Detailed Watercolor Florals for Surface Pattern Design

1. Intro: The world of fashion has never been bored of floral patterns. The trends change, color schemes, bothering scales and layouts change, but flowers remain a hero motif in a meaningful part of the surface pattern design. Detail, botanical illustration is very popular in fashion these days. Glue code different luxury brands use floral illustration, Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Dolce and Gabbana, and many more. My love for illustrating florals, and my passion for creating has led me to break down the formula for creating beautiful floral illustrations, the surface pattern design. My name is Katya. I'm a watercolor artists and surface pattern designer. I'd like you to see my watercolor patterns on fashion items of different brands. This class is about how to illustrate floral motifs for surface design and about botanical illustration with watercolors. We will talk in detail how to draw flowers, how to create illustrations adapted especially for surface bedroom design needs. I will demonstrate the painting of beautiful architects with watercolors step-by-step. We will not learn how to work in Photoshop and how to create repeat patterns, but I will demonstrate to you all the process of creating a floral pattern from building a concept to creating a seamless repeat ready to use on different products. This class is a combination of some useful theory alongside a lot of hands-on work. So whether you want to discover my approach for creating floral patterns, or whether you want to learn how to bend quadruple orcas, welcome to my class. If you have any questions, please write them down in the discussion section below. I will be happy to respond to all of you. Don't forget to follow me on Skillshare and don't miss out my new classes by clicking the follow button. You can also follow me on Instagram where I share works instructors and different other stuff. See you in the next video. 2. Design Your Own Pattern: Here is an example of a traditional botanical illustration by Pierre Joseph Redoute. Look how gorgeous the flowers are. You can see that he painted very precisely, but in the case of grade, and floral motifs, for fashion feathers, you don't have to be as detailed or as realistic as in this illustrations. The goal of traditional botanical illustrations is that the flowers should be informative, and our goal is to make flowers beautiful and sophisticated. You can slightly simplify the shape, the level of details, and you can be a designer in the sense that you can choose harmonic colors. The final results should be realistic, but not photo-realistic. Details such as small streaks and shadows get lost when printed on fabric. Your most important goal here is to show the character of a flower. You can do this by beautiful illustrating the pattern on flowers petals, by emphasizing its volume, and combining the light in the shadows in a unique way, or by giving it your personal touch through exerting its main curves, and shapes. In this class we will illustrate detailed floral motifs for creating a beautiful pattern for garments or any other fashion items such as scarves, iPhone cases, or whatever you wish to apply it on. The first thing that we need to do is to choose a flower which inspires you. Usually I use my own photos as references or draw from real flowers. But in case I want or need to illustrate a specific flower which does not grow in my area, I search for references in all botanical books, or via free to use web services such as Unsplash.com, where you can use the images for commercial purposes without asking for permission. But be careful and respect the intellectual property of others. In order to create a good flow and balance in my future pattern, I use few small tricks. Usually for this type of floral pattern, I choose one kind of flower, but I'm creating a few illustrations of different modifications. It can be few angles of the same flower, it can be different stages of its life cycle. Just the buds have bloomed, opened and full bloomed. Look how interesting the compositions of this anemone are. Each of them features only one kind of phenomenon, but painted in different angles and the different stages of its life cycle. Another option is to combine groups of flowers alongside the single ones, as in this [inaudible] pattern. Be creative and listen to your own intuition in order to create harmonic compositions. Try to emphasize the beauty of a flower, elegance, waviness, beautiful curves, or as an alternative, its simplicity. Imagine that there is a wind blowing on your flower or it is going underwater. Usually, I try to avoid placing more than one flower frontally. In most cases numbers such as three, five or seven in a group will work better than two, four, or six. If I draw the branch, I try not to place flowers on two sides symmetrically. After collecting references, create motifs for your future pattern. Draw three fault sketches of your favorite flower or groups of flowers. In the third step, create a final illustration by painting in watercolors. I really encourage you to share your works in progress at every step with everybody in this class, so they can give feedback. I would be happy to see your creations and give you feedback too. Don't be afraid. Everyone can draw. Drawing and painting are very learnable skills, just like cooking, or riding a bicycle, anybody can learn it. So let's get started. 