Beginner's Very Loose Watercolor Florals

1. Welcome!: Hi, and welcome to this very loose watercolor class designed for new to painting students. We'll be keeping three key terms in awareness, transparency, analogous colors, and layering. I'm Holly, and I've been providing classes for you since 2020. Let's delve straight into what I have in store for you today. We're going to be using analogous colors again, colors which are next to each other on the color wheel. You can check out the gallery with color inspiration in our thank you section at the end of the class. I'll be showing you the materials that I use, but also offering alternatives, as I'm going to imagine that some of you will be working from paint sets rather than watercolor tube paints. So we'll start off by mixing our palette. We're going to choose colours like magenta, lilac, and purple. Although you could choose any of your favorite purples or pinks. And to complement those, we're going to mix a warm green with green gold, and a cooler green with anthronblue and green gold mixed together. I'll be taking you through how to mix colors from a Cotman watercolor set. And how colors react to each other. Which ones flow more? Which ones are shyer and hang back. There can be a lot of frustration starting out with watercolor, and this is why I've designed this class to be more of a printing method than a brushstroke method. We'll be practicing how to mix two layers of transparent colors, one which has a lot of water added, and a second layer, which is still very delicate and transparent, but holds more pigment. We'll be focusing on how to create pretty light filled layers and loose pools of watercolor. And although it can feel counterintuitive, working on a larger scale painting gives you a lot more insight into how watercolor and water work together. At the end of our practice, we're going to pull our pencil through little areas of watercolor. Then moving over to our project, we'll be blotting to create texture and putting into practice all that we've learned in the run up to the class. If you like, you can always upload your project. You'll find where to do this in our projects and resources area. Underneath the class and on the right, you'll see submit project. It's a lovely way of showcasing your work, as well as sharing tips and feedback with other skill sharers. So when you're ready, let's launch into our loose wood color class. 2. Materials: I'm going to run through materials fairly swiftly because I'll be going through color prep and mixing in our next lesson. I've chosen mostly quinacridone colors for their vitality, they're so vivacious and vibrant, but you don't have to have quinacrodne colors. Just choose your favorite pinks, violets, blues, and a nice light green. So we have quin lilac, quinn purple, quin magenta. And in dance throne blue, which is a lovely rich blue. For greens, I have green gold. I'm going to mix a lovely cool green. And finally, just some white. And I have gouache, but it can be watercolor, or it could be Chinese white from your Cotman set bottom right there. I'm using a size 18 Escoda Prado for this class. It's a lovely, large round brush with a lovely tip. So just your largest brush, really. And I have a mop brush that's a size zero mop, just for splattering. So whichever brush you like works for you. So I have a cop man. I haven't used mine in years, but I just wanted to bring it in in case this is your primary source of paints. Now, we're going to be using a lot of water, so we need something to blot on, and we're also going to use kitchen roll to scrunch up and blot. So it has two purposes. I bought these recently, and they're lovely. They're really absorbent, and I use a mix of the two. I have a large palette here, which I really like, gives you lots of different shaped wells and sizes, and really get on well with it. And then finally, I'm using fabriano, and it's a studio watercolor. You get 12 pages, 25% cotton and 300 grams or 140 pounds, and it's 11 by 14 ". I find it handy because it's not a block you can just rip off the page and move on. And for a student paper, this is really good. I'm really getting on very well with it. And it's a little bit more affordable, of course, than buying their professional range. I also am going to bring in a pencil, and I'm using my mechanical pencil, 0.7 by Faber Castel. It's a fine point, so the finest point pencil you have, and we're going to use it very gently just to add some delicate mark making. 