White flowers is a great subject to learn how to develop your watercolor techniques. I enjoy teaching how to paint white flowers because the student learns how to paint around the white space and learns the concept of painting negative spaces. It is also a good way to learn shadowing and nuances of color found in the whites.
The following is a tutorial of white magnolia blossoms:
I started with a full sheet of Arches 300# paper and drew the design with pencil. I chose to use large brushes for this size of painting (32 and 14 round) and later I use a smaller round to get close to the edges.
I started with the background by wetting the paper and adding Windsor Newton Pathalo Turquoise. I painted in sections so the water would not dry before I could cover the whole paper. Remember when you move on to another section to wet the paper first for better control.
Here you see that I have started to put the darks in by using Pathalo Turquoise and Quinacridone Sienna by Daniel Smith, and French Ultramarine blue in various amounts to give it a modeled look.
At this point I moved to the blossoms and added very light glazes of Quinacridone Sienna around the bottom of the flower. I the painted the fist try at the branches using a combination of QS and FU
I realized I didn't like the branch on the bottom left (see pic. #3) so I lightly scrubbed out the the color around the white with a Fritch Scrubber (available at Cheapjoes.com) clear water and blotting lightly with a clean paper towel. I painted over the area with the background color after drying it thoroughly.
I also started putting in the shadows making a blue grey from the colors above and strengthened the QS color in the blossoms.
My next step is to finish painting the branches by adding dark's, the shadows in the blossoms and then give the background one more go round.
Try white flowers for your next painting. Don't forget to look for the slight nuances of color in your photo source and play with a little color to enhance your painting.
