Transcripts
1. Floral Illustration Intro: Hi, My name is Nisha. I'm an artist and an illustrator. Welcome to floral illustrations with watercolor and inks. We'll be using watercolors in a mix of some inks and pens, and we'll be putting all the materials together and creating two final projects at the end of it. As a fund bonus, I've included a swipe file of floral illustrations. You can use this to kick start your own designs, so grab your pain in your brushes and all your supplies and let's get started.
2. Lesson 1: Leaves & Stems: this is less than one, and it's all about leaves and stems. All right, so the first thing you'll do is grab a couple brushes. I have a 6 12 and eight here and start with anyone that you like these air round brushes. Which means that the I have a little bit of a point at the tip of the brush. You can use any color you want to start with. I've got green here because we're doing leaves and stems, so the first practice we're going to do it's a little bit like doing drills. Ah, well, use some paint and make straight lines and using just the end of the brush, have very little pressure in your hand and just practice doing continuous straight lines. So the goal here is to make them as consistent as possible and practice that pressure control. It's sort of mike muscle memory in your hand, so continue your line building by increasing the pressure and you'll get lines that are whiter and whiter and keep trying to keep them consistent. As you do this, the last mark you make make it full pressure just to see the whitest you can get from your brush, so then we'll build on that. So what you can do is start with light pressure, push down for more pressure, and then towards the end of your mark, just lift up slightly, and this is the basic structure of your leaves. So I switched to my larger brush and starting with some of the straight line drills and then going through the practice again so you'll see that with the bigger brush, you'll get wider marks, and it's a lot harder to get the thin details. So when you're choosing rushes for your florals later on, you'll have an idea of the kind of marks they make. The other thing to take note up is how much water to paint ratio you're getting on your brush. That when I just did, has a lot more water in it, because you can see the paint kind of pulling up in the little areas, so practice doing some really translucent marks and then some that have a lot more pigment saturation. All right, now that you're all warmed up and you practice, let's start making some leaves and stems so these leaves are similar to what we just did that pressure and then pulling up towards the end to get a tapered leave and then try making a thin stem and then having some leaves coming off of it. This is a fun way to make something like a fern, if that's what you wanted. Another option with that stem in the center is playing with the length of the leaves. You can do ones that are a little bit shorter and get a whole different look, so that one had a lot more paint in it. And then this one I'm doing has less paint. So there's more water ratio, all right, so using the larger brush, I'm making some wider, larger leaves. So there's a halfway first, and then you're rinsing your brush a little bit and then completing that leave. This is sort of the base for a rose leaf. You want to have a wider shape, and it just takes practice, getting the two halves to blend together. I'm moving really slowly, so I have a lot of control over where and putting that mark, and you'll notice that with watercolor when you put down the first half and then the second half touches it, the water and the paint mix and blend. Naturally, that's called bleeding. And that's one of the beautiful effects of watercolor. All right, so this is my smaller brush. This is size six and just using the end of it lightly making some line work. So this is probably more of the illustrative style. You can almost use it like a pencil and just draw your leaves right in. Here's another style of that line drawing version, just adding little, almost like little fingers on the ends. And maybe some circle details have a lot of fun with this. There are so many options that you can do. Okay, here's another version. This time I'm gonna use a few stems, so not just one in the center, and maybe do a couple wavy ones and then adding some tiny leaves towards the ends. All right, so to do a branch, you would use a similar line work to make the center parts of the branch, and then I'm going to use my brush. Mora's this stamp, so pick up some paint and then just pushed down and lift up. So there's no long stroke. This is really one of the easiest ways to make leaves coming off of a bridge. And then I'm just doing some more of the push pull kind of leaves. And for the last one, this is be a little bit of a line work style, too. Just draw some thin lines and then curved the ends. This is good to practice, in case you want to add some of these swirly types into your work. And then I'm gonna add some leaves and some tiny little dots. The details are up to you. Just have fun with it. Here is a version I did using those same exact techniques and just coming up with some different versions and styles. So have a lot of fun with it, and I cannot wait to see your work and what you come up with.
