Learn Watercolor Basics With 5 Minute Paintings

1. About the Class: Have you ever felt unmotivated to start because of fear of trying? I did because the hardest thing to do is to start, but you know what? When you realize that we're not alone in the journey, it gives us that sense of courage to begin and achieve endless possibilities. Don't be paralyzed by fear. Join me in conquering our fear of starting through this five-day watercolor escape. I'm Bianca Rayala, a watercolor artist and entrepreneur from the Philippines, and welcome to my new Skillshare class. This five-day watercolor escape aims to ignite our passion and creativity to help us make time for painting every day, and ultimately to help us take a break from our usual day-to-day routine and escape to a place where we can be free and creative. We will be painting smallest paintings that will definitely inspire you to create every day. It won't take much of your time as you can definitely finish each painting in less than five minutes. I will be sharing step-by-step tutorials from simple sketch, to painting process that are recorded in real time, and the daily encouragement to help you keep going. I invite you to set aside five minutes of your time to paint along with me every day in five days and together, let's keep the passion burning, knowing that we are not alone in this watercolor journey. 2. Materials: We will be needing just a handful of materials for a watercolor challenge. Prepare small size pieces of watercolor paper. The one that I'm using is five by seven inch size paper. This is 200 GSM cellulose paper, but you can also use cotton paper if you have one. For the brushes, feel free to use your favorite brushes at home. I'll be using some round brushes most of the time, and also a flat brush for washes. We will be needing a mixing palette and of course, a watercolor paints. You can use any kind of watercolor that you have at home. Prepare also a glass of water, pencil, eraser, masking tape, and some tissue paper. 3. About The Class Project: For our class project, create the five painting exercises that I will share in the videos. You can paint each subject one day at a time, but feel free to paint more if you get extra inspired and motivated. In the project section of this class, you can find the reference photos for your guide. I encourage you to watch first the fundamentals that I shared about the brush and the paints, as these principles are very helpful to understand the relationship between water and pigment. Second, I also encourage you to finish watching first the painting process, observe my strokes, and listen to my explanations, and then re-watch the video for the second time while you paint with me, so you can better understand the process of each exercise. This class covers the basics of watercolor and will expose you to different painting subjects like seascape, landscape, florals, and still-life, which would help you also discover your subject interests. Remember also that our main objective in doing each exercise is to relax, have fun, and conquer the fear of starting. Just keep going, and don't worry if each work takes you longer than five minutes. I wish you a wonderful watercolor escape with me in the next five days. Let's get started. 4. Know Your Brush: To prepare us for this exciting challenge, let me review to you first some important watercolor basics. Many people see watercolor is a difficult medium since its main component, which is water, is uncontrollable. But let me tell you that if we learn how to play with water and pigment, we can unlock and appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of watercolor. Let's begin by knowing our most important tool, which is our brush. The brush is the vehicle that translates what's in our hearts and minds into an artwork. It is very necessary to get to know it very well. The brush is usually made of wooden handle, a metal for rule, that holds the handle and the hair together. There are different types of hair, natural, synthetic, and a mix of both. So this is the tip, and this part is the belly of the brush, which is responsible for holding water and pigment. You can hold your brush the way you hold the pen for more control, thus creating more precise strokes, or you can also hold it at the far end part of the handle for less control and more new strokes. We create thin strokes by using light pressure with just the tip of the brush touching the paper. We could aid a stroke with a very light pressure to create a very thin line. Make sure that your brush doesn't hold too much water to create that Chris stroke. We will do the same way in doing curved thin strokes. Apply very light pressure using your brush with minimal water in it. Next, let's do some fixed strokes. This time, hold your brush at 45-degree angle and load the entire belly of the brush with much pigment and water. You create thick strokes by letting the entire belly touch the paper. 5. Know Your Watercolor: Next, let's understand the basic watercolor mixtures. Compared to underpainting medium watercolor is transparent. You make light tones by adding more water with a pigment and we make darker tones by having more pigment and less water on the mixture. There are four basic mixtures in watercolor, namely tea, milk, cream, and butter. For this activity, I want you to choose just one color so you can better differentiate the tonal values of these four mixtures. Let's start with tea mixture. To create a tea mixture, you create a mixture with more water and very small amount of pigment. You imagine the consistency and color of a tea. Do this on your separate mixing plate. The mixture should be very transparent and watery. Now you see a clean and very light wash. This is tea mixture. Next, let's do the milk mixture. The milk mixture is flowy and still has good