Watercolor Made Easy: Back To the Basics

1. Introduction: Hi, welcome to watercolor, Made Easy back to the basics. And Emily to leak of a wildlife illustrator, graphic designer, and all over creative professional. I'm also the creative behind where the wild things go. A passion project all about different endangered species. Next with puns and playful type biography. Now, as you can tell, I love those training Hannibal's, especially in watercolor. So I'm excited to take you on this journey into watercolor illustration. Also, people over the years have told me, Emily, I really wanted to start watercolor, but I don't know where to start or I feel intimidated by the medium. Today, we're gonna be helping to break you out of those watercolor series and really diving into watercolor and make it easy, I'll be walking you through choosing your own inspiration from the world around you. Whether that be an animal, a plant, a rock. You know, it's it's whatever you want it to be. We'll also be going over setting up your illustration, tips and tricks or watercolor, as well as finishing your piece and plus a whole bunch of other fun additions. This class is especially great for beginners who maybe don't know where to start or looking for some advice, want to dip their toe in, ease into the watercolor world. But so this class is perfect for you. Are you ready to break free of those watercolors? Gary's? Let's go. 2. Choosing Your Subject Matter: Hey everyone. Alright, so first off, we want to figure out what we want to illustrate today. Now, my personal recommendation is if, if that's a time and you haven't been outside for a bit, signal outside world around you to keep an eye on. Say, what do you see? Do you see an interesting bug on that tree? You see a really cool piece of fungus maybe in your neighborhood or even a very nearby. This could be anything. Could be something you see, something you wanted to see your favorite animal. Their favorite species is your favorite plant. Illustrating is fun because you can, you can literally illustrate anything. Another option to say, you don't want to go outside or you know, that you want to illustrate a particular animal or creature. But you also know that it does not exist in your neighborhood. Like most animals, you could always go online to look up reference images. With reference images you'd put in, say, oh, I'd like to illustrate a colorful bird. Or I would like to illustrate a draft or an otter. And then you can see all sorts of different pictures. And that'll give you a better idea too of what you want to create. 3. Gathering Your Supplies: Now that you know what you want to illustrate, it's time to gather your supplies. You're going to need watercolor paper. Roll of paper towels. This is mine. The palettes can be clean or dirty. So if you don't have a paint palette, pretty much anything that's not going to absorb the water will work. You can even use a Tupperware lid, whatever you have at home. I tend to have a lot of paint on my palette because once it dries, you can just add water in it, reactivates them. So you always have that on hand and painter's tape or helping them some water. A couple of different sizes of brushes, everywhere from larger flat brushes like this to midsized ones, even some little small ones. You'll want a couple of different sizes and different ones that way you can use them for different parts that you're illustrating. Then you're going to also want to show you heavier pencil to illustrate, as well as whatever colors you're wanting to use to be any brand you want. You don't have to get too specific. Lots of places are carrying different generic kinds of watercolor paint. Especially as you're first getting started, whatever you think is comfortable and as you go, you can always try other options and brands. Alright, so now that you have all your supplies, Let's get started. 4. Setting Up Your Painting: Alright, so first things first, what you're going to want to start off doing, once you have all your supplies gathered, you're going to take your watercolor paper, and then you are going to take your painter's tape that you have and align it to the edges of your paper. This way, we're creating a frame around it and you'll have a little extra space. And it also just kinda helps you create a frame of reference for the view of your illustration. You're going to have it before we make the composition. This way too, if you're wanting to frame your illustration later, you'll be able to do that. I'll have a little extra wiggle room and you can always trim that to later if you want. Now that you have your papers setup, we're going to take a pencil and all that reference image that we found earlier. So whether this is a picture off of your phone from your walk outside, or if this is an image you find on your computer. You don't just want that to have that handy to refer to. Now there's a lot of different ways to get your image on your paper. Personally, myself, I find it the quickest way is to just kinda look at what I'm have a reference image and then I'll create a sketch based on that reference image. Now, this won't be 100% exact. I think even myself as a full-time artists and creative, I'm not gonna get it right 100% of the time unless I use some kind of tracing option. But for the purposes of this tutorial, we're gonna be doing this based on a reference image. What we're going to want to do is just lay out our illustration how we want to view it in our painting. Now. So you can have your animal maybe to the left, maybe on a branch. A lot of times what I'll do when I'm illustrating is add a little bit of some kind of element to have it on. For instance, if I'm illustrating a bird, I would have it sitting on a branch for, just add a little more interests to the composition. Today, I'm gonna be illustrating an owl as we go along. So you can follow along with fine as I make this out. Or you can use your own reference image based on your preference. 