Watercolor Flowers
Learn to paint watercolor flowers. I'm sharing two ways to paint Grape Hyacinths.
Yield: 2 paintings
Materials
- watercolor paper and scrap paper I like Canson XL
- watercolor brushes sizes round 4, 6, detail (if desired), and flat
- paint palette
- paper towels
- water containers
- pencil
- washi tape
- hair dryer optional
- paper cutter optional
Watercolor Paints
- Winsor Violet
- Sap Green
- Chromium Oxide Green optional
- Indigo Blue
- Lemon Yellow
- Raw Sienna
- Burnt Sienna
- Payne's Gray
Instructions
For Impressionistic Watercolor Flowers
- Cut paper to size - I cut my watercolor paper as 2 x 5 cards (this size makes great bookmarks or small frame-able art). Tape edges of watercolor paper onto a table or hard surface. Be sure to press the tape firmly.
- Apply a light wash of water with a flat bush. While the paint is still wet, softly drop in a light blue for the background. Allow to dry. You can speed up the drying process with hair dryer.
- For the first layer, apply a watery mixture of greens and pale purples to create the look of flowers in the background. I drop the flowers in with a stippling motion of the brush. Allow to dry.
- Go back into the painting with more concentrated mixtures of greens and purples. These darker colors will make the flowers and stems look closer to the viewer. Use the same method as the first flowers. Allow to dry.
- Carefully remove the washi tape and enjoy your painting!
For Botanical Style Watercolor Flowers
- Very lightly sketch out your flowers and bulb. It might be helpful to create shapes first and and then add the details. Keep the sketching very light as it can be hard to remove the pencil markings after painting.
- Start with light washes - in the video I started with the stems, then the bulb, then the flowers. Be careful not to work on touching areas when the paint is still wet or it will bleed into that area.
- Continue with painting adding layers and layers of darker and more concentrated colors to create texture, shadow, and depth.
- When using watercolor its important to keep areas you want white left unpainted or you can carefully lift paint with a paper towel or dry brush.
- The paint will lighten as it dries so you may want to come back in and add more paint to areas.
- Once dry and you're happy with the results carefully remove and stray pencil markings.
Video
Notes
You don't need to use the paint colors listed here. Use what you have. You can also create your own purples mixing together blue and red and you can create your own greens mixing blue and yellow.
I can't wait to see your paintings and to hear how you enjoy this tutorial!