Live Encore: Loose Watercolor Leaf Wreaths

1. Introduction: I paint these leaves not just as drills and practice but even just as like meditation. I've done it so many times to the point where I can just close my eyes and then just paint. That frees me from that perfectionism. The more you allow yourself to even mess up, and try new things the better it will be. My name is Audrey and I'm a water-colorist, and calligrapher, and educator. I'm based in the Chicagoland area, and I have been a Skillshare teacher since September 2017. I started out by painting loose florals, and I think that's what I'm most recognized for. I love to paint expressively and with an impressionistic style. Today we're going to paint a leaf reef using basic strokes and watercolor techniques such as layering and color harmony. I just published a class on how to paint a watercolor reef so I'm not going to do something that involves a lot of florals like these guys, but we're going to do something a little bit more simple and I'll put that in quotes because sometimes when we think simple we think it's going to be easier but sometimes it's harder. We're going to create a leaf reef like this, and we're really going to focus on how to paint a leaf. Just really focus on drills, and exercises, and then put all that together to paint a reef together. By the end of the class I hope that you'll feel more confident and be able to really let loose in your watercolor style. Something to note this class was recorded live and I got to interact with the audience as I was painting. So grab your supplies and paint with me as I take you step by step on how to paint leaf reef. 2. Class Materials: My name is Tiffany Chow. I work on Skillshare Community Team. I will be serving as your host for today's live class with Audrey. Audrey, we are super pumped to have you here today. I'm sure everyone cannot wait to dive in. Well, thanks Tiffany. Yeah, I'm really excited to be here. Again, my name is Audrey and I'm in watercolors, and I also do calligraphy. But really teaching is my passion. Today's class, we're going to paint a leaf wreath like this. Yeah, we're going to look at layering and color harmony, and just do leaves in a wreath. I'm excited. Before we start, I want to show you what materials you'll need to paint along. For this class you're going to need a couple of different things. You'll need watercolor paper obviously. The type of brand doesn't really matter. Today we're just here to just have fun. But hopefully, it's about 140 pounds. You'll also need watercolor paints obviously. I am using the Lucas brand. I love these colors. They're very rich and very creamy. As for brushes, I like to have at least a size two for a very detailed work and then a size six for more broad strokes. If you don't have these specific sizes, that's okay. If you have a size one or maybe an eight or four, that's really okay, just as long as one is a lot smaller than the other one. If you only have one brush, that's okay too. You'll need a jar of water. I actually have three jars of water only because I won't be able to dump out my water during the session. I have three, but really you just need one, maybe two. Then you'll need a paper towel or a cotton rag or something, just to blot your brush. Then lastly, I do have a pencil and an eraser just in case we want to use that to draw the circle of our wreath. On the topic of brushes, do you have a favorite brush brand or material? Yeah. Great question. I've used lots of different brands. I've used Winsor and Newton, Grumbacher. The brand that I'm using right now is called Creative Mark. They're are synthetic brushes. I love that the head of the brush just holds a lot of water, I haven't really found a lot of affordable brushes that can move really do that just yet. So, yeah. I bought these from Jerry's artaRama. Now we're going to warm up by painting some simple leaves. 3. Leaf Painting Warmup: First we're going to warm up. Just like an athlete or a musician warms up with structuring their muscles and stuff, we're going to do the same but we're going to do it by painting. Let's grab our Size 6 brush or whatever larger brush you have, and you can choose whatever color you want. We're just going to warm up with by painting leaves. I'm going to start with just the tip of the brush on the paper and that's going to be my little stem. Hopefully you can see that. Just a little bit more. There we go. Then from here, I'm going to bend my brush down. Do you see how the bristles fanned out? Then I'm going to drag it and as I'm dragging about half an inch, I'm going to start lifting up to get to another point. That's just one way to paint a leaf. Let's try that again. Again, start with just the tip of the brush on the paper and then bend down, let the bristles fan out, drag, then lift to a point. Now if your paint is pooling over at the end, that's okay. You can just quickly use your brush and bring it back down if you want. But for me, this class is also called, letting loose. I really just like to let the paint and the water just do its own thing. So I don't really mind that. One more time, again, the tip of the brush on the paper, bend down, let the bristles fan out, drag a little bit, start bringing it up, back to a point. That's a pretty simple one single