Mini Painting Season, Round Three: Pink Water Lilies With No Blue in Sight
Hi, I'm Valerie Englehart, and it's mini painting season again. I go through this about twice a year, and wouldn't you know it, it's already time for more.
Why I Keep Returning to Water Lilies
A very popular mini painting of mine was a pair of white water lilies where I made the water green instead of blue. In business, when something goes well, you do it again. But I'm an artist, and I get bored easily, so I'm painting water lilies again, only this time they're going to be pink, and once again, no blue at all.
For my shadows this time, I'm using brown madder and quinacridone magenta instead. That makes this a complementary color scheme painting: brown madder leans quite red and quinacridone magenta reads more pink, and both sit opposite green on the color wheel.
Laying Down the First Wash
I'm working on a cold press block, about four by six. I popped in some Daniel Smith Iridescent Topaz for a bit of shimmery green, with Daniel Smith's Green Apatite Genuine as my main green; it's lovely, bold, and granulating. Then I went in with the warmer colors, the quinacridone magenta and brown madder, splotching pink into the areas where my water lilies would go.
Lifting Petals Instead of Painting Around Them
Using a size eight round brush by Silver Black Velvet, I started lifting off the petal shapes. This is my favorite way to work: lay down a loose, mid-tone wash, let it dry just enough that lifting won't cause the surrounding paint to flow back in, and then use directional brush strokes to lift paint in the shape of each petal, following the point where the petals naturally taper.
I like this approach because painting around a water lily to leave it bright white ignores something true to nature: white is rarely, if ever, truly white. Lifting keeps whatever was already on the paper still technically there, so the petals read as reflecting the colors around them, giving them a soft tint even when the goal is still to read as white.
For these petals to stay pink rather than white, timing and follow-up gouache both matter. If I'd kept the top of the petals very light and never reintroduced pink later, they'd read white instead. Timing the lift itself is tricky too; too early and the surrounding wash floods back in, too late and lifting becomes a real struggle. It also depends on your pigments and your paper. I usually find hot press easier to lift than cold press, but my local art store was out of the small hot press blocks I use for these minis, and I didn't want to order online just for this, so I used cold press instead and was still happy with the results.
Once that green area started feeling a bit flat, I spattered in some magenta and brown madder to add movement and break up the block of color.
Building the Second Layer
For the second layer, I let the first one dry completely and naturally rather than reaching for a blow dryer. Natural drying gives more interesting texture, and I've found a blow dryer somehow makes watercolor dry even paler than it already tends to. Watercolor can have a reputation for being washy and pale, and I like bold, vibrant color, so avoiding extra paleness is worth the patience it takes, something I genuinely have to work on.
Try the Same Subject in Different Colors
If you find a subject you love, I'd encourage you to try it in a completely different palette. I've painted water lilies on canvas with blues and greens, then again in just green and white, and this time in pink with red-leaning shadows instead of blue or green ones. Watercolor paper and artist-grade paint aren't cheap, though, so I keep paper scraps around to test color combinations quickly before committing. More often than I'd like to admit, I think I know which colors I want, put them on a scrap, and realize I'm just not feeling it. Painting with colors that don't excite me turns into a slog, and I want to feel giddy and free when I paint, not like I'm dragging myself through it.
I don't often reach for brown madder; the last time was during a lounging figure study. Pulling out a color you don't usually use is a good way to reignite creativity, since you can't fall into old habits with something unfamiliar. If you're ever in a rut, grabbing a different set of colors is a simple trick worth trying. I'm already thinking my next round of water lilies might lean purple.
Negative Painting to Keep the Background Interesting
While building up the piece, I did some negative painting, painting around a subject rather than the subject itself, to bring shapes forward and push others back. That whole green area risked being visually dead, so I used glazes and negative shadow shapes to keep it interesting without letting it compete with the flowers themselves.
Complementary Colors Don't Have to Mean Mud
Complementary colors neutralize each other when mixed, usually into a gray or brown, and a lot of watercolorists fear that neutralizing means mud. But mud comes from over-mixing and fiddling, not from complementary colors themselves. I lay down a color and let it be. I might gently bleed it out, but I don't keep going back into the same area again and again.
