Another New Step by Step Watercolour Demo

This is another flower demo in watercolours, done in the same style as the one I posted yesterday. This one was done for my Wed. morning class and the flower is Cosmos.
Step 1: begin with the main flower shapes on dry paper. Remember to puddle the colour and let them mix together on their own. For this step I used combinations of Azo Yellow, Gamboge Hue, Quinacridone Rose, Scarlet Lake and Ultramarine Blue (all M Graham watercolours, except the Scarlet Lake which is Winsor Newton).
Step 2: begin to puddle in colours for the background, making sure to puddle in some of the flower colour. Keep this stage fairly light at this point. When you cut around the flowers, you can soften the interactions with the flower edges in places. This is still done on dry paper using juicy wet paint.
Step 3: finish the first layer on the background. I splashed some water droplets into the damp background washes to make some blossoms for texture. At this point, the background has 'caught up' to the foreground, so it is now time to go back into the main flowers to pull them up from the background.
Step 4: The main flowers now have more colour and detail than the background. Make sure not to cover up all of the original washes on the flowers to keep the colour bright.
Step 5: Go back into the background and begin painting both negatively and positively to form the middle ground elements of flowers and leaves. To do this I used darker combinations of Azo Yellow, Phalo blue and Ultramarine blue as well as some of the previous flower colours on the found flowers.
Step 6: Continue to paint in the background to increase complexity. At this point mark making becomes very important, as I merely painted in the suggestion of things that will read as folliage. I let the blue cross the painting in a diagonal from upper right to lower left to counteract the diagonal of the flowers which move from upper left to lower right.
"Cosmos", 7 x 11", watercolour -A bit more tweeking of colour, shape and value and the painting is complete.
Enjoy!