April 18, 2011

Orange Flowers Tutorial Part 2: Stems and Leaves


As you can see I have added five more flowers to my painting since last time. Now, as promised, I will show you how to do very basic stems and leaves.

1. First arrange all of the materials that were outlined in Part 1 but this time include some nice shades of green instead of (in my case) the yellows, oranges and reds. I keep everything on my palette so that I can play with unusual color combinations.



2. Then with a pencil draw in your stems, I like to do this first because it gives me good foundation upon which to place the leaves. I recommend doing this step with a very light touch so that you can move anything that is not to your liking.


3. Add in leaves with your pencil, you can barely see mine but they should be attached to the stems in some way or coming in from outside of the frame.

4. I start painting the leaves first, unlike the petals I do not wet them with water first but rather pick up the paint with a wet brush and apply it directly to the paper. I used the lightest green first and then layer with darker greens in succession. This should remind you of working on the petals and it is similar. Remember that as you layer you want to take account of shadows and the shape of the leaf.
*I added a touch of deep yellow to the center of the leaves, just so that they do not look alien next to the flowers.


5. Repeat for all of your leaves.


6. Now on to the stems, for this I want to wet my brush but only slightly. If the brush is too wet you will not be able to keep the fine line of the stem. Again like the leaves I'm not going to wet my paper beforehand. For my colors I chose a deep yellow and the green I used for the leaves.

7. Add shadow to the stems, leaves and even the petals as you see fit. Try to think of what these flowers would look like sitting next to each other and where their shadows would fall. But also keep in mind that this is a very loose and playful painting, we are not actually doing a still life but rather a sort of imaginary flower.

8. Sign your name and there you have it, a very cheerful and bright painting!


Please send me any photos of your Orange Flowers and I will be sure to post them. Thanks and I hope this has been helpful!

1 comment: