3. Paint a series of ruffled-edge petals all radiating outward from a center point. Turn your surface to make painting easier.
Flowers: Approaches & Techniques
Flowers, pretty girls and local scenes that’s what sells at amateur art shows. But flower oil paintings do not deserve their stigma among more professional artists. Too many flower oil paintings are over-pretty, what the trade calls ‘chocolate box pictures’, but the methods of avoiding such problems are many and obvious:
1. learning from botanical illustration to studying flowers closely
2. bringing out their intimate character, which is much more than the surface attractiveness of the flower
3. exploiting their bright hues in unusual compositions and color harmonies
4. following oriental painters and concentrating on spatial and compositional aspects
5. taking a semiabstract approach, employing a vocabulary of forms and colors generated by detailed study of flowers
It’s not that flowers are attractive to those who care nothing for painting, or that they appeal in non-artistic ways. The trouble is that the appeal is strong over a very narrow base of painterly concerns essentially flamboyant shapes and rich colors. But that itself indicates what has to be done. Not to deny the obvious appeal of flowers, which is pointless and hardly honest, but look for and develop other features. And this is no more than what all artists do, whatever the genre. The good landscape painter, faced with a rain-soaked fields, gloomy farms and a featureless sky, is immediately finding ways of conveying the scene through unusual viewpoints and heightened contrasts in a much limited palette. What emerges is a ‘strong’ picture, possessed of an atmosphere hardly to be found on a pleasant summer’s day. The same advice holds for flower painters: observe, explore, get beyond their surface looks and bring out their hidden natures.
Pictorial Realism
The first concern of botanical artists is accuracy. That usually means very detailed drawings that carefully explore the features important in the classification and description of plants. How do the leaf bracts spring from the stem? What is the exact shape of the leaves, in the young plant and at maturity? And the leaf serrations, the hairy undersurface, the exact colors of the leaf decoration? And so on. Only when these are fully recorded has the artists developed a feel for the nature of the plant, and can attend to the final illustration. The work reproduced in photographic plates was often finished in watercolor or gouache, of course, as these allow fine details to be shown, though oil painting can be just as detailed.
But what is important is the study, the prolonged examination that generates a full understanding of the plant. That was the achievement of the seventeenth century Dutch painters and others. Their works are very good paintings, but they take no liberties with their subject matter. Everything is scrupulously observed and rendered: a photo-journalism of past floral displays. That requires great patience and manual dexterity, and indeed the larger oil paintings of flowers and fruits of different seasons will have been painted from life over many months or years.
These painters were specialists, and it’s doubtful whether much of a market exists today for such highly finished articles. A lifetime of practice lay behind the acquisition of such skills, moreover, and today’s artist is perhaps hardly encouraged to try. Nonetheless, many flower painters may want to produce one such painting, as an exhibition piece, a demonstration of their skills. And who know? if that does generate a commission commensurate with the time and effort involved, then a neglected branch of oil painting may well enjoy a new lease of life.
High Key Palettes
Many flowers have bright, even dazzling colors: how are these to be conveyed? Essentially, there are two approaches. Artists till the nineteenth century generally used contrast to give the colors their full brilliance. Flowers would be painted in deep shadow on a dark background. The arrangements would be such as to allow juxtapositions to bring out their individual colors.
That approach is still valid. Particularly in direct painting, the the tonal range needs to be quickly established. Color harmony has to be worked out, and largely adhered to. The reason why many amateur flower oil paintings can be fairly hateful is the neglect of just these aspects. There is not enough variety of tone, and the colors are a garish medley. Planning is the answer and the informed study of past masterpieces.
But one should not make a virtue of necessity. The range of colors available to the seventeenth century artists was much more restricted than today’s. Tertiary colors had to be mixed, and their muddy tints could only be make to look bright in relation to a prevailing darker tone. Most painters today prefer a lighter palette, and paint manufacturers have created a range of truly astonishing colors, synthetic and not cheap, but indispensable.
