Beginning Watercolor: How to Paint an Apple

1. Introduction: I'm Wendy, and today I'm going to teach you how to make a really simple apple painting. It will look so beautiful and you'll learn a lot of techniques, but it's going to take you through some very simple techniques that you can use and build on to make your own paintings. This class is designed for anyone who's never done watercolor before or someone who's really, really new to water color. It will teach you how to do a glaze. We're gonna do a little bit of painting, let drying, and then paint over for a nice, dimensional look. I was going to teach you how to use your brush well, how to use it so that it keeps your brush nice and good condition and then is gonna teach you how to use tubes of water color paint. You can look at my other videos if you have a pan said. But today where we are going to be using tubes of paint, I find that tubes really have a very vibrant color, and I like how you can have a little more control over how much paint toe water you use. I hope you haven't had a bad experience with watercolor already. But if you have, forget that. Forget your old experience of water color because this is going to be fun. We're going to work through it, step by step so that you have no fear and you can feel confident using watercolor. You might find that you have a very distinct style, and I hope as you're going along with this project, you get some ideas of what you want to do. Watercolor is a great way to relax, relieve stress. I find it's an awesome way to document life. I do a lot of journals with pictures of off the coffee that I drink yesterday or of my kids toys, so I never forget those. So watercolor can be a really fun way to document your life almost like journaling, but with pictures, I really like to use supplies that are too cheap, but that aren't too expensive because you can find all ranges. I like them right in the below middle area because their quality and they work for what I want to dio. But they're not too expensive, they're not gonna break the bank. And I find that that if you find a good product in your price range, you're more likely to use it if you if it's really expensive, you might be scared to use it. And that just sits in the closet, which does no good. And if it's too cheap, you might find it doesn't work. Well, then you don't use it, and that's no good either. So I kind of stick to a good budget for myself, and you can see what works for you. Over time you'll find products and you'll find paints or paintbrushes that you really like . But for right now, I'll give you some very concrete ideas of what to get. In case I forgot to mention it. You're also going to be learning how to work with shadows today. Don't be afraid. We'll we'll break it down in a really simple way 2. Supplies: here. I have all of the supplies I'll need for this project. First of all, I need a little jar of water jar, Cup of water. You don't need a ton. Um, you can start out with just a little bit, but keep in mind that the more you clear out your water and get new water, the less muddy your colors will get. I have a number six a round brush. Like I said before, if this is your first time painting, just get a number six round brush. But as you get more into painting, you will find your favorites. I have four colors here. I have a metallic gold that's going to be added, the very end for a little pop of sparkle of a gray, a red and and Oakar these air all by Reeves. I will again, I will link toe all of the products I using this down below. And if you have any questions or if you what? Recommendations, comment or let me know, and I will be happy to let you know what works and what doesn't. I also have a pin I like to use theme I crone pens because they are waterproof, they will stay and they won't smudge when you paint over them. Which is really important for this project. This is a number one. This is like the brush. If you continue to paint and draw this way, you will find your favorites. But a one is a great a great choice to start out with. It's a little bit thicker, so it gives that nice, strong line and makes your your drying really stand out. I have a couple color pencils. I have an Oakar color and kind of a raspberry color. I'll be using those at the end is, Well, just add a little extra pop. Have an old toothbrush going to use that for splattering some paint and very, very important have a paper towel in hand. I use this one all the time. It just helps on those times when you accidentally get too much water, it will happen. Just dab it up and let that spot dry, and then you can start over. But keep this on hand because this will. This will be your best friend. I also have my sketchbook. This is sketchbook I like to use. It is seven by 10 inches, so it has a nice big area to paint on. Um, it is a mixed media like Anson that what that really means to us is that the pages hold up toe water. They really they won't wrinkle too much when you are painting with water color on them, which is important, and they won't soak through to the other side. You want that when you're looking for a sketchbook for water color. This one's a great, um, inexpensive sketchbook, tohave and a really nice size. And finally, over here, I have just a little pallet where I'm going to mix my colors. You can get a smaller one, all linked to the one that I usually use, and it's a circle that has little little circles around it that you can mix in. But 3. Let's Sketch: first thing I'm going to do is and I'll just know sometimes you can use a pan set. You continue this project with the pan set like this, but I'm not going to do that today. Today we're gonna learn how to use tubes. So I have a gray, a red and Oakar and then a metallic gold. I'm just going to start by putting a little gray right in here. You can