STEP BY STEP #2!!!

so finally here we are again!  yessssss.  i had a friend, like i told ya before, that commisioned me to do a big painting…. well three paintings as one.  she loves poppies… there are fields and fields of poppies here in germany and she had a particular field in mind.  i never saw the one she wanted but i found a picture that looked a looooooot like germany, with a field of poppies, so i used that.  its at the very end of this long post.  this is a really long post again, so if you get bored then just go to the end to see the results. 

so first pick out your canvas’.  i had two 16×20’s and a 28×36 that were the sizes requested, and i lay them down on my floors to work on.  i used my handy dandy CHINA marker to mark out the basic areas i would be putting color, and also especially the lay of the land.  i love china markers ’cause you can paint right over it , and it doesnt show through. 

next i blocked in the sky with blues and white….. the very fun and exciting thing about paint is you can blend so easily with one or more colors laid down and quickly get the desired effect.  i used one of those huge cheapy foam brushes to do this.  they really get a lot of paint on big canvas’ quickly. 

so then i squirted a lot of white paint on the canvas’ and little light lime green color (cant think of the color name) and did the same thing with the foam brush, but with the direct to canvas technique it really gave it a nice effect.  this is the color i want shining through just a little, and also blending in with, my brighter green top grass color.  with acrylic painting its better to start with the lighter colors as the base and bottom coats, because its harder to get those lighter colors on top of the darker.  unless you are patient enough to let each layer dry…. i’m not!

so next i had a bright yellow that i also wanted to shine through and blend in with the brighter colors, and i squirted tiny dribbles of that randomly on all the canvas’ and used a fan brush to paint it in and blend it in.  the fan brush makes really nice grass-like brush strokes. 

so you see it doesnt have to look perfect or precise in any one spot… just random fun painting.  next below you see i did the hills in the backgroud simply by blending in different yellows and greens and then a nice hunter green for the trees in the background, using a small round brush.  if your fast enough then as your adding your trees , the background paint might still be wet enough that you dont need to worry about highlights, they will happen as you add the trees, which are just little fuzzy balls.  also i worked on the bright green grass and mellow green grasses for my top colors of grass , with the same fan brush.

so give all that green some time to dry… if you dont then when you paint your nice bright red poppies on the wet green the colors will mix and you will get mud… you do not want mud.  red and green are complimentary colors and will make brown when mixed…. do you know all the complimentary colors? 

red+green , orange+blue , yellow+purple

so now sporadic red poppies with a nice square brush, using the shape of the brush to make the petals of the foreground larger flowers.  the nice thing abotu this painting is that you dont have to paint in the stems… they blend into the grass.  anyways… i painted the poppies all in and added the details of highlights and centers ……

then take just a touch of the poppy red you used and a lot of glaze to it … 10:1…. mix it up and glaze all your poppies… it will really make them POP…. hee hee

so WAAAAAAAH LAAAAAAAAAAAH!  there you have it!  simple and sort of quick, large easy peasy painting of poppies!