Watercoloring Hard & Soft edged color

 This week Kia is sharing this watercoloring tutorial seen here on YouTube  By Sunlit brushtrokes that is part of the tutorial the basic idea here is to do soft and hard edges on the flower petals. ( which is very cool) if you would like to see the whole painting finished there is a second video seen here and it also has links to the flower if you wanted to print and trace it. 

So the main thought in my head was, the scale of the flower she is painting is not going to fit on a card or a tag so, just go grab a flower stamp with some open space in the petals to try it. So, I started out with this PSX botanical Hibiscus because, it had some open space on the petals and a stamen to do shadows under.

as a side note, I normally start my painting on Saturday for this challenge. and so, this last saturday we got in the truck bright and early like normal, we have a standing go out to breakfast date and then grocery shop. but, this last weekend we did make the drive to an Best buy and Costco and a mall & Barnes & Nobels book store these are about 80 miles from our house so we were gone all day. And what I got was a TV bracket that allows a little TV in the hobby room to be seen from where I am standing to paint. Which turns out to be a better visual than a 15" laptop screen for sure.  

Anyways, that is some cold press Arches wc paper and just what ever paints were left on palettes from last time around. It was stamped with some Versafine Clair Morning Mist ink, which may have been too dark to do the fading of the petals on the edges. at least when you do sketch with a soluble pencil it fades. 

The first layers of paints I did add some yellow to the leaves and the petals and tried for some shadows under that stamen. 

I did try to deepen the shadow areas of the flowers and leaves by this point and I did add some of the purple pink color to the leaves.

At this point I had  already skipped ahead to the second video and started watching it before I had ever started this flower so, I had forgotten how it started. the second video adds color to the background around the bloom and I decided that there was just too much detail on this stamp to show off the color flow effect. 

 So, I grabbed an Ellen Hutson Mondo Peony stamp to try it again, and this time around I actually remembered to do the center as Yellow as the first color down. and it did spread thinly to the out skirts of the bloom.

 I did add layers of paint to some of the places I thought there would be shadows and used a damp brush to smooth them out a little. 

Another layer of paints. Tried adding some to the center including some "shadows" under the stamens.

 

More paint added here, its not a dramatic change between shots but, I am seeing it deepen and I am like struggling with this as I like how the yellow peeks through the petals but, I am also thinking this is not quite right for a Peony. so, I started looking at some of my mug shots from my yard of plants.

And when I look at these I see the darkest pinks in the center shadow places. so, Looking at my stamped flower I am thinking all the shadowing I did is in the wrong places ha ha. So out came the paints.

I am thinking this having the darkest color at the center is better but, I seem to have the shadows wrong, this is almost as bad as trying to color folds into people clothing. (that is another thing that I tend to put the shadow on the wrong place) Now, that I have shown you the pitfalls of painting your stamped images, this is where things stand at the moment.  

They are pretty and I probably will do something with them but, I am running out of time to actually get something ready to post for tonight and I may end up sticking this photo above into the gallery. And I may add more paint to them, the paint is drying on the palette as I try to switch back and forth between brushes so, its slow going. If you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at SCS. Thanks for stopping by.