Transcripts
1. Welcome To The Class!: Hello everyone. My name is Will Alison and welcome
to this Skillshare class. Today, I'll be
guiding you through my complete process
for painting flowers. Whether you are
new to watercolor or already have some experience, you'll be able to
follow along at your own pace and improve
your painting skills. Join me whilst we discover a variety of expressive
and impactful techniques. I've been a
professional watercolor artist for many years now, exploring many
different subjects, from wildlife and portraits to cityscapes and
countryside scenes. I've taken part in many
worldwide exhibitions and being lucky enough to win awards from well-respected
organizations such as Winsor and Newton, the International
Watercolor Society, the Masters of
Watercolor Alliance, and the SAA Artist
of the Year Award. I also have collectors that buy my paintings around the world. Watercolor can be
intimidating for beginners. My aim is to allow
you to relax and have fun learning this
medium step-by-step. Hopefully, by the end, you'll surprise yourself
with a nice painting. If this class feels too
intimidating or too simple. Please check my other
classes as I have them available
across all levels. My approach to
watercolor starts off loose and expressive
with no fear of making mistakes
because we're just creating exciting textures
for the underlayer. Then as the painting goes on, we'll add more details, bringing the painting to
life and making it pop. I tried to simplify
complicated subjects into easier shapes that
encourages playfulness. The flowers we'll be painting today are a great opportunity to use vivid colors and discover how they
react with each other. Not only will we be learning
about complimentary colors, but also how to paint in a bold way without
getting overwhelmed. All these things
will help you create striking paintings that
capture the attention. When you enroll in my class, I'll give you the
high-resolution image of my painting to
use as a guide. Today's focus is about
painting rather than drawing. I have included templates
you can use to help you sketch out the
drawing before you paint. I'll also include
my color charts, which are an invaluable tool when it comes to choosing
and mixing colors. Throughout this class, I'll be sharing plenty of
tips and tricks. I'll show you how to use
mistakes to your own advantage. Taking the stress out of
painting and having fun. I'll explain which
supplies I'll be using so you can
follow along exactly. I'll also cover how to choose
and mix harmonious colors. I'll be splitting
everything up into short videos so it's
easier to take in. You can also pause at any moment if you want
to take more time. If you have any questions, you can post them in the
discussion thread down below. I'll be sure to read and respond to everything
you guys post. Don't forget to follow me on Skillshare by clicking the
Follow button at the top. This means you'll
be the first to know when I launch a new class, post giveaways, or just have an interesting announcement
to share with my students. You can also follow me on Instagram to see
my latest works. If you'd like to create your own expressive
floral paintings, all off learning fun and
exciting watercolor techniques please click "Enroll"
as I'd love to have you in my class.
Now let's begin.
2. Your Class Project: First of all, thank you so much for enrolling in my class. I really do appreciate it. We're going to learn a lot about painting flowers using a fun
and expressive approach. I think floral paintings
go very well with watercolor because they are
so organic and flowing. We will have the
opportunity to use bright, vivid colors and use a variety of different
textures as well. It's best to watch
the whole thing of fruit first before you paint, just so that you're better prepared for how to go about it. Then I highly advise
giving the painting and go yourself because that's
the best way to learn. You're welcome to copy
my drawing and follow it exact or experiment
with your own. I will put my painting in
the resource section so you can use it as a reference
throughout the process. There's also a template
you can use to trace and transfer
it onto your paper. Don't feel guilty
about tracing when using it as a guide for
learning how to paint. It's important to
have the underdrawing correct so that it doesn't inhibit your ability to practice and learn the watercolor
medium itself. Whichever way you
use this class, it would be great
to see the outcome and the paintings you
create in this class. I'd love to give you feedback. So please take a
photo afterwards and share it in the student
project gallery. You can find the gallery under the same project
and resources tab. On the right, you'll
see a green button that says Create
Project. Tap that. And once you're there, you'll
have the option to upload a cover photo and a title and
write a little description. I would love to hear about your process and what you
learned along the way. Once your project is uploaded, it will appear in the
student's project gallery. You can view other projects
here and I'd highly encourage you to like and
comment on each other's work. We put so much time and effort into creating
our paintings. Why not share it with
the world and help support each other
along the way? Now that you have a good
idea of this class, let's get stuck into it, starting with the equipment
and materials I'll be using.
