Botanical Illustration with Watercolour | Rose

1. Introduction & Welcome: Hi everyone. My name is Helen and I'm a botanical artist and teacher. And I've been painting botanicals now for about 14 years. I'm so excited to welcome you to my latest class. In this class, I'm going to take you through all the steps that you need to take to create this beautiful painting of a rose. I'm going to take you through the materials that I use, my process step by step, including my favorite utter cal techniques so that you can end up with a beautiful painting just like this. I really hope that you can join me. 2. Materials: For this class, I am going to dive straight into the painting itself. In my previous two classes, you'll be able to hear in much more depth about the materials I use and about how I warm up before starting a painting. I'd really recommend having a watch of these before starting this project. But if you feel ready to dive in with me, then let's go a little reminder to make sure that you have the video playing back in H D. Which you can adjust by clicking on the settings button at the bottom of the playback screen. Don't forget to, to download the reference image and the line drawing from the project resources section. Let's move on to materials for this painting. I am once again working on a piece of Rs, hot pressed watercolor paper. This is stretched onto a piece of plyboard. Again, if you'd like to see how I stretch my paper, please do have a look at my first tutorial where I explain and demonstrate this really, really easy process in depth. I have then transferred my line drawing onto my watercolor paper so I'm ready to paint. You'll notice I've chosen to place the rose to the left hand side of my paper. This just gives me a little bit of space to test out paint colors or practice any techniques on stretched watercolor paper, which personally I prefer rather than working on a scrap piece of paper. The brushes I will be using, as in my previous classes, are the Rosemary and series seven sizes, 42.0 I also have a Faber Castell putty rubber I love to use to lighten any pencil on my watercolor paper. I also have my reference image close to hand for me, it's on my ipad. The paints we are going to be using for this rose are Windsor and Newton Professional watercolor paints in permanent rows. Windsor lemon and French ultramarine. Just these three, it's amazing what a limited palette can do. I'll tell you more about my limited palette as we paint. You can see here too, my water jar palette and a piece of kitchen roll which protects my paper and allows me to block my brush when needed. Now we've gathered everything that we need. Let's get painting. 3. Mixing Grey: The way we are going to approach this painting is actually with a gray tonal underpainting. I will talk to you about why I chose this method too. While we paint first though, I'm going to show you how I mix my grays. This is a really great skill to learn as it's so translatable across any subject you might choose to paint. Essentially, the botanical gray we're going to mix is going to be made from our three pigments. When you mix three primary colors, you will eventually end up with a gray. There are many reasons I love mixing my own gray rather than using one from a tube. Firstly, we're not adding another pigment to our palette and our paper, we're using the colors that we know already will be in our painting. This reduces the chance that our painting will end up looking muddy and dull. Secondly, I love that we have scope to easily adjust the gray. If we feel we want a pinker gray, then that's easy to do by adding a little bit more permanent rose. Similarly, if we want a bluer gray, we can add a little bit more French ultramarine. We have so much more flexibility and more opportunity to color match on the paper. For this painting, I'd like you to do just this mix up, two gray mixes, one that is a little bit more pink and one that is a little bit more blue. We'll be varying the colors across the flower to show areas that are a little warmer, tending to be nearer the light, and those that are a little cooler, usually areas in shadow. Now, it's very unlikely that you'll hit upon the perfect gray first go. It'll take some adjusting and perfecting. It can be sometimes quite hard to see the mix clearly when it's really very strong. Try watering it down and see what effect you get. Then test out your colors on your paper As you go, you can see me doing that here. And once you're happy with your mixes, we will move on to creating this lovely tonal, underpainting across the rows to capture the shadows and the highlights. 4. Tonal Washes: Now we have some beautiful grays mixed. We can move on to starting our underpainting. Now for the majority of this painting, we will be using a wet on wet technique to apply the color to the paper. If you've not used this technique much, you might want to have a look at my previous classes where I go through the wet or wet technique as well as other watercolor techniques in more detail. But if you're happy to carry on, then I'll talk you through my best tips for the wet on wet technique. As we go, as you can see here with the wet on wet technique, we apply a layer of water first before we lay down our paint. This allows the paint to spread and blend beautifully across the paper. The most important thing to check is that both your water and your brushes are clean. For this part of the process, it's so easy to accidentally have a little bit of paint on your brush or forget that your water jar is colored with paint. It may well show up. So it's best to start clean. You may know already, but I paint with two jars of water by my side, One that I use for messy cleaning of my brush, and one that I try and keep clean. It makes it