Botanical Illustration: Finding Your Style with Wildflowers

1. Welcome!: I am so excited to see you. This class is going to be so much fun. I hope that you are ready to learn about botanical illustration. And I hope that you are excited to see a little bit about your style of botanical illustration. Andi, In this class, we're gonna range from very traditional botanical illustration where we use I mean, really, I went completely old school. We're gonna use fountain pins. Teoh do very detailed, very Victorian esque botanical illustration and of course it's me. So they will be letter, but within gonna range from that all the way to pure pure water color. And it's going to be service fun. And I hope that you are excited to see not just watts the illustration styles. Ah, but also which one you enjoy the most. And then we're gonna end up with a class project that incorporates all of them. So the idea is that we will do a very loose atmospheric water color background. We're then gonna add a little bit more detail with watercolor. And at the very end, we are going to add detail with our fountain pains. So I hope that you are super excited and I will see you in the next videos 2. Getting Inspired: So before we start, I think that it's really important to remember that every artist has a story, and more importantly, every piece has a story. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about inspiration, because I feel that, but understanding what inspires us about a subject we can understand a little bit more about ourselves. But also we can understand what story we want to tell. I'm gonna share what inspired me to create this class. And I hope that you can take this time to think about what inspired you to take the cloths . So every year in Cape Town, from about August to September, it very slightly because nature has no top non. But we get an amazing springtime phenomenon, which is known as, well, allergy season. I mean, allergies hated, but it's beautiful. Every year, the new mackerel and daisies come out in full force. There are daisies and color as far as the eye can see. And if you know anything about faint balls, Finn boss is generally a if he grey green color, and all of a sudden it's just wound is yellow and purple and white and arts gorgeous. So that is what has inspired me to paint this, um, at this time and I thought you know what I am going to share? This is a class because I'm enjoying this so much. And I feel like I shouldn't hold it. Hints this class so together we will explore springtime in Cape Town and springtime, wherever you are. Be inspired. Do what you love and draw what you love. If you want to draw something with skills that you've learned in the cross project section , that is a bit difference. Feel free. I hope that you can take this time to just reflect and think about what you love about botanical illustration. 3. Supplies: Okay, So for those class, you will need water kind of paper and a brush. Any will do. This brush is a golden tackle on synthetic brush and the cellulose paper. You'll need clean and dirty water containers and lots of paper for all your some creations . Some pins with waterproof ink, pencil paint, brush on paint. T is optional. I also have these awesome fine take pains, which a glittery there are completely optional. But they're really pretty, sir. I thought I would give you guys some eye candy. Remember, just to use what you have, Andi also pro tip. If you are going to use any metallic pains pre with them, like centuries before you want to use them. And don't forget enthusiasm and an adventurous spirit. See, you know 4. Pen and Ink: So we're gonna start off by placing our flower. So we're gonna make a sort of half circle for the part that has the pollen in. And they were going to make an egg shape for the pedals because the pedals that are on the side are gonna be wider. The pedals that are closest to us are going to be foreshortened, which means they are going to be made fatter and shorter, and the ones that are away from us will also be at a different angle. But it's sort of the same sort of effect as for shortening. We're going to start with the pollen and the petals. We're gonna use a 0.5 fountain pen. You can use any pin you like. You can use a ballpoint pen if you want. It's Disney rules, but the is a benefit to having a thicker and thinner pin, and you'll see that just not so we start off with whatever you think openness, and you make little see shapes and you full in that sort of half circle, and then we start putting in the petals. Now the pit als ah, random but also have a certain shape. So you're gonna want a sort of very, very elongated oval, and we're going to try and make the oval not have perfect sides. So we're going to try and add little curves into them because the curves make it feel more natural because in nature nothing is perfect and you'll see that what I do with that I've made like little curves. I've also added a another line, so that extra line is gonna look like the the pitiless folded. And that, as well, will add to that effect off the flour, being natural and sort of carefree on. And yeah, and you also note that when you're doing the flowers on the very, very edge of the piddle, there's a little bit of like an irregularity, almost like a little mini fringe. And that is just part of how the petals form and adds a little bit of realism to the picture. Another prototype wind during a flower is not to go around, so you'll see that when I did, the petals were going to do them in opposite directions. So we're going to do one on top than one on the bottom, then the sides, and then fill in as we go. And then if you feel like any of the petals are too far away from each other, you're gonna add in extra petals that are sort of half pedals that look like they're underneath other pedals. And this is something that the flowers do you have. But it's nice to add them in last because they can fill in any gaps that maybe look too wide. Then we're gonna add the little piece of greenery that holds everything