Grow Your Creativity: Daily Watercolor Sketchbook (Spring Edition)

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the spring edition of Grow Your creativity, Daily Watercolor Sketchbook. I'm so excited to share my love of Watercolor sketching with you. In this class, we'll unlock the joy of daily art practice, inspired by the beauty of spring and the magic of the garden. My name is Garima Srivastava. I'm an artist, surface designer, and a top teacher here on skillshare. I love sharing my creative process with my social media community, and with my Skillshare classes, I've taught thousands of students my relaxed way of making beautiful art by focusing on simplifying the art process in easy, achievable steps. I've been painting since 2011, and I'm a strong advocate of having a daily creative routine. Daily practice is the secret to artistic growth. It's not about perfection, rather, it's about showing up for your creativity. You'll be surprised how creatively rewarding painting even simple subjects every day can be. To make this process of creating every single day a little bit more interesting, you can play some fun games with art prompts. I've put some of my favorite spring and gardening theme prompts into this little bowl here, and throughout this class, I'll pick a few prompts to paint an entire sketchbook spread. You can follow along or come up with your own spring and gardening theme prompts, a blooming cherry blossom tree, a family of ducks, or a cute chicken. Inspiration is everywhere. We'll be working in a watercolor sketchbook. They are perfect for your daily watercolor practice. It's your safe space to experiment, track your progress, and capture inspiration on the go. This is an all level friendly class where an overview of art supplies, brushstroke drills, and a walk through of basic watercolur concepts is included to have watercolur beginners start right away. I'll show you how to fill an entire sketchbook spread with eye catching motifs that will paint in very simple steps each within a few minutes. As a project for this class, you can paint one or more of the prompts in your sketchbook or even on a loose sheet of watercolor paper. You can follow the lessons at your own pace. You can paint for a few minutes every day, trying a couple of prompts or enjoy painting this entire sketchbook spread with me. I would love to see what you painted in this class, so do share your project here on Skillshare for all of us to admire. I hope I've got you excited about this class. So grab your watercolor art supplies, and let's go sketchbooking. I'll see you in the class. 2. Your Project & Resources: Welcome to the class. Let's have a look at what you'll be creating in this class and what resources are provided for you. I'll be teaching you how to step by step paint this entire sketchbook spread with individual spring and gardening theme prompts. As a project for this class, you can decide to follow along and paint one or more of the prompts in your sketchbook or even on a loose sheet of watercolor paper. Pick one prompt and paint the entire sketchbook spread with it, painting it once or multiple times or paint multiple prompts over the page. I'll show you the basic art supplies and watercolor concepts that I've used in this class to help Watercolor beginners. I would love to see what you paint in this class, so please do share your sketchbook page or your loose sheet of watercolor paper on which you painted. Once you're ready to share your project, simply click a photograph of your sketchbook page. You can upload it here on Skillshare under Projects and Resources tab of this class under my project. If you have any questions during the creative process, you can put it under the discussion tab and I'll try my best to answer them. Now, let's have a look at the resources that I provided for you under the projects and resources section of this class. I provided you with a month's worth of 30 prompts, which are perfect for the spring and gardening theme of this class. I've also got a sample art prompt bingo game for you that you can print and play to decide on what to paint and a template to print and make your own art prom bingo card. Provided a line drawing for all of the motifs that are painted in this class, along with the finished photograph of my sketchbook spread for your reference. Under the resources, you'll find the entire list of art supplies that I've used in this class, including a few watercolor sketchbook recommendations. You will also find the color names that I have used, along with their swatches and brand names. Now, let's get started. 3. Daily Art Practice & Sketchbook: In my personal opinion, one of the most powerful tool of artistic growth is a consistent daily practice. It's not about creating a complex masterpiece every time. Rather, it's about showing up for you and your creativity, even if it's just for a few minutes. Think of it as tending to your creative garden. A little nurturing every single day yields the most beautiful blooms. From my own creative experience, I can tell you there's so much joy that lies in painting sweet and simple subjects every day. A fun way to find inspiration is to simply look around you. You garden or a local park or even a windowsill herb garden can be a treasure trove of subjects. You can take a photograph or jot down quick description of things that catch your eye. These little observations can become great starting points for your watercolor sketches. And now let's talk about the magic of sketchbook and why is it so important for daily practice. Firstly, it's your safe space. There's no pressure to create perfect artwork. It's your place to play, experiment, make mistakes, which are actually just learning opportunities. Secondly, a sketchbook is a visual diary of your creative journey. You can track your progress, see how your style has evolved, and revisit old sketches for inspiration. It's incredibly rewarding to flip through a filed sketchbook and see how far you've come. Finally, sketchbook is portable. You can take it anywhere and capture inspiration where it strikes. Waiting in line in the grocery store, you can simply sketch some of the people around you or one of your groceries. Enjoying a tea in the garden. You can sketch some of the flowers or even your teacup. You can paint a single page placement design or fill an entire sketchbook spread. You can pick one subject and fill the whole spread with it, painting it differently each time, or fill the whole sketchbook spread with simple subjects tied around a thing. You've got the creative freedom to do whatever you want in your sketchbook. In the next lesson, I'll show you some fun ways to pick a prompt, to paint in your sketchbook. 