Transcripts
1. FillerFoliage intro: [MUSIC] Welcome to filler foliage and watercolor. Filler foliage means to fill in little spaces around your main florals or artwork. I love creating filler foliage because they add a lot of fun, accents and textures into your work and really balance out the composition. These are past examples that I've done. Because this class is designed with a focus on technique and mastering brushstrokes and line work, I made it really easy and simple. As far as supplies, you'll need only one brush, watercolor paper and just three to five watercolor paints. I'll take you step-by-step through some warm-up drills, and then we'll come up with a library of basic elements that we can use in our designs. I'll show you how to mix and match different combinations and also add layers and details. I have two options for the final class project and I can't wait to see your work. If you're new to any of my classes, hello, my name is Neesha. I'm an illustrator and designer with lots of nature inspired classes on Skillshare. I hope you'll join me in painting some fun filler foliage. Grab your supplies and let's get painting.
2. Supplies + Brush Exercise: For supplies, it's very simple for this class, you'll need the basics like watercolor paper. I like this one, it's cold press, it's Strathmore. Just make sure your paper is at least 140 pound. I actually use this in cutup sheets, so I'll cut it down to smaller sizes. I also have a color wheel. You don't need this, it's optional, but I will list it in the supplies as well in the description. It will just help when you're creating color palettes; it's a nice little tool to have. Then a couple of brushes. I actually just use one medium brush and I'll go and do a deep dive into that in a moment. You can use any watercolors that you like. This is my favorite pan set from St. Petersburg. We're just going to need 3-5 colors for these exercises. Then you'll need a jar of water and also a paper towel on hand for easy cleanup or fixing mistakes. It's important to understand your brushes and the marks that they make. Here's a quick demonstration and you can follow along with your brushes. I have a variety of sizes here, these are all round brushes. I have a large in a 20 and then my medium range are six and eight. Then I have a detailed brush which is a size zero. You don't need all of these brushes, but I do want to show you quickly a little exercise on how you can get similar marks with just one brush. Before the warm-up drills, I want to show you how thin I can get these marks. Using that detailed brush, you can see it's a very fine line, and then I'm going to use a middle range. You're going to see that it's very similar. This is why I don't really use detailed brushes that often. You can get really delicate marks with your medium brush as well. As long as it comes to a nice point, you'll be able to do both wide marks and really thin, delicate marks. Even in the closeup here, you can see that the detailed brush and the middle range brush are very similar. In fact, that last one is a little thinner than even the detailed brush. Then my last brush, which is a large, size 20, I'll just see if I can get a similar line. You can see it's pretty similar and then the widest mark I can make, just by pushing all the way down with pressure on that brush, is the last line there. You can have a nice range of stroke sizes from just one brush. The largest mark you can make from the detailed brush is this one here. The other thing, it runs out of paint and water pretty quickly, and the bigger your brush, the more water and paint it can hold, so it'll last you a little longer. My recommendation is to go with a medium brush; it holds a lot of water and paint, it comes in nice points, you can have the detail marks as well, and you can get some nice bold strokes. Of course, use any brush that you love or if you have a favorite one, there's no reason you shouldn't. This is just my recommendation. It's what works for me and I find it gives me the most flexibility.
