How to Paint a Beautiful Watercolor Lavender

Do you like flowers and watercolor illustrations? Here, I will show you how to make a beautiful
watercolor illustration of lavenders. Perfect inspiration for the spring.

First
you need the following materials:

-Watercolors (I used three colors for this: olive green yellowish and ultramarine violet)

-Watercolor paper (I used Hanemühle's watercolor book 8.5 x 6 in).

-A round brush in size 4 and a fine brush. I used size 0.

-Handkerchief or paper towel to dab off some paint.

-Pencil and eraser

In these two photos I will show you what the shape of the lavender is and what our illustration should look like in the end.

First of all, if you want to be accurate, you can easily draw two lines at the beginning and at the end of the watercolor paper to set the illustration frame. You can decide how many centimeters leave for it. Keep in mind that it depends on how big
or small you want your lavenders. It is Important to leave an equal distance, as you can see in the photo. In this space you will paint your flowers.

You can now draw a sketch of the flowers with a pencil between the two lines. The shape of the lavender is very simple. It is important that you draw the lines very lightly, with little pressure, so that you cannot see the pencil lines later or can easily erase them.

In these two photos I will show you what the shape of the lavender is and what our illustration should look like in the end.

Note: You can do each of the following steps on each flower so that you allow time for each one to dry and move on to the next step.

To start painting the flowers first you need to mix a mid-tone of the ultramarine violet and then dab the shape of the flower with the brush.

It is important that you leave white areas between each petal and also that you do not have too much water on the brush, otherwise you will not be able to control the color and undesired water streaks can appear later. You will notice this when you see that the color is floating on the paper and you cannot see the paper pattern. If this is the case, you can dab the color on the paper towel.

Give a second coat to each flower in order to create a bit of plasticity and contrast to the petals by mixing the color again, but this time with a darker tone, from the ultramarine violet. To do this, you have to take more pigment (i.e. paint straight from the watercolor pan) then some water. Next, dab the shape of the flower again, but leave more free spaces however the flower should be completely dry beforehand.

When the whole flower has dried, you can now paint the stem with both yellow and olive green colors. This should be relatively thin. You can change the color between the stems by using more or less water.

It's time to start painting the leaves. You can see the shape in the photo. These are a bit elongated and look relatively upwards. You can leave the leaves in the middle and sometimes paint them darker or lighter. You can fill the neck stalks with leaves and if you want, you can paint a short and then a long stem on each side and fill them with leaves.

Paint a few small green lines at the base of each flower, as you can see in the photo, to make it look more natural.

Now you can paint a few more details. I always like to paint few dots here and there. This gives the painting a lot of personality.

For example, you can paint few dots in the leaves and few on the stem as well. The color that you use should be a little darker than the one you use for the leaves and stem. You can also paint a pair of lines in some leaves to make the illustration look pretty.

When you have finished painting the three flowers it's time to sprinkle them. This is optional, but I recommend you give it a try, it's a lot of fun! I used the ultramarine violet for this, but you can also use the olive green or, if you want, a different color. You do this by tapping the brush lightly with your finger.

And that's how quickly you have your illustration ready. I hope that you liked it and that you could paint it easily. Have fun!