Painting Rich Colour, Texture and Detail: Rudbeckia

This week I painted the second in a series of four illustrations, a Rudbeckia inflorescence, a cultivar called "Summerina Brown", which has dark golden brown velvety 'petals' (ray florets). This type of colour and texture can be challenging and in order to achieve such a finish it's necessary to understand two things. Firstly, the importance of underlying and interacting colours and secondly the necessary of different watercolour techniques to maintain underlying colours and build texture. Here is a little about my process.

Lighting

These flowers are incredibly obliging for the painter, they flower for months and last a long time once cut, towards the end of summer they start to yellow producing amazing autumnal colours. I began by lighting the plant to make the most of its colour, using a 5,500 k daylight lamp with a CRI (colour render index) of over 90. I wanted to bring out the full range of colours and the velvety texture, without good lighting this isn't possible, is I played with the light until I created the desired look but kept in mind the true colour of the flower at all times. I took many reference photographs in case the flower wilted, but it didn't! 

The flower: I used a few different flowers for reference, this one had a slightly gnarled centre, so I used one with a fresher looking centre. I lit the flower dramatically to bring out the golden colour and to make more of the highlights which had a contrasting violet appearance in places, these contrasting colours work to enhance each other. 

Research 

I made sketches and notes about the plant and other Rudbeckias in my garden. It's a member of Asteraceae, which have an inflorescence comprising a central disc of tiny flowers, surrounded by the petal like ray florets. In this Rudbeckia the stem is ridged and hairy, leaves are simple and hairy on both sides. I also made sketches of other Rudbeckia from the garden as seen below, but this Summerina Brown is my favourite and I loved the way the petals twist and turn, it makes a much more interesting composition than the one below, which is nice but quite stiff.

Sketchbook studies: A different Rudbeckia, gorgeous colours but not such an appealing shape.

Process 

Colour matching is the first task and I do this in good natural daylight. I identify any underlying colours, there are violets and golden yellows. and dark red/browns in the ray florets.
I begin by painting in the underlying colours in the petals, I identify rich violets mixed from Indanthrene Blue and Quinacridone Magenta and also a warmer mix of Indanthrene Blue and Permanent Carmine (mostly carmine). I also drop in a few small highlights of a lighter Manganese Blue which makes the violet pop.

Putting in the underlying colours also creates form and structure in the early stages of the painting

As a slight aside, I can't miss out the central disc structure. I plotted this by lightly drawing in the two spirals, one is clockwise and the other counterclockwise, you can probably see below that one spiral is not as steep as the other. This is actually easier than it looks if you sketch the spirals in and then paint around the little flowers, towards the centre of the disk they disappear into a furry type of appearance.  I paint the spirals in first but not as straight lines but painting around the little bumps of the flower and add a the violet wash over the top, varying the colour slightly from a blue violet to a red violet by altering the ratio of blue and red. I leave the yellow pollen areas clear of paint and add yellow later. Finally. I deepen between the flowers where necessary using creamier darker mixes, which are almost black using the same colours as the painting develops, the colours are Indanthrene Blue, Permanent Carmine and a touch of Transparent Yellow.

This is a typical composite Inflorescence. Here you can see the two spirals in the central disk, which comprises many tiny flowers, the yellow is the pollen from the open flowers at the outer edge. Flower opening is sequential and this maximises a chance of pollination over a long period. Each tiny flower can develop into a single seed if successfully pollinated. 

After painting in the underlying violet colours I start to add selective areas of the golden colour, I do this by dampening the area where I want this colour to shine through and apply by dropping a condensed creamy mix of Transparent Yellow mixed with a touch of Scarlet Lake into the brighter areas. It's important to control the intensity and spread, so dampening the area with the right amount of water is important.
I also start to add the darker reds, using a combination of 3 reds. The reds in this flower vary from cooler to warmer mixes depending on the light. The three reds used in this painting are Quinacridone Magenta (cool), Scarlet Lake (the brightest 'hot' red) and Permanent Carmine (darker warm red). I also mix very rich dark purples for the deepest shadow areas using the Carmine and Indanthrene.

Adding the bright colours, yellows and reds.

