Dreamy Watercolor Flowers: Atmospheric Botanical Illustration Techniques

1. Welcome to this Class: If you're like me who find dreamy, soft, and dainty watercolor flower paintings aesthetic and have always wanted to create one. Then this class is for you. Since working with watercolors in 2018, it's been my goal to try out this painting style and make floral compositions of my own. But it wasn't easy. What I imagine to paint is far from what I am producing. It's like my hands are not listening to me. But after some experience experimenting and practicing with a growth mindset, I finally did it. Through this class, I am happy to share with you that techniques and tricks you'll need to create this floral paintings. Hello, I'm Bianca Luztre, an aspiring watercolor artist from the Philippines. I started working with watercolors during one of the worst times in my life and found comfort in creating artworks. After a few years of painting with this medium. I felt this urge to teach and share the joy of painting with others. Here we are. In this class, we will paint and finish three floral paintings, aiming for a soft and dreamy look. We'll begin with a quick exercises to review watercolor techniques that are essential in this painting style. We'll learn how to paint white flowers without using white paint. Observe the wetness of the paper to avoid mistakes. In case we did, how to correct them. We'll also discuss how to properly soften edges to achieve balance in our paintings. This class is designed for those with enough experience with watercolor but beginners are also welcome to join the fine, since I will be guiding you step-by-step through out the painting process. Grab your materials and let's get started. 2. Class Project: Before diving into our class projects, I will demonstrate watercolor techniques to be used in each painting. These exercises are designed to help you prepare for each project so I highly encourage you to watch those first. We'll be painting three white flowers, starting with the easiest one, and increasing the difficulty as we move to the second, and third artwork. You'll need the following materials. Watercolor paper preferably 100 percent cotton. I will be using the smooth side of my orange watercolor paper. Watercolor brushes. One inch flat brush, a round tip brush, one big and one small, and a flat synthetic brush. This brush is optional. Watercolor paints. These are the colors that I'll use, but feel free to use your preferred palette. Water jar. I have this plastic jar and I keep the middle one clean. Paper towel or rag, pencil and eraser for sketch, and masking tape if you want a crisp border. I have uploaded a PDF guide with the list of colors, materials, and scanned copies of the exercises, finished paintings, and reference photos. Feel free to download that from the Resources tab. Once done with this class, you can share your favorite piece or upload them all for everyone to see. Soon as I'm free, I'll give you feedback on your paintings. If you're all set, let's jump into the next video. 3. Technique - Wet on Wet: Let's prepare ourselves by practicing some of the essential watercolor techniques and painting dreamy watercolor flowers. We'll start with wet on wet. You'll need a separate jar of clean water for this exercise and for demonstration purposes let's cover only a small area here with direct painting first. Charging my brush with blue and covering half of the background with that color. I'll have some purple to blend with the blue to create a two-tone background. What you're seeing right now is not how I do wet on wet. If you do this on a bigger area, chances are while you're preparing your second color, the first color in the background that you laid down earlier, must have started to dry already. This is how it looks with direct painting. Not so bad? Next, let's pre-wet the small background area with clean water using a bigger brush. This, ladies and gentlemen, is how I do wet on wet. You can either prepare the background area with clean water or with a very watery paint mixture before dropping in your other colors. Remember to prepare your background colors before doing the wet on wet technique. Tilting the paper will help you see if you have thoroughly wet the area you want to cover. Since most of our projects we'll be using this technique for the background, let me show you how it looks like when the paper is pre-wet with clean water only. I loaded my brush with dark blue, then rinse and loaded with purple, leaving the middle part blank. While wet you can paint in some more shapes and let them blend with the background. It's important to note though, that I'm using 100 percent cotton watercolor paper. It might look different if you're using a paper made with different materials. Here's wet on wet with a few lines and splatter marks. Now, let me show you how I make my backgrounds extra smooth by softening my wet on wet background. The approach will be the same with the above example. Preparing the area with clean water, then dropping the colors to let them blend with each other. But after that, you will need another type of brush to soften the feathery edges of the paint puddles. If you are using a hot pressed watercolor paper, then you will have a different experience. This extra step is for those using cold pressed or rough watercolor paper and if you observe a feathery effect when you use the wet on wet technique, like what you see here. This is a cheap Chinese calligraphy brush, a generic one, and the bristles are a bit stiff. It should be dry before using it to soften the edges. What I'll do is lightly brush between the colors and you'll see that it further blends the background colors smoothly. Splatter for some texture and that's how we will create the background of our first project, this white [inaudible] floating in the water. Now for the ripples, all you need to do is load your brush with a thicker paint mixture and draw the ripple lines with quick motion. The paper is still wet at this point. You can also tap the belly of your brush on a rag or paper towel to remove the excess water and paint those ripples away. That's wet on wet technique for you. Let's continue with this mini exercises on the next video. 