Patriotic Poppies

After completing my first piece during my Fabulous Florals class with Elizabeth St Hilare, I decided I wanted to do something in a blue jar . . . I thought it would be fun to do some poppies and daisies to hang above my sink —I love red, white and blue in the summer. [BTW - if you are interested in seeing some demos of the paper collage techniques, check out Elizabeth's You Tube channel for her Tutorial Tidbits]

I used an inexpensive birch wood panel - 1/4 inch - to fit into a frame that I had. I applied Gesso and then mixed some paint - three shades of gray to blend for the background.

Instead of drawing directly onto the board, I drew some flowers and cut them out so I could play with them, moving them around until I arrived at a composition I liked.

The background paper I had used was pretty thick, so I traced my design onto some thin tracing paper to make it easier to transfer to my board.

Ready to paint a loose underpainting to block in my colors and show my lights, and darks.

Colors are blocked in and it's time to take a day to create some interesting papers in the colors I chose. (See Fabulous Florals for more on printing papers)

I began tearing shapes and applying some deep green papers in the center. I also decided to change the highlights on the poppies to shades of orange instead of my original pink color. It's much richer!

I continued tearing leaf shapes, and started on some daisies and a few blue flowers—always working from back to front:

After working on poppies and blue flowers — nearing completion. Standing back to look at it, it felt a bit unbalanced so I added a stem going off to the left.

I used a black Sabilo pencil for more detail on the inside of the poppies. I added a few more blue flowers and I shaded the daisies a bit with a purple-y paint. Then I used Liquitex Satin Varnish to seal and protect it.After popping it in the frame, I'm calling it finished!