A word of warning then. The greater freedom can increase the likelihood of getting things wrong. You may need to give much more thought to color harmony, both because synthetic color juxtapositions create their own problems, and because the reduced tonal range deprives you of many devices to give depth and variety to the work. At their worst, high key flower paintings end up looking like posters a respected branch of graphic design, but still design and not painting.
Basic Techniques of One-Stroke Flower Petal Painting
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Basic Techniques of One-Stroke Flower Petal Painting
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JAGGED-EDGE PETAL
Double-load a flat brush. Start on the chisel edge, touch, and lean toward the fl at side of the brush. Use quick zigzagging motions to create the jagged edge of the petal.
TEARDROP PETAL STROKE
1. Start on the chisel edge. Press down so the bristles bend in the direction shown. Press down more and pivot the red edge of the brush. Don’t slide the bristles—just pivot.
2. Lift back up to the chisel and slide to a point.
LAYERING A FIVE-PETAL FLOWER
1. A five-petal flower is a series of teardrop strokes all started from the same center. To layer them, start with a cluster of three or four teardrop strokes.
2. Then paint a complete five-petal flower overlapping the first set of strokes. To make a large cluster for hydrangea blossoms, continue painting three-, four- and five-petal florets that overlap each other.
POINTED SINGLE-STROKE PETAL
1. Double-load a flat brush. Start at the base of the petal, lean down on the chisel and start sliding up towards the tip.
2. As you stand back up on the chisel, twist the brush in whichever direction you want the petal to turn.
3. This is how a flower made up of long, pointed petals looks. This is a great stroke for making orchids or lilies or any flower with long, slender petals that radiate out from the center.
PETALS WITH A RUFFLED EDGE
1. Petals with a ruffled side edge are found in many different flowers such as irises, parrot tulips, and orchids. To begin, double-load a flat brush with your two petal colors. Start at the base of the petal, push down on the bristles and wiggle up.
2. Stop wiggling the brush as you near the tip. Slide smoothly the rest of the way to the tip and lift back up to the chisel edge. This will give the tip its pointed shape.
3. Without turning or lifting your brush from the surface, reverse the direction of the bristles and begin leaning down on them. Compare the position of the bristles in this photo with the bristles in Step 2.
4. Apply more pressure on the brush as you start to slide smoothly back down to the base of the petal.
5. Lift back up to the chisel edge to end the stroke at the base of the petal. Notice that the darker side of the brush is in the same position as it was when you started the stroke.
OUTLINING PETALS
Here’s a quick tip for adding interest to a petal or leaf. Outline one side of it with a darker shade. Load a script liner with inky paint and pull a smooth line following the shape from base to tip, lifting off to come to a point.
PETALS WITH RUFFLED TOP EDGES
1. Double-load a flat with Yellow Ochre and Wicker White. Start on the chisel and wiggle out a few times to paint a single petal.
2. Slide back to the pointed base and lift back up to the chisel.
3. Paint a series of ruffled-edge petals all radiating outward from a center point. Turn your surface to make painting easier.
4. Dot the center with Fresh Foliage on the tip end of the brush handle.
TRUMPET FLOWER PETALS
1. Begin by painting the base of the trumpet. Double-load a flat brush. Keeping the darker side of the brush to the outside, stroke upward toward the base of the trumpet, watching the outer edge as you stroke.
2. Pivot the brush at the base of the trumpet and slide back down the other side. Lift back up to the chisel. Don’t worry about filling in the center—it will be covered by the next strokes.
3. Double-load your fl at brush again with the same colors, but this time turn the brush so the lighter side is to the outside edge. Add the upper part of the ruffled opening with a series of little shell strokes.
4. Continue with little shell strokes for the lower part of the ruffled opening, turning your work so it’s easier to stroke and keeping the lighter side of the brush to the outside edge.
5. To shade and deepen the throat of the trumpet, load a flat brush with floating medium, then side-load into your darker paint color. Start your stroke on the left and pull across to the right side, creating a wavy shape that is pointed on both sides and wider in the middle.
