Live Encore: Autumnal Watercolor Wreaths

1. Introduction: I know a bit of a lot of people get very excited about seasons changing and I think that celebrating that in watercolor is so much fun and it's satisfying, and it is so meditative and I think that it can really apply it to just about anybody, as a practice in watercolor. My name is Peggy Dean. Well, I'm more known as the Pigeon Letters, I license my work through that name, other than that, you'll find me with so many classes on Skillshare. I am an educator of a lot of things that are creative, and today we're going to be doing watercolor. We are going to be jumping into some really beautiful autumnal leaves where we really embrace the beautiful colors of fall and build up a circular-beauty arrangement, if you will, of leaves and branches, and it's going to be a perfect addition to festive season. It's also a really super simple and quick practice, where you can create something really, really beautiful in a very short amount of time, so that is a bonus. I'd love for you guys to sit down, enjoy, paint along with me, all that you're going to need is watercolor paper, some watercolors, some water, and some paint brushes. As we move through this class, more than anything, I hope that you really embraced the practice, that you'll enjoy the process of creativity and that you'll leave feeling inspired. Just so you guys know, this class was recorded live, so I was interacting with the audience while I was painting. By the way, this is one of two fall inspired watercolors sessions. Be sure to check out the other one where we explore watercolor [inaudible] If you guys are ready, if the answer's yes, let's jump right on and start painting. 2. Class Materials: Hi, everyone. My name is Katie. I'm a Producer with Skillshare and I'll be hosting today's session with Peggy Dean. So Peggy, Hi, welcome. Thanks so much. I'm so excited to start painting some watercolor wreaths with you all. To get started, I'm going to show you what materials I'll be using. Today the supplies are super simple. We're going to be using a paintbrush, and I'm using a round brush. This is the Pigeon Letters around the brush. Any round brush will do. I'm using a six, you can use any size. I recommend using in-between four and a 10. I think that will be giving you your best results, but anywhere in between, number 6 just happens to be my favorite. We'll also be using a pencil very briefly. If you don't have a pencil, you could use a pen or the very tip of your brush, and I'll get into why as soon as we get started. The other thing that you'll need are watercolor paints. Any watercolor paints are just great. I'm using Daniel Smith watercolors. Just as an FYI, not necessary, any paints are great. I'm also using watercolor paper. This is a watercolor paper sketchbook by Stillman and Birn, but you can also use any watercolor paper that is a 140 pound or higher. Cold press is my favorite. That just means there's a little bit of texture to the paper. The other thing is, I'm going to be using a jug of water, and you'll see that this already has some warm tones in it. I'm going to use a cool tone. This is just dependent on whether you're using warm tones or cool tones and making them separate will make it so that the water doesn't muddy up as you're using it. You don't have to change your water out as frequently. You'll probably notice I don't have a paper towel sitting here, and that's the reason why because the trick is in the water. Feel free to grab a paper towel if you think that you need one, no judgment. But that's all that you're going to need. 3. Drawing a Circle: To get started, I want to show you my super nifty trick on how to draw a perfect circle every time even when you don't have an official guide. Here's the trick, ready? If you don't have something cylinder, because ideally when we do a wreath or something like that, we draw a circle first. I could draw a circle with this but that's going to keep it small, or I could draw a circle with a big plate but that might make it too large. Or I might be somewhere where I don't have any of those things because I'm not at my house or whatever the case may be, I am so into this trick and I had to show it to you guys, which is the whole reason we're even doing a wreath, is just so I can show you my new circle trick. It's selfish. What I do, is I find the very, very center. I'm going to make the slightest mark. Basically, you guys aren't going to be able to see it, but I'm making a center mark in the very, very middle of my paper. If you don't have a pencil, you could do this with the tip of a pen, just really light, or you could do it with a really light color or watercolor that's not going to detract. Here's the deal. When you create something so bountiful, if you will, you're not going to notice that tiny detail, and if you scan it in, and if you're going to use this for a design of any kind, when you scan it in, it's a really quick removal, so don't worry too much. I know that that's cheating but if you use a pencil, you could erase it, which is technically also cheating because, you get it. By the way, this is a Stillman & Birn Sketchbook and mixed media sketchbook. The thickness is of the same as a watercolor paper. I love a sketchbook, I think that your work is so safe and beautiful in a sketchbook which is why I love working in them. There's not a reason I chose this over something else, I just love having a sketchbook