Experience Watercolours: Welcome Spring! Snowdrops

1. Welcome and Supplies: Hi and Melinda Wild. Welcome to another session of experience. Watercolors. Well, spring has sprung where I'm from on the west coast of Canada, and we have these gorgeous little surprises coming up in the garden. One of my favorites are the Snowdrops. They're so fresh and clean and beautiful, such harbingers of spring. So I really wanted to share this exercise with you where we're gonna create them coming up through the snow. Although the snow has all melted here, but often there is still snow when they do come up. At any rate, I hope you'll join me and we'll have some fun creating these gorgeous little snowdrops. Let's just take a moment and talk about supplies. We've got £140 arches, cold pressed paper, a little bit graphite paper. You can also use a soft pencil, which I'll talk about in just a moment. You will need a pencil for transferring your image onto your watercolor paper. Uh, one inch flat and around. Doesn't really matter what size as long as it's not too small a song as it comes to a decent point. So and then our basic materials masking tape, a water bucket here on absorbent rag on my right. I'm right handed. So everything's on my right hand side that I'm gonna be using and some masking fluid as well. Okay. I think that's everything. And Oh, paint. Uh, here we go. We're gonna have a very simple palette today. Going to use some Carmine. You can see it in through here. So lovely shade. Um, I will use ultra marine and burnt Sienna combination. We're going to use that to mix this neutral. It's in here and maybe a little bit of yellow. And get that greeny color. We may have to make some turquoise in with it. So pretty limited palette. If you've got thes four colors, you're good to go. And that's about it. Here we go. 2. Transfer and Mask: So here's where we're headed. And I just wanted to mention something about the paper. Now I use are just £140 cold press, and they do have I don't know if you can see it there. They do have their logo on the corner. If that bothers you, you can just flip it over and paint on the other side. And that's the beauty of really good paper. You can paint on both sides. So we're gonna take this down and then I'm gonna take this pencil drawing that I've done line drawing that I've done of the image, which is You can see. It's the same image there, and we're just going to tape it down and transferred onto our watercolor paper. There are a couple of ways you can transfer onto your watercolor paper so the graphite paper slides underneath like so and then you just draw over top of your image. Not pressing too hard because you don't want to make a dent in your watercolor paper, and you don't want to make a mark that's so strong it won't erase off later, but you can see that that transfers beautifully. The other possibility If you don't have any graphic paper handy, you can take a soft pencil a 246 b and turn this over and you can graphite on the back of your image and then back over. I would do the whole image that I don't want to waste time here doing that. But I just want to show you how it goes. And then you can flip that up. You can see that that also works. So either a soft pencil, excuse me or some graphite paper, and away we go. So I've transferred this onto my watercolor paper like so. And by the way, this image is in the project section of this class, so you can upload it and use it directly. Now, I can take the take off of there because I have the image transferred onto my watercolor paper. Now I'm going to mask all of this, so I just want to talk a little worried about masking fluid. It will wreck your clothes. It will wreck your, um, brushes unless you soap them. So you want to so pure brush really, really well, right up into the feral of the brush. And then when you dip into your masking fluid on Lee did halfway up the bristles. And when you finished your masking job, wash your brush immediately. So I'm gonna mask this. You don't need to watch that, and I'll see you in a moment. 3. Background: so here I've mass this, and I just wanted to mention a couple other things about masking fluid. Be sure it's good and dry before you proceed with your painting and you'll know what's dry when you touch it and it doesn't come off on your finger. It always feels a bit tacky, so don't worry about it. Feels a bit tacky, but just as long as it doesn't come off on your finger, then you know you're OK to go. The other thing is I didn't be a moves. I put it up on the corner of my board instead of putting it in the corner of my palette. I don't like to put it anywhere near my paints, because if it gets mixed in with them, it just makes such a mess. Um, the other thing is, you wanna wash your brush immediately as soon as you finish your masking a job. And if you're blow drying, which I often do between layers, be careful not to blow dry. Too close and too hot. If you get this too hot will actually adhere to your watercolor paper, and it will not come off. So there's a couple tips about masking fluid and let's get to paint. So the first thing we