leaf. Now we're going to put two of these together. You're ready for this? The first one is going to be exactly the way that we've been doing it. The tip of the brush to the paper, bend down, drag, lift. Now the other half of the leaf, I'm going to put right up against this first one but I'm going to leave just the sliver of white space. Because that white space is going to act as our vein of the stem. Instead of starting at the very beginning where I started the first leaf, I'm going to start right about here where I started to bend the brush. I'm going to bend down, drag, leaving just the sliver of white space and then meet up with that first point. My brush wasn't quite as wide, so I got that little streakiness but that's okay. So this is one way to paint a more rounder leaf, a wider leaf. Again, that sliver of white space just gives you the impression that that is a stem. Let's try that one more time. The first half of the leaf, and then a second half start about right there, leaving just the sliver of white space. Now I didn't actually let the white space go all the way throughout the leaf, and that's okay too as long as there is some white space somewhere within the leaf. Because if you don't have the white space, it sometimes looks just like a blob. That's the fun part and the frustrating part about water colors. When you neglect to have white space, then it looks like yeah, blobs. We don't want that. Let's try it one more time. So one half of the leaf, and then that second half. Now as you are doing these drills, what's really important is, you want to make notes of how your wrist is also bending, how your fingers are responding to the brush, and then how your brush is bending, and moving and gliding across the paper. As cheesy and cliche is the sounds, the more that you are one with the brush, the more you'll be able to do this with fluid motions. That's the point that we really want to get to. Now today, you might not get to the point where you're really fluid with these motions, and that's okay. But that's why the drills are so important. Let's try to move just a little bit faster. Again, just making notes of how your brush is bending, how your hand is moving. We've been doing our leaves in one direction but try to vary it. Maybe make it curved a little bit or maybe have it pointing down. I'm going to give you another minute or two to practice these drills. I've got a question for you. How long would you say that it took you to develop this style and get comfortable with those motions like you said, and become one with the brush? It probably took me about, I want to say a year. I think within that first year there is a lot of experimentation and whether I really enjoyed this style or this loose expressive style. I think at one point I thought, oh, maybe Botanical painting would be more my style which is that scientific, accurate way of painting and I realized I don't have the patience for that. I realized doing something that was more loose and expressive it was just more exciting to me, I think. Again, we're practicing drills right now, and I want you to try to get to the point where you can do it almost without even looking. Now we're going to do one more thing before we go and start on our reef which is, we're going to start combining these into a multi-leafed stem. So this time we're going to paint one long stem with just the tip of our brush. We'll do one leaf at the end. Then as we come down on the stem, I want you to make sure that you're not painting your stem like this, where there's one here, one here, one here. Just right next to each other. We don't want that where it's all doo, doo, doo, doo. We want to try and make it look more organic and natural. So we're going to have the leaves bending and curving and touching each other. This next one, I'm going to have bending downwards. So come up and then bend down. The next one, I'll have just regular like that. But this next one, I'm going to pretend that it's hiding behind the stem. The way that you're going to do that, I'm going to curve the little stem like that, and you can see that right there. Then I'm going to do my leaf. So just putting that leaf right in the middle of a stem again, gives you that illusion that this leaf looks more organic, looks more natural. Then the next leaf would probably start right about here. So I'll just do another one right there. Then just keep working your way down. I got a question for you if that's okay. Yes. How do you manage the amount of color you have on your brush to make sure that you have the same color with each leaf? Great question. A lot and I just comes with practice unfortunately. But basically, the less water you have, the more saturated your color will be. So the more you practice with just one type of brush, the better you'll get to know it. What I like to do, I usually like to blob my brush after I wash it out so that I get most of the water out of the brush and then I pick up the paint. When you start mixing your paint with the water, you want to be careful that you don't add too much water either. Because the more water you add, then the less water you want on your brush. Some of that just comes with intuition but some of them will just come with practice as well. Hopefully that answered your question. Yeah. Thank