Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Hannah Victoria, and I am a watercolor artist, author and teacher. In this sculpture class, I'm going to teach you how to paint loose watercolor florals. Now I know that there's a few classes out there that teach the subject matter, but I thought it would be interesting to share my personal approach to this specific style with you. I think you're going to have a lot of fun, it's a very loose class. There's no drawing involved, stress-free and I think you're going to make some very beautiful flowers here. We're going to do an entire test, keep trying out different flowers and then once you are finished with that floral sheet, we're going to start painting. We're going to actually add on a different project to that where we're going to do some cutouts and make special gifts with your watercolor florals. I'm really excited to see what you make with this class and I can't wait to see what you upload to the project gallery.
2. Supplies: These are the supplies you will need for this floral watercolor class. You will need watercolor paper to begin with. I'm using Canson cold press paper in 9 by 10 inches, any size will work. If you decide to use hot press or rough paper, your watercolor fluidity might change a little bit, but that is totally up to you. We all just have to experiment with your own paper and see how that feels for you and what your personal preferences. I personally like to use a cold press in my day to day watercolor work, and then you will also need some water color paints. This is my pen sets [inaudible] , and you can also add in some different types of watercolors. You can add in tubes or liquids. For example, I have a few little drops of some liquid watercolor here because it's really vibrant, specifically the Dr. Ph Martin's. I sometimes have little drops around my pen set to add some extra vibrancy there, and then you will also need some watercolor brushes. I'm using round brushes with a pointy tip, the size is really up to you. I like to paint a little bit smaller, so my brushes are not too big. They are usually like, for example, this here is a four. I think this is faded by now, but I think it is probably like an eight. These are a little bit smaller, like zeros and ones. This is a liner brush. So basically any size of round and pointy watercolor brushes will work, you need some paper to dab your paint on, you will also obviously need some water, and then here is a little fun extra that you can do with this class. I personally love adding some metallic details into my watercolor paintings, specifically these watercolor flora's, and these are some really fun handmade watercolors by an Etsy seller. Actually her name is Hydro color. I discovered these because at every one of my watercolor or magic jungle retreats, we have little gifts for all of our students and we give free little dot cards with these samples and each time I order one, I also get a few of these for myself, so I have quite a collection now they are really fun. There are more brands out there of gold paint or metallic watercolors per lessons, iridescence, etc. But this is the brand that I have with me right now. So these are really fun to add little tiny details at the end of our watercolor flowers. So these are definitely not necessary, you don't need to have these to take these class, but I'm going to use them for details and I just wanted to see for you to see what they look like. So you are not wondering what I'm using and the brand is Hydro colors. She is an Etsy seller. They sell out pretty fast, but there is tons of different brands out there in different types of metallic paint. So don't get too hung up on having this specific brand or anything to add the details. Again, this is just optional. Just wanted to share with you before I get started with the painting, and that is pretty much it. That's what you are going to need for this class, and you can also use some scissors might come in handy for final project. That is something that is optional that you can do with your paints, and that is pretty much it. We are ready to get started.
