Experiment with Liquid Watercolors and Explore Fun Techniques.

1. Introduction: If you are inspired by nature as I am, and who would like to draw what you see? It could be intimidating and seem to be difficult to paint what you see. But it's definitely worth trying. And I would like to share with you a simple technique and a fun way to create an easy way, modern and fun illustration. Because I live by the sea. It is often the seed and inspires me. But I think I enjoy the most what is underneath it? I often go to aquarium and I'm standing by the colors of the underwater world. I'm hypnotized the colors and plie, it's officious plants or electric shine of jellyfish. And I always wondered how to paint it, how to represent this vibrating colors if you'd like to discover it with me and also see a fun and playful way to overcome your fear of illustrating water worlds, natural world. Then I invite you to this class. Hi, my name is Anna. I'm an illustrator and graphic designer. And on my Skillshare profile, I teach classes on multiple arts techniques in my illustrations. I'm often inspired by nature. So I'm very happy to welcome you in this class. I will join those two favorite things, exploring art techniques and painting nature. In this class, you will learn how to create an effective illustration just with two mediums, liquid watercolors and bleach. And with this technique, we will paint two different underwater scenes, underwater plants and jellyfish. But of course, you can apply it in your future artwork with other subjects. I also hope that with this class and with this technique, you will approach more playful way to your art, to your illustration. And if you need to, also, that it will help you to overcome the fear of creating this class is for everybody, It's no difference if you're a beginner or advanced Illustrator. If you're new to liquid watercolors, then maybe you can watch my other class about basic of liquid watercolor. But it's not necessary. All you will need are a few art supplies and a lot of will of having fun. So I hope to see you in this class 2. Class Project: Welcome to this class. I'm very happy you joined me. I will explain you what we will do for the class's project. Basically, we will play with three ingredients, water bleach and liquid watercolors. And we will paint modern fun illustration. It will be water plant and jellyfish. So there are few reasons that I made this class for you. The first is to share with you a fun and easy technique to represent not only water world, nature scenes, but also to use in your other projects. And also, I hope that with this technique, you can enjoy creativity and overcome a fear of painting. I want you to have fun and to explore and to play for the class project, we will paint two illustrations. First will be water plant, and the second one will be jellyfish. You can choose to paint only one of them, or you can paint both of them. It's up to you. If the subject is too complex for you, you can paint, for example, just one jellyfish or a simple plant. And there are a few ways that you can paint your final project. You can follow my steps and paint the same illustrations, or you can search for your own photo references. I will also leave you some photo in the class resources. So be sure to check it out. Or maybe you have possibility to go to a query them to the zoo and do the photo of your own search for your own inspiration. It would be really beautiful. So here are the steps that we will take in this class. First, I will show your art supplies that we will need. Then we will do simple exercises to see how we can apply water bleach and liquid watercolor. And those techniques though simple exercises later on we will apply in order to create our plants and our jellyfish. Once you've finished your final illustration, please be sure to upload it to project gallery. All you have to do is go to the project section of this class. Click Create, project. Make a photo of your art uploaded. Share with us your process if you want, your steps may be doubts that you have and then click Publish. I think it's important that we share our projects so we can inspire one another. And I also invite you to feedbacks on other student's project. It will be very encouraging for us. Grab pure liquid watercolors, search for a bleach in your home. It can be bleach that you use for your laundry or maybe you have a detergent in your kitchen that contains bleach. It could work as well. And I invite you to see the other lesson where I will explain better what art supplies we will need for this class. So see you there. 3. Art Supplies: Welcome to the art supplies lesson. I will show you briefly what we will need for this class. First of all, a sketchbook or other watercolor paper. I will use a sketchbook as I find it quite good. It's not the best quality sketch book, but it works fine as you can see, I use all the exercises with echo lines with, with liquid watercolor. And it works really good. Otherwise you can use watercolor paper. That brand is not important. The important thing, or that it should be cotton paper or 300 g, or at least 200 g, I would say. And a paper that you usually use. And that works good for you. Also to jars with water, I will use two jars because we will use the bleach. So in one jar, I will clean my brush that I used with bleach and then I will clean it again in the clean water because I don't want to contaminate my colors with bleach. So I think it's useful as bleach. I will use a regular, normal bleach from my laundry bleach that I use for laundry and I have this spray bottle. I think I took it in a flying tiger, but I'm sure you can find it also in other places. I also will use this little container to dilute bleach because