Illustrative Botanicals - Watercolor and Ink

1. Introduction: In this class we're going to create these fun and whimsical botanical line art drawings over loose watercolor backgrounds that any beginner can do. Intermediate artists will also love these projects because there'll be a ton of tips and tricks throughout. We'll go over the basics of watercolors and how to create super whimsical effects with the wet-on-wet painting technique. I'll share tips on the different ways to use wet on wet and my favorite ways to create these fun backgrounds. We'll go over how to draw sketchy botanicals. I'll share tons of examples in how I approach creating sketchy flowers will create three projects that will increase in difficulty as we progress. First, we'll focus on a basic loose watercolor background and one single type of flower. The second project, we'll focus on adding additional colors and working with multiple botanicals. The third project will add splatters and work with a bouquet of flowers and greenery. I will guide you through my thought process during each demonstration so that once we're finished, you'll have the ability to create your own beautiful and whimsical works of art. So grab your watercolors and ink and let's get started. I can't wait to see what you create. 2. Suggested Supplies: This class can be done with a few basic supplies. I'll be including additional items which you are welcome to add as well. But one of these whimsical illustrations can really be done with whatever supplies you have on hand. There are really only three tools that you're going to need. Paper, watercolor and ink. Paper is important here because we're using watercolor and ink. So the paper that you use has to be able to bear the weight of those things. Watercolor paper is the obvious choice, but mixed media paper is also a really good option. Watercolor paper has a lot of texture to it. So it's actually better to use a hot press watercolor paper since it's smoother. However, the paper that I like to use, It's a super affordable option and that's the Canson watercolor paper. It's cold pressed, but it has a smoother texture than most. So it works really well with the ink. Cold press paper typically will be hard to draw on with the pens, but this Canson version is perfect. The next item on the list is the watercolor paint. Now, the general rule is the higher-quality of the paint and therefore, more pricey has a higher saturated paint. That being said, if you only have student grade paints, use what you have. If you want to invest in additional Paine's later on, go for it, but don't let the quality of your paint deter you from moving forward. There are many options of paint on the market, and there are a few that despite the lower price point, the quality is still really, really good. I'll be demonstrating with a coy watercolor, the Jane Davenport watercolor, and also a Winsor Newton. These all have different price points. And yet you can see that the quality is very comparable. In fact, Jane Davenport is one of the best that I've used. And finally the ink. There are many forms of thing that can be used for this project. Fine liner ink pens or the most obvious, but Sharpies are also a good option. Hence, we'll have a bit more control and the lines will always look consistent. However, if you prefer the different line thickness and sketchy feel using a liquid ink, like the India ink and a dip pen or thin liner brush is also a really great option. I'll demonstrate each of these in their project lessons. Make sure to test if your inks are waterproof. If you plan to add watercolor on top of the ink. If you add ink on top of the watercolor, then it's not as important. That's how I'll be demonstrating in the lessons. Other than that, the other items that you'll need is just a water jar, paint brushes, and paper towels. 3. Loose Watercolor Techniques: Wet on wet is when you apply paint to a wet surface. Whether this is applied with brushstrokes or by dropping in the color. The beauty of this technique is that it offers less control over the color. For some, this may be hard. It literally means you have to go with the flow. But letting these colors blend and move on their own is truly what makes this technique special. For the first exercise, you're going to wet your paper with clean water. No paint will be on your brush. Then get a generous amount of wet paint on your brush and drop in the color. Here. I'm starting with a blue paint that I've thinned with water. I go buy an 80 20 rule, mostly when painting, unless I need a thinner wash. 80% of paint, 20% with water. As you drop the paint into the wet circle, you'll see the way the paint spreads and disburses across the wet area. It won't breach the border, but rather stay inside the wet area. You can even add additional water to really soak things. Lifting the page. You can also force the colors to mix because of the amount of water I used in this first example, the paint will over mix and can even get muddy. So be careful. The next example, let's use a bit less water when making our shape. And then we'll drop in color the same way we did before. But this time, don't add as much paint to the brush. You'll see that the paint is still spreading and dancing across the wet area. But it's only mixing where the paints touch instead of running all over together. The third example, let's have very little water to create the shape on the paper. Then take less paint on your brush. You can see that the paint is still spreads out. Just a little more like fireworks, then mixing with the colors nearby without the water. It doesn't mix that much. For your illustrations, you'll want to find the level that you prefer. Typically I stay in the area of the second example, but it can depend on how transparent I want the background. I like to hold my brush at the end. This gives me even less control over the brush. Then when I wet my paper, I like to spin the brush between my fingers just as I move it around the page, I repeat the same gestures when I apply the paint. When I set the color down, I'm not resting the bristles on the paper so much as just letting them skim and skip over the wet area. This gives some areas more color and others a bit less, but it's going to offer great dimension. The other way to apply the first layer of color is to start with paint on your brush. Instead of using clean water first, make the first gestures with the paint, and then you'll add additional colors by dropping them in. Make sure your initial colors are still wet when adding additional colors. So they mixed together. If your paper starts to dry, your paints won't mix as much. This is when I like to add my splatters. I want the splatters to bleed out just a touch, but not mixed together with the other colors already down on the page. If you are getting puddles of paint forming, you can do a couple of things. You can leave them to dry as they are. They will dry with tons of texture and can be unbelievably beautiful. You can use a paper towel to soak up the excess. If you just set the paper towel gently against the puddle or you can press the paper towel into the paint and actually lift color and the puddle at the same time. The third option is to use a dry brush to soak up the excess paint. There's no wrong ways to do this. Just play with your brushes and your pains and see which types of marks you prefer. When adding this bladders. I like to wait until the paint is slightly dry but not completely. I get my paint is very wet and I soak up as much as I can with my brush. Then using my opposite hand, I actually will take the brush and tap it against my opposite finger. Or holding the brush, I can use my index finger to tap the brush firmly and creates bladders if you want tiny, tiny splatters, you can also just use a toothbrush, make sure to leave a lot of whitespace on your page. This adds contrast and can really live in up your piece. 