3. Art Supplies: Here's a brief overview of an art supplies that you will need to complete your class project, pencil, eraser and regular paper of sketches, watercolors. You will need a basic watercolor set. You can use either pens or tubes, whatever you have and whatever works best for you. In my class project, I will use four main colors, quinacridone pink, opera pink, cobalt blue and lemon yellow. Brushes, while painting with watercolors, use authentic or Kolinsky sable hair types watercolor brushes. Essential sizes of the brushes are, one big size, around eight for covering with water big areas, one working brush, size four or six, this brush is the most important, and one brush for painting the smallest details and veins. For this purpose, I will use the thinnest brush I have, size 5/0. Watercolor paper. An ideal choice for our class project is hot pressed cotton paper with high white color. Usually it is available in white and high white, so I advise to choose high white paper in order to make the illustrations more bright and saturated. In this class, I will use Saunders Waterford watercolor paper, water, water container, and paper towels. Choose a comfortable white container in order to keep water clean for a maximum time. Paper towels are very important. Always keep them near your painting hand. You can find some examples of recommended art supplies in the class description below. 4. Creating a Concept: As you have already guessed, I'm going to create an orchid illustrations as my class project. I've chosen the orchids because they're bright and beautiful. The have interesting pattern on its petals, they will look gorgeous on any fashion item. Finally because I have an amazing park of orchids nearby, where I spent a lot of time observing them. First, I went through my photo references and choose three of them. My illustrations will include a group of three fully opened orchids. One branch with half opened orchid and a bud, and one branch with three buds. I think that this diversity of shapes, angles, and the stages of its life cycle will create a sophisticated look and natural atmosphere in my future pattern. Also, I like that in this group, all the flowers have different size and they all face into different directions. On this stage, I start analyzing the flower. When I'm looking at my references, I noticed that every flower has its own tonality. Some flowers are darker and some are lighter. Despite all of them are flowers of the one kind. But when I start painting, I often use a small trick from an atmospheric perspective loss instead of copying exactly from my references. Atmospheric perspective says that the collar and the tone of the subjects lose their characteristics with going deeper into the space. That means that the flowers which are closer to the viewer will be most saturated, darker, and we'll have more contrast in comparison to the flowers which are further from us. You will not always see it in real life, especially in the objects which are close to your eyes. But when you look at landscapes, look far from here, you will see that the colors in this scene will gradually lose their situation and the most remote it from your objects will have a great color, despite their own color, could be bright, saturated green or whatever. Keep that in mind and try to apply this effect in your illustrations. In the next video, we will talk about drawing flowers. See you there. 5. Floral Drawing Basics: Botanical drawing is not a simple process, which we get better at after hours of practice. But there is a logic and a sequence behind the process. Everything that I will say in this class is something that works great for me but maybe you have a different or better way to draw flowers. Creating a detailed sketch before diving into the final illustration is a very important step. If the drawing is not successful, it might influence the final result in a negative way. So take a deep breath, be patient, and let's start. Drawing flowers go from general to specific. That means that we will start from sketching the biggest areas and the basic shapes forming the flower, gradually getting down to the details. First, you need to be prepared, observe carefully, and analyze your flower or group of flowers. Ask yourself the following questions. What are the main proportions? How is the width of a flower related to its height? Which part is closer to the viewer?, How many petals are on your flower? How many flowers are in the group?, What happens in the central reproductive part of the flower? This part is often a complicated one, so be sure to understand it properly. When I'm not completely sure about the structure of the reproductive part, I draw it separately in order to focus my learning on it. What is the pattern on the flower's petals? Whether the pattern is the same on every petal, how many leaves are there, and how are they attached to the stalk of the flower? Are they symmetrical or not. After observing the flower, try to divide your flower or group of flowers into simple geometric shapes such as circles, ovals, cones, bells, triangles, and lines. Don't think about the details at this step. This will be meaningful when you want to draw the flower and you are not exactly sure how to do this. Look at the shapes. Find the angles which are between the main lines and shapes. Observe which shapes are created by negative space. That is it. Enough theory for now. Let's dive into the practice. 