3. Floral Shapes 1: We're ready to start this watercolor loose floral class, and we're basically going to dive just straight into painting a full page of watercolor florals and once we're done with this, we are going to actually create something really fun out of this full page of florals. But for now, we're going to worry about actually painting all of these shapes which are super fun to make and we don't need to use our pencil at all. It's all free form. It's very loose and very fun and these are very enjoyable to paint and I'm going to be using my watercolor pen set here. These are just my day-to-day paints, if you've taken my other classes, you know the particular way that I like to paint with watercolors is by adding a few touches of different paints onto my pen set. It all mixes together and I have these really fun organic colors and one of the colors that I am really enjoying lately is mahogany by Dr. Ph.Martin's. I really like this tone because it's like this super deep almost eggplant color and it's a very warm violet. I'm going to add just a little touch of that on here to my palette and I will go crazy with that color, but I'll come back to it and maybe mix it with the rest of my pen to add some vibrancy into there and I have this deep red by Daniel Smith and I'm just going to add a little bit here and then I have a little bit of indigo, also by Daniel Smith. I'm a huge fan of indigo. I really like deep blues and I feel like it gives like a certain aspect of sophistication to artwork. I'm just going to dab a little bit of there, of that there and another color that I really like to use is ogre, specifically Kaufman, Winsor, and Newton ogre. I've tried pretty much every brand and I always keep coming back to this. There's just something about the consistency that I really love and as you begin to collect your favorite paints, you'll have probably favorites of your own. Right now I'm not too concerned with the color palette, but I just instinctively going to go with a bit deeper tone instead of white vibrant tones. I'm going to be using a lot of indigo and ogres and maybe some deeper reds for my floral seer. They also will pop up on the screen a lot so you'll be able to see what these look like and I have some two waters here. This water is a bit dirty or I've been painting with it for a bit and then here I have some clean water and we're ready to get started. I have a couple of brushes here. A few brushes actually what I'm going to be using and they are most of whom are round brushes with a pointy tip except this one here is a liner brush. This one may help us for maybe some smaller stands for leaves and I have this brush. It's a small filibuster brush and it's a flat brush with the rounded tip and they're not super important. You can take this class just by having any round brush with a pointy tip. But I didn't want it to show you that sometimes just the shape of your brushes, what's going to really change the aspect of your flower. That's just a little extra there and I'm going to leave the brushes to this side where I'll be using them throughout the class. I am going to get started here. I think the first flower that I'm going to show you how to paint is a small rose like a tight rope rosebud and I don't consider these flowers to have any specific names to them. I'm not basing them on any real type of flower and it's just very instinctive and fun and it's not meant to be taken too serious. I'm just mixing a few. This area here is full of purples. I'm just playing around with some reds and some purples and finding a color that I want to use here and just like a side note, usually when I mix my colors, you'll see that I'm not necessarily using just one color directly from the pan set or the tube. I always like to mix it up and create my own color combinations and I also like to test out a little bit. In fact, I have some scrap paper here where I can test out colors to the side. This is always a good idea to have for this tight rose. Am really fun way to paint roses is to have them be in a trio. I have three little roses and together and basically you're going to start by just painting these long half-moon shapes and you are going to press down on your brush as you go around the rosebud and continue to add a little bit more water each time you approach the edge of the rose so that your center will be more opaque and you will slowly get more transparent colors as you go to the edge then just observe the way that I'm doing it here. There's really not much to add except that the way that you're holding your brush and the pressure that you're applying onto your brush. This is a very simple flower to paint and they're very sweet and very beautiful and I'll do this three times so you can really get the hang of it. I'll go in and I'll grab the same color but I'm going to add in a little bit of this eggplant that I mixed, like eggplant purple and I'll do it again. You start out with a couple of small little half-moon shapes that go around in a circle like this. Again, just to make this super clear, you start out at a 90 degree angle like this with a tip and then press down as you go around the circular shape. Then we've got a little bit more water and continue to press down and go all around. You don't go completely around each time. You also try to be mindful of not starting and ending each section the exact same spot. By this point I'm just grabbing pure water. The pigment that's going around is just the excess paint that I have left over on my brush. Then maybe I'll grab this same purple and add maybe some, a little bit of indigo that I have on this side, which is dark in that up a little bit to make like a deep purple here. If you notice, I have the original color that I used and I slowly turn it into a darker purples. The colors are going to go well with each other. Again, a little doing the center here. Three little crescent moons. Then going around and adding some more water. By the final strokes, the petals will get more transparent as go around. Now I have a beautiful little rose bud trio here. The next thing that you're going to want to do is while you're paint is still relatively wet, I think I want to use some deeper greens here. Maybe even make sense of indigo with your greens, going with this deeper, darker palette here. I have a complete class on watercolor leaves. If you want to go deep into practicing those, but I'm just going to do some basics here. Painting leaves is extremely simple. I'm just working with my brush here, starting off at a 90-degree angle and then applying more pressure towards the end. Then if you're at the tip of your brush is fine enough, you can go in and with very little pressure just using the tip of your brush go in. Suggested that the leaves here. Then I might do some shorter leaves here. I like to leave a little area in between both sides of the leaf. You can even go in with a thinner liner brush to paint the little stems here if you want super but fine lines. I think I'll add the same flowers that I have here over to this side. Now, I'm just going to flip over the paper so it's easier to work on this side. This time I picked up a little extra green that I had here. That's totally fine to when working with watercolors, I think it's really important to not get too hung up on trying to replicate a specific color that you're using. It's very much about just trusting the way your color mixes and it's all going to blend in very organically. Then I'm going to fill this site and with some larger leaves similar to these. I'm painting outside of my paper because I actually want to fill the entire paper up and you'll see why as we move forward. This was our first style of watercolor florals. This is a very romantic type of flower. So little tight Rose Bud. It gets very sweet and very beautiful. There is also another way to paint roses, which I'll demonstrate down here. It's actually pretty similar, but the way that you hold your brush is quite different. I'm actually going to use a bit of a larger brush. I used a number one brush with these. For this side, I am going to use a larger brush. This is a number four round brush.
