How to paint Poppies in a Landscape in Oil

"Days of Spring and Poppies", 9" x 12" on canvas panel

This was a quick little landscape I did as a commission piece. I was asked to do some poppies in a landscape and so I dug into a bunch of old photos from California days and put this together from memory and references.

I started with a quick lay-in with some raw umber to define where I thought my darker values should go. I just suggested some tree shapes and distant hills in the background. I wanted the clouds to be big puffy ones that reflected the movement in the rest of the piece. You can see those suggested as well.

So here I've worked in the sky with some cerulean blue and a touch of ultramarine blue and white. The clouds are naples yellow and white.

Basically the muted landscape greens and hills were worked out with mixtures of hookers green, cad hellow, violet, and white. I added bits of blue and ochre to tone the violet. Essentially, I started here with muted grayed mixtures which were merely compliments combined with white or yellow as necessary.

I wasn't sure where I was going with the road yet, but I knew I wanted cool shadows and warm lights, so I used some burnt sienna and white with yellow and touches of cad orange to make the warmer lights. The cool shadows were more of the violets and blues. I dropped in the poppies with mixtures of cadmium red light, cad orange and cad yellow medium. I cooled these appropriately as they moved further back in the landscape.

I put in some shadows to show that there was a drop from the grass into the bowl of the road. At this point the road started to look more like a wash and as that is a common site in California, I decided this was a happy accident that should be emphasized.

Here you can see that I AGAIN forgot to take a picture. This is actually the finished piece. But here's what I did. I brought out the clouds with more heavy brush work and paint and then started to work out the distant trees. I kept these cool gray greens on the left and warmed them on the right with olives and ochres. The sun is hitting the trees on the right and while it may be doing this on the left as well, the side most noticeable to the viewer is in shade. I threw in some highlights though to show some sunlit areas there as well. I punched in some sky holes for the birds to fly through and made some branches for the trees. Using a liner, I picked up a thick dab of orange and layed in a "string" of bright orange for the branches of the trees. The wash was starting to look better too and now I had my palette working for me so I laid in the violet shadows on the wash floor and dropped in some white and burnt sienna mixtures for the very back areas - really pushing the lights. I decided this was spring so there should be some water still left in the wash and brushed a bit of blue with white sparkles into the wash to indicate a puddle. I heightened the detail on the left side of the wash where the walls rise up to meet the grass. This didn't take much as the contrast in values did most of the work.

After laying in the poppies in the foreground, I added a few dabs for detail as these flowers are closer to the viewer. This was all that was necessary to make the the rest of the flowers come to life. Lastly, I added some lighter greens with more yellow in them to brighten the distant grasses.

I cooled the hills in the back a bit and then softened the line where they met the sky by running a dry soft brush over them. Phew. Done.