Sunflowers

As promised, a quick look at the painting of Sunflowers that I completed during the quiet times at the exhibition. The 'Poppies' painting is at the end of my previous post, and that is now framed and ready for the next exhibition.
The Sunflowers came about when a member of the painting group brought a bunch in to paint on the Thursday 2 weeks before the exhibition. She was going on holiday the following weekend and said I could take them home as they would fade during her absence. Anyway, it appears that she had a whole swathe of them in her garden and had never managed to grow so many in one season. Of course we are all eager to know the  specific name of the variety she grew, so that we can all have a go next year. I started the painting the following week and took the pad to the exhibition, where the public, especially the children seem to enjoy seeing someone paint, and I needed to keep busy, or people think you are watching them ready to pounce!

As this is a fairly figurative painting, with nothing very much of an experimental nature to it, there is not a lot to say. I started with the centres as this helped me see the composition better than just the pencil drawing, and added a bit of the background as well..

The flowers were painted with a variety of yellows including Cadmium, Hansa and Indian, with Venetian Red for the darker areas. I left plenty of the petal edges white or nearly white to give some contrast and painted the background with my two favourite background colours.....Indigo and quinachridone rust.Leaves were painted with Apatite Green mixed with various yellows.

Finally I darkened the centres of the flowers as they seemed a bit lacking in punch.

As usual the paper is Fabriano Artistico Extra White 300gms, 30cm x 45cm.

An added bonus is that a visitor wanted the painting, so I removed  one that had not seemed to attract too much comment from its frame and put the Sunflowers in its place, and the customer went away very happy, and I was quite pleased too!