practice. Just an FYI if that question comes up. But when you're working on a page that's not square, which is generally the case, and you're making something cylinder. Because we're making a wreath, if you think about it, the circle right here, you're not going to only be creating flowers along the leaves, whatever it is on the inside of a wreath. So you're not going to want your line to come all the way to the edge. You're going to want to leave space on both sides of that line. That means that I'm going to use the shorter side of each page from the center to determine where I want my lines to be, because if I go way up here, and I want a perfectly symmetrical circle, that would put me way off the page. That's why I choose the shorter ends, and I'm going to go to enough space where I'm going to leave areas on both sides, and then I'm going to do another mark just right here. I'm going to make this darker just so you guys can see it, but on your side, just make it real light. I know that's super dark and that's not ideal, but I'm doing it so you guys can see it visually. From here what I do, is I take my pencil and I hold from the center to the tip. It could be the opposite way, it doesn't matter. Basically, all I'm doing is measuring how much space is there. Then what I'm doing is with my finger marking that space as I'm dragging over to the other side, and I'm making a note with my other finger of where this lines up, and then I can make another mark on the other side. Now I have equal-ish distance on each side. I'm going to do the exact same thing to the top and bottom. I'm going to take my pencil, hold it in place, and then rotate straight up, and then I'm going to hold my finger here so that I know that that's the distance. We're going to do the same thing below. I'm moving a little faster just so that I don't waste too much time on this screen. Here is where it is really important to not leave it at this. Here's why. Yes, you can see where all of them lie. But if you are reliant on just these four corners, you're going to end up making a diamond-shaped or a sideways square or something, because when you start creating an arch right here, it seems natural to have it just be right there, but it actually comes out quite a ways further than we think it's going to, so I'm going to do the same thing at diagonals. See how much further that protrudes out, that's why I like my guide to be on an X and on the cross. I'm just going to do that in-between each dot that I made. I know this is really unnecessary if you have a perfectly sized bowl sitting by you, but I promise you this trick, you're going to use it more than you think, if you end up making more things on a cylindrical guide. I recommend it and that's that. Once you're done with your guide, you do have the option of going through and just creating a light circle if you want to and then you can erase these dots however you want to do it, but basically you have a guide now. I'm just going to lightly erase mine where they're not all the way erased. I just made mine really dark so you guys can see it. I'm hoping that I can cheat in how my watercolor cover them up, but we shall see. If they don't, they don't, but you can still see them and that's my point. From here, we are just going to begin because we have our guide. 4. Watercolor Basics: Next, I'm going to show you some really quick watercolor tips and techniques. I'm using my smaller brush. I'm going to use my smaller brush for everything. Now, you can create really thick lines and really thin lines with round brushes, which is what I love about them depending on how much pressure you put on them. I just only have water on my brush. But just to give you guys a quick idea, if I am at an angle and I just lightly drag, I have just a real thin stroke. If I am on the side and I press down all the way, you see how much more space and more realistic that covers on your paper. That's basically what we're going to do when we create our leaves. To start though, I am going to use the very tip of my brush. You can use any colors in the optimal range that you would like. We're talking yellows, and oranges, and reds, and browns. For now, I'm just going to grab a reddish brown. Great question, Penny, as you don't have it prepared. This is to cheat you guys. I have a chart so I can actually see what's going on in my palette, which I recommend everybody. I have a class on doing this. It's so much fun on how to prep your watercolor palette in the right way. It really has nothing to do with the chart. The chart's just fine. I'm grabbing Piemontite Genuine and this is just a brownish, reddish color. Real quick. This is just another tip. When I am grabbing paint or water, I am going straight in and I am rubbing it completely on the side, and then just one drag on the edge. Then I'm doing the same thing with paint. I'm going in on the side and just really loading it up with paper or paper with paint. From there, when I'm all loaded up, this is going to make it so that I am not being light. It's not going to run out of paint right away, I have a minute to go. 5. Painting Your Wreath Base: Now we're going to get started painting. We're going to start with the base of the reef that is made up of fringes. You could go along only the edges that we created, or you can make branches that just follow it as a base. So whenever I create a guide, I think of it like a magnet. It keeps things in place, it