4. Floral Shapes 2: For these larger rosebuds, I'm going to pick this very deep red as a base here. I'm just going to place a little here and it's going to naturally start to mix in with the purples that I had here. That's totally fine. For this one, I am starting off with a little bit of a, it's actually pretty concentrated. It starts out the same where we're doing these little buds, these little half moons in a circular motion like this very simple shape. We have this very simple shape to start out with. It's just a couple of a few little half moons ago around each other. Then, we're actually going to clean our brush completely. We're going to grab some freshwater. I'm grabbing freshwater, there's absolutely no pain here. But what you're going to do is, you are going to hold your brush to the side like this. The tip of your brush is going to touch a little bit of this paint. It's going to bleed into each other. You are going to hold your brush sideways like this and you're actually going to be creating larger petals. You can even go in and add a little bit extra paint in the middle, so it gets more saturated here. Or you can even add a little bit of a different color. At some point, if you want to darken it up in certain areas, you can go into the edges where each petal stars in, add a little extra paint there so it's still bleeds in while it's still wet. This specific type of roses, I feel like it looks like when the pedals are opened up. I'm just adding a lot more extra water here. These are a little bit more delicate and these are a bit more bold. I'm going to grab some of this burnt orange and add it into this red to get a little bit of a warmer tone for the next one. I'm going to add one more down here in the same method. Little trio of roses will go down here, grabbing some clear water and pressing down like this. The biggest difference here is the way that you hold your brush. Sometimes it actually helps to move your paper around so that your hand is more comfortable with these movements. I'll add one more rose down here. Same thing. We are doing the little crescent moons. Then, cleaning the brush off and just adding some plain water. The tip will touch your shape, then you will go around. This type of rose is a lot more loose and open and this one is a little bit more tight and delicate. While the paint is still wet, I really want to go ahead and add in some large flowers here. I'm going to medial add them in some Ochre paint and with a little bit of green. But I really want to take advantage of the wet paint here so that we can also have a little bit of bleeding action into the roses, which is very beautiful as well. I'm going around on each edge and just adding some initial flowers here, I mean, some initial leaves. Then something you can do to decorate around your leaves is actually add in a couple of very light shapes. So instead of some extra leaves here, we're going to just paint some circles all around here. I want the lines here to be pretty thin. So I'm going to go in with my [inaudible] liner brush and just draw really thin lines that go up into these berries. I'm going to flip my paper because my hand will be a lot more comfortable. For me it's easier to pull towards the end that just like that. It's all about finding the way that you feel comfortable with your brush and holding your brush to make thin lines. Then if you feel like you're missing a few, maybe go in and add a few extra little lines here so that you can add even more berries. So this is your second type of rows, and now we're going to move on to a different type of flower, and it's a flower that I really enjoy painting. I think what I'll do is paint it a couple of different times using a different brush so you can see the difference. I'm going to grab some indigo paint here and work up a little bit of fresh paint. What you're going to do is paint tiny little dots to create a circle like the pollen in the center of the flower. So once you have this, you can go in with a larger brush, and I'm going in with just pure water, and I'm just letting the tip touch a little bit. I'm just letting the tip touch a little bit and then I'm pulling water out like that. I am just letting the tip touch a little bit and then pulling the water out. I'm not really forming any specific type of petal or anything. I'm just very loosely, letting the water do its thing here. That