Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to my channel. I'm so excited to be painting with you today because pansies are one of my favorite watercolors subjects. They come in a variety of very vibrant bright colors and they make for a perfect subject to practice watercolor techniques on. My name is Anna, I'm a Canadian money designer, and I specialize in botanical and decorative art. In this class, I'm going to show you step-by-step how to paint three different types of viola or pansy flowers. Although each lesson is quite brief, about 20-25 minutes, we will practice some key fundamental techniques that are essential in order to come up with a realistic watercolor painting. We'll start off by talking about masking fluid, and ways to apply it in order to preserve highlights and prepare your subject before you apply watercolors. Next, we will practice wet-on- wet and wet-on-dry techniques in order to build volume step-by-step and add more realism to your work. I will also show you on some of the pansies how to combine wet-on-wet and wet- on-dry in order to achieve some very interesting results. In terms of the format, this is a real time recording where you will hear me narrate every step of the way. In addition, you will see a detailed instruction written on the left side of the screen where I will summarize the objectives of each step, materials and pigments I use, and techniques that we will be practicing. In terms of the resources to help you along in this class, you will get the following. I will provide an overview of materials I used, including some alternatives that you may want to consider depending on where in the world you are and which brands you prefer. For those of you who are interested in learning how to sketch your subjects better, I also included a very brief lesson on how to come up with a perfect pansy outline. I know from your comments on a lot of my previous classes, this is something that many of you struggle with. If you don't want to use black and white outline that I've included in the class resources, you can take a look at this brief lesson and I will show you a very simple technique that I use to come up with pansy outlines, and you can apply it even without using a reference photo. But, of course, I'm going to share a detailed black and white outline of my pansies so you can download and trace them. I will also include a whole bunch of reference photos, different colored pansies so you can practice on your own time. For your class project, you may choose to perfect your technique using just one flower at a time, or you can combine them into a more complex composition panel like I did here in one of my recent watercolor paintings. If you have any questions as you're moving along with your project, you can post it in the discussion section of this class. If you enjoy the class, don't forget to subscribe to my channel, and you can also follow me on social media using the links above. If you feel like sharing your projects beyond Skill Share platform, do tag me on Instagram, I love seeing your work. Now if you're ready, let's take it to the table, I can't wait to see you in class.
2. Painting Tools & Optional Supplies: Hi guys, I'm so happy you joined the class. In this first lesson, I'm going to talk about watercolor materials that I use. You can also download a handout with a summary of tools and also some alternatives that you might want to consider depending on where you are in the world. I know not every country has the same inventory of brands when you go to your local arts store or on Amazon. These are the trusted brands that I've tried and used. Hopefully you will find something that you either already have in your watercolor collection or something that you can easily get from your local arts store. Paper is the number 1 most important thing that you will need when painting with watercolor. Brushes and pigments we can have some flexibility on, but paper is the number 1 supply that will make sure that you get good results if you pick the right kind. Please make sure that you pick 100 percent cotton paper that's made for watercolor. Anything that's not 100 percent cotton and not acid free will not absorb colors in the same way, will not hold water the same way, and will not give you the right results. In terms of weight, you can go with 140 pounds or higher. Higher of course is better as it will hold more water. In terms of the surface, you can go with cold pressed or hot pressed. I prefer cold pressed, it absorbs water in a very specific way allowing you to work with a wet surface for quite some time before water dries out. I would recommend cold pressed over hot pressed. You can see a bit of a closeup here. It's quite grainy and rough, and that's the surface you're looking for. Finally, you can go with loose sheets or pick a block. I like blocks, they're very convenient because you don't need to stretch your paper before painting. If you do go with loose sheets of paper, make sure you stretch it or tape it to your table so that you avoid that buckling effect when you add water. My brand of choice is arches, but of course you can pick your favorite brand. I quite like Cold Pressed Winsor Newtons paper. Again, it doesn't matter which brand you choose as long as your paper is professional watercolor paper that's 100 percent cotton. When we're drawing our outline which you can by the way download in class resources from black and white outline that I created for you or maybe you prefer to draw by hand. Either way, pick a hard pencils, so don't go with something that's soft because it will leave marks on your paper. Go with something like 2H or 4H which indicates hardness, I'm using 4H for this drawing. In terms of the eraser, any soft eraser will do. But I just wanted to mention that for precision, I prefer retractable erasers. They're very, very convenient because you really don't want to erase too much on your watercolor paper, it will affect the surface as you paint later on. Retractable thin erasers like this one I have here will really help you just pick up the graffiti marks that you're interested in erasing and nothing else. This is a really, really convenient tool. In terms of brushes, what we will need is two types of round watercolor brushes. I'm hesitant to recommend pure Kolinsky sable for various reasons including the price and also how rare they are. I often just use synthetic substitutes for Kolinsky sable and I find that a Escoda as a brand has the best price to quality ratio. What we will need is one larger round brush for larger washes, especially in the beginning as we're doing background washes and one round brush that's a little bit smaller and finer for those tiny details towards the end of our work. If you do have a real Kolinsky sable brush, you can probably get away with just one in size four. Real sable brushes hold a lot of water so they're suitable for larger washes and they also have a perfect tip. You can do a lot of detailed work with them. But again, if you don't have a real Kolinsky sable, synthetic sable brushes work just fine and you only need two of them. You can also use real squirrel or synthetic squirrel brushes as well. Again, you probably need two; one larger brush in size 4, 5, 6, and one smaller one in size 0, 1, or 2. We'll need a palette and my preference is always for porcelaine palette because white plastic palettes absorb pigments and get dirty very quickly. But it really is not that important, you can use whatever palette you have on hand. For water, we'll need a jar of water. It's actually better to have two jars of water because you will use one to clean your brush, and then the second one to make sure it's completely clean and clear as you switch from one pigment to another. Now there are a couple of completely optional supplies that I will mention because you will see me using them. First one being this glove. I get a lot of questions about this. This is simply to help me preserve the paper underneath as I'm painting. A lot of people just use cloth or a sheet of tissue paper just to put underneath your hand to make sure there are no smudges. These gloves are actually made for digital artists. I work a lot on tablets and I find them just as useful for watercolor, completely optional. Next, you may want to consider a watercolor medium like this synthetic Ox Gall that I use. It's not necessary, but it is quite useful if you are having trouble keeping your paper wet. If your workflow is a little bit slower, it helps you keep your surface wet for longer periods of time. I also find that if you're working in warmer and drier climate where your paper will be drying lot faster, you will also find it quite helpful as it will help you keep your surface wet for a longer period of time. The one I'm using is QoR watercolors and you only need a couple of drops in your water jar to do the trick. Finally, we will need masking fluid and an applicator for your masking fluid. If you don't have masking fluid from watercolors don't worry about it, you can always cover those areas with white gouache or white watercolor after your painting is done. But it is quite useful before we start painting to prep your surface in areas that we want to keep white with some masking fluid. I really like Winsor Newton, it's very fluid and almost feels like water. Some other good masking fluid options include Dr. Ph. Martin's Liquid Frisket. Make sure to get Level 2, Level 1 is quite thick and not as good. Level 2 is absolutely excellent. You can also try Schmincke Masking Fluid. I really like the one with the blue tint because it's actually visible on paper after you apply it. In terms of the applicator, I like rubber applicators like this Royal Sovereign rubber shaper. Don't worry if you don't have this specific tool, you can just use an old brush or the back of your wooden brush or a matchstick. Up next, we'll talk about watercolor pigments and the structure of our color palette.
