Magnolia Bloom in Watercolors

1. Intro: Hello, and welcome. My name is Emily, and I'm an artist and instructor based in Madison, Wisconsin. In this tutorial, we'll look at how to make our magnolia branch pop off the page by first creating an out of focus background and then adding lots of wet on dry details to our main flower and branch. You'll have access to a tracing template included in this tutorial, as well as some color reference photos and printout instructions that will teach this tutorial step by step. So grab your watercolor supplies, and let's get started. 2. Prep and masking fluid: Alright, so to get started with this tutorial, I already printed off the template onto my eight by ten inch watercolor paper. For this class, I'm using arches, cold pressed paper. I do suggest that you use something that's 100% cotton because we are going to be wetting the entire background, and we need the paper to stay wet for as long as we can. I've taped it on all four sides onto a plastic corrugated board so that it stays in place. And now I'm using Windsor and Newton masking fluid to mask my magnolia bloom petals. Now, you notice that I'm using an old brush. If you also have an old brush at home, you can use an old brush for your masking fluid. You can also use a fine tip applicator for this process. Just know that the fine tip applicators for masking fluid do take a little bit longer to dry. One suggestion that I have as you are painting your masking fluid onto the magnolia bloom is to make sure that you have a thick enough layer. Sometimes beginners will try to conserve their materials and so they don't use quite as much as necessary. I do definitely suggest with masking fluid that you have a nice thick layer, and having that nice thick layer is going to protect your paper. It's going to make it easier to take it off of your paper after you paint. And then it also is going to make sure that your edges are nice and hard edges, and you don't have any sort of texture. Now, you'll notice that I am painting around the edges of my magnolia petals first. On the smallest of these petals, I will go in and I'll fill in those petals. However, to conserve a little bit of masking fluid, I don't need to fill in the entirety of those large petals. I'm also not masking the branch. The reason I'm not masking the branch is because my background color is going to be a light color, and my brown of my branch can sit nicely on top of that blue background. If you're choosing to paint a darker background for your magnolia bloom, then maybe you should mask your branch. But if you're going to keep it slightly lighter, just like I am, there's really no need to mask that brown. 3. Wet on wet background: Okay, so now that I have my masking fluid around the edges of my magnolia flower, I'm going to wet my background. Now, as I'm wetting my background, I'm going to use as clean of water as I can get, so it looks like my brush is a little tainted from the past color that I used. That's okay. So I'm gonna try my best to go around these edges, but I definitely want to try to avoid wetting the inside of the flower here. I added masking fluid just on the edges, mainly because I didn't want to spend time masking the whole flour. However, if you have time to mask the whole flower at home, you definitely can. And then I am going to what all over the stem area. Because my stem is brown, I don't need to worry about a lighter colored background affecting that brown color. But I do need to worry about the background color affecting the magnolia petals. And I forgot that I didn't mask this section, so I'm just gonna lift up that water quickly before it dries. I'm kind of bending my head here, I know you can't see it in the video, but I'm bending it to the side, just to check on all of these areas and make sure I did actually wet all the way up to the edge of the magnolia flower and that I have kind of an even wetness throughout the whole page. So I'm going back to where I just started, making sure that it's an even wetness that there's no pulling anywhere. I don't want pulling, but I just want to make sure that it's still evenly wet. Alright, now I'm ready for my color. So I'm going to start with a blue. This is a thalo blue. I am going to mix kind of a lighter shade of blue. I'll start kind of at the tip tops here. And I do want to have a little bit darker blue towards the top, but I also want this blue to just kind of peek through. I'm going to leave a little bit of sections of the paper open. So my background, I don't want really dark and intense of a color. I want it to be kind of a lighter color. You can always choose if you would like this background to be a little bit darker. You're more than welcome to have it be a different color than mine. You can also use different tones of blue. So if you want instead a Cerlean blue, you can also use a cerlan blue instead. So now that I'm moving kind of quickly, I'm making sure to not add any extra water to my brush. If I