3. Creating a Color Palette: So because this class is focused on creating filler foliage in a specific style, I didn't want to complicate the lessons with color theory. So I've chosen analogous colors as a standard palette for this class. Feel free to mix it up, if you like or if you already are familiar with color theory, you may want to play around with different palettes that you love. If you're brand new though, I would recommend starting out with this so that you have no guesswork and this part is done for you. Analogous colors mean that they are next to each other on the color wheel and for the palette here, I've got shades of green. So different versions of a grass green, yellow green, olive green, a brown green and then as an accent, a little bit of a warmer orangey brown. So don't do more than four or five colors, depending on what watercolor pans, tubes, or set that you are using, you may already have these pre-mixed. If you don't here's a quick tip. You can just start with a basic green and to make the yellow-green, you add some more yellow. To make the island green you would add, you would want to dirty it up a little bit, you can add a little brown or purple into it, maybe a touch of blue. You essentially want to get different shades of green that all work together, like they're sitting next to each other on the color wheel. So mix up enough so you can practice with the same colors and this will keep your palate a little bit more consistent and really keep the focus on creating style versus colors. If you don't have a color wheel, this is what I recommend. It's a really quick, easy way to checkout complimentary colors or different combinations of colors that can work together. I've also put this in the list of supplies in case you want to use it as a reference and as you can see, it goes over your basics like primary, secondary, tertiary colors, warm and cool. Goes over the definitions of hue value, intensity, tones, shades when you add black, when you add white, and how to change up your colors and on the back, it shows you about complimentary combinations. A complimentary color means that you will have two colors across from each other on the color wheel. So for example, the opposite of green would be red and then a compliment for blue would be orange. However, for this class, I'm using analogous colors and that would be all those shades and tones of green that are next to each other and other thing that I like about this wheel is that you can get inspiration by just switching that wheel where the top one turns and you can find different combination and inspirations that way too. So now that we have our analogous color palette set, we are ready to go on to the next step.
4. Warm Up Drills: For the first drill, we'll make really thin lines, and as parallel as you can. They don't have to be perfect. Also play around with where you hold your brush on the handle. Sometimes holding it towards the back will give you a nicer organic line, a little bit looser with more gestural feeling, and then when you hold it closer to the brush, almost like a pencil, you can find that sometimes have better control. Play with that, and just get your hand warmed up. The next step would be to be aware of how our wrist is moving. You can move your brush from your wrist point, or also if you want to involve your whole arm, you can move it from your elbow point. A really good way to practice this in warm up is making curved lines. Just be aware of where your arc is coming from. Are you using more on your wrist or using your whole arm, to get a really nice long loose line? Again, try to make these lines somewhat parallel, it will really help you with that brush control if you can duplicate the same marks. Because we went left to right, we want to practice the opposite direction and go right to left. This will also help you with muscle memory and brush control. I'm also playing with where I'm holding the brush, either low on the handle, or back up high. To get an even more warmed up loosen hand, we're going to make swirls and circles. This is similar to the line work we just did. We're using a light touch to make thin marks, and try to keep the spacing even. Keep practicing that as far as your angles and your curves. You can also loosen up your wrist by doing waves or that infinity mark. Just practice that over and over and try to keep your lines as consistent as possible. These are all really good exercises to do as well when you buy a brand new brush, and you're not sure how it will behave or what marks you can get. I do this every time I purchase a new brush. We've been working on some really thin lines and delicate marks, and now what we will do the drills for pressure and brush mark making for bolder strokes. Using the India brush, we're going to start off with a really thin line, and then slowly push down on that pressure to get a wider bolder mark. Then towards the end of that mark, lift up again slowly, and transition back into a really thin line. Getting really good at controlling your pressure, will help you in making a lot of your different shapes. For example, this mark here is the building block for making leaves, and petals, and different shapes like that. We'll just keep doing this, and try to do different lengths. Some will be shorter, some will be longer. Your brush will maybe behave a little differently, and you'll start to get really comfortable with how much water, and paint you have each time you push down on a stroke. Remember to hold your brush on different parts of that handle and get a good feel about different styles of marks that you can make just by changing your pressure and where you hold your brush. I'm moving very slowly at first, and as you get better at it, you can go a little quicker. Once you've done some left to right, and right to left, then next would be up and down and then down to up. We're