amount of water, but the pigment is a little stronger than the tea mixture. Now let's move on to cream mixture. For the cream mixture, we create a creamy mix with controlled amount of water and a generous amount of pigment. You can now see the difference in consistency between tea, milk, and cream. Seeing that the tea mixture has the lightest tone, while the creamy mixture has a slightly darker tone. Lastly water mixture. To create this kind of buttery mixture we drain the water from our brush by dabbing it on a tissue and get a pigment straight from the pan, the look should be very thick and dry. In application, we use tea mixture in painting background and elements that we don't want to get more attention. Milk mixture we use for middle grounds or elements supporting our focal points. Creamy mixture is often used for main elements, which is also our focal points, and butter mixture we use for fine details and highlights. We will appreciate these principles even more as we apply them. In the challenge, we will learn brush control, water pigment ratio, and loose painting using different techniques. I'm sure you're as excited as I am, so let's get started. 6. Project #1 Brush and Paint: [MUSIC] Welcome to day 1. For our first challenge, we will paint every painters treasure, a brush and a paint. Let's start by doing a rough sketch of the brush and it doesn't have to be precise, but just make sure that you have all the parts that the brush has. The handle, the ferrule, and of course, the hair. This brush is silver brush golden natural, which is made of mixed natural and synthetic hair. It comes with a very nice pointed tip, which is perfect for fine strokes. Now let's draw this watercolor tube. Start from the cap, and then followed by the tube. Remember to draw loosely. I actually just copy how I see it. Remember our goal is to relax and escape from the stress of life. Erase some unnecessary lines, and now let's begin painting. I take burnt sienna color in a chromium mixture. Remember our watercolor mixture studies from the recent video and carefully paint the handle. Add a thicker shade here at the bottom and use the same color to paint the hair. Next, I will get gray paint like neutral tint to paint the ferrule. I leave the highlight on the metal part unpainted. I'm softening the edges and then now we paint the watercolor tube. I still use the neutral tint to paint it. I lift the color on the lower side to show a bit of dimension. I just loosely paint my interpretation of the tube. To paint the shadows on the white portion of the tube, I just use a thin mix of gray color. I love seeing how the paints bleed on water because it gives such a loose feeling in the painting. Now, let's add some details on the brush handle since it's dry already. I just paint dots instead of real texts since I'm aiming for a loose effect. I do the same as I paint the details of the tube. Now, I want to bleed a bit of color from the drawing using a wet brush. I touch the tip of the brush to a small corner of the drawing and let the paint flow. I also drop some pigments on the wet surface for more vibrant colors. 7. Project #2 Cup of Cofee: [MUSIC] We can always find inspiration everywhere, even with a cup of coffee that you had this morning. Today, we will paint a loose dark ice cup of latte. For an easier sketch, I take a round object that will serve as my guide in drawing the saucer. Now I'll draw a smaller circle for the cup. [MUSIC] I draw the top view of the handle, and I'm good with the sketch. [MUSIC] Let's start painting. I get a milky mixture of yellow ocher with a bit of sienna and loosely paint the latte. I will leave white gaps to show an impression of the latte art in our cup. Again, when we say milky mixture, the consistency of our mixture should be watery, and the paint has more vibrancy as compared to the mixture. While this layer is still wet, I drop a milky mix of the same color with a bit of dark brown for a prettier look. [MUSIC] Now let's paint the saucer. I use a milky dark ice paint and paint it around the cup. I leave a thin gap around the cup. While the layer is still wet, I will drop darker shades of dark ice to bring contrast and dimension. The reason why I leave a tiny bit of white gap around is to avoid the brown color of the latte from blending or bleeding our color of the saucer. [MUSIC] I will leave the upper left part of the saucer light and loose. Then I drop some darker pigment on some areas for contrast. [MUSIC] Now I'm painting the small portion of the handle. Then with the watery mixture, I'm doing an outline of the saucer. [MUSIC] I won't be doing a complete outline of the saucer, but broken lines would be sufficient to define its shape. [MUSIC] Let's darken also the inner cup using a dark brown color. [MUSIC] Use a clean damp brush to blend the color. [MUSIC] Here's our cup of coffee for Day 2. I hope this painting would always remind you to paint for your own happiness. 8. Project #3 Sailboats: [MUSIC] I'm glad to see you on our Day 3 challenge. Today, we will paint an easy seascape. Let's begin with a very simple sketch. Just draw the horizon line somewhere above the center and draw some sea routes on the horizon. Notice that I taped the sides of my paper to get a crisp border. We will use the dry brush technique for this project. Let's begin painting. Using milk and mix of ultramarine blue, I create a gradient wash for the sky. I make the upper part of the sky darker and the lower part lighter. I use a flat brush to create an even and a quick stroke for this project. Next, I paint the ocean using the same color, but I remove the excess water from my brush to achieve this dry brush effect. Repeat this stroke from left to right, and then from right side to left. I also leave white gaps to show glare on water. Make the lower part of the ocean darker