Painting a Camellia: Lifting Color, Complementary Schemes, and Not Wasting a Scrap of Paper

Hi, I'm Valerie Englehart, and for this painting I pulled out one of my favorite resources: a book of old scientific botanical illustrations. This time, a camellia flower caught my eye and became my inspiration.

Starting With Scrap Paper

Instead of grabbing a fresh sheet, I used a scrap piece of Arteza Pro watercolor paper that already had a previous tutorial on the back (a large avocado, if you're curious). The front side was clean and usable, so rather than waste it, I figured, why not get another painting out of it? I pulled out my palette and got to work.

My Palette and Brush

For the center of the flower, I started with Daniel Smith cadmium yellow hue, then dropped in permanent alizarin crimson (a cooler red, not permanent red like I initially thought) along with little bits of rose madder genuine.

I painted this with my size eight Silver Black Velvet round brush, which has gotten incredibly worn over the years. The bristles are splayed and weathered at this point, and it's probably close to time for a replacement, but I've had it so long it's become my workhorse. Even in this state, it's still great for adding texture, so I'll probably keep using it until it truly gives out.

Capturing Light With Lost and Found Edges

This was meant to be a loose, illustrative painting, but I wanted that atmospheric quality you get from lost and found edges. After painting the petals, I bled some of that color out into the background, but I made sure to keep definition around certain areas. In some spots I touched the paint with clean water and then left a tiny white gap.

That gap does two things: it keeps the shape of the flower distinct and easy to read, and it creates a small shard of pure white light. In watercolor, remember, white is just the white of the paper showing through. So by painting one area and leaving a gap before painting the next, you create the illusion of light without ever having to paint a light source.

I saved the rest of the flower detail for the very end, when I came back in with a touch of quinacridone gold to bring out the stamen.

Working on the Leaves

For the leaves, I kept my scientific illustration nearby for reference, but I didn't follow it exactly. I mostly let myself be inspired by the general leaf shapes and how the plant grows.

I used Rockwell Art Onat Diamond Yellow for the green leaves, and for the shadows, a strong blue called Rockwell Arts Enchantress, which is similar to a French ultramarine and granulates beautifully.

The Lifting Technique

One technique I keep coming back to in watercolor is lifting. Here's how it works: you lay down your midtone color and let it dry slightly, until it's damp but not wet. If you try to lift while it's still too wet, the surrounding wet color just rushes into the area and you either get nothing or you risk making mud.

Once it's at that damp stage, you take a clean brush, remove the excess moisture from it, and give the area a gentle scoop. Don't scrub back and forth, or you'll create mud. Just a soft swoop lifts the pigment off the paper and leaves you with a soft highlight.

Playing With a Complementary Color Scheme

This painting leans into a complementary color scheme of red and green, which naturally contrast each other nicely. But complementary colors also neutralize each other when mixed too much, so I had to be careful.

A few ways I handled that:

I waited for the flower to dry before painting the leaves nearby, so the colors wouldn't bleed into each other and turn muddy To create cohesion, I dropped a little bit of red into the leaves here and there, then left it alone. If you keep messing with it, it'll neutralize into a gray or brown you probably don't want

For the leaves themselves, I worked in a midtone first, added darker values, and then scraped out some lighter areas.

A Happy Accident With the Stem

Originally, I planned to have the stem sit in front of one of the leaves, but since that leaf was still wet, the stem diffused into it. I liked the look of the stem sitting behind the leaf instead, so I simply lifted that area to make it work.

I also dragged some of the stem's color out into the spot where a leaf would attach on the lower left, before adding any blue there. That little bit of dragged color creates dimension, making that part of the stem look like it's catching more light and coming forward, even though I didn't do anything particularly technical to make that happen.

Making the Leaves More Interesting

Watercolor dries much paler than it looks when wet, so when I added that strong blue into the leaves, it looked almost cartoonishly saturated at first. Once it dried, it settled into something much softer and more pleasing.

I like using blue in leaves because it keeps them from feeling too flatly green. I added a few small drops of pink as well, just to break up the large shapes and make them more visually interesting. My advice: don't be afraid to add unexpected color into your leaves. You could even do an entire leaf in blue if you wanted. This is art, and you get to decide.

That said, I stayed strategic about where I placed each color. I kept the blue mostly on the cooler side of the leaves and used the pink sparingly. In general, you want one dominant color, and since these are leaves, green stays dominant. Adding small amounts of blue and pink just makes that green more interesting without taking over.

This also ties back to the complementary color scheme. If red and green were 50/50 throughout the painting, it would actually be a little boring. Instead, green dominates as the main color, which makes the small pop of red at the center of the flower stand out even more. There's only one real focal point of red in the whole piece, so your eye goes straight to it.

Suggesting Light Direction

Something subtle I did throughout: when I softened leaves by dragging color into the background, I paid attention to the direction I was dragging in. On the left side of the plant, I blurred out the lower edge of the leaves. On the right side, I blurred the upper edge instead.

That diagonal pattern creates the impression that light is coming down from the upper right, even though there isn't an obvious light source anywhere in the painting. It's a small, almost subconscious effect, but it adds a sense of atmosphere.

Why Scrap Paper Has Its Place

Using the back of an old painting, or any inexpensive paper, takes away the fear of experimentation. If something doesn't work out, it's not a big loss. That said, in the interest of playing devil's advocate with myself: professional grade paper does behave differently, often in ways I genuinely prefer. If you want to do a lot of serious work on good paper, it's worth practicing with it directly so you get used to how it handles.

But there's nothing wrong with grabbing the back of something old just to have a little fun and take some risks.

Tying It All Together With Yellow

Near the end, I added a touch of cadmium yellow to the upper leaves. I noticed the center of the camellia had that same yellow, and I didn't have it repeated anywhere else in the painting. I wanted to place it somewhere that was still wet, and the top of the plant made the most sense, since that's also where sunlight would naturally hit first.

For the cluster of upper leaves, I used the lifting technique again, this time to help separate which leaf sits in front of which, giving that whole area a little more dimension.

Keeping It Loose

I wasn't overly concerned with realism on this one. The entire painting came together in one sitting, start to finish, in about 20 minutes. I wanted it loose and illustrative, without a separate wash pass or a lot of extra detail layered on top.