The most recent class in watercolor was of a white rose. I started by wetting the entire paper and laying in color for the background. I keep this fairly pale and let it bleed into some of my flower and leaves. After this has dried I started to paint the sunlit areas and then the petals that were turned away from the sunlight.
I demonstrated how to paint each petal wet into wet with 3 colors. It is fun to paint a white flower with colorful shadows. I use cobalt blue, rose madder and hansa yellow. Using those 3 colors I adjust for warm or cool shadows. Wet the entire petal and charge in your blue and while it is still wet, paint in rose and then some yellow. Let the colors blend themselves on the paper. Try and apply the paint and remove your brush from the paper. That can be difficult for people who like to apply paint with many strokes of paint. By using a minimal amount of paint strokes the colors are more brilliant and are less apt to look muddy.
An important fact to remember is that the shadow has to be at least 40% darker than the light area, this will help your paintings have more depth. I finished up the painting with the leaves. I continued painting wet into wet for each leaf and adding detail after the paper dried.
The class then started their own painting of flowers. We painted the background and will continue this painting in the next class. Some facts to remember is to mix plenty of paint and load that brush up with paint! When painting wet into wet the water on the paper will dilute the color so use plenty of paint.
Until next time,
P.J. Cook