4. Technique - Damp on Damp: We've seen how to create smooth backgrounds with a wet-on-wet technique. Now, let's paint blurry but distinguishable shapes with the damp-on-damp technique. To compare the two, wet-on-wet and damp-on-damp, let's draw leaves with both techniques and see the difference. We'll try wet-on-wet first. As discussed in the previous video, I'm preparing my painting area with clean water first before drawing in my leaf shape. I am reloading my brush with clean water and brushing it back and forth, making sure that the paper is wet enough. Tilting my paper to show you how shiny it is. Usually the shinier the paper, the wetter it is. So keep in mind that the wetness of the paper plays an important part in the difference between wet-on-wet and damp-on-damp. The other factor is the load of your brush. I charged my brush with my blue puddle here. With short strokes, I will draw a leaf shape from the inside out. If you'll observe carefully, wherever you lift the brush, that's where the paint spreads outwards. This is how it looks like when dried completely. The shape is barely noticeable. Now, this is how I do damp-on-damp by observing three key factors : the wetness of the paper, the load of the brush, and the direction of the strokes. First, the paper should not be too wet. Compared to the first example, I only wet the second one just enough for my paint to be blurry once I drop them in, less shine than the first one. If you accidentally put in too much water, all you need to do is blot your brush on the paper towel or a rag and let it absorb the excess water from the paper. Next, make sure that the brush is loaded with more paint than water. You can see that I am reloading my brush with more paint, but I am not dipping it on my water bucket. That's the direction of your brush stroke. We saw earlier how the paint spreads every time we lift up our brush from the paper. Instead of drawing from inside out, let's draw the leaf shape from outside in. This way, the paint will spread when you lift the brush, but it will be hidden on the stems. Continue doing this until you're satisfied. I will also recommend that you use a smaller brush when working with small blurry shapes. Try different brushes and see which works best for you. This technique is what we'll use for the blurry leaf shapes on our white cosmos painting project. Here's damp-on-damp for you. In the next video, let's discuss ways to soften edges and why even bother using this technique. 5. Technique - Softening Edges: Continuing our mini exercises for the needed watercolor techniques in painting dreamy florals with softening edges. When you paint a shape directly on the paper, it creates a hard edge and nothing's wrong with that. But if you want to achieve balance and rhythm in your painting, you might want to introduce some soft edges too. You can do that by rinsing your brush clean and scrubbing it on the area you want to soften. It's like erasing the paint that's already in the paper, but you will have to observe and match the wetness of the shape and the brush. If your brush is too wet, you'll create blooms like this. It's not yet evident, but once this dries, the cauliflower effect, as they call it, will be noticeable. Let me repeat that once again and show you how not to do it. I painted the shape here, rinsed my brush clean, I did not blot the excess water. Then I'll soften the other side of the shape. You can already see the blooms it created. The water from the brush is disturbing the paint that is already starting to dry. That's why it happens. Here are the two shapes softened without matching the wetness. Now, there are two ways you can successively soften an edge without creating blooms. First, you can prepare the area where you want the soft edge to be by painting it with clean water first, then go ahead and paint your shape and connect it with the pre-wetted area. This way, you can lower the chances of blooms. It's like wet on wet. Now, while this is still wet, you can soften it even more with a clean brush. The other way is to carefully match the wetness of both shapes. The colored and uncolored one, but it takes some practice to get used to it. I've painted the shape here and I will give the other side a softer look by using clean water. Since I am not yet sure how loaded my brush is, I will not go directly on the shape, but paint water somewhere near it so that I can check if their wetness is matched or not. If they are, meaning they have the same shine when you tilt the paper, then I can connect both and proceed to soften this part. We discussed wet on wet and damp and damp in the previous videos, and these techniques create soft edges. But if you directly paint a shape and want some parts to be soft, then use this technique like what we have in this white hibiscus project. One side of the leaves is hard and the other is soft. Here's a comparison of our practice pieces. Let's end this mini exercise series in the next video. 