3. Materials & Supplies: Let's go over the materials and supplies you'll need
to follow along. We'll start with
the colors I use. Unlike most of the materials
we'll be using today, there's a lot to do
with preference. I have 12 stable colors in my palette that I
fill up from tubes. They are cadmium yellow, yellow ocher, burnt sienna, cadmium red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, cobalt
blue, cerulean blue, lavender, purple, viridian,
black or neutral tint. At the end of the painting, I often use white gouache
for tiny highlights. I don't use any
particular brand, these colors you can
get from any brand. Although I personally
use Daniel Smith, Winsor and Newton,
or Holbein paints. Let's move on to brushes. To keep things simple,
in this painting, I'm only going to use a
small selection of brushes. First is this mop brush. Mop brushes are good for broad brushstrokes and filling
in larger areas or washes. But they also have a tip
for some smaller details, so they are one of my
favorite types of brushes. Next is this a
Skoda perler brush. I use various sizes, but for this painting, I'll use size 8. These brushes allow for
more precision because they have a finer tip and
last quite a long time. For even more precision, when painting final touches
or highlights for example, I use a synthetic size 0 brush. All brands have them and
they're super cheap. This here is a sword
brush or a rigger brush. It's quite long but thin. It's only used for
very small details, much like the size 0 brushes, but it holds more
water and pigment, saving time and
effort refilling. The only drawback is, it's more difficult to
control as it's more flimsy. That's it for brushes. You're of course welcome to use your own favorite as well. Onto paper. The better
quality your paper is, the easier it will be to paint. Cheap paper crinkles easily
and is very unforgiving, not allowing you to
rework mistakes. Good quality paper however, such as cotton base paper, not only allows you to rework mistakes over multiple times, but because the pigment
reacts much better on it, the chances of
mistakes are a lot lower and you'll more likely
create better paintings. I use arches because it's what's available
in my local art shop. Next, various materials that
will come in very handy. A water spray is
absolutely essential. By using this, it
gives you more time to paint the areas you
want before it dries. Also it allows you to
reactivate the paint if you want to add smooth lines
or remove some paint. Lastly, masking tape, and this of course
is just to stick the paper to the surface
to stop it sliding around. It also creates a nice border at the end when you've finished. That's everything
you need to know to paint along. Let's
get on with it.
4. Drawing a Composition: Usually when coming up with a composition with
other paintings, I just use this
mechanical pencil. But because of the nature of flowers and floral paintings, I want that to be a
little bit more flow and I want it to
be more organic. I'm going to use
this regular pencil, which is 4B, which has a nice soft lead. We don't have to press as hard. We can keep it nice and fluid. To start off with,
I'm just going to start with a simple circle. Very lightly going over
it again and again. Then I can start off
with basic shapes, have little lines,
curves coming off it. Maybe you can do that to
certain other circle over here. These, of course, circles
will turn to flowers, but at this stage we're
keeping it very simple. I have circles and little
branches coming off. Maybe their branches,
maybe they're not, doesn't matter at this stage. I'll put the flower heads. Let's turn to the flowers. I mean, I'm not an expert in different anatomical
terms of the flower. I mean, as an artist, I just see whatever I want to paint and try and interpret
it however it is, I don't necessarily look deeply
into the names of things. I don't think it should matter really because all
you're looking at, is shapes, colors, textures. That's really what makes
a good piece of art. You don't need to look
at the technical terms. It's just visually what matters. Now, after doing
the main circles, I go into small circles. We can rub certain ones away. We can focus on other ones. This is why we're using the
soft pencil at this stage just because we have the
choice to do these things. This is just the first step in coming up with
the composition. I think we have
reached that stage now where we have just
basically done circles, lines connected it all. You can do this thing
