1. Wet all the background, avoiding the flowers but, if some goes over the petals, don’t worry. Leave a dry area at the bottom.

2. Apply aureolin at the top right-hand side of the painting using free vertical brushstrokes then add strokes of cobalt turquoise light on the left in a similar way. Drop a few strokes into the aureolin as well.

3. Begin adding deeper colours as you work down the paper. Lift the paper to encourage running and drips at the bottom where the paper is dry.

4. Add more colour as the painting dries and encourage drips to happen. If the painting and surface are still wet, add deeper blues under the flowers and green where the leaves lay. Use a paper towel like blotting paper to remove colour if it runs into the flowers too much.

5. Allow to dry as naturally as possible but, once the shine has gone from the painting you could finish with a hairdryer. It is important that everything is completely dry before the next stage.

Mix aureolin with a little cadmium yellow pale.

Wet the centre of the flowers, taking the water up the petals at the back and cutting carefully around the front ones to keep them dry.

Drop the yellow mix into the bottom of the wet area and allow the colour to bleed upwards

1. While the centres dry, begin to build up glazes to suggest the leaves. Use cascade green, aureolin, light red and perylene green.

2. Soften the edges with a damp brush and blot with a paper towel to lose the strong outline.

3. Add veins radiating from the centre by scoring with a cocktail stick or the end of a tube of paint.

Mix ultramarine and light red to make a predominantly blue mixture; this should be quite thin, but colourful. Use this wash to paint the shadows on the flower petals. Keep the painting to a minimum and delicate.

1. Allow this to dry completely then carefully rub out the pencil lines. This will help you to see where more shadows might be needed to define petal edges.

2. The leaves should be dry by now so emphasise some leaves more than others by glazing over them again. Use counter-change – light against dark and dark against light – to give form.

3. Use the lost-and-found method of some of the edges so that the leaves don’t have a rigid outline. A damp brush and paper towel comes in useful for this again. Make your strokes radiate from the central point to follow the shape of the leaf.

4. Use a fine brush and dark green to show veining in a different way.

1. Darken the colour under the flowers and some of the leaves to lift them from the paper.

2. Suggest further leaves at the top with a thin blue-turquoise and in a simple silhouette so that they fade into the distance.

3. Take a little cadmium yellow pale and with dashes and dots suggest the stamens in the centre of the flowers. Repeat, once dry, with a slightly more orange-yellow.

4. With a strong mix of cobalt turquoise light and a fine brush, paint the head and body of the dragonfly. Add lots of water to the turquoise and paint the wings. Leave to dry.

5. Add a deeper blue to more turquoise (again a creamy mixture) and paint the shadow areas of the dragonfly. Add a few fine lines of tracery on the wings; look at a photo of a dragon fly before you do this. Add his legs with a dark colour on a fine brush.

The finished painting

Water Lilies, watercolour on Saunders Waterford High White paper, (61x45.5cm)

For more watercolour painting demonstrations by Rachel

CLICK HERE

About Rachel McNaughton

Find out more about Rachel and her work by visiting www.artbyrachel.co.uk

Unlock a wider world of advice, expertise, news and exclusive offers specifically tailored to your passion for painting with our inspirational Painters Online emails today.