Sunday, September 22, 2013

Sunny days with sunflowers


Sunflower study#1
  In defiance of my missing "sunflower season" I have taken to brightening my days with cut flowers. When I went all around town I could not find a sunflower to save my life. After 3 strikes I found a flourist who tells me, "Oh yes, we have sunflowers. It's the flower of the month." It was like christmas and I was strangly giddy to have found the little guy... so I painted him twice.
Then the florist called as they got a new shipment. I was hoping for the mammoths (I don't think they ever get those) so I stopped by. Sadly they had the same yellow petals with green center sunflowers so I went to another grocery store to my surprise they had two bunches of yellow petals with dark brow centers. This bunch of 5 models costing $1 more then my single florist specimen. They said that they got shipments in weekly but were clueless as to what would be shipped variety wise. I took one of my new models for a paint session on Fox Island and found his dark center right at home with the dramatic light coming in through the old windows of the schoolhouse... alla prima in 2 hours for that model.





Ponce De Leon Lighthouse study

It was incredibly hot painting the lighthouse but I must admit my first red lighthouse. All the grass sections between the buildings had "do not walk on the grass" signs but the sidewalks had ants... which I found out the hard way when doing this study.


Interior stairwell of Lighthouse

The inside of the lighthouse was like a nautilus shell. How ironic I thought considering the oceanic tie/tides...