I updated the flowers because I felt like they were too washed out. Still need to update the cloth the vase is sitting on — LATER.
The revised painting is on the left; the former version is on the right.
I updated the flowers because I felt like they were too washed out. Still need to update the cloth the vase is sitting on — LATER.
The revised painting is on the left; the former version is on the right.


This 6×8 painting of a sunflower is based off the image used for Episode 29 of Artists Network Drawing Together series. What I did differently from the others I’ve painted was that for the shadowed part of the leaves, I mixed my yellow with a touch of Dioxazine Purple to desaturate it (rather than using Yellow Ochre). Ditto for the center of the flower; there’s a lot of the purple mixed in with yellow (although I also used Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber).
Here’s the work-in-progress.

And here’s the finished piece.

These pastel paintings were done based off an image by นิธิ วีระสันติ from Pixabay.
I used the same pastel palette for both (mostly) — Blick, Richeson, and Terry Ludwig sticks.
The paper on the left is Art Spectrum Colourfix, and the paper on the right — which I found easier to work with — is Clairefontaine Pastelmat.



After painting the sunflowers in my two previous posts — as much as fun as it was — I wanted to make my flowers more artistic and less symbolic. I was reading blog posts from Karen Margulis, a pastel painter, and was inspired to up my game.
This was done in pastel on a terracotta-colored 6×8 Pastel Premier 4-ply board.

After doing a quickie version in pastels, I decided to a similar scene in acrylics. This was done on 7×10 300-lb. cold-pressed watercolor paper.
Here’s the work-in-progress (right) and the finished version (left).


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.
