Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello everyone. Welcome to my Skillshare class. My name is Cheryl and I'm a watercolor artist and teacher living in Sydney, Australia. I started painting with watercolors in the late 2016 and I have been in love with this medium ever since. I mostly paint watercolor florals but I also love painting different kinds of landscapes, birds and even fruits. But in this class, I'm teaching you how to paint dreamy watercolor hydrangeas in an expressive and impressionist style. This class is suited for all levels. I will guide you on the supplies and colors that we are going to use and teach you the techniques that are essential in capturing this style of painting. From how to hold and control your brush and the concept behind the behavior of watercolor to proper negative painting and blending techniques, all to prepare you for a painting in the final class project. At the end of the lesson, you will be able to paint this painting; a dreamy hydrangea bouquet in watercolor. I hopefully you will join me and enjoy my class. See you soon.
2. Supplies: In this video, I'm going to guide you on the suppliers we are going to use for our final project, as well as the importance of the quality of our supplies. You can use any pencil or eraser you have on hand for sketching. I'm just using an ordinary mechanical pencil and eraser. For the brush, I'm using natural Hair Sable Encoding Ski watercolor brushes. The reason why I've chosen natural hair is that they hold a good amount of water and pigment, and because they maintain a very fine point. This one looks a bit frayed, but only because it's dry. Once I re-wet it, the point will come back. This is an Escoda Optimo travel brush, Size 1. It's a Kolinsky Sable brush that I used for big washes. These two are both called Rafael Martora in a Size 12 and eight. These are Red Sable watercolor brushes, they are used for washes and details. I love the quality of these brushes and I use them for almost all my paintings. Now this one is called a Hake brush, made out of goat's hair. They are very thirsty and hold lot of water, and I use it for really big washes, mostly for base wash and background wash, but you can use any big brush that you have on hand. For paint, I use artist's quality or professional quality watercolor paints, and there are a lot of great brands out there and you can use whatever artist quality paints that you have. But for this class, I'm using ShinHan PWC, and I buy them in tubes then pour them into empty half paints and let it dry. I loved them because they're vibrancy, and the fact that they remain transparent and luminous. They're really great quality for a very economic price. Next, you will need your water jug and extra paper towel to absorb any excess moisture from your brush. Finally, you will need good-quality watercolor paper. I recommend Arches watercolor paper, Coldpress, 180-300 gsm. This is what most artists use, and that's because it's one of the best out there. It's 100 percent cotton and acid free, which is good if you want to frame or archive your paintings. But for this class, I'm using Canson Montval Coldpress 300 gsm watercolor paper. I also recommend this one because it's good quality, cellulose archival watercolor paper, and I love that the texture of the surface is a bit smoother, and therefore, the paints stays on surface somewhat to create a painterly effect. Let me show you some of the pieces I've painted on the Canson Montval and also Arches watercolor paper. That's everything you need to start painting. I hope you are as excited as I am to start this class. See you on the next video.
3. How to Hold and Control Your Brush: In this video, we are going to learn how to hold and control the brush. In terms of holding the brush, the usual tendency is to hold the brush the way we write with a pen. The problem with that is that the muscle memory in our hand reminds us to use force that way. With watercolor, we need to practice a very light hand. I suggest you pull your fingers a bit further from the ferrule, or the bristles, and just relax your fingers, and your wrist, and your whole arm. Now let's learn how to control our brush. One of the first challenges as a beginner, is to know how much water to load brush, and how to manage pigment to water ratio. Well, it will take a little bit of getting used to, but to begin, let's try to learn how to load our brush with water. One tip to remember is that when you are loading your brush, the water usually is retained at the belly and the pigment stays on top. That's significant information because that will determine the angle you hold your brush to attain certain painting techniques. Start by wetting your brush, and if you squeeze the bristles of your brush and water drips, then obviously that means they have too much water, you don't want that. So what you want to do is wet your brush again, take out the excess on the rim. If that's not enough, then you can even use your paper towel to help absorb the extra moisture from your brush. One of the most important things to learn in watercolor is the paint to moisture ratio, because that will determine the intensity of your washes. The thing to keep in mind is that if you need to paint a dark wash, then load your brush with more paint and less water. If you need to paint a light wash, load your brush with more water and less paint. Now let's try to paint a dark wash. Let's load our brush with a bit of water and more paint. This is what it looks like, a very intense pigment. Now, let's wash our brush and use more water this time, and less paint, and our flat wash becomes lighter. If you want to amp up the intensity again, then take out most of the moisture from your brush and get more pigment. You can even let your paper towel absorb your brush, and you have a very dark pigment again. I hope you enjoyed learning how to hold and control your brush, and I'll see you on the next video.
