In early June, I had another commission come in through this Etsy listing for a custom watercolor bouquet, purchased by a husband for his wife on their anniversary.
Brent requested that I include their wedding date somewhere on the painting, and supplied me with photographs to work from of his wife's wedding bouquet, which was a tightly bound bouquet of calla lilies.
I started, as always, by lightly tracing the outline of the bouquet onto watercolor paper. Then I taped it to the table. (If I'd been thinking, I also would have traced the wedding date onto the bouquet at that point, but I forgot to do so until later - which is why I ended up having to transfer the digits onto the paper instead of tracing them.)
Then I did a light wash to get the general colors down.
And started building up layers of darker, brighter colors.
I decided to put the date on top, in the same color purple/pink as the insides of the calla lilies. I transferred the date onto the watercolor paper by printing the date out onto computer paper, coloring the back of the computer paper with graphite pencil, lining it up where I wanted it to go, and then tracing over the printed ink with a pen, pushing the graphite down onto the watercolor paper with pressure.
If you squint, you can see the faint graphite outline of the numbers on the watercolor paper.
Then I painted in the date:
I used some white acrylic paint to lighten up certain parts of the calla lilies so that it better matched the photograph, and then decided there was too much white acrylic in the upper left corner, and so added another layer of green/brown watercolor, and then a final bit of thinned white acrylic on top of that.
I also used some white/yellow acrylic to add in the only visible stamen in the center of one of the flowers.
Once it was dry, I peeled the masking tape off, flattened the painting for a few days under a pile of books, and then packaged it up to ship it out to Brent in Alabama.
Brent requested that I include their wedding date somewhere on the painting, and supplied me with photographs to work from of his wife's wedding bouquet, which was a tightly bound bouquet of calla lilies.
I started, as always, by lightly tracing the outline of the bouquet onto watercolor paper. Then I taped it to the table. (If I'd been thinking, I also would have traced the wedding date onto the bouquet at that point, but I forgot to do so until later - which is why I ended up having to transfer the digits onto the paper instead of tracing them.)
Then I did a light wash to get the general colors down.
And started building up layers of darker, brighter colors.
I decided to put the date on top, in the same color purple/pink as the insides of the calla lilies. I transferred the date onto the watercolor paper by printing the date out onto computer paper, coloring the back of the computer paper with graphite pencil, lining it up where I wanted it to go, and then tracing over the printed ink with a pen, pushing the graphite down onto the watercolor paper with pressure.
If you squint, you can see the faint graphite outline of the numbers on the watercolor paper.
Then I painted in the date:
I used some white acrylic paint to lighten up certain parts of the calla lilies so that it better matched the photograph, and then decided there was too much white acrylic in the upper left corner, and so added another layer of green/brown watercolor, and then a final bit of thinned white acrylic on top of that.
I also used some white/yellow acrylic to add in the only visible stamen in the center of one of the flowers.
Here's the final painting (above and below):
Once it was dry, I peeled the masking tape off, flattened the painting for a few days under a pile of books, and then packaged it up to ship it out to Brent in Alabama.
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