How to paint a sunflower and shadows using watercolors.
Let's begin with the picture that I took.
What do you see? I see intense colors, bright highlights and saturated,colorful shadows. My goal in working on this painting is to create a bold interpretation based upon my original photo, but without being photo realistic. In otherwords, I am choosing to let color, brushstroke, shape and values make a dominate statement. The question is where do I begin?
The answer is I start with a plan!
1) First comes image choice, pick your photo inspiration and draft a drawing of the image onto the watercolor paper of choice. I am using 140lb cold pressed Fabriano watercolor paper.
2) Making decisions:
For this watercolor painting, I am choosing a palette that consists of: New gamboge yellow, Hansa yellow, Pthalo blue(green) and Permanent Alizarin crimson
3) Next I want to plan out my values placement. Comparing a black and white photo print to my "value chart" helps me to organize where I want specific values to be in my future painting.
Notice how I have placed a series of numbers ranging from 1-6 throughout my photo to give you an idea of where I want specific values. Each number describes a "value" as shown in my chart. The lower numbers relate to the lighter values , #1 representing the white of my paper (lightest value) and the larger the number the darker I paint.
Go ahead and create your own “Value Study” by simply turning your photo inspiration into a black & white image , notice where the lights to darks are on your image and write the numbers of 1 -6 (each number representing a value level from light to dark) on top of your photo reference.
Remember that the more choices that you make prior to painting the easier the painting experience will be.
Begin painting when you feel comfortable about the choices that you have made.
4) I begin my painting process by working loosely and wet paint on wet paper so that my pigment flows and mixes across my work surface. The wet into wet technique is accomplished by brushing clean water over the entire paper surface. Then, with extremely diluted watercolor paint, I paint on the wet paper with mixtures of all of my chosen paint hues all over the paper in an abstract fashion. These background colors are so light that they can barely be seen. The next step is to let the damp paper dry. When dried, I then add paint where the sunflower petals are with the first of my color choices: new gamboge .
Repeating the step of painting a specific region with water such as the stem or leaves, I then choose to use a mixture of Hansa yellow and new gamboge & a small amount of pthalo blue dropping the paint onto the wet stems and leaves shapes of my drawing.
Now it is time to drop some color into my shadows shapes. Lets wet a few of the shadow shapes with clean water. By re-wetting the paper first ,in just a small specific area, I am able to help my watercolors flow throughout a shape and not create hard edged strokes within the area that I am painting in. By choice I will mix a "complimentary" colors for my shadow shapes. I think using a purple hue- ranging from a bluish purple to a reddish purple will make this painting bold!
Let's take a look at my color wheel to better understand a little bit of color theory.
Notice the placement of colors on my color wheel. Follow the diagonal center line and you can see that ...Reds, like scarlet lake, live opposite green on the wheel, orange is opposite from blue and our purple colors are the complimentary hue of our yellows.
Think about it like this: colors that live "next door to each other, like blue and green or red and orange are called analogous hues (think neighbors) and two hues that live across the street from each other are referred to as "complimentary" colors. Our purple lives across"the street" from the yellow family making it a complimentary color! By placing complimentary hues next to each other we can create a dynamically bold painting, which is my goal in designing this painting!
5) The main techniques used in painting with watercolors is layering. Layering paint is the method of building up or intensifying saturated colors by over-painting with additional strokes. Layering paint washes also makes regions darker on our paintings. Artists simply layer one stroke of color paint layer over layer. With each layer of paint that I use I build up paint and can create a darker version of what my previous paint strokes leave behind.
In this photo, I am slowly layering mixtures of my yellows over the petals, yellowy-greens over the leaves, reddish purples close to the flower,but bluish purples near the edge of the paper.
Notice how subsequent strokes of color on the petals or leaves create different shapes inside the larger forms and develop a range of values that are now giving my painting a 3 dimensional look. Notice how my first diluted washes of paint color in the background are barely seen but unite the other forms.6) Did you notice that the center of my sunflower has small seeds, which means that I need to use a different type of stroke to create the essence of pattern in the center of the flower. I do this by holding my brush perpendicular to the paper. By the way, my brush has previously picked up a mixture of Hansa yellow, Permanent alizarin crimson and a dash of pthalo blue from my palette. With a loaded paint brush, I gently touch the tip of my brushes point to the paper, leaving behind a dot of color. I place the dots in a circular fashion, moving around the center of the flower.
I can also use my brush to splatter paint and create small pointellistic patterns. To avoid getting extra paint on unwanted areas, I mask off the painting by laying a paper towel over areas where I do not want water color paint to drop before splattering.
7) Slowly, but surely a painting develops before my eyes. Experience has taught me, that to "see" if I have created enough values in my painting so that my image resembles my inspirational photo and reads correctly, I take a black and white photo of my painting. This step helps me to make my final " informed" decisions about what I need to do to my painting.
8) I want to increase the darkness values in my shadows,so I will paint one more coat using a mixture of my pthalo blues + crimson. I ,also, feel my flowers petal tips need some adjustment. For this , I will step away from traditional transparent watercolor methods and use a small amount of fluid acrylics. I am doing this,because I want to lighten the petal tips to almost the white of the paper value.
Acrylic paints are a type of "water media" but they are more opaque than traditional watercolors. Once I go too dark with my watercolor paint, it is very hard to bring back out the lightest of light values. Enter titanium white acrylic paint. By diluting the white acrylic paint, I can now re-paint my petal tips, so that the tips appear to be sun drenched and the lightest value (think value#1).
In this close up you can see how I have even used some of my white paint drops on the seeds in the center of my flower.
When your painting is complete and you have nothing more that you can say about it then you are done. Step away from your artwork, take a deep breath, perhaps even stretch a little and enjoy the beauty that you have created! Congratulations, you have now painted a sunflower, Fearlessly!
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