Watercolor Rose Painting Tutorial – Heidi Klum Rose

About Doris Joa

My name is Doris Joa and I am an artist from Germany.

My mediums are watercolor and oil. One of my special favorite subjects are Roses and figurative work. I paint roses and also other flowers in oil and watercolor. Beside Pansies, Rhododendron, Peonies, Daisies and Tulips, there are a lot of roses in my gallery on my website like Heidi Klum Rose, Sangerhauser Jubiläumsrose, Rose “Mein schöner Garten”, Rose Golden Celebration from David Austin, Rose Innocencia, Rose New Dawn, Rose Clair Renaissance, Rose Queen Mother, Rose Bonita Renaissance and more.

My goal is to paint in romantic realism. I am also doing figurative work, portraits, still lifes and in 2005 I have started a new series of colourful Horse paintings in oil. I also have started with doing postcard paintings in 4?x6? and other small studies .

I have a great passion for nature and her beauty and try to capture this in my paintings. The sunshine, the shadows, the light and the glittering of a raindrop I find most captivating.

I love it when people tell me that when they view my paintings they can smell the flowers, feel the velvet of the rose-petals and have the feeling of standing in a garden.

Please be sure to visit Dori’s website to learn more about her and to view more of her work.

Her websites:

http://www.dorisjoa.com/

http://romanticrosesinwatercolor.blogspot.com/

Step by Step Watercolor Painting Lesson – “Heidi Klum Rose”

I have started with a new painting of the Heidi Klum Rose.

It needed some time with finding the right composition. This time I will have a lot of sunshine in the painting, especially later on in the leaves and in the background. Hopefully it works out the way I have envisioned it in my mind. I think it is always an adventure when you start a new painting and so exciting when you see the final result. I am often pleased and stunned by the outcome, but sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way I planned, but I always try for perfection.

Above are two photos . I was not able to paint very much and I needed to do a photo before it was too dark outside.
The first photo is the drawing, the photo is not the best. Sorry for that. The painting will be around 10″x14″ in high format. I paint on coldpressed 140 Lb Paper from Lanaquarelle (the same quality as Arches) and I paint directly on the block without stretching it. It works perfect.

The Heidi Klum Rose is a very pink/violet Rose. The petals in shadow have a dark violet/blue colour.

I am using the following colours:

Permanent Rose and Alizarin Crimson for the very warm areas, Purple Magenta is the “local” colour, which I also add to the warm and to the cool areas. Winsor Violet and a Mix of Purple Magenta for the cool areas and I add Helio Turqouise to this mix, when I want to have it darker. In the really dark areas I am using a mix of Alizarin Crimson/a bit of Purple Magenta/some Winsor Violet and a bit of Sap Green, these areas are not as cool so I leave out the Helio Turquoise there.

I must add here, that I am playing with the colours and when the colour is dry I often see, that it doesn’t look exactly as I intended it to look, so I may go over this area again and then add another colour from the colours above. I also do not always mix on the palette. ON some petals I simply wet the area and then drop the colours in that I want to have there and let them mix on the paper.

The leaves will bathe in sunshine later. There are leaves which are looking more green and some are looking really blue and for this green/blue I will use the Helio Turquoise. I love this Colour and since I know that I will use it on the leaves I am using it also in the Rose. I simply thought I would try it out.

When something doesn’t work, or the colours look terrible, I start over to try to make it better. Don’t be afraid to play with your colours – I cannot tell you how many times I started a painting over. But since I am not afraid to experiement, it makes painting much easier and more relaxing.

Not much has happened with this painting yet. I did have a visit from a very dear friend, which I have not seen for several years now and I took all the time for her which was possible. And the other day I was swimming with my kids and we all enjoyed this. Also I am still working on a figurative painting, which Work in Progress you may have seen on my other blog, so there was only a bit of time for this Rose.

I have painted more on the petals, using all the colours, which I mentioned before. But I wanted to spend some more time on the leaves. This gives me the feeling, that there is more happening on the white paper and I enjoy this. It also gives me a better feeling of what the painting will look like, so I am painting them here and there on the mainsubject and here and there on the leaves.

For the leaves I used aureolin yellow, indian yellow, sap green, phthalo green and helio turquoise. I also used some of the Winsor Violet in the leaves. I like the different colours on the leaves, to have some warm and some cool and some darker and some very light.

I was contacted by several people about my Demos of how I create my Rose paintings. I hope that my blog is helpful to YOU and gives you some inspiration. Please share it with your friends and link to my blog and when you have a moment, simply leave a comment. I love to hear what you think.

I have finally done more progress on this painting. This is the next step. I am still working on the background with all the leaves and I really like how the painting is developing.

I have worked more on this Heidi Klum Rose Painting. As you can see, I have made a lot of progress and I really love how the painting is coming along. I only hope I am pleased with the final painting. I started to add darks to the background. Within all the leaves (there are really many leaves) I think this works the best. The colors for the darks are Alizarin Crimson, Phthalo Green, Sap Green, Helio Turquoise, Winsor Violet, Ivory Black (but only mixed together with other colours) and here and there some Indian Yellow.

To integrate the leaves into the background I have at first wet the area, where I wanted to paint the darks around the leave and then I simply moistened my brush with clear water and wet the edges of the leaves. The result is that the still wet paint of the background runs over the leaves.

This eliminates hard edges and brings and blends the leaves into the background so that they are part of it.I really love the painting – the feeling of a hot summer day. So far, I have only worked with transparent watercolors and have not used any masking fluid. I have painted around the whites.But I also have to add when you loose some highlights it is always possible to add then maybe a hint of white gouache to save your painting.

Heidi Klum Rose, watercolor,
10″x16,5″, copyright: Doris Joa

SOLD

The painting of the Heidi Klum Rose is finished. I softened many of the edges, but I still need to take a closer look to see if I have forgotten any.

The greys in the background at the top are a mix of sap green with winsor violet.
When you compare this photo to the photo in the post before you will notice that I have painted over some leaves, which were too white, it didn’t work and my eyes were still wandering there, especially to the leaves on the right side at the bottom.

When I was finished with the painting I did at first a photo and looked to it at the monitor. This helped me to see how distracting the hard edges were. So I used a flat brush and softened them.

Here is a photo of this brush, this works really perfect.

In the next photo I just would like to show how the painting looks before with some hard edges and how it looks after softening them. This may help for the beginners to get a good suggestion.

You see in the left photo how distracting these edges are, here is a close up of the part which shows it much better. I think I should have done the photo then, before I softened the other edges and did think of showing this when the most were already softened. But I think you will get a good suggestion of what I mean.