we will use bleach, concentrated bleach, and also diluted bleach to see other effects. So it can be handy. And I will also use the pet to pick all both bleach and clean water. It's really handful. Asked for the brushes, I will use a variety of sizes and forms of brushes to see different textures and effect. You can use a synthetic brush. Maybe it's better because with bleach it will be safer not to use natural brushes. I will use different forms, for example, this fun and discomfort brushes. Those also have different kind of resource. I will use them to see the different textures and effects. Also this bamboo and tip. And you will see during the exercises, if you have this kind of tools at home and it will be cool to use them and try them. And finally, our liquid watercolors, I will use three brands at Caroline's from royal talents, Dr. Ph. Martin's concentrated liquid watercolors because they have two different watercolors. I have this concentrated one and also PBL. So short. And important to notice is that those are dye based watercolors. I'm not sure how pigment based watercolors, liquid watercolors, Sorry, works with bleach. So if you're not sure what I'm talking about, reach out my discussion or I explained to those two kinds of liquid watercolors and explain better the brands and the types of liquid watercolors. Also, if you haven't worked with liquid watercolors so far, then I invite you to see my other class where I explain you the basics and I introduce to this paint medium. So crap, you're painting supplies and see you in the next lesson, where we will start experimenting with liquid watercolors and bleach 4. Playing With Bleach Part 1: In this lesson, we will test different techniques, different ways to apply bleach with liquid watercolors. We will play around two different experiments. For example, here you can see the swatches and different experiments that I did before. I won't go into details to explaining different techniques if you wish to see it better than jump into my liquid watercolor basics class. Okay, so as you can see, I tried different ways of applying bleach. For example, we'll apply it with prepared with different brushes, with different tools, diluted bleach or concentrated bleach. So let's jump into the exercise. In this exercise, I will swatch circles and try out different techniques and play around. For example, here I do the wet-on-wet technique. I apply concentrated or diluted bleach on the wet color and see how it will blend. Second swapped. I will do I will blend two colors with wet-on-wet technique. So first, I paint swatch with water and then I apply two colors that will blend into each other. And later, I will also add bleach into the color that is still wet and let it blend altogether. I will repeat the same two swatches and this time I will apply bleach in a different way. I will make dots with bleach. So to do that, you can use your brush and just live prompts of leech, or you can use a pipette. I already painted some circles because I want to try to use bleach on the dry color. So first, I want to try this comp brush. You usually use it to paint hair or fur or grass. So I was really curious what effect it could create, what's texture it could create. If I were to paint the bleach with this, with this brush. The next one will be simple. It will be simple strokes painted with brush. I just wanted to see the difference between the upper swatch width. I also painted strokes but with wet color and try to now I will paint over the dry color. So obviously it will be it will be different. The bleach want blend into the color. The other two circles I will use the lifting technique. I will paint or with clean water. It is just clean water without bleach. And after a few seconds, I will lift it with tissue. If you don't know this technique than I invite you to see my other class when I explain the lifting techniques with liquid watercolors, it's really fun. So I wanted to give it a try and mix it with in different ways with a bleach. So for example, I want to overlap this part with leech when it will be dry. So right now I will leave it to dry. And then we'll paint a circle in the other swatch also with water and lifted. And then I will paint with bleach over it. So it's all about exploring, playing. Feel free, obviously to play around and experiment whichever direction it will lead you, which the ideas that he will have to explore. Bleach. So feel totally free to play around. There's no schemes to follow or any theory just playing around and this exercise is really fun. I will use this technique to create jellyfish for the jellyfish exercise. So first, I painted water. As you can see, it's quite a lot of water. I will leave it, I want lifted up and then I will apply drops of bleach into this little puddle of water. So I will, we will use this for the jellyfish exercise. I wanted to do once again strokes with bleach because the strokes over the green upper swatch, they reacted as you can see in a funny way. I love it, but I wanted to try it with this yellow color. As you can see, it Works differently. Probably. There was still some water when I paint it over the green colors. So that's why you can try different colors and try the same technique with other swatches and see that they will never be the same. Once again, lifting technique. Because later on I want to paint with a bleach. And I also want to use a spry. The bleach that I have in my bottle. And the spray, bleach spray can create really, really lovely effect. For example, you can create a beautiful sky with it. Or for example, Sparkling Diamond effect. I use it quite a lot. So here's the swatch of this, of this particular technique. I really recommend it. It's really beautiful