Work in Progress- Watercolor Flower

For a while I've been wanting to do a really nice watercolor picture, but I wasnt sure what to do for the first one that I would feel confident in and would make me want to do watercolor again. I found a picture of a watercolor painting on Etsy.com, I cant find it now so I can give it credit, I am not trying to steal the picture or take credit for the idea, but I thought the style was beautiful, so i decided to make one for my living room, where my mom has been begging me to get some artwork for the house. I did tweak it a little bit so it would work better for my house, but I decided to do a work in progress for it. So First, I found the picture I wanted to paint, I made some sketches to practice and try a few things before I put it on the expensive watercolor paper.

I then set up my little studio space in my room with my references on my left side, and then all my supplies and such on my right side, since I am right handed, it would make it so much easier then having to reach across yourself to get water or paints. I have my watercolor paper, paintbrushes and a jar of water, I have my watercolor pencils, my liquid watercolors, a paper towel, reference books and sketches, and my little watercolor pallet where I have some dried watercolor paints, but I also can add the wet paint to mix.

You cant see it in the above photo, but you then lightly sketch out your design, with watercolors, you can erase the pencil marks after the paint is down, so you need to make them really really light. Once you are satisfied with the sketch, you apply the really light background washes, use the lightest colors, because you can always get darker, but you cant erase watercolors very easily. For this I used a very pale lavender and very pale sage green, and slowly started developing the veins in the petals, but didnt get into to much detail, as this will have several more layers painted over.

Once you get the light areas in the petals finished, you let it dry, then slowly add a slightly darker, slightly more detailed layer, and you add layers and layers until it is as dark as you want it. Once it is the right color, you can finally add the real detail, This is where watercolor pencils come in really handy, the fine points were perfect for adding the skinny veins of the petals and detail on the center of the flower.

You repeat this process for the rest of the picture, I moved onto the next flower, then once I was done with that one, I moved onto the stems. This is my finished picture....

I hope this made sense... I am still a very inexperienced water-colorist, obviously, as this is my first real try, but for a first, I think it turned out pretty well. ( sorry for the poor photo quality) Hope you like it!