Watercolour Painting Gordonia Blossom

The lovely Gordonia Axillaris is an evergreen tree with a funny nickname “fried egg” plant!  When its blossoms fall, they drop around the tree face up leaving the golden orange yellow centre popping out in the middle of the frilly white petals. Looking like dozens of fried eggs.

The Gordonia belongs to the Theaceae  ‘tea family’ and the flowers have a similarity to camellia blossoms. The tree grows about 3-5 meters high with lush dark and glossy green leaves.

The big flower petals are about 4 inches across, white and have a large orange yellow centre.  These trees require lots of rainfall and do not tolerate drought well.  Which is why,  I saw hundreds of the trees in Sydney NSW  and none here in Perth.

The watercolour palette chosen for this painting included:  cobalt, ultramarine, prussian blue, burnt sienna, permanent rose, winsor lemon.   This palette helped me to avoid mud and mix brighter more vibrant colours.

I created a bit of a sparkle  by leaving lots of pure white paper. Plus, I emphasised the complementary pair blue and orange to jazz up the image.

The post on Types of paper  is a useful one to refer back to. What I’ve used here, was 100% cotton CP  cold press,  Arches.  Arches is a great beginner friendly paper,  it can take a scrubbing and still manage to look good. And I think its more cost effective in the long run. I can use it front and back, rinse it all off and start all over again.  I can not do that, with the cheaper papers!