Sunflowers & Citrus -a still life painting in oil

oil 12x9 inches magnify/purchase Painters need friends who have fruit trees. Thanks, Chris Sayers for bringing fruit with stems and leaves. Makes for much more interesting paintings. You might have noticed the drapery shown in my last post was gray. I've found that by using gray drapery I can lean the color in my painting toward warm or cool, blue or violet, etc. depending on what will complement my subject. So here I leaned toward violet which I like with both the yellows and greens. If you love painting sunflowers, here's a tip I've learned about getting that deep transparent center color. I use transparent red oxide adding ultramarine blue for the really dark parts. Gives you a rich, warm and transparent dark. Then use some of that TRO in the shadow areas of petals, and maybe mixed into the greens a bit here and there for unity. There's one more sunflower painting coming up. I paint them 'till they hang down their heads and die. Reminds me of Tom Dooley. Anybody else remember that song?