Monet's Poppy Fields

Wild Poppies Near Argenteuil (1873)

Claude Monet was known as a prolific painter. His most famous paintings might have been those of the Japanese footbridge and waterlilies, but there are so many others! 

One of my personal favorites is this blooming field of poppies.

Poppy Field in Giverny

I thought would be fun for our young artists to paint a field of bright red poppies. 

For simplicity, we would complete this painting in watercolor (9" x 12 "). 

 

First, we lightly painted a horizon line in blue, and completed the blue sky. We left white areas for clouds, adding purples and pinks like Monet often did in his clouds.  

Then we filled in the bottom portion of the painting in light greens, and we painted a dark tree line along the top of the horizon to indicate perspective and distance. 

We then added distant flowers, which were really just long horizontal streaks of red or pink, because these flowers are so far away.



The closer the flowers are, the larger they look, so that is how we painted them. Those at the bottom of the paper are so close we can see some of the black centers inside them.

The last step is to add grassy details to the field of poppies. We would be able to clearly see green blades of grass between the poppies in the lower portion of the painting.

My sample

The poppy field below was completed by a four-year-old. We used liquid tempera paint and poster paint dabbers (dotters?) on large sulphite paper for this one. Because young children like to paint BIG, right?

This project is loosely based on a lesson found in Painted Paper Art: Monet's Fields of Poppies.