I spent a lot of time studying the sunflowers before deciding what to paint and how to approach the painting. In the end I decided on an off center close up of the flower with a single Bumble bee feeding.
The disc florets spiral out from the center in
Fibonacci sequence. This pattern provides the optimal number of flowers and seeds for the given space. The pattern can be easily seen in the un-opened disc flowers at the center. My pencil sketch included the placement of the ray flower petals and the spiral lines in the center's unopened florets.
The palette I worked with included warm and cool yellows and blues; as well as Yellow Ochre, Burnt Siena and Burnt Umber. The whole central part of the flower would involve a lot of
negative painting. Using the cool yellow I painted the whole center of the disk. A wash of blue and warm yellow was added the center. Warm yellow was used for the ray floret petals around the disk. Then working from the outer edge of the disk inwards, Burnt Sienna was add to define the spent disk flowers. Yellow was mixed in to the Burnt Siena to lighten the color as I moved toward the center and began to define the open disk florets. Additional colors were added to darken the spirals in the center and define the unopened florets.
Background color was added between the petals and additional shades of yellow were used to continue to define the open disk flowers. The bee was painted. Many additional layers of color were added to develop the background, flower and bee.
