Watercolor - Sunflower Field

This is a watercolor painting on Fabriano Artistico HP paper, 20"x16". I made my own Chromium Green Oxide paint from Gamblin pigment powder and used it on the leaves, stems and flowers. It is a very gritty pigment and tends to scratch the paper when brushing it on. It's very opaque and rather neutral colored, but it mixes well with yellows and blues and works well in glazes. I like the fact that it is easy to shape into fine details, and it doesn't tend to form hard edges.

I also used a lot of Terre Verte from Winsor and Newton. This color is also very useful for shaping fine details. It takes a lot of paint to take it to a dark value, so Terre Verte helps prevent accidentally making an area too dark while working out the details of a light-valued area (in this case, the palest areas of the leaves).

I used Daniel Smith's Primatek color Piemontite Genuine as the initial glaze for the sunflower centers. The color somewhat resembles Mars Violet; however, it is a bit richer in maroon and brown hues. It's very granular and easy to sculpt into natural looking 3D textural shapes.