6. Technique - Lifting: The last technique we'll discuss is what we call lifting. I have here two negatively painted petal shape. The one at the top is still wet, and the other one has completely dried. My favorite brush in doing this method is this flat synthetic brush. To do this technique, simply scrub your clean brush on the area that you want to lift and pat it dry with a paper towel to let it absorb the reactivated paint. This is how I do it with the paint has already dried on my paper. See, the left side of the petal has a softer look now. But what happens when you lift without matching the wetness of the paper and the brush? You got it right. Blooms. That's why I prefer lifting once everything has completely dried. This technique is what we'll use for all of our three white flowers in correcting mistakes, softening edges when the paint has dried already, and adding highlights like the veins on these leaves. That's lifting for you. We've discussed all the watercolor techniques we need for our class projects, so let's go ahead and paint a white frangipani on the next video. 7. Frangipani - Part 1: [MUSIC] Time to apply what we just learned on our first project. White Frangipani. We'll use wet on wet on the background and paint around the flower shape to define it. We won't use white paint. Instead, we'll use the white of the paper and darken the background to make it pop out. You'll find a reference photo in the Resources tab and yes, we will only use this photo as our guide for the flower shape and shadows. Specifically, this one. My color palette for this floral painting consists of manganese blue, cobalt blue, permanent violet, and royal blue. Color is a very personal thing. Feel free to choose your own palette. Let's start by wetting the background with the flat brush beginning from the outside going inwards. Keep reloading your brush with clean water as needed and wet the paper to prepare it for our background. Depending on the weather and the temperature of the room you're working in, you might need to keep on wetting your paper even more. As you reach the flower shape, it's time to switch to a smaller brush and carefully paint around it. If you need to retake your paper for a more comfortable angle to paint around our flower shape, then please do so. In case you accidentally painted inside the white flower, don't worry, you can easily fix that later. Re-wetting [LAUGHTER] the outer areas once more, since they are starting to dry. Always tilt your paper to check whether you have covered the desired area for your background. Or to see if you have accidentally wetted the areas that you want to keep dry. With a paper towel pad the areas you want to keep white. In this case, we want to keep the frangipani shape white. Since we will use the background color to define our flower. Keep doing this until the whole flower shape is dry again. Once done, you can either start working with the background or re-wet the areas that [LAUGHTER] you accidentally dried. Yes. It is a cycle. Wet the dry or dry the wet until you've got it right. Once satisfied with this, we can now start working on our background with a wet on wet technique. I'll begin with my lightest color, Manganese Blue. Our goal here is to create a soft background with varying shades of blue and a touch of purple. The shape of the background color doesn't really matter at this point. Let's have fun and drop our colors as we see fit. Since the frangipani is floating on the water, I'll make an imperfect circle shape around it without even bothering to cover the whole area. I'll try and shed my brush alternatively with different colors and drop them on my paper. I made a mistake here and accidentally painted inside the white shape. But there's a really easy trick on how to fix it, which I'll demo later. I'll continue working on the other side of the background with the same approach. You may also notice that I am quickly working on my background. It's because during the time I'm recording this, it's summer and the paper dries quicker than I want it to. To make the flower pop out, I'm making sure to paint the area closest to it, the darkest. That's what I meant when I said in the intro, that we'll paint white flowers without using white paint. We're actually doing the technique called negative painting, where we paint around the shape instead of inside it. By making the surrounding areas dark, we can easily make out the shape of the flower. With a stronger and darker blue mixture, I will further define the white flower shape. This could also work as its shadow on the water. At this point, you may want to rotate the paper and work on a more comfortable angle. Or if you want the next of challenge, then you can paint like this. I have used this brush for quite some time now. I already know how to work with it. Every time I purchase a new material, I make sure to spend enough time getting to know what the material can do and cannot do. I recommend the same for you. Now here comes the handy calligraphy brush. Using it to further soften my background by lightly rubbing it on my still wet paper. It's so addicting to do. But I need to stop before this brush gets too wet or I will disturb the background too much. Checking if my paper is still wet enough for me to paint the ripples. If yours has dried already, then you have to wait for this to completely dry or use a blow dryer or heat gun to speed up the process. Then carefully re-wet the areas where you want to paint the ripples with clean water and using a thicker paint mixture, draw the ripple marks with quick motion. My paper's wetness is still workable for me. I will load my brush with the thicker dark blue paint and draw the ripples with broken circle shape. Splattering with clean water and we can leave this to dry to add the final details. I'll see you in the next video [MUSIC]. 