3. Pigments & Palette Structure: Now that we went over our supplies, I'm going to show you the watercolors that we will need for our three flowers. I will go over a specific pigments and some of the alternatives you may consider depending on your existing collection of colors. We will talk about the structure of our palette. In other words, a way to organize your pigments for each flower in a logical way, with a clear understanding of the impact of light, whether it's sunlight or other type of light, and the impact it has on our pigment choices. You can find a full list of pigments and the palette for each flower in the class handout, which you can download on the Skillshare website. You'll get a handy table, just like this. First things first, I only have eight pigments that I used for these three different flowers. Two of them, blue and orange, are completely optional. If you only find a match for the six main ones, you will still achieve a result very close to what I have here. Feel free to use your favorite brands. It's really up to you and you will find some alternative suggestions in the handout. The most important learning that I want you to take away from this is that you can have a rather limited palette, and by arranging your pigments in a different way and layering them using different transparency and different saturation, you can achieve a completely different results every time. The first one we will need is purple and I use Dioxazine Purple from QoR. QoR watercolors are super vibrant, but may be difficult to control. They use a different type of binder from typical watercolors like Winsor & Newton or Daniel Smith. The flow in the water is a bit more unpredictable, it takes time getting used to, but the result is extra vibrant. You may want to choose something more conservative like Imperial Purple from Daniel Smith or any other purple from your favorite brand. Next, we have violet and there are so many options available. I went with Quinacridone Violet from QoR. Just make sure that it's more on the red side than the blue, otherwise, it will get lost when you add it on top of your purples. If you want it to stand out more, you can go with something more pink like Quinacridone Magenta, or even something like Bordeaux from Daniel Smith. We will definitely need a red for our pansies, a cool red. I would say stay away from warmer reds, more orangey reds, because they will clash with the rest of the palette. Something like Carmine, which is what I used, Carmine from Daniel Smith, or you can also go with Quinacridone Red or Permanent Alizarin Crimson, both would work very well. We will need a warm brown. I decided to go with Perylene Maroon, which is a brick red, brownish color. We will primarily use this pigment for warm shadows. In other words, shadows that contain some bounce-back glide reflections from other petals and also for some very fine details on those white elements in the middle of each flower. On the red pansies, we will also need this warm brown in order to create outlines for our petals. You can really go with whatever your favorite warm brown is. Something like brown matter will give you a more subtle look. If you choose, let's say Quinacridone Burnt Orange, more orangey brown, it will stand out much more. I encourage you to experiment with different browns and see which one you like best. We will need a warm, medium yellow, to paint the center of each flower and also, of course, the base for our yellow pansies. I'm using one from QoR. You can use something like Winsor Yellow from Winsor & Newton. Really, any of your favorite warm yellows. Perhaps, stay away from lemon yellow or Indian yellow, or any of the cooler yellows, as they would clash with the rest of the palettes. For orange, which is really optional for this type of painting, although it's quite easy to find in any palette, I would say go with it if you have it. I decided to go with Hansa Yellow Deep. It's really an orangey yellow, not quite a full orange. You can go with something much darker and redder if you want, but there are also lots of mid-range choices like yellow-orange from [inaudible]. Lastly, our green, we only need a little bit of it in the center of each flower and also for some shadows on our yellow pansy. Pick your favorite warm green. I went with sap green. Pretty straightforward choice. I will definitely stay away from more vibrant blueish greens. Blue, we will only need once on our purple pansies and I used Phthalo blue-green shade. I tend to favor non-granulating colors, but really any code blue will work here. Don't worry about the exact shade. Just pick your favorite non-granulating blue. Now, let's talk about building our palette structure for each flower using these eight pigments. If you've taken any of my previous classes or have seen any of my YouTube videos, you may have seen this diagram, which is essentially a map I created to help you organize your water color pigments for any botanical subject, according to the direction of light. We always have our base pigment, which is this big circle in the middle, and this is the most important choice you will make. It's the pigment that will keep the entire palette together. Everything else will be in relation to this pigment, in terms of the temperature and saturation of your colors. In some cases, you may want to add a boost pigment to brighten up your base. It's usually close on the spectrum, can be cooler or more likely warmer and much more vibrant than you base. In case of our pansies, we actually don't need a boost because the base colors we will be using are all quite strong. Then you have your highlights and your shadows. Of course, these pigments will appear on your subject depending on how light hits it. Highlights are typically warmer and lighter than your base. On our purple pansy, for example, we'll use a light wash or a cool red as our highlight. Shadows are much more complicated and often include more than one pigment. Shadows can contain reflections from other subjects and I recommend using both cold and warm shadow pigments in order to differentiate these different reflections. For example, in the case of our red pansy, we will use brown for our warmer shadows because it contains some yellow highlights, reflections from other petals. We will use violet for our cooler shadows. Finally, there are always additional color spots. In case of pansies, we have these large, dark spots on each flower and also some deeply saturated lines that I call veins. We will need to set aside some pigments for that. We'll explore this in more detail as we paint each flower. With this in mind, let's explore each flower and how the palette structure that we just discussed might look. First, let's talk about the base pigments. These are the most important ones and it's pretty straightforward. We will need purple for purple pansies and I'm using Dioxazine Purple. Pick your favorite purple for the base here, a cool red for red pansies, I'm using Carmine from Daniel Smith, and a warm mid-range yellow for our yellow pansies. Now, let's talk about supporting colors for each of our base colors, for each of our different colored pansy. We will use a cool red for highlights on the purple pansy, violet for some warm shadows, and also some fancy details on the edges of the petals. Blue only appears on this purple pansy. By the way, on a few bright spots and also on some of the petals in the background, as I mentioned, blue helps you set things back visually, so just to help us bring those petals to the background. Finally, warm brown, for some very light details in the middle of the flower. Finally, you will note that I have these yellow, green, orange boxes on the right. This is reserved specifically for the center of the flower, that little area in the middle where we don't have our base color. It has its own logic. Yellow is our base for that area, green is for shadows in that area, and orange, an optional color, if you want to use it, will be our boost color there. So that tree will be the same for each flower. Yellow, orange, green, not just for the purple pansies on each flower in the center, we will use the same structure. For our red pansies, we will need even less pigments. Purple, of course, for cool shadows, and also those big, dark spots in the middle. A bit of violet from warm shadows. Brown for warm shadows and details in the middle of the flower. Again, that trio, yellow, orange, green that we just talked about, in the middle. For our yellow pansy, we will need a bit of orange to boost the base yellow pigment and I'm using a yellowish orange, very light orange, Hansa Yellow Deep from Daniel Smith. Purple and violet in order to paint those dark spots in the middle, and a warm brown which I ended up mixing with some green and orange to come up with different shadow variations throughout the petals. Of course, pure yellow and green in the middle, that center of the pansies really doesn't change much, so we'll keep it consistent. Again, you can find the reference diagrams for each flower in the class handout. I hope you're finding this informative and fun, not just in the context of these pansies, but hopefully in general, it can help you think through different palettes structures. In the next lesson, we'll talk about how to draw a pansy outline without a reference photo. You can skip this step and go straight to painting if you want to. Of course, you can download black and white outlines, my reference outlines on Skillshare website in the classroom resources section.