4. Art Prompt Games: While you can find plenty of art inspiration on Internet, social media, it can very quickly cause procrastination and results in endless scrolling. To prevent that indecisiveness, you need to commit to art prompts. You can simply pick a few everyday themes that you like, seasons, food, travel, and simply write down everything you can think of related to them. You can commit to one of these themes for a few days and pick a prompt every day to paint a new sketchbook. You can bring a bit of fun and a sense of surprise with some art prompt games. You can write down some inspiring prompts on a bingo card like this. Simply close your eyes and point a finger or roll a dice, and wherever they land, that's your next art prompt. I've provided a sample spring theme bingo card and an empty template for you to create your own that you can download and print under the resources section of this class. There's another way to add some fun to your creative routine. Whenever you think of an inspiration or an art prompt, you can simply write it down on a piece of paper or a post-it note and collect them in a neat jar like this. You can also pick a theme and add all of the prompts related to that theme into a small bowl like this and simply pick a prompt or multiples to paint in your sketchbook. Here's the list of 30 spring and gardening theme prompts that are provided under the resources section of this class for you to play with. I've added some of these prompts to this little bowl here for us to pick and paint during this class. So my suggestion is to add a bit of fun and some freshness from time to time to your sketchbook creative routine. 5. Art Supplies : Let's have a look at the art supplies I'm using today. Choosing the right art supplies can be a bit overwhelming, especially when you're a beginner. So my advice is to start from a basic set. And then as you go further along your daily art practice, you can start adding and experimenting with more art supplies. For sketchbook, I'm using this sketchbook from Moleskine. They come both in watercolor paper, but also the ones that are not watercolor friendly. So this one is a watercolor notebook. The weight of the paper is 200 GSM, so it's able to take a few washes. It's not as heavy as a normal 300 GSM cold press watercolor paper that we usually use for beginners, but 200 GSM is good enough to try a few watercolor techniques. This one is 13 by 21 centimeter in size, and portrait orientation comes with this band. So the paper has a little bit of texture. It is cold press feel. Every alternate page spread is slightly smoother to touch, and the next one has a little bit of texture on it. So on this paper, you are able to try quite a few watercolor techniques. But if you're a beginner, you can simply get a 300 GSM cold press watercolor paper pad from any one of your hobby stores. These sketchbooks come in various sizes and orientations. This one is a portrait orientation. I've got one in landscape orientation as well. So it's up to you to decide on which kind of sketchbook orientation you would like for your daily art practice. You can buy non watercolor paper sketchbooks. It's just that if the paper is not heavy enough, it will not take watercolors that well, and it will buckle, and it won't be that easy to play with watercolors on it. Now that we have looked at sketchbooks, let's look at other art supplies. I'll show you the brushes at the very end so that we can see what marks they make. For colors, I'm using tube colors that I've squeezed out into these wells of this ceramic color palette here. I've got my yellows up here. I've got my pinks, red, some orange and some burnt umber. In this other one, I've got my blues, some of my ready to use violets, green, and a few neutrals s gray, black, and some white. You can also use pan sets like this. Pan sets like this come with these dry color cakes and also these mixing trays. In both cases, you're going to need some kind of spritz bottle to spray over your colors to activate them. So just spritz over them and wait just 30 seconds or something for them to get activated. I will be mixing my colors in this porcelain color mixing plate. It has got quite a few different size wells here, so I'm able to create different mixes here. But you can also use a plastic mixing plate or even a porcelain dinner plate. For any white details, I use a doctor PH Martin bleed proof white. You can also use white gouache. It comes in a bottle like this. After a while, it will eventually dry up a bit, but you can just add a few spritz of water in it to reactivate the white. For drawing, I'll be using my 2B pencils, and for eraser, you can use any nice eraser that you like, or you can also use a kneading gum eraser to pick the excess graphite. You can easily store photographs of your inspiration on your phone or on a Pinterest board or simply write them as notes, but I wanted to add a bit of fun, so we will be picking some of my favorite spring prompts from a bowl. To collect all your inspiration ideas, you can use an origami paper like this or simple post-it notes like this to add your ideas, and then you can collect them in a bowl like this or a nice jar like this. Apart from these art supplies, you might also need a paper clip or a small clamp like this for your sketchbook. You will need a spritz bottle to activate the colors, a paper towel or an absorbent cloth to remove excess moisture and two jars of clear water. One of them to mix your colors and the other one to wash your dirty brushes. You will find this entire list of art supplies and the color names along with the color brands under the resources of this class. 6. Brushstroke Practice: Now let's have a look at the brushes that I've used today and a few alternative options. Before that, I'm going to quickly activate these colors so that I can demonstrate how these brushes work. The brush you will see me use the most today is this pointed round number three brush. It comes to a really nice point. And with it, I'm able to make really fine lines. So all you have to do is hold it comfortably right here and then simply drag your wrist to create straight lines, some wavy lines. You can also try to vary the pressure on the brush, start with just the tip of the brush. When you press it down, the marks get wider and then you gently lift, they become thin again, then push again. And thin again, push again. This exercise helps you get acquainted with your brush. So try to use just the tip of the brush and also try to use the whole belly of the brush to see what kind of marks it makes. Based on the size you're painting, you can vary your brush sizes. I'm using number three because I'm painting relatively small. I don't need to paint bigger areas. Number three, number four is ideal for me. You can create petal shapes, leaf shapes with this For petal shapes, start from the center, push the brush down and release. Let's see it one more time. Start from the center, push the brush down, and gently release to make it wider, start again, push the brush down and gently release. So you can with multiple brush strokes, make wider marks. With a brush like this, you can also paint bigger areas by filling them up like this. You're able to paint all kind of fine, but also thicker marks, little dots or wider marks like this. So it's quite a versatile brush, and it suits the size I'm painting. If you're painting even smaller, you will need to go down in the size. And if you're painting on a bit bigger paper, you are painting bigger objects, then you can up the size of your brush. So this is number three, pointed round. This one is from a brand called intrend, but you can find similar brushes in any one of the watercolor brush brands. Similar to pointed number three, I also sometimes use pointed number four brush. This