3. Preparing Our Palette: So let's prepare our palate. And first off, we have quinacridone lilac. And then I've put down quin purple. This is the Quin magenta. And then I wanted to bring in a blue, and I love in Danthroneblue. It's such a rich color. Just going to put some of that over there and some green gold in this far right well. Now, I'm going to put some up here as well, next to the blue because we're going to mix a lovely viridian green, and I've also got it on its own there. So let's start with the quin lilac and mix a very watery version of that, because we're going to be creating very, very transparent petals. So starting off with a very fine watery layer. That's the quin purple. Beautiful. And then I don't have a separate well for the magenta without going off the screen, so I'm just going to create a watery pool there. And then I'm going to prepare this blue. It's quite sticky and old, so I'm having to work a bit hard here. And if you're using the Cotman set, you can either mix intense blue or ultramarine with your cadmium yellow or lemon yellow. Or you might have a viridian in your set, and that would be perfect for this. Or you might want to just go with a sap green. And isn't that a lush color? It's really gorgeous. And because we're using the danthron blue to mix with our pinks and violets, this will all harmonize really well. Just adding a bit more blue there. Really want to get the right color because I want it quite deep and cool so that we can balance that with the green gold, which is extremely warm. So to reach a green gold, if you don't have a pale green, just add yellow to your green. 4. Practise Part 1 | Flows & Blooms: Let's start off with our watery quin lilac. And drop in water just so we can familiarize ourselves with how blooms work. That's the quinacridone purple. These colors are all very close to each other, but I've chosen them for that reason. And you can see how the water is blooming and moving out, creating an edge. And that's what we're looking for when we're trying to create blooms. So we're allowing the water to create that transparent look, as well. So it gives us two effects, the lovely color flowering and the edges and a lovely transparent quality where we've dropped the water in. And we can see here how they're all flowing together as well. Now, as soon as I put the green gold next to the magenta, it's going to want to move in quite quickly into that color. So this is just to allow you some choice, really. If you're using green gold, it's wonderful for flowing colors, but it can also take over that color. Beautiful, though, isn't it? And here's the cool green, and let's put that next to the green gold, and see how that behaves and it's less bossy, so that's good to know. And then let's splatter in because this is how we're going to start out. I really feel it just helps to ease us in to working with a blank page. And it also has a lovely effect in the watery layers that we've just put down. So now let's mix up our second layer, which is going to be a deeper value. So more pigment to water. And perhaps pulling out that paint and then dropping in one drip from my large brush. And what we're trying to achieve here is not a very pigmented color because we're creating subtle layers. So this layer needs to be not too watery, but also not too domineering. Just putting a little bit more of the magenta down. That was slightly more watery than the other two colors. Going back to our lilac, and you can see it's not the consistency of a gouache. It's still very watery, but I would say it has 60% pigment, 40 water, showing you how much water I like to have. And I'm taking the excess off on my brush when I'm doing this effect. Kind of rolling the brush around and just taking the wetness off the base of the brush, just so there's no drips that might surprise us. And then into the purple. And what's nice here is we can see the effect of the paler colors and how they flow into our second layer flowers. So there's lots of relationships going on. We can see how all of the lilac violets and magentas work together, and we can also see how the very watery layer reacts with those. So again, a thicker layer of green gold, and it's doing what I was anticipating it to do, and that is kind of flow quite a lot into the magenta. And then our cooler, gentler green, which we know now doesn't travel as much as the green gold. So it's always good to know about the flow capabilities, if you like, of what color. Let's move over to our Cotman set. Before I do that, I'm just going to show you how we can blot. And we're going to use blotting to lift areas where it's got a little too watery and too flowy, but also to use it as a technique in itself. So here, if I didn't want that magenta to be flowing in so much, I could lift it. It's a lovely first layer, by the way, and I think we'll definitely do something like this because it creates these lovely delicate flower shapes, and then you can go on to create further layers. So it's a lovely technique. Is blotting. So now let me show you if you don't have tube paints and are working with a color set, and this is the Winter Newton Cotman set. Now, with the Cotman, we don't have the same choice really between all of these lilacs and magentas. And, of course, I don't know exactly which colors you'll have. So this is ultramarine blue. It's a mid blue, and it's lovely fur mixing because it doesn't lean either way into the cool or the warm. So let's start off with that. And you could mix this in a larger palette, but I'm just starting you off here and showing you which colours are available to us. Then into the Elsaan crimson. This was one of the first pinky reds I ever used. I remember it till this day. I haven't used it for years, and it's such a lovely color. So it definitely leans towards a pinky red, certainly in the Cotman set. And this is because Alizarin crimson is a cool red leaning towards purple. So it's ideal for this. I have very little left, so I'm trying to eke out