Easy Watercolor: Modern Watercolor for Beginners

1. Intro to Easy Watercolor: Watercolor edges additive. I use watercolor for many years in a very amateur and shy way. It wasn't until I took the time to discover it fully that I entered into a fascinating creative world, that has become my obsession, and has helped me to develop myself, and go further into my career as an artist. My name is Roselyn Carr, I'm an illustrator, font designer, and watercolorist. I have worked over 10 years using different techniques such as watercolor, watch, font design, illustration, and hand lettering. I have been so lucky to sell my designs, applying these techniques on photo cards, templates, marketing products, albums, and more. In this class, we are going to learn everything you need to know to start watercolor in a fun and easy way. We're you're going to talk about materials, how to choose them, and do some tricks that made a huge difference in my daily practice. We will explore our color palette. Learn how to mix color, lining techniques, how to create textures and get confident with these lovely medium like never before. Also, we are going to paint easy exercises for you to combine all the techniques in a single project. At the end, you will feel comfortable playing around with watercolor and creating your own patterns and colorful compositions. I promise you will fall in love with watercolor just as I did. 2. Welcome!: One of the things that I love most about watercolor is that I can create something beautiful and unique out of nothing, It's just like magic. When I was little, my mom always had a crafty project on her hands. Whether crochet or a cross stitch pattern, or even a cache ceramic painting. Hardwood panels, acrylic paintings and brushes were always in our counter-top. Which allows me to create a sensitivity for creative projects. Having the freedom to create has been my motivation to make a living of art. Since 2008, I have sold my designs, art works, templates, and fonts all over the words to thousands of creatives in platforms like Etsy Images, Creative Market and my own website Birdesign. All these from my little studio in Costa Rica. I love watercolor mostly because it's so relaxing and versatile and inspontaneous. The lovely watercolor textures, the way the color blends with each other, and how you can try different styles with a single medium has made me fall in love with them over an over again. After 10 years of being a designer, I was still the on the fence related to color and finding my own greatest style as an artist until I decided to go forward and explore watercolor from the very basics. Since then, watercolor has helped me to develop a passion for color harmonies, colorful compositions, patterns, and loose style paintings. Watercolor doesn't have to be overwhelming. It's actually the most satisfying and relaxing medium I have worked with. Get ready because once you start, you will never stop again. Let's have fun. 3. Watercolor Materials: These are some of the supplies you will need to start on watercolor. However, you can start with any materials you already have. Quality materials are very important when you use watercolor. You can definitely get very different results from using one paper or another, the same with the paints and brushes. I want to share with you what are the brands and materials that have worked best for me. First, the paints. Watercolor comes in different presentations. Some of them come as tubes like these and some come already in a pan set. I use Winsor & Newton watercolors. For me, it's one of the best quality paints out there. The pigments are vibrant and the finish is very bright. I have used both a student grade paint as [inaudible] Cotman and currently I'm working with a professional grade, which works very well in terms of blending and finish. I have used the pan set, which was very useful when starting watercolor, mostly because it includes a wide variety of colors and that helped me to find my out favorites without spending too much buying all those colors as tubes. This is the palette I'm currently using and which has helped me to keep my work consistent and colorful. I have here, lemon yellow, deep yellow, ocher, cadmium orange, scarlet lake, opera rose, ultramarine violet. cobalt blue, persian blue, Permanent Sap Green, hooker's green, burnt umber and ivory black. This is like the basic palette and you don't need more than this. You will be surprised by the amount of colors and tones you can create just with them. I use a plastic palette where I put my watercolor paints, letting them dry overnight. This way, I keep my color palette updated with the colors I'm currently using. Maybe from time to time, I add a color that I feel I can reproduce with mixing, like this Cobalt Turquoise Light that is very bright or this Indigo color because I love to have it ready while painting a specific subject. Now the paper, when we paint with watercolor, we're going to use a lot of water. That is why we need thick papers that keep their shape while being wet. There are a wide variety of watercolor papers