Easy Rosy Wreath

1. Introduction: Hi guys, It's Chris from sweet seasons art was self-taught watercolor artists in Richmond, Virginia. And if you follow me on Instagram, you know, I love to paint a wreath. Today, we are going to paint an easy Rosie wreath with ink, just like this one. This class is great for beginners and your project will be to create your own watercolor and ink wreath. 2. Supplies: Okay, everyone, Let's talk supplies. We need paper. You know, I love arches, like a 140 pound cold press. I'd like to use a block. This is a 100 percent cotton. I also use Fabriano artistic. Oh, it's extra white and I also use a block for this. Use whatever you have on hand, whether it's scrap paper or sheets, any kind of watercolor paper will work. We also need brushes. What to use to round brushes, a larger and a smaller. This is a 12 and a six. You could use a 10 and a 4. These are from the pigeon letters, and I like these precious. We're going to need a monoline pen. You can use micron. These are actually from the pigeon letters. I have a 35, I'll probably end up using the five. It's a little bit thicker. And of course, we need paint. I get two shades of green, at least maybe even a darker one. This is a sap green and the olive green, it can get a green gold. And then I'm going to use different shades of pink, use whatever you like. This is opera rose. There's permanent rose here, Scarlett lake for some real bright red, but use whatever reds you have on hand. But he nice clean water. And of course, paper towels for blotting. We're going to paint a wreath, so it's obviously a circle. If you want a little quick cheat tip, get around bowl, put it right on your paper. Trace it really light pencil line around it. It helps you keep your shape as you're going. I do that sometimes just as a little cheat to make it easier. Let's get some practice in now. The next clip. 3. Practice: So we're going to start with two ways to paint leaves today. Very simple, very straightforward, fine for beginners. So load up your brush with a little green paint. Any color will do. So just on this first one, just use the very tip of your brush, touch it to the paper and push and drag and the lift at the end. Literally that's it. That is a leaf. It's a thinner leaf. It'll only be as wide as your brush will spread. But just try it again. Just touch the little tip loaded with paint. Push it down and slowly drag it and pick it up at the end. And I like to dab a little bit of color along there if you don't get enough pigment, but that's it. That's a very simple, really super simple leaf and that's what we're going to stick with today. It's just easy for everybody and that goes real fast. So here's a second one. Same motion, one side, and just repeat it and connects them. You can leave space in the middle like I did. I like to do that kind of delineates the center of the leaf. Or you can go ahead and film and add a little darkness to the tip, maybe shape it a little if you like it. Let's try that again. Push out and pick up. And then this one, I did it right next to it. So I didn't leave the center of that time. You can see what that looks like. Here's one that's really dark and then I think we'll get some water, just water on this side and watch this effect connected and do the same motion. Let's see how that leaves a nice variation or one side is darker than the other stem. So take your time and practices as much as you like or we can just move on. We're going to practice our roses now. I'm still using the bigger round brush. And I'm gonna do, again, we're gonna do two types of rows. One is more of Lubbock blobby rules. Again, we're going to start using the tip at the Amarna kind of blob it out a little bit and not be very particular. So you see my first two shapes here. They're just like two little C shapes next to each other. We're just going to keep making the same shape around and around offset as we go. Sort of adding more water. And it's okay if you touch your back, pick up some pigment, refine the edges of our C shapes. But the motion is just to touch and push out and lift, just like we did with the leaves really. So I kinda think of these as a bunch of offset see shapes working your way around. So they overlap a little at the ends. And then they kinda pull off a little bit just at the tips where the petal would be thinner like that. I kinda like that shape. Just going to go in now with a lot of pigment on my brush and touch where it's wet on the inside of each pedal. See the beautiful bleeds we get when we do that. It adds a little depth and dimension to the rows. And I think it's really pretty effect. So just touch where it's wet. It's the wet on wet technique of watercolor. And it provides just a little extra color and a little more depth. So I like that guy. We will let him dry. You do a little more structured, same, same brush, big brush. And we're going to a little more of a structured rows. So we're going to start by making two little shapes that look almost like tadpoles use just the tip of the brush and they look like little tendrils will touch and lift. And then it's just the same process that we're going to make slightly irregular sea shapes now, where we touch and pushed down and then we really kinda drag it out a little. Or we push right away and then lift up and drag. And they're still offset, see shapes, but they're more irregular, less consistent, and they have a little more structure to them. And there's more white space in between each shape. So they don't touch each other or blend and bleed into each other. Again, we get larger as we go. And with a little less pigment as we go, a little more water, they get a little less intense. So you see how I'm dragging them out. You can see the difference here between the two of these. But the idea and the way you approach it as the same. You see I'm kind of making these really irregular. One thing to do is not make them all the same. I have a tendency to try to make everything