3. Lesson 2: Petal Shapes: welcome to peddle shapes. So we'll start off with a little practice drill. We're going to use a round brush and make any color paint you like, and we're going to start off with a really saturated square or rectangle shape. And then as you move towards the right, yet a little bit lighter and lighter, And at the very last one, we're gonna have it be the lightest is possible. It's mostly just gonna be water. Okay, so now we'll try to make the transparency scale without any spaces. I put down the color first and then rinsing my brush and lightening up. As I go, you'll see that the color will start to mix on its own and lighten up as it moves to the right. Right. So now we're gonna try it with two colors and tried to get a nice blend between two very different colors. So I'm putting the purple on the left, and this is a rose kind of color, a little bit reddish and then using just Clearwater trying to smooth out some of those edges and getting a nice blend. All right, one more time. Try it with another caller. Two totally different colors and just try to master the blend and technique. Okay, so one more drill. This is a really fun one. It's just making circles and putting Clearwater down and then on some of them and then adding more color and saturation on some others. And I'll speed up the video here so you can see kind of in fast forward how the water color mixes and blends on its own. So on the left side it it's in cool colors. And on the right side, I chose the warmer colors. Me and this will. Just to give you this exercise will give you a really good idea on how to choose your colors and what goes well together. Tom. It's always a good test to see how colors work next to each other, all right, and then, just as a quick test to show you how it works. When you put warm and cool colors next to each other, there's no hard and fast rule, but when you have colors that are direct opposites on the color wheel, they're called complementary colors, and when you put those together, you can get really muddied up colors. So, for example, in the corner. There were the purple and the orange er kind of mixing. You're making a really muddy ish color, and that might be fine. If that's what you're going for and you want a brown or a modish color, then you would definitely intentionally choose to mix complementary colors. All right, now that you've done some transparency drills, let's put this into practice on our flower petals. I'm starting with a reddish rose color and making to seize their kind of interlocking. And then as I move outward, I'm pushing down without pressure a little bit more, and then keep going with the pressure and I'm rinsing my brush. So whenever I make another layer that goes on the outside, it's getting lighter and lighter in color. And since it's all wet, if I put down a translucent clear pedal, I'm barely touching the pedal next to it, and that color is bleeding over, and that will produce a really light petal color. All right, so another rose on the right side, starting with the two little sees in the centre. Those will be the most saturated and then moving outward into wider petal shapes and also lighter petal shapes as you move outward. So this next flower going to be more of a daisy shape. I'm starting with a sort of a long pedal and then doing one right on the opposite and also the diagonal pedals as well. I find that if you do these four first, it's easier to put in the ones surrounding it. And there's somewhat symmetrical this way and then just fill in the rest of the pedals. I'm keeping mine pretty translucent. For now, it's a lot easier to go light to dark in watercolors harder to take away paint. Okay, so a second Daisy down here, you get too much paint or saturation. Just keep a paper towel handy. You can blood away that extra paint and water. Okay, so while those first layers air drying, we can add in some leaves.
4. Lesson 3: Layering, Light & Shadows: welcome to less and three all about layering light and shadows. So one of the most popular and most requested flowers to paint is the pne, and it is gorgeous. It's a full, full flower, lots of pedals happening here. Just something to note what we're looking at this reference picture. Take a look at how the pedals are opening up and the way that it's blooming and the bottom petals are a little bit flatter, and then the middle to top are pretty much going straight up. And then the peony buds are really small. There round, very circular. The pedals are really tight and they're closed up. We'll also take a look at the way the leaves air girling. There are some dark green, some yellow greens and the leaves are growing. Ah, in a bit of a cluster, and also the leaves that air the closest to the bud that just underneath those are really narrow and a little bit smaller. So feel free to take a screenshot of both those images. If you want to have a reference on hand, all right, so let's get started. This is my larger around brush, and I'm gonna start with a peach fish pink fish color. Like most paintings, I always start really light and transparent. It's easier to get an idea first of how your flower might start looking, and then you can go in with some darker shades and colors and build on top of that, just referencing that picture that we were looking at. I'm putting in that center bit. First, it's like a bull and then adding the flatter, more horizontal pedals along the bottom. A lot of these pedals air really light still, so there's more water and less paint ratio. When this layer dries, we can go back in with some darker paint and put in somewhere shadows and details. So the