Blooming Pansies: A Quick Watercolor Sketch

1. Introduction: Hello, everyone. My name is Natalie. I'm a watercolor artist, sketcher, and drawing instructor. I'm excited to welcome you to my class and share my knowledge with you. Flowers are one of my favorite subjects to draw, and that's why I created a seria of seed lessons. Today we will be focusing on drawing pansies. This short but rich lesson will introduce you to various techniques and methods for capturing quick sketches of flowers. Let's get started and enjoy painting together. 2. Materials and drawing with a pencil: Let's start the lesson. Here is such a beautiful plot that we will draw. The materials are the same. Let's quickly go over them. Watercolor paper with a weight of 200 250 or 300 SM, whichever you have as any will work for these techniques. You can use a sketchbook or tape the paper to a drawing board, as I have done. Also, you will need a pencil with a needed eraser and a liner for detailing a end, a standard pair of brushes, a medium soft one, and a smaller from a one. Watercolor paints, a palette tissues, and a container of water. That's all. Let's start with a pencil drawing. First, I suggest roughly placing the flowers where they will be without details for now. We have four flowers. The first one is here. The second one is behind it. A little lower is the third one, the smallest one, and here is the first flower. You can slightly rise the composition upwards to the edge of the pot. It's important not to draw details from the start, so you don't have to raise much later. The pot will be someway here. Now let's start with the flowers. Look closely, the center of the flower is slightly below the middle. There are two large leaves on the side at the top one on the top, and another one below. You can slightly outline the dark part, but we'll detail it later with watercolor. This flower is slightly sideways. Draw the center and the petals, two of them are on the edges, one on the bottom, and one on the top, is the largest one. After that, let's draw the stem and leave. The next flower, Let's draw the center and petals, one, two, three, and four. And the last flower. Let's draw one petal, the second from the other side, and look the right e two petals at the top. I think there are one, somewhere, there are two petals, but you can just draw them curved. And the lower ones After that, we will draw many leaves at the bottom. They can be let right to the edge of the paper. Carefully outline the shape of the pot. You don't need to go into details, and let's remove the extra lines so that the pencil drawing is not too bright. Now we can finish with the pencil and move on to watercolor. 3. Colors selection and watercolor drawing: Before starting, I always make a swag picking colors. This time I settled on four shades that I like. For the greenery, I will use green emerald, very bright, saturated paint. That is in almost every set. But in its pure form, it's too bright. Poison a so, you can mute it with a drop of some kind of red color. I will use burn Ciena to mute this shade. Then the green will be closer to natural. You can add cadmium yellow medium. This will give light shades. For the center, we need yellow, we need pure form. And the last color is purple. I will add burnt CNA in pure form here for clarity. These are the colors I will use. They mix beautifully and don't create mud. The first thing I want to do is feeling the background, painting it brown, where the brush well with clean water and carefully go around the areas around the flowers. Here you can go out net around the stems, leaves and petals because we will walk the color near the edges, and it will help you to make it easier. I want the background to be blurry, so we walk wet on wet. I take the paint and make washes. I want the flowers to stand out against the contrasting background. Some way you can make it lighter. Let it be. Carefully go around the edges to create a beautiful conter. You can make it less saturated at the bottom. Now let's paint with green. Start with a very light color. I mix yellow with saturated green and add a drop of brown burn Ciena to make the color less. Use your brush stumps. Fewer movements make the lines more attractive and less overbooked. L et the leaves reach the sides. You can make darker areas by edging purple to our mix, to avoid coldness and to more brown to get a quite dark shade. Here we can pin the des areas on the background. Don't need to draw too much details here. Light brown or green is used here on the pot with light movements to avoid drawing too much attention. The most interesting part is the flowers. They are very tender with beautiful watercolor gradients and gentle tints. To convey all this, let's wet them and after that, add watercolor. Okay. You can use a thin brush. It will be easier to walk with. Start with the center. Light movements and stamping. Take purple. And make prints. Lo carefully where it is allocated. In some places, you can darken them adding specificity, but try to keep the lightness and des. Somewhere, you can blur the color so that the flowers don't look the same. You can add drops for creating washes and add a bit of details. Highlight the edge of the petal to show the boundaries. But not everywhere, just in some places. Mark the edges of the petals in a couple of more places. And you can add brightness if you want. Last strokes. I will highlight the shapes of the leaves with brown, making them a bit brighter. This completes the cool. I will dry the sheet and only add details and the sketch will be. 4. Details: The sheet is dry, Let's a details. I also wanted to say that you don't have to fill the whole space uniformly. If it reaches the corner here, you can leave some empty space at the bottom for interest and not outline the port clearly because the pot is not the main character here. It's even a plaza it won't stand out. Let's start with the flowers. Relax your hand and confidently outline the petals. You can show the winds we see, and maybe add shadows. Don't outline all sides equally. Let the bright spot remain where it turned outly with pure watercolor. Let's leave it to draw the eye there. Where you want to emphasize the shape, you can add more shadows to highlight the delicate flowers. On one side, I will highlight the leaf in just a shape for a curve. The leaves on the edges are uneven, and you can emphasize this and don't go into heavy detailing. Keep the lightness and ambiguity. Look, this leaf is not yet detailed. On the body is yellow, you can make it brighter. Add an open stroke at the bottom. But I don't touch the top petal because the body is clear. Last strokes. Pay attention to the. Its center has an interesting going. The further to the edge, the fewer details. Let the view I guess what's going on there. Look closely at the leaves. Winds originate from one place from the center. Here, I want to make it a bitter. Last details. I will not detail this area anymore. The main scene I wanted to convey worked out. Our main characters stand out against the background because it's darker. The result is a light troubled plot. It's important to stop in time. Now let's carefully remove the tape. All done, I tried to make this lesson as simple as possible. So get inspired and 5. Conclusion: Thank you for joining me in this lesson. I hope you enjoyed exploring different methods and techniques that we covered draw with joy and share your beautiful creations here. Don't forget that there are more lessons in the series dedicated to drawing flowers. I've included links in the description. Be sure to check them out. Happy painting and see you in the next lessons.