Towards the end of August I did a location painting called Sunflowers in the City, which was a variation of the famous HBO TV show called Sex and the City. It was suggested periodically that I frame and hang some paintings in my office and in the lunch room at work. Maybe I can help out with the budget problems by selling paintings? Whatever the case may be, we went out to the mall last weekend and I got a good price on a couple of generic frames that are for 11 x 14" photos although they actually have a 10.5 by 13.5" opening. I thought about which paintings might be suitable to repaint and this one came to mind. It was originally a 5 x 7", and the bottom left portion was cramped, the car barely visible. In the repainted study, I opened up the bottom left and made room for a second car going in the other direction. Ideally the car would look like a Porsche or a Lamborghini, and in canary yellow to play off of the sunflowers. I would still add a few smaller sunflowers reaching up to the right towards the yellow traffic light. You get the feeling of a sports car running a yellow light, with the city in the distance and these sunflowers sitting incongruously in the middle.
What makes the composition work is how the big sunflower goes against the grain, and how the delicate looking plants appear to hold the massive sky scrapers on the their back. I will practice painting the car a few times, then try to do it all on a proper rag paper with nice details. But I like the rushed look it has, so I wouldn't want the finished painting to be too tight. Its not often I recompose and repaint things in the 'studio' aka half of our kitchen table, but its been rainy lately so may as well work on it now. There are lots of good paintings from this year so I can look back and cherry pick the good ones to repaint.
Sunflowers in the city, study, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, October 2024
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