and you can try them on your own. But the quality of the paper will make a huge difference in your results. I have tried several kinds of watercolor papers and the one that has worked best for me is the Arches paper. That is the one that I find locally and it's known for being one of the best papers out there. It is 100 percent cotton and it's amazingly helpful because it allows you to have a lot of control while blending and making different watercolor effects. There are several kinds of watercolor papers, this is cold press, that is one of my favorites and I also have hot pressed paper. The main difference between them is their texture. Cold press paper has more texture and is my favorite for a loose watercolor style. I like the way it behaves when I'm blending colors. I will say that you need to try them both to see what kind of paper you prefer. But to start, I will recommend cold press paper. This is hot press paper. It has a very smooth texture, so it works very well for a detailed watercolor style and for projects when you need to scan your final artwork. May be if you want to have very smooth lines or edges, this could be the best option for you. Brushes, there are tons of brushes out there. My favorite brush is the round, mostly because it's so versatile and you can go from creating wide strokes, to creating fine lines with a single brush. I always have on hand, a round brush 12, one number six and one number two, for small details. It's a good idea to have a flat brush. I have two different sizes here. It's very good to make straight lines or shapes. The quality of your brushes is very important. What do you have to look for in a brush is a capacity to be flexible and hold enough water for your painting. The brush should be able to be pressed to create wide strokes and come back to its original shape when lifted to make fine lines, dots and little details. I usually have two glasses of water to clean my brushes. One for warm colors and the other one for cool colors. This way I prevent getting brown water into my painting. A paper towel is very handy to clean your brush, law bill by painting or even fix mistakes along the way. I also have a spray bottle of water to activate my palette when I'm going to start painting. These are the materials you will need to start. If you, don't have a color or a specific brush, don't stress yourself. You can start right away with the materials you already have. Let's get started. 4. Knowing your Palette: One of the things that helped me to improve my water coloring was to know my color palette. Experiment with the paints and with every color helped me to know all the possibilities I have with them. Watercolor is so versatile and I love it because with a single color, you can create a lot. In this exercise, we're going to learn all the possibilities we have with a single color and learn more about the values and transparencies. One of the aspects of watercolor is transparency. That means that with a single color, you can get several values or transparency's just by adding water. Value or transparency refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. In this exercise, we are going to experiment a little bit with the colors we already have and learn all the values we can get with a single color. I have here my warm colors and here my cool colors. But for this exercise, I will start with a lemon yellow and the warm colors, and then I will go in to do these part of the palette. First, I will activate the watercolor pigment with water. I will grab the pure pigment, in this case, lemon yellow deep. I will start here making the first shade of lemon yellow. Now, to make the second value, I will put the brush inside the water and paint a new swatch. This will be the second value for the lemon yellow. Again, I will do same, dip the brush into the water and paint the next value. This way, you can see that with more water, you will get a lighter value of the color. In this exercise, I'm using the pure pigment in the brush and I get the values as I add water. But you can do the same when painting by mixing the pigment with water in your painting palette. So here we have all the values we can get with lemon yellow deep, from the more saturated or darker shade to the lighter. Now, I'm going to do the same with the yellow ocher. I'll paint the first swatch, that is the pure color. I will dip my brush into water and paint the next value. Again with water, this is an excellent exercise for your eyes to learn all the tones you can get with a single color. It seems so simple, but just by painting this chart, you will know your palette and you will develop a better sense of the colors that will help you in the painting process. Now, I'm going to paint the chamomile orange in this color-like swatches. As I mentioned before, these are the colors I'm using, but you can do this exercise with the colors you already have. This exercise can help it to choose favorite tones, keep your palette consistent and put away tones that really don't match your style. Now, I'm going to paint with opera rose. This color