Easy Fluid Style Watercolor: 5 Projects Using Liquid Watercolor | Joly Poa | Skillshare
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Easy Fluid Style Watercolor: 5 Projects Using Liquid Watercolor

teacher avatar Joly Poa, Watercolor Artist

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      2:07

    • 2.

      Class Overview

      1:13

    • 3.

      Materials

      3:42

    • 4.

      What is Liquid Watercolor

      2:48

    • 5.

      Techniques

      8:00

    • 6.

      Feather 1

      8:42

    • 7.

      Feather 2

      4:17

    • 8.

      Feather 3

      5:36

    • 9.

      Feather 4

      6:11

    • 10.

      Jellyfish

      10:28

    • 11.

      Koi Fish Part 1

      7:43

    • 12.

      Koi Fish Part 2

      8:52

    • 13.

      Loose Sunflower Part 1

      8:56

    • 14.

      Loose Sunflower Part 2

      7:58

    • 15.

      Fluid Style Peony Part 1

      8:16

    • 16.

      Fluid Style Peony Part 2

      9:25

    • 17.

      Final Thoughts

      1:28

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About This Class

Hello! 

Maybe you've heard of liquid watercolor but never really got to try it. Today, we will dive into this wonderful medium. Liquid watercolor is watercolor in a liquid form that can be readily used. This watercolor is placed in a bottle with a dropper. One of the things that I love about using liquid watercolor is how easily it spreads on wet paper and how intensely vibrant it is! In this class, we will learn the following topics: 

  • Materials
  • Techniques (wet on dry, wet on wet, controlling water, pulling color)
  • Difference of Liquid Watercolor and Regular Watercolor
  • How to Paint 5 Easy Projects (Feathers, Koi Fish, Jellyfish, Loose Sunflower, Fluid Style Peony)

Don't worry! This is a beginner friendly class. At the end of the class, you will be able to create 5 amazing projects. I'm excited about what you can create! :)

Joly

Meet Your Teacher

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Joly Poa

Watercolor Artist

Top Teacher

Hi everyone!

My name is Joly and I am a watercolorist based in the Philippines. I discovered painting with watercolor back in 2013. I started out as newbie and learned to paint better through making mistakes and learning from other amazing artists. I just love how we can express ourselves through painting, creating wonderful watercolor florals using our artistic interpretation. It makes each painting really unique!

My instagram account (@jolypoa) serves as my art journal where I post my progress in the form of timelapse videos, real-time videos and photos of my paintings. My goal was also to be able to share what I have learned in watercolor. I hope to be able to do the same here on Skillshare! :)




