It's been a busy few weeks but I managed to make a new mini tutorial! The Opium poppy is a great choice for the Summer, it's such a beautiful plant, and I figured a new tutorial provides a good activity for when it's raining.... which in the UK, seems to be most of the time this year!
The other news this week is that after a lot of requests, I've set the new date for the next Botanical Illustration Course, which will begin on October15th 2024 this year, and its booking up fast!
But more about the Opium Poppy, Papaver somniferum, a tutorial which is available online now.
This plant seeds just about everywhere, so it's not difficult to find, mine are a pink biased red colour but they come in several beautiful colours from white to dark plum. They arrived a couple of years ago and must have spread from the waste ground in the Lane where I live and now they seed on mass in the garden. It's always interesting to see what grows on this site because it usually ends up in my garden the following year, and this year I also spy giant yellow verbascum spikes too, which is exciting for the future.
I'm also keen to paint the field poppies this year .... if they appear, because there's also a wheat crop growing at the bottom of the garden.....that would be such a classic combination for my sketchbook.
In the tutorial I present a sketchbook format page, combining a watercolour flower and bud plus a page of graphite details. Information on colour mixing and swatches is included, and the process is equally useful for any botanical painting. It includes information on the composition, drawing and some of those tricky areas of a painting, such as painting around the complex mass of stamens in the flower centre and those crumpled petals too plus the wet and dry techniques to build the colour and texture.The graphite demonstrates demonstrates the tonal technique and a dissection, with over 2.5 hrs of video split into 8 watchable parts, and step by step photos, there is also a number of photo reference images.
AND, theres more, I'm going the throw in an extra video of painted seedpods later this week too! so thats an extra hours worth of video and it will take the project through to the of the end of summer.
So theres a lot packed in this mini tutorial to keep you busy and for just £20. Here's a link to the Tutorials Page if you fancy trying it.
Comments