4. Drawing Sketchy Botanicals: When drawing flowers, There's a lot of different ways of going about that. For this class. We're not focusing on the perfection of it or making it photo-realistic as much as it's taking the images as inspiration and turning them into a very sketchy type format. So we're going to do some practicing on paper first before we move into the actual projects. And what I like to do when I'm pulling inspiration is first and foremost, I like to look in my own camera roll. That's because we have a farm and we have lots of flowers in a garden here. So I'm always taking lots of photos, especially during the spring and summer. And so when I sit down to do some sketching, whether I'm on the couch or I'm sitting in the art studio, I actually will pull up my camera roll and see what I've got. The next place that I'll look for inspiration is actually seed catalogs. They've got beautiful images that are typically zoomed in pretty closely to the actual plant itself or the flower. So I can use that as a way to really break down the shapes of a flower. Seed catalogs are great. And the other thing is if you're at a library book sale, or maybe you're just really into gardening and plants. You might have actual gardening books on hand. And this is a really good one because it's all about annual flowers. And then I also have this indoor garden book. One of the other really great things about using the gardening books is that a lot of times they'll actually have bouquets of flowers together and you can actually use and pull pieces of that to actually see how a floral arrangement would go together. So then when you're actually drawing your sketchy illustrations, you might actually have something that's super easy to just kind of mimic. And also they also have a lot of greenery. And so if you're looking for different leaves and combinations of greenery that you want to add to your flower arrangement in your illustration. This is also a really good place to pull that kind of inspiration and examples from. So first let's look at a few examples and I'll show you how I break down the flower into shapes. That's the key to how I actually go about making and drawing flowers. So we're going to use this Kosmo as an example. There's lots of different types of Cosmos, and you can see a couple of them here. So if we just take this flower, e.g. when we go to sketch on our sketch book and on our paper, what we're looking for is the shapes. And we're just going to take it one shape at a time. On this one, we've got the circle center. And we also have the circle center here, whereas this one is going to have a little bit of color out. But that's okay because unless we're mimicking the color, we don't really have to separate those pieces. Then we're going to take the petals individually because we'll deal with the center and I'll show you how to do that. So I'm just using my pen. I'm just getting a sense of how these shapes come together. There's the first one, this one sits close to that one. And then as you see they spread out, they have different jagged edges. This one actually comes up at an angle, sweeps up and then it only has this fold on top. So it looks very different than the other petals. If you actually just get a chance to just trace over the shape of the flower, you'll actually really get a sense of how it feels to make those marks. So let's look at this one down here. This one has, these petals are very long and straight and they have those jagged edges here. Even though it's also still Cosmo, the edges are much more rounded and the ends aren't quite as jagged on this one as that first one on top there. So I just work my way around. This one actually sits slightly in front of this back one. See how this one kinda falls behind here. But then this pedal sits in front of this one. So as I trace over these, I'm getting a sense of the positioning, the shape, and how they all work together. So then if I took that and I mimic that in my sketchbook, I have a sense because it's almost kind of like this muscle memory that starts to happen. Here's another Kosmo. You can look at any of these flowers and you can start to do the same thing, even the very complex one, if you just break them into basic shapes or the hint of a shape. And that's one of the things that I like to do when I'm working with my sketchy florals. Is, I like to imply their shapes there. And I'll show you when we get into the actual sketching part, but it's not that I have to draw every little piece of this. This is a very sweet salt and is a very complex drawing. And I don't have to get into all the nitty-gritty and all the little petals that make up these little shapes. As much as I'm just trying to imply something, any of these same thing. Here's a poppy from a very basic shape poppy to a little bit more complicated one here with this jelly bean, one has a little bit more to it, even with the marigolds, even when something is super, has a ton of little tiny, tiny pedals, you do a few and then you imply the others. Okay, so let's get into our sketchbook and we will be able to draw some of these out. And I'll show you how I go about the sketchy illustrations. For your sketching practice. What I like to have as my inspiration. So the images that I'm using as an example, I like my sketchbook. So then I like to have a few tools on hand and usually it's just a mechanical pencil, but you can always use a regular pencil and then a kneaded eraser. And I also have one of these erasers that you can click out if I need to get something a little bit more fine tuned in there. Okay, so let's just practice our flowers. And so we're gonna start with the cosmo. And we're just going to take the shapes that we broke down. Here. I have my basic circle. And even though I know that there's texture going on inside, I don't have to draw every little teeny piece of this yellow center. What I like to do is implied that it's there. So I do that with a couple of