Yellow Plumeria

Reference photo. I took this about three years ago at my mother-in-law's house in Bradenton, FL.

Here is the drawing I'm going to use. I've eliminated a lot of the background foliage and some of the flowers. 

I scanned and copied the sketch on a smaller scale. (about 50-70%) I used the copy to create a value study. I only concentrated on getting my lightest lights, mid tones, and darks. This helps me understand the picture better, decide whether I need to make corrections, and helps me find

my way when I'm painting. 

After drawing the sketch onto watercolor paper, I erased as many pencil lines as I could, especially on the white and yellow petals. I could still see them, but I didn't want a lot of pencil lines showing through the pale yellow and white areas. So when you draw, don't press hard and try to use a hard pencil instead of soft.

One way to erase without harming the sizing in your paper is to roll a kneaded eraser over the top....think of it as using play-doh to make wormy shapes, rolling it over the pencil areas instead of "erasing." This picks up extra graphite that might dissolve in your paint and make areas seem dirty. 

PAINTING THE FLOWERS

I started with wetting three colors: azo yellow, new gamboge, and raw sienna. With clean water, I wet each petal (the ENTIRE petal, not just what I wanted yellow) and painted azo into the centers and pulled it out gently into areas of yellow, avoiding white areas. While wet, I dropped in some new gamboge at the centers, and gradually darkened those areas. Working one or two petals at a time, I did an initial wash of each flower. Be sure to leave those whites.

While the flowers were drying, I used Quin burnt scarlet (or alizarin) to lightly paint in some reddish undertones in the stems and parts of the leaves. I also painted a light yellow and alizarin into the two orang-ish buds.

You'll notice that in the above picture one flower has a pink petal. I was showing what colors to use if you choose to do a pink plumeria with yellow center. 

I began "shading" the flowers gradually, first with raw sienna, (or quin gold), then with quin burnt scarlet (or quin burnt orange) for the very deep centers and warm shadows. I concentrated on the little curl or "lip" of each petal that runs from center to tip. I only wet that area so I would have a dry edge to create a hard edge on one side and a wet area to soften on the other side (the inside of the petal). I built this up gradually so as not to get too dark too soon. 

To shadow and form the white areas, I mixed a gray with ultramarine, yellow, and alizarin in a very wet solution. I worked gradually to add the blue-grays to the white petal, occasionally making the gray more bluish in some areas. 

THE LEAVES

I made  a green from ultramarine and azo yellow first, and put a wash of that color over all the green leaves. When it dried, I darkened the green with a little purple and carefully went over the leaves again, painting around the veins of the leaves instead of masking them out. (you can do this as many times as you need to get the leaf color depth you want) I glazed over the leaves, veins also, with a wash of yellow green, and when it dried, I added some reds where I wanted some interest. 

On the stems, I mostly kept them reddish, but glazed over them with a little green and shaded one side to give them a more cylinder look.