add any extra water to my brush, it's going to be too wet, and then it's gonna push all the pigment away. So now that I have some blues where I want them, now I can wet my brush. I'm going to go in with some pinks. Now, this brush has a very, very large capacity for water. So I'm going to switch to smaller brush. This is a round size six. I'll grab some magenta here. Now, the most important thing to think about is that I don't want this brush to be soaking wet, so I might tap it on the side of my palette. And then I'm just going to test out how wet these blooms are going to be. So I want the bloom to still expand, but I don't want it to expand too much. That's the key. So if I lay down my brush and I start to see it moving too much, I'll tap my brush, and that'll release some of the liquid. And then I can go in and I can add my color where I want it. Now, here I'm just trying to add a little bit of this magenta kind of popping out in certain spots. This is going to act like the blurred magnolia flowers behind the larger flower here. So I can have it Really I'm need to clean my brush. It's getting a little too purply. So I'm going to just have it kind of popping and peeking out. I'm still working a little quickly here. I might add a little bit larger. I'm kind of trying to work where I left those open spaces, just because if I mix too much with the blue in the background, it's gonna turn into a purple. I clean my brush, dried it off, and now I can use a dry brush to kind of smooth some of those edges or lighten some of those pinks if they got a little bit too dark. So I can kind of play around here. Make them a little bit more circular if I want to just kind of make it look a little bit more out of focus. I can use my dry brush as long as the paper is still wet. Now there is another color that I want to add here, so I'm going to work on the next color before it dries, and this next color is this opera pink. So just like last time I do have to wet my brush, but I want to make sure that it's not super wet, so I'm tapping it on my paper towel if it's too much there. I'm just going to add in this opera pink in certain sections. If I want just a little bit brighter of a pink, Now, here you can add different colors if you would like. So if you're wanting to add any sort of yellows, just be cautious of mixing with the blues. I'm already starting to see that my paper is starting to dry just slightly. And so, before I let it dry completely, I'm going to take a peek and just make sure that I've got these colors where I want them. If you were wanting to add any sort of browns for any additional branches that are coming up, you would want to add those browns at the very very end. So, here I have a pyomintite genuine mixed with just a little bit of indigo. Once again, I have to make sure that it's really nice and dry because I really want this brown to stay where I put it. So if I wanted to add any sort of branches coming in and across anywhere, this is the stage that I would do this, where the paper is starting to dry a little bit. It's still wet. But I have a little bit more control because as you can see, it's starting to dry a little bit down here in the corner. It doesn't have as much of a shine. Up here in this upper corner, it is a little bit wetter. So if I bring my brown up in this area, it might spread just a little bit more. So to be a little bit more cautious in that area. I don't want this brown to be overly intense. And so I'm not I'm I'm not mixing too dark of a color. It will dissipate a little bit because of the wetness of the paper. And I just want these little hints. So I'm not pressing down very hard. I'm gonna work kind of more in this section that's a little bit more dry. I just kind of want the hint that there's something there. If it gets too dark and all, I can dry my brush. Use a dry brush to kind of lift off where it got a little too dark. Alright, now, I already am noticing that this is starting to get a little bit too dry to work. So this, I'm not going to add anything else in this area. I definitely don't want to add any more liquid or otherwise, I'm going to see blooms happening. If there was an area that I did want to work at, you can see this area here is still a little wet. So if I had wanted to add a little bit more color here or work on adding a few branches, I can still continue to work in this area. But you are going to have to be in control of your paper and notice which sections you can still work in and which ones are a little bit too dry where you might need to stop. Alright, and then before I let this totally dry, I'm going to take a peek at the petals in the center. I do want to make sure that I don't have any color on this edge where I had left off the masking fluid. It seems like it's pretty good, though. Alright, and so now I'm going to let the background completely dry here before I peel off my masking fluid and then start working on the flower itself. 