Just About Finished...

I am absolutely thrilled with this piece, I am at the finish line.  Now that this piece is almost complete I will now live with it for a bit, and find the areas that will be needing a little detail and glazing.  I hope to have this accomplished by next week.  It will be going into the gallery for sale.  Makes me a little sad to put a price tag on this painting, I know it will find a good home.

Stems and Sky

OK now I have finished the sky and all those crazy stems, next I will be painting the upper poppies they will be orange, looking forward to mixing those yummy colors.

Adding the Morning Sky

For the sky I had decided that I wanted it to be dark blue at the bottom to a gradated light thalo blue at the top.  How can I get an even flat wash, painting around the stems, and background poppies.  I thought masking?  No way, today Guy Magallanes showed me the coolest technique, you can teach old dogs new tricks!   Using this is the result of the darkest value of my sky, tomorrow I plan on finishing the sky with a thalo blue wash.

Painting the Orange Iceland Poppy

The orange poppy is just about complete, with dew drops and all!  The dew drops were time consuming but well worth the time.  I will detail a little bit more but not until I have the painting near completion.  For the orange poppy I used quinacridone gold and permanent rose.

Now for the upper half of the painting, thinking about the background, I think I would like to frisket over the flowers and stems and create a beautiful blue sky, my advisor Guy says this would really work well for this setting.  The reference photo has brick work and lawn, too much detail, think I will listen to Guy on this one.

Painting the Negative Shapes

After painting the wet into wet green background and allowing it to dry throughly, I then select the areas where I can create a leaf effect by glazing in another wash of green with a negative shape. 

Was growing tired of painting greens, had to switch over to the orange poppy, I will return to the "Leafy Jungle" once I have finished the orange poppy.