Learn to Paint Cheerful Loose Watercolor Flower Bouquet

1. Introduction: Are you someone who loves flowers and wish you could paint them? Or are you someone who finds it difficult to paint loose watercolor flowers? Or are you someone who struggles to take time out of their busy schedule and would like to paint something quick and simple. If you answered yes to any of these questions, then my friend, this class is for you. Hi, I'm gonna do, I'm a watercolor and gouache artist based in India. When I started my watercolor journey, I was mesmerized by loose, expressive watercolor flowers. But in my initial days, I also struggled a lot while painting loose watercolor flower. They look so easy when somebody else brainstem, right? I struggled with getting loose brush strokes, color, palette, color values, and even while choosing the right kind of materials, if you face any of these issues, believe me, I totally get you. Now, I find painting loose watercolor flowers, very calming and therapeutic. But also understand that it can be frustrating, especially if you're just starting out. I want to make this process easier and fun for you. My aim in this class is to equip you with all the right techniques so that you can come up with your very own floral compositions. And as a bonus, you get a beautiful frame where the floral painting of your own. This class is suitable for beginner and intermediate level. But even if you are just starting with watercolors, don't worry, I've got you covered. If you want to follow my watercolor journey, you can connect with me on Instagram. My Instagram handle is at the root two's art retreat. I share all my latest paintings, tips and tricks and behind the scenes on my Instagram profile. I would love to stay in touch with you. Now without any further delay, let's move on to our next lesson. 2. Class Project: For our class project, we will be painting a beautiful floral bouquet. Start by getting to know all the materials that we need for this class. I will share my tips for choosing colors, brushes, and paper. We will learn some basic brush strokes and then move on to learning petals and leaves. Together we will explore some color mixing techniques, and I will share my secret of mixing variety of greens. I will share my process of composing and sketching a flower bouquets. Then we will move on to painting our flower bouquet. And I will walk you through all the steps. You are free to choose your own color palette and composition for this class, as our focus will be on exploring the techniques. In the end, I will show you few more examples of floral compositions that I did using the techniques that we learned in this class. 3. What Do I Need for this Class ?: I'm so glad that you decided to join me in this class. Now, in this lesson, we will go over all the materials that you'll need for this class. First of all, we will need glass or jar of clean water, some paper towels, fences. So then we will need color mixing palette. Now, if you don't have a color mixing palette, you can even use a ceramic plate. I prefer to use vitality because it gives me a better idea what my colors actually looked like even before I put them on paper. Then we will need some watercolors now, Visa, artist grade watercolors. And they're from Brian, quite nice. So here I have glows. Orange, indigo, sap green, yellow, ultramarine blue, and burnt sienna. If you don't have exact same colors, that is completely fine. In our next lesson, I'll show you how to mix colors to get different shapes. Now for paper, I usually prefer watercolor paper. That is 300 GSM and a 100%. But if you don't have a 100% quarter, but you can even use, since we won't be using heavy washes in this class, it's okay to use a student grade paper as well. Last but not the least, we will need watercolor brushes. Here. I have number 46 brush from Princeton heritage and a number 0 brush from stationary brand. But number six, brush for painting small to medium class. Number four, brush and brush. I completely optional. If you don't have a read of this, you can even use a smaller, smaller brush or the number 0 brush. In the next lesson, I'll share a few tips on how I choose my watercolor brush. 4. How to Choose Right Brush ?: In this lesson, I'll be sharing tips on how to choose a right kind of brush. As we depend on a good brush for getting those beautiful loose strokes in our florals. And people often don't know which process to use or how to choose a brush for loose florals. So here are a few steps. First thing, I prefer, a brush with a good snap. Likes it delivers me to lift it off quickly and still get a very pointed and shop for that better our lives. Second thing is your brush should have pointed tip. So even if you can't see it over here, just see what happens when I dip this rushing water. Now you can see the brush has come to a good. This way we can paint very small thin lines, even using a bigger brush. Last but not the least, the brush should hold a decent amount of water. So look for brushes, especially made for watercolors. So these are just few tips and you don't need to have the same brand as I have. But if you are going to buy any brushes, or if you want to pick a particular brush for loose florals. These are some of the tips you can consider. 