Watercolor: 9 Tropical Leaves

1. Introduction: Hey, guys, I'm Peggy, author of Botanical Line Drawing and in this class I'm actually going to approach botanical's using watercolors. We're going to go over nine different tropical leaves that you can paint very quickly and easily and then create a really cool design. There's a lot you can do with it, but the project that we'll be doing in this class will be to create some negative space with some tropical leaves around it. There's a lot of things that you can do with negative space. So that's a fun one. I'm going to go over how to create those but first we will attack some leaves and I'm super excited and I can't wait to see you in the class. 2. Tools & Materials: Hey guys, welcome to the class. I'm super excited you decided to join me. I want to mention that if you're new to water color or there's some techniques that you feel that you might want to brush up on before we get started into tropical leaves, I do have another water color class and the link is in the above section below. I recommend just going over that briefly so that you can get familiar with different techniques with washes and things that you can do with Control. Otherwise, this class will give you of a jump-start into that. If you feel like you're a fast learner than this is perfect for you and we will get started. The first thing I want to go over are supplies. Right here I have just some basic watercolor supplies and I've never been a fan of tubes. I might be one day, but right now it's just not my thing. I don't have the patience to squeeze the tubes into a tray, but there's some really great water colored tube paints that I know that if you want to get serious in water color, if you are those are like an awesome way to go. For now this is just standard. I have the watercolors by Sakura , the Koi travel side, which I love. It comes with a water brush and then you have a sponge that you can squeeze the water onto and clean off your brush for the next color, which is a really cool feature of this side. It also comes with a palette and you can hook this palette on so it moves. It has these prongs, I'm going to move these. It's got these prongs on the bottom, and these will stick into anywhere you want on this palette. It can go here on the back, on the front, on the side, or it can just sit in this tray. Then you can also put some additional washes on the tray, so it's got a lot of options there. When it comes to brushes, I love the Loew Cornell soft comfort brushes. It's got this ergonomic handle, so your fingers set really nicely in it. They're super velvety to the touch, which is awesome. They come in packs of four and they're super cheap on Amazon. The link is also below in the above section of the class, so you can grab those and here I just have a size 2, 4, 6, and 10, and we'll go into that. You want your jar of water, because we're doing just greens, I'm just going to use one jar of water if you're doing flowers that are bright red and orange and then you have your leaves, you'd want a warm and cool tone separate jars of water so you don't make the colors neutral and it turned that into that murky brown color, so that's the point of having the two jars, but I'm just going to have this one for now, and then watercolor paper. So much watercolor paper out there, the main thing that I can tell you is to make sure that it is a 140 pounds. There are some watercolor papers that claim to be watercolor paper, and it's not that heavy-weight. Your papers are going to warp. It's just pointless, you're just throwing away money, unless you want to draw on it. Mixed media paper is great to do a light wash a watercolor when you mix it with ink and things like that. I say go for the watercolor paper because, it can't go wrong. This is by Canson, there's also some by Strathmore, Arches, so lots of options out there. I don't really have a preference necessarily, you'll find me always using Canson products. I don't have a good reason why. They're just very accessible especially in price point, and they're also acid free, which is a big bonus. Grab your watercolor, grab your big brushes, grab your paper, really anything across the board will work just fine for this class. We're just going over technique so, let's get started and let's get Painting. 3. Areca Leaf: If you don't already have one, I super highly recommend having a swatch chart of your watercolor palette and that way you can quickly reference exactly what color you're going to grab. As you can see, the colors don't always look exactly like how they're going to come out. This grassy apple green comes out much lighter, this blue here, it looks a little more purple on the palette itself. So having a swatch chart is super helpful. Then obviously you can always mix colors as well. Using that as a reference, I'm going to start my leaves. The leaf we're going to paint together is the Areca palm leaf. This is probably my favorite to paint so it's an easy, obvious one for me to start with. What you'll do is you want get your brush wet and grab the color that you want to use. You can choose tones that you want go with these. Sometimes it might be cooler greens and some might be warmer or brighter greens. I like to actually mix the colors together. You'll see what I mean as we get into it. To begin, with your stem, use the very tip of your paint brush. We're just going to slowly drag this away from us without pressing down too hard because we want it to be nice and thin, and don't