6. Using the chisel edge of the same brush, pull little streaks out from the shading onto the lower part of the ruffled petals. Keep the upper edge of the shaded area sharp and distinct to create the illusion of depth to the trumpet.
FLOAT-SHADING
1. Float-shading is an easy way to give shape and dimension to your flower petals. I use this technique when painting magnolia blossoms and other cupped flower petals. Let your petals dry, then load a flat brush with floating medium and side-load into Burnt Umber. With the Burnt Umber side of the brush next to the edge of the petal, paint along the inside edge as shown. This gives the effect of the petal’s edge turning inward.
2. To separate the upper petal from the lower one, load a flat brush with floating medium and side-load into Burnt Umber. With the Burnt Umber side of the brush next to the outside edge of the lower petal, paint along the petal’s edge as shown. Continue shading all around the petal to separate it from the background.
3. Float-shade around the left side of the back petal to separate it from the background. Using the same brush, pull little chisel-edge streaks upward from the base of the petal to deepen the shading within.
4. The key to successful float-shading is to load your brush properly and to follow along the edges of the petal or leaf you are shading. If your shading seems too dark, you can always pick up more floating medium on your brush and soften the shading.
The above exercises are taken from Donna’s book, Essential Guide to Flower and Landscape Painting, published by North Light Books.
Watch as Donna paints a sunflower using her one-stroke painting techniques
Step 3: Loading the Cotton Swab Bundle
Take a cotton swab bundle and load it with Red. Do this by pressing one side into the paint until the cotton tips have absorbed a decent amount. You can reload your cotton swab bundle this way throughout your painting process. Remember to use one bundle per color to avoid polluting your colors.
Now it’s time for the fun part! Lay down the first layer by dabbing your loaded cotton swab bundle onto your paper. Your makeshift tool will produce a unique dotted texture that you can play with to make an easy flower painting. To achieve the raindrop-like form, simply change the way you hold the cotton swab bundle. If you hold it vertically, you can cover a lot of space, so do this for the body of the flower. To create the tapered tip switch to a diagonal grip and use the sides of the bundle. This will give you narrow coverage and more control. Keep in mind that the amount of pressure you apply will also give you different effects to play with. More pressure will give you darker, bigger dots, while a lighter touch will give you softer, smaller dots.
Step 5: Building up Colors
Pick up another cotton swab bundle and load it with Red Violet. While the first layer is still wet, dab it onto the paper so that the two colors blend into each other. Keep the pressure light to prevent the Red Violet dots from blending with the Red dots completely. Once that layer is finished, add a third layer of color with Violet, also working wet-in-wet but using a smaller bundle to cover a smaller area.
Now that the first flower is finished, let’s give it a companion! You can repeat steps 3 to 5, positioning this new watercolor flower above the one you just made. The best part about this beginner technique is that you don’t need to be overly careful about where you put your paint. Since both flowers don’t have a defined outline, it’s okay to let them blend together where they overlap!
Step 7: Drawing the Stems
We’re almost done, so let’s add a few details to tie this easy flower painting together. Pick up a no. 6 round brush and mix together Red Ochre and Emerald Green Hue. With the tip of your brush, lightly draw in the stem of each flower. Extend the stem into the base of the flower by adding small dabs of your green-brown mixture into the reddish dots. This creates the effect of the stem peeking out through the flower petals. Finally, add smaller stems that branch out diagonally.
Now for the final element: the leaves! Switch to a no. 12 round brush and add more Emerald Green Hue to strengthen the green tint. Paint the big leaf in front by using a brushstroke that tapers off at the edges. To do this, start the stroke with your brush tip, apply pressure to make the stroke wider in the middle, then ease off the pressure at the end. Add the other half of the leaf in the same manner, and remember to leave a line of white space in the middle to indicate the center of the leaf. For smaller leaves, you only need to use the tapered edges brushstroke once. Don’t forget to join the leaves to the stems via the wet-on-dry technique. And there you have it, an easy watercolor flower painting created with a simple, makeshift tool! If you want to see Jay demonstrate this beginner technique, here’s his
