Create Watercolor Flowers Using Markers

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Jessica. From brown Paper Funny studios. I'm an Aussie. You can probably tell from the accent, but I live in Seattle, working as an artist and an illustrator, and in this class, I want to show you how to create watercolor look, flowers using water soluble markers. They're really vibrant, beautiful colors that they come in and they are really versatile and easy to take with you everywhere. So there's no excuse not to create wherever you are. And in this class I'll show you a variety of different techniques and different flowers that you can create, too. And here's a few examples. This is a more loose looking flower that I created using markers. It's another one, and here's a floral wreath, which you can choose to do for your project in this class. Super easy to create another example, and you can even get more illustrative and, um, add line work to your flowers after they're dry, and you can see how vibrant the colors are. The ink could do letters. They were great for invitations. Cards or journals, planners just about anything you can think of, really. One last example, and I would say that this class is great for beginners. If you've never done any water color before, I will walk you through everything. But if you have experience already as an artist, it's also a great place to learn some new techniques and some new styles, and I hope you'll join us, so let's get started. 2. Materials: Okay, let's talk about materials. Everything that we use in this clause will be listed out for you in the downloadable equipment guide, so make sure you grab that first you cannonade a pencil and in a razor. For sure you have these at harm already. If you don't, I'm using the tumble for monitoring pencil and the number Plastic a razor. And you'll, of course, need some water soluble markets. The ones that I'm using today are also by timber that the tumbler jewel brush pens. They have this nice brush on one end, and they have a bullet tip on the other end, which is great for finer details. And they come in lots of different colors and they're super vibrant, and they blend beautifully with water. The next thing you're gonna need is a couple of water color paint brushes. If you have someone harm, use the ones that you have. But if you don't have anyone by some, I've recommend getting a size two in a size six. So that'll give you some variants, and I'm using the Princeton around brushes. You also made a blending palate tongue. Burbank's days get them on their website. They're just a laminated piece of card. So if you have a piece of hesitated harm or something that's laminated, you can use that. Or you can get this number one, which also has the color chart from the back and course you're gonna need some paper. The paper that I use most often is the cancer in Excel Watercolor paper. This block is in nine by 12 size, but it comes in other sizes, too. It's super inexpensive pen. It works really well, especially with blending the marker. Hank. Sorry, that's whatever commend. 3. Techniques: Okay, I'm going to show you the three techniques we're gonna use throughout this class and the materials you need your markers. You need water. You need a blending palette. This is a laminated piece of code, so you can do that yourself weakened by this one. Or use a piece of acetate anything plastic and relatively hard to use with your markets. You'll also need some paper tell and you wrote a color paper. And, of course, your paintbrushes. Okay, so let's get started. The first technique involves putting some ink down onto your blending palette. You want to get quite a lot of income there, so you'll get lots of nice color. And then the next step is to take your paintbrush and put a little bit of water on top. Fetting. And you can use as much or as little as you like, depending on how much of a wash you want and how vibrant you want the colors to be sort of mix it all up, get lots of it onto your brush and then transferred to the paper, and you can see it looks just like water color when you put it onto the paper. and you can add water. You can drop in more color for more vibrancy. I really encourage you to play around with it. Get a feel for it, see how it moves. See how saturated you can make the color or how like you can make your wash and just really have some fun with it, because we're gonna use this technique throughout the class. And I want you to feel really comfortable with you, can add more water and really pull the washout. Make it really lied if you want to. And once we're finished, you can clean off your blending palette with your paper towel and some water just wipes off and super easy to clean at the end. And now, for the second technique that we're going to use, you're going to use marker to putting down directly onto the watercolor paper. So just drawing a lot of declines, or you can do a lot of thin lines for less color, and then we're going to use a paintbrush again and some water Teoh wedding directly onto the paper so you can see this is a lot more vibrant because you're not losing any of the think it's all directly there on the paper. But jean also add more water as much as you'd like to get a paler, more sort of delicate wash, keep adding And again, I encourage you to play around with this technique and get a feel for it and become really comfortable with putting down on the paper directly like this. And then our last technique is a combination. We're going to transfer hink from the blending palette like we did in the first technique by wedding it and using our paintbrush. So get it nice and saturated. Put it down on the paper, make a nice, nice, colorful area to practice with. And then once this is completely dry, I'll show you the second part of this step. Okay, so now that this area of ink is completely dry, we're actually going to go back in with our Marcus and draw in some detail directly over the top. And this will give you some really nice finer details that are really going to going to stand out a lot against the background color so you can use the brush tip to do thicker lines and get a good variation or you can turn it over and use the bullet tip to get some really nice fine details and mom much smaller areas of color. So have some fun with this play around, and there's going to be the three main techniques that we're going to use throughout the class. 