Transcripts
1. Trailer: Have you ever wanted to paint gorgeous watercolor floral pieces? Well, here's your chance. In this class, I'm going to show you techniques for painting leaves, florals, and butterflies. I'm not just going to show you one type of flower, but tons of examples, and I'll give you the tools to paint any flower from any reference and show you how to get an understanding of that flower to add it to your own floral toolbox. My goal is to open up your horizons and to show you that your potential in floral painting is unlimited. We'll even touch in more advanced concepts and techniques for beautiful and harmonious floral compositions. At the end of the class, I'll show you three examples of floral compositions from start to finish, including a fun read. What are you waiting for? Pick up your brush and let's start.
2. Supplies: The supplies for this class are very simple. Essentially you just need watercolor paints. Any kind will do, but higher-quality paints tends to be more concentrated and saturated. Of course, you'll need watercolor paper that it's at least a 140 pounds to prevent warping and round brushes or brush. If you're a beginner, I recommend getting a size zero round brush for details and its terms, and a bigger round brush like a 10 for everything else. But if you're more experienced, you could paint everything with a larger round brush. If you already have or can afford a large coiled brush like this one, then that's always fun to use as well, and it's fantastic for florals. If you'd like to work small, then you can use smaller round brushes, but if you'd like to work large then use a coiled brush or a larger round brush. It's really just a personal preference. You will also see me using a white gel pen. This is the uni balls signal broad point gel pen, and I highly recommend it, but it's not necessary for this class. Also, don't forget the essentials like water and paper towels. If you're completely new to watercolor, I recommend you check on my previous class that covers that topic in detail very quickly and try out the techniques in the class before moving onto this one. Now that we have everything we need, let's jump right into leaves.
3. Leaves: Leaves are super simple and fun to paint, but they require the mastery of controlling the thickness of your stroke when using a round brush. To do this, just practice touching the paper with only the tip for a thinner stroke and as you put more pressure on the brush, the stroke will get thicker. If you put lots of pressure, it gets very thick. The bigger the brush you have, the bigger the variation in thickness you can get. Now try starting with a tip for a thin stroke and lightly pushing down until you make the thickest stroke and then slowly lifting until only the tip touches again for a thin stroke. This is line variation and this movement is what we use for making most leaves, just vary the pressure on your brush. You can vary it as much as you want. Like here I started with lots of pressure and then went to the tip. Here I altered it in much quicker strokes. This is great to do for practice. Once you get this movement down, you can try doing other things with your brush. Like here I'm lightly pushing down from the tip to the middle and then lifting again quickly without getting to the tip first. This makes a cute leaf with a rounded edge or even a petal shape. Here I'm doing something similar except I'm pushing down even more for a broader leave. You can also do one side of a leaf with a curved line and then mirror it on the other side for a white middle, and really just let loose and play with it and see what things your brush can do. We are going to be painting loose and expressively, so there is no wrong way of doing things. Just let go and practice using thin to thick strokes and simple marks your brush can make. Also practice making stems that connect with each other. This one I made with my number six round brush, but if this is hard for you you can instead use a smaller brush like the size zero round brush just for stems. Circles are also really fun and can be playful to make. I love my zero round brush for making tiny leaves easily. In the example on the left, I use a simple push down and then quickly lift technique for rounded leaves. You can also use your small brush for making simple outlines of leaves. This can be fun next to loose florals and should be experimented with if you like this style or you can leave a line in the middle of a leaf and a darker color or leave a white space by painting around it in two strokes like I showed earlier. Notice how I made the leaf's end rounded this time instead of pointed by just using my brush differently. If you want to paint more realistic leaves, then get references and try copying them. I recommend to do it loosely and in your own interpretation, but it's up to you how realistic you want to get. With time and experience you will find your favorite way of painting leaves. Just give yourself room to experiment and try new things. As you can see, there's tons of different leaves that can be painted. Some of these were inspired by references and some were made-up. Take out a page and play around like I did here. It's up to you if you want to paint stems, you really don't have to. But practicing painting tons of different kinds of leaves to get more comfortable with it and to be more comfortable with your brush is a great way to start this practice. Notice that none of my leaves are perfect and look exactly like the last one. I always use loose and curved strokes, not rigid and straight ones or perfect ones because leaves are organic. So just be sure your hand is loose when painting them. If they look too cartoony, it's probably because you're being too rigid in your movements and that's okay if you like that look, but if you want a more loose look, just relax your hand and make slight curves with your brush and embrace your imperfections. One more thing to keep in mind when painting leaves or flowers or anything really is to let colors mix on the page. Painting with just one color is so boring. So drop more similar colors in while it's still wet for a richer and more beautiful painting. You can learn more about this and color mixing in my previous class that I made, especially on this topic. Now that you have the basics of leaves down, let's get into florals.