6. Detailed Pencil Drawing: While drawing motifs, I will use a regular pencil and eraser pen and a regular eraser for removing big parts. Also, I will use this beautiful feather in order to clean off my vapor. First, let's understand the basic shapes orchids at formed from. I see that the orchid flower has a circular shape, which includes two layers of petals in it. On the bottom layer, there are three petals that form a triangle with sharp points. On the upper layer, there are two petals which form an oval. After building a basis, we create the outlines of the petals. Look at the difference between the upper and the bottom petals. The upper petals are wider and bigger, and the bottom are more narrow and sharp. After we are sure that we understand the structure of the Orchid, we move on to draw in a group and the remaining motifs, it is important to calculate the right size of your motifs. I have noticed that it is better to draw objects slightly bigger than planned for your final products. Down scaling your illustrations further while creating a pattern will hide many imperfections and in general, will make your illustrations look much better. Usually I draw motifs bigger and prefer downscale them later in Photoshop. The first illustration will be a group of three flowers. Each of them face into a different direction. I will isolate these three flowers for my first reference in this way, when I look at our group of flowers, I see that all three flowers that I'm going to draw form a triangle. We will mark the main lines in order to create a working area for the drawing. We sketch our flowers at three circles and ovals. The upper orchid is the biggest. By the way, we can artificially vary the sizes of elements for creating a balanced composition that is not boring by creating a contrast between the main shapes. I will slightly enlarge our upper orchid. As we previously said, there are triangles and ovals placed inside each orchid. Accordingly, we place a triangle and an oval in each of our three circles. Considering the angles and the perspective modifications of the shapes, notice how main lines and shapes are related to each other as you draw, for example, try to visually relate the beginning of one flower with the middle of the other and things like that. We find the middle of each flower in order to start drawing the upper petals and the reproductive parts of the orchids. Always relate different critical points to one another and create visual lines in your mind between them. This way, your objects will look harmonious and will not dance separately on your piece of paper. After you have placed main elements of the orchids, we start adding the details by creating outlines of petals, followed by sketching its central reproductive parts. When sketching a central part, again, divide in your mind to separate shapes and start drawing them relating their critical points one to another. Notice how beginning of one shaped relates to the shape that you've already drawn in the sense of placement and angles. I'm not totally happy with the big piece of negative space between the upper and the right flower. Therefore, I will fill this space was one additional background flower. As I has previously said, I prefer to draw three or five flowers in the group. But in this case, the first flower will be partly hidden, almost invisible, and it will serve as a group, as a background. So I still can say that the main group consists of three. In my second illustration, I will draw this three box. Each of the box opens differently from fully closed to almost opened, which I think will look nice in our future pattern. At the third illustration, I want to extract this two lower flowers from this brain, but I want the smaller one to face up. So in order to make my life easier and turn in my reference in way which will be comfortable for me. Continue drawing all your motifs, until you feel satisfied with the result. You can rotate the bait, which will help you to identify things you might want to improve. You can find line drawings of motifs that I have created for this class in the project description below. Feel free to download them and practice. That is it, in this lesson with a finished drawing, our illustrations. Now we're ready to start painting with watercolors. See you in the next lesson. 