The first part of this tutorial is designed to help you become familiar with the subject you wish to paint.  One of the best ways for one to get to know their subject well is by drawing it out in pencil, either as a small thumbnail sketch or full scaled drawing.  This helps one work out complicated sections and offers the best way to determine and work on values before a brush is ever picked up and loaded with pigment.

The second part focuses on the painting process of the individual petals.  By working the petals individually, you will gain practice working the wet in wet technique and then moving to the glazing process.  This section is broken down, step-by-step, with illustrations to aid in color placement and to show the process of those techniques used.  Please read through all instructions before beginning.

Finally, we will bring all the components together to create the final flower by showing the order in which this study was painted.

TOOLS, BRUSHES and COLORS:

• Pencil
• Paper or sketchbook
• Putty eraser
• 140 lb NOT or Cold Press Paper
• Brushes:  #4 Round, #6 Round, and 1/2" Slanted Flat (Rigger and/or #2 Round optional)
• Stylus or any object with thin point to bruise fine lines
• Masking Fluid 
• Colour Shaper (I use a small chiseled pointed shaper) 
• Colors Recommended:  Aureolin, New Gamboge, Burnt Sienna, French Ultra Blue and Olive Green
• White Gouache (optional)

SPECIAL COMMENT ABOUT COLOR CHOICE:

What helped me determine the colors I wanted to use, I first used my photo editing program, Adobe Photoshop Elements, to take samples of those colors in my flower.  I used the eyedropper function to carry this out giving me the following readings.  Those first colors from darkest brown to light yellow were throughout the petals with the darkest being in the center.  The other colors are described in the illustration.  And, although I didn't use all these colors as shown in this chart, this gave me a fairly good idea what pigments and mixtures I wanted to use.

INSTRUCTIONS

DRAWING/SKETCHING EXERCISE:

Using the following as a guideline, practice drawing/sketching until you feel confident in the structure of the flower and have a good idea of the values you hope to obtain in your flower painting. 

Please note in the following illustration and in the painting examples that follow, the tone values are actually darker than that which is shown in the photograph.  The reason for the darker values is to help separate one petal from another, to add interest, and to give an overall illusion of 3D.