13/10/2025
Golden Poppies, watercolour, full sheet. These are Iceland Poppies, they come in a wide variety of luscious warm colours. I love all poppies but these are certainly among my favorites. I was especially intrigued by the red edge on the petals. I also really liked the composition of this painting, with the slightly younger and darker flower behind the main flower. I added the seed pod from another photo, to bring the eye up again to the top of the painting, after it had followed the poppies down. It also continues the pattern of pistils and stamens, from a younger flower to a slightly older one to a much older one that has just dropped its petals but still has its stamens, but the pistil is now turning into a seed pod. I love it when paintings tell a bit of a story or illustrate the life cycle of the flower I'm painting. Of course the main, lower flower is the luminous one, but the one behind is a deeper, more saturated golden yellow colour, with more prominent reds, which adds richness to the painting. I also liked the little bit of stem with the tiny hairs that echoed the little filaments and the tiny hairs on the seed pod at the top. Repetition of colours and patterns gives unity and coherence to a painting, and the 3 pistils create their own curved movement around the painting. The curve is picked up in the curve of the background, which is otherwise dark and unremarkable, a nice foil for the luminosity and richness of the poppies. The texture of the background comes from French Ultramarine, a granulating pigment, which I've mixed with Burnt Sienna and Winsor (Dioxazine) Violet. Though there might have been a little salt in there too.