and try it now, I will paint with bleach over the the lifted part and to see how the two parts will overlap. And the same here in the circle lifted with water rights. Now, I will paint with bleach. I would like to create the dark to light effects. So this one will be lighter. The lightest part of the circle. And on this one, I will paint little dots with bleach. I was, I don't know. I'm just playing around also, this technique can be easily applied to create a jellyfish or maybe a flower. It's just thing around with forums and whatever imagination will suggest to you. I will just continue with playing around. Another cool technique that I tried. I painted the rectangle and underneath I painted with a clean bleed just to bleach and painted while the color is still wet. It just as you would do with normal water. And see how two colors and bleach are blending into each other. And also, I will use later the bamboo pen to apply. Details. Here is wet on wet color. I really like this effect. And also I will try it on the dry color. Also, you could try to use pen to paint tiny details with bleach. Let's see how it works out. Use whatever tools you have at home. Play around. And I'm really curious of your ideas, of your experimenting. If you want, you can share it with us within your project. And in the next part, we will continue experimenting and trying out the bleach with liquid watercolor. See you there? 5. Experimenting with Bleach Part 2: Welcome to the second part of experimenting with bleach and liquid watercolors. In this part, we will continue exploring and experimenting. But I encourage you to actually try to paint with bleach. You can do just a simple forums, nothing fancy, simple shapes. And also you can try, continue to experimenting with different tools. And also how you can paint with pure bleach and with a dilute bleach. You can see the differences between how it will affect the color if you use just pure bleach and what will happen if we will dilute it with water? So let's jump into the lesson. My first tip for you would be to use different colors for each sample. In this way, you will see the effect that bleach will make on a different colors. So if you have more colors in your home, then use all of them if you want. It's really, it's really good to see already the effect that bleach will make on each of them. I prepare the diluted bleach. I added few drops of bleach and diluted with few drops of water, more or less 50, 50 scale. But you can experiment, make it more diluted, less diluted. And I will swatch my paper with different colors. You can swatch rectangles as well. Or you can use whatever type of switches, the two arms, you can also paint the whole page. You can blend more colors if you want, or just make one color swatches. It's up to you. Important thing is to have quite a big swatches just to be able to paint shapes on it and try painting with bleach. So as you can see, I prepared normal bleach and diluted bleach and also water for this exercise. So I want to test both normal bleach and diluted one and see the difference that it will make. So for example, here I painted this shape with normal bleach and I enter the same shape with a diluted bleach and we'll, we'll see if it will make some difference right now. I'm adding a little bit of water because I think it was still too strong and maybe the bleach wasn't really diluted. As much. The same exercise, but I will try different shapes. I will paint fish and see the difference between painting with a normal bleach and diluted bleach on this color. Later on, I will write down which color I used. I, I would advise for you to do the same. So in the future you will know what color you use and if you liked the effect, then you can repeat it and you already know what color you used. Also, I will write I will write down which one, which swatch was made with normal bleach and which one width I looked at one, I think it's a good, it's really useful cheat sheet for you, for your future projects. Again, I want to try my fan brush and try to paint OAuth with diluted. And it's normal bleach. Also with bamboo pen, just again, experimenting and playing around. And now I'm painting with diluted bleach fish again. And I will paint over it with normal bleach and see the difference between those two. It's now I'm painting on the swatch where I blended two colors to see the effect that I can achieve with the bleach over two different colors. Trying fan brush again here to see the effect on the different color. And then I am trying to spray over the black color because I was curious how what color the beach would create on the black color. For example, if I would like to make night sky and this is the effect, it turns out yellow, usually. This exercise again, we will use in the jellyfish project. First, I apply that diluted bleach and I will leave it. I will dip it but I will live with wet in while it's still wet, I will use the normal bleach and see how to solutions of bleach will blend into each other. This time, I will try to paint a plant elements and I will use this kind of effect for the plant project. So first, just a pure bleach flight with fresh and later on with a dip brush to create tiny, tiny strokes. Now I wanted to try the bamboo and to apply strokes as well. And this time I will paint the fish again. Okay, so I will call it done. This is my, those are my swatches with experiments. You can proceed, make them as many as you wish. Have fun. Explore, play. And if you want, you can upload it as well with your project. And in the next lesson we will start to paint our first project of this class, which is the abstract plants. So see you there. 