4. Florals Part 1: Okay, let's get started. I've got my water. I've got my blending palette, some paper towel, my paintbrushes and my tumble Jewell brush pens with the brush on one side and the bullet tip on the other side. Now the colors that I've chosen for today our Karl ladder pink carnation, light green and sap green. But you can choose any colors that you want to work with. It doesn't matter, and I've outlined these rose buds in black ink so you can see what I'm doing. But you might want to sketch out your design in pencil first so that it's light and doesn't sort of sure through. And I'm also going to make a few outlines available as a download. So if you're not comfortable drawing your own flowers from scratch, you can print mine out, trace them onto watercolor paper and then practice using the markers. And then once you feel comfortable during your own flowers, you can go ahead and do that. So I like to stop with a light base layer, and the way I'm going to do that is by using the blending palette. So I'm going to pick 7 to 3, which is pink and put some pink down onto the blending palette. Then, using my large paint brush just a size six dot some water onto the blending palette and mixed being cup until it's all wet and consistent. And then I just take a little bit of that and I start laying the ink down. Has a base layer, likes getting onto pitches. And if you want a lighter wash, just add a little bit more water. Or if you wanted to be a little bit more vibrant and concentrated at a little bit less water. That's how you can control how dark or light each of the flowers are. Okay, I'm just going to go through paint the rest of these, and then we'll move on to the next step. Okay, All of my buds have been painted with my first wash and what I liked to now he's had a little bit of a second color into that, Sir, this is a 20873 which is Carl. It's going to add a little bit of that down on the blending palette and then use my wet paintbrush. Get a little bit of that ink and I'm just going to dab it in to some of these areas that it's still a little bit depth to give a little bit of variety and color and make it look more like water color watercolors. Not usually completely even does. Doc has faults and lighter spots, and it just looks a little bit prettier. I think if you've got more than one color sort of mix together, so him have this extra color where you live, and then I'm actually going to add in 1/3 color as well, which is 99 gun light. Have that the blending Palin. Mix it up with water, and then I'm going to stop Debbie map into a few places as well for a little extra variety . And like I said, this this part is optional. But I think you'll find at the end you'll have a nicer result. Mixing the color is rather than just using one solid color for everything, unless that's the look you're going for. And that's fine. This is all you know, up to you, how you want to interpret it and have fun with it. Okay, now I'm going. Teoh, drive my pain fresh, which is why I got my paper tell here. And then I'm actually going Teoh Zepp, thes with the hairdryer to make them dry a little bit quicker so we can move on to the next step. Okay, now that everything's dry, we can go ahead with our next layer. And I like to work like to duck, because if you look closely, there's a few areas here where I've gone over the line a little bit, and that will be easy to cover up with the darker green than trying to go the other way. So let's start adding a little bit of shading to some of our rose butts, and I'm back to 73 which is pink, And I'm just going to draw this directly onto the paper along some of these lines to give an illusion of depth, as if some of them are receding behind and some of them are in front, the ones in front of going to be the lightest. So I'm just heading away. There would be a shadow, and I'm imagining that the light source is coming in from this direction. So that's how I'm thinking about where the shadows would fall and I'm not being too precise with because we're going to go over this with water kin as well, setting a little bit of depth. It's funny. We used to live in Colorado, and it's very, very dry there. So my watercolor and my markers, when I use them with this wet technique would draw very quickly. I hardly ever had to use the hair dryer, but we recently moved to Seattle, and it's so much more moisture in the air that it takes significantly longer for my paints to dry. So I'm having to get used to that all over again, pays her funeral little shudders just here and there, especially around this bud pop where you got lots of pedals over, locking each other hand a little bit down towards the bottom. Okay, so now I'm going to use the small of paintbrush, which this is a two size, too, and I'm just going toe wet it a little bit Deb off any excess on my paper tell, and then I'm going to lightly go over the bank that we just drew onto the paper and lend it out slightly. Sir, there's no hot edges. Where means the lighter color just blending. Emerging me colors together a little bit. Okay, so there's quite a few areas