Sunflower Study : 2023-01

Sunflower Study, 30 January 2023

Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 inches (41 x 51 cm)

- Private Collection -

I was asked to lead something of a 'paint night' or lead a group through a painting. I've never done that before (let alone the limited time we have) so I thought I'd better come up with a subject and rehearse. Maybe that wasn't a great idea, but it felt like it was appropriate. At least I have an idea of the end state. The idea was a group of sunflowers based on a Van Gogh which is the last picture. It deviated quite a bit and there were prior versions I think were better (3rd and 5th pics), but it was a study for study reasons.

This painting was a repurpose from another painting I had in my collection. Ironically, if I'm not mistaken, from a painting event. At first, I was toying with simple geometric shapes (a sphere on a box) so we could work on creating depth and shadows (above, left). However, I trust the group can do much more so I started down the sunflower path. I thought the vase, table, background and flowers (even leaves) could be treated separately so we can continue to move as painted areas dry. Obviously, there weren't many pictures between the first and second pics. Looking back, I really liked the top, right picture but continued to modify it since they flowers were far from sunflowers. Although, I might keep it as a back up. That's the fun of flowers. Similar to birds, you can kind of make them up.

After the initial laydown of the plants and vase, I focused on the flowers. Experimented with a few colors and didn't mind any of them. That reminds me I can tell the group to use whatever color they'd like - they're just flowers. The background changes quite often because I was working on multiple paintings and often use leftover paint to 1) not waste it and 2) see how it looks.

The last two pics are trying to find a good yellow. Yellow itself does a poor job of covering an existing dark color and it was getting frustrating - and taking too long for my comfort. Threw in some white and voila! It worked very well. Van Gogh's version is the last picture and you can see the differences. It was a good study.

Animated progress.

The sketch

- mm -