allows me to explore more. What I do is, I take the very tip of my brush and I just drag it and make little branches like this. You'll notice that goes in on my circle, which is not ideal unless you're doing it intentionally and trying to create more of a playful reef here. Another thing to note is this is essentially one branch, but it is all going the same growth direction. What I mean by that is, let's say I have another one coming this way, notice that anything coming off of it is instead of coming off straight, it's coming off gently. Also I am doing this so they all go the same curvature of the circle, but you could also do it to where it starts to work off this way. This is going to make it look a little more contained, I'll just do one to show you. If I was to come off this way, then it's going to start looking a little more wild. No right or wrong answer, it's totally personal preference. I find that with these types of projects, I just end up like letting it take its own course, but you do have to kind of be mindful of it because they can get more out of control than expected sometimes. Not that I would know anything about that, but yeah, so I would pay attention to that. This is one of those pieces too, where you can rotate your paper as much as you want to. I know a lot of watercolor bouquets, it's not frowned upon, but like for your own purposes, you don't want to do that too much because in theory, where you are viewing the piece, like you want it to be structural as a bouquet from the top, because if you flip it over and you paint flowers that way, then it might not look right orientated. But because this is a shape that we are building upon and it's going to be circular, it doesn't matter. We also can build, if there's a weird spot like what I just had, I just filled it in. If you see something that looks a little wonky, it probably just need some balance. That's probably enough for branches right now, I don't want to get too crazy, but that's my base, and that's all I want to start with. As you can see, I'm still going, don't be me. Don't be me and keep going when you don't need to because then you get out of control. Might look weird, but as soon as you start filling in flowers and filling in leaves, it starts to make a whole lot of sense. 6. Painting Leaves: Now let's start adding leaves to our wreath. It doesn't matter if this is still wet. If you start making leaves on branches that are still wet, all that's going to do is it's going to make it so that it does a wet-on-wet effect. It's where one color bleeds onto the other, which is really beautiful. It's one of the beautiful things about watercolor in general, it's something that you can do to really create added interest. I super recommend playing with the that. I'm going to grab a yellowish color. This one just for an FYI, if you want to know is Mars Yellow by Daniel Smith. I load it up the same way. I rinsed my brush really well and then I dipped it in paint and rolled it. You notice too, I am right-handed and I love to work from right to left. Don't do that because you're going to make little Schmidt marks which gets all over your page. But this thing again, it's totally forgivable because you can do a leaf over that and call it good. But what I'm doing here is I am just going to lightly set my brush down and then drag up real slow so that it creates this nice tip. Then I'm going to do the same thing on the other side, leaving a little bit of white space in the middle and that's optional. You totally don't have to do that, dragging out to that same tip. That's just how to use your round brush to its advantage. Let me show you a version of that's a little bit wider. Leaf shapes are beautiful in the sense that you can do so much with them. I could make this real fat and small or it can make it nice and long. I don't like to do leaves coming straight off of branches, so I am actually going to go create another little, they're called petioles. I learned when I wrote my book. Petioles. Then I'm going to do the same thing, but you can make this nice and long if you want to. We have a lot of control over that. I'm going to make this one match. It's just personal preference. Then notice how my other side, instead of pressing down, I just created it on the side. That makes it look like the vein in the middle on the side so it gives the illusion that the leaf is on its side. Just a little trick so that not everything is face up. You also don't need that vein-line like I filled mine and on that one so that it wasn't distracting. No. Never mind. Just ignore what I just said because I filled it and made it longer. But I'll explain this again as we keep going. I'm going to cover up this schmutz mark that I made because it's driving me crazy. I'm basically putting my brush down on its side, curving a little bit, and then slowly lifting up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up before I come to the tip and let go. I'm going to do the same thing on the other side. It doesn't have to have white space in the middle but I like to leave just a little bit. Something I want to point out about this, is that a lot of times when you first start trying to intentionally leave white space in the middle, what can happen is you don't press hard enough and then you leave whitespace like this and that's not what you want to do. Trust your brush, it knows how to create all of that surface space. But then the thing to keep in mind