Sunflower Paintings 7x5 pastel

Sunflower Studies 7x5 pastel

I am working on a commission painting this week and the first thing I usually do is a few small studies to show my client before I work on the larger painting. In this case they wanted a view of the sunflowers you see growing wild along the roadsides of the midwest and west. I happened to see a lot of these happy flowers on the drive out to Wyoming but the last study was based on some sunflowers that were growing in front of our cabins in Hope Valley California! The larger painting will be 11x14 and I will show you the finished painting when I am done. I have been doing a lot with underpaintings lately. Not only because of the Richard McKinley workshop but my basic class has focused on underpaintings as well. For these studies I did an alcohol wash over a layer of harder pastels that were mostly reds and oranges.