Fancy Flowers - Art for Kids and Playful Adults

1. Class Presentation: Hi, Playful friends. My name is Stella, I'm an artist, that loves nature and especially flowers. But I also love creating playful art projects. That's why in today's class, we'll create an amazing garden with our own imaginary flowers. I will guide you through every step of this project. In the first part of this class will make for playful experiments using watercolours. We will start with the wet on wet technique, then we will use some home found items such as kitchen salt, plastic wrap, and a candle. Those candlesticks are very practical, as you can call them as a pencil and draw with them. While playing and experimenting, you will learn how to create some interesting textures using watercolours. In the second part of the class, we will use our beautiful textured papers. to make our fancy. This time we will play with collage, drawing and coloring. You can complete the whole project in one day. But maybe for some of you, it could be a little too long. If it's the case, I would suggest you to do the first part with the watercolor experiments one day. It will take you about 30 minutes and to come back, and to do the second parts with the actual flower making and composition and drawing of details. Another day. This second part will take you about 30 to 45 minutes. According to how many details and embellishments you would like to put on your flowers. So I let you decide what is the best for you and see you in the class. 2. Class Project: Your project for this class will be to create your own imaginary flower garden. You can share any step of your project in the project gallery and ask for questions. Or you can post directly your final artwork. I will be very happy to discover what you will create in my class to encourage you and to answer your question. See you in the next video, where I will walk you through the materials that you will need for this project. 3. Materials: Let's have a look at the materials you will need for this project. Let's start with paper. I highly recommend you to use watercolor paper, which is at least, 300 grams or 140 pounds. And not the normal copy paper. Neither any thin sketchbook paper. The reason for this is that the watercolor paper is thicker and made to absorb water, which avoids excessive buckling. I will use four sheets of watercolor paper. Watercolors. You can use any watercolours you have in pans or in tubes or liquid watercolors, it doesn't matter. I will make the demonstration with my watercolor pans. Then you will need two containers, with water. In one keep always the water clean and the other one will be for cleaning our brushes. One large brush. The larger the better as it will allow you to cover the paper quickly with watercolours. You will need also some table salt. I have put it in a little container in order to make it easier to sprinkle. A candle and plastic wrap. For drawing you will need a pencil and a black marker. I will use a pigment liner. You can also use a Sharpie with a fine tip. For the final colouring and embellishments I will use those chalk markers. They are really great as they have very bright popping colours. But you can use any markers you have, you can use also Sharpies. You can also use POSCA pens if you have them. Finally, you will need also scissors and transparent glue. And that's all. Now let's dive into our creative adventure. 4. 1st Experiment : Wet on Wet: For this first experiment, you need your watercolor sheet, watercolours, two containers with water, always one with clean water. And the other one is for cleaning our brushes. And you need a brush. Choose a brush large enough in order to cover your sheet quickly. I will use also the sprayer just to activate my colours. to put some water in. But you can also use an eyedropper to put some drops of water in them or just drop some weather with your brush? Well, I like to use the sprayer because it's just quicker. You don't have to activate all the colours but at least those that you would like to use. This first experiment is called wet-on-wet, because we will put wet watercolors on a wet sheet of paper. Let's start with putting water on our sheet. We need to make our sheet wet enough. In a way that the colors can spread and flow easily. You should use for this step the clean water. If you want to see if your sheets is wet enough, just put it on an angle and you will see, this brilliant surface of the water. Well, now let's go on and drop some colorus. You can make stripes like this, or you can put just spots of colour on different parts of your sheet and let them spread, let them flow and interact with each other. I love this part of the process, which I find very funny. And I'm always surprised how the colors will work together. How they will blend, how they will spread. Look at this beautiful blossom and all of those irregular edges. Chose to mix at least three colours. I have chosen here, the green, yellow, and blue. And well, Maybe you have noticed that I have already cleaned my brush in this container. So, the other one will be now the container with clean water. I love to make the colours travel on the sheet. If your brush is very dry, and the paper starts drying also, the colours cannot spread, they cannot flow. So just put more water or spread the water which is on a part of the paper, spread it on the outer parts, make it flow. Observe how the colours will interact with each other, how they will blend in a very smooth soft way. when they will meet, Observe all the blossoms and interesting textures that you can have with this technique. I would like to add some more blue. Well, as you can see, I have mixed my jar of clean water and the dirty one. Now what I have to do is to change the water in one of them in order to have always clean water. for the next experiments. Let's leave this sheet dry. And I will change my water and see you in the next experiment. 5. 