is so vibrant and I love every shade of it. Also, it makes beautiful colors when combined with others. This is ultramarine violet. I was rinsing my brush in the glass water for warm colors, and now with the violet, am switching to the glass of cool colors. Sometimes you will notice that you will need to help a little bit the swatch to be darker. For instance, this swatch is lighter than expected. So I will add just a little bit of pigment to match their scale of transparencies. Now, I'm going to paint with a cool colors, cobalt blue, permanent sap green, and hookers green. Finishing here with brown, amber, and these beautiful shades. So now we have here all the values of each color of our palette. You can make like this, or you can make just three to five shades of each color. Anyway, this is a good exercise to know your palette and materials and know your possibilities. In the next chapter, we're going to learn how to mix colors and develop a consistent color palette with them. 5. Color Mixing: Mixing water colors is a lot of fun. You would get surprised by the amount of colors you can get using in just two colors. Painting mixing charts is a great exercise for you to learn more about your color palette and even develop your own style. These are some mixing charts I had done, they're so informative and beautiful at the same time. The good thing is that as you go with this practice, you are going to get a better sense of what colors to combine for one subject or other, and your painting process will become more relaxed and enjoyable. Mixing chart will let you know what are the possibilities when mixing two colors. For instance, here, I mix cobalt blue, with lemon yellow. You can see all the possibilities of colors that you can create with them, from bright green to turquoise. In this side you can see all the variety of colors from upper rows, lemon yellow, including three different values for each done. This lovely exercise will provide you with a lot of information about your watercolors. Also, it gives you the tools to develop your color palette and find out your favorite color combinations, to paint with more ease and confidence. In this exercise, I will mix amber rose with lemon yellow, and then I will mix cobalt blue with lemon yellow. But, you can do any color combination you feel inspired to. We're going to start by making the first row of one of the colors that we're going to combine. In this case, amber rose. Here I have the first swatch at the boroughs. Then, like in the previous exercise, I will dip the brush into the water and make a lighter shade of this color. For this color mixing chart, I will do three different shades of each color. Again,I will add water to make the third transparency of amber rose. This will get a little bit messy now, since I'm going to make the first color combination, I'm rubbing the pure pigment of amber rose with my brush and now I would grab just a little bit of lemon yellow. Here we have a new swatch, made with amber rose and lemon yellow. With the brush as it is, I will deep into water and make a lighter value of this same color mix. Again, I will add water to make a lighter shade. Now I have three different shades of these beautiful pink. With the same pigment I have here, I will make the second color combination to get a color that will be 50 percent of the amber rose and 50 percent of lemon yellow deep. We are getting a more beach color and I will continue painting that free values of it. One more time, using the color combination I have in my palette, I will grab more lemon yellow and less of amber rose, to make the next batch that will look more yellowish. Now with my brush clean and with water, I will clean the lemon yellow paint to take off any amber rose pigment from paint. Now that is clean, I will rub the pure pigment of lemon yellow to complete the mixing chart with the pure color of this combination. Now we have this beautiful chart with the colors we can get between upper rows and lemon yellow deep. It becomes a little bit messy in your palette, but is a lot of learning. Besides this chart , I will do a second color chart combining cobalt blue with lemon yellow deep. I will start by grabbing the pure pigment of cobalt blue. Then I will do lighter values of it. I'm doing these charts in a very relaxed way. I'm not doing great to make this course perfect. You can do it just like this, or with the squares or circles. The idea is to have fun, enjoying playing with the colors. I will grab the pure pigment as cobalt blue and add a little bit of lemon yellow to get the first color between them. Now, I will mix the colors to get a swatch right in between the two colors. We could say, this one is the first green shade we're getting from these colored combo. Now without adding any pigment and just using what I have in my pallet, I will run for more of the lemon yellow, to get a color that will be a lighter and brilliant green tone. I think that, this color is my favorite in this color mixing chart. Finally, I will clean all this mess here with water, plaining the brush in the towel. To get rid of any blue pigment, to close the chart with lemon yellow deep. Now we have our color mixing charts done. They are very helpful and for this purpose, I need only two color combinations. But you can experiment combining your favorite colors. I'm sure you will get new shades that will help you develop your RA color palette. Anyway, just by doing this exercise, you will get a lot of knowledge in a new sense of what colors you can get when mixing. I can't wait to see you in the next lesson. 