Paint a Pink Anemone in Watercolor

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Marie and welcome to my watercolor class. If you like to paint flowers and realistic subjects, then you're in the right place. My simple step by step watercolor method will help you to paint anything you like. In my classes, you'll learn the skills and techniques that you'll need to really bring your subjects to life using deep washes of rich color in layers and adding detailing that really adds a unique look to your painting. You'll find all the resources that you need below under the projects and resources tab. There's a reference image to paint from and an outline image that you can trace so that we can get straight on with the painting. There's also a list of materials that I use. In the coming lessons, I'll show you how to mix the paint that you'll need to paint this beautiful subject and the techniques that you'll use in order to build up the flower. If you have any questions, just message me below. I'm always happy to hear from you and always happy to help. Let's get started. 2. Mixing Colours: Hi, welcome to this beautiful deep pink neme tutorial. In this tutorial, I focus on creating depth by honing in on the tonal contrast of each petal from the darkest points at the base to the lighter, fuller areas where the petal is capturing more light. This creates a really three dimensional image that just pops off the paper. So first of all, I'm going to prepare my palette and in order to really capitalize on the tonal values of each pink petal, I use three different colors mixed together in different consistencies. With this, I can create a lighter pink right through to the darkest shadow pink, which has a lot more purple in it. The lightest color that I'll use is permanent rose. And to this, I'll add quinacridone magenta, which is a much deeper, richer pink. Therefore, darkening up the pink of the petals and creating a much richer, deeper color. And for the darkest shadow areas, mainly at the base of the petals where they tuck under, I'll add Windsor violet to my pink mix. I'll use these mixes in much thicker consistencies where I need to in order to create the really rich areas of color. Then I need a green for the little leaves that we can see poking out from behind the flower. For this, I use cadmium yellow pale and French ultramarine blue. Then for any areas of green that are really dark or where a dark shadow is created, I'll just add a touch of sepia into my green mix. This gives me a lovely deep dark green. Then the last color that I need is the dark almost black color in the center of the nem. For this, I'm using French ultramarine blue and cadmium red deep. So you can see here this is creating a really lovely dark color, but it's still too blue leaning. In order to make it a more neutral black, I add a touch of yellow to it, and then I just balance the colors out, adding a tiny touch at a time until I've got the hue that I want. And just popping that down here. Now, I'm also just going to add a little yellow ochre here mixed with a touch of sepia for the little seed heads in the center of the stamen. I'll keep this quite a watery wash. And here is the color chart that I can refer back to whilst painting my flower. 3. Materials: Here I'll show you the materials that I use in this project. First of all, you need a palette for your paint, and then I use this big water container because there's two sections. In one, I can rinse my brushes off and then I also have clean water available as well. You can also just use two separate containers. But it's important to always have clean water to hand. I use a selection of brushes. For this tutorial, I'm using a size three brush. This is a sable round brush with a very fine point for the more delicate veins that I want to paint in. Then I also use a number four and a number six round. I swap these two brushes depending on the size of the area that I want to paint. These are the paints that I'll be using. I prefer to use paint straight from the tube as I find the mixing of them a little easier, but pans are fine as well. I use Windsor and Newton professional watercolors and the colors that I use for this tutorial are in the materials list, which you can find in the projects and resources tab down below. Now, if you already have a different brand of paint, all these colors can be substituted. I also have a kitchen towel to hand as it can catch any drips off of my brush or if I need to clean the paint off quickly, it's quite absorbent and just really handy to keep by your side. I use hot press paper because I really like to paint on a smooth surface. Again, if you prefer something with a little texture, that's absolutely fine. I find that a smooth surface makes painting in small detail a little easier. In the next lesson, we'll take a look at how I transfer my image, my outline drawing onto my watercolor painting. 4. Transferring the Outline Drawing: Below in the Projects and Resources tab, you'll find an outline drawing of your anom. I like to also add a reverse outline as this is a really good simple method of transferring your image onto your watercolor paper. I simply place a piece of tracing paper over the outline image. I like to use a mechanical pencil as the lead tip is very narrow and it stays narrow. It doesn't become blunt and this means that you can be very precise with the details that you're drawing. If you don't use one of these pencils, use quite a hard pencil, so maybe a two H or harder so that your pencil marks don't smudge. Again, you can keep your lines nice and thin and precise. Then I trace all of the lines of my image, including all the little details that I've added. You might want to secure your tracing paper with a little masking tape so that it doesn't move around. Then once I finish tracing the outline, I simply turn my tracing paper over and place it where I want it on my watercolor paper. Again, secure it with masking tape if you need to, and then just draw over the lines again. It doesn't matter if you scribble over them as long as you cover all of the pencil lines so that it transfers the image to your watercolor paper. And by using the reverse image, if you use this method, you end up with a drawing of your nem the right way round. Then when you finished, you can neaten up any pencil lines if you feel the need to or even remove any if they're too dark with an eraser. Now you're ready to start painting. 