together, and we're gonna add the stalk. The stock also shouldn't be straight up and down like there are no straight lines in nature for the leaf. I just sort of made an extended version off the pedals. So now we're gonna move on to adding the final lines. So for this, I'm using a point to note and Wyman screen The barrel is I want to show you that I've changed the ink cartridge to kaban ng because carbon ink is made from a pigments and is not die based. So it weren't fade, and it also will withstand putting a light wash over it. So it'll stand putting water color over it. In other words, so I'm just adding a few more tiny little sees, and then you'll see. I'm adding some straight lines just around the circumference off the pollen, and now we're gonna add some details to the pedals. So petals have thes little lines that run from the base to the tip, and they give a lot of information on the direction off the pedal, whether it's fold erred, whether it's leaning, sort of slightly upwards, and you can see that they, in a perfect world, would have one very straight on the middle and then one sort of running around the age of the pedal and then one on the other side of the pedal. So to give a direction, you can just bend thes lines and play with where they go. So, for example, for the ones that I'm doing now, where the pedal is slightly curved up, you can see that the direction that I picked my pin is the direction that I want the papal to move it. So for the ones that are good coming towards us, you can see that I sort of made all three lines almost curved to the rights so that it looks like the pedal is going up and over towards us and for the ones on the left eye, curved them to the left so that it looks like the pedal is coming up and over. But it's still turning towards the left and you can sort of add a much darker feel to the part of the pit ALS that are curved up. So any little frill that we've added by adding dense aligns. So just more lines because adding more lines, adds Thean Yuzhin off a shudder and we do the same sort of thing on to the leave. Onda will also add some detail onto the stalk. Just that everything feels like it has Bean rendered perfectly. And you've really thought about adding detail to every part off the flower again. Now, for the fun part again, this part is completely optional, but I cannot say no to a good, better bling. So the color I'm gonna add is the school like mermaid Schomer, which reminds me off hummingbirds, breast feathers. Andi, I don't know. It just makes me feel very happy when I look at it. So that's war, how it selected it, and basically we're just going to take away our guidelines. Normally, razors fine. Just be very gentle because it is watercolor paper, so you don't want to push too far down on it, because then that can interrupt the truth of the paper. Then we're going to use something round. I used a compass, but literally. You can just pick up anything and trace a circle on, and we are going toe. Add glitter. So the close up shot that I'm sharing now is to show that with any metallic pains, if you don't pre with them and let them become that Mulki thick, gooey consistency, it's going to be too thin. And they tend to react really, really easily with water in terms off. If you add another layer on top of it, it tends to become really, really streaky really quickly. So just make sure that before you use any metallic paint, it does have that sort of milky, creamy texture before you start painting. Otherwise, add more water or wait a little bit longer just for a two activates, so the step is completely optional. You don't need to do this. You could have stopped straight away, and that would have given it a mawr serious feel, But I like my bling, sir. I added this. You can also add a plane. What a color wash if you so wish. 5. Pen, Ink and Watercolour: hello again. Okay, so in this class, we're going to do a very intermediate example. So we are going to do a botanical illustration that is in the old style, but with color, because color is magical. So I sought it out by using a yellow that I'm mixed with. A little bit of you can use red or orange just to give it a slight warm tens, because I felt like that makes it a bit more natural. And then I'm going to go back to my old school literal child and creates a flower, a daisy picture that is literally, Just so. We started out with a little bit of weight on dry watercolor action, and now we're gonna go wait on weight. So while the yellow is still wait, I decided to add a bit more orange because the flowers actually have a very beautiful orange core close to the beautiful pollen center, which I'm now adding. So the color that I chose actually is called Mars Black from Shrink A. And it's pigment is PB 11 and basically I'm gonna allow it to do its thing. The reason I chose this is because it's actually quite a beautiful granulated black, which means that it behaves a little bit erratically. But it also reflects nature a little bit more. You can use any black. It really doesn't matter. This was just my personal preference, and I added it. And because granulated it actually disperses and becomes quite light. So I added a little bit more. Just be careful with black and make sure that when you're doing weight on which you can actually see that texture off the paper. Because if you can just see the sheen off the water, I think it might be to it, and you will end up with a beautiful miss. But remember that with went on wit If you make a miss its fine. You just need a piece of kitchen towel and you could just dab you mistakes away. Ah, if only life for worse. So easy. So the next part is basically a repeat of what we did in the previous listen, and what's really cool is I did it in a much larger version so that you could see exactly what's going on. Just in case you feel like you would like a little bit more instruction so we start off with the larger line. So remember, this is the 0.5 nip. So we're gonna start with the pedals and again we're going to do oval like shapes and you'll see that I