will be a very soft and loose flower. I'll do a similar one right next it, but using a different brush. Same idea. I'm going in with this. This is a number one size brush, but you can also have larger little dots. I'll show you how to do that one too. I'm going in with some water and actually I'm going to add a little tiny bit of ocher, really transparent ocher onto my brush. Again, just pulling the water out like that not really worrying about a specific shape or anything. It's almost like a poppy. So these are very loose flowers. Then I'm going to do one more and I'll actually paint. I'm actually going to use a little bit of black paint for this one. I'll make the dots a little bit bigger this time, and a little bit more spread out just so you see different versions of this. It's all the same principle really. So this time I'm just going to also just grab some water, but make a point of trying a little bit harder to keep a certain shape going on. So these are meant to be larger petals like this. I'm going to start flipping my paper around. And there's a little more that we can do to these flowers once that they've dried. We just have to wait for the first layer to dry and then we can add in some extra details to make it look extra special. While it is still wet, I'm going to add some simple leaves around or I can actually even do a different type of leaf, which is like a home style leaf. Something that's really important to keep in mind here is that you actually do have to be pretty quick because you really want to work with your wet paint to have everything blend in really nicely. The next type of floral that I'm going to teach you how to paint is a very simple daisy. I'm going to grab some pinks here, some of this mahogany and you can also do the little pollen texture like this in the center, like this. But this time your petals are going to be different. You're going to be a lot more mindful of spreading out an individual petal. I'm going to grab some clear water and with the tip of my brush, I'm going to pull the paint out and apply pressure and then lift it up. You're going to do that all around one by one of this this daisy shape. You can also feel free to mix in a little bit of a different color at some point just to have some diversity and tone. Like here, the trick here is to try to not make your petals too straight, make them a little bit bouncy if that makes any sense. You can also go in and add an extra one, if you feel like you're missing a little bit more. I'm rounding this one out a little bit. You can go either way here on the direction and see I'm demonstrating here. I'm going sort of up to down, which is a good way to do it too. I'm sort of filling these a little bit more. You're still working with just blending in the wet paint but just being a little bit more mindful of the shape. You can add a little bit extra paint in the center here and you can even play around with a shape here or I'll do a simpler one next. But here, I feel like, I want to sort of make it, go in with my smaller brush while it's still wet and kind of play around here and just give it some fun texture. You see, you can have a shape like that or you can have a lot more of like a cleaner version of this. Again, I'm going to grab some of this and grab a little bit of orange and I'll do another version down here. I'll do it here. We're going in small little dots and I'm actually going to go in with my thinner brush here. I'm going out to in like this. Right now, I'm using just water. Maybe I'll add a little bit of ocher here just to play with the color a little bit. I'm just making one of those bouquet flowers with a lot of petals in here. I'm going to go in with a darker color here and just make the center a little bit more dominant. Then you can always just grab and do a dot of paint. This is pretty thick ocher paint. Then you can be very mindful of the tip here. I am actually using the paint this time. Right now everything sort of bled into each other, the colors and that's fine. This is not the final way that it's going to look. I am actually going to go in later on and add some extra details in here. This is going to be kind of like our base. But the petals in this one are quite different from the other ones. I'm just going to add some leaves around it and then here, we might do a couple of peonies to finish off the watercolor flower page.
