Bouquet of sunflowers

A very colorful painting of sunflowers.

Bouquet of sunflowers - Acrylic painting on canvas (36x36 in)

The painting started as an idea worked in photoshop out of a photograph of a bouquet of sunflowers. It is the first painting I have done out of a digital photo that has come out better and more colorful than the actual digital picture.
I used a lot of layers on this painting, beginning with the purples and magentas on the white canvas to make them as bright as possible since they are transparent pigments. Then I added the cadmiums with the knife, smoothing some of them with a sponge. The blues came last. All three in separate sessions to keep the colors saturated and clean.
Once I had the background with the structure of the painting (a cross), I added additional background elements, such as the magenta flowers on the back which is really two separate layers: A magenta fluid layer, using a spray bottle to blur the edges, and the purple flowers using a custom stencil.
Then I blocked out the center of the sunflowers and used the brush to splatter some paint to give some interest to the background colors.
I then painted additional elements such as the chinese letters and the wall patterns. At which point I added another blue section on the bottom left to balance the blues on the middle right.
I added the vase and the oranges at the bottom right.
Then I painted the petals using fluid acrylics, a spray bottle, and squirt bottles to keep the shapes fluid. I used paper towels to blur some of the sections that I wanted to blend into the background.
It was a week of work, but very satisfying.