different things. So for the center of my flowers, I'll use different size circles. I'll use, It's a C-shape or U-shape, and it's just sometimes it's a combination of all those upside down. Okay. So that's the basic shape. It's just see or you or I'm using squiggles and sometimes I've been known to use all of them. So when I'm working on a center, it kinda depends. I mean, the other one is whether we've got lines or something because there might be little pieces. So for this one in the center, there are lots of little circular type. So I might do a little bit of circle. Some bigger, some smaller. It might actually just kinda put dots here and there. Some, I'll leave that for now. And let's start looking at the petals. Let's take this petal and this upper right corner because it sits in front of the other ones. So I always like to start with one that's sits slightly in front. My pedal doesn't have to be exactly like this one. I'm just looking for the basic shapes here. So I do know that this does taper down. It doesn't completely close in. This one has a little bit wider right taper. So I'm going to bring my hands together, but they're going to come out wide and then curve into a rounded edge. So I just start and I go light in the beginning because I always can come back in and add darker lines. So I start with that one and then I look, it's in the next one and it slightly sits behind this first one, but it comes out at about here. Again, I just look for the basic shape. And now because this one sits behind both of them, I'm actually going to draw this one first, just so that I have my line in place. Now, these two are a lot longer. This one is shorter, so I'm going to cut it down further down because it's, this is where we're adding the perspective. And these two are somewhere at the same level. And then I'm gonna complete this one because this one sits in front. So see how I just work my way around the flower, just looking for basic shapes. And then this one sits in front over here. So that's why I go light with my lines because as I start to fill in all the petals, I can move things around until I'm happy with them. Okay, so here I have the basic cosmo. Now, I would always like to lighten up the edges, my edges of the center or a little bit abrupt, but that's okay because now I have my basic flower and now I can go back in and I can rough up the edges because I don't need that perpendicular circular shape. If you notice these actually come out on the edges up on this one too. I just rough up my edges. I'm just implying that there's shape and texture in the center here. And then I start to darken my lines and I actually liked the sketchy feel, so I don't try to go real precise. I just let the shape come out of my pencil. I'm not holding my pencil super tight. It's just letting it flow. I find that the lines that I'm making when I do that are a little bit more authentic and have a better feel to them, then if I am trying to be too stiff and try to mimic the line that I had originally sketched. So just let your pencil flow and you can actually get really, really sketchy with them also, if you'd like, where you're actually going outside. Your lines dramatically, which adds a lot of movement and shape. And I do this a lot because I just think it's gorgeous. And sometimes you could just do edges. You didn't have to do the whole petal. So kinda play with your sketchy lines and see what you prefer. And then in the center, if you notice, there's a lot of center lines on these. And again, they don't have to be exact, they don't have to be perfect. I'm just using them to guide me where I put my lines. This one, if you notice what's all the way to the end, but I don't necessarily need it to. I'm just gonna give hints along the way that they're there. I started at the base here and then maybe I'll connect some on top. It's just giving texture to it. I don't want to make them stiff. I want them to flow with the shape of the petal. This petal, remember, is kinda coming down. It's like looping down and up. So I would create that shape with my lines that helps to reaffirm the visual that's happening in the viewer's eye, In your eye. So when you're drawing, it's flat, it's 2D until you start adding some of these textures and lines which helps to give it shape and can make it appear with far more dimension. And again, this is just your pencil sketch. When you go in with your ink, it just feels different. But by being able to play with your sketchy lines in pencil, it will help you decide how you want those lines to look once you're actually applying the ink. Okay, so there's our Cosmo. Let's pull out another example. So if you are going to work on something like a Xenia that has all these little petals here. So here's this example. Same thing. You've got your center. There's all kind of fall into each other. On this particular Xenia, you have all these little yellow type flowers sitting on top of it. And so those can be really easily implied by these really small little stars. And then because there's all these little petals, it starts to feel really overwhelming. But again, you're just going to fill in what you need to and then imply the rest I typically try to focus on with the top layer will look like. So I'm just going to work my way around the very top layer of petals that's closest to the center. And then everything that falls behind that can ultimately be implied. It's just, sometimes it's just basic shapes that underneath it, it doesn't even have to be anything fancy. I'm not even getting every single one. I'm just giving it the basic idea that they're repeated petals falling below that line. Let's put it on a sketchbook and you can see how that works. So again, we have roughly our center and we're going to know that all those center pieces fall toward themselves, right? And then on the outside we're also going to have a layer of these little stars, which I'm going to add. Again, there doesn't have to be exact. I'm just giving that there's something going on here because they're all falling toward the center. I'm just adding these little flick marks that imply that there's movement toward the middle. Then when working on these, Again, we're just working on the basic shape. I look at how taper they are, how they fall behind each other. It's kind of a haphazard a little bit looking. And because they're all coming in at different angles, there are different shapes. But I'm looking at creating just that top layer. And there's nothing about this that's exact. If you notice mine look very different than what the images, but I'm just giving the basic shapes and giving the idea that it's there. I can create these little fold lines so that it looks like it's currently. So now that there's that basic one because this flower, the angle that the cameras at right, we see more of this bottom part of the petals than we do the top. So up here, I'm just looking to add a few other lines