one is a natural hairbrush, holds a lot of water in it, and this one is a semi synthetic that you can use. I've used the natural hair brush in this class because it holds a lot of water and I'm able to quickly paint a very wet shape, as you can see, with just once spread, I'm able to add quite a bit of water. So if you want to paint a wet shape or a bit bigger shape, you can use. This one is from the brand called Da vinci and it's a pure Kolinsky brush. But now you can also find synthetic and semi synthetic brushes that hold good amount of water. With this, you are able to create thin lines. And if you press the brush belly down, you can make wider marks with it. If you paint with just the tip of the brush, without any pressure, you can create thin marks. And if you add a bit of pressure to the brush, your marks will get wider and bigger. Try experimenting with your brush, try creating fine lines, try to vary the pressure on your brush from thin line to thick lines, straight lines, wavy lines. All of these exercises will help you gain confidence with your brush, and you won't need a lot of different kinds of brushes. A few of your favorite brushes in a couple of different sizes are enough for your daily art practice. For really fine detailing brush, I'm using a synthetic number 3/0 or 000 brush. It has got a really fine point. And this is from DaVinci Cosmotop spin. It's a synthetic brush, and with it, I'm able to create really fine marks with watercolors, but I'm also able to use it to add white details, so you can see how thin of a line it can make. So this is a 000 or 3/0 brush. You can practice similar kind of mark making exercises to gain confidence with your smaller detail brush as well. For my lettering, I've used this round number zero Van Gogh selected filament brush. It's another smaller detailing brush. You can create fine lines with it. It also gives me optimum control to create the lettering. You can create fine marks and also add details with it. Instead of multiple detailing brush, you can have one of them that you're comfortable with. Another brush that I haven't used today is a flat number eight brush, but I highly recommend it to have with you because with this brush, you're able to cover quite a big area very quickly. This is a flat brush has got a flat chisel here. And with it, I'm holding it again comfortably here, and I'm dragging the wrist here, and it makes quite a wide mark. You can make vertical one like this. If you hold the brush completely perpendicular to the paper, you can make thinner marks like this, vertical ones. You can also paint with just the corner of the brush just like a round pointed brush will do. So really thin marks. Can also press the brush belly down to create wider marks. But what I like about the brushes, you can very quickly cover big shapes and create really sharp edges. So if you want to paint something big quite quickly, you can use a flat brush like this. Another brush that I have used in this class to assist painting some feathers is this old natural hair brush. It doesn't have a point anymore, and the bristles are quite dry. So what I like to do is if you've painted a shape like this here, You can use a dry brush like this to simply create these feathered edges, and it creates this nice feathered look which comes handy when you're painting some feathers. You can also dip this brush directly in the color without adding too much water and just use this dry brushing technique to create these strictly marks. Sometimes it's nice to hold on to your old damaged brushes for techniques like this and always keep some kitchen paper towel or any absorbent cloth with you to remove excess moisture from your brush. Do practice some of these brushstroke drills to get more confident with the brushes that you have. All you need is a couple of different sizes of your favorite kind of brush. So say, for example, I like pointed round brushes. I use a number four for bigger objects, a number two for medium sized objects, and triple zero or number zero for really tiny details if I want to add them. So you need maybe two or three different sizes of your favorite kind of brushes. Bigger the size of painting, bigger the number of brush, and for smaller details, you will have to reduce the size of your brush. So these were some of the brushes that we have used in this class. 7. Watercolor Concepts: Now let's have a look at some of the very basic watercolor concepts that you will need to get started with watercolors. Your watercolors can come in small dry cakes like this that you can keep in a tin like this, or they can come in tubes like this and you can freshly squeeze out the color or squeeze them out into a small color palette like this. In each of these cases, you're going to need a spritz bottle to spray the water and give them just a few seconds to get activated. The first concept I will show you is the ratio of water to your color and what difference it makes. I've got my round pointed number four brush, and with that, I'm going to rinse the brush and I'm going to pick some indigo color. In here. This time, I've not added too much water in it. The brush was simply wet and with that, I've added this color here. Now when I'll paint with this color which barely has any water, you can see how dark my mark comes. There's barely any water. You will probably not need to paint watercolors like this, but just for your understanding, when you have very little water in your mix, the marks will come out like this. Now, let's pick the similar color like this. Okay. But this time, let's add a few brushfuls of water to it. I've added one brushfl and second brushful of water. Now you can see the consistency of the mix and with that, let's paint the same color. But now that we have added a bit more water to it, you can see the paper is showing from underneath. Is transparency has increased. Now I'll use same color again. But this time let's add a lot of water to it. It's a really watery mix now. So now if I'll paint with this one, you can see how light my wash comes out. There's barely any color in it. So as you add more water to your color, the transparency increases and the color gets lighter and lighter. So lesser water will give you darker coverage, and more water will give you more transparent wash. It's important to understand how to load your brush correctly because if I've not loaded my brush and I simply pick the color like this, there's not much moisture in the brush. After a few brush strokes, I will start getting these dry streaky marks. That means my brush did not have enough moisture in it. It can be because it's a different type of brush. Some of the fibers don't hold enough water. It's important to find a brush that holds good amount of water so that you don't get these dry streaky marks. To prevent your brush from having too much water in it, it's important to load your brush correctly. So rinse your brush, pick the color, and if I'll just directly paint with it. Sometimes what happens is your brush has too much water in it, and with that, if you'll paint, it will create big puddles like this. To prevent that, what you can do is pick the color and before you paint, simply touch the bottom of the brush against a paper towel to remove excess moisture