2 Must Know Beginner Watercolor Techniques: Wet on Wet and Wet on Dry

1. Intro: Hey, everyone. This is Mega, and I'm a watercolor artist based in Bangalore, India, and I am totally in love with the beauty of watercolors. I love painting things which are inspired by nature and in today's class, I'm going ahead and explaining to you two beautiful watercolor techniques which are wet on wet and wet on dry. And we will be using we'll be painting two lovely planters which are stress free and so beautiful, they don't even look like they are beginner friendly, and you're going to enjoy the whole process. And in a very simple way, I'm going to explain to you how I'm going to use this and what I'm doing and you will clearly know the difference between these two major watercolor techniques that you will need to know if you want to start your watercolor journey. I'm going to quickly show to you. This is the one which we will be doing for our wet on dry, which simply means working with paint on a dry paper. This is the second one which is wet on wet where he's working on a wet surface. Once we get onto the part, you'll know what I mean. Without any further ado, let's go ahead and start with this class. 2. Materials: Alright, so let's have a look at all the materials that we will be needing for this class. Since the paintings are small, I'm going to use this number five round brush, so you can go ahead and use number four, number six. That won't be a problem. Then I have my tissue here for extra water and paint. Then two jars of water so that I have clean supply of water. Then I have this Daniel Smith watercolors, which this one from the basic set and from this gen han set, and it has a lot of beautiful bright colors. They are out here. This is a swatch card of it. I do have a few extra ones like this lemon yellow here and a little bit more yellows and all the greens are here and these are the ones that we will be mostly using for this class. And then I have my mini frames here. These metal frames are available easily online and this is you can also use a small paper if you don't have these frames available for you. So what I have done is just 100% cotton paper, 300 GSM, and it's smooth finish, not very rough. It's like a medium kind of paper, and I just cut it into small piece so that it just fits in here and you can carry this frame with you. You can use it as a back chum if you want to carry your art and it's double sided. You can also write something nice here and paint something nice here. That's how both of these frames are, and that's about the materials, and let's hop onto the next part of this class and we will start with our first plant. 3. Wet on Dry Technique: And this is what we will be doing in this part, and this is our wet on dry, which I've already explained to you, and this is the painting which we will be making this sweet little planter. Okay, so I have my paper here ready. I'm going to use this beautiful burn siana from here and maybe we can add a little black to it. Just to make it slightly darker. I'm just using this from here and just adding a hint of black to it just so that it gets a little darker to it. And we'll start from the top because we want to make it appear as it's coming from the top with a very free hand, I've just drawn one string like this, it will go inside our basket, and then one more like this and a third one like this. If you want, you can also add little kind of macrame style details to this. I'm just adding just to give it the look of rope. I am alternating and painting these tiny scallops, using just the tip of my brush. Since there is a lot of this kind of detailing, that's why it will be good to use a smaller number brush and make sure that also your brush has a good tip, it just gives it a nice that macromy look. Then again, to the same burnt umber, taking a little bit burnt umber here, and like this. And I will mix a little red y less, just a hint of it. So just to get a nice terra cotta kind of a shade. So in any of your browns, you can add a little red or if you have a very bright orange, just to give it a nice feel of a nice this thing, burnt color, I'm sorry, terra cotta kind of a color. So for the basket, I'm going for this very round typical basket. And since we are not drawing anything, I'm not going to worry too much about symmetry or anything. This is a very great technique first you do the outline and while it's still wet, you just get some water on your brush and you just run around this line and drag the color in and let it nicely spread. You can also drop in a little bit more color. Like this. I'm leaving it like this for now because we want to do our leaves and our plant. You can use any of the greens here. I'm going to use this green appetite from my Daniel Smith set and loading the brush with not too much water also. And not much paint. First, we can just take out a few stems like this running out of it. For this, we are just using the tip of the brush and you can make a few go up like this, gain come down. Don't worry about all this. Once you have quite a bit of this, we'll go ahead and start with our leaves. Taking the same green again and then using the tip of the brush, I'm using the stem that we did as a guide. Then start painting the leaves using just the tip of the brush. All I'm doing here is using the tip of the brush and slightly pressing it and then lifting it up to create this leaf shape and you can just continue it all over the stem that we painted before and continue doing it for all of the stems. Also, make sure that you are using a brush that has a good tip, then only you'll get this nice panty shapes. Since we are doing wet on dry, there's more control and you'll get a more defined shape of the leaves and let the pot dry fully if you don't want any color to bleed in and just continue the pattern. And I don't worry too much about symmetry about getting it right. Just have fun with it, just go with the flow. Just observe how your brush is playing around and keep on adding more water when you feel that it has become dry. Too much water will make the leaves spread and you won't get this nice fine shape. Taking it up a little bit, doing little tiny ones on the top. Some of them might not come in a very great shape, but that's totally fine. What we want is just overall look of a nice tiny planter, and then we are going to fill in more Basically, we have to cover this so you can keep on adding stems. Let a few of it overlap this and come down like this. Fill this gap here. Maybe one more. We can do just climbing up like this. Then again, you can go back to your brown and black mixture and you can finish the basket like this. A little bit of white gap is always okay. It looks nice with watercolors. I'm just adding a little dark on the top part. Just