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Painting Orchids in Digital Watercolours Work in Progress DemoThe plan for this painting changed dramatically after I got started on it. Worked out some cool techniques to paint the purple striped ones, which I will recap even though I've scrapped that part. Later...need to carry on painting the green ones for awhile.
 This illustration has very descriptive Layer Attributes to help you decipher what you are seeing and reconstruct how it was done.
 This illustration shows where I've scrapped the purple stripes and am trying out some soft green with lavender centers orchids. I'm partly making them up and going by a photo reference of mine. I felt the softer less dramatically coloured orchids needed a more intriguing background, so I added some leaves to the sketch. I don't think they are the right kind kind of leaves for this orchid, but use your imagination folks!
 Below are some of the necessary brush controls for the nice soft watercolour brush I am using on the petals today.
 The petals in the illustration below were painted with it. Two colours seem to diffuse together nicely.
 This took another interesting turn and I had to keep going. I was experimenting with a dark background. Lots of new tricks in this session. Hope I can remember them all tomorrow. I am playing around with Skip Allen's Real Watercolours 2 Brush Set and getting a bit of a handle on how to tame the beasties! They are available on the Painter Talk Forum. It looks blurrier at this resolution. It's a little crisper in real life.
 Kind of painted myself into a corner last night when I charged ahead with painting this dark background. Today I had to start with copying my sketch back into this version, and erasing from the canvas layer where I painted over parts of the sketch last night. The reason this happened is because I was experimenting with painting a wet looking dark background with Skip's Real Watercolours 2 Brushes.
 This above illustration shows where I have erased the orchids and stems.
 Using a favourite technique of mine on Layer 11. Gel Wash/Wet Blender a two brush, two step technique (used as a paint inside selection) step to paint the darker shadowed area in
this petal. I like using John Derry's Wet Softener because it is so variable. A great captured shape that removes paint, opacity can be varied and it can be diffused as well.
 The Watercolour Layers were grouped -there are about 10 layers in there! This view has them all turned OFF. The next image will have them turned ON to compare.
The DWC Layers are grouped together as well. Many in there too! Noticed at this point, that the center on the 4th orchid turned sideways is the wrong colour. It should be purple/blue.  Some of the glazes are on the orchids and some are around the orchids to add depth to the painting.
 When you are satisfied that you have enough glazes on, drop all your layers to the Canvas and dry the DWC Layers (or Clone it - which effectively done the same thing!)
One of the other things I did with the background before dropping the layers was to remove some of the colour in some places with a Glow Brush at 4% (in the colour being removed)and glazed again. You can see this more clearly by comparing the top right of the painting in this one with and earlier version. This one has quite a bit of blue up there. I wanted that area lighter, but glazing it with greens just didn't look right against all the green petals. The blue makes the green pop more to my eye.
Putting the canvas on a WC Layer sets things up for some final touches, in which a wet layer is necessary.
The first thing I did was Wet the Entire Watercolour Layer which is explained in this tutorial.
Then I used a Watercolour Eraser in White to add a few little wet spots and a Splatter Water in blue as well. The WC Eraser is not a Paint Remover on this setting. It's Method is Wet with a Subcategory Wet Abrasive. I tied it as a Wet Remove Density and it didn't tkae off the colour and spread the paint as much as a white wet drop did. I don't like to use too much jitter on this brush and prefer to put my spots on one by one for the most part, so I have more control where they go.
Lastly I slightly increase the Brightness and deepen the Contrast very slightly.
I'm pleased with the way this turned out, learned a lot doing it ... hope YOU learn something too by trying out some of the techniques. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to drop me a line!
Please share this post with your friends and followers. I would like people to know that painting florals with digital watercolour tools is possible! YOU can learn to control the brushes, and use techniques comparable to traditional watercolours.  Related postsCommentsAlessandro said: Hi Joan!
Saturday, March 19th
Joan said: KIrk thanks so much for your visit and comment! I love lots of orchids, but not all of them! Thanks for following along!
Saturday, March 19th
Joan said: Hi Alessandro
Saturday, March 19th
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Kirk Mathew Gatzka said:
Wonderful WIP! Great use of color and layers. Lovely texture as well. don't you love Orchids! Beautiful image!