Sunflowers

Sunflowers were the theme for Inspiration Avenue this week.  Sunflowers are also my favorite flower. 

I did two sunflower artworks for this challenge.
First, I painted a sunflower on watercolor paper.  Then, I made a couple of photocopies of the sunflower I painted in order to use them again.  I made an art journal page first, which I wasn't entirely pleased with, which you can see here at this previous blog post.    So here is the canvas I came up with, which I like a bit better.  I used that photocopy of the sunflower, and layered it on top of another photocopy of one of my watercolor paintings, this one.   I added some acrylic paint and oil pastels to integrate the two together.  I used some of the cute red Japanese tape on the sides of the canvas.  I also used oil pastels on the border and then smeared them with baby wipes.  I love the soft effect.  I will make a little tutorial at some point to show you how fun and easy it is.

And since I love sunflowers so much I'm going to share with you some really fun pictures I have.

First, here are the sunflowers from my garden from last year:

You can see how ginormous these are.  They were so beautiful, but they shadowed the rest of the garden and we didn't get a lot of good vegetables that year.  So, we scaled back the sunflowers this year and put them in the back row instead of the front.  I haven't taken a picture of them yet.  And my hair is super red there!

Here are some photos from my school garden.  I do Student Council at school, and with the kindergartners we planted sunflower seeds.  Each of them also planted a few sunflower seeds in a flower pot to take home.  They decorated the pot in my art class.  Here are some of our beautiful flowers.

Also linked to Paint Party Friday , Out of the Journal, and the Butterfly Effect.