Transcripts
1. Welcome to class!: Hi guys and welcome to class. This class is going to be real-time and we are going to paint this step-by-step, awesome bouquet in a pumpkin, very seasonal multi. I'm going to take you through the whole process from the initial sketches to first wash, second wash, and all those final details that create an amazing art piece in the end. The reason I'm doing this class is to, of course, show the process and show you that I too make a lot of mistakes along the way, and I fix them. I hope to give you some confidence in your own painting process. Secondly, I think that the most important thing is to inspire you to paint your own bookcase in pumpkins, and that is your class project as well. I hope you will upload it in the project gallery and tag me on Instagram if you are on there. I think that is it for now. Let's just dive in and start painting.
2. Tools and Materials: Okay, let's get started. Here we have Arches paper. It's a 100 percent cotton and 300 grams per square meter, so it can hold a lot of water and it has a nice texture to it because it's cold pressed. Then I have my winter newtons. These are different types of paints I collected throughout the years. Some of them from tubes just squished into the pens and others are just regular pens. Then I have two brushes here. It's a six and 10 synthetic brush. You can use whatever you like, just have a big one and a small one for detail. I have this bunch here. There's a pencil, it's an H, so hard pencil. I have different types of fine liners, this is 0.1, 0.2, and 0.5. Make sure they are waterproof, but except from that there's no limit to which one you choose. Then there's a [inaudible]. I have this neated eraser as well. It's for conveniently getting rid of those pencil marks. It's a very nice tool. Then of course, I have some tissue and water right there. Finally, a pellet to mix my colors. I'm going to go a little more in depth with which colors chosen for this project. Here you can see, I listed them up and they are all Winsor Newton's. First one is lemon yellow, then I have Windsor yellow deep, cadmium red hue, Vandyke brown, SAP green, and indigo, ultramarine, and lastly, dioxazine violate, the one I can never pronounce. That is it.
3. Sketching: Now we're all set up and ready to start sketching. I have got my pencil here, which was an h pencils, so it's a hard pencil. I'm just going to put a couple of marks here on the paper to see where I want my appending to start and to end. Just trying to place the motif on the paper. As you know, I'm going to paint a pumpkin instead of a vase. I'm trying to just roughly sketch that in just to have an idea of how much room it will take up. Also just to get the right curve here. It's such a big item on the paper that it's really nice to have a sketch of where to put it. Of course, if you are digitizing later, you can always move it around. But for now it's really nice to have it down. Then I'm just going to sketch the biggest flowers. I'm not going to do all of the flowers, but just to the ones that's going to be in focus and that's going to be the sunflowers and especially the ones in the front. You can see I'm not doing any details at all. It's just rough sketch and the rough shapes just to get an idea of where to put them. Now I'm going to take my kneaded eraser and just step on the line to get some of the graphite to not show as much through the paints. As you know, watercolors are very transparent and you have to remove a lot of the pencil unless you want it to show through. I'm just going to quickly do a mark there. That's all the sketch we need.