6. Blending: Wet on wet technique: In this video, we are going to learn blending techniques as known as wet and wet. Wet and wet happens when you apply the color over a wet surface, whether with water or paint, creating these beautiful color blooms, radiants and unique effects of watercolor. Let us step in. We are going to start by learning how to make a radiant. For that, you can grab any color you want. I will use upper rows here. First am activating the color with the water and grabbing the pure color fit. I'll make a line here and I want it to be saturated, so, I will grab more paint. Now, I will dip the brush in the water. I have to get more water, and I will pull the color all the way down. One more time, I'll grab more water, and I will pull the colors down. This is a way to make our radiant. Also, you can make radiants combining two colors. First, get a color to start, put it into paper. I didn't get enough water here. I will start with a line and now, I will grab a little bit of other color combining both to get the shade between them. I'm cleaning a little bit my brush, and I will get more of the color I want to make radiant. In this case, I'm looking to finish my radiant with lemon yellow. A little bit more of lemon yellow. This is how you can combine two different colors, making a gradient with the shades between them. You start with one color then you add a little bit of the second color, and you can even add more colors, it depends on what you're looking for. Here, I'm going to gloss with more lemon yellow. So now, we have two ways to create radiants, pulling the color just with water or pulling the color using another color. Another way to blend, is by adding the paint to the wet paper. Here, I'm making a rectangle with water and once the paper is wet, you can add the paint. I will use cobalt blue. You can do it in the side just like this, and the color will flow where the water is. You can dip inside the damp area to make shadows or accents of color. The more you dip in the water, the more color you will get in your painting. This is so relaxing and fun to do, and the color will surprise you as it changes when drying. You don't need to overdo it. This technique is very smooth and it represents perfectly watercolor and it's beautiful textures. Another way to blend, is by adding color to paint. First, I will paint a base of color, with enough water for the pigments to flow. While the paint is wet, I will add another color. Here, I will make a spots of lemon yellow. Usually, I use this technique when I paint flowers or petals. It's like making spots of color and it looks so beautiful and organic once is dry. Here, I will try with another color. I can make lines or shapes. The paint could behave in different ways depending on the area and the amount of water. But always, the paint will flow towards the water. Another way of blending is when two shapes touch each other while being wet. I would start by painting a circle. You have to have two wet areas that touch each other for the blending to happen. I will paint an orange circle next to the first one, and you will start noticing how the color blends in the area where they meet. You can push the color a little bit or you can leave it, letting the blending to happen naturally. We can make a similar blend using only water. For that, I will paint a blue circle first. Now, I will rinse and clean my brush. I will grab just water to make another circle next to the first one. That color will start flowing to the new shape, creating a soft shade of cobalt blue. Sometimes you will notice the color moving one way or the other. It depends on how much water you have in the surface and how much water and pigment you're applying. Watercolor is beautiful for all this surprises it has, and that's the beauty of this medium. I hope you have enjoyed this practice, it was a lot of fun, and I will see you in the next chapter when we are going to speak about wet and dry technique. 