Poppy Fantasy

After completing the 30 day challenge for the month of January, I was ready to paint something bigger.  I decided on  a 48" x 48" gallery wrapped canvas.   Although I took a few days off, I have been working on this painting most of the first half of this month and I think it is near completion.  I've decided to give it a rest for awhile while I decide if there is anything I want to tweak before signing my name to it.

Working on a large painting is so different than small.  I really like to work on larger pieces, maybe not quite this big but larger.

I'm not very happy with the photograph I took because the painting looks a lot better in real life.  There are a few things I can see in this photograph that the camera interprets that is not in the painting.  Thus, the reason it is better to paint from real life instead of a photograph, but that is not always possible.

This painting is not from a photograph, although I did look at photographs of poppies as I drew the poppies in my sketch pad.  Once I decided what I wanted the flowers to look like I drew them on the canvas with my paintbrush where I wanted them to appear and built my leaf structure as I went along.

 Here are my progression photographs taken right off of my easel: