I picked a floral subject for today's exercise because I think they are the perfect subject for practicing design, simplifying complexity into simple shapes, trying out many many lovely colors.
This painting is inspired from an exercise from Watercolor Simplified. I used a number of transparent pigments for this painting - quin gold, phthalo blue, quin rose. I may have dipped into a bit of indigo and phthalo green for some of the darks.
Things I learned from this painting :
- Design is more important than realism. Think in large shapes, and just enough detail to suggest the subject.
- Shadows don't have to always be purple. Here the yellow orange shadow works beautifully.
- Use the right size brush to cover the area, otherwise you will need to make too many brush strokes to join up an area with color and this can make things look busy and untidy.
- Practice brush strokes to make the leaves look more lively.