4. Floral Basics: In this lesson, you will see me using a lot of references. That's because I want you to see how I interpret what I see into loose shapes. In using this technique, you can do the same thing with any flower you can find or even make up your own. If you find it very difficult to see things for their basic shapes, check out my quick drawing class that shows you many examples of how to really observe and illustrate anything you want and then come back and try again. But I believe in you, so just give it a try because it's easier than it looks. Just be loose and playful. Let's start with this simple daisy. Always do one step at a time. Let's start with the center. I start by using the tip of my brush to make lots of little dots, and then I outline them in a loose circle. I'm just observing what I see the shapes, the shadows, the lights and I'm interpreting them in my own way and simplifying with loose brush strokes. I add a second color in to make it more interesting while the paint is still wet, and now I have the choice of waiting for it to dry to paint the petals or just painting while it's still wet like I did, which pulls the paint out from the center. This is a personal preference but I really like the loose look this creates and don't mind the paint mingling. Notice how I paint the petals. I'm using a couple of strokes on each petal because I'm mimicking the likeness of the reference. I'm trying to get the texture and lighting down. It's very important that I leave the white of the page, it makes a piece feel more alive without it, it would look flat and lifeless. Also notice how each petal is completely unique. I'm not really looking at the reference anymore but it's more like I understand how the petals are. I'm doing something similar in my own way and I'm doing each one quickly so I don't think about it too much and overdo them or make them all exactly the same, just stay loose within. Also notice how I don't touch the center in some parts so that color doesn't bleed in. I'm controlling where it does and doesn't bleed and we'll talk about this more a little later. I continue painting the petals until it's done, that was super simple and now I know how to paint daisies without a reference. This process started with me looking at a real daisy and observing it and interpreting it in my own way but there isn't just one way of interpreting a subject. Everyone will see everything differently and we'll painted differently because everyone has their own unique style and that's a beautiful thing. Let's see how I would paint this rose but before we start painting I want you to observe it with me. What I see is a dark center that gradually turns lighter as it goes up. I also see a lot of detail in the center that gets less and less detailed until it turns into big petals. This is what I will try to paint. I start with a detailed and dark center using the tip of my brush for thin strokes, notice how it's just lines that are going around a center point loosely, not closing everywhere and I leave a lot of white space. Then I drop in some dark purple to make it darker and now I clean my brush until only water is on it and I start painting thick petals around the center point by pressing my brush down, because I touch the center it pulls paint out of it and makes light petals. It's up to you how many petals you want, I just loosely painted a bunch in and left lots of white space between them to show separation. Then I decided to add some pink and dropped it around the rose for an extra pop. Now, I do the same thing on the right side of it. Notice how where they touch you can't tell where one rose begins and when it ends because I didn't let the previous rose dry first. I also added more dark purple at the center of this time and since the paint is still wet, it will bleed out and it will make more contrast because the darks and lights will be very different. I used the same technique to paint one more smaller rose on the left to balance the composition and then added simple leaves by using the technique we went over in the previous lesson. I placed them randomly and let them bleed into the rose where they touch for a beautiful effect and that's it. Now this was one way to paint a rose, but there's plenty of other styles and techniques. Let's see a couple of different ways I painted roses in the past as an example. This one was done similarly to the previous one but I made more strokes around the center more like half circles. It's more abstract but it's still recognizable. I made the center a little differently and less detailed. Also these roses were made with two layers not just one. This one doesn't have contrast it's just more like a loose rose shape but it still works. Notice how I made the leaves outlines for nice a contrast. These roses were more controlled and yet still simple. I did use a darker center but I made lots of petals and an elegant pattern. These roses which you'll see in a future lesson, are very loose and expressive and don't have that much contrasts either. I even put little purple dots in the middle one even though roses usually have little yellow dots, but I can take the artistic freedom and do whatever I want with my flowers. This last example which you will also see in a future lesson, is very loose and expressive but still has that soft quality, because I lay out the details on top of first layer that's very soft in color. As you can see one type of flower can be painted in tons of different ways even by the same artist and still be easily recognizable so don't worry about painting your flowers the right way. There is no such thing. Just play with it and find your own unique style. Now what do you do if a flower looks complex like this one? Well, that's simple. Just simplify it. It's really just a pattern and I painted it by starting in the center and then kept doing the same thing until it got bigger. I also added in some made-up leaves and used water to pull color out of the leaves and flower for a loose background. Using