you. There's been a couple of requests. Would you be willing to show us how to paint a round leaf like a eucalyptus leaf? Sure. Let me bring that other large paper that I had. I'm going to go back to my Size 6 brush, and I'll just use whatever green I have left over here. How I like to do that, I do it very similar to these pointed leaves. But instead of dragging my brush in a straight line, I just curve it. That's really it. Think of a C shape. So I still do my point but I'm going to adjust my hand a little bit so that I go up like this. Then for the other side, sometimes I like to wash out my brush just a little bit so that the colors is bleed into each other. So for the other side, I'm going to turn the paper just up so slightly and then just come around in a C shape like that, and then bring it together. I know, again, it's hard to see because my water's still drying, but that's really what I do. If you want to do a multi-stemed eucalyptus, again, you can have a stem like this. You just go around in a C shape like so. Now, sometimes on a eucalyptus plant, the leaves aren't always just facing you like in face forward but sometimes they are in profile. So for that, I literally just do a horizontal line, a squiggly line like that. I know it seems so simple, but that's really all I do. Because, again, as you look at it from far away, you're the viewer. The eye will just automatically interpret that to be a leaf that is sideways, like this. Again, just C shapes. That's all I'm doing. Then having that white space in the middle is really key. Again, this is great practice for when you are getting ready to paint or just in general. Even as a calligrapher, I do my drills. I always emphasize and I'm, "You got it. You got to stretch your muscles. You got to remind your hand, remind your brain how you painted these leaves." The more you do these, the easier it'll be. Whenever I get a new color, whenever I get a new brush or new paper, or just any new supplies, I like to just fill a whole page of just leaves because they're easy to paint, I don't have to think too much about it and I'm getting practicing. Let's move on to our actual reef now. 4. Painting Prep: Next we're going to prep by finding some source imagery and mixing colors. This is the Pinterest board I created for my leaves class and I just pinned a couple of these greenery leaves right here. You can paint exactly with me or you can do one of these, whatever you want. I really like something like this where you have different shapes of leaves, where we've got some pointed leaves ,we've got some round leaves. Then you've got a couple of different colors of greens too. We're going to go one step further and add more these are more like darker, warmer greens. We're going to go ahead and do a couple more cool tones as well. But let's do something like that. If you have that off to this side, what I used to draw a circle is just whatever I have on hand so masking tape, washy tape, in this case, a glass jar, my water jar. I'm going to use my pencil to very lightly draw a circle and I'm only going to draw the top two thirds of the circle because the bottom third is going to be where I start painting. It might be hard to see my circle right now because I drew it so lightly, but I'm also going to erase some parts of it. I dropped my brush, one moment. I'm going to erase my line just ever so slightly because once you paint over your pencil line, it's really hard to erase. You may have encountered that before, so we don't want to do that, I'm going to erase a little bit of my pencil line. Now, I don't know what your color palette looks like, but we're going to mix a couple of different greens before we started painting. It's great to have all of your colors prepped ahead of time, because once you start painting and then you need that color, then you're not wasting time, but you're spending time mixing when you could be painting. I want to prep our colors as much as possible first. I have a couple of different greens here. This is one of my favorites, it's closest to maybe like a sap green color, it's a little bit more muted than that. If you have a sap green color, maybe have that in one of your palettes, sort of ready to go. I like to drop it in one of these mixing wells. Just picking it up with my brush and sort of dropping it in there. Again, I'm not adding too much water, I only added a little bit of water to the paint itself in order to activate it. But I'm not really adding more water into the well just yet because I want a nice saturated color. Now I'm going to wash that out. I'm going to use this and I'm going to drop it in a different well, and I'm going to pick up some of this yellow over here and get like an even warmer, lighter green. Now, if you already have a yellow green color, that's okay, you can just use that one. I'm not going to use too much of it because I personally don't like a yellow green color, but I like to add it in my leaves just to add some more dimension to it. Then I'm going to mix. If you have a bright green, like fallow green that color is the same, I believe. Yeah, that's a really bright green. Again, personally, I don't like that, especially in my leaves, I tend to go for a more muted colors, more olive green colors. I'm just going to drop some