Summer Tea - Original Palette Knife painting by Nithya Swaminathan

This still life is a part of a monthly challenge in the Floral and Botanical forum in WetCanvas. 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. 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.  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.