see it squeezes out. You just open it up and squeeze out just a little tiny bit. You just put a little dot right on your palate right here. Close it up. You guys can see it's a very, very small amount. The pigment from thes tubes will go very far, so you don't need too much less is more to start off with next. I have the Crimson going to put like I did before. Just a little. A little squeeze. I'm just gonna dot that on there. Gonna put a little bit of the Oakar in the next one. Same thing, Just a little squeeze. And then finally this one. I am going to use the end. But I might also use it while I'm painting the apples. It just has a tiny, tiny bit of sparkle to it, and it adds a really nice touch. It's but some right and later and you ever sketchbook open to a nice clean page and we're ready to start drawing apples. I haven't apple here for reference, and if you notice it has just this rounded shape, if you simplify it, just a little circle shape with a line on top. Today we're going to go simple shapes. So I want you just to imagine the most simp simple form of this apple. Make four apples here that are about two inches each and watch my example. And then you can follow along. I'm just gonna drive a little curve. Apples come in all shapes and sizes so they don't have to be perfect because Apple's always have a little bit imperfection to them. You just wanted to take up some space, so you have a very, very simple silhouette of apples of four apples here. They're not all the same. They all have a little bit of a different look to them that I'm just going to add the stem . These don't have to be the same or perfect, either. Remember, there is no perfection. It's all developing your own style. I'm teaching you how I see things, and I hope this helps you get ideas for your own paintings in the future. 4. Let's Paint: next thing I want to look at with an apple is how it has, how everything has a shadow and a highlight on this apple we can see here. There's a highlight over here. See this white spot? That's the highlight. It's coming from this window over on my right. And if I set it down, I have, ah, flashlight here. I'm gonna make it even a little more obvious. Okay, If I shine right here, you can see the highlight. Very well. Also knows that the shadow comes back behind it. So one side has the highlight. The other side has the shadow. You don't need to know much about this. What you need to do is choose where your highlight will be. And for this activity, let's make it right up here in the upper right corner. So I'm gonna have you trying not to get any paint in this upper right hand circle right here. That's gonna be our highlight. If you do, it's not a big deal, but but we're gonna work to make that the highlight. Go ahead, pick up your brush. Get a little bit of water on their It shouldn't be dripping at all, but you should be able to tell. It's got a little water on it. And you're just going to mix. Start with the red. Just makes a little bit of water into that watercolor pigment. Give me a little more. Try to get all blended in notice how? It doesn't stick to the site. It runs back in. This is about the texture you want. Maybe even a little more water. I love tubes, though, because you get that really vibrant color. Makes it very fun to work with. Okay, Now you have that red paint on your brush. Just roll it around in here till till it looks like there's no more red paint on there. And we're gonna get pick up a little water, do the same thing with the other colors, so you don't want it thick and pasty. That's which would seem kind of like acrylic. So notice how much paint you can get just from that little drop. A little more water on that. Okay, so remember that I said this upper right hand corner is going to be our highlight, so we're gonna try not to get paint in this area. This if This is the highlight. This site is gonna be a little bit darker. Don't worry too much about that right now. But keep that in mind. We're gonna start with putting a little bit of red paint into this first apple. Go ahead and pick up a little bit on your brush. Just start filling it in. If you feel like you have too much water, this is where it's really handy. Tohave your paper tell with you. Notice how I haven't gone back to get more paint, just filling in with what I have. You can get more paint, but sometimes it's a good exercise to try and push around what's already there. Get a little bit more. I like to right in this side over here. Notice how I'm trying not to paint that highlight. Now I'm gonna go back for just a little more paint notice. There's quite a bit of water. Just dab better If you are having the same problem. Just Abit up a little bit. Okay? After you get this filled in, then rinse off your brush and remember, don't leave it sitting in the water. Parents it off and we will move on to the next apple really important here. Let this apple dry. Let it dry for the next step. Don't go on with this apple until we do the next step. As you progress, you'll learn more about techniques that you can use while it's wet. But for this one, let it dry. Okay, let's dip our brush in the Joker. Where to start filling in this next apple again. Try not to get more paint until you've used up what you have just adds that really translucent look. But we love about water color. Just push that paint around. Remember to try and leave that highlight open. It doesn't have to be perfect, but if you leave that white paper there for the highlight, it's gonna be so beautiful. The end Good again. Let this apple dry completely. Before you do anything else to it, go ahead and do one more Oakar colored apple. - If you notice the big streak like that, don't worry too much about it. Once it dries, it will blended better. But it is kind of nice to help you learn how to push that paint