tops of the painting right there are going to be really light. That is the other side of the flower, so you'll just be seeing the tops of those pedals. It's so putting in the second flower on the right with a little bit of a more yellow color , and just so that it's not too different. I'm bringing in a little bit of that pink color back just a little bit, and then it's gonna naturally blend and bleed with the yellow. And just remember that the middle ish and top pedals or straighter sticking straighter up. And then the bottom ones are a little bit more narrow, flatter and more horizontal. I've rinsed my brush, and so just with clean water, I'm softening up some of those edges and adding in the back pedals that are gonna be lighter. Okay, so while that dries, let's put in some of the little baby peonies. Just some buds. So make some circular petal shapes and again starting really light. You can always add more color later. If you get too much color like this, you can rinse your brush, dab it on a paper, travel to dry it a little bit, and then do a pick up where you just picking up some of that extra color right off of the paper. So I'm just putting some Clearwater on the edges of this, but here and allowing that extra paint to bleed off into that petal shape and then just using the end of the brush with light pressure to make that circular round shape around the edges. All right, so, well, it that first layer dry and we'll add in some of the stems. So with green paint, just pull down a thin stem for both these. Remember dad stems for the two buds in the back also, and then start putting in all the other leaves. And remember that the ones that are closer to the flower buds were gonna be a little bit more narrow and smaller, and then the ones along the bottom for the front peonies there gonna be a bit bigger. It has added some more yellow into that green just to get a little bit of variety in my green shades. All right, time for the layers. Once it's fully dry, you can add those in. I have a size six brush in a size one for the details, the starting along the edges of that. But I'm putting in some darker pinks, wincing my brush and then blending and softening out the bottom part of that. You want to do this pretty quickly, so it should be pretty damp And what? Still, if you wait for it to dry, it will have a lot harder time trying to soften out those edges okay, and then adding some more definition onto that next pedal using the same technique, and I'm putting in the backpedals behind those front to ones and then also softening and blending those out. And there are also some shadows on the underneath side of this bud. So putting those and then blending those out and because that left but has some really light pedals. It's a little bit trickier it, Sergeant Asi, but I still wanna build in some of those edges so that there clearly defined and that shape is more round, like it looks like in the reference picture. Keep on adding lines and details and as many layers as you like, until you get the look that you like, right? So while those two are drawing, let's add in some of the little baby lease that are right underneath the bud a little bit of a yellow green, and they're just small and then tapered towards the end. And then I'm also pulling a little bit of that yellow green color into the base of that bud and then rinsing my brush and then feeding that out so it just blends right in. All right, so I have a purple lee color here. It's a bit of a rose, darker rose purple color, and I will start by putting in some of the shadows that are gonna be on the underside of this part of the pne and then with the rinsed brush. So it's completely clean, blending out some of those edges. Not all the edges have to be blended. It's nice to have a bit of contrast, so you have some that are sharp edges and then some that are blended, and that gives you a nice visual interest in your work. All right for the other painting, adding a lavender purple for the shadows and doing the same thing. All right. So to add some more definition into the top leaves from using a little bit more of that rose color a bit darker and then just put in some gesture marks. It's a little bit like sketching with a pencil who gives this flower little movement. And then I just wants to my brush, and then I blend it out a few of those edges. And then I went back into the other one and added some more of those gesture lines so that they tie in together, okay and then shadows on the two buds on the top as well. For these, I'm definitely looking back at the reference pictures, and it's easier to know where to put the shadows when you have something to look at. So while those air drying, we'll add in shadows into the greenery. So the stems and some of the leaves I'm just pulling in a little bit of a darker green into some parts and then blending out in a few areas. Okay, so at this point, I think I'm finishing up. And then I thought I was done, and I realized when I stepped back and I looked at the flowers, I saw that that top left Bud was really strong with that pink. And because my I was going right to that, I felt like the painting was off balance a little bit. So to fix something like that, what I would do is go in and add some stronger pinks somewhere else, so that it feels a little bit more balanced. It's perfectly fine to take breaks and step back from your work and then reassess it with fresh eyes. I do that a lot, and then I can fix areas that I didn't notice before. Now I feel like the painting is visually balanced, so I'm gonna call it done. I hope this was helpful and that you have a ton of fun painting this.
