From Brush to Bloom: Learn Essential Watercolor Techniques by Painting Proteas

1. Introduction: Oh. Hi. I'm so excited to have you here as we dive into the world of vibrant proteas. If you've ever wanted to capture their beauty on paper, this is the class for you. Hi. I'm Wendy Lee, a watercolor and acrylic painting teacher. I teach in person classes to adults and children, as well as online classes. In fact, I have a couple of skill share classes that you can join. Welcome to this class from brush to bloom. Learn essential watercolor techniques by painting proteas. In this class, we'll be focusing on how to paint realistic and eye catching vibrant protea flowers. This makes this class perfect for the beginner, as well as the intermediate watercolrist. So no matter your skill level, I'll guide you through each process step by step to make your painting journey more enjoyable and inspiring. So what do you expect to learn today? First, we'll explore the basics of using vibrant watercolors, shadows and highlights to bring your painting to life, to make it look three D and more realistic. You'll discover how to layer your washes for depth and dimension, of course, we'll work on brush techniques that will help you capture the unique shape and texture of these beautiful blooms. By the end of our time together, you won't only have a beautiful piece of art to show off, but you will have learned various watercolor techniques that you can use in all your future watercolor projects. Come on. Grab your brushes and your paper and let's get started on this creative journey together. I can't wait to see what you create. 2. Class Project and Materials: For our class project, we'll be painting beautiful proteas together. You can use my reference picture, or you can paint from nature or you can use your own reference picture if you would like. To do this project, you will need watercolor paints. It doesn't matter if they're in a tube or a pan. Whatever watercolor paints you have will be fantastic to use. Also watercolor brushes. I've used a bigger brush and a smaller fine tipped brush for details later on. You need watercolor paper. Any watercolor paper will do hot press or cold press. For this project, I have used cold press watercolor paper. Don't forget your jar of clean water. Then as an optional, to add highlights to your painting right at the end, to create those tiny little details, you can use either white gouache or white pens like a posca pen or a gel pen. Last but not least, you need masking tape or artist tape. This is to help to stick your painting down to a work surface or to a board so that it doesn't buckle. Right, now is the time to gather up all your art supplies that you need and to draw your reference picture. Remember, you can copy my reference picture or you can draw from life. I'm now going to quickly go and draw my picture on my page so that when I start the next video, I can go straight into painting. I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. Painting the base layer: Once you have drawn your protea or traced my template, mix a very pale, watery yellow and apply it as a base coat for the flower head and also the leaves. While this base layer is wet, add a little bit of watery green to the leaves and touches of vermilion or crimson red to the edges of the leaves. This wet and wet technique allows the watercolor paint to blend softly. As you can see here, the red is running over the lines into another leaf, and that's okay. That is the nature of wet on wet watercolor. For the flower head, you can use a touch of very water down crimson red or a shade of pink. It doesn't matter if some areas are slightly darker as this creates depth. I'm making sure to paint right to the edges all along the edges towards the petal so that the whole protea head is covered. Remember, this is our base layer, so it is very, very pale and watery. It doesn't look like much yet, but it will look beautiful later. This is looking good. I'm ready for the next layer. 4. Painting the protea petals: I'm putting my first petals in. It's a good idea to mix a few different shades of pinks and reds on your palette. You can make them lighter by adding more water or dark and more pigmented by adding less water. As you can see, I'm not painting petals that are right next to each other. This is because I don't want the colors to bleed into one another. I want these edges sharp and crisp. Oh oh, I have too much water here, so I'm using the lifting technique to lift this puddle. I do this by letting my dry paint brush absorb the water and then touching my paper towel before repeating this until I'm happy that my puddle is gone. Just keep painting your petals one by one. I'll be fast forwarding parts of this lesson quite a bit, as it can become quite tedious to watch me paint each protea petal individually. This gives you time to paint yours too, and to mix the colors that you like, as well. For a few of these petals, I've added a touch of vermilion red. Instead of the crimson red. This just creates a bit more color variety in the petals. Play with your color choice a bit and enjoy exploring different reds and pinks and different mixtures of the two combined. Here I've added a touch of blue to my crimson, and this has created a beautiful burgundy color. I'm making these bottom leaves, this burgundy color just to create a little bit of extra depth. I'm using a bright pink for some of these petals now and repeating it on various petals around the flower head. This is to balance the color. I'm also mixing less water into my colors, as you might have noticed, as my watercolor layers become more vibrant. Just look at how this protea is starting to come alive. If you