Occasionally I have a chance to teach a handful of people what little I know about oil painting. I have only been painting for 12 years, so while I feel qualified to share what I know, I don’t think of myself as a qualified oil painting teacher.

There are 3 women about 2 hours away from Three Rivers who have been learning to oil paint by various methods and by painting together. They invited me to teach them what I know. One was my dear friend, The Captain, who successfully painted a pomegranate with me about a month ago.

This time we painted poppies, each person working from a different photo, but all mixing similar colors and tackling the project in the same order, but at differing individual speeds.

1. We squeeze out our double primary palette colors and mix up three shades of the background greens.
2. We draw the approximate shape of the poppy on the canvas, rotating the canvas and photo to view all the shapes from every angle and learn how to erase.
3. The background gets painted first, working first with the darkest colors and moving lighter.
4. We mix 3 shades of orange for the poppies.
5. We paint the poppies.
6. We let it dry overnight (only sort of dry – this is oil paint!) and then repaint the background for better coverage and more detail.
7. We repaint the poppy for better coverage and detail.
8. We evaluate one another’s paintings, congratulating the others on their success and belittling our own efforts (sad, but true).
9. We exclaim over the fun, the success, and say that we need to do this again.