DAY 4: It's a rather gloomy day here in South Carolina, so I hope this sunflower painting brightens up my studio. Here's a photo of what SUNFLOWER #1 looked like before I began painting this morning.

The first thing I did was start painting the center of the flower. I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to go about this. The other four sunflowers in the series each have very dark centers, but this flower has a center that is basically the same color as the yellow petals. Hmmm... what to do...

I decided to just keep the center yellow, as is shown in my photo. I want the flower to really pop off the blue sky. I'm afraid if the center is dark, it won't have that same effect I'm striving for. It is actually much harder to paint with shades of yellow than shades of brown. The yellow is more translucent so it gets muddy very quickly if you aren't careful. Whereas with brown, you can just keep layering paint on top of paint until you get it right. You kind of only have one shot with shades of yellow. Right now the center looks like a bull's eye. What am I going to do to fix that? I guess nothing now--it will need to dry first before anything else can be done.

I decided I better move on to painting the leaves and petals. Maybe once those are done, the center will look better to me. It's hard to make an accurate judgment about one area of the painting when there are still unfinished white spots popping off the canvas to distract the eye.

The petals finished for now. I'm looking forward to starting the smaller flower in the lower right corner. That has a dark center, which I think will be a nice contrast to the big flower. I'm glad I have the weekend to walk away from this painting. My eyes have seen too much yellow paint this week! I'm sure I will feel more objective about this piece on Monday. My thought now is that I need to tone down the shades of red from the center. I think this may take care of my "bull's eye" issue. (Does anyone else see the logo from Target in this painting too?) 🙂