Boouquet of Dahlias SOLD

Summer is ending but the dahlias continue to bloom.  These luscious flowers are from a friend's garden.    Most of the flowers were in shadow in this set up; the light was in a small arc in the upper left hand corner of the painting.  To make this painting work I actually painted just a few petals; mostly I massed the values and suggest the colors. The very dark red flowers were like a black hole in the painting and I wound up lightening those flowers and limiting the amount of really dark paint.The fun was trying to make the whole bouquet read together as one thing with light and dark and volume.