and then paint with it, and it won't create big puddles like here or here. Simply check how much water your brush holds. If it doesn't hold enough water, you probably need a different kind of brush, but if it holds too much water, then practice removing excess moisture from your brush before you start painting with it. Let's have a look at the watercolo techniques we have used today. There are quite a few different watercolo techniques. The ones we have used today the most is called wet on dry. What that means is you're applying wet color on top of a dry paper. You can see how I've painted this shape on a dry paper with my wet color, and all the edges are quite sharp. With this technique, you can very quickly paint something if you want to have really nice sharp edges. What wet on wet means is that the paper was wet and then you applied wet color on top of it. Let's see it here. First let's wet this area I've just used clear water to wet this area. So now the paper is wet. Now if I will apply wet color on top of it, let's see what kind of shape it makes. We applied wet color on top of a wet paper, we tried to paint a similar shape, but you can see how fuzzy it's becoming because the wet color is flowing on the whole wet surface. So you get these fuzzy edges. So this was simple wet color on top of a wet paper, but you can also apply another wet color while this color is wet. So that is also wet on wet color mixing. So I'm adding some wet yellow color on top of this wet pink color. These two colors are now going to interact with each other while the surface is still wet. All of these marks are going to become quite fuzzy. So it's a great way to softly mix two colors. So with wet on dry technique, you get really nice sharp edges. And if you want to create a softer look, then you can use wet on wet technique. Let's have a look at some of the techniques that you can use to add details to your watercolors. They basically work in layering the colors. The first one is called glazing. Glazing involves adding transparent layers of colors on top of each other, either to achieve a darker value or to slightly shift the color. I will show both of them to you. This little pear shape is made out of cadmium free yellow. Now, if I'll use another layer of cadmium free yellow and with that, I will add a little shadow area here. So you can see how by adding another layer of the same color, we were able to achieve a deeper value. Here, it was lighter, and then when I added another layer, it became a bit darker. This was the same color. Now, if we add a thin layer of another color, a thin transparent layer of French ultramarine blue over this yellow base. You can see how it starts to look like a green here. So it shifts the color from yellow to now an optical mixed green color. So yellow was the base, slightly transparent blue on top gives you a slight green color. So this is shifting the colors with glazing. You can use glazing to add this kind of details on top of your dried watercolors. But one thing to make sure for glazing is the base layer should be completely dry when you're adding another layer on top and when you're adding this second layer or third layer, make sure you're very gently adding it so that you don't disturb the underlying color layer. Now the second technique to add watercolor details is similar to glazing, but this time we are not adding very thin transparent layers, but a bit thicker paint to achieve some deeper details. Here I have a dried green leaf. I'm going to pick some deeper indigo. You can see it's not very transparent. With this, I will be able to achieve quite opaque details. You can use watercolors with lesser water in your mix to create details like this to paint on top of your underlying watercolor layer. Again, make sure that the base layer has dried. To add any kind of white details or metallic details, you need to have the base layer dried, and then you can use either a bleedproof white, white ink, white gouache, or acrylic gel pens to create white details. If your bleedproof white has dried, simply spritz a bit of water in it. Gets activated again, and then you can pick your smaller brush to pick some of this white and add details like this on top of your underlying watercolor layer. Adding white or metallic details quickly brings highlights to your work and makes it look quite interesting. Next up, let me show you how to lift color. You can use this to create highlights, but you can also use it to quickly stop colors from bleeding into each other. For that, I will paint this little area first. Now if I want to simply lift color from this area, what I will do is rinse my brush, remove excess moisture by patting it against paper towel. Now I'm going to press this brush against the area where I want to lift the color. Rinse the brush again, remove the moisture again, and repeat this method, and it's going to create this highlight here because it picks the color that was on the surface right here. You can use this method to also prevent colors from bleeding into each other. Let's paint another block here. If you're in a bit of hurry and you had to paint another shape right next to it, but you're worried that the colors have started to bleed into each other, what you can do is Simply rinse your brush, pat it dry, and press it against the area where colors have started to bleed. This will create a bit of highlight, but you can manage that later. This way, you're able to stop the colors from bleeding too much into each other. You have the color separation intact, and once this dries, then you can go back in and cover this highlight later. But as an immediate rescue, if you want to stop the colors from bleeding into each other, simply rinse the brush, remove excess moisture, and lift the moisture from the area where the two colors are meeting. You can obviously let the colors bleed into each other if you intend to paint loosely and you don't have to worry about colors bleeding, but if you want to keep them separated for shape, then it's easy to lift the color like this and later manage this lighter area by adding some more color on top. Now let's have a look at the last technique I want to show you. That is how to soften up an edge. If I'll just paint a shape like this, it's going to dry quite sharp. All the edges will remain sharp because we are painting it wet on dry. But what if I want to soften up one of the edges. For that, what you can do is paint the shape rinse your brush. Remove excess moisture and with this slightly wet brush, run it along the edge. You want to soften up. You might need to repeat this a couple of times, rinse the brush again, remove the excess moisture and soften up this edge again. It does spread the color a bit, but you will get a softened edge here, and here you can see you had a sharp edge. If you want to create a softer look, you will need to wet that edge a bit and then soften up that edge. Once this dries, you will barely see this little area here because it has very less amount of color and watercolors anyhow dry a bit lighter than when you paint them. This is a great way to soften up an edge. So these were some of the watercolor techniques that you will see me using in this class. You can practice these techniques in your own time to get