putting flowers into the dark

I have an idea for some flowers to put in the upper left corner of one version of the bouquet that I’m working on.  These flowers are stolen from Huysum and are turned around sideways for the purpose of my painting. However, I’m not sure how to put the flowers I’m borrowing into the darkness as Huysum has done here.   I have to figure out where the light is coming from, why this side of the bouquet is dark and how to reconcile the dark flowers with a light background behind the bouquet as a whole.

Stuff to figure out.

Meanwhile I’m looking at that leaf Huysum painted. It’s like a map.  It’s extraordinary. You can get lost in just a single leaf.

beginning of an idea

The idea to draw larger than life size heads in pastel began with a drawing from memory in my notebook. I was impressed by a group of charcoal drawings made by students in a workshop and wondered to myself what it would be like to have color function in a pastel drawing the way that tonality was functioning in their charcoal drawings. I made a sketch from memory of their model based on someone’s drawing and kept the idea tucked away for the proverbial rainy day. Now I’m attending a life class once a week that I devote to my experiment.

The parallel lines are the rules in a writing journal.  Thus the drawing above is very small. What’s visible above measures about 3 x 5 inches proving that you never know where some small thing will lead.