A new painting: ADewy Sunflower

A few weeks ago, a friend on Instagram, @theplussizemermaid posted a beautiful photo of an unfurling sunflower partially filled with water. She lives in New Zealand, and her garden is currently in bloom.

I asked her permission to paint her photo and she granted it.Here’s my progress.

And the finished painting!

It was a big challenge. First of all, yellow is such a challenge in watercolor. It’s so easy for the shadows to take on a green tinge, and I wanted to preserve the beautiful maroon shades of the original flower. Also, because the flower was in filtered light, it was a bigger trick to make the water look wet, if that makes sense. But whenever I am lost and don’t know what to do in a painting, I just slow down and work on recreating exactly what I see.

I feel good about how this turned out, which I really needed because I just received notification that none of my pieces were selected for the Western Federation of Watercolor Societies. For this year. That was really disappointing and discouraging. So much so that My nerve has failed me and I don’t think I’ll apply for the city traffic box art program after all. I’ve been rejected from that several years in a row, and it’s really tough.

I think I’ll just focus on making great art and not worry about entering it into any jury situations for a while. My Instagram supporters on my art page are so supportive, they can help me heal my rejection wounds and help me repair my certainty that I should continue making art.

Follow me over there if you don’t already! @henandchickart