The splashing and throwing of watercolor technique is a great way to loosen up if you tend to paint too tightly.  First, take a half sheet of 140# Arches watercolor paper, staple and tapethe edges down onto gator board, plywood or hardboard.  This is a very important step, because the paper will get very wet and will buckle quite a lot, so you need to have it secured. 

I drew the design onto tracing paper and then transferred it to the watercolor paper using graphite paper.  Then, I used maskoid to mask out all the flowers, buds and leaves.  There is no way to avoid this step and still be able to maintain your drawing.  I know it's tedious!  Once the masking is dry, mix up puddles of some warm colors; yellow, red and a small amount of burnt sienna.  My mixtures were the consistancy of milk.  Take a large round brush (I used a #12 Kalinsky sable that holds a lot of paint) and throw the yellow towards the top of the painting.  Next, take the red and do the same thing as you overlap some of the yellow creating orange.  Be careful not to cover the entire background, but to leave areas of white spaces in the paper.  Spray water onto your thrown paint to create softer edges, with a windex type sprayer.  While this is drying, salt may be added to create some texture.  Dry completely!

The next step is to mix puddles of deep blue (ultramarine blue), diazonin purple, cerelean blue and whatever shade you would like.  Throw these colors into the lower section of the painting (near the leaves) to 'ground' the painting.  I threw a bit of this above some of the orange also to make it appear there were some tall flowers in the background.  Spray again with your water bottle.  I tilted the board back and forth to move the paint around and to really soak the paper.  As you can see the colors in this painting are quite deep and bright.  It's all right if the colors are more muted if you try this yourself.  Anything goes with this type of painting.  You may notice I threw some paint in the direction of the bottom of the paper to make it appear the paint was falling off the page.  Some of the paint did drip down off the edge.  Be sure to take a paper towel to soak up the edges once you are happy with the color results.  If the puddles are left behind, they will create 'blossoms'.  Salt may again be used, but the salt works better if put on when the shine of the paint is still on, but there are no longer any puddles.  It's a little tricky sometimes to know exactly when to apply the salt.

This now has to completely dry before removing the masking.  Mine took quite a long time, even though a hair dryer was used.   Once the maskoid is removed, all of your flowers and leaves are left white and will be ready to paint.  Tomorrow, you will see a more progress on the "Poppy Blast"

When painting a garden, leave room for fairies to dance............