Mastering Watercolor Brush Control: Paint Leaves in a Glass Jar

1. Welcome!: [MUSIC] Welcome to this fun watercolor class, where we master our brush control by painting five different types of leaves in a glass jar. Hey, I'm Kanchan Kaul, and you may also know me as petiteprocrastinator from Instagram. I'm an artist, illustrator, and an art educator. My work has been used for books, wall art, products, and even tattoos. Teaching art has been something that I always enjoyed. Whether it's sharing small tips and tricks and Instagram or in-depth classes on Skillshare, I love it all. Today, I have a strong community on Instagram and this is my sixth Skillshare class. This class is perfect for you to practice your brush strokes. In fact, if you have taken a small break from painting, it is a great way to come back. In this class, I will teach you how to paint five different types of leaves. Later, we even get a bit crafty and I'll show you how to easily draw and paint a glass vase. Each leaf that I teach in this class is unique and uses a different technique, which makes this class enjoyable and holistic. Finally, we will put all our learning together to create a beautiful class project. At the end of the class, you will master your brush strokes to build a solid foundation, and learnings from this class can be used in future for many different paintings. Are you excited to get started with all the greens? Let's get right into it. 2. Class Orientation: [MUSIC] Before we get into the lessons, let's have a quick walk-through of the class. This class is divided into practice lessons, where we learn how to paint five different types of leaves. We learn how to make the double-stroke leaf, the long single-stroke eucalyptus leaf. Then we learn how to create a leaf using the twisting technique, and we'll also learn the lead with the rolling technique. Finally, we will learn a dabbing technique to create a fern leaf. Then we will learn how to quickly draw a vase. In this lesson, we even get a bit crafty, so keep your scissors handy. After the practice lessons, we will go on to paint a final project where we will first paint the vase and then paint all the leaves in it. I will highly encourage you to post your creations in the project gallery. It's a great motivation for everyone. I'll see you in the next class, where we will talk a little bit about the materials. [MUSIC] 3. Materials: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we will go over the material that we will be using throughout the class. Before we dive into the lesson, let's see the material that we will be using throughout the class. I will be using this Canson watercolor paper which is cold pressed, 300 GSM, 100% cotton. You can choose to use any brand that you like. Just make sure it is 300 GSM and 100% cotton cold pressed paper. A 100% cotton cold pressed paper with 300 GSM gives you the best results for watercolor paintings. I like this brand because it is not very expensive. It is perfect for practice and it has a slight texture, not too rough, and not too fine as well. This works perfectly for me, but feel free to choose anything that you like. For the brushes, I'll be using this black velvet silver brush, size 8 and size 6. Most of the times I will be using size 6, but it's good to have size 8 handy as well to create beautiful fuller leaves. I am using tube watercolors, but you can use pans as well. Since I'm using two watercolors, I will require a palette as well, so I have a ceramic palette with me. Finally, we also need a paper towel to dab the brush so I keep reusing this paper towel, some water, a pencil, and an eraser. In the lesson when we make awash, it's good to keep a scrap paper handy. We will get a bit crafty, so just any paper is okay. I'm just using one of my practice sheets and keep scissors handy as well. I'll show you more in depth how we can use this paper and scissors to create awash in that lesson. I hope you have all your materials ready. In the next lesson, we will learn a little bit about the colors that we're using throughout the class. [MUSIC] 4. Colors & Color Mixing: Now let's look at all the colors that we will be using in the class. I have a few of my favorites but I'll also show you how to mix colors to create similar shades. One of my favorites is the Perylene green which is a really nice deep shade of green. I'll show you what it looks like and if you don't have this, we can even create it with the basic shapes that you get in the palette so I'll show you that as well. Let's see what it looks like. It's really beautiful shade. I love this green color. I'm just swatching it to show you what it looks like. If it was a leaf it will be something like this. I'm just creating some branch. This is a deep beautiful shade of green that I have. We can create this beautiful green ourselves as well if you don't have it in your palette. I'll show you how you can create it with the basic colors that you have. If you