Tutorial Index

Demonstration: Stella d' Oro Lily

INTRODUCTION:

The first part of this tutorial is designed to help you become familiar with the subject you wish to paint. One of the best ways for one to get to know their subject well is by drawing it out in pencil, either as a small thumbnail sketch or full scaled drawing. This helps one work out complicated sections and offers the best way to determine and work on values before a brush is ever picked up and loaded with pigment.

The second part focuses on the painting process of the individual petals. By working the petals individually, you will gain practice working the wet in wet technique and then moving to the glazing process. This section is broken down, step-by-step, with illustrations to aid in color placement and to show the process of those techniques used. Please read through all instructions before beginning.

Finally, we will bring all the components together to create the final flower by showing the order in which this study was painted.

TOOLS, BRUSHES and COLORS:

Pencil
Paper or sketchbook
Putty eraser
140 lb NOT or Cold Press Paper
Brushes: #4 Round, #6 Round, and 1/2" Slanted Flat (Rigger and/or #2 Round optional)
Stylus or any object with thin point to bruise fine lines
Masking Fluid
Colour Shaper (I use a small chiseled pointed shaper)
Colors Recommended: Aureolin, New Gamboge, Burnt Sienna, French Ultra Blue and Olive Green
White Gouache (optional)

SPECIAL COMMENT ABOUT COLOR CHOICE:

What helped me determine the colors I wanted to use, I first used my photo editing program, Adobe Photoshop Elements, to take samples of those colors in my flower. I used the eyedropper function to carry this out giving me the following readings. Those first colors from darkest brown to light yellow were throughout the petals with the darkest being in the center. The other colors are described in the illustration. And, although I didn't use all these colors as shown in this chart, this gave me a fairly good idea what pigments and mixtures I wanted to use.

INSTRUCTIONS

DRAWING/SKETCHING EXERCISE:

Using the following as a guideline, practice drawing/sketching until you feel confident in the structure of the flower and have a good idea of the values you hope to obtain in your flower painting.

Please note in the following illustration and in the painting examples that follow, the tone values are actually darker than that which is shown in the photograph. The reason for the darker values is to help separate one petal from another, to add interest, and to give an overall illusion of 3D.

PAINTING EXERCISES:

1) Mix up washes ('thicker than water' consistency) of Aureolin, New Gamboge, Burnt Sienna, and Aureolin mixed with a little Olive Green.

2) Begin the painting exercises working with the individual flower petals commencing with the smaller back petals.

Note: Except for the initial wet in wet stage, the petals are worked with glazes of color by pre-wetting petal and then gently brushing or dropping in the color needed. You may glaze as many layers as you feel necessary to achieve your tone values and colors as long as you allow each layer to completely dry and you don't mess about too much when applying another glaze.

Small Petals:

Wet in Wet - Illustration 1a - 1c

1) First lay down a thin wash of Aureolin.

2) Drop in New Gamboge beginning at the bottom of the petal where you want your darkest value. Allow the pigment to travel toward the outer edges and top of the petal.

Note: It might help to turn paper upside down where the bottom or darkest portion of the petal is turned to the top. This allows the pigment to run towards the outer edges. Do not allow pigment to cover entire petal. You want some of the Aureolin along the inside border or edge to remain untouched by the New Gamboge.

3) Working quickly and while this is still wet, drop in a little of the Aureolin plus Olive Green Mix.

4) Take stylus and gently and lightly bruise fine vein lines as shown in the illustration. If you are unable to work fast enough to where the wash is still wet when time to bruise the vein lines in, you can always go back in and detail with fine lines of paint and a rigger brush (or corner edge of the slanted flat brush).

5) Allow to completely dry.

Glazing - Illustration 1d

1) Re-wet petal and drop in a very light mix of Burnt Sienna....again working from the bottom of the petal. You want a hint of orange in these petals to unify with the larger petals but not so strong that they compete with the top petals.

2) Allow to dry.

