I’m starting work on my next watercolor painting of poppies. It’s based on a photograph that I took in my back yard several years ago when I was living in Mt. P. of my poppy patch. These dark days leave me yearning for some spring light and color.

Here are some color studies. I feel like the painting needs cad. orange and indigo blue, but I’m a little unsure about using these rather opaque colors. Perhaps if I only use them a little?



I also want to confess to using grids to construct my drawing. I can draw without a grid, but I end up wasting a lot of time reworking. My main concern and reason for using the grid is to accurately capture the shape of the flowers. To justify my cheating let me say that it’s still a lot of work and I don’t trace. I also use my own photographs and I manipulate the photo in photoshop – so there is a lot of creativity happening. Here is my grid. I prefer to use newsprint and folding the grid is a lot quicker than drawing it and it also doesn’t interfere with my drawing.

This is a painting I worked on yesterday. I think I improved it a lot by darkening the background, but I’m not sure if I like it enough to include in the beanster show.