8. Frangipani - Part 2: [MUSIC] Welcome back. Once completely dry you can already see the mistake that I was referring to earlier. It's time to fix that using the lifting method. With a clean damp brush, I will likely scrub off the paint that got into my white flower. This flat synthetic brush is my go-to when doing this technique. Sorry for the autofocus. Anyways, if we don't have a brush like this, you can use any brush that you have. Generally the stiffer the brush is, the easier it is to lift paint on dry surface. Don't forget to pat it dry with the paper towel or a rag or the reactivated paint will just stay on the paper. Keep doing this until you're satisfied. I want some blurry edges for my frangipani. That's why I'm going around and working on the whole shape. I prefer correcting mistakes with lifting on a completely dry surface. But don't forget that you can also lift paint while the paper is wet. In doing that, your brush should be drier than the paper and you have to keep rinsing it to get rid of the paint. I'm just demonstrating lifting on dry because it's so much easier to control for me. Once done with the lifting, my white flower has now softer edges and I managed to somewhat erase the background colors that got into my flower. Now it's time to add details on the flower itself. I'll use wet on wet technique too. Refer back to the reference photo as your guide on where to place the darker color. I will work with each petal individually, starting with wetting the petal shape and leaving a narrow gap between each petal. Then using a watery mixture of manganese blue and permanent violet, I will charge my brush and drop that lovely blue-violet color starting from the inner part of the petal going outwards. Since we're working on a smaller area, make sure that your brush is loaded less compared when we were working on the background with the wet on wet technique. When unsure, you can always use a scrap paper to see how loaded your brush is or just stop the belly of your brush on the paper towel. For the next three minutes or so I will work on each petal using the same approach. From time to time I will also drop a slightly stronger blue mixture at the center or the innermost part of each petal, where the shadowed area is. If you're getting confused where to place those colors, just look back at our reference image to help you decide. I have replaced the yellow and pink parts on the flower with my preferred blue-violet mixture. Again, color is a very personal thing. Your preference towards color combination is greatly influenced with your taste and experience. If you feel like using another palette, please feel free to do so. This is your painting so own it. I used to avoid using reference images with one color palettes, like yellows and reds. I'm not sure why, but I find it so hard to work with them. The colors are too bright for me the shadows are hard to mix or some other reason. Later I realize that I have the freedom to interpret a reference photo with my own colors. Instead of avoiding photos like this, frangipani I use it as a reference for the shape and form and for the light and shadows. Another thing I learned from experience is that I shouldn't hurry. I used to think that when working with wet and wet, I should move fast and get things right the first time I do it. But I was wrong if the paper dries, then I can just remove it. Don't hurry and don't worry. When we're relaxed, we feel things happening right. Now that you know how to work with wet on wet or damp on damp and how to observe and match the wetness try to enjoy the process of painting itself, rather than worry how your artwork will end up looking. I left my paint to dry and now we're onto the final details. All that's left is darkening the middle part of the flower to draw our attention to it. Adding some marks on the flower with wet on dry technique or direct painting. But if you want an extra challenge, I will spend the last three minutes demonstrating how I painted the tiny droplets of water on this petal. I am using the same blue-violet mixture for the details on my flower, about 50/50 of the manganese blue and permanent violet, just thicker this time. At this point, you can also switch to a smaller brush if you find that easier to work with. This round tip brush is my go-to when adding details because it holds enough paint and water and the tip is easy to work with. Time for the water droplet. You can call it a day and consider your painting done at this point or work with me. Let's make this painting more visually exciting by adding this final detail. What I did here is painted a semicircle for the top of the water droplet. Rinse my brush and soften the bottom part. Now I added the shadow below the circular shape that I created and made the top part darker. I'll keep tweaking this droplet until I'm satisfied. Here is our white frangipani painting. To summarize what we did, we started with a light sketch of the flower at the center. Using a bigger brush, we prepared the background with clean water and switch to a smaller one as we got closer to the flower shape. We avoided painting clean water on the frangipani itself and used the white of the paper for the white of the flower. Using wet on wet technique, we dropped our background