Poppies, poppies , poppies…. Acrylic creative techniques workshop with Tim Fisher

On a lovely morning in May we all turned up in Rothley equipped with bags stuffed with acrylics, brushes, car sponges and palette knives… and an easel, with the intention of learning how to paint a poppy field Tim Fisher style. I took my sister, she had never painted, before and was like a jelly before we entered the hall, but in brave anticipation she soldiered on.

Tim suggested using mountcard to paint on about 18” x 16” if not canvass board or MDF. The basic structure of the painting was pencilled in, following this Tim vigorously covered the board using cadmium red, and cadmium yellow to give a patchy orange glow.

Whilst his dried we had a go at ours. The next stage was to put masking tape to form the horizon line. White and cerulean blue were splashed on to form a lively sky, and violet, white and ultramarine were used to create distant mountains.

Using a car sponge we blotted black in to form the background of trees in greens made from ultramarine and yellow, yellow and cerulean and yellow for the leaves, and raw sienna and yellow ochre for the trunks.

acrylic painting demonstration — Background work

Then came the really exciting bit! Tim gave a really comprehensive session on how to use the palette knife, giving tips and hints as to how to get the best results. We then practiced the techniques on scrap paper to hone our skills. Using the same greens as for the trees but using a palette knife Tim started scraping the paint across the board densely at first then with a chopping motion as he came down the board creating the poppies in reverse. It was really effective. Then we tried…

We were all really proud of our paintings and the lessons learned that day using the palette knife. Even my sister who had never painted before was inspired, since then she has not stopped painting and has created an impressive body of work!