Flower "Step by Step" Loose Watercolour Painting

I've been asked to do a video on how I did the clematis but sounds a bit technical so thought a step by step might "break" me in before I go for the filming bit!!! My friend Susan Hall and I were chatting and she wanted to give this flower a go, we have been on-line friends and painting buddies for a good while now and the whole "loose" thing started with Susan so I have a lot to be grateful to her for....

This is the image Susan chose (one of Suzanne Wallick's lovely photos on Paint my Photo ) and I have to say wasn't sure how to begin. I thought I would start on the centre at first, then decided to do a full wash instead

Used opera rose, ub, may green, permanent rose, dash of green gold, paper is 20"x25" 200lb Hahnemuhle, so slightly smaller and squarer than full imperial. The biggest I have ever done!!! Tried to keep the pink/purple shades to the outside with darker shades in the centre. Now what to do next.... well first it needs to dry and then am going to try and do a mix of positive and negative painting defining some of the petals but by no means all but not sure at this stage where to do that..... exciting eh?

Thought I might be losing it here, kept going in before it was properly dry.... am always telling other people not to do that but I get carried away!!! Anyway I add paint then wash it away by adding clean water to the darker paint so that I don't get hard lines (you may notice the bg to the left is slightly lighter than the first photo.. that's because it had a hard line as it dried so I washed it away) and also let the colour bleed into other areas so that hard lines are kept to a minimum. I have made a mistake with the paper, as I had forgotten it has both rough and smoother sides and I have used the smooth for this whereas I much prefer rough.

Starting to see it now and I liked the "unfinished area to the left so decided to keep something of that as I continued to add some of the detail around the centre of the flower. Just kept adding a mix of darks both negatively and positively and washing away to pick out some of the petals. At this stage I was using some violet to give added depth to the darks. Another note about letting the paint dry, as I work on each area and wash away the paint I need to let each of those areas fully dry before I even think about going in again, otherwise mud will happen before my very eyes!!!

This is where it got trickier, deciding where to lose the flower head so I had a few goes and think this looked the best, at this stage it really is a case of keep stepping back to observe from a distance and tweaking it until it looks right to you. At this stage I also added a touch of chinese white for some highlights in the centre.

So that's the first step by step I've done, I usually forget to do the photographs in between but disciplined myself for this one. Would be very interested to hear your comments about whether you found this useful and would also be very happy to answer any questions you might have. Just leave me a message here or by e-mail and I will get back to you.