the last remnants of it. I can see how much I loved it. So what we're going to do is just mix together the ultramarine and the Elazarin crimson. And that will bring us a violet color. Now to mix the green, and we can go into the lemon yellow, which is a transparent color or handsy yellow light, which is a slightly bolder color. And here is Vidian. So what we get there is a lovely bright, almost limey color because we've got the cool yellow. And then if we mix the cadmium yellow and lemon yellow, we get a mid yellow. And then bringing in the viridian, that's going to be a nice warm green, very close to green gold. So they may not be exactly the same color as you would get if you had tubes. So paint. But we certainly have some beautiful colors there. And we've also got the sap green here. That's a lot cooler than I think in other makes of paint, but it's another alternative. Let's drop some water in there, and then do a little bit of blotting, just so we know what that looks like with the Cotman watercolors. I'm surprised actually how vibrant the colors are in the cotman. So I'm hoping that you'll get lots of colors that you're really happy with. I 5. Practise Part 2 | Brush 'Printing': Y. So let's start off again with a little bit of splattering. And then I'm creating more of the watery quin lilac. Lots of water. Same with the purple. And then I'm just going to add a little water there as I don't have a well that will be on camera. Let's practice our brush drokes. So, again, this is a size 18, quite large, round brush, has a nice tip to it, as well. But any brush that you're happy with, it's really up to you. You could even use a Filbert or a mop brush. Don't let it stop you if you don't have a round brush of this size. And then we're just going to literally print onto the page. Just pressing. We're simply forming the shape of the brush with the paint. Got a little bit of magenta in there as well. So we're going to trust our brush a lot, really, and depend on its shape. So now let's push in a little bit more and then allow the bristles to flare out. Let's try that again. Just going to the right there. And we get these lovely petal shapes, very, very simple shape, and moving to the left a little bit there, and then up flaring out and then left a little bit. Flaring out and then right a little bit. To the right. Do the left. You get these lovely organic shapes. Pushing in quite a lot, you'll start to get some of the bristle showing up in the shape of the brush. What now if we kind of just smudge it around a little bit and then put some water next to the more pigmented petals. That's a technique that a lot of watercolists use, and it's a beautiful one. So we're painting a petal and then putting down almost neat water next to it. And we can then watch as it flows in so just moving left and right there and then a quick, swift lifting up of the brush. And then in with a paler color next to it. And you can start to see how we can create lovely blooms and flows. So I'm adding more quinllac there, making it more pigmented, 60 pigment, 40 water. And let's do the same brushstroke with that color and then put some clear water next to it. And see what happens. You can encourage it a little bit. So without thinking about it, we're actually creating florals. But all we're thinking about is the shapes, the flows, the cauliflowers. And, of course, the water continues to move, so it's not until it's completely dry that you can enjoy the effect. But that isn't that beautiful. And that's how we get those kind of slightly harder edges. And here, that's a much softer flow. And because there's more pigment in that one, it's not flowed quite as much. Now let's widen the shapes. So we're bouncing our brush up and down and around. So it's like a continuous movement of the top row that we did dropping in the essential water. So the little hard edges occur when the water pushes the pigment to the edge, and it stops flowing, and you're left with this lovely soft line. And then adding some water into that one so we can see how this flows. And here I'm just doing large scribbles, really. And let's get adventurous and drop in some paint now after our water. It's about trusting the watercolor and water, the nature of it. And that's what I love about loose watercolors. We're trusting that the water knows what it's doing. A lot of watercolrists call it collaboration with watercolor, and I think that's a very good way of putting it. It can't be fully controlled. So let's mix up slightly more pigmented purple. And again, taking off the excess water from the base of the brush and then scrunching in over the lighter paler petals that we've just formed. I'm using slightly less paint and water on my brush, not quite as watery as the pale layer underneath. We're now going for a slightly darker value. And mixing up a little bit more magenta. So in our project, this will be the second layer. And then we're just going to very gently go over these pale layers. And if we get it right, we can see the layer underneath, and we can hold on to that transparent look. So have a play around. We don't want to go in too heavily here, but we do want it to be slightly more pigmented than the first layer. And we're going to still be dropping