Learn Watercolors - Painting Flowers

Watercolors is a lot of fun when you know the techniques, I mentioned that in my last post. However, all said and done, we need not only to learn them but also have to try and master them. A small exercise was given to our little students at Art Hours on learning to paint flowers. Here's a step by step guide on how we painted the flowers using only watercolors.

Painting Flowers - Watercolors

Materials required:

A pencil - to make the drawing

Watercolors

Brushes - One round brush about 1/2" thick will suffice, Flat Brush about 3/4"wide will be suffice for this exercise.

Clear Water

Paper - For practice purpose, any paper will do but in the long run, try and use a good quality paper that can absorb the watercolors better. Here we have used white printer paper.

Procedure:

The steps shown for painting the flowers with a background are just for guidance, and not thumb rules that you have to compulsorily follow. You can develop your own style once you get a hold of the techniques. This exercise is meant for beginners and learners and if you follow the steps, you will definitely get a fair idea on how to proceed with watercolors. Two techniques are demonstrated below, wet on wet and wet on dry.

WET ON WET TECHNIQUE

Step 01:

Draw a flower shape. Start coloring from the center of the flower. Apply a light wash in the center. Here we have used yellow for the centre.

Step 01

Step 02:

For the area surrounding the center of the flower, apply orange color. Here you may use a smaller round brush tip to fill in the small areas.

Step 02

Step 03:

To start with the petals, load the round brush with a violet color and starting from the inner side go towards the outer side of the petals but not till the end. Try to keep the outer edges of the petal white at this stage.

Step 03

Step 04:

Complete the flower using just one shade at this stage. You may load your brush with more color if you feel your brush is getting dry.

Step 04

Step 05:

For this step no need to rinse your brush. Just dip the brush in a little water and quickly pull out the color from the darker violet till you cover the outer edge of the petals to get a light shade of violet. So effectively you have created the transparency effect and not used any extra color too. Note, at this stage, if the inner dark violet color has dried it will be difficult to pull out the color outwards from that area so you have to work quickly with your brush. You can also go one petal at a time. Here, the wet on wet technique works best, hence work quickly so that it is easy to blend the colors.

Step 05

Step 06:

Going back to the center of the flower. By now, the yellow color in the center would have dried. Take a round brush and load it with brown color - here there should be less water and more color and using just the tip of your brush apply it lightly on the center creating the pollen grain effect. 

Step 06

Step 07:

To focus on the background of the flower now. Load the round brush with green color and start from the areas adjoining the petals, leaving more color near the edges of the flower and pull out the color with water towards the outer side so that you blend the green color with the white of the paper. Note, here you can use a round brush to apply the color near the petals but as you go outwards you can use a flat brush to pull out and blend the color. This will make it easier to give a smoother finish.

Step 07

This is how it would look once you have applied color around the flower.  We are not done yet and the background is still incomplete. You can smoothen out the background using a flat brush at this stage.

Flower Painting - Wet on Wet 

Wet on wet is a little difficult technique to master and takes a lot of practice. You can view more details here on this link to understand how to use wet on wet technique to paint flowers using Water colors.

Now, moving on to the next technique. Most of my students are comfortable with wet on dry technique so let's proceed with the tutorial.

WET ON DRY TECHNIQUE

You can try this another technique - 'Wet on Dry' for painting more flowers. Here's how you would do it. Just draw some flowers on a sheet. We have used an A5 size sheet for practice purpose.

Draw some flowers on a paper

Now, apply a wash on all the petals using the same color with a round brush. Here, I have applied light pink wash and left it to dry.

Apply the first wash layer

Once, the first wash has dried, load your brush with different shades for one flower at a time and apply thin brush strokes from the inner side to the outer side. In the picture below, you will see I have used dark blue, violet and crimson red for the flowers. Also, note here we have used the wet on dry technique since we waited for the first layer to dry and then applied the wet layer.

Finish your painting with a background as mentioned in the previous technique. Start with a round brush loaded with the dark green color from the areas adjoining the sides of the petals and blend it outwards with a flat brush to merge with the white of the paper. 

Flower Painting - Dry on Wet  

In the picture below, you will see the different techniques used and each created a very similar effect if you notice the flowers only. For the green background of the flowers, different techniques were used, and we will talk about it in more detail in our later posts.

Water Coloring Flowers

So, there is no rule that you need to religiously follow, just experiment with your colors and explore the various techniques till you are comfortable with the one that gives you the effect you wish to have.

Here's a look at the work done by Art Hours' Students using the above two techniques.

Water Coloring Flowers 01

Water Coloring Flowers 02 

Water Coloring Flowers 03

Sometimes, you need to draw a rough sketch using a pencil while sometimes you can directly paint without any base drawing. As mentioned above, I had also posted a tutorial earlier, on painting flowers with watercolors. You can check out the link here which will give you more ideas if you wish to paint flowers with watercolors using different techniques. 

Hope the above tutorial is helpful. If you like this post and find it helpful, please share it with your friends and do leave in your comments that will help us improve.

Keep looking out for more on watercolors in the forthcoming posts.

Have a Flowery Day!

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