Playing with watercolour

So here is my play time, I've had a few really lovely sketches of lotus flower and water lilies sitting around for ages. Then, as it happens, wake up and the painting bug gets ya... so to see how good my skills are I chose to see how good a lotus I could paint with out painting very much.

Here is how it progressed...

Light sketch an first layer of colour wash

When you want to jump into a painting the hardest thing can be to holding yourself back. Normally I just want to start laying the colour and keep going. But to paint a white flower you can not do that.

Second layer of colour and flower centre 

 The second layer of colour was really to work on the shading a little more before adding the blue background wash. Only after adding the background did i add the last bits of shading just to get the dark tones just right...

Watercolour Lotus flower

I am very happy with how this painting turned out. The background is very unique, the paper I used was old and I think it must have got dramp. So when I came to paint you could see each brush stroke and it layered in different tones.

I think it works, even if it's just for a bit of fun.