New favorite flower photos

These beauties were from a bouquet I purchased at Trader Joe's. Not to sound like an advertisement, but they lasted almost 3 weeks! I LOVE flowers... Here's three of my favorites from a photo shoot earlier this month---straight out of the camera:

Poppy #1

May 20th the local plein air group headed to Shreiner's Iris Gardens for a morning of painting. They have an outstanding display of flowers---Iris of course, but many, many others too! Lupines, peonies, & my personal favorites: dinner plate sized poppies! After scouting out the best poppies I settled in to paint one in particular. I have my own poppy plant I purchased from Shreiner's several years ago and it was blooming gloriously in our backyard these past 2 weeks also. Since I had so much fun painting their poppy I decided while ours was blooming I'd try to capture some more, resulting in 3 more 12x12" almost finished poppies! I knew I had to work quick since the bloom time was short, and sure enough once the temps rose into the 80's they immediately began to show signs of wear & tear. Photographs just don't do justice to the amazing reds of these particular poppies---they're always a bit too pink & not as rich as the poppies are in real life. Even major photoshopping can't capture the intense color! That was my painting goal---to put that red on canvas. It was really a fun challenge! Here's the first one I painted from Shreiner's poppy: I'll post the other 3 in the next few days.

This was my quick sketch on site at Shreiner's - to see any image closer you can right click & open in another window or tab.


Here's the first layer of pastel:


And the final painting:

Paint out day!

This was the site of our plein air paint out today---a private home with an abundance of flowers, vistas overlooking the valley, and fun garden art tucked here and there to surprise us!


The variety of poppies was pretty stunning---these especially, each one about the size of a dinner plate---or larger! There were red poppies, frilly orange & lavender ones, and these amazing giant white beauties.



I loved the painted floor in the bathroom...how cool is this?!


This poppy was unique with its crackle-like white veins shooting out from the centers.


Here's what I finally settled on painting. At first it was in the shade---like I was, but then as we approached noon, the poppy was flooded with sunshine, making bright highlights and subtle shadows I tried to throw in at the last minute.


This was the first layer of pastel on my 12x12" canvas.


And here is the pastel painting at its almost finished state. I need to study it for a bit now, see if there's anything I don't like, or want to change. Any suggestions? Constructive criticism? Ideas?

Mmmm, I love RED!

This amazing poppy is the perfect red---just stunning! Saw it when out painting at Shreiner's Iris garden several years ago, then discovered I too could be the happy owner of this gorgeous poppy, so bought a plant, brought it home, then let it sit for a year in its pot before finally planting it last summer. I was happy to see it return this spring, and it's now sporting two beautiful blossoms---not the dinner plate sizes that the Iris garden boasts, but a large tea cup size is just as amazing to me since they're my favorite RED! My daughter and I know what the perfect red is, and often point out a "good red" to each other when we see one together... This is a good red---wishing you a glimpse of a good red today!