Watercolor Painting for Dummies (46 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
Flowers are the inspiration for many still-life paintings. They also provide a vertical counterbalance to horizontal lines.
Flowers also can symbolize meanings and set the mood for the painting. For example, sunflowers indicate a casual painting with a touch of country atmosphere. Roses, however, set a formal mood.
Flowers are mostly circular and oval, but look at the general shape of the flower before you begin sketching the simplified shape. (See more on drawing in Chapter 8.) Reduce the complexity of the flower to simple geometric forms. For example, trumpet flowers are a circle attached to a cone or triangle shape. When you have all the general shapes in, then you can go back and refine the details.
If you have a bouquet of flowers, you may want to first sketch the entire shape of the bouquet as a circular shape. Then, within the big circle, sketch the individual shapes representing the individual blooms.
Sketch on tracing paper. Start loose. Put another piece of tracing paper over the first rough sketch and draw a little more carefully. Forget the eraser. Put each refined stage of the drawing on a new piece of tracing paper. You can look through the tracing paper to see the sketch below. When you get the drawing the way you like it, take the top tracing paper sheet and place it over the watercolor paper. You can now move it around until it’s in just the right location relative to the sides of the watercolor paper. This allows you to crop some parts of the drawing if it adds interest. Try to avoid the “lollipop” look in the center of the page. Read Chapter 7 for ideas on better composition and Chapter 8 for info on how to transfer your drawing to watercolor paper.
Avoid the every-flower-looking-forward-and-perfect syndrome. Have some facing sideways and backwards. Have some buds. Have some flowers past their prime. If you do this, you have created a whole life cycle and now have the symbolic circle of life in your painting. The painting now has more content. It will interest the viewer longer too.
When painting flowers, start simple. At first choose flowers with fewer petals. Daisies, pansies, and tulips are great flowers to start exploring. (Chapter 4 has a painting of daisies.)
You don’t need to paint every detail between each petal. The viewer’s brain lets him see the separations between the petals. If you explain too much — paint every hair on the dog or every petal on the flower — your painting is less interesting than a simpler rendition that involves the viewer. In this case, less is more.
Paint a simple pansy with five petals.
1.
Trace Figure 9-12 and transfer it to your watercolor paper. (Chapter 8 tells you how to transfer.)
Notice the petal numbering in my tracing. I refer to the petals by their numbers throughout the steps.
Figure 9-12:
Pansy drawing to trace.
2.
Choose a 4-x-6-inch piece of watercolor paper and mix four puddles of color on your palette.
• Make one puddle of lemon yellow.
• Make a puddle of red-purple. I used quinacrodone violet, but you can mix permanent rose with cobalt blue.
• Make a puddle of dark blue-purple (you can mix ultramarine blue with alizarin crimson to make a blue-purple). The dark purple I used is a mixture of dioxazine violet, burnt sienna, and Payne’s gray.
• Mix one more puddle of blue-gray (ultramarine blue and burnt sienna).
3.
Start with the lightest color, yellow. Using a pointed round brush, paint the center of the pansy, as shown in Figure 9-13a.
If the yellow is too light, you can add more pigment or another layer of paint after this one dries.
Figure 9-13:
The beginning of a pansy.
4.
Paint petals 3 and 4 with the red-purple (see Figure 9-13b). Avoid the yellow center so the dark color doesn’t flow into anything wet.
Make the purple even; you add the dark layer later.
5.
Make sure the puddle of blue-gray is pretty liquid and use it to paint the light blue-gray shadow areas that pucker petals 1, 2, and 5, as well as the shadows in the white areas (shown in Figure 9-14).
There’s a shadow under petal 1 falling on petal 2. Paint the blue-gray above the yellow center where petals 2 and 5 touch.
6.
Paint the center patch of red-purple on petals 2 and 5. While the paint is damp, drop in some of the dark blue-purple so the water mixes the two paints, but not totally. See Figure 9-15a.
7.
Paint the red-purple center of petal 1 only if the yellow center is dry (as shown in Figure 9-15b).
8.
Let all the petals dry.
9.
Paint the dark areas of petals 3 and 4 as a layer over the red-purple (see Figure 9-16a). Add the dark area at the tip of petal 1.
