Painting Pansies in watercolour.

             Today we continued painting  the Pansies. The drawing was completed last week and my students have drawn a variety of compositions including single flower heads, buds and leaves scattered across the page to a group of the plants. I prefer to use an H or HB pencil for botanical or floral painting so as not to leave too much graphite on the paper which can make the flowers look dirty when they are painted. The paints I use are Winsor and Newton artist quality and the paper, Saunders and Waterford 200lb high white.
             We began in the class by painting the pale flowers (not the purple flowers) and the colour used was a mix of Alizarin crimson, Ultramarine Violet with a touch of Opera Rose. I like to add Opera Rose to a colour mix to keep the brightness of the wash when it dries. The pale flowers ranged from a dusky pink to a more lavender colour depending on the age of the flowers, so the colour mix was adjusted to suit the flower (more Alizarin Crimson in the dusky pink flowers, more Ultramarine Violet in the lavender shaded flowers). Always keep paper propped up slightly to prevent paint causing run backs.
              To paint the petals we wet the whole petal with clean water (leave to dry for a few seconds so the paper is just damp) and dropped the colour around the outer edges of the petal. To create the effect seen on the petals, with a clean brush wiped on kitchen paper a couple of times, flick the tip of the brush through the paint just applied and down into the damp area. This with practice will produce the pretty effect seen on these petals.  Leave this petal to dry before painting the petals adjacent to it. The next stage for these flowers will be to paint the darker areas near the centre of the petals. My students will tackle this next week.
             My students then applied the first watercolour washes to the dark purple flowers. The three bottom petals are a different colour to the two back petals and were painted with  two colour mixes of Dumonts Blue and Winsor Violet. The first mix has more Winsor Violet than the blue and the second has more Dumonts blue added than Winsor Violet. Wet the petal again and wait a few second so that the paper is just damp before applying the first colour mix around the outer edge of the petal and the second colour mix towards the middle and bottom of the petals letting the colours mix at the edges. The colours used for the two back petals were a mix of Winsor Violet and Opera Rose (mix 1) and a seperate mix of Winsor Violet and Alizarin Crimson (mix2). These were applied in the same way as the side and bottom petals, wetting the paper first. Mix 1 was applied near the edges of the petals and mix 2 more to the centre and bottom of the petals. Always leave a petal to dry before painting an adjacent petal. The dark areas on the bottom petals ( I call these bibs) will be tackled by my students next week.