I made my first ‘botanical painting’.
It started promising, but I’m a rookie, so I overworked it…
It took me over 12 hours in total.
Painted after a photo from a copyrights-free photo’s website.
I looked at several tutorials from professional watercolor artist Anna Bucciarelli (especially one of a similar kind of picture, of yellow roses) to get an idea of how to go about it.
Since I used an Arches watercolor paper block (all four edges glued) I could not trace the picture on my light board. Instead, after printing it in the desired size in black and white, I rubbed the back with soft pencil, then taped it to my watercolor block and traced the outlines of all the parts I wanted in my painting with a red colored pencil (so I could see which lines I’d already done). That way I got a light sketch on my paper. But I noticed that it smudged and disappeared easily. So I covered the lines with a harder pencil. And then, with my kneading eraser lightened the lines, so they would not show up in the painting and leave no residue in the paint.
Time to paint!
In the first session I painted the first layer of the flowers.
In the second session the first layer of the background (leaving the leaves and stems white for now).
I improvised for the background. I did not want it to look flat, but also did not want to paint in extra foliage.
In the third session I painted a second layer on the background and the leaves and stems.
I felt good about it.
In the fourth session I painted another layer on the flowers.
In the fifth session I tried to negative paint the leaves, around the veins, using several hues of green, for more interest.
But I overworked it and the colors flowed into each other.
Then I overworked the background. Argh!
I should have stopped here, while the flowers still looked quite realistic!
But no, I thought they needed more shadows, for more depth.
And yes, I overworked the flowers too, sigh…
(Also, the ‘photo’ of the final painting is a scan, that I photo edited. The greens and yellows in the picture above are more what they look like in the actual painting.)
But hey, I think it was still not bad for a first try.
I hope you like it.