I did it like what I did with the tree, using black, except the hair shadow that's the (what I could tell) base color on a new layer in multiply then after all lighting/shading was done I did overlay wit a black and white gradient and moved opacity around until I liked it. :3

I accidentally clicked don't save the image in to an XCF so I can't show exactly what I did.

Light effects aren't easy. If you study other pics that succeed more or less in depicting sun rays, you will see that the background needs to be darkened to make the light...lighter. It's tricky and hard to pull off well.

Beautiful job, anyway. The tulips are nicely done. I think they want to encourage the tree to put out leaves

Sorry it's taken so long Molly. I tried to keep them shading soft to keep it in line with your style. I've kept it in layers on the xcf so you can have a good look. I had to zip it because of size restrictions for attachments.

Thanks Eris, that looks cool. It looks more believable cuz it is a straight on view where I don't think the shadows should be on the right side. I will look at your XCF and see what you did.

EDIT: I just looked at your Layers. I see where you did all the shadows and hi-lites. Did you paint those in, if so you did a fantastic job on them. How did you get them so smooth, did you use a filter to do that?

Thanks Molly. Yes I painted them in with a fuzzy brush - no filters involved.

excellent

I have been trying to draw and paint these poppies for months and I keep putting it off. I have made more changes and I still don't like it. I thought of grinding them up for Opium but didn't know how so I posted it here instead.
I couldn't figure out what to do with the background, then changed the pot, on and on. soooooo, here it is

Lots of nice projects and good progress in this thread molly! Looks like you've gotten into MyPaint in a big way!

I'm jumping in a bit late in this thread, but to give some feedback on your latest image with the poppies; I would suggest not using a textured pattern for the background. The reason for this is that the pattern is much sharper than the foreground. I would generally avoid gradients or special effects for things like this. This detracts attention from your pretty potted flowers.
I'll tell you what I do when I need a background but don't really have any ideas - I go with an out-of-focus background. Think of how this would look if you had taken a photo of the flowers with a camera. The flowers would be in focus whereas the background would be blurry. You can easily make a blurry background by varying large dark and brighter patches and smudge/blend them together. With some experience you can hint at very sophisticated backgrounds without much work at all.
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Griatch

Thank you very much Griatch, I still have my XCF. I didn't like the backgroud either for one thing it was much too bright. I will try what you said. thanks for the feedback, much appreciated
I am not quite sure how to go about this smudge blur but I will try it.

@Griatch, is this more what you had in mind for the background? I think it is toned down quite a bit so maybe with some more practice I could make it more attractive.

I think it is really good, and I do not think it is so lopsided. All faces are not equal on both sides in real life. The hair does look like it needs more individual hairs showing, but I have no idea how to do that unless there are special hair brushes to use. I cannot imagine that one would draw individual hairs to make it look real.

@molly
Sorry for the late reply, those threads rush me by so fast!

This is an improvement I think, yes; the blurry background does bring more focus to the foreground.
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Griatch

Molly that's pretty neat.
Griatch thank you for your tutorials. I've learned a lot from the master;}

Thank you systemX

Looking good Molly!

Thanks Odin... BTW I didn't draw the silhouette, just added the hair and cleaned the background.

Molly, I like your composition!

Thank you Marcello.

I just noticed this one, very nice.