"Painting" Vases of Flowers

I used to sketch with a pen and ink when I lived overseas.  Clearly self-taught.  I sketched seashells because I loved the shape and symmetry and because I lived in the South Pacific and had little to do when I was not a work.  Natures beauty has always captured me.  This was before children, of course. 

Now I sit at home and read or watch TV or cook. The cooking part is really something I should avoid. So, instead, I then turn to working on my photographs. With spring and early summer blooms there is plenty of stuff to digitize. 

I always admired the flourishing of art and science under the Medici family in Florence, Italy in the 1500-1600s. I even have a cookbook with Florentine recipes collected by Lorenza de Medici and accompanied by paintings by Giovanna Garzoni, a famed female miniaturist of that time. The cookbook was a gift and published in 1994.  While perusing that cookbook for recipes it stimulated my still early attempts at still-life art below from my photographs. Each takes 3 to four hours from beginning to end if I do not count all the sorting and deleting!  I also sometimes go back days later and "fiddle."

I admit that these are still broadly stylized and derivative with no consistent style, but I do like doing them. I have not moved into the areas of bugs, fruit, and animals...yet.  Do you have a preferred one?