Paint loose watercolor daisies with me

I couldn’t wait to try this!

It was the hottest day we’ve had so far in the UK, and what better way to spend it than to paint loose watercolour daisies.

The sky was bright blue, and the haze of beautiful white daisies was a sight not to go unnoticed.

What you’ll need:

• Paper: 300gsm Arches (140lb) cold pressed watercolour paper or sketchbook with the same grade.
• Brushes: Jennifer Rose sizes, 3/0 Mop brush. Link here: https://www.rosemaryandco.com/jennifer-rose-mop.
• Kitchen towel (to dab off any excess water)
• Water in a container and a little bowl. A palette to mix your paints on.
• A scrap of paper to practice and mix your colours with by your side.

Paint colours I used: I took my handy carry case with me)

• Winsor Lemon
• Cobalt Blue
• Cerulean Blue
• Sap Green
• Yellow Ochre

• Here’s how I went about it:

   I wanted to make sure I captured what was in front of me, and work from real life. Making notes on your paintings can help bring back the experience when back at home.

1. I began by mixing my vibrant winsor lemon color to a watery consistency and placing a semi circle shape to form the centre to one of my daisies. Notice how they are not round as such when looking at them from a side angled view. Immediately I drop in my yellow Ochre colour too to give a secondary tone to the outer of the new centre.

2. Thinking of how I would create the white petal shapes, I decided to use a combination of my cobalt and curlean blue paints which matched the brilliant blue sky above me. I thought that the contrast of the blue would really accentuate the white petal outlines and create the background I was seeing all at the same time. There was an option to use green instead of blue as this was also a prominent colour before me, but I decided to keep this for later for when I applied the stems.

3. Taking care to see the white daisy shapes, I outlined the solid form of the daisy and didn’t bring my paintbrush to the centre to outline each of the petals within – I will come to this next. Making sure my basic daisy outlined shape was made, I then continued to extend the light blue wash outwardly to create a background. I had to work quickly at this point as the sun was drying my paints quicker than I’d liked.

4. Now I have my white daisy shapes formed, with yellow centres, and surrounding blue wash, I was able to give an indication of the shading to the petals. I did this by using by lamp black colour (watered down to create a light grey) and lightly applied this to join the yellow centres to the outer blue background forming the shadows and individual lines to the petal shapes. See my example below:

5. With my daisy heads complete, I used my sap green and winsor lemon to create various shades of vibrant green colours to create the lower stems and background.

6. By repeating the process I painted other surrounding daisies at different angles to create a wonderful composition. It’s almost like flower arranging on your paper!

Have I inspired you to paint your own daisies too?

If I’ve inspired you to paint your own daisies from real life, or at home, I’d LOVE to see! You can tag me on Instagram and Facebook, and use the hashtag #jenniferrosegallery or email me personally at jenniferrose.gallery to see how you got on. I always love hearing from you.

Love

Jennifer Rose xx