A Sunday Start

Friends who came to dinner last night brought me an amazing bunch of flowers. My first thought was to get them in water, my second thought- when can I paint?
This morning I set them on a patterned tablecloth on the back deck and stood above them. This flattens the picture plane and lets me focus on composition, shape and color before I start trying to "turn a form".
I want to paint several layers, so I lay the paint down quite thin. There was a bright area of sunlight on the deck, with the rest of the set up in shade, and I wanted that abstract shape in the top right corner. I also drew a few composition lines with my brush to look more carefully at the intersection of those lines. The top edge of the table, where the wall joins the deck and of course, the edge of the deck in the sun.
Can't wait to get back to it- I love painting from direct observation!