perfectly, you know, carbon copy petals. And you really want to have variation. Some are kind of lumpy are and some are thinner. And you can stop at any point when your rows you feel like it's complete or you'd like the shape. You could kind of go on forever through this process. You've got to be careful that you don't just make it huge. So I think we'll wrap this one up. I think he's, he's good like that. So let's get a little more pigment on our brush, really intense pigment and go back in like we did with the other one. And see how beautiful I love this effect. It's like my favorite part is making the rows. What a board, deep, a little more bold. And you can go into all the different layers and really huge him up a little with some intense color. We can even touch our first rows where it's still wet. Again, you only want to do that where it's wet or it'll just kinda sit right in the middle like a big blob. But if, if you can see where it's wet, you can still go in and add even more depth to it. And it still adds a nice effect. So just keep touching them sort of until you like the effect you have. And then we're going to wait for the blobby one to dry. And then we're going to go in with a little ink detail. Well, we're reading for these to dry. Thought maybe we would just practice inking a leaf. It's really the same shape and process that we painted. Sort of a C and a backward C could add a little center detail. This is just a practice. If you want to mess around with your pen, try the five and C, that's a little bit of a larger tip on the pen. But if these are dry, we can add detail on our, on our painted leaves. Can make them where they kind of peek out from another leaf. I love this effect on the wreath. It's the effect of layered leaves. So I like that effect and we can do it anywhere where there's like a dry leaf. See how I'm going to tuck this one in-between these two leaves. I think that really looks neat. You don't have to add a vein if you don't want one, but I like to add some little leaf detail, but I like how that sort of hides away. It makes that Greenleaf kind of pop out of the page at you, I think. So. We can do that on these roses as well. I'm basically just going to go in and trace the shape of a petal and make the curve not exactly along the line, but similar or sort of you kinda have to gauge where you want them, but basically where the petals would be. Just add a little more detail and you'll see, I'm going to add some thickness. Maybe at the center of these lines, maybe at one end. And it's okay if they don't follow the painted pedal, right? They can go on to the white part or start or end on the way. That's fine. They can overlap with other petals. Just gives a little definition. And you might like this effect and you might not, maybe you're just a purist and you don't want any ink, that's fine. You don't need to do that. Might go in and add to the centers and make those shapes similar to our more structured rows. But I like to go in and make these lines not just one thin layer. I like to add a little bit of like a thicker parts in certain areas. Then we'll just add a little here. This is kinda what you have to gauge. You could really ink this up a lot or you could keep it simple with just a few lines to extend that out into the white part. I like that effect where it's not exactly along the line of the paint. You see now that just gives it a little depth and I think it looks kind of cool. Do as much or as little ink as you want on your, on your leaves like this, you can just add a little center on your painted leaf or just, you know, little detail like we did on the other ones. Just to practice with the ink and get and get an idea of what you like and don't like. 4. Painting Your Wreath: So now it's time to paint our wreath guys, this is our fun part. If you want to get a bowl and trace it so you stay on a circle, that's fine. I'm gonna kinda wing it today. I'm going to start at the quote unquote, corners, opposite corners of what would be our wreath. And place our large flowers there. Start with our large brush again, sort of gauge where those corners might be. And I'm going to start with the rows. So I think I'll do this as a structure grows. We'll do it just like the second one. And we'll see where it goes. Every one is going to be different. Yours is not going to like mine and mine is not going to look like the first practice one I did. This is kinda looking halfway in between the blobby London structured one. And there's really no right or wrong. Add a little water and do some larger petals. And really I'm just going to see where this ends up, guys. So don't stress about it, just let it go. If it gets really blobby and messy, we can add some ink. If we like how it looks, we can leave it alone. So just get a sense of how large you want it. It's pretty big. It's probably about maybe as big as we need. So let's go add in some of our darker pigment here. And maybe we'll just leave this one like this. This will kind of anchor where our wreath is going to be. So I went and took another smaller one right next to it to, so there's a little more to anchor the wreath at this top part. So I'm going to start this kind of close to the other one just so it will, like I said, like tuck in and you'll see how we do that. We get get closer. I'm going to sort of treat it like I'm building and rows just like normal with our different layers and build it out. And then add a little more water. Kinda make the fatter pedals. And see I'm going to start this petal like it's coming out from under the other rows, it's going to get a lot of pigment. And then we will move that petal over just like it had continued underneath the other rows. One way to make that really clear is to make that dark right there. It's like it's in the shadow of the other ones, so I'd like to darken it where it might tuck underneath. Try a little extra water here, and I like that. I'm going to leave that alone. I think I just