need to do is mix a nice neutral. So I'm gonna make some ultra marine blue and some burnt sienna, and I'm gonna add more ultra Marine than burnt Sienna because I wanted to be a little bit bluer than pure great. I'm just gonna move that out of the way so I don't end up splashing it. Okay, here we go. Make a nice puddle, Ultra marine and burnt sienna. It makes a lovely gray, and you can push it, as I said to the blue or to the brown, whichever you prefer. I like to the blue because we're in a snow scene and it's kind of has a cooler feel to it. Then if it's a bit bluer and you contest your test your color on a piece paper to see that you like it, you see, I like that. I think that's a lovely neutral, so I'm going to stick with that. Actually might just mix a little bit more because I don't want to run out. And there's nothing worse than what I call chasing paint when you didn't mix enough in the first place. And then you have to try and remix in the middle of your painting. Well, everything is wet and drying and you end up scrambling. Okay, let's get to painting. First thing is, we're gonna wet the whole thing. So with the whole background, be a good weather because we don't want any hard edges at this point, just all soft. And if it's on a wet background, every edge will be soft. Way go. I'm gonna take a little bit of my carmine. Not too heavy, just a little bit soft. Actually, my brush isn't very clean. Every go thing, that out of it, that's better. See, that's a bit brighter. Okay, let's just just kind of flop in my brush around, kind of rolling it in my fingers like this. Just play with it and enjoy. And you're the shapes and the way it meanders on your page. You can, even if you want, take a little moisture out of your brush, hold your fingers close to the page, and then just do. This kind of makes a pretty background, too, at any rate. Now I'm gonna take some of that neutral while everything's down and I'm kind of going to strategically place it behind or over top of the snowdrops. You don't want to make them each look like they have a gray or so, you know, be strategic about it. But you do want them to stand out. Once we take the mask off and they won't stand out, they just be against white paper. Unless we get some of that gray on there, that great can just mander right off the page here and be meander off. They're a little bit. I don't want to put too much of it down here because this is where we're going to have the lost and found edges of the snow. And I'll show you what I mean by just pointing to this. You see, if we have too much gray down here, we won't be able to put in these edges. That suggests snow. Okay, but we do want to have some around the background of the flowers. Great. I think that should do it. Maybe I'll just do a little bit of this with the gray. Kind of makes it a little more special, and I think we'll drive that. See you in a moment 4. Create Crevices: So the next step is to create the what I call lost and found edges or the divots in the snow. So the first thing I'm going to do is take a little bit of that neutral that I mixed. And I'm going to create an edge. And I'm gonna make it a little bit on the lumpy side because I'm thinking it's sort of corn snow in the spring. It's not real smooth. Just gonna run it along here, maybe make some of it a bit deeper than not my brush, make it a little thirsty on my rig and come from the clean into the dirty and just soften all the way along here. Clean my brush again, Just soften and soften. Soften. Here we go. This way we make a little hole in the snow. Well, let's just carry on. That's a bit straight. So maybe it's just mix it up a little, make it a little more interesting. Cleaning my brush again, starting in the clean and softening into the church. You better. All right, I'm gonna carry on with that. That little dip it I think maybe meander along here. Do you have it come up a little again. I want to keep those edges a bit lumpy. Good. If you had a little coffee or something before you did this, you had the Gits. You could just meander along and it would just do it for itself. Okay? Cleaning the brush, making it thirsty and again softening. All right, so we want hard edge and then a soft edge. Let's create a little more. Think put one up here a little bit. Okay? I'm watching those edges, making sure they're a little bit a little bit poky because it's corn. Snow. It's not smooth. Winter smell. It's spring snow. And then again off the top here. Alright, How about down here? We've got a whole lot of stems coming out of snow. I really want accentuate that. So I don't want to go any lower than the bottom of my stem with this edge. Create a couple with them along here, clean my brush, make it thirsty and soften cleaning it. Sometimes you have to clean it a couple of times because it picks up painted. You go along. Okay. Hopefully you can see how this is beginning to look. So these air poking out of a hole in the snow. That's what we're after. Okay, I think we'll take that to the dryer. I don't want to leave you out of the loop. I decided this was maybe a bit too soft. So