Painting project

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

▪ How to paint flowers

▪ Follow a step-by-step painting process

▪ Practise essential watercolour techniques

In the last issue I made colour swatches in preparation for this painting and I used them to remind me, where necessary, the colours I would need for the effects that I wanted to achieve. I suggested a few things you could practise in preparation for this step-by-step project. If you haven’t done those already, you could do some as warm-up exercises before beginning. They were:

1 Negative painting fine lines.

2 Impressing lines into a wet wash to create dark veins

3 Checking out the colours that you have, to see how close you can get to what I used.

4 Painting backgrounds around complex shapes.

Planning

When I began planning this painting, I intended to include a mid-tone dark background to set off the brightness of the sunlit leaves and petals. As I worked through my preparation I wondered if I would prefer a light background to set off the dark; eventually I decided to