water for a controlled bleed is really fun but it does take experience to know when it's a good idea and when it's not so good. For example, when painting this cosmos in the first example, I did not wait for the petals to dry before adding the yellow center and it bled very messily into everything making muddy colors. It just doesn't look good. The better way is to first paint either the center or the petals, let it dry completely and then add the rest. In this example, a little part of the petals was still wet, but I knew that when putting the painting and wanted there to be a tiny bleed. Look how much better it looks now. Bleeds are super fun but just be careful not to overdo them and control them. In the end, the truth is loose florals are easily recognizable because our brain is so good on picking up information and finishing the picture. You could literally just paint super messy and loose and I would still know what you are painting. On some of these I was more controlled and neat and on others I was more messy and wild but it's very hard to see the difference because all you can see is lavender. You can literally just go loose and crazy and make up weird strokes and not even include stems and your brain would still pick up that it's lavender. My point is, don't worry so much about it and just let go and do your own thing. Now that you got the basics down of painting from a reference and studying a flower to understand it and then you can do it in your own way. Let's see a few more examples that are more advanced.
5. More Advanced Techniques: Now let's get into a little more complex ideas and compositions. For this example, we want to paint more than one flower in the scene, and they're all pointing in different directions and angles. You can start by sketching out each flower or just by defining the centers. I do this by painting the yellow centers where I want the flowers to go. Notice how I varied the sizes and angles, but it's not the same flowers in the reference. I'm just using the reference to understand what it should look like. But I'm actually putting together my own unique composition inspired from the image. I use a hairdryer, to fully dry the yellow, and now I'm ready to paint petals. I use simple and long brushstrokes, but at the end of each one I don't leave my brush to the tip, just like we did in the leaves lesson. Notice how I round out each petal from the center and vary the curves and how long each one is. I get all this information from the reference and do it my way. I don't have to look at each petal and copy each one exactly. I can just see how they mostly act and then just do one at a time, looking at my page instead of just staring at the reference. That's why observation is just so important. Don't think about it too much. Just do one petal at a time. I then drop in some blue to the web parts to make it more interesting and paint little details in using simple lines in some of the petals to make them more dimensional. I do the same thing with the next couple of flowers varying the angles in which the petals come out depending on how I painted the middle shape, notice how one paint is still wet. The petals blend together when I overlap them, but if the paint is dry, then you get a really cool transparent effect. When they overlap, the color below and the color and top mix, which is glazing. It's up to you if you like layering or not. It doesn't really matter in loose floral so you can get away without it, or you can do it to make your stuff more dimensional. Once I finish painting all the flowers, I add tiny flowers all around just to balance the composition. Notice how I vary the sizes and there are no leaves in this illustration. Leaves are always optional, but are great for some contrasts and balance in your work because I painted these flowers for reference, I now have a better understanding of how these types of flowers work and behave in a three-dimensional world. If your work feels flat, then try sending flowers from different angles like this. If you don't study flowers and just draw from your head without really looking at them, your work will not feel real even if you are being loose. Now what if you wanted to paint something like this. This may look a little bit complex, but each flower is just a simple shape and can be easily approached if you do one at a time, instead of focusing on the whole piece and getting overwhelmed for no reason. Notice how loose I'm and I'm just doing one at a time and the same time I'm getting a better understanding of this type of flower faster because I'm painting so many. I loosely painted one more layer to dark in them and give them dimension with the similar color and add a stem and leaves and I decide to make the inside darker for more contrast and then I use a technique that I really love to use. I let my brush with plain water and paint in the background using just clear water. This will pull any still wet paint from the flowers and leaves into the background and make a subtle and fun colorful background. Notice how loose I'm, I leave lots of white space randomly. This is very important. I splatter on top with the same colors I already use. Then it gently fades into the background because it's still wet. But once the painting is dry, I spot it one more time for hard dots that won't fade and then I use a gel pen to add little details around the leaves and inside the flowers. Those type of illustration was much more loose and is a lot of fun. I encourage you to try something like this at least once to see if you like this style or something like it. Another fun technique is painting the negative space or background first, this works best with lighter flowers, especially white flowers like these. Negative space is the space around an object at something we tend to not pay attention to, but it's very important any type of art or design. So illustrating something starting with the negative space is great for developing your artistic eye and feel for balance and composition. For