This complete beginners guide to painting flowers in watercolour is ideal if you want to learn to paint but are short on time. Each of the 35 quick and easy exercises takes no more than 30 minutes to complete, and will teach you how to paint flowers of different shapes, colours and families lilies, orchids and hellebores amongst others or learn a key technique such as masking out, working wet in wet and colour-mixing. The exercises are all worked at postcard size ideal for a 6 x 4in (A6) watercolour pad, and tracings are included for each study. The book is broken down into five chapters that focus, respectively, on working with watercolour, watercolour techniques, colour and tone, form and detail, and finally flowers in context. The final section of the book contains three complete paintings that demonstrate how to combine all the techniques and elements of painting flowers, as learned from the preceding chapters. These paintings, too, are accompanied by actual-size tracings.Introduction 6 Basic painting equipment 8 Working with watercolour 10 Washes 12 Working wet in wet 14 Layering 16 Blending out 18 Using the white of the paper 20 Techniques 22 Masking 24 Cutting out 26 Negative painting 28 White flowers with shadows 30 Spattering & scribbling 32 Salt & wax resists 34 Colour & tone 36 Mixing greens 38 Mixing dark colours 40 Mixing shadow colours 42 Mixing yellows 44 Mixing autumn colours 46 Contrast & tone 48 Backlighting 50 Form & detail 52 Drawing & composing 54 Flower shapes: star 56 Flower shapes: bell 58 Flower shapes: cup 60 Flower shapes: cone 62 Complex flower shapes 64 Buds 66 Painting leaves 68 Leaf shapes 70 Seed heads 72 Seed heads: Honesty 74 Flower markings: orchid 76 Flower markings: hellebore 78 Flowers in context 80 Flowers in a vase 82 Mixed border 84 Woodland with daffodils 8l