I have started painting the roses in the foreground in the somewhat loose style as they are not the main focus here in this painting. In the first wash, I dropped in S ruby red(cool) and WN winsor red(warm).
In these second washes, I`ve left the areas or petals having the lightest value (from the first wash) alone and strengthened the remaining areas.
Here, I`ve put in shadows with S madder red dark and also with a mix of ruby red with S cerulean blue tone.
This rose is nearest to the viewer and has more of details to it than the others. I used some S translucent orange too, for the sunlit petals.
The first washes for the leaves contain DS hansa yellow medium, S cerulean blue tone and a bit of the reds. Mix three puddles – yellow green, green and blue green and also puddles of the primary colors. Now you can add any of the primaries to any of your three green mixes to get the exact tone or shade of green that you need in each area. You need to add the red too to these particular green mixes to tone them down; if they were new, young leaves they would have those bright colors but not here. I`ve left a fine white line for the main veins.
I`ve layed in stronger colors and also started with shadows. The shadows make a beautiful pattern here on the leaves, its a good idea to draw them in first. Shadows too have colors, they are not grey but they should always be duller than the sunlit areas. Add more of the reds for them but not so much that they dominate the greens and start looking grey.
Strengthened the shadows a bit more with the same colors.
Watercolor Journal 