in water on our second layer as well. So you can still see the edges coming through from the layer beneath, and that's just what we're looking for. Gorgeous. And over this larger petal here, and we've still got that layer showing through. So with the use of watered down colors and dropping in water, we're getting that transparent effect. Let's add some leaves, and it's exactly the same brushstroke. And here you can see the green gold barging right in to the purple above. So if you don't want that effect, I would choose another green. If it flows in too much, you can always just take your kitchen roll or cloth and lift it a little bit. Mixing a little bit more of the green gold into a more pigmented form. Just checking. That feels a little too pigmented. So I'm going to add two drops of water from my brush. And that looks gentler. And luckily, green gold, which is my favorite green is also a transparent pigment, as is the in Dance room blue. As the watercolor dries, we can look back and start to see the delicate layers. So we can cast a look over our practice sheet and see if there's anywhere we want to lift with a bit of kitchen roll. And then the leaves are, again, just that single print of the brush. And look at that green gold running into the purple. So this area has a lot of water in it. So I have a choice. I can either place down the brush shy of that so that the green doesn't run in and take over. Or I could just blot the edges a tiny bit. What that does is create a dam so that the new color that I'm placing down doesn't run into its adjacent color. So you have a decision about how much you want the elements to run into each other. So this is our viridian, which you could use directly from your Cotman set or mix the anthron blue with green gold. And I want this to run into or rather be invaded by the green gold. So I'm going to place some of them right next to it. This is like witnessing a little bit of alchemy because there's so much going on in this page. There are so much detail, texture, transparency, lovely analogous colors working together. It's a beautiful sight. I love working with this technique. This cooler green brings a lot of balance. So simply printing with the brush, making sure that they're not all pointing in one direction. And I think that's it. So let's move on to part three. 6. Practise Part 3 | Pencil: A I think it's time to get our pencil. And let's practice moving the paint around with this. So you can see the pencil picks up the paint and moves it, but also runs back into a pencil in places. So it has a dual purpose. There's nothing I like more than soft pencil on wood colour. A take your time over this, and we're looking for any little pools of color that we can utilize to create very simple leaf and petal shapes. Much of this is dry now, but there are some little pools left. So if I was to press down on my pencil, we'd get much more defined lines, and I'm really not looking for that. So I'm placing the pencil on the paper and just allowing it to move. So there's hardly any pressure on it at all. Just bringing out little stems. And where there's a pool of paint at the bottom of a leaf, you've got a real advantage because we could then just pull that out into an easy leaf shape. And I do absolutely adore how we get the pencil mark, and as it runs through the paint, it acts as a stylus. Let's go back to some of our practice brushstrokes here. Very calming, very meditative. And although I am doing loose leaf and petal shapes, I'm holding on to the idea that this is semi abstract. So they're just shapes of color and texture and transparency, and now gentle pencil. I'm just going back to mixing a little bluey area that mix of down thrown blue with one of our colors beneath. And this is another thing that you can do. If a lot of your paints have dried, you can always go in and add little extra leaves and flowers and then run your pencil through. So now we can let it dry completely, as it's still moving very slightly. And once the paint has dried, we will see the full effect of the transparency. 7. Class Project | Part 1: So let's start with the watered down grinacrodone lilac. And we'll just start with some splattering. I always think that kind of breaks the ice a little bit. If you're using a Cotman set, you could aim to mix a lazarin crimson with a blue. I have this set which has two blues, and that will give you a little variety. If not, just go between the two colors mixing mostly a azarin crimson with a little bit of blue or mostly blue with a little bit of crimson. So you can see it's very, very pale, so don't be afraid to go quite pale with your first layer of shapes. And I'm just going to create these shapes by pressing the brush down on the page as we practiced. Dropping water in as we go along. More water. Don't be afraid of just splashing loads of water on the page. 