Transcripts
1. Intro: Hey, guys, I'm Brooke from soulfully printed are in design today. I'm gonna teach you guys how to paint watercolor florals. We're gonna focus on Econ Atia and black eyed Susans. I've been learning watercolor and lettering for about two years now, but really been diving deeper into the world of floral watercolors in about the past six months. By the end of this class, you're gonna have to watercolor floral paintings that you can either give to somebody Keep for yourself frame whatever you want to dio. But you're gonna be able to paint some beautiful flowers, and I'm excited to teach.
2. Materials: okay, So really quick. I'm just gonna go over the materials that you'll need for this class. I will talk about specific brands and things, but you do not have to use the same brands that I use. These are just suggestions and a little bit of information for you. So to start off with watercolor. So I have poured my own watercolor. It's the Windsor and New and the Cottman watercolors. You can see the better now. But like I said, I pour them myself in this palette just so that they are accessible and easy for me to use . Um, I have used Kuwait watercolors in the past. Those air really great on. And I got some Daniel Smith watercolors that I'm gonna be using soon. I literally just got them yesterday, so I'm really stoked about that. But, um, watercolor is watercolor. I started off with the artist's loft brand, So if you are a beginner, that's a good place. A good, cheap place to start. I've got my paper towel here. I've got a couple paintbrushes, these air, actually, from my friend Peggy. She is the pigeon letters. So she recently launched her studio round paintbrushes they're awesome. If you're thought about getting them, just do it. They're amazing. Um, and she didn't mean to say that. So I really do love that. We also. Then I've got to jars of clean water. I use one for my warm water colors and then one for my cool water colors so that they don't get all muddy and brown and gross, um, on the page and paper is super important. So first of all, I will show you the paper I use. This is the stress more watercolor paper, so there's a couple different Siri's. As you can see, this yellow pad is the 300 series, which they tell you is better 400 Siri's, which is best. So in short, I usually just used the yellow of the 300 Siri's because it's a little bit less expensive, unless I know I'm making it for somebody as a commissioned piece. Then I will use this the 400 Siri's or best Siri's, because it will last a little bit longer. It's a little bit heavier, but the most important thing for you to know when you're picking your watercolor paper is that you need it to be £140. Anything less than that is gonna work very easily. Some people do use mixed media paper. I use too much water for that. So if you want to try mixed media, go for it. I personally don't do that just because I use too much water and it works the paper. So whatever you use, just make sure its £140 I did get this hung visit. It's real and Ling nickel paper. That's £119. It was literally on sale Hobby Lobby for less than $2 So that's why I bought it. And it is useful for warming up. I mean, the paper is very thin compared to £140 watercolor paper, but it it's nice because it's a cheaper way for me. Teoh. Try out a little techniques or different things that I, you know, maybe it's a thumbnail sketch of what I want to paint. So I mean, there is a place for watercolor paper that's less than £140. But if you want something to look great and to frame it or give it to somebody, it needs to be £140.
