This was just a quickie because I didn’t have a lot of time, yet I wanted to paint something. It was done on a 6×8 white Pastel Premier 4-ply board (from a sampler set I got at Dakota Pastels a few years back).
I didn’t even use all the pastel sticks shown below — but one thing I would do differently would be to paint the centers last so as not to smear the yellow shades with the darker brown.
I decided the background was too gloomy with that gray blue, so painted over it with Golden’s Neutral Gray 7.
I used the blurred reference photo from the PaintCoach Patreon site, and listened here and there to the video, but ultimately I decided to go with my interpretation of the colors rather than trying to copy color for color the instructor’s work.
We had a baseball game to go to in the afternoon (for Independence Day) so I wasn’t able to get more done on this painting. However, I have the base colors in for the roses.
I need to watch the PaintCoach‘s YouTube to understand what he did for the flower stalks, and the finishing touches.
I’m trying roses now, using a reference photo from PaintCoach’s Patreon site. This is the background done, on a 11×14 canvas.
This 9×12 painting of a vase of sunflowers is from one of the PaintCoach Patreon lessons. I’m on a sunflower roll…
For the stems, I used my Liquitex BASICS Green Gray, my new Green Earth, and Phthalo Green (Yellow Shade) with Liquitex Cad-Free Yellow.
For the petals, I used Cad-Free Yellow, Yellow Ochre, and Cad-Free Orange desaturated with Ultramarine Blue.
The vase was done with Ultramarine Blue, Cerulean Blue and Titanium White.
Wow! I’ve actually made 100 paintings. This one was my first from life rather than a photo. And, man, these sunflowers are in bad shape! I bought them specifically to paint them, but I’ve been drawing rather than painting for the last week or so. (I did take some photos of them right when I bought them, though, so I can try again.)
I decide to use my new Green Earth paint for the stems and leaves (mixed with my go-to Chromium Oxide Green. I used Diarylide Yellow for the petals, and a mix of Burnt Umber Light w/ Carbon Black for the faces of the flowers.
As with the study of my cat in yesterday’s post, this rose in a vase done while I visited my mom was sketched in compressed charcoal.
One of those 20 minute things.
Here’s the finished sunflower.
I used Yellow Ochre for the shaded parts of the petals, and Liquitex Soft Body Yellow Azo Med (PY 74) for the brighter parts of the petals. The yellow is fairly transparent, so I deliberately wanted to leave brush marks to give some additional definition to the petals.
I may come back around and paint over the greenish areas where I overpainted the yellow on to the background. Then again, maybe not, as from afar it looks a bit like shadow. We’ll see.
Based on an image by Couleur from Pixabay
This 6×8 sunflower painting was based on an image by Couleur from Pixabay.
The green I used was one of my favorites — Chromium Oxide Green (PG 17) Liquitex Heavy Body. For the darkest green, I mixed it with Alizarin Crimson. The medium green is straight from the tube. And the lightest silvery green is Liquitex BASICS Green Gray.
This time for the sky I used Phthalo Blue from Golden Fluid, mixing it with the Golden Fluid Titanium White.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 