... See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Liquid watercolor maybe you've heard about this type of watercolor once or twice, but never really got to try it. Join me today as we learn how to create fluid watercolor paintings like this using liquid watercolor. [MUSIC] Hi, everyone, welcome to my Skillshare class. My name is Joly and I'm a watercolor artist based in the Philippines. I'm also known as Jolypoa on Instagram right here. That's where I post photos of my paintings, my time-lapse videos and process videos, and anything related to art. One of the things why I love using liquid watercolor is because of how beautifully it spreads on wet paper, and also how intensely vibrant it is. In this class you'll talk about the materials that you need and you will learn the simple techniques using liquid watercolor but we'll focus more on the wet and wet technique. I have pepaired five fun and easy projects that will help understand how to use liquid watercolor. We will create feathers, coy fish, jelly fish, loose sunflower, and a fluid style of watercolor peony. This will surely be a fun and amazing class, both for beginners and for other artists who just want to try a different type of watercolor. See you in my class. 2. Class Overview: [MUSIC] Hello again, this is the class project overview. You might have seen the five wonderful projects from the introduction video. It might seem a little overwhelming, but you may choose to start with just one project for now. But I do suggest watching all the videos so that you can learn different techniques. This class, we'll focus on wet-on-wet technique. It means that we will be painting the shape of the subject with clean water and then you'll drop in some paint and just let it move and flow in the water. This effect will produce a fluid style of painting. I have lowered the brightness of some of the videos in this class so that you can see the water on the paper. If you don't have liquid water color, don't worry, you can use your regular water color, which I will demonstrate in the feather number 4 project. To learn more about watercolor, you can also watch my class called From Blobs to Blooms. Well, I won't keep you waiting. Let's head on to the material section. [MUSIC] 3. Materials: [MUSIC] For the materials let's start with the brush. I'm using the silver brush Black Velvet and this is in Size 6 and 8. The bristles of this brush is made of synthetic and squirrel hair. I love that it can hold a lot of water but at the same time, it keeps its point. As you can see, this brush is very pointy. For the paper we are going to use 100 percent cotton paper because the paper really makes a big difference in our painting. I'm going to use the Arches, 100 percent cotton paper. This is cold pressed and I also chose the thinner version so that it's cheaper. This is 185 GSM. The downside is that it can be a little wrinkly when we put a lot of water on the paper. But at least the quality is still good, the painting will still look nice, and what we can do is you can just put some tape all around so that it doesn't get wrinkly. Also to save money, I suggest buy a large sheet of watercolor paper and just cut it into smaller pieces like this. Another brand that we are going to use in this class is the Saunders Waterford. This is 300 GSM paper. This is thicker than the Arches paper that I showed you and it's also in a block style, which means that all the sides are glued and you just have one portion here that isn't glued. That's how you can take out one sheet of watercolor paper. The reason why the sides are glued is that it keeps the paper from being wrinkly when you put a lot of water on your paper. You can definitely choose a different brand of watercolor paper but I would suggest that you choose 100 percent cotton paper. I think that the Arches, 185 GSM has a good price. Next up, we need a jar of clean water. We need a ceramic palette and this is where we will mix our liquid watercolor. You can also use an ordinary ceramic plate. Then we need tissue paper that you will use to block off the excess paint in our brush. For the paint, we are going to use the Art Philosophy concentrated watercolor, so this is a liquid type of watercolor. If you don't have a liquid watercolor with you, you can definitely use your regular watercolor paints. This is optional but in our projects you can also add some metallic paints. This is the Metallic Accents from the Art Philosophy brand, and you can add some cool details to your paintings. So now we're good with all our materials. Let's now move on to the next video. [MUSIC] 4. What is Liquid Watercolor: [MUSIC] Before we head on to painting, let's talk about what a liquid watercolor is. A liquid watercolor is just watercolor paint in a liquid form. It comes in a bottle like this. When you open it up, there's a dropper. What's nice is that you can readily use the paint right here. I have my ceramic palette and I'm just going to put a few drops. Then we can use this paint. What I love about this paint is that you can create some really vivid colors. This is the pure form. You can get a really nice green color. Then if you want a more softer color, you can add some water to your paint, and then you'll be able to create a soft green color. Just like your regular watercolor paint, you can also mix air liquid watercolor. Let's try to make a peach color. I have here my pink paint. Then let's just try to mix it right here. I'm going to introduce a little bit of yellow. That looks a bit much. Let's add a few more pink. I think I'm just going to use this. I'm going to put a lot of water because I want a really peachy pink color. We have to be careful when we're adding yellow to our pink because there's a tendency for it to become too orangey. I'm pretty happy with this. It's that easy. This is a very convenient paint. One more thing that I love about the liquid watercolor is how it just spreads on a wet paper. We will talk more about that in a separate video. [MUSIC] 5. Techniques: [MUSIC] Now let's move on to the techniques and the first technique is wet-on-dry. It just means that you have a wet brush and the paper is dry. I'm using the Arches 185 GSM, this is cold press paper and let's try to swatch this. I'm