Flowers: A Poppy Wrestling Match

Last week I decided to create a large flower inspired abstract painting for the house. It’s going to take a lot of practice, though, so I’ve committed to a dozen small studies of various flowers until I find what will work both aesthetically and still be within my sphere of skills. 

The first study was essentially a wrestling match with poppies. The white poppy was first, followed by a pause of a couple days before tackling the blue flower. The goal wasn’t to create a beautiful piece of artwork, but rather test drive a few approaches, various brushes types and sizes, and play around with values to create convincing petals. 

I used a small 5×7 canvas panel, which is fine for the initial studies, but I’ll need to switch to a gesso board or more refined canvass surface. A toothy surface like this canvas panel is great for many subjects, but it’s not going to work for flowers. Also worth noting is the blue flower isn’t a poppy at all and had nothing to do with the reference photo. I wanted to try something with more complexity in terms of petals, and thus created some kind of cross breed never before seen by humankind. 

This is a good start and got me excited to pursue more flowers. Next up will be hydrangeas with a more earnest attempt at realism.