Preview - while paint dries!

If you have been following my blog, you know that I enjoy painting flowers.... sometimes just because they are beautiful - but - I also am working on some other purposes for my paintings.
I'm working on ideas having to do with Matthew 6 - the passage where we are told that if God clothes the flowers of the fields in such glory, when they are here today and gone tomorrow, how much more he values and cares for us! (quite paraphrased!)

Sketchbook drawing - graphite

This graphite sketch has led to several small paintings of sunflowers, which I'll be posting when the paint dries. I may do another one or two in preparation for a triptych of sun flowers I am planning in my studio - a much larger version. Here, you will see, I'm trying to work out the shapes within the flower, but also looking at values and where those values occur. (Value meaning lights and darks). Color will come into the mix - but not yet... before color can be dealt with well, value has to be addressed and (for me) understood.

Its been a little overwhelming to think about working large again. (I used to work much larger than I have been lately! ) Composition needs to be thought through carefully - and then the physical task of laying in paint takes much longer ... with a little different way of thinking about painting! Well there you have it! This is what is happening in my studio this week.... actual paintings to be posted soon!