4. Flower Outline - Tips & Technique: Hello. In this lesson, we're going to talk about a really simple way that you can use in order to come up with an accurate outline for a pansy flower. Now you don't have to sketch it by hand. You can simply download black and white outline from class resources on this Skillshare website. But if your are interested in learning how to build your flower shape from scratch, even without a reference photo or an outline, then take a look at this. Essentially before we get started, all you need is a pencil and you will need something to help you come up with a round shape. You can either use a compass tool or you can use something like a household object, that's a perfect circle. Like what I used here, which is just a lead from a jar. Now keep in mind that in order for this video to be crisp and sharp, I used a very soft blue pencil and red and purple markers, but that's just so you can see the outlines easily. For your final work on watercolor paper, I highly recommend using a very hard pencil, something like 3H or 4H, so that your outline is very faint and you don't leave any graphic marks on paper. First, you need to draw a circle just like that. Once you have a nice circle, find the center of the circle. If you're using a compass tool, would be much easier to find, but you can just approximately outline the center, just put a dot, so you know this will be the center of your flower. The next thing that will help you find the right placement for the petals will be two lines, vertical and horizontal, just like that going across and through the center of the circle. Now that you've divided the circle in four parts, you can start from the center and draw the front petal. Just like an upside-down heart. You can see that it will be the biggest petal. Then from there, you can do two symmetrical petals going to the left and to the right. Let me outline the front petal a little bit more so you can see it better. You can see it's like an oval or an upside-down heart. Then the two background petals will be right there in the back. That's a typical pansy shape, five petals. Now I'm just going to use a red marker to outline my shape. So you can see exactly how it fits into the circle. You can see the largest front petal. Nothing is really going outside that circle outline everything just fits. But we created an easy pansy shape without any reference. Now, when you're about to start painting, these are the parts that we will need to cover with masking fluid. These little beards coming from the inside and they're attached to the front petal. A little bit of highlights because the petals are quite thick. If your source of light is on the left, then these are the parts that I would either keep white or put some masking fluid on them. Now the spots, really easy again, just going around the center of the circle. I'm going to try again, but without drawing my circle. I'm just imagining a circle outline. Because I've done this so many times, I'm just going to use the dot and the cross method. Here's my little center of the flower. Then I have the skeleton, the vertical and the horizontal line. Then I'm going to start with the front petal again, just an upside-down heart shape, very symmetrical, left petal and right petal. Again, just going from the center. Everything is coming out from the center. Then the petal on the back, and another one, the two in the back are overlapping. Here I'm going to go with a red marker just so you can see better. You have a nice big front petal. You can make the edges a bit more wavy just to add a little bit more interest. Depending on what flower you're painting, they might be more straight or more wavy. Here's our pansy again, I did this just by imagining a circle around my dot. But you can draw the circle if it's easier for you. Now, this is the part that we're going to keep white in the beginning outline with a masking fluid. I'm just covering it with a purple marker to show you so you can see better. This is our source of light coming from the left down. You have a couple of edges of the petals that you may want to outline with a masking fluid as well, just to keep them white to preserve those highlights. Now the color spots, they will follow the natural direction of the petal. You can use those faint outlines, the pencil outlines of the horizontal and vertical lines to help you make them symmetrical. Here we go, two on each side. This is your typical pansy flower. This is how you can make one without a reference photo. Or if you have a reference photo, this method will just help you keep your flower more symmetrical and more accurate.
5. Purple Pansy - Part 1: So we're ready to paint. In the first lesson, I will show you how to paint this purple pansy flower. We're going to do it step by step, in real time. If you saw me describe the process in one of the previous lessons, this only includes five steps. We're going to start with step one, which is our outline and masking fluid. In terms of the outline, what you will see me do on the right-hand side is just draw it by hand. I'm using a hard pencil, I'm using for 4H just so that I don't leave any marks on my paper. But if you are not comfortable drawing it by hand using a reference photo, by all means, feel free to use the black and white outline, that I created and saved in the resources section of this class, on the SkillShare website. You can also trace, there's absolutely no right way of creating outlines. I think what we want to do is, to focus on practicing watercolor techniques and so use whichever method you prefer. When your outline is done, what we need to do is mask some of the white areas with masking fluids. We're going to end up with something like this. You can see the masking fluid shining in the light. If you don't have masking fluid, as I mentioned before, don't worry, you can just paint around those areas, or you can use white gouache, or white watercolor to cover them afterwards. Don't let the fact that you may not have masking fluid discourage you. If you do have masking fluid, grab your most comfortable applicator, and just follow along. You can use an old brush. Just make sure to clean it after, or you can use a matchstick. We're going to mask just a tiny little spot here and there. So those two little parts in the middle, they're at the base of the side petals. The other thing I'm going to mask is, just some of the edges of the petals. What you will notice is, I'm only doing it on the left side of the petals. Essentially, where the light hits the petal, I want to make sure that I capture that and create a nice edge that we will erase later. Now let's start with our first layer of color. This is our background layer,. Our objective here is to create a really light wash of color just to establish the color scheme. This is the most important part of the painting. If we get this right, the next steps should be much easier for us. The technique is called wet on wet. Essentially, what I'm doing is applying a thin layer of my base pigment, in this case, purple. I'm going to add some other colors into it, wet on wet. We have to work fast, before the paper dries out. You will notice that I'm painting one petal at a time. This is just to make sure that my paper doesn't get dry. In terms of the pigments that we will use at this stage, I am going to use purple, violet, to create some nice juicy highlights. If you don't have quinacridone violet, which is what I'm using, magenta will actually look a lot brighter. I've tried that before and it works really well. We'll also need a bit of cool red or pink. I'm going to use carmine. Opera pink would look amazing, but as some of you may already know, it's a fugitive color, so it will fade. This is why I'm going to use carmine and a little bit of blue, a little bit of yellow and a little bit of green just a bit. In terms of some key principles that will help you along the way. As I mentioned, wet on wet technique requires painting without any breaks. Make sure that you choose smaller areas like one petal at a time, and work until the paper is dry. The second thing I wanted to mention is, this layer has to be very light. You can see my purple is really diluted, and this is because, with watercolors, we're always painting light to dark, we're building our layers from light to dark, because you can't go back and erase anything. Make sure to keep it very light and you may even want to pre-mix your light purple before you're starting, so that you don't get a lot of variation, and just continue working confidently. Finally, when you're applying your boost colors, cool red, or pink, or violet, make sure the direction of your brush is following the direction of the petal, so essentially, from the edge of the petal towards the center. That will help us create a more realistic look. Now looking at the reference photo, let's just follow along. What you will see me do is, I just finished the first petal on the left, and I'm just moving the color around. I have my base purple and little bit of violet on the edges, and I'm just helping it spread down towards the center. Now I'm going to drop a little bit of carmine just on the top, because I feel there's some sunshine there, seeping through, and maybe a bit of more saturated purple just to create some shadow areas. Now let's do the next petal. I'm going to pick this top petal, it's a bit lighter, as I'm looking at my reference photo. I'm going to start with a really light pink spot, again using my carmine, and then I'm going to continue with my purple. Just going around it, very, very light, we can always make it