really loose and kind of messy and I'm want to put another rows down here now. So this is the other corner. And again, we're just gonna do the same process. So just paint along with me. You can do one or two roses down on this side. Your call on how it looks, how big your rows tends to grow on you. Mine tend to get a little, little out of control sometimes. So just paint along and see how it works for you. You can see this one looks like it's oriented a little to the side. So I'm going to go and fill in some petals over here to balance it out. We definitely want to remember to touch these inside of the petals while it's still wet in there, it looks like it's drying. May want to go in and do your little darker highlights as you go. So this guy's really getting out of control. I think we'll stop right there and just let him live just like that. So now we need to fill in the circle of our wreath. So we're going to start with our green leaves. And I want to teach you a trick on how to make sure that your greens always work with your colors. So one way to do that is by blending some of the pinks or the other color you're using in with the green that you're going to use for the leaves. And I want to show you exactly how we do that. So I have a bunch of green here. I'm actually going to pull some of the pink I've been using into the grain. And then I'm going to add back a little more of my sap green here. But that's going to ensure that these greens and pinks will actually coordinate. We're going to go ahead and fill in the loop of the wreath here. We start off again, just like we practice, we're using them larger of our brushes. And we're going to make, make some leaves. Can do this and leave the center like we did on some of our practice leaves where you can go ahead and fill those in and the kind of string amount. Both techniques. And I'll make some little darker and some little lighter. Just one more. Squeeze water. Psi. And again, I like to add some of the darker pigment at the base or the tip of the leaf, just adds a little depth to the leaf. These aren't really supposed to look super realistic. But I think that adds a nice dimension to put something over on this side. And we're just going to work out from both sets of flowers here. Syllable single leaf. It looks like it's kind of dropping down. Who put them right next to each other. We're just going to kind of fill in some of the spaces. We're not going to fill in all the space because we're going to leave space for our ink. I find it helpful to turn the page and I'll do this a lot. I hope I don't make you dizzy, but I think it's easier to turn the page sometimes to get a better angle and also to keep track of the shape of the wreath, it's easier to kind of see it if you move it around and get a sense for, you know, if you're keeping it fairly round or if you're making more of an oval shape, which is also completely fine, Let's just keep making leaves, leaving some spaces and recognizing that we're going to go back with ink detail as well. Again, with a wet on wet, you can touch them while they're still wet and add more pigment if you want. And we can do some larger fatter leaves and then smaller leaves as well. So right here I'm going to hide a leaf. When did you half a leaf? So it looks like it's coming out from behind the rose to do a darker pigment we talked about that makes it look like there's a shadow to a darker pigment along the rows. And then with some water, just pull that out and see how it looks like that leaf is just popping out from behind the rose. I love that effect. And go back and add more depth. In all of these. I'm going to take a smaller brush now this is a six. You can use a six or four and some smaller leaves on a little sort of like stock just to fill out the shape a little more. I don't want it to get to full. So here we're going to make small leaf see the same motion. It's exactly the same motion as the larger leaves we did. Again, they're not precise, right? These are not perfect, perfectly shaped leaves. We're going to just pull out just the hint of like a stem right here. Let's, let's turn it again. Get a better angle, but it's still to doing the two little swatches to make each leaf. And again see how I'm leaving a little space. I want to talk some ink in there. I think it looks really neat when you mix it. So skin idea where you feel like it could use a little more green and a little more help with the circle shape that we're working for. I think this will help fill it out really nicely. I think you might be fun to lighten up our leaves a little. I'm going to add a little more green gold to the green that I had mixed up just to give it a slightly different, maybe brighter leaf. I'm going to make these a little bit smaller than our original ones, but not exactly. But you see, I was just a little bit of a variation to add a little green gold or even some olive green. We're just going to fill in a little bit more of the whitespace here. Not quite connecting everything, but just leaving it so we have a good circle shape or oval shape as it may be turning out to be. Remember, you can tuck leaves back behind other ones and sort of off and quote, outside of the reef. They don't have to all be in the perfect circle shape. See I like that. There's a little bit of contrast there. And that can be right next to each other too. So I feel like we're getting a good shape here. We're really filling in with green and I don't know if we need a lot more before we start our ink, we can always come back in and add more. But sometimes it's fun to add some leaves in the center. What would be the center of the reads to me, we'll add a couple here. So I think that's nice. And then there's kind of a space here. We could put like an ink leaf kinda in-between. And I think that would look really neat. So let's get started with our ink and the next section. 