Tuesday 26 July 2022

Painting Wild Flowers with Wet Watercolours!


This is a very exciting way to paint wild flowers, as you never know what you will end up with!

As you are painting watercolours "Wet on Wet" (wet paint on wet paper) it does its own thing - great fun and easy to do, so very suitable for your groups. 

And you get great results, even for the "un-artistic"!

You will need...
Watercolour paper (as you are wetting the paper, you will need watercolour paper - anything else won't work!)
Watercolour paints
Brushes
Black pen - waterproof ink. (I used Staedtler Pigment Liner 0.8, but any similar will do)

Get ready...
Mix your paints before you wet your paper.
I mixed green (2 separate shades - one darker)
Flower colours - I mixed Yellow (2 shades) and Crimson

Wet your paper by brushing over with clean water.

Wait a few minutes and then using a large brush, wash on the lighter green with upward strokes and feather the top edge. 

While still wet, apply the dark green - let some of the light green show through.


Next - check if your paper is still wet - if not then re-wet the top of your picture. (careful not to go into the green area)

Then apply the colours you have prepared - just load the brush with paint and then touch the paper and the paint will spread by itself.

Put different size blobs of the different colours - in random order (these are wild flowers - not planted in rows!!)

Lastly, take your brush and flick (hold the brush parallel to the paper and tap it sharply, with your finger, just below the bristles) small blobs of paint randomly over the whole picture. 

Do this with all your different flower colours.


Let it dry thoroughly (I use my hair dryer on low heat to speed up the drying process)

Once the paint is dry, take your pen and draw in your flowers. 

Try to draw freely - don't be too precise - the paint is not precise, so the drawing too must be "Random"!

To make it look natural, have some flowers "side view".



Scribble in grass at the bottom, over the green area. Stand back and admire your work...!

Have fun!

8 comments:

  1. This is a great painting. I'd like to try this for a fireworks type scene, maybe watered acrylics mixed with white on black wet paper would work the same? Have you done this as a group? How did the others look? It's always interesting to see an alternative take on the same idea, especially because you have to draw the detail afterwards!

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  2. What a great lesson in painting. L couldn't see where you were going at first, but adding the flower shapes really helped. Thank you so much for your work. Now, I am admiring ~your~ work! Hugs! Loretta

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  3. Thanks for your comments... Fireworks sound great fun! Not sure about black paper - haven't tried that! Let us know if you give it a go...
    If you want to see a few more samples click on My Ebay link (top left) as I have a few ACEO's there done the same way. (ACEO is a minature 3.5 x 2.5 inch Art Card) Nancy

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  5. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this lesson! When I started to make a birthday card today I was going by memory of how your painting looked. So mine (alas, it's already in the mail) didn't turn out great! But I KNOW I'm going to be successful at this. Wet on Wet! Halleluiah!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And THANK YOU!

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  6. Lovely, going to try with my art group of adults with learning difficulties today.

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  7. It looks really pretty. Beautiful photos, and enjoy your flowers art work.

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