Dogwood Demo

Tuesday Tutorial

 

My home is surrounded by clouds of white flowers during the spring. I have 8 Dogwood trees in my yard and they are showing out this year. This shameless display of beauty inspired me to paint a few Dogwoods.

I took some photos and gathered supplies.

• Arches 300 lb cold pressed watercolor paper (I cut mine to 5 x 7 for this demo)
• brushes size 2, 6, 14
• clean water for rinsing brushes and mixing washes
• pencil, transfer paper (I prefer Saral Graphite paper), paper towels, tracing paper (optional)
• watercolor paints: Sap Green, Hookers Green, Cadmium Yellow Lt, Cerulean Blue, Anthraquinone Blue (A. Blue), Quinacridone Rose (Q. Rose), Neutral Tint
• Liquid masking fluid and something to apply it with

This is my reference photo, I changed the composition just a bit to make it a bit more simple.

I transferred my drawing to the watercolor paper using the Saral Transfer paper. Make sure you use a wax free transfer paper.

Where I want my whites to remain I mask them off using liquid masking fluid and a bamboo skewer. You can use a number of things to apply the masking fluid EXCEPT a good brush! Never use a good brush to apply masking fluid!! It will destroy your brush!

Once the masking fluid is dry, I put a light wash of sap green + Cadmium Yellow Lt on the leaves and in the center of each flower. Adding more yellow to the flower centers. Let it dry.

The leaf shadows are then darkened with hookers green and the ribs of the leaves are painted in. For the shadows on the white flowers some Anthraquinone Blue with a lot of water. Let it dry. You can use a blow dryer (hair dryer) to speed it up. 

I put a wash of Q. rose on the background and let it dry. Then I remove the masking fluid. Make sure the paint is completely dry before you remove the masking or you may smear your paint. Not pretty.

Once the background is dry I put a glaze of Cerulean Blue over the Q. Rose. I wet the paper first and then just drop in the blue so some of the Rose will show through. I also took some A. blue and darkened the shadows on the white flowers and. The centers of the flowers were darkened with hookers green+ A. blue just in the shadows. 

While the background was still wet I added extra A. blue just under the white petals to create shadows and dropped some sap green to the back ground. The shadows of the flower petals were then refined and darkened using a mix of A. blue and Q. Rose. Let dry.

The last thing I did was take a weak wash of Neutral tint (lots of water) and glazed over the background to make the flowers come forward and push the background to the back.

Practice practice practice. And have fun!