How To Draw Simple Watercolor Flowers – Painting it is pure joy! Botanical art requires special techniques, additional knowledge of paper and brushes, which we will discuss in this article.
Here we will create some beautiful pink roses and I will walk you through each step we took to achieve this result.
How To Draw Simple Watercolor Flowers
You can use 100% cotton or good quality cellulose (like Canson Montval). We are not using the wet technique, so the sponge is not a request here, but rather a suggestion for a more pleasant experience. However, both types will serve their purpose. We used “Canson Montval” pulp paper.
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It is recommended to press the composition with heat. If not, press cool (if it’s not too grainy), but not rough. To create these soft petals, we need a smooth surface to lay down the paint. For this tutorial, we used cold pressed paper with a texture that isn’t too obvious, so it’s all good.
The size doesn’t matter, but we recommend no smaller than A4 (21 × 29.7 cm or 8.27 × 11.69 inches). The larger the sheet of paper, the easier it will be to work more calmly with a brush on each petal.
Use any professional watercolor set. We used “Rosa” (Ukraine’s first professional watercolor brand). I moved on to tubes and created a palette of my favorite colors that included other brands (Winsor & Newton, Sennelier, Van Gogh, etc.). You can make your own palette, or simply use a brand of watercolor in a container. After all, it won’t have any effect on your drawing.
You will need a synthetic brush, round, small size (#3-5). The size depends on the size of your paper sheet and rose. If you want to paint larger, you will need larger brushes.
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Especially for larger pieces, use a natural brush: this will remove a lot of the water/paint, so the size of the rose will still be manageable. I used a squirrel hair brush.
For final details, take the smallest synthetic brush (size #1). These are very fine, so you’ll need a stiff brush that doesn’t shed too much water.
Sketching pencil: can be soft (HB, B+) but we recommend using hard pencil (H) so that the smallest lines can be seen in the sketch.
Draw a detailed pencil drawing of your rose. A thin, hard pencil (H) will leave a clean mark, which is not easy to erase with your hand when drawing. It’s always accidental, but botanical art sketches are more important than landscape sketches. Therefore it is important to keep the picture clean and neat.
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Before you start painting the details of the rose, make sure you have worked out the composition. If you place the flower too high or too low on the paper, the overall composition will be distorted. To make the painting look harmonious, the first step is to create the composition and arrange all the elements in it.
To make this step easier, you can first trace a simple circle (which will soon turn into a rose bud) on a piece of paper to see the approximate position of the flowers and petals. When every element is in place and satisfied, each rose should be studied in detail.
The lines should be barely visible (so you probably won’t see much in this picture of mine).
If your sketch is too dark, the watercolor layers will not be able to cover it and the outline of your image will turn black.
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Also try to minimize eraser use as it will damage the surface of the paper and affect your future watercolor layers.
Here I tried to process the image in Photoshop to make sure I could see all the lines in my image. You don’t have to copy the image exactly, it’s just a reference and you can use whatever you feel like in your artwork.
We’ll start by applying the first semi-transparent layer to one of the petals, which is the bottom part of the rose bud.
For this step, I used a natural brush (squirrel) because the coating surface is relatively large (compared to other petals) and I wanted a soft, smooth effect in one stroke.
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The brush is wet, but not too wet (water is not dripping from the brush). So you have enough control over the paint here.
For this layer, I mixed pink (Magenta Rose, PR 122) and red (Cadmie Red, PR 108) to create a sort of mid-tone.
While the first layer is still wet, I focus on one side of the rose bud and add a little darker color to increase the density of the paint.
The brush should be half filled with wet paint. If your brush is too fluid, it will release too much water, thinning the first layer and creating unnecessary patterns on the soft rose petals.
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I draw the second petal with the thinned paint used in the first layer. As you can see, I chose a petal that does not come close to the first one so that the paint does not flow from one petal to the next. We have to keep each petal nice and clean. There should be a little amount of liquid left on the brush so that too much water does not fall.
The paint dries very quickly (mostly because we work with cellulose and relatively dry layers). This allows us to go back to the original petal and add a deeper layer underneath to create a sense of volume.
Now color the top petal with the same mixture (pink + red) that we used in the beginning. This petal is slightly bent. To restore its elasticity, I applied a slightly darker color (shadow) to the folds at the top of the petals.
Go further and deepen the base of this petal with a darker deep purple that leans towards purple (Quinacridone Lilac, PV 19). The same applies to the base of our second petal.
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Water colors lose some color and luster when they dry. Sometimes we need to bring back that shine by adding more color to the area.
Switching to a smaller brush helps to work on the elements better, and since this brush is synthetic, you can control the flow of paint more.
The petal on the left casts a shadow on the rose bud, which we should also show. So mix deep purple color (Quinacridone Lilac, PV 19) with red color (Cadmium Red, PR 108) and lay down to the left of the rose bud.
I know it’s too dark to show in the picture right now, but trust me, once we’re done with the flowers, all the paint spots will be in place.
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To recreate the fine veins on the rose buds, I used the pointed tip to move the brush up and down. This pulls the paint in the direction you’re moving it, creating a small thin line. If I had tried to paint it with the tip of a brush, it wouldn’t have worked.
For this trick to work, you will need enough wet paint on the base (or left side) of the rose bud. If your layer is dry, there will be nothing for the brush to draw in the opposite direction.
Now that you’ve mastered the basics of drawing petals, apply them to the next few petals. Remember that the part where the two petals join (touch each other) should be dark, because here both objects cast shadows on each other.
Make sure that your petals are not all colored in one plain color. This makes them look flat and boring. This doesn’t mean you have to add all the colors from your palette. Stick to the color scheme of your flowers (all variations of pink and red). Don’t forget to think about areas that should be shaded and colored in.
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Important: Do not outline the shapes of the petals like in a coloring book, so that they are recognizable and different from others. It will look flat and cartoonish. Outline one petal by drawing another petal next to (or around) it. It will look more natural.
The inside of a rose bud is naturally dark. So to remove shadows use dark purple (in my case Quinacridone Lilac, PV19) or purple or a mixture of blue and purple. Imagine the rosebud as a shadowy sphere at its heart. Additionally, the petal on the right will have a brighter shadow where it joins the rest of the flower.
Move on to the leaves and stems. The first layer should be light and transparent. I like to mix green alone (yellow+blue). It depends on what pigment you use.
Mixing lemon with phthalo blue will give a completely different result than mixing cadmium yellow with ultramarine blue. Mix your own variations and take the time to choose your favorite greens