a bit easier rather than changing the water every half an hour or so. Here I am now starting to add some of the gray we have mixed on our palette. I'm choosing to use the bluer hued mix for this particular petal as it's more in shadow. Being on the right hand side, if we are assuming that our light is coming from the top left, try to ensure that you have a milky consistency to the paint. You want it to be flowing easily from the brush. I am using my size too rush to apply the paint smaller than the size four I was using to apply the water. Using the size four to apply water means I can cover a relatively large area with each brush stroke. Minimizing the number of times I touch the paper with the brush, but also ensuring I can work quickly enough before the water dries. The beauty of both of these brushes is that they have a nice point and are quite rigid. It's easy to still have good brush control in finer areas for adding the paint. Though I'm using a size two for even more control. You can see here that I am applying paint initially to the areas that are going to be most in shadow. These are the part of the petal that is hiding under the one on top, so that left hand edge, as well as to the right hand edge of the petal where it is bending slightly away from the light. This gives the petal some shape and form and shows the viewer that this petal is underneath the other one. The other way you can begin showing the shape and form of the petal is to start to apply paint in the direction that the veins will be traveling. As you can see me doing here. You can see already with just a few soft lines following the shape of the petal, that it already appears to be curving as it leaves the base of the flower. Now we repeat this process across each and every petal in the flower. I know that this might seem a little bit daunting right now, but don't worry, it will all come together beautifully. The most important thing is to try and enjoy the process of putting paint to paper when it comes to repetitive processes like this. Once I have a feel for what I'm doing, I like to put a podcast on or some music and find that flow state. If we go back to thinking about that wet on wet technique, the way to ensure that the paint flows beautifully across the paper, to ensure that you have covered the entire area that you wish to paint with water. You want the paper to be glistening, but with no puddles of water if you're working in a hot climate. A little reminder that you may need to even add a second layer of water to ensure that the paper is saturated and you have time then to add the paint before it dries. I'm always looking closely at my reference photo, trying to translate what I see as carefully as possible. But remember, this is art. This is your individual representation of what you are seeing. You might notice that the paints are separating a little bit on your palette and even a little bit on the paper. Don't worry too much about this. This is actually the nature of French ultramarine. Personally, I quite like the effect as it gives another subtlety to the colors we are applying to the paper. If you do want to minimize this, just make sure that you're mixing the paint on the palette well. Before you pick it up onto your brush, you'll notice that I'm not applying gray paint to the whole of a petal. I'm keeping much of the surface of the petals white. This is to provide contrast to the painting through the balance of highlight. Shadow. Remember, it's much harder to lift paint from the paper than it is to apply another wash once it has dried. The white highlights are what will make your painting glow as you move from petal to petal, try to make sure that you're not painting next to a petal that is still wet. This will lead to messy and untidy edges that blur together and that are hard to fix. The beauty of working with a rose with this many petals is that we can move around to ensure that this doesn't happen and we have lots of time to let things dry. Remember that you can adjust the colors slightly as you move to Those bluer hues are great for the bottom right hand side of the flower, whereas you may find the pinker hues are better for the top left. Hopefully you'll see as I paint the subtle variations I'm trying to capture within each petal. One other tip I wanted to pass on is about controlling the water and the paint on the paper. If you notice that you have some water or paint puddles on the paper, you can just take a clean and dry brush and gently lay it in the puddle or glide the brush across the surface. You will see as you watch me paint that, I will often use my size four brush for this. Whilst painting with the size two, I often even paint holding both of those brushes in my hand at the same time. You can also use this technique to lift out some paint if it creeps too far into any white space. With this wet on wet technique, it's really important to stop painting as soon as you notice that the paper is starting to dry. This changes the technique otherwise to one of wet on dry. And you will end up with edges and lines if you're not careful, rather than that lovely, blended quality we are looking for on the paper. I'm going to speed up the video a little bit now, but remember that you can always slow the video playback speed down at the bottom left of the screen. I'm also going to skip the process of laying down the water from this point on as this process remains the same for each petal. The only exception to this is in the very fine areas in the center of the flower. These smaller sections are so tiny that you may find it far too tricky and unnecessary to lay water down first. In these ******, you'll see me applying paint directly to dry paper. I've chosen to keep the entire painting included in this video, slightly