4. Behavior of Watercolor I: Introduction to Watercolor Painting: Welcome to behavior of Watercolor Part 1. In this video, I'm going to introduce you to the characteristics of watercolor to help you start off with your painting journey. The first technique that we are going to learn is called a flat wash. Now we have mentioned previously that intensity of your wash will depend on your paint to pigment ratio. Since we want to create a dark wash, we are going to load our brush with more pigment and less water. Here is a flat wash. Notice how intense and vibrant the color is, and that's because we painted on a dry surface. One thing to remember is that the behavior of watercolor is that it will never go to a place or an area where it's dry. Even if we drop a different color within our flat wash, it will only stay within the flat wash because that's the only part that's wet. Now let's paint a flat wash from dark to light. Load your brush with a very dark mixture of paint, which means more pigment, less water on your brush. Then dip your brush once in water, take out the excess on the rim and paint. Repeat the process, dip your brush once in water, take out the excess on the rim and paint. You'll see that each time we do this process, the wash you paint is significantly lighter than the previous one. The basic concept of this is that you are washing your brush each time you paint, that's how you get a flat wash from dark to light. Our next technique is called gradient wash, and it's basically the same concept as doing a flat wash, but instead of us leaving gaps, we are going to do it seamlessly. First you load up your brush with a very dark pigment because we're going to do it from light to dark again. Then dip your brush once in water, take out the excess on the rim. At the very tip where your previous wash ends, that's where you start and pull it towards the direction you want it to go. Again dip your brush once, take out the excess on the rim and at the very tip where the previous wash ends, that's where you start. Continue on doing that process until you get a seamless gradient wash. One tip of making sure that the creative wash doesn't have hard edges is to make sure that your previous washes are still wet. Once it starts to dry, you will find that you will have hard edges. It's best to work on this technique while everything is still wet. The last technique on this segment is called variegated wash. What that means is we're going to put different colors next to each other and we're going to try to create it seamlessly. The first thing that you do is choose a color that you like and then lay it on the paper. Then wash your brush thoroughly, grab another color, and at the very tip of your previous wash, that's where you start like the gradient wash that we did previously. But this time we're not just washing our brush once in water and taking out the excess on the rim, this time we are thoroughly washing our brush so that we keep all our colors clean. Again, wash our brush thoroughly, grab a new color. Then at the very tip of your previous wash, that's where you start with your new wash. Again, a tip here is that you work while everything is still wet so that you get a very seamless wash in the end. Try practicing these three techniques to help you familiarize yourself with the characteristics of your paints. You'll find that these are very helpful as you continue on learning more about watercolors. See you on the next segment.
