New YouTube Demo Release! Let's Paint a Still Life with Sunflowers

I am painting flowers for Valentine's Day. I will have a pop up sale this week! In the spirit of painting flowers I am releasing a video demo from my Patreon Page. In the video I work from a photo and paint a pitcher full of sunflowers for our month long focus on the still life. 

Here is the link to the video on my Youtube challenge. I welcome your comments and I hope you will share it with your artist friends!

                                             https://youtu.be/RSM3C3hXKc4

 It was fun to paint and I hope you enjoy the demo. After the camera stopped and I had time to step back I saw some things to adjust so that I could make sure I created a better visual journey for the viewer, a better feeling of depth and a better connection between background and subject. Scroll down to read more about the changes. 

The finished painting is 12x13 on Uart 400.

The first thing I did was to remove the handle of the pitcher and make it into a pot. I didn't like the way the handle looked. I could have fussed with it to get it right but in the end it wasn't important to the story and it was more satisfying to brush it out. Now it is just a piece of pottery!

• I needed to create more depth within the flowers. I adjusted and refined some of the leaves making some cooler green in the leaves farthest away. I also added a darker blue under the largest leave to make it pop away from the pot. I used a variety of greens to refine the leaves. 

• I refined the centers of the flowers on the right making them darker.

• I refined the petals and added some to the right. I also add a couple of petals on the table. The reason for these petals is to move the eye around the painting by repeating the yellow. The petals on the right point us done to this area and we are drawn by the petals on the table. We then look back up to the large flower completing the circle. 

• I pulled out a bright blue and added it to the center of the flowers as well as in the shadow on the table.

• I add a few more marks of pale blue and violet in the background. I used linear marks to pull the ye into the painting. I chose to keep the background simple so the flowers can be the star. I decided that the background of trees in the photo would be confusing and too busy. 

Here is a close up so you can see my marks. Can you see the difference between the heavy yellow marks and those done with a light touch? This add contrast to the painting. 

 Please consider joining us on Patreon for a low monthly pledge of just $4! We covered the still life in September 2020 and you will have access to all of those posts and much more! www.patreon.com/karenmargulis