7. Layering: Wet on dry technique: You can also achieve more detail finishes by adding layers of color. This technique is named wet on dry or layering. Wet on dry means that you apply the color over a dry surface, where the bond paper or layer of paint that is already dry. This technique is perfect if you want to add details to your painting or add them to your objects, also if you want to overlap layers. Let's get started. To start this exercise, I will paint a first layer of elements. You can paint circles, lines, or any shape you like to overlap with order shapes and see together how layering works. Also, I will paint a leaf to show you how you can use layering to add details to any specific subject. Now, I can start layering over these painting. I will do a couple of circles overlapping this one. I will paint a blue circle here. As the paint is dry, you can notice that the color is not blending but instead layering forming a defined shape with a color between pink and blue. I will paint another circle here using yellow. They look like bubbles of color. Here you can notice the new colors where the circles overlap. This technique is known as layering or glazing. Overlapping lines is so much fun. Here, I have painted orange and yellow lines. Now, I'm going to overlap pink and red lines between them. Now, I'm going to make another triangle here overlapping the first one. This is wet and dry. This technique is also useful to add shadows and details to your subjects. For instance, I painted this leaf and I will use wet on dry technique to add contrast and detail to it. I'm planning to add banes to the leaf. I will use my round brush number 2. I'm grabbing dark green and with it, I will start painting the banes on the leaf. Now, you have learned how to apply wet on dry and I invite you to get creative and practice any of these exercises, whether overlapping shapes or adding details to a subject once it's dry. 8. How much water? Master watercolor: Hello, we're going to speak about water control. One of the most common questions when learning watercolor, is how much water shall I use? There's not a right answer for that. It depends on how much water you're brush holds, and the area you are going to paint whether if it's a leaf, or if you are going to paint an entire page or a landscape. Please, notice that the quality of your paper is very important when controlling the water. I have not used that when I'm using 100 percent cotton paper, I have more control, less watermarks, since the water dries more even, and the pigments blends better. In this lesson, we are going to learn water control and even how to fix mistakes along the way. First, we're going to see what happens when we don't use enough water? I'm getting a pigment and I didn't get enough water, and you can notice the dry brush effect. That paper texture will be more noticeable and paint doesn't flow over the surface. When you use too much water for a small area, you will start noticing portals forming in the shape. The painting will get strong watermarks, ones it's dry. We're going to let this circle dry here, for you to see the final result. Sometimes when you are going to paint, you will see a big drop in the tip of your brush. That means that you have too much water, and it won't be helpful if you want to paint a small area. Instead of putting the brush in paper, you can blot it beforehand in your paper towel. Now, I can apply the color. We don't have an excess of water. If you are noticing that you have a lot of water, when you are painting or puddles forming your shape, you can use your brush to absorb any excessive water, em-blotted in your paper towel. Sometimes happens that you paint with a color, and then you realize that it's darker than you expected. You can fix that. You just have to clean your brush, and with your brush clean and dried, you can leave the color. With your brush, you are going to absorb the color and lift it. You can use your towel to clean your brush when doing this. This is a good technique, If you don't want the color, or you want it to be lighter, or if you want to fix something. Sometimes by mistake, I get a drop of color on my paper, or maybe I did something that I don't like. Here we show you how to fix it quickly. I immediately rinse my brush and put clean water over the paint. With the paper towel, I absorb the water and [inaudible] If you are still noticing color in your paper, you can repeat the same process. Putting more water with your brush, rubbing a little bit, and absorbing again with the paper towel. This is possible only with high quality papers, the arches or any 100 percent cotton paper. We're going to let these dry completely, and you will see the final result of this exercise in the next chapter. 9. Let's play with watercolor textures: In this video, I'm going to show you some picture you can get with watercolor using different techniques. I'm going to use red. This is a scalar lake, so you can notice the textures even more clearly. Here, I'm using the color very saturated, and I will paint three circles. I will paint them quickly, because I want them to be wet to apply the textures. Let's start adding the textures. One of the most bubbler textures is made by adding salt. This texture is strong, so you just have to add a few salt rains. Where you're going to let the salt there and wait for the paint to be absorbed. Another texture you can get is by adding clean water to your wet paint. Here, I have my clean brush with water and I will put little drops over the surface and immediately a texture will show up making live watermarks. You can get another texture, just by using a paper towel to lift the color from an area. This texture is very noticeable