Loose Watercolor Roses | Atmospheric Florals | How to paint Roses

1. Intro: Hi friends. Then here I'm from coaching CT in Malaysia. Coaching means cat in our language. So here I'm with my cat named cookie. I'm a self-taught artist, meaning I do not have any professional art training. I learned from watching lots of art tutorial videos at books, and also took a few online classes to further my skills. I practice in my own little space called watercolor Studio and create this cute logo for my brand. In this class, you will learn to paint loose watercolor roses with an atmospheric low. And here are some examples. We are not looking for perfection. In this class. We want to have our painting telling only half the story or the other half of mystery. This class is for all levels. Not to worry if you're a beginner, as I have an easy step-by-step technique video for you to follow. You will also learn how to paint roses in the foreground and also in the background. I will also get you to plan your final painting for your project by planning thumbnail sketches and a whole video on the final piece of art. Besides, roses are flowers, a lot can be achieved through these techniques. And here are some samples I have done before. I'm so glad that I can share my self-love skills with you. So I will see you in class real soon. 2. Project: A class project always sound a little intimidating, but don't be discouraged by the word itself. As it can be fun if we know exactly what we are going to do for the project. So let me walk you through the steps from start to finish. Once you have watched and learned the techniques of lifting and softening of colors throughout the lessons. Then plan your project by doing a few thumbnail sketches. Choose the one that you are most comfortable with or one that is workable for you. It can be a couple of roses are a bunch of roses. But be sure to include techniques that you have learned from the lessons. And not to forget to one or two background roses and leaves that are out-of-focus. Be proud of your project no matter how it turns out to be, as we are not going for perfection. This is a loose watercolor painting and not a realistic painting that replicates the photo. Once your project is done, to upload it in the project gallery, to share it with fellow students. There you can also comment on each other's work. And to me that's how we can improve our work further. 3. Tools and Materials: Tools and materials. Before we begin, let's look at what we need to use in the class. Watercolor paper. Paper must be at least 300 GSM, hundred and 40 pounds, as we are going to pen with quite a lot of water. Preferrable, a cold press paper with textured surface, also try to get a bright white color instead of natural white, which is most of the time a bit creamy in color. Doesn't matter if your paper is made of cotton or cellulose fibers. I will be using this pepper for the technique videos. And I will use this sketch book for the full Ross painting towards the end of the class. The pepper in this sketchbook is watercolor paper of 300 years or 140 pounds. Cellulose fibers with texture and white color. I quite like the size of this sketch book and to my opinion, is quite a good size for this class. If you have a bigger paper like this one, you can always cut it into half. Next is brushes. We're going to use three round brushes of different sizes. The smallest one is size to medium size. And the last one is size ten. Sizes of the two bigger brushes used will depend on how big your rows is going to be. The smallest brush is for details. Besides a round brush, you can also use regal brush like this one. Or even a small Chinese calligraphy brush is also excellent for the job. Next is pellet. Advisable to use white pellet so it's easier to see the colors, especially if you are mixing two or more colors together. It can be plastic or ceramic. Difference is that plastic will get, then over time. Next water, you can use one or two jars of water. One for washing your brush and another for using clean water or kitchen towel for wiping your brush. Watercolors. I have a set of Winsor and Newton here with colors that I most frequently used. I will show you what colors we are going to use in the class. Here's the color chart for the whole set. Out of this set, we are only going to use a few colors, like the Permanent Rose, Winsor, green set green, ultramarine blue, or violet. He's okay if you want to pin your rows in a different color instead of permanent rose, choose your own color like yellow, peach. After all, we are going to learn techniques later. I will show you a small color swatch, which I have done earlier to show you the colors that I will be using in the entire class. The first color at the top is permanent rose, which are used for the rows. Next is cadmium orange, which I didn't end up using, but I use it in my other class over in my YouTube channel. It's a deep and bright orange and it's beautiful for sunflowers and sunsets. Here's the roster I have painted in. My other class is still painter, was permanent rose for the main color. And then I applied some orange for the sunshine. Next is green and sap green for the leaves and stems. See the line dividing the swatches on the left is showing saturated colors. In the right is diluted colors. I will show you some techniques used in this class in the next lesson. 