I can’t help it. I love painting daffodils in spring. It’s a curse. It’s funny though, a few years ago I remember seeing my friend Serena’s sketchbook. She had drawn a daffodil that I fell in love with. I was stunned at how dimensional it looked. I tried back then and couldn’t draw one. Now I absolutely LOVE drawing their fluted faces. This time I knew I wanted to paint them too so I’m working in my Hahnemühle watercolor book. Find my review here. BTW, the paper is natural white, I photographed in the evening, sorry. :o)
The Drawing:
When I do these kinds of paintings I let the pen do the heavy lifting. I start out with a 03 Zebra fine-liner and outline the entire drawing. Then I switch to a thinner line, a 01, and get to work. The petals have distinctive lines in them with some great shadows so I start there. Try to use a light touch at first, so the pen nib just skims the paper. Remember, you can always go back and darken! I look for light values and try to remember that the paper (if it’s white) is the lightest value. If you’re working with toned paper, the paper is usually the mid-tone, you’ll add white as your highlight and the pen is your darks.
I also try to vary the line direction for each “object” (petal or trumpet). Shadows cast by a neighboring object will get cross-hatching. Cross-hatching is laying down lines one direction then switching the direction by 30 º to 90 º. You can actually cross-hatch the same space half a dozen times, each with a different direction to add a truly dark shadow. The biggest piece of advice I can give is start light but remember, shadows are nearly ALWAYS darker than you think they are. If your drawing isn’t jumping off the page at you, darken the deepest shadows!
Be careful when doing the inside of the daffodil trumpets, try to stay in one direction as you move out of the center unless the flower “face” is looking right at you. You’ll notice that for all except one of the trumpets I go one direction, it’s only the one in the lower center that I move circularly around the inside of the flower. The stems were just done in different darknesses depending on how hidden in the bouquet they were. The farther back, the darker I did the stem.
Now onto painting.
After the black pens have done the heavy lifting, painting this sucker is quite easy. I used hansa yellow light, hansa yellow medium and hansa yellow deep from Da Vinci. Lemon yellow and new gamboge could easily be substituted for the first and last color. Schmincke’s pure yellow is the perfect medium yellow. I also used a little quin gold as a low light/shadow and added some leaf green mixed into my yellows to add dimension. I find daffodils give off a green glow sometimes as you look at them so I used that to add whimsy. The stems were done in sap and phthalo green yellow shade.
I knew I’d be adding white highlights with a gel pen so I didn’t worry about saving any whites. The biggest thing I concentrated on was giving enough saturated color to the inside and deep shadows of the flowers. That has been my downfall in the past with yellows. You want them to jump off the page so be bold. Here is where it really helped to have that third clear yellow, lemon yellow or hansa yellow light. The contrast between the three yellows made all the difference.
The HYL leans toward the blue end of the spectrum so can look a tiny bit green. This made the addition of a teeny bit of leaf green make sense in the petals. Now I had a contrast that glowed. In the deepest shadows I added a little bit of prussian blue mixed with lemon yellow (HYL). Yummy.
The painting of these only took about half an hour. It’s the drawing, the pen work that did all the heavy lifting here. Try it out. There’s something wonderful in working in just black and white. Pen is intimidating but a great way to lean into discomfort just a little. And that’s the way to grow as an artist.
Laura
These are beautiful! Thank you for sharing. I’m so ready for Spring.
sandra strait
Your daffodils are amazing! I love line’n’wash – my favorite way to paint!
Jean Marmo
Wish I could draw like this. So pretty
Alice
These are gorgeous, jenn. Thanks for the step by step. Who knows. Maybe one day I’ll try it. ❤️
Susan
They do glow! Thanks for showing your approach to painting daffs, Jenn.
Brenda Abbott
Stunning!
Carol Boss
They are so beautiful! Very nice work.
Thanks for sharing the process.