4. First wash: Sunflowers: Now we're ready to dive in with some color. This is the first wash. I'm going to start with my first sunflower. I'm just going in with the Van Dyke Brown. I'm actually going to do a pretty light washer and just dabbing in some more color just to give it some variety and some shadows from the beginning. As you'll see, this paint is going to be very loose. I'm going to go in with the lemon yellow, very light yellow. I'm just dabbing various and putting the brush down and I'm just going to touch slightly on the Van Dyke Brown so it'll bleed nicely into the yellow. If you don't want that, you can just don't touch the brown and it won't bleed. But I really like the bleeds it creates a nice shadow on the pedals and it connects to the flower. You could also choose to do it a little bit later. So it won't bleed just as much because the Van Dyke is pretty wet, it will bleed a lot. You'll see in here, I'm just going to just adding a little bit of the Winsor yellow deep, and just to give it some more depth and definition. You can see all of these pedals are curved and none of them are the same. That is just to get some movement and as you know, no flowers are perfect in any way, and that's the beauty of nature. So that comes in handy here when we are just painting very loose. So no perfect strokes out there. I'm going to do another one here, and this one is facing down. I'm doing the same thing, just putting down the brush and touching on the Van Dyke, very light. I love these colors. I think they are so perfect for autumn. I can't stop painting some flowers at the moment and they are so beautiful. I'm painting from memory at the moment. But if you are on doubt and want to check out, how do sunflowers actually look or any of the other flowers, you're going to paint just to take a quick browse through Pinterest or Google search and look at the flowers there and don't copy but look at the shapes and look at how the pedals are moving and how sunflowers are looking when they are facing up and from the back and from the side. There's so many angles and you can create certain interesting painting if you create some variety in your flowers. This one is a peekaboo flower behind the main flower. I'll be trying to keep focus on the middle flower, the one that are painted first. All the other ones here are supporting actors. I keep putting some Van Dyke Brown on the middle of the flowers throughout this painting process, while it's still wet just to deepen the colors. Here I'm actually adding a little bit of red, cadmium red just to create some interest. I think the red really complements these flowers well. We're going to have some rose hips as well and they look really nice together with the other reds. The red in the sunflowers are not really that prominent. We can easily do it and they will blend nicely and just create a cohesive color scheme. You can see that when I painted, there was just a peekaboo flower as well. I think one of the important things when you're painting stuff like this is that you really don't have to see every flower. If you look at a bouquet in real life, some of the flowers are not visible at all. Some of them are just half and some of them are full focal flowers and that depends on which angle you look at the flowers. Sorry, that was a tractor driving by. We are going to go into the leaves now. I'm just starting out with a Sap Green. I think that's such a nice color. Then I'm just going to put a little bit of an Van Dyke Brown here and that was a little too much, but I'm going to use this brown, green to create some shadows underneath the flowers. Again, all of these leaves are different. Just be super loose with these, no perfect leaves and try to make them look like they're from different angles and just adding a little shadow underneath the flowers. It will make the flowers papilla more when some shadows. Then as you remember there's going to be a pumpkin underneath these leaves. These leaves will just cradle, in lack of other words, the pumpkin. You just paint how many leaves you want and you can easily add more later in the process as well. See I'm deepening the Van Dyke again. This paper really keeps its moisture a long time. I can do this for a long time. If you're using something else like Canson or another brand, it might not be wet as long and then you can just adjust accordingly. But you know your paper best. So you just do what you find easiest. You can see I'm actually doing a lot here on this first wash, trying to just dab in some color and making it interesting and shadows underneath the flowers. I just tried to get some variety in the color of the leaves. I think that is it for sunflowers. Let's hit onto the lavenders.
5. First wash: Lavendars: I'm going to do a little blue and purple lavenders here. You can see I'm just actually doing some mock makings here on the paper. Just stabbing in different colors. It's the ultramarine and the violet. I'm holding my brush high on the handle so I can get these loose shapes. No nitty-gritty holding the brush tight, you have to loosen up a bit. That's actually a quite a challenge, I think for me because it's easy to want to hold your brush tighter. You'll see am probably going to move my hand a little because I want to get into details. When you're doing painting like this, it's really, really good to be able to be loose. You can see I'm just randomly placing these lavenders. I tried to make some of them overlap to get some dimension in the painting. I'm just varying if I use the ultramarine or if I use the violet. Just to get that nice color that I think lavenders have. Again, if you're not sure how to paint lavenders, just go on Pinterest. There're so many pictures and they are gorgeous. I love lavenders. I'm actually going to paint a sunflower more here behind just a peekaboo one. That's just to get the composition to work better. That's really how I work at, often look at the composition on the way and just try to add what I think is missing. I think it was missing that sunflowers in the back. I actually have five sunflowers and I think that works better for the composition to have an uneven number of sunflowers. As you can see, the lavenders are placed super randomly. Am just making sure that some are overlapping and some are on the outside of the pumpkin as well, just to create some dimension in the painting. Actually same effect that I get with those peekaboo flowers as well. We want to create a dimensional bouquet and not just a flat one. I'm just going to add some small leaves as well here, just to again try to balance the composition. We're going to continue our composition with some nice autumn details.
