Happy Potted Plants with Watercolor and Ink

1. Welcome!: Hi everyone. It's Chris from sweet seasons art. Welcome to happy potted plants. I'm so excited that you're here to paint with me today. Maybe you have some little plant babies at home like these. I need to get these potted, but I thought we could use them as some inspiration today in painting our own watercolor and ink. Happy little potted plants will do some vases and some inked plants. And then we'll add some ink detail to our watercolor plants. Just like these. This project is great for beginners. And your project will be to paint your own happy plants. Let's get started. 2. Supplies: I wanted to quickly talk supplies with you. I have some cold press watercolor paper here. I've made two horizontal lines where we'll be drawing our vases and pots is just to keep us straight, which is hard for me to do. Usually, I have some pigeon letters, round brushes, watercolor brushes 62. I have two ink pens. This is a Pigeon Letters Monoline size 01. This is a unit ball white pen. Then obviously you need some water and a paper towel. And also I wanted to swatch some of our colors for you. So we're gonna do a yellow ocher. We're going to do also a burnt orange, which I really love. That's Daniel Smith. For our greens. We're going to use just some traditional sap green and I think also some undersea green, which is Daniel Smith. It's just a little darker. I want some contrast in our plants so that one will be a little darker. Then I think for the blues in our pods, we will go ahead and use some turquoise. This is a cobalt turquoise. I'm going to darken it with probably a little indigo or some black. We might also use a little brown for the dirt in our pots, but those will be our supplies and we're going to jump right into painting a row basis right here. 3. Watercolor Vases and Inked Pots: I want to just go ahead and jump in and start our first vase. Let's start here. So we don't start over here and then drag your hand through our painting, which I do quite frequently. Do some fun shapes for these vases. So I'm just gonna do a little line here. I might actually dark in this turquoise a little bit, just to give it a little more dimension to your, just a straight talk to our vase. And then I think we'll bring it down in a, a triangular shape. Then maybe we'll take it straight back down in to our line here. I'm very bad at keeping things symmetrical and we're not going to worry if they are symmetrical today. Once we have our outline, we are going to go ahead and fill it in. But not to precisely a lot of water in there. Right? We'll keep it nice and loose. If there's some white spots showing, we won't worry about that either. Only thing we might do here is darken up or exterior lines. A little, gives it a slight bit of dimension. And I like the bleeds of these tones. Indigo has a great granulation. Honestly. There's our first face. So let's go ahead and load up with yellow ocher. Our next face will make it. Let's do it a little bit of a oval. Maybe there'll be a little shorter than that first one. I'll start with a top. Then we'll try to keep it as symmetrical as we can. Okay. It's not going to be because I'm not good at it, but something like that. Again, I'm going to fill in the center with paint and water and try to get rid of those lines. If you get water on your page, tear a little paper towel, soak it up. It a little more pigment here. Put the bottom on this guy. Sure, his top is good. And again, if there's some white showing, long here, is really just looks like a shine on the pot. I think that's just fine. We're going to add ink detail later. So we don't need perfection here. Right? There is our base number two. Our third one. Let's get some really nice orange. Let's make a tall skinny. Let's make a tall skinny kinda base. Again. I'm not great at straight lines, but we're just wing it. We put the bottom on him here again trying to I'm trying to keep to my horizontal line. I drew top right there. Sorry. With water here. If there's white showing that's fine. Maybe the sun is hitting it dark and the edges a little. Now before we do our plants coming out of these and before we ink, detail the vases, we have to wait for these to dry. So get a hairdryer if you want to speed that process or be patient with me, which I'm not. And we'll start once these are perfectly dry. Now that we have our basis, Let's go ahead and take our black ink and put some fun plants in them. We'll just do this kinda loosey-goosey. I'd like to do three stocks and H1 because I think that's odd number looks good. So we'll do three stocks going out of each one of these and slightly different plants. And it might be a little hard to see my hands in the way. So I'm going to try to show you as I go. Usually start with the center, like a center stock, because that will be the one at the front and I draw the stem. And then I just add, this one will just add little loopy leaves. I didn't leave a lot of space here for myself, so maybe you'll be smarter and leave more room. There are some little wonky leaves and now this next stem will come out from that same side, but it's going to be hit in a little behind this first one. So I'm going to start off doing sort of leaves that are a little bit tucked behind you can't really maybe maybe see them, right. So maybe like that. Then we'll just go like this. Keep going. These are just fun. You can see these are very imprecise shapes. But leaves, you see them from different angles. Don't look exactly the same all the time. And the last one I'm going to do looping out this way. So it's actually going to come out from here and then it's gonna kinda go Medallia, a little like this, may have to change the angle that you're drawing. To do this. It's a little hard to do. See the stem would come like this way. Now the leaves are