It’s been a while since I posted anything on my Works in Progress page! Fortunately, I have the perfect project to share. I’ve been working on a painting of some Iceland poppies for a client, for whom I do a botanical painting each year. The first step, of course, was to purchase some actual Iceland poppies; I much prefer drawing plants from life if I can. You can get multiple angles of a single flower that way, plus then the color is much easier to match.
I began making studies of the poppy flowers:
I made several sketches of leaves too. Once I had enough sketches, I compiled them all in one big layout (including color swatches for reference):
This image was sent off to the client, who responded with a request for a more horizontal format. We also decided to make it larger that life—meaning that I couldn’t fit it easily on my scanner, and this terrible photo will have to suffice!
My client loved the new size of the sketch, but thought perhaps it could use more open flowers to incorporate more color. I was happy to oblige:
Now we’ll wait and see if this is the last of the rough drafts. If I get the go-ahead, I’ll transfer this drawing to a large piece of watercolor paper and start painting!