6. First wash: Wheat and Berries: Now we've got the foundation of the bouquet here, and it's time to add some details that's going to look super awesome. I'm just going to hold my brush very far, even further up the handle, just to make some nice light strokes here for the wheat. Just trying to get some super light strokes and I'm doing these in the yellow deep and a little bit of Van Dyke brown as well. It's good to use a limited color palette, so you get a cohesive color scheme. I'm actually going to change my brush here, I used my big brush, the 10 brush up until now. But I can see that these ones require something smaller. Again, very light strokes don't be heavy-handed on these and if you don't want to listen to me or you want to watch this in a faster pace and I totally get that, you can just hit "Mute" and there's a fast button underneath. You can just hit that if you like, to just turn on your own music and watch this in a faster pace. That is totally fine. But if you want to listen to me, that is super cool as well, and I'll be happy to tell you about my process. I'm actually trying being super light here and trying to add some of these light strokes in different places as well, just to give the idea that these weeds in the rest of the bouquet as well. But I am trying to keep them in the left side. The reason I'm doing that is to create a more interesting composition and that is totally up to you how you want to make it. But I just found that this was more fun because you can try to play around with the balancing, the composition with the berries afterwards. I think that was fun. I'm just dabbling in some darker color in the bottom of the weed just to get some dimension shadows. Now I'm going to go in here and paint some twigs. Again, I'm holding the brush very far up the handle to get a nice loose stroke. Twigs on branches are super light in this composition and I want to keep them mainly on the right side. First I'm painting the branches and then I'm going to go in with the cadmium red and just paint some berries here of rose hips, I think. Just like the ones that's in the top of the frame here. I think they are so lovely here in autumn and they really light up everything at the side of the road, both with this rosy, but also with the flowers, which are lovely. I could have included them here as well. Maybe I should. Next time I'll include those. There are so many lovely flowers and just can't seem to stop when I get started. When you paint something like this, it's always a good idea to have an idea of which flowers to incorporate from the beginning so you don't get carried away and you can easily choose your color palette according to that. Just going to go in with the fantastic here and just creating the small details at the end of these rose hips. I think it's a nice detail. It's good to have both very big flowers and some more detailed ones as well to get a good composition. It's called detail flowers, very conveniently. If you are interested in loose flowers in general, I have another class, I actually have two classes. I have one on loose flowers where we are painting a pianist. It's actually my first class, we are painting pianist and tulips and muscary and creating a bouquet from that. I love that class. If you're into flowers, you should really check that out. The other one I have is on greenery to accompany those loose florals. I think we are heading to the end of this first wash, just adding this final branch here. But when I finish that, I think I'm just going to let the painting dry a little. I'll see you in the next lesson.
7. First wash: Pumpkin: I let the painting dry a little, just to make sure that the berries and the twigs and are not bleeding into my pumpkin. Now I'm just going to go in here with my yellow dip and painting the middle of the pumpkin. I'm just going to do this in vertical lines, and if you can picture a pumpkin, they are divided like the one in the right corner here in sections. I'm going to do that here as well. But this is a big pumpkin so there's not that many segments. But I'm going to do that and just leaving some white space between the sections and trying to get some shadows on the edges of these segments. Just to get this three dimensional feel of the pumpkin. Try to leave some highlights as well. It creates some interests in the painting. Here is the final segment on the left side and they keep getting bigger when they go to the further side. I tried to capture that and still have the highlights and the white between the segments. I'm just stepping in a bit of more color in the bottom as well, because we all know that this shadow on the bottom of a pumpkin because it's round. I'm trying to go in and they have a little shadow underneath the flowers and the leaves as well. Here I'm just going in with the damp brush to remove some of the hard edges. We don't want those hard edges if we can avoid them. I'm being super careful when I'm painting around the berries and the branches to prevent reactivating the paint. If we do it's not a problem it'll just bleed a little and that will either look really cool or we can remove it with a tissue or a dry brush. Again I'm going in with some shadows here on the side, and underneath the flowers. For some reason some of the video will be cut off in a second, but I'm doing the same thing here with the last segment so I'll see you in the second.