6. Class Project Painting Abstract Plants: In this lesson, we will paint our first final project for this class, the simple shapes, which reminds me of water plants. For example. I use them to create those aquarium since I think it is really cool. Because just by simple brushstrokes and the lifting technique, by using both water and bleeds, you can create really, really lovely, lovely effect and that is really relaxing, not difficult way to create. Really nice illustration. If you're not sure what is the lifting technique and how to use it, I invite you to see my other class where I teach what is the lifting technique and how to use it with liquid watercolors. My water plant project, I decided to use warm color palette. That's because I was inspired by some plants that I saw. But feel free to use colors that inspire you most, even the less predictable ones. This feel free to experiment. First, we will paint the background. I will prepare my colors. I will use those three warm colors. And you can use whatever colors you wish. And to paint the background, I will use wet on wet technique. So first let's paint the paper just with water. You can paint a background in different ways. For example, you can apply color with the brush. I will apply directly from the bottle because I have bottles with pipette, you can do it the same. So apply the color while the background is still wet directly in the water and just let it spread and blend it. Really cool and nice gray. I will use a brush to blend the colors together. But you can leave it as it is, just as you prefer, or just to finish the process by applying the drops at the end, I also will leave some drops to create extra textures and then I will leave it to dry. You can leave it to dry or use a hairdryer. Obviously, the background is dry and I will start to paint plants. I thought that I will use the lifting technique for this project as well. Again, if you're not sure what it is, then jump into my other class, but It's nothing difficult. I will explain you briefly. You have to paint with water over the dry color, leave the water for awhile and then lift, lift it with a paper towel or tissue, paint, whatever subject or shape you wish. So for the purpose of this class, it will be this grass or branch shape. Obviously you can skip it, you can paint it also. Later on. I thought the show it to you because I think it's a lovely effect to alternate lifting technique with bleach. It will create really lovely two-dimensional and translucent effect. So let's jump into the painting with bleach. I will start with the dip pen and painting with pure lead, a tiny strokes that we did in our second exercise. Just a short notice that usually after painting with bleach, I will try it with paper towel as well. It's not the lifting technique. It's just that I will lift it up for the practical purpose. So usually I will do it after painting with bleach. Right now, I will paint with a brush and pure bleach. I want to show you what kind of effects bleach can create over, over the background. That is why I use this colorful background. I use more colors because bleach will Be different over different colors. You can already see how lovely gradient it creates. For me, it's very hypnotizing, relaxing. And really, I really enjoy this process of painting with bleach. And now you will see the difference between the first branch and the second that I'm painting right now. How different it is, how different color it creates it. It will be different over orange and brown and different over the purple color. It will be different over the color that you will use, because obviously you can use other colors for your background. I will also switch between pure bleach and diluted bleach. Also to see different reactions, different colors. Basically, this is what I will do during this illustration. During the process of illustrating this project, I will use different kind of bleach, different tools. I can turn back to lifting technique with water. In this process, I am creating layers, I'm layering shapes. I create different gradients. So I invite you to do the same around, explore, enjoy this layering technique which is really full of surprises. And it can provide really a lot of surprising moments for you. I will speed up the process. Basically, you already. I explained everything that I will do in this illustration. Right now I'm painting with diluted bleach. And I wanted to anything new here. So I will speed it up and I will see you at the end of the lesson. So here is the final outcome of my plant illustration. In the next lesson, we will paint jellyfish seem. So. See you there. 7. Class Project Painting Jellyfish: Every time that I visit aquariums in the zoo, I am hypnotized by jellyfish and their colors and light. It seems that they are made of electric light. So this is what I want to represent. Most of all, I want to be realistic. I will use simple shapes and forms. And I invite you to do the same and play. Or if you prefer, you can be more realistic as far as the colors, I will use dark greens and blues. But again, feel free to experiment. I will leave you some photos for inspiration in the project resources. Those are some examples of my jellyfish illustrations. I really enjoyed the process of painting them. And I think that by applying bleach and water, you can achieve this electric effect and vibrant colors. And I think it's really perfect to represent jellyfish. So we will try to make a similar illustration and we will apply the techniques, the experiments that we used in the previous lessons. I will just show you briefly which techniques can we use? For example, here where I landed diluted bleach with pure bleach. Other exercises that we can use, for example, that so bleach leach into the water, bleach over the lifted color or