5. Behavior of Watercolor II: Basic Watercolor Techniques: In this video, we are going to understand the behavior of watercolor even more by learning these basic techniques. Let's start with the behavior of watercolor Part two. The first technique that we are going to learn is called layering and glazing. What that means is that we are going to lay watercolor paint on top of an already dried paint. You see in this area that I've already laid three streaks on dry paint and I painted over that. The reason behind this technique is that watercolor is a transparent medium. When you put a new layer on top of an already dried layer, you can still see the colors underneath. That's the beauty of watercolor and this characteristic in particular. Our next technique is called color bleeding. Where in we are going to let our paints bleed towards the colors that are next to it. What you want to do is load your brush with a good amount of water and pigment and lay it on paper, then grab another color and paint right next to it. Now you see that the more water you use, the more flow you are going to get, so the more bleeding you are going to see. Just continue on exploring this technique, so you can discover how the paint flows with less water or more water and how pigments react towards one another, and just enjoy getting to know your paints. Our next technique is called wet on dry hard edge. What that means is that we're painting with our wet brush on dry paper. What I want you to do is paint random shapes, like what I'm doing here, any shape will do. It doesn't matter what color or what size or what shape. I just want you to paint on dry paper. We will see the significance of this area once we get onto the area right below it, which is called wet on wet soft edge. Our next technique is called wet on wet color drop. Wet on wet simply means your wet brush on wet paper. One of the beauty of this medium is to see what happens to pigment when you put it on a wet surface. The way you'll be able to tell if your surface is wet is if it's shiny, if there are mad areas than those areas are dry. Now what I want you to do is to wet the area and make it paddling wet. Then grab a good amount of pigment and water on your brush, and then drop it on the wet surface and see how the pigment flows. You can even grab another color and drop it on the surface where the other paints are, to see how those paints react. You don't need to use just paint, you can even use clean water and drop it on the surface and see what happens. The more water you use on your brush, the more flow you are going to see and vice versa. It's fun to play with this technique. Moving on with our next technique it's called wet on wet color flow. What you want to do is to wet the area pretty much like what we did on the wet on wet color drop, make it paddling wet then grab a good amount of pigment and water on your brush, make sure that you load it properly and then drop the color on one edge. Rinse your brush thoroughly, grab another color and drop it on the other side of the edge. Now lift your paper and control the flow of the paints. The difference between color flow and color drop is that color flow, you have more control over where the paint goes because you can control the direction, whereas in color drop you just let the pigment to its own thing. Again the more water you use, the more flow you are going to see. Moving onto our final wet on wet technique called soft edge, and what you want to you is to width the area but this time not paddling wet but just damp wet, and you can use your fingers to make sure that it's just damp. Then paint the same shapes that you've painted on the wet on dry hard edge to this area. You'll notice right away that the shapes don't have any hard edge to them because you've painted them on a wet area. The significance of this is for you to see what happens when you paint on dry surfaces versus wet surfaces. Onto our next watercolor technique called lifting. What I want you to do is to grab any color that you like and paint on the surface. Doesn't matter if you're using light or dark paint, Just make sure that it has enough pigment to cover the surface, and then rinse your brush thoroughly. Use a paper towel to absorb the excess moisture in brush, and then absorb the paint using your dry brush. One good tip to remember is to always rinse your brush thoroughly every time you lift, because if you don't, then the colors that you lifted from one area will just be transferred to the next. It's always best to rinse your brush thoroughly and let a paper towel absorbed the excess from your brush before you lift again. Our next technique is called spraying and splattering, which is one of the most fun techniques in watercolor. What I want you to do is to wet the lower half of the area and make it damp wet while leaving the upper part dry. Now grab paint, make sure that your brush is loaded with a good amount of pigment and water so that it'll be easier for you to sprinkle and splatter and start having added and just have fun. You'll see that the sprinkles that fell on the wet areas are softer than the ones that fell on the dry surface. Our final watercolor technique is called salt effect. Now what you want to do is to grab any color that you like an paint it on your watercolor paper. Then grab salt, I'm using Himalayan salt or pink salt, but you can use any salt you have in your pantry, and sprinkle it on top of your wet paint and wait for it to dry. Now what the salt does is it pushes the pigment away from itself, so it creates unique and very beautiful effects. This is what it looks like once dry. I have dusted off the salt and this is what remains. Remember to play around with different kinds of salts because those can produce different results as well. Remember that the techniques you've learned in this video are not just for the final project that we're going to paint in this class. These are the basic knowledge that you need to have for you to learn more about watercolor. Once you know these techniques, then you basically have a good knowledge of painting with watercolors. I hope you guys enjoyed and learned a lot in the segment, and I'll see you in the next class.
