How to Paint Botanical Water Colors

Painted tulip

Painting with watercolors can be simple and fun. The trouble with a transparent medium is that it's very hard to cover up or change your mistakes. In addition, watercolor often changes as it dries, so that the image you saw when you stopped painting is not the image you're left with when the paint is dry. This makes watercolor especially irksome for portrait artists, but if you're painting a botanical scene, it can work to your advantage.

Things You'll Need

• Watercolor paper
• Watercolor paint
• Watercolor brushes
• Palette

Instructions

1. Pick your subject. This could be anything from flowers to plants. Search through photographs for the right subject. You can paint from imagination or from a photograph, but note that a painting done from imagination might lack some of the interesting details of a photograph. When selecting a photograph, look for subjects that include a lot of sunlight, shadow and bright colors. For example: flowers in a garden. Watercolors are an excellent medium for conveying lightness, brightness and whimsy.

2. Draw the general structure of the painting on your paper before you begin to paint. Do this very lightly. As already mentioned, watercolor is a transparent medium. If you draw too darkly on the paper, the pencil marks will show through. Do not become too detailed in your drawing--this is only to help you get started. Draw only the outline of the foliage, and major branches or stems. For flowers, do not draw the patterns on the petals or the veins of the leaves, draw only the outline of the most obvious shapes, such as the petals themselves and the stems.

3. Choose your colors and place a small amount of each color on your palette. Dip a medium-sized brush in water and then dip your brush in a small amount of paint. If the color looks dark on the brush, dilute it with water.

4. Apply your first, thin wash of color to the entire paper, so that all of the areas of the painting have a layer of paint. Keep in mind that watercolor is difficult to control. Allow the watercolor to bleed from one area to the next if that's what it decides to do, and don't become too attached to what you see on the paper (because it will appear to be different when it dries). If you absolutely must control the medium, use as little extra water as possible, and allow the painting to dry completely between layers. Do not worry too much about minor details like leaves and patterns on petals. Concentrate only on filling in the biggest blocks of color.

5. Build up the color on the page layer by layer, with patience. Decide what areas will appear to be in sunlight, and what areas will appear to be in shadow. Areas with sunlight will not have as many layers of paint as areas in shadow. Remember that once you've applied the paint to the paper, there is little you can do to erase it, so try not to paint too darkly all at once. Apply thin layers, one at a time, in order to build up your image. As you build up areas of shadow, such as in the case of a dark and gnarled bush or the shaded side of a tree trunk, do not use black. For green areas that are in shadow (leaves), use dark greens, mixed with blues and browns. For brown areas in shadow (tree trunks), use darker browns, and blues. For warm tones in shadow (for example, pink flowers), use a darker version of that color (a darker pink). Black paint will only muddy your painting, which is especially undesirable when the subject is something natural and beautiful like a flower or a tree.

6. Paint the smallest details (like the veins on a leaf, spots on a flower petal) toward the end. With an unruly medium like watercolor, you may even wish to skip the smallest details.

References

• Watercolorpainting: Tutorials