Usually we take our walks close to home, we have a small but nice park area with tall trees and bushes that is not very crowded, even on sunny days.
Spring has come and all those trees and bushes are full with budding leaves and blossoms, some are already in bloom. I have made some reference pictures of the white blossoms of one of these bushes to make a watercolour painting.
White flowers are not easy to paint, most painters use the white of the paper for the flowers and give them a very dark background. Then some shadows are added to the flowers and the results usually are beautiful.
Of course I do not want to do the same, I want something different, I want to paint flowers in my own style.
Besides, my cotton-based Arches paper is not optically white so I would never have really white flowers. There is optically white paper that I sometimes use, but that is cellulose based and not suitable for the technique I use for my flower paintings.
For this watercolour I have made my background first, using the browns that are still the colours of the bushes and trees - as there are not many leaves and blossoms yet. For this background I used lots of water and gravity to make the paint flow and this is today's result.
Using a white watercolour paint I have added the flowers where they would be 'in the right spot' compared to the background. For the flowers I have used two or three layers of paint. The bright green leaves were suggested with only one layer of paint.
The details of paper and paint used, the size and availability can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
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