6. Behavior of Watercolor III: Blending and Negative Painting: Welcome to Behavior of Watercolor part 3, Blending and Negative Painting Technique. In this video, we will explore how to create soft edges by blending, as well as how to define shapes by painting the negative spaces. Let's begin by learning how to blend or soften hard edges. Start by painting a flat wash. Notice how hard the edges are and that's because we painted wet on dry. To soften the edge, what you want to do is rinse your brush thoroughly and take out the excess moisture in your brush then at the end of the flat wash, use the tip of your brush to blend the edge. Repeat the same process and continue on softening the edge. Notice how the pigment flow towards the new wet area. Again, that's because watercolor will only go where the surface is wet and since you introduced a new wet space, the paint will flow there. Let me show you what happens when you have too much water on your brush. See what happened here? Having too much moisture in your brush will only create a gradient wash and will only create new hard edges, that's why it's crucial you control the moisture in your brush and only blend the edges to create a soft look. Here are a couple more demos to show you how to blend and soften the edge. Notice that as I was trying to blend the edge I took more water, but took out some of the moisture and then blended again. Sometimes in your first attempt, your brush is too dry, so it's best to do a trial and error on this stage. One important tip to remember is to always clean your brush every time you blend because if you don't then you're just dragging the pigments towards other areas. Every time you blend, rinse your brush and then blend again. Another good tip for you is to know when to use the tip of your brush and know when to tilt your brush at an angle. Notice that I'm only using the tip to blend the edge and you see that that didn't do anything at all, but when I started tilting my brush at an angle and maximizing the moisture that's retained at the belly of my brush then it's beginning to be blended more softly. Moving on to our next phase, which is called negative painting technique. What that means is that you define a shape by painting around it. Let's start by creating or painting a shape of a leaf. Now, in normal circumstances, if you want to create this shape, then you will color in the shape that's how you define the shape of a leaf. But with negative painting, what you want to do is create the shape of the leaf and then soften the edge or blend the edges outside the shape. Notice how hard the edges are. This is where we are going to put into practice what we've learned by blending or softening the edge. I have blended the edges as much as I can and now we are left with the shape of the leaf. Let's continue to practice by creating another shape and let's define that shape by blending or softening the edges and using what we've learned about negative painting technique. Again, always remember to wash your brush every time you blend, and use clean water to blend the edges, so that you get a very seamless and soft look. Now I'm going to show you how to apply what we've learned. Here is a glimpse of the final project that we are going to do in this class and what I want to do is to define the shape of a hydrangea, which is this circular thing here. I'm going to do that by negative painting. I start with a very light wash, which means more water and less pigment, and I define the shape by doing the negative painting. Always train your mind to see negative spaces. Imagine what's being left behind, and try to do this very carefully with a very light wash so that you have a soft look. Now, what you don't want to do is define the shape all around at once, and that's because if you do that, then once you come back to your first wash, it'll be dry and you will have hard edges and it will be harder for you to soften them. Try to do them by increments. What I did was lay the foundation of my negative painting in this side first and then blend. Then once that's blended then I go around little by little until I define the whole shape. When defining shapes, again, my tip is to use the negative painting one section at a time and then blend. It does take a little bit of patience, but I assure you this will guarantee a better result. Now we have successfully defined our object without it looking too harsh or intense, in fact it looks very soft and dreamy. I'm going to do another one to help you in your practice of negative painting technique. I hope you learned a lot in this video and I encourage you to continue to practice and just enjoy the process. See you on the next video.