4. First Layer of flowers, wet on dry: Okay, so I've let this dry a little bit. So I'm going to take the masking fluid off. You can either use your hand if you've got clean hands, or you can use a kneaded eraser or even a gum eraser to pull up the masking fluid. All right. So now that we have all of our masking fluid taken off, now we can start working on the petals of our magnolia flower. So before I start, I'm going to just mix up a little light pink. So here I'm using opera pink. And then I can drop in any of my magenta here, my quinocraton magenta, if I would like. I'm going to start out with this very, very translucent opera pink. I'll start out with one of the petals on the edges just because I don't want to start with a focal point just in case I make a mistake. And as I'm painting this first layer of color, I'm thinking about leaving a little tiny edge of white paper along the edge of this petal. And what that little tiny white edge of paper is going to do is going to help to highlight this flower so that it'll feel like it's really popping off of the page. So I'm going to start with this first layer. My first layer of all my flowers are going to be wet on wet. So I'm starting, of course, with this lightest layer first. And then I can come in and I can grab any pigment directly from my pan, and I can drop in pigment directly from my pan wherever I want. Wherever I notice those darker colors popping up. Now, this is just to kind of get a sense of where these colors are going. Uh, I'm gonna take a little bit more of that opera pink. Remember that I do not want this color to be the pigment that I choose. I do not want to be mixing it with water. If I mix it with water, then I'm gonna have this pigment running all across this wet area. And I don't want it running across the whole wet area. I want it to kind of stay where I put it. So I need to have a less less wet. Now I'm drying my brush and I'm lifting that pigment where it moved too much. All right. And this is all I'm going to do with that first wet on wet layer. Now that that first layer went on what is done, I'm going to continue working on each of my petals using the reference photo. I'm not really focused on any of the shadows yet. I'm just looking at kind of the tone of the petal itself. And then any of the shadows I can add afterwards. Now, I do want to make sure that I'm skipping and jumping around so that I'm not touching too wet petal segments. But I'm going to continue this video. I might speed it up in certain sections just so it doesn't take forever to paint. But you'll be able to see where I am where I'm painting this wet on wet and where I'm leaving a little bit of section of white of the paper. Basically, anywhere that I'm seeing really, really white light tones, I'm going to try to leave that the white of the paper. So right here on this petal here, I'm noticing that there is a bit of a white, very, very white highlight there. I'm still trying to leave a really little sliver of white around these petals around just the edge of the petal. And then I will drop in my color. And then lastly, just on the bottom portion of this little magnolia blossom, I'm going to add a little bit of green to allow that green to kind of seep in with that pink along the top. Then some of these little pedal like sections that are kind of in the background here, instead of using that really light pink underneath for my first layer, I'm using a quinacridone magenta that's a little bit darker, a little bit more opaque, and then I'm going to add a little bit of green into that section just so that it's a little bit darker. This is this section of these petals where it attaches to the stem and so it's going to look a lot darker there and so you're adding this green that I'll also be using on the stem area is going to kind of combine both the stem and the leaves so that there's a little bit of continuity throughout the painting. 5. First layer branch and leaf: So I do need to let this green stem dry a little bit. So while I'm letting everything dry, I'm going to take a peek at my branch and the little bud here. So I'm going to do the same thing with this little bud. The top is going to be a little bit of pink and then green along the base. And then I am going to mix a brown. So my brown that I'm going to use, I have this piaanteGenuine, that has some more reddish tones to the brown. And so I do like using this for my branches, and I used that same in the background. So I'm mixing kind of a lighter opacity. For the branch here. And then, same thing. I'll drop in some darker pigment, both darker brown, but then also some greens to kind of tie and everything. I might also drop in a little bit of magenta. Along this branch just to kind of tie everything together. But I do want to do this well it's wet. So my first layer of color here, I'll add, and then I'll drop in my darker colors. Once I have that figured out, so now that I've got that light brown, I'll start dropping in some darker brown. My highlights, of course, are