I'm adding a little more pigment, ultra marine and burnt sienna to my mix so I could make thes holes a little bit deeper and color just meandering in there again, which you can do quite nicely. I don't want them to be super dark, but I just felt they were a little bit wimpy. Here we go. Just make that a little bit stronger. Especially these ones that air in the foreground. Maybe just put a little deeper color. This is gonna make thes snowdrops pop out really nicely once we get the mask off. Yeah, I'm happier with that. Okay. See you soon. 5. Remove Mask/Paint Greenery: so now it's time to remove Are masking fluid. You can do that with this handy dandy masking fluid remover or an eraser. Just please don't use your finger, because that adds a lot of oil to the surface of this 101 100% cotton paper, so it makes a little harder for the paper to accept the pigment after that. So again, I'm gonna use my a mask. Include remover. It's the easiest to just stick so beautifully that I can see how easily that comes off. I must make sure your pages good and dry, though, before you try to remove it, We are OK. Time to paint the snowdrops. Let's start with the greenery. I'm going to mix up a tiny bit of my yellow on my turquoise. She's a greeny blue. The ultra Marine we used earlier is a purple E blue with more yellow notice. I don't clean my brush. I'm kind of dirty painter. Can you feel like it wants to be a little bit less Sharpton that some adding a tiny bit of sienna to that a little too much sienna. Here we go back into the yellow and a little more turquoise. Really? Get a green I'm happy with. Might stick a little Prussian in there. That's my darkest blue. Okay, think that work. Cleaning out my brush. First thing I'm going to do, I'll paint this big guy right down here. Just going to add a little water to it. So and I'm gonna pick up my yellow drop a bit of yellow in there first. Then I'm gonna take the green. I mixed, and these snowdrops have kind of straight down the center of them down the center of their these. Here we go. Someone said I'm just my mask and food Wasn't very pointy swimmers making it into a point with the paint drawing down on other stuff. So it may run a bit into the yellow, which is kind of what I want. Fact, it's a little bit drier than I wanted to be. Clean out my brush, make it thirsty, and just run those two colors together a little bit better because I don't want this leaf to look outlined, which it does right now. So I have to fix that, adding a little bit more green pigment in there. There we go. And especially down here where it starts to tuck in. I definitely want more green. Darker green. Is it tucks into the grass or not the grass? This? No. In this case, this gives us a nice transition from a darker greening into the yellow and down into a darker green at the bottom. All right, let's try the next one. I don't want to paint any that are too close because I don't want to leave together at this point. It's just moist in this. Take it down. There we go. Can with a touch of her yellow, especially on that curve where it might be catching a bit more light. Pick up green to go through there, right along this it see the colors are running together and like that, with more green still feel like greens a bit. Unbelievable. Make it more earthy. Adding a little more CNN to the mix, cleaning my brush, making at thirsty and just softening this edge here where they're not bleeding together very well like that. Okay, we should probably work on maybe this piece of greenery now, but I need thes two to drive because they don't want them all running together. so just take it to the blow dry for a moment. So we're ready to carry on with our greenery. But there's something I want to mention first when we get to the point where the greenery intersects the white part of the flower. Not a bad idea to reinstate some of the interior lines just so you know where the weights and begin and the greens end. So this little line here goes like so like so. And if you just look at the drawing that I've uploaded or the one that you used to transfer , you be able to see these lines. And I'm also including a few photographs of snowdrops so that you'll know how they really look in real life. OK, there we go. So we know we want greenery Teoh here greenery to hear greenery to here and then we're into the white flour. All right, let's take some of green. It's handy at this point if you have to. Brush is to work with if you don't know problem, but just saves you having to clean up your brush because I'm gonna moist in this area with one brush all the way down like So pick up my green. Just drop it around the bottom edge here, and I'm hoping it'll run, but if I didn't make it moist enough, it won't. So then I'll go back in with my clean, thirsty brush and just soften it. There we go. I want to leave a little highlight right in the middle of this bowl because that's what will make it appear around gonna just a little moisture to this. There we go way down and then on the underside. That's where I'm gonna lay the color. Assuming the latest from overhead Keogh very