7. How To Do A Rough Sketch: In this segment, we are going to tackle how to do a rough sketch of a hydrangea bouquet. But first let's look at the colors that we're going to use for the painting. Ultramarine blue, pthalo blue, dioxazine purple, perylene green, viridian, and indigo. Again, make sure that you take note of these colors because these are the colors that we're going to use for our final project. Our goal is to spend less time drawing and more time enjoying painting. Let's look at the reference of an impressionist painting of a hydrangea boutique and see how we can do a rough sketch to guide us in our painting. Now when creating a simplified sketch, what you have to bear in mind is to always focus more on the shape of an object instead of the object itself. With hydrangeas, the basic shape is circular. If you want to create a bouquet of hydrangeas, then you must draw a cluster of circular shapes. This will give the illusion of fullness without focusing on any detail. Once we're happy with our basic layout, we can now define the shape of our hydrangeas, and we can do that by drawing uneven edges to create the illusion of the outer petals of a hydrangea. Again, our goal is to spend less time drawing and more time painting. Just continue on doing this exercise until you're happy with the overall shape of your subject. Now, this is an example of how it looks like once you're done with your sketch, and now we can move on to defining or drawing the shape of the vase. It's just a basic shape of a vase that you see me do here. All you need to do is to copy on your paper. Here again is a complete demo on how easy it is to draw an impressionist hydrangea bouquet. Be sure to hit Pause when you need it so you can follow and sketch along. I hope this gave you an insight on how easy and quick it is to do a rough sketch of a hydrangea bouquet. See you on our next video.
8. Dreamy Hydrangeas Step 1: Create the Base Wash: It takes a lot of courage to take the plunge and try something new. I would like to take a moment to commend you for finishing the first part of this class and making it this far. Keep up the good work, enjoy the process, and welcome to our final class project. We are going to paint a hydrangeas bouquet in an expressive and impressionist style to create a delegate and dreamy look. As you can see, I'll tape the edges of my paper with ordinary masking tape and this is not only to secure my paper, but also to create a crisp white border once I take it off. Have your sketches ready and let's do the first step. Create a base wash. What is the base wash? A base wash is basically an initial wash or a background wash. In general, if you want the background color to show through and become part of the subject, then you start with the base wash. I also use this technique when I want to have harmony among the colors within my painting. Let's start. The first step is to wet your paper. Make sure that the whole area is completely moist. You can use your bigger brush that holds a lot of water to help spread the moisture throughout the surface. Just remember to take your time and enjoy the process. Now with your size 10 round brush, load it with a lot of water and a lot of pigment and use the color dioxazine purple or your permanent violet. At this point, don't mind the sketch, our initial tendency is to coloring the shapes and stay within the lines of your sketch. But what I need you to do is to let loose and let go of the sketch at this stage, your aim is to create a background wash, so just let the paint go wild. Also to maintain a soft and like look, make sure that you load your brush with a good amount of water and paint. Don't make your washes too intense because we can always add more color. Now load your brush with ultramarine blue and drop the paint as you see here. Notice that when I drop the new color, I don't drag it all around. I just spread it a little bit and then I move on loading my brush again with more paint and water, then drop it on another area. This will make sure that the colors remain separate and yet still blended together. Dropping a little bit of a pthalo blue. If puddles starts to form, absorb it with your paper towel. You see me just playing around with sprinkling and splattering on wet paper and see how the paint reacts. Again, if you start seeing puddles then just use your paper towel to help absorb some of the excess moisture and then spread the remaining moisture or paint around. A tip is to make sure that your surface is truly wet to give you ample time to adjust and blend the colors. Also move the paint downwards to create the base wash for the vase. Use the same colors you use at the bouquet area. Again, don't mind the sketch at this point we are creating a background wash to harmonize the colors of our painting. Now, dropping a little bit of viridian, again, make sure that your brush is loaded with a good amount of water and paint so that your pigments will spread and flow all around the surface. I'm just adding a little bit more watery wash of that purple color just to make sure that I have enough purple color in my bouquet. At this point you can step back and look and see what else your base wash needs. This is a good exercise to practice your intuitiveness when it comes to painting with watercolor. Now you see me adding a little bit of that perylene green in some areas and again, a tip here is once you see puddle starts to form, then just absorb it with your paper towel and with the remaining moisture in your painting, just spread it around. Once you're happy with your base wash, it's now time to add a little bit of whimsy by sprinkling salt. I am using pink salt or Himalayan salt but again you can use any salt that you have in your pantry and sprinkle it on the bouquet area. Now, it is absolutely crucial that you let your base wash dry completely before going to the next step, which we will tackle more on the next video. See you soon.
