Painting a Sunflower!

Well, I’m late in two days this time. 😂

First off, because it isn’t Thursday… at least by my calendar. The second way is in the content of this post. The piece of art shown here would better fit summer, as you’ll soon see.

This painting is actually one I did a while ago (so in that way I wasn’t late! Haha.) I’d meant to do a post on it, but then I lost the pictures I took of it. So… I never did the post. Cause what’s a piece of art when you can’t see what it looks like, right?

Well, today I found the pictures, so now I’m going to do the post! 😊

First off, when painting, I always lay my canvas on scrap paper. In this case, I used newspaper, but you can use anything you want. Second, I will sometimes make a border on my painting by taping off the edges before beginning to paint. This is something I saw on Youtube, and I quite like the result! I used masking tape, but I’m sure there’s an actual art tape you should use, since masking tape sometimes bubbles and lets paint through underneath (don’t worry, you can paint over it in white later!) .

Ok, next! I the first thing I did here was put some white paint directly on my canvas. I do this because it takes a lot of paint to cover the canvas, and it’ll take a while if you’re using a palette and transferring it brushful by brushful. I spread the white out completely, then but on blue and green the same way, to establish a background wash. The original white is covered up, but it helped spread the following layers of paint!

Ok, so here is shown my next step (I forgot to take a picture of adding the blue and green… whoops!) after setting up my background. I added white here as a rough guideline to the stems of the sunflowers I’ll be adding in a minute.

Ok… here I got carried away in my painting and totally forgot to take pictures of the following steps… basically I started at the bottom and layered my way up, adding more color and detail as I went until I got to… this!

They’re a little… wonky if you couldn’t tell. 😂 I’d never painted sunflowers before, so the colors and petals didn’t turn out quite right. The leaves… were also terrible. The one on the far right is the best one, by far, as you’ll see in a moment. The reason the others look a little strange is because (especially on the middle flower) the don’t have a branch-thing connecting them to the main stem. And the others are just WAY to droopy-looking… 😂

Anyway, on to the next picture! In this one my mom suggested I add little dots for fireflies (and to spruce it up a little bit) and a ladybug. I’d also never painted a ladybug before…

You’ll notice I also connected the floating leaf, and added more detail to the flowers. Now for the final product, when I took off the tape surrounding the edges of the painting!

Granted, I could have done the border a little thinner… but I could have done a lot of things differently that I didn’t. 😂 My mom liked it a lot, and one of our neighbors did too! She actually ended up buying it recently, so now she has it in her kitchen on the wall. 😊

Hope you enjoyed today’s little art piece! Have you done any paintings lately? Did this inspire you to do so? Tell me in the comments; I love to hear from you, my wonderful readers! 💛

God bless,

Janet 🌻

When Your Plans Fail and You Get Something Better Instead!

Sometimes things don’t turn out how you hope. 

You remember the fall festival I was doing paintings for? 

Well, I did somewhere around 25 paintings… 

And sold five. 

Or maybe it was four… 🤷‍♀️  

Sad, right? It was super slow, and not very many people came. Plus, they were more interested in the food for sale than the wall art… 

Well, it was sad from the business point of view. 

But it was a success in a different way! One of my neighbors really loved one of the painting’s I’d sold (she actually wanted to buy it but came too late) so she asked me to paint the same one again for her.  

Of course, I said sure! 

Then a few days later she contacted my mom with an idea… 

She and her husband have an Airbnb with some empty wall space, and she was wondering if I could do some paintings for that area—to sell. They would have price tags on them, and if a customer really liked one of them, they could buy it! 

A pretty cool idea, right? 

I thought so. 😀  

I now have a commission to paint some of the tourist sites around my area (and other random cool stuff) as souvenirs for visitors! 

I can’t wait to get started! 

So you see, the festival didn’t turn out how I had hoped it would, but God had a bigger and better plan! Now I have an opportunity to get my art out into the world way faster than I’d even thought possible. There are so many places this could go, and I’m so excited to see how it turns out. 😀 

My main draw from this experience is this: God has a plan—go with it. 

Ok… that’s paraphrased. With anything that you want to do, just think of what it might turn into if you let God take control! 

This may show up in re-thinking your idea, giving it a creative twist, asking friends and family for more ideas… and much more. 

I wouldn’t have come up with the idea to market my paintings in someone else’s house on my own, but God planted that seed in their minds. He can use other people around you, so keep an eye out! 😂  

Although the festival didn’t seem to turn out well, it may have led to something even better and more long-term! 

That’s my latest art update—I hope it inspires you to think of your gifts in new and amazing ways! 

God bless, 

Janet 🦋