3) Wet the petal once again, taking care not to disturb the colors already applied, and drop in a stronger mix of the Aureolin plus Olive Green.

4) Allow to completely dry.

5) Go back now and 'fine tune' what you feel the petal might still need. This will be a good time to add the thin vein lines if they were missed earlier. If you paint them in, do so very lightly.

Large Petals:

Wet in Wet - Illustration 2a - 2c

1) First lay down a thin wash of Aureolin.

2) Drop in New Gamboge beginning at the bottom of the petal and allowing the pigment to travel toward the top portion of the petal.

Note: It might help to turn paper upside down where the bottom or darkest portion of the petal is turned to the top. This allows the pigment to run towards the outer edges. Do not allow pigment to cover entire petal. You want some of the Aureolin along the inside border or edge to remain untouched by the New Gamboge.

3) Working quickly and while this is still wet, drop in a little Burnt Sienna.

4) Take stylus and gently and lightly bruise fine vein lines as shown in the illustration. If you are unable to work fast enough to where the wash is wet when time to bruise the vein lines in, you can always go back in and detail with fine lines of paint and a rigger brush (or corner edge of the slanted flat).

5) Allow to completely dry.

Glazing - Illustration 2d

1) Pre-wet petal and with a little Aureolin plus Olive Green, lightly drop in depressions and inside curves there at the petal edges. Not too much as you don't want but a hint of green for the shadows (yellow-green).

2) While petal is still wet, drop in additional Burnt Sienna if you need the value darker than what was achieved during the wet in wet stage.

3) Allow to dry.

4) If your petal is not yellow enough, pre-wet the petal once again without disturbing the previous layers of color and lightly drop in Aureolin.

5) Allow to completely dry.

6) Using a damp brush and tissue, lift a little color here and there towards the edges of the petals. This not only gives you highlights but also gives the illusion of translucent areas near the thin edges of the petals. You would want your highlights lighter (almost white) but the translucent areas you would want to keep some color remaining.

Painting the Center - Stamens:

1) Apply light wash of Aureolin over stamens and allow to dry.

2) Taking New Gamboge, paint a line on one side of each individual stamen and then with a clean damp brush, run it gently along one edge bending to a soft edge towards the lighter side of the stamen. Allow to dry before working on the next stamen. Continue this process until you have separated each stamen from one another with one side darker then the other. Remember to be consistent with the dark/light sides from one stamen to the next. See illusion for example.

3) After that is dry, if need be, apply a little stronger value by adding a hint of Burnt Sienna to the New Gamboge.

4) Allow to dry.

5) With the very tip of your brush, dab Burnt Sienna at the tips of the stamens following the design as shown. Then add a little French Ultra Blue to the Burnt Sienna and dab a few darker spots.

6) With the same mixture of FU and BS, darken the spots or little areas of the flower (between the stamens) as shown.

7) Gently darken around the other perimeters of the stamens should you find you need that value darkened or extended out as you see in the 4th illustration here. I pre-wet with water first and then just dropped my BS and BS plus FU where I wanted it to go.

8) If you wish, you can go back in after completely dry and apply a few small dabs of White Gouache and/or light yellow dabs mixed with White Gouache and Aureolin around the tips of the stamens.

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER:

1) Lightly pencil the outline of the stella on your watercolour paper.

2) Mask out the center using masking fluid (I use the tip of a colour shaper to apply my masking).

3) Using the techniques learned in the previous exercises, paint the stella d' oro in the following order: If petals join one another (as the larger petals do), make sure to allow the paint to completely dry before moving on to the next.

Here's an idea of what it could look like against a purple/blue background. I used neat (straight) Winsor Blue in some areas and Winsor Blue mixed with Aliz Crimson in other areas. I applied my background in after the flower was finished by carefully applying water, a section at a time in which I thought I could work wet in wet, and dropped in the colour. I allowed each section to dry before proceeding to the next section. If not dark enough, you can go back in after completely dry and repeat this same process.