8. Second wash: So now I let the painting dry and I'm just going to check that it's not damp before I go in. If it's a bit cold, it's not completely dry, so just let it sit for a couple of minutes more. I'm going to go in with a second wash and I'm going to do this to create some more depth in the color and to create texture. As you can see I'm starting with my focal flower here, the sunflower and I'm just going in with a thicker mixture of the Van dyke and just tapping and you can actually see the strokes here. I'm doing that to create some texture in the flower. If you studied some sunflowers, you can easily tell that they are not flat. Here in the center. We want to create some dimension, and some darkness as well. These, at least I think watercolors really need dark values as well to make me the piece Pop. It's different from person to person. It's a personal opinion and you can do whatever you like of course but I like it to have a darker value. At least some dark values. It's good to have a mixture of the dark and the light to create some interest in the painting. Here I'm actually going in and trying to fix some of the bleeds because it dipped. The Van dyke did lead a lot into my lemon yellow. So I'm just going in with a bit more yellow to make it more yellow and less brown, but you can see it still has this nice effect from the bleed. I'm actually going in with the yellow deep just to get a warmer tone, the lemon yellow is a pretty cold yellow. So it's good to warm it up. At least I think it's again personal preference and the most cultures are personal preferences I think unless you go for the whole color wheel, color theory thing. If you look at the color wheel I'm going for a triadic harmony here where you have the violets and the oranges and some nice greens. I really think that creates a harmonious piece but that in mind, I'm not only using those colors I'm also using the red and the blue and brown, so you don't have to stick to those colors. I'm just going in with some lavenders here. Just going into a little darker column actually going in with indigo here, just to create a little shadow. For example, here in the overlapping lavender it's important with the shadow on otherwise I can't really see that it's overlapping. Otherwise it would be just like a cross blob lavender thin, and we don't want that. So I'm just going in and just stepping in a little color and I'm really just setting down the color. I'm not doing any strokes at the moment. You can see I'm using a fairly thick paint here. This is the sap green just to give a little detail on these leaves. I'm just going in and painting the middle, and just painting a little inside between the flower petals. So it's not only white. Again it's to create this dimension and an illusion that the flowers are on top of the leaves. If you look at a bouquet, it's not white inside. It'll have a lot of shades between the flowers and the leaves. Often times I just actually do a dark color underneath, just to gather the composition and make the flowers purple. I'm just mixing my sack ring with some indigo, and I really like this indigo to mix with the other colors because it creates a nice stagger shade, which is actually a little cool, little cold, and that creates a nice contrast to the flowers that are fairly warm and the pumpkin is pretty warm as well. I think it's good to have this contrast between cold and warm colors. I'm going on the branches as well, and I'm using the fine brush for this and here I'm actually just adding a few more to tricks because I wanted to add some leaves as well. I thought the thing that the composition needs a little more. Want to do this. This bouquets is one of the things I'm really thinking about is to create a composition that's not too nice. I want stuff to be popping out to create some interests. Of course, if you are going for like a very nice tight bouquet, don't make it too weird. If that's the look you're going for. But I really like the wild, more natural look. You can see I'm just adding small strokes. To add more rose hips and small leaves. These leaves are super simple. It's really just two strokes and it's done. But I think it creates a more interesting composition and it gets a little closer to life. So even if you are on your second wash, it's totally okay to go in and just add stuff. You can always go in with the third wash or fourth one. Especially, if you're doing like botanical illustrations, those super realistic ones. They can have so many layers. You have no idea. It could take forever just to get the piece to dry between the layers. I rarely have the patience for those pieces. These pieces I can do in an hour and then do it while my baby girl sleeps. So it's perfect for nap time. It's perfect if you have a busy schedule and you don't have a lot of hours in the day to just paint. Few people have, I think. So they either paint like this or paint the same painting. Spend like days on the same painting and that is totally fine as well. I think that gives some perspective to the painting and that's pretty cool. You can actually step back and think about what to do next. I think sometimes I need that in my process. But some of the magic happens in the unexpected. I'm just going to add a little more shadow. Again, underneath the leaves and on the sides of these parts of the pumpkin. I'm doing these vertical strokes. But making sure that there's no hard lines. So when I do a stroke with my paint, I can go in if there's hard lines I can go in with my the damp brush and just soften those edges. Especially with this pumpkin, because the surface of a pumpkin is pretty smooth when it's these, these big pumpkins and I wanted to be a contrast to the pretty textured flowers on top. I'm just trying to track some of this shadow from the bottom up onto the pumpkin to create a little bit of a little indication of lines to show that there is a little texture. Darkened my yellow deep with my thin dark, let it turn-up pretty brown so I need to drag it out quite a bit. I'm being careful not to ruin my super nice highlight here. I love that highlight. We want to keep that going in here as well to just starting. Again, being careful with my rose hips so I don't reactivate my paint. It can be a little difficult to paint something that is underneath. Another motif already, but it is totally doable. Now, ways to get about this you can use masking fluid or something like that. But I free handed here and I think it looks pretty nice. I think it's so fun to show you guys my process. I really hope you learn something from it and at least think it's fun to follow along. If you like it, please write it in the comment section because I would love to make more, but especially if you guys like it. Otherwise it would be pretty silly. So this is an experiment. Okay. We're ready to add some more details.