darker. For now, I just want to cover everything with a light purple wash. By the way, wet on wet can be done just using a clear water base. You don't have to start with purple, but I'm fairly confident that using a light purple wash will work here just as fine. You can see I created that big petal shape. Now I'm going to start dropping more colors, a bit more pink, or specifically, carmine is what I'm using. Now let's do a little bit of violet on the edge, much more saturated, but still quite light. I'm just dragging my brash along the edge, watching the pigments spread. Adding a little bit more purple. I'm going to leave it to dry and move on to our bottom petal. The same principle, I'm just going to cover everything with a light purple wash, perhaps a bit darker towards the center of the flower but overall, very light. Spread that pigment around. If there's some variation of light and dark, you don't need to worry about it because there's going to be lots more detail that we're going to have to take care of. Just look at it overall, is this the lightest wash you can do? Maybe it's a bit darker towards the middle, I think that's good. I'm going to drop a little bit of blue, and I'm using tallow blue-green shade, one of my favorite pigments. It's going to pop right there in the middle. Now, same thing we've done before, just going over the edge with the tip of my brush and applying quinacridone violet. Hopefully, your paper is still completely wet there. What you want to achieve here is a really sharp edge, but the color spreading towards the middle and into the purple. Now, let's do the right petal. Same thing again, I'm going to create a light purple wash and follow with a little bit of violent and a little bit of carmine, maybe a little bit more saturated purple right there on the right bottom since that part of the petal is in the shadow. Now I'm going with the tip of my brush just creating those nice saturated edges with my violet. Let's do the last petal, it's really light, it's facing the sun. It's right there in the back and it's sort towards the sun. You can see I started with a very light spot of carmine or whatever pink you're using will work, and then I'm just going around it blending it with my light purple. Towards the center, it's going to get darker. You can see me applying a bit more purple there. Then I'm starting to define those petal grooves just a little bit wet-on-wet with some purple and some carmine just a few strokes following the direction of the petal. You can see in the reference photo it's a lot more pink, that petal, because it's getting more sun. But towards the center, it gets darker, so Here I go again with a bit more saturated purple this time, blended around, and I'm just going to leave it. I think this is what we wanted to achieve. I'm going to make sure that my front petal was dry and paint the center of the flower with a light wash of yellow, and then add a little bit of much deeper yellow right there where the yellow blends with purple, a little bit of green on top, and that would be our background layer for the center of the flower. Allow your layers to dry for at least 2-3 hours, I gave it a day, just to make sure that your paper is completely dry because our next step is going to involve wet-on-dry technique. In other words, we're going to be layering wet, transparent color over dry paint. Our objective here is to define larger areas of light and shadow, boost some colors in some places, and to really add detailed texture on our petal. We're going to be painting a lot of those petal grooves. The pigments I'm using are mostly the same as the ones we've used on the background layer, just purple, violet, red or pink, and blue. I switched to a smaller brush. You can see me going over this first petal with my Escoda Versatil, but this time it's in size 2, so I need a much finer tip. What you will see me do essentially is move from the edge of each petal towards the center. There will be areas that I'm going to leave completely blank. For the most part, I am going to just create these grooves and they will be mostly purple with some other colors dropped into them wet-on-wet. Your pigment saturation should be two steps darker than your base layer, but still quite transparent. You still want to see your color wash underneath, but it should be a bit darker. Again, we're directing our strokes from the edge of the petal down. Don't worry so much about your reference photo, I would say that the key thing would be to actually look at the shape of the petal that you've already created and just recognize those wavy edges. Each wavy edge would inform where you have an area of light and an area of shadow as you can see me do here. At this point I'm loosely referring to my reference photo, but I'm just trying to create some variation and some texture on the petal. I'm just creating those shadowy grooves mostly with my purple. Sometimes if I'm painting on a very light pinkish area, I'm going to add a little bit of carmine. I'm very aware of the reference photo, but I'm also considering the source of light. I know that generally speaking, judging by the shape of my petals in order to make this look realistic, the bottom half of the side petals will always be darker because it doesn't get as much light. The base of the top petal will also be darker, so I'll make sure that I create those shadows in this step. Finally, on the bottom front petal, I'm just going to drag a few lines from the edge towards the center. There are a couple of very defined grooves there already judging by the edge of my petal, so I'm just going to use that as a guide and create those lines with my light purple. Now, to define the center of the flower, I'm just going to add a little bit of sap green right there in the middle blended with my brush. This is really deep inside the flower, so there's a lot of shadows there. That little bit on top, if you look closely at the reference photo, it's a bit brownish, so I'm going to use my warm brown here, reddish brown. Create an outline and let it dry so we can move on to our next layer. This is the exciting part where we get to create those spots, those dark spots on the petals, and some really defined veins.
6. Purple Pansy - Part 2: The technique we're going to be using is wet-on-dry again, and a little bit of what I call a combo technique, which is a blend of wet-on-dry and wet-on-wet. I'm going to show you that in detail in a minute. If it's easier for you, you may want to outline the spots before you paint with a pencil. I'm eyeballing it and starting with my base purple but a lot more saturated as you can see. Again, because we're going to be doing a lot of wet-on-wet, we want to make sure that the area we're working on is always wet. Let's paint maybe one, maximum two petals at a time. When we're doing our veins, they're going to be even more saturated than the spot. You can see what I did here is create a spot with purple and then I dropped a little bit of my carmine in there. You could go with opera pink or quinacridone rose, just to make it even more vibrant. It will really look nice, blended with your purple there. What I'm doing here now is I'm actually dragging the tip of my brush across the petals, starting on the dry area and towards the center. I'm starting wet-on-dry and then dragging it into the wet area and it's becoming wet-on-wet. What's happening here is the beginning of the vein will be super precise. Then where it hits the wet spot, it will be spreading a little bit and blending with the background color. Now, the trick here is to make sure that your wet spot is not too wet. You don't want too much water sitting on top of your paper. You want to allow your water to sink in, maybe a minute or two. I can show you here what that looks like in an angle. You can see how the light hits it. It's wet but it's not completely overflowing with water. It's almost half-a-minute before it starts drying out. Let's try this again on the next side petals. I'm going to create this a jagged blob of color with purple, add a little bit of carmine, violet, maybe more purple. Now let's drag those lines, and you can actually do that from the center out or the other way around, doesn't matter. Again, the trick is to make sure that your paper is not too wet but not dry yet. Here I'm actually going to try to follow the reference photo much more closely because it's easy to get carried away with these lines and it's starting to look like a spider. A couple of thicker lines, I see five on that petal and then a few smaller more finer lines branching out. One thing you can do is instead of just doing them in purple, combine two colors. Your purple on your violet or your purple on magenta. That would add a bit of a visual interest to your painting. It depends on how comfortable you are and how fine your brush is. Let's do the front petal. By now you're familiar with the process. I'm going to paint my dark purple spot. Not too dark just yet because I want the lines to be visible. Then I'm going to add a bit of violet and carmine just to warm it up. More purple on the left because that side is away from the sun. The right side is more likely to catch Sun rays and drag a few preliminary lines. Maybe I'll add a little bit more saturation there. Wait about a minute and go with my thin brush from the center out. Very carefully, one line at a time. I'm just testing to see, it feels like maybe I started a bit too early. It's really not a scientific process. It's very different every time, so forgive me, I'm not giving you a precise timeline on how long you need to wait before your water