Flowers Going Beyond Realism - Watercolor Lesson with Karlyn Holman

This lesson is a balance of negative and positive painting. Blending the background with your subject or blending one shape into another will add variety to your composition. A lot of this relationship is actually a spontaneous and intuitive process. Just let it happen.

This first lesson will focus on semi-abstraction. My love for realism and my love for abstraction comes together in this lesson. To begin, study your subject and decide on the shapes, colors and textures you want to use in your painting, Some parts of the subject may be painted more realistically and other parts may be more abstracted. Push and pull the tension to arrive at a semi-abstract interpretation.

This lesson allows us to focus on the elements of design and to express ourselves in a very personal way. The key focus in this lesson is the balance of negative and positive painting and lost and found edges. We are trying to capture the essence of a flower, both familiar and sometimes made up. We will start with a spontaneous, free underpainting and later try to pull in a bit of realism. We will push and pull this tension to arrive at a semi-abstract interpretation. Blending the background with our subject or blending one shape into another will add variety to our composition. A lot of this relationship is actually an intuitive process. So, just let it happen. This lesson will focus on semi abstraction. My love for realism and my love for abstraction comes together in this lesson.


To begin, study your subject and decide on the shapes, colors and textures you want to use in your painting, Some parts of the subject may be painted more realistically and other parts may be more abstracted. Push and pull the tension to arrive at a semi-abstract interpretation. This lesson allows us to focus on the elements of design and to express ourselves in a very personal way.

Process:
1. This lesson starts with a wet into wet underpainting. While the surface is wet, take some risk and add BRUSHO and salt and even throw some sprinkles of water onto the surface. This breaks up the surface and makes it possible for you to find floral shapes. Just for fun, cut up wax paper and let it drop onto the wet surface. Taking some risks in this early stage will result in these lovely textural surprises. Let this underpainting dry.

2. Begin finding your flowers and either draw in those shapes with an HB pencil or negatively paint around the shapes. The biggest challenge is that you do not paint around the entire shape. This will kill the fresh look you are trying to attain. Select about three places to define the flower and leave the other sides without definition.

3. When you paint the flowers keep the petals light against the dark background and paint the petals dark against the light background. Leave much of the background as the underpainting, try not to overwork your composition. Remember we are trying to only capture the essence of flowers and leave some of the areas as abstraction.

4. The final touch is to add your darkest darks. Remember to not overdo this path of dark, just get in and get out and lose the edges.


Materials list
• Watercolor Paint
• BRUSHO. (These are highly-pigmented, transparent watercolor/ink crystals. You can sprinkle the powder with a dry brush or dissolve the crystals in water or simply sprinkle from the jar. They are non-toxic and non-hazardous. They have been around for over 35 years.)
• Arches 140# paper

Paints Used:
Scarlet Lake
Quinacridone Gold
Antwerp Blue
French Ultramarine Blue
Cobalt Blue
Winsor Orange
Quinacridone Burnt Orange