Learn to Paint a Botanical Pumpkin Poster in Watercolor

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Irina Trzaskos, a watercolor artist and illustrator. Welcome to my watercolor channel. Here you'll find a big collection of classes for beginners. In today's class, we will explore one of the trends, organized florals, and we will paint a botanical illustration. All my classes are filmed in real time so you can follow along. If you are new to this channel, welcome, and thank you for joining. Press the Follow button on top and let's get started. 2. Colors and Supplies: In this class, we'll be using the following supplies. First of all, we'll need watercolor paper. I'll be using a cold press Canson watercolor paper. A little bigger size than I usually do, so you can see the details better. Also, we'll need a template. You can paint it from a project and resources on the class. So what we'll do, we'll paint the template, and we'll transfer the drawing onto watercolor paper. If you're using, or you want to use your own references or your own drawings, it's totally fine too. Also, need water, paint palette, pencil, eraser, paper towel, a medium watercolor brush. This is number six. Just make sure it has a good sharp tip, and this small watercolor brush. This is number two. In today's class we will be using four watercolor themes, four colors. So it has to be a yellow, orange, purple, and green. For yellow, I chose Naples yellow, because I want my painting to be a little in muted colors. That's why I chose this yellow. If you wanted to be brighter you can use Cadmium yellow. The second color is Cadmium orange. So we need green. Just classic green, and violet. Of course, we will be mixing these colors between green and violet. Of course, it will be mixing these colors between them. That will create a color harmony. Now let's get started. 3. Drawing a Botanical Illustration: The drawing is very important in botanical illustration, the more detailed the drawing is the easier it will be for you to paint the illustration. Because it has to be a little realistic, try to add as many details as you see in your reference pictures. I have reverted your drawing template because this is a painting class, not a drawing class. Feel free just to transfer it. I transferred it by just taping of a template to the window and then putting the watercolor paper above it and tracing it with pencil. So I already made it. This is my original drawing. I took a bunch of reference photos of pumpkins, of leaves, and I picked the ones I want and I changed them a little bit. Like here I changed this pumpkin, so it looks more interesting and it forms a nicer composition. Feel free to do that if you're painting your own vegetables. I wanted to transfer the drawing, however, I received your comments that you cannot see the drawing when it's so light. I always encourage you to make the drawing as light as you can. However, I'll do mine a little darker so you can see it on camera. Let's start with this leaf. We'll draw the shape of the leaf, and then we'll also add the lines. Because the lines on the pumpkin leave are lighter than the other parts of the leaf. I'll show you later how we will paint them, so we leave lines light, and we will be painting between the lines. So here is the shape. Just feel free to use the template, I made it myself just for this class. It's totally for you to use for your studies and to have a nice botanical poster for yourself or as a gift. I think it would make a very cool poster for a kitchen, or for a dining room, or really any interior which is in a warm, beautiful autumn colors. Your drawing doesn't have to be, please do not do it as dark as mine, do it in very very light so you can barely see it. Feel free to add your own changes to this template or even draw your own veges. Well, I encourage you to start with this one and then after you understand all the steps for painting a botanical illustration, then you can apply it to all fruits and vegetables and plants. Here we have some pumpkin seeds. I choose them to be dark for this painting, I think it's more expressive. You can find light colored pumpkin seeds in somewhere in dark almost black. Here I'm showing the flower from the top, it's star-shaped, middle, some circles and this little lines here. I'm not doing them too dark, but you can see them on template. Also the template has the Latin name for a pumpkin, which is Cucurbita pepo. If you want, you can trace that too and paint it. I'll do it but later after I scan it for a botanical print. Here we have a flower which is sideways, and here we have a little pumpkin already forming. We have a little long. What are these [inaudible] , they are very botanically accurate here, but we settle with green stems with some green little leaves, maybe you know the name. Here the pumpkin, I didn't want it to be straight and totally boring, so I aided this to show the shape of a stem of pumpkins, I made it almost very tailish to fill this space beautifully, and we'll have a little leaf here too. They'll say first this little branches are spiraling. On the template you can see lines in here, I don't want to add them in pencil, it's really not necessary. If you don't want to add some details in pencil, we can just leave them and then just add them right with a brush especially if you feel more confident in watercolor. Although this class is designed for beginners, so don't get scared you can do it even if you're just starting. It's all step by step and it's not as difficult as it may seem at the beginning. This is our drawing, we also have here some spots. It's not really necessary to draw them all, we can always improvise. Just by looking at the template we know where they are, and we'll just do it right with the paint. This is our drawing, and next we will be painting the first layer. 