again and again and again until you're happy
with your main composition. The balance of it,
where it's weighted, where the heavy things are, where the center is of a focus because you can imagine the details
before you put them in. I think I've reached that stage now, and I'm happy with it. Now I'm going to change
to my mechanical pencil, and press a bit harder
from left to right, so I don't smudge the details. I'm going to start
going in with details. I'm just going to
draw the petals. The outline of the
petals, at least. Fairly irregular
but organic shapes. Like I said, I'm no expert on what the names of flowers are. I don't really know what
kind of flower I'm doing. I'm just drawing
my own perception of what petals are like. I don't like to see myself as an artist that just sticks to one subject or specializes
in one certain area. If I were to do that, then I probably would
learn a bit more about the terms and
the names of things. But if I want to paint a flower I'll just want
to get on with paint it. If I want to paint
some wildlife, I don't want to have
to learn everything about that wildlife,
that creature, that animal before
I'm able to paint it with things like this that are so
organic and abstract. You really don't
have so much freedom in what you can do
before it looks wrong. With these outlines,
I'm drawing harder, so you can see the
little bit more. Because these lines that I'm putting in now will
be the lines that I follow when I paint. I'll rub all these softer
lines out just before I paint. Let's draw some leaves.
Turn these into leaves. Whilst I'm doing this drawing, I'm starting to think
about the whole process of how I'm going to paint it, what colors I'm going to use. Because even though
we've thought about the spacing and
the balance of it, we think about what colors
we're going to use, and where they're going to go. I think I have lots of
complimentary colors. As always, orange, I think I'm going to have
orange and to balance that out, I'm going to have blue. Then may be I'll
influence some green into that blue and maybe purple. We'll see. I try and
plan things out. But really, I think the power
of watercolor is allowing the painting to
dictate what looks right at the time because
you can't always control it. If things go unexpected, got to learn to adapt. Why in the end, if
you learn about the fundamentals
of drawing an art, and the things I try and
talk about with each class, you can adapt it to any subject. The way I'm drawing
now is known, not necessarily that different from how a door street scene. I break it down
into simple shapes that I think looks
appealing to the eye. Pleasing. From then I just build on it
with organic shapes. We can draw this wavy
outline of the petal here, the silhouette because having a good silhouette
is a strong thing. Strong visual cue, it makes it easier to
read and more attractive. Then we'll go into these silhouettes and
make individual petals. I'm thinking of
different tones as well, not just colors but tones. I'm going to have one flower, I'm not sure which
will be light on dark, and the other will
be dark on light. I'm going to have to negatively
paint the other one, which will be a good
demonstration to show, I think because two different
ways to approach a flower. You can paint the
flower darker than the background or you can paint the background
darker than the flower. Now, I'm painting the
individual petals, and I'm looking at
where it comes in, values in and then
bring it around. I'm not going where
there's a tip. I'm going where there's
a valley, so to speak. There's wiggly
shapes are not like as I'm painting this
from my imagination, I have a few reference
images of different flowers. But mainly I'm just doing
this from visual memory. Through these textures, I'm just implying
where things are, and then I'll allow
the watercolor to create the
textures themselves. If you have the time and
something, I might do, something that will always
improve your paintings is just to give you eye a
rest from looking at it. Once you think you've
drawn it out, well, if you have the time and
patience and not in a rush, you can draw it out, and just put it away for a few
days and don't look at it. When you come back
to it, you can see any inaccuracies or
corrections you can make. I think that's what I'll do
and I'll come back to it tomorrow. Discover fresh eye. I might do a few more changes before we add the paint
or clean up these lines. I'll see you back when
we're ready to paint.