gonna get hidden. So they're going to be a little bit weird. And it'll go like that. Draw that stem in a little darker. Then it goes back there. That's really, I think, fun. And just right for that one. If we want to add a little detail to the pot, we can add some white ink detail to this base. Let's try a bad with straight lines. I said so let's use a little cheat here. Let's try a straight line. Right here. Remember you have to get your white pen going. Cold press paper can be hard on pen. Maybe something like that. And then let's add, just add some lines going down like this. The base, maybe for fun. Let's try our second one. Yeah, this one we'll do three stocks that look a little bit like eucalyptus. You think about how eucalyptus looks. Let's take one out. This way. Eucalyptus has little straight lines when you see the side of the leaf and loops where you see the whole round leaves. So sometimes you see the whole thing and sometimes you just see a line. And sometimes it's at an angle, right? And sometimes it blocks the stem. Might come out this way. Very wonky, very imprecise. And I think that that's fun. So let's just do some leaves like that at angles. And so something like that for some, for some eucalyptus I think is good. And then maybe we'll do another one here. So again, maybe some little here. And a bigger leaf here. Maybe a leaf like that. Stem. Maybe. Then it's going to get hit in here, right? So you might see some of these, but you won't really see them. All right? And then let's just do a third one. Alright, let's add some fun ink to this one as well. Maybe something simple like right there, I do it just a straight line. Let's try maybe a straight line here. You've got to get her ink going. Here we go. 4. Watercolor Pots and Plants: Alright, let's use our same colors for our plots that we use for our vases. And let's do sort of a traditional start with sort of a traditional hot for our first one. We will just do the top. We're not going to be too precise, but we shouldn't do the top. I'm leaving the back open because our plants are going to come out of there. And I don't, I don't want to paint over top of the pot basically, if that makes sense. And then we're just going to bring bring our pot down. I'm going to bring it out a little at an angle just for fun. We're going to try to keep things symmetrical. If at all possible. Real pot, there'd be a shadow underneath the top of it. I'm going to paint a little darker here. Then I'll add more water. As we go. Again. Nice and loose guys know. We're not going to stress over perfect lines. These are supposed to be fun and whimsical. So maybe darken her. And she's a little. Then I might go back with my tinier. He's my little tiny brush here. And I'm just going to bring up the front of the pot. You've probably heard that a dry brush is a thirsty brush. So if we wanted to make the lip of this stand out a little, take a dry brush and pick up some water and pigment. Then we add some darker tones underneath. Again, it just gives a little dimension to your pot. Necessary. But I think it's fun. All right, we might add more dimension at the end, but depends, We're going to, we're going to ink it so we don't have to be too concerned. Now, I thought we'd start with just a sap green, pretty light and do some little, just happy little two-part leaves. So when I say two-part leaf, this is, if you're a beginner to see shapes essentially touching each other, I'm going to keep this light because these are our first leaves and then I'll add some darker ones behind. And we'll just see how this goes when I came out a little dark, so I'll just get more water. Larger leaves down towards the bottom. And tenure leaves up at the top. You quite a few. And then we'll just talk. We will talk some of that darker leaves behind. What we're gonna do is connect these along a slightly darker stem. And I love when we get some pretty leads going. Dashes in here. Maybe this guy up like this. Just really simple. And then just for fun, let's add a little brown sepia. Gotta be careful if your pot is wet that we don't just totally ruin it. But again, these are very loose. Alright? So we might wait until some of these leaves dry a little bit to go back because if we start putting darker leaves behind, they're just going to blend into those. And it's gonna be a big mash. So let's start our second pot here. While we wait for those leaves to dry just a little. I'm gonna go back to this blue color. I really like it. Maybe a little more indigo in this one, but essentially are same mix. Let's do something fun. Let's do like a three tier blobby pot. We're going to see how this goes. Starts off the same way essentially though, right? We're going to start off with our pot where we can kinda see. You can kinda see the dirt would be going to round this down a little, up, a little pigment. Alright, now I'm going to add another tier that's almost exactly like that below it. Me a little bit bigger. I did Google like pots. And I also looked on Pinterest just to get some ideas of some fun things. So we wouldn't just be doing anything boring. Right? And then let's add the last tier, which is a little bit even. Maybe thicker, doesn't matter if they touch. I'm leaving some space. Just again to add in some darker pigment and give it a little bit of dimension because it will look like parts are indented right there farther away, the darker is the farther away. Okay, So this is just kinda fun and funky little pot, but I think he's kinda cool. All right. Let's go back and pick up our small brush. It really careful not to run our hand through our new pot would be sad. So fingers crossed, we don't do that. Let's add some darker leaves. So I'm picking up some undersea green. And I'm going to add some leaves that are behind these other leaves. So say for instance, this one might