'cause that's a really good kind of process towards forming transparent petals. As you can see, I'm also just adding pure water next to these shapes just to pull them out a little bit. Dropping in little bits of paint. And that's enough of the lilac because we want to introduce lots of colors. So now we're going in with the grinacrodon purple. Pressing the bush down on the page, moving it around a little, splattering a little bit of that in. All I'm doing is making sure that the shapes are all pointing in different directions. I don't want them all facing one way. And now for our third color, which is Quin Magenta. And I'm placing the magenta near the other colors so they can all have a little swim around together. Keeping it extremely loose, not thinking of them as flowers, just shapes. Working quickly means that you don't have much time to think, which I think is a good idea for very loose watercolors like this. We're getting our pencil out and doing what we practiced, which is holding the pencil towards the top and pressing very lightly. If you're not using a mechanical pencil, just ensure that you have a really sharp tip to your pencil and use a very light pressure. It's more the texture of the pencil that I love in watercolor. And where we have pools of paint, we can draw those out as we did in the practice run. I'm just going to do a wee bit of scrunching. This is just kitchen roll. This adds a bit of texture to the transparent look that we're trying to get. So it's lifting the paint, but in a different way. And I'm going to create another color over here with the endanthron blue and magenta. I just felt like bringing in a fourth color. So we've got various hues there. We've got the all blue. We've got the blue with the magenta, and then a very watered down version of the quin lilac on the left. I do love in down throne blue. It's such a rich color. And we can start to see how this is flowing into the pinks and lilacs. Just the printing movement again. Very simple. And I'm choosing areas that are slightly wet, so I know that there'll be some lovely blooms. So this is very much about shapes not creating flowers. And let's move on to our second layer. 8. Class Project | Part 2: So why don't we add some green now, and this is the green gold. A fairly watery mix because with watercolor, it's always best to go in on a lighter side than have to lift a darker color. So I'm going in with a very pale green here. In reality, this is slightly more green, but through my phone, it's quite yellowy, but, of course, green gold has a lot of yellow in it. And I'm just dropping in extra bits of color and some water. And that's what we need to bear in mind all the time here is that we're dropping in water, and this is what continues that transparent look. So I don't want to overdo it because I know that I want to bring in another green just as we practiced. Now, here, I'm not keen on that, so I'm just going to pick up the color with some kitchen roll. So you have control over this. We want to allow the watercolor to do its job and be unpredictable and beautiful. But there may be areas that you're not so keen on, and it's always possible to lift that. Quite like the effect of it, so I'm just going to put in a few extra blots. So you can see we've still got a few areas that are wet. But it's mostly drying now. This is also because I am using hot press paper, and on hot press, it dries much more quickly than on cold pressed. So back in to our quinacridone lilac, one of my favorite colors. It says lilac, but I always see it as a pink. And we're trying to go for that mid range, not too pigmented and not too watery. And let's just have a little try out and see. And that's lovely. It's not going to overpower this first layer. So let's pick up some of that and just scrunch it into the page. Very easy. I'm going over the areas that look like pale quinn lilac. But you don't have to. You can go over the blue or the green. I'm also slowing down here now, as well, and just being more considered about where I'm placing the shapes. And I'm also paying attention to the fact that they're all going in different directions. I want to keep a nice flow going. And now I'm dropping in the essential water just to really get those lovely cauliflower effects. Too much water going on in that petal, so I've just lifted it, and I'm adding some more colour. Green gold took over completely on that petal. You do have to be quite careful with green gold. So back into the Quinn purple, what a gorgeous color it is. I'm just going to check again that it's not too pale and it's not too pigmented, and that looks lovely. And again, just rolling or scrunching or pressing the brush to the page. Picked up a little bit of pigment there, but I quite like that effect, so I'm not going to try and lift it. You can see that my brush now is kind of flattening out a little bit, and we can utilize that. Just rolling around a bit now with the brush. Different directions. Keep looking to see where your shapes are heading. So I know there's color there. I'm just gonna drop some more water into these areas now. Where they're wet, they will, of course, flow more where they are partially dry. The colorflowers are smaller and more defined. So a little bit of splattering there 'cause I can't help myself. It's just lovely, but not too much. So, I'm mixing some of that in Danthromblue mix. And I'm just going to put some over the previous layers now. Lovely flows over this little area of blue over here. And because we've used a pale version of the second layer flowers, we can now see the layers coming to life and that soft early layer falling into the background and using slightly more pigment in our colors, brings it to the fore. So nice and bright colors over soft, pale colors. Adding a little bit more green gold to the well and putting that over the previous layer of green. And I know that there are still some wet areas, and I know the green will completely take over. So I'm being careful now, as I don't want too many runs of green gold. I do like the area with the blue in the bottom right hand corner. 