9. Dreamy Hydrangeas Step 2: Defining Shapes and Details: Now we move on to the second step of our class, which is defining shapes and adding details. Again, make sure that the base layer is completely dry before you start layering. We are going to define the shapes of our hedge ranger bulbs through negative painting. If you want to learn more about this technique, make sure you watch the behavior of watercolor Part 3, blending and negative painting techniques. Also, now see the effect of the sprinkle salt. It has created beautiful blues that we can use to our advantage. Now let's begin identifying our shapes. Once we've identified the shapes of our hedge rangers in our sketch, we can start negative painting. Makes sure that you use a light wash in defining the shapes. Our goal is for painting to have a light and airy feel. That way it is easier to build up our layers without losing the colors of our base wash. You want to still see the base wash underneath our glazes. Notice how I lay paint then blend and I do this one section at a time. This will ensure that you won't have to worry about your washes drying before you soften the edges. Again, observe carefully how I lay paint then soften the edges then blend. In choosing the colors you are going to use for a negative painting, my tip is to look at the base wash underneath. If the majority of the base wash is purple, then use purple to continue harmony, but be free to use other colors as well to build luminosity as long as you use a light gouache. Here I'm laying a combination of purple and ultramarine, both using light washes. Continue to define the shapes through negative painting. One section at a time, one high drain at a time. Just take your time, be patient and enjoy this step. Notice how even though I use a different color for negative painting, my wash is always light enough that you can still see the colors of the base wash. Still, the shape gets defined. Now I'm using viridian to define the upper shapes. Just make sure that you use a very light wash to maintain luminosity and transparency in your painting. Remember to soften the edges and blend with clean water. Again, observe how I lay paint, then rinse my brush, take out the access and grab a little bit of clean water, then soften the edge and blend. This will make sure that your wash is luminous and transparent and will give you a very soft and dreamy feel while still defining the shapes of your subject. Now we can begin to paint little details to add value and tone to our hedge ranges. Bear in mind that we have to preserve the highlights by painting soft, darker strokes to give the illusion of drop shadows. We can use the effects of blooms that our salt effect has given us. This is where intuitiveness and expression comes in. Observe how I paint one stroke using a lightly stronger wash, then blending it by softening the edges right away. You may use the reference on the left side of the screen to help guide you on where to put the shadows for the hedge rangers. Again, notice how you see me using the balloons from the salt effect as shapes that I can define to make it look like they are highlight petals. You can even paint dots like you see me do here, and just blend it with clean water if the pigment becomes too intense. Again, this will create the illusion of petals. I'm just using the same colors that we've been using in our base wash to layer in those expressive strokes that creates illusions of drop shadows for our petals. The yolks purple, [inaudible] blue, ultramarine blue. See how little by little, just by adding those expressive strokes, we slowly see our bouquet come to life. Just remember to be mindful of your hedge ranger shape and build the negative painting by placing darker tones around the shape or even just on the crevices. Don't forget that every time you lay on paint to soften the edge and blend. Always clean your brush every time you blend and lay new color. Just continue to add darker and darker expressive strokes on the crevices and even on the drop shadow of the bouquet. We are going to define the shape of the hedge ranger even more by adding leaves on our next video. But for now, just continue adding those little details of expressive strokes and enjoy being intuitive in this exercise. Add darker expressive strokes around the shapes of your hedge rangers. To help define the high ranger, even more. Always be mindful of your hedge rangers, shape by negative painting around the shape. By adding more of that dark, expressive strokes one layer at a time. We ensure that transparency and softness of our painting. Also remember to add darker wash or negative painting on the crevasses and not around the whole hedge rangers all the time. This will again create the illusion of shape without the intensity of a border around that shape. Now I'm just adding more of that darker shade on top of the dry paint to give the illusion of an intensified definition of that shape. The more you add darker expressive strokes or dots on just the crevices, the more it will give an illusion of a defined shape of a stranger. At this stage, it's nice to take a step back and look at your painting so far. This is a good exercise of intuitiveness by imagining patterns and blooms that you can play around with. Just continue on adding that darker expressive strokes and then blending one layer at a time. This will ensure transparency and luminosity in your painting. Once everything is dry, we can define the shapes of the hedge rangers even more by adding illusions of leaves around hedge ranger shape. We will do that on the next video.