7. Color Palette: The important part of every watercolor painting is choosing the right set of colors before hand. I'm going to think about the color palette for the orchids in my special sketchbook, which I keep, especially for mixing colors. I have chosen here four basic watercolors that I'm going to mix in order to find all the columns that I see in the art piece. They are quinacridone pink, opera pink, cobalt blue, and lemon yellow. Also, I might need the help of some red. You can search for your own color combinations or instead, to use ready made colors. Just rely on your own intuition and your eyes. For the primary color of the petals, we are mixing opera pink and cobalt blue, which will let us achieve the beautiful cold pink color of the orchids. For most saturated but still lightened areas, I will use a mix of opera pink, quinacridone pick, and cobalt. The shadows on the petals have a deep purple color, for which I will mix quinacridone pink, cobalt blue, and a bit of lemon yellow, or even mix all four colors. I slightly varied the proportion of each of the colors in order to achieve different hues. With opera pink, it will be a bit brighter, red color in reproductive parts. Here I need the help of some cool deep red color. Here in my palette, there's alizarin crimson, which I think is a great choice. I will mix alizarin crimson and quinacridone pink as a basis and add here a bit of lemon yellow and cobalt. This will be our saturated red color for the reproductive parts. But also we need one more shade of red. But a bit colder and darker for the darkest shadows. For this, I will mix cobalt blue, quinacridone pink, lemon yellow, and opera pink. For stems, I will use green and gray. For this purpose, I will mix cobalt blue, and lemon yellow. This combination can vary from light gray to a sunny yellow green color depending on the proportions of different pigments. Finally, lemon yellow, which will be used for the reproductive parts and warm livens areas on the petal. Also, we can add a bit of opera pink to make the yellow warmer if needed. All our flowers on the references have slightly different colors, but we can achieve all of them using the same color combinations, which we discussed in this lesson. We can vary the lightness and darkness, the saturation and the proportions, which will give us a huge diversity of hues. 8. Watercolor Painting: Basic Layers: When your illustrations are ready, trade them onto watercolor paper. While transferring your drawings to watercolor paper, keep pencil lines as clean and as invisible as possible, which will help you to avoid visible pencil lines in your final watercolor illustrations after scanning. When you work with a relatively simple drawing, which doesn't have any small details, you can trace an outline who's a similar color to watercolor pencil, which will dissolve when you cover it with water, so you will not have any unwanted lines at all. We will start painting the first layer by applying color on the biggest areas, which are the petals. This layer will be a basis for building volume and adding nice details on top of it. First mix colt pink colors, one very diluted colt pink from cobalt and opera pink and the second one, more saturated purple for shadows from cobalt opera pink and quinacridone pink. We start painting big areas in wet on wet technique. When the paper is slowly and evenly, don't worry if water flows beyond the borders, you can always fix that with a paper towel, but try to avoid that. Put the light mix to all the area leaving the outer border the lightest and apply more saturated colors to the center cup like area of the petal, repeat this action to all of the remaining petals. Apply the color accordingly to what you see on the reference, observe the flower and try to differentiate between the lightened parts and the shadows, between the warm and cold fuse. Notice that there are full variety of colors from colt violent shadows to warm yellow light. For successful painting with watercolors, you need to be a strategist and always plan ahead, think about where you would like your whites and lights before you apply paint. If you want to learn more about basic watercolor techniques used in Botanical Illustration, you can watch my previous class called the Essentials of Watercolor Botanical Illustration. After this, we will deepen the color where there is a cup like area of the petal in a wet on wet technique again. Use a purple mix of colors for shadows from cobalt, opera pink, and quinacridone pink. We do the same on the second petal as well, here we use a brighter mix for the shadows by adding more opera pink to it. Continue deepening the shadows on all remaining petals. After you finish, apply the same actions to the remaining flowers. After the basic layers of our group is ready, we will continue painting central reproductive parts of [inaudible] in the next lesson. 9. Watercolor Painting: Central Parts: Let's move on to paint in central parts. I start by mixing quinacridone pink, cobalt, and opera pink in two consistencies. One more diluted, and one more saturated. Despite all parts in the reproductive area being small, we will still paint them in a wet on wet technique in order to receive smooth results. Slowly and neatly, wet each area one-by-one and apply color according to what you see in the reference. Apply the most saturated colors in the shadows, but be sure to get around the lightest areas in order to live them light. Ignore the smallest details and shadows. For now, our goal is just to create main volume in each of the small parts. As we see in our references, the reproductive parts are much darker than the petals, therefore will paint them with the most saturated consistency of paint from the beginning. Keep this part saturated, contrasted and