[Tips] Magnolia: Painting White Flowers

Mixing 3 primary colour paints will produce richer "grey" than using only diluted single black/grey pigment to paint white objects. As I mentioned here, the mix consisted of 2 parts of French Ultramarine, 1 part of Cadmium Yellow Pale, and 1 part of Cadmium red deep. I added a small amount of other paint that matched with the object's hue, e.g. Permanent Rose for the Magnolia and the Hydrangea, or Cadmium Lemon for the snowy wood-rush (illustration in the middle). 
[Insights] Those 3 paints of basic mix didn't mix together long, they would separate out.  It meant I needed to stir it again soon before applying it on paper. You can even expect them to separate again on paper if the wash is really wet. However, I liked the "separated" effect especially when the granulating french ultramarine came out in this Magnolia illustration. The shadow tone looked rich and it lent the leathery effect of the petals, too.

In addition, I used white gouache for the fine hair of the buds. [Tips] I mixed white gouache with yellow watercolour, hence it blended nicely with the whole illustration. If not, the white gouache tended to look bluish.

And here is the scanned image of the Magnolia. It is one of the 4 illustrations I made for Rathbone Square Garden. Please visit my Behance to see the complete illustrations. Cheers :)