Camelia painting finished

After a long time I finally finished a little painting of a Camelia. Due to illness I could not do much the last months. But..... there it is and I think I finally get it: how to work with watercolour paint. It was so often so frustating and such a struggle. Often my thoughts were: I give up and stays with what I can....... drawing. But I cannot stand it when I cannot do something so finally I think I found the way I like to paint.

cyclamen leaves, excercise watercolour

For my online course Botanical Art with Leonie Norton I choose the Cyclamen for my masterdrawing and painting.
My next assignment is therefor to paint two leaves of the Cyclamen, front and back.

I do not have much experience with watercolor and I am really struggling. But slowly I think I am getting somewhere and I discover what kind of technique(s) I like.

I took some photos of the leaves, not yet finished but I do not know at the moment how to proceed. So I put them away, practise a bit more and look at them again after a while to see if I can make them better and of course how to do that. It is a bit difficult because at the moment there are no cyclamen available so I only have my notes and drawings to work from.
To see if I painted the right tones I altered the painting in black and white with the help of Paint Shop Pro.

The second two photos are altered, I made the paintings darker with the help of Paint Shop Pro so I could  see what they would look like if I add more darker layers of paint. Again I changed the colours into black and white to see the tones.

hosta leaves watercolor excercise

I just finished a watercolor painting of some hosta leaves. I used an example from the book by Margaret Stevens to draw from. I am studying very hard with watercolor and I learned a lot by painting these leaves.