Morning Glow - Daffodil WIP (watercolor demonstration)

My daffodils are FINALLY blooming! I'm so happy. This morning I went out and took a bunch of photographs and I decided to make this a watercolor WIP (work in progress). This is an ACEO (Art Cards, Editions, & Originals) 3.5 x 2.5 inches. I used watercolor on Arches 140 lb hot press paper and then at the end I went over some parts with watercolor pencil but I didn't blend the pencil with water. To bid on this ACEO on Ebay, click here.

I first drew my daffodils on. I lost a little more of the left daff than I had wanted but it works OK because the focus is on the taller one. I used New Gamboge, to paint a wash on the flowers, Cerulean Blue in the background and Winsor Green and more New Gamboge to paint the stems & leaves. Hot press paper is smooth and requires more building up of the paint than cold press.

I used burnt sienna and winsor green to develop the darks in the leaves and ground. Cadmium orange for the centers of the flowers and cobalt blue, rose madder and new gamboge to paint the shadows. I didn't completely mix the 3 colors but let some of it mix on the paper so it wouldn't look flat.

I just continued to build up the color using the same colors mentioned above. Then I used some cerulean watercolor pencil to go over the back a little and some alizarin crimson pencil to go over the shadows on the daff and over the burnt sienna in the background. I like the additional look from the pencil strokes and it intensified the color.