coming from above, so I need my shadows or my darker colors along the bottom here. So I'll be adding a little bit of this darker brown along the base of my branch here. Of course, this is all wet on wet. So any sort of other markings from this area we'll add once it's dry. Here I picked up a little bit of that quinacridone magenta. So I might drop in a little of that quinacridone magenta kind of where it's a little bit darker on these branches. Just to kind of tie in the branch. And then I'll also grab a little bit of my green. This is an undersea green, so it does have some browns to it, as well. And I'll do the same thing. I'll drop in a little bit of greens while it's still wet. Now, I'm not dropping in these greens everywhere. So if you notice, I'm just kind of here and there, I'm dispersing it a little bit. I just want the hint of this green here. I don't really need it all over the branch. Grab a little bit more brown, go up the sides here. Alright, and now I can let that dry and wait for my second layer of color. And before I do that, I'm gonna just take a peek and see if I need to lift anywhere before it dries if it got a little bit too dark in any section. Alright, and then now I can take a peek at this little green branch. So I've got some sap green here. And same thing I did on my petals. I'm going to paint a single layer of wet on dry. So wet on dry paper. If there are any areas that I need to keep highlighted, I will leave the white of the paper. So kind of here where the fold of the leaf is. I might try leaving just a little hint of white of the paper and that upper fold. The underneath side, of course, is going to be darker. And then the color that I'm going to drop in, I will drop in a little of that undersea green that I used in the branch just to give it a little bit more of a shadow. I do want to only drop it in where the shadow is sitting, though. So I'm going to correct some of those shadows. If those colors ran a little bit, I'm correcting it with a dry brush. Here, I can also drop in any sort of complimentary colors. If I want this green to be a little bit darker. Since it's in the shadow, I can add a little magenta. Once again, it's gonna tie in that magenta color from the magnolia flower. I'm just gonna tie it into the green of the leaf there. 6. Adding Shadows part 1: Alright, so now I'm ready for my second layer of color. Some of the petals are still drying. The branch is still drying. The leaf is still drying. But I do know that I can start working on the shadows of some of my petals. I'm working on shadows and then any hard edges. So this shadow color that I want to use, I'm going to mix up here. I'm going to rotate this a little bit so you can see. So for shadow colors, I often use indigo as a shadow color. Indigo works great for shadows. You can also use any sort of gray tone I am going to see what it looks like just adding a little bit of purple into that indigo, so it's got a little bit more of a purple tone to it. And I'm going to keep it really nice and light in color, so it's going to be very transparent. It's very watered down. I can always test that color on a little test strip that I have close to my workspace just to check and see if that seems like a good shadow color. I think it looks pretty good, but, of course, I'm gonna test it on one of my petals. That's a little further away from my painting. Now, I'm going to try to work on the shadow that's a little bit more apparent at first. And so I've got this really nice shadow that's running down the edge of this leaf here or this petal here. Kind of got out of the lines. Dab it and start over again. And then in order to blend out this shadow, I can dry my brush a little bit and take that dry damp brush and just kind of go along that edge and blend that edge out. If I need it a little bit darker in any sort of section, I can take either the indigo or the purple directly from my pan. And while it's wet, I can just kind of drop it in in any of these sections if I need it a little darker, I am going to kind of wait and see how that looks before I make it any darker. And here I'm just going to take a peek at what other sort of little shadows I might want to add. So I am noticing there's a little hint of shadow along this leaf here, kind of along the center. So I added the shadow, and then I touched my paper towel and kind of soaked up some of that purple because it got a little too dark for me. There's another shadow that's running along the base of this here, and it kind of curves along. Now, the one thing about this shadow is that it has a lot of magenta in it. So now that I've added that shadow color, I'm going to come back in and add a little magenta that it's nice and wet. And we'll see if I like that. It kind of looks a little too separate of shadow colors. I'm gonna see what it might look like adding a little bit of purple. I think I like it a little bit better with that purple kind of connects everything. So if you are noticing that