[Chloe Reid]

Watercolour.
I'm looking for critique about my work as I am experimenting with watercolour. Tips or comments would be very helpful.

 

[Scott R Nelson]

Okay, here goes...

Overall, the shape of the petals looks good to me. What color are the stamen and pistil on the actual flowers? Photos I've looked at have either white ones or closer to the flower petals.

I'm wondering if the drips are intentional. I generally paint on a flat surface so that I don't get runs from wet paint.

It looks like you're using black for the dark parts. You might experiment with either a darker color of the same hue, or maybe a complementary color to darken it up. I guess I have a personal thing against using black if there is any other way to get the effect that I want.

After doing a few flowers, I've discovered that it's actually quite difficult to accurate produce the true colors that I see. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to do a California Poppy and get the feeling for how they look in the morning early in the year when they're the deepest orange color. I think I might need some sort of fluorescent orange to match the color I'm seeing when I look at one in person.

 

[Chloe Reid]

Thank you for your feed back that is very helpful to me. Much appreciated.

 

[pencils]

To me, the runs take something away from the stems, have to tried layering your colors one on top of the other allowing each to dry between?Nothing wrong with black...though I haven`t used, what we used to call "company colors " meaning, straight out of the tube, everything I use gets mixed now...you could try a little Prussian Blue or Payne`s Gray with the black, but test those out on a another piece of paper see what you like and you can add or subtract color until you find something you like. Do you work with pencils or coloring pencils? Might help figure out the shading that way. And do more....in my case it has taken me years to get a grasp on watercolor and how they react to different kinds and weights of paper. Each one is a learning experience, make mistakes and learn from them. There is no substitute for experience

 

[AZACRYLIC]

That pencils, he so good, because I agree with his critique!

 

[Chloe Reid]

Thanks for the feed back, honestly helps a lot! Taking it all on board.

 

[pencils]

Paint every day of you can and don`t get upset if most of what you do gets tossed, when I started with watercolor, 75% of what I did was thrown away, of the remaining 25%, about 10% was seen by other people...but it wasn`t a waste of time or materials, it`s really the only way to learn. I took a class with a master watercolorist when I decided to get the medium a try, I`d worked with oils exclusively prior to that, and the class was a must for me, it probably saved me years of trial and error, and even with a great teacher, I still had to contend with the numbers I mentioned above, just the way it is. These days, many years later the percentage of crap is much much lower though I still manage to muck one up now and again, but thats what I like about watercolors, always on the edge of disaster but also, on the edge of possibility. paintpaintpaint