Sunflower Painting

I decided to start something new on my blog today. I am going to document the process of a painting I am doing in the studio from a reference.

I first drew the image on my paper and then wet it and stretched it–a process I usually do in reverse.

Since I had the drawing and the paper was wet, I decided to drop some color in and then I waited for it to dry.

After the initial wash, I continued to drop color into wet paper. I want to keep this loose and free and try to capture the dappling light.

I started to approach this with negative painting to give some definition to the flowers

I was really interested in the vein of the leaf, the petals of the small flower 

To finish, I just added some more darks for detail.