At this stage, I begin to build the petal colour and texture. Using transparent yellow, scarlet lake and Permanent Carmine in different ratios of mixes, I continue to build colour by what I refer to as 'selective application' wetting/dampening small areas with clean water  and dropping in colour. In fact I seldom add a wash of any one colour all over any subject and use this selective approach all of the the time, its more like a 'patchwork' painting.

building up the petal veins with soft veins 

As I build colour less and less water is used, ironically water can be the enemy of the watercolour botanical artist, too much in a flower like this will spread and dilute colour, it can also flatten the intensity of the colour and smother the underlying colours that we want to preserve,  making them dirty (not to mention the problem of ragged and hard edges) - too little water makes unsightly thick paint, so I find dampening the the most useful approach.
There are deep ridges and soft veins in the ray florets/ 'petals' and I dampen the area and paint these using a fairly thick mix of paint onto a pre dampened area so that lines are soft. To define edges I wet the outer edge where the hard line is needed and drop creamy paint at the edge and soften inwards. I use dry (damp brush is probably a better description) on a slightly dampened surface to create the velvety surface texture.  There is much selective layering and building of colour, some needs to be overlaid and other areas preserved - at this stage I find that I have to be brave and keep going! adding small amounts of reds, violets and brown using these techniques but still using the same colours by dampening and dry approach interchangeably to control the colour. At this stage I must keep a close eye on the light and shade in the flower to see the bumps and crevices in the 'petals' and elsewhere. I try not to make assumptions and keep looking at the subject for clues.  I find consistent lighting from a lamp and squinting helps me to see the lights and darks yet I always use a magnifier to see and paint the detail.

Bring up to this stage using the red/brown mixes for the colour building. I use dry on damp and dry on dry depending on the desired outcome, dry on damp is great for those soft veins. A wetter surface is needed for creating a sharp edges and dry on dry can create more texture.

I add the stem and this looks almost finished but I continue to add more colour as the actual flower is richer. Definition is still needed in the center and edges.  

 I add the green stem and a single leaf, for this mix I use underlying blue on the light side of the stem (Manganese Blue) and underlying violet at the shade areas (Manganese Blue and Quinacridone Magenta) these subtle colours are hardly visible but do make a difference. I use a mix of Indanthrene blue, transparent yellow and a touch of quinacridone magenta for the green mix (yes the same colours as used elsewhere) I paint in the darker ridges and than add a yellow biased green mix first, followed by a richer darker green (more blue and red in the mix) - using the same colours in the flower and the greens creates more 'unity in a painting. I never find the need to use ready made greens, some greens contain black and other pigments that flatten the colour especially when mixed. Don't get me wrong some ready mixed greens are probably ok but I never find the need for them.
Finally, I add the fine hairs at the edge that are on the white paper using a mix of manganese blue, quinacridone magenta and transparent yellow to mix a grey, where the pale hairs are on the green, I use some white gouache and add a small amount of the same colour. I also paint a small shadow line under some of the hairs using a violet mix. At this point I put the panting away for a day and then review.

Rudbeckia watercolour size 28 x 18 cm The finished painting, slightly deeper colour  added all over.

Materials 

Paints, Windsor & Newton artist quality: 

Reds: Quinacridone Magenta, Scarlet Lake and Permanent Carmine

Yellows: Transparent Yellow 

Blues: Manganese Blue and Indanthrene Blue 

Brushes:

Winsor and Newton series 7 Miniature size 4 and 2 

Paper:

Saunders Waterford  140lb (300gsm) HP  High white 

I've been using this paper for all my tutorials and paintings over the last few months and find that it's pretty robust. so for the moment will stick with it.  I seldom need a heavier paper as I don't use much water, I only use heavier paper if working on large paintings, such a a full imperial sheet size. 

Painting Roses and Colour Mixing: Sheffield Florilegium Workshop

I recently ran a workshop on painting roses for The Florilegium Society at Sheffield Botanical Garden. It's always interesting to talk to participants and take on board what they have to say about where they find difficulties. I offered to write this blog post for those who attended on the day and for general interest for anyone interested in drawing and painting roses, with a few additions on palettes and colour mixing too which was a common topic of the day.

A rose painted before the workshop, colours worked out in advance using a combination of Permanent Rose, Quinacridone magenta and a touch of cobalt blue in the shadow colour. The use of blue in a shadow on a pink rose gives a very fresh look, which is important in roses and ther flowers.

It was a very warm welcome from quite a large group of 18, I probably talked far too much but hopefully shared some useful information.
Drawing and painting a rose in a day is a tall order at the best of times, so I had forwarded some preparatory information of how to approach the drawing of a rose, but as you no doubt know, there are an enormous variety of roses, however the basic principles for drawing and painting are the same.

