Drawing a Chrysanthemum in watercolor

Chrysanthemum in watercolor and application in physical products

Let's draw a chrysanthemum in watercolor!

How rewarding it is to draw flowers! I love to take my own pictures of the flowers I see growing in my garden or the ones I find when I go for a walk or travel somewhere. However, many times if we want to draw something we don't have on hand, we can look for free images on the internet.

On the web pxhere.com you can find lots of free resources without copyright, like this beautiful chrysanthemum that I fell in love with at first sight.

In general, chrysanthemums represent happiness, joy, love and beauty.

It is also said that chrysanthemums bring luck to those who give them as a gift. It is a flower of the month of November

Next, I am going to show you the step by step I followed to complete this flower. It took me approximately a total of 12 hours of work.

Materials

• PAPER: Canson Moulin du Roy, 100% cotton, grain satin, Hot pressed (Amazon)
• PINCELES: Escoda 2, 0.2 (Barna Art); Winsor & Newton Cotman 0; Windsor & Newton 3 and 5 (Amazon)
• AQUARELS: Sonnet Studio (Amazon) (they are Russian watercolors and I have to say that I love the intensity of the colors).
• PORCELAIN DISH: I like to use a porcelain dish, as the watercolor spreads out, whereas in plastic ones it tends to clump together in droplets.
• Masking tape.
• Hardboard of MDF or wood.

Devices or tools for working digitally

• Scanner. I use an EPSON scanner - Epson Perfection V370 Photo, with maximum A4 size.
• Adobe Photoshop

Process for drawing a chrysanthemum in watercolor

First of all, we have to draw the flower sketch on a normal copy paper. We can also take a printout of the reference image to make this process easier.

Next, we will transfer the drawing to the watercolor paper. For this we can use a light table, which will save us a lot of time.

We will use an HB pencil or similar, because we don't want too strong marks on the paper. It has to be very subtle, but enough so that we can see where we have to color later.

Next we are going to attach the paper to a board. I use tape and a hard MDF board to hold the paper well.

Watercolor technique used

For this flower, I used the technique of wet paint on dry paper, or wet paint within the dry paint area (wet-on-dry).

This technique is perfect to have more control over the watercolor and to be able to create sharper edges, which will help us enormously if we want to digitize the image later.

With this technique, we slowly build up our flower. First we apply the most transparent layers and progressively we will add the darker tones.

It is advisable to keep our reference image in view, as it will help us to know which are the lightest and darkest areas.

We add layers and more layers to gain more depth and volume in our flower. It is advisable to leave a little time between each layer to give the paper time to dry.

With a little patience, we will finish the illustration!

Digital work to make a chrysanthemum in watercolor

Once it is finished, we can scan it to work digitally and thus make decorative sheets, stickers, or create prints to apply on product surfaces.

I usually scan watercolor motifs created at 600 or 720 dpi for better resolution.

Then in Photoshop, I adjust the levels slightly as the scanner usually tones down the colors.

Printed with chrysanthemums

I have used this flower as the main motif to create a pattern that I have applied in some of my own products.

When we have a single motif, we can use the scattering style to assemble the pattern, as well as play with the scale of the elements.

In the print I have placed the flowers randomly, rotating and turning to give an impression of movement and fluidity.

I have also played with different sizes, which makes the pattern not particularly cluttered.

As a background base I used a light pink color and added some small details in the shape of hearts, as well as some cotton clouds.

What do you think of the result 🙂

Products created with the chrysanthemum pattern

As a print designer, the ability to apply my own patterns to real products is one of my greatest joys.

The chrysanthemum print is a very feminine design, romantic in tone and also timeless.

Below I show you the physical products that I have created with this print and that are for sale in my online store.