5. Starting with the Petals: Then once I've transferred my drawing onto my watercolor paper, I'm going to start by painting in the petals. I'm mixing up a large puddle of my pink mix. Now with this mix, I'll continually adjust it as I go by looking at my reference image and picking out whether the area I'm working on is a darker or a lighter pink. So for this main puddle here, I want to get as close to the middle pink color that I'll use, and then I can easily darken it up or lighten it up by adding either my Windsor violet or my permanent rose. Beginning with my first petal, I'm adding a watery wash all over it. Then I add in my lighter pink mix. So I'm carefully picking out where the lightest areas on the petal will be. For this one, it's around the top edge here. Now, because my surface is quite wet, I can pull out any areas of paint that I want with my clean damp brush, making sure that I'm saving these very lightest areas. Then I'll add a slightly more saturated mix of my paint into the areas where I can see the color on the petal is darker. All the time I'm cleaning off my brush and using it barely damp to blend out the edges into the lighter areas of the petal. Now, if your paint starts to become streaky as you're doing this, then it's best to let the petal dry off completely, and then you can come back in and put a water wash over the whole petal again once it's dried and then add your painting over the top. So once your paint becomes streaky, it means that your surface is getting too dry to work with. Because we want the different tonal values of each petal here to flow from dark into light smoothly, we are working with each petal quite wet to start with. But as it dries off, this is when you might find that it's harder to blend the different layers into each other. Then I'm taking my eraser and removing any dark lines as I don't want these to show through the lighter areas of my paint. Then I add a water glaze over the next petal. This time, I'm adding my paint into the very darkest area on my petal. Again, I make sure that my petal is quite wet so that I've got time to work the paint out, making sure that all the edges of it are smoothly blended up into the lighter areas. This is two different ways of working really, I tend to switch between the two depending on the amount of dark or light areas on the petal to begin with. For example, if you're starting with a very light petal to begin with, I would use the first method where I add a very light wash first. Whereas here I'm coming straight into the darker areas, adding paint to these and then blending the paint out to create the lighter areas. Again, your surface needs to remain wet enough so that you have time to work with the paint on your paper, but not too wet so that you have no control over where the paint goes. It may take a little practice, but once you've got the hang of it, you'll be able to completely control your paint on the paper. It's just getting that balance of wetness correct. The balance of how wet your paper is against how wet your paint mixes as well. Now, what I want to do with this whole first layer of petal painting is work my way around the flower, mapping out the darker and lighter tonal areas so that I end up with a pink tonal map of my whole flower. Once the first layer is completely dry, I'll then come back in and deepen up areas and pay a lot more attention to the edges and the detail on each petal. With this first layer, I'm working with my paint a bit looser and then I'll use the second layer and possibly a third in places to really tidy up and hone in on the detail. Now as I go along, I'm all the time looking back at my reference image and adjusting the color mix depending on the area of the petal that I'm working on. So I'm adding in more of my Windsor violet, mainly to the base of the petals, where the color is darker due to the shadow there and really making sure that I retain the lighter areas on each petal as well. Because once my painting is finished, it's the contrast between these dark shadows and the much lighter areas on the petal that will create the depth in my painting and therefore a much more naturalistic image. A a then moving on to the next petal, I'm moving my paper around so that I'm not painting in the petal next to it, making sure that each one is completely dry before I paint the one in directly next door. I add my water glaze again, making sure it's quite wet and will give me enough time to work on the petal. Then I add in my mid to lighter pink first. I'm making sure that I'm retaining the lighter area through the central part of the petal. And just very lightly brushing over it to help those edges settle in using my clean damp brush. Then I'm coming in with my darker mix. This is my pink with the Windsor violet added, and I'm adding it in such a way that it's creating a slightly textured surface, hinting at the beginning of the veins in the petal. A Then coming back in again and adding an even darker layer at the base here. On this first layer, I'll try and make the darker areas as dark as I can by adding in my dark mix. But in order to really increase the contrast, I definitely have to come back in again and add my darker mix over the top once the layer is dry. Then I continue picking out the shapes of the petals as I work my way around. As I'm painting in these smaller areas of petal, where the petal has been foreshortened in the central area here, I'm careful to use less water. It's not necessary to keep the smaller sections wet for so long and it can also be harder to keep control of my paint in smaller areas. I don't want it spreading out too much too quickly. Then moving on to this large petal, I thoroughly wet it. And then add in my lighter pink to start with. Then taking quite a thick consistency of my darker mix, I drop it in here to the base of my petal. Using my clean damp brush, I gently help to pull the