Sunday October 25. More sunflower bits.

The pastel study of the shrivelled leaf has been added to several times. As always the balance has to be right between accuracy and expressive impact. Each colour is used where needed throughout the picture before another colour is selected. I try to keep a harmonious balance.

The lack of clear form led me to attack with a black conte crayon. This is always dangerous, as it is harsh compared with other colours.

Having fixed the picture it was clear that I had overdone the black. As so often with pastels, it was getting harder to alter. The following stage shows my desperate resort to tinted white acrylic to restore the highlights. Better in some ways, also lost the freshness. Ah well.

I selected a malformed seed head to do a small acrylic study of on a little canvas. The aim is to use a small brush for a change.

I built up the image in stages with thin blue and red acrylic with some white for highlights.

More of each stage with thin yellow wash applied to start building the greens.

Final stage, I think. I want to keep it slightly broad,not to perfect.