5. Get to Know Your Colors !!: In this lesson, we will explore our colors. I like to start by swatching my colors first. It's a good exercise, especially if you're just starting with the watercolors. First, I like to spray my colors with some water and I'm going to let them rest for a couple of seconds. This way it becomes easier to reactivate these colors. Never put your colors directly on paper. First, take it to your palette. Mix it up. Okay, Now let's watch it. This is the highest value of this color. Here I have a very concentrated color mixture. It's mostly pigment and less water. Next step what we can do is we can add water to this color and dilute it down further. Let's see how it looks on paper, but now it looks almost transparent. I'm taking just water and very less color. This is our lightest value of your ganache. I think can go a little more lighter. Like this. It's important to know what your color looks like in its darkest value form and its latest by default, you can do this for all your colors. My color actually looks like. I like to explore some color mixes. Add color to this orange and see how it looks like. Let's take some more orange in it. Get this beautiful, rich. Once you have your color, make sure you can do the same experiment. You can add some water to it and see what is the darkest value and the lightest value looks like. They're all part of possibilities with colors. And I wanted to try and experiment this canal mixing, timidity, robotic, and it helps you know your colors better. Thing, which I like to do is write down the name of the colors. Orange. The orange. This way, I don't forget the color mixes and I can refer to this color, Jackie. I like to use different shades of green in my leaves and foliage. Let's explore some green color mixes now. I have some sap green over here, really bright green color. I'm going to add a little bit of ultramarine to it. A very cool dark green color. If I wanted to have a darker mixture, I can add a little bit of burnt sienna to this ultramarine and sap green mixture. You get a very dark green, olive shade. Green are complimentary colors, but let's just see what happens if we make some rose color with this sap green. If I add a little more sap green to the mixture, we get this beautiful, warm, olive green color. I know this one and this one, they look quite the same, but this is a little towards warmer side. This is towards the cooler side. Sap green is such a versatile color and you can get variety of color mixes with it. You can give depth to your painting by just dividing the green senior foliage. I'd like to see what kind of color mixes you'll come up with. So feel free to post them in your project section. 6. Line Exercises : Brushes are very versatile and we can get a variety of brush strokes using a single brush. So in this lesson, we will learn some simple brush strokes. I have prepared some color mixture here. You can take any color of your choice. We will be learning the thin lines first. So thin lines are very useful when you want to paint such stems or flower stalks. First thing which we need to do is load up our brush. Just load up your brush and tinted. And if you see a water droplet fall forming at the tip of the brush, then it has too much color and water. So just dab it off. I decided of your palate. And now you can see my brush has a pointed tip and it's fully loaded with color. What we want to do is hold your brush at 90 degrees angle. Gently touch it to the paper with very less pressure. Up your brush. Or you could have 90 degrees angle tip of your brush to the paper and with very less pressure, just draw it. Don't hold your brush like a pen. So here you can see I'm holding it at 90 degrees in the paper and drawing nothing like. Why is that comfortable drawing lines? I've said to start by making such a loss. Is painting a line. Similar to how we draw a thin line. The only difference is the pressure that we apply. Again. Your brush. After 90 degrees. Sit down completely and just drag it off. Now you see I've got a very thick line here. Are to just back this distinct far. Drawing the thick line you can hold your brush or the drought. This angle and press it completely down and then just drag it off. And you'll get a thick line. Like so. You can get lines of various thickness by simply changing the pressure on your brush. Starting with a thin line. Gently press your brush down. Slowly lifted up. You will get this leaf shape practices a couple of times as well. You have to get down like this. 7. Learn to Paint Petals and Leaves : I know we talked a lot about anger and pressure on your brush, but believe me, they are the key to brush strokes. This lesson we will see how to paint petals of this main flower. If you see he has a shape like this. I like to do. I load up my brush with color. I start from the best of greater. Start from the base. Gently press your brush down, follow along the line. And before you lift it up, just pull it inside. This is 1.5 of your better. You can do the same thing on the other side. Just filling the gap. Do another one. Again. I start at the base of my brush down and lift it up. Slightly, carve it inside like a fish. Then I do the same thing on the other side. Once you get comfortable, you don't even need to have. Let's do another one. Like Practices petals a lot. I know I'm saying that this is really the only way to get better. Once we are done with the petals. Now let's see how to paint some leaves over here. And now let's just paint some leaves. Started with a team name plus your brush. This gives you a leaf shape. Like this. One leaf shape. I'm just making it a little longer. I get a different leaf shape now. Just by batting the length of a simple extrude, a slightly bigger one. Like this. My painting, I like to have different kind of leaves. I have some bigger leaves and then I have some smaller leaves. See how we can paint some smaller, smaller leaves are pretty simple. I usually paint them with just one brush