How I Painted a Mini Water Lily Piece with a Limited Green Palette

Why I Chose a Mini Format

I've been creating mini paintings lately, and for good reason — they're incredibly popular for gifting and are a great fit for art calls. This particular piece is just four by six inches on hot press paper, which actually presented its own set of challenges I'll get into later. But small doesn't mean simple, and I wanted this little painting to feel just as rich and luminous as any of my larger work.

My Three-Green Palette (Plus a Little Sparkle)

Even though I was painting a pond with water lilies — a subject you might expect to be full of color variety — I intentionally kept things tight by working with primarily green tones. My three greens were:

Daniel Smith Undersea Green — this was the workhorse of the painting and made up the majority of the color you see.

Winsor & Newton Perylene Green — a deep, cool, transparent dark that I used for my darkest values. I love this color for drama.

Winsor & Newton Green Gold — wherever I wanted a suggestion of sparkling light, this is what I reached for.

And then, because I just couldn't resist, I also added Daniel Smith Iridescent Electric Blue. The painting was starting to feel a little too one-note in its greenness, and I always love incorporating iridescent pigments into smaller pieces. There's something special about an original that shimmers and shifts in the light — that's something a print simply can't replicate, unless I do a hand-embellished version.

Planning the Painting with a Notan Study

Before I touched the paper, I spent time with a reference photo I found on Unsplash and ran it through a notan app to break it down into just four values: light, lighter mid-tone, darker mid-tone, and dark. This is one of my favorite planning techniques because it frees me from trying to copy the photograph's exact colors. Instead, I'm just mapping value — how light or dark an area should be — and I can use whatever colors feel right. It removes distraction and gives me a solid structure to build from.

The First Wash: Letting Watercolor Do the Work

I propped my block up at an angle so gravity could help move the paint, which is something I almost always do. I love using the natural flow of water to create movement in a piece rather than forcing every mark.

For the water lily petals, I used a rinsed, blotted brush to lift paint with curved strokes before it dried. This scrubbing technique doesn't bring the paper back to pure white, but it does create a naturally toned petal with built-in shadow — which means I'm doing less work later. When some wet paint bled back into the flower area, I just kept going. The first wash is never the finished painting, and getting precious about early marks is one of the biggest things that holds artists back.

I typically think of my process in three passes: the first wash to establish values, the second wash to build the major details, and finally a third pass for fine details. Some artists work in five to seven layers, but with my shorter attention span and love of efficiency, three tends to be my rhythm.

Negative Painting to Pull Out the Flowers

Once the first wash dried, I switched to a size one script liner brush and started painting around the flowers rather than on them. This is negative painting — using dark color to define the light shapes by surrounding them. I worked with both the Undersea Green and Perylene Green here, alternating between the two because the warmth of the Undersea and the coolness of the Perylene keep things from looking flat or monochromatic.

I deliberately left gaps and let edges bleed away rather than creating hard outlines around every petal. I don't want my paintings to look like paint by numbers, and I find that a little ambiguity invites the viewer to fill in the gaps with their imagination. I'll meet them halfway.

Building Depth in the Foreground

Even once the negative painting gave the flowers some definition, the piece needed more punch — especially in the lower third. I brought in the Perylene Green in a dark value and added geometric shapes to suggest lily pads, creating contrast in both value and shape. More contrast means more visual interest and a stronger focal point.

One compositional choice I made consciously: I kept the upper third of the painting relatively calm. Even though my reference and my notan study showed darker values up there, I chose to ignore that. If every part of a painting is fighting for attention, nothing wins. Restraint in the background lets the foreground breathe.

Adding the Iridescent Centers

This is my favorite part. Using the liner brush, I added the centers of the water lilies using Winsor & Newton Iridescent Aztec Gold. Rather than using a plain yellow, I wanted the bling factor — and I love how the warm gold creates a beautiful temperature contrast against all that cool green. I painted the centers slightly differently for each flower; one has them more exposed, the other more tucked behind petals. Little variations like that make a painting feel alive.

Then I grabbed my toothbrush for a splatter pass, directing the spray intentionally — as if the flowers were releasing pollen outward. It adds energy and texture without requiring precise brushwork.

Knowing When to Stop

One piece of advice I've heard that I really believe in: stop about half an hour before you think you should stop. When you're still learning, that instinct to keep adding marks can actually undermine what's already working. I've gotten better at reading when a painting is done, but that comes from hundreds of paintings behind me.

Hot press paper was a new challenge in this piece — colors dried noticeably paler than I'm used to on cold press, so I kept having to go back in. That's fine as long as you know your paints. Perylene Green is transparent and layers beautifully. Other pigments, like black hematite genuine, will lift and shift if you try to glaze over them, and that can look like a mistake rather than a choice. Knowing your materials means knowing which rules you can push.

The Finished Piece

A final touch of Iridescent Electric Blue in a few strategic spots, a pass of white acrylic ink on the petal tips to push the light forward, and the painting was done. Six paints total. Four by six inches. And that shimmer? You really do have to see it in person.