Society of Botanical Artists - Assignment 4 - Flowers

"It relaxes my mind to paint flowers." Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Assignment 4 - Flowers - my favorite painting subject. I was thrilled to start this new assignment. How fun to paint 7 flowers, each distinct in color and uniqueness. I started searching for flowers in my backyard and then visited several garden centers to find new and unique flowers. My daughters were incredibly helpful as well as we traveled to various garden centers looking at flowers.

This assignment took me about 5 weeks to paint total with each flower taking 3-4 days to paint. But before I dive into my painting. I first want to share my layout. Each flower was measured and sketched out onto regular paper, or cartridge paper in the UK. After sketching out my final drawing, I then used a micron pen and outlined each flower. The dark outline helps transfer my drawing to my final watercolor paper using a lightbox. Here is my sketchbook with my color matching and drawings of each flower.

I started my assignment from the top left, moving to the right. To protect the painting, I cover it with tracing paper, exposing only the flower I'm currently working on. This allows me to rest my hand on the tracing paper, and if there's a spill or a drop of watercolor, the painting remains unharmed. I've had several accidents before and have lost some paintings as a result.

Here is the finished hydrangea flower. The colors I used are lemon yellow, permanent rose, and cobalt blue. I mixed my own greens and used DS Bordeaux for the little markings on the stem. Looking back now on this painting, I would have picked a different blue and not the cobalt blue because of its graininess. I have retired that color from my palette.

My second flower was a dahlia. I ended up using two colors: Quin Rose and DS Quin Violet for this painting. For the shadow color, I used Quin Violet and a touch of Bordeaux.

This sweet balloon flower burst open in my garden, and I knew that I had to paint it. I used Sennelier Blue Violet and Dioxazine Purple. The veins were painted with Prussian Blue and Winsor Violet.

Moving on to my fourth flower, which was this sweet lily just starting to open up. I used a few colors here: DS Mayan Yellow, Pyrrol Orange, and a touch of Vermillion for the darker areas.

i do love a pink flower. For my under-painting and shadows I used Quin Pink and French Ultramarine Finest (Schmincke). DS quin pink and WN permenant rose was used for the main flower colors.

Yellow flowers are the hardest to paint, and I wish I could do this one over, as well as the red rose. I have learned a bit more about these two colors from lots of reading. I think that the underpainting was a bit too dark, and I feel it is not as bright as it could have been. Colors used were Schmincke lemon yellow, Sennelier Alizarin Crimson, and Helios Purple. I also used WN lemon yellow, which I can see in this painting, and it is opaque and has lost the transparency and vibrancy of this flower.

My final flower, a red rose. I dearly wish I could redo this one too. It appears so opaque and lacks vibrancy. I wish I had the knowledge back then that I possess now, but that's precisely why I'm attending school - to develop and evolve as an artist, and now I can identify the mistakes I made with my watercolor selections. The colors used were Winsor Red, Permanent Scarlet, Sennelier Red, and for the shadows, I used DS Anthraquinoid Red.

Here is my final piece with all seven flowers painted.

I recieved a 9.2/10 which is my highest mark to date. It's amazing looking back on this painting. At the time, I was building a house, selling our home, packing, cleaning and meeting with builders on a daily basis. If I can paint during those times, I can paint during anything! Looking forward to sharing my next assignment. :)

If you have any questions please leave a comment! I am here to chat about botanicals all day! Blessings, Joanna