#572 Dragonfly On A Sunflower #572
by William Lum
Title
#572 Dragonfly On A Sunflower #572
Artist
William Lum
Medium
Painting - Watercolor
Description
The dragonfly on his sunflower throne in a world of sunflowers. Rows upon rows of sunflowers as far as the eye can see are grown at the Elkhorn Basin Ranch in West Sacramento, California. The ranch sits on the opposite side of the Sacramento River from a popular local restaurant called Swabbies. Artist and photographers were invited to the ranch for a Yolo Art-Ag plein air event. It was a triple digit temperature day so I decided to be a photographer rather than a painter in the early part of the morning while it was still cool. A month later I decided to paint a watercolor based on the reference photograph of this dragonfly.
In 1766, Moses Harris was the first English artist to make a watercolor illustrations of dragonflies accurate enough to be identified to species. I’m 255 years late to the dragonfly watercolor party but dragonflies have been around a long time before that. Fossils of 30” wingspan dragonflies date back 325 million years ago. 30” happens to be the width of an Imperial full sheet of watercolor paper, what a coincidence, and wow, that’s big. Typical dragonflies today have a wingspan of about 4 inches that they use them to fly between 22-34 mph. I think the best thing about dragonflies is their diet includes mosquitoes. I usually see a few dragonflies in my garden daily doing their pest control duty and I appreciate them. They are worthy of being on a throne.
The 12” X 16” watercolor was done on Arches, 140 lb, cold press paper.
Uploaded
July 30th, 2021
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