My gallery of watercolor flowers

Watercolor paints are available in two forms: tubes or pans. I used pans.

I began with the flower and the stem. I put the colour and shaded it adding a small quantity of water with the brush to obtain a soft gradation. I used a couple shades of green, a light one and a darker one. I also used black for the dark areas of the stem. The flower was painted with a small quantity of black thinned with water and after drying some yellow just in a small area.

I let the work dry (if you want to speed up the drying time you can use a blow-dryer).

The background of these watercolor flowers are painted with the "wet in wet" technique:

Wet in wet is the application of paint to an area of the painting that is already wet. It is one of the features of watercolor painting.

The technique is to wet the entire sheet of paper, then to add the colour with a brush saturated with paint. This is normally done to define large areas of the painting, which is then refined with more controlled painting as the paper dries.

I used this process for the background, infact before putting the colors, I sprinkled the paper with water using the brush. Then when I put the color it spread immediately creating an interesting effect.

I used vertical strokes of green and black with a brush trying to put a colour close to the other. The water that was under mixed them in a natural way.

Some watercolour painting tips:

If you want to create on your watercolor flowers those strange particular snowflake like effects that you see in the background, you can sprinkle the paint, when still wet, with grains of coarse salt. After putting some salt on the paper, you will see it absorbing the pigment creating that peculiar effect that is hard to reproduce with a brush.

I let salt act and after drying, I removed it from the painting.

Tulipano

(Tempera painting)

Tulipano rosso

From watercolor flowers to male nude drawing