just going to grab this beautiful pink paint from Art Philosophy. This is the color candy. It's a little similar to the opera color if you have the regular paint. Let me just swatch this. As you can see, we can create a nice vibrant color because it's not diluted, and later on, I will show you what it looks like if we do the wet-on-wet technique. Also with the wet on dry, you can create this very clean edge. That's one of the characteristics of doing a wet-on-dry. If you're adding details to your painting, this is the technique that you should do. Now let's move on to the wet-on-wet. For the wet-on-wet, it just means wet brush and then wet paper. We are just going to paint some water on the surface. [NOISE] Let me show you the shine on the paper. This part is wet and I'm going to drop in some paint. As you can see, you can create really soft edges if you're using this technique and you're actually going to focus more on this wet-on-wet technique. Later on, you'll be painting the shape of the subject with clean water like just what we did here. I love how it just flows just so beautifully, and this one will dry with a soft edge. Now let's move on to the wet-on-wet technique but this time we're going to use irregular paint. This is also from the Art Philosophy line. This is the watercolor confections in classics. I'm going to wet this surface again. I just wanted to show you what it looks like, so I wanted to show you the difference between the two watercolors. Now let's grab some paint. [NOISE] As you can see with this regular watercolor, it doesn't spread as much compared to the liquid watercolor. But still, you can use this regular paint for this class and I will be showing you how to use the regular paint using the wet-on-wet technique and the feather number four project. Now let's talk about controlling the paint because sometimes it's difficult to control the paint on a wet surface. I'm going to show you how you can control how your paint spreads. Let me just paint this with clean water again. [NOISE] Then I'm going to rinse my brush and just dab the excess water. Then let's grab some paint. Just going to drop it here. As you can see, the way it spreads is quite minimal because we took out a lot of water in our brush. This is a technique that we will be using later on in the feathers of class project. As you can see, you get a round shape, but it doesn't have a hard edge because the surface underneath is wet, so the paint just disperses and you get a very soft edge. Putting colors means that there's just a very concentrated color on the paper, and you are going to pull it using water or it could be another paint. I'm going to show you that. Let's start with the pink paint again. I'm just going to put a dot over here. Let me just tilt the paper, and then let's just rinse our brush to get clean water. Here in my brush, I have clean water and I'm just going to lightly touch this small dot of concentrated paint. As you can see, the paint just flows into my brush. It just follows the direction of the water that I have introduced to the dot. This technique will be useful for painting some petals or if you want to add more details and you don't want to add a lot of extra colors anymore, you just want to pull the original colors on the subject. This is one of the ways to do that. Right here, I'm painting a petal. Let's try another one. Just going to paint a line, just a green paint. Now I have water in my brush, and I'm just going to flick my brush and just pull the color from the center. This is just an exercise, and you can continuously rinse your brush to get clean water. All right, we are done. [MUSIC] 6. Feather 1: [MUSIC] Let's now use all the techniques we have learned and apply it to simple projects. For the first project, we're going to do some simple feathers. I'm really excited because they're really fun to paint. For this painting, I use the Arches watercolor paper. For your paint, I use a concentrated liquid watercolor from Art Philosophy. Just to show you guys that you can use regular watercolor, what we're going to do is we're going to paint these three feathers using the liquid watercolor. Then for the fourth one, we are going to use just regular watercolor. Just to show you that you can paint with your regular watercolor, I just find it easier to use the liquid watercolor for this wet on wet technique. For this exercise, I just drew some lines on this paper. It's just a guide, but you really have to follow it. Then for the colors of the first feather, we are going to use wood and truths. I have dropped some paint over here. We're going to paint this one first. I'm going to dip my size eight round brush in clean water. Then we're just going to paint a loop using just clean water. So I'm going to paint the outline first and then I'm going to fill in the inside with water. For this video, I had to turn down the brightness of the video so that you can see the water on the paper because it's very difficult to capture the water since it's clear and you won't be able to see the color. I will try to leave a space that doesn't have water so that I can leave a whitespace like this. Now, I'm just filling it in with just water. I will try to tilt this so you can see the reflection. It doesn't really have to be a straight line. Just want a really thin center. You can also fix the shape later on. We just want a rough outline for this feather and I'm just going to paint the loop first. We're going to paint this part later. I'm keeping it really wet because I want the paint to really flow. This paper is arches, which is really nice. It can handle a lot of water. Now here comes the magic. This is my favorite part. I have truth here. We're going to drop some paint. You'll just be amazed at how it just moves in this wet area. Can you see that, so nice. We're just going to randomly just drop some colors. Then I'm going to rinse my brush and pick up the color wood. So let's add a bit more blue over here at the top. Now I see that this whitespace is too big. I'm going to rinse my brush and let's try to close that up a bit. I'm going to add more wood color. Don't be afraid to experiment. This is really a fun project. I am just helping out the paint spread a bit more so we can get