Painting Manitoba Sunflowers

Who doesn't love sunflowers.  One of my plein-air painting friends met a farmer just the week previous who had sunflowers and was willing to have us on the property to paint. It was meant to be! We decided to do an evening session so we left Winnipeg at 6:00pm and headed out to a farm just past the perimeter highway on number six highway. This was a very large, well kept farm and the sunflowers were gorgeous and at their prime. It was hard to decide just what view to paint ... should we paint individual flowers or try to capture a portion of the field. Angela settled on doing a "portrait" of the sunflowers while I took a longer view.

I did my painting on a piece of Arches oil paper and toned the paper first with a mixture of colors on my palette leftover from a previous painting session. Angela chose to do her painting on a textured ground and used a palette knife. We worked for about an hour and a half when we started to feel a few drops of rain. We packed up and went back to thank Bruce for allowing us to paint his field. He suggested that we might want to look out back which we decided to do. By this time, the sun was a brilliant orange red ball of fire that had almost set. A very large piece of farm equipment was silloutted against the sky with the backdrop being the sunflower field. We both agreed that we had to come out again to paint these sunflowers. We both took photos but they just don't do justice to the incredible sky we had on the way home. Thankyou very much to Bruce and we hope to have the opportunity to paint again at your farm.

Sunflowers painted with oils on Arches oil paper