personally prefer to do one line and you know, you can get that momentum, then do the other line and leave a slight space between the two so that I can give the edge of the pedal that slightly serrated Look again. Don't go all the way around rather start one side and then move to a different part of the flower so that the pedals are in a good direction and we don't end up with a kind of skewed flower. Cool. So we're just gonna ADM or of those little half circles. And this time, instead of doing them all facing upwards, we're gonna do all of those little sees facing in every direction. And you don't need to full the entire middle of the flower because that's what the granulated painted the granulated pen gave a texture, and now we're just emphasizing that and giving it a little bit of full. So we're moving on, and this is the point to Nerb. So whatever pain you're using, use a smaller version off that, and basically you're going to start in the middle and pull out some lines. So those ones straight down the middle and in the ones curving around the curve off the pedal on either side of it and be free, be loose, let them start with a lot of pressure and then just left your pin to finish the line and leave that in that middle. But empty. It gives it a little bit off space for the imagination of the viewer. Remember that art is a collaboration between you and your audience, so it's always good to let them feel like they have a part to play. And then I've added a few little extra lines on the sides of the pedals to give it little folds just so that the petals feel like the occupying a three D space rather than just being flat on a page. And we're just gonna continue this until we finished remembering not to do solid lines for the detail, work in the flowers, start from the inside and girl outwards, and start from the edge of the piddle and go inwards. Have fun. Enjoy it. It's very therapeutic on now. I'm just gonna go in and add a few more little semi circles just to give some variation to the middle of the flower and especially, put some detail around the edge because these flowers tend to have a lot more detail around the circumference off the pollen. So take some time at some final touches, enjoy your work, admire it and I'll see in the next video. 6. Just Watercolour: Hello. Hello and welcome to the loosest of all the illustration styles. So we're going to start off with whatever yellow you would like. I started with yellow because the yellow flowers seemed to be a lot easier to manage and a lot easier to see because the white ones, as much as I love them, involve a painting technique. Cold, negative painting way. You don't paint the white because in watercolor painting you tend to use the paper as the white Andi. I'm really enjoying not having a background which obviously would need for the wildflowers . So we start off with yellow and basically you do a very rough shape. It's actually much easier to see with the orange and you do a daisy. That's sort of looking away from you, Andi. This is gonna be wet on dry, so you're gonna have dry paper, and this will give you those nice, crisp lines. But then you can do some wet on a weight to add some accents to your flowers. What's really important is that the flowers office, different directions and that the flowers are different in size, that it gives the illusion off space and the fact that the flowers are not like planted perfectly in a garden, but are wild and free. And then, while the flowers are still wait, we're gonna add a little bit of green. So to make a nice green that looks more natural during take green straight from the palate , rather take. So in this case, I've taken a variety and Hugh, which is actually a sailor green. And then I've added a quinacrine yellow, which is like a brownie. Hello. You can use yellow OK, you can use any sort of dull yellow, and that just makes the green look model and more natural because the pallets tend tohave this bright, bright, bright green, which I mean you can use it. It's fine, but it's just not very natural. And that's what I was going for in this particular illustration piece. I've also put in a few flowers which are closed so that it gives the idea of growth. And maybe the story is that this still more beautiful things to come. So basically, I decided the yellow was like a little bit light, so if you want, once everything is dry, you can go over with the second layer But just be careful because yellows can be very opaque. And that means that the layers can actually take away some of the vibrance off the water color. If you want to explore ideas like capacity and how to read tubes and all of those lovely things exploring watercolors. Another class I teach on skill trip so you can check that out. So I felt really bad because I felt that the purple flowers were getting a neglected and I was doing a lot of yellow and a lot of orange, which, ironically, are not actually my favorite colors, sir. I thought, you know, I'm gonna be a little bit girly, and I'm gonna splash out and treat myself with some purple. So this is a lie Lick. It's very soft because I diluted it a lot with water. And again, you're just going to do these very loose shapes, making sure that they're facing different directions on that they are different sizes. So while they're drying slightly because you don't want them to be to it again, if you see the sheen on the paper, it's going to be to wit. But if you can start seeing the texture you can generally feel like it's going to be dry enough, and I've just added some darker purple to the flowers because they tend to be Dhaka at the bottom. And again I used green and I'm just loving the screen because it's so easy to mix. And it's really nice if you actually put a little bit of green. And while it's still wait, because then you can see that it's actually spreading up into the flour and making the technique even mawr airy and loose and off. It's quite delicious watching watercolor do its thing, and in this technique you're not gonna have as much control as other