5. Painting The Background: The method that we're
painting in today, will involve multiple layers
and when painting in layers, you always start off with
the lightest layers first. Looking at the image, I'm going to do some
softer background shapes, some organic shapes that we
can later paint on top of, the later shapes in particular, just organic shapes that
imply maybe leaves or flowers and to get them soft
rather than hard edges, I'm just going to wet the paper, that's going to be
the first step. I'm just using this brush,
it can be any brush. This is another
example of a brush, any brush you've got. It's just water at the
moment just to fill in some space so that we
can get some soft lines. These will be around the edge, I'm not interfering with the
main flowers at this stage. We don't want to apply
the paint strings away, we want to let the water seep in to the paper so that
it gradually blends out. If we added it straight away, the pigment will just cover the whole area and there
would be no edge at all. If there is some water
running off the bottom, you just use a tissue
to pick it up. Now depending on the
paper that you're using, your paper might crinkle a bit. Mine does, it's
quite a thin paper, but it's still
cotton-based Arches paper. It will eventually dry flat again if you have
it taped on properly. I'm just going to wait a bit
until I think it's ready, at the moment it's wet, I want it to be damp so
it's not dripping so you can see it's not so reflective it's not a
thin layer over water, it's actually submerged, soaked into the paper. That's yellow ocher, I said these are quite
light colors at the moment. Have coming off the edge here. Soft edges, add some
cadmium yellow, very faint, very faint. Tiny bit of cream there. Isn't
going to be very subtle, so you don't have to worry
too much about them. They're not going to
steal the attention away, just to fill in some
space in the background. You should also use a
water spray if you want. Whenever the water runs down, you can soak it up. [inaudible] I'm using
a tissue to pick up some pigment because it's
gone over the line there. Maybe I'll start adding some
purple into that's here. It's a bit too much but we'll balance it out
with a yellow again. Maybe add some red to that purple there,
tiny bit of red. Depending how confident you are, you can experiment with
your own color schemes. Back to orange. Splatters that will
fade out there. A bit of green here. As it dries, you can start
going back in if you want to imply a few more details because the dryer it gets, the harder the line will be. I don't mean hard
as in difficult, I mean not soft. I'm going to go back
up here, more green there. I have various
reference images of flowers but I'm not
being so faithful to them, they're just basic references. I decided I want to
fill in a bit more of the whitespaces in the middle. Again, very lightly
going through making it quite bold, add a few more shapes here. Again, as it's drying, the shape will hold a bit better because it won't
bleed out anymore. So at this stage, look quite odd
because we're just doing abstract background shapes that don't relate to anything. It's difficult to judge
whether it's going right or wrong and you should take comfort in the
fact that it generally doesn't matter
because these shapes won't be that important, they're literally just
to fill in some space. You can really have fun, experiment with these without there being many consequences. I'm just playing around, might look like I'm
doing specific things, but I'm not actually. Don't be afraid to go back
and splash some water, get some nice textures. Just when it starts to dry, you can splash some
water in there. This is the stage of the
painting where you can really have fun creating
some nice textures, maybe these flips
can be like Poland. Think I'm going to do
some try brushing, try that off Canvas. Now I'm going to use the
hairdryer to dry the stage off.