where have gone outside of the lines. And sometimes I'll do that on purpose because I like the way it looks. But I want to also show you how you can get rid of some of those areas and clean them up a little bit. You just need a damp paintbrush not too wet. So plot off any excess water. And if you can't you right away. You can just use your paper tell and sort of mull pit up. But if it's already dry, we can go back in and just rub over the areas that you you wanna get rid off as much as he can with the damn paintbrush and then blot it with the paper tell and that will help you clear up any of those areas. And certainly it'll stop them looking quite as has hot edged if you just self in them a little bit using this technique. So I'm going to do the same thing that I did with the rose buds and put down one layer with this like green first. And instead of using my blending pellet. I'm going to draw this directly onto the paper, which definitely will save you some time. And it also makes for more vibrant color because you haven't washed any of it down on the blending palette you've kept full of the color directly onto the paper. I want my greens to be quite vibrant. And Dhaka, then the light pink petals of Rose butts. Okay, so I'm just gonna go ahead and get all this color down, and then we'll move on to the next step. - Okay ? So you can see that I haven't been to precise, especially in the leaves. I've let some white space, and that's because I'm going to add a little bit off the yellow into these faces. And I'm going to blend thinking together with my wet paintbrush and you'll see, get to see how that looks as we go. And you can add more of one color than another color if you want it to look a little different in on certain leaves and certain areas. But I'm taking my small paintbrush and I'm just going to stop with the yellow and work out blending it into the green. This rinse off my brush. Start in the other blended out. Sometimes if you start in the darker color, you lose all of the light of color completely, and it just kind of disappears into into the doctor color again, reading the paper, starting with the yeller and then landing out into the green. And once this is dry, we can go back over it and do several different colors and layers. If they want to the yellow to stand out more or we decide we don't like the yellow. We want more green. It's easy to keep lending until we get a look that we really like. So just going carefully out into all of these little corners with my damn paintbrush. Glendening together Get that water color. Look, Princey Now, And also once I'm finished with the leads, I'm gonna go back forever full of the stalks and other little areas to make sure that everything has been wet and everything has been blended together and looks like so it I have is if you are trying to get into some really small areas like these little tiny leaves of the end on the edge here, make sure there's not too much water on your paintbrush because if there's too much when your brush touches the paper, the water is just gonna spread the ink and go everywhere. But if it's just slightly dead, you'll have a lot more control in those little tiny areas like things. And then, once you moved down to the larger area, you can had some more water because there's not too much danger down there of the think so spreading and going everywhere, and something else that I really love about these markers is that you can re wet them. So just say you once it'll dry. Do you discover that you missed in area where you found that there was a really harsh line like bullshit? You can say that right here. I've got a line where there was water hitting dry, and I can actually just go back here and smooth it out with a depth paintbrush so it's not set in start. You can keep playing with that. You didn't keep moving around the paper until it looks the way you want. And here's another example. I put down a lot more water when it was already starting to dry in another area. So you gave what that I like to call is a collie flower effect as it spread out. Some people really hate this, and I like it and you could smooth it out. I kind of like it. I think it makes it look like you've used a Web medium like water color. Sir, I'm going to leave it home. This leave here, but I'm going to smooth it out a little bit on the leave behind. So even though it's drawing, you can just go back in and soften the edges a little bit and re wet this bank to make it smooth out like so and Smith that this bottom area make a nice and light as it goes off the page out of being clients. Okay, clean my brush. It's important to let age layer dry fully before you move onto the next, or else it'll just start getting really muddy. Everything all mixed together, the pink with green, and you just have a big mess, and it just one going the way you want it to. Sorry for the next step, I'm going to use this darker green to 45 which is sap green and add a little darker shade to some of these stems. Hand sort of shadow hare is 100 days where the rose buds are. So this is the same kind of technique we used earlier with the rose buds to have a little bit of shelter. It's just a couple of areas on each 100 knees. Give it a little bit more depth. And if you've decided that your leaves that you like in a little bit of this darker color in a swell and we're going to go over with the paintbrush afterwards and just smooth out any of the hot edges a bit of shadow anything because But you can really can had so many different colors in and create new colors that didn't exist before, which is Superfund. You can either make some on your blending palette or directly on your paper and play around with. It gets really fun results Little shadows down here. This leaf is