you are wanting to kind of deviate a little bit from your reference photo, that's okay. Reference photos are there for us to use, but you also, as the artist can make little corrections, um, changes to make your overall piece look a little bit more uniform. Now, for this petal here, we've got some really strong shadows along this curved edge of the petal here. And so I want to keep these edges really hard. I don't want to blend these edges out because it is a very hard shadow edge. And then the shadow edge kind of runs along this edge as well, this left side. But then this is where I can kind of start to blend my shadow a little bit once I have it in place. So I've got my color down first. I keep adding a little bit more shadow down to the base here. Of course, it's going to be a little bit more shadow, since it's being overlapped by these other leaves here. These other petals. Now I can kind of blend out this edge a little bit with a dry brush. So that's the edge that I kind of want to blend out a little bit with my dry brush. Color correct a little bit, if I need to drop in a little bit darker. Kind of went over the edge here. Alright, now, we'll move on. It doesn't look like there's too much of shadow on this one, but I know that it's behind this other petal, so I'm going to add a little bit of a shadow here. I'm gonna wait for the shadow on this largest petal, so I'm gonna add a little bit of a shadow here to this one. Yeah, no, the shadow on this leaf that's kind of flipped over. This also has a very pronounced shadow on it. So if it's very pronounced, I want to make sure that I'm not blending my edges too much. However, it does look like this edge of this shadow is blended out just a little bit, so I'm going to use my damp brush to blend this edge slightly. The other edges here, I'm going to keep nice and hard. Mix just a little bit more of that shadow color. And I'm ready for the shadow on the largest flower here, on the largest petal. So, the biggest section of this petal that I notice that has a shadow is there's this underside of this petal here that is in shadow. So I'm gonna try my best to kind of guide that shadow. Magnolia flowers. They do tend to have kind of all these little, like, bent edges here. T in the section, use my dry brush to soften that shadow there. This shadow is quite prominent there. And then it comes down and it seems to have this shadow around almost this, like, bulb, this bulge here. So I'm going to try my best to keep this little bulge from that little shadow there. And then I'm going to soften some of these edges. And I might use a little of this shadow color to kind of help draw some veins through these petals. If I'm finding I need a little extra details of these little veins that are coming out. I can either use this shadow color or I can go back in and I can use a more of a magenta. Oh 7. Shadows part 2: And then, lastly, I do like to keep the consistency with shadows. So with this same shadow color. Obviously, this is a little darker. It's not quite as light as I had it for the petals. But I'm going to use a slightly darker shadow color to come in here and add a little shadow to the branch itself. There is this quite prominent shadow on the tree branch. And so I do want to highlight that shadow here. There's quite a dark shadow that's quite prominent along this leaf here. And then I might use this shadow color to add a few details along the branch. So I'm still trying to keep these edges very hard. So I'm not going to blend out these edges, particularly on the branch here, because my branch is going to have some very hard edges because of the quality of the branch here. So I'm going to try to keep this color along the darkest edge here along the bottom. But then I'll also try to bring some of these little notches up from the base here. I'm using my reference photo as kind of a guide here, but I'm kind of also loosely following it. I want to give myself a little bit of grace so that I can add details that look like they make sense without having without having to completely follow the reference photo. So now I'm just going back in. Just connecting some of these shadows here. Some of these. The shadows got a little too dark. Then I'm taking a peek. I think I want a little bit more pronounced of a shadow in some of these areas, so I can use this darker shadow color that I used here for the branches, I can also add some darker shadows here. Sometimes you'll notice that I kind of test things out to see how they look. And then if I don't like how it looks, I've got my paper towel right by me that I can lift it up. If I'm not liking how it's looking or if I think it looks awkward, where I placed it. Alright. Now I'm going to let those shadows dry for a little bit. And then I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna color correct. So I'm going to take a peek at where I want some more of these pinks to be a little bit brighter or if I need to add a little bit more green or if I'm