is ready or your surface is ready. You test it and see, is it spreading out too much? Do you still see the line after you put down your stroke? If you do, if you still see that line and it's not blending into the background, that's the right result that we want. You can see on the right side there, I started a bit too earlier, so it's spreading a bit more out of control but that will happen. It can always be fixed. We can always go over it again with a more saturated line or we can lift the color. It's all good. I think I'm happy for now with this petal. These top two are a bit different because they don't really have that dark spots. I'm just going to cover that area, the base of the petal with clear water. Then do a couple of dark purple lines just as they appear in the reference photo. Clear water to get that nice spread. Where our line is not too precise, it's looking more natural. There we go. Again, let this dry and make sure it's all completely dry before we erase the masking fluid. It's super important to make sure that your paper is completely dry before you erase the masking fluid. Again, I gave it about six hours this time. With my retractable eraser, I'm just going to remove the masking fluid in those areas where I put it and then we're going to fix them up in the final stage, which is our finishing touches phase. This is really an opportunity for us to take a look at the overall painting. Now that the pigments are all dry, and as most of you know, watercolors when they dry out, they look less vibrant. It's almost ready. This is what it's going to look like going forward. We can now finish this up by fixing a few minor details. Like especially, you will find when you remove masking fluid, there will be some edges that need attention. We may want to adjust our colors in some spots, maybe boost some of them. I'm going to start with the center of the flower just to warm it up, make that spot pop. It's a beautiful contrast with purple, so I want to make it more pronounced, more intense. The second thing I'm going to do is now go wet-on-dry with the very tip of my brush and maybe add a few more veins but like much thinner than I did before. You can see in the reference photo especially at the bottom of the flower, there's a lot more little lines and veins that are almost magenta-colored. I'm going to do that just to stay true to the subject and add a bit of visual interest. But as I mentioned before, it's quite easy to overdo it. You don't want it to look two-spotted or like a zebra with just lines going up and down. Just be not too generous with your lines. Maybe just let's stick to the bottom. Another thing I'm going to do is accentuate those shadows on the top of the side petals and maybe add a little bit more detail there on the edge. Again, looking very closely at the reference photo. Now, what we're doing is just making it more realistic, more unique. Painting those little imperfections and adding a little bit more definition to our shadows. I think I'm happy with this side. I'm going to switch to the side petal on the left and do something similar, add a little bit more carmine right there on top. Again, this is just because I know the sun is almost shining through that petal, so it's getting a lot more warm color. Then on the edges, I see some spots there that I want to include. These two folds on top of the front petal, want to make sure that I don't leave them white. Cover them with a very light wash of violet. Now let's move on to the top. I'm just going to go over it with tiny little strokes. Again, always following the direction of the petal from the edge down just to add a little bit more interest there and then maybe boost the shadow. That area is really not directly in the sunlight, so I'm going to make it a bit darker. Maybe one more blue spot. We have one on the front petal but here I see an opportunity to add another one. It's nice because it's going to tie it all together, top and bottom using phthalo blue and just on the edge, blending it down. Here's another one. Maybe this part is not so true to the reference photo but I feel like it's still looks natural enough so that our one blue spot from before doesn't look completely out of place. That's about it. I hope you enjoyed the process. We will follow a variation of this process on the next two flowers with some adjustments for color, of course, and some of the steps. But overall, I hope you enjoyed the layering and using different watercolor techniques from start to finish to build a realistic flower shape. I'll see you in the next lesson.
7. Red Pansy - Part 1: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to paint the red pansy. The interesting thing about it is that the colors we're going to use are virtually the same as the ones we used in the previous lesson for the purple pansy, but by arranging them in a different way and layering them in a different way, we're going to achieve a completely different result. Let's get started and just like we did in the purple flower, I'm going to create an outline. I'm just drawing it by hand. But if you're not comfortable drawing it by hand, feel free to use the black and white outline that I saved for you in the class resources on the skill share website. You can also review one of the previous lessons where I showed you a very simple technique on how to create an accurate pencil outline. The pencil that I use, and that I recommend using on watercolor paper is 2H or 4H, so a hard pencil. We don't want to leave any graffiti marks on paper, and if you make any mistakes, you can erase it with any soft eraser. I like my thin retractable erasers because they pick up only what I need them to pick up. After our outline is ready, let's put down some masking fluid. What I'm going to do is a little bit different from what we did in the purple flower. I will cover the two large white spots right in the middle. But in terms of the outlines, if you look at the reference photo, what we need to do is actually create a very thin border between every petal. On the purple flower we only did this on the sunny side, and this flower we're going to outline every edge that is surrounded by color. I'm using my rubber shaper as an applicator and you can use a matchstick or an old brush. I'm just slowly tapping and making my thin line, the size of this color shaper is double zero, so it's easy for me to make that thin line. You can use a synthetic brush in size one or zero, it will work just fine or a matchstick and just create that nice separation between the petals. As I mentioned before if you don't have masking fluid, it's totally fine you can just paint petal by petal leaving a very thin white border between the petals. You can also fix it up later on with whitewash if you make a mistake or paint over the area. Now, let's start our step two and please make sure that your masking fluid is completely dry, I gave it about an hour. Our objective in this step is to establish the overall color scheme. We're going to be applying our colors wet on wet, meaning we're going to wet the area and add additional colors into it, and I'm going to do something different here with the yellow center in the purple flower we painted it last. I'm going to show you a bit of a different flow where we're going to paint the yellow center first and then follow with our base red color. It doesn't matter which way you do it as long as you allow a little bit of time in between your yellow center and your base petal color. I started with my warm yellow from core and I'm just following up with a light wash of hand say yellow deep, you can even try a light orange. I'm blending it with water towards the center of the petal and just a little drop of green. Now, I'm going to let this dry for about half an hour just to make sure it don't disturb the color underneath. You can give it even more time and I will follow with our base red color. I'm using carmine it's a very nice, cool red from Daniel Smith. You can use something like permanent Alizarin crimson or any cool red that you have in your palate. I'm going to paint petal after petal so that I can make sure that the area we're working on is wet when I add additional colors and I'm using my medium round brush, synthetic sable from Escoda. Real sable will probably work even better, but I'm pretty happy with this synthetic substitute. They last longer and of course there are a lot cheaper and this color makes a wonderful, wonderful substitutes for real sable. I'm just going to spread my carmine all over this petal. Just like that, I'm not too worried about the fact that some areas are maybe a bit more saturated, we're going to work on them a lot more and put down a lot more layers. For now, I'm quite happy with how this is coming out and now I'm going to start dropping my violet. I'm using quinacridone violet from core. It's very, very vibrant as core colors tend to be, and I'm applying these lines in the direction of the petals from the edge and towards the middle. I'm watching the pigment spread. You get that faint line, but the color spreads in every direction and now we're going to do something similar on the petal on the right. Again, base carmine or whatever cool red you're working with. By the way, if your red is more on the warmer orange side, that's absolutely fine. It's just going to end up looking a bit warmer overall. Here I can see in the reference photo, the bottom side of the petal is a lot darker and it makes sense because it's away from the sunlight. I'm going to make it a bit more saturated there and then drop a bunch of quinacridone violet also on the edges. I'm