5. Lesson 4: Borders & Clusters: This is less than four, and it's all about borders and clusters. Okay, so for this video is zoomed out a little bit so he can see my exact set up. So I've got my A paint set on the side. I've got the mixing Trey attached to it, so just use that paper towel for dabbing off excess water or paint Watercolor paper, two jars of water, one tour in school colors, one to rinse warm colors and then my go to brushes. I usually keep a couple large size. This one is 16 and this one is 12. So I keep these for the larger pedals, the more translucent layers and washes. Then I have the middle range, which is six or an eight, and then my detail brushes. I have a zero and a one. I mostly used the pan set of watercolors, but occasionally I will throw in these liquid watercolors, their super concentrated so a little bit goes a very long way. Okay, let's get started using the middle brush, which is the six I want to start by getting a little green, getting the brush wet man collar pilot wet and starting with the first design, which is gonna be a border. You can make a straight line. You can make a wavy line up to you and then drop in some foliage. So leaves Stam's and then a couple of flowers. This is using that stamp method where I'm just using the brush like a little stamp and pushing down and then picking up. And then if you get a little bit of, ah, mess right there like I did just what it with your brush and then using a paper towel, you can dab away any of that before it dries. And as long as that area is dry, you can go back in and redo the design the way you want. Because I'm using a little bit of purple now and putting in some of those roses like we did a couple videos back. I'm dropping in the most saturated parts in the center and then rinsing my brush and doing lighter strokes around the outside. I'm also occasionally dabbing my paintbrush onto that paper towel, so that's soaking up any extra water after you rents. Sometimes it's too wet, and so I will sometimes just touch it to the paper towel, and then I just want to have a damp a brush instead of a supersaturated brush. Okay, so for this floral arrangement, there will be one main focus. So one large flower that's gonna be in the center and then accents on the sides like the leaves and branches here in playing with wet on wet technique. So dropping in the purple onto that light blue. Okay, so after good rinse using the same brush and putting in some leaves, um, alongside. Okay. So I'm gonna use some of that concentrated watercolors now. And a skinny is a tiny bit of that blue and mix it up for some of the extra leaves. Think about different textures and styles when you're putting in the foliage. Everything that you put around your main flower should be kind of like a supporting character so that your main image in the center is really the focal point. As long as those first layers or dry, you can go in and add as many details and lines as you like. With that centre flour dried. Now I can go in and add the details on top of that. So putting in something lines and that centerpiece and then rinsing my brush and then giving a little dab on the paper towel. And I'm going back in and I'm softening some of those detail lines. Caleb, Eva, darker blue and adding in some little dots into the middle and then a brush, rinse and then softening some of those alright. For the final style and arrangement, this is going to be a corner. This will be really handy to practice when you're creating frames. We're putting in the leaves first, the way we had done earlier, so pushed down and then pick up your pressure at the end. You create that tapered effect. All right, so for the florals, a little bit of a pinkish mixed up here, a little bit of red in making some roses on this one. So the little see marks in the center and then rinsing my brush and making more translucent pedals as I move outward. Okay, send mixed up some blue, and I'm adding some pieces behind the roses, so you want to think about adding texture, so these are just tiny little dots to break up a little bit of the bolder strokes and adding more delicate items. This will add to the overall visual interest in your composition. It's a picking up some yellow. Now I'm going to keep adding in some texture into this corner design and then mixing up a bit of orange and adding a couple more small pieces. This is the fun part of layering something like this. You can just keep going and going, so it's hard to know when to stop. But I think this might be a good point for me to wrap it up. Things to think about when you're planning your design for the whole of, um for the corner or that center one or the border is having a lot of movement, a contrast of textures and styles and play around with it to as many as you like and have fun.
6. Final Project 1 - Floral Wreath: Okay, So creating our first final project A floral wreath using all the lessons that we have learned so far was starting with a very light green paint. Then just roughly outlining an oval shape. You can do any shape you like. You can do a circle square rectangle. Also, if you're more comfortable tracing something or using a pencil to get a shape first, you will come to do that. I'm using my large brush and a little bit of light pinkish paint and putting in the first floral. And for this rate design, I've chosen to just do one focus point. So I'm going to have a cluster on the bottom left. Okay, with a darker purple, I'm going to start putting in some of the centers for a couple of roses, these air going to be smaller than the pink flower and with that same technique, using a clean brush, pulling out some more translucent shapes outward. All right, so time to put in some leaves while the flowers dry. Using some green pain is always starting very light and translucent and then building up that color because my focus is all on the bottom left. These leaves are going to be the biggest ones. And then, as I move that word all start making them smaller and smaller as they go around. So switching to a smaller brush, I'm adding a little bit more blue into that green and then pulling out small leaves. Now, with a little bit darker green, I'm going to go in and put a light vine like shape all around the rest of the reason, because the bottom is so heavy. I wanted to keep the top part really light right? So now, with a little purple, making some lavender and adding in some more texture into this three, it's fun to add different sizes and shapes just out of righty. If you're doing some layering over the first leaves, just make sure that they're fully dry. All right. So now, with some yellow into my palate, I'm going to add some other petal shapes. This will be more like an abstract to lip when you're planning out your composition, just keep in mind to keep the colors and shapes bouncing around so your eye has a nice movement throughout. Your work writes a little bit of a darker orange, just for the stems. I'm pulling down thin lines, all right to keep that movement going around with the colors and shapes and putting small accent little buds all around in pink and yellow all right, because his palate is very bright and there are a lot of happy colors happening. I wanted to tone it down in some areas, so this is a neutral. It's a gray, and it will kind of balance out that brightness and give the I a place to rest. Sometimes it's nice to have both, and then I'm adding some little dot details with that neutral gray and then some neutral gray leaves just a few in and throughout the design, it'll kind of go into the background and make the other ones that are more vivid in color pop up into the foreground. So now that the main flower is dry, I'll go in with some details, putting in that center part in some line work, so making the lines and then using a clean brush to soften up the edges, keep a paper towel on hand in case you need to dab away any extra paint, Okay, and then this final layer is just some extra details, going in with some darker colors and adding stronger contrast in a few of the areas. Building a floral wreath can be so addicting there are so many different ways to design them. Top heavy bottom, heavy, full foliage. Wait all the way around. It's up to you and have so much fun coming up with your styles and designs.
