the middle of a black mammoth

Some days it is harder to push yourself into painting than others, and sometimes a painting moves more slowly than you expect. I guess it might have been the weather, rainy and dreary, good for laying around and cuddling with kitties. On those days I push myself a little and know that if I give it enough time and patience the painting will come together eventually. Of course there's always the option of giving up too or saying, good enough, which I do choose too sometimes. Anyway, I did get half way done with this one and tomorrow I am sure it will come together, the Black Mammoth Sunflower:

The SESE website tells me that these are the sunflowers to grow if you are growing them to eat their seeds, "big seeds" "great for munching".
And I just learned the neatest thing about sunflowers from wikipedia. Their heads, the part we think of as the flower, are actually 1000-2000 individual flowers joined together by a receptacle base. Here is some more on that, "What is usually called the "flower" on a mature sunflower is actually a "flower head" (also known as a "composite flower") of numerous florets, (small flowers) crowded together. The outer petal-bearing florets are the sterile ray florets and can be yellow, red, orange, or other colors. The florets inside the circular head are called disc florets, which mature into seeds."