Sunflower Art and Being a Son Follower

Sunflowers have always been my favorite flower. I can't help but smile when I look at one. I'm not even a big fan of the color yellow, unless it's on a sunflower! I’ve been working digitally on my art for quite a while trying to hone my skills for picture book illustration. Besides that, my iPad and Apple Pencil are portable! But here in the last few weeks, digital art and paint brushes just haven't excited me.
It was time to break out the wet media! Sometimes you just have to get messy. Do you ever get ideas stuck in your head? Well, I had a sunflower stuck in mine. I decided to watch some great painting tutorials on Skillshare to get my mind wrapped around this idea floating around in my skull. Bonnie Lecat had a great quick acrylic painting class, so I pulled out some old canvases from the cabinet and went to work.

Not only do I love sunflowers, I love quirky animals! Animals with attitudes… animals in glasses… there was this Polish chicken with crazy hair just screaming to get out of my brain… I'm not the only one with crazy ideas rolling around in her head, right?
Anyway, as I was painting, I lost all concern and focus on the outside world. I enjoyed painting the sunflower so much I decided I needed more of them. In fact, I set a little 100 Sunflower Challenge for myself and the fun continued. We will see where this takes me!

Oh, how I love how God connects the dots! I do a kids message at church each Sunday, and my mind kept coming back to the sunflowers as I was talking to God about what my next message should be. I found a great article by name here on sunflowers. Each morning sunflowers face the east awaiting the sunrise. Throughout the day they will turn and follow the sun; however, they never fully turn and face the west. Instead, they turn themselves back to the east to position themselves for the rising of the sun the next morning. In Matthew there is a scripture that talks about the return of Jesus and how like the lightning He will come from the east. Wouldn't it be great if we were more like sunflowers...if we would position ourselves each morning to follow the sun that is, the S-O-N? Follow Him throughout the day, and position ourselves again each night two await Him and follow Him? I don't know about you, but of all the flowers in the world, I want to be a sunflower!