more than anything, is that basically as soon as you set it down, so it's set down full body already and lifting up, up, up, up up and just going into a curve. That's how I make it to where it doesn't continue and continue and continue or get too blobby. I find that in workshops like these, the leaves that come out most of the time, either have too much white space or none at all and people get stuck in the why isn't this working the way that I want it to. Chances are, it's just in the motion of being able to or grasping that you want to start full body and then lift up right away, lift up, up, up, up, up, up, up. That makes sense? Continuing on, notice that I'm not putting all of these leaves on every single branch, and the reason why is because I want to alternate their colors. Let's see. We're going to do a few more and then we're going to swap colors because that's really fun. Another thing, hey, more tips, is when you're doing, whether it be green or any type of wreath, I'm going to switch colors now so I am washing up my brush as I'm telling you this. But try changing your tone of green or your tone of whatever it is you're doing because even if it's slight, it adds so much interests into the wreath. It makes it so much more playful, so much more refined. I cannot recommend that enough. I don't really have a good true orange on my palette, so I'm grabbing some red and I'm just going to put a lot of water down where I can mix a better orange. I have this really light orange, but it's not quite orange enough and then grab more water, grab a little more of that orange. That's a better orange. This is going to be really, really close though to my mars yellows, so maybe I'll put a little more red in there. This is like the color of my tree outside right now and it's giving me life because it looks like I am inside of Photoshop, because the colors are so vibrant. Now I'm just tilting this. I'm going to do the exact same thing. But I want to encourage you guys to also play with shapes. The exact same thing might look like this, where it's just shorter, but has the same shape, has the same effect. The trick is, it's actually easier to make longer leaves with this than it is to make shorter leaves because you have to have a lot more control. You're like, I set down and then immediately lift up. Sat down immediately, lift up. You saw that I had to make some adjustments there and so a coin totally trailing all this paint on myself, it's fine. Then here and here. See it's just real light and I did that in a real swift motion. The more you do these leaves, leaves are my favorite to practice. I love painting leaves. I consider it like swatch practice. You'll see in that class if you watched that lose watercolor laurels. But you'll notice that there are like swatch practices in there that will help you get a better grasp on this type of stuff where you're like, okay, paint to water ratio, how does the brushwork? How can I get nice thin strokes and nice thick strokes? I prefer to do this with leaves. I just find it to be so satisfying to do these nice curves. As we're getting into those, I know that we didn't go over those exercises, but I did promise that I would talk about technique a little bit as we get into it. One of the things that you'll notice as we are creating these leaves is that, not all of them, but one side could be either or neither is wrong or right. But doing a little S-curve. What that means is, I'm coming around like this and then I'm going into a point. But if I hadn't used any pressure, it would just look like an S, just really lightly. The other side I'm doing is a C because I am not coming out again, I'm actually creating it to where it connects to that side. That's not the order you need to go in, it's just I wanted to show you those two simple strokes. The other thing that I really like to play with is instead of grabbing more paint, I'm just going to really quickly do this very quick rinse in my water and then drag it along the side. I didn't get all the paint off, but I got a little bit off and then made sure that I had enough water on my brush and then you can see that I can play with transparencies. These can be so pretty when they're overlapping or throughout because it's just creating not just a different tone, but it's also an opacity difference. It's more translucent. If you did your whole piece in these nice translucent leaves, it creates a totally different effect. I also recommend playing with your paint to water ratio and that can just take some practice. I swear I wasn't trying to plug that glass. I'm also going to say that it goes over like when you build up your paint, you get thorough in the water, thorough in the paint, and to your sludge. Then if you rinse real quick, drag off, do it again and then without paint, rinse real quick, drag up, do it again and you basically do that until all the paint comes off. That's how you can really get familiar with paint to water ratio and build that up to where it's worse than your benefits. You'll get familiar with your paints, your pigments, and how you can achieve these effects with intent. I'm going to be wild and I'm going to grab a fuchsia color, which I realize is not legitimately involved in the fall leaves. But when we paint, we make creative choices that are up to us and this is up to me right now. I decided that I want to put a little bit of fuchsia-ish in here. The color I'm using is called Bordeaux. It's