I got ahold of a sunflower a few months ago and had taken pictures outside, so I am working on a painting from those pictures right now. I wish I could be working from life... but it's ok. This one is a little bit larger, 11x14, here is where I am at right now. (click on the picture to see it better!)
I was having a lot of trouble getting the shadow colors. I started with the center, which was easy to get looking nice, and then I went up to the top right which had a lot of shadow, but everything was looking too brown. The sunflower is really a dark dark yellow, or light orange color, and what I finally figured out by the time I got to the bottom of the flower is that the shadows in the petals are really a cool orange. At first I was using some transparent red oxide and terra rosa and mixing that with cad orange or cad yellow deep. Some of my problem was that I was working off of a picture and I couldn't figure out what colors I was seeing. Some of the problem was me not really thinking through it.... The picture was in bright sunlight so the shadows should be cool, but they still had the orange of the petal showing through, especially in certain parts of the shadows. So what I figured out by the time I was finishing was to mix yellow ochre, which is a super cool yellow) with a tiny bit of ultramarine blue and some cad orange. It worked much better. Don't ask me why I was using brown before...I thought I was seeing brown I guess, but I wasn't. I've tried to go back towards the top and fix some of the shadows, but I may have to do some more. Gonna paint the green backing leaves and background today. Probably could have used a larger canvas, but oh well.
I'll post the finished piece tonight or tomorrow :)
