How to paint a flower still life with watercolor on canvas

English Garden
Watercolor and mixed media on canvas
12 x 12 inches

buy prints by North Vancouver artist Sandrine Pelissier — Original is sold, prints available here

When you want to paint from imagination, starting with an abstract background gives you a good starting point to try to see shapes. There are many ways to start an abstract background, here it is with watercolor on canvas.

Here are the steps you can take to paint a flower still life with watercolor on canvas

mixing watercolors wet into wet on canvas

Start by mixing watercolors wet into wet on the canvas using a dropper.

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Yarka St. Petersburg Professional Watercolor Pans

Same palette of traditional colors the great masters used a century ago. Liquid-poured means semi-moist pans respond instantly to a wet brush. 24 pans in plastic case. Also individual pans. – Master Set

spray alcohol on watercolor for visual texture

If you want to, you can spray alcohol to help with the formation of abstract patterns.

Let the canvas dry. As this are watercolor and they could be very easily lifted up form the canvas,, you will need to spray the painting with fixative once it is dry before the next steps.

If you want more complexity, you can paint additional layers, here a layer of turquoise blue acrylic.

outlining shapes before negative painting technique

drawing the shapes of the flowers and the vase

Now this is where the real fun starts. On the same idea as the Rohrbach test, try to guess shapes in the design. Here I see little flowers.

Outline the main contours of the shapes you see.

outlining flower shapes from an abstract background

painting the negative space with white acrylic on canvas

Block those shapes by painting all the negative space with white acrylic.

flower still life with negative space painted in white

You can introduce more colors as you go, like here on the vase.

drawing roses on top of the watercolor on canvas

You can draw on top of shapes to add definition.

detail of the watercolor roses on canvas

outlining flower shapes with a Sakura pigma micron marker

and add designs with markers, here I used Sakura pigma micron markers.

Sakura Pigma Micron Pen

Pigma Micron pens are acid-free and archival, making them ideal for any application requiring precision and permanance. Pigma ink is derived from a single pigment to ensure color consistency, and is fadeproof against sunlight or UV light. – Set of 6, Black