Painting roses in watercolour can be a challenge, but with a few tips you can do it. 

Roses in watercolour by Ada Fagan:

Painting tips:

Some artists like doing a very soft pencil synopsis of where the roses are approximately going to be. No detail, just very basic outlines. 

Select where you want the highlights to be on the roses and paint them in with liquid masking. Don’t use a brush; rather use an eyedropper to draw in the highlight shapes. 

When the masking is properly dry... carefully rubbed out the soft pencil synopsis outlines. Do this before actually painting starts. 

Actual painting procedure:

Use a fine spray bottle and wet your paper both sides with water. Not too much water. Wet paper creates blurred image effects. Depending of cause how wet or dry your watercolour paper is. 

• Note that the centre of the roses is dark, because the surrounding petals create shadows. So paint the centre first, right over the masking liquid. 
• Putting contrast of tone in the centre of the roses pronounces them as the focal point. The one with the most contrast of tone and colour will be the main point of interest. 

And fill in the surrounding colours in the roses according to their tone values. Because of the masking you don’t have to stress where the paint flows into. This is what makes it fun painting roses. 

Creating form in the surrounding areas:

And while the painting is still fairly wet, fill in the surrounding leaves and stalks. 

With a posy of flowers you work from the centre outwards. That is, from the roses outwards. 

With watercolour you work from light colours to dark colours. This helps to create form, through different tone values. Example: Light colours, medium colours and dark shady areas. 

As the paper dries, add your darker colours. This will give definition to the edges of the light forms. 

What makes an exciting painting?

Not too much detail. Too much detail can make the painting look busy and stiff. 

Soft edges (blurred form edges) allow the eyes to travel smoothly, and gives the painting an emotional appeal. 

Only put detail where it’s important… mostly at the main focal point, or to lead the eye into the painting. 

The outer edges of you painting must be out of focus. In this case, you may have to re-wet the out areas to create a soft blurred atmospheric effect.