This book shows you how to paint a range of fabulous houseplants, from glossy exotic palms to spiky cacti. Following the step-by-step instructions, including color mixes, you can create beautiful artwork for your home or to give to friends. When you want to experiment with painting different plants, you’ll find the next few pages are packed with hints and tips for going solo.
To some degree, your choice of subject will depend on what is available as your source, whether that be plants you already have in the home, those that you can buy at your local market, or photographs you have taken or sourced from books or online. You may want to paint the whole plant, or you might choose a single specimen that you can study in-depth. When you are just starting out, it is a good idea to choose a simple subject, like a palm or monstera (see this page and this page).
Leaves vary in size, shape, color, and arrangement. You will soon come to recognize particular shapes or configurations and how they are set on the stalk in a particular pattern. Leaves can rise in a single blade, like the banana leaf (see this page), or be wonderfully intricate, as is the fern (see this page). They can have a smooth or serrated edge and be placed on the stalk singly, alternately, in opposite pairs, or in whorls.
As you complete the projects I have prepared for you in this book, you will soon learn what looks good on the page. It does not have to be symmetrical, but it must look natural. When you start painting your own compositions, you will get used to editing with your pencil or brush by leaving out leaves that complicate the painting, or by rearranging them.
It can be a good idea to simplify what you see, since you don’t need to include every minute detail. What you do need to do is search for the characteristics that distinguish your plant and consider how to reproduce them on the page. With paint, you can suggest detail rather than reproduce it photographically. This means, for example, that you can suggest the rough texture of a teazle with sporadic brushstrokes (see this page) and the impression of spikes on a cactus with masking fluid (see this page).
Changing your viewpoint can drastically alter the composition of your painting. Try out some different views to see how they affect your perception of the plant. You can view from above, below, at an angle, or close up.
A sketchbook is a good place to explore compositional possibilities for finished paintings. Try out thumbnail sketches, looking at dominant lines and compositional pathways, cropping options, shape and pattern, negative and positive shapes, as well as color temperature (see this page) and backgrounds.
You can plan a pathway that leads the eye around the painting, perhaps along dominant lines or plotted with highlights or splashes of color. The Western eye reads a composition from left to right and can easily be directed around a painting. For example, in a painting of three stems of eucalyptus (see this page), the eye could be led along a shorter stem on the left and then directed to one in the middle in an opposing direction, and finally to another stem lower down, taking the eye on a circular tour via a strong compositional line.
You can create a natural composition by considering the rule of odds, meaning that you have an uneven number of elements on the page. This forces the eye to travel and not settle on even groups.
You might also consider the rule of thirds, which can help you to decide where on the page to position your focal point. In a grid of two sets of vertical and horizontal lines there are four points that intersect. Any of these makes a good place for your main point of interest.
Try out various cropping options with a viewfinder made from two L-shaped pieces of card. Your subject will usually suggest the shape—portrait or landscape—but it is a good idea to try both. Cropping will allow you to focus in on any part of a plant for a dramatic view, or to pull back to take advantage of more complicated shapes and patterns. Any element of the composition cut by the frame of the painting will be brought forward into the picture plane, so a row of plants cropped on either side will dance across the foreground of your picture.
Look at not only the positive shapes of the plant—the stalk, leaves, seeds, and flowers—but also the negative shapes in between. These are very important in watercolor painting and can be manipulated by moving your viewpoint or through cropping. The “positive” edge around a pale leaf can be found clearly against a contrasting background (the “negative” space).
If the purpose of your paintings is to help you gather information about different plants, you need to represent them in an adequate but not-too-bright light. You do not want to be confused by the darkest of shadows and the brightest of highlights if you are aiming to depict true colors accurately. A bright light, however, will help you to polarize the tonal range, making it easier to divide up your tonal approach to dark and light, with a midtone in between.
When you are painting from life it is important to be aware of the direction of your light source in order to accurately capture the shadows, highlights, and midtones of your plant, and ensure it looks three-dimensional on the page, and not too flat, particularly when painting individual leaves. To indicate the areas where light is shining on a leaf or subject, use warmer, lighter colors, and use cooler colors to show where parts are in shadow.
Interesting viewpoints
When painting your own compositions, choosing a viewpoint is an important consideration. Viewing the succulent shown here from an overhead perspective allows you to see the natural, impressive symmetry and intricate structure of this plant, while also helping you to study the plant’s changing colors and depth of shadows.