4. Techniques: Here are some simple watercolor techniques that we're going to use in our class. First technique is lifting. Lifting is basically removing or erasing of pen. It can be used for highlighting or simply wanting a certain area to be lighter. It can be done with a brush, tissue, or a sponge. Let's begin painting a shape onto the paper. Make sure is even n with no puddles. To check, lift up your paper at an angle. And you can see if your pen is even. And without any puddles. Let it dry for a bit, making sure it's not too dry or else it would be quite difficult to live. Now wash your brush clean and wipe off the excess water. We want the brush to be just them. Place your **** brush on one area, press it down and lift it up, then wipe the paint off your brush with your rent. Repeat this process until you are satisfied with the results. If there's too much paint on your brush, you can always watch it clean and repeat the process again. It's all up to what you are looking for in your painting. You can leave a dot, a line, or any shape you like is quite easy to do and it gets easier with more practice. So I advice you to practice on scrap paper if you are applying this technique in any of your paintings. Next is glazing or layering. What the color is quite a transparent medium. It moves so when it is dry after your painting. So sometimes to get more depth in your painting, glazing is done in layers after each layer is dry in order to achieve what you aim for. It can be layers of same color or different colors. Let's spend two sections as evenly as possible and let them dry completely. While waiting for them to dry. Let's move to the next technique, softening ages. Sometimes we do not want to have hot lines or edges in our watercolor painting. But of course at times hotlines are useful, especially if we are painting branches or edges of objects. Using a small size brush, pen, a line, and the curve. Wash your brush clean and use clean water so soft and these lines before they are completely dry. Sometimes, if it gets too dry, just use your brush to rub it in. Notice I'm brushing the water on the line on both sides. Sometimes you need to brush on one side. Let me show you another example. Now I will draw another line to show another example. A clean brush with water and blend on one site only to blow out the edges. Let's try another one. Draw a wider line this time and soften it with water. Try to bring the color and blend into the water as much as possible. You can apply this technique to so much more in anything other than just flowers, example of full moon animal eyes and much, much more. Now let's get back to the glazing. This two colors are completely dry. Now, Let's paint a second layer of the same color on the top part. Only this way you can see the difference between the top and the bottom path. Since the top path has two layers, the value is much inductor compared to the bottom one, which is lighter as it has only one layer of color. As for the second example here, I'm going to pin two different colors onto the origin color. I'm going to pen ultra marine blue on the top part and Indian yellow down below, leaving just a small gap in the middle showing the original color. And Indian yellow is something like an orangey yellow, which is beautiful for sunset and autumn leaves. Here I'm showing you the color of Indian yellow on its own, and also the original color, non rows on its own. Next technique is color movement. I'm showing you two ways that we are going to use in our painting. First one is movement of one color with water. And second one is movement of two or more colors together. Moving off of color into what is to create an atmospheric loop. Or just creating a lighter value for highlights, or maybe for some background color. All four neighboring objects that are nearby. Pick one color and Penn any ship onto the paper. Then with a wet brush, draw the color out with the water from your brush as Sean. Then tilt the paper to let the water flows and brings the color along with its movement. You can always use your brush to encourage the flow to the direction that you want. And you can always add more water to have a lighter effect and flows more. If too much water is added. Don't worry, you can just blend it out with tissue or sponge. This is how it looks. But you can still add more water if you want. Since I have space down here. So I add another drop of water and see how it goes. You can continue putting water and see how the results. Sometimes it can surprise you of how beautiful it can turn out. Now let's do the second example. This is the movement between two or more colors together. Start by painting one color on the paper. Then drop a second color, just barely touching the first color. And let it spread. Lift up your paper at an angle and let the color flows down a stream of water and let the color flows into the water. You can see down here is a mixture of red and blue. Some purplish tone. Now turn your paper around and let the blue flows into the red color. See how the color mixed together. You can move your paper around and let the colors blend together. You can add another color and see how it goes. With all these techniques. Now you are ready to plan your roses. So I'll see you in class later to pen some roses. 5. Facing Front Rose: Before we begin, let's look at the photo of a rose here. I have drawn markings on their roles with yellow and blue colors. Yellow shows the lighter value which indicates highlights, while the blue shows darker values, which indicates shadows, and also gradation of the colors. Get writing your paper color and brush. I'm using a size ten brush as I'm going to paint a bigger area. Wet your brush and wipe off the excess water. Then sock your brush with paint as much as possible. Since we are painting a front-facing roles. First, we need to pan the whole size in some sort of a circular shape. And try to paint the outer part in an irregular pattern. As what I'm doing here. Doesn't matter if some part is darker or lighter at this stage. It's also okay if you have some white spots here and there, you can opt to cover them up or just leave them as highlights. Wash your brush clean and wipe off excess water to have a DEM brush for doing lifting next. Now press your brush down firmly and as if to make a curve which will look more like a petal. Now, do another lifting next to the first one. Repeat one more time for more lifting. Continue lifting and creating more petals for your rows. Remember to wash your brush if it has collected too much pen or you wouldn't get the