sped up in case there are particular parts that you find more challenging than others. I'm thinking particularly of the center of the flower, as the petals get smaller. I promised I would let you know why we are starting this painting with a total underpainting. This isn't a technique that I use often, but I felt it would be perfect for this rose. Given the subtlety of the colors and the gentle fluctuations in color, I appreciate it's not easy to know when to use which technique. Spent quite some time thinking about this myself. For this painting, my best advice is to learn as many techniques as you can as you're doing now. Until you feel that instinct to kick in, which makes a choice a little bit easier, just practice a small part of your painting with different techniques. For example, in this rose, practice underpainting with a few washes. Then try without and see which technique you prefer and which gives you the best outcome and overall effect. I'll let the video play now without much talking, but I really hope you enjoy the process. There we go. As we come to the end of our first layer of washes, you should have a beautiful tonal underpainting completed. I really hope you're pleased. Now we get to move on to playing with some of these beautiful bright coral, pinks and yellows, and start to lay these on top of our painting. This is when it really comes alive. I suggest you take a little bit of time now to have a break, make a drink, stretch your legs and your back and your arms, and then we can get back into more painting. 5. Adding Colour: We can now begin to add some beautiful color to our rose. I start by clearing my palette. It's unlikely that we'll need any of those grays again. Of course, if you have a second palette, by all means, use that to save wasting any of the mixes you've made so far. Now we're going to mix up three different paint mixes. A bright coral orange color using the Windsor lemon and permanent rose. One that is permanent rose with a small amount of Windsor lemon. And finally, a soft violet using permanent rose and French ultramarine. I'm creating all of these colors once again from the three on our palette. I'm going to mix these as a strong pigment and then also water them down a little. You can see how once again, I'm making samples of each color on the paper, which lets me see more clearly the color I've mixed and therefore allowing me to make fine adjustments. I'm always looking at my reference photo and trying to color match as as I can. Finally, I'm going to mix just some plain, permanent rose on my palette, as well as a fourth wash to apply in areas that are that really vivid pink. Make sure to mix up enough of each color right at the beginning. It's so much easier than having to keep remaking your mix part way through the painting. It's not the end of the world if you do have to do this. But it gives me a bit of peace of mind to know that I've got enough to keep me going for a while. Once again, we're going to use our trusty wet on wet technique. This time applying color over the top of our gray tonal painting down a wash of water, just as before. And then looking carefully at the reference photo, we can select which color to apply across the petal. Do you see more of a yellowy hue like I'm seeing in this part of the petal, or pink or violet? Gentle variations in color will bring a lovely complexity to your painting. You can start relatively pale with your washes, as we can always keep layering. But in certain places of shadow, do be bold with the amount of color you're laying down. Remember to make a darker color. Just have less water added to the mix. You'll see as I work, once again, I'm using a combination of the size two brush to apply paint and the size four brush to both apply the water and move paint around the petal as needed. You can keep working on a petal and adding more color until the paper begins to dry. It's always best to stop too soon rather than too late. Keep an eye on where the paper is still glistening and where it is drying. This will ensure you always end up with a lovely, smooth and blended wash. Remember once again that you do not need to cover the whole petal area with paint. I'd recommend leaving some areas completely white, even if perhaps you see color across the whole petal in the reference photo. These highlights are what is going to make your painting glow. Once again, I'm going to speed up the video slightly and remove the application of water to the petals to allow you the chance to see the whole flower being painted. Don't forget though, to do that water wash first. Do pause, slow down, or even rewind the video as you need to. I promised you I would talk to you about my limited palette. It's amazing that we can paint this rose with just three paints, isn't it? 95% of the time I work with just six paints. And these are the permanent Rose, French Arch Marine, and Windsor Lemon we are working with here. As well as Perreline maroon in danthrine blue and new gamboge. Also all Windsor Newton professional paints, I truly haven't come across a color yet that I can't match with these six paints, you'll notice that there isn't a black, a white, or even a brown in this selection. That's because black can come from mixing, a few strong mixes from the color of the flower. Or a gray, for example, a very dark purple pigment. Grays, as we've already discussed, can be mixed of our three primary colors. White tends to come from the paper itself. Every now and again, you may see artists using some white go paint on their water colors. Of course, this is an option. It's not one though, that I've used in a very long time. Preferring to use the paper to show any highlights. Using a limited palette means that you really get to know your paints with time, can instinctually select the pigments you need to mix a certain color. It also reduces the chance that your painting might look muddy or disjointed, which can happen if we add too many different pigments into one painting. I'd really recommend having a little play on a scrap piece of paper and seeing just how many colors you can make with just six paints. It really is amazing. Wonderful. Now you've finished adding the color. The rose should really be coming to life. Now the next step is to add some lovely detail into the petals, trying to capture the veins and the more intricate shadows on the petals. 