worry about perfection because the imperfections is what really makes watercolor come to life I think, it brings a lot of movement into it. Once you have your stem. I'm just going use a smaller paint brush, so this is my size two. But what I'm going to do is start near the top and drag that lightly so that it has a really thin stroke and then apply a little more pressure and just flick it off. Then I'm going to have more of those toward the top, they're just still pretty small. I don't grab new paint every time because I want it to be, like that transparency to come through. At this point while it's still wet, if you want to add more colors in, different tones, grab those colors, and then you can just set it where those wet areas are, and it'll blend in with them creating a little more dimension, which is a lot of fun to do with the leaves. Continuing on, these leaves come upward so we're going to incorporate that. Still pretty thin like outward, and then maybe grabbing a little more of a different tone outwards and see how when you run into the other ones it makes this really cool effect where it's bleeding. That's one of my favorite parts. Then go to the other side, do the same thing. Just to remember that you are just making that thin stem and then pressing a little bit and just flicking that off. You can drag it too if you want to, but I find that doing that flicking motion, makes a little bit more of that movement in the plant itself. You can always go back and extend some leaves if you need to. Another thing you'll notice is that if the stem is still wet, when you're setting down that initial stem off of it, it will expand into it even more so it'll create more color in there which is cool. If you see like these leaves that have a prominent color, but you want to add a little texture to it, you can grab like browns, and then just set that at the tip and then that'll lead into it. A little more realistic looking. Anywhere that there's like, you can obviously see there's a pool where it's still wet. It makes just that much more character. So we will bring this up. See how this one is more transparent. I had a lot of water on my brush right here. This is the stuff that you guys want to play with because different techniques as you practice these leaves, you'll actually see what is being created and there's no wrong way to do it. You could even do this super dry and have no bleed and that scratchy texture would make for a beautiful version. We're just going to bring a few more through here. Then last one. Then you have this gorgeous Areca palm leaf and you can be totally done and that's all you need to do. Amazing, right? 4. Banana Leaf: Now we're going to do a banana leaf. I love these ones too. They are pretty straight forward. They have the split leaf effect, which is one of those telltale signs that it's a tropical leaf. There, a little brighter and definitely a different style than what we just did. I'm excited to jump into that with you. So what I'm going to do is grab a small paint brush again, grab a lighter colored green, and then bring my stem up the same way that I did with the leaf that we just did. Essentially it's just going to come up like this but the thing is with the split leaf, we have to keep that in mind so we have to leave space for it. You can do this in two different ways, you can either come up, drag, create that split leave, come back out, drag create the split leave, come back out or you can do just the base shape, but leave gaps where the slits are going to be to be. To me I think that's a little easier because your base shape won't be wonky that way and it'll be consistent as the leaf and then the split effect will be a little easier to tackle. So what you're going to do is pull this up like this, put a little break in here, come up, do another break, make this one a little bit wider. You need to grab more paints, you do that, come up a little more and then maybe another split and then come to a tip like that. Then we'll do the same thing on the other side. You want to make these not even so come up maybe to here and then do your first split right here, come up and then maybe another split here. It could be wider, it could be skinnier. I'm just going to use a real skinny one, then come all the way into that same point like that and then go in and create your splits. These can go pretty deep, if I'm going here, I'll start here and have the leaf connect like so and do that to all the areas that you have split your leave. If you find that you have an oops like this, which happens often, just ball up a paper towel and roll it, if you dab in that area, it'll lift the water color up. Then if you have no paint on your brush, touch the water down one more time, do the same thing. Just blot only don't rub and it'll take the majority of that off if not all of it and then you can go back in and fix that then you have your slit leaves. What I also recommend doing is creating some splits inside that don't reach the outside and these can be real minor. So as you're putting color in, make these ahead of time so that you know where they are so that you're not coloring over them. So just really skinny areas, they could just be little holes but the more you put in there, the more character it's going to have. Don't worry if it's not doing exactly what you want because you can always create it somewhere else. It's fun to do it where they're all in a group, so one on top of another like this. It looks a little strange because the