lifting done properly. Also, if your pen is getting dry, wet your brush and lethal. And when you press your brush down to lift the color with your brush and lethal in the pen will be lifted up. Once you are done in satisfied with the numbers of petals you have created, let it dry completely before we proceed to the next stage. Is completely dry now, and we are ready for the next stage. Get ready on number eight or medium brush and the tool, your smallest brush, mix the same color as you use before with less water. This time, because we want the color to be more darker in saturated. Now wet your smallest brush with water and wipe off the excess water. Now pick up some color with your brush. Pen, the center of the rose with a small spot of color. Then touch the edge a little with your bigger wet brush. With your small brush, draw a small curve, and that will be your very first petal. Then use your bigger brush to blow out the insight of what you have just drawn. Look for petals that you have lifted up and continue the process of painting darker ships with small brush and blurring with your bigger wet brush. I'm just showing you the idea of how to pan around the lifted areas to form visible petals. Not that you're lifted areas will not be the same as mine, but the idea is the same. So I advise you to watch how and what I'm doing throughout the whole process. First, before painting along with me. Once you've got the idea, you can start painting along while you repeat the video as a guide. Notice that even though I have a photo reference, I do not copy exactly how many or how the petals look like in the photo. I refer to the reference photo only as a guide for things like the shadow, the value, or the light of the flower. Since this is a flower with many petals, I don't have to know how many I need to Penn. But if I'm painting an orchid flower that has specific number of petals, then I will have to stick to the idea of how the reference photo is. I will let you watch the process to the end at three times speed with a little background music. It's all done now, and let's move to the next stage. We can now try to soften some of the outer edges by using a wet brush in ascribing movement. Also try to draw the color out into the wet area. You can also do this before you paint the petals where the outer edges are still damp. So it's much easier to soften the edges and also bringing the color out. If your roles is to try like mine here, you can always drop a little pen into the wet area and blend. This gives your roles are more at most four loop. It's done. And next we're going to do a rose in profile and also a rose, but in the next video. 6. Profile Rose and Rosebud: In this lesson, we are going to paint a rose in profile and also arose. In the last video. Prepare all the things you need before you start with your biggest brush, a number ten, roughly pen a few strokes like Saul. Remember that you don't have to copy exactly as a reference photo is just the us the guidance. Don't worry if it doesn't look like a rose at the moment, as this is just the initial stage of shaping. What's your brush clean? When you are done, you can opt to use the same number ten, or you can change it to a smaller number. It it all depends on how large or how small is your roles. Like before wet your brush with clean water and start lifting to create petals. If the pen is too dry, just use a little water. If it's too wet, you will create blooms are shown, but it's okay as we can always go back and remove it later. Some consider blooms or mistake in the painting. But for me sometimes it can look beautiful, especially for backgrounds, all feathers, for birds and so on. Continue creating more petals. I have to do a little rubbing here with my brush as my pen is a bit too dry now. You can always do the same if your pen dries up to, but be gentle. Or sometimes if you're up to heart, you might live up the fibers of the pepper. Continue till you have enough petals, and once you are done, it dries completely. Get your number eight and number two brush ready with them and wipe off the excess water. Then your small brush with Penn and Penn, a small half circle facing down as shown. Blow out with water using your bigger width brush. My brush is too wet here, so it forms a paddle in the center. So to solve the problem, I'm using a smaller, clean and damp brush to pick up that puddle. Now let's paint our first petal with a small drop of color at the center and a small curve below. Then so often with water and let it dry first. While waiting for it to dry less pen a different site first. You can always draw a couple of petal lines. First to estimate the placement of the petals. Then blur them out with water. Don't draw too many or else they get dry and will form a duck hot lines which are difficult to remove letter. The process is basically same as what we have done for the front facing roles in the last lesson. Draw with a pen and soften with water. I'm painting the petals out of my own imagination rather than following the reference photo. This way, I can pan more freely without thinking too much of how the petals should look like or where they are facing. While painting, I forgot that this area is still quite wet. See how the color spreads into the wet area. So I need to sop up the powder again and let it dry once more. Let's pan the upper petal first. Above this petal is the background. So I try not to paint outside of the petal. This brush will always be clean and wet with water only if there's too much paint on it. Watch it first before using. As you can see, that the petals shown in the profile Ross is almost like showing it an angle. So it's more likely to be a horizontal position as compared to a front-facing roles, which is more curvy and roundish. Continue painting and creating more petals. Following my guidance. At this point, the process is repeating. So I'm speeding up the video a lethal and let you watch with a little background music. Most of