6. Left Flower Under-Layer: It's pretty much dry. It's still a bit
of dampness there where it's got a
bit of a crinkle, but as you can see, it's flattened out again
and the next stage is to do the underlayer for the flowers themselves
and the leaves. Already you can see we've got a color scheme by experimenting with colors for the first layer, we can see where we can paint
the flowers and what color. They are mainly
going to be orange, I think this one's
going to be orange and maybe this one's
going to be purple. This orange will work
well with this purple and this orange will work
around with this purple flower. I'm mixing some
yellows and oranges. I'm just going to
go straight in. I'm mixing on the
paper actually, I just got pure
colors and I'm mixing them directly on here. I'm actually going
to use my smaller scoder brush for this. Bear in mind this is
just the first layer, so we don't need to
go into big details, we just have to make sure
that the silhouette, the outline is good and then the center can be
a bit more abstract. Well, it's drying in
different stages. You can do little lines
going up and down. It's useful to have
a tissue at hand to pull out bits that you might want to do
corrections for if we've painted too
dark at this stage, you can still use a tissue
to pull out those details. I'm being quite general with
how I'm describing my colors because when I say red, you can have warm reds
like this like the reds up here like almost
orange or we can have cool reds like this,
the center here. I try not to talk about brand names
because it's all personal. I didn't think of colors
in terms of the name, I think about their temperatures whether they're cool or warm. If you want to
paint a red flower, you can make it
more interesting by using all the different
varieties of reds. We've got warm reds
close to orange, or cool reds that
are close to purple. We're going to have orange
here and purple here. You can look at the
color charts to see what colors you think would look nice together because we can talk about color theory
but at the end of the day, it's a lot to do with
personal choice. Color theory is a general rule or principle and
then like all rules, they can be broken
in certain contexts. That's your choice. That's what brings out your
individuality as an artist. I just hop around
from red to yellow. Every now and again, I'm picking pure pigment straight from
the tube and have it using that thick pigment
or really help mount paint into the
water to the paper. Flick some water as it dries. Now the opposite of orange
on the color wheel is blue, so I'm just going
to add some blue in there just a little bit. Now, this blue won't be
in the final result. I just want it to
influence the main color. I'm going to go in
with purple now. This is pure pigment again. I'm going to let that dark
bit dry for a bit while I extend another flower down here. There's a line here that
I'm not going to cross because I want that to be some green leaves I think, and I want that to
be a strong contrast between that red and green. The way we're doing this flower will be different from
the other flower. This one is going to be dark
on top of light background. This is going to
be a light flower on top of a dark background. Actually, this one's
going to be more complex because it's going
to transition. This is an example for a more simple flower in which it's all going to
be dark on top of light. This one is going to be
dark on top of light here, but over this side, it's going to be
light on top of dark. [NOISE] You take some of the
bits that are still wet and just drag them out to imply the direction
of the petals. You can see these lines
here where we put the pure pigment that really
blended out in a nice way. Although we might be
using a variety of different techniques and
textures in the middle, we're actually just
painting by numbers. We've found a silhouette, the shape of the flower, and we're purely
painting it out. We're going to go
back up here and start to merge this bit. This bit might look
a bit strange at this stage because it's so dark compared to the rest of it, but we will make the
rest of it dark. This is just the first
layer, remember. By breaking it down into layers, it makes it much
easier to control. Just pure orange
pigment into that. As it dries, it will bleed
out again in a nice way. Now, we can let this dry.
7. Right Flower Under-Layer: Now moving on to this side, we're going to do a similar thing but
with different colors. This time I'm going to
just go with a blue. This is lavender but we
can go with a purple. Bring some of that
red back in now. Just had a little
idea. Think I'm going to get a
paint to that line. On this petal here, just going to do a
little bit of orange there because I'm going to paint around this petal
to make it really stick out. The shadow underneath here, I'll go back to the yellow ocher color, bring in some red. This purple mixed with the
yellow works really well, I think, because they're
complimentary colors again. It's useful to know what
complimentary colors are because you can always just rely on them if you can't make a decision on a color
scheme you like. You can look at the color charts to see what colors make what
and help you make decisions. I've looked at my color chart so frequently that I memorized. I know my palette quite
well now off by heart. I'm going to work from
the other side around. We're going to take
some strong yellow, and make sure to
go over that line. I can mix in some Alizarin
crimson into that. When it comes to
painting flowers, you can really experiment
with different layers, leaving certain petals out. It can seem quite complex, but as long as the
drawing is clear enough, it should be okay. I'm just going to put a
little bit of green here, a bit like we put
the blue there, just a little influence. It's not necessary to do it if you don't feel
comfortable risking it. I just had the feeling
I should do it. I think the under-layer, at least for this
flower, is done as well.
