The Flower Crown On Sister's Hair

My sister looks slightly past the viewer, the way children do when they have just been told to hold still. Oil at twelve by sixteen inches. I gave her a crown of daisies, roses, tulips, and one sunflower, painted the ground as a warm slide from yellow into pink, and let a yellow butterfly settle at the left edge and a blue one glow at her shoulder. The Vietnamese title, Hoa Cài Tóc Em, means a flower set in the hair of someone younger, and it is a phrase you would only use for a person you feel protective of. Six stages took her from a cool grey block-in to this. The flowers went on last, once I was sure the face could carry them.