a nice shape for the feather and for the color I guess you can use ultramarine for regular paint, almond then for the brown one, you can use burnt umber or sepia or Van **** brown is also good. Now I'm going to add the details right here. I'm going to add some sort of stem. I'm going to grab wood. Just pull that right here. I'm going to rinse my brush so that the water here is clean. I'm going to tap the excess water and you're just going to create some wispy strokes like this. So as you can see, I'm just grabbing whatever color is in this area. I guess you can go into different directions. I feel like I want to add a bit more blue just to add a pop of color. I love that for this feather. Every feather will look different because when you're adding paint, it just spreads all over the place and you can't really predict how it will move on the surface. That's what I love about this exercise. If you noticed we have some dots right here. They are dots but they look faded. We want to achieve that for this feather. To do that, we just need to clean our brush, just rinse it with water and then just dab the excess water. I'm going to grab some paint and we are just going to drop it on the wet surface. I guess I'll just grab this truth color. This is the blue color. Then just going to add a little bit of the brown one. Then let's just try to put some dots. This way the dots are a bit more controlled. It doesn't spread as much because we don't have a lot of water and our brush. This is a nice touch to the feathers. Just gives it a bit more character. Just randomly add those dots. As it dries, it will fade away a little. Don't worry about that if it looks too strong right now. So I'm just going to add a bit more here. I think we're done, we're done with our first feather. 7. Feather 2: [MUSIC] Let's move on to feather Number 2. It's just the same technique we're going to create a loop. This is just clean water. For this feather, I just want it to be elongated and a little thin. Thinner than the first one that we made. I've just created the outline and then I'm going to fill it in with just clean water. Let's just slowly close the center and just leave a very small area that doesn't have water. Came pretty happy with this. Let me just show you the reflection. Now for this one we are going to use some red and some orange and also some black. I'm going to go ahead with a really nice shade the thread. This is called fire break and then just spread so nice. Let's add a bit of tangerine, this orange, add it here. Then I'm going to add a little bit of black right here and trying to be more careful with the black because I don't want it to overpower the other colors. Let's add some back over here and then if feel I want to add a bit of yellow, so you can actually put the paint straight on the paper. Just like so and just let them blend together so we can help them out by just spreading the paint using our brush. I'm just going to quickly close this part. Let's add a bit of black at the base and then I'm going to pull it to put the stem. Then I'm going to just rinse my brush and going to tap the excess water and I'm going to paint some wispy strokes. All the paint in this area just came from the main feather. We're just going to pull it. As you can see, it's so nice because it's just blending right here. I'm just tilting my brush and only the tip is touching the paper so that I can create those nice thin strokes. I want to add a bit more black right here just to make it more intense. You can also add a bit of orange over here. We're done with the feather Number 2 [MUSIC] 8. Feather 3: [MUSIC] Let's now head on to feather number 3. Every time I start with a feather, I need to get some clean fresh water, because the liquid watercolor easily stains the water jar, so I need to change the water every time I start with a new project. For this feather, we are just going to create just two parallel lines. This is just a guide. I'm leaving an untouched space at the center. I guess I'm just going to add a little bit of color to my brush just so you can see it better. I'm just going to add some blue. I have to remind you guys that you have to paint with this clean water. I'm just adding the blue color now just so you can see what I'm doing. Then we're going to paint some wispy strokes, like so. I'm just leaving this side a little frayed so it just looks wispy. Let me just tilt this. I'm just going to add a bit more. Then it merges at the top. Then let's do another one on the right side. Don't worry, you can always go back to fix this. If you're almost done with this, then you can drop some color. Let me just tilt this again. Now let's add some really fun colors. This is the color called Bora Bora. It does look like a turquoise color, and it's also one of my favorite colors in this set of liquid watercolors from Art Philosophy. Then let's try to drop in some orange, and then some pink. This is the color candy. I'm going to drop some paint straight on the paper. Just let it do its magic. Then add some red over here. Every time I add a new color, I have to rinse my brush. Let's just add a more concentrated blue over here. This is the color truth. You can use ultramarine for this one. Let's just help this out. You can continuously fix the shape. That's what I love about this style of painting. Since this is wet and wet, you can still change the shape while it's still wet. I think we can add just a little bit of green right here. This is the color, see green. For the stem, I guess I can add the color with just a little bit of black. This one, the dark stem. I'm just going to rinse my brush again because we're going to add the details here. This has clean water. I'm just going to pull the color here. That is just beautiful. You can add a bit more blue over here. We are done. 9. Feather 4: [MUSIC] This is the fourth feather, so I'm going to use the Art Philosophy, Watercolor Confections. This is the current set and we are just going to paint again with clean water. I'm going to paint two parallel lines. Again, I added a little bit of color to my brush just so we can see what I'm painting, but if you're going to do this at home, you have to make sure that your water is clean and that it doesn't have color. Now