paint out and blend it into the lighter area at the top of the petal. Again, just pulling out the beginnings of the little veins here as I go. Now on a smaller petal like this, I dampen the surface thoroughly, but I'm careful not to leave any pools of water at all. Then using my darker mix, I come straight in with this along one edge and taking my clean damp brush, I just blend the edge of the dark paint along here, creating a little texture as I go. But I'm being really careful not to pull the dark paint up to the edge of the petal as I want to keep this very light. So this is an example of where it's really important not to add too much water because on such a small slither of petal, if it was too wet, I wouldn't be able to save my light aside as the paint would spread out too much into it. Now I'm just continuing to paint in the rest of the petals using the same methods. So remember, always look back to your reference image and see exactly what is going on within each petal, checking the color and where the lighter and darker areas are. By treating each petal individually, you make sure that you end up with a really interesting final image, rather than if you were to just paint them all uniformly in the same way. 6. 2nd Layer of Petals: Once I've completed my first layer, I'm going to apply a second layer. With this, I want to really enrich the colors and strengthen the tonal contrast. I'll also add in any details at this stage as well. I start off by laying a water glaze over my first petal and using my darker paint mix, I drop it into the darkest areas on the petal again. I then take my clean damp brush and blend up and out the edges of this darker paint into the lighter areas of the petal. With this layer, I'm being a lot more careful of my edges as I want to really neaten them up, as I work my way around the flower, Then with quite a concentrated mix of the same color, I add this into the very darkest shadows and creases on the petal. It's this really concentrated mix of my paint that will add the deepest contrast all over the image. I add this quite sparingly in places just to really accentuate the darkest details. Now on this layer, I'm also pulling out the paint that I apply with the very tip of my brush in order to create the crossy textured effect on the surface of the petals. On each petal, there are a few more prominent veins, but there's also a background surface pattern that I'm faintly painting in as well. Then moving on to the next petal, I dampen this first. Now, while adding my water glazes to this second layer of petals, I don't want my petals as wet as the first layer and I have to be careful not to disturb the paint underneath too much. You can see here that with the tip of my brush, I'm just pulling out all of these little lines and creating the surface texture and pattern that's on the petals. Then just adding in that really deep touch of color into the very base of the petal here as it disappears behind the top overlapping ones. I'm all the time trying to increase the contrast in the shadows as this will really give my painting the depth that I want. Then I continue to work my way around the petals again, I'm continually adding to my mix, sometimes to make the mix thicker and then others to just help it lean more towards a brighter pink or to add in my windsor violet to really deepen the pink up for the shadows. As I said, I'm really paying a lot more attention to all of the edges and where the petals meet. Now, where they meet each other, it gives us a really good opportunity to really look and decide which side of the join is darker and which side is lighter. By accurately painting this in, it really helps with the realism of your painted image. Now I'm just going to continue to paint around my flower, deepening up the color and the contrast on each petal and adding in any details. I and 7. Final Layer, Contrast & Details: Once I've been over the whole flower again, adding a second layer, I can take a look at my image as a whole and see where I still want to really accentuate that contrast and enrich the color. I'm adding in some quite concentrated mix here. And then also really defining any of the stronger veins that stand out on the petals. I paint these in again using the tip of my brush, but leaning on it a little more heavily this time, and the surface that I'm painting on is still just barely damp. Then I use my clean damp brush to very gently brush over the lines to make sure that they settle smoothly into the background and are not left standing out too much so that they look unnatural. And then I can also just add in any more little veins on the petal. And Then I still want to darken up some of these deep shadows at the base of some of the petals even more. I'm coming in here and just covering a small area at a time. I really just want to capture that shadow where the petal dips down behind the stamen in the center. I'm just adding in my thicker darkness of paint and using my clean damp brush to very quickly smooth out the edges a little. Now I'm standing back and looking at my painting and I'm noticing where those absolute darkest tonal values are on it, and I want to paint these in and strengthen up these areas. Now on the whole, depending on how large the area is that I'm painting at this stage, it's usually quite a small specific little area of shadow. I'm not dampening the surface first. I'm just adding in my paint and then smoothing out the edges, working quite quickly so that the edges don't have time to dry into the paper. But by working this way, I managed to keep my color a lot more concentrated, so I really do get the darkest hues that I can. Here I'm adding a very light water glaze as I want to add in a little more color here, not just a small shadow. This is the stage of your painting when you get to really add impact to it. You can take as long as you like, standing back and looking at your flower and deciding where you really feel that the contrast could be accentuated and then painting in that extra layer of your dark pink mix and also adding in any of the more prominent veins that you can see, as this will really give your flower character. And Once you're happy with the level of contrast and color that you've achieved on your petals, we can move on and paint in the little green leaves that are just appearing around some of the edges of the flower. 