Bullet Journal Cover Page July 2024: Water Lily
Watch the video on
Choosing a reference image
How difficult can it be to paint a water lily with Gouache, I asked myself. The water lily has relatively clear lines. I always look for that when choosing a reference. First I drew the water lily digitally, and then I printed the flower on mix media paper.
I use Gouache a bit like Watercolor
To paint the water lily was learning by doing. Basically, I use gouache a bit like watercolor. I deliberately put the colors into a watercolor palette. I know that the light colors also cover dark ones. That was handy when I messed up.
Layering the colors from light to dark
In the first part of the video, I painted the background with lighter colors and then moved on to the darker ones. If a lighter color showed through after layering, that was intentional.
How I painted the water of the water lily pond
The water in the reference was a muddy dark grey and brown. For my image I changed that to a kind of dark blue with brown tones and a splash of black.
I wanted the water to be very dark, like in a tragic fairy tale. I had to apply several layers for this. At the very end I experimented with effect pigment. I have a watercolor palette with glitter paint. The effect paints mix well with gouache, but the result is rarely predictable. So after I managed to make the lake as dark as I wanted, I lightened it again by mistake with the effect pigment. I just didn't mix in enough dark blue, brown and black.
I lost patience with the water and left it as it was. I cut out the step with the effect pigment. I was angry with him and he didn't deserve to be shown.
How I painted the water lily leaves
With the leaves of the water lily, I tried to support the natural curve of each leaf with my brushstrokes. After applying a light and a darker layer of green, I found the brushstrokes to be too busy. Shortly before, I had seen in a YouTube video that you can also activate gouache on paper with water. So I tried that with the leaves. I don't know whether that improved the illusion of a lily leaf. I found this step to be helpful in some way.
The delicate details of a water lily
I drew the pink details of the water lily partly with watercolor pencils and with gouache. You can see me trying to activate the color of the colored pencil with water. I was not satisfied with the result and added pink gouache to the inner petals of the water lily.
Drawing the delicate pattern of the water lily petals with a colored pencil required more patience than I could muster in one day, so I split the project up into several days.
The outer petals of the water lily were almost white in the reference image, so I painted white over the pink before giving these petals their delicate appearance.
How to discourage a beginner artist
I'm still a beginner artist. Because of my chronic fatigue, I learn much more slowly than the teacher's model students. I was part of Marc Brunet's (Link opens to YouTube) feedback group for a year. I learned a lot from Marc’s feedback to me and to others in the stream. However, I was not impressed by the students who shared a nearly perfect sketch with the group after the live stream and told the others that it only took them an hour to draw it during the stream. If it takes you two hours to make a better stick figure, such statements can be demotivating.
Unite the painting with my Bullet Journal
Finally the picture was finished and I removed it from the backing to glue it into my bullet journal as the July cover.
I like calligraphy. It's a good exercise for practicing line confidence.
The structure of my monthly overview is tried and tested and works for me. I added a page with notes. Let's see how that develops.