Poppies, Poppies and more Poppies!

Last week was poppy week. I taught a workshop based on a request to share this “loose and free” approach to flowers.

What I loved most of all is that even though we all followed the same process and worked from the same references, every workshop participant had a completely different painting. (I wish I’d remembered to take more than just this one shot in the last workshop!)

What was even more fun was seeing post-workshop paintings from participants over the next couple of days. There’s learning we do in workshops, but atleast as important is taking what you learn, playing with it, cementing the ideas and making the process your own.

Here are 4 pieces I saw pop up on Tracy Chastain‘s photostream within days of the workshop.

Here is Jenny Sperry holding the piece she created in the workshop and three pieces she painted over the next couple of days.

So how did we paint these?

To truly loosen up, we started with big, fun blotches of color on wet paper and then corralled it all in just enough to give the impression of a field full of poppies. It was fun to paint so freely and we discussed working in limited palettes, mixing color and getting some really saturated color on paper.

I don’t always do a whole painting in a workshop, but in this one we all painted together, so I now have three poppy paintings from the workshops.