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Demo on Web
The watercolor painting demonstration on this page shows Lian Zhen's floral painting techniques.You can see more watercolor and Chinese painting demos with similar and different methods on variety subjects from three of his books published by North Light: Chinese Painting Techniques for Exquisite Watercolors, Chinese Watercolor Painting Techniques - Painting Animals and Chinese Watercolor Techniques for Exquisite Flowers, as well as on his painting demo DVDs.
To purchase the books and painting demo DVDs, click Book & Painting Demo DVDs
You can also learn the techniques from Lian Zhen's workshops, click Workshops

Chrysanthemum (watercolor) 18"x24"

Materials: use watercolor painting materials listed at the bottom of the Workshops page on this web site.
Preparation before painting: Put the three primary pigments into three small dishes separately and dilute them with water to make color liquids about medium tone. You need approximately 7 teaspoons of color liquid from each color to finish this painting.

Step 2: Pour the Yellow and Red liquids on the upper left of the painting and use mouth to blow them in forming the shapes of the flowers.

Step 1: Sketch the composition on the watercolor paper with pencil. Use masking tape to attach the perimeters of the paper on a firm board.

Next, use masking fluid to cover the three flowers at the focus point.

Step 4: Pour more color liquids on the painting and paint with similar method as step 3 using fingers and large brushes. Tilt the upper edge of the board about 4 inches higher so that the liquids can flow down toward the bottom to create the stems.

Step 3: Pour the Yellow and Blue liquids next to the flowers. Use fingers to guide and blend the colors. Avoid over-mixing the liquids.

Step 5: Here you can see the whole painting after pouring and blending. While the painting is wet, use a large brush to mix thick and soft Blue and Red pigments into dark Blue to paint around the flowers.

Step 6: Wait until the painting completely dry. Use masking tape to lift the masking on the three flowers.

Step 7: Use a pencil to sketch the details of the flowers again if the original sketching disappears. Take two mid-size round brushes to paint the flowers, one for apply colors and the other for blending.

Step 8: After for the first layer of the colors dry, use two small size brushes to defined the petals, one for apply colors and the other for blending. To mix dark red use the soft and thick Red and a little Blue. To mix orange use the Red and Yellow.

Step 9: When defining the petals, measure not to paint every one of them with same intensity of colors, nor same level of details.

Step 10: At the upper left of the painting, use a pencil to draw the shapes of flowers, improvising from the effects of the color pouring and blowing. Then use negative painting technique to define the petals.

Step 11: Repeat the techniques on step 10 to call out
the flowers at the lower left of the painting.

Step 12: After finishing the flowers, paint the leaves and stems starting from the focus point area. Use two brushes to define the objects with negative painting technique. Put more dark value colors mixing from the Blue and Red around the light flowers.

Step 13: Paint more detail backgrounds around the focus point area. Do not defined all the edges of the flowers in the same way. For those locate away from the focus point such as the flowers at the upper and lower left some undefined areas.

Step 14: At the top of the painting, just briefly defined the buds. Leave the water mark at right and the orangey color at middle top alone as suggestions of flowers.

Step 15: Add a reddish dragonfly on top of the painting. It gives more life to the flowers. On top of this page is the finished painting.

To purchase Lian Zhen's books and painting demo DVDs, click Book & Painting Demo DVDs
To take Lian Zhen's workshops, click Workshops