Sometime last year while playing with watercolour, I discovered an artist whose videos on watercolour flowers I found easy to follow. Her name is Jenna Rainey, and I’ve since bought a couple of her books. But before that, I tried my hand at various watercolour painting various types of flowers. Here are some samples, laid out on a grid. All of these are done with one simple round paintbrush!! I had no idea the variety of techniques I could try with one brush! If you know nothing about brush techniques, trust me when I say that it is mesmerizing and relaxing to try these different brushstrokes, even if you think your flower petal or leaf isn’t perfect. The act of laying the tip of the brush and then laying the body of the brush and drawing it along the paper as these petals and leaves appear under your hand is so fun!
In this next one, you can see more flowers I put on the grid. I experimented also with petals flowing from the flower centres from different perspectives. As well, I experimented with laying colour on colour to let colour bleed from flower centres or outline petals. I think my favourite is the yellow one at the top.
In this last part of the grid, you can see that I also played with viewing petals from the tops of flowers, like in the two in the second row. I also did little dabs of colour to create the lupin at the top left. Here in Nova Scotia, we see lupins growing by roadsides in June. When I came back from California last year and as I drove home from the airport, I was struck by the beauty of all the lupins that has sprung up during the week I was gone! So of course I enjoyed trying to replicate their basic shapes in paint. On the blue rose, can you detect the gold metallic paint I outlined petals with?
This final photo is of another watercolour flower grid I created. I really enjoyed adding metallic paint in unrealistic ways to some of the flowers, such as the roses. Notice the dots I added to the one on the upper left. And I really enjoyed trying sunflower-like flowers in varying yellow hues and adding shading to them. You can see by some of the squares that I veered off the flower theme and into more abstract territory. I might have been getting bored that day, haha! But I did enjoy some experimentation, including with colour on colour and letting the water and colour flow where it may. I don’t think I will ever get tired of experimenting with colour and patterns in various media.
What are you experimenting with artistically and/or creatively? Please comment below and let’s converse about it!
