STORY BEHIND THE ART OF AN SUK PARK

24th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and Marin Art and Garden Center

Sunflower

Helianthus annuus

The genus name for sunflowers, Helianthus, is from the Greek helios, meaning sun, and anthus, meaning flower. Sunflowers are impressive, and I think every botanical artist wants to draw a sunflower at least once in his or her life. I, too, dreamt of drawing sunflowers for a long time. I wandered several times over the years to find wild sunflowers facing the hot sun, but I couldn’t find exactly the ones I really wanted to draw. At last serendipity brought me to a flower shop where I was excited to buy a bunch of sunflowers to draw. Starting with one, I decided to draw a group of nine that vary in shape and color, depicted as if they were casually arranged in a vase.

Members of the Asteraceae family, sunflowers are composite flowers. They typically bear flower heads with ray florets around a disc of hundreds of florets, the true flowers, which grow on the disc in a spiral pattern described as a Fibonacci spiral.

I found it difficult to draw the florets, and I did my best to draw the spiral precisely and to create depth. I was nervous, afraid of making a mistake—if I misplaced even one floret, the orderly arrangement of the rest would be broken. Studying the magnified image on iPad, I counted the relatively larger flowers in the disc and numbered them. I drew them, checking one by one, to make a perfect sequence. After I finished the larger ones, I placed seemingly countless tiny ones among them. I worked through that part of the composition with great effort, and I feel especially satisfied and proud of my perseverance.

I used lemon yellow for the base color of ray florets. After that, mixing cadmium yellow and Indian yellow, I tried to depict clear yellow petals. I had some trouble finding the right color for shadows; the whole flower would look too red when painted in an orange mix, or it would look turbid when painted in a brownish cast. So, it was difficult to control the mixing of paints and to get the right concentration of water.

For the white of the hairy leaves and stems I prefer to leave white paper unpainted rather than use white paint. I had to brush carefully around hairs on the stem so as not to stain them. Thanks to the thick 640g paper, it was possible to apply many delicate layers to depict the density and rough texture of these strong stems as they support the large flower head.

In the words of plant miniaturist So-young Lee, “Sunflowers are usually thought of as yellow, but in fact they appear in many colors and cultivars: red, purple, black, orange, terra cotta, ‘Lemon Queen’, ‘Van Gogh’, ‘Moulin Rouge’, etc. Nevertheless, the reason yellow comes to mind may be that a yellow flower facing the sun suggests a feeling of hope.” I empathized with her feelings about sunflowers, and I also worked on my painting thinking about hope.

While I worked, I hoped COVID 19 would disappear quickly. Perhaps my work will be a hopeful message for everyone. While drawing these yellow sunflowers, I was attracted to the sunflower itself. I realized they have their own characteristics and attractions, whatever the shape and color, so I look forward to drawing sunflowers in other colors with a prayer for world peace.

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