around. Let these all dry for a good 5 to 10 minutes, and then I'll see you back here. Remember not to leave your brush in the water 5. Let's Have Some Fun!: should be dry to the touch on. If it's not, wait a little bit longer. First thing I'm going to do is grow a little more red to put on this apple. I'm going to just do this corner over here. Keep in mind we're talking about shadows, and this is kind of the shadowed area. So I'm just going to put more over here and leave it like that, going to do the same thing with this apple with the Joker color, it doesn't have to be perfect. Just get the idea that it's darker on this side on this bottom left side where the shadow would be complete that with the other two apples and let them dry. Here is the painting with the extra layer dried completely. And if you'll notice when you add that paint on top and then let it dry, it changes even between that drying time. Okay, let's do this one more time. Only this time I'm going to have you change up your colors a little bit. We're gonna we're going to leave these tops top to, as as is thes bottom two. We're gonna have a little fun with color, so I want you to get some red paint on your brush, and we're going to just fill in a little bit of this bottom corner with a little bit of color. Don't mess around with it too much. Just get it on there and then leave it. The more you work at, the more you play with it, the more it's going to, uh, the less bright the colors become, the less the color stand out. So just just put down a little bit of read on this yellow apple and then leave it. We're going to do the same thing with the orange here with the Oakar on the red Apple. Now you might look at it and get a little bit nervous. What's happening? We're testing things out, and we're playing around with some color mixing so again, don't work it too much. Put it on there and leave it and we will let those bottom two apples dry. We're gonna put just a little bit more of the same color on these top. So I'm gonna put little red here, just building those layers, then a little bit of the poker color here and on the bottom where that where the shadow will be too. Okay, so you have four apples here that we've all done that we've all changed a little bit with either a different color or adding a extra layer for that extra shadow. And now we're going toe. Add the drop shadow, this bottom shadow here, coming off the bottom of the apples. Let's look back at our apple for a minute. So if here is, if you concede that highlight right here than that shadow is coming off the bottom kind of back into my hand. So we're going to very simply recreate that idea with a little bit of gray. So I have my paintbrush get a little bit of water and mix it with the great until you get a very, very light gray like this right here. And what we're going to do is just draw a little shadow off. The bottom of these doesn't have to be perfect. Just a little line off the side. If you're feeling comfortable with that, even put a little bit darker color under the apple notice. It's running together a little bit with the wet paint I have on the apple. I like that. If you don't like it, wait till your apples are completely dry before adding this shadow. But it's good to play around a little bit because water color can have a really cool effect when it mixes with other colors. But it's important to learn how to do it. And sometimes we learn by trying just have shadow there. Take it a step further by getting just a little bit darker grey and it right under the apple, where the shadow would be the darkest notice. How under these stems, we could put a little shadow just because with the stem and with that that kind of dip in the apple, it would have a shadow as well. So get a little bit of gray again. We're just gonna puzzles of grey right here. Don't try to make it to perfect. Just one little swipe of color will give the effect you want a lot of times with water color, our mind puts the picture together. These shadows may not be perfectly accurate, but our mind knows how to process them and how to see them very realistically going to add in a little bit of color for my stems, and then I am going to finish this up. It's OK if it's not quite dry, because it's going to mix with those colors to create that really bright, fun color that you might get when colors mixed together. If you would feel better that it's completely dry them. Wait a couple minutes and then do this last paints, so I'm going to just take my brush, dip it in the red, pick up a little paint on there, just gonna grab the side of the paint brush and just splatter a little paint around. If you notice it's not bright enough, you would like a little bit darker can add some more paint from the two. But I think this will work for what I am wanting right now. I'm going to get a little bit of sparkle and spray that around two just adds a really nice finish to this piece. You could do it wherever you want. If you look at an apple closely, it has little spots on it, so this gives it kind of a realistic quality to it. It runs off my toothbrush here, going to take a little look at my page. I am loving it. I'm going toe, let it dry, and then I'll show you one more technique that you can add if you want to add just a little more. 6. Finishing Touches and Final Thoughts: I'm going to add a little bit of color here on the corner just to highlight that shadow a little bit more and to bring out some fun colors. I'm also going to use the same red colored pencil on the yellow apple and see what it does . It's just color in that edge. You can even blend it a little bit. What I hope this really taught you today is that watercolor is for you. You can do it and try your best. Try your best. Believe you can make something cool and practice, and it will become easier and easier.