this technique, I do use a light pencil to sketch out the silhouettes of my flowers and start painting the background. I use lots of pigment to make it dark and sometimes less for contrast. I use various colors like blues, greens, and purples speaking them up randomly every time I get more paint, but mostly blue. Sometimes I would drop more water into certain places to create beautiful textures called blooms. You could use rubbing alcohol or salt at this step as well for a fun background, once it's fully dry, I can paint within. Now I'm going to keep my colors later and I'm very conscious of leaving white off the page. I start by painting in the flowers by painting the shadows and the stems and the leaves. Notice how I used blue and a teal to paint in the shadows inside the white flowers. I don't like to use black or gray. Notice that I left a lot of white outlines on the leaves to make it pop and to make a nice contrast with the background. It could be done at this stage. but if you have some white that you can use on top like wash or acrylic pen or a gel pen like I'm using here, then you can add more detail and make it more fun. I use a white gel pen to trace around the silhouette a couple of times, and then I add little dots varying their sizes for a magical feel like stars or [inaudible] and the piece is done. This was super fun and easy to make and because we did the background first, we paid more attention to the composition and silhouette. It looks very balanced and has a feel of nighttime and moonlight because of the dark background contrasts in with the lighter flowers. One more point that I want to make is that you shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes and you should experiment that way you illustrate and the tools that you use. Like for example, I painted the same flower into different styles and may be I prefer one over the other, but I wouldn't know unless I tried. You could also spice up your paintings by using different supplies and media over them, like markers, gel pens or inks. I go over this in a couple of my previous classes, but look how playful and fun the result is. I wouldn't have gotten it if I didn't give myself permission to play. So please be playful, fun and loose, and give yourself some slack and room to grow. Just focus on having fun and enjoy the moment. You will not improve without making mistakes. So celebrate every mistake and every discovery. Now let's do a quick lesson on painting butterflies.
6. Butterflies: You might want to add butterflies to your florals. If you do, I made this lesson to give you some inspiration and to show you how easy they are to paint. The easiest butterfly is a butterfly from the front or the back of it. I encourage you to get creative with it's wing shapes. But just remember that the top wings are larger and longer and that both sides have to be symmetrical. I personally like to drop paint in while the first layer is still wet for a fun wet and wet effect in butterflies, the dryer the paper is the less the paint will spread. So keep that in mind if you want it to be more controlled, please be sure to do whatever you do on one side, on the other side as well and do it quickly if your first layer is wet, keeping it symmetrical. If you want the body of the butterfly to bleed into the wings. You can also paint it while they're still wet, paint the body just paint around the line that is thicker at the top and curve symmetrical lines that end at a teardrop shape for antennas. I add more fun details and just play with it until I feel satisfied. Notice how I just use simple lines and circles. For my second butterfly, I made the wings a little more fun. I painted a simple body like always and start adding more paint, while the first layer is wet. This time i don't add much detail, I only use one color for a simpler look. I use a hairdryer to dry it, then I take my size zero round brush and add fun details and patterns using hearts. Just be sure to mirror whatever you do on each wing and we're done. If you have a gel pen, you can add more details. Also you can always expand the wings by outlining them and leaving white space in between for contrast. As long as you do it on both sides, the results are super fun and cute. You can get super detailed if you wanted, like in this example. But I strongly suggest you match the amount of detail in your butterflies and that of detail in the rest of the composition or florals, you have to stick to the same style. If you want to do a butterfly at different position, like sitting on a flower, you should use a reference, at least in the beginning, just copy the general shape by painting it as one shape and then dropping paint while it's still wet. But pay attention to which side is which on each wing by looking at the reference and keeping that in mind. Then painting the body is simple line like always, but be sure to curb that antenna in the right direction. You also have the option of sketching out each wing individually, and then you can use masking fluid to separate them or you can just be very careful in painting next to them and letting each one dry before you move on to the next one. If you want that obvious separation between wings, as you can see, masking food work great here, but the same time we can always go back over the dry paint with a gel pen or any other white medium to show separation. Like in this example, I used white ink with a brush but to separate after it was dry or you can just leave a connective since it's loose, it's really up to you. Also notice why curve the body of the butterfly and the right. This is a personal preference and I really like this kind of look more. So that's it for the basics of butterflies. You can get as creative as you want. But if you're serious about painting them obstinate and want to get good at them and collect a bunch of references and paint them over and over again until you can get really good at them and paint them for your imagination. Now, let's get into planning of floral composition.