looking a little bit too like for my liking served, going to had a little bit more this darker color. I get a little more green, a little bit less yeller, and as you can say, I'm not at all being precise with grand putting the because I know I'm going to use my paintbrush to smear that allowed afterwards. I'm going to use my large paint brush, but I'm not gonna have it too wet. And I'm just going to use the very tip. Go in, smooth out some of these lines. Get some the shadow in the darker color wearable. It's always a little bit of a balancing act between wanting to use the smaller paintbrush to get into these little areas more easily. But wanting to use the lodge, A paintbrush holds more water, so you don't have to keep de penas off. But once you once you play around that, you'll find how much water you need and what size paintbrush works best for you when it comes to blending me. Okay, I'm going to just keep going around and wedding all of these new areas of ink that I put down softening the lines and then we'll move on to the next step. Okay, so now I'm going to use 76 fund, which is carnation, and I'm no, probably not gonna wet this. I'm just going to use it to add a little bit more depth and color in a few areas, and the most vibrant pink is always going to be straight from the marker. So it's nice to use. That is the very final layer from a little bit darker. Shutters and shades added in there. It's important to work like two dark, because it's always easier to make something dark hair, but it's a lot more difficult to lighten something up. So this is just a very subtle extra layer of color over the top and with water colors. It's really all about layering. And so if you do lots of layers, you'll end up with something that looks a lot closer to motor color than just using markers to feeling solid areas of color. I'm gonna do the same thing with 1 95 which is the light green just ahead. Yeah, more depth to certain areas. Half of some of these leaves. He's just a little more color. It's these shelters underneath buds. I'm a little bit more steps, and then once hole of this is completely dry, my clean up some of the edges and that would be finished. Be ready to move on to the next lesson 5. Florals Part 2: in the last lesson, I showed you how to layer different colors and different techniques of using the blending palette or using the markers directly on the paper. And now I want to show you how to you paint some slightly looser style buds and flowers that were going to use in our homework assignment when we put together a floral wreath. So first I'm going to start out with my 761 which is Carnation, and we're going to draw a loose style rose. You start with a tighter center like a little kind of C curve, and then you continue drawing see curves around, getting bigger and bigger like this, as if you're drawing the rose petals going around and around like that. Then we're going to use our large around brush the number six with quite a lot of water this time, so not quite dripping but almost. It's pretty loaded up with water and then going to go over this pink starting in the centre , working my way. How blending the colors together Clendening so it softens those edges and just keep working the way around and around, softening of the edges. If you need to go back and get a little bit more water can fill in some of this white space , but try to leave a little bit because that's what makes it feel fresh and loose. It's having this wide of the paper showing through, okay, and now we're going to work quickly. And before this old dries, we're going to pick up some of the other colors that we had left over on a pallet and drop them in to the wet areas and just let it spread around. So we get that variety of color can use the yellow docker pinks has spread them around. This is one of the the most fun parts of painting with water and markers is just watching the color spread blend together. Find it so satisfying. I'm going to get a little bit more of this darker pink, which is 7 to 3. Put that down home. I blending Helen quite a lot and then used the word paintbrush pick up the color. I'm just going to drop some of that in here and there, just for a little bit of variety. Okay, I'm gonna let that dry, and while we do that, I'm going to show you a loosest style of, um, Roy's bud as well. So was started again without lightest pink. The 761 We're just gonna strive to a little squiggle that gets small Arthuis at the edge here and then switching are about to my 7 to 3 pink going Teoh. Start a little bit above it and do another sort of squiggly shape on the side, so it doesn't look like much yet, and that's okay. And then I'm going to add in a little bit of 873 Carl to the center and using my largest brush, making a fairly wet. I'm going to just go over the bank, so that's wet. But I'm not blending it together too much of this stage and just wedding it and getting it ready. A man with a rinsed off clean brush I'm going to push into the middle, give a little squiggle to kind of blend it together, but make it lighter, the bottom. Then, once that tries, I'll show you how it's all gonna come together because it doesn't look like much right down . But let's do a few more, and I encourage you to practice until you get shapes that you really like. Could have three little flower petals in here for a but that's a little bit more open squiggles at the end, and you could use yellow instead of Carl the center to give it a little bit of variety again using my paintbrush. It's going to hurt for the ink to wedded get ready, then going a legal it all together. So I joined up. And while it might not look too much like a flower bud now when it's hold together in the reef, um, you'll definitely know that it's a