10. Dreamy Hydrangeas Step 3: Painting Leaves and Adding More Details: Our next step is to define the shape of our blooms even more by painting illusions of leaves. We can do that by using the color paralleling green, forest green, or any dark green that you have. By painting leaves around the hydrangea shape. Still using the negative painting technique. Using our size six or eight brush, add one leaf shape at a time. Notice how sometimes I don't even paint a shape of a leaf per se. But just adding that green gives you the illusion of foliage, and it helps separate the hydrangea shape from one another. Make sure they add those leave illusions around your hydrangea shape. I use the same technique of laying paint, then softening the edge and blending. This will ensure that you maintain the transparency of your painting, making it look delicate and dreamy, all the time. Again, just by even adding a bit of that green color on the crevices, already gives the illusion that they are leaves, even without any leaf shape at all. This will make your painting look very loose and expressive. Just by doing this technique, the hydrangea shape gets defined even more. Continue on adding leaves or illusion of leaves, and observe how I do that. Little by little you see our bouquet take more shape. You can add more leaves on the outer shape of their hydrangeas and make leaf shapes this time. So as to defined, what you want to convey on those other areas. You can define the shapes of the hydrangeas even more by darkening the edges. Just be mindful of the shapes you leave behind. Remember, our goal is to make our hydrangea shape pop. We can do that by always darkening the crevices or the areas around our shape, by negative painting. Always remember to soften the edge in blunt. Add more and more of those dark drop shadows at the edge of each of your hydrangeas and maintain the highlights on the upper part. This will give dimension to your blooms. Add more and more of that green around the shape of our hydrangeas to give it more definition. It is important, that we maintain the transparency and luminosity of our painting, by layering our paint, one moment at a time. Now you can add more details on the hydrangea itself by painting darker dots on the crevasses. Add more leaf shape in the outer areas, again, be mindful of the shapes you leave behind for the hydrangea shape. This style of painting is all about the negative painting technique. Now you can add a bit of indigo to green to darken in it and layer a leaf shape on some areas. This will create dimension in your painting. To find even more shapes by negative painting. Add even more details by painting darker dots on the crevasses, and you can use ultramarine blue or purple depending on the color, of your base wash underneath. By doing so, you help to define the shape of the hydrangea even more. Now to make the painting even more interesting, let's use this splattering technique. Make sure you cover the areas you don't want to get splatter on. I'm using a bit of purples and a bit of blue and even clear water to help some of the intense dots get diluted. Notice how those tiny random dots. Add more [inaudible] and will also give the illusion of pedals to your painting. At this point I'm just blending some of the more intense dots, to soften it, and to give it a more dreamy look. Voila , see how much difference, that technique made, in our painting. I'm just adding more of that dots in the crevices using ultramarine blue or teal blue, or purple depending on the colors that you want to use and depending on the, base washed that you have underneath. This will give more dimension and definition to the shape of your hydrangeas. Again, this is a perfect time to take a step back and look at your overall painting so far. See what needs to be added and see what more colors you need to add. This will again give you the practice of intuitiveness when it comes to painting. So just express yourself, be free let loose and enjoy this process. Now it's a perfect time to add more of that leave illusion, by using darker colors and darker tones of the paints that we've been using so far. Again, always minding the shapes we leave behind, and imagining the shapes, that we get from negative painting. We're almost done with our step three, and the next thing that we are going to be painting is the vase. Be sure to pause any time you need to so that you can paint along, and see you on our next video.