crisp. Now, I see that some of the areas that I have painted are not totally smooth. But I will fix that in the following layers. After applying yellow color in the middle, I move on to painting this suspend section. Be careful here and get around the swirls at the end of the suspended section without letting paint touch them where they should stay light. The bottom part, has a bright thin color which goes up and gradually becomes red. With the red color I mix quinacridone pink and alizarin crimson. Continue adding small shadows and details for all the parts. After you feel that you have built the volume into the central part you can start to add details with the thinnest brush you have. Observe the flower carefully and replicate strike and dark patterns. Darken the shadows where needed. Repeat this actions for all remaining flowers. In this lesson, we have painted central parts of orchids, and in the next lesson, we will add more shading to the petals. 10. Watercolor Painting: Additional Shading: After painting central parts, we move onto building additional volume in petals, which will make our orchids look more natural and realistic. We wet each petal and apply color where there are shadows. Always analyze and compare colors in shadows. In some petals it will be warmer and brighter, and in some parts it will be purple and muted. Also, there can be different shadow hues in one petal. Rely on your eyes. They will guide you how to use color. After applying the paint, soften the edges of painted areas with a clean depressed brush. Think about finality on this step. In order to create a more sophisticated look, I will create a visual hierarchy in our group. The flower which is closest to me, the right bottom orchid, will be the darkest and more contrasted one, because it is placed closest to the viewer. The upper orchid will be a bit brighter than the bottom right, and the left orchid will be the lightest in the group because it is placed the furthest away from us. Accordingly, the shadows on the petals will be brighter and less saturated. If you have any questions, write them down in discussions below. 11. Watercolor Painting: Veins: When our orchids are just about ready, we will paint veins on its petals. It is important to paint veins in between the layers, because following layers will soften the veins and make them look more natural. That means don't paint veins at the end, be sure to cover flowers with at least one more layer of half transparent paint, or even water. Also all veins aren't the same, some of them are pink and some of them are almost violet. This process is quite long and requires patience, but it really adds a lot to the illustration, so I would advise you not to skip this step. It is important to keep the hierarchy that we talked about in previous class, the veins on the right bottom orchid should be darker and not contrast it than on the other flowers, like in real life, we will see pattern and texture better and with more detail on a closer object to our eyes. Keep this rule in your illustrations too. 12. Watercolor Panting: Finishing Touches: As a finishing touch, we'll make the separations between the petals more clear by darkening the underlying petals in overlapping areas. After this, we make an additional contrast and accents on the bottom-right orchid in order to emphasize more a tonal hierarchy in the group. Finally, let's darken a bit the underlying forest flower. The function of this flower is to make our group to stand out and to serve as a background for it. Therefore, with the help of this flower, we will make the light edges of the upper orchids look crispy and contrast. That is it, our first illustration is done. Continue painting the remaining motifs and upload your results to the project gallery. 13. Scanning and Processing: Now, when we finish painting illustrations with watercolors, we move on to the digital part of the process. First, we need to scan the illustrations. It is important to scan them at the highest resolution possible. Usually, I scan with 100-2000 dpi. In case you haven't used hot press paper before, you will be surprised that you won't to see the texture of the watercolor paper, which is great for printing [inaudible] on different products in the future. After scanning, I import all the illustrations to Photoshop. Image processing consist of two steps: First, delete background. There are a lot of ways to remove the background from multiple color illustrations, but the brighter your illustrations are, and the less content between paper and the illustration, the more time you will spend doing that. When I tried to select a white background with the Magic Wand Tool, its selection includes a lot of unwanted pixels, which I'm possible to exclude from selection as is. Usually, in this case, I create a working layer of orchids by copying the original one. I make the illustration less contrasted and reduce the amount of white by using the curves too. After this, when I select a white background with Magic Wand Tool, it selects less unwanted pixels than it was in my previous attempt. In order to make a selection more accurate and get rid of extra pixels, where there are pencil outlines, I expand the selection by clicking "Select", "Modify", "Expand," and