in there but then I'm going to mix it with some brown to warm it up. Depending on what your brown color is, you may not need a lot of it, so just drop a little bit at a time. Remember to wash out your brush in betweens that you're not cross contaminating colors. I'm going to bring some of this brown in here to warm it up. That was a little great and bring some more brown, there we go. Yeah, I like that darker olive green color, almost like army green. I want to mix a lot more of that because I personally really like this color, I'm just going to drop even more green in there and more brown going. Now if your paint starts to dry on your palate, that's okay. I usually have a water spray bottle nearby and so I like to spritz it every now and then just to wake it up. Everyone have their three colors. Now with watercolors, as you know, just because we have these three colors doesn't mean we're limited to that. The more water you add, the lighter it's going to get, and you're going to get this whole array of greens. We're going to use that to our advantage, okay. 5. Starting Your Wreath: Now, we can get started actually painting our Wreath. We're going to start with the lightest color. Again, with water colors, you want to start with really light and then you can always lay a darker colors on top of that. I'm still using my size-six brush and I don't know if you can tell, but my circle is really small right here in the middle, and I'm going to start by painting those large leaves that we just warmed up with. I'm going to have them coming out from the middle here, going to the right and then going to the left. Let's do that. I'm going to start with that first Sap green-ish color and add a little bit of water to it. Pick it up, and let's do a couple of leaves right here in the middle. That's one leaf. Let me zoom in just a little bit. Here we go. I have the next one pointing downwards. Just to the left of this, this is the center of my leaf if you're curious. Now, again, even though I'm using that Wreath I showed you on a Pinterest board's inspiration, I'm not going to try to replicate it exactly. I'm just going for the overall feeling of it and that's part of what letting loose just means. You're just interpreting it into your own style. Let's do a couple more. I'm going to turn my paper just a little bit because I'm not ambidextrous and I can't paint with my left hand, and I'm going to do a couple more leaves, but this time I'm going to do multi-stand leaves. There's one, two, and I'll do one more. If I bring it right-side up, this is what it looks like so far. Another tip, when you're painting your Wreath, if you've ever arranged a Wreath before, it's just a big, hot mess of branches and floral elements. They're just everywhere. They're never just sticking out exactly where you want them to be. Just like how we didn't want our leaves to look like this, we want our leaves to look more natural like this. I did see the comment about not being able to see the circle. I'll pause right here and go ahead and paint the leaf part or the circle part. I'm just going to use my size-two brush and very lightly, with a brown color. I'm just going to go around so you can start to see it. Now, you can do this if you want, you don't have to. I'm purposely leaving gaps, because I might want to fill it in later or maybe I'll change my mind and I want the Wreath to go or the leaves to go all around. We'll see. Hopefully, by now, you're first leaves are starting to dry, because that's the only way that you're going to layer properly. If they're still wet and you put wet paint on top of it, you're certainly going to start to get bleeds and some people like that effect, but some people don't. If you want a properly layer, you want this layer to completely dry. But while it is drying or if it's not dry yet, we're going to keep going around and paint some of the smaller or do some more of these leaves but in different locations. Now, again, I'm just loosely interpreting the actual Wreath that we're following. I'm going to use that same light green color that I've been using, and do some more multi-stand leaves coming up to the right and then coming out to the left. I know it's also hard to see because my overhead light is hitting the leaves. But, yes, I am using the same color. I might have added a little bit too much water. It might look a little bit lighter. Again, it might be harder to see the leaves right now just because the water is reflecting or the light is reflecting off the water. I'm going to do, maybe just one more multi-stand leaf coming out this way. As we wait for this to dry, I was going to say, let's mix our next color. [inaudible] mix color. See. 6. Adding Layers: Next, we're going to add more leaves in different colors to give it that layered look. Let's go on to this next, the yellowy-green color. I'm still using my size six brush, and I'm going to do the same multi-stemmed leaves but with a different color now, so I'm using my yellowy-green color. Let's just do some more of these. Now, at this point, if you want to layer this paint on top of the first layer, this is a great opportunity to do that, especially if it's already dry. Now, I'm saving some of this space right here for my darkest leaves, so that's why you're wondering, "Why is there