let's start painting the feather. I'm going to add a bit more color so that you can see it. Ideally we want a clean base so that it doesn't mess with the real color that you're going to put on the feather, but since this is just a demo, I'd like you to see the strokes that I'm making. Let me just tilt this so you can see the reflection. I'm done with the base and now let's grab some paint. What I did was that I just put some water on top of the paint so that it will become softer and easier to pick up the paint. I'm just going to grab this color first and just drop it. With the regular watercolor, it doesn't really spread as much, but we can help it out with our brush. Let's add some green over here. With this style, you do need a bit more patience because the paint doesn't spread as much. Let's just spread this and help this one out. I'm just going to close this gap some more. As you can see, the colors are not as vibrant compared to the liquid watercolor. We can add some blue over here and you can make the sides more wispy. Let's now add the stem, I'm just going to use a very dark blue. This is Payne's gray. Then I'm going to rinse my brush and make sure that my brush is clean. This is just water, and let's just add some more details and just pull those colors out. At this point, I'm just going to show you something that you can add to your paint, and you can add some gold details. What we can do is I can grab some gold paint. This is from the metallic accent of Art Philosophy. While this one is still wet, we can add some details, some gold details, and the effect is that it will just spread and you will see a softer effect. If you want a more opaque gold detail, wait for this feather to dry before you add the gold detail. But right now I think I want a softer effect, just a little glitter. I think I'm happy with that. One more thing if you want to add some dots like this one, we can add this down. Just make sure that your brush is gray, and then let's grab some Payne's gray. Just put some dots and just let it spread a little. I think we are done. It's so easy, right? 10. Jellyfish: [MUSIC] Let's paint a jellyfish like this. Again, I just painted this on student-grade watercolor paper, but for the final project we are painting on Saunders Waterford. This is 100% cotton paper and I am using a round brush. Let's start by painting the part of the jellyfish called an umbrella. This is the umbrella and I am going to just get some clean water. Again, we just need to paint on the paper with clean water. We can start with a letter C. Just paint the outline of the umbrella. Let me just tilt this so you can see the reflection. Now I'm slowly filling it in with some water inside, but I think I need to add a little bit of blue just so you guys can see what I'm painting. But if you're going to paint this, make sure that you're using just clean water. Thank you. I think I'm going to add a bit more blue just so you can see it. Then for this part, you're just going to wiggle the bottom. We can still fix that later. Now I'm going to prepare some colors that I will be using and I have decided to use the color Bora Bora, and it's a turquoise color and I'm still going to add some ultramarine, so this is truth. We are just going to drop in some color. This is going to be really pretty. I just love when it spreads, so nice. You could just play around, just let it spread. You can also fix the shape. You can also tilt your paper if you want the colors to move in a certain direction. It's going to add a bit more blue at the bottom. Then let's have that out. Let's just use our brush, just move it around. I think I'm going to add this color clarity just to make it more interesting. I think I like that. I'm just going to fix this. Looks very pretty. Now we are going to paint what we call the oral arms. That's the roughly part and you have these thin lines which are called the tentacles. Let's start with the oral arms, and I'm just going to clean my brush and we're just going to make some wiggly strokes. I'm just going to keep this one loose. We can also leave some spaces right here that doesn't have water. I'm just going to keep it quite loose. I'm just tilting my paper so that you can see the reflection. Now I'm going to attach it to the umbrella so that it will just flow like this. Now I'm just going to add a bit more water just to let it flow. I'm going to add a bit more color to my brush so that you can see what I'm painting. It's a little difficult to capture just clean water. Now we have some paints flowing and going to help that out. I think I want to add a bit of the Bora Bora or turquoise and you can also add a bit of the truth color. This is like an ultramarine color and one more color that I love adding to jellyfish is just a little bit of green, so this is called lucky. I like the names of the art philosophy, liquid credit color. I'm just going to drop it and we just want it to be quite loose, so I'm just adding water. Don't be afraid to add water because it will make your painting look more fluid. I think I'm okay with this, the oral arms. Now we want to add those thin lines or the tentacles and I want them to be a little bold in color. Just going to dab my brush so I can get a more concentrated color. We're just going to create thin lines by doing this to our brush. You just want the tip of the brush to touch the paper. I'm going to add Bora Bora. I love that effect. I'm going to do that again. Now I'm going to clean my brush. Now I want to add just water. Just let the colors flow. I'm just grabbing paint from here. Another thing that you can do is to grab some paint and just splatter it like this so that you can get a more loose interpretation of the jellyfish. Just adds a bit of character. I love adding these splatters. We just have to be careful when you're doing this because it can get all over the place. Make sure that you have a cover on your table so that you don't stain your table. I'm pretty happy with this, but I want to add a bit of shadow over here. I guess this can add a little bit of black to the blue color. Just going to drop it right here. Let's just add some more. I feel like I want to just fix the shape. I love how loose it just looks, so nice. Definitely, you can