7. Lesson 5: Backgrounds & Textures: welcome to lessen five all about backgrounds and textures. Okay. To start, you'll need artists, tape and a board, or some surface that you can tape your paper, too. You want to be sure not to use regular masking tape that can really destroy your watercolor paper when it's time to peel it off. Painter's tape or artist tape is specifically designed to be more delicate. We're taping down or edges because today we're making backgrounds with a lot of water, so if you don't tape it down, you will get a lot of buckling on your paper. The other option is using watercolor blocks. That is where the paper is already sealed down for you, so you don't have to worry about the paper buckling up and getting to it. So for the 1st 1 you'll need some salt. Any kind any brand will do, and you also want to have a clean paper towel on hand will be using this for the 2nd 1 Okay , so for the first background, we're gonna put you on a lot of water and start making a little bit of a great Asian in the background. Many do one that's green and a little bit of blue and then in the middle, have them mix up in blend. And while it's still what will take that salt and just go ahead and Sprinkle it all over the background and just let that fully dry, all right? And for the 2nd 1 we're gonna do this similar situation where there is a blending of colors putting purple on the bottom of this one, adding a little bit of blue on the top and then with that clean paper towel in just a few areas, dab away and blot and pick up any colors. So you have a really lightened, translucent area and then leave that to dry fully. Okay, For this one, I'm using my concentrated liquid watercolors. These were just a little bit more vibrant, so I really like these was starting with just circles with water and then dropping in that what? I went technique with a couple of the circles and having the colors just blend on their own . Okay, so we'll be using the black India ink for this one, using a very small detail brush and taking a very tiny amount and just dotting it on the circles This is a really fun technique to watch how the color just spreads and a little bit goes a very long way. I would recommend starting small, and then you can always do more layers. If you would like to add more and then put that aside and let it dry 100% they will move on for the last background. I'm going to what? The whole paper this is. So the color blends really nicely and easily. I'm gonna be using greens and blues can build a lot of layers on this one, so you get some nice saturation. So this is the alcohol technique. So what I have is a little straw, and I'm using actually nail polish remover and then dropping it on. And as you can see, wherever it gets dropped, it almost acts like a bleach, and it adds a little splash of texture onto your work. This is a lot of fun. And just because I was very curious and to see if it would work, I actually used a toner. Since I can astringent for your face after you wash it, Um, it has what alcohol in it. So I wanted to see if it would work. Just out of curiosity. Now you'll want to let this one dry as well, but I sometimes am impatient, so I'm using a hair dryer to speed up the process. Just a side note. If you use a hair dryer, keep it on the low setting while you dry, because it's actually not meant for paper and it could burn. If you have a craft gun that is a heat gun that's actually better suited for this kind of drying of artwork. You have that use that once all your backgrounds air dry, gently peel him off, and if you do, you pull off too fast. It will rip part of your paper off like it did on mine in a few areas. If you remove it slowly and peel back slowly, it should come off pretty cleanly. Here's a close up of that alcohol texture. Got some really pretty lighten dark areas. It did bleed under my tape a little bit so I can go back in and clean that up later with a white, opaque paint. So this is why it's more to put down your tape cleanly the first time and make sure there's a good seal. Otherwise, you get little pools of water on the edges. I really liked how this ink one turned out. So we'll be using this in the next lesson and building on this with our florals. So if you can already guess thes, they're gonna be the floral blooms. It will be adding layers to this. Okay, so for the salt one, I'm using a tub to collect, only sold. I'm going to take off normally. I would do this directly into the trash can that since I'm filming, I wanted to show you. So all you're gonna do is use some gentle pressure with your finger and in just in circle motions, all that salt will just come right off. You don't want to push too hard because it'll tear up the texture of your paper on the surface, but it will come off easily. And that felt made a really interesting background texture. And then here's a close up of the 2nd 1 we did with the paper towel, blotting the textures in this turned out really fund. And I like the way that the paper towel really soaked up that water and paint Okay, so just for a last minute addition that, like this one, needed a few more translucent blooms. So I'm using a little bit of paint and a lot more water and making a couple more blooms, just abstract ones. And just to show you an option without Inc, this is Blackwater Color, and it does something very similar. It spreads out the way the ink does, and it's slightly different. Similar enough, though, that you could use it as a substitute. And I'm darkening a couple more of the centers just to have a little bit more contrast. I really love how this one turned out. There's so much going on all the textures and color blends in the black centers and accents . This will be a fun one to add on to. All right, so we have four different ways of making backgrounds and adding texture into our work. Have fun painting. I cannot wait to see your work