drawing with bleach and with bamboo pattern. But there are different ways and different kinds. So let's test it directly onto our final illustration. I will use those four colors for the background, Dr. Ph. Martin's blues and greens and PBL blue, indigo, violet, indigo blue. And I will use the same technique as for the background for the previous projects. So wet on wet technique, but we will see it later on. And before I will start to paint, I will prepare my diluted bleach. So I will be ready. Once my background, I will be ready to go on. My background is dry. Let's prepare the background. First painting with water and then applying color with wet-on-wet technique. The same as before. I will blend the color with the brush. Wants the background is ready, we can start to paint. Previously, I did a light sketch of the jellyfish. You can do it as well or you can paint it directly. I use as a reference my previous illustrations, but I also watched for the photos that I did in the zoo when I was in the zoo and aquarium. You can watch also for the photo references in the internet to see how jellyfish are made, the shapes, the light effects. So first, I will start with wet-on-wet technique. I start to paint with water, and then I will apply a leech. You can try the difference. When you apply pure bleach, it will be stronger. It will create more contrast. Maybe it can be too strong or spread too much. So decide when it's better to use pure bleach and this, and when the diluted bleach in this case, I'm using that they looked at bleach. Here, I'm repeating the same process. So first painting with water and then I will apply bleed drops. Now I'm making the light frame around the shape. Now I will do the lifting technique with water. So I'm painting with a clean water and then I will lifted and I will leave it to try to finish the jellyfish later on. My next jellyfish, I will paint with diluted bleach directly on the color. So I will explain you more or less each and every step that I take here But it's not that you have to copy it, copy it, copy all the techniques or my illustration. You can use totally different patterns, totally different Jellyfish shapes, and your own experiments and techniques that you can apply, obviously, by your own way, by your own imagination. And now I'm painting an oval stroke and I will apply trucks of bleach on wet water. This is water that I'm painting with and then I will apply bleach. One more time lifting technique. I will lift up the water and leave it to try to paint, to finish the jellyfish later on. Now it's time to paint some details. So let's paint tentacles and arms. The dip pen will really work, work perfectly. So I dip the pen and the niche. You can see that it creates really fine lines. So here it is. This time I will draw them really long. Obviously, you can look at the reference photos. Just draw what's your imagination? Ranks. I will use again, my pen to draw tiny arms, will tentacles. I'm not sure the right word for those parts of jellyfish. And use pen for painting lines, tiny dots, and tiny details. For your jellyfish, you can use normal pen or bamboo pen. It's up to you. And now painting the lower part with water and then dropping inside the drops of bleach or the second jellyfish, I will paint directly with bleach. You can also use pen to define shapes and edges. For example, I drew is at in the way that it seemed that the jellyfish is lifted. And you can see the bottom of it. And again painting tentacles, but this time they directly with brush and diluted bleach. Adding tentacles here and also with the dip pen, you can use both brush and dip ban. Adding some extra details and shapes. At this stage, there are no limits. You can play around. And at whatever details you want. You can try to be more realistic. If that's what you prefer. Now, I will paint with bamboo pen. It keeps another type of texture. It's a little bit different as effect, and I will paint with with it while the paint is still wet. If you can remember. It's the exercise from the rectangle. When I painted with bamboo pen over the white color. And I thought I would like to recreate this effect on this jellyfish because I found it really, really cool. For the final touch. I will use prey. They will spray the diluted bleach to add just some extra texture. You can do it or you can skip this step. But I thought it will create lovely texture for the water scene. It fits good. What I will call it done. This is the final effect. I invite you to see the last lesson where we will just share some final thoughts. We'll see you there. 8. Final Thougts: Thank you so much for taking this class. Congratulations, you made it. I hope you had fun. So those are the steps that we took in this class. First, I showed you the art supplies than we did simple exercises when we played with water bleach and liquid watercolor. And then we apply the exercises and techniques into our final illustrations. And we painted water, plant, and jellyfish. If there's one thing that I would like you to take from this class is that I hope that you had fun, that you enjoy the process, that you discovered a fun technique that may be you will enjoy to use in your future creativity. Final reminders, I would like you to post your final project into project gallery. It will be really lovely to see what you create it. Please share also with others. And I invite you to give feedback on the other student's product because it's very encouraging where we support one another. And also, I would like to ask you to leave a review for this class if you enjoyed it, If you liked it, it will be very helpful for me. So I thank you in advance for your review. Thank you once again, and I hope to see you in my other classes. Bye