these weird gap [inaudible] in the middle of your reef? I do one more set right here. I'm going to use my size six brush just one more time for those dark leaves right here. I'm going to use that darkest color that we mixed with that yellowy-green and a brown color, then I'm going to paint some pretty large leaves, just a few, just right along here. I love that I can layer. This leaf right here was the very first one I painted, and then I put the yellow-green on top of that one, and then now I just put my darkest color on top of that first one. I just love that layering effect that you can get with watercolors. I'm going to do some couple of more darker ones here, maybe one more. I'm going to switch to my size two brush and do some more smaller leaves. I'm going to go back to that first color that I mixed, this sap green color, but try to use less water and more paint so that my brushes really saturated with darker colors. Again, we're just going to keep layering darker and darker colors. With the size two brush, I'm going to try to fill in a little bit of this white space just so that my reef looks a little bit fuller. I'm going to do the same motion, painting a stem, and painting small leaves, just to fill in the spaces. By now, your previous layer should be pretty dry if not all ready, so this is, again, a great chance to start layering your paints. Got another question for you from Melissa. Yes. When you want a layered effect, is it best to go lightest color to a darkest? I think you said this earlier, but might be helpful to go over it again. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, you definitely want to go from light to dark. I will say sometimes at the very end, after it's all complete, I do step back and look at it and I'm like, it could use a little bit more lighter elements just to fill in or fill out the reed. Sometimes I will go in there with one more final layer of a light color, but I'll only do that if it's absolutely necessary, but in general, I try to work from light to dark. 7. Finishing Touches: Finally, we can fill in any gaps and add the final touches. Maybe I'll do just a couple more here. Here's that one random one sticking out this way. Sometimes when you have a random leaf sticking out like this, again, it just makes the wreath more believable, more real. If you have a random leaf that's just sticking out, feel free to add that. This is the point where I step back and look at it, and I'm like, "Mmh, what else does it need." You can even hold it up, and hold it about two feet in front of you, and just think like, "Mmh." Maybe you need slightly cooler tones, maybe you need to add warmer grains, whatever it might be. Maybe you need that one random leaf I was talking about, like that guy right there. The last thing I'm going to do just to finish off our wreath. I did say that I left some gaps on purpose, but I'm going to go ahead and fill it in because I like the shape of that original wreath that we're working off of, and I just want to close it up. At this point, again, if you mess up and you're like, "Oh no. It's not a perfect circle." That's totally okay. You can pretend that they're branches or something. Then just wiggle your brush around. I'm using a size 2 brush, and just pretend that it was meant to be branches all along, and no one will know. That is your completed wreath. 8. Q&A: So now let's open it up two questions from the students from the audience. One of them came in earlier about just your general painting journey. How long have you been at it and do you feel you can have multiple styles when it comes to your watercolor painting? Yeah, great question. I started painting probably the end of 2016 or so, and I actually started because my grandmother was a watercolor artist, and she painted flowers in this expressive loose style. So I started out by trying to imitate her, and because she had died earlier that year, and so I wanted to honor her memory by doing what she loved to do, and then I ended up loving it anyway. In terms of having different styles, I absolutely believe that you can have different styles, and I believe that it will evolve. The most classic example is Pablo Picasso. He started out by painting very realistically and then he started getting more and more abstract as his life went on. So I absolutely believe that your style can evolve. It could be affected by not just your life circumstances or just how you're feeling, it could happen over your lifetime or even just within a year. So I think you should explore different styles, but eventually get to a point where you feel comfortable, and it feels natural, and then I think that's how you actually start really exploring that one kind of style or a few styles. Awesome, thank you for sharing that. Do you have any tips when you select your palette, your color palette for a painting project? Yes. So when you have a pan palette like this, you're very limited to how much paint you can use within a single painting. So first of all, if you're painting a large painting, I always use two paints. For that, I really love Winsor and Newton. I know they can be expensive, especially they are professional colors, but really nothing comes close to their professional colors. So if you're looking to do a commissioned work of art, and