to give it a nice and lovely finish like this. Then again, if you want, you can add a little bit more details like more color here. And again, we can take this and add a little bit of since we did the macrame thing, a little bit of detail like this and maybe one or two strings like this to make it appear as if it is holding it. Like this, you can go for a third one if you want. For this one, we are not going to do any detailing. We can just keep it simple. So that's it once it is nice and dry, you can just go ahead and put it in your frame. And as I said, you can use the backside for writing a beautiful coat, putting your initials, anything like that, you can just use it for. Just like this, it is all done. And in the next part of the class, we will hop on to our next frame and maybe this one we can add some flow 4. Wet on Wet Technique: Okay, so I have my paper here ready and we will be starting with our wet on wet for this second one. We will start from the top. And this one, we can make it simple, maybe like a few notes. Here like this to give it the effect and it's going to be very, very simple and then very free hand and like this. And for the part of this, we can do it a little bit brownish. In the same brown and red mixture that we had from before, I'm adding a little black to it just like this and we'll do the planter. For this, we will do the planter a little bit later. And I'm going to use a different green for this one. This one, I'm going to use the undersea green and we will do wet on wet for this. The earlier one we did wet on dry. What I'm going is I've taken some clean water on my brush and I'm just applying it randomly towards the top part. Taking the green and just leaving it like this and you can see how beautifully it's spreading. This is a wonderful example of wet on wet. M and then you can take it a little down, wherever you want the greens to go, you can add more water, layer water first, and then drop in your green. This color is really beautiful, so it's giving two to three shades of green on its own. Again, I'm just using the tip of the brush. This will be our first layer. Then again, we'll be taking the same color and then you can take more pigment and we'll add a few more highlights here and there. This time, since the water has gone and it's a little dry, so you can see how the color is not running around and not spreading as fast as it did in the first layer. So this will add a little bit of detailing to it. So in your corners, you can add as if the leaves are coming out of it and in between, a little bit more. Just keep on ending like this. And then we are going to use this brown that we made before and now you can go ahead and use any shape that you want. Maybe for this one, can do a little squarish. And this part, I'm assuming it's all hidden with our plant. I just did a line and then same technique like before, I'll just wet my brush with clean water and drag this color around. Then take more on the brush and drop here and there. Give that nice and lovely watercolor look. So just like this. And then I'll also teach you one more technique which is called lifting. Since we have to add flowers, so I will lift some colors. I'm taking clean water on my brush, scrubbing it gently and putting it on the tissue to remove it. So you can see how clean paper is coming out. So a little bit here. Kind of erasing as if Okay. So yeah, that's it. And then also you can just scrumble your tissue and just go ahead and pick some more like this. Then again, we'll start with the clean water, and I'm going to put it on this part a little bit here, little here, little here, like wherever you feel like. And then I'm using this beautiful quin rose, and then I'm going to drop this here where we just put the water just to create look of flowers. Okay. So this is a very cool and easy way of using wet on wet to paint with watercolors. I'm just going to add a little bit here as well. Make sure your brain has dried properly before you hop on for this pink one. And you can just let it spread. Once it starts to dry, you can take more pigment and using the tip of the brush, start adding a second layer to give it that depth and so it doesn't look all mushy and very spread out. It has this tiny details on it. Like this, if you feel you can add more flowers. For me, it looks good now. One last touch up I'm going to do is I'm going to take my green back, which is undersea green this time more pigment on the brush and adding a few here as well on the flowers. The side of the flowers and wherever the color has become lighter and it has spread out way too much, there you can go ahead and add this detailing near this spot I'm going to add just like here, here. Just use your brush, tip of your brush, keep your hand very loose and don't hold it very tightly or something. Keep it very loose and just follow your heart, see where you feel. Like this part looks very, very, like a blob kind of thing has happened here. There are no leaves. You can see. It's just as if some green color has dropped off. So I'm just taking my brush and randomly just touching, lifting, touching, lifting. And it is creating this beautiful detail. And that's the joy of watercolor. Like you don't have to worry too much. Just go with the flow. Maybe one or two here, not too much. And then you can also add in between here because there's a huge patch of flowers here. Yeah, that's all. All right. That's about it. I hope you enjoyed this watercolor class which focuses on two basic watercolor techniques wet on wet and wet on dry, which are a must if you want to begin your watercolor journey and you can use these in a variety of ways for a variety of paintings. Mostly we combine both wet on wet and wet on dry in any watercolor painting. Keep experimenting with it. In the next part of the class, I'll let you know about your class project. 5. Class Project: For your class project, you can go ahead and paint both of these because it's important for learning the techniques, it is important that you know the difference between the two, go ahead and give them both a try. You can change the color of the flowers if you like, but give them both a try. You don't have to use these frames if you don't have them available with you. You can just take a bigger paper like this and cut a smaller sheet out of it. This is around two inch by two inch roughly. That way, you can just cut your paper around like this or you can also use any size paper that you would like and go ahead and give a try to both wet on wet and wet on dry and submit it as your class project. If you have like this class, don't forget to leave a review for me. I would love to hear from you, do drop in any comments or any questions that you would have and wishing you all the best. Thank you bye bye.