colors Made made the area closest to the flower shape, the darkest. Charged our brush with thicker paint for the ripple marks and left it to dry. With lifting method, we fixed some errors and gave the edges a softer look. Use wet on wet again to add shadows and colors on the petal itself. Made the center part darker and added final details. The droplet is optional for those looking for extra challenge. Finally, I am retouching the shape of the flower with the same background colors I used earlier. I hope you had fun painting along for our first project. See you on the next one, where we'll paint white cosmos. [MUSIC] 9. Cosmos - Part 1: [MUSIC] We're on to our second project, a white cosmos. Like what we did with our frangipani artwork, the background will be done using wet on wet. The white flower will be defined with negative painting, and the leaves will be painted with damp on damp technique. Just like the first project, the reference photos colors are different from what I'll paint. You'll find a copy of this in the resources tab. I will use manganese blue, and cobalt blue, and I'll mix hookers green with cobalt blue, and royal blue with permanent violet, a limited color palette. Here's a simple sketch I prepared for my cosmos. I didn't bother to draw the individual leaves, but sketched a simple guide for them, preparing the background with clean water and working from outside in. If you're wondering, before, I used to stretch my paper by wetting it completely and securing it on a thick plywood with staple wires, but I find that time consuming for small paintings like this one. So I skipped that step for these projects. The size of the paper is small, so the buckling is still manageable for me. But if you want to stretch your paper using a method that you're familiar with, please go ahead. Stretching papers before painting works wonders by keeping your painting nice and flat and I find it easier manipulating the pigments while doing wet on wet, and damp on damp techniques. It's optional, and it's your call. Now, I've switched to my smaller round tip brush working around the flower. This shape is more complicated than the first time, but it's really a good opportunity to practice negative painting. I hope you'll give this a go. Dropping my background colors now, starting with the lightest one, manganese blue, and not worrying about the shape. Our goal is to make the flower shapes pop out by surrounding the white part with darker colors. To make the painting visually interesting, I will strongly define the lower left and upper right sides of the flower and leave the other ones soft. I delight in different shapes and sizes so I am deliberately creating a semi-abstract and defined and messy but soft background. Just remember to make the colors closest to the flower, the darkest for a contrasting look, splatter here and there for additional texture too. I will now introduce greens on my painting by drawing some stems in random shapes. We're still doing the wet on wet technique. We need to wait for a little more before we can move the damp on damp technique. Depending on your room temperature, you should observe if the paper is still wet or damp already. I'll drop more background colors as I see fit and leave whitespaces for a contrast. Now softening the background with my calligraphy brush. You can also use hake brush if you have one or just skip this step if you don't have any, I just want mine to be extra soft and smooth. If a bristle falls off during the process, like this line, just leave it be, we can easily pick that up once the first layer has dried completely. Going in and defining the flower shape even more with a round tip brush. This time, I'm carefully painting around and refining the smaller shapes that make up the petals. Splattering blue-violet here and there, and covering the white flower with my hand to protect it. Time to paint, some blurry leaves in the background while the paper is still damp. If you watched the exercise videos earlier, you would recall some factors to keep in mind when doing the damp on damp technique. First, the paper should be damp and not too wet, second, the brush should be loaded with thicker paint and less water. It will be easier too, if you use a smaller brush, like what I'm doing here, and lastly, it will look better if you paint from outside in to control the spread of the paint every time you lift up the brush. I do tend to forget that last factor, but I'll just let it be. Check the reference photo as your guide for the leaf structure. I'm not making an exact copy of the leaves, and that's okay. As discussed earlier, this technique does require some practice, but it's not impossible to do. I think the material of the paper also plays an important part. When I was a beginner, I only used student grade papers made of wood pulp for over a year, and there was a dramatic difference when I shifted to 100 percent cotton papers. Don't get me wrong, I'm not forcing you to purchase 100 percent cotton papers, especially if you're just playing with watercolors and testing whether it's a medium for you or not. But if you've been painting for quite some time now and is considering to upgrade your materials, paper should be the first one on your list. Speaking from experience because I made the mistake by upgrading the paint first, then my brushes, and paper was last. There was a huge difference with my paintings when I upgraded the paper and I thought to myself, it's not me, it's the paper. In case you are using watercolor papers made from different materials and see that it's not