"Poppy Beauty" (watercolor on paper; 5" x 7")

click here to buy

I don't know about you, but just looking at these two beautiful red oriental poppies makes my heart beat a little faster!

"Scarlet Heaven" (oil on stretched canvas; 24" x 18")

click here to buy

I started "Scarlet Heaven" before my medical crises in late October and have been working on it on and off.  Happily, it is finally finished!  Can you believe I saw this incredible field of scarlet poppies, stretching for miles, in an island off southeast Sweden?  It was one of the happiest days of my life.  I hope there will be in 2016 many happy days like the day on which I walked with my daughter in the poppy fields in the Swedish sun.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

"Oriental Poppy Mystique" (watercolor; 8" x 6") sold

sold

The painting started out with a pure white background.  Photographing it turned out to be difficult.  So, last night, I turned the white background into something else.  A dark, mysterious background brings out the incredible form, color, and texture of red oriental poppies, don't you agree?

"Red Poppy Passion" (watercolor; 5" x 7") sold

sold

I decided to paint poppies a little differently.  I glazed the flowers, stems, and pods in several layers (in the left flower below, you can see the first yellow layer), whereas the background was painted wet-in-wet.  The painting looks intense and tropical, doesn't it?  I love it!

"Red Poppy Love" (watercolor; 5" x 7") sold

sold

Here is the last of the red Oriental poppy triptych.  It look like this together. Fabulous, if I may say so!

sold

sold

sold

"Red Poppy Glory" (watercolor; 5" x 7") sold

sold

An old collector of mine who bought "Oriental Red Poppy" commissioned me to paint two more of these poppy paintings so that she could display them together.  What an awesome idea!  And I get to paint a mini series!  Thank you, Kierstyn.  This is the second of the series.

"Red Oriental Poppies" (watercolor; 6" x 8") sold

sold

These are Oriental poppies, not the regular poppies.  Papaver orientale is a perennial flowering plant native to the Caucasus, northeastern Turkey, and northern Iran.  Having quoted from Wikipedia, all I care about is how huge and bold these babies are!  There is a batch growing in the nearby Green Spring Gardens Park, which I make a point of checking out during the season.

"Glorious Poppies" (oil on stretched canvas; 12" x 12")

click here to buy

We had an afternoon to kill during our Scandinavian vacation, so we decided to drive around Oland ("o" with an umlaut), a big island off the southeast coast of Sweden.  Rick Steves's guide book said that Oland with its mild weather was considered the "Provence of Sweden".  Even so, when I first saw the poppy fields, I couldn't believe my eyes.  Poppy fields in Sweden?

My daughter and I got out of the car to find out what was going on.  Poppies were growing amid wheat for miles. We tried to walk the miles until we got tired.  When we asked around later, nobody seemed to know why. Most people seemed to think that poppies were just growing wild.  I believe they were planted alongside wheat.  For whatever reason, the poppy fields of Oland made my day!

You can see how happy I was!

"Red Poppy Dance" (watercolor on paper; 10" x 10")

click here to buy

Red Oriental poppies with delicate blue green fronds dance against a blue sky, which was not a blue sky at all in the reference photo!.  As the painting progressed from the bottom of a quarter watercolor sheet (15" x 11"), it became clear that dark, lush green background all over interfered with the vivid red petals of the poppies. The painting was about to become too choked with intense colors.  There would be no respite for the eye or a breathing space.

I cut the bottom portion, making the painting a square, and made the foliage lighter.  You can't paint what you see; you have to follow the direction of the unfolding painting.

"Passionate Poppies" (oil on stretched canvas; 12 x 16") sold

sold

Imagine coming across a field of red poppies.  Your heart leaps with joy!  This is a painting to blast you out of the winter doldrums.

"Poppy Field" (oil on linen; 5" x 7") sold

sold

Reference photo

Poppies at Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA

Sometimes the subject matter is fairly easy to paint.  It is the background that causes problem.  As you can see in the reference photo, I had to be creative with the bottom part of the "poppy field," which was not exactly a field of red poppies bobbing romantically.

After several scrapes, I came up with the finished painting, which has the red-green compliment colors as the dominant color scheme.  The violets in the background were inspired by the deep violet heart of the flowers. I didn't start the painting with this color scheme in mind.  I stumbled into it!

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!

"Glorious Poppies" (oil on linen; 8" x 12") sold

"Glorious Poppies"
sold

"Red Poppies" (oil, 8" x 12")
sold

Last summer I spotted gorgeous red poppies at Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA.  As I was leaving after a plein-air painting session, I didn't have the time or energy to do another painting.  I took a picture, thinking that I would come back soon.  I did a few days later, but the flowers were all gone!  As the Roman poet Horace said, it's carpe diem or dead flowers.  I had to console myself with the photo, which served as the reference for "Glorious Poppies."

Compare the new painting with "Red Poppies."  The old painting has a merit--soft, dreamy, etc.  But I absolutely prefer "Glorious Poppies"!  I don't know what's happening to me.  I seem to have become bolder, more confident, not afraid of strong contrasts, and so on.  The new one has more depth and interesting "details" too.  When one thinks of red poppies, one does not dream of a  romantic, pastel image, unless he is Claude Monet.  Aren't these papery, blood red flowers all about hot-headed passion?  "Glorious Poppies" fits the bill much better than my earlier attempt, I dare say.

"Red Poppies" (oil on linen; 8" x 12") sold

sold

"Red Poppies" blocked in

As I said in the entry on "Purple Irises," I am an alla prima painter, finishing a painting in one session, whether it takes one hour or a whole day.  The idea is that as long as the paints remain wet, you can manipulate the edges--hard edges for emphasis and soft ones to recede.  There are, of course, exceptions to my usual approach.  Sometimes I run out of time and can't finish a painting on the day when I started it. 

Or, like with "Red Poppies," I decide to let the first block-in stage dry.  The green seed heads are in front of the red petals, and you know one of the color principles: you mix two complimentary colors, then you end up with mud.  Greens and reds are such a complimentary pair, occurring in nature often and making it all the prettier.  The point of poppies is their brilliant reds--cadminus red, permanent rose, and alizarin crimson, etc.  Your heart rate goes up happily, exhilaratingly.  So adding green paints on top of fresh, juicy red paitnts would have been simply asking for trouble. 

As impatient as I am, I wisely let the flowers dry for two days, which meant that the soft greens and violets of the surrounding meadow also dried out unfortunately.  Dry brushing came in handy to paint in delicate stems suggestively and poetically.  I am quite pleased with how the painting turned out.