making the same pressure marks. You can start to see that there are going to look a little bit more like leaves the shorter they are. It's the same technique and you're just practicing your pressure and line control. Here's a close-up. As you can see, I'm resting my pinky down to hold that hand weight and have a little bit more control as I start. Then pushing down on the belly of the brush, and then picking up really light towards the end to get those really fine points. Another thing you can do is slightly swirl your brush towards the end, and then you can get a little bit of a different type of top, and come to a fine point as you turn your brush. When you do two next to each other, we can see that that makes a basic leaf. Rotating your brush towards the end at that point will give your leaf a little bit more of a floppy feel. You can practice different styles that way. Also practice going down to up, up to down, and where you hold the brush either low on the handle or high up. So far all these marks have been straight up and down. Now we'll practice how leaves are actually in nature which is slightly curved or at an angle. We can practice a few of these. You want to imagine that there is a stem in the center. So when you're practicing your leaves, know that they will start towards the base of the stem and then point outwards either up or point down from that stem. Also practice going in the opposite direction. You will have foliage and greenery that will have leaves going from left to right and right to left. You might also notice that it's easier to go in one direction versus the other. For me it's harder to go right to left on the left side of a stem. But this is something that you can practice, and whatever is your stronger side, just practice the opposite so that you get a balanced warm up. The other thing I'm practicing is rotating my brush towards the end of that pointed part of the leaf, and just getting that leaf to look a little bit turned. As you're pushing down out of that pressure and picking up at the end, I'm just rotating the brush with a little flick, and getting different curves. One of the last steps we'll do is that figure eight mark that we did earlier with the thin lines. This time we'll do this with the bolder strokes, and practice going in and out from thin to thick lines by just loosening up our wrist and arm movements. Combine your thin marks with your thick marks, and then swirl them around and get really comfortable with your pressure. Feel free to fill up your whole page. This is all for you to practice, and play, and have fun, and keep making as many marks, and pressure strokes as you can. Every time you do this, you're building up your muscle memory, and it'll become second nature to you when you go to make the types of leaves and plants that you want. You remember we used just one brush and made a huge variety of strokes, and marks. Now that we are loose, we're ready to move on to the next step.
5. Basic Elements: Let's start with our basic elements, I have 10 broken down, and these are easy to do. Once we have a little library built up, we can refer to this as we build out different combinations. In the first element, we are building a little cluster of dots. It's roughly in a triangle shape or a cone. If you can imagine a little bit of a triangular shape, you can put in your little dot clusters together and just a little bit more narrow towards the top and a wider base. Then I'm just putting in a thin line around the bottom area as a little stem. For the second one, I'll use the end of the brush, with that fine point and just make little circles, just outlining them for now and making little clusters. Also adding tiny little thin stems on the bottom of these clusters. The next three are different versions of branches. This one is straight lines and then curved lines and we've practiced this similar in our warm-up drills, where you're moving from the wrist and really making some elegant curves. Then the final one will be swirls at the end of the branch. Okay, so for the next one, this will be your simple leaf shape. It's a single leaf using that pressure drill that we did earlier. For a slight variation of the same leaf, you can have your two strokes separate a little bit in the middle. When you're pushing down, just leave a little white space and that'll look like a little natural highlight or divider on your leaf. This one is a teardrop shape, so you have a very narrow end and then a rounded opposite end. Little bit like a raindrop. The next one is a little bit of a fan shape, It's like a flat leaf and so it fans out along the top with about roughly four points that are rounded and a tiny stem. Then we have berry like shapes so just a rough circle and adding in tiny stems to these as well. I also kept a little white showing or that paper so it looks like a natural highlight. Then the last version is this leaf that has a rough edge and going from the center stem, I'm just pulling out little flicks to make that edge a little bit jagged around the leaf. Now, just a little variation on this teardrop shape. You can round out both of those edges so it doesn't come to a point. So it looks more like a little bean. Then another variation on the rough edge one, you can just wiggle your brush. So instead of a jagged edge, you get more of a wiggly outer edge. All you do is just as you're pushing down, just shimmy your brush a little bit and you'll get that wave-like shape. Okay, so what we have here is roughly 10 different versions of elements. We can use this as our library and then mix and match some really fun combinations. So we have all of our pieces together and we have an analogous color palette setup that we mixed up in the previous lesson. So I'm just going to tag these yellow green, grass green, olive green, brown green, and that warm orange, which I'm using as a little bit of an accent.