3. Technique: The very first thing I want to teach you guys about doing these watercolor florals is something that can help you in every aspect of watercolor. There's a couple different techniques that are most popular and most used on. I'm only gonna go over these two because that's what we're mostly gonna be using in this class. So we have a couple of different techniques we have wet on dry and wet on wet. And if you haven't really heard of that have been doing watercolor. You might not know what that means, but it really is super simple and pretty self explanatory. I'll first explain wet on dry. So I'm just gonna get my brush wet and I'm gonna get some paint. Doesn't matter what color will just do green for now. And what on dry is taking this wet paint and putting it on a dry surface? Just painting on the dry surface here for a wet on dry. So give you just one example that so super simple. If you haven't been doing watercolor for for very long, that's probably mostly what you've been doing on what I'm Dr doesn't have to just be on the blank paper. I'll show you an example with this here, since it's already dry, um, you could go in a detail later on. So if I wanted out some detail to these leaves, they're dry. So it's still wet on dry technique that I'm using and got me Watercolor here. I'm just going and add some shadows or something. Line work that's still technically wet on dry. Now what? On wet as you might be able to guess, it already is. We're gonna take our watercolor and put on a wet surface. So to make that surface already wet just gonna get my paintbrush and some clean water. I'm just going Teoh on my paper. It was just basically clean water here. I'm gonna go in and I'm going. Teoh, get some watercolor and I'm just gonna But on that water while it's still wet and it's gonna give me a very different look than the wet on dry, I think it usually gives kind of more a soft, a softer look, more subtle blend. I'm like, if you wanted to use some other colors in with it, kind of create their own kind of blood to get together to mix awesome thing about watercolor is it's pretty forgiving. So if I didn't want it to be that saturated in color, I can take just a piece of this paper towel that's dry, and I can pick up some of this. If it's still wet, lightly dab it. I don't want to, like, rub it, pick some of that up. You can also add more water since I loot the the color. That's also one thing that's important to know is the more water you add to the color, the lighter it will be. There is an example of what on what? So just a quickly review what on dry. We're just taking our watercolor, and we are painting it on a dry surface, whether that's dry paint or this the blank page. And what on what is when we've got water already on the page? But we are adding the color to the water. Um, yeah, we're gonna be using that in the following videos, and in the next video, we're gonna go over some of the brushstrokes that are going to create your flowers
4. Leaves & Petals: so a lot of the time we look at a painting and we just see it as a whole. We see it as one piece, but we don't realize until we start painting that it's just made up of a lot of small little lines or strokes our shapes. And so I'm just gonna show you guys how to create some of these shapes using your paintbrush, and you're going to see that it's a lot easier than you probably thought. Not saying It's easy to paint flowers and to get really good at it. But it's a lot simple. Or then you might have previously thought So we're going to start. Um, whatever brush you have doesn't matter what color you want to use. Use this right red here. So first, just take your paintbrush and we're just gonna do a really thin line. So if you've done lettering, it's kind of like an upstroke, Um, you know, with very, very little pressure. If you haven't, that's OK. It's just putting, you know, just enough pressure on the brush. Teoh, get the paint on the paper so make it varies. Then as you can. And on this one here wrists are adding pressure and then taper off. Lighten it up again. This is emotion you're gonna use a lot, especially with these black eyed Susans and the econ nation Flowers. Basically any daisies or flowers without the pedals, you'll use this a ton. Same with the leaves. Works for leaves to so just light and then add the pressure taper off again. Just do that for a little bit, just to get used to the movement on some of them. You can Maybe not quite as big. See the range of your paintbrush to the thinnest it can go and then you see how thick you can get it. That motion starting that pressure. So now gonna take green because gonna get into some leaves instead of just going straight across. We're gonna start here at the bottom and just kind of come up as come up in a curve. Hey, and then we're gonna add that pressure again and then just barely taper off with the end more than I did there. But I can come about a curve used taper off at the end so that there's kind of that point there. So as you can see this here in and of itself could definitely be a leaf. I'm gonna show you another way that will give a little more dimension to it in a really easy way. So we've got first bit and I'm gonna come back on the top here, and I'm going to just do a thin airline at an angle and connect them here. Look down here. But leaving white space is a really simple way to add dimension. I'll also show you other ways