11/21/2025
A Burst of Blue, watercolour, full sheet. My most recent painting of Himalayan Blue Poppies, in the Meconopsis family of poppies. It is sold, but I do have giclee prints available, check out the Prints page of my website, www.marneyward.com. I usually paint blue poppies with a darker background, but this time I thought I'd try it with a lighter background, to pick up on the blue and yellow theme and give an airier, more expansive feeling. I wanted to incorporate some of the lovely hairy buds and some leaves and stems, which I can't do in a more close-up painting. And the pink prickles on the buds were just delightful, even the leaves have little prickles. The stamen centers are bright yellow and formed into a tight cluster when the flower first opens, but as the flower matures, they deepen to a golden-orange colour and spread out so you can see the delicate white filaments that hold each one. The hairy green pistil becomes the seed pod once the petals drop. That bit of pink in the blue petals comes from the back of the flower, where is a white circle around the stem, and then a pink ring around that, which leaves a pink glow on the white filaments. I included some orbs of light in the sky but made them mostly yellow, to float the flower in the air a bit. The darker blue orbs in the top left were needed to bring out the luminosity of that upper petal. The background always needs to support the main event! Multiple blues and some Perm Rose and Winsor Violet were used to create the depth of blue in the petals.