8. Using Thick Pigment: Now, for the leaves,
we're going to do it slightly different way. As I'm showing you a range of different ways to do things, for the leaves we going
to do the darks first. Whenever I do
darks, I have this. You can use your palette, but as I always use
this all the time, I just mix my dark colors here. I just fill in little areas. There's many different
ways to approach things. You can paint the flowers
this way as well, but for variety, I need to show you more
than one way to do things. I thought I'd use this part to demonstrate
this particular way. The green I'm using is viridian, and the blue I'm using
is ultramarine blue. It's this technique that
excites me the most with watercolor because it creates such organic shapes that it feels like
it's magic almost. It really does feel like
magic because of the effects. If you leave the watercolor
to do its effects itself, it's so organic. It's impossible to replicate by forcing it with your brush. No water touches this. That's how thick I
get my pigments. This is just a bit of cardboard, I actually painted a
bit of acrylic on it so that it doesn't deteriorate. The plastic and
the acrylic paint keeps it from wearing away. Sometimes my hand
covers the camera, which I'm very sorry about some angles that are
just so difficult to get to, though I have to just do it. You can see I'm not
actually putting that much dark pigment on
because it's so potent. But it will do a lot. In fact, while we're
putting on thick pigment, we might as well do
that to the rest of the painting,
including the flowers. I'm going to mix
more dark pigment. I'm putting alizarin
crimson and burnt sienna, some pure black. I'm just dropping that
in the middle there. Do a similar thing here.
9. Painting The Left Leaves: Now, I just want to start
painting the leaves. To paint the leaves,
I'm mainly just doing the same shape but
in different positions. Just a stereotypical leaf-like little bit like lips, I guess. The colors that
I'm going to paint the leaves are going
to vary from blue, all the way to green,
and even yellow. I make the decision
in the moment, I don't really plan it. Maybe I'll have a leaf
here that fades out. Two's a bit too strong
and darker out. Of course the water
splats that adds texture. We're going to follow
this stem down. Now, a little trick that is
relatively simple to do, but it still does
require a still hand, is to get your finest brush, your smallest brush, add a parallel to a
thicker line like that. Just draw a very
small one next to it. It's very subtle, but just
having that fine line, will give it a bit
more sharpness and it will imply more detail
than there actually is. Here, I'm going to do
a very obvious leaf. A lot of those are more
abstract and implied leaves. This one's going
to be a form leaf. I'm really going to
emphasize the tip. As these bits are
drying, we can add a few lines that
will melt into them. The leaves I'm going to do here. I think it's going to be a bit more monotone.
Let's color. Because I want to
almost merge them with the color in-between the
flower and the leaves. I think I want these leaves
to be a bit brighter, so I'm just going to
pull off the pigment. I'll come back to
the leaves later because I want to make it pop. Let's do that. There needs
to be more contrast. Applying some very
strong pigment here. It's not that strong
actually, it's just wet. Interacting with that
pigment we put down before. See see a lot of these shapes
are quite random. They don't have to be perfect
to be able to look good. Just going to add more
pigment here actually because still quite dark enough. The bottom of the
stars, I'm just going to have them go
thinner and thinner. I'm making sure I have
enough water pigment so that it doesn't dry
halfway through this, otherwise it won't work. We can't start drying
until we've completed it. We're doing intricate
little bits like this. Maybe I'll use the same color. Maybe I'll use the same
color here, as well. Bringing back some of the orange because it goes well
against the blue.