have a leaf that was tucked right there. And here might be a leaf coming down that was tucked behind this guy. And so is tucked behind that guy. So now our plant just has a little bit more dimension. Maybe one that hung down this way. So I think that's good. He's kinda crazy. He could add, we can make him a little bit more interesting if we add another leaf up top maybe, and one that goes out this way, just so it's a little more shape to him. But you could do it every like on this. He's gonna get a little, a little crazy. The side and leave shows here, right? It's not a full leaf. Maybe that's true here too. So this guy just ends up being kind of a wellness. Again, if you want to darken this line underneath, you can go back. You just might have to blend your line in a little so you don't have a big watermark. All right, let's go back to this guy. That guy is fine and we'll add ink to him in a minute. I'd love to do a cactus and this one, I think that would be really fun. So I'm gonna go for a really light green to start. And we're going to do the same thing where we start with our top layer. So I'm going to literally go and like make just a wavy line like that. Pretty pale. You can see it's pretty pale. I'll do another one. Maybe a little fatter next to it. A little bit of darker pigment along the edge just to give it a little contrast. Then we'll come back with our darker pigment in a bit. We're going to start with those two and then we're going to add some in behind to make that like a cactus, but we need to again, we need to wait for that to dry. So let's do our third pot. Civil, go back with our yellow ocher. Let's do, this guy was kinda oval. Let's do more of a round pot here. Let's try to really make him rounded. Will make him a good size to a little smile. And then I really want him to be fat. And so the symmetry might be a little hard. I might have to sort of keep going back and forth. Then I get into trouble because it'll just grow to be huge. But let's try this. Again. Not perfect, but that's not what we're going for. Darker pigment under the lip to right. We can go back in and make that more precise later, just like we did here. Darken the edges, okay. Let's go back to our cactus and let's get some of the undersea green and actually want to pull in a little of the indigo just because it's in that indigo pot and it'll kinda make it blend coordinate better. What I wanna do is put in little cactus guy here. He's darker, so he's going to come out behind. And then there's gonna be one right here. And this is gonna be tricky because you're going in behind these two. So it's only going to show you're going to have to kinda do a really. Then he's going to come in here and then down. Alright, so I know that's really precise. Use your little brush. And he is right there. Right? Then let's do one more on the other side. And we can go ahead and put a little in the pot. I don't mind if that gets blended in with the base of the plants because I think it just kinda does. So it's okay that there's still some wet paint down there. Okay. And so we'll have some fun when we incur them as well, doing some ink on the cactus there. We have our last guy here, a big fat, such a big fat plot. And I'm just going to use my bigger is said. And I'm going to do some broad leaves like this. Again, we start with the lighter color because we can't paint over the dark. Maybe one that goes and then things out a little. And I don't mind if these blend, we can add some dimension and shadow and a little bit while we wait for these leaves to dry, let's go ahead and ink this pot. I'd like to add a little white ink details to the leaves to give them centers just like this one. So make sure your pens working. Make sure your dry just adding a little vain. Let me think that looks cute. The side, once you wouldn't see it, you only need to add it where it would show. Let's get them as dark leaves. And then maybe we'll do like that. Could leave the pot or we could stripe it. It looks good the way it is, but I kinda want to add some more to it. So I'm going to cheat again on this one. I'm gonna get my black pen and I'm going to be very careful. I don't want to smudge my lines. That's cute. Let's go into this now. And you know how the cactus will have the little white like squiggly lines. And I'm going to make these little squigglies with the white pen will cooperate. I think that's fun. Or leaves are dry here. So I want to take our larger brush again and get some of the darker greens going. So we have more dimension. This is where plant is large hill. Maybe. He's tucked behind. Then even do it'd be careful here, but we could even do like a darker got real dark, darker toned up some of that. Just a little too much blue in that darker toned leaf here. He's tucked behind that one. Then we have a lot of variation coming in there on those. And then I am going to put just a little bit of dirt in the pot. I think. Let's get our black pen and go ahead and add some ink detail to the leaves on this pot. I'm going to just do some centers here where I think they would show on these leaves that are tucked behind. And then we'll deal on the front leaves too. That I think is kinda fun. Now this pot, he's so big. I don't really want to do stripes on him. I'm not I'm not entirely sure. Maybe he's a polka dot guy. Could also do this with white. Quash, would probably be a lot more efficient. So something like that. He's kind of crazy, but I like it. I think it works. We might go in and fill those in a little better, but I kinda just like the crazy white polka dots. And I hope you do too. 5. Final Thoughts: I hope you had fun painting plants with me today. I hope you'll look for me on Instagram at Sweet seasons art and tag me in your projects when you paint your very own happy potted plants, I'd love to story your work. Bye!