11. Dreamy Hydrangeas Final Step: Painting the Vase and Finishing Touches: For our final step, we are going to finish this piece by painting the vase and also adding finishing touches. Let's start. For the vase, you select wash of indigo. Make sure you paint around the head ranger and leave shapes that's on the vase area. This is so we maintain those shapes as separate from the vase. Then blend and spread the paint on the vase, adding more water to the mixture when needed. Drag the paint even on the lower part of the painting. Again, at this point, we don't have to mind our sketch because we will define the shape of the vase later on by negative painting. Add a tinche of purple or ultramarine blue and tingle blue to to the vase area. This is to harmonize the entire look of our painting. This will serve as a reflection from the look of hydrangeas. At this point, while I'm waiting for my vase area to dry, I'm just adding a little bit more details to my bouquet. I'm trying to see what else is needed and I've added a little bit of [inaudible] blue again to serve as an illusion of the bouquet reflecting on the table and on our vase. A tip is, to only drop new color while your area is still wet. This will ensure that you don't have any hard edges and that your paint will spread beautifully on the surface. Now I'm adding just a little bit of that indigo color underneath the bouquet area to serve as drop shadows. Again, while waiting for your vase area to dry, you can take this time to add more details to titrate your bouquet. Once the vase area is completely dry, we can now glaze on more details. I am painting strips of indigo, and you can follow along what I'm doing here. Make sure that the indigo pigment is not too light, nor too dark. We still want to see our vase wash underneath. Now, carefully define the shape of the vase by negative painting, using a darker wash of indigo. Remember that once you lead paint, follow-up by blending the wash to create a softer look and carefully spread the paint as needed with clean water. By doing the simple negative painting technique, you can now see the defined shape of our vase. I just added a little bit of that purple to create more interests in our painting. Then let this layer dry. Once our previous layer is completely dry, we can now add more details to our vase. I'm using a darker pigment of indigo and just painting small vines in leaves using the tip of my brush to do that small strokes. You can do any pattern that you'd like as long as you use a darker wash so that it will create dimension. Once everything is completely dry, you can define the shape of the vase even more by negative painting using an even darker wash of indigo, meaning more pigment and less water on your brush. Don't forget to soften any hard edges and blend. Notice how I'm focusing the final layer of our negative painting, only at the area closest to the vase. This will give a more realistic drop shadow and dimension to our painting. That's that. You are finished. You can now slowly remove the masking tape to reveal a crisp white border and your beautiful painting is done. Great job, you guys. I hope you enjoyed and learned a lot, and congratulations for completing my class.
12. Final Thoughts: Congratulations for completing my class. I am so proud of you. I understand how it can be a challenge learning a new skill or new techniques, especially if you're a beginner, but I hope this class encouraged you and inspired you to play with watercolors more and to continue practicing everything you've learned. Don't be frustrated if your work does not turn out the way you envisioned, just keep on practicing to improve your skill and enjoy your creative journey. Remember to let loose and be free and to be excited about happy accidents, and to just have fun painting hydrangeas with watercolor. I hope you enjoyed and learned a lot. Thank you for joining my Skillshare class. See you on the next one.
Cheryl Sun Ong, Watercolor Artist