going to return to my left petal, add a little bit more violet there. It's drying out but it's still wet. I can add more color there and now even more saturated carmine just adding those shadowy spots and what this is doing is it's creating very soft texture on the petal. This is a very good start for us and it's going to give some variation in tone and we can work with that in the next couple of layers. Now, grab your warm brown. You can use all sorts of different reddish browns and it works really nice here for the shadows underneath and maybe counter-intuitive to use brown here, but it's actually working out quite well. The reason why I'm using brown as opposed to say purple is because I know that the front petal is casting some reflections on those two side petals and those are warm reflections. That's why warm brown works great. You can use something like ground matter from Winsor Newton. I used perylene maroon from Daniel Smith and now let's do the front petal. This is similar to what we did with our purple flower. Here I'm going to start with more saturated carmine and then blend it with clear water towards the edges of the petal. The reason for doing that is because this petal is really facing more towards the sun, so it's a lot lighter. I want to make sure that I start light, especially on the edges, but of course as we move towards the middle of the flower it will get more saturated. Now, I'm going to follow up with some violet right there on the left and on the right where the petals fold and there's a little bit of a shadow. Now in those folds that I drew, I need to make sure that I leave a little bit more saturated color, and depending on how weighty your edge is, the placement of those shadows will be a bit different for you by essentially judging it by the direction of the light. I'm making sure that anything that's sort of in the groove away from the sun, I'm adding Carmine and then following with my warm brown, or more specifically parallel maroon. Now, let's do the top petals, I'm actually going to start with a very light wash off parallel maroon and then follow with Carmine, again, very light. Looking at my reference photo, they have those brownish spots, so that's why I started with parallel maroon or warm brown if you're using brown, and then following with my red. The key here is to keep it super light. Then, follow with your reds, again, making sure I'm using the tip of my brush in the direction of the petal. So from top down towards the center of the flower, and finally, adding a little bit of violet, especially at the bottom. That part is not really anywhere in the way of sunlight, so it's going to be darker and then a couple of lines wet on wet, just to identify the folds of the petal. This last petal as you probably guessed, it's going to be quite dark. It's all the way in the back. I'm going to start off with more saturated carmine, and then follow with some violet, maybe come back to the previous petal, a little bit more brownish-red pair, and just there where it's touching on the other two petals, I'm going to add more shadow. Again, back to this petal, it's still wet. I can add more saturation there, more warm brown. Again, warm brown as opposed to say cool purple because we're getting some bounced back from the petal at the front, and so that shadow is very warm. Now, let's move on to our definition layer, and this one's probably the trickiest because it's not that easy to follow the reference photo, so I'm going to loosely follow it here. Our goal is to really define our shadow areas now wet and dry, meaning the previous layers completely dry, and now the strokes that I'm putting down are having very hard edges unless I blend them with water, and my pigment is a bit more saturated. Then in the previous layer, again, I'm following strictly the direction of the petal from the edge down. The colors are virtually the same. Carmine, violet, and parallel maroon. So your base color, your violet color, and your warm brown, save your warm brown for those shadowy areas that get reflections from other petals, and the darkest areas are going to be towards the center of the flower and also on those side petals, at the bottom of each of those side petals. So you can see here the left petal, I'm actually covering almost the entire bottom half with my violet and blending it with water, making sure it stays very dark, and then adding my parallel maroon. I'm going to do the same thing on the right. A layer of quinacridone violet covering almost the entire bottom half. Then, I'm actually going to drop a little bit of purple there just to really set it back. Visually, purple will help me make that area look cooler and darker. So in addition to violet and parallel maroon, you could use a little bit of purple there. Blended and add a couple of more grooves from the edge towards the middle of the flower. Now, let's do the same exercise on the last petal. Actually, this is not our last, this is just the front petal and we still have one petal on the back. But what I'm doing is, as you can see, I'm doubling down on those areas that identified in my background layer is shadow areas, and just going over them now, wet and dry, creating more defined edges for those shadows and those grooves. Same principle, the direction of each fold is from the center towards the edge or from the edge towards the center, depending on your preference. But it should really always follow the direction of the petal all the way towards the center of the flower. Primarily, I'm using violet and occasionally my warm brown, my parallel maroon. Now, let's add a little bit of definition in the middle, so I'm using sap green and I'm just going to define some shadowy areas there. So a few on the top petal, and there in the center. Blending it with water, and maybe you can even add some anti-yellow deep or warm orange if you are using it in the background layer. I'll see you in the next lesson.
8. Red Pansy - Part 2: Now the fun part, we're going to do the accent layer. This is my favorite part. We're going to do those spots, and add some nice dark veins on the flowers. It's starting to look more realistic. If you want, you can help yourself and create that outline of the spots with your pencil first. I'm just eyeballing it using dioxazine purple from QoR. Very vibrant, blends really nicely with quinacridones. We're going to use a mixture of wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry technique. Meaning I'm going to create this spot while it's still wet, add a bunch of other colors like I just dropped a little bit of my carmine to give it a boost. Then we're going to grab a lot more saturated purple, and paint those flower veins. Not yet though. Let that water sink in. I'm going to do another spot on the right before we start our mixed wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry method. Here we are, we have two spots. The water is sinking in. It's not too wet, there's no water sitting on top. You can see in the reflection of the light. But it's still wet enough. What I'm going to do with my thin brush is drag a couple of lines, starting wet-on-dry. I'm starting all the way on the dry area of the petal, and then dragging them all the way to the wet area. Where it's just the beginning of the line, wet-on-dry, it's going to be very sharp. Where it starts going over the wet spot, your line is going to spread. Its not going to be as precise. If it's spreading too much, give it another minute, let that water sink in some more. Just looking at the reference photo, find the right placement for those veins. You can also do it in the opposite direction. You can start on the wet spot and then drag it out to the dry area of the petal, like I'm doing here on the right petal. The key here is to not get overly excited as I do sometimes, and create too many lines. I'm just going to keep it to maybe three or four main lines, and then a couple of smaller ones branching out. You can finish them off wet-on-dry with your base red, with your carmine, just to add a little bit of variation and visual interest. Here, you can see on the right-hand side, my lines are spreading way too much. That means the paper was way too wet, and that happens sometimes. It's really an unpredictable process as it usually is with a wet-on-wet. Don't worry about it too much if it's spreading way too far. Again, just give it a minute, and let's repeat the same process on the front petal or our last spot. Do the base wash with purple, then add your red and violet to boost. Let that water sink in into your paper. This is why I recommend only professional watercolor paper because this effect would not be possible on a regular paper that's not 100 percent cotton. Now, let's try those lines. Feel like it's too wet right now, but let's give it another try. Perhaps I started a bit too early. I'm just going to go over them one more time, add a few more thinner branches, and once again, go over the lines with more saturated purple, and leave it to dry. Now, once it's completely dry, you can see it's starting to look very close to finished. Make sure you give it enough time, like I gave it about six hours in this case. Now, let's erase the masking fluid. I'm using my thinner eraser, so I don't lift any other areas of paper where I have pigments already. If it's not dry enough, it's going to smudge; so make sure it's completely dry. Now, let's continue. Now that we revealed our white areas, it's time to finish off our flower. Finishing touches include a couple of things. We're going to fix any minor errors that we see, and typically, they show up when you remove