4. Painting the First Layer: To understand the first layer, it has to be the lightest, lightest color you'll have on the subject in the painting. So we'll be using a lot of water. Also as unifying color, we'll be using Naples yellow, because we want our illustration to look warm and sunny. We'll be adding yellow in every color we use, especially in first layer. Then it will be shining through all the layers because it's water color and it's known for it's transparency like non other media. So I'm adding a lot of water to my palette, and we'll start from the leaf. We have to paint it like the color we want the lines of the leaf to be. So it will be a very, very light green. I hope your lines are not as dark as mine. If they are, before you start doing this, just go once with eraser very lightly and bring them to a lighter lines. So I have Naples yellow here, I'm using it to a little water [inaudible] let's add a little more water. I think we should have enough of this mix to cover the entire area of the shape where I'm painting the first layer, but I'm taking some green. Just a little bit, not too much. Let's add a little more yellow. This is the color I want. So it has a lot of water and we are using a medium brush with good tip. I think it needs a little more color. Botanical illustration is known for its layering again and again. But I don't have patience for too many layers, some I'm trying to do like 3-4 layers maximum. That's why I'm not using a very light washes like some other botanical illustrators would do. I think with patience, we also have to make sure you are letting every layer dry before you start painting the next one. If you are going to paint just a little bit every day, it will totally work for you. You'll be painting one layer and then the next day, the next layer, and so on. It's a very good kind of illustration when you don't have much time to spend every day. Just a little bit and you'll get a nice painting done in several days or in a week. I do my paintings in one sitting. Well, I'm still waiting for every layer to dry. So if it doesn't happen because of weather, I'm walking away and doing something else while it's drying. I usually do not use any hair dryer or any heating dryers. We have it in light beautiful green on our leaf. You can see a little puddle form here, maybe you can see it, maybe not. But if you see a little puddle on yours, just wash your brush, dry it in a paper towel and absorb excess of paint. Next, let's paint the flowers. We'll add a lot of water to the palette again. Then I'll just take on Naples yellow, which is our unifying color for this color [inaudible]. Just tap and drop there, it's okay. So we have our Naples yellow. If you don't have Naples yellow, you can use any yellow. I decided it on this one because I didn't want it to be too bright like cadmium yellow. I want it to be a warm, soft yellow. So you can see, we mixed it with a lot of water, and we are just covering the entire flower with this color. Very simple, like in a coloring book. At it is point it all look flat, but do not worry it will get better. The same thing with this flower. Beautiful, very simple washes. That's why we need enough mix just to keep in [inaudible]. Again on how to match your paint and water here. We don't want to leave it like puddle because it will create this texture of blue, we don't want. We want it to be a very smooth and beautiful wash at this point. Just very flat. Next, I'm going to add more green to this mix, but before we do that, we still have one more leaf. So let's apply it on this leaf before I add some more green to it and to use some [inaudible] , branch, should I call it. Now, I want to add some more green to this mix. Because this bottom of a flower which has little pumpkin, easily do darker. It doesn't have those lines, we should keep nice and light. So after this one, after we cover everything with first layer of paint, we'll have to let it dry and then you can still erase some of the pencil lines if it still seem too dark. So now to this the yellow, I want to add some cadmium orange for the pumpkin. Again, we're mixing with color which will be the lightest. Think about highlights and the color you want there. Do not mix it darker because this is water color, and it has just start from the light to a dark. So once again, on the pumpkin I'd like to dry a little bit of the first wash, so let's add some yellow right into the paper. So we have more orange here and just [inaudible] need to add some interest to the wash. [inaudible] but totally flat on