This week, between cold and snowy weather, i was i need of a little piece of hope for spring. So i try myself on painting snowdrops in watercolor.
This started when Jean Haines (famous english watercolorist) posted her work on snowdrops studies. It inspired me to try to paint them too. So i try her technique first but wihtout a lot of sucess. And you can see the result in the first picture above. The flowers are painted last with some white gouache. After this study, i thought that it would be better if i was painting the snowdrops with my own path. I wasn’t convinced by the gouache technique. And i ended up with the second picture.
As snowdrops are white flowers, it means that i have to work a lot with negative painting. Maybe the most delicate phase in this process was painting around my flowers during my first wash and of course not forgetting them ! Once this is done, the rest of the painting is quite straight forward. Adding greeneries for contexte, some shadows on the flowers to get some dimension… and this is it ! The second important point in this painting is the colors i’ve used. Snowdrops are winter flowers, so i have to render the atmosphere right for you to understand better the painting. I’ve decided to work with a lot of cool colors. Blues and violet mostly, but even the greens are quite cold. And to make those colors even colder i’ve used a bit of warm tone in order to add contrast.
Watercolor snowdrops in video
Supplies :
Brushes : Raphaël le “803” nº2, Rosemary & Co serie 39 1/2″.
Paper : Arches hot pressed.
Colors : Indanthrene blue (Sennelier), Rose madder lake (Sennelier), Quinacridone gold (Daniel Smith), Lunar blue (Daniel Smith).
And here you have the finished painting (click to enlarge) :