by adding indigo to your mix. This will show an atmospheric perspective in your work. Repeat the same dry brushstroke for the ocean fragment until you achieve the depth that you want to see in your work. Just remember to keep this one part of your paper that has white and painted gaps fresh and clean so that you would have layer on water. [MUSIC] You will notice that the concentrated white spots here on this side represents the glare on water. Protect these white spots so your seascape would shine. [MUSIC] I just add some more indigo on my ultramarine to get a very dark creamy mixture for my foreground. When you're happy with the tonal values of your ocean, you may proceed on painting the sailboat. To paint the sailboat, we use a creamy mix of neutral thin or any gray paint. Let's carefully paint the sails with bright red color. [MUSIC] I start with a milky mix of red to paint the sails, then, later on, I will be adding a darker and creamier mix of red for the sails. [MUSIC] For final touches, let's add some riggers and also some birds flying on the sky. [MUSIC] The birds may be small, but it definitely gives some interest in our composition. Once your work is completely dry, you can peel off the tape to get a nice border. [MUSIC] This is our Day 3 exercise, and just like the sailboats following the direction of the wind, remember that as you paint, always follow your heart. [MUSIC] 9. Project #4 Winter Nightscape: Welcome to our fourth challenge. Now let's paint some pine trees on a window nightscape setting. Let's start with a gradient wash of cool purple color. We do this by creating a milking mixture of purple, and paint from top to bottom. Make the top part darkest in tone and gradually get a lighter tone as we reach the bottom. We need to work fast to avoid having the initial layer get dry before we achieve the gradient. You can also tilt your paper to help the paint naturally flow down. When you're happy with your gredient, we need to let the background to get dry first before we paint the pine trees. While we think, I will show you how to simply paint pine trees on a separate paper. We start with a straight line that serves as the trunk and our guide for the tree. Next, we do some small dabbing strokes using the tip of our brush to show an impression of leaves and branches. Create big thick strokes for the base of the tree. You can practice on a separate sheet of paper. The stroke to prepare you for painting the final work. Now, that the layer is almost right, I get a thick creamy mix of purple and paint some pine trees on it. Since the background is moist, I get a blurry and mystic kind of image. Vary the height of the trees for a natural look. For the base of the trees, I just create big and thick strokes and then use the tip of my brush to create dabbing strokes for the trees, leaves and branches. When it's almost dry, darken some parts of trees using a creamier mix so that it would pop out from the background. The foreground should have the darkest tone so that we could put all the emphasis on our main focus in the foreground. For our last step, using a whitewash, splatter some white paint to create an illusion of snow. If you don't have a white gouache, you can also use a white opaque marker or a white pen to do this effect of snow. This is our painting for day 4, and I hope this painting remind you to be unstoppable in your creative journey. 10. Project #5 Cosmos Flowers: [MUSIC] As we end the challenge, let's paint beautiful and loose flowers. Let's begin with basic sketch of the cosmos flowers. I'm doing just a rough outline of the flowers and some leaves. For a better composition, I will place these bunch of flowers on the right side of the paper rather than in the middle. [MUSIC] I'm drawing one flower facing the side and two flowers facing me. Now, add some leaves in different directions, but following the direction of the flowers and stems. Using a nice pinkish red pigment in milk and mix, I loosely paint the petals using the tip and belly of my brush. I follow my base sketch and just paint loosely. I hold the brush on a little bit higher position so that my strokes are more loose, and has lesser control. While it is still wet, I also draw some more pigment in the inner petals to create a nice gradient in tone. Now using a battery mix of orange, I will paint the middle part of the flowers. I just let the paint bleed, but since I use a buttery mix of orange, the paint will not leave so much. The reason is that there's only a little amount of water in the mixture. With a small brush, I will also paint the stems and leaves by very thin and thick strokes. I draw the strokes with a light hand, so it would not look stiff and harsh. For our less but very helpful step, I add some details on the petals, but be careful not to overdo it. I will also splatter some paints using my leftover pigments from my palette. This is a good way to enhance your composition. Now we are done. As we complete Day 5, always remember that we can always get inspiration from everything around us. We just have to pause and escape from our daily routine to appreciate the beauty in everything. Keep painting. Don't be afraid to start. I hope that you will have a wonderful watercolor journey. [MUSIC] 11. Final Thoughts: I hope you had the wonderful five-day watercolor escape with me. I hope this helped you build confidence in taking your brush and just painting out of the overflow of your heart. I'm so excited to see your works and if you'd like to continue this daily watercolors escape with me, please do share your works in the project section and let me know if you'd be interested to see more five-minute projects from this class. You may also want to join my other classes to help you expand your experience in painting different subjects in watercolor. Hope to see you there.