So flowers are basically one of my favourite things to paint! (Aren’t they one of yours too?) And over on instagram, the January edition of #surelysimpleart and #surelysimplelettering is going on- with one of the prompts : Daisies. When I was painting this, it just occurred to me that it might be helpful to make a small tutorial for it. So here we go!
Stuff you need:
| watercolour paper
| watercolours (I used paint tubes as well as a watercolour palette haha)
| a pencil (2H for drawing in, and a regular HB- I used a mechanical one for extra darkening)
| paintbrushes – I used a 0 brush (fine details) and 6 brush (colouring)
Steps:
1/ Start by drawing the daisies with a 2H pencil.The 2H is ideal for watercolour because when you paint over later, it barely shows up as compared to a regular pencil.
2/ This time, I started by painting the background first- a watercolor wash. I mixed up blue and spread it in little areas, merging pinks and purples and blending them. I also made a rather irregular shape around them- if you want a perfect shape, I suggest you use a ruler to draw a good guideline beforehand.
(sorry, I don’t have photos of the initial drawing and the colouring of the background. You can watch a video I uploaded on my instagram if you’d like to see a glimpse)
3/ For the leaves and stems- Add a little green shade to the stems and leaves. This is the first layer.
4/ Then after the green dries, add a darker green line in the centre of the leaf and blend it in.
5/ Do the same for the other side of the leaf.
6/ Continue with all the leaves and the sides of the stem.
7/ Continue adding layers to the greens until you feel satisfied. (Which in my case, is hardly ever. Haha.)
8/ For the daisies- Paint the centre of the flower a nice yellow, and after that dries, add little orange circles in it for texture. Since we need to retain the white petals, add light grey on slowly on the sides of each petal, for shadows. I did this without a reference, but if you have a reference photo, it gets easier to see where to paint the grey.
9/ To make the flowers really pop from the background, I used a mechanical pencil to outline the whole flower. It also adds structure to the petals. I added venation for the leaves, little circles in the orange-yellow centre and lines on the petals with the mechanical pencil, for good measure.10/ And you’re done! It’s that easy.
Pop over to instagram (@surelysimpleblog) and check out the tags to see all the amazing entries for this drawing/lettering challenge! And maybe even join? I’m totally loving it. -Aaria