Sunflowers on a Sunny Day

 

Today at lunch hour I went out to make a painting around the Westhaven Community garden which is in the field where I painted the chairs and tables. In fact, as I was painting this one, a gentleman walked up to see and said that he remembered seeing me paint the chairs and tables. Last time I painted the sunflowers it was a rainy day. In the rainy day painting the flowers were hunched over and suppressed by the heavy clouds, whereas the sunny day painting shows the sunflowers reaching up to the sky. Getting the painting right required a good contrast between the bright yellow petals and the bright blue sky. Since this is a watercolour painting, there are no pencil or pen outlines. The sunflowers were applied with juicy yellow brush strokes, and the blue sky painted carefully around it. For the centers of the flowers, I used transparent burnt umber (PR101), and daubed in some carbon black (PBr6) while moist. The rest of the foliage just had to support the flowers and not command too much attention, so I painted the leaves and stems in an almost abstract fashion. There was a row of condos in the background which I simplified by lowering them below the foliage, and only depicted with a few brick orange (PR101) brush strokes. These compositional adjustments helped to make yellow/blue play the starring role. Speaking of stars, I also recently painted sunflowers at night in NDG. A similar kind of painting was hanging in an art gallery in old Montreal, the artist had used oil paints to depict sunflowers against a dark, navy blue background on a large canvas. Obviously sunflowers are a great motif with endless possibilities.

Sunflowers on a Sunny Day, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, September 2023 (No. 3554)