pumpkin. Next, let's add some green to this orange yellow. So we'll have all three colors together. You can see it's resulting in this olive green, and we'll use it. Just make sure you're not touching the area which is wet. So we'll use it for your stem. First, remove this little puddles because they already start forming some texture I did not plan on. This olive green is for this stem of a pumpkin. Take your time when painting botanical illustration, you can pause, you can scroll back. Some of you wrote that I'm painting too fast, but this is real time and it's not speed up in any way, so just pause if you need to pause and paint along. Now let's cover this seeds too with this olive, brownish, green. So this is our first layer. It's very important to let it totally dry. If you want to check if it's dry, just touch the paper on where it's not painted and then touch it where it's painted and it has to be the same temperature. If this part is still colder, then it's not dry. So let it totally dry and then erase extra pencil lines, and then I'll see you next video. 5. Painting a Pumpkin Leaf Part 1: The first layer is totally dry, and I erased some lines. You can see the edge of the leaf is not as dark anymore. I should still erase these little lines, but I'll do it later. In this video, we will be working only on the leaf and maybe on this green part. The leaf is very easy to work on because it's flat, it doesn't have volume. Everything we have to do is just we already have the lines. Take a small brush. Add just a little bit of green into the green mixture you already have, not into olive, into a green one. It's still very watery, and its okay because, by putting layer on the layer of watercolor, it already will make it darker. What we do, we will be filling these spaces between the lines with the green. We'll leave just a half a millimeter, a really teeny, tiny space to the line. So the lines stay light. I think we should do it even darker because if you're going to do so many layers, then it's okay to keep it this light. I'm not going to do 10, 12 layers. So let just add some green in here and add the previous green shaped and maybe a little bit more yellow. This is better. We have thicker paint and doesn't have as much water as previous one. Once we do, we fill the spaces between the lines. In this way, the lines will stay the first color we had applied to our leaves. This is very relaxing and requires good brush control practice. If somewhere your line disappeared, it's fine. Don't worry about it. Take your time. Even if it takes you a few hours to do this, it's fine. I'll try to work faster. In some way, botanical illustrations are easier than wet-into-wet techniques or paintings where you need to work really fast. Here, you can take your time and just paint a small portion of the painting, and then take a break and paint another portion. However, I suggest you should paint all in one sitting because some of the next day it may change or the mode. You can mix different colors, and it may look like a half of illustration was painted by one person and another half was painted by another person. Make sure you have a beautiful edge of the leaf. If your wash is not perfect and got some textures, at this point, it's okay. I even encourage you to add some more green and more yellow into the wash to keep it interesting. Right here we can add some green. It's a little too green to my taste. Well, I'll add some yellow over it. I can't do it, but you can turn your paper any way you are the most comfortable. So because the leaf has this many lines, it makes it beautiful and at the same time, it's one of the most difficult parts of this illustration. Well, it's not as difficult. It just takes time to do every portion between the lines. Mix some more. The right thing would be like to start painting from the left to the right if you're right-handed. I didn't do it, so I risk, to smudge all this part once I work on there. I hope it'll dry by then. Then we have this line here. Just take your time, do not rush it. Pause the video if you need to. If I wouldn't be painted for a class I probably would be painting slower. I would really take my time with every portion. I'm going a little faster now and you can see some details could be better. I'm going a little faster so this class does not take forever. But I'm doing my best here. Botanical illustrations are very popular now. I always was fascinated by all the detail and beauty of the painted plants. I'm so glad it's returning in interior design, you can see a lot of botanical illustrations. Makes a nice present too if you frame it. Here, I erased a line so I'll be coming upward form and just guessing where they should be. I decided to mix a darker green because that one was turning way too pale. Here I erased a line, so I'm trying to guess where they could show and if it disappear somewhere, in your painting I mean, not in real life, it's okay. Because depending on how the light is shining on the leaf, then you can see the line or you cannot see little lines. So it's okay to be able to see some and not to be able to see others. Adding some more color to this part because it seems way too pale. Yes, this is better. So