masking fluid. There might be some uneven areas. We might add a few more thin veins with more saturated purple and red. For this particular flower, I also want to outline the petals. Looking at the reference photo, I'm going to create a very thin outline. Grab your smallest brush and just do a very thin outline. I'm using violet, can be the same red. You can vary the color, but this is quite different from our purple flower that had a very defined edge. This red one has that white border around. If you're painting this flower and adding a background, you won't need to create an outline all around, just to make sure your border is not touching the petals and leave some space in between. But in this case, I'm painting on white paper. I'm going to just create this really faint outline. This is really a chance for us to look at the overall color balance. If something doesn't look right, if there's some areas that are too light, we can make those shadows more intense by adding a few more washes. For now, though, I'm just going to continue with warm brown, my perylene maroon, and add a couple of details on those white spots. If you look closely at the flower, they look like little forkballs. There's some fibers there. I'm going to create a little bit more definition. Now, this is what I was talking about. I feel like we need to add more shadows, the bottom of our side petals to really create more variation in tone. This will help us to achieve that realistic look. The reason why perhaps I didn't see it when we were doing the previous layers is because when you're painting wet-on-wet, the water makes your pigments look darker, when it dries out, if you've been painting with watercolors for a long time, you know that it usually looks lighter. I expected to see some areas that will need a bit more pigment and a bit more saturation. Now, I'm just going to add some perylene maroon and even purple just to really make sure that the shadows are fully defined. Another shadow area that we've covered before is that bottom of the top petal, closer into. Again, I'm going to use some warm brown there and violet. Maybe add a few more lines and details on the petal itself with more of a lighter wash. Just as we did before, always directing our strokes from the edge and towards the center. The same thing on that petal on the back, just a couple of strokes, just a bit more variation in tone, making it look more realistic, identifying those little grooves on the petal. Again, not necessarily exactly as we see them in the reference photo, but following the same principle. You should have, at this point, a nice guiding color scheme with your background layer, and your definition layer, and your accent layer. You know where those shadowy areas are, so just add more strokes there as you see fit. I'm going to add a few more details in the center and maybe more definition to those veins. If you recall, when we were doing that layer, my spot was way too wet, so my veins were spreading too far. The color was dissolving in the water. They're not very defined. I'm going to add more definition there. We're done. Go over your flower one more time. If you feel like there's any opportunity to add colors or lift colors with a clear wet brush, you can do that. I think if you follow the steps in that order and you paint from very light to dark, you should see your flower emerge at this point. All you need is to let it dry, and you can either add leaves, or scan it, make a pattern out of it. I really enjoy making surface design patterns with my watercolor blooms. I hope you're happy with your results. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to paint a yellow pansy, which is probably the easiest of them all. I will see you in the next lesson.
9. Yellow Pansy - Part 1: In this lesson, I will show you how to paint the yellow Pansy. Our first step will be a pencil outline and we will follow the similar process, but we'll skip the masking fluid and I will show you how to go about painting a Pansy just by putting our pigments around the wide areas. Again, I'm going to use a hard pencil here, just slowly going around each petal, creating a very faint outline and you'll notice that this particular flower is a bit on an angle, as opposed to the first two Pansies that we painted but the process will be very similar. So I will start in the middle, find my center, and then build my petals from the center out. I won't be outlining those large dark spots in the middle because this flower is really light, our layers will be translucent, and so when we approach a stage of painting those dark outlines, I might put a few pencil marks then, but I won't do it now. When your outline is ready, we will start with our first layer of paint, our background layer and our goal here is, again, just to establish the overall color scheme. As I just mentioned, please keep your layers super light here so you can even start with clear water if it's helpful. Our base color is yellow, you can start with clear water and just add your base yellow color very slowly. But I started with a very light wash and I'm adding a bit more pigment towards the center of my first petal, ending with just a tiny patch of Sap green. Now, as my paint is drying out and the paper is slowly absorbing the water, I'm going to add a little bit of a Hansa Yellow Deep, which is my choice for my light orange, just there in the middle. Let's create the background layer for our front petal. Again, I'm doing a very light wash of yellow and I'm going to use more intense yellow, more saturated yellow towards the center, and then drop a little bit of my Hansa Yellow Deep, just there, almost in the middle of the flower. You'll notice that I avoided putting color in the very center of the flower, we're going to work on it later. Now, let's do the left petal. After I put down my base yellow, I'm going to add some of my warm brown and my Hansa Yellow Deep at the very bottom of the petal, there's a lot of shadows going on. The important piece will be capturing the reflections from the front petal that are being cast on the back petal. For now, let's just keep it very light, we will come back to this area, again and again, to get all the shadows correctly. Now, let's do the petal on the right. The further I go down, the more intense my yellow will be, again, this is because there is a lot of shadow there. I'm going to drop a little bit of my warm brown and my light orange and some of those areas that I see will need to be in the shadow. Very quickly, the last petal in the background, just a little bit of our base yellow. Let this layer dry completely; I gave it about two hours and we're going to start defining our areas of light and shadow, wet on dry, and build my saturation as I go. Starting from the edge, you will see on this petal and also the one on the right, later on, I'm going to use my warm brown. Using the edge of the petal as a guide, I'm going to paint those shadows as I move to the top, slowly transition to a very light wash of green, that entire area is in the shadow, as you can see in the reference photo, continue by adding a little bit of my warm brown and a little bit of orange mixed together, again, super light, and finally, towards the middle, towards the center of the flower, I'm going to finish off with a much more saturated yellow, so just a few shades darker than the base yellow. More orange at the bottom, blending it with yellow and here we go. The result is, we left a few highlights on the edges of the petal just by not touching the paper there at all, and then we have some nice variation of color on the rest of the surface. Let's try the same thing on this top petal. I'm going to start off by painting the shadow with a light mixture of brown and then transitioning to warm yellow and orange towards the center of the flower. Again, notice that I'm leaving some spaces completely blank and those are my highlights and those are all towards the edge of the petal. Let's do this petal on the right. Once again, I'm starting with warm brown, a very light wash, transitioning to more saturated yellow and just outlining those grooves using the edge of the petal as my guide. I know that the side of each fold that's away from the sunlight will be in the shadow and therefore it will be darker. Now, let's do that back petal, the darkest one. Technically, even though we can't quite see it in the reference photo, but I started with a warm yellow and towards the center, I've added a little bit more brown. Now, let's do the front petal. This one is the lightest and we should keep it that way, especially towards the edge. Again, we'll just outline a few folds with a very, very super light wash, more warm yellow, and orange towards the middle, spread it around, just accentuate a few shadows, maybe more towards the center, and now that area all the way in the middle, it's in the shadow, and I mentioned we were going to come back to it later; just using pure Sap green to paint the shadow underneath that, around that in the center, and again on the side where we see the right petal curving inward and then a little bit on top. Again, the best thing you can do at this stage is keep your pigments light because we can never go back and erase things short of lifting your color with a wet brush, which is not always successful, we really don't have any other option other than paint from light to dark, that's what watercolors are all about. So keep it very light and build your saturation slowly. Now, I think we can let this layer dry and in the next lesson, we will go over our accent layer and our finishing touches.
