# Nelson Watercolor #5



## Scott R Nelson (Jun 26, 2013)

I've been interested in painting a sunflower for decades. I started one using oil paint a few decades back, but never finished it. That one was of a whole field of sunflowers and it just didn't come out right.

Finally, last summer, I went out south of where I live, found a bunch of wild sunflowers growing along the road, and took a bunch of photographs to try to capture the feeling that I wanted.

The one new thing I wanted to try with this one was using frisket to mask out large areas so that I could make the sky with an even wash, then remove the frisket to get clean white paper for the petals. The bright yellow petals are especially tricky to get right. Down at the bottom of this post is my first attempt, which I am now calling my "study", since not very much came out the way that I wanted it to.

After staring at the "study" for several months I was finally ready to have another go at it. The sky needed to be a much deeper blue and I needed to find a way to keep the bright clean yellow feeling of the petals while still being able to represent all of the shadows on those petals. I'm still not completely satisfied, but the second attempt came out quite a bit better.










My "study" painting that helped me figure out how to improve.









Time to go find another lighthouse to paint now.


I took photos of the steps I took with this one, but I'll have to get at least five request to share those before I'll dig out the photos.


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## photoman (Apr 28, 2014)

Scott R Nelson said:


> I've been interested in painting a sunflower for decades. I started one using oil paint a few decades back, but never finished it. That one was of a whole field of sunflowers and it just didn't come out right.
> 
> Finally, last summer, I went out south of where I live, found a bunch of wild sunflowers growing along the road, and took a bunch of photographs to try to capture the feeling that I wanted.
> 
> ...


I love the finished painting as it captures that yellow glow that sunflowers have. Thanks with sharing it with us


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