6. Adding Details: Part 1: Now we can move on to adding some details onto our painting. The paint mixes that we are going to use to add the details you'll be pleased to hear are almost exactly the same as the ones we've been using. To apply our first layer of color washes, what we need to do is just add some water to these mixes we have on our palette already, thinning them down to a nice pale color that will be visible on our painting, but not so dark that they look harsh and too strong for the delicate petals. The only difference is the violet. To this you can see I'm adding a small amount of the yellow so that we have a purply gray color rather than the pure violet. Once you're happy with your colors, we can move on to painting. Now, before painting veins, I always warm up once again. You can see how I do this in my previous videos, but for the purposes of this, I will talk you through my process as I go keep your painting nice and protected as I have here with some tissue paper or tracing paper to prevent any mishaps at this stage. To add the details, you can size naught brush or a size two. So long as you have a good tip to the brush, you'll be okay. We then, whilst looking at our reference image, want to try and capture those faint and delicate veins and the shadows we can see on the petal surface. The best tips here that I can give are to try and be as gentle as you can, just tickling the surface of the paper with your brush, to paint very fine lines. You want to avoid bending the tip of the brush if you can. That means you're putting a little bit too much pressure more than you need to through the brush. Don't worry if you are being that the brush actually lifts off the page at times, That's okay. Also have a play around with the speed that you're painting. Do you have more control when you move slower or is it better when you move a little bit quicker? There may be areas where you want the line to be slightly thicker, like here. This is where you can put a little bit more pressure through your brush. You can vary the paint color that you use as you wish. Here I'm using more of the purple gray, as this petal is more in shadow than some of the others. But you'll see in the other petals. I will adjust things, we slowly build up these details. Here I am trying to show some of the very subtle undulations in the surface of the petal. Be very mindful of the direction that your brush is traveling in the veins tell a story as to the shape of the petal. You might want to use this opportunity too to add a little bit more shadow to certain places as I am here. And then blending it out softly with a damp brush. I'm going to keep this petal at real time speed so that you can follow along with this process. But then I will speed it up a little bit once again so that you can see me paint the entire rows. I'll keep jumping in though, to talk through some other parts of the rows that I found a little bit more tricky or if I feel I can talk you through my thoughts as I paint, When I work more quickly, like you can see here, I call this a feathering technique. I'm applying many soft, fine brush strokes to build up some texture on the petal surface. You can start very pale with this technique and then build it up slowly if you need to, with more color. You'll see me doing this a lot as we move across the painting. Note I still always move though in the direction of the veins in the petal. It's a great way of adding some more depth of tone into the areas in shadow. In addition to the lovely washes that we can apply here, this may seem quite bold, adding this much color to the edge of the petal, but look how it softens out beautifully with a damp brush. The trick with this is working quickly enough so that the paint doesn't dry before you've blended it out. We'll move a little bit more quickly now, but the process remains exactly the same as we move across all of the petals. You can see for this petal, if chosen a more pinky color than the gray purple mix on the previous petal, I'm being bolder with the amount of pigment on my brush and areas of shadow much softer and paler in areas of the petal that are lighter. My size Fe brush that is damp and clean is always nearby to help me touch up and blend areas where necessary. There are a lot of petals to work on here. Take your time and once again, just try and enjoy the process. It's so fun seeing it come together slowly, I promise you. When you step back after completing all the petals and look at your painting from a distance, you'll be amazed at how it's changed and increased in complexity. It keeps coming alive on the paper with every part of this process that we work through. In this petal. You can see that I'm really focusing on building up a little bit more depth of color in this area of shadow. We will be adding some more washes though, so it doesn't have to be perfect at this stage. This petal is a bit trickier to capture the lovely shape as it blooms out with the fold there in the center. Just take your time and build up the detail slowly, keeping a close eye on the direction that those veins are traveling in. You'll see me correct myself once or twice. We can go quite bold down in the base of this petal where it disappears into the flower. 