7. Planning the Compostion: The easiest way to plan any composition and for any type of art is to first, do a thumbnail sketch of what you're going to make. Now, this isn't necessary, especially for loose florals but if you feel like you don't know where to start, this can really help. In my previous class, just on this topic, I showed this process in detail. A thumbnail sketch is just a tiny sketch or plan of the final piece that you will illustrate. In this example, I first started with a loose plans of the composition, and then pick the best one or two. Then I refine those until I was happy with them, and pick my favorite, then I was ready to make the illustration. We can do the same thing here, just remember that there are all kinds of ways that you can plan your floral arrangement. For example, you can pick shapes like a circle, a triangle, a rectangle, square, oval, or whatever else. You can see how your composition will look tiny by putting the floral arrangement inside the shapes. It's easy to fix big mistakes and plan the sizes of your flowers, and you can get very creative, and make tons of improvements until you get the best composition without wasting time, energy, or supplies. Also, things that look good small, will look good large, and usually mean you have the composition down. You can also do this to plan on flower reeds, or frames, or anything really. So if you feel stuck or like your work doesn't usually look balanced or cohesive, or just don't know where to start, just grab your sketchbook and start here, or you can wing it instead. It's up to you. Just know that this option exists.
8. Example 1: In this first example, I will not utilize layers. Instead, I will work on one big layer and use lots of wet-on-wet technique. I really enjoy working like this, but it's up to you if you do. Like most of my florals, I'm just going to wing it. I'm not going to be painting from any references because I've studied flowers lots and lots, and know the general shapes of them. Like I said before, we humans have a knack for recognizing the general shapes of things no matter how inaccurately or abstractly they're portrayed. But please, don't be afraid to use references if you're not comfortable enough to do this yet, it takes time to get here. I usually start with the focal point or the biggest flower and I start by painting a rose type shape using big strokes. But decide to add little dots in the center. Like I said before, don't be afraid of making up your own florals, or playing around with them. Then I make another rose shape on the right and on the left. Notice I have varied the colors, but since everything is wet, it mixes and mingles where it touches. Just how I like it. These three flowers are the only ones I'll have in the composition. I start painting little features around them to make it balance and more interesting. First with little red circles of various sizes that could be berries. Then I paint out, stems that end thick, and that pink at the tips loosely for some flowers that have not yet bloomed. Notice how curved my strokes are. I'm essentially balancing and making the composition more interesting with everything I put down. They also start adding in leaves all around. Sometimes, I use less paint to make them lighter and sometimes more for a darker look. I also you stems only sometimes. Then I decide to add detail to some of the leaves so I paint in some lines on the lighter leaves, and that's a wrap. This composition was super easy and quick to make, and that's how to [inaudible] and loose. I use the leaves to help balance it, but usually, any painting with one big flower in the middle and two smaller ones at its sides will feel balanced. Notice how the overall shape is an oval. Now, let's see another example that's a little more complex.