performing like the one you're watching, don't be discouraged just keep on painting and practicing and if you get a chance to try cotton papers, that's when you'll know if it's you, or it's the paper. While waiting for the background to dry naturally, I can work on the middle part of the flower. With quick short strokes, I will build the shape that I see in the reference photo, just replacing the dark yellow with my dark blue-violet mixture. Splattering some more on my damp paper, and we can leave this to dry and finish our second project in the next video. See you. 10. Cosmos - Part 2: [MUSIC] Welcome back. In the last video, we finished our background, blurry leaves and middle of the flower. Let's wrap up our second project and add our final details on this cosmos painting. I will start by softening the edges of my petals by lifting, same approach with our first project. Clean your brush, blot the excess water on a rag. Lightly scrub on areas you want to lift and part the reactivate the paint, dry with paper towel. Keep doing this until you're satisfied. I am often asked what I do with those pencil marks that are still visible on my painting. I always answer with, I just let them become part of the final painting. Sometimes I will erase some of those lines so that only a light sketch remains. But for demonstration purposes, I'm leaving it here so that you can clearly see what I'm doing and which part I'm working on. Having planned that those pencil marks will be visible and become part of the final painting, I used a purple lead for my mechanical pencil, but that's only a personal preference, and it's optional. There are, however, some graphite pencils that don't react well with water and you'll end up with messy smudges. Better test it out on a scrap paper first and see if it smudges or not. Once done lifting the edges of my flower, I will now lift some veins for highlights using the same technique. That's why I prefer this flat brush in lifting on dry paper because it's so easy to lift thin lines when needed. Checking the reference photo, those highlights aren't really there, but I thought it would make the painting look more interesting and complicated. Here we are, adding those white marks by lifting up paint. Next, let's paint the shadows on the petals with a very watery mixture of manganese blue and blue violet. About 80 percent of manganese blue and 20 percent of blue violet. Nothing fancy here. We're just painting the shadows directly on our paper and using their reference photo to decide where to place them. Make the shadows as light as possible so that the flower is still lighter than the background. The higher the contrast is, the eye goes first to that area. By making the center of the flower the darkest and surrounding it with white petals, when someone looks at this painting, they should be drawn to the center of the flower first and move their eyes around the painting. One is the trick to check that is by grabbing your camera and changing the settings to black and white and see if we can still make out the flower shape or not. I'm showing you the finished version of this painting in black and white to check if we can still distinguish if it's a cosmos flower or not. It looks like one, doesn't it? I'll continue working on this shadows until the petals are separated by them. You can also soften the edges with a clean brush. How are you feeling about your painting so far? Any lessons learned? Are you getting excited to see its completion? One thing I like reminding my students is that they can only compare their art works with their old paintings. Not with somebody else's, not even with my own version. You can only measure your improvement by looking back and see how you did and how your art journey is moving along. Paint, experiment and remember what happened. You will develop your own painting style if you never stop trying, practicing, and enjoying the painting process. Hold on and let's finish this project together. I did check this painting by taking a photo and changing it to black and white, and then I realized the background is not dark enough to make the flower the center of interests. I will retouch that by doing the same approach we did with the background earlier. Wet the area first with clean water, drop your desired colors and work with wet on wet. To make this painting visually more exciting, let's add contrast to that blurry leaf shapes by painting some defined stems and leaves with hard edges. To summarize what we did, we started with a simple sketch of our cosmos, prepared the background area for the wet on wet technique. Avoided the flower shape and painted the background randomly using the colors that we prepared. Splattered for texture using our background colors and sometimes clean water. Painted the center of the flower while waiting for the background to dry a bit. Using a smaller brush loaded with thicker paint, we drew the leaves with the damp on damp technique. Left the first layer to dry and lifted paint to soften edges of the petals and add highlights on the stems. Painted the petal shadows wet on dry. Retouch the background and made it darker so that the white flower pops out even more. Now, painting some more leaves and stems wet on dry to contrast the blurry ones in the background. Here's our white cosmos painting. It's a bit more complicated than our friend Japan project in terms of form and shape and techniques used. Let's challenge ourselves one more time with our hibiscus art project in the next video. See you. [MUSIC] 11. Hibiscus - Part 1: Last project. You're doing