you're planning on selling it, or showing it in an art show, I really think that you should use very high premium colors. Yeah, but if it's just more for like every day like a hobby thing, I like the Winsor and Newton, their cotton, which is their student grade brand. In terms of choosing colors, less colors is always more, because I think if you're not familiar with mixing watercolor paints, you can really make every color in the world with just the primary colors, if you're super patient, that is. But if you're not patient and you don't want to spend time color mixing, then get a palette of about 12 to maybe 18, 24 colors, and that will definitely give you as much of a variety as you need. In terms of brands again, I like this Lucas brand, I got it a frontier is harder Rama, but I know a lot of you are from around the world. If Amazon delivers to your country, you know, you can get the Winsor and Newton Cotman, 12 color palettes on Amazon I believe for 12, $13. I don't know how that converts to your currency, but it's quite affordable in my opinion. That was my very first palette when I first started out, and it lasted me probably a whole year before I dived into two paints and other brands. Do you tend to study the shapes of flowers, or leaves, or succulents before you start painting them? Yeah, that's a great question. That's another step that I like to do, research and sketching. I didn't really talk about sketching, because when I paint loosely, I don't normally sketch my final results, but I do a lot of sketching beforehand, just to understand the anatomy of the plant. But again, I'm not studying for scientific purposes. It's more just like, "oh, these leaves are, what's the actual term like pin eight leaves when they're just like this. Then the other kind where they're staggered like this. So just observing that or observing how the veins look, or observing just the overall shape, whether it's pointed or rounded, or multi, I don't know the technical terms, kind of the maple leaf like multiple points to them. So I look for more general characteristics rather than very, very specific anatomical look or anatomical details. The audience is saying this is so relaxing. She really needed this. Do you find that you paint this similar style when you are needing a little bit of stress release or self-care? Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, I paint these leaves not just as draws and practice, but even just as meditation too. I've done it so many times to the point where I can close my eyes and just paint. Then I start to let go of what the leaf even looks like. So that frees me from that perfectionism, which I do suffer from every once in a while. Then the fact that I can use a photo as a reference, but again, not be tied down to exactly what it looks like, and interpret it in my own way. Yeah, that'll just come with time, but really, the more you allow yourself to even mess up, and try new things, the better it will be. Yeah. Great question. I absolutely believe it. Yeah, it can be great for meditation and relaxation. 9. Final Thoughts: Thanks for watching my Skillshare Live Class recorded when participation from the Skillshare community. Something that I emphasize in all of my classes, if you've taken them. At the end, I always give you a couple of tips and one of them is always to practice. I know that sounds so basic, but it's absolutely true. I like how we've warmed up with these drills and mixing leaves. Just give yourself like you tried doing that for like 20 minutes a day or 20 minutes every other day. You'll be amazed and how easily these leaves will start to come to you just after a week or even a month. Those are the things that people don't see, like on Instagram or on Facebook or social media in general. We don't see all the daily practices like go into it and so definitely practice. The other thing is if you're struggling with perfectionism like I do. I know I got a lot from it but I still struggle with it from time to time. This is a skill that will just come with time and practice but it's learning to make mistakes and be okay with it. So even like in the recovery painted together, I put gaps in that circle but then I went back. Then I tried to trace over the circle exactly. Then I was like, oh no, I didn't match it up perfectly. The perfectionist inside me, it would be like I would cringe at it. I'll get mad at myself. I'm frustrated. I want to rip up my painting. But the more you learn to be like, okay, wait, that's okay, how can I work with this? How can I roll with the punches? So then I just tried to do punches. Allowing yourself to pause and not reacts immediately to a "mistake" is another tip I guess, or advice and I wouldn't want to leave you with, because that's where the joy of watercolor really comes from. Watercolor can't be frustrating only if you let it be. So, yeah, I'll be okay with mistakes. I'd love to see you raised. So make sure to post your painting in the projects gallery. Obviously I'm your Skillshare teacher, so I hope you will take my classes. The latest class is how to paint your wreath but we'll paint floral wreaths. I go a lot more in depth way just how I approach a painting and how I think through it. This is from design all the way to execution. Till next time, bye.