Andalucian Poppies

This is beautiful!. I love the shadows underneath the trees and the realistic image of the poppies close by. I'd love to be able to produce something so beautiful.

Me too!!! this is really gorgeous. The trees are stunning.

Thank you Elizabeth and Karleen. I appreciate the feedback.

Fabulous work, especially the way the poppies so effectively recede, and the distant path.

This is really stunning, you could just walk into it.

Thank you all for your kind comments.

Just love it. Well done. I often stop my car and take a photo or sketch of something that catches my eye too. I once got beeped from a lorry driver for doing it, to catch a sunset over snow. It was lovely. Worth the beep!!

I love your paintings. Would you say you use acrylics more in the style of water colour than oil. I struggle with them because they dry so fast, but if I could achieve effects anything like yours I would persevere with them!

Thanks Suzanne. For most of my work I use acrylics as though they are oils - i.e., straight from the tube/bottle. I rarely thin, except when I am using them for glazes, in which case they are heavily watered down. If I want to keep the paint wet, I use a fine spray bottle, although I rarely need to. A lot of people complain that acrylics dry too fast but I really don't find it a problem, especially now that I have got used to them (I used to paint in oils). In most cases, the fast drying is a major benefit, especially as I now paint on a sloping drafting board and not an easel. This became necessary after I started suffering from acute shoulder pain when painting at an easel. The pain has now gone and because I can rest my hand on the canvas, I can be far more accurate when painting fine detail.

I have found that if you use a paper pallette on a flat sponge wetted with water the acrylics stay wet onthe pallette for the duration of your painting session, then you can ut cling film on top to keep till the next day. On the canvas, the only way to keep the colours wet enough to use as oils throughout is to use those interactive acrylics which you can spray and the sprayed area becomes wet again. (I haven't actually tried these yet, though, only heard about them, many painters swear by them, but I actually like the fast drying time on the canvas, of ordinary acrylics, allowing you to paint your next layer fairly quickly. Oils can be frustrating in the opposite - slow drying till the next glaze). Sorry to pinch your space Richard, I thought it might help Suzanne. jx

Jean. Thanks for your comments on this and my other paintings. Your comments above are very helpful. Most acrylic artists I know use stay-wet pallettes, like you. These work very well, although I must admit that I no longer use one. Instead, I now use a white ceramic tile and only squeeze out enough paint for the next 30 - 60 minutes of painting, keeping them wet with a spray bottle, if necessary. Colour mixing is easier, I end up with virtually no wasted paint and clean-up is a doddle - I just wash off the paint under a tap, scraping any dried paint off with a pallette knife. Like you, I have never tried intereactive acrylics but so far have not found the fast drying time of acrylics to be a major problem, except possibly with skies. I like the fact that the paint dries fast, as it enables me to put on subsequent layers and glazes more quickly. As someone with very little patience, this suits me!