Spring flowers in watercolors - how to paint

Narcisi dal giardino, 2016 -38x56 cm fabiano 300gsm

Lately I have been concentrating on urban sketching and painting, but I usually love painting florals.

It's easy - they grow in my garden or I keep them on my table.

Earlier I painted realistic, even if not really botanical flowers, 

while I now prefer to simplify and catch the essence.

On the painting above you can notice a clear influence by the paintings of Jean Haines ;), 

only an impression of the flowers!

Floreale, 2016. 38x56 cm

I paint quite big, real size, which means that I often just  can't fit everything into the paper. 

That's one reason why I choose to paint only a part of them; 

the main reason is that I find it more dynamic and expressive as a composition.

This is how I proceed: 

I use a big brush, a lot of water and bright colors. 

Once the first wash is dry I will add darker details, little by little - trying not to overwork - 

this is the hardest part!

Then I leave it to rest, and some hours later, or even the next day I will see if I need to add something.

I some areas are too bright, I will use a glaze, often with a complementary color.

Thank you for reading,

Hope you enjoyed my spring flowers?!

Cyclamen 1st part - Ciclamini parte 1

Close up - Dettaglio 

. I started very loose and wet-in-wet making sure to preserve some white areas for contrast.

Ho iniziato con il bagnato su bagnato, avendo cura di conservare del bianco.

More details... I'll upload the final painting soon - have to take a new photo! 

- Altri dettagli... A breve  invierò la foto del dipinto finito (è venuto sfocato!)

P.S. The finished painting is here.

Ps.  vedi il dipinto finito qui!

Vinca Rosea Step-by-step

Negative painting

Dipingere in negativo

One way to paint light flowers is by negative painting... Here is a step-by-step demonstration.

Per dipingere i fiori chiari, a volte uso il metodo di pittura al negativo...

Sotto vi dimostro come procedo.

I start by a first wash wet-in wet. I just put down the lightest colours that I want to blend together. I also added  the central part of the flowers.

Il primo passo è una stesura bagnato su bagnato. Qui uso i colori più chiari che devono sfumare insieme. Ho anche aggiunto la parte centrale del fiore.

When the paper is dry, I start with the dark parts and shadows, just painting the OUTLINE of flowers and  leaves, blending the colour outwards ...

Quando la carta è asciutta, comincio a delimitare i fiori e le foglie dipingendo il contorno esterno e sfumando in fuori...

Just continue until you reach the contrast that makes the flowers stand out - this is negative painting!

Si continua fino al contrasto voluto per fare risaltare i fiori - 

 this is negative painting, and this technique is used commonly in watercolours. I hope you liked this tutorial !

 questa è la tecnica al negativo, si usa spesso nell'acquarello. Spero ti sia piaciuta!

Lesson 5: Play with your watercolours!

 Take your material and start playing - it's easy and fun!

Start with any piece of watercolour paper and use clean water to wet it with your brush. Check the wetness of the paper by turning it and looking at it from the border : it should be damp all over, without pools!

Now choose 2 or 3 colours  and start dropping colours onto the paper! You can mix some colours, if you want, or just let them mix on the paper. 

Let the colours spread and see how beautiful the result is without  any effort!  This is the basics of wet-in-wet painting and You will enjoy playing like this even if you are a more experienced painter!

This is Wet in wet - It's easy!

 Wet-in-wet is one of the basic watercolour techniques - so now practice!!

This post will be continued...

Work in progress - A Tribute to...

Work in progress...  Inspired by a beautiful painting of the great watercolor artist Kanta Harusaki.

The First washes, wet in wet.

I decided to add some red to the center of the flower and some plastic wrap for special effects...

I'll show you the final painting soon - I just noticed I didn't take a photo of it yet!

I decided to 'copy' freely the works and the styles of some artists I like, in order to develop my own way of painting. Especially I want to loosen up. I never liked copying artwork before, but noticed that this was a funny way of just painting without worrying about problems to resolve, like composition and choice of color! I really think that I'll be doing more of this!!

Sketching Cypresses!

A picture from my smaller sketchbook from last week!

Just playing around with colors and a common object -cypruses!

Watercolor landscape workshop!

I had a lovely weekend recently, painting in good company and experimenting new technics,   participating at a workshop by the Swedish artist Björn Bernström. It was very inspiring and liberating with new approaches, and especially fun to look for special effects - like 'cauliflowers' - that traditionally are considered errors!

Here, as in the first picture, we were using burnt umber creating staining effects...

A more traditional painting, or actually two in one!! 

Exploring wet-in-wet and new colors, more than aiming for finished paintings.

                              

                                                          They look better separated! 

                                       Here the transparent and delicate colors show a little better...

Waterlily - painting challenge!

I really wanted to take part in this new painting challenge by Lela of paintanddrawtogether.blogspot (click on the link to see the original photo and other paintings). 

I did a few sketches before I started with my watercolor!

 I started with painting wet in wet with the pink and roughly giving shape and color to the flower with its yellow stems, leaving part of the flower white.

Now I added some more color to define the other areas, keeping everything quite light. At this point I also wanted to try the plastic wrap technique - inspired by Jean Haines - so I pressed the plastic to the green areas while still wet to create some patterns on the leaves.

Working with the background, i.e. the water. The negative painting is used to determine the shape of the waterlily. I also played with some splashes on the leaves.

 Final shadows to define the shape of the waterlily. I also deepened some other colors, especiall the water, wanting to create more contrast and interest.

Some of the sketches and a couple of paintings. My way of painting is quite free and emotional. Unfortunately even if the original  subject photo is beautiful, I'm not too happy with the painting, as I feel that I wasn't able to 'make it mine' and capture  emotion and atmosphere in the painting! But painting is always a challenge and an adventure - and especially when painting with watercolors you have to keep in mind that the unpredictable is part of the joy - so even if you try hard sometimes you'll be less satisfied, sometimes more!

Still life Challenge - Part 2 - loose watercolor painting!

The very first approach, this time I'm painting wet in wet. No drawing, just a light layer of color to mark the volumes and shapes.

What I adore most in this photo, is the blue shadow of the jar of water!

Usually I would have painted the light green tomatoe first, but since I had started with deepening the reds, I was obliged to let the greens wait a while, not to mix up everything. Since I couldn't keep my hands away, I went along with the browns of the jug meanwhile.

Here you can see the proceeding of the green color and the table. The background is still very light.

The result is fresh and loose and I left it aside to dry.

In fact, I wanted to paint a third one - THE painting, but because of my time restrictions painting was postponed ...

But, once this painting was dry, I went back on it with the finishing shadows and more details. I also painted the background darker, to make the objects stand out more.
I did enjoy the whole painting session a lot, especially sketching in a loose way!

You can click on the link of Paint and Draw Together to see the source photo and more paintings of the same subject, as I mentioned in my previous post.