Painting a field of Sunflowers without painting every flower.
Since I began painting outdoors I find painting from photos very limiting. However, one of the hardest things for beginning painters en plein air seems to be not painting every detail. Many people are accustomed to accepting the frozen camera view of reality, but in reality your eye sees the world very differently. You see the field of flowers as moving shapes and colors while only seeing the details of the closest flowers. Sunflowers follow the sun until they are heavy with seed and can no longer turn their heads with the sun. I painted with the sun over my left shoulder as I viewed the field. Still I found that the painting was more about suggestion of distance and color filled space than about contrast of value. Changes in color notes were subtle and that is what I concentrated on.
Sunflower Field, Fluid Acrylic, 11 X 14 inches
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