Sunflower Trio

Last week, I hosted our critque group, aka artist's group, which includes some absolutely phenomanal artists.  One of them brought me some sunflowers, which I just got to painting.  I think I'll go back in on the flower petals with some crayon.  The painting is approximately 18x24 inches on 300 1lb Fabriano Rough Paper.  Palette is Indigo, lemon yellow, quinacridone burnt orange, permanent yellow deep, undersea green, a little ultramarine blue, and a little pyrene orange.  

A Series of Small Abstracts

When I finished my sycamore tree painting, I had a lot of interesting grays in the mixing well of my palette.  I don't like to waste the paint, so I used the original colors from the sycamore painting and a strip of paper from a cropped painting to create five small abstracts.  They tend toward landscape.  

From top to bottom:

Color Block:  3.5 x 4 in.
Abstract:  4.25 x 4 in.
Corn Field:  5 x 4 in.
Gray Field:  4 x 2 in.
Mountain:  4 x 3.5

I've done this before--see here.  I think for me, working small makes it easier to go more abstract.

Sycamore In Front of Storm Cloud

My community has the most lovely collection of street trees.  There are sycamores, oaks, maples, tulip poplars, and more.  (And, ash.  The ash are sad, since many of them look stressed, or dying because of the emerald ash borer.)  Many of the trees are mature, which means in the summer, it's like a huge green tunnel with dapples.