10. Painting The Right Leaves: That's side of the petals done and we can
start working here. I got to make it less blue here. I'm going to have a
more natural green. I'm going to use a
lot of yellow ocher. [NOISE] These could have been painted underneath first but it doesn't really matter. Spread some cerulean blue here. That will dry by the
time we come to it. I have a little bit
coming out there [NOISE] which is out here a bit as well to
break it up a bit. I have some of this purple but easing out into that. Now let's have things connected. I'm going to do a little stem
here that connects. Cleanse these two. Having it very yellow here. When that dries, I'll
redefine that edge, make it a bit darker
as it's still wet. It will blend out at the moment, so it's not a good
idea to do it now. Look at this area. Not super necessary. Again, I just feel like
something needed to go there. Yellow here has to be stronger. I'm trying to make this class
adaptable for all levels. If you're a beginner, you still have something to
take away from this. You don't have to paint with quite so much detail
if you don't want to but you should still be able to get
a result from this. On the other side, the reason I might be painting with quite a lot
of detail is because I want more intermediate
level painters to be able to get something
from this as well. I think the leaf's done
for the time being.
11. Negative Painting: Now I'm going to paint the negative shape
background here. I'm going to
re-activate this bit here so that it can merge out. I can do that here too
actually for this. I'm being very careful not to leave a white gap. It looks dark just
because I've put a lot of pigment but I don't want to be short of
pigment with this. You can start bringing it out, making sure it doesn't dry. You can go back in there and
get to move about a bit. If you went out of time, you can use just
water spray to stop it from drying because the
last thing you want is it drying at this stage. Then as it gets further
away from the petals, you can fade out. That's why we pre-wetted it. We planned in advance
what we're going to do. I'm going to use my cardboard while I do the
[inaudible] to make sure it doesn't go
anywhere important. Turn that to a little leaf. I think it needs just a
little bit more pigment, maybe a few of purple is there. Now we can dry that. Just want us to try and apply
a few more leaves here. There's no particular order if I see something that I want to do, I'll just do it now that we're in the later stage
of the painting. Just adding a few of
these weird wisps, I guess is cool to know
if they are wisps, but it's clearly things
in the background. Just compositional little tools and not anything in particular. They just have, for lack of a better term, floral vibes maybe
even here I'll do a little negative shape, a leaf or two. There's a way you can make things interesting. As you can see, I've
done an outline of the leaf there by painting
the behind a bit. Now on the bottom side of it, you can paint on it. Then you can blend
that in as it goes up. Even though we're
painting today, drawing skills are really important because
they allow you to do these organic flowing movements with your brushwork [NOISE] Maybe I'll turn
these into leaves so that it looks a bit tidier. I twist my brush around
when I want it to merge, mimicking petal shapes
or leaf shapes. I do some dry brush. I think we can leave
that bit alone now. Fill that out as well. I twist, it just helps
merge it a bit better.
12. Left Flower Details: Now we're going to go and
finish off the flowers, starting with some
orange up here. Just look at a few
photos of flowers. You don't need to
copy them directly. Just see different patterns
and copy the patterns. Correct deep orange
here, I think. Here, I'm going to
do an under petal, a petal that's underneath. It's a bit of a
cooler red there. Alizarin crimson. That can blend up. Now this stage you can go on for a pretty long time
depending on how much detail you want
your flowers to be. But you can imply detail rather than doing
it exactly as it is. This middle bit wet again. What I'm going to do is wet around it and I'm going
to let it do what it does. I'm not going to
interfere with it. As it dries, it will
do its own magic. These little lines
are, of course, shadows of other either crinkles or other petals lined
on top of each other. If I've got too much water, I just brush it onto the side, so that I can create
some dry brush effects. Then back over here again. I think it should be
just a bit darker. It'll be very red here too. Take my Holbein lavender, split a few of these lines. It's a little bit too
early to do that. It's not yet dry enough. Maybe that section is. Just to remind me to do some more later. We can move down here
and do something here. If you don't have purple, you don't need to
buy a new tube, you can just mix it yourself. Depending on what
purple you want, you can mix it with red or blue. No, I don't want it to. Not too happy with
what I just did there. I'm going to get rid of that. You see how that is now merged out and it looks
quite attractive. Sometimes I feel like I
can't allow myself credit for these textures because I'm purely letting
watercolor do it for me. It's not about being
modest, I don't think. It's just the truth. I'm just allowing watercolor
to do what it does. Knowing when to allow
watercolor to do its thing, when to interfere
with it and when not to is another thing, and is a bit more challenging. Now I think it's trying
to stop there to put in some lavender strokes
following our pattern. I'm aiming let watercolor do its own thing where
it's the darkest darks. If it's too light, there's not enough
room to control it, because it's very thin pigment.