experiment with this. You can add different colors if you want. You can experiment with some pinks and some violets, so it's all up to you. This is just a really, really fun project. We're done. [MUSIC] 11. Koi Fish Part 1: Let's start painting koi fish. I'm going to show you my sketch. As you can see, it looks a little patchy because I painted on student grade paper. I just wanted to show you guys that the paper really matters. Sometimes when you're disappointed with your painting is not really your fault, sometimes it's the fault of the paper and sometimes the student grade paper just cannot handle a lot of water. Let's start painting on this one. This is 100% cotton paper, and this is from the brand Saunders Waterford. For the first part, we are going to paint the shape of the koi with just clean water. So we can definitely use a pencil to draw the shape of the koi fish so that it's just easier to know the shape of the koi fish. But if you don't want to use your pencil, it's okay. The first step is to just grab some water. Let's just start painting the shape of the body of the koi fish. I do like starting with just an outline. Let me just put a little bit of color in my brush so that you can see what I'm painting. But it's better to paint with really just clean water. The shape will look a lot better if you tilt the body of the koi fish like this. I'm just adding a lot of water. Don't worry about the shape, you can definitely try to fix that later. You can add the tail. I like to keep the tail really loose. Let's just paint some S curves. You don't really need to add a lot of tail because we can add some more later when there's color. Pretty happy with the shape. Now let's move on to putting some color on the koi. I have here the firebrick or the red color from the Art Philosophy 9, and I also added in some tangerine and orange red. I'm also going a bit of yellow later. Let's start with this red color, this beautiful red color. Then I think I feel like I want to add a bit of yellow. Let's just move this around. You also still want a bit of white paper underneath. You still want to see that in this koi. Let's add a bit of black. Koi fish has some really nice black patterns. Let's add some more over here. I'm trying to be really careful with the black because I don't want it to spread so much. Let's add a bit more here. You can just add the mouth and just paint a thin line over here. This is just an artistic interpretation of the koi so we don't really need to follow all the details. Then I'm going to rinse my brush and I'm going to add some fins over here. I think I'd like it to be a little gray so I'm going to add just a little drop of black color. Let's add some more fins over here and a little bit at the black. Then for the tail, let's just add a bit of blue. This is optional. I do like it to be a little whimsical so I'm adding a bit of blue and just let it flow and you want this to be so fluid. We can do that by adding a lot of water, a lot of paint. Of course this is optional if you want to add those blue colors. I feel like I need to add a bit of black over here just to balance this one out. Maybe just a tiny bit of yellow over here just to brighten up that area. You can use your brush to just move some of the colors if it doesn't feel right. I feel happy with this shape. Let's move on to the next koi fish. Now we have to change our water. 12. Koi Fish Part 2: [MUSIC] We're now on the second coy fish, and I'm just going to grab some clean water and let's just paint the shape using just water. I'm going to add a little bit of yellow just so you can see what I'm painting. This is really, really fun. You can add different colors. I'm just going to sway the body. Just remember that this is just a loose artistic interpretation of the coy. It might look a little different. I think I'm happy with the body of the coy fish. I think I'm just going to adjust the shape later. For this one I think I wanted to be mostly yellow. I'm just going to grab the yellow paint. This is the color taxi from the Art Philosophy line. Let's try to drop in some color, and we'll try to zoom it in so you can see it better. Let's drop in some yellow, and just let it spread. I think I want to add a bit of orange. Then we're going to add black later. Let me just fix this area. Let's add the mouth. Then I'm going to add a bit of black. [MUSIC] We're going to spread it a little, and then since we did not paint the tail awhile ago, we're just going to pull the color. Love that. Just flows so naturally. That's why I love leaving the tail less, and also the fins. I'm just adding a bit of blue. Again, this is really optional. You can change the color. I added too much yellow. I'm just going to fix that. We can now add a bit of blue. I'm just adding water, just letting it flow. You can also tilt your paper just to let the colors flow. Now we're going to add the fin right here. Now let's zoom out. I feel like I need to add a bit of red, just a pop of color. Just going to add a bit more black. Because it got faded over here. You want it to be really, really intense. Just try to bring in the colors, just bring it back. Now let's just put ice on the coy fish and you have to be really careful. I'm going to use black, but I made sure that I plotted my brush, to take out the excess water, because I don't want the black to spread so much. Let's just dab, and just grab a little bit of black. You have to be really careful. [MUSIC] I just put a dot right here. Is a tiny dot, so that it doesn't look too overwhelming. Then let's just add a bit more definition over here. I'm adding a bit more orange. [MUSIC] We're done. Another suggestion is to add some gold details. You can add this, while the paint is still wet. Sometimes you just want a little shimmer, so we can just add it here. You will make your painting look prettier. But this is completely optional. We're done. [MUSIC] 13. Loose Sunflower Part 1: [MUSIC]. I'm really excited to start this project with you because we're going to paint this loose sunflower. To start the class we need a 100% cotton paper, this is Saunders Waterford, and this is nine by 12 inches. I just drew a circle right here. This is roughly six centimeters. Right now I'm just going to grab my size 