and you can use it for making clouds, skies, or add clarity to your painting. Another texture you can meet with watercolor, is by using your dry brush. You can use this to fill an area or make lines, it depends on your style and this object you're painting. Let's go back to the circle. I want to show you that, you can make these wide watermarks bigger and more contrasting just by tipping more and more water. The more you tip, the more pronounced will be the watermark. This works very well when you're painting galaxies, a moon, or some kind of landscapes. Now, we are going to wait for this texture to dry to observe the final finish. Now, that the exercise from the previous lesson is right, we can notice the big watermark I got when using too much water. This is the circle where we use the right amount of water. Now, this is dry and I can take off the salt from the painting. The salt absorbed the paint and left some white spots. This is the final texture of the drops of water, the texture with the paper towel and the dry brush. Notice that these textures are so organic and unpredictable. I invite you to this practice, play around with them, and maybe you'll feel inspired to include them in your future paintings. See you in the next lesson. 10. Let's paint circles: Wet on wet technique: In this video, we're going to paint a circle composition to practice blending. It's going to be a lot of fun and you will end up with a lovely and easy design artwork. I love using all the colors. I have done this painting before, making a rainbow with circles, so I'm going to use a lot of colors here. I'll start by making a pink circle. Sometimes you don't need to grab more pigment, but to grab water and pull the color to finish the shape. For the purpose of applying the wet and wet technique, I'm going to use enough water, so the shapes keep wet while I paint more circles around them. I will use only water to make a second circle here. This way, I can pull the upper rows to make a new transparency of the same color. Here I can push a little bit more of the pink color into the new circle. I'm going to paint more circles of different sizes and colors, applying the wet and wet technique between them. For these circles composition, I love moving from one color to other, forming a rainbow. I'm going to paint with more warm colors like orange, red, and yellow here and then I will incorporate purples and some cool tones. Remember that for the blending to happen, both shapes should be wet, so it's important to use enough water in your shapes for them to be wet as you advance in your composition. I'm going to paint here a light red circle and as you notice, they touch each other and now the light orange is coming into the light red circle. This practice is so relaxing and it allows you to practice blending, color mixing and even, muscle memory with your brush. You can experiment with different shapes, sizes, and colors. As you go you can stop and then step back to notice if you like the way it is or if you need to add more contrast or variety to your shapes. For instance, I'm noticing, I need to add a little bit of contrast and this is why I'm painting a dark-blue little circle here. In finishing, I add a couple of green circle at the bottom. I love the way it looks now and I can't wait to see your blending creations. See you in the next lesson. 11. Let's paint lines: Wet on wet technique: In this lesson, we are going to practice more of wet-on-wet technique, creating gradients and blendings. We're going to paint our patterns of lines, and get ready because this is going to be so satisfying and relaxing. Now, we're making another exercise where you can practice more of color blending using wet on wet technique. For that, I will use these two flop brushes, this is a number 12, and this one is at three quarters of an inch. They are perfect to paint extra lines and that is what we are going to do in this exercise. I'm going to start with the 12 brush. For this practice, you can go with any color harmony. I will combine bright colors just because I love them, and I love to see how they blend with each other. Let's start painting along line in the page, and when the colors starts to fade, I can add more water, or I can add another color. Here, I'm going to change the color to orange. This way you can practice creating gradients. Now, I'm going to paint a line next to the first one. I will leave a very small space between them, so that when they touch each other, a beautiful bloom will show up. These flat brushes don't hold too much water, so you have to charge the brush more frequently. In the same line, you can use 1-3 colors to practice blending and gradients. Here I'm going to paint a yellow line from the beginning to the end. Now, I'm going to switch to the biggest brush to make a wider line, adding variety to the pattern. In the next minutes, I will work in the painting trying now different colors and line sizes to finish this colorful pattern. As you move forward with your painting, you are going to start seeing color blooms, and beautiful blendings between the lines. I used a lot of color contrast here, combining warm and cool colors, but you can choose your favorite color harmony for this exercise. I hope you have enjoyed this easy and fun practice, and I can't wait to see your version of this pattern. See you in the next lesson. 