Sunflower Sunset

 

Just across the street from the bus stop there is a grocery store that has community garden-pots all around the parking lot. Local enthusiasts planted a variety of flowers and herbs, including several prominent sunflowers that tend to bloom in late August. This evening I set out after to work to capture the sunset after rethinking a painting strategy for the complex mix of colours. From bottom to top, the sunset transitioned from high chroma (saturated) red-orange, orange, orange-yellow, then a series of low chroma (greyish) colours including yellow, green, cyan, finishing with increasing intensity of blue to the top of the sky. Its hard to write and even harder to paint but now that I understand it better I can figure out the proper way to mix it. The sunflower attracted me like a moth to a candle flame. As I stood painting this scene many people glanced over and commented. Look, a nice painting! Getting the yellow of the sunflower right was tricky, it was a slightly warm yellow, with medium value... slightly darker then the sunset, but lighter than the surrounding foliage. All of the colours are slightly exaggerated here to pay homage to the style of, well, you can probably guess what artist inspired me to paint sunflowers!

Sunflower Sunset, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August 2023 (No. 3515a)

This was the first painting I did on location, the scene shows the parking lot with all its surrounding greenery and the sunflowers growing in a large wooden planter. I made a similar painting in 2021 of the same parking lot with sunflowers. As I researched methods to paint sunsets I discovered a painting by Monet known as Sunset in Venice, you can see it on wikipedia by clicking the link. Monet created the sunset with small interlocking brushstrokes that went from red orange, orange, orange-yellow, then a low chroma (greyish) yellow, followed by high chroma green, cyan and blue to the top. He tried to grey-out the green too, which fits the profile that I measured using digital analysis of sunset photos. That goes to show how keen Monet's eye was.. without the benefit of computers or cameras he was able to match almost exactly what could be expected in a sunset. Even more impressive is that it took Monet many hours to complete a painting, but a sunset only lasts ten or twenty minutes. It must have been a great challenge for him, perhaps he returned to the scene several nights in a row as he did for many of his landscapes. Upon further reading it seems that Monet may have finished those Venice paintings in his studio.

Sunset Metro Parking Lot, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August 2023 (No. 3514b)