There are four techniques that I consider helpful in flower painting. One is painting wet into wet and adding darker paint to edges; one is lifting to create highlights; one is underpainting the shadows; and one is lifting to soften edges.
Here is the reference photo for most of this lesson.
Here is the simplified line drawing. The dotted lines indicate where the edge of an overlapping petal would be. I WANT the petals to appear to overlap.
The idea is to create the effect of transparency, as if you were looking at the light through the petals and could see each individual one.
Make two puddles of color, one very light, and the other with much less water.
Wet one of the petals, including the part the overlaps another petal.
With your bigger round brush (size 8) apply the pale colors. Make sure it is not too puddly, just shiny.
With a small, pointed brush, use the thicker consistency paint to paint around the edges of the petals while it is still damp. You should get a hard line where the dry edge is and it should spread where it touches the damp petal.
Here is a really good video that gives the idea. It is from Liesl Arts.
Emma LeFebvre also has one about layered transparent painting that is simple and fun:
Here is what mine looked like. To do the stems, loosen some of the paint from the flower and let it go into the ball shaped area at the bottom. Dry it. Wet the stem and sepals, drop in a green (mine is made from cerulean and new gamboge). Gently lift some of the paint from one side to create a a light. Then, one the other side, take some French ultramarine on a thin brush, and go down the side to create a shadow on one side. It's like what you did to the petals, only on one side instead of all sides.
We practiced using a lifting brush to blur some edges or lift color out to create a highlight.
The brushes I have for this are:
Winsor Newton Monarch filbert or flat, size 4 or 6
Zen Royal Langnickel flat size 6
I used to use the "scrubbers", shown at the top, which come in a package with several sizes.
I use these only for really difficult patches, as they will remove the sizing of the paper more easily.
Next we tried "underpainting" a color in the shadow areas before glazing with the local color.
(That is the general color of the object)
Since we are doing daffodils, I wanted to show what colors would be good to use in the shadow areas of a yellow flower. In the chart below, you can see left to right:
violet (painted very lightly)
quin gold
burnt sienna
(next row) raw sienna
The daffodil is underpainted with raw siena
All are glazed over with hansa yellow and some new gamboge. In the corner is a demo of how to paint a black background, but that is another lesson.
The two I definitely have a preference for are the violet and the raw sienna.
People can also use yellow ochre.
Yellows are particularly difficult to shadow because yellows don't get a very dark value on their own. If you try to darken it with a blue you get green (which is probably ok on a daff). Browns look a little dead.