to add dimension as we're doing the paintings. But especially if you're a beginner, that's an awesome way to go and also practice coming at it from this side here, I've found that I'm right handed, so it's easier for me to do the strokes in this way than it is to go to the left because it's just kind of following me natural motion. But I found that if I kind of bring my hand over the top of it, it helps me to get a better range of motion, create the leaves that are going to the left. There's an example you can always no play around with it and get some more leaves up here. But there you see that there's a super simple motion that creates something super pretty. Um, no. And you don't have to add that white space. You can always just simply have the leaf be and closed and add some dimension to it by adding more color and that wet on wet effect, much water. No, make it darker in areas. I mean, since this isn't a complete painting, I don't really know where the lights coming from, but I'm just gonna kind of parking it at the bottom, you know, And then, if you wanted to add to mention to this over here, it's dry. That's mostly dry. We can do the wet on dry and just got some more defined. The lines dimension. If we didn't want to use just simple brushstrokes to create the white space, I want to go even darker here just to show you guys that wet on wet technique, let's have a ton of really concentrated watercolor on my brush, not as much water, so that that deep green go in there. So there's some simple ways to do those leaves. Now we're gonna focus on how we can use these strokes here and using that pressure to create pedals which are super similar to the way we did leaves. So just take this a red again. So if we're looking at some black eyed Susans, their pedals are usually pretty thin. I mean, they can definitely very, um, but they're not going to start out as thin as thes leaves because this this because these leaves here are starting with the stem, whereas the pedals are gonna be coming off of the flower so it doesn't have to start that thin. So you want to add some pressure and then just come out and then taper it off at the end? We can do that same thing adding some white space if we wanted Teoh. Um, no getting more pigment in the top there, full pressure and then just taper it off. If you find yourself shaking as you're coming off the pressure, like if it's kind of wobbly, if you do it kind of more like a foot if you use kind of a flicking motion, you know, like that there that might help you to get that wispy look not without feeling like it's too forced. I'm gonna up some of that water. Um, you know what? Some of the pedals, and depending on the angles, you're doing your flowers that you know they will be coming up. You can use several strokes to create the pedals. It doesn't have to just be the one. You know, when you can use that white space in there, it could be a puddle. I thought there. And sometimes you go in really light so that you can add more color. Maybe not that much, but good thing it's still wet, cause I can simply come in and pick it up. So if you need to pause the video and or rewind the video at all just to practice those strokes again before we jump into our paintings, please do that next video, we're gonna start on some flowers.
5. Black Eyed Susans: So I did a Google search and just picked a few pictures of these black eyed Susans that's at different angles and different compositions just to give us some inspiration and something to go off of me. If you have a real flower, that's great. But I don't have all these different kind of flowers just going in my backyard. So that's why I find pictures of them. And the pictures are not meant for you to copy. They're just there to give you an idea of what these flowers are looking like in real life , how the pedals bend, how the leaves are connected to the stems, things like that just so that you can be somewhat accurate in that, um, you know, in your perceptions and in painting them so you can do your own. Get your own pictures if you want, but I have these provided here for you to look at during the class. I also I have mixed some colors for these paintings. I'm not gonna go into color mixing in the videos, but if you want to know which colors to mix to get these, then you can go to my sample project and it will be there to give you a little more information on that. But we're going to start out with some brown. We are going to start by creating the center of a couple of these flowers Thes black eyed Susans. So this one here. And what kind of just making, like 1/2 circle with French, a little dogs? You want to make sure you leave white space in there? I don't want because we're going to be adding black on top of this as well. And the white space really gives it much needed dimension. Hey, and I'm gonna do another one over here. This one is going to be a little bit more of an oval, because this, um, flour is gonna get a tiny bit different than that one at that angle that it's at Howard looking at it. Oh, all right, so we'll stop there, Brown, and then I'm gonna go in with some black, and some of this is gonna be wet on wet, and some of it's gonna be dry or wet on dry. Uh, just because depending on what is already dried in these brown the idea, I think Well, I think What makes it look really great is having both. So some of these are just bleeding. Some of this block is bleeding