one of my favorites. It's highly pigmented. This is another thing when it comes to your paint, is I know what has more pigment or more grain in it and what needs more water and what doesn't and that's a learning thing too as you get paint. No pigment doesn't matter because it's the same brand is created equally. Get to know your paint is a big one. I'm just going to do the same thing, just make these smallish leaves. Isn't that color so pretty. Totally doesn't belong here but this is what's happening now. Just some little guys. I'm going to want to fill that space a little more because it was one of those wild ones that came off so I don't want it to just be hanging out by itself all sad and drooping. I want it to be wild with intention. We'll just continue doing this. Don't think that you have to put a leaf on every single end of your branches because you can either keep them on their own or you can add little balls to the end of it that look like berries or like twig ends, which we're going to be adding intentionally anyway. As you build these fun wreaths, you'll be able to make those types of creative choices. 7. Creating Balance: Now we're going to take a step back and look at our reef and really make sure that it looks and feels balanced. Once it gets to this point, I'm noticing I have a pretty equal balance with these colors. You could choose to either keep it where it's balanced like this with color, or highlight a particular color that you really want to emphasize. That's the thing that I like to do. I like to think about it rather than a total balance, thinking about it as, you get to highlight what you want, which I think is the funnest part of creating is being able to highlight what you want. I think that the color I like the most is this mars yellow, so I might go a hint down more in brown. I'm going to use French ocher, for those wondering. It's very similar. You might even not see a difference on camera. But creative choices are fun. Yeah, you can't really tell the difference. I can. It's just like a little tanner. I don't know if you can or not. Some sparse areas. This is where you just pick and choose. Somebody had mentioned they were feeling like their whole reef looked droopy. This is not something that you just nail in one go. My first reeves, I still have them. I wish I had them sitting with me right now so I can show you, but they were very sad. They were very overworked more than anything because I didn't really understand composition or where to stop and I kept having these weird spaces that I would second guess. But you'll see the more that I add on this side and the more that I add on this side, suddenly this looks like an intentional split so that the growth direction comes up this way. That's why I'm like, "Take a step back, Petty, just [inaudible] how those can go because it can easily be overworked." I don't want you guys to get to that point, which is why I'm stoked that we're doing a walk-through together. From here, I'm going to get even thinner with my stem lines. You can pick the same color, you could pick a different color. I'm going to pick the same. Two ways to do this. I did say to go in the same growth direction to where a stem is here and then the other one comes up and off, but this is where we're creating stick effects. This is where you could have them come off like here's your stem, and then you have this harsh split, and then another harsh connection. You could do it that way, or you could keep it gentle and still have it going the same direction. Neither is right or wrong. I'm going to have it go gently. I'm just going to go a little bit slower with the tip of my brush so I have a little more control there, and then I will come off. See, it's a lot thinner. That's also something that takes some more practice, you guys, is to be able to have the controller going really thin with the tip like a number six. Number six is my absolute favorite brush size. Everybody has their own, but whenever people ask what my favorite brush size is, it's always. I just love a good six because you get a lot of versatility out of that size. You can do a lot with it. Basically, I'm just adding little areas. I want to add enough, but not overdo it. But I'm adding some so that I can add either berries or just dots [inaudible]. My reef is pretty colorful, so I don't want to add more color. I'm just going to take the tip of my brush on each of those areas and just add a little dot. It's real small, but the more that you do that, it just adds a little added interest, which is really fun. Then, you can also see how this guy, it's protruding pretty high up there. It's like, "Hey, I'm having a great time, but there's nothing really connected to me, which is really sad. You can make these real branchy, real twiggy. Somebody correct me so that I know what word I'm looking for. Branchy, twiggy. The best part is I know you know what I'm talking about. That's all that matters. See what I mean? All that I did was, instead of having it come off of the base only, I also had it come off of the individual parts, the added branches, and then it all is connected to that one. But now it looks like it has so much more interests, whereas this is more simple, more sparse, and either are a good choice. My biggest thing is take a moment to really check out your reed in between these steps so that you can really see, take a step back, really see exactly how it's being built because the whole point is you want to avoid overworking it. It's so easy when you're head down, I can see what's happening here and I just keep building, and building, and building because I think it needs this, and I think it needs this. That's my M.O, I totally understand my first reeves are a hot mess because basically the entire page is just filled with all these, let me fix that. Let me put a bigger leaf here. Let me try to balance it out. But I promise that if you just give it breathing room and [inaudible] organically come together by putting things in the steps that we've been putting them in, then you will find that it really does a good job building itself. 