My Red Sunflower
© Traute Klein, biogardener
Who says that a sunflower has to be yellow? Maybe it look yellow, but if they feel red to me, then I will paint it red. And I actually do have a red one in my garden. If you don't believe it, have a look.The Color of Sunflowers
What colors do you see when you look at a sunflowers? Be honest now. Are they all yellow? Well, maybe they all look yellow to most people, yellow on the outside and brown on the inside. If you look closely, though, you will notice that there is a great deal of variation in sunflower colors. Reminder: In case you forgot, let me remind you to hold the mouse over each picture to read the caption.My Red Sunflower
This spring, I sowed one package of large Russian sunflowers in my garden. Even though all the seeds came from the same package, not all flowers have the same color. I believe that the pH of the soil makes a difference. On the heavy alkaline clay soil the flowers are yellow and brown all right, but the seed which sprouted on the compost heap grew into red flowers with just a bit of a yellow around the outside, as you can see in the picture.Looking with Your Heart
Now let me tell you what happened a few weeks ago in my first art class which I started taking on Wednesday evenings. The teacher gave me a huge piece of paper, 20 by 30 inches, and I was going to paint the first acrylic picture of my life. I normally paint in transparent watercolors, so this was a challenge for me. I got inspired by a field of sunflowers on a calendar picture, so I thought that I would paint one huge sunflower, as huge as any which would later in the season grow in my garden. First I created a really colorful background, blobbing patches of all my favorite colors onto the paper. I was just having fun. Never having used acrylics before, I needed to experiment. Then I proceeded to the red center of the sunflower, and the teacher wanted to know what kind of a melon I was painting.My Sunflower
Well, this was no melon. My sunflower was not going to be brown anywhere, because I didn't feel like it. My sunflower was going to compete in brilliance with the lifegiving sun, full of light, warmth, and energy. Brown is fine for a sunflower to feed the birds, but not for a sunflower to brighten the wall on which I would eventually hang the picture.
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