There’s something about poppies that just gets me every time. Even in November, when you’d expect them to be long gone, I found myself painting these beauties from memory and imagination.
I worked on A4 watercolour paper for this one, using one of my favourite techniques – painting into a wet wash. There’s something so freeing about letting the colours bloom and merge on the paper, not knowing exactly what’s going to happen. It suits how my brain works, honestly. The unpredictability, the flow of it.
The star of the show is definitely the cadmium red – I’m absolutely in love with it in watercolours. That bright, vibrant orange-red that poppies have, it’s so alive, so bold. I’ve paired it with bright greens for the foliage and cobalt blue in the sky and background. These colours together just sing – the intensity of the red against those fresh greens and that lovely blue creates such energy on the paper.
Painting into a wash means you have to work fast and trust the process. You lay down your initial wash while it’s still wet, then drop in your colours and let them do their thing. The pigments spread and create these beautiful, organic shapes that you could never achieve with careful brush strokes. It’s controlled chaos – which feels very appropriate for how I create.
These November poppies might not exist in the real Suffolk fields right now, but they exist in my mind and on this paper, and that’s what matters.
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