the petals are done. So let's get back to the center part which is dry now. Painless small spot right at the center and the curve below it spreading the color out more as this area is under shift. Then so often with water using your bigger brush. I'm lifting an area here for this vector as I want this part of the petal to be in the light. Now using a wet, clean brush, try to soften some outer edges and add the lighter color like before. So it will seem to be colored sipping outwards from the petals and add more water. And now it's done. And lastly, let's paint a rose. But using your bigger brush, either an eight or ten pen, a vertical oval shape, which resembles a rose bud. Adjust the size to your liking. Since a rose bud is quite always darker than a full bloom roles or edit a little blue on top. Try to blend the two colors together, especially for the upper part. Once the colors are blended, back the Ross or direct color that you are using to get that darker shade. While the raw spot is still. Then start painting the sepal of the row spot with sap green with your brush slightly touching the butt. A sentence set to let it dry a bit and move greens. Then use a clean, damp brush, lift some pens off from both sides of the rows, but it's done. In the next lesson. We are going to paint a branch of roses in one painting. 7. Leaves and Background Roses: In the last two videos, we have learned through Penn roses in the foreground, which often focus. Now we're going to paint roses that are in the background, which are blurry and out-of-focus. Here is one that I have painted earlier, just to show you how it looks like in watercolor, we are going to use the small and medium-sized brush for this exercise. Your small brush with your rose color. We will start with the front-facing rows first. So just make a few random strokes for the center of the rose. The strokes don't have to be in a certain position as we are going to blur them out later with water. Get your medium brush ready and wet it with water. Then blow the strokes from outside into the center. You can opt to leave a lethal of the center and touch it all depends on how other focus you want your roast to be. Here you can see the comparison of the first and the second row, one with less calendar center and the other more color in the center. As for the rows in profile pen, the brush strokes as what I'm doing here in sort of a slanting way. Also at a center too. Once you are done with all the strokes, then soft and wastewater. Same like before. You can leave a bit of the center color or you can partially blow it out. If you want it to be more blurry, you can move water around the rows. As four leaves. I'm mixing green and sap green together. Or you can have your own mix of grains, depending on your reference photo. Not your size eight brush with the greens and pen, a leaf shape as what I did here. Don't pan, You're live in a perfect leaf shape as this is not a realistic painting, is supposed to be loose and having an atmospheric look. I'll do a couple more ships for you to see. Don't be too concerned of how the shapes are at this time. I promised you that they will look stunning when they are added to your roses. With the tip of your brush, you can add a little detail at the edge of the leaf if you prefer. Some leaves of roses do have some dark color on them, especially red roses. So to do that, I just painted some strokes with the rose color while my leaves are still dimmed and below them out with some water. That's it for this lesson. And I will see you in the next lesson where we'll plan how to paint the whole picture. 8. Thumbnail Planning: Thumbnail sketches are small and simplified drawings, which helps a lot in planning your painting. They will give you a rough idea to plasmon of the Roses and leaves. On the whole. You can also see the balance in your picture and that's conversation. Now let's look at the first thumbnail. I'm sketching tool facing front row says one profile roles in one rose bud. Once you have your roses, then you can add in the stem, the branches, and the leaves. The main focus of your painting, other roses. So once you have the number of roses that you wanted, then the others are just add ons to create a balanced picture. No matter how simple or complex your picture is going to be, it's important to create balance. Now for the second one, the second thumbnail here, I have one facing front rows, one profile roles in one row span is easier to sketch the flowers first, then the leafs. Thumbnail sketch number three. You can also make it more interesting like this one, the branch growing downwards with older roses facing down. Here. I have one facing front rows to profile roses and a rose bud. Sometimes you don't even have to sketch in older leaves. You can add in the leaves after you have painted all your roses. Who share what you choose, try a few options. Sometimes you might even pen in more leaves than what you have sketch. But nevertheless remember to keep in mind the composition of your picture. Thumbnail sketch number for this sketch is the simplest if you want to start simple, just one facing front, rows and rows. But perhaps after you have painted the rows, you can add in one or two out of focus roses. Now that you have all your sketches in front of you, chose any one or you can create your own. And I will see you in the next lesson where we will append the whole picture. 