into the brown, and some of it is just sitting on top of it. You don't even think about it too much. I went out as much block as, uh, you did, brown, but definitely get some good black in there. I'm over here. Same thing, this center. All right? And, you know, once we're further into the fainting, you might end up wanting to go back and adding more of those dots. But for now, that is perfect amount. So I'm gonna take my yellow. It's kind of golden yellow, and we are going to create some pedals. They're coming off of this. The center here. I'm going. Teoh, start with this one over here. This one is just gonna be kind of the side profile of one of these black eyed seasons. Remember when I kind of start thicker up top and then just taper down? I think it's kind of fun to have the brown in the block bleeding into the pedals sometimes , but on the way to do that is just Yeah, barely touched that their touch, the yellow, the pedal And if it's waiting more than you like my trusty paper towel here and soak some of that paper towels do a lot more than we give them credit for. I'm kind of doing a little bit of wet on wet. Since I didn't wasn't as concentrated as I was expecting it to be. I definitely did not want personally. I don't want that bleeding in as much. I kind of got a bit and swipe it back up in, But it still has, like, you know, has a little bit of that bleed, which is fun. I think the reason why I'm dabbing some of this up, even if it's not too dark, because sometimes if you have too much water, you'll get lines on the outside of your of your pedals or whatever you're painting once it's dried. And if you like that, look, that's great. I just don't personally want that, too. Happen this. It's going to do one more kind of on the side here. It's not as long. It's just kind of a little bump. We'll decide over here, too, one over. All right, so now we've got one of this flower done. It's at an angle. So we don't see the pedals that are behind it there, there. But we don't need to see them to know that because we're looking at it from this side. This one here is gonna be a tiny bit different. Going to start out the same. Basically, we're gonna do some petals coming up here side. Don't worry it. Once you get here, you might be a little worried about how you're going. Teoh do those brush strokes without crossing these. But in nature, I mean, pedals are gonna be crossing. And that's just kind of how it is. So and that's just kind of how it is. And so I just don't worry about it too much. It's kind of do what I think it would be doing. I'm doing a short one. And as as we get to the back here, we're just going to make them make The pedals are not gonna look like this because they're still in an angle. But there is a This flower is at an angle that we can still see the pedals that are behind it, barely so just kind of make little with speed lines. They're coming No from behind this here. They're not connected to it right here. But they are at the base of it. That kind of gives us the illusion that we're But those were the petals coming out from the other side of the flower. And I like to add some pigment to the pedals. Close up, um, near the base near the center of the flower because you can see in the pictures. Usually that's where they are a little bit darker, and it kind of gives a better idea of the of the shadow. You know that they're not just coming off of it, just like you're doodling a flower. But they're actually coming from the center, not just connected to it. And then here I have have the option of, you know, maybe doing some wet on dry work. We're here. I wanted to add some little detail lines. Some of these these ones are still pretty wet. Besides this one so and still give it dimension with a wet on wet look. And you don't have to only do one like in this painting. There's so much of both. So I'm gonna come back in later, once those air dry to add more details. But now we're gonna take some of this green. We're gonna start doing some of these stems. Who The stems for these flowers. So stems are usually pretty thin. It's I believe it's easy. It's better to do too thin first and then if it needs to be thicker, make it thicker because you can't always take back what you paint. So I go pretty thin. And then I also don't always connect them like it's not just one line. Like there's two lines here. They're gonna making this one stem. Just because I think it looks more realistic gives it some life crossing those, too. So make sure there are two stems. Um, and then I'm gonna come this way and add belief. I can leave it that way. I can had a little thin line here to give it some more dimension, not one kind of coming in front of this stem. You see that I crossed here Not necessarily because I really like I felt like I should, but it just kind of worked, and I personally I'm okay with you know, the pedals and the leaves pleading into each other because even though that's not realistic , I love watercolor bleeds. So get adds a lot of really pretty character to it. So I don't have a lot of water on my brush. That's why that happened there. Going to come in to some went on, wets to give that some dimension one more small. We live here. Sometimes I overdo it on the Leafs, and then afterwards, I wish I didn't. So, uh, gonna stop right there. I can always add some later if I want. Um, I'm gonna go in with this really pigmented of green, and I'm just