Hi it's Anna Mason, and in this watercolour tip video I wanted to unpack the colour mixing
decisions I made when I painted this gorgeous Magnolia flower. At a superficial glance we
might describe it as 'pink'. But when we really look at it we can see that even in one
of the pink petals, we have a whole range of pinks.
It can seem overwhelming to try to paint them all, but painting them all is vital to achieve
realism. So let me show you how I matched to these colours. I always work in the same
order - beginning with the lightest colours which you can see here. I start by selecting
the paint in my palette I think is closest to that one. This is where it really helps
to have a wide selection of colours. In this case I think the closest colour is Cobalt
Violet. So this will be my base colour. But I think that looks a little bit too blue. So
let's look at the colour wheel. We want to keep the colour nice and bright
- and we only need to shift it a fraction, so let's look to shift the colour away from
blue just a fraction and try the colour that's next to it but closer to red - that's the
Opera Rose With the Opera Rose added in and the mix watered
down a little more to keep it pale I apply this mix as a layer to the pink petals. After
painting in the branch, which was the darkest areas of the whole composition, I paint the
darkest tones in the petals which are these rich purple/pinks at the base of the petals.
To match to those I begin with some thick Permanent Rose which seems to be about
the closest I have in my palette to this colour. But when we look at it it's not dark enough
and it's too vibrant and too red. So if we look at the colour wheel I'll look to
add one of the neutral colours which will serve to mute the colour down and make it less vibrant, and because
I know I want to darken the colour and shift it a little towards blue, Payne's Grey is
my choice here. Though I'm only going to want to add a touch as it's such a dark colour that's going to
easily overwhelm the Permanent Rose if we're not careful. I put the Payne's Grey on my
palette to make it easier to get less of it on my brush, but then I still need to add
more Permanent Rose to the mix to balance it back and get the colour I'm looking for.
I then apply this mix to the darkest tone areas. Adding more of the Permanent Rose in
as I work into the slightly lighter areas. As we look at the area that connects up to
these darkest tones we can see that it's a really vibrant bright purplish-pink. So
to match to that I'll take Permanent Rose as my base colour. But as I look at it in
the palette it looks too red and not bright enough. If we look at it on the
colour wheel we can see that the colour needs to be shifted towards blue a little. The colour
next to it that is closer to blue, and is also really bright, is Opera Rose so I'm
going to add that into the mix. I add in thick Opera Rose and water the mix
down. Then I apply it to these darker midtone areas, adding in some Cobalt violet where the
colour was a little more purple-pink and slightly lighter.
After working on the darker end of the tonal range of these pink
petals, now let's look at the lighter end again - at the colours just a little darker
than the ones we painted with our first layer which you can see here.
Because it's a really similar hue to the one we used for our first layer, all I'm going
to do is use the same two paints but use them thicker and therefore darker.
So that's Opera Rose with plenty of Cobalt Violet and I then apply this to everywhere
except the lighter areas. After working on the lighter and darker ends
of the petals tonal range, it's time to bring them together with the middle and work on
the midtones which you can see here. They still have a purple-pink vibrant glow to them
so to apply them I use the same Cobalt Violet/ Opera mix again - this time applying it as
a third layer to these midtone sections. I then watered this same mix down some more
and applied it over the lightest tone areas again - everywhere that needed to be a
little darker - leaving just a few gaps through to the lightest tone mix from the first layer.
Once that's done I went on to paint the buff coloured petals. Because the way we perceive
colours depends on the colours we see around them, it was then time to go back in and make
some tonal adjustments...working on the darkest tones again.
And lightest tones again and repeating this until I felt the flower was complete.
I hope that's shown you just how important it is to really closely observe the colours
in your subjects - and also shown you a method for matching colours. Of course colour matching
is SO much easier if you really know your paints. So I recommend you spend some time
experimenting with them at different consistencies in your sketchbook soon!
A full video tutorial of this magnolia flower is available now in my online School.
If you've enjoyed this tip video, please subscribe to my YouTube channel and I'd
love it if you'd share this video with your friends.
And if you'd like to take one of my tried and tested video classes FOR FREE, hop on
over to AnnaMasonArt.com where you'll find even
more resources to help you pick up your brush and paint the way you've always wanted to.
Remember, you won't improve your painting unless you MAKE the time to paint. So be sure
to schedule in some me-time to paint something YOU love this week.
Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon with another tip for creating watercolours
with 'wow'.