Primroses in Watercolour : Further Exercises

Working from Negative Shapes.

In my latest book there is a chapter called " Positive Negativity ". I always believe strongly in postive thinking and I also love surrounding myself with positive people. There are times in life when we are legitimately allowed to feel low. But negative thinking in many ways can be so destructive. So from the beginning of every painting, please  try to feel positive about your results.  I should say this works not just in painting but in life too!

My last blog post on my step by step with primroses was for painting positive shapes. Now I want you to cover a scrap of paper with the shades you painted your primrose flowers in. Hopefully you have found great primrose shades that work well for you. My wash of colour is mainly diluted Cadmium Yellow.

Flowers shapes exercise next to a scrap of paper with  yellow painted on it.

Please let the yellow wash dry thoroughly.

Next stage?

Paint  the outline of a few flowers but be careful. You need to work colour around the flowers quickly before the line dries! The flower shapes don't have to be perfect at this stage.  They are just  giving you and idea of where you are going to place them and helping you practise your technique.

Negative outline for primroses

Now for the fun part! Add green quickly to surroundyour primroses and if you need to, now is the time to correct some of the petal shapes so that they do indeed look like primroses.

 

My background wash building up around the primroses  leaving negative shapes with  gorgeous creamy yellow colour for the flowers

If you study the image above you will see I have some detailed edges and some petal edges are blurred? These are called soft and hard edges and bring life to subjects in watercolour.

Now we need to allow this stage to dry and then we can add the centres from the previous blog post. If you want to, you can add leaves but please wait until you have painted the flowers first.

My last post  on this step by step will be tomorrow!

It is so much fun sharing my passion for watercolour on my blog. Thank you so much to every one who has been so kind sending me emails letting me know how much this step by step is being enjoyed. Maybe I can share seasonal step by steps throughout the year so we all have something to look forward to!

I hope to share a few primrose paintings by you on my blog so please email them to me when the step by step is complete!