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In my weekly class, I try to demo something different at least every other week. I'll show the class what is on my mind, do a short demo, then they get to work to do the same things using my photo. After they do that, they then use their own photos and apply the lesson to them, hopefully. 

A few weeks ago, poppies were on my mind. I love poppies. I love paintings of poppies. I haven't painted them a lot. This day, I decided to try two different surfaces, and two different styles of approach to painting them. Here is my reference photo, taken by me at Stonehenge several years ago. A magic place, to be sure, surrounded by fields of poppies.

I started with a piece of Uart 400, which is a light tan color sanded paper for pastels. The 2nd surface was a black Uart 500, also sanded paper. Both were mounted on mat board for added stiffness. The first one is @ 4" x 7" (a scrap of the paper for the demo), the second is 6" x 9". As I usually do, I started with the darks. I like to lay down a light layer of a warm dark near the front, in a path to lead the eye back through the painting. This will have the other colors laid over it, as seen in these photos. I then put an initial layer os warm greens in the front and cool greens for the distance, with a small line of trees and a bit of sky. You can see the different ways I put my strokes down. The left one is going to be more realistic, the right will be more abstract and vivid.

I continued to add flowers and grasses, including the different colors for the skies, and here are the final paintings. Which do you like best?