8. Q&A: Okay. So now we're going to hear some questions from the audience. Can you share a close-up of your palette cheat sheet? Yes. I love it. I'm really proud of it. But I like it because it's super messy and really imperfect. But then what I did was I did a transparent lay down first, and then as it was still a little bit wet, I put down some more pigment so I could see what it looked like, both more translucent and opaque. But yeah. It's so fun to do guys and to cut it to where it fits in your palette. It's just a happy surprise every time you open it. If somebody wanted to take this idea, where would you advise them, look for some inspiration, translating something from life to paper? I love physically going out to nursery, I know it's hard right now because of COVID. So Pinterest is a great resource. Oh, you know what, who else is Solabee Flowers, if you follow her. Floral Solabee, it's Solabee. They're local to Portland, but they have a great Instagram. So these floral Instagrams and things like that, they just have these beautiful arrangements. They're such great inspiration because you can paint these beautiful florals. I always recommend if you find one that you love, then you can paint it and then share it, and say you were inspired by and then name the florist because give that florist credit. You guys don't even know how hard they work. It's insane. But if you can, when you're outside, just take an extra moment to pay attention and be inspired by your surroundings and take photos yourself. Because you're so much more connected to your personal experiences, than you are with photos of florist images, anyway. It just gets us more connected to our surroundings and to what we can find in our natural world, and I think that that's a really beautiful thing. I know that not all of us are in the same type of climate. I'm not really somewhere, where an abundance of blooms happen. I'm more surrounded by greenery. Someone mentioned how much green I have on my palette. I love greenery. But you can tell that I'm really inspired by my surroundings, which is probably why I have so many greens. But yeah. That's what I would say. 9. Final Thoughts: All right, that is it. I hope that you guys enjoyed painting along with me. I always have so much fun with this exercise, and it can really be applied in any color and any season. Especially, just as a quick side exercise to get your creative juices flowing, please remember to be inspired by your surroundings, and I know that sounds trickier. But just to remember that when you're out and you see something beautiful, that's a moment to capture, and then take it home to your studio. If that's your living room, if it's your dining room table, it does not matter. Your studio is where you make it, and just give yourself some time to really connect. We are our worst critics and when we look at our work, we will always find flaws. You guys saw what I painted and you probably think it looks great. I'm just kidding, you might not, but you know what I mean. When you see other people's work, it's hard because we compare ourselves to what we see on paper. But if I were to paint this exact same thing again, I couldn't do the same thing. It would end up looking very, very different because we build them differently every single time. Don't be discouraged by the process, enjoy the process. It's where we get to experiment. By no means are we ever going to master anything because we're our own worst critics. Create to create because creating is the fun, the process of creating is the fun part, and it's the most important part that we can embrace. Now I know that I mentioned we are our worst critics, but I promise you that your wreath probably looks a lot better than you think it looks like. I really personal need, desire, want to see what you created and I know that everybody else does too, so please share your work in the project gallery. I can't wait to see what you create it. To dive a little bit deeper or a lot a bit deeper into watercolor techniques, I super recommend my watercolor loose florals class. It will go over a lot of structure, when it comes to using your brushes correctly to really get familiar with your paint to water ratio, and then also taking my class on how to properly prep your watercolor palette using tubes, which also goes into the really fun cheat sheets. That's the whole point of the class in my opinion. It's not, face it. You'll know what I mean. Thanks again so much everybody for following along. This is such a fun project. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did. Please be sure to follow me on Skillshare, so that you can see all the other fun classes that are coming up, because they're always coming up and have fun. I'll see you guys next time. Thanks again.