9. Class Project | Part 3: And now we're going to get our pencil out again and pull out some little marks. Very, very light, holding it at the end, and I'm hardly pressing at all. It's just a very delicate detail. And where there's wet paint, we know that we can drag that through. Adding a little blob of green there. The same here, just so I can pull out the wet paint. So now let's go back in with our second green mix. And if you're using your Kopman set, you could actually use Vidian for this. So we'll just continue to press our brush into the page. Adding water, blotting. And slowing down. And doesn't this suddenly just come to life with this green. And that's because we're using a palette where we are mixing some of the main colors that we're using together. And that's what creates this harmony in a palette. So we have the blue petals, and we also have in Danron blue with the green gold to create this lovely cool green. So they all marry up together. Dropping in some water in places. Keeping an eye on where I already have leaves. We're slowing down a lot now, considering where we want to place these. A little bit of a dry brush there. I would say I'm not a cold green lover, really, but using a warm and cool green is such a great technique to bring complexity to your paintings. It's such a lovely addition to what we've already got going on with all the transparent shapes. I'm just adding a little bit more blue. Just in places, and this is a mix between the blue and the Vidian. I quite like the fact that not everything is placed, and there are little kind of gaps of white here and there. I'm keeping this blue fairly translucent, adding little pops of color now. So a little bit more of the quinacridone lilac. And I'm just dragging my brush for these marks. A few more pops of green gold. So what I'm doing here is just using the tip of the brush and moving it sideways. And where I place these extra areas of paint, I can now go back in with my pencil, drag out the paint and allow the pencil to act as a stylus. So you can see I'm moving a lot more slowly now looking around and seeing where these little pockets of watery paint are. And, oh, I love the little stem. That's nice. Might do a few more of those. Do one here. These little details feel like nothing when you're doing them, but when you look at it as a whole, you can see how all these little elements come together like a beautiful song. I like that little leaf. And that one is such a fun thing to do. I love making marks with pencil. It's a lot gentler than going in with a dip pen or a pigma micron. And this way, we can utilize the little wet areas. And the pencil carves in a little furrow. I like this pink area, but it's a little amorphous. I've not got much shape, so just dragging the paint down into a rough kind of leaf shape. It's a very contemplative time, I think, when we get to this stage. Let's do a finishing touch here of some splattering. And I've just grabbed a brush which happens to be a size zero mop. But any soft brush smaller than the one that we've been using. And I'm going to mix some of the lilac with the anthron blue, although all these colors have now mixed together quite a lot. Make sure you have no drips on the brush, and we'll just splatter in some color. Now, we need to be quite reserved because I want to do another set of splashes. So we're going to recreate what we did on our practice run and get some white, and this could be watercolor. It could be Chinese white from your Cotman set or gouache. I'm using gouache just because it was the closest to hand. We just want to add some water to that. It's still quite thick, so I would say 80% white 20 water. A and I'm just going to splatter this in to the page. And it usually has some sort of surprising effect with the wet watercolor has to be found out in the practice run. Because Guesh and watercolor do react in a magical way. I think that's another class, perhaps. But look how it's mixing with the wet watercolor. I love it. And there we have it or finished painting. 10. Gallery Of Flowers | Thank You!: It was so nice to paint alongside you in this class. We set out to explore transparency, analogous colors, and layers. I've put together this little gallery just to reflect on the colour choices we made. We touched on the fact that quinacridone colours do have an advantage for this style in that they're very transparent pigments, but also really vibrant. The flowers I love in this color range are sweet peas and hydrangea. Don't forget that you can showcase your work in our projects and resources area. If you need help with anything, you can always contact me via discussions or over on my Instagram page at Holy Thomas Design. Take good care of yourself, and I shall see you soon. Bye for now.