A FAMILY OF BIRTHDAY FLOWERS
This lesson covers these basics of watercolor:
1. Painting on HOT PRESS paper
2. Using dryer techniques
3. Using pen and ink
4.Using your knowledge of color to create different greens
5. Using Brush-O/spattering/or shavings from WC pencils
One of my students wanted to paint her family's birthday flowers. She got the idea from pinterest, and I really liked the way it turned out. But I didn't want to copy someone else's drawings, so I drew my own birthday flowers and arranged them in different ways for each family.
Here are the birthday flowers. (I have no idea who came up with this)
January: carnation or snowdrop
February: Iris or violet
March: Jonquil or daffodil
April: Sweet pea or daisy
May: Hawthorne or Lily of the Valley
June: Rose or Honeysuckle
July: Water Lily or Larkspur
August: Gladiolus or Poppy
September: Aster or Morning Glory
October: Cosmos or marigold
November: Chrysanthemum or Peony
December: Holly or Narcissus
My first step was to draw each flower about 5 1/2-6 inches long and 2 1/2 inches or less wide.
I cut each into a seven by 2 1/2 inch rectangle so that I could place them on my paper where I wanted them. I taped the drawings to the paper and used a lightbox to trace onto my watercolor paper.
Below you'll see one of my daughter's family: An August husband (poppy); Katy (June, rose)
and their twins, also June. I did two things to differ the roses. The first was to change color. The second was to flip the drawing on one of them.
I left room at the bottom to later write in each name.
ABOUT HOT PRESS
Some people love it, some hate it. It is what botanical painters use because of the tiny detail you can get with the smooth paper. I wouldn't use it for years because it just felt so foreign. Like anything else, it has its advantages and its drawbacks.
To the good, It has a different feel when painting. Like the brush wants to glide across the paper. It's quite smooth and easy on the ink pen nibs. The paint doesn't seem to sink into the fibers as much, so the paint doesn't lose as much of its vibrancy as it dries. You can do all of the techniques that you can with cold press.
One of the disadvantages, as you will discover, is that it is difficult to lift the first layer from the paper. If you rely a lot on lifting, this is a pain. It can be fixed a bit if you cover the paper with a lifting preparation before you paint on it. Another disadvantage is that it dries differently, sometimes a little too fast for me. This can make for a lot of unwanted blossoms.
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To teach this, I made a bookmark out of each flower, cut 7" by 2 3/8 inches. This will fit perfectly into a 7 x 2 1/2 inch bookmark sleeve.
By cutting them apart, I was able to demonstrate how to paint each type of flower.
Below is the beginning of a daffodil. The difficulty of painting a yellow flower is that it seems to limit your value changes, since yellow doesn't have very deep values. I used 3 yellows on this: hansa (like cadmium yellow light), new gamboge (oranger yellow) and quin gold. You can create this darker yellow by adding bits of burnt sienna to your warm yellow.
White flowers can be hard, but even white flowers have shades and shadows. Here I painted it very lightly with violet and some light greens. Because this is going to be inked, I'm not too worried. But if this were a true botanical, I would have to paint in some background to make the whites show up more.
Violets and sweet peas are painted very similarly. On the violets I used a pale base of purple, then dropped in French ultramarine blue while it was still wet. I wanted the colors to mingle but not completely mix.
When dry, I painted in the bright yellow dots in the centers. The sweet peas are also done a bit wetter, using cobalt blue as the base, then dropping in a different blue or pink or purple. Leave whites.
The rest of the work will be done with the pen.
Poppies, irises, and carnations can be done in a similar way. Wet the flower, drop in colors (for a poppy, a warm yellow, some orange and some red), and while wet, cover it was a small bit of wrinkled plastic wrap. Put a weight over it and allow the flower to dry. You can see the wrinkled effect it produces on this poppy.
Daisies and other white flowers still need to have color in them. I usually look for the shadows beneath the petals and paint them a greyed down purple or blue. The center is new gamboge (warm yellow) with a burnt sienna popped in along the base of the center to make it pop out a bit.
Poppy leaves are a gray-green, created by adding a bit of purple to the green.
I purposely drew broad leaves behind the lily of the valley to make the whites show up. Even the white bells have some pale blue and green shadows in them. These are spring greens with a lot of yellow in them.
For the holly leaves, paint an initial wash of medium green and let it dry. Use a darker, bluer green for the next step. Paint half of the leaf up to the middle line with the darker coat. On the other half of the leaf, leave a very fine dry line down the middle as you paint the rest. When it is dry, lift a little bit where you want to see the leaf curl.
For the berries, paint an undercoat of orange or warm red, leaving tiny dot of white on each for highlight. When dry, use a darker red, like alizarin on the outsides, shading it like a tiny ball. Where the berries touch and there might be shadow between them, make the red even darker.
I really like painting a half-closed rose bud. I paint the whole flower with a base color, in this case new gamboge. Before it dries, take a small brush and dot in bits of red along the edges and let it blend in with the yellow. The leaves on roses are like the holly leaves only not as dark, and some of the serrated tips have a bit of red in them. As does the stem.
When I was done painting, I used ink where I wanted to. I used two different sizes of microns, but you can use dip pen or extra fine sharpie. I just like varying the width of the lines.
Next week we'll cover finishing this project, using some brush-o, and designing some lettering.
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