that make it seem like there's additional petals back there. But down here, I'm going to start adding additional petals but see how they're like I'm almost not, I'm just making Heinz. I'm barely even adding a shape consistent with that. But what I've done is because I'm implying that if they're super basic now you can get more defined if you'd like. You can actually add in a little bit more structure to it. Or you can just do what I did originally and just give some basic lines there, which makes you think the image is full, right? Okay, so there's the basic Xenia and I can continue to fine tune this by darkening areas by letting certain things become more prominent. Again, that's where I'm adding a little bit darker. We'll Shane here and there. I can come back in and add some lines. I can darken up my edges now that the sketch is roughly done. And then I can also again, I'm not being precise. I'm not going to go over every single line, soup or stiff. I'm letting my pencil flow and being really easy with it and going with that sketchy. And then I can start to add lines which are going to give depth and movement. To my flower. And you can add a lot of lines which will give it a lot of darkening if you really wanted it to look like because some of these have a lot of folded. So you could definitely come in with a lot more line to shade that in and make it look really dark. So if you just let yourself play with your sketches by adding more lines, adding less lines, sketchy just imply lines, all that you just have to start playing and you start to figure out what you like and what feels good and what your style really starts to feel more genuine and authentic. And then out here I don't actually add lines to all of the petals. I just do it to a few of them again, I'm just starting to imply, and part of the reason that I do this also when I do this particular illustration type, is because when I'm using the ink over the watercolor wash you marks for those backgrounds that I do, the ink can be overpowering. There's a lot of black and a lot of lines and I don't want it to get lost and overpower the softness of the watercolor below. So just start to play with the way these sketches feel. And then you'll be able to get a sense of what feels right to you as you move into the inking phase. Okay, and then I want to do one more thing. And that is, let's look at a little bit of greenery and practice doing a little bit of that. So typically when I use greenery, if I'm not using the particular flowers leafs themselves, I'm implying things. If you see with the zinnias, they have a certain type of greenery shape. So if I were to add those, I'm looking for that shape, right? So here again, we get our marker. It's always good to trace over the leaves also because that'll help you with the guide as you start to put yours together. So if I'm not using the greenery from my flowers themselves, then I'm looking for greenery that I can add to the background. A lot of times it's just squiggles lines. So when I add greenery, I'm looking for ways to fill in my bouquets of sorts. So if I have my basic flowers positioned, what I'm looking for is different greenery that can fill in a gap. So leaf shapes, whatever that might be. Again, you're always just implying something. So whether this line has long skinny leaves or you can try this one. This is kind of like a figure eight is just like belonging oval. And I just go in a swoopy figure eight, or maybe you wanna do like a eucalyptus. And so same shape. So wherever my flower is, so if this was where my flower was and I wanted to fill in other things, I might bring in that greenery, right? And so all I am looking for is just basic shapes and I would just fill in my gaps. So there's that you can use long skinny grass looks. And then again, use these to inspire it. If nothing else, inspire the shapes. You can do ferns, which wherever you have a fern, these are real tight. Just keep your leaves real tight and they progressively get larger as you work your way down. So you would just fill in that all the way. Or maybe once you have all your flowers here, and lot of times I'll have green on my watercolor wash. And again, you can just imply that a leaf is there. So here's this leaf that's coming off the flower. But what if I just did something like that? So when you see it, it's going to look like there's something there. I can also come up and I can do squiggles. So it's just filling in those gaps and looking at the way greenery is, looking at different foliage. Because again, this is sketchy. It doesn't have to be perfect. Although in drag your hand over your sketch like I just did. So it doesn't have to be perfect. You're just looking for ways to fill in the space. Find some images of flowers that inspire you. Get those out, take some pictures, start sketching, start playing with the positioning of things and figure out what feels right to you. 5. Illustrate With One Wash & Botanical: For our first project, we're going to focus on just applying one color and then we'll add the line art to it. So for our first lesson, we're going to be focusing on just applying one color and then we'll add the line art. Now for this first one, we're going to apply the clean water directly to the page first. Then we'll drop in the color and then we'll add the line art after it's dried. I have three different brushes here, and I picked up some that are just really easy to access and get your hands-on. I picked up a set of the artist's loft watercolor brushes from Michael's. This isn't around 12. And then I also have this one which is around 18, and I got this one at Hobby Lobby. And then of course my favorite brushes are the Princeton and this is the round size six. So I'm going to use the artist's loft. You don't have to have expensive brushes for this class. So whatever you have on hand or whatever you have access to is totally great. Just have a jar of clean water. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get my brush fairly wet and I'm going to put on about two or three areas of water. And kinda like we did with the practice, it's just about making random shapes. I'm just going to hold my brush here at the end really loosely. And I'm just going to drag my brush around in circles, just giving the page a little bit of water. And then I'm gonna go in with color for this first lesson. I'm going to use this really pretty blue. And blue is actually the Artesia brand. And this is the blue that I'm using. So I'm going to get some blue here. I'm getting my paint nice and saturated. But I want it to be watery still because I want that saturation to bleed out onto the areas that are already wet, then I'm just going to come in on those areas that I already wetted and I'm going to drop in color. Some areas are gonna be wetter than others and that's okay. It's almost a little fireworks that they spread out. They kinda dance across the page. Then I can also go back in and I can always add additional water to my paint to essentially desaturate the color and drop in some paint that's not quite as bright and vibrant and let those mixed together. And the other thing that you can do is actually go in with just clean water again and drop in a bit more water and let the water mixed together with your pains. And because we're using one color, we can actually pick up our page and let those colors role and blend together. If you do this with too many colors, you actually get some Medina. And we don't necessarily want that. Let this dry just a tad. Then I'm a drop in just a little bit more color. The great thing about using one color is you can actually continue to add layer on top of layer and the color gets darker. We're going to let this dry just a little bit and you'll start to see these puddles that form. If you don't like the puddles, you can always go back in with either a dry brush and it will just absorb some of that liquid if you aren't happy with it being there. Or you can always use a paper towel as well. You can either take your paper towel and actually blocked in area and you're actually lifting your lift that color out, which if you really want some white areas, that can actually be done really well and really pretty. If you were just like, Oh, I don't want this a little bit lighter. You can actually touch your entire paper towel to the area. Or I like to take just the edge of the paper towel and I just stick it in the puddle and it just absorbed, it just sucks that water off the page without creating too much of a whitespace. It just removes some of the pedaling. So you can totally do that as well. It depends on the look that you're going for and just play with it until you really kinda play with these ways of lifting the puddles and or color out. You don't necessarily know which way you prefer to try a couple of spots. Okay. Well, let that dry just a second more. And then I will drop in additional color. And I want the bright, vibrant saturation again. So I'm actually just going to make sure that I've got some really bright color here. And then I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna do it all over because I like how this is starting to spread out and dry. I just want to add a little bit of deeper tone in there just so that I have a little bit depth to it. So I'm just gonna go here in a couple of spots and let that just spread out and dance together on the page and do the same thing over here. And then I'll do that in this one as well. So now I'm going to let that dry and then we'll come back and we'll add in the line art. Now that our paint has dried, let's start adding our line art to it. Now when we had practiced our florals, I had said that the more that you practice with your pencils, the more that you're going to feel comfortable with the lines that you make with your pins. But for this first lesson, I do want to stick with the fine liners just because you have a little bit more control, will do the liquid ink in a later lesson. So if you have a micron or a sharpie or Tombow, they were cast shadow. I've even got this king art ink line pen, which actually got in a recent sketch box. So whichever pen you feel most comfortable with, you could use a really thin or thick lines. It's really totally up to you. I'll start with a king art pen. And the other thing that you're going to want is your mechanical pencils or whatever pencil you, you're using. I'm using this mechanical pencil with a 0.9 millimeter. It's just a basic number two, and I'm just going to sketch out real lightly the florals that I want to do later in ink. You can go directly into it with the ink if you prefer. But let's just practice taking our sketches from our sketchbook to our watercolor paper. I'm not gonna do this whole thing. I'm just going to focus mostly on these really pretty cone type flowers. So I'm gonna make three cone flowers of different sizes. Now, what I like to do is just because the paint is there, it doesn't mean that I have to do them inside of that, maybe my largest flower is up here. The color, the shape, none of that applies. It's just a background, it's just adding, it's just adding depth and feeling to the drawing. Because remember what I said is lot of times I'll paint these in my sketchbook and field notebook and then I'll take that to the garden or on a walk or on a trip or something with me. And then I'm just adding the illustrations as I see them. Not necessarily because I'd put those colors and those shapes down to mimic something. So, I mean, I think I'm going to put my largest cone flower here. And the other thing is I don't stay inside of the color washes. I like to bring my illustrations outside of that. I actually think that I'm, even though this is drawn that slightly that way might tilt it a little bit more. Because remember this is just inspiration again for the next phase. So I'm going to start my cone circle here roughly. And I'm going to fill those in with lots of little dots, right? Then I'm going to start adding in these petals. I want my cone flower, the largest one is going to take up a majority of the scene here. I'm just giving myself a guideline to work with. And then I'm going to start lightly coming in here and adding in the petals. Okay, There's my basic shape. Then I'm gonna go and add another one up here. I'm going to draw something similar to this. Again, I'm not just trying to stay inside of that watercolor area. I'm just using it as a basic guide. Then I don't have a ton of room because this is a fairly large circle. So majority of my cone is actually going to sit inside this wash. But you'll see how we can really make that stand out still. These two are now getting close to touching. So I'm just starting to kinda let some of these tucked behind this other flower. And again, I'm just putting basic lines out there right now because I'm going to, I'm going to fine tune it with my ink. Then I'm just going to add a few leaves here. When you're adding your liner, you can let this get as sketchy as we did with the sketches in our sketchbook. You don't have to have clean lines. See how I'm just letting my pencil be real rough. I can do the same thing with my ink when I do that, because the center of the cone on this flower is all circles. I'm not going to draw this line. I'm just going to start putting in the circles. What I like to do is I like to add circles all over the place and start to fill them in. Now, if you wanted to imply that there's a full head of circles, you could do that by just adding some strategically around. Or you can go and fill in the whole amount. I'm going to do both. One. I'm going to do like this where it's all full. And then the next one I'm going to only do part of the way. So just to spread out my circles, I like to put in some fairly would be on the larger side of circles and then I pick an area and I start filling in with circles because I'm using a