Be selective and paint the dark blue-purple to describe the veins and shadows of each petal.
Figure 9-14:
The top petals are painted purple, and the lower petals have shadows.
Figure 9-15:
The pansy “face” emerges.
Figure 9-16:
The last petal detail on the pansy is painted.
10.
If you choose to add a background, such as the one shown in Figure 9-16b), prepare some puddles of color you want, then wet the entire background with clear water, drop in colors, and let the water mix the colors.
I used several values of green, purple, and yellow, and sprinkled in a small pinch of salt for the texture. (See Chapter 4 to find out more about using salt to add texture.)
The more petals a flower has, the more complicated it is to paint. The way to approach a flower with many petals is to paint each petal individually. Look for the subtle lights and darks at the edges of the petals. Why do you see one petal against another? The answer is usually value. One petal has to be darker. The color is most often the same, but the values are different.
To get lighter value, add water to your pigment. You can also layer the paint to make the value darker. If at first the color isn’t dark enough, add another layer. Layers of transparent pigment produce glowing depth.
You can get lost in the intricacy of roses, but isn’t that part of the fun? In this exercise, you paint a rose with many petals.
1.
Choose a 4-x-6-inch piece of watercolor paper.
Grab some tracing paper and graphite paper as well.
2.
Trace the rose in Figure 9-17 and transfer it onto your watercolor paper — Chapter 8 tells you how.
Notice that the drawing is generally an oval shape. Then the edges are made more interesting with dips and divots, converting the boring oval into an eye-catching shape.
Figure 9-17:
Your rose is taking shape with this outline.
3.
Choose the color of rose you want to paint and activate your paints.
Roses come in many colors, and you may want to paint your own color choice. I used brilliant pink for the light areas and alizarin crimson for the darks (refer to Figure 9-21 to see the final painting). Where it’s really dark, I mixed in some purple with the alizarin crimson to create a shadow. I used green and a yellow-green for the stem and leaf.
4.
Using a pointed round brush, wet the entire paper with clear water and cover it with a light wash (see Figure 9-18).
I used lemon yellow and brilliant pink and opera (a bright pink) all at once while the paper was still wet. If you’re using your own color scheme, choose the lightest colors that you want to peek through the other layers.
5.
Pick up the paper and tilt it so the colors blend and no hard edges form. Spray water on the paper if it gets too bright or dry.
This layer is the
underpainting.
It unifies the painting. It’s so transparent that another layer covers it easily.
6.
Let the first layer of color dry completely.
Figure 9-18:
The rose is painted with a wild wash that doesn’t have to stay between the lines.
7.
Start on one side of the flower and paint a petal using a graded wash of dark to light (see Figure 9-19).
Follow the drawing to determine where to put color and where to soften or lighten the color.
I left the curled-over petals the color of the yellow wash. I painted the undersides of the petals a gradation of light pink to dark. The lightest area was brilliant pink, then opera, then permanent alizarin crimson with a tiny touch of ultramarine blue at the darkest point.
Figure 9-19:
Adding depth to the inner petals.
8.
Find a petal that doesn’t touch a wet area and paint a graded wash of dark to light.
9.
Repeat Steps 7 and 8 until all the petals are painted.
Paint a petal from dark to light. While that petal dries, go paint another petal that doesn’t touch a wet one. Work on the left and then the right side of the rose. The petals will probably have enough time to dry while you work on the opposite side. If not, pull out the blow-dryer to speed up the drying time.
10.
Paint the stem and leaf light yellow-green, and add the dark green shadow to the stem when the paper is dry enough to hold an edge. Drop a dark bit of green into damp yellow-green at the base of the leaf. See Figure 9-20.
Figure 9-20:
Add a stem and leaf at the bottom of the flower.
11.
Add a background if desired (see Figure 9-21 for inspiration).
Wet the entire background with clear water. Drop in a variety of the colors you used in the rose, leaf, and stem, as well as the wash colors. Let the water move the paint around. If the paint dries too soon, let the background dry completely and try again in another layer. Sprinkle a pinch of salt around the wet paint for texture.
Figure 9-21:
A rose of many petals.