color isn't filled in yet, but know that they're not going to be this large. It's just those little slivers of white that you see. Then go ahead and fill it in with the lighter color that you're using, and we'll add some darker color in here shortly. What I want you guys to do also, it's okay if it touches, but try not to paint over the stem itself because we want to add some darker color coming from the stem and it really doesn't matter. It's just that if you're going to paint over it right away, you don't want it to bleed into that because you want that stem to remain a little lighter. That makes sense? A little bleeding is fine because it adds that character. Once you have it colored in and add some darker color in there so we can create some more dimension. You want it pretty wet, more water than paint on your brush, then just set it toward the middle and it will bleed on its own because you just put that water color down. That's why I like to do it now versus waiting until it's dry because then, it sounds silly but you have less control over where it bleeds which is what you actually want because it creates that watercolor effect but if you were to wait till it dried, you can always lay water down and then do this or you can direct the watercolor exactly where you want it to go, which would also be a beautiful leaf. So that will give you some options to explore. Just set it, see how I am just setting it close to the stem in the middle, dragging that color through real close, but my stem is staying for the most part prominent on its own. Then as we go, I'm just adding a little darker to the same exact areas because they've already bled, and it's basically building up that darker color toward the center and letting it continue to disperse but holding that overall dimension. Once that's over, you just have those two colors down, you have the wet bleed. You're done with your banana leaf and it looks like this awesome textured slit leaf. So pretty simple. Then we will move to our next leaf. 5. Aralia: This one is super full. So we're going to do the stem again first and then draw the outline. We'll start with a light color again. Grab whatever color you want to use. We're going to do a short stem. Then this is going to be a little bit thicker because it will then branch off into the veins of the leaf. From here, you're going to drag it up into its first section and then do the next. That will come just from the base of the stem that we just created right here. Then to keep this even if it helps you, instead of doing this side first you can move to opposite sides of the center that you just did, and then you know that it's even. Then go to the next one, and the next one. These are getting shorter as they get toward the side. Then another one right here, another one right here. Then the last one is pretty short, like that. Then we will add our lighter color and we will bring that color up to about right here. Just under the middle of those areas. From here, we're going to split this color off and into its own individual leaf, so to speak. It's like needles on a leaf. But I'm going to do that to this whole area first. Just dragging color in the middle, maybe a little farther down and then shape the leaf like this. Just like you were to a regular leaf, shape all of those. It's okay if they're overlapping a little bit, shaping, but do come back and make sure that there's a little bit of a gap right here and then have the overlap. Then the other side. Although it's okay to overlap it, you probably don't want to do it too much. Another way to do this too, is you can create the leaves and then connect it higher. Different approaches and then just come in, create that wash. Now that real light color coming through. Then we can go in and add those darker colors. So if you have an area like this where the outline is a little darker inside that wash is not so dark, just color in. You can grab the same color or something similar that's a little darker, and just set that down and let it bleed. I'm using a similar green. It has a little more of a blue tone, but it's not quite as dark as this. I'm going to let it concentrate just on this section of that stem for now because I don't want it to overwhelm the entire area. Then I'm going to go in with a yellow color and mix it with the green I just used the first time, and then set that down here and just drag it through. Now I just want to add some color to the tips and then the inside. So I'm going to get the very tip wet and then drag that down. But I don't want the rest of it to be waxed. I don't want it to bleed the whole way. I'm going to go in, the darker green and just set it at the tip. Just like that. Set it down and let it bleed. As it bleeds, you can set it down on my time toward the tip and then add a little water toward the edge or towards the middle so that it bleeds further. You can do that and guide it. But play around with these techniques because they are build-able. Then what I'll do is do the same thing to the center of each leaf. I don't want them to connect, so I'm just doing them separately. Then go in with that darker color, set it down. Then I'm going to bring just on the leaves that are a little lighter, a darker color toward the middle and outward just a bit like so, which is creating a little bit more dimension, and then you are done with that leaf. 6. Bird of Paradise: The Bird of Paradise leaf, right now for some reason, this is my favorite plant. I love it, I have two of them. One