let's mix some more yellow and green, and I'll keep going. I like this warmer dark green better so I'll keep painting yellow to my green. I also like this part but it's darker, so maybe I'll be more dark spots in here later. I probably will anyway. Yes, the contrast is nicer like this. You can see the lines better, and we don't have too many layers in this way. After awhile, your hand is getting used to these shapes and you'll start painting faster. I already noticed it's like okay, this goes this and just a small triangle, and then this portion, and so on. Here I can see my wash came out of our lines, so I'm just following the wash and changing the shape of the leaf a little bit. I really like this part, so we'll adjust as part to match this one later. It has a warmer shade, it's darker, it's better contrast and it won't need as much work as this part when we'll start adding the shadows. I'm doing the same thing with the rest of the leaf. Keep painting more yellow more green to your wash to keep it interesting and by wash, I mean, to the color mix or right on to the paper. It's up to you. Either way is right way, whatever works the best for you. I just love this color and I'm very happy with colored of lines. We decided on in the a first layer. Around the lines trying to paint with a long brush strokes. First of all, it's easier just to follow like this and second, texture will be nicer. If at some point you'll see that you have too many white lines, then you can always cover some of them or make them thinner. 6. Painting a Pumpkin Leaf Part 2: I notice that my color is getting lighter, so I take some more paint. It happens because I'm washing the brush, and when I get it back into the paint, it adds water to the mix, so it becomes more watery and lighter. What happens, so you just add more paint to the mix. This is our leaf, and next what we have to do, we'll just bring this part, choose the color of this part just by adding a little bit of shadows, right next to the lines. We are adding the darker paint right next to the lines, so when I'm washing the brush, drying it in paper towel, and softening the lines. Do the same thing here. If you are not sure where you should add some shadows, you can take a picture of your painting with your phone, and in the photo you'll see instantly where there is enough to contrast, and where's any of the highlight or a shadow. By adding the shadows next to the lines, the lines instantly pop, because a better contrast is created. Again, I'm washing the brush, drying in the paper towel, and softening the lines. The process of botanical illustration is always the same. It's, first, you add the main color, which is the first layer, then you add more color, and shadows, and contrast. The last you will be adding the textures, so it's three steps. Well, between these three steps could be a lot of layers, but it's color, then shadows, and then textures. At this stage, let's let it dry, and we'll see how it looks after. Meanwhile, let's add some color to this part of the flower, which is a little pumpkin. I think we will shadow on the right, and then I think we highlight on the left, just like this. Later we'll make more details. In the next stage I be adding shadows to the flowers. 7. Painting Pumpkin Flowers: While our leaf is drying, let's add shadows to our flowers. We'll take some Naples yellow with a little bit of green, and we'll start to consist some of these petals and paint it, so we'll add the color right next to it, and then we'll wash our brush and dry it in the paper towel, and we'll soften the line by dragging the color towards the middle of the petal. The same thing we'll do on this outer edge, just to paint a tiny line, wash the brush and soften the inside edge. We need this [inaudible] to stay the lightest. The same thing we'll do on this side. A very tiny line and everything comes to the middle. I'm already painting some lines to create the texture. Let's do the same with all the petals. I know that in real life some pumpkin flowers are brighter, are very bright yellow. However, with the interior I have in mind, I need a softer yellow. That's why I changed it to Naples yellow instead of canary yellow. Let's add some lines for texture too. We need to add some darker yellow. This is Naples yellow with a little bit of green and you can see how our flower is coming to life just because we added the shadows before. It was very flat and uninteresting and shadows bring it to life right away. Now let's mix some more green into our yellow and add some green lines. This middle will be green too. The same thing we'll do on this flower. Well, the same thing, let's add some shadows next to these creases or lines, and we are softening them by leaving the highlights of the same color we painted them in the first layer. Then with very light green, we'll add some light. This green is not so light. Let's add some more water to it. This is better, so very light watery green with some lines. Now when I look at this leaf, I have a feeling the lines are not warm enough so let's just add a very thin layer of yellow on some of them. There, there, see, so it makes some yellow with water and delete some of the lines. Now let's let it dry and erase these lines around of these seeds. Next we will be adding shadows on the pumpkin. 