flower and a nice lease way to do some leads as well as you can. Just think of all the great thing with the brush tip is that you could imply different pressures to get different thicknesses so you can start out nice and thin and then pushed down everything again. Do that on the other side, but not quite touching. They care, had our other green in for a little bit more steps, and then right back with a wet paintbrush land being together a little bit more very simple . Loose looking relief. Lincoln again practice doing chores until you get really comfortable with them. Just think And then thin, like pressure, having a little bit of color variety and wedding it with Rush. Okay, I think you guys are ready to move on to the homework assignment and see how we're going to filled out our floral wreath. Let's go. 6. Class Project: Okay, So for harm work, we're going to draw a full Wraith. And the first step is to draw a circle at this really handy tool that helps me draw circles . But if you don't have one of the things you can use a bowl upside down or or compass or anything else that you have that will help you draw a circle. Okay. So once you got your circle, I encourage you to actually erase some of the areas so that you've got private three or five sections. If he split it evenly into quarters, it ends up looking kind of boxy and strange. And we wanted to be a little bit more fun and uneven. So I'm going, Teoh, take out a little section here. I want to be here. So now you can either use your pencil or you can just go straight in with their markers and kind of map out where you want the branches to come off of your grief. I'm going to stop with pencil just lightly, some inward, some facing hat, working my way around. We're gonna point in the same direction. So now that you've got to the basic outline of your re. Let's go ahead and stop putting in some of the branches. I'm going to draw them on live lean with 1 95 to get started just so I know where everything's gonna be. All right. So we know where the branch is going to be. Let's get started with our smallest brush size number two to just wet this ink and get hard . First layer done. All right. Now I'm going to gloss this first layer with the hairdryer, and then you can move on to the next step. Okay? Using my Carl 873 I'm going to stop heading some fiddles for where I'm going to have bugs on the read so you can do faily closed up. You can add extra pedals as if they were opening. Could do a mixture of both. We're just going around heading where you want lilies. Pretty little flower buds, individual stocks. - Okay , Now we're going to use 73 to add in some additional color. Some of these buds here just going through heading a little bit variety. You can do it to some of them. All of them to mix it up a little bit now. I'm going to add 991 The light hurt to the center of some of my buds. Now we can whip the buds you didn't choose. Tell how these your small for your larger paintbrush. I'm going to use the larger one so I don't have to dip it in quite as much. Just make sure it's not dripping. You just wanted to be a wet but not overflowing with water. And just like we did in the lost lesson, I'm going Teoh Deb on a little bit of the water. Men just kind smush it together. I'm sure that's the technical 10 terms smushed thing. Okay, To give these buds a little bit more of a watercolor effect, I'm actually going to re went just the bottoms where the old the pedals will join together . Look at what is sit for a second, and then I'm going to dab it with my paper tell to take off just a tiny bit of color together, have some of that color just to give it a beautiful brightness and let some of the paper come through a little bit more clearly. - Okay , in self, my brush. All right, now, I think we need to leaves on hand to kind of fill out, Sir, I'm getting my 195 the light green again and going to work my way around, drawing on some waves to some of the empty spaces so we could use a leaf in here. So we started out light, apply pressure. I can and then the other side to something here. - Okay , then, that I've got the basic outline of where want believes to go. I am going to do the same thing we did with the flowers and had in second color to 45 the CEP green. Okay, so once we've got fourth shades of green down, I'm actually going to add in just a touch of yellow or light darker than 99 Just a little bit to freshen up these leaves. Miniature variety. Then once return that we're going to go him with a paintbrush. 10 were with them and blamed being together. Chip. Still trying to leave a little bit of wide space, blending together. Okay, so now that all of their lives air on there, it's time to draw the little stem pots that hold the flowers on. So I'm going back to my light green 1 95 And I'm just gonna droll little weekly. He says, Toe little the buds on and amusing my number to smoke brush to go through this, blended and soften those little pieces. Okay, now I'm going to make sure that all of this is dry hand. Then we'll move on to the next. I'm going to use my 761 carnation just to go around all of these buds and give them a little bit of extra. It's the color and depth in certain places. It's for them increased varieties who later? And I'm just looking all the same. No, really doing shading and really just heading. And then I'm going to soften that. We have the damp brush. It doesn't have any cottages. - Okay , I'm going to call this raid finished. You could keep heading layer upon layer, or you can leave it in just a couple of layers and have a leiden and airy. Make sure you upload your read into the project area so I can see the colors you used and how it all came out. Thank you so much for watching and I'll talk to you in the project area.