Painting a Sunflower with watercolor. The sunflower is 1 of the herbs that best represents summer. Its warm colors, the slender and imposing structure, the bright green of the leaves, and the stem. I would say that it is the ideal subject for a lovely summer watercolor. And in addition, we will take advantage of the opportunity to try new colors, choosing the colors necessary to create this magnificent flower. Today’s article will explain how to paint a Sunflower with Aqua Drop Science liquid watercolors.
Draw and paint a sunflower with Science liquid watercolors
As always, we start by listing the materials used in this guide. In addition to our beautiful sunflower, the protagonists will be the Aqua Drop Science liquid watercolors. Probably the word liquid watercolor will amaze you, and maybe you have never heard it. But you must know that there are also watercolors in the liquid format in addition to goddesses and tubes. The pigment is already dissolved and diluted in an aqueous substance and is, therefore, ready-to-use colors. However, they should not be confused with inks, which are often made with dyes of lotus drawing.
Here are the Aqua Drop colors I used: Umbra 620, Verde Giada 550, Sepia 680, and Gallo Limon 200. As for brushes, I used those contained in the Da Vinci Flore ale set, a selection of brushes explicitly designed for botanical painting and the illustration of flowers and plants. In addition to these, I also used a round trip brush size 3/0 and a flat tip brush size 2 (size 3 is fine too). Lastly, the paper: I had a beautiful pad of Fabian Artistic Extra White fine-grained paper at my disposal! In my case, the measure is 12.5 x 18cm, so the small size, very convenient even for painting when you are out and about!
The drawing of the sunflower
Let’s start by putting the drawing back on the watercolor sheet. If you don’t want to draw it freehand, you can find the original image at the end of the article. Again, you can use tissue paper (or tracing paper) to help you. Detect it with tissue paper and put it back on the sheet with the old pencil method: go over the design on the back with a soft pencil and then trace from the right, releasing the trace on the watercolor paper. Finally, you can refine the drawing in the inaccurate points and, if necessary, lighten the line with rubber bread.
We prepare the work
The practicality of the Aqua Drops lies in the fact that they are ready-to-use watercolors. They already occur at maximum intensity and in the right dilution. It is a great advantage, especially in the mixing phase, because it makes the process more controllable and easily repeatable. Then a drop is enough to paint at will, and once the color is finished, it is possible to re-integrate it in a few moments! No caps slipping from your fingers, no pucks to reactivate or dilute like the previous one.
Always remember that the Aqua Drops are already diluted! Pick up tiny Amber and tap the edge at the petal base while the previous yellow is still wet. Then, using the mixture a little more diluted, stretch the brush strokes upwards without ever covering the white parts and ultimately affecting the yellow. Darken the tip of the petal a little too. Immediately after that, tap the petal base again, picking up some pure color if necessary.
We prepare the work
The practicality of the Aqua Drops lies in the fact that they are ready-to-use watercolors. They already occur at maximum intensity and in the right dilution. It is a great advantage, especially in the mixing phase, because it makes the process more controllable and easily repeatable. Then a drop is enough to paint at will, and once the color is finished, it is possible to re-integrate it in a few moments! No caps slipping from your fingers, no pucks to reactivate or dilute like the previous one.
We paint the central part of the sunflower
Once the corolla of petals is finished, we will take care of the central part of the sunflower. We will color it using all 4 colors: yellow, Amber, green, Sepia. First, let’s create a medium green starting from Verde Giada, buttoning it down with a little bit of Amber and Cuttlefish. Always in small doses! Then we prepare a dark green by adding a more significant amount of Cuttlefish.
Again, we work on dry paper, but we will blend the colors:
1. After tapping some yellow dots (see above), add more with the medium green mixture, a few points of Amber, and finally, the dark green mixture at the top.
Let them blend into each other and ignore the side dishes. You will fix them later.
2. Once dry, tap the various colors, in the same way, to paint the ring all around. Leave white spots in the upper right areas. Conversely, darken the lower left parts. Here too, we let the dots merge.
3. Let it dries completely, and then use pure Sepia to create more defined dots, especially in the upper part.
We paint the tiny leaves
We will always use Lemon Yellow and the 2 shades of green created in the previous step for these leaves. We start by painting the tip with yellow, we continue inwards with medium green, and we finish with dark green in the most shaded parts and contact with the sunflower petals.
The final touches
At this point, I let myself be tempted. Another beautiful color is included in this Aqua Drop kit. And I couldn’t stop anymore? With this shade, I turned on the color of the petals in shadow, and I went over the various outlines. Of course, it is not necessary, but the result is very nice!
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