8. Lesson 6: Masking & Resist: welcome to lessen. Six. This is all about masking and using negative space. Masking fluid comes in a couple of forms. You can get it straight as a liquid where use a brush with it or you can get this kind, which is a fine line masking. It's got a very thin point to at the end. Essentially, you can make very thin detail marks and lines. So I've chosen this green and blue background that we did earlier. And because these little cotton puff areas looks so fluffy that they be perfect Dandy Lion bluffs and I'm gonna take the masking fluid and just go around and make a little round shape and also make a few lines sticking out to show of the texture and also pulled down a few lines for the stem. And I'm also going to include a few of the dandelion seeds just flying off into the wind. So once this is dry, we can paint over it and do a darker layer. So I'm using this clay tool. It's got a rubber, and you can also use an old brush. I would not use your high quality watercolor brushes for this. So, using the other kind of masking fluid. I'm just dipping in the clay tool and making little blades of grass. The other thing you can use is a white oil crown. Oil, pastels, anything waxy. You can use it as a resist. So when you put this down and then you put watercolor near it or over it, it will resist the watercolor. It's a great way to also add highlights into the areas that you may have lost some of that white paper. So at a few highlights onto my dandelion puffs. All right, so going back and now taping off the sides again because although masking fluid has dried, so I am ready for painting. So with watercolors, I'm adding another layer of imagining this to be more of a night time seen so a lot of dark blues and some purples and darkening up the bottom green as well. Well, I'm just being careful to stay outside of the dandelion puffs, since they did not mask the entire center and then where the grass is. I can go right over it because the blades of grass are protected with e mask. Include area. If you do get paint where you don't want to, just quickly what it with just clean water and use your paper towel to dab off the extra paint. Once your doctor layers air on, you want to leave that to dry 100% and when it's fully dry, we can remove the masking fluid. This is called a rubber pickup. It can just pick up the masking fluid pretty easily. It kind of sticks to it, so it's very easy to just remove. When I pull it off, you can see the masked off areas now. If you don't have masking fluid, you can also do this method. I left this one a little bit less defined, so you would just use the detail of brush and some water color pain and define the edges, just going in really slowly and going in by hand and making those sharp edges. This method will take you a little bit longer because you're not. You don't have the masking fluid protecting the light areas, but it's also a little bit easier to get more detailed in this method to So I'm building out some of the puff edges and putting in some little lines and some shadows right in between the stems and the grass area. It's also good to do a combination of techniques until you figure out what you like best and what works for the style that you want to achieve. Okay, and now I'm just gonna add in a little bit of shadows into the underside of the dandelion puffs. He's in a little bit of a blue and then, with clean water in a paper towel, blending out some of those edges you now just adding a little bit of a darker blue. Once it's all dry, you can take off the painter tape, so I'm using a white acrylic paint to clean up some of these edges. Some of that paint had pulled underneath my tape. This is a really easy fix, and you can later on as many layers as you need to get that opaque white and clean up your edges. Here's a close up of all that texture and fun, layering and all the masking that we did hope you enjoyed those techniques, and I'll see you in the next video
9. Lesson 7: Opaque Accents: welcome to lessen seven all about opaque accent. So let's go over some supplies. First, we have some ink pens here. You want to make sure that whatever you use is waterproof and double check that it's not water resistant and it actually is waterproof. So some of my favorite brands are the Tom Bo brand. They make a good waterproof ink pens. This is what the pen tip looks like. The other one is this main gacaca. A don't have to say that exactly. I think it's a Japanese brand, and they make a really good pen as well. And its waterproofing. And then my all time favorites are, of course, the micron pens. Thes air really popular. You'll find a lot of artists used these, and they come in different sizes and styles, and they just work really great with any other type of paint in material. The other thing I have is a gold acrylic paint and a white acrylic paint. Either my general go twos. However, recently I have just discovered this brand, the co pick opaque white, and it is so amazing you can re what it so once it dries, you can activate it again with water and reuse it again. It works almost like a really thick Inc. I find it to have better coverage than the regular white acrylic paints that I have. Also, this is a white ink pen. This is a jelly roll, like a gel pen, and a lot of people use this in their work, and I find it occasionally useful, though it's not my go to, but just want to mention it in case you like it. All right, let's get started. So of watercolor paper pains, brushes Mike Jar Jane. We will start with some loose laurels, so beginning with some pinkish pain and putting in the beginning of a rose and then rinsing my brush and then making more translucent pedals outwards and then putting in a little abstract to lip shape, then getting a little bit more paint and making a second