How to Draw a Poppy in Five Easy Steps

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A red poppy is one of the friendliest flowers to draw, and with Remembrance Day on 11 November it is a flower a lot of people are reaching for this fortnight. What makes it read as a poppy is one idea: four broad round petals that overlap, two at the back and two in front, around a small dark centre. Add a thin stem and a bud nodding on a hooked stem, and nobody will mistake it for a daisy.

The finished poppy tutorial drawing on a dark canvas: a red poppy with two deeper red back petals and two brighter red front petals, each with a wavy rim and thin creases, a dark crimson outline, a sage green seed pod with a star on top inside a dark zigzag ring of stamens, a soft red shadow cupped around the lower right of the centre, pale coral highlights on the upper left rims, a thin green stem, a lobed green leaf on the left and a green bud hanging from a hooked stem on the right

What you need

Everything happens in the Grovetracks editor on the default dark canvas: the ellipse tool for the petal circles, the centre and the bud, the line tool for guides, the freehand brush for the outline and colour, and layers. Draw the first three steps on the layer the editor starts you on: that is your sketch layer. In step 4 you add a new layer for the finished drawing, then delete the sketch layer whole instead of erasing it, so no guide takes a bite out of a line you are keeping. Every colour is in the table below, with the hex code to type into the colour picker.

Colour Hex Step Used for
Grey blue pencil #93A6BC 1, 2 Shapes and guides (sketch layer)
Warm cream #F2E3C6 3 First outline (sketch layer)
Deeper red #C0202C 4 Back petals
Brighter red #E0323A 4 Front petals
Pale sage #9AA27A 4 Seed pod
Leaf green #6E9A52 4 Leaf, bud and stems
Dark green #3E5E30 4, 5 Leaf and bud edges, bud shadow
Dark crimson #5C0F1A 4 Petal lines and creases
Near black #1E1418 4 Stamens and pod
Dark red #9E1420 5 Petal shadows, about 45% opacity
Pale coral #FF8A72 5 Petal rim highlights
Pale green #D8DDB8 5 Dot on the pod, line on the bud

Step 1: Draw four circles

Step 1 of the poppy: thin grey blue pencil shapes on a dark canvas, four overlapping circles in a square around a small circle in the upper middle, a straight stem line running down from the bottom of the circles, a small upright oval for the bud on the right and a long thin oval for the leaf on the lower left

With the ellipse tool and a thin brush (width 2), draw four circles of the same size in a square, each about a quarter of the canvas wide, so they overlap a lot and all four cover the middle point. Put a small circle on that middle point. Then draw a long stem line from the bottom of the circles nearly to the bottom of the canvas, a small upright oval out to the right for the bud, and a long thin oval leaning up to the left from the lower stem for the leaf.

The common mistake is circles that only touch. A poppy's petals overlap by about a third, so push them in until the small centre circle sits inside all four.

Step 2: Add the centre and the stems

Step 2 of the poppy: the same pencil circles, stem, bud and leaf, now with a vertical and a horizontal line crossing at the centre, a slightly bigger ring around the small centre circle, a curved side stem rising from the main stem and hooking over to the top of the bud, and a straight midrib down the leaf

Switch to width 1. Draw a cross through the centre, one line up and down and one side to side, so you can see where each petal sits. Draw a second ring just outside the small centre circle: that is where the stamens go. From the lower part of the main stem, draw a side stem that rises up and to the right, then curls over and hooks down to the top of the bud. Finish with a straight line down the middle of the leaf.

The mistake here is a bud that stands up. A poppy bud hangs its head until it opens, so the hook has to bend all the way over.

Step 3: Find the outline

Step 3 of the poppy: a confident warm cream outline over the pencil guides, the two front petals drawn whole with wavy rims, the two back petals showing only where they peek out above them, two curved creases on each petal, a zigzag ring of stamens around a small round pod with a star of lines on top, a cream stem, a hooked side stem ending in an oval bud with a seam line, and a lobed leaf with a midrib

With the brush in warm cream at width 5, draw the two front petals first, following the bottom circles with a gently wavy line like crumpled tissue. Then draw the back petals only where they peek out above the front ones. At width 2, add two short curved creases on each petal, running out from the centre. Around the centre, draw a zigzag ring for the stamens, a small circle for the seed pod and three short crossing lines on it for its star. Trace the stems, the bud with a seam down its middle, and the leaf with three soft bumps a side.

The one mistake to watch: drawing all four circles whole. Lines that cross the front petals make it look like four coins. Stop each back petal where it meets a front one.

Step 4: Fill in the red

Step 4 of the poppy: the pencil guides are gone, the two back petals are filled in a deeper red and the two front petals in a brighter red, the pod is pale sage inside a near black zigzag of stamens, the stems, bud and leaf are leaf green, and the petals are outlined in dark crimson and the leaf and bud in dark green

Open Layers and tap + Layer. The new layer sits above your sketch, and everything from here on goes on it. There is no fill bucket, so colour goes on like a marker. Fill each petal with a ring at width 60 and one big dot in the middle: the back two in the deeper red first, then the front two in the brighter red on top. Two reds, not one, is what keeps the petals apart. Put a pale sage dot over the centre, a green stroke at width 30 down the leaf and a short one at width 28 in the bud. Then redraw the petal lines and creases in dark crimson, the stamens and pod in near black, the leaf and bud edges in dark green, and the stems in leaf green at width 8 and 6.

When the new lines are down, delete the sketch: in Layers, tap the delete button on Drawing 1, the bottom layer, and confirm. The pencil guides and the first cream outline go in one tap, and nothing on your new layer is touched. That is why the guides live on their own layer: the eraser would nick every line a guide crosses.

The mistake here is keeping the cream outline. Cream around red looks like a sticker; dark crimson lets the petals glow.

Step 5: Add one shadow and one highlight

Step 5 of the poppy: the finished drawing, with a soft dark red shadow curving round the lower right of the centre, a second soft shadow inside the right edge of the front right petal, a pale coral highlight along the upper left rim of each left petal, a tiny pale dot on the pod and a thin pale line down the left of the bud

Pick the light: here it comes from the top left. In dark red at about 45% opacity and width 18, draw a curve round the lower right of the centre, as if the petals cup a little shadow there. Add one more soft stroke inside the right edge of the front right petal. In pale coral at width 6, draw a short curve just inside the upper left rim of each left hand petal. Finish with a tiny pale dot on the pod and a thin pale line down the left of the bud.

Keep the shadow soft. At full opacity it reads as a stripe; at under half it reads as a petal curling.

Draw it yourself

Open the editor on grovetracks.com and draw a poppy of your own: a small field of them at different heights, a white or orange one, or a bud just splitting open with red showing through. For a head start, open any step's gallery page above and branch it to pick up from exactly that stage. Every step shows its lineage back to the first four circles, and the finished poppy's Made from section walks the whole tutorial.

Trace the finished poppy back to its roots, every step linked in one view: the poppy's lineage.

For another plant drawn the same way, How to Draw a Mushroom uses the same five step method, and How to Draw Light in Line Art has more on choosing where the light comes from.