8. Painting a Pumpkin: In a template, you can see that on the pumpkin, I wanted to have this dark spots and we won't be painting them right now. First what we have to show is a volume of the pumpkin. So we'll be paying attention only to these lines which show the shape of a pumpkin, how this has its edges. That's why we'll be using orange mixed with some violet. Let's take cadmium orange. I changed my water. So if you need to change your water, you can do so too. Just pause the video and change your water. Here is a lot of cadmium orange, I mix it right into yellow, which was there and then I take not this much of a violet. Violet is a very dominant color. So if you add too much, it will take over. We need a darker but not totally brown orange. Let's add a little bit of yellow to this orange too, because it's a unifying color in our palette. You can see this beautiful brownish orange we got. Again, in the flower, we had a darker part on the right. The same thing we'll have with the pumpkin, because otherwise, viewer won't understand what's going on. If it's on the right, it's on the right on all the object. We are leaving a little bit of a reflection on the right-hand side and then we are adding with shadow right here. Again on the way bottom, it will be darker than on the top. We are adding more color in here. This color almost look like red [inaudible]. We painted our shadow and then we'll start adding a dark color on these lines, which will have our pumpkin. It will be the darkest inside. We can even mix some more purple with orange for that. It will be the darkest inside, and once it gets to this bump of a pumpkin, it gets lighter. We can always make it darker if we want to later. Let's soften the edge and you can see how it gets lighter. Again, from the bottom it will be darker than on the top. You can see, again, when we have more muted colors, traditional bright orange to keep it more contemporary and to give it a more [inaudible] I'm thinking about. Again, we are painting along the line and softening up. This is too dark I did on the lower side. Always check it by taking the picture on your phone and see if you need some more shadows or highlights. It definitely starts looking like pumpkin. Let's mix some more orange with purple and a little bit of yellow. Left, we have two more edges. As it approaches the lighter side, these lines will become not as dark. Also, you need some shadows right here, and you can start adding some random lines. However, make sure they repeat the shape of a pumpkin. Later we'll add some more texture. But now we can add just some line thickness. Nice. It looks like a pumpkin and it makes me happy. I hope yours does too. When working, I want to add a little more purple and orange, and darken it right here in the bottom, just a little bit. It looks dark now. I'm washing the brush, [inaudible] it and softening these dark lines I just added. Very nice. So now you can compare everything else, how flat it looks, and that's how flat was looking the pumpkin before we added the shadows and the little bit of texture. I feel like I'll mix some more thicker orange, like we need to add more precision to these lines. Just a little more. If you're not sure, just take a picture and look in a photo. Yes, it looks great. After it dries over, we'll be adding the spots, which we can see on a template. Meanwhile, let's take some of this orange with purple and mix some green to it, and we'll add some shadows on the stem. Again, we're leaving some reflection. Here, I want to [inaudible] just by adding the texture. So we'll add some lines right away. We will be adding darker lines later when we will be adding the spots on the pumpkin like this. We have this leaflet so let's paint it too. This has two oranges so let's mix some orange with green. More green less orange. This is too much orange, so let's add some more green. [inaudible] you didn't paint faster and faster once the class progressing. I think I did not draw the lines on this leaf. Let's decide where they will be. You can always add some lines with white ink later. I left some lines, but I may need to add some more later with white ink while I decided to add, when we'll be adding the final touches, but we're not there yet. Now, let it all dry. Next, we will start working on the textures and details. 