Well over a year ago, I began work on this painting with sketches of live Iceland poppies in my studio. Life got busy, as it has a way of doing, and I was only able to work on this piece in fits and starts. But a few weeks ago, I finally finished it! I thought I’d share some images of the painting as it progressed from nearly-done to finished product.
When I last posted about the poppies, I had blocked in the color using acrylic paints, and was starting to add detail. I first added detail (medium and deep shadows) on the leaves, which I knew would be tedious, since there was quite a lot of green. Once I’d finished with that, I started adding detail to the flowers.
I was excited to get started on the flowers. Aside from the fact that I was a bit bored of working in green, these blossoms were the focal point of the piece. But I quickly discovered that each flower was going to take a while. Look at all the detail in this one peach poppy!
Once all the detail had been added to the flowers, I started adding the little hairs that are found on Iceland poppy stems and sepals. This work was even more tedious than all those green leaves, but it was necessary to make the poppies feel realistic.
After adding all that detail, the painting felt close to finished, but the bottom was so green that something was needed to unify the piece. It had been suggested to me to add some fallen petals at the bottom, and I liked the idea. As soon as I added these little bits of color at the bottom of the painting, it all came together and the poppies painting was complete!
After working on this painting for such a long period of time, I was very happy to see this one finished, and I’m pleased with how it turned out!
