Poppies, Act Three: shadows of their former selves

You thought you were all poppied out, but you were wrong.  Here's one more act, the denouement. The brisk wind here has stripped most of the beauties of their scarlet streamers, though there are some ingenues waiting and hoping in the wings.

Comments

[Nancy]

Yes, I realised that you always put colour on top of colour -- I've been trying to do that more lately, since I can see that it adds a needed depth to the painting. I do hope you'll try a step-by-step -- they're fun to see; even, I imagine, for people who already know what they're doing.

[LaureAnne]

Nancy, thank you very much. I will try and do as you ask the next time I paint flowers from my garden. I'm already looking forward to sketching my monarda blossoms, which are spiky and ethereal. I glaze with watercolors, adding layer on top of color layer and that might account for what looks like complexity. I'm an oil painter, not a traditional watercolorist, so glazing is what occurs to me to do. There is some wet on wet at the end, but not much, just enough to get necessary color effects. I draw first with pencil or pen and, as I like process, I like having those marks, the beginning of the story, show.

[Nancy]

I don't know why, but your flower pictures look so complicated that I always wonder how you've done them. At the same time they look very loose and easy (and brilliant and wonderful). I wonder if you'd consider taking step-by-step photographs sometime? This one is particularly amazing - so many colours. I love poppies, they have so many associations. In Flanders Fields, and opium farms up in the hills in Afghanistan... bloody, fleeting, gorgeous.

[LaureAnne]

Thank you, R, N and V! Victoria, fields of poppies in northern France are a favorite memory of my childhood, too. Poppies have such an otherworldly air and yet they are simple and robust flowers. I love that paradox.

[Victoriaf]

Dear L! I love your poppies series. They remind me of gorgeous poppies I saw in my great grandmother's garden, which is why they are among my favourite flowers. You captured their delicate beauty so well! I can just imagine the movement of their petals.

[N aka parislondres]

Oh this is so pretty L! Have a gorgeous day.

xoxo