SAA Paint a Poppy Challenge - Anita Pounder Watercolour Poppy Tutorial

Hello I'm Anita and I'll be painting a poppy as part of the SAA Paint a Poppy Challenge. I've already pre-drawn it and what I want to do is work quite loosely and what I will be doing is using the colours that are in the SAA set. They put together these colours, maybe not all of them, but what it does is give you three wonderful reds and two lovely greens, a really great starting point for painting poppies. So let's get started. I'm going to start in the middle creating detail. So I'm going to have a detail and everything that comes out is going to be a bit more blurry. So just taking some of the wonderful green gold from the SAA range, I'm just going to put, changing the tonal values, but I'm going to keep that nice and sharp. This is probably going to be the most sharp colour I'm going to use. With the colours they're lovely but I've had to add some blue just to be able to give me a little bit of tonal value and a purple. So I'm just going to pick up a little bit of the alizarin and the French ultramarine, that gives me a little bit of a purple and I want to just bring that here and I don't mind if some of the yellow mixes into the purple. I'm just going to wet it, let it spread out and now I'm going to wet the whole of the poppy. Now I'm using a natural hairbrush because this allows that really wonderful application of wet onto your page and it's going to be very loose, very quick and there's going to be areas I'm going to miss and leave white and I think that's all part of the characteristic of the delicate but really tough nature of the poppy. So I'm wetting all over I just want it to be quite free and loose. I'm just being a little careful with the bit in the new colour poppy red, it's a wonderful orange red. I'm just going to start at the top and let the colour run down. So see that fabulous colour? Now poppies have a really ragged edge and I can suggest that by keeping the colour quite loose, just pushing it down, just avoiding the area at the moment until it's dry and you'll see there's areas I've missed and I'm not always sticking to the lines underneath. It's your painting, just have a little fun. So often by working quite quickly and putting it on then allowing the colour to work itself, it actually paints it for you and I love that, just looking at darker areas. It's all the same colour but look at all those tones and values you've got throughout the poppy and I'm just going to, same colour, I'm just going to add a little bit darker, maybe be able to touch the yellow now and you'll see lines come down in poppies as the very delicate petals fold over. I'm just trying to suggest different tones, looking at where the petals fold over and I know that they have between four and six petals, so this one has quite a lot of the really lovely lines and you can see how quickly that's come together. It's all done itself. So while that's still wet, I'm just going to drop into the Scarlet Lake colour in this set just to add a little bit of a different red. Just so it's not all, I could have left it with just that orange, I want to very quickly just add just a tiny little bit more colour, just being quite careful. You can see it's still wet, it's actually doing a lot of the job for me. I just need to see where we're going with this one and this is quite dark, trying to work out where my petals have folded over. Okay, I think that's done for now. I need to let that dry, then I'll come in and start to put on some detail. Hi, I'm Jane Bettridge and I've created this painting as part of the SAA's Painter Poppy Challenge. You can get involved and help us raise money for the Royal British Legion by painting your own poppy too. Paint, donate, remember. To join in, simply paint or draw your poppy on a square of paper using any medium you choose. Each entry will be part of our special exhibition to commemorate the end of the First World War and if you can, we ask that you make a donation to support the vital work of the Royal British Legion. Join with us and Painter Poppy to say thank you to the courageous men and women who served and sacrificed for our country. Paint, donate, remember. For more information, visit saa.co.uk forward slash poppy. Okay, so that's dry and now I can continue with a little bit more detail. I'm just going to add some of the olive green into the stem, maybe drop a little bit of the blue in just to give it a bit of tonal value and now while that's dry, I'm just going to pick up the little bit of detail. So I'm using the blue and the alizarin crimson and a little bit of the green to create a dark colour. So this is where I'm going to add the detail. Again, keeping it a little loose but just indicating that this is where the detail is coming from. So very sketchily adding all the little details that you want to add. I'm using the tip of this wonderful natural hairbrush, just making sure you have different levels and that they're not all in the same place. Don't want to overwork that, just want to very quickly put a background on. I'm going to use the olive green, just swidge it around very well, taking it up to the poppy, making sure it touches. Again, I don't really mind if it goes over or onto and then when I've done this, I can just finally look at those really last touches to add a little bit more light and dark. All done very quickly and it's a good exercise to work quite quickly because you can't worry about different things. Just add some blue just to give some different tonal values and to make sure that the stem jumps out. Look at that, it's already doing its own wonderful things. While that's still wet, I'm just going to drop in, because I can see it's dried a little bit, one tone. So I'm just using the alizarin just to bring back some darker areas, maybe a little bit of texture into the poppy, just make sure I can bring out a little bit more detail. So you can be as quick or as detailed as you want to. Just dropping a little bit more colour in and bringing out some of the lovely tones you can see, but not losing the lovely colours underneath. I want to just tell you where that is going and finally just bring a little bit of the dark here, glazing over, adding a bit of shadow into the middle to create poppy and I think that works. Okay, so the stem's got a little lost, this is easy, what I can do is I can go back in and lift off a little bit, take the colour back. What you do need to do is just make sure that the stem goes into the centre of the flower, so see if I can maybe just suggest that a little bit more or put much darker around it. So there's always really good ways of bringing lost areas back. Just changing brushes, I need a little bit harder brush to be able to push this back. There you go, that's done it, that's just made that stem push forward a little bit more. Okay, so there's a finished poppy for the SAA Painter Poppy Challenge. You can get involved and help us raise money for the Royal British Legion by painting your own poppy too. Paint, donate, remember.