8 round brush. Let's just grab some water. I'm going to paint this part. Just a round shape with clean water. I guess I can try to zoom it in so you can see it better. Let's just wet this part right here. We're going to do a wet-on-wet technique. I think I'm happy with this. Then you're going to grab some black liquid watercolor. Because I don't want the liquid watercolor to spread so much, I'm going to just dab my brush and take out the excess water. Then let's just dip it here in the black paint. Can you see that it just spread so fast? Let's just be careful when adding this black color because it's difficult to undo this part if you put too much black paint. Now I'm going to just rinse my brush and then let's just grab a brown color. You can use, this color is called wood in the Art Philosophy, liquid watercolor. But if you don't have this color, you can try using burnt umber or sepia, that would be a good alternative as well. I'm just painting a ring of color outside the black paint. Then let's rinse our brush and grab the color coffee. If you're using an ordinary paint, you can use burnt sienna. I'm going to mix my color with a little bit of orange just to make it a little warm because I don't have the exact color of burnt sienna. But burnt sienna would be the perfect color for this because I'd like to get that warm brown. I'm just adding all around this area. Right now, I know it looks funny, but it does look like the eye. It looks like an eyeball. Maybe you can do this technique if you're painting an animal. I'm going to try to wet as much area on the outer part as much as possible because I'm going to paint the petals and I want the paint to just flow into the petal. Then you're going to grab some yellow. This color is called taxi, but you can get any medium shade of yellow. I'm just going to paint some s curves. We can rinse our brush and just paint with water and just let it flow. We also add a little bit of orange. As you can see some parts are getting dry already, but you can fix that in a while. I just want to finish painting this yellow petals. Let's continue to paint some s curves. One other color I love to add to any yellow flower is a violet shadow. I'm just going to dilute this. You want a really faint color of violet. We're almost done. I think I'm just going to add a little bit of orange to some petals and some purple. Now let's add some more color over here. I'm going to use the color coffee. This is almost similar to burnt sienna. Just want to bring back the color. Then you can also add a little bit of the color wood to make it deeper. I'm going to rinse my brush and just to give it a pop of color in the center, I'm going to add a little bit of green. You can use sap green if you're using regular watercolor. I'm just going to add some green all around this black part. In some areas, we can fix this brown part. In some areas, it's spreading too much. I'm just going to clean my brush. This one has clean water and I'm going to dab it and let's just fix some areas and lift some of the colors that we don't really want [MUSIC]. 14. Loose Sunflower Part 2: [MUSIC] Just to blend everything in the center, I'm just going to dab my brush and let's just blend them using just the tip of my brush. Because it's feels the center is separated from the outer circle, I want them to blend a little. I'm having that and you can just go back later to add more petals, and right now I'm going to grab some green paint. This is called three in the liquid watercolor art philosophy. We're just going to add the stem. Then let's try to add some leaves. I'm just going to try to do a side stroke. I'm just going to tilt my brush and use the side of my brush to create this leaf. We'll do the other side. We're just going to slide our brush and then move it downward and then start lifting so that you can create that thin, pointy tip. You can also add a little bit of brown to your green to make it a little more natural. Now let's start adding a few more yellow petals. I want this to look really loose. Just pretend that you're dancing with your brush. You're going to try to add a little bit of violet petals. Now let's move on to painting the background. I just grabbed some clean water again. You're just going to paint some clean water on the background. This job will be easier if you had a flat brush. Great. I'm just using my round brush and just paint all over the background. Can you see the reflection? I'm going to paint over the petals because I don't want some of the petals to just fade into the background. It will look more fluid that way. Also it will look more expressive. As you can see, I've smudged some area here. That's okay. You actually want that. I have prepared some violet color over here. I'm just going to drop it on the background, just like so. I'm moving in one direction, just in this angle. We can also add some splatters. I'm going to grab some yellow and we're going to put some splatters over here. Just tap your brush like this. Add a little bit of orange splatters. [BACKGROUND] You can also add a little bit of yellow in this part. We can experiment with the background and just add any color that you like. [BACKGROUND] You're almost done. I'm just going to go back in to this center and I have the color word which is umber. I can get some sepia, that's also okay. Just going to add a bit more definition to the center. This is optional. You can leave it as is. But if you want more definition, you can add more color around the center. I'm just putting some small dots. I think we are done. Congratulations, you have now finished painting a loose sunflower. I love how expressive it looks, and I'm really excited to see your projects. [MUSIC] 15. Fluid Style Peony Part 1: [MUSIC] So we're going to paint a fluid style of peonies. Right here, this is just a sketch that I did and I painted it on, so I did create watercolor paper. So you can see that it's a little patchy, but that's okay. It's just for practice. I also wanted to show you guys my reference photo and I'm going to put the link in the project resources. So this is a photo by Alaskapeony on Instagram. A lot of you would ask me, how do I start painting based on the reference photo? So right here we have two flowers. Usually