great so far so let's end this class with our white hibiscus painting. The background, as usual will be done with wet on wet technique. The leaves will be softened and the veins will be defined with the lifting method. You guessed it right, the reference photo will be used for the form and shape, but I will not copy the local colors on this image. For our limited palette, I will use cobalt blue and permanent violet, olive green, and a mixture of that with manganese blue for variation. [MUSIC] Here is a simple sketch and a scanned copy of this is available in the resources tab, so go ahead and download that if you haven't already. Let's start with our wet on wet background. Using a big flat brush to cover larger areas faster and we'll switch to a smaller one once I reach the flower shape. [MUSIC] If for some reason you find it hard to see the clean water that you're using to prepare the background area, you can try painting it with a very watery colored mixture instead. Say cobalt blue with lots of water. That way, it's easier to see the areas that you have already painted and prepared for the wet on wet background. The color that you will use however, should be a part of the background. [MUSIC] This step requires patience, especially if you have to keep reloading your brush and rewetting the background area due to the weather, or hot room temperature, but the result is very satisfying. Another way to make things easier for you is to rotate your paper as you work closely on the flower shape. Also, don't forget to prepare the background colors ahead, for a faster application. Let's start coloring in our background. I'll begin with olive green this time and cover the area where the leaves will be. Don't pay too much attention on the shape of the background, we will define the leaves later, once we apply a second layer of paint. [MUSIC] I will also use that same color on other parts of the background for harmony and unity. Then, I will charge my brush with other colors and have fun covering the background area randomly. Be mindful though, when you're close to the flower shape and be careful applying paint. Make sure to paint around the hibiscus flower shape and not inside it. My background looks messy at this point, but I won't worry about that too much. As long as I use a limited color palette and make the dark parts dark, light areas light, it will all make sense later. I also keep in mind not to overwork my background or it will not look fresh anymore. [MUSIC] Splattering for texture and protecting the white flower with my hands. I notice that the top left and lower right parts are too black, so I'll cover them with more of my background colors. [MUSIC] Now I'll grab my calligraphy brush to soften the background even more. Again, this is optional. If you want a softer blending for your background, you can also use the smooth side of your paper, or try using a hot pressed watercolor paper. You may also try using a clean brush and work on those areas where it's too feathery for you. Splatter with clean water to create intentional looms and add texture on the background. It just makes the painting look more interesting, doesn't it? Now, with a darker green mixture, I'll paint the dark side of the leaves. You can observe the reference photo to give you an idea which side is dark and which is light. The paper is somewhat damp at this point, and I'm charging my small brush with a thicker paint consistency. You can consider this damp on damp. While waiting for the background to dry naturally, we can paint the center of the flower with our thick permanent violet mixture. I am following the pattern as I see in the reference image too. [MUSIC] With the same color, I will splatter some more and since my paper is still damp, it creates soft edges. Leave this to dry, and let's finish this project in the next video. 12. Hibiscus - Part 2: [MUSIC] Welcome back. So happy to see that you are challenging yourself with our last painting project. Here's where we left off from the last video. If we have been working along with me from Project 1, you know what to do next. Soften edges with the lifting method. There might be some colors that are hard to lift. If you notice that you are having difficulty removing paint from your paper, you might want to check the color chart of the watercolor brand you're using. Brands like Daniel Smith, Winsor and Newton, ShinHan, Holbein, and other big companies provide charts on their website with ratings for the staining power, light fastness or permanency, transparency and opacity, granulation, intensity, and whether it is easy or hard to lift. Here's a sample from Holbein. Most of the colors I'm using here are from them, except for olive green, which is from ShinHan. Here they show you how to read the watercolor packaging and they also have a legend for the properties of each color. Let's check manganese blue. It has three stars for permanency and it says ONE, which means it's opaque, non-staining, and an easy lift color. What about permanent violet? Two stars for permanency and labeled TNE or transparent, non-staining, and easy to lift. That's a useful chart when deciding on your colors, isn't it? Referring back to the reference photo as my guide for the shadows on my petal. Instead of lines, we will use these shadows to separate the flower petals from each other. We'll paint the shadow first with permanent violet, rinse our brush, blot the excess water, and soften the edges. Or if it's easier for you, use wet on wet instead and work on the individual petals like what we did with the white frangipani