more acquainted with them. 8. Prompts: Rainboot, Jam & Birdhouse: So I've got my sketchbook ready and a bowl full of lovely but simple prompts. You can pick one prompt and paint quite a few of them all over your sketchbook spread, or do something like what I'm about to do is pick quite a few of the prompts and then arrange them over your sketchbook page. So I'm going to start with three prompts at first so that I can decide how to arrange them. The first prompt is a gardening boot. The second prompt is a jar of fruit preserve. The third prompt is a bird house. I've got my 2B pencil here, and with that, I'm very lightly sketching the shape of a gardening boot. We'll be painting quite a few different prompts, so I'm not making it too big. Now, let's get started with the painting. You can look for inspiration for gardening boots. I'm going to be painting mine with very simple neutral kind of green. Get our colors ready. I'm going to start with some Sap Green. And to that, I'm going to add just a touch of Burnt Umber. That's fine. Since we are not painting it too big, you can use number two, or number four, any of the brush sizes that you like. I've got a number three here and with that, I'm going to simply paint the shape of the boot. I've left a little space here for the strap. We'll be adding a bit darker color sole at the base. Well, this base layer is starting to dry. Let's mix the color for the sole of the boot. For that, I will simply start with some Burnt Umber and to that, I'm going to add a bit of Indigo, or you can add any other blue. It will create a near black color for you. And with this and my number three round brush, I'm going to add a bit of a base to the boot here with some Burnt Umber, I will also add the strap here. I'll mix a bit more Burnt Umber to the green we started with and add a little darker part up here. Now you can leave it like this or if you want to paint a pattern on it, you can go ahead and do that. You can add polka dots, stripes, or any other pattern, I would like to add some loose flowers on it. So for that, I'm mixing again almost the same color with which we painted the base. So Burnt Umber and Sap Green. But this time I'm not adding too much water. I'm just loosely going to add these big flowers. If you want a bit more control, you can pick a smaller brush like this triple zero I have. This is just to add another layer of some more attention grabbing details. For now, I'm going to leave it like this. Now, let's get started with our jar of fruit preserve. For that, let's sketch, a little jar. I'm not trying to make this very symmetrical. We'll start from the top to paint the cover or the lid of the jam jar. For that, let's mix sort of a blush color. I'm going to pick some Cadmium-free Yellow, and to that, I'm going to add some of my Opera Rose or any pretty pink just to create a very light, blush or creamy color. We'll be later adding a pattern on it, but for now just to give it a base color. This much color is okay. It's very light color because we'll be adding some red checkers later. For now, this is okay. Now it's up to you what kind of fruit preserve you would like to paint here. I would like to add some strawberries. So for that, let's mix our color. Go to start with some Winsor Red, touch of Transparent Orange and for some darker bits, I'll keep my Permanent Alizarin Crimson ready as well. I'm roughly mixing my Winsor Red and Transparent Orange. And with that, I'm going to add a strawberry shape or small glob shapes. Since it's a fruit preserve, you won't really see all of them with their full shapes, but you can also do that depending on the state of the fruit preserve. Now to paint the glass jar around it, I'm going to pick Cobalt Blue and to that I'll add just a touch of Burnt Umber. This will give me a nice bluish gray color. With that, I will paint the jar going around the strawberries. Don't worry if the color bleeds. Also adding this grayish color up on top here. Well, it's drying, let's go back. To our strawberries, I'm mixing some of that Winsor Red along with some darker Permanent Alizarin Crimson and just giving a bit of border to some of these fruit shapes, adding a bit more texture marks on them, like little dots. With that same red and orange mix, I'm going to add some checker marks on top of the lid and this parchment paper. So some diagonal stripes first. Just using the tip of my brush. And now let's go in the other direction, just loosely adding these stripes. I'm going to pick some of that slightly gray color and with that, go around the edges of this lid a little bit, just to mark some shadows. With some Burnt Umber. In my brush, I'm going to add a string that's tied around the lid. Let's just add a little bit of shadow underneath the parchment paper. For now I'm done with this one. Let's move on to our bird house. For that, let's sketch our bird house. For the bird house, I would like to have my Phthalo turquoise. So starting with some simple Phthalo Turquoise color. I've got a little round hole inside the birdhouse. I'm going to leave that. But since we'll be painting it with darker color, it won't really matter, so you can paint this whole birdhouse shape first, and then once it has dried, and then you can add the hole for the birds to get in. When I'm painting multiple icons like this, I keep going back to some of the older ones that have started to dry just to add little details. So this way you're working simultaneously on multiple icons throughout your sketchbook spread. While this one is drying, I'm quickly adding a bit more shadow to my jar of fruit preserve here, giving the lid a bit better shape. While this base is drying, let's mix the color for the roof of the bird house and also the pole on which it's standing. So for that, I'm going to pick some Burnt Umber and mix some Transparent Orange to it. This creates a nice terracotta or a wood color. With that, I'm going to first paint the pole, dragging my brush down. I'm trying to paint where the base blue color has dried. But if you're painting this loosely, don't worry about it. We can also use this color or the darker almost black, we had mixed using Burnt Umber with Indigo earlier to paint the center hole. Also using the wood color to paint the base for the bird house. With the same Phthalo Turquoise with which I painted the base for this bird house, I will add some wood texture marks, so some vertical plank marks. And with this, our first three prompts are finished. Now let's pick a few more prompts. 