5. Inking Your Wreath: So I really like how this is looking. I hope you like the shape of yours. I think this is good right where it is, Let's make sure everything is dry now. And let's go and add some ink. So look at your whitespace and let's go ahead and add ink where we have these whitespaces. We can add some independent leaves or we can tuck them in behind our painted leaves. This is just a judgment call and how much ink you want to add or if you just want to leave it alone and not, not have any ink at all. Let's start by tucking a leaf here. We touch it right up to the edge and then, and then stop. Maybe one over here. Now it would go under that one. So c, I'm going to stop and draw my lines like it was tucked under. That looks like a really neat layered leaf. So pay attention to where your painted leaves are. And I think tucking the leaves under looks really cool. We add a center like that. It looks really neat. So let's just look around at our wreath and pick spots to add ink. Again. Let's turn it as we go. Here, I'm going to add the little leaves in where I left spaces. I think that's kinda neat. Maybe add one or two at the end. We can connect the little stems. It's kind of a cool effect. We'll do that over here. At your little leaf in here. Maybe add another one, just connect everything so it comes from the same stalk. And we're just gonna keep looking around. I think a leaf here would be neat. Tuck it behind the painted one. I think that's a nice detail and we can just look at the shape of the wreath and decide, here's a lot of whitespace over here. So maybe we'll just add a leaf that's on its own. Fill in that space. Maybe add one takeaway over here. And just, just keep looking at the shape and the whitespace on your wreath. Add one here right up against the rows, just like the one we painted. But now it's with ink tucked underneath. I think that looks really neat. They don't need to all connect to each other. We can kind of draw in stems as we go. And we said we could put one here. I think that would look neat. So let's add gold leaf tucked in behind these two. Kinda comes back in like that. It helps to make the painted leaves pop off the page. I feel like it gives it to mention right there where those kinda connect. Let's just add some ink leaves as we go and then we'll stop and take a look at where we are in a minute. So right here I'm going to add another little stem of leaves like we had painted. And instead of leaving space for an int leaf, I will leave a little space so we can add back in a painted leaf here. So I want to go in with a smaller paintbrush now and just add in leaves a couple of places here where we left space. Again, we're going to tuck it behind this other one. So I'm going to seem like the tip here and paint in behind. And I think there's just a few places I'd like to add some more green where it can tuck in behind the ankle IEP. So we've talked a lot of ink leaves right behind the painted leaves, but we haven't actually talked to me painted leaves back in. So I think we'll just pick a few spaces where we need a little more green. Go ahead and darken these. Pick a few spaces where we need more green here and then we'll go ahead and add some half leaves and right, like we tucked in behind the rose before. We'll just talk these behind our inked leaves. Remember, add the darker pigment at the edge, and then it really gives the effect that that leaf is over top, right is over top of this. It's casting a shadow on the painted leaf. And maybe it will take another half leaf here. Using the same technique, same way of painting it, just talking it back and adding a shadow. Let's finish off some final details in the next section. 6. Final Details and Thoughts: So I really like the way this is looking. I think we just need a little more ink to tie this all together. I want to add some details to the inked leaves and connect the dots here to make the stems of some of these leaves linked together. So I'm going to go in and make centers on the inked leaves. You don't have to do this. You can add little ones like we did in practice. You can add ones like this. I kinda just like to add these intricate back in just like it would look behind the other one. Makes sure that your paint isn't too wet at this point because you will smudge it with your hand. I do it all the time. Connect these leaves so they're growing from the same stalk. That looks neat. Should be filled in and connected some of these spaces that we've left open. At a center here you can see where it's again tucked underneath that that rose petal like to be consistent and do it all on all of my anchor leaves. Just checking to make sure that it lines up. So I'm liking this was forget sometimes to get all of them. So I have to keep looking back and making sure I haven't left any leaves without their center. That looks really great. We could leave it right here. You could stop right here if you, if you like, I'm going to continue a little bit and connect these leaves into the not kinda hanging out there in the middle of nowhere. Think that looks cool. And then keep looking at it. It doesn't need more. Could add ink on the painted leaves. I think I'm going to leave my patient lives alone, probably put me on these little ones. I'll just add little centers. I'm just going to plant my pen and kind of flick out a little center on these. That looks cool. Do that on all these little leaves. I think. You do want to make sure your paint is dry before you put ink on it or I'll just really blur and kinda get messy. So make sure those are dry. Took another leaf in here and then add centers. Okay, What do you think? I really like how this turned out and we're really happy with the way this looks. We could add ink to our roses, but kind of maybe want to leave them alone if you want to add ink detail, go ahead and do it just like we did in practice, but I'm loving this and I hope you had fun today. Please post your projects to Instagram and into the project site. And I love to share them and I'd love to hear your thoughts on my class. Happy painting.