ones. But I think that that's a little bit off the beauty of watercolor. So for this, enjoy it and have lots of spare pieces of paper because it's very addictive and he will be making a ton of these. But also, if you make a mistake and you feel like you've messed it up, let it dry because a lot of the time it feels like or we missed it up. But it actually just needs a little bit of ah George here in a So for example, I added another flower at the top. They when I felt that the painting was a little bit empty and a little bit confined to the bottom off the page. And it's always nice to give a little bit of depth by putting stalks behind each other and putting leaves in front of each other and have fun, enjoy it. 7. Class Project: Wildflower Landscape: cool, Cool, Cool. Okay, so for this part of the class, we're going to make a landscape, so the flowers are absolutely beautiful. One of the most amazing things in the Western Cape is every September when the flowers come out, and it's not the individual flowers that make it beautiful, but it's more than atmosphere and the feeling of this giant field that's just full with life and color and just like a celebration of nature, which makes me really happy. And I think that that's what I'm trying to convey with this landscape, which I think is really important. Before you go into peace, you should always think What emotion do I want to in pots upon this piece again? So we started off with a green that had a lot of yellow in it so that it was warm and felt really close. And then I wanted to push the further bushes and, um, just the rest of the field further back, just so that you can get that feeling off how immense the scale of this is. So to do that, I added a little bit of water and then added blue, and that made the green a little bit cooler and a little bit more like a shadow color. And then I added even more blue, and that gave me a sort of even darker turn so that it could create a little bit more shudder. So pro tip whenever doing anything with nature is to be random. So you saw when I was making the trees, or will the bushes cause you don't really get trees in Cape Town? Um anyway, uh, yeah, so you just want to make it as random as possible and you want to just make it as loose as possible, depending on the style. So we started off with something that was very rigid, and I thought that seeing as we're moving to this landscape, I was going to make it a lot looser. You can make it as loose or as detailed as you like. The only thing is, just be careful not to overwork it. There's a difference between something being really detailed and something being overworked . That is something that I struggle with every day. So don't feel like you're alone. I always add too much detail. And then I'm like who? Maybe not, And I think that's something that's difficult with deciding. The style you want to make is deciding whether something is overworked or if you have a detailed style. A good way to check is often toe. Ask people and get a sort of second opinion on it. Um, but also remember to ask people that you can trust for an honest opinion but also a kind opinion because you don't want Teoh destroy the hopes and dreams of your little child that is creating this beautiful artwork. It's still a lot, no matter what anyone says about it, because you created it and creating something way there was nothing before is always something to be proud off. Okay, so for the sky, we did a light, surreal Ian Wash. You can use any light blue that she like. You can also just really, really dilute anybody that you like and then to make clouds. Clouds seem really daunting, but really, it's just crumpling up a paper towel and dabbing. So again, try and make it random and try and squish the towels. That's irregular because you don't want your clouds to just be like thes perfect wide lines in the sky. Even though sometimes cards do act that way most of time. People's representation of clouds in their mind is something fluffy, so don't let them down. Keep it random, but get so for the flowers again. We're going to try and make the small off like a impressionistic kind of work. You'll see all adding some hectic detail later, which is where that pen and in comes in because that's just the extra kind of person that I am. But for this part, try and choose something that's but more opaque just because we're putting it on after we've put on the green. So maybe use a cadmium raid and a cadmium yellow mixed together or any other opaque yellow or or pay grade mixed with a more transparent red or yellow. And then I just went in with the same yellow, making more flowers. So remember what the's flowers you'll be able to see that I've used like a very, very almost childlike representation of the flowers where it's just sort of a star. It's just petals coming away from a points, and sometimes I've done a full stars sometimes have done 1/2 star, and those are to represent the flowers that are facing away from us or facing directly upwards versus the flowers that are looking straight at us. And then there's also these gorgeous little cute pink flowers that appear between the daisies, and I just sort of darted in some colors for those. So now we go in. I've gone in with the final version of the pain, the 0.2. Nope. And I'm basically making tiny versions off the previous two flowers that we drew. So they are tiny and they're going to look very child like at first. But what you can do is you can add a variation in the direction off the flowers. So, for example, the ones that you're seeing me do now Ah, straight forward, looking directly at us kind of flowers. And then I move in to doing sort of 3/4 flowers, where you'll have smaller petals facing the viewer and long of petals facing outwards. And then I also just added a little bit of detail. Teoh the bushes as well. And again, this is just random, absolutely just little swirls that I draw with my pen without thinking too much about it, just to give the overall cohesive idea off this being a complete work that is made with the