10. Yellow Pansy - Part 2: Let's finish off our yellow pansy with the last two layers, and our accent layer will be focused primarily on these dark spots on the two side petals, and also on the front petal, and we'll also paint those thin veins combining wet on wet and wet on dry techniques. I'm going to start off with purple and put down a quite a dark wash at first, not as dark as what we've used on our purple pansy. Just because again, this flower is very light, and we want to make sure that we're still seeing a little bit of yellow underneath. While it's still wet, this first spot, I will add a little bit of our warm brown, and now I'm going to follow up with some violet and a little bit more purple towards the center. We have some nice variation of color capturing those highlights still, and I'm going to use my thin brush, just a tip of the brush just to drag out the pigment in a few spots, and this will be the beginning of our veins. Again, we're following the natural progression of the petal and the natural effect of light, so our pigments are more saturated towards the center. I'm going to leave it to dry, we're going to come back to it later. I just want the water to start sinking in before I come back to it, and in the meantime, I'm going to paint that spot on the left-hand side. First, a very light wash of purple, a little bit of a warm brown, and now I'm going to follow up with some violet, followed by a few drops of more saturated purple towards the middle. I'm going to use tip of my brush and a much more saturated purple, putting down a few lines on the right hand side on that right spot, wet on wet, and then I'm going to do a few details on the edge just starting to outline the spots where our veins are going to be. I'm going to leave it to dry and watching the pigments spread as long as there is a faint outline of the vein, I'm quite happy. I may come back to it and add a bit more detail later on. Now let's do the dark spot on the front petal. Same process, I'm going to start with a light wash of purple, add a little bit of brown, more purple towards the center, and then making sure that the edge is not a straight line, but more following the folds of the petal starting to outline those veins, and a little bit of more warm brown, some violet, very light. Let it sit for a bit, let the water sink into the paper. I waited exactly 60 seconds, and now I'm going to use the tip of my brush and a very saturated perylene maroon just to paint those lines, maybe try purple instead of perylene maroon. It's a bit darker. I feel like my surface is still way too wet. You can see the pigment is spreading, again this happens all the time, all we have to do is just give it another maybe 30 seconds and try again. Let's try it on the left-hand side, on the right-hand side. Now it's working a lot better, so we get that nice effect of pigments spreading, but not spreading too far and I think I'm going to leave it at that. This is a very light flower and I don't want to add too many harsh details. Now it's time for finishing touches. Our goal here is to review the final work, fix any errors, adjust our color balance as necessary. In other words, we're going to make our shadow areas darker and we're going to outline and work around or highlight areas, and we're going to be using wet on dry technique. We don't need to erase the masking fluid in this case, like we did in the first two flowers, so we can just move on to finishing off our flower. Before we started, I just wanted to show you the mixture I made, and this will be the mixture that I will use for our shadows on this flower. This is one of those rare cases where we're not going to be mixing colors directly on paper, but rather premix it in our palette, and essentially what I did is I started with my sap green. I dropped a little bit of our base, yellow into this green, and then I added my warm brown, my perylene maroon. In the end with a bit more water, I have this olive color, and this will be the color that we're going to use for shadows. The reason why this works is because this mixture contains the main colors that we used throughout the petal, and it will allow us to have those shadows capturing some of the light that's being bounced back from the petals onto other petals. For example, from the front petal, on the side petals while keeping the overall palette cohesive. Even though it's a bit of a darker wash that we're going to apply, it's going to contain all the colors that we've used before. We're going to keep it warm, and we don't want to use any blues or purples foreshadows here, but it will still work to help us to find the areas that don't get as much light. What you'll see me do at first is focus on those areas on top of the left petal and also at the bottom of the left petal. I'm just going to double down on those shadows little bit more, using our mixture. I'm going to move on up to the top pedal. Lots of shadows there, and I'm just going to really accentuate the edges and the folds there. Every bit that's away from the sun, I'm going to make it a little bit darker. There's going to be a lot more green as I move towards the center because that's the part that's going to be eventually touching the stem, so lots more green there. Now let's do the right petal. Again. I'm going to really double down on my shadows. There is a one big one in the middle of that pedal and another one all the way at the bottom. Moving on to the front petal, this one I want to make sure that I keep it light. The angle of this petal is really facing towards the light, so I'm going to just use a more saturated yellow. Coming back to my top petal, a bit more of our base yellow mixed with a little bit of our orange storm and up a little bit. My strokes are following the direction of the pedal, always from the edge towards the center, and a few orange details at the bottom. I think it's starting to look very close to finished as I watch my pigments drying out. I'm going to move on to the center of the flower, and here, I think for the first time I'm not afraid to use quite a saturated green. Lots of contrast using sap green and just really tiny strokes going around that little detail. It's almost a circular shape, creating a lot of contrast there that will help us add more depth. Now you will notice that I also did a couple of small details on the bottom pedal with my warm brown, and those are the areas where you see the reverse side of the petal. Again, this is helping us create a sense of depth, and finally I'm noticing I could use a little bit more warm brown on the front petal towards the center. As a final step, I am going to put another layer, a really big layer, just almost half of the petal on that area on the left, where I see a lot of shadow. Similarly, because it's the same angle, I'm going to use our green, brown, yellow mixture on the right-hand side, and a little bit more on the last petal, the one that's just peeking out from the back and that's to set it back visually. Now, note that I'm going to come back, and add a lot of our warm, yellow, wet on wet into that shadow and this is the reflection within the shadow that I was talking about. You can see it quite clearly in the reference photo, so even though that side of the pedal is turned away from the light, it's getting some bounce-back yellow color from the bottom side of the pedals. That's about it. We could theoretically come back and add a lot more details on the veins like we did on our purple and red pansy, but I want to keep it light for this yellow pansy because our base is so light and the overall feel of this pilot is very light and translucent, I want to avoid putting in any more harsh purples or violets, so I'm going to leave it at this stage, less detail, less saturation compared to our first two flowers and I'm quite happy with this look for this particular flower. I hope you're happy with your result. Up next, just a few final thoughts. Congratulations, you've finished the class.
11. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on finishing the class. Doesn't matter if you did all three flowers or just focused on one flower today. I think you will find that this makes for a great exercise, particularly when it comes to botanical art, but also for any watercolor subject. I hope you enjoyed practicing wet on wet and wet on dry techniques and you've learned something new about the pigments that you have in your palette, and got more comfortable with mixing directly on paper. Most importantly, I hope you're getting more comfortable with building a watercolor layers step-by-step to achieve realistic volume, and you have a better understanding of light and shadow and how you can use these different techniques in order to come up with a realistic subject. If you have any questions or something was unclear, you can post a new discussion on the Skillshare website in the Discussion section of this class. Your final projects, I can't wait to see them, please post them in the project section of the class. If you feel like it, you can also share them on social media and tag me using one of these handles because I love seeing what you guys come up with and especially if you incorporate the flowers into some of your other work. So don't forget to tag me, again, only if you feel like it. If you enjoy the class, don't forget to subscribe so you can get notification next time I post the class. If there's some things that you really enjoyed about this class and you want me to continue including in future classes, don't hesitate to reach out. Of course, I'm very much committed to improving my teaching style. So if you have any ideas or suggestions on how to improve the format or the flow of the class, new subjects that you want me to consider teaching, please do leave a comment either in a discussion board or you can find me on social media and reached out directly. I always appreciate your feedback and support. Thank you so much for taking the class. I look forward to seeing your projects. Take care, and I look forward to seeing you in the next class.
Anna Bucciarelli, Professional Illustrator
