Step 1: Establish the Background
I first used a Robert Simmons white sable 3-inch brush to wet the entire piece of 300-lb. hot-pressed paper. I then poured diluted Rowney blue, flame red and process yellow onto the wet paper. (I prepared these three mixtures separately in small cups before wetting the paper.) As soon as the last cup of diluted paint was poured, I held the paper in a vertical position so the excess paint and water ran off. I then laid the paper flat to dry.
I next sketched the house and tree branches. I painted the dark of the house with the same three colors that I mixed on my palette. I used one drop of paint from each bottle to make black and painted the details on the house using a Robert Simmons white sable No. 6 brush. For the roof of the house, I used a glaze of diluted yellow ochre. Notice the flawless blue sky, pink house and yellow foreground. These will be the lightest values in the finished painting.

Step 2: Create the Focal Point
I next painted the red flowers of the tree. The brightest blossoms were simply a single drop of flame red dropped onto damp paper with a touch of yellow ochre. (I used both directly from the bottle.) The lighter receding blossoms were painted on dry paper with diluted paint. I then painted the trunk, branches and foliage of the tree using the basic watercolor technique of painting light to dark. I added antelope brown as my fifth color. With this step, I completed the sky, house, and tree.

Step 3: Be Inventive
The foliage close to the house appears very detailed, but is actually only a play of color, shapes and values. This is the part of the painting I enjoy most. Once the design and mood have been established, I'm free to be inventive. I mixed color on my painting instead of on my palette, saving yet another step. I established the foliage using light blue, and then added one or both yellow to make the various greens. Some colors were mixed on the wet paper and others on dry paper as a glaze. For the darker areas, I added red and more blue. This was done one small section at a time using a No. 2 and No. 6 white sable brush.

Step 4: Fill in the Foliage
To delineate the foliage in the foreground, I used my familiar background painting techniques. For example, to create an underwater atmosphere, the splashing surf, or a misty sky, I'd use a spray bottle of water to slatter the paint, rather than traditional painting. With several transparent glazes over tissued-out clouds, you can create a powerful sky or, by tissuing-out trees, creat an unlabored landscape. After the apint has dried, I painted my planned composition over and around the underpainted background.

Step 5: Add More Flowers
As a rule, objects in the immediate foreground of a painting have the most clairty. In my painting, I felt I needed more flowers in the garden than were portrayed in the photograph. So I looked through my gardening magazines and found a great photograph of a flowering bush. To complete the garden, I painted around each plant with a dark value before painting the details of each bush. I placed the flowering detailed bush at the bottom and center of the painting to give the painting more depth.

Step 6: Finishing Touches
To complete Flamboyant (22 x 30), I darkened the values on the house and added yellow glazes to the foliage in the foreground.