At one point I did go back into the brown to try to move it, and it actually lifted the pigment instead. Because I've put in a lot of brush miles, I knew how to correct that without creating mud. Mud happens when you rework an area repeatedly until things lift, mix, and turn ugly. As long as I lay down green, pop in pink, and leave it alone to merge naturally, it stays pretty, even in the neutralized areas. And having some areas desaturate is genuinely useful: it makes the more saturated, purer colors pop even more, which helps guide the eye to your focal point.
A Favorite Pink and a Very Unhelpful Cat
For the lotus itself, I added back in Daniel Smith's Rhodonite Genuine, my favorite pink. When I'm working with colors I'm less familiar with, like brown madder here, including one color I already know and love makes the whole process feel a little easier. Any time I paint a pink flower, Rhodonite Genuine is probably in the mix.
My cat Chai stopped by to say hello partway through this stage, though he didn't have much to add.
Building Detail With Gouache
Most of my paintings happen in three stages: the first wash, building everything up, and then the details. This was the detail stage, and it still takes real work to finish out properly. I pulled out my white gouache, which I keep in a clean jam jar lid separate from my watercolors.
Since this is a pink flower, I'm not painting entire petals white, just adding enough gouache to create a bit more contrast and break things up, without overdoing it. One of my favorite gouache techniques is to lay a watercolor base first, then add gouache on top, so any gaps let the watercolor show through underneath. Gouache is opaque, but not perfectly so; there's some transparency depending on how you bleed it out. I kept the petal tips quite white, then waited a moment and used a clean brush to bleed that white down into the rest of the petal for a smooth transition from white to pink.
This piece feels more dynamic to me than my earlier water lily paintings, which just reinforces that painting the same subject repeatedly is a great way to keep learning and improving, especially if you get bored easily like I do. Watercolor has a reputation for being unforgiving, but the more you use it and understand how your specific pigments behave, the more you can work your way out of most situations.
What "Failure" Actually Gives You
If a painting isn't working, that's not the end of it; it's freedom. Once I've decided I don't care about the outcome anymore, I can try anything, and sometimes that leads to something genuinely useful for future work, or even saves the piece in a way I never expected. And if a painting really is a disaster and the paper is good quality, you can paint on the back. If it's lower quality paper, the back still works fine for testing colors on your next piece. There are a lot of ways to get the most out of your materials.
Finishing Details and Adding Sparkle
Toward the end, I deepened the areas of petals closest to the center of the flower, since the parts facing the viewer should carry the most definition, while areas further away can stay looser, lighter, and less discernible; I like that atmospheric approach.
Using a size two Mimick round brush, I did more negative painting around the petals and added dots for the lily centers using Daniel Smith Iridescent Aztec Gold. I love adding a bit of bling to my water lily paintings; Iridescent Topaz went on the lily pads earlier, and Aztec Gold went into the flower centers.
For movement, I loaded up a toothbrush with pigment and tested my splatter technique on scrap paper first. Even after testing, I still went in too confidently and created a bigger splotch than planned on the actual painting. Luckily it was still wet, so I simply pressed a clean towel down and lifted, rather than rubbing back and forth (rubbing can activate pigment and genuinely ruin a painting). Watercolor is transparent enough that viewers rarely notice a small splatter mishap; they're far more likely to notice repeated correction attempts or improper scrubbing.
Step Back Often
From time to time, it helps to step back, take a breather, and view the piece from about six feet away, or prop it up across the room. Working up close means noticing every tiny detail the viewer will likely never see. Individual small things do add up to the whole, but if one small spot isn't quite working, that's fine as long as everything else holds together.
At one point I added white gouache into the flower centers to lighten them and wasn't fond of the result, but I resisted the urge to try lifting it out, since that likely would have created mud. It was better to leave it alone and carry that lesson into the next painting instead.
I finished with a bit more negative painting, small triangle shapes between petals, bled away into the background.
Final Thoughts
Complementary color schemes (like brown madder and quinacridone magenta against green) don't have to create mud; mud comes from over-mixing, not necessarily from color choice
Lifting petal shapes out of a wash, rather than painting around them, lets the surrounding color subtly tint the "white" areas the way real flowers reflect their environment
Keeping paper scraps for quick color testing saves both materials and motivation
Revisiting a favorite subject in an unfamiliar palette is one of the best ways to keep improving and stay engaged
If a correction attempt might create mud, sometimes the better move is to leave it alone and apply the lesson to your next piece
Stepping back from a painting periodically helps you judge the whole rather than getting stuck on small details