7. Adding Details Part 2: Whilst I paint, I'll tell you a little bit about this rose. This year I was offered an allotment, which has been a huge project it turns out, but a fun one, if you're not sure what an allotment is. It's essentially like a community garden. And I was given a plot of land that I could grow flowers and vegetables on. This rose was present on the allotment already when I took it over. It was a lot of fun just observing this year and seeing what bloomed over the summer. Now I know what's there. Having gone through almost an entire year with the plot, I can start to plan how to get things set up for the year to come. So many of these lovely roses bloomed. They were beautiful as cut flowers, and its scent is gorgeous. I'm not confident with the name though of this one, as I didn't plant it myself, but I do know that the previous owner still pops by from time to time, so I'll try and ask her. If you're feeling a little bit lost in these small center petals, don't worry, it's not easy. What helped me for this part is to start by adding in the very dark areas of shadow to help me define the other petals. Bringing them forward and helping me to gain clarity as to what goes, where you can see here. I felt as I went a little bit dark with my mix. I therefore use my magic or mixing branch to lift that highlight back out again. Then for extra help, I use some kitchen roll to blot out any extra paint. This is a good trick to lift out areas where you feel paint has crept in too far. But you do have to be careful though, as you do risk damaging the surface of the paper if you scrub too hard. Now stepping back from your painting, you should be able to see that detail has added some gorgeous texture to your petals. The final thing I like to do at this stage is take my magic brush, ensuring that it's completely clean and just damp. And I use this to soften any edges that may have become a little bit uneven. A very gentle scrubbing action can be enough to even out the texture and just help you achieve a clean and crisp edge to your petals. There you have it. Your details are complete. Now we have the opportunity to go over our rows with a few more washes to deepen our tones. But don't worry, not necessarily the whole rows. Let me show you. 8. Final Washes: For this final stage of our painting, we are going to work on deepening the tones of the rose even more. The best way to do this is with washes. But as I said, don't worry, we aren't going to need to do another layer of wet on wet washes across the whole painting. This time we're going to select some key areas that need an increased saturation of pigment. And just bolden these to really make the colors pop. You'll see here I am reawakening my washes of those same three mixes we made a while ago. The orange, the pink with a tiny bit of yellow. And the violet, once again, I'm adding a small amount of yellow to the violet to find a more natural shadow color. Finally, the plan permanent rose may also come in useful. I'm mixing a bit of that into those of you who have studied water color with me before will know that I talk a lot about tone. We want to make sure in every painting that we have the whole tonal scale from white to as close as black as we can get. This will really make your painting stand out. Now, you've already seen me demonstrating this technique in the detailed stages of our painting. We are going to use wet on dry For this part, your two brushes, the size two for applying paint and the size four for blending out with a clean, damp brush will be needed. Watch me closely here. I'm applying a good amount of paint directly to the paper. The paper is dry, then I am blending this out with that size four brush. I'm being quite bold with my application of color. We only really want to do this process once, if possible, for this petal. I'm using the violet gray to represent shadow underneath the petal above. Then I'm using a color towards the edge of the petal. You can use whichever colors you feel your flower needs to balance out what is already on your paper. See here on this petal, how dark I'm applying the paint. This is what is needed for my painting to increase my dark tones. This may not be the same for yours, just make any adjustments that you feel are necessary. This area here on my painting definitely needed more pigment. Look how bold I am being here. Don't be afraid. It will blend out well with a damp brush if you work quickly, if you do find that it is drying, then you should be able to soften it with your damp size. For brush, it might just take a few more strokes to tease away any harsh line. If you were still struggling though, then you could always use the magic brush for a little bit more rigidity and pressure on the paper. I'm going to keep moving around the flower now, looking for areas that I feel when comparing to the reference photo need more color. Yours may well be slightly different to mine, but do follow along, obviously. If it's helpful. I'm going to speed up the video a little bit now, once again, so that you can see my entire process. Remember to keep your blending brush nice and clean. Wow, and there you have it. We've finished our rose. I really hope you're pleased. That was a lot of painting, and if you've got to the end, then you've poured a whole lot of time and love into this piece. I hope that you've learned lots and that your final piece is something that you can display somewhere in your home. If you've enjoyed this class, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next one I put out and come and hang out with me on Instagram where I post lots of shorter videos and updates. Thanks so much for joining me and I will see you soon.