when I paint a flower, I start right here in the center. So this is where the petals are coming from. So we are going to start right here and we're going to move outwards from the center. So think of it like a cup like this. Then we can paint the petals over here. So this one is going to face downwards. For this style, we are going to paint with some clean water first, and then we're going to drop in some pink color. So let's start painting. We have here the color candy from the liquid watercolor line of art philosophy. You can also use permanent rose or mix it with a little bit of opera. So we are going to paint some petals using just clean water. But because it's difficult to see it on the paper, I'm going to put a little bit of pink to my water just so you can see the strokes that I will be doing. So the start bit. Well, it would be best if you can save this photo in your phone or you can print it out. I'm going to put a small dot over there. That will be my guide. So this is going to be at the center or this is where the petals are going to come from. So let's start to paint. So I'm going to add just a lot of water so I can move around the petals and I can adjust the size. So you can hold your brush at the end of the handle just to keep it quite loose. We are first going to paint some cup right here. I'm also trying to leave some white spaces. These are spaces that I did not paint on. So now that we have the cup over here, let's add something on the top just to close it up. So I'm just painting lightly and I'm trying not to paint some big and broad strokes. So we want to build those strokes or try to paint some small strokes like this so that it's easier to adjust later on if you feel like the shape isn't looking right. So I'm keeping all the petals quite wet. So just remember that you're supposed to paint with a clean water. So now you're done with this part. I'm going to just let you see the reflection. So now let's add the petal right here. So now I want to add the more concentrated pink. Then you're just going to try to move this around. You can also add a little bit of yellow to your paint so that you can create a nice peachy pink color. So let's just mix this up. Then we can add a little bit of purple or pink just to create a deeper shade of color and to add some shadow to this area. We're almost done with this flower and then we'll proceed to the second flower. I'm just going to drop in a little bit of yellow right here. 16. Fluid Style Peony Part 2: [MUSIC] We're done with the first flower and we're going to move on to this one. Let's again start with some petals using just water. Right now I added a little bit of pink to my brush so you can see what I'm doing. I'm painting a big petal over here. Let's try to add a few more stroke. [MUSIC] We're just creating that cup. Then let's just close this one up with some quick strokes. I wanted to add more petals from this side. We're going to add some broad strokes. Still, let's try to put some whitespaces just to separate all those petals. I'm going to extend the petal until here, just so they will blend together so the two flowers will look more cohesive. We can add a bit more on this side. Now let's add the bottom part. I'm leaving this part white; not going to paint on this area. Now let's add the color. We just want this to look really loose. I'm going to add a little bit of yellow to my pink to create a peachy pink color. I think I'd like to add something over here; a bit more color just to create that shadow. As you can see there's a darker part over here, so let's just add a more pigmented pink. You can also add a little bit of red to your pink to give it a warmer color. We can add a bit more here and also right here. Because this is still wet, we can continuously make some of the petals bigger and without making it look obvious that you just added more volume to the flower. Then let's now use our green color. You can use sap green if you have sap green, and lets just add the stems. I love that this area just blends together. We can also add a little bit of brown to our green to create a more natural green color. That's why it's nice to work quite fast when you're painting this type of loose florals, because you want the flower to still be wet when you add the leaves so that you can get those beautiful blends. I guess you can add a few more stems sticking out and then also hear some leaves. [NOISE] I think we can add some buds I'm just going to press my brush and then lift and then add one more stroke on the left, another one o the right. Then you can grab a bit more green and just add it right here. [NOISE] I feel like I want to add a bit more color in this area, so I'm going to add a bit of red and some purple just to give it that extra punch. Also right here and also here. Then you can just clean up some of the edges that doesn't look that good [NOISE] We lost the separations of petal here, so that's why I painted a stroke over here, just to give that impression that it's a separate petal. [MUSIC] I think we are done. [MUSIC] 17. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] We have reached the end of the class. I hope that you've enjoyed watching this class. I have uploaded all the photos of the class projects that we did in this class, in the projects and resources section. Do check that out and you can download it as your reference photo, or you can also find some free images on the website called Unsplash. When creating the class projects, you can practice on student grade paper, just like what I showed you, but just remember that it will look a lot better on 100 percent cotton paper as it absorbs the paint better. Usually, with student-grade paper, the paint just sits on top and it gives you that hard edge. I would suggest using 100 percent cotton paper. I would love to see what you can create from this class, so choose your favorite project and paint it and upload it in the class project section of the class. Or if you're going to upload it on Instagram, do use this hashtag so that I can see your work. Lastly don't forget to follow me on Skillshare so that you'll be notified via email every time I upload a new class. That's it. Remember that practice makes progress. Happy painting. [MUSIC]