How I sketched poppies.
How you can do it too.
In an earlier email I told you about my annual sketching session at my friend Susanne’s garden. How Susanne pings me each year around my birthday week to say, Hurry, the poppies are out! And how I rush over, eager to sketch them with her, before some rogue weather knocks them flat.
My conclusion about these sketching sessions was this: If an opportunity presents to sketch or paint, seize it. And even if an opportunity doesn’t present, do it anyway! Life is fleeting. Obey the ping.
In that earlier email I shared some past sketches from Susanne’s garden, along with two from this year: A painting of poppies, and a quick sketch in ink and wash. I promised to send along a step-by-step of the sketch.
Well here it is, a reworked version done back in my studio, where I took photos of each step.
My tools and materials for this sketch:
- A fountain pen with permanent black ink (De Atramentis Document Black Ink)
- A round watercolour brush (#8 Winsor & Newton Pointed Round Artists' Watercolour Sable)
- A 7" x 11" sheet of watercolour paper (mislabeled in the photo as Arches but it's actually Fluid CP)
- My regular 18-well palette (if you want to see how I chose the colours for that palette, have a look at My Essential Watercolour Palette demo)
For the drawing of the poppies, I went straight to ink, meaning no preparatory pencil. I love a pure black ink line on white paper! I chose to include five flowers (compositionally, odd numbers are often more interesting) plus plenty of buds and leaves.
I wanted to capture what makes these poppies distinctive. And, since the main characteristics of Oriental poppies are their ruffled petals and hairy-textured leaves and buds, edges are important. I worked carefully on those.
When I know I am going to add wash to an ink drawing, I don't do any hatching or darkening, leaving plenty of room for colour. However, I did add more ink in the flower centres.
With the drawing done, I mixed up some juicy wash for the blooms. Over the years, I've learned that if I want to capture the brightness of poppies in sun, I need to add a lot of yellow to my red mix. For these washes, I started with Organic Vermilion (semi-transparent) and Quinacridone Coral (transparent), and then added some Hansa Yellow Medium. While the wash was wet, I dropped in a bit of Carmine for the darkest areas of the petals.
I include some closeups so you can see how wet my brush was when I painted these. There's nothing more satisfying than watching the colours flow on the paper as I paint.
Oriental poppies have dark centres, so when I'm sitting in the garden to paint or take reference photos, I always choose a slightly elevated view to show the centres to best advantage. The contrast of deep purplish black and bright red is so much fun to paint! I used Carbazole Violet for the stamens and Lavender for the pistil.
For the thistle-like leaves, I used Cerulean Blue and Lemon Yellow, darkening my wash in places by adding some Cobalt Blue. Again, I used a drippy brush, a light touch and lots of water. I also varied the greens by adding more or less of the Lemon Yellow.
With my final brush strokes, I darkened the green washes surrounding the flowers. When the paper is completely dry you can can always add more ink lines. But in this case I decided to preserve the freshness of my sketch.
Now you try it.
I hope you liked how this sketch unfolded, and I encourage you to try it yourself. You can download the reference photo here. Then try and apply what you've learned to a sketch of another type of flower, from your own garden or a friend’s.
But most of all, I encourage you to just sketch…anything. Flowers, landscapes, buildings, wheelbarrows, pets…anything. The point is to make creative time for you. Every day. Before you know it, you will learn and you will get better. Promise.
My birthday week sale can help.
To help you accelerate your learning, you can also take advantage of Shari’s Birthday Week sale. The sale ends on Sunday, June 9, at midnight ET, which means you still have three days to save 20% on all my individual courses (course bundles aren’t included, as they’re already discounted). So it’s a good time to stock up for the entire year on courses that will strengthen your artistic skills, build confidence, and instil that all-important creative habit. Just remember to use the discount code HAPPY20 at checkout.
And, since we all love painting flowers and it’s summer in my part of the world, this week I also launched JUST FLOWERS! My 3-Course Bouquet. This trio of best sellers includes Wet-in-Wet Blooms: An Intro to my Favourite Watercolour Technique; Sketching Fresh Flowers: Late Summer Blooms; and Sketching Spring Flowers: My Favourite Blooms in Watercolour. Purchased individually, the three courses in JUST FLOWERS! would cost $105 ($141 CDN), but I’ve bundled them so they’re only $79 ($109 CDN).
So stay positive. Seize the moment. And happy sketching!