Usually when I paint flowers or plants I do just that. Then, I have to decide what to put my creation in! The pot or vase are only too often left to a last minute sketchy thing which does nothing for the whole composition, or, even worse, left out entirely!

Today though I am turning the whole thing on its head and doing this colorful painting using a new twist for me!

Starting with the bottom of the painting first – I created a landscape of containers for my succulent forest. And then, only then, I painted in the plants!

For this painting I used a piece of Hahnemühle mixed media paper which contains 90% bamboo fibres and 10% cotton. I have found this paper very good for using my new set of Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors, some of which are quite like gouache and enabled me to create this lively painting.

Here are the links to the paints and the paper I used.

Two new papers I’ve recently found on Amazon for the first time are called Wanderings and Sax. The Wanderings is handmade, Indian style, so bound to be irregular and ethnic, and the Sax is 90lb cold press at a very good price. There is also the Etchr pad which I find quite good. All would make good supports for this painting.

I really like mixed media paper for the whimsical paintings I am doing at the moment and it is fine for light florals too. It’s very forgiving to watercolor and is a good surface for penwork. There are other mixed media papers too, and the Canson one is good.

Alternative paint sets

This painting would work well if you just used a set of gouache paints. You need some degree of opacity to make the leaves stand out against the pots and the leaves behind in order to get the punch of this painting. Here are some options:

The brushes I used were a medium round, size 9, and a larger one, size 13 or so, for the larger parts of the painting. Depending on the size you design your painting, you might need a bigger or smaller brush.

Here are a few good options for brushes:

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