9. Prompts: Strawberries, Butterfly & Gardening Tools: Now let's pick our second set of prompts. A butterfly or a moth, A twig or a branch of fruit. Gardening tools like shears, gardening forks or trowels. For a branch or twig of fruit, I want to paint a twig of strawberry. For that, I will sketch it right here in the middle. That way, it will be spreading across the two pages. I'll be adding a few leaves, two strawberries, and a couple of flowers. Now in this space here, I will add a butterfly And for the gardening tools, we can add them here at the bottom where we have a bit of space. So kind of a trowel here and a handheld gardening fork. Now we can get started. We'll first paint the butterfly, with that, I'll pick my Cadmium-free Yellow. You can paint your butterfly, any color that you would like. What I'm trying to think is strawberry is going to be red. I've got a blue here, green here, yellow will flow the colors nicely around here. I've sketched the shape of the wings very lightly. You can also paint simple butterflies like this without sketching. I'm going to start near the center and push my brush and spread the color to the bigger wing first. And then to the bottom one. I'm keeping this center area a bit wet. Now I'm going to my Permanent Rose, picking some of it and adding it right in the center here and letting it bleed. Also adding it towards the bottom of the wing here, and also towards the top here. Letting this color softly bleed, sometimes even nudging the color to spread over the wings a little bit. Let's do the same on the other side. So starting with some yellow, I've sketched it pretty lightly, so it's not going to be very symmetric, but just try to make them almost similar shape on both sides. So after yellow, a little bit of Permanent Rose, in the center towards the top and the bottom of the wing. If you want a bit more dramatic effect, what you can do is pick your Burnt Umber. Not too watery, quite thick and add the butterfly in between already while the colors are still wet.This will bleed a little bit into the wet pink and yellow that you have. Add the two antenna. For now, we're going to leave it like this, let it dry, and then we will add some more details. In the meantime, we can go ahead and paint our strawberries. For the strawberries, I'm starting with my Cadmium-free Yellow first and just adding a bit of yellow to that left side of the strawberry. Most of it will get covered eventually with red, but adding a bit of light initially gives a little difference in the color and gives your strawberry a bit better shape. With this yellow, I'm also adding some dots to the center of the strawberry flowers that we'll be adding later. Now let's mix the red we need for the strawberry. So I'm starting with that same mix with which we painted this jar of fruit preserves, some Winsor Red and Transparent Orange. With that, we're going to add the color to the strawberries here. We will go over the yellow we have painted, but leaving behind some lighter areas. I'm trying to leave the edges of the strawberries quite bumpy. While these strawberries dry, let's paint the leaves and the stem. For that, we had this earlier mix of Sap Green and Burnt Umber together. We are going to use that same mix, add some more Sap Green to it. With that, let's first add the stem or a stock. Coming close to the strawberry, but not quite touching it because we'll be adding the green leafy bits above the strawberries later. Now for the strawberry leaves, what I like to do is paint for a rounded leaf shape. So like this. Then while it is still wet, go ahead and pick its edges and pull them out like this to make them serrated. Let's see it one more time here. While it is still wet, pull them out with the tip of your round brush. With the same green, we will add some top leafy bits to our strawberry. Now for the flowers, I'm going to pick some Cobalt Blue and add it near the Burnt Umber. This will give me the bluish gray that I need for the petals. The petals are usually white in color, to show a white on top of white paper using this bluish gray is a nice way, keeping it quite light. Five petals, our strawberries have almost dried, so we can add another layer of some details. So picking some Winsor Red, adding a bit of Permanent Alizarin Crimson. With that, we can make small curved marks, little dots, a bit more dense towards the darker right side, just to give the bumpy texture. Curved marks. Dots. We'll pick some of the Sap Green, add a bit to the center of the flowers. With some Sap green mixed with some Indigo, I'm going to add the thin veins to the leaves. With this darker color, I'll also add a little bit of this color to the tip of the green bits above the strawberries. Also giving them a bit more color, slight color variation with this darker green in there as well. Give a bit better shape to some of the petals that look a little fuse. Bit of red in the center. For now we are done with the strawberries. Now let's concentrate on our butterfly again. We'll pick some of that pink again and with that, let's demarcate the two set of wings, just a very light pink colour. With some Burnt Umber, let's add some darker spots. We'll start at the base here, try to add them symmetrically. I've added two at the base here, one on the side, another one on the side, one at the top here, another one here at the top. I'll use some of that Burnt Umber to demarcate the wings a bit better. With a very light Burnt Umber and just the tip of the brush, I'm going to create these vein like marks for the wings. You can look for inspiration on Internet for the particular kind of butterfly that you like, or the ones that visit your garden and paint that. This is a very generic butterfly I've painted here. We'll come back to this with some white. But for now, let's move on and paint our gardening tools. I'm going to start with some Burnt Umber mixed with some Transparent Orange. For the wooden base, making it slightly curved in the middle. Now, for the fork and for the trowel, I'm going to make some Burnt Umber with some Indigo to create that near black color. Now, let's paint the fork. We can also add some details to the handle so with some more pure Burnt Umber, very less water in my brush. I'll add a few stripes here. While our gardening tools are drying, I'm going to go back to my strawberries. I've got my bleed proof white here, and with my zero brush, I'm going to pick some of that white and just add a few dots to the strawberries. We will also use this bleed proof white to add some dots to our butterfly. Also to the center. I'll pick some of the Burnt Umber in my zero brush to add a leafy motif to the handles of these gardening tools. You can see I'm mostly painting all of this with my number three round brush. Number three gives me the right amount of control I need to paint something small like this. Giving a little bit of shadow to the trowel and to the fork. I'll pick some of the tal blue and with that, add a bit more color to the birdhouse. I was starting to fade a little bit. Add a bit more shadow right underneath the roof with that blue. We can move ahead and pick another set of prompts. 