5. Floral Shapes 3: Finally, in this area that I have here, I'm going to show you how I paint these flowers that are opening like a peony or maybe even poppy flower that's opening up a little bit. There's a couple of different ways to do this. The first that I like is, I'm going to use my number one brush here and I'm grabbing a bit of concentrated paint. I am doing a shape with thin lines like this, similar to what we did with the rows, but this time it's all in more of a horizontal shape like this. Then I'm going to grab a little bit of a larger brush and just grab some water. I'm actually going to move my paper around like this. I have a steady hand and basically just going down and out like this, describing a little bit of extra water on the top so it blurs out a little bit. While this is still wet, you can even go in with a slightly different color and maybe even do some thin lines like this. A little bit of detail that's wet on wet. Adding a little bit of extra color to this top part. It didn't bleed as much as I would have liked it do. I think the paint might have been a little too dry by the time I got to it, but it's also good for this to happen so that you can see what you can do if you feel that the painting didn't bleed enough. Here, while it's still wet, I'm still able to add a little bit more in here. This flower is meant to be like a bud that's going this way. You can even play around with the stem of the flower, going out like this. Add some petals that are going out from the bottom of the flower like that. This is a really nice flower to do. If it was a rose, you can add a little bit of thorns, while it's still wet, just playing around. Then a similar version of this that you can do is actually, I'm going to grab my number one brush here, and I'm going to grab some dark purples. I'm going do a texture like this, squiggly line texture, and I'm going to go in with a larger brush. Let me grab some of this pink that I have here, and same thing, making these larger puddles and go all around here. There's tons of different versions of flowers that you can think of here. I mean, it's just really fun to use your imagination and play around with this. It's just no pressure and loosen. A big component here is actually letting water color do its thing with its own personal texture. What I'm going to show you here in this small section that we have left is something similar to lavender, and I'm going to grab slowly white paint here, and it is cold blue with a little bit of violet. Just draw the line here. Just add tiny ovals all around. Keep in mind, this was just a first layer. I'm going go back in here and now add all the details, which is going to make everything look quite different. This entire page is actually super saturated. Usually, you would leave a lot of air between all of your flowers, but for our final project, we are doing something that requires the entire page to be full of flowers. We're actually going to end up painting all these tiny little spaces that are left over with some extra leaves. Once I finished doing this, I'm just going to go back in and by that time, the first layer will have dried and I'll go in and walk you through all the small details that we're going to do, to make all these flowers really have some personality. I finally filled up my entire page with watercolor florals with style. Personally, I always like to add some final details, even when it's this very loose style. There's a couple of things that I wanted to do to all these flowers. I'm going to start by adding a little bit of white ink. If you've taken any of my other classes, you know that this is my favorite brand of white ink. I really love Copic. I just really love the texture. I'm just going to grab a little bit of this and put it into this mixing dish. Usually when I work with ink like this, I like to keep it in a separate area like this so, it doesn't get mixed up with my watercolors. I'm just going to grab a little bit of freshwater, and water this down a little bit and make it easy to blend. I'm going to go for these daisies, especially these for me they look like they're still in initial stage, there's a lot more that I can do here. I'm going to start by painting some lines within each petal. I'm actually going to go in with my white ink around the paper, to see where I can add some fine details like this. Then something else I like to do is actually, I have these metallic watercolors. These are the brand hydro color. I like to grab just a little bit of gold is a really good one, for example. I think I'm going to add some of this gold paint over this ocher paint here. This is going to make the flowers look really cool and just pop in. Don't feel like you have to add this step. The flowers look really cool on their own already. But I like to do these little details, to make them look extra special, especially since I won't be scanning. These watercolors are meant to be observed in person. So I am going to continue to go around my paper and I'll let the camera rolling. I'll leave a camera rolling, so that you can see the small details. I'm going to be adding mostly its lines and dots pretty much, but they're placed in specific areas and this will make everything look really special. Finally filled up my entire page with watercolor florals and along the way I demonstrated a few different styles. These are the ones that I use most often. It really is up to you whatever colors you want to use. For example, you can do a larger version of this and create a big sunflower or there's all different types of things you can do. Just use your imagination here. As you noticed at the very end, I like to add a couple of details with my lighter brush, and in this case, I use a little bit of white ink to give this little effect around these flowers and a little bit of lines for the daisy flowers. Just some small details that I think that look really fun and help your paintings pop and I use a little bit of bold watercolor, metallic watercolor and a couple of these, just for some fun shine and they look really cool in person. This concludes the lesson where I actually teach and demonstrate the watercolor florals. Then in the next video we are actually going to make something special with these. There is a specific reason why I filled the entire paper up with florals. Hold tight and join me in the next video for our final project.