6. Explore Styles: From the previous lesson, we should have our color palette already mixed up and ready to go. Then using these simple elements, and that exercise, we can start to combine them, and create different styles of foliage. Starting with a thin stem in the center. I'll start with that first leaf shape, which is coming off of that center stem, and then pushing down, and then lifting up towards the end to make a fine point. Then just go all the way along the stem. While it's still wet, I can drop in a little bit darker, brownish green in that center to really pull out that stem element. For the second one, I'm doing another curved stem, so that's number four from our element library, and then this time the little leaves are going to be that teardrop shaped, and they're smaller. Just changing up the scale of your leaves can really change up the feeling of whatever foliage that you're painting. This time a cluster of wavy lines can make the center branches, and then instead of small leaves that are altogether, this is going to be single leaves on each branch or stem. They're a lot larger in proportion compared to that stem, and they're done with a single stroke. A little tip here, if you're trying to build foreground and background, anything that's darker in saturation is going to come into the foreground, and if you leave it a little bit more transparent and faded, it'll go towards the background, so you can create some depth that way. This combination is number three and number one it's the straight line branches with the dots that are in a cluster. This is a fun one and it's really quick and easy. This one is a version with number nine, which is the circular shapes that can look either like berries, or circular leaf shapes and they're just clustered along a simple single branch. Combination of number five and seven. This is swirly branches, with a tiny little cluster of those teardrops on the end of each branch. Here we're playing with the design and the style, so instead of everything being symmetrical, I am just putting the little leaf shapes on the ends. Just playing around with where you do the location of these leaves and the size of these leaves, will give you different styles. Again with number seven, but this is more of that bean shape, so I'm putting them in a cluster of about four for each cluster. Then putting them spaced down that branch, like little stacked steps, and that gives you a completely different feeling and look. Time for number eight, this is that flat leaf shape where there's about four or fiveish fan like shapes, on in the end of each of these branches, and I'm using a little bit more of that yellow, green this time. For this jagged leaf version, I'm holding higher up on the brush handle to give it a little bit more of a looser feel, and I'm also having it go from right to left, so it's leaning left. This is just one little sprig with three rough leaves. Then along with that rough leaf, I want to do a wiggly version where I am just making more of a smooth, wave-like leaf. Those ones are pretty quick. This one is a wavy branch or plant to like structure, and the ends of them have these little dots, so they're little pools of color that I'm just making a little thicker on the ends to indicate maybe the start of new growth. Then this one is really short V-like shapes along a branch and I'm going to cluster them up together. They almost look like maybe a pine tree branch or something similar. You can see just varying up the different sizes, and shapes, and lengths, and even the quantities of clusters or single leaves gives you totally different looks and feels.
7. Mix + Match Combinations: Now that we have our elements individually and we've done some styles exploring different versions, we can now do a mix and match and try some different combinations of each style. I would recommend at this stage to challenge yourself to mix up at least 2 or 3 different styles for each combination. This is a good way to push your creativity and try different elements. You want to look for a contrast in size and shape and feeling, and play around with it, have fun. For this first version, I did a combination of the tiny dots and this simple leaves that are a little bit floppy. In the second version, I'll do those leaves, but this time use that fanned flat-shaped leaf and maybe add a few more dots as well. For the third one, I'm using more of a yellow-green, and doing clusters of berries combined with maybe little sprigs that look a little bit like that pine tree branch. Next, I'm doing a version that looks a little bit like a fern leaf combined with some thinner, more delicate marks. At the end of each of these little lines, I'm adding a little dot of paint, so I was just pulling up a little bit to show maybe like a seed or new growth. Then this one is swirly branches, then I'm putting tiny little leaves that go all the way down. It's very simple and I like how delicate and whimsical this one feels. With a little bit more blue in that green, I'm doing a more simple version of some wispy branches and just doing a few of these V-shaped leaves on the ends. As I move upwards and out, they get a little bit smaller at each level. As you start to play with your combinations, you can see that even the same elements such as berries and flat leaves can also be done in multiple ways. You can also change up the line work and make it look really delicate or wispy or really thick and dense. This version is going to be the little wavy leaves, which I'm doing by wiggling my brush. This is similar to that exercise we had practiced earlier. Because this one is a little bit light, I'm going through and adding a little bit of a shadow line to some of these leaves and that center stem. This one is a combination of those flat leaves that are a little bit fan-like with some tiny dots. This version has a sprig of large berries and I'll keep it pretty simple, I'm also leaving a little bit of white from that paper showing through as a natural highlight. The bottoms of these look a little bit like teardrops. They're a little bit longer and narrow and then the tops have these reverse teardrop shapes, so they point upwards. This one is a little bit more of a symmetrical layered stem, so I'm putting little clusters that go down the stem with these little maybe berries or dots at the end. For the last one, because I am at the end of my page here, I'm doing a little blue-green version of these little tiny leaves. Also combining them with some little swirly branches to make a new combination. Push yourself and fill up an entire page of all kinds of combinations, whether you love them all or not, it will be a great exercise for you to explore your creativity and come up with many different designs and combinations.
