Simple Watercolor Poppy Wall Art

After sharing a few posts last week showing the watercolor poppies I used to make holiday decorations I decided to hold off and publish this watercolor poppy wall art separately so that it wouldn’t get lost in all the gorgeousness of the watercolor poppy cut outs and the watercolor poppies centerpiece! After making those watercolor poppy cut-outs with straight stems, I realized that I could paint a panorama (two sheets of large watercolor paper used horizontally) of curved stem poppies to fill the width of my kitchen picture ledge for some more lovely decor! And yes indeed, simply painting a long row of poppies with no added background looks quite good, and can be done fairly quickly. Best of all, flat art like this is certainly simple to store until you need to add a festive touch once again. Of course these poppies are so great looking you’ll likely leave them up for a while! I have 3 picture ledges in my kitchen that are used to display art generally, and I love to change them up, so these poppies have been a nice addition, and quite a bit more calming than my flower paintings hung clothesline style! The great thing about watercolor paper is that I was able to simply stand the sheets on the shelf, and with just a bit of masking tape to secure them, voila, lovely art was born. Okay, I did have to paint the poppies first, but that was pure joy! Want to make some painted poppies to decorate a spot in your home? Let’s do it!

You’ll Need:

• large watercolor paper, mine is 35cm x 50cm, used horizontally, so final art work is 1 meter long and 35 cm high
• a black fine line marker, mine was not permanent
• a pencil (for the leaves, since I wasn’t sure how to draw them at first)
• watercolors

How To:

Take a look at my watercolor poppy cut-outs for some instruction on drawing and then painting these poppies, just use the drawing below as a reference to make the curved stems, and then add some leaves at the bottom. I did not use a pencil to draw the poppies as I am comfortable drawing them with a pen (much quicker too!) but the leaves were experimental so I drew those with a pencil, went over the lines with a pen, and then erased the pencil lines before painting.

I photographed these two pages stacked, but displayed them side by side for the best effect.

As you can see, my composition includes blooms of different sizes, and it also turns out that all the large blooms are at the top, which I didn’t plan, but I like it. I didn’t plan the composition at all, but you can certainly do a little sketch first to see what arrangement of sizes you like. The main thing is, have fun with this, and use the results to bring joy into your home!

Paintings don’t have to be complex or difficult to be something you can truly enjoy, so go for it!