of them is giant. So we're going to do that. It's real similar to the banana leaf, only it doesn't split quite as much. It does have a longer stem. They can be kind of a rich green. I'm just going to grab a standard darker green and do a pretty long stem. To scale with these other ones, it's like the same size stem. What I mean is that I'm going to make the leaf a little smaller, but pretend that it's, because it's a long stem. Then I'm just going to curve it around, make these folds, because it does have some more flowy bends and folds. Then I'm going to keep a little bit of white space between where the stem was. We can see that I've now created more of a reference for the stem in that white space versus the stem itself, which is fine. You can leave some white space in through here too. From there, I'm just going to go even darker toward the center. Darker in the center, and a different hue. Then I'm going to the same idea that we did with this. Just do some really light, flicking motion outward, just so it drags out there, but doesn't cover the entire area. It's marked for texture than anything else. 7. Fan Palm: Now we'll move onto our Fan palm, which also has a longer leaf. These are a lot fun, they're just like our Areca palm. Only they're shaped more like the Aralia. Just come up. Then we're going to do the same thing where we apply pressure and then flick off. Maybe have a little more control, have some slower motions instead of just having that real fast ones. Because you do want these one to be shaped appropriately. Then you can go in and grab some more different tones and colors. Then just for the bottom they get much smaller, similar to this guy only it's the home version like that. This is all you could do. You don't have to do any more than this. It actually creates a really cool effect. It's an unfinished, more of that blending type of watercolor. Or you can go in and add more detail of darker colors. I'm going to add a few more leaves, but I think I might, I really like the way that this is looking and I'm going to let it dry for a minute because I don't want my additional leaves to just create a flub from the back. I'm just going to be kind of careful here to make them pretty skinny. Like so. I'm going to leave it as-is because I really actually like the effect that I made. 8. Durban: For the next one that we're going to do that has some color to it. It's the Durban leave. It's got some red in it, and it is a pretty basic shape. When red and green mixed together, it's going to create brown. It neutralizes. So you don't want to add one color to the other. You can either choose to do the green first and lay the red on top or vice versa. I'm going to do the red first because I'm going to use a dark, dark green on top of it. I feel like the green that I use on top of it won't get lost in the red, whereas the red might get lost in the green. Since it's a lighter color. To start my shape, I'm going to leave the stem open like we did with our Bird of Paradise, but I'm going to make it a lot more crisp. I'm going to bring that up and then go in again, and bring that up. Only as it gets towards the top, I am going to make it skinnier and then eventually connect. You can see that there's that red area in between, and now I'll create my shape. It's just going to come out and then come back in like this. Pretty easy. You don't have to do it this way. I could just do that solid color, but this helps leave a little white space which will help the green be a little more vibrant. What I'm doing is just connecting the outer part of the stem that I did to the outer part of the shape so that it pops a little more. Let that dry and then we will take our darker color, green over it. I'm just going to drag it up in really, really thin lines toward the outside and have them connect and curl toward the ends. Now they started to look a little transparent, you can just come back in with a little more pigment, more paint on your brush, less water. The same thing to the other side. Holding your brush upright and less at an angle will help you get more of those fine lines also. All these are looking a little transparent, so I'm just going in and adding a little more pigment to them. Again, you guys, these don't have to be perfect. So if some of your lines are thinner and some are thicker, it just adds character. So embrace it. Then from here, I'm going to go in with just a little bit of paint on my brush and drag it through the stem so that we have some cohesive lines where it brings it together. But notice that I left some white space too and that can be it on that leaf. You can also wait till it dries and go over some of those whiter areas or red areas and add some yellow in. I wouldn't do a lot. But just some to it pops out a little bit because these leads do have a little bit of that in them too. So I'm just going through the middle and just pulling that through, but not the whole way. That's just an optional add-on, and then what I like to do is just go in and blot it. Not super obvious, but it's just a subtle edit. 9. Monstera: Now we'll do everybody's favorite. I'm sure you've been waiting for it the Monstera leaves. If you guys paint this leaf and you share it on Instagram, you can use your hashtag Monstera Monday. No, really though these leaves are awesome and they are all the rage right now. I'm going to grab a lighter color with a good amount of water. I'm going to make my stem and keep some white in the middle of it. Then create my shape