intention off, having detail added, with pen and watercolor airing the color and the I guess to me the emotion off the peace. So if you wanted to, you could see that the previous version off this was also equally fine. Like you could have just left it very loose, very free, and that's up to you. Remember that any person teaching any form of art is always doing it in their style. So it's up to you to decide if that's for you or not for you. So you can see what the flowers air just drew. That the pedals on the top and the bottom of the flower are much shorter than the ones on the sides. And that gives it a sort of dimension, showing that the flowers are looking slightly upwards and slightly away from you, drawing only half the flowers and not necessarily the pollen. Part of the flower also gives it a dimension off overlooking away. Some of the flowers are facing towards the viewer. Some of them are not, and this makes it feel more natural and less contrived. And I think once you've done all your flowers, we can call it done 8. Class Project: Wildflower Love Letter: landscapes are an art form in and off themselves. So I thought that I would put an alternate version off across project here, just for people who perhaps are not finding landscapes to be their cup of deep. So I thought I would create a little love little to you guys. So for this, you just need to very, very briefly make an envelope looking thing. And I used buff titanium and then I'm adding in a little bit off burned amber just to give it that little old fashioned kind of look. And then I'm using that lilac color that I had before and just loosely again, completely combining all of the techniques that we've done before, very loosely, adding in some water color flowers and very, very childlike, very free. And I added some darker purple to give that that yummy centre to these flowers and in a little dry. So it's very important that you let this dry because if you add the green that we're gonna add just now in or these defining lines, that is just again a mixture of the buff titanium and burnt umber in before it's dry, you're gonna make a bit of a mess. I mean, it might be your style and might be what you want, but this is to create beautiful, crisp lines and to really embrace the beautiful glazing that water color allows us to do so . This again is very loose because envelopes age differently in different areas. So while you see me away, I'm busy mixing that green again. Use a green that is not directly from the pan. Try mix it with something like a yellow, even a blue just to make it slightly different. And now it is gonna add in some leaves because the flowers sort of look a bit empty and you know that they would need some foliage to hold them up and, you know, fill it with as much love as possible, right? And we're just gonna let the stri and again, we're really embracing the layering technique off water color with this. And I'm going in with my point, too, because obviously it's a very, very tiny detailed drawing. And I'm adding in my little half circles for the center of the flowers. And this gives a lot of definition and will create a contrast off detail versus free loose watercolor which will draw the viewer's eye towards the flowers and really create the focal points of the image. Because wherever there's the highest contrast is way the eye is going to be drawn first and like the landscape, we're gonna use very loose representational forms of flowers. And if you make the pedals wide enough, we're gonna add some little lines to them to make the pedal see more detailed, like we did in the first class. And this is really gonna be where you decide what you want to take from the three previous lessons and put that into good use to make something that's your style. So on the edge of the flowers again, I did little friends like protrusions. I yes, just to make the flowers look less drawn on Mawr. Biologically correct, I guess. And I'm just going in, adding some final details at as much or as little as you like and enjoy the process. It's very therapeutic. It's very fun, and let yourself be inspired by what drew you to this costs in the first place. So post any project that you've done either one of the lessons or one off the class projects or both Or all of them. Whatever you had fun doing, sharing your work is an amazing confidence boost. And I believe in you. 9. What Next?: Oh, my gosh. You made it to the end. Well done. I'm so excited to meet you here on the other side. And I hope that you had a really good time. Okay, So what's next? Hopefully you will feel brave and inspired and share your class project in the project section below. Honestly, I will only leave very encouraging feedback because I feel like critique is about encouraging what's good? Not focusing on any negatives. And I'm really excited just to see what you've done and what inspired you about the class and how you have translated this class into your style. Andi, finally enjoy your work. Display it. Do something with it s o in the video above. You're seeing what I do with my work. Sir, I actually have donated the illustrations that I've made and I've made quite a few extra than what we saw in this class. And I'm donating it to a shop in the South African national parks that will sell them to contribute the money to conservation off these gorgeous flowers in South Africa. And what's really nice is that the piece is put in with some more she tape so that The person can not only get a beautiful cod and a beautiful message and some love from someone else. But they can also take up the artwork and then dinner. Hang it up. I don't know. Send it to a friend hanging up in your own house. Rebel in the beauty that you have created, it doesn't need to be. What your mind says is good. You have created something from nothing and therefore it is art and it is good. So enjoy that. So I hope to see you in another class of very soon. Keep learning. Keep enjoying. Keep art ing. And I hope you have an amazing day. Week, month, year. Go creates. Okay. See you. Bye.