rose and doing the same thing with the translucent pedals while it's still wet and dropping in a few extra colors to brighten up the florals and then using some purple to put in some pedals here. And then I'm rinsing my rush and making more translucent marks going outward in the mixing up some green and I'm adding in all the leaves and maybe a few branches varying up the shades of green can be a really fun effect. So I've got both a bluish leaf and a greenish leaf as well, and then, for some contrast in shapes a lot in some abstract Berries. He really liked this blue color with loose florals like this. It's fun to just keep the marks really fresh and maybe do one or two strokes and then keep it as is. All right, so that's our first layer. We're gonna let that dry fully, and then we will work with some inks on top. Okay, so now that is dry. I'm going to go in with my ink pen and add a few fund lines and details. This is always a little bit scary to do because I always get concerned. I might mess up my watercolors, but just remember to go slow and take breaks and come back to your work with fresh eyes. If you're not sure that you want to continue adding another layer, this is really just like doodling. Using the same botanical and floral elements were just adding them in, but this time with a pen. So when you're putting these in, just think about adding a variety of lines and shapes and styles. So some small, some big, some inked in and some really delicate and fine lines. The variety is what will give you that nice visual interest. Fun to also add some outline roses, just a bunch of circular wiggly lines. All right, so using that kopek white paint, I'm going in and adding a few highlights to some of the florals and along each of leaves. Wherever you want to add a highlight, you can add this. Okay, so for the last step, I'm going to use that gold acrylic paint and add in a few more accents. So I'm not going to go too far with this because there is a lot going on already. Home's gonna have a few more delicate lines with the detail brush and then call it done. All right, there we go so you can see the gold shining in the light and all the layers of the loose watercolors and the ink details on top. I hope you have so much fun with this one. There are so many options to play around with and materials to test out, and I can't wait to see your work
10. Lesson 8: Watercolor Pencils: welcome to Lessen. Eight Today will be using some watercolor pencils in addition to painting some cherry blossoms. So for references, take a quick look at the pedals. Each flower has five petals, and they grow in clusters. They're usually pinkish from a light pink to a dark pink, and then they also have little buds that are roundish and they all grow along a branch pretty tightly close to the bridge. So starting with some light pink paint, I'll just show you a little close up. I'm putting in the five pedals for this one blossom and keeping it really translucent to start. And then, while it's still wet, I'm dropping in a darker pink right into the center and just let that fan out and bleed on its own. Okay, so just want to show you that one close up, and then we're gonna add in a little branch with some darker brown paint. In just using a smaller brush, go behind the flour and make some thin lines and some thick lines and leave room for the rest of the cherry blossoms. So what? That larger brush putting in some more just like we did that 1st 1 high pedals. If you get too much paint, you can rinse your brush and pick up some of that extra water and light it up and then drop in the darker centers so continuing to add to the branch, putting little buds in smaller flowers, some facing sideways. Keep working your way up the branch and having a few lighter and a few more saturated with color, so you get that nice contrast. Cherry blossoms are pretty quick to paint because they're quite a simple flower and there a lot of fun because you can use that wet on wet technique. I love watching the color blends happen when I drop in the darker colors, right. So now I've got a little bit of a purple brown blue bit darker, and I'm going over a few of the areas and where the buds connect to the flower. I'm letting it pull up a little bit and having a little darker spot right there just to show the new growth on that part of the branch. All right, so mixing up a little green, we can start putting in a few leaves, just small ones, and I have ah little yellow green with a touch of purple in it to tone it down. Okay, once all the leaves, Aaron Well, let this first layer dry completely and then come back with watercolor pencils. Alright, so I've got a yellow and a green on a detailed brush. There are a lot of ways to do this. What I like to do is first wet that area with my brush and then go in lightly with the watercolor pencil and just add in a little bit of color and then go back in with that brush with just clean water and blend out some of those edges. I find that when you wet that area with water first, then it's a lot easier to control. How much of the watercolor pencil you actually want on there? If you did it dry, it would be harder, I think, to take away the color. So this is a fun way to add a little more warms onto my pedals, so just that little bit of yellow on just a few of the pedals is a nice way to bring some more color into the final piece, and I'm gonna go in with the green on some of the leaves and it's gonna be really subtle. I just want to add a few edges. All right. After that has dried fully. We can go in and add the centers to the flowers. This is just the final detail, a few sin lines and some dots. I'm also going to go in and darken up a few of the bud areas right below the bud, where they connect to the stem, just making those a little darker as a final touch. And there you go, Well done.