How to approach a Rose Painting
If I were to paint a rose for a florilegium, I would probably paint it over two seasons. This is the best way to familiarise yourself with the plant. I take the approach of a study page initially, which enables me to 'get to know' all of the plant parts as well as working out the colours, approach and watercolour techniques. For the workshop participants were to draw and paint just one aspect of the rose but hopefully they will now be better equip to tackle roses in the future. Here's a breakdown of the process I outlined on the day.

A study page started at the Sheffield workshop. The rose is William Lobb, a Moss rose

Line Drawing
If the drawing is flawed or incomplete, it certainly wont get any better as the painting progresses and this is particularly true with a complex form, such as a rose. Consequently an incomplete drawing can easily become confusing and rather overwhelming.
The best approach is to measure and be systematic, break down the subject into shapesand don't be afraid of taking photographs for reference... remember roses like to rearrange their petals when you're not looking! I always start by taking overall dimensions, then look for noticeable angles, which I plot, next I look for 'land marks', such as unusual shaped or distinctive petals. I gradually plot the petals on a basic grid, which allows me to navigate around the flower and to see the petals in relationship to each other by position. I work on tracing paper for ease of corrections transfer to watercolour paper this mehtod aviods wasting paper so doesn't cost much if you make a mistake.

Stages of Drawing: Measure, plot angles using pencil and thumb method and find 'land-mark' petals to work your way around the flower in a systematic way.

Palette and Colour Mixes
Start with finding the basic hues for all parts. Having a piece of white card with a hole cut in it can help you to isolate the colours in the subject, remember that surrounding colours of an object can alter your perception of colour, so it's important to remove other colours that may distract you. You can take photographs for reference but never try to match colours from a photograph - it will not be accurate, instead always colour match from life in good natural daylight by a window.
Identifying colour mixes seemed to be a general problem for many people on the day. My attitude is to keep it simple, work with a palette of 12-18 paints. A good range of single pigment primary colour paints is what should be used for florilegium work, remember the whole point of this type of work is longevity and documentation, and that means using the best materials available. Paints should have ASTM I or II,  Opera Rose should never be used for Florilegium work! a few participants did use it for fun though and by way of comparison. Some people say they have done windowsill tests but a test of 5 - 10 years has no robustness, so best to be cautious and avoid fugitive colours....if the manufacturer say its fugitive, I'd take their word for it. I start with colour and technique experimentation on small areas, such as petals.

A simple exercise in working out colour and technique, for William Lobb, a David Austin Rose. Start with a simple petal on your study page or sketchbook. Colours used here: Quinacridone Magenta, Permanent Rose and Violet Dioxazine. Three washes and dry brush work to create the texture of the petal. 

Greens
Greens always seem to present problems, I have seen some of the most bizarre colour mixes, with multiple pigment paints and even using colours with black, such as Indigo and Sepia, this is bound to end in a flat and dirty appearance, so again keep it simple.
Painting a green chart is useful (see below) and mix all greens from primaries.  I don't recommend using convenience colours such as Sap Green because almost every different brand has different combination of pigments, some have up to 4 others have 2 and none in common with each other, the result is unpredictable! Every time you add another pigment to it you move nearer to mud! I'm not saying never use convenience colours but if you do use it make sure you add no more than one additional pigment.
Carefully observe the colour to see how it is affected by light, this can make it warmer or cooler and there may also be underlying colours.

Careful observation of greens is required! I would use and underlying cobalt blue wash for the highlights in this leaf. Some areas are more yellow biased ( leaf stalk and mid rib) and some more blue biased. See how the light catches each leaflet, making one side of the leaf blade darker and more blue than the other blade because of the effect of light.

 It's much better to mix your own greens I start with a 1:1 ratio of a blue and a yellow to mix a secondary colour and usually add a small amount of red to make a more natural green. Then I can bias the mix from cool, with more blue; to warm, with more yellow, and also towards a more muted or appearance, with more red in the mix. Here's a short clip of how I work out greens ( not specific to the rose but hopefully still useful. I can also mix all the browns and any other colours this way and with the same three colours. 

I usually mix greens using a blue with a light value similar to the green that I'm trying to achieve, no-one at the workshop had ever heard of this before! so we discussed it at the end of the day. Basically, this means that I use a high light value blue, such as cerulean for a light coloured leaf, a mid light value blue, such as cobalt for a mid value green and a dark blue, such as Indanthrene, for a dark green leaf. Below you can see the high light value greens on the top row, the mid range in the middle row and the the darks on the bottom row. Of course you can paint them in different densities to make darker of lighter too.