9. Adding the Final Details: We are almost there. It still doesn't look finished because we didn't add textures and final details. While it all was drying, I changed the water, I washed the paint palette, and I brought some whitewash. If you need to do so, you can pause the video now and go, and I'll get ready for the next and final stage. We'll start with the leaf. We don't have to add a lot of texture to it because we already have the shadows, we have the lines, we have so much going on, but it's not really necessary. However, I would like to have some precision to the edges because they look a little bit rough with different tones on them. We'll take some green, we'll take medium brush. Now, add some yellow to the green. I think we need some more green, send some more water. We'll just go around the edge and fix it just a little bit. Let's not go all the way because I'm afraid this edge will dry by the time I get back. Let's do one portion at a time. After that, I'm drying with brush, softening this edge right over lines. You can see how instantly, the leaf looks more unified in this portion. Here, just this little light wash. Let's get to the next one. We're painting the border and then softening the edge. If you don't want this earthy tons on your illustration like I did, you can use different colors, you can use cadmium yellow, you can use brighter green, or orange is good, you can use red orange. If you have a different interior in mind for his botanical poster. However, I think this will work for most houses. I think it's a good choice to make earthy tones. Muted colors are very elegant and they remind me of autumn and so it's beautiful, it's cozy. This shape, I want fix it on the edge. This? Yes, this is nice. I can see some lines need more precision, just a little bit more. Do not overdo it because it's not a photograph. You still want to give this painterly feel, just handmade and looks warmer and precise, and perfect photography. I don't have anything against the photographers but because we're painting in watercolor, you can still just celebrate these imperfections. We're out of color, and the last portion. Here it is. Our autumn leaf. It's a little darker than in real life, but I think it's some perfect for this illustration. Next, I want to paint the seeds which is very easy. We'll take a lot of purple and I'll add some orange to it. As a result, we'll have a beautiful brown. Cadmium orange, and the pretty [inaudible] paint. I think we more purple because it looks way too orange. Here is our nice brown. Let's paint this. Leave a little bit of light on one side. It's interesting. In a composition, it's nice to have some big elements like large, like a leaf and pumpkin, then we have [inaudible] and then we have tiny details which add more interest. With the same brown, I want to add more that combines to this middle of the flower. With the same color, I want to add some details here, it have a little neck, and it has some spots like dots like lines because it's a future pumpkin coming here. Beautiful. With the same brown, I want to add few dots on the leaf for the texture, a few lines maybe. With the same brown, I want to work on this stem a little bit, so just painting the lines, and then we'll add some darker green lines too, so it doesn't look too dry. Add some lines here too. You can see, I'm painting with the same color everywhere just to unify the entire painting. Next, our flowers look good. However, I want to add some more yellow to them, they look a little pale. I'm just mixing some naples yellow with some water. Our water is pretty purple. Just paint it a little bit right in the middle. Just to bring a little bit more vibrancy. You can still see the lines we painted before because of transparency of watercolor, and the same thing here. You can still see the first color, you can see the lines we painted, and we added some more color. Nice. Next which I want to do is to add more green to this orange. I will take some thick green, very dark green, put a little bit of orange to it, just a teeny tiny, just to make it unified with the rest of the pumpkin. With this dark green, I'll start painting some lines and some spots. I really wanted to try to paint this pumpkin with a dark green spots. I think they are so beautiful. You can look at the template or you can just improvise. It will be darker, it will have more lines on the top. Good thing we see any of the pencil lines which is a good thing [inaudible] the same tones. It's not easy. We're looking at the template, we have some here. I hope this is not too much. Do some more lines. I feel this is enough. Next on this stem, I also like to add some green because it's way too brown and it looks dry. I still want to add some green. Also, let's add some darker spots on this leaf. Now, when I look at this little detail, it needs to be fixed. A few green lines here with really light green, be colorful. I think our illustration is illustrative. Now, I'll take some whitewash, and we'll dilute it with some water. It's a watery whitewash. You can add a little bit of green to it so it's not too dried. We'll maybe cover some, not all of them, some of the lines, especially along this leaf. We got lost. Add few white lines on the pumpkin. On the flowers, I'll add some dots. Next, I'll scan this illustration and let the text to the bottom. This is outer botanical illustration of the pumpkin. Feel free to use the same techniques to any vegetables. The water off techniques is following, you add your color, then you add for shadows, and then you add of the textures and details. Thank you so much for painting with me. 10. Last Thoughts: Thank you for joining me in this class. I hope you had a chance to paint with me. If you liked the class, please leave a review, and upload a project to our project's section on class. If you're sharing your project on Instagram, please tag me, so that I can see your beautiful artwork. I'll see you in the next class. Bye.