8. Add Layers + Details: All right. This lesson is all about adding some layers and detail work. We can use that same sheet that we first practiced on and put in our second layer. Now what you want to do is steady your hand. You can use your pinky if that helps, or you can just put your whole wrist down. Then try to outline the leaves, really delicately and come up with some really fine brushwork. What we're going to do is practice on this page before we move on to our final projects. One of the reasons I like practicing on a sheet like this is that, it takes away that perfectionism part, you don't have to worry about it being a final piece. Just think of it as a draft version and do as many types and styles of line work as you can think of. On the second leaf, I'm purposely not touching every line. I'm leaving a little bit of wide space in between the marks, and that gives it a little bit of a different feel. In some cases, you can try shading half the leaf or you can try doing a shading version without the outline, or maybe just a center line, or maybe half-the-leaf-half-details, try wiggly lines, you can try patterns, you can put in shadows. These are all ideas to jumpstart your creativity. The more variations you can think of, the more you can pull from as a reference. The more you do this exercise, the more you'll realize there are certain design choices that you're making, it's more of a style preference. Then you'll start to come up with a signature look every time you do this. Also remember, you can do a lot with line work. So instead of a solid shadow, you can use fine lines clustered together to give an illusion of a shadow on the underside of a leaf. On this version, I'm creating that line work by using the same thick and thin pressure technique we used. You can vary up your styles and your line work that way as well. When you're done, take a look at your work and maybe two or three that are your favorite versions, and you can apply that to your final pieces. I would also recommend doing the same exercise on actual styles. So instead of that practice sheet that we have, go ahead and use a few of the samples that we did earlier, that were the design styles and combinations, and try adding in your details and shadows on these. This is the other reason I like to do a whole sheet of practice first, so that when it comes to doing the shadows and layers on actual foliage, its a little bit more natural, and I already know what kind of line work I like and which will work in my compositions. So now that we've done a whole sheet of practice, shadows and detailed layers, and then we've also done our sample design foliage in shadows and layers. We have graduated to the next step. That is the final project. You have the option to do both projects or choose one, or even do more. I can't wait to see your work and remember you can post your projects in the class project section of the class, and even including your drills and practice work.
