OKAY! Here is part two of my poppy-painting tutorial: The flowers!

If you haven’t seen my Remembrance Day post, check it out here. It’s where I first shared the painting I did for my dad, and I also talk about my Grand Daddy,  so it’s worth a read!

I got so many requests for a tutorial, that I decided to paint another poppy painting and document the process! It turned out pretty long, so that’s why I’m sharing it in three parts: The background, the flowers, and the stems/ paper airplane.

Here is a link to part one: the background. 

If you just want to learn how to paint poppies, you don’t really need my nifty background, so you can come along to learn some flower painting tips too 😉

Now that you have completed your background, and washed the paint off your table, you can get started organizing your paint while the canvas is drying.

For the flowers I used a combo of black, burnt umber (brown), red, and an earthy green acrylic paint. I have them in a row on my palate (AKA dinner plate) like this for a reason, but they kind of resemble a slug…

Aw, he’s such a sad little guy.

He’s probably hungry…

That’s better. Back to painting. Sorry about that, sometimes I relapse into insanity.

Using my fave brush ever (a half-inch angled flat brush) grab some of the brown and black paint.

OH MY GOODNESS I HIT A VEIN!!!!!

That was such a mess!

Okay, I’m done with the distractions, I promise.

Get yourself a nice mixture of dark blacky-brown. Don’t mix it to well, nature isn’t only one color 😉

Make a blob on the canvas. (I should probably get a teaching award for this tutorial, just sayin).

Or you can make a blob look like this! No two poppies are the same, plus, you’ll wind up fixing up anything you need to in a later step.

For this sized canvas I just did 3 blobs, AKA poppy centres, and I did them all at once, so I didn’t have to go back and forth thru different colors and washing my brush etc. I am lazy.
Grab some red paint (don’t worry about getting it perfect!!!! How many times do I have to tell you!?!?!) and use small strokes with the same 1/2 inch angled brush to create petals, like-a this:

Notice how I covered up the center?? That’s okay, and that’s why you don’t need to worry about anything being perfect… you’ll eventually get back to it 😉

Next you want to give the petals some different color and a bit of shading.

Just take your same red color, but darken it up with a bit of brown. Pull some of that paint up the petals, making sure to not hit the ends of them. You want to keep the ends pretty red.

Now go back to your blackish- brown color and fix up your center! As you can see, I got my dab on. Dab it good.

WOAH, helloooo flowers! So, as you can see I did my first 3 poppies in the same way as I just explained, but then there is another style of poppy I’ll show ya! It’s the half-opened and sad looking droopy ones. They are super-easy to paint!

I chose to paint one here because ther was a patch on the background that I missed somehow, so I wanted to cover it up! Start with one side,

Then add the next side! Easy peasy.

Just add a few of each type here and there until you are satisfied with your poppy field!

And THAT is where this part of the tutorial ends- We are done the background AND the flowers, so stay tuned for Part Three- The Stems and Paper Plane 🙂

~Dot