around it. It's similar to the banana leaf, but what we're going to do instead of doing the shape where it splits and then continue to go and then skip a spot. We're actually going to go make our shape and then go in and do it that way. You can do this by starting at the bottom, or starting at the top. For this example, we're going to start at the top. I'm going to create an imperfect area to start. You can see that it has, its tip is coming down. Then we're just going to fill that in a little bit and connect it. Then we have the split so the Monstera plants come in and then they circle around and then get up. They go up again. But then what they do is it's almost they're constantly curving. Then up here, you want this to follow in that bubble forms. Each leaf has its own curve and everything on this side is going to be curving this way, and then the other side will be curving this way. I'm going to fill this part and then connect it here. Then these leads to you don't have to fill them until the end. If I have a lot of pin, I'll drag it through. But throughout the league itself, if you leave white areas, you'll have the split inside the Monstera, which is part of its main charm. Make sure that you don't fill in all the areas before adding some of those will create that separation down here where it curves. Then another thing to note with these plants is that down by the stem is going to be a lot wider than the part of the leaf that comes out. You want to keep that in mind and do another one here. I'll create a little bit of white space in this line for that split or hole. Then bring this shape through then out again is just going to get wider. You can either stop here and go to the other side so you can make sure that this is looking even or you can continue. I just go off with how I feel if I feel this is going to start to get wonky, then I'll go on the other side and create a couple of leaves over here or leaves but branching off. You know what, I mean, something else that I would note is not to leave white space in every single area because I think it can be overkill. As you get toward the bottom, the main area here is a good area to have that break. As you get out of the center, you're going to start coming in more where this sections are as long. It's a good rule of thumb to try to keep it consistent. This part is just one big curve? Then the smaller areas start to connect where they're not as split. You can have this going right into the next one. Then coming up and then I'm going down into a little bit of a slit, but then this area, like so. Then you have the base of your Monstera, leaf, and you can add a lot darker color, the darker color toward the center is always a good idea. If you go in and set that down there and make sure not just set it over any of your white areas because you don't want it to tamper with any of that. The nice thing to know is that if you set down wet watercolor on other wet watercolor will only bleed to the wet areas so you're safe near the white areas as long as you don't go over them. Then I will add not the same darkness, but just a little more pigment and some areas on the leaves. Drag that through a little more. Then if you notice that it's not bleeding everywhere you want, I mean, you can even come into the leaf a little bit just for that extra dimension. Then you're happy with how that's looking. You are done. You can add a little more yellow, you can add a little bit of a brown color to make it look more natural. It's amazing how adding a little bit of brown will do to your leaves. It's one of my favorite effects because it just makes it [inaudible] but it makes it have a lot of that character coming to life. 10. Taro Leaf: We're going to do a Taro leaf. The shape is pretty similar to the Monstera, it just doesn't have the splits in it. Create that stem that has the white space. Then connects toward the top, and then creating that shape. What I mean by the similarities is, it starts up here and then comes down for the shapes. So comes down and around and up. This is one of those obvious tropical features in these leaves when you see it coming down and around. Then I'm just going to do a real wet-wash, and then have it getting lighter towards the center a little bit. But definitely have the edges blending in so there's no hard lines. Then you can go in and when it's a little drier, create some veiney lines. I like it to do it when it's a little bit wet still because it will bleed and it looks pretty cool. In the event that it may not, do make sure that your paint brushes just the tip of it. Because I'm looking for that effect where it will be thinner but some areas it will bleed, some areas that won't. But that again adds to that overall character. Then you can add some different hues in there, just like we did with the others. We set that down, and drag it through some of those spots. Then you have that leaf. So, pretty simple. 