carefully down one side of this skinny little stem. And then maybe we'll just put a little highlights there. Or low lights. I guess you'd call him, and then maybe a tiny little bit on the other side of stamps. We want to leave that light down the center if we can. Just gives the whole thing a little more around. Look, all right, now, once we get into that little spro teething up top, I'm not gonna wet it because it's such a tiny little area. I'm just gonna paint into their and then I'll take my thirsty brush and just soften it. Can we go? All right now? We also have little bits of the stem that comes down to here, through here and into the snow. So let's just paint those in. They come in behind these leaves or pedals whatever you want to call them. Here we go. All right, let's just carry on through this moistening stopping because we've got a flower there. Way down. Just do one of the time. Don't try to do all your leaves at once because, um, you'll end up having it dry on you, and that's frustrating. You wanna work into it? Well, it's with It's wants a little bit more color. So I'm just gonna go again, get a bit deeper, socking it my brush so it starts to look around. Let's just pull this piddle right down into there. Make a nice, dark separation between those two. There's that little strip, the center, and to get a little more depth on this guy, think too. Sometimes it's scary to use those darker shades, but you can always soften it off with your clean, thirsty brush. All right, let's do this guy. Where did you come from? This is a little bit thicker, so I am gonna add a bit of moisture to it, cause I have a little more room to work in there again. Just with my really fine point and softening it off. Leaving these highlights of white paper are really important to make the whole painting come alive. Okay, Last one extra first and pigment to keep going back for more pigment. It's very easy to work on a painting and forget toe. Load your brush again, and then by the time you get to the end, your strokes are very insipid. 6. Flowers!: So while we're working with the green, they have the sweet little centers on these flowers, and they have actually a little green wavy thing. It's hard for me to describe, but if you look at the photos that I'm going to upload for you, you will see that I mean, and there's a little so I'm just gonna put those in there now before we get to shading. Sheeting are flower and great there right now, as for the shooting of the flowers, But I'm gonna use go back to my neutral that we used in the background. And I'm just because they're white flour, we just need to add a little bit of curve to them. So this is similar to what we did in my botanical rendered Rose bud class. So I'm moistening just that area, picking up the pigment, trying to pick up pigment. There we go and then dropping it in in areas that might not receive quotas, much light and down one side, maybe down the other side, just want to make it look plump and around without covering the white completely go. And it's a good idea. If you want, you can get time to sharpen up some edges. If you're not happy with your masking fluid job, can that I'm gonna lift a bit of that because I feel that's a bit much Go clean, thirsty brush. And then, perhaps might be a bit downplaying it a try. Just put a couple little strokes in there to suggest the direction of growth. All right, let's try our next guy here thinking maybe this color I'm using to shade is a little bit grace. I'm gonna add a little more ultra Marine to the mix, Make it a little bluer way, Wason. You can do this one pedal at a time to moistening. That's not a bad idea. So you don't have to rush in and moist in all of them at the same time. Yeah, I like the blue a little bit better. It separates it from the background a bit better. Now if I decide I didn't care for this, so I'm gonna go back into it. I'm just gonna soften it off with a bit of moisture. Take it paper towel or toward the paper. Kleenex. Let's get some of that color out of there. This is a little fix it job. Here we go gives it a little more brightness, and then I can use a little bit more of my slightly bluer shading and put it in there. Just so matches a bit better with the others. So anywhere where you feel like maybe you've lost a bit too much light. Clean your brush, making thirsty and you can just scrub a little and block. But let's clean your brush often when you do that. Otherwise you will end up with just pushing the pigment into your page. Here we go. Let's just make those all a little bit brighter. Oh, that's good. The last little finishing touch We could add a few little striations to suggest the direction of growth. These air pretty smooth pedals in reality, so we don't need to put too much in there. Here we are, 7. Thanks and Happy Spring!: So there's our snowdrops bursting forth from the snow with quite a magical background. You remember all that splattering we did. It was a lot of fun. And I hope you enjoyed this class. And I hope you'll try it and upload some of your project so I can have a peek at them. Thanks for joining me.