Green mixes separated by light value of the blue. Top row: High light value blue mixes, middle row, mid range blue mixes and bottom row, dark values blue mixes. This simple process allows you to identify the type of green that you are looking to achieve with your leaf.

 Always make a note of the colours and paint a swatch for future reference and as part of your working practice.

Here's my suggested palette: approx 5 Reds, 5 Blues and 4 Yellows plus a few others:

• Reds: Permanent Rose, Permanent Alizarin Crimson or Permanent Carmine, Quinacridone Magenta, Permanent Magenta and and Scarlet lake

• Blues: Cerulean blue, Cobalt blue, French Ultramarine, Winsor Blue and Indanthrene Blue I also like Prussian Blue
• Yellows: Lemon Yellow Nickel Titanate, Winsor Lemon, Winsor Yellow and Transparent Yellow
• Others: Cobalt Violet and Violet Dioxazine

Don't overwhelm yourself by buying too many paints, it's important to understand the properties of the paint and to learn colour mixing first.  You can add more later but you don't really need them. 

The Painting Preparation and Process
Paper: Always use 100% cotton archival paper. Transfer the drawing by tracing lightly on the back of the final drawing with a B grade pencil. Use a soft tip fine liner to trace on the front side to transfer and this will allow you to see where you have been with the tracing and will prevent you from applying too much pressure, which can indent the paper and ruin it.

Brushes: Don't use brushes that are too small, this tend to lead to an overworked appearance and makes very hard work of it. I use a Kolinsky sable Size 5 round and pointed/ round for the initial washes and size 3, 2 and 1, miniatures or spotters for detail and dry brush (I use old worn brushes for dry brush work), also series 107 Pro Arte spotters are great for detail. I also find the Pro Arte synthetic Series 62 Flat shader, size 1 excellent for repairing edges and lifting.  Again I have other brushes but this selection will do the job These last two brushes are cheap craft brushes and cost about £1.75. There is no need to purchase specialist brushes for this purpose. Most are simple cheap brushes that have been re-branded.

Use appropriate sized brushes, I've seen artists using size 2 brushes for washes, this is far too small

 Watercolour Techniques
I use a range of techniques but generally employ a staged approach as follows:
1. Apply the 'tea' wash sometimes wet-in-wet or wet on dry in smaller areas, this lays the foundations. Be sure not to have pencil line under the wash and remove as much as possible first. you can also work just inside any pencil lines on the outside edge.Then remove any remaining pencil after the first tea wash.
2. Build colour with more layers of washes and introducing some detail and shadows, more selected washes in the areas requiring more depth of colour. washes
3. Add detail and dry brush work to build texture and final detail
4. Tidy up any areas such as edges if needed.

On a complex rose I find it easier to work from the outer petals and work towards the centre, as shown in the video below, I also work on alternate petals so that they are dry before moving to the next petal.  

Using a burnisher is useful between washes, as with some papers 'flocking' occurs on the paper surface. Make sure that the washes are completely dry before using. I use either a flat agate palm stone or my new toy which is a gilders burnisher, which is excellent.

A gilders agate burnisher is perfect for smoothing and flocking of the paper surface, which can happen with certain papers. Available from gold leaf suppliers

Overall it was a very enjoyable day at Sheffield. I learned about the the Society and you can find out more and view the archive of work on their website

The Green Book

This week I've been reading extracts from Ruskin's Elements of Drawing...what a wise man!
I love these Victorian texts because they feel much more philosophical than modern instruction manuals.  Anyway it got me thinking about whether there's a better way forward for my students than painting endless colour  charts, given that I've already put them through numerous torturous brush technique exercises and feeling duty bound to come up with something more interesting. I've nothing at all against painting colour charts but tend to do mine in the context of study pages because painting exercises need to be be put into context to make them meaningful.
Students of botanical art often cite the green palette as troublesome ....and hand-in-hand with the 'green'  problem comes difficulty with painting leaves. So I thought it might be a good idea to create 'colour' based  sketchbooks....Starting with green of course.  It's not exactly a new idea but I quite like the idea of colour reference books sitting on the bookshelf.

So before inflicting the idea on anybody else I made a start on my own Green Book this week to see how it works out..... It was tempting at this point to make a red book and a yellow book etc. but I want to keep this achievable.