happy with how it looks as it's dried, I can leave it like that. 8. Glazing Color: Alright, so now that my shadows are dry and the petals are dry, I can go back in, and I can always glaze over each of these petals and add a little bit more color just to deepen the color a little bit. And I can do it two ways. I can either wet the whole the whole petal and then drop in my color, or I can mix a little transparent color and then glaze wherever I want that color to be a little bit more intense and then drop in a little bit of color where I want it. Now, the one thing that you have to keep in mind if you're not going to if you are not going to wet the entire petal is that this edge here, you are going to have to blend out. And so I like to blend that out with I wash my brush. I kind of dry it on my paper towel, and then I soak up where that edge is and then I'll just go back and kind of adjust tones. So that gives it a little bit more of that color along the edge there. And I could do the same thing with this opera pink. If I had wanted it to be a little bit more of a pinky color, a little bit deeper of a pink, I can go back. I can add a little bit more of these little veins here. So at this stage, basically, I'm just color correcting. I'm adding color two areas. I can also glaze a little bit with some yellow to kind of brighten up. So I notice in my reference photo that there's a little bit of yellow tone at the end of the petal here. And so I can just glaze a little bit of yellow. Along the edge here just to kind of brighten it up a little bit, and to kind of give it a little bit of a sun kissed look. So I glazed a little bit of that yellow. I washed my brush, dried it. And once again, on those edges that I want to blend, I'll use that dry brush to blend it out, and then I can go back in. Once those edges are fixed a little bit, I can drop it in a little bit more yellow, or if I don't like that, I can pull it back up. So I can kind of adjust things as I go. Um, at this stage, too, you do need to kind of babysit these colors a little bit. So I'm constantly looking back at what I already painted and looking at these edges just to make sure that I don't need to fix any of these edges. Sometimes those edges get a little sometimes you fix the edges, and then you look back at them, and the edges are hard again. And so you'll have to kind of adjust those edges as you go. So it looks like this one, I'm going to glaze over a little bit more of that opera pink. Now, I do usually go back at the very end of most of my paintings, and I will glaze over and kind of strengthen some of these colors, mainly because watercolors dry so differently than what they look like when they're wet, especially depending on your paper choice. So if you have a cold press paper, I notice and a cold press quality paper like arches, I do notice that your colors will soak in and they will lessen when they dry. A hot press paper, your colors might sit a little bit more on the paper instead of soaking so much. Alright, so I'm going to go through, and I'm just going to add a little bit more color here with the same technique of mixing a more transparent color. I might drop in a little bit of color where it's already wet, and then I might dissipate those edges. I might add some extra lines. And then here I'm actually adding a little bit of red as well just to deepen this dark area here. So in this stage, too, you can always add just like we added a little bit of yellow at the tip of that petal, you can also add other colors to kind of brighten your tones or to mute them down. A he And, of course, glazing works for other colors as well. So here I glazed a little yellow on top of that green branch. And here I can glaze just to separate these colors a little bit more here. If I need that to be a little darker, can I add a little bit more brown just to make it stand out a little bit more? And, you know, I'm kind of curious as to what this yellow might look like glazing on top of some of the highlights here in the branch. I'm wondering if it's just gonna help give it a little bit of, like, a sunlight kiss on the top here, so I'm going to kind of add a little bit, of course, I'm painting with my paper towel handy just in case I don't like it. I can always switch that stamp it out. But I do kind of like how that looks with a little bit of a sun kiss. Alright, now, obviously, with watercolors, you can keep on working however long you'd like and building up layers. But the more layers you build up, sometimes the less definition you have for your shadows and some of these really nice hard edges. So it really is a give and take of letting it be done. And you can always try more intense layers the next time you paint your subject if you weren't able to get that really good of a contrast. But I think I'm done with this one. So, although I can take the tape off right now, I want to let it dry completely to help it flatten, and then we'll take the tape off and sign it and be done.