10. Prompts: Feather, Chicken & Watering Can: Now let's pick another set of prompts. Next one is a bird's feather. Let's pick another. We'll paint a chicken and a watering can. Let's get started. I'll paint the chicken right up here for the feather. I have some space here. We can include a feather here to draw a chicken. I usually start with a triangular shape, something like this, and then add a round head up on top here. And kind of follow this triangular shape to create their body. Add their comb on top, the wattles, the wing, and then their legs. I've shown it to you here a bit bigger so that you can also draw your chicken like this. I'll be drawing it here, so it will be quite small for you. I will add the watering can right here. Now, let's get started with the painting for the feathers. There is a technique I follow for years. For that, you're going to need an old damaged brush, something like this. It's right now quite dry. I haven't touched it with water. You can paint your feather in any colors. I'm going to paint the top of it slightly bluish in color and the bottom in this orangish brown color with a mix of Transparent Orange and Burnt Umber. I do suggest to mix your colors right away because we will need to paint it fast, got the Burnt Umber here, to that, I'll add some Transparent Orange. We will start with Cobalt Blue, starting from top, I'm going to create a curved thin line using just the tip of the brush. So rest your hand comfortably and come down like this, make it a bit wider at the base and pick a fluffier brush that can hold a bit more water. I've got this natural hair number four here. With that, I will pick that Cobalt Blue start from the top and touch your brush, push it down, leave it, go on the other side, with a thin brush like triple zero or a dry brush, simply pull thin lines out from the center like this, really thin lines, giving it a bit of texture, adding thin lines, coming out from the center for both sides. Now we're going to pick that Burnt Umber and Transparent Orange mix and add towards the bottom of the feather like this. While it is still wet, take that, the dry brush, and simply pull it like this. The dry brush will pick thin lines of the color. You can go over the blue a little bit, giving it that nice fluffy look. Keep them smaller towards the bottom, pick some more of that color, deposit it in the center. If your older brush has gotten wet, you can run it along a paper towel like this to dry it nicely. Now it's again dried and with that, you can pick a color directly. Dry it again and create dry brush marks like this to give it a bit more texture. But if you don't have a brush like that, then you can simply pick your detail brush and very lightly go back and forth, create these thin marks. We'll wait for this to dry before we add some more details to the feather. In the meantime, let's paint our chicken. For the chicken, I'll use this similar kind of color combination of Burnt Umber, Transparent Orange, maybe a little bit of Quinacridone Gold. I will start with a little bit of Quinacridone Gold from the top where the head is supposed to be. Bring the color down. Now shift to my Transparent Orange and Burnt Umber mix near the breast of the chicken. Continue this color over the wings. Pick a bit more Burnt Umber, and then a bit darker color towards the bottom, and also the back part of the chicken, keeping the back fluffy and even the bottom. Also, I'm keeping a bit darker. We'll wait for this to dry before we add any more details. In the meantime, we can paint the base layer for our watering can. For that, let's use a gray. I'm going to start with some Cobalt Blue. To that, I will add some Burnt Umber. It makes a nice bluish gray. Since it's a bit bigger shape, I'll pick my natural hair number four here, holds good amount of water, and let's paint the shape of the watering can first. You can see it's a nice light gray color. With that, I'm quickly painting the base shape of the watering can. While it is still wet, I'm going to pick my zero brush and with some Burnt Umber in my brush. I'm going to add a few spots where the colors are still wet to show a bit of rust, especially where the joints are of various parts of the watering can. Let that color bleed, don't worry about it. While all of this dries, we can come back to our feather here and let's add some darker color dots. For that, let's mix the Burnt Umber and Indigo together to create that almost black color again. So Burnt umber and Indigo Before adding those dots, let me add a little central line first. I'll pick some of this black itself and with that very lightly, I'll recreate the central line. Now we can get back to adding the dots. This time zero brush, just adding slightly bigger dot shapes to the whole feather here. Now we can get back to our chicken. For that, let's start adding the little details. I'm going to pick some Winsor Red. I'm going to add a few marks for the comb part, the little red but on top of the head of the chicken and small red wattles with some Transparent Orange in my brush. I will add the legs and the chicken feet. Can also use this orange to paint the beak. Add some more of that orange to the Burnt Umber mix, and add some color around the wing here, add some more color to the front, soften it a bit. It's up to you what kind of chicken you would like to paint, a bit more orange towards the neck, little dots and dashes to give a bit more feather texture. Now we can come back to our watering can. We'll mix that same gray with which we painted the base and add a little bit of shadows. To the handle here. Some darker areas. Let's add a stripy pattern on it to a combination of some thin stripes and a white one in between. You can decide to paint any pattern. So you can make a simple watering can like this. Quite interesting by adding little details like this. I'm getting tempted to add a few white dots to the feather here as well. You can add simply just the white dots, but I would like to add a mix of white and black dots. So now I'm just adding a few white ones. This is just an imaginary feather, but you can look for inspiration for any particular bird that you really like. With that near black made out of Indigo and Burnt Umber, I will carefully add the eye just a round dot and then add a little bit of red around it. With some of that Burnt Umber mix, I'll also give a little bit of texture to the chicken legs, little dashes. With some pure Burnt Umber, without much water, I'll add some dots and dashes all over the wings So just some text remarks. With that near black, I will also add a few dots on the spraying part of the watering can. Now we can pick another set of prompts to fill these remaining areas. 11. Prompts: Lavender Pot & Carrots: Now let's pick our last set of prompts for this spread. Next prompt is a potted plant or flower and some freshly picked vegetables. It's up to you what vegetable you would like to paint, and also what kind of flower you would like to add. I will only pick these prompts for now because I want to add the word "spring" here. I have this space here and this here. I will paint the potted plant here and the vegetable here. I think a few carrots might look really nice here. I will quickly sketch the letters here so that I know how much space I have for the carrot. We'll be painting a small pot of lavender here. You can decide to paint any flower that you like. Let's get started with it. For the pot of lavender, you can pick any one of these colors that you like for the pot. You can use a terracotta color like this Transparent Orange and Burnt Umber, or you can pick any one of these colors to make it flow throughout the page. I'm thinking of using this Phthalo Turquoise that we had mixed earlier for the bird house. With that, I will first paint the rim of the plant pot using my number three round brush. You can use a flat brush for something like this. It will be much easier. But this is fine for now. I will let it dry before I add the lavender strands. In the meantime, we can go ahead and paint our carrots here, laying flat like this with their stalks going up. For carrots, we can obviously start with