stroke. Lightly press your brush down and just lift it up like this. Try doing this. I'm using just the tip of my brush. As you can see, I don't have the perfect leaves. Still they look beautiful. Fact is definitely become easier. Comfortable with this. Let's move on to our next lesson to see how we can be. 8. Composition and Sketch : I hope by this time you are now comfortable painting petals and leaves. Let's go ahead and start with our class project. What our class project? We will be painting a flower bouquets, something like this. Let's go ahead and start with the basic sketch. We'll be painting some front-facing flowers like this. And then we'll be adding some side facing flowers, for example, like this. And we have some flower buds. These are our main class. And then we have these flowers drop at some filler flowers. I like to start by blocking space for my main flowers. I'm just going to draw a rough circle. This is my first flower. I'm going to draw a second one around here. Two main flowers. Now, let's see where we can put some side facing flowers. I'm going to draw an old cheap to denote my site facing. Something like this have been over here. And I want to have one facing up here. Let's add one over here. Now I want to add some flower buds. I'm thinking maybe one over here, one over here, and one facing downwards over here. Now let's see how we can draw a fight butterfly. One thing I like to do is mark the center of my circle and then roughly divide the circle into five parts. And then I like to add some drops, petal shapes. Here. Don't be afraid to overlap your patents. And now we have a flat. Then you had a beginner. It's good idea to have a rough sketch of your flower like this. Once you add comfortable painting without the sketch, you can even go ahead and paint directly. Let's do this one adds it written. This way. I make sure that all my flowers are of same size. Now let's see how we can draw site facing, flat, side facing plan like this. I draw some like this. That's it. For our flower bud. I'll just drawing a simple are done with our main class. Now I'm going to go ahead and add a flower style for filler flowers. Not going to draw everything. I'm just going to draw something like this. Just to mark the space for my flower stalk. Worn. A second one like this card one maybe over here. One over here is just a rough sketch. And as we go ahead and paint this flower bouquet, I'll be coming back and doing some adjustments. 9. Painting Main Flowers : Now let's start by painting flowers. I want to prepare color, which is kind of a warm yellow. So I'm going to take my yellow and I'm going to add a little bit of orange to it. And I'm going to dilute it down. Now. Let's watch this color and see how it looks on paper. I always keep the subscript, but along with me, so I can test my colors before I put them on paper. I like this yellow. Let's see what if we add a little orange at the base of the petal? You see it looks beautiful. I start by painting are flat. I'm going to show you how to paint front-facing flowers and side facing flower. And then you can go ahead and paint the rest of the class. You remember how we paint a petal shape? Let's start from the base of the petal. Now, I like to add some orange color at the base line. It's still think this is another Britain now taking some orange color again and just lightly touching it at the base of vector. Once you do this, don't touch it this better now I just made that color spread on its own. Feel free to turn your paper. Now, I'm going to paint these two vectors. We are done. Slash side facing flat. Start with the middle petals. Go ahead and add two more sites. Drier too, orange color at the base. And we are done with our side facing flower painting. Just like finding a single pattern. That's it. Now let's complete the day. Stop the flaps. By painting upward facing. I also like to add just kindof opposite vectors. Something like this started feeling this triangle. Let's draw some lines like this. Give us the unusual in that. The other side. Once we are done painting our main class, now I'm going to let them dry and we'll come back to detailing in the end. 10. Painting Filler Flowers and Stems: My main flowers are dry now, so I'm going to be painting these filler flowers. I'm taking some ultramarine blue. And I'm going to add a little bit rows. Now, let swatch you that I'm going to go with this color. Now. What I'm going to do, load my brush with color and just going to point my brush towards this team. Just simply pressing down like this. So keep this line as your reference. These teardrop shapes along the state. Now that we are done with adding gardening flowers and filler flowers, it's time to add some deeds and same. I have some color remaining from my main flowers. I like to use the same color to mix my green. I'm going to take some sap green and mix it with this yellow, orange color. Let's test it now. This is still very bright for me. I'm going to take some orange, mix it with this color. Okay. I think now we have a perfect olive green. This one I like better. But remember how we painted thin lines in same V. We want to pain stems. If you're not comfortable with using a bigger brush to paint thinner lines, you can use a smaller brush. But rigger brush. I like to paint. Visa fly first. Now follow this line. Paint this flower stock. Take it slow, don't worry about it much. You can do it in small segments like this. Again, I'm just turning my paper because the states more comfortable for me to paint. 