9. Transferring Sketch: I'm going to show you two easy ways to transfer your thumbnail sketch to your paper or sketchbook. The first way is rule of thirds. In rule of thirds, we normally draw two vertical and horizontal lines to divide the sketch into nine boxes are shown in the picture number one. But since our sketch or painting is quite small, it's enough just to draw one line on each side instead of two. Hence, dividing our sketch into four boxes, only. Draw two lines crossing each other as shown here on your sketch. Then do the same onto your paper. So now we have the center where the lines cross each other. You can start sketching with the guidance of the lines. As for me, I like to start from the center and sketch out what's wrong day. Once it's done, sit back and check on your sketch. If your pencil sketches to dark like mine here, you can always erase lightly using a soft or kneadable eraser. Don't over Erase tool. You can see your sketch. Another way is by tracing. You can use a carbon paper under the sketch to trace it over to your sketch book directly. But I don't usually do this. Or sometimes carbon paper can be very messy and will leave black traces onto your paper. So a better way is to cut out the main subject of your sketch, which are the roses here. You don't have to cut out the others, like the leaves and the stems. This is what it looks like. After the roses are cut out. I will put a color backing so you can see how it looks. All the dark blue colors here are the positions of neurosis. Now place this cut out sketch onto your watercolor paper or sketchbook. Then sketch out the outline of the cut-out shapes with a pencil. Once you remove the cut-out sketch, you can see the roses shapes on your watercolor paper or sketchbook. Then it's time to roughly sketch in all the stems and leaves according to your cutout sketch. And there you have your sketch and ready to be painted in the next lesson. 10. Roses : Complete Painting: Before we start painting, prepare the color of your roles. We're going to need a saturated color for the first layer. Do a pen test on a piece of paper first to check the consistency of your color. Once you have the consistency that u1, you can now start your painting. Start painting your first rose from what you have learned from the technique video. We begin with the shape of a facing front rows, leaving some white spaces we've seen for highlights. Wash your brush clean and we're going to do lifting of colors. Remember to live with COVID movements so your petals will look more natural. Continue creating your petals and do remember to wash your brush when it's too saturated with pain. Us what the profile roles? Remember the pen, the petals in a slanting horizontal way. Then immediately pen the half opened roles besides eight, pen in a triangular shape. Back to the profile roles. And lift some colors off with a damp, clean brush and soften the top with water. Leave off some colors from the half open roles to soften the top edges. Pin two strokes curving inward each other. The blue or violet to darken it. Prepare a mix of green and sap green together. Start drawing stems using the green mixes. I'm still using size brush here, but you can always change to your size two brush if you feel the bigger brush is a bit too clumsy for a delicate subject lines, stems. Since the rows but is still damp. I painted the sepal saw the greens will blend into the rose color. It looks nice when the greens seeped into the rose color. Penn sepals for the other two roses above the rows, but there are no samples for the facing front rows. Stay behind the roles. So continue with the stems. Start drawing branches for the leaves. Following the guide of the technique video, pen the leaves in sort of a jagged motion. Also try to leave some white spaces as highlights. Made it dry before we go to the next step. Now, it's dry and it's time to paint some details for the petals. Remember that your petals are most probably different from mine, but those techniques always stay the same. So I will fast-forward a lethal and let you wash with some background music. I added some more saturated rose color to the Rossbach as it dries a little too light. As normally, rose buds are usually darker in color compared to an open two rows. Now I'm painting an out-of-focus rose bud above here, starting with a saturated color, then blurring it out with a very wet brush and carefully still leaving a bit of center and touch. Not to worry if your center is smeared as you can, always come back after it's dried and in the center again. Now load your brush with rose color and draw thin strokes on the leaves and branches. Then soft done with water before it dries. If your stems and leaves look a little like mine here at a little more greens, or you can add only sap green to brighten them up. Since the rose bud on top is an out-of-focus one, I'm adding an out-of-focus branch of leaves on its stem. Now, adding a blurry sepal to this out-of-focus rose bud here. Now I'm adding a very, very diluted rose color over here in the background to suggest a distance roles. In another out-of-focus rows down here. It's almost impossible to stop when adding out-of-focus flowers. So be watchful not to overdo it or else you will overcrowd the whole painting. One way to know when to stop is to stand back and look at your painting from a distance like an arms length away. This gives you a better view of the whole painting. At the same time, you can also have a better view in seeing which part needs a little bit more attention. Lastly, to endure painting, sign your name and thus it. I hope you enjoy the whole process as much as I enjoy painting it for you. 11. Recap: If you have this last video of the lessons, it means that you have finished watching my class. So congratulations. I hope from the lessons you have learned a short, simple and easy watercolor techniques to paint roses. I also hope you will continue to practice these simple exercises. As I do believe, that practice makes progress not perfect. So don't look for perfection in your painting. With a thumbnail sketch in your head is always easier to plan your final painting for your project. Have a few thumbnails to choose from. Please do post your project in the project section below this video. May it be only a rose or whole bouquet of roses? If you post it on Instagram, do tag me at all. You what the color. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure for me to be able to compile this class for you hope to see you in future classes to come.