8. Leaves: Okay so I'm mixing up a little puddle of my green and I'm keeping my green quite dark. I lightly dampen the first leaf and add in my green. Now, as I'm keeping my green quite dark, it's leaning a little too much towards a blue. I'm just adding in the tiniest touch of red in order to balance the green out and keep it more natural looking. Now, with these little leaves, they're all different shapes. What I'm looking at here is the actual shape of each little element and how dark or light it is. By treating each little element separately, it makes it a lot easier to paint this little jumble of leaves. I've also changed down to a smaller brush. This is my number three sable brush, which has a lovely fine point on it for this small detailed work. First of all, I paint in the lighter color with a more watery wash of my green, and then I just drop in a slightly thicker consistency of the same color to the areas of each little section where I can see a shadow or a darker detail. On any really dark areas such this part of the leaf here, which sits behind the others, I just add a small touch of sepia into the mix to really darken it up further. With most of the little leaves like this one here, I just add the lightest base color. While that base color is still damp, I come back in and add the detail and any shade with a thicker consistency of green, therefore, making it darker. And just gently blend in any edges that I need to with my cleaned off brush. I just continue to pick out each little section of leaf and painted in in the same way. Then I paint the little bit of stem that we can see here in the same way. Applying a light water glaze and then adding a very light wash of my green. I then add in a slightly thicker consistency, creating a darker tone to add in the shadow area. Then moving up to the side and continuing to paint in the little leaves here. 9. Stamen: Then once I've finished the leaves, I come into the center here to paint in the stamen. The first thing I want to do is mix up a nice thick puddle of my dark color for the center. I start with French ultramarine bloom and cadmium red deep. I mix these colors up first until I've got a really lovely deep color. Then I add in my yellow to bring the color more towards a black. It's still a little blue here, so I add in more of my yellow because the color in the center is leaning more towards a dark brown black rather than a blue black. Once I'm happy with the color, I start by adding a light water glaze to the central area here. And then I add in my color, making sure that I retain the highlight in the center of this dome shape. I'm making sure that the edges of my black are kept soft in the center here. Then taking my number three brush again, I'm going to paint in these little seed like shapes fanning out from the center. I'm also picking out the shapes of the filaments and anthers on the outer edge here as well. A I'm quite loosely painting around the little seed heads that I drew in. This is when it really helps if you've been accurate with your drawing because it saves time now when you come to paint because you can just follow around the little shapes that you've already drawn in. I'm making sure that these shapes are rounded off or tube like and painting in the little bit of space between the shapes with my dark paint. Then I just follow around the whole section in the same way. And then once I finish painting in all of the little seed heads and anthers and going to mix up a little yellow ochre with just a touch of sepia to dull it down slightly. And then keeping it in quite a watery mix, I'm coming in to paint the heads of the inner circle here, I'm painting them in quite loosely, but being careful to leave a little lighter patch on most of the heads. This is because I don't want them to look flat, each little head is a rounded shape. By leaving a light patch or a highlight on each one, it creates the illusion of a curved surface. U. I work my way around picking out the odd larger shape to paint in with this yellow mix as well. Then for the next color that I want to use, I'm going to take a touch of my pink mix and mix it in with the remainder of my black. Using it in quite a watery wash, I want to add this hint of color to the surrounding outer ring here. I'm keeping my mixes quite watery as I want the work that I've already done to show through once I add these washes. So I can use these washes to build up the intensity of color in the center here without losing all of the detail that I've added in first. Again, I work my way around the circle, being careful to leave some highlighted areas, saving a light spot on as many of these shapes as I can. Then once I finished with that wash, I'm coming back to my black mix. It's slightly thicker this time, and I'm going to use this to paint in the darkest tones that I can see in the central area. Now, although my wash is slightly thicker, it's still not too thick, so that I can still see the detail and the nuance in tone showing through from underneath. I'm also going to work into the outer ring, building up this area and darkening it overall, but still making sure that I have the lighter areas and the detail showing through here as well. And now I'm just adding a touch more of my yellow mix to deepen the color up here. And just a few final touches. And then when you're happy with your painting, you finish. 10. Sharing your Image & Conclusion: So you've finished, well done. I really hope you've enjoyed this tutorial and that you've mastered the techniques and the skill of controlling your washes. I'd love to see your finished image, if you'd like to share, you can do that below. Don't forget to hit follow if you'd like to be kept up to date with the classes that I'll release here on skill share. If you'd like to continue your watercolor journey with me, I also have plenty more tutorials over in my online school. The ink is below. Goodbye for now and I hope to see you here again in class soon.