Sunflower Bouquet

4x6 watercolor (Rosa paints) with black India ink applied with a chopstick to dry paper done last week of January, a quick floral study using fresh flowers in Joggles sketchbook (80 lb. paper). COPYRIGHT 2025 Kay Smith

Sunflower Sizzlers - WIP

 22x15 watercolor beginning stage yesterday of a work in progress, a group of red and yellow sunflowers in a glass vase I first painted awhile ago.  This is on Arches 140 lb cold press paper,  On dry paper, I first laid down my darkest darks for their centers (quinacridone burnt orange, ultramarine blue, carbazole violet, quin gold, violet) and let the paint mix and mingle.

 I lightly wet the top background area with most of the same colors plus olive green and blue bice (American Journey); those areas are soft and out of focus and could be flower shapes, stems, or leaves.  Since I don't have my original photo reference I'm using the original painting.

In this view, I've added a couple of petals with top sunflower and the very large leaf front and center using UB, quin gold, arylide yellow, alizarin crimson, sap green, being careful with any tube greens being too harsh so I add a touch of any red.  I wet the leaf with my 1" flat brush first then lightly blotted it.  Fully loaded with two colors I quickly laid in the different pigments.  These steps show my direct method of painting wet on dry watercolor.

BEFORE version of China Cabinet

This is the still life that got me interested in reworking into a vertical composition as posted below in China Cabinet.
Size 15x22; flowers, vase, pitcher, onions and cloth were items we used to paint from in an oil painting workshop with Ann Templeton in Odessa, TX several years ago.  I used many of my photos of those to paint watercolors later on.  I just did not like this one as my white pitcher proportions are off.  Flowers were okay but not spectacular and there was plenty of color.  When reworking it I did crop it as you can see from comparison of the two.  The title of this one was called Ann's Garden Variety.