13. Right Flower Details: Have time to do that here. When looking for
subjects to paint, I look for areas
where I will allow watercolor to do its own thing, because that's what
will bring out the best of the medium. Now what I was talking
about way before here about having small lines
next to each other, I'm going to do
here and you'll see how a few small lines
look very nice together. I'm no expert on what
the scientific name of plants are or
flowers in general. When I come to
look at a subject, it's more about in
artistic terms. I'm looking at how light
and shadow play with each other, or colors. Doesn't matter what
the subject is, as long as there's
potential for something, I'll try and paint it. I say that because it helps work out how you're
going to paint something, especially if a lot of it's from your imagination,
like this. Light and shadow basically describes form,
that makes sense. I'll try and simplify that idea. The changes from dark to light
show how a shape curves. When I'm thinking about
painting petals, for example, I'm thinking about where
the light is coming from and how it curves to create the
shape of the petal. I'm going to move
to the other side and start doing that here. If I mention something
or talk about topic that I don't do while
explaining in this video, please start a discussion because often I bring
things up and then something happens in the
painting and I get a bit distracted and I never come back to that point or fully flirt it out or describe it in a way
that's more understandable. By starting a conversation or discussion in the section below, I can type it out in a more understandable way with a lot more
thought involved, I can really try and
explain it properly. You can copy this exactly or you can come up with your own composition and
use this as a guide, whichever you're more
comfortable with. You can see we even know there are quite a few colors
going on in this painting. It is a limited
palette, so to speak. We need to define
this edge here. A bit brighter here. A little more
definition here maybe. Now we're 99 percent done, the best thing to do at this
stage is to take it off, leave it for a few days, and then come back to it
with a fresh eye just to see what's left to do. That could be a
little details here. But just so that you
don't overdo it, it's best to leave it, not even a day, maybe
just a couple of hours, just go and you have dinner or lunch or whatever
time you're doing it and come back to it later once you've
disconnected for a bit. I'm going to call this
done for the time being and then we'll come
back and sum everything up.
14. Final Thoughts: Welcome back. Now the
painting is finished. Let's have a close
up look at it. I hope you have a painting of your own
to look at as well. In this painting, we explored different approaches
to painting a flower. With the left flower, we used a light background,
and on the right one, we used a dark
background to give contrast and really
make the petals pop. We also explored
colors that work well together to create
a pleasing harmony. I try to encourage students to discover their own
interpretations and everyone has a different
vision which should be explored as part of their
journey as an artist. Of course, when
trying new things, there can be a bit
of uncertainty. But the magic of watercolor come from it's
unpredictable nature. If you'd like feedback
on your painting, I'd love to give it or if you'd like any advice
related to watercolor, please share your painting in the student projects
gallery down below, and I'll be sure to respond. If you prefer, you can
share it on Instagram, tagging me @willelliston
as I would love to see it. Skillshare also love
seeing my students' work. Tag them as well @Skillshare. After all the effort
we put into it, why not show it off? Remember, please click
the Follow button up top so you can follow
me on Skillshare. This means you'll
get a notification as soon as I publish
my next class, or have important announcements
like free giveaways or sharing some of my
best student artwork uploaded to the project gallery. Thank you so much for joining
me in this class today. Please leave a comment below
in the class discussion area if you have any questions or comments about today's class. If you have any subject, wildlife or a scene you'd
like me to do a class on, by all means, let me know about it in the discussion
section as well. If you found this class useful, I'd really appreciate
getting your feedback on it. I hope you found this
class useful and are inspired to paint more
in this glorious medium. Until next time, bye for now.
Will Elliston, Award-Winning Watercolour Artist
