Watercolor is such a great medium to render reflections on water and paint beautiful scenes with lily pads.
One of the trick  to render a water scene is to pay attention to the quality of your edges and see from your reference picture which edges are soft (blurry) and which edges are hard (well defined).

Here are the steps you can take to paint a water scene with lily pads.

Start by stretching your paper, here I am using a board and stretcher bars. Then transfer a detailed drawing on your paper. I used Arches hot press 140 lb.  To transfer your drawing you could use a grid system or a light box.

You might also like: How to make your own lightbox for tracing on watercolor paper

Here is my color palette
Holbein: cobalt turquoise light,
Daniel Smith : Burnt Sienna
Da Vinci Prussian blue, Cadmium Lemon Yellow and Sap Green
Van Gogh: Madder Lake Light

With watercolor, the first step is often to preserve some white areas on the paper with masking fluid, so you can paint around freely.

Look at your reference picture and see where you want to leave the paper unpainted. Apply masking fluid on those areas.

With masking fluid, you have to wait for the liquid to air dry as if you use a hairdryer, it will bind the masking fluid to the paper and make it very difficult to take it off.

I am a Blick Art Materials affiliate and I receive a small compensation for sales. That does not effect in any way the cost of the purchaser’s order but it helps me keeping the content of this blog free.

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Daler-Rowney Masking Fluid This fluid is used to create striking white highlights or to mask areas for overpainting at a later stage. It forms a fast-drying, water-resistant film on watercolor paper and board, and is easily removed when dry.

I am starting by a gradated wash of Prussian Blue on the lower corners of the painting. Painting a gradated wash will allow some color variation with only soft edges.

I then start painting the Lilly pads leaves, mixing colors wet into wet inside the leaves and painting a darker outline wet on dry around the leaves, on the part where they touch the water.

I am also painting the upper section, mixing different tones of Prussian blue and sap green wet into wet.

I work on the painting one section at a time, here starting to work on the water reflections under the Lilly pads.

To paint a complex scene, I often find that just painting section by section will make it more manageable and less overwhelming.

For the middle section of the painting, I start by applying a light blue wash and then will paint the many colors of the water reflections, just looking at my reference picture and trying to reproduce the colors I see there.

I am mixing my colors directly on my working table, I like a bit of mess when painting 🙂

I am a Blick Art Materials affiliate and I receive a small compensation for sales. That does not effect in any way the cost of the purchaser’s order but it helps me keeping the content of this blog free.

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

I have a lot of hard edges in some of the water reflections, as you can see on picture above. I will soften them later with a bit of water and a stiff brush

When you take off the masking fluid, you might want to soften some of the hard edges along the areas where the masking fluid was painted. You can do so easily with a stiff brush and a bit of water

Time to splash! I made 3 light washes mix, the blue wash has a bit of white gouache added to it.

I add splashes of color and spray the painting with water, letting the paint move and taking off paint I don’t want with a tissue paper.

Nymph Echo, watercolor on paper
17 x 29 inches

Here are a few close-up of the finished painting:

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Here is a time lapse video,