Poppies on the Cliff Path, Morning Sun
It's an invented view in the spirit of Monet's Pourville and Varengeville cliffs. In the foreground a windblown meadow spotted with red poppies runs down to the left. A pale chalk path crosses it, and a small figure with a white parasol stands on it near the cliff edge. Below and across, the Channel deepens from milky turquoise shallows at the foot of a pink-and-violet chalk cliff to a strong ultramarine at the bottom edge. A path of broken sun glitter runs across the water, past a few white sails, toward a lavender headland on the horizon. The sky is laid in with loose, cream-lit cloud touches.
There are still two weak spots: the poppies in the upper meadow look a bit like evenly spaced dots, and the dabs in the sky are rather uniform. I judged that reworking them would cost the picture more freshness than it would gain. My journal now records this final check and that the painting is finished.
Watch it being painted, with its thinking →
What the painter was asked
Compose and paint one original picture in the manner of Claude Monet, at the easel, a simulator of oil paint on linen. The subject and composition are yours to invent. Work from knowledge and the notes in your studio; don't use reference images, image models or pictures of his work.
The painter's journal
- day 1, 15:45: Subject: clifftop over the Channel, Pourville-ish, original. Horizon y=300. Distant violet headland right; chalk cliff face left mid (lit pink-cream top, violet shadow); grass slope foreground lower-left, edge running diag to (670,794). Sea in 4 bands lighter→deeper; bands too hard, need broken horizontal touches crossing seams. Sky smooth & banded — needs clouds/touches. Grass a uniform carpet — needs light/shadow masses, wind direction, flowers.
- day 12, 15:44: Session 2–3: clouds restated over dry sky (blending had made it too smooth; then dragged broken touches over). Sails, poppies (touch() marks came out too small, so I used short strokes instead), figure with parasol on the path. Mistakes: a yellow crest pass buried the figure, so I repainted it once the paint had set. A lilac "hatch" pass at coverage 0.15 came out much too dense, with pale dashes everywhere. I worked over it wet with sea and grass colours, and what's left reads as sun sparkle on the water. Sea strokes overran the grass edge by the figure, so I restored it with grass and tufts. Finished and left to dry.
- day 12, 15:44: Session 4: Back after a week of drying. Squinting in value, everything sits at one pale mid-grey: sky, sea, grass and cliff all have the same weight. Plan: (1) cool shadow masses in the grass (blue-green/violet), sweeping with the wind, darkest in the lower-left foreground and under the crest; (2) deepen the near sea and break the hard seam at y≈530; (3) knock back the sparkle outside a glitter path near x≈620–780, and put warm sparkle into that path; (4) turquoise/emerald shallows at the chalk foot.
- day 29, 04:31: Session 4 done. Knocked back the scattered sea sparkle and gathered it into a glitter path under a faint warm glow at the horizon. Deepened the near sea with ultramarine/viridian, then worked mid-tone strokes into the band while it was wet to soften the seam. Turquoise shallows at the chalk foot. Grass: my shadow mask covered 78% of the meadow (I checked the area after painting rather than before, so check mask areas first). It buried the figure and poppies, and I relit about 55% with yellow-greens wet-in-wet. Repainted the path top, the figure and her parasol, and the poppies (deeper madder reds in the shade, larger blots at the bottom edge). Covered the dull grey-lilac dashes with greens and a few richer violets. The values now have a real structure while staying high-key. I call it finished. Title: "Poppies on the Cliff Path, Morning Sun".
- day 29, 04:31: Session 5: Came back and looked again, whole, squinted and up close. The light structure holds: a pale sky band, the cool sea deepening toward the bottom, the glitter path, and sunlit grass with cool shadow underneath. The poppies in the upper meadow are a bit dot-like, and the sky's dabs are a little even. But going over it again would cost more freshness than it would gain. I'm leaving it as it is. Finished.
Also after Monet: The Footbridge over the Lily Pond
Also after Monet: Meules, soleil couchant, hiver