Pre-wet the area around the outline with water from a spray bottle. Soak the paper well.

With the size 14 brush, drop in cobalt violet into the background and where the leaves will go. This is a nice establishing colour; don’t be too concerned if it goes over the main subject matter. Encourage the paint to run and drip – hold the paper upright.

Take up Jane’s grey on the same brush. Wherever you want the dried leaves to go down into the wash, drop in the grey. Be brave with this colour as it does go pale once it has dried. Work quickly or you will miss the boat for putting down the leaves. Grey is a universal colour for any subject matter.

Hold up the paper again and let the paint drip and run.

Lay the dried leaves on the damp background. Think about the composition but keep in mind that everything can be edited. Persuade the leaves to stick to the paper.

Balance out the composition with different leaf shapes on each side of the poppy and physalis group. This is a process of experimentation.

When the leaves are down, ‘feed’ them: drop more colour in and around the leaves to add to the drama of how the leaves take on the pigments.

Add some Brusho into the mix. Sprinkle it into the paint using a coffee stirrer – the rough surface of the stirrer grips the particles of the Brusho. Tap the powder into the paint for a granulated effect that will add to the movement and drama. This is a good compositional tool.

Add a few more areas of Brusho. Spritz the powder with water to allow it to move and spread a little faster.

Prop the painting upright once more and allow the paint to drip again. Use kitchen paper to dab away any excess.

Use map pins to pin the leaves in place. The stems can be reluctant to sit in the colour so pinning them down will help.

This will now need to dry overnight. It is tempting to use a hairdryer to speed up the process, but you would be in danger of blowing away your leaves.
 

When the painting is completely dry, remove the pins and carefully lift off the leaves to reveal their shapes in the paint.
 

Remove any remaining excess leaves with a flat palette knife.

Working on a disposable palette, pour sand over white acrylic paint using a flat palette knife.

Mix the sand into the acrylic paint.

Put areas of texture onto the seed heads using the white acrylic paint and sand mix on a tapered palette knife. The acrylic will repel the watercolour as it dries as a film.
 

Don’t put the acrylic paint–sand mix all over the seed heads; simply put in some interesting textural marks for ridges or highlights. Sculpt the seed heads with the paint. 

At this stage, if you have too much Brusho or watercolour on your seed heads, you can use the acrylic paint to ‘erase’ it.
 

Paint acrylic paint along one edge of a plastic card and use this to print along the stems. You do not have to work in a perfect, straight line – it can be quite ‘hit-and-miss’. Allow to dry.
 

Using the size 14 brush, put in paint everywhere – alternate between Pyrrol orange, cobalt violet and rose of ultramarine. Work from the top to the bottom of the paper, and pick out the areas where you want colour. Be careful that you don’t obliterate any highlights.
 

Put down the colour and use water to blend it in.

Think about the fact that you have a dusky blue in the background, so the foreground should pop. Identify with the colour what is a seed head and what isn’t.
 

While the paint on the seed heads is still damp, use Jane’s grey on a smaller brush (I’m using a size 8) to put in some shadows and make the seed heads look more three-dimensional.

Lift some textures from the surface to add interest to the background: place a plastic stencil over the painting, dab the magic sponge in water and dab over the stencil to lift off the colour. Here, I’m using a floral-themed stencil.

Peel away the stencil to reveal the effect.

At this stage, stencilling is a way in which you can edit any of the leaf shapes that may be a little too bold.

Apply the same effect to some of the seed heads – use a smaller stencil for this. I’ve used one with a tyre-track pattern to give texture.
 

With the size 10 round brush, begin to paint negatively around the stems and the seed heads with the Jane’s grey.

It may be tempting to paint around everything in this way but you risk leaving obvious outlines.

For the next stage, take up Posca pens in shades of orange, pink and blue–grey.

Use the Posca pens to pick out fine details.

While the pen ink is still wet, take a damp brush and blend the pen into the rest of the paint. Posca pen inks are opaque so you can get quite a lot of definition back over the darks if you have lost them.

Pick out any expressive lines originally drawn in with pencil, and go over these with the Posca pens to add dynamism and movement, and reintroduce drama.

Put some of the colour from the poppy seed heads into the physalis, and vice versa, for unification: this will help all the seed heads look like they’re supposed to be in the same painting.

Finally, mix a little zinc white gouache in with flame orange gouache and spectrum violet gouache, respectively, so that the colours are pale but not pastellized. Spatter the colours over the painting. If you want to soften some of the spatter marks, spray them with water and they will diffuse slightly.

The finished painting.