Some time back I had painted this 6×6 canvas panel with cerulean blue, so today I used that for my sunflower. The petals are layered with cadmium-free orange as the base (although it looks like yellow ochre now that it’s painted on the blue). Then I mixed azo yellow with some yellow ochre. Finally, the top layer is cadmium-free yellow. The center is burnt umber light, with some yellow ochre, and then purple and yellow denoting the seeds.
I haven’t painted (or drawn) for weeks, so today I was just playing with paint without any ideas in my head of what to paint. But after the red oxide paint dried, I rotated the 8×8 canvas, and it suddenly seemed to me like the Sangre de Christo mountains in New Mexico. To that end, I added the chromium green, the yellow “road” and the white dots (lights in houses along the road?)
Just practice, a sketch in graphite, from my sketchbook.
I painted one of the sunflowers in my vase — but skipped the vase. And decided to outline it with one of my Arteza Brush Pens. This was done on 6×8 300-lb. watercolor paper.
The painting below — on 6×8 300-lb. watercolor paper — is based on a photo by Shannon Baldwin on Unsplash; my painted rose leans red as opposed to a peachy coral.
As I mentioned in this post, I’m taking the online course by Peggi Kroll-Roberts, and the assignment is to do 2-value and then 3-value studies painting the figure. In this effort, I am using the figure I sketched out in charcoal here, as prep for a future painting.
I drew out the figure first, using a 6×8 piece of 300-lb watercolor paper. For comparison’s sake, I’ve included the charcoal figure.
Based on an image by sarahbernier3140 from Pixabay
Yes, this IS a type of sunflower! Since it’s different, I decided to paint it on a 5×7 gessoboard.
This painting was done by “winging it” — meaning, no specific reference photo. I wanted to try building out my sunflower with a base of green petals. Below is the result. I’ve layered the petals with Liquitex cadmium-free lemon, and cadmium-free yellow medium, as well as yellow ochre and dioxazine purple.
I did this on a piece of 6×8 300-lb. watercolor paper.
I’ve been unsatisfied with my sunflower painting so the other day I googled “how to paint sunflowers in acrylics”. The search results were a bounty of different YouTube videos. Well, naturally, some sunflower paintings appealed to me more than others so I watched about half a dozen.
What I found was, naturally, everyone has their own way of painting sunflowers. Some start with the background, some start with the dark center of the flower. However, the colors they chose for painting the flower were largely in sync across the board — and with my own paintings: yellow, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber, etc. etc.
One process I decided to try, though, was to do more layering of the petals, and start with a round of yellow ochre first, applying the brighter yellow afterwards. This painting on an 8×8 canvas was just from my imagination, and the mix of all the sunflower pictures I’ve been looking at lately.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 