9. Project 1: Foliage Wreath: Let's do project 1. It's a little bit more simple. Then project 2 you can follow up with if you want to challenge yourself a little more. I'm starting off with a watercolor piece of paper that's cut down approximately six by nine inches. We're making a wreath. It's a really simple version of a wreath. What I'm doing right now is measuring out a rough oval. I'm not using a ruler, you can, but I'm just eyeballing it, putting in little lines to where I know. I want the space around the edges. Then from there, pulling out a little oval shape, I'm keeping it really light. You won't be able to see this because we'll be covering it with all of our foliage. You can start out with one of your leaf shapes. I'm starting out with one of those pressure leaves, where I push down and then pull up as I get towards the end of the leaf to get that fine point. You'll see me rotating my paper. It's a lot easier to work on a wreath if you can keep changing the angle, so make sure that you're in a comfortable position and you can pull out the leaves exactly the way that you like them. Also remember to keep some white space so that you can fill in some other design styles and foliage types. I'm using that warmer orange, yellowy-orange and putting in a flat leaf design here. This is straight from our sample pages that we did in the previous lessons. If you happen to get too much paint in any area, remember, you can use a paper towel and soak up any extra paint or water. It's a really easy fix. I'm also keeping in mind to go in one direction, so all my leaves and little foliage pieces, they're all pointing in one direction. Feel free to follow that or you can go in two different directions, totally up to you. Now I'm using a little bit more of a gray. It's got a little bit of brown in it and I'm putting in some loose berries. I'm keeping a little bit of white space on each of these to show a slight highlight. I'm also spacing these out pretty randomly but pretty even around the wreath. When planning your wreath and having a balanced composition, you might want to step back and take a look at it from different angles, or take a break and then come back and look at it with fresh eyes. Sometimes you can see if it's done or not when you take a step back. You can always add more, it's harder to subtract. If you need to take breaks, definitely do that. The other way I like to work is going light to dark. Same as composition wise, it's easier to add than subtract. It's also easier to add layers and saturation, and go light first and then keep on building your darker layers. Here I'm adding a few darker vine lines all over the wreath, and also going in with some darker little leaf shapes that are smaller. It can be as simple as just adding a couple of leaves throughout the little branches. Then using a little bit of purple in that gray color. I'm going to put it in the little dots and little clusters throughout the wreath. I'm adding them on top of these little darker leaves I had started earlier. Then going back to that yellow-green, with a little bit of brown in it, I'm going to go in with some more detail line work and just outline some of those bigger leaves. I'm not doing every leaf, just a few of them, just to bring out a little bit more detail into those background leaves. Then for that final touch, I will go in and add a couple of detail lines into those yellowy-mustard flat leaves that I had put in. I'm using a dark inversion of that orangey-brown color. My challenge to you would be to use, at least, three or four different styles and techniques that we've practiced. Once you are happy with all of your shadows and your detail layers, you can call it done. That is a simple filler foliage wreath.
10. Project 2: Foliage Frame: For project 2, I have another sheet of watercolor paper that is trimmed down. This is approximately six by nine inches. This project is creating a filler foliage frame. It'll be a lot fuller than the wreath that we did previously. Keep your design samples in practice sheets on hand, so you can refer to them, while you are creating your composition. I find it easier to work with one element at a time. I'll pick my first design one as this little ferns style, and go ahead, and put it all the way around the edge of the paper. I'm going all the way around in a border that's approximately an inch or so, up towards the center of the page. This part of the process can be really relaxing and meditative, especially when you're creating the same shapes over and over again. Don't be afraid to cross your foliage, have some going over and under, and maybe even different sizes and heights. Onto the second element, I'm going to use this blue color, and put in some berries, and then just randomly place them throughout some of these whitespaces. You'll see me rotating my paper as I work, so feel free to do that if it makes your brush work a little bit easier. For the third element, I am using this mustard yellow color. What I'm doing here is adding in something for contrast. A lot of the other shapes were a little bit rounder, and more of ovally shapes. This time, I want to make thin lines for branches, and then use those dots to add another element that's slightly different. This is where your previous samples and design styles will help. Use that previous sheet where you explored your different versions, and see where you can add in contrast, and get different filings with your elements. All of this will play into the balance of the composition. For this project, challenge yourself to come up with at least three different elements that play well together. Once you finish up your first layer, let it dry, and then you can go in, and add your details and shadow layers. This is just like the version that we practiced on the practice sheet. You don't have to do every single bit of foliage, just wherever you think you want to add a little bit more definition, and then you're done. Remember to post your work in the class project area. I would love to see it. I hope you had so much fun.
11. Next Steps + Final Thoughts: Congratulations, you finished the class. The next step would be to post your work. If you look under the video, there's a few tabs there. You can go under projects and resources, you'll see a green button that says, "Create Project." This is the page that you will come to, and you can upload all your work here, the class project or any of the exercises and warm-up drills. I'd love to see your work. Also just be sure to check that you are following me so anytime I release a brand new class, you will be the first to know. I also release new tutorials and content over on Instagram and YouTube, so come say, "Hi", if you'd like to follow me over there as well. Thank you so much for joining me. This was such a joy to create, and I hope you had so much fun painting along. See you in the next class.
Neesha @PaperWand Studio, Watercolor | Illustration Studio