6. Final Project: Now that my watercolor florals have dried completely, I'm actually going to do a really fun project with these. The reason I filled it up so tightly is because I actually want to create some name cards with this texture finally. What I'm going to do is actually flip the paper around and cut it, and just for reference, I have another little practice sheet that I did here before creating these with you. So if I run out of space here, I'm going to go ahead and use these same florals that I did here, I just had done them before. A little bit messier, but it looks really cool when it's all cut up into little shapes. So basically, I am just going to turn this paper around and I actually did this for my wedding guests and they were really happy with all these and they're just such a fun gift for your guests. I have to make 11 of these name cards because I am hosting a brunch party with all my childhood friends. I want to make some really cool name place tags for them. So the first time I did these, I actually did rectangles. So I just cut the back of my sheet into rectangles, but I thought it would look really cool as little ovals and circles. So I'm just tracing out different shapes back here and you can cut out anything you want. You can even do moons or stars or hearts, and it looks quite beautiful. Hearts would be so cool. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, I'll prolly have room for eight, and then I'll do the rest on the back of this one. So basically right now just I'm tracing with a pencil and then I'm going to go on with my scissors and cut the shapes up and I'll flip them over and see what they look like. I finished cutting out my oval-shaped floral textures here and I'm really happy with how they look so far. This could be a really good Easter activity if you did it in an all soft pastel colors, that will look super beautiful. What I'm going to do, is I'm going to write each of my friends names with some black ink and I'm just going to do with some of my personal lettering style here on each one of them. I have some black ink here, you could also use like gold paint or a darker color of watercolor. It all depends on what your backgrounds look like. But I have the itch to use some black ink right now. So I'm going to do that. I want it to look a little bit deep and dark. So basically I'm going to put all these to the side and I'm going to start painting everyone's names individually, just with some lettering. I am going to let the camera roll here so you can watch me do this and if, you want to learn more about lettering, I have a full class on watercolor lettering, specifically developing your own lettering style. I really like to have everything be quite personalized and unique. Basically what I am doing is just using my personal cursive handwriting and making it more embellished. So I'm just using some black India ink here and I have my number 1 round brush here and I'm just lathering up a little bit of black ink, adding some water to make it smoother. I'm just going to go all of these one by one and paint all of my friends names. Just a quick tip on lettering is, if you're doing cursive style, whenever your stroke goes down, you go a little bit thicker and when it goes up you go a little bit thinner. That's a super basic watercolor or lettering trick in general. Again, the reason that I'm not going to dive too deep into lettering right now is because I have a full class on that and I'm really trying hard to make these classes a little bit shorter because most of my classes are four hours long. So hopefully you will have taken most of my foundational classes by now and you'll be ready to do a more complex project like this. So I'm just going to go ahead and continue painting all the names here. I'll let the camera roll so you can see what it looks like and then I'll Just be back with you for some final commentary. Our final project is done. I did all my friends' names and I will put all of these on their places and it'll just make the whole experience so much cooler. One of the things that I really like to share, especially what I wrote about in my first book, 'Creative Watercolor,' was that sometimes we paint these beautiful watercolor florals, or we even do test sheets like we did here, where we were just really trying out and experimenting. I don't know about you, but sometimes you just end up with a bunch of watercolors that are quite beautiful, but you don't really know what to do with them. This is a really good idea of something that you can make as a gift with all of your watercolor experiments, especially with florals, it looks really beautiful and I hope that you make a version of your own. You don't necessarily have to do lettering if you're not into that, but I do recommend at least practicing all of these florals and posting it to the project gallery. I love seeing everything that you make and I do also want to share one last thing with you, it's concerning inspiration because I do get this question quite a lot. I'm going to just move these to the side really quickly to share with you something from my second book, 'Color Harmony for Artists.' The entire book is basically about how to gain inspiration using color. There's actually a section right here that's all about botanic goals. Using photography as a base and color is really helpful to come up with new ideas. For example, here, this is a really cool color palette that is inspired by this photo and then I just loosely went in, and, I didn't try to copy the exact same image here or the exact same type of flower, in fact, these look a little bit more like lavenders, but it's just a fun activity to do, if you are looking for inspiration basically, like these succulents. The entire book is a method that I've developed to help you gain new ideas through color. This little rustic farmhouse here, even though I'm not painting, it's not a copy of this picture, it's an extraction of the color palette of this picture here, and then I use these loose florals as inspiration for an entire mood and even a little bit of shapes. These are just like the daisies that we did in our practice. Tropical brights here, totally different color palette, romantic bouquets. The exact same type of floral will look really different depending on the color palette that you're using. I just wanted to make a point of that because sometimes it's really exciting to just use every single color that's in your Panza and limiting your color palette to specific tones is super powerful and important. Basically, this one is a similar flower to what we have here, but it looks totally different because of the deep color palette and I just wanted to give you that little extra. That's it, I just wanted to show you a cool little inspiration thing as a bonus here. I hope you enjoyed this class. I am super excited to see all your work and I'll see you next time.
Ana Victoria Calderón, Artist