2nd Experiment : Salt Effects: For the second experiment, we will start with the technique we just learned. Let's start by putting water and colours on our sheet. We need that the surface is very wet before we applied the salt, and this time I will make stripes of color. I will put my clean water Further, so that I don't mix it with the water for cleaning my brush. You can also let the colors spread. Just before your paper is dry, Or if it is already almost dry, just put more water. And let's put the salt. I use simple kitchen salt. Let's leave it for a while on the surface of our paper. And we'll see what happens once the paper is dry. You will not see the effect immediately. You need to live it dry for a while. See you for the next experiment. 6. 3rd Experiment : Candle Marks: Welcome for our third experiment. For this one, you will need a candle, one that you can hold as a big pencil in your hand and draw with the candle on your dry paper Some random marks and motives. Yes, I know those are invisible. Maybe you're already asking yourself, what's the purpose to draw invisible motives? Wait a minute, and you'll see after a while how the invisible will become visible. You can draw some spirals or circles, you can draw stars if you wish. After you have finished putting candle marks and motifs on your watercolour paper, you can choose one or several colours that you like and cover your paper with some of those colors. Now it is magic time. And you see that the watercolours start revealing your drawings. What do you see? The watercolours cover all of the surface of the paper except the candle marks. As the candles contain wax, they are water resistant. Are your candle marks surprising or close to what you expected them to be. When I was a child, I had a lot of fun with this unpredictable technique. I even used it once for writing a secret invisible letter to one of my school friends, that nobody could read, except the one who has the secret how to reveal the candle writing on the white sheet of paper by applying a layer of watercolours on it. Once you're happy with the result, let's leave it dry and move to the next experiment. 7. 4th Experiment : Plastic Wrap: Welcome for our fourth experiment. In this one, we will use a plastic wrap. This is my favorite experiment. Now we will start by covering this sheet with watercolours. You can again make your surface very wet or applied directly. Some water activating your paint and colour your sheet of paper again, with some of your favorite colors. See that your brush is wet enough so that the paint can spread easily and quickly. We will try to do this step quickly in a way that the sheet is still wet. When we apply the paper wrap, you can use one or several colours. I just want to ensure that my paper is wet enough. And I'm sure it is. So let's cut the paper wrap and apply it directly on the surface of your paper. If your sheet is not big enough and doesn't cover the whole surface. Put an additional one. And make as many wrinkles as you want. You can press slightly, leave it for a while till the paint dries. We'll come back in a few minutes. Now. Let's see what's the result with our experiment. It should be already dry. 8. Results from Salt and Plastic Wrap Experiments: Let's have a look now at our salt experiment. It is almost dry. And you can already see this beautiful texture that the salt made with the watercolors. Do you see all those tiny crystals on the surface of the paper? Once my watercolor sheet will be completely dry, I have tstill to wait a little bit. I will remove the remaining salt crystals with a dry brush effect. But for the moment I have to to wait a little And what about our experiment with the plastic wrap. Let's remove the plastic wrap. Observe all this amazing texture that the plastic wrap has created. 9. Choose a Background: Now is the time to choose our background. Look at your fourth textured papers and choose the one you would like to use as a background. The background is the area you will see behind to the main object. In our case, it will be the area all around the flowers. I think I will go with this one. This is the very first experiment we have made with the wet-on-wet technique. Once you have chosen your background, put the paper of your background aside, and take the other three sheets, out of which we will cut our flowers. 10. Drawing and Cutting Flower Shapes: Now grab a pencil and let's draw some simple shapes directly on the three sheets you have chosen for the flowers. You can make a variety of shapes. But my advice would be just to keep it simple because it will be much easier for you to cut those shapes out of the watercolor paper, which is very thick. If your shapes are very sophisticated and detailed, you will have more struggled for cutting them. And in any way, we will have the opportunity to add lots of details and embellishments later in our project. So for the moment, keep your shapes simple. You can draw, for example, circles or ovals or cups. You can observe also the patterns, or the textures on your paper. And maybe it will inspire you some interesting shapes. Here. I can see another cup. Here I would cut directly those flowers, you can make small shapes or big shapes. We can make also ovals or leave shapes. Why not hearts or tear drop shapes, rectangles, triangles. You can also download the handout sheet into resource section of the course for more inspiration. In reality, a few shapes will be enough. You can make from five to ten shapes. And once you have finished drawing them, cut all of them, with your scissors. I love so much the texture on this heart ! Cut a few shapes out of each sheat and keep the others. You can still make additional shapes and cut them later if you wish something different or if you wish to make a second project, I will let you cut all of your shapes and see you in the next video when we will start playing with our shapes on the background and we will find an interesting composition for our flowers. 