5. Watercolor Techniques: Alright, so now that we have all of our supplies gathered, we've gotten painting so that it's time to get into the thick of it. So before we begin, I'm going to go over a couple of different watercolor techniques just to get you a little familiar with the process. And if you want and have a scrap piece of watercolor paper on hand, you can practice on there as well. Before we get started on the mainland, we'll be using a lot of these techniques as we go as well. So it's up to you whether you want to practice a little bit beforehand or use it as we dive in more fully. The first technique we're going to be the point over is called wet on wet. So basically, what this means is that you make the paper wet first. Add the wet watercolor that you've mixed with water on your palette onto that. And so this is really great, especially for color blending. When you want to mix different colors, you want more fluidity, a little less control. That's really great for that and that's what we're gonna be using for a good amount of our splatter technique will be learning first. Next. Really important technique. Wet on dry. So this is all about just putting the wet watercolor on the paper itself. So what you'll do is you'll mix the paint with water on your palette. And usually the more water you add, the less saturated that your color will be. So if you have a lot of paints compared to water, or more paint, less water, you will have a more pigmented color. That'll be going on in your illustration. And this just involves having the pain regularly on that. So all of these are used pretty interchangeably. You can mix and match. They all kinda blur together the more you are creating. And I just think it's super fun. Now, one more thing we'll talk about this blending. And so this is a big thing in watercolor as the colors blend. So altogether, you could do that like I was saying earlier, you want to make sure that if you are blending something, if you're wanting to avoid getting those kind of muddy tones. If you use complimentary colors are colors that go well together, those will get some really beautiful blend. It kinda looks going. I think a lot of times we want to overwork watercolor and I know I have also I'm also guilty of three that from time to time, but a lot of watercolors just kind of going with the flow, being open to the flexibility of the medium and letting it, It's not upset you or that's in control of you and just kinda going with the flow of it. You can do so much with watercolor. And I think that's really cool. Now, one super cool tip I have that I think now a lot of people know about because I think if they knew about it. So fine. Watercolor, bit less intimidating is you can erase watercolor with water. For instance, if, say I'm illustrating the background and I've accidentally gotten a little bit of water color ink into my image and I don't want it there. What you can do is you make sure your brush is clean and you just mix it with water. And once you do that, you'll like scrub that area and then blot it with the paper towel. And that'll actually help remove a lot of the pigment that isn't that part. You could also use your paper towel to pick up the color off the page. There's a lot of different methods that we can use and I'll be showing you a lot of these as we work through our illustrations. Alright, so far, so far as tips and tricks, some other things that are fun to use and you'll also might already have at your house. The first one is salt. Salt. If you add it to a waterfall image before it's dry, we'll get this really cool kind of starburst effect on it. So I just think it's really fun. So just to be pouring, sprinkling salt on your painting to get these really cool bursting effects, especially in areas that have more color going on, like your background, That's really cool place to use it. Another tip that I'll use is and you can use either like a more watercolor itself on the dry method on paper for this. But my preference is to use white acrylic paint to add some accents. And I think this really helps to bring out the image a bit more. Make it, I guess you could say pop, you will. And it, another technique that I personally like to use is once my illustration is dry, I'll go through this with Sharpie and add different accents or scribbles to different areas to really kinda give it a whole new work. And that's a lot of my trademark kind of style that I've done. And I just think it's fun, so I hope you enjoy it too. But the biggest tip and trick that you need to know with watercolor is patients. Aka, let it dry before you do any of your layers, you want it to be fully dry. Especially if you've already done this background that has all these different colors and things going. There's a lot of water. You're going to want to wait until that drives for you before you work on your main image. 6. Blocking In Your Background: What we're gonna do is you're going to, first off, get your big brush. And then you're going to kind of use it around the edges of your main image. So here, as you can see, I'm just adding water initially to this. And this will just really let our colors spread when we add it. So now that we've got that, we'll see as we're going along those same parts, we didn't have water. It's okay to be a little messy. It's gonna kinda accent the different parts of my owl. You can see the water's doing some really cool things already. And you can also do some fun splattering. So if you hold your brush and kinda tap on your finger to you as you go, you can get some fun most flattering action. In this initial part as well. Some people use like a toothbrush to not have to worry if you're getting it on your other places right now. That's okay. We'll, which is all about the process and feel like the fun splatter. And as you can tell, I'm making a mess, but I love to make messes. That's what watercolors about. That's why I've got this really nice orange in, but I think I want it a little bit of red. So I'm gonna just kinda get some red, red and just kind of mix it in. And I get this nice little accents in different areas with that rib. If you're wanting to like a more pigmented color, do that by having less water to paint mixture that we're actually going to go in right now. Little touch up since before it dries, what things are still wet. So right now I'm just dipping my brush smaller size one in some water. But if you take your paper towel to these parts, splashed out about where it was before, that'll lift the color somewhat and then you can also go in, which is like water and rub it on that