fine liner pen. It's a lot I have a lot more control over my lines and they're all the same width roughly. Now because this is actually a little bit more of a softer brush tip, I could actually bend and make them thicker versus the microns, which are always going to create the same width. It's always going to have the same thickness in the stroke. Okay, So the cone is finished. Now, Mr. adding the lines for my petals, I don't always have to follow the sketch lines that I started with exactly. Again, if I do that, then my lines start to feel really div, so I'm actually just using them as basic guidelines and letting my pen just move across the paper. And I get a sense as I start to fill this in how it, where I want things and I can make changes as they go. Okay, let's move on to the next one. And here I'm actually just going to add a few lines of the circles. I can actually add a few of top if I wanted to as well. Again, I'm just giving it the basic. Shape and let it imply that they're there anyway. So here I've also filled in a lot of it, but I don't have to fill it all in a way did this one. There's so many different ways to do this. Okay, now we've got the basic line art done. We can always go back in and add a little bit more and make things a little bit more sketchy. Now, you can either add shading, which if you wanted your stems to have a little bit more depth. I'm just kinda going around the edge. I'm just using little like hace type marks to fill it in to give it a little bit of shadow. I can do the same thing now. I can either color in, down, around the base of this cone to C. I'm giving it the shadow. So then it's giving it a little bit more of the depth than 3D. Look at this, I'm just creating a solid shaded border area. Now here you can see, instead of extending that line, again, I'm just implying that there's things, there are some times you can always add dots to things. We could add marks down here. You can always switch to a thinner pen tool. Here I've got this thicker pen tip. You can always add a second pen, whether it's maybe like a micron size three, which is a much thinner tip. And this is where you just start adding different sketchy marks to give it lots of texture. You can do the same thing inside your petals. These lines are really thin, but they just add just enough to help it look like there's a lot of depth to it, like the petals are folded. And in here, I can also add areas that are a little bit darker too, if I wanted to. Again, it's adding that depth and shadow. Or you can always come in and add little dots and see that's going to make it look like there's more area filled in. You can also add lines which is going to make things look a little bit more sketchy. If you add lines here, it's going to make it look like that is folded. You could add lines to your sides and you want to make sure that it's going with the flow of the flower petal. So just by adding some botanical line art, you really have just made this drawing stand way out there super fun. You can't go wrong at all the sketchy lines. You can always go back in and add even more if you're like, Oh, this is too clean and I want a little bit more sketchy lines. You can always do the same thing that we did in our pencil drawings. You can come out and add additional lines outside of the lines that you already drew, which is going to make it look like there's movement in the picture. It's gonna be sketchy. And they're so for super, super fun. I mean, they're just looked beautiful. Can even do it on your, you can even do it here on the leaves. Give the tips little curlicues. Okay, that's your first lesson in watercolor in line art. 6. Illustrate Using Multiple Colors & Florals: In the second project, we're actually going to be adding two colors this time and a little bit of greenery. And then we'll add the line art on top of that. So with this one, I'm actually going to apply the color directly to the page. I'm not going to put clean water on the page and then drop the water in or drop the painting. I'm actually going to get the paint on my brush and then I will paint the background. Washes on there directly with paint. For this one, I'm gonna go in with this really pretty. This is also an Artesia color and this is called spiced apple. I'm just getting my brush nice and wet. Again, I'm going to hold my brush at the end. We'll loosely, and I'm going to spin it in my fingers as I move it across the page, I'm looking to create about three areas and I'm just spinning it around in my fingers. I got a lot of color on there, so I'm gonna get a little bit more water so that it isn't quite as saturated. And then I'm gonna do one more. And I'm going to come back up here. And I'm just going to drop a little bit of water in here because it's just pretty saturated. And I'm going to blend that out on the edges just a little bit. For my second color, I'm actually going to be picking up some of this Winsor Newton and it's there, the rose color, drop some of that color and I'm not going to spread it around the way I did the first layer. I'm actually just going to drop in droplets of really saturated paint. And then I will let those mixed together. Now that I've got that color in there, There's only two and I don't want to get them to muddy. I like how they start to intermix themselves, but I can always help them a little bit by just rolling my paper around and just letting those colors mix just a little bit. From here, you can either just completely let it dry or I sometimes will go back in with my first color, just add a bit more of that. If I feel like my page is getting to dry in areas, I can always re-wet it here. I'm just going to bring my brush around the areas just a little bit, but you can always add your first color back in if you feel like your second color took up too much space or isn't blending as much as you'd like, you can totally go back in and let those mixed up. You can run your brush through that all of the paint and have it intermix. This is kinda cool the way that is webbing out a little bit. So I'm going to let some of that dry on its own and see how that turns out. When I'm adding my greenery, I'm just going to add a little bit of greenery. And so I'm actually going to use this Winsor Newton sap green. I'm using my Princeton. This is the sixth size six, you can use any size brushes that you want. And for this, I'm just going to have a kind of a basic shape. I don't want anything just super definitive. So either that's just I'm just letting my brush kind of spread now as this touched my paint in my flower, I can say, Oh, I don't like that. Or maybe you do and you like that? I do both. Sometimes I just mix it up with the paint. I cleaned it up a little bit. I can use my paper towel to dry up that area To there's lots of different ways to handle it. If you don't like the way that that is, I sometimes like both. Just kinda depends. But I love how the colors just intermixed. You