What is it about Poppies?

It’s hardly surprising that poppies are such popular flowers, especially among artists. They come in such a wide selection of varieties and somehow they seem to combine brilliant, bold colours with an air of fragility, both in their paper-thin petals and their delicate-looking stems!

A far cry from the rather dull, red paper poppies that we buy to wear on November 11,  Poppy Day or Remembrance Sunday, here in the UK and in some of the Commonwealth countries.


I don’t know whether it’s seeing that politicians and TV presenters seem to wear their poppies earlier and earlier each year, but last weekend, I had a sudden yen to make a poppy collage! 

This was unfortunate as it was the last weekend before the start of Module 2 of the ‘Art and Business of Surface Pattern’ course and I had so much to do, not least finishing the illustration for the book of Welsh Nursery Rhymes I’ve been invited to contribute to. Time is running out!

But on Saturday, when I was scanning the illustration at high resolution, I could see that it was going to take a long time. So I seized the opportunity and started to cut out poppy petals, based loosely on a doodle I’d done one evening while watching TV, trying out my new blendable coloured pencils!

On Sunday I made some changes to the illustration so I needed to scan it again and I used the time to make a different kind of ‘stripe’, consisting of diamond shapes in the bright pink, orange and green that I used for the poppies.

Sadly, the pink and the orange have both come out looking fairly uniformly red on my computer and I couldn’t find a way around that. Even so, I’m quite pleased with my collection of 'Poppies' patterns – and, as a bonus, they reminds of me of the ‘Poppyland’ area of my beloved Norfolk!

You can read my earlier blog post about 'Poppyland', illustrated by my soft pastel painting of it, HERE
 

Poppies seem to be very popular as greeting cards and I’ll probably make another ‘poppy’ card from my collage, alongside my watercolour, oil pastel, watersoluble crayons and photographic versions of Poppy greeting cards – when I find time! 

In the meantime, you can find more information about the varieties of poppies and see 'Poppy' gifts and cards that I've already created, on my other blog -

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