and that'll pull the pigment off of your illustration. Super guy in touching up, erasing these bits, I'm just going to wet your paper towel, just kinda pick up some excess color. Maybe you have a little too much like I did over here. I pick up some of that that'll help it dry a little faster as well. So before it's completely dry, this is completely optional. If you have some salt, a fun thing you can do, just sprinkle a little bit of salt. It'll give you this kinda cool little affects king in this mainly applies if it's wet, it'll do is it will pull at the water there and it gives you a cool texture. So this is definitely something fun to play with, especially in backgrounds. Once everything is dry is we'll just, we'll just scrub off the salt and it'll be fun. So now that you've done that step, the next step is to wait. Where are you Do any of your layers? You want it to be fully dry. Especially if you've already done this background that has all these different colors and things gone. There's a lot of water. You're going to want to wait till that dries fully before you work on your main image. 7. Creating Your Illustration: All right, so now that your background is, we're going to start on the next round of blocking in color. Since this is an owl, I'm going to have some brown, some wax, variety of costs and you don't have to make it exactly like what you see up on either. Watercolors. Very flexible. If you want to make a blue cow, you make a blue cow. If you want to make a purple pigeon, you make a purple pigeon. Now we're going to focus on the main part of our burden, just kind of getting these blocks of colors chunk. So what I usually do, and you can either start with lighter colors are darker. I'm going to just start with a little bit of water on my brush and then dabbing that in my color palette to get some of that started. So I'm going to start actually with the darker areas because I know that I'm going to want to start with the pigment in parts and then pull that color out. I'm gonna go in and get a bunch of water on my brush. And then I'm just going to pull it, pull that color away from these pigmented areas to these other parts. Also has some yellow so while it's still wet, but I usually do as all like all these different colors and blend as I go. Just kind of bring in a bit of other colors. What I'm going to do is add in some of these little trees, owl, kinda pull the texture and get that little feathery go. And what you can do too is if you have your brushes dry, you can also kinda get a little bit of this texture of going and pull some of that that's there on your watercolor. And just kinda pull that to other places. Right now my brush is dry, but as you can see, I'm really easily picking up these different parts. Blending this over. It's kinda give me at this little feathery feeling. Actually want to do, I'm going to pull a little bit of blues into my dark spaces and just add a little bit of extra colors and super subtle, but make it a little more rich. Who's with your blacks, so forth. And this will all start to think she puts all about just kinda let it take me or it'll take me kind of thing. But my biggest advice I would say is just have fun with it. And lots of different artists and illustrators will have different ways that they approach their work. Those different looks and feels. This was my particular way that I like to do it and show off my style. I would say, alright, now that we know breaking bonds and let this dry. And then we're going to come back and to do our next step. So now that that's dried, what I'll do a lot of times as all kinda come back in and put my highlights on top is because if I'm not getting quite the contrast I want, which is watercolor, I will just go ahead and acrylic whites as highlights. What I like to do is use this Goodall handy. Acrylic white Accents. Keep it separate from your watercolors. Put it on a different part of your palette because that's not gonna be able to access like the other ones. As you can see, I like to use this kind of at the end. Whenever you've gotten most of your stuff in place, just because it gives that a little more extra definition is also really great for like. You want to add a little bit of axon terminal back on the eye. I'm ready that does so much just to bring those eyeballs to y. And up until a certain point, acrylic does kinda mixed with watercolor. I like to do is mix some water. Mix that in your acrylic and then do some more splatter with that on top. And this just gives it like a fun little extra little bit of white splatter on top too. Once that's dry, what I usually like to do, and this is kinda the atypical thing. I actually like to go. Add some additional elements with a sharp B. And this is definitely, I think this is my, my approach. Like I'll use a little scribble add-ons, gesture really free and Kelly's different elements into my pieces. Bright. And that's, that's it. You've made your bird, and it looks fantastic. 8. Finalizing Your Painting: So once you have your finished illustration, that's all done. It's dry. All that. You can go through and brush off these little salt crystals if you added those. And you'll see and where they were, you'll have this cute little first effects and yeah, little starburst. Now, once you're done, we're going to do very carefully peel off your feet depending on what she did, how you set up. But you'll see it gives it a really nice extra kind of outline around it. There we go. It's all done. You now have a beautiful piece of artwork. You can show all your friends and family how cool you are creating different things. And I hope you enjoyed this class. 9. Conclusion: Alright, so let's officially wrap. You'll have a watercolor illustration of your own. You've eaten the watercolor scary. And now can proudly say, you've taken and completed watercolor, Made Easy back to the basics. I am so happy that we could work through this together. Learning how to find inspiration in the world around you, setting up your piece, illustrating it and finishing it off for the final touches. Snapped to go off into the thank you again. Makes sure to tag me what you're sharing on social media at Emily dot Phillipa, or at where the wild things go or both. I'd love to see your final creations. And thanks again.