11. Final Project 2 - Floral Frame: welcome to the final project. We're making floral frames. So to start off, I have my painter's tape and I'm gonna be eyeballing a rectangle. You can do any shape you like, And if you feel more comfortable measuring this out with a ruler and getting straight edges , you go ahead and do that. I'm just roughly eyeballing it for now and then to clean up the little edges. I'm using an Exacto knife. This is a craft knife and just lightly scoring that tape and then just pulling away the extra sides. All right, Once it's down and the way you like it, we can start painting. So we're going to build on the previous lessons. We really focused on different techniques and textures and using different materials in our floral illustrations. So I'll be using those lessons in this final project, starting with a background wash and building up my texture, I'm using a light blue and a little purple and then also using a paper towel to soften up edges and take away any excess paint or water. Hurray! For some reason, the video in between these two steps got corrupted and I wasn't able to load it, so I'll cover these branches and Berries a little bit later on in this video. All right, so adding to the layers using a light blue, I'm using the large brush and making big soft leaves. And then once that layer is dry, I'm going back in with a smaller brush and doing some smaller leaves. These air more fern like All right, So to add to my color palette, I'm using a little yellow. It's a little bit of a toned down yellow. I added a tiny bit of purple into that yellows just to bring down that brightness, and it's almost like a mustard or lemon yellow mix. And then just putting those all the way around and using that as a fun accent and then just a warm it up a little bit more matting a tiny bit of orange along the bottoms of each of these, just where the gods and stems meat. Okay, so now I wanted to make a full frame. I decided to go for it and just do a full page frame. So I've decided to tape down all the edges, since it will be a very what paper and it might start curling. I'm going to take general for edges and then fill out my frame design. All right, so doing the same thing as before, using a little water and paint and making a soft background first and then building layers from there. Alright, some adding a few more details on the first leaves that are now fully dry. And now that the background is dry, I can go in and add my soft please and small leaves and mustard yellow accents into the rest of the page. I'm using a detail brush for these branches and small Berries, right? So using the masking fluid, the one with a thin line I'm going to drop in some small little flower shapes. And then when it's dry, I can use watercolors over this area. Okay, now going in and adding the mustard yellow accents and then with a darker purple heading in the fern leaves and also adding a little bit of definition into the larger leaves, Okay, and then I decided at in a few Berries. These are like a rose reddish color and just dotting them on and having them be kind of a loose, abstract shape, all right now that the masking fluid has fully dried. I'm going back over those areas the little flowers and making circles so that when I pull off that masking fluid, you'll see a white flower in the middle. All right, so now I'm gonna use some of the pen illustration techniques that we covered, just adding in a few areas with my waterproof ink, Okay, and then using a wider brush pin, I'm gonna use that to make the little leaves and foliage right. Time to remove that painter's tape and just take it off gently. And as a final touch, matting gold paint along some of the edges with the little leaves and also making a little gold edging on the inside frame and then removing that masking fluid and we're done. There you go. I hope you had a lot of fun using all the techniques that we covered to make your floral illustration frame. Remember to post your work, and I can't wait to see it
12. Final Thoughts & Wrap Up: Congratulations. You finish the class and I'm so excited to see what you create. Remember to post your work. I would love to see it. And if you have any comments or feedback, let me know. Also, you can follow me on skill share. Whenever I post new content, you will be the first to know. And if you post Instagram remember to tag me that way. I won't miss it. Thanks for joining me. See you in the next class.
Neesha @PaperWand Studio, Watercolor | Illustration Studio
