How To Draw Colorful Poppy Field Sketches In Your Art Journal

After two years packed with creativity that included everything except my beloved art and sketchbook practice, I said “enough is enough” and now instead of making cross stitch art (a bit obsessively, but it was great), it is back to the paint and sketching supplies! I dipped my toes back into the sketchbook last week while in Jerusalem, since historically my sketchbooks have gotten the most use during summer trips! I started with something simple and familiar, ( just realized that I did botanical line drawings of poppies in my sketchbook in 2020, so check out that link) which is a great place to start, so lets learn how to draw colorful poppy field sketches in your art journal! Let’s do it……

Supplies For Poppy Field Sketchbook Study:

• A sketchbook, with watercolor paper, thick paper, or paper prepared with gesso, ideally. Mine is a moleskin journal and not quite thick enough which is why you can see the buckled pages

• Stabilo woodies water soluble pencils, or other brand or watercolors, red, coral, yellow, light and dark green, sky blue

• Caran Dache Luminance colored pencils in deep red and gold and olive green

• Ecoline Brush Pen in dark green and medium green

• A paintbrush and water

• Fine tip black pen

• How To Draw Clouds With Watersoluble Pencils tutorial by yours truly

How To Create A Poppy Field Sketchbook Study:

1. Divide page into two horizontal blocks, using a ruler and a pencil
2. Using water soluble pencils or watercolors, create a loose layered landscape that is very light colored (see photo below)
3. Alternately, use the tutorial linked to in the supplies list to create a huge sky of clouds with a tiny strip of land, as seen at the bottom of this post.
4. Using brush pens and colored pencils, draw tall grass, with just one stroke if using brush pens.
5. Look at a photo of poppy fields for reference, and with the dark red luminance pencil draw loose flower shapes
6. Loosely fill in flower shapes with Stabilo pencils and water
7. Give flowers stems with black pen or pencil
8. Add black dots in the center of flowers where it is relevant
9. That is it, and of course, just use whatever supplies you have on hand!

Loose watercolor like backgrounds are a great place to start anytime!

Try creating a sketch of just clouds, by following my tutorial How To Draw Clouds with Stabilo woodies, and the do a sketch with much larger poppies.

They really do look great filling a spread in a sketchbook, so give it a try!