Art Along Camellia Flowers

posted in: Online Classes

Here are the details for my online class this Thursday evening, 20 August.

This week we are going to sketch some pink camellia flowers. I spent a happy hour sketching these flowers in my garden, and enjoyed reflecting the loose floppy construction of the flower in a loose sketch.

Although I sketched and painted from real life (about 50cm!) I also took some reference photos for you to study. Pay particular attention to the petal construction and colouring, plus look closely at the colours you can see in the leaves – there will be a quiz!

I used my ‘flower’ palette for this painting, and I will run through the colours I keep in this permanent palette, specifically for flower paintings.

The main colours you will need for this painting are pink, green, blue, yellow and brown.


Permanent Rose, Phthalo Blue, Prussian Blue, Cadmium Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Sap green, Paynes Grey & Burnt Sienna.

We will start our session by setting up our colour palette for the picture, and selecting our brushes.

I recommend taping your paper down to a surface with masking tape. I tape my copier paper down to thin foam card, plywood or even some stiff card with masking tape. This will help to keep the paper flatter, you may also want to have a hairdryer to hand to dry the layers of paint as we go along.

For our session you will need:

  • Your camellia line drawing printout, ordinary copy paper is fine for this exercise.
    Print out at A4 Portrait .
  • Your sketchbook or a spare piece of paper to try out your paint mixes on before applying colour to your painting, you could even print off a second copy of the line drawing for this.
  • Watercolour paints: pink, green, blue, yellow and brown.
  • Size 8-12 round brush – we will keep the work loose by using a larger brush.
  • A palette for mixing your paints – a white ceramic plate works well
  • 2 pots of clean water
  • Rag or kitchen roll (for wiping your brushes on)
  • Hairdryer

Watercolour paint names and where in the painting you will use them.

Rose Pink | Rose Madder | Permanent Rose – (C13 swivel paints) for the Camellia petals
Cadmium Yellow (C05) for the pollen and mixing with Rose for the petals
Lemon Yellow (C03) Cool Primary for the leaves
Sap Green ( C25 is perfect!) for the leaves
Prussian Blue
– (C36 swivel paints) background and leaves
Phthalo Blue / Cobalt Blue (29 swivel paints) to mix with green for the leaves
Burnt Sienna (this is a warm brown) – (mix C17 & C33 swivel paints) for the background
Paynes Grey – (mix C43 & C37 swivel paints) for the background