I have always loved daffodils and their cheerful spring greeting.
My watercolor entitled "Daffodil" started when I took some photos of daffodils in my garden one sunny spring day. The photos I took had a lot of daffodils in them but I ended up cropping one photo to just these two daffodils to evoke a sense of intimacy with the flower.
Next I picked my paint colors. In this case I used just three colors -- a red, a yellow and a blue -- the other colors were blended from those. I also had to decide what I wanted to leave white. I don't use white paint so the whites are just the white of the paper showing through.
The daffodil was painted with several very thin layers of watercolor, each applied after the previous one had dried.
The background utilized a technique called "negative painting". Instead of painting the leaves, I painted darker paint around the outside of the leaves, making the leaves "magically" appear. This painting was the first time I tried that technique and I was very happy with how it turned out!