Floral Watercolour by Christin Stapff was the very first book I bought to learn how to do loose florals. Coming off my detailed realistic drawings, the look of loose watercolour flowers is very appealing to me. Believe it or not, loose isn’t easy and requires a lot of practice! So if you are interested in learning how to do loose florals, take a look at what this book offers.
What you will learn in Floral Watercolour by Christin Stapff
Christin Stapff, a.k.a. Madchenkunst, provides step by step guide on how to paint leaves, flowers and wreaths in Floral Watercolour. Take a look at the Table of Contents:
Since this book is not specifically for beginners in watercolour but for learning how to do loose florals, you won’t find a large chunk of the book devoted to discuss supplies, colour theories, etc. like in Emma Lefebvre’s book. However, it has good warmup and exercises to build muscle memory, which you need if you want to master loose florals.
The How-To Exercises
Particularly, I love that Stapff focused on the brush strokes and there are so many exercises for you to practice before you do the projects.
I followed the instructions and painted some of the flowers. By the way, some of the exercises have QR codes where you can watch Christin Stapff demonstrate how to paint them.
The Projects
What I love about this book is that you can use all you have learned from the exercises in these projects. There are 10 of them and I did quite a few. These are not hard; most of which you need to layer (wait to dry between layers).
Bouquet Project
I painted this several times and still find lots of room for improvement. However, the whole point of loose watercolour florals isn’t perfection; you don’t really look at one individual element but rather the entire piece as a whole.
No Rain, No Flowers Project
Next, I did the rain boot painting. Somehow my boot came out very blue, even though it is more violet in person. My paper isn’t the best, so I had a bit of hard time doing the wet on wet with the flowers, but it was not difficult to paint at all.
By the way, there are no tracing pages in this book. However, the projects are fairly simple, and because most of the projects are loose florals, sketching isn’t required.
Floral Cake Project
This was fun as well. My cake was a little too yellow due to using Meiliang paint, which stains the paper even with a small amount. It is, however, a great paint to practice with.
Floral Patterns Project
Afterward, I painted the floral patterns project. It was slightly more challenging in that I didn’t make the flowers the same size. I enjoyed painting this, though!
Flower Ice Cream Project
Last, but not least, is the flower ice cream project. I painted this when I first learned watercolour and used a paper I hated. Anyway, this was another fun project which I intend to repaint.
Floral Library
One very useful feature of the book in particular is the floral library at the back. It has a great variety of Stapff’s paintings so you can recreate the florals using the skills you have learned from the book.
Summary
All in all, this is a great book especially for anyone who wants to learn loose watercolour florals. I thoroughly enjoyed it and still use it frequently for reference. So far, Floral Watercolour, Watercolor for Relaxation and Watercolour Lessons are three of my favourite watercolour books.