add a few extra pixels. Usually, this number varies from 1-5. This way, we will partly remove pencil outlines. I delete the background and using the Magnetic Lasso Tool, I select problematic parts on the copy of the working layer. I copied them, b and q layers and unite them together with a working layer. Select the needed layers and click "Command E" for Mac and "Control E" for PC to merge layers. Now, our illustration has ragged edges and I prefer to clean them out with an eraser tool, which is a pretty time-consuming process. But it is definitely worth it because it will make the illustration's edges crisp and neat. I select pixels on the working layer and copy this selection from the original layer. Now, I have my illustration perfectly clean and separated from the white background. This will allow me to experiment with different background options for my future bedroom. After this, we slightly adjust the brightness and the contrast in order to make the orchids look most similar to the original. Pinks and purples are pragmatic colors to scan. Therefore, my illustration lost its saturation, and my themes in purples now look tired. I am adjusting the colors with the Selective Color 2, which is one of my favorites. I want the pinks to shine and not to turn pale in this case. I repeat these actions to all remaining motifs. 14. Repeat Pattern: That is it. Now we are on our final stage, creating a repeat pattern. Personally for me, it is the most fun part of the project. I prefer to create a rectangular art board, because this way, the repeat might look more interesting, especially if it will be printed on something big. I set up the file on 7,500 pixel width, and 9,000 height, on 300 DPI. Let's open all the illustrations and place them in the repeated pattern file. They are too big to use as this. So I decreased the size of all three illustrations proportionately. Now we start building a repeat. Try to create a good flow and movement in your pattern. Our goal is to create a balanced and interesting composition. Think about the negative space. It has the same importance as the illustrations itself. Usually, I setup a few rules for myself while working on each pattern. I decide whether I can vary the size of the illustration or not. If yes, I define a maximum two or three sizes for each of the elements. I do not create 10 different sizes of the same illustration in one repeat, it can create chaos. Also important to decide whether you want your illustration to overlap or not. Setup rules and keep the same look in all the repeat. The most important part is to relax and have fun. This is the main reason why we love art and why we do this. When your ahead with the placement of the illustrations, test your repeat on a separate layer. I do this by clicking, "Edit", "Define Pattern", and fill a new layer. Also, now it's time to think about the background options. Try a few different versions. In my case, I like the white and the black. It is a hard decision, but actually you don't have to decide and you can use both. If you still prefer to choose a winner, creating some mock-ups with different background options will really help. In my case, I want to do that and I'm trying a few different options of products, which in my opinion, my pattern will fit. Mock-ups helped me to understand that I'm pretty sure that the black version is the winner. 15. Final Thoughts: Here it is, you finished the class. I strongly believe in learning by doing. Therefore, I really encourage you to create your own project use my references or your own. You can post your project at every step, from a concept to a watercolor painting to read or repeat. I will be happy to give you feedback and help you wherever you are at. Here are my three top final tips for today, don't underestimate the importance of creating a confidence details sketch before moving on to the final illustration. Drawing can be challenging, but it can become more simple and natural after hours of practice. Believe me, your drawing must can grow. What is most important is that the confident drawing will give you freedom as an artist. If you ask me, what is the most important arc supply in watercolor painting of a kind that I use in my works? I will say water colored cotton paper. Preferably what breast paper when we speak about service design. This type of paper is a great choice for painting with a lot of layers and it's perfect for scanning, so it is definitely worse the investment. Settled goals. Drawing and painting is not something that you are born with. It is something that you can learn through deliberate practice, settled goals before start of every project and analyze your works after you finish. Maybe you will not achieve all of your goals, but definitely you will learn things to avoid. Set a big goal for the following year and a few small goals for each of your brain teams. Thank you so much for watching my class today. I hope you are inspired to start creating Hindu bother, but I want to call it Brain Team. Leave your questions and comments in the discussion section below. Whether we have a question regarding the article or you have an idea on how can I improve my videos? Also, don't forget to follow me on skill share by clicking the Follow button.