11. Arranging the Flower Shapes on the Paper: Do you have your shapes ready? Here I have displayed a variety of my shapes... I have too many, more than I can put on my paper. But this gives me some choice. So I have some small shapes, some medium shapes, and some big ones. Now take your background sheet and we will start playing around and see how we would like to arrange them. I would suggest that we put together some big shapes, our medium and some small shapes. Let's see how we can arrange those flowers on our paper. O, I really like this one You can put also several shapes together to make a flower. You don't have to glue all those shapes immediately. First, try to find a composition that you really like. Those are imaginary flowers. They don't have to look like a flower that you have already seen. They can be completely different. Once you are ready, whith your flower composition, take a cut marker with a fine tip and draw the stems. This way you will remember exactly where they are. Before gluing them. The stems can be straight or slightly curved. If your stem has to cross the flower, instead of crossing it, you can stop and continue after the shape, or you can simply take out the shape and draw the stem. Later, you will put your shape just above the stem. Maybe I can put in additional one here, Let's see. Now, let's go. We will use a transparent school glue. I will simply apply it on the back of the shape and spread the glue all around. Put it again on the stem. And then I will press slightly and hold it for a while. The watercolor paper is heavier than the normal copy paper or construction paper you might be used to. and it will take a little more time for your shapes to stick. Just be patient. Hold your items for a while. and it will work. If some of your shapes don't want to stick, just to press them again, hold them for a while, and they will finish by sticking on the paper. If you're ready, see you in the next video, where we will complete our flowers by drawing with the fine marker. 12. Line Drawing with a Marker: Welcome back. In this video, we will complete our artwork by drawing with a fine tip marker. Let's start by drawing leaves to our flowers. If you have some remaining leaf shapes, maybe you can try some of them and why not glue some leaf shapes before we start drawing with a fine tip marker. But you could also perfectly just draw the leaves with a marker. However, I decided to go for gluing some additional paper-cut leaf shapes. Now, let's draw. Think of the variety of shapes the leaves can have. Some of them can be very small Others can be bigger We can also have heart-shaped leaves. Some of them can have winding edges. Some can have several ramifications, others can be oval. Here, I will make the same as here. then, let's add some details inside of the leaves. You can draw even on the top of the paper cut leaves. And then think of all the veins inside of the leaves. For some leaves. The veins follow a different direction. For those I would like to make half of the leaf darker, as if it was in the shadow, and the other half - lighter. And for those, I would simply like to do some dots. Now, our flowers look complete. They have their heads, Their petals, their stems and their leaves. But we can continue drawing some details and embellishments. Our flowers don't have to look realistic. You can make them as fancy as you want. You can put additional marks, outlines some parts, or filll other parts with petals Let's explore, imagine, and let's create our own imaginary flowers. For example, here I will follow the fixture of my watercolour paper. You can put also some simple patterns inside of the flowers and what about if we add some stemens and some pollen for bees. We can just get inspires by the motifs that are already on our flowers. and we can still add some other details. Here I can see a spiral. We can make another spiral new inside, or we can make something else. Maybe we can fill this spiral with rays. Or, we can also imagine that those become additional petals that are inside of the spiral. We can go even outside of that papercut shape. Here I mention those two buds. of this big flower that are not yet unfolded. This one can be a little sun. On the top of this one, I would like to make some additional hearts. And put again some pollen for the bees. What about If we play a little bit with this pattern inside. If you have completed this step : Congratulations ! You might consider your project finished. But if you want to go a step further and add some more embellishments, this time with colour markers, join me in the next video. 13. Colouring and Embellishing with Colour Markers : Welcome for the very last part of our fancy flowers art project. In this video, I will add some coloruful embellishments to our flowers. I will use these chalk markers as they have very bright popping colours. But you can use any other markers you have, as far as they draw on the top of your watercolours. And you enjoy drawing with them. Look all over your artwork and choose spots where you would like to add more colours. It can be inside of some flowers. It can be also inside of some leaves. May be, you would like to put some additional colourful patterns, or maybe you would like to colour inside of certain shapes. You can also put some details on the background. Trust your artistic intuition and see where it leads you. With the chalk markers, we have to be careful not to put out a hands-on them before thy are dry. Otherwise we smash them. You can put just a few deals or a lot of details. You can put as many details as you want. Feel free to, to make those flowers, the way, you would like them to look. As magic as you want them to be. The advantage of the chalk markers is that you can layer them. If you don't like the colour that you have put, once the colour is dry. You can put another layer on the top, of the colour you would like. You can also create texture simply by tapping I don't want to colour inside of all the leaves because I want that some of the background texture is visible at certain spots. So I will choose to colour only some of them. And finally, I would like to add some pollen in the air. Decide when you want to stop and you can consider your artwork finished. I think mine is done. Now, I just need to take a picture of it and to post it in the project gallery. I invite you to do the same. Take a photo of your fancy flowers and share them in the project gallery. I can't wait to see what you have created.