The Modern Flower Painter A Guide to Creating Vibrant Botanical Portraits in Watercolour

About this book

Anna Mason's exceptional floral artwork has won awards from the Royal Horticultural Society, International Artist magazine and seen her elected to the prestigious Society of Botanical Artists. In The Modern Flower Painter, she shares her innovative watercolour technique so that you can paint flowers in her clean, crisp style. The Modern Flower Painter covers every aspect of painting modern botanical-style portraits of flowers, from tips on gathering your reference to Anna's six stage watercolour process. There are instructions on setting up your studio and how to produce the detailed drawings. Each of the six step-by-step projects is accompanied by an outline drawing, tonal notes and useful colour swatches so that you can compare the tone and hue of your mixes to Anna's own. This all builds into a fantastic guide that will inspire and challenge the experienced watercolour artist, while drawing in and reassuring the complete beginner.

Contents

Introduction 6
About the author 8
Material 10
Getting started 16
Reference material 18
Setting up your workspace 21
Drawing 22
Painting colour 26
Learning to see 28
Working with watercolour 32
Painting tone 34
Painting hue 38
Mixing hue 42
Brush techniques 48
Holding your brush 50
Applying the paint 50
Painting flowers 56
The six stages of painting 58
Flower portraits 70
Step-by-step project: Clematis 72
Step-by-step project: Viola 78
Step-by-step project: Cosmos 86
Step-by-step project: Tulips 94
Step-by-step project: Oriental Poppy 102
Step-by-step project: Dahlia 114
Outlines 124
Index 128

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Biography

Anna Mason grew up surrounded by the lush English countryside and has always been inspired by the intricate detail and colourful beauty in the natural world. Completely self-taught, Anna has developed a true-to-life painting style that she wants to share in order to get as many people enjoying the therapeutic benefits of watercolour painting as well as the results they want. A member of the Society of Botanical Artists, Anna has won numerous awards for her painting. She lives in Surrey and teaches at RHS Wisley & West Dean College.