Did you know that sunflowers are known as composite flowers and can have up to 2000 florets, or little flowers, on one flower head?! Each seed that you see used to be one floret. That is a lot of flowers! The bumble bee that I watched as I sat painting feasted for hours on this flower. Anyway, there is a video below and a couple of behind-the-scenes start-to-finish photographs. Hope you enjoy!
The beginning…. Just a few washes of color to set the foundation.
I built the form of the petals by adding details and more saturated color. At this point to get the grainy texture of the floret area I had added a wash of color then sprinkled salt. The salt pulls the color from the water to make interesting designs. I liked the design it made so much that I was hesitant in adding more to the painting but decided…
…to give the sunflower weight. So to add more contrast against the lighter yellow hue of the petals I added a mixture of ultramarine blue, magenta, and sap green.
Here is a photo of the actual sunflower bowing its heavy head.