9. Details: Grasses: We're going to start with one of my favorite details, actually for floral compositions and that is grass. You can see in my second class on greenery how to create different types of grasses and create colorful grass as well, so it complements the greens. But you can also just watch it here. I'm just doing some super light strokes here and on some of them, I am adding some mark makings, some marks here. First I did it in a sap green and now I've just added my van dyke. Okay, more sap green. Did turn out pretty dark. Don't want that. I'm just sweeping my hand when I do these strokes, and then I just lay down some small spots. Just try to vary how I position my brush. Try to imagine that there's grasses in your composition. How will they flow? Try to vary the color as well so it gets interesting and has some texture and some color. I'm pretty much using the sap green and van dyke, but also some of the yellow deep and it is colors I've used in the rest of the composition, so it totally works together. As you can see, while I built these grasses up, it creates a lot more movement to the piece. Grasses are great for movement and you can really just add how many you like, but be sure to stop when it's enough and you feel it's enough because sometimes you can just get carried away and I did with this one in particular because I have one very similar right next to it, so you can see I mirrored the grasses here on top and that looks a little bit silly so I'm trying to fix it by adding some more and trying to create a composition that's not just as symmetrical. I really don't want that. I want the natural feeling to this. I'm trying to add more here in the left side and I think it already helps a lot. You just have to step back once in a while and see when enough is enough. Do some at the sides as well and some just sticking out and have fun with it. It's super fun to add grasses, for some reason. It is really fun.
10. Details: Shadow: Now I actually finished my bouquet, almost. First I'm doing a little splatter here. I do that with most of my paintings because it feels, to give some movement and it really creates a more living piece and I think that's perfect. It could be the grasses shedding some seeds as well, so I love that. Then I want a little bit shadow here underneath my pumpkin so it doesn't look like it's just floating on the paper here. You don't need that at all. But I just lay out a little water, and just dabbing in some indigo here. Just a little bit of color to just indicate that this pumpkin is sitting on something. By turning the page here a little on the side, I can get the paint to move with the water. I want it to go a little down here. I want it to be super subtle so I'm using a lot of water here. Now I'm trying to drag a little bit of the color up into the pumpkin to make it not a part of the shadow, but just give an indication that the shadow is not just an afterthought. Usually, I would probably have painted the shadow a bit earlier when the pumpkin was still wet, so I could get some of the the yellow to be in the pumpkin as well. Right now this was an afterthought and I am just working with it. I really like it so far, so it's that lucky, I guess. Then I realized that I only made a shadow in one side. I guess I'm a little tired. I'm going in and adding shadow in the left side as well. It's more easy on the eye. I don't have an obvious light source to explain why it should be only on the right side. I really need this on the left side as well. I'm just trying to drag some of the color up here as well. I think that works really well, so it's integrated.