11. Umbrella Plant: Let's move into our last leaf, this is the umbrella palm leaf, this one's really fun, it makes sense for its name, it's like an umbrella, I guess it's like several leaves on a stem. But we're going to draw this without the stem, it will have stems on each individually, but the stem that it comes off of, it's like an umbrella, so it's like the stem and then the rest of them come out this way, so we're going to draw it as if we're looking at it from the top. We're going to create where it branches off and part of these are going to be longer than others and then shorter as it gets towards the other side. These leaves, they're more rounded on top and the point comes toward the stem like this and then we will drag that stem through the center and then do that to all the areas around. Then same with the stems, the leaves are shorter as they get to the back, so one of the easiest ways that I do this is to do the backside first. Anytime I'm doing something that is supposed to be shapely, whether it should be even or opposite sizes like flowers, I'll start on one side and then go to the other side, so then I know that that is turning out the way that I want it to in scale and make these just like over half of the size of that one that we just did and then the ones in between that just grow to about this long. So it makes it a little easier to do that and then you have reference on both sides and then you can pull that color through. I would let it dry a little bit so that you have that stem a little more prominent, you can even go in with a darker color to make sure that it pops and then once it's dry, just go in with a light wash and add some color in. I'm going around the middle, this is that it has that obvious break where the stem is and that's it. Then you have an awesome taxonomy and that was the idea here. But no, taxonomies are awesome. If you did this in a different way on different paper, I encourage you to try doing a taxonomy because these are some of my favorite prints that are available is when they are all on the same paper and then you can label them and it can create a pretty cool art piece. Now, we're going to use these leaves and do our project. 12. Project: You guys ready for the best part? We're going to hop into our project now. By far this is my favorite, because you'll be able to learn some new techniques, but then I get to see what you guys come up with. If you've taken any of my classes, I get the most excited about this part. What we're going to do is create an invisible frame and then have our leaves coming out of that and then inside that frame is just going to be white space. You can add a name or a quote, or even a line drawing illustration in there if you want to, if it makes sense to you. I'll show you how to do that quickly with some washi tape. You can use painting, like paint tape or masking tape. I like to use the washi tape because it has an even lighter bond to the paper, so I know that it's not going to rip it. What we're going to do is create a straight line as big as you want to have it. I'm just going to do about this size and then rip that off and then do the same thing. Basically make a box in the area that you want this to be. Now, to make sure that your lines are even all around, I'm going to come in this way and then come in this way. If you see that it's not quite straight, you can pull it up and then just replace like so. You can see that I have a little situation right there. To fix that you can always use a new piece of tape or you can just be lazy like me and cut off a piece of washi tape, set that down and smooth it out and then you have a perfect square. If you think that you're going to be pretty sloppy with the water color, you can fill in this space, but if you think that it's safe to just make sure that you're only working into the border, then you don't have to at all and you can just leave the frame because really, we're just going to be using this as our resistance, if you will. Let's just jump right into it. I'm just going to show you quickly how to start throwing those leaves off the frame. You can come in and make your stem. When you're first doing this, it's easy to want to start to do the base of each leaf like the end of it, right, were the washi tape is, but that completely takes out the idea of it actually coming from behind. We want to assume that this is already way down here. All of these leaves are going to come out. Basically, we're already in the middle right here, like this. If you have that in mind, then this should be pretty simple. It's cool because it cuts out half the work for you. Because half the work isn't that invisible space. Once those are in there, you can add your varying tones and colors for bleed, and then continue around the entire thing. I'll throw one of these in here, start at the top. As you can see, I did some overlapping through here a little bit. If you see some empty space like this and you think that it makes sense to put one behind or coming through something like that, you can definitely feel free to visualize the way that that should be first. This one could have gone wrong but if you incorporate different colors, then it won't blend together and it'll make it a little more sense and just have that follow-through behind so that it's cohesive. That's really simple. Let that dry completely, and then we will take the tape off and add our quote. Once that's dry, go ahead and peel this off. When you're using tape on paper, the way that you want to peel this, is to lift off the corner and then instead of lifting up like this, or lifting off like this or pulling, get it as close to the paper as possible and go exactly the opposite way. This is going to give you the least amount of polygons the paper, to keep the paper in its original state. Same thing over here, just nice and slow but real close, almost like flat against it. Then you have this really cool empty space. I really think this is one of the best exciting parts. From here, you can put something in the middle of it, anything that you want.