find that some petals have dried like these, and they're too pale to your liking, add another layer over the top. Keep some of the petals paler and some darker to make your protea look more realistic. Each individual person's color choice comes into play here, so your protea might not look exactly like mine, but that's okay. That's how it is in nature too. Keep adding your various reds. Let's zoom out and look at our reference photo again. Look how vibrant it is. Are you ready to paint the leaves with me now? 5. Painting the leaves: For this bottom leaf, I'm using a very light but bright green and working some of it into the stem before adding a blue green shade. And of course, I'm adding a bit of 1 million red to the tip of the leaf just like we did for the base layer. I don't want all my leaves to look the same, so each one will be a slightly different green. The undersides of this leaf will be a bit darker as it is in shadow. You can see the darker green mixing with a lighter green, once again, using a wet in wet technique. The red mixes with the green, it becomes slightly brown, and that's okay. That's what it does in nature as well. It's blending beautifully. As you move from leaf to leaf, keep experimenting with different greens. Add a touch of blue or red, or even yellow to your greens. You know, a dab of yellow ochre will also look nice on these leaves. Sometimes we just need to let go and experiment with color a bit. Here we go using the lifting technique, which is to remove a little bit of color, and it creates a natural highlight as well. As I paint my leaves, I make sure that I include some of these same colors in the stem. I'm also remembering to keep the outlines of my leaves sharp and crisp. Don't forget to add your red on the tips to make it stand out a little bit more. As I'm adding my colors, I'm looking at the overall picture of the leaves, and there are some places that I want to add a few more different greens that I might not have added initially. I'm going over the layers, adding a couple extra layers bit by bit as I feel that my leaves are a little bit too light still. This is totally optional and up to you. If you started off with a lighter layer and you want to add darker layers, you can do that now or you can just leave it light as it was. Just adding a few more to make them stand out a little bit more. Keep painting each leaf and don't forget to paint their little stalks. This is really just a place to play and to discover varieties of green. Don't worry. Your protea will still look realistic. I promise. When two leaves overlap like this, I make sure that the back leaf is a little bit darker than the front leaf. Or the front leaf is a little bit darker than the back leaf. So just have a look and make sure that the two leaves next to each other or overlapping each other are not exactly the same green or shade of green. Oh, look how gorgeous this is. 6. Painting the protea inside: If we look at the center of the protea in the reference photo, we can see a slight shadow to the left and then close behind the front petals. So we will paint this section slightly darker. For the very part of the protea, we'll make oblong in shapes, remembering to follow the angle of the protea's edges. If we had to paint these in straight rows, it would make the flower head look flat and not rounded at all. So just keep filling this flower head in bit by bit. So once again, I've used my burgundy shade that I used earlier in some of the petals, and a good tip here is to water it down quite a bit to create this light color. This helps to create the furry effect that we are looking for, and it's okay if there are slightly darker areas in between, as it makes the protein more three dimensional and realistic looking. 7. A Quick Fix: This leaf is a problem. The colors are too similar to the leaf behind it. So I'm going to change it a bit. It's always good to come back to your painting and look at it with fresh eyes to see if anything is bothering you. I'm adding some lighter colors and some reds to the front of the leaf, and then I'll be adding a darker shadow just underneath the leaf so that it stands out from the leaf behind it. Right, I'm ready to add some highlights. 8. Adding Highlights: I'm going to be using white guash for my highlights. But if you don't have any guash, you are welcome to use a white pen or paska marker. This step is optional. The white just makes the petals pop a little bit more. Use the very tip of your thin brush and just add touches of white to the edges of a few petals. As you can see, I'm touching the petals very, very softly and just adding in a few highlights. Don't forget to add a few highlights to your leaves and stem as well. The process of painting this protea has been so satisfying, don't you think? I'd absolutely love to see yours. See you in the next video where we will be doing our final wrap up. 9. Final Words: This process has been so fun, and the results have been striking and beautiful. Well done for completing it. I'm sure your protea is beautiful, three dimensional and vibrant looking. And I know it is looking very realistic. I would really love to see the protea that you have painted. You can post it in the class project section below. And if you enjoyed this class, please try some of my other skill share classes as well. Also, please leave a review so that I can see what I need to improve on this class or see exactly what you have enjoyed about it. Please remember to follow me on Skill Share so that you'll be the first to know when a new class comes out and also follow me on other social media platforms so that you can join me on my art journey, and I can help encourage and inspire you on yours.