gonna, you know, make some wispy lines here. You know, whether it's grass or just parts of this stem, I don't really know, but it looks good. You don't always have to know exactly what what it is that's creating some pretty peace is in your heart. And then I like to go with, you know, we're really, really concentrated but a watercolor and just kind of put some thoughts. Some of this is what still, some of its dry doesn't really matter to me. All right, so we have their about their and I would say at this point, this could be your finished painting. I think it, you know, it works really well that way I would want out a little bit of detail personally here. And this is where you can, kind of if you want to make more sense of what's going on here with these overlapping pedals and say, Hey, this one's in front. So I'm going to do that detail work there, or you can simply leave it as it is. Um, and my thing that I do with my paintings is after there at this point basically done, I'm gonna take what clean water I have and kind of just dab it. And I wouldn't have it so much into the green yet because it's still super What? Um, I mean, it's not really right or wrong way to do it, but personally, I don't do that just cause I don't want it to be that, um, blended. I guess you could say so. I've got some just water all over here. I'm gonna take the colors that I used in my painting, and I put my finger this way. I've got a lot of paint on my brush and I just top it. Give it some spotters. So let's go do some yellow and get some brown as well. It's not always a rhythm or rhyme to where I do these, Um, just kind of look at it and see what I think it needs. If I think it's good that way, if there are spoon spotters that you don't like where they landed such as this green one here, I mean, I could leave that I could also, if I was really not loving it could come in kind of pick it up or spread it out a little more. So it's not so harsh. Um, yeah. And then I think I for this one, I would just add a little bit more black here in the center of these flowers, a little bit more depth. Still want to leave a good amount of white space, but also want a little bit more depth. And I would say for this painting gonna call it good. Um so like I said, you don't have to that last bit with the splatters. I do it just because I love it, and it's kind of turned into my signature look, um, with the floral paintings that I dio. But yes, so we will. So there's your black eyed Susans. Once it dries, you'll see that it looks a little bit different. If you've done this spotter effect, it'll look a little different than it doesn't know. When the next video, we're going to do our econ, Isha or Cone flowers, so it's either.
6. Echinacea/Purple Cone Flowers: already. So now we're going. Teoh, do our econ nation flowers or cone flowers, purple cone flowers, lots of names for them. But the only thing you need to know is that they are gorgeous. I love them. They're probably my favorite flower and one of my favorites to paint. So as you can see in these sample pictures that I have attached there, centers have kind of a reddish orange tint to them. So that's what that's the color that I'm going to start with and we're gonna go from there . So, just like with our black eyed Susans, we're going to start by creating the center of the flowers. I've got this orange that I'm starting with. We're gonna end up doing three of these little like a nation flowers instead of two, like the lost with you. So we're just making these kind of half circle. Fish shapes do not have to be perfect. Circles are half circles. Okay, so now I'm gonna go in. What? We've been the orange. I'm gonna go in with the brown. I'm not going to do as much brown as I did orange because we still want that orange to be visible here is kind of a lot of wet on wet work. Just kind of tap it in over here. I want to do so much that it just overtakes all of the orange, But I don't want the centers to be homemade orange. Okay, this would have turned into a funny shape, some kind of giving it more of its shape with super phone. Okay, now that we've done the brown, I'm gonna go in with a little bit of black. Not too much quite yet, but it is still an important part to give it that depth. And a lot of this is still wet on wet, which is great. It's kind of giving it a dream year blended. Look, I'm not adding a ton of the dark, darker spots up at the top yet, depending on what it looks like, depth wise later on, I might For now we're gonna call it good for those centers. Oh, I also forgot to mention I'm using a smaller brush this time. Just go. It's just one size down. Um I mean, you can do this with any size brush, depending on how big your painting is, but that I'm doing it with a smaller brush just to kind of show you how to do the smaller pedals. So now we're gonna jump on over to do in some pedals, start here, just, you know, a little wispy hulls. And I love when that can, like slightly. When the dark slightly bleeds in tow the pedals. I don't know why it just makes my heart really happy. One more here. Didn't. Quite not as much as they wanted it to, but Okay, okay. I'm just gonna kind of see what happens. I want to bring the pigment, do some wet on wet before all this dries. What was too late for that one? But just to kind of give it a little dimension. Sorry that that's try because I can still smooth detour that way. Okay, Now, for this