My first Green Book entry, Asparagus, Painted using Cobalt Blue dp., Transparent Yellow and Permanent Alizarin Crimson. 

Using a low cost W&N sketchbook, I covered it with green paper ( Blue Peter style again). I wont be using the sketchbook paper but instead will work on watercolour paper off-cuts gluing the studies into the book later... to be useful, colour studies should be painted on the same paper as any final pieces.

The variety of greens is many and varied, so this should be an opportunity to really get to grips with them as well as a chance to study leaves and other subjects too. I started by collecting up some fridge finds followed by a collection of a few things from a morning walk (see images below) You can see the variety of greens in just that small collection....this will be a fat sketchbook!

One of the problems with greens, and any colour for that matter, appears to be in 'seeing' the particular variation of the basic hue - by that I mean that what we 'know' about an object, i.e. 'it's green all over!' which can over-ride what we actually see. It's simply not good enough to just add a standard looking highlight, a bit of shadow and a touch of reflected light in approximately the right place as expected. There's more to it than that!

When painting in watercolour we have to learn to 'see' all of the colours. To observe the way that the light interacts with the colour of an object is all important because it significantly alters the three attributes of colour, i. e. the hue,saturation and tone. I often use a piece of white card with a hole cut in it to identify the varying colours of the subject,  this helps me to see the effect of light and shade by isolating each colour and removing surrounding colours which influence our colour perception. The same effect of isolating colours can bee seen below in the lime image below.

Above: Observations of the variation in colour caused by the effect of light falling on a lime. You can see how the basic hue, which is found in the mid tones, becomes more yellow or blue and also warmer or cooler in relation to each other. How it becomes lighter or darker in tone, and less saturated under the effect of both light and shade. On the bottom row I have turned the colours to black and white to highlight the difference in the tonal values between the isolated colours. Observe the tonal values carefully without being fooled. Good observation of the values will really bring your painting to life...... and always preserve the highlights! 

There is no better test of your colour tones being good, than your having made the whites in your pictures precious , and the black conspicuous...Ruskin

When mixing colours I try to work with as few as possible, chosen from the primary palette I generally use 3 colours to mix greens; blue and yellow form the basic green plus a smaller amount of a red. I usually choose from 4 blues, 4 yellows and three reds. Occasionally I use two blues in a mix and also use overlaid washes, which results in greater transparency. I tend to work with transparent colours in the washes to preserve luminosity. The basic 3 colours can makes a very large number of different greens simply by altering the ratio of the 3 colours and also the with the ratio of water used. Personally I've always had particular dislike of opaque colours with black in them, indigo being one of the worst to use in a green wash, it results in a flat dull appearance when overlaid.  I was pleased to read that Ruskin refers to Field's Chromatography as follows: ....while Indigo is marked by Field as more fugitive still, and is very ugly.

also:

Only observe always this, that the less colour you do the work with, the better it will always be.

A collection of leaves, branches and lichens made on a morning walk, showing a variety of leaf types and colours. 

And one of a few green creatures found among the collection

From my collection I chose a dark green ivy leaf with very prominent venation and which was not particularly shiny for ivy. Using good natural light, I first identified the basic hue and decide on which blue, yellow and red to try out for the mix. Once I have identified the basic hue I look at colour saturation and tone. 

Colour studies using 3 colours, shown  on the left page entry. A  quick leaf study putting the colour chart into practice.

I chose the three colours to work with and tried out a various combinations to get the yellow or blue biased greens and light and dark greens. I used Indanthrene Blue and Transparent Yellow plus a small amount of Quin Magenta. At first I though I might need something darker but decided that was unnecessary. The only other colour used was a small amount of Cerulean Blue which I used in an initial graded wash the bring out the soft highlights. That's probably a bit of a habit though and I'm not sure that I actually needed it. The stem was also painted using the same colours. I believe the less colours used - the better the continuity in a painting. I number all of the colours and make a note of the order of washes applied and the techniques used. Hopefully I can refer to this chart again in the future

Ivy leaf study with my initial colour choices.

So that's all from the Green book this week. I'll sign off with another Ruskin quote, one I must try to keep in mind when feeling bad tempered:

Your power of colouring depends much on your state of health and right balance of mind: when you are fatigued or ill you will not see colours well, and when you are ill-tempered you will not choose them well.

John Ruskin, Elements of Drawing in Three letters to Beginners, Letter III On Colour and Composition 1857