How to paint watercolour oxeye daisies

Introducing Negative Painting

To explore some techniques to paint daisies using negative painting, soft layers, loose mark making

Materials

Colours:

Cobalt blue, cerulean blue or ultra marine blue

Pink or alizarin crimson

Yellow

Indigo

Pthalo Green (optional)

Sap Green (optional convenience colour)

Focus: Negative painting, soft layers, loose mark making

Outcome: A fresh, expressive daisy painting with soft background shapes and glowing white petals

Instead of painting the object, we paint the space around it. Look at the example below, see how:

This is about suggestion, not perfection, wobbly edges and blooms are very welcome

Step 1: Simple sketch - or trace

Step 2: Painting the background - you can do this in one layer or two

Paint a light wash of yellow, where your two brightest leaves will be and your stem. Use a cocktail stick to draw a few veins (optional).
Now move to the top of the paper. You are going to paint the whole background, using a loose wet into wet technique, moving from blues at the top to greens as you move down. It’s important to move methodically around the painting, working on small areas at a time. If the area is too big, some edges will dry as hard edges.

Begin with the sky area, wet loosely with clean water
Drop in cerulean blue
Paint around the petals, leaving them white
Add green as you move further down the page - painting around your leaf and stem shapes
Let colours blend softly and include some darker areas and lighter ones
Tip:
- Don’t chase edges — let the paint settle naturally
- place darker colours around the stem, and the petals at the bottom of flowers
- throw water splashes into the wet paint to get some added texture

Step 3: Daisy centres

While the background dries slightly:
- Stipple centres with lemon yellow + orange. Using the opposite end of your brush really makes the easy. Darker at the base of the centre. When dry, add some dark green dots where the flower petals meet the centre - bottom side only.

Step 4: Building depth with darker negatives

Step 5: Final details & texture Optional:

Mix some very light washes of desaturated blue and green
Where petals overlap each other add a very light wash of the desaturated colours to the shaded petal. Add subtle veins to petals with the cocktail stick while the paint is wet.
At the far edges of some of the flowers you can use a damp brush to wash a little of the surrounding paint over the petals, to take those areas out of focus and make the daisies fade and become one with the background
Add some bokeh highlights in the background. This works best in the darker areas. place a dot of water where you’d like the highlight. Work it into the paint, until the paint starts to lift - then use a clean piece of tissue to pick up the wet paint
Add some deep yellow pencil shavings (sandpaper) to the flower centres and elsewhere if you like
Have a look at what else your painting needs - maybe you need to reinforce a couple of dark area. BUT - less is more, stop before overworking, white space is powerful and loose edges feel fresh and lively