some orange. But you can also start with some yellow and then add some orange wet on wet. So it's up to you how you would like to paint. Now to paint the carrot, I'm going to pick the color, either yellow or orange. Doesn't matter. And starting from where I want the carrot to start, lay the color like this flat, and then kind of jiggle your brush a little bit and lift it slightly as you're coming down. To give that carrot uneven edges. I'm extending the carrot to the other page as well. And while it is still wet, you can drop in some more of that orange in little dashed marks like this. Let's see it one more time. So either pick your yellow or your orange, start from where the top of the carrot is, and wiggle your brush, drag it horizontally like this. And while it is still wet, don't forget to add the deeper orange color. Add a few spots. You can also use the tip of your brush to add some more thinner hairy roots Now for the stem, we can start with a light Sap Green mix for just the base. So thin lines coming out near the carrot. Then you can extend them a bit more for the leafy area. For the leaves, you can pick Sap Green or Sap Green and Indigo and just add tiny leaves close to each other. Starting from top, then two sides, small dashes on each of the sides close to each other. I'm painting the leaves quite loosely, as you can see, vary greens to create a little bit of color variation. Sap Green, sometimes Sap Green mixed with Indigo. We can now move back and paint our lavender. So to paint the lavender, I'm picking some Quinacridone Magenta, and I've also got my French ultramarine ready, but you can also use To turquoise to create that nice violet or purple colour. So I'm starting with some magenta, starting from how high I want it to be little dashes in clusters coming down like this. So clusters of little dashes. Sometimes I'll pick a little bit of that French Ultramarine. So just a few clusters running vertically. I'll make it quite full. So in between some of the earlier strands, I'm leaving a little bit of space near the bottom. To show the leaves. For the leaves and the stem, we can use the same very initial mix of Burnt Umber and Sap Green. And with the thin tip of the brush, connect all of these strands together like this between all of those clusters, add this green and at the base, add a few thin leafy shapes, long ones. Close to the bottom and making it quite dense with the leaves. Making it dark at the base. You can go back and add a bit more magenta or the purple. Make this lavender pot nice and full. Now, let's add a little bit more detail to this plant pot with our Phthalo Turquoise with which we painted it. Let's first demarcate top rim. You can add any pattern that you would like. I'm using that same Phthalo Turquoise just to add these loops here. Just to add a few little details to create a simple flower pot, a bit more interesting. Some of the details on the carrots have faded, with a little bit of Transparent Orange, I'll just add them once more, just a few dots and dashes. In the next lesson, let's add some colour to this lettering here and fill up few of these areas either with small flowers or some eggs to celebrate spring. 12. Lettering & Finishing Touches: Now let's add some color to our lettering here. For lettering, I'm picking my number zero point at detail brush. For the lettering, you can decide to pick any one of the colors that you have used throughout the pages or painted with black or multiple colors as well. I will pick this red that we have used for the strawberries. You can follow your favorite lettering style. I'm just adding some serif lettering, but quite loosely. Giving the letters a bit of a bounce. Take your time with lettering. Don't worry about it. But if you want to add it loosely, feel free to do that. Now we can fill some of these spaces with maybe some chicken eggs to celebrate spring or little flowers. So for the eggs, you can pick this Transparent Orange and Burnt Umber mix, and this number zero brush, and with that, add few egg shapes. You can also pick some Cobalt Blue for some bluish color eggs, for some of the bird eggs. Let's also add a few flowers. For that, we will start with some yellow for the center. It's a little dots. Let's add one up here. One down here, maybe one here in between. Now you can decide whether you want to paint them with pink color petals or with the white petals like the strawberry ones. I will paint them with the white petals. For that, you can either pick Cobalt Blue or add just a touch of Burnt Umber to Cobalt Blue to create that slightly grayish color for the white petals. Simply add five round petals next to the center. If the yellow is still wet, it will bleed, but that's a nice effect. I like to go back in and redefine the petals with a little bit of border. It's a gray color. When you paint them this closely, they tend to get fused a little bit. With this little bit of border marking layer, the petals become a bit more demarcated. Go back in with a little bit of that red. Add some of that red to the center in little dots. With my really tiny brush, I'm going to pick some of that Cobol Blue again and with that, add a few dots to some of these eggs, giving it a bit of texture for the speckled eggs that some of the birds have. So using just the tip of my zero brush, just adding little speckles. Now we are almost done with our whole spread. You can go around and see if you would like to add little details anywhere else, just to give that little extra bit of love to your sketchbook page. I'm adding some of the white dots to our chicken here. Adding these white dots binds it all together nicely. Adding some of it to the center here of the flowers, be it painted. If you would like to, you can also add little leafy marks throughout the spread just to fill up some of these spaces. But you don't need to fill the whole page with these. Just add them at a few spots. And with this, our sketchbook spread is ready. I really hope you enjoyed painting all of these little spring icons with me, and I can't wait to see what you will paint in your sketchbook. So please do share it so that we can all appreciate it together. 13. Conclusion: I really hope you enjoyed painting this entire sketchbook spread with me. Even if you didn't paint, I sincerely do hope that I was able to inspire you a bit to give Watercolor sketchbooking a try. Here is my final sketchbook spread, and now it's your turn to share a photograph of your sketchbook page. And remember, process before perfection. I would love to see what you created, so do share your project here on Skillshare. And if you're sharing your results from this class on Instagram, you can tag me. You can use the discussion tap to ask any questions about this class or to interact with me and other students of this class. I've turned my sketchbook spread into this pretty art print that you can purchase as a digital downloadable print. You can print it at home or at a nearby printing service. Use it as a wall art. If you enjoyed my teaching style, you can check out some of my other Skillshare classes and hit that follow button to know when I publish my next class. Thank you so much for joining me for this class. And let's paint together again really soon. Until then, stay creative.