Happy first of may ! Our schedule are messy and our lives upside down, but it’s the perfect time to just enjoy the little things in our lives. Like Lily of the valley blooming in our garden and in the wild !
I do not have any reference picture for this painting because i mostly painted from memory. But here you have a quick sketch i’ve done with gouache a few days ago.
My watercolor painting this week is very simple. There is a lot of step, with a lot of drying time, but there isn’t any difficult technique here. To help you reproduce this painting here you have the steps :
- Background : Paint the entire sheet of paper with some colors and lots of water. We want blue/violet at the top and green at the bottom. But the center of the painting must remain quite light in color (just add water to your mixing to further dilute the color). Let dry.
- Masquing : With white gouache, use the tip of a round brush to stamp the shape of the flowers. You can then add some few dots at the bottom of the flower in order to have the exact shape of lily of the valley. At this stage it’s better to work with quite a thick layer of gouache. Let dry.
- Second layer of background : This time we use less water but more pigement. We want darker colors so that the flowers will appear even whiter by contrast. For the colors, just follow the tone from your first layer. The only thing to pay attention here is to not disturb to much the gouache. You can paint on top of it, but keep your brush light and spare your brush strokes. Let it dry.
- Rinse the sheet under the sink. Rub gently the area where there is gouache until everything is dissolved. Let dry.
- Add details, greenery, foliage, shadow in the flowers… and Voila !
Painting lily of the valley in video
Supplies :
Brushes : Escoda Último nº8 rigger, Silver Brush Black velvet 1/4″ dagger shape.
Paper : Fabriano Artistico cold pressed.
Colors : Cobalt blue (Schmincke), Cerulean blue (Daniel Smith), Nickel azo yellow (Daniel Smith), Rose madder lake (Sennelier), Lavander (Daniel Smith), Cobalt violet (Schmincke).
And here you have the finished painting (click to enlarge) :
