VIDEO: Painting watercolor flowers

Everything starts with sketches - first steps to the painted flowers

It makes perfect sense to sketch out the shapes first when painting, even when doing watercolor.

1. For your floral watercolor, start with placing a real flower in a vase on a table that is as bare as possible. A colorful tablecloth would distract you and possibly influence your color impressions.
2. Then, sit down at the table with the watercolor pad and your pencil. If necessary, push the flower away a little. A little distance makes your work easier at the beginning.
3. If you leave your worksheet on the drawing pad, the paper will stay taut and will not curl. It will ripple a little when you paint it, but it will contract again when it dries.
4. Use the soft pencil (degree of hardness B and softer) to quickly draw the outline of your flower on the watercolor paper with a loose hand.


Watercolor painting - exercises for beginners

You can teach yourself to paint in watercolor. With some exercises for ...

5. Place the flower centered on the leaf a little above the center and let the stem taper towards the lower edge of the leaf. It is not necessary to paint the vase and the entire stem. For a successful flower display, it is sufficient at the beginning to show the flower with the indicated style.
   instagram viewer
6. The next step is to draw the lines of the leaves and the flower inside the outline.
7. Then take a very close look at where the overlapping of the petals forms shadows and where the brightest spots of light are.
8. Don't forget to show at least one leaf on the stem as well. This will make your flower look more real. Leaves are difficult to depict because you can partially see their inside and outside, but at least one sheet should be shown.

Complete the watercolor - this is how the colors can be used

You can now, like schoolchildren, color in the flowers as normal with the watercolors. To do this, moisten the brush a little, pick up a bit of paint and color in your sketch. But you can achieve the typical watercolor effect differently.

1. Take up some clear water with a clean brush and moisten one of the petals with it.
2. Now dab the slightly damp brush in some paint.
3. Then carefully put some paint in the middle of the watered area with the tip of the brush; A quick dab is often enough.
4. Observe the course of the color in the water and, if necessary, continue further splashes of color so cleverly that not too much runs over the drawn edges.
5. Remember, however, that the bleeding over the given shape is one of the typical effects of watercolors.
6. Another characteristic of the watercolors is that the Colours stay transparent. This will make your further work easier.
7. As soon as the base color has dried into the pre-drawn shapes, work with a slightly damp brush and a little paint on the brush tip. Use it to emphasize and trace lines where you think it is necessary.
8. Each new application of paint makes the color appear darker, so that you can use it to set the light shades.
9. Finally, put the dark shades. Use a shade of brown for this. If this is too dark for you, mix it with the basic color of the surface.
10. In the same way, you can then also place special drawing elements in the petals. Lilies have z. B. various lines and points on the petals.

A tip at the end: After you have sketched your flower for the watercolor, you should only copy the most important elements from your flower model and paint the rest according to your feelings.