11. Details: Fineliner and Gelpen: Now we're actually finished with the painting process and I'm grabbing my 0.2 fine liner. This is the home run. This is the final stages of the painting process. That is where I go in with my fine liners and my gel pen and just adding those final details that will make a big difference, I think. Adding ink is a personal preference and it does make my watercolor a mixed media, I think. Some people like it, and some people don't like it. Obviously I do. But that is totally up to you to add ink or not. It can easily stand by itself. But I'm going in here and just defining the petals. I'm not doing outlines at all. I'm just doing light strokes just to show where the edge is and just shaping the petals. I use these fine lines to show how the petal moves, which direction it goes and create some texture as well. In the middle of the sunflower, I created some doodles. That's very close to what I was actually doing. This just circular motions to create a texture, even more texture than I did with my second wash. You can see it here that I'm actually just doodling. I'm doing it where I want my shadow to be most apparent so it can get a contrast to the nice wash underneath. I'm focusing on the big flowers and the most prominent ones. The smaller flowers, the peekaboo flowers behind, doesn't get as much ink or detail. That is totally to get the eyes to focus on the focal flowers. This is just a trick to move the eyes. I think that is one of the magical things about painting stuff like this. This is to actually make the eyes go where you want them to go. You don't just look at a bouquet, but actually look at part of the bouquet, the most interesting part, which is the sunflowers in this case. You can do them in a lot of ways. You can do it by emphasizing with ink like this. Or you can do it by different shades of color or tones of color and stuff like that. It's a lot of ways, especially value of color. If you want the top flower or the focal flower to pop, you can create that in a much stronger value and have the other ones be lighter. It would be an easy trick to get your focus where you want it. There's one problem with using fine liners on a paper like this. That is that it has a nice texture to it and that is amazing when you paint. But it's not super easy on the fine liners, it does wear them out faster than smooth grain paper would. Then a thing you have to remember when you're using fine liners like these, is that you have to have a totally dry painting to work with. Otherwise it'll just stop working, the fine liner and that is super annoying. I actually threw out some fine liners in the beginning of my career here because I thought they didn't work and those just because I was painting or drawing under a wet surface. That is really annoying. I used them so few times and then I just threw them out because totally thought they were broken or I used them up. I didn't. Now I'm changing my fine liner to a bigger one. This is 0.5 and I do that to vary my strokes here. The 0.5 will get, of course it's fatter, so it shows easier. But also the variation in stroke does good. Just give the texture even more texture and it's just more interesting to look at. It's good to vary your fine liners if you have more than one size. This one is a 0.1. I'm not outlining this, but I am trying to define the edge here of the pumpkin. I didn't want that to read too loud. That's why I changed it to a smaller tip. I'm also going to just try to slightly define these edges here. It's more like a racket line. Don't outline completely that it will look a little silly and cartoonish. Of course, if that's your style, then go for it. All comes down to style and preferences, like we talked about earlier. I think with time, everybody develops a style. That is the fun thing about painting often. That is you actually figure out what you like and what you lean towards. It took me a pretty long time to get to where I am now. But I like it and I look forward to see where I'm moving next. I'd love to hear what your style is. If you want to tell me, please write it in the class project that you upload that could be super fun. Just a couple of words about how you style yours. Now this is the white gel pen. I'm just going in with this to make some small details. This is actually just dots to make some highlights in places where I think it needs this. A bit more highlights here in the pumpkin and on the flowers. A bit on the rosebuds as well. That's it. We actually got a finished painting here. I hope you enjoyed the process. Now it's your turn to get out your brushes and start painting.
12. Let's Wrap up: Thank you so much for taking this class with me. This has truly been a learning experience, for me to get you through my process, and put it into words, stuff that I usually do just with music. So I hope you learned just as much as I did, and if you liked the class, please leave a review, and a thumbs up that helps other students find this class easier, and it makes me so happy. So there's two good reasons to do that, and if you have any questions, or comments, or even suggestions, for other classes please write them in the comments section, and I'll be happy to answer anything. If you want to know when my next class is out, please hit the follow button up here, and you'll be notified by email when it's out. Of course I have other classes as well. You can find some on the loose florals, and there are some on travel sketching and other classes as well. So feel free to check those out as well. I think that is it for now. Thank you so much again, and I'll see you next time.
Camilla Damsbo Brix, Teaching Whimsical watercolors