can take your brush and just kinda scratch it and let it be real dry looking or you can just have it super wet. I'm adding just a touch of additional green using just the one-color still. And there's nothing specific about the shape that I made. It's just giving this hint that there's color there. I'm just implying that there's gonna be greenery down here at the bottom. So now we're going to let this dry and we'll come back and add in our line art. For our line art on this one, I'm actually going to be using an old drawing that I had done many years ago, about four years now, we're going to use this as inspiration when we put our drawing together here. Again, I'm going to start with my pencil and I'm just going to sketch out my flowers. I'm going to flip flop this a little bit. I'm going to put my largest one over here. So I just start with the basic shape of what the center is going to look like. And I'm just trying to follow rough shape of the first one. The one I'm using overhears inspiration. Again, I'm not trying to be stickler with it because I like to keep my lines flowing and authentic so they don't feel stifled and stiff. This is going to be roughly where my centerpieces. I'm just kinda giving that some shapes so I know where I'm going with it. And this is that folded side down here. I'm going to add the stems. And then with this one, I'm going to add these green. I'm not going to add these little ones, and I'm going to add the greenery. And I want one to go that direction and then I'm going to bring it down like this. And then I think I might have a little one here and off of here I'm going to have some leaves that go with my flower. I'm just drawing these and progressively getting larger. Similar to the firm that we had practiced in our drawing lesson. I'm bringing these fern leaves all the way down. And then over here, I'm gonna do it a little bit differently. So I'm just doing my little more curved leaves and I'm doing those like my figure eights when I switch to my pen for this lesson, I'm also going to be using a fine liner, but I'm going to switch to the Tombow and I'm going to trace the edges similar to I had done in the first lesson. And then we'll add a lot of these patchy marks to it. Then when I'm working in the middle, because there's gonna be some shape to it. I'm just going to come in with some squiggly lines. And then I'm going to add this a little bit to indicate the center and I'm just using circles and then I'm going to use a lot of little dots because I want some of the color to show through. And then the way that this flower works is I'm actually going to use these lines to indicate folds in the pedal. And then back here on the outside, if you draw a line down, it'll show the outer side of that fold. So they'll look like folds and these are just gonna be slight fold. So I can just indicate those with lines. And then obviously I can add more for the smaller lines later on. Okay, let's move to the next one. Let's actually come up here to this one. I'm actually going to change where this folder is. Just because I have my sketch there doesn't mean I have, I'm committed to it. Remember as I start to put these together, I can then fine tune things in and adjust as I go. I'm going to add the center again like I did. And then I'm gonna give some indication of these folds here. Let's work on our greenery here. I want these leaves to fall in front of my flower leaf. So I'm drawing them first before I fill in the stems. That way I can draw around them. So when I go to add the stem here, right, I can just add it right behind. This, is that we, and I do want to keep that in there. Here's our other greenery that's in the back and the cheese, the position just a little bit. Now that I have these done, I can go back in and start adding in my little hatched lines. And that will allow me to begin adding movement in the flower as well as depth and shadow. So I'm being mindful of where my folds are. Again, I can always add dots to indicate things. I can make lots of lines over themselves to get it darker and darker and darker. I can also switch to a smaller liner pen if I want finer lines. And mindful of the way that the pedal goes so that my lines follow the shape. I can add a lot of smaller patches to down lower, which will then give depth around the center and it will draw the image down. Then it looks like we're looking down at the center deep inside that flower. You can just keep adding the hatched lines. I usually add them out here because those are obviously going to be in shadow. And then I just work my way around my illustration, keep adding lines until it has the field that I like. Then on this one, I think what I'm gonna do is I'm going to actually color these in. You don't have to keep everything open. You can definitely fill in areas if you'd like. But I want to separate this greenery piece from the other greenery piece. So I'm going to color it in. Then if I wanted to add thinner lines, again, I can always switch into my microphone. This is a five. You can go with a three or one even and just get some extra thin lines in there. Then I'm going to use my eraser and I'm just going to clean up my pencil lines that a lot of areas that I had actually moved things. So I'm going to really clean up those lines. And that's why you draw really, really, really faintly with your pencil because they're just super easy to clean up when you're illustration is all done. And there you go. We're done with number two. 7. Splatters and Floral Bouquet: For our third lesson, we're going to be creating some watercolor wash marks that are gonna, we're gonna use about two to three colors per flower. I want to have two different colored flowers. I'm going to have some greenery, a little bit more color in the greenery, and then we're going to add splatters. So I'm going to start again with the paint directly on the paper. I'm still using my size 12 artist's loft. I'm gonna go in with the blue first and holding it loosely and rolling it around in my hand or my fingers. I'm just going to create some marks. You don't have to make big marks either. You could always do little ones like little blossoms. Then I'm going to switch to the demo to switch to the rose color. And this is Winsor Newton rose. And I'm gonna get a mark or two out for that. Then I'm going to go back in with my second color and I'm going to use the MOV for my blue. I love the way these two colors mix together, and I'm just going to drop in a little bit of them off here on this blue and let that dance around and get all happy together. Then for my rose color, I'm actually going to use some yellow and I'm using yellow out of the Jane Davenport palette. And I'm going to switch this little brush, the size six. And I'm just going to drop yellow into this rose colored mark. Then I like to go back in with some additional color. I'm gonna get some pretty heavy saturated paint and just Intermix that now