I began with 2 copyright free photos.
My art is copyrighted.

Tutorial:
This painting was done the same as the painting I did here
http://www.pbase.com/image/50877003

This could be done a number of different ways. Here's one:

I needed to start with a simple image, and I gave it a new background that I made from an undersea pic, selected an area of it to re-color and played with colors and a few effects.

I used Buzz Pro to simplify the poppy, then into Painter IX, where I used the Just Add Water brush to blend it even further.

Then to PaintShop Pro, where I made a layer underneath this one and applied Effects/artistic/chrome/golden2 (preset) to it, but this technique could use other metalic layers or even black or white for other interesting looks.

Then I erased through the top layer, outlining the flower and the selection. I think a narrower outline would look better, but I wanted it to show up well here. I found a quote I liked and used Free Transform to move my text around.
If any of this is unclear, leave me a message here on PBase, and I will try to answer it.
Happy painting!