12. Let's paint triangles: Wet on Dry technique: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're going to practice these wet and dry technique or layering. First, I am going to paint a layer of filaments and once it is dry, I will do a second layer overlapping the objects. I will start by panting several triangles. These will be the first layer. I will paint triangles of different colors and sizes. I love using basic shapes like these and making them overlap because they look so organic but perfect at the same time, and also I love combining around colors. One of my favorite things to do is creating patterns like this. I'm going to use scarlet leaves or a little bit of opera rose, also cobalt blue, and lemon yellow. [MUSIC] So this is going to be the first layer and I'm going to wait for the paint to dry before layering. This is completely dry, and now I can add the second layer of triangles. You can play around making new colors to see what chase you can get when they overlap like here, I'm going to add a little bit of lemon yellow to make a more brilliant color with opera rose. [MUSIC] Then I will paint some blue triangles. [MUSIC] You can even make shapes that overlap with two colors by these yellow triangles. [MUSIC] Also you can paint different shapes and sizes to make the pattern more dynamic, organic and balanced. [MUSIC] We have here a lovely pattern made with layering. Also, I included a little bit of wetting technique here where I poured the coloring to another shape. But the main purpose of this exercise was to play around with overlapping shapes and colors using the wet and dry technique. I hope you have enjoyed this project and can't wait to see your own creation. 13. Let's paint a cactus: Combining techniques: In this lesson, I will show you how to combine both techniques in a single project. Wet on wet for blending and wet and dry to a detailed stereo painting. For that we're going to be a beautiful cactus. I would make combination of permanent sap green and Hooker's green. First, I'm going to paint the left side of the cactus with a dark shade of green. I will add here a little bit of sap green. Now just with water, I will pull the big marker to paint the outer side of the cactus. As you can see here, I have shadows on one side and more light on the other giving that to the painting. Here, I will add a little bit of who Hooker's green to make this side just a little bit darker. Now with the darker green, I will paint in the first cactus leaf. I want to make a lighter shade here in the base of the leaf. For that, I will use the same dark green, pushing the pavement past the cactus base. While the paint is wet, I can add a little bit of lemon yellow in the leaf and the base of the cactus to make a spots of light. Now I'm going to paint the outer leaf. I will use a light shade of green and then I will add some shadows with sap green. Now I'm going to paint some pink flowers at the top of the leave. Here, does depend a little bit with the brush and as you can see here, the pink is blending with the green and am adding a little bit more of the upper rose. Now I'm going to add a little bit of the lemon yellow to make an axiom in the center of the flowers. Since the base of the cactus is still wet, I can make some lines with the darker green. These lines will safely blend with light green. After adding some shadows in the green, I will let the painting dry before adding the final details. Now the painting is dry and I can add a layer of details. You've seen my round brush number two, I'll grab a very dark shade of green and I will use the tip of the brush in 45 degrees angle to make the ferns of the cactus. You can make them to look very organic by painting them in groups of two or three thorns. They don't have to look like a perfect pattern. You can paint them filling the cactus with virility. If you want, you can have little [inaudible] or shapes of flowers using a darker pink. I was just on fine lines to define the petals of the flowers. This is ready. I hope you have enjoyed this project and can't wait to see your watercolor cactus. 