painting, our first project. Remember that you have to match the wetness of the paper and the brush to avoid backgrounds or blooms before softening an edge. Another option though is for you to paint the shadows directly, wait for them to dry completely, and lift the paint. If in case, upon checking the color chart of your watercolor brand you used a color that is considered hard to lift, you can let the water settle in the paper first and moisten the pigment, then proceed with working your brush over that shape. I hope that helps. I'll continue working on my shadow shapes while observing the reference image to help me decide where to place them. If like me, you're using colors different from the photo itself and find it distracting to use the reference image because of the color difference, then simply turn it into black and white so that you can focus on the lights and darks instead of the local colors. Add more paint where it's supposed to be darker and enjoy the process of softening edges. This technique can be very challenging at first, but once you have enough experience with it, I swear it is quite a bit addicting. I used to paint with hard edges only, especially when I was just a watercolor beginner but when I encountered this technique and gave myself enough time to practice and master it is truly satisfying to do. Using both hard and soft edges, gave my paintings a balanced look and made them more interesting and exciting to look at. I mixed some of my green with cobalt blue for a darker tone and I'll start working with the leaves. I'll paint half of the shape directly, then soften the other side using a clean, damp brush. I will do the same for the other two. Our painting is finally taking shape now and the background looks soft and not messy anymore. I'm so excited to finish this one with you and hope that as you're working on our projects, you are relaxed too. Just like me when I was filming this class. No need to hurry. Do not worry and finish what you started. Watercolor paintings sometimes look better once they have already dried. The first layer may not look appealing but it's better if you finish a painting rather than perfecting it. Finished, not perfect. That's what I used to remind myself of when I was starting to paint full compositions. I think it was only on my second year with watercolors when I finally had the confidence to paint a full composition with backgrounds and foregrounds, and painting it on my own using the techniques I learned from books, tutorials like this, workshops and seminars, and lots and lots of experience and mistakes. I was painting veins using the tip of my brush. This is also one of the challenges I had to get through with watercolors, applying just enough pressure on my brush to paint thin lines. Oftentimes I will accidentally paint thick ones and it's so frustrating, especially when you're nearly finished with your painting and all that's left are final details. If you want to use watercolor pencil or switch to a liner or smaller brush to achieve thin lines, then please do so. I'm now painting the stem directly and softening the edge for contrast. Charged my brush with permanent violet to paint the pistil that contains the stamen, stigma, and style of the hibiscus flower and we're nearly done. You can do it. To summarize what we did, we started with a simple sketch of our flower, prepared the background area with clean water. Using wet on wet, we painted the background. With a limited palette, did damp on damp for the leaves and splattered paint for texture. Painted the center of the flower with our darkest color. Left it to dry and lifted paint for softer edges. Painted shadows on the petals. Defined the leaves and softened the edges. Added final details and now I am lifting paint again from the leaves to add highlights and define the veins. When doing this, make sure that the painting has completely dried or you'll have blooms. Here's our last project. Hope you had fun. I'll see you on the next video for suggestions on what to do from here. 13. Before You Go: That was awesome. Whether you just finished watching the whole class and plan to paint later, or you painted along and create your own version of a white flowers, hats off to you. We've practice three watercolor techniques that would help us create soft and dreamy looks for floral paintings. Wet-on-wet for smooth backgrounds, damp-on-damp for blurry but distinguishable shapes, and softening edges for a balanced look in our paintings. We also learned how to observe the wetness of the paper and the importance of timing to avoid blooms, correct mistakes, and produce dainty appearance for our floral artworks. Working with a limited palette was fine. We only used a few colors, but the results are still a static. Now that you know the watercolor techniques needed to create these dreamy and soft painting style, you may want to try painting white flowers on your own. I have included some photos which you might want to paint, but feel free to pick your own reference photo. These techniques also work well with still life subjects, abstract paintings, colorful backgrounds, and even atmospheric landscapes. I look forward to seeing and appreciating your versions of a white flowers. Don't forget to upload them in our projects gallery. A review is greatly appreciated to help me improve my classes. You may also try painting these enchanted forests with negative painting technique or try out loose and expressive florals. Hope to see you in my other classes too. Thanks so much and may our artwork bring more color to this world.