little guy, same thing adding lows, puddles. And the thing with loose for old painting is you don't have to. You shouldn't be thinking about it so much that you're not sure where to put everything. Um, that's that's why I, like with most people who do loose florals, is kind of the point of it is that you're not drawing it beforehand. So you're not. You don't have, like, a complete plan of where every pedal is gonna go every line, every detail, whatever, Um, but it's kind of just away. It's just a It's an easier, not easier, per se. It's a different way to paint. And I think it's really therapeutic because it teaches me that I don't have to control everything. Don't have to have ah, huge elaborate plan for something toe workout and look great. Have a lot of beauty in It may not be Picasso, but no, it's my painting and it has a lot of beauty. So anyway, there's your inspiration for the week. Okay? I'm just adding in these little lines, you know, so we can see that those are the pedals coming from behind. This is a little bit more of a messier look and painting than the black eyed Susans. I just wanted to show you. You know how you can kind of work with that? A lot more details over here, and details can like to give depth. It can be as simple as adding that blob of paint right there. Like when it dries. I pretty sure it's gonna look pretty, pretty dope. I'm excited about it. I used to think it had to be so precise, but really, just spotting tiny little blobs sometimes really gives it a lot of character. I'm gonna go in here and get rid of some of this water cause I think it's gonna dry. Funny, have too much. I can go in and add some more pigment without worrying about it. Okay, Now we're gonna take our rain. This is a little cooler than the other one. Well, excited for it. Okay. So, top, I would recommend doing this stems before all the believes. You mean you don't have to, but it kind of just helps me figure out where one believes to be and make sure that your painting makes sense and that there's not, like, 18 stems and four flowers. It was only fair. I was going out of super sin going over the top for some dimension on that one. I'm also just gonna throw a leaf up. Here was who's to say that can't happen? Right? That seems kind of helping my composition toe e not symmetrical, cause I don't feel like most of nature's not symmetrical. Some things are, most of it isn't, um, but at least giving it balance. No, adding a little weight over here, - and not every little many stem that's coming off of your main stems have to and leaves. So if you feel like it's a little leaf heavy, then you can just add little wispy lines that could either be grass or leaves from behind. And that's also one of the reasons I really like doing the, um, the water at the end with all the spotters is it kind of just gives it the illusion that there is more going more is going on than what we see right here. Like there's these flowers, their focus point. But when we add the other, But when we are the splatters and that other water, that just kind of gives it some life kind of give us the illusion that there's more going on and it doesn't have to be totally detailed for us, toe come to that conclusion. Okay, so, no, I am gonna add a little more block to those centers. Not going to do too much at the top. I'm gonna do a little bit. Do you work here since I was a little bit water heavy. You just got lots of paint. Okay, so now to the fun part where we add some clean water all over the place taste why, we're gonna take colors that were in our painting. You don't have to do all of them. I usually do, but got some of that pink purple, Take some of the grain. My favorite part. This deep green and lightly exploder that pick up some of this orange too a ton, but just enough to show it off a little bit. Let's take some brown. Here we go. And a little bit of black. I am a fan of block. You can't. Okay, so I like this here. It's kind of fun, but I also don't love how far it's going out. So I'm just gonna minimize how far that's bleeding and how concentrated swing by using a paper towel So they're still that bleed there. But it's not going off the page there, I would say, I think that's finished. You wanted to add more. You could, whether it's more little dots down here. I mean, maybe I would add a little bit more of the deep green down here. This some dots there around the stones to give some more shading shadow work. But other than that, we're getting a little more everything in here. Yeah, I would say that. That's basically done. So once they dry, what's all that water around? It drives. You're gonna have a really dreamy painting of these recognition flowers.
7. Wrapping it Up: okay, and that's it for this class. I hope that you guys learned a lot, and I hope that you share your projects in the project section. Just click the button below. That says, start your project and upload some pictures of your floral watercolor pieces. But I really want to see your work, and I want to hear your question. If you want to share your project on social media, go ahead and me in its at soulfully printed or you can hashtag soulfully printed scale share. And that way I can see it and give me feedback and possibly even share it. But thank you so much for taking the class. Once again, you guys rock will be doing more floral watercolor classes soon.
Brookelle Jones, Botanical Illustrator | Lettering Artist
