Summer Tea - Original Still Life

This still life is a part of a monthly challenge in the Floral and Botanical forum in WetCanvas. The “Plant Parade” challenge revolves around a theme each month and the collective reveal date for the paintings is on the 25^th of each month. I cannot post it in the site until then. I wanted to share it on my blog however, since I am quite pleased with it :-) It is done entirely with a knife, with some highlights finally tweaked with the brush. Most of the times I do not get the confidence to just stop it after working with the knife alone, I get this obsession to tweak something or the other with the brush too. I am slowly getting there to just call it done when my gut says it's done.

This 8 by 10 canvas was one I had discarded, after an unsuccessful attempt at one of my snow scenes. It did not turn out as I had visualized and I decided to paint over it. This month’s theme in the Plant Parade challenge is Sun flowers. It was a revelation to me last year that sunflowers are seen during fall than in summer. I did not know that. Near where I live, we even saw a sunflower field last year, so beautiful! And I was quite surprised seeing the huge size to which they grow, quite astounding! Some of them are taller than I am!

Summer Tea
Acrylics on canvas, 8 by 10 inches
© Nithya Swaminathan
$100.00 + $20.00 shipping worldwide

I loved all those blues in this image, as I am in general a sucker for blue and yellow. There are some pairs of colors that make me go weak in the knees almost, and this is one of them. I think blue works beautifully with yellow than its complement orange. And given that I had never done a sunflower before, I just had to paint this one. The other references were those of the flowers in fields, or flowers up close. I liked this one better than the others, coz I’ve been meaning to do a floral arrangement still life for a while now. My hydrangeas (still incomplete, sic!) is a step in that direction. WetCanvas has some fabulous references of such still lifes with flowers arranged with vases, fabric etc. I might paint one more of just the flower too. Let me know what you think of this one.

I have done this still life from someone else's reference after a very long time. All my still lifes are from my own set ups, though I did enjoy this one immensely. Looking forward to doing more.