This is an oil painting of begonias and gardenias from my garden floating in a silver bowl filled with water on a glass table with the grass showing through it. It's a fun look for entertaining and the flowers seem last longer. I've seen travel documentaries with large decorative containers floating dozens of flowers. These flowers were sculpted with Sculpey, heated in an oven to harden and then set in a layer of modeling paste. Another medium would be paper mache for the sculpted effect. Paint applied this thickly would take forever to dry for oils and crack over time, and acrylics tend to flatten even with gels. In either case, paint is very expensive, and only need for the top layer.