11. Let's Add Some Leaves : We'll be adding some bigger leaves now, for that, I'm going to use a diluted version of this olive green color. Let's start. I start from the base. I add one more over here. I like to add another one over here. One over here, one over here. And don't worry if your leaves overlap with your flowers stands, it's completely OK. I'm going to add some smaller leaves over here too. No. Why not adding the bigger leaves now, at this point, I'd just like to take a step back, see if I have any gaps, spaces that I wanted to add anymore. Far now I'm just going to stop over here. Let's go ahead and add some smaller leaves. Now, I want to mix a darker green shade for my smaller leaves. I'm going to take some sap green tea and discuss very dark olive color. Now I just see like where I can add some smaller leaves. For example. I can add one over here. Again, like if you're not very comfortable painting smaller leaves with a bigger brush, you can go ahead and use my number two brush or number four brush. Sometimes I like to add a leaf with a single brushstroke. I'd enjoy leaves around your flowers. Don't be afraid to overlap your leaves. Once I'm done, I want to take a step back. I want my neck say dark. 12. Adding Final Touches: I will be adding a couple more darker leaves. But before that, I want to now go ahead and add some details to our flash. I want to mix concentrated mixture of yellow and orange. This darker mixture, I will be adding some highlights, store flaps. Swatch it once. Yeah, it looks good. I like to outline these flower petals using some loose, wiggly lines. Let's go ahead and do that again. If you're not comfortable using a bigger brush, you can go ahead and use a smaller one. Like this. Here's a closer look. It gives that pop of color to your flowers. I like to do this with all my flowers. Keep your hand. Drawn stress about having perfect lines. Keep these lines as loose as possible. I like to add some lines at the floss and just have fun with this. After adding all due two days, I want to paint the center of these two front-facing flowers. So far that I want the dark color. I'm going to pick some indigo lifted bit of orange swatch this color. It's not a black color, but it's still pretty dark. Warranted little bit darker. So I can draw lines like these in the center, odd, you can just put some dots like this as well. I'm just going to paint a small circle. And I'm going to add some little dots here and there we go. I want to add few more darker leaves. And for that, I'm going to pick this mixture of olive green and add to it. You see, I really like to reuse on my paint. This is a pretty dark mixture. One swatch it. I would still like a darker mixture. I'm also picking some burnt sienna. And I'm going to mix it with indigo. And it gives us this dark green color. Dilute this now you can see the green. Now I want to add few darker leaves here and there. When you are adding darker leaves, just be mindful. You don't want to add too many of them because we don't want them overpowering painting. So just tiny leaves here and there. Just going to take a step back and see how this looks. Now, Varela have this dark green color on my hand. Like to add some highlights to my leaves. I won't be doing this for all of the leaves, but just for them, one of them. And I like to add one or two grass triads. Then I'll just tell you this color a little bit. And had such TIN lines to show that there's something over here. Last day that I like to do is sign my name. No, I painting is complete. 13. Before You Go...: I'm so proud of you for finishing this class. Remember you keep practicing all the techniques that we learned in this class. The more you practice, the easier it gets. Now, as promised, here are some examples of flower bouquet that I painted using. We learned in this class. This is another one that I did using similar color palette, but a slightly different composition. Here, I painted slightly bigger main flowers and added some highlights to the filler flowers. I added some white highlights to the main flowers. And then you can see such small lines. To fill up. I used only two colors. Drama in blue, I'm sap green. And I painted slightly bigger main PRs. Stood up the filler flowers, I added. This. One is also done using only two colors. Remember the steps that we follow to paint this. Start with your main flowers and then decide the position of your filler flowers. Then move on to adding the bigger leaves. Then we added some smaller leaves in the darker shade. In the end, we added some highlights and finished more darker leaves. Remember to vary the color values that you always start with the lightest value, then move on to adding some darker elements. Remember to have a balance of lighter and darker elements in your painting. This will help your painting look more effortless and naturally, it will also add depth and volume to your painting. I'm excited to see what you create in this class. So don't forget to post your project in the project section of this class. I would love to give you my feedback if you decide to post it on Instagram, please don't forget to tag me. My Instagram handle is at the red route towards art retreat. I'd love to reshare your work. If you have any questions related to this class, I'm reachable over Instagram, DMs, and my e-mail ID. I will link both of them in the description below. In the end, I would love to hear your feedback. So please don't forget to give a review. It will definitely helped me improve and give me ideas about what to cover in my future classes. If you love this class, please feel free to share it with your friends and families. Thank you for taking this class, and hopefully I will see you soon in my next class.