with the yellow and the rose color that's already there. And if I want to, I can gently lift it and also let these dance together a little bit. I don't want to lose too much of how it's mixing because it's kinda cool, but you can always intermix those a little bit. Let's go back in with a little bit more blue and spice up this one. I'm just using a wet brush to just kinda dampen the area a little bit so that it spreads a little bit more. You can always drop in additional water in areas if you need to. Okay. And then I think I'll just drop a little bit of this yellow back in here since a lot of it's mixed together and given us a bit of an orange, Let's move on to the greenery for this we're going to use, Let's start with this really light colored line green from our teaser. For this, we can actually give a little bit more color or shape to it if you want. Now let's go back in with our sap green and dropping color. I'm actually just going to use the very tip of my brush to imply that there's, and you can even go way out here if you wanted to. And it doesn't have to make sense. Remember, we're just giving the illusion. We're not creating anything definite. We're not creating a specific, we're just giving the marks there. You can always add even deeper color if you'd like, you can go in with this brighter green or even a deeper olive green or something if you wanted to give a bit more color here and there, just to see what it does. Okay, then the last thing we need to do at our splatters, and I usually wait to the end, let things dry just a little bit. I'm going to splatter with some yellow. You can use any size brushes, bladder, I typically hold it real loosen my hand and I use my finger to just tap really firmly against the top. Or you can use your opposite finger and you can be it that way too. If you're using a toothbrush, you would just grab the bristles and flick it with your thumb and then it will spray off little colors. And then I'm going to use a little bit of blue to splatter. You can use any color that you like and you can definitely overdo your splatters. So just kinda play with it until you find how much and how little you like. So I'm going to let this all dry together and then we can come back in and add our line art. This time we're going to use a dip pen with liquid black ink. I'm actually using the speed ball India ink and I've got a dip pen. You can use any dip pen that you want and even the calligraphy pen, if you don't have the liquid ink, you can always just stick with the fine liner. If you have some liquid ink, but you don't have a dip pen, you can always use a fine tipped brush. Those work just as well. The fun thing about using a dip pen is that the ink comes out sporadically. You have thin lines, thick lines. It looks super sketchy without having to really try too hard. Here's a few examples. The ink, if you can see that the ink just, it has such a beautiful way of drawing versus fine liners, which are just as beautiful. But there's something so interesting about the way that the liquid ink will actually dry. Okay, so let's also sketch out, I'm actually going to use a combination of this. This isn't necessarily the exact illustration. I'm going to go for it, but I'm going to use this along with a few other things that we sketched out as inspiration. Think I'm going to put this one. With the blue. Now, we could go directly with our pencil. Again like we have, you can go directly with your dip pen as well. I'm going to stick to this just so you can see how I put these illustrations together. I'm actually going to put this one a little off-center from this, just because I really liked the way that you see the line art through the white background. I'm gonna do this cone. Do this down here, and then use one of the puppies here is inspiration. Again, I'm always looking, should just follow the shapes. If you get overwhelmed, just break it down into shapes. Then I also want to add some greenery. So I'm gonna go back to these and look at inspiration for greenery. I'm going to use some of my squiggles here. So a lot of this will get fine-tuned as I start adding in the ink. I always have my ink and I always have a paper towel next to me so I can always blot out. I've got my paper towel and then I just start working on it just like we do with the fine liner when I'm using the liquid ink, I always try to start at the top because if I work my way up, I my hand by touch the wet ink and it's just like the watercolor, right? It has to take time to dry. So I'm actually going to work up here on this flower first with the liquid ink. I like to keep it really sketchy. And I also like to just use a lot of the lines to imply something and I'll show you what I mean with, especially with the flowers or the leaf down here. Because see how when I press, I actually get this kind of a puddle of being and that just dries so needs. So as I work my way around my flower, I just choose a few areas to press a little bit harder. And it gives me a little bit of a pooling of the actual ink. And it just creates such beautiful lines and depths and the texture is just super cool. That ended up being pretty messy. And again, if you like that line, leave it. And I actually think that's kinda cool. But just like with the watercolor, if there's something that you don't like, just the edge of your paper towel in the puddle and it will absorb some of that. I'm trying not to move my paper around so that it doesn't make you dizzy. But I normally would switch the paper angle also so that because these brushes aren't as easy to use at all angles the way that a fine liner is because of the way that the dip pen and we'll split open to release the ink. It definitely doesn't always work at every single angle. So for you definitely move your page around as needed. One of the things that you can do when you're implying that there's leaps in the area instead of drawing every single thing is if you come down here and you just make some of the lines your eye fills in the gap. See that? That's all I have to do. And immediately you know, that there's a leaf there. And then what poppies, they have very interesting little leaves. So again, it's just a lot of little marks, short little dashes, little zigzags that are going to imply that there's a poppy Leaf Back there. And then of course you can do the same thing with additional lines which are going to look like grass going back in to add these lines as we need them. It's the same thing again because the page is wet with my ink. I have to be really careful not to touch it with my hand. So you can either wait until your pages dry or be super careful. And I'm just adding hatched lines and little marks to make sure that I'm adding texture and depth to each of my flowers here. Remember these are not photo-realistic. Play with it. See how much texture you like to add. Just let the experimentation happen. You just won't know what you'd like until you try.