9. Example 2: For this composition, I wanted to layer and include more florals. So I started out with the focal point again and paint flowers around it. Notice how this time it's two roses and the [inaudible] flowers aren't anything specific. They're more like thick petals that I really like and can be read as tons of different flowers. I have these around them and notice how playful I am this time. I used all different brushstrokes and even little yellow dots for fun texture. Also notice how I drew stems. I go down this time, so almost looks like a bouquet. When I'm happy with this overall composition, I use a hairdryer to speed up the drying process and start on the second layer. I take a dark purple and paint an expressive lines to show that it is indeed a rose, starting with lots of detail in the center and becoming more sparse like we did before. I also paint little dots on my petal flowers to make them more interesting and dimensional and define my last rose in the same way as the first. Notice why I use the same technique in styling each pair of flowers. It's very important to stick to one style when painting a piece for a cohesive and harmonious fill. Now i could be done at this stage, but decided to add a second layer of leaves for more dimension. This time I use the soft teal and I add leaves in circles around the piece. Remember that watercolor's transparent. So when you layer like this, the layer below will show through. Also keep in mind that I kept them light. If they'll be too dark it would scream for attention too much. Notice how light most of the piece is. We're done. Notice how the shape is rectangular, but that doesn't mean it's perfect rectangle. Also notice how there is more going on on the right side with the leaves. That's balanced because the three middle flowers are all leaning in the left direction. Balance isn't always about symmetry. It can be but I encourage you to get a feel for it with your eyes instead and to do it asymmetrically like this because it's more fun and lose especially in floral arrangements. Now let's paint a fun and loose floral wreath.
10. Wreathe Example: Paint a floral wreath, we first need to draw a perfect circle and the easiest way to do that is to trace around something round, like a bowl. I used my lightest pencil, but it was still a little too dark, so I go over the lines with my eraser to lighten them further. Now I can start. You can start anywhere you like. There are no rules. But I picked three places that it will have roses by painting in the dark and detailed insights. Then I wet my brush with plain water and paint in petals like I showed in the previous lesson. I add a dark purple in the middle for more contrast. In this painting, I'm really just flowing from one thing to the next, so I decided to add little blue flowers on the composition and the I paint in very loose and tiny peony type flowers with quick strokes. I add some simple pink flowers and then start adding leaves. You can see how it's starting to come together now. While I add more details, I'm really being aware how balanced the composition feels and how cohesive it feels. I don't add a random thing only in one area. If I add a certain leaf, I'll place it in other areas as well. I do the same thing with all the types of laurels that I put in. I also decided to add little dots because I love that loose feel and they really help in balancing the composition even more. The piece is done, but in the final composition, there are a couple of details that are added on off-camera, because when I walked away from the piece and came back later, I realized that I could do a little more to make it even better. Sometimes it's great to take a break from whatever you're painting and come back to it later because you will see things in a new light. But as you can see, floral wreaths are pretty simple to do and there are endless variations out there. Now, let's get inspired by beautiful Pinterest boards and talk about your assignment.
11. Your Turn!: So the class is coming to a close and I hope you've taken away tons of useful information, tips and tricks and now you feel ready to tackle Florals. Your assignment is to make at least one floral composition that can be as simple or complex as you want. To help you get inspired, I have curated two Pinterest boards. One is full with gorgeous pictures of flowers that should inspire your work. If you really like a certain flower, you can learn more about it and you can open it and scroll down from our picture, that type of flower or similar flowers so that you can pin studies of it and it to your floral toolbox. The other board is filled with other people's floral watercolors to help you see how many different styles are out there and to get you inspired as well. If you really like someone's work, don't be afraid to copy it. Copying is the best way to learn, but don't post it online claiming it's your work. If you want to share it, you'd have to get the artist's permission and credit them. When I was starting out in drawing and painting I used to do tons of studies of other people's work, which is essentially copying, but it stayed private in my secret sketchbook. This process really helps to improve your skills quickly. So don't dismiss it just because you won't create original work in the process. As for original work or if you copy any of my paintings, I'd love to see what you do. So please share with the class by uploading it in "the your project" section of the class. If you paint florals from a references or do studies, you can share those as well. You will only improve and grow your floral painting skills by studying the same flowers over and over again. It really doesn't take long to memorize how each flower looks and works and to be able to do it in your own way. So don't delay, grab your brushes and have fun. If you have any questions at all, leave them in the community section I'll get back to you soon as I can and If you're hungry for more learning, check out my numerous other classes. As always, it's been a great pleasure in sharing my knowledge with you. I'll see you guys in the next class.
Yasmina Creates, Artist & Creativity Cheerleader
