Iceland Poppy 3-day watercolor workshop at Gallery 2611

The results of our hard work, we left tired but happy and armed with many new and great techniques. The class will have the opportunity to complete this piece on their own, with new found confidence. As well as myself, I will complete and keep posting!
The stamens, what a fun area to paint, somewhat loose, using the wet into wet technique dropping in the golden yellow along with the transparent yellow. No matter which approach loose or detailed, it is going to look terrific. The secret to this is not to over work this area. "Put the brush down and step away from the painting"
Once we completed the red poppy we moved to the white poppy in shadow, this was another fun learning curve for those students that have never attempted to paint, this subject. To master painting the poppies, it is useful for any level student, it is believing in the process, applying it.
This is the beginning of our Iceland Poppy lesson with the green leaves and stems. The focus on this portion of our lesson is how to paint the cluster of leaves, stems and pods and get the depth of the "jungle" portion of this beautiful flower. Many techniques were taught to achieve this wonderful pattern. The students all agreed that this alone was the "icing on the cake, it is a huge learning curve that can be repeated in so many ways and on so many different subjects".

On the morning of day two we began painting the red poppy, this poppy was painted with three colors, and most of the brush work was with 1 - 1 1/2" brushes. Learning how to apply large and deliberate brush strokes was the focus on this portion of the lesson. Building confidence to load up your brush and paint the darkest largest shape of the pedals wrinkle. My students were tired but happy by the end of day two, a lot of new and interesting techniques as well as building their confidence to trust the process.
Here is Evelyn deep in concentration, if you look closely you can see her beautiful green pattern of stems and leaves just popping of the paper, good job Evelyn!!
Jackeye, Barbara, Monica, and Evelyn
May 2-4 I taught my yearly workshop at Gallery 2611, which is my home town. I decided this year to forego a still life and to go back to teaching a floral painting for this workshop. The above three photos are the students hard at work, and deep in concentration. Learning bit of confidence goes a long way.

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.

FINDING THE DEPTH OF A BACKGROUND

Here I am painting negative shapes to create the illusion of  depth behind the leaves and stems. This is a wet into wet process, with the thought of negative shapes around the leaves and stems in the furthest background,  paint in the transparent yellow and then I drop in the mixture of burnt sienna, winsor green (bs) and winsor blue.  Yum! it is the best combination.   The background is fun to paint and I know it will be a great lesson, so in May I will be teaching this in a 3 day workshop.