14. Let's paint flowers: Combining techniques: Paint flowers. Flowers are among the most popular septics when painting with watercolor. In this lesson, I will show you how to use landings when painting a loser style flower composition. First, I'm going to paint simple flowers in the center of the page. I will start using a very light shade of Averroes and our being here at double of pedals. Now, I will grab a little bit of lemon yellow to make different shades of these color combination in the same flower. I will make here the second flower and here I will grab just water to make mirror pedals. As you notice, sometimes I grab color and sometimes I just pulled the color using water. Here am going to paint around the flower. This is a very loose a style painting, so the idea is to have fun, experiment with the shades, and color combinations. Now I'm going to add contrast here with red flower. I'm using a scarlet lake and I will paint some pedals here in the back. Forget how these beautiful colors touch each other and safely blend together. I can start adding some greens in the back. That is that when the painting is still wet, blues of colors show up when the shapes connect with each other. That's the beauty of this medium. You can use different shades of green, that way your branches will be more organic and interesting. You can mix us you go or you can prepare the colors beforehand in your palate, and then the way you will play with more flow in its. As this flower is still wet, you can have an accent in the center of the flower. I will put a lot of lemon yellow here and the second flower is dried already, so the blending is not happening. Instead, the yellow accents will be more defined, which actually looks fine. Now that the painting is completely dried, I can't add the final details. For instance, I can add contrast to the red flower. I'll paint with more saturated red in the center. I love finishing flowers, adding contrast in their center. Usually I use the darker at dawn, I have use dark blue, purple, brown, and sometimes black. In this case, I will use a dark brown made with Barn Amber and a little bit of hybrid black. Here, I'm using my number 6, and with the brown color, I will paint little drop shapes in the center of the flower. It can make them with different shapes going now that [inaudible] in different directions to make them look more organic. I love to make the center of the flowers darker, mostly because that's more contrast to your painting. But is up to you and your style, you can make the center of the flower lighter too. For that, I would recommend using watch that is more opaque medium. Watch words very well over watercolor when you need to add details with white or yellow. With this little touches am finishing this flower composition, so there you have it. For me, it's perfect the way it is, but you can add details or veins to your leaves if you want. I really enjoy painting these simple flower composition. I want to thank you for watching this lesson. This was an easy exercise to practice everything we have learned until now. See you in the next lesson. 15. Let's paint carrots: Combining techniques: In this video we are going to combine both layering and blending. For that we are going to paint carrots. Let's get started. I will start by painting the shape of the carrot, only with water. This looks a little bit orangey, but it's because the water is already orange. Now, I will use a little bit of orange pigment to add color to the shape. I will make it softly only on the edge of the carrot. I have used orange in one side and I will use some more reddish color in the other one. I have a lot of water here, and I will absorb it and clean it in the paper towel. Now, with lemon yellow and a little bit of cadmium orange, I will paint the second carrot. I will add a little bit of the color and then pull it with water to make a lighter yellow color. I will add a lighter shade of yellow on the side, and a more dark color on the right side. I'm going to paint it just with little touches to make them organic. I want to make sure not to over do it with the brush to preserve the water color texture. The next carrot will be more pink. I will use opera rose and a little bit of cadmium orange to paint it. As you can see the colors start to blend together, making a very interesting composition. I want to add more opera rose in this side. That way, I will refine more the shape of the color, and add some shadows. As the water dries, the colors start to set softy, and the watercolor picture starts to show up like magic. I can start working on the greens. Here I'm grabbing permanent sap green and a pinch of lemon yellow. I'll start painting these branches here, going to one side, and I'm going to make sure to add wide variety of shades of green here. I will start painting the leaves by tipping with the brush in the paper. I would recommend you to research beforehand the subject you want to paint, whether observing the real object, or looking for pictures of it in Pinterest, or books, so you can have a better idea of how the carrot leaves would look like. I'll first make some branches and then I will add leaves. In this part, I will be switching from dark to light shades of green using lemon yellow, sap green, and several shades between them. Now that the carrots are dried, I can add their final details. I'm using here my rub brush number two, and with a darker orange, I will start adding lines to the carrot. Here, and I want to make them organic in one side and the other. For the yellow carrot, I pick a light orange. Finally, for the pink carrot, I'm going to use a color combination between cadmium orange and opera rose. This project was so easy but satisfying at the same time. I can't wait to see your creations in the project section.