have a sap green so you can use the sap green and mix it with a bit of cobalt blue to get this beautiful shade as well. Let's see how we can do that. I'm squeezing out a bit of cobalt blue and sap green to mix them together. Even this gives you a nice, beautiful deep green color, which you can use throughout the class if you don't have Perylene green. I'll show you this looks beautiful as well. If you want to make it darker you can just add more blue to this. This gives a beautiful deep green color as well. You can mix a blue and green to get this beautiful shade of green. This is one color that we will be using a lot, Perylene green. If you don't have Perylene green you can create that by mixing sap green as well as cobalt blue together. Keep this handy with you. Other lighter green would be sap green that is very handy for creating lighter shades of leaves. I'll show you what this looks like. This is a really light beautiful green and this is beautiful for creating those green with which you want to show that it has a little bit of sunshine to it. Lighter shades of green will be beautifully created with this color sap green. Next I wanted to show you how you can create olive green. One of the other colors that I love using is the olive green. Olive green is slightly deeper shade or green. Either you can use is straight from the tube if you have it. I'll show you what this looks like. This is the olive green that I have which is light slightly darker than the sap green that I just swached before. This olive green you can create even with the basic colors that you have. If you have a sap green here I'm going to mix a little bit of yellow to this and a little bit of cobalt blue. Just a tinge. Not too much. I'm going to swatch it here. Beautiful green as well. A slightly different from the sap green that I had but it's beautiful nonetheless. There's another beautiful color on my palette that I love using for creating leaves which is the super granulated Schmincke desert green. I have marked all these colors in the description so later you can always go ahead and have a look at that. I'll show you what it looks like. It is a grayish green with little bit of brown tinge to it and it has a beautiful granulation to it as well. I think it gives you a really beautiful darker shades of green and if you can see closely it has a lovely texture as well. Apart from all this I will also be using an indigo shade for creating the glass. This is a beautiful color to make glass. I love making glass or glass jars using this indigo color so it's good to keep them handy as well. That's it. With this greens and blue we're ready to get started with the painting. Are you ready with your paints? Let's dive right into it. [MUSIC] 5. Basic Two Stroke Leaf: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we will paint a simple two-stroke leaf. Our final project is to create this beautiful jar with different leaves. We're going to start with practicing the first leaf, which is a simple two-stroke leaf. Just get a practice paper with you and just your brush and paint, and let's get started. You can use any color you like, I just squeezed out a few to demonstrate the colors that I'm using, so I'll reuse this. It's just practice, so you can use whatever you like. Grab your [inaudible] brush. I'll show you the first leaf, which is a simple two-stroke leaf. What I'll do is start with creating the central vein first. I'll just use the tip of my brush to create this beautiful central vein. From there I'll start adding leaves to this, so let's start from the top. A simple two-stroke leaf will be something like this. Press your brush and pick it up. Then again, from your tip of the brush, press your brush and pick it up. This is a simple two-stroke leaf. Then again, tip of the brush, press it and pick it up. Tip of the brush, press it and pick it up. This is a good practice to understand your brush as well. When I have nothing to do and I probably bought a new brush, I would always go ahead and create this beautiful two-stroke leaf to just practice my brush and understand how it behaves with water and color. You can even overlap them, for example, this cell come on top of this, and create a beautiful leaf like that. This is just a practice. Again, I'll show you how it's done. Just repeating, tip of the brush to just create a small stem, press the belly of the brush, and pick it up, and then tip of the brush, press and pick it up. Continue this. As a good practice, I would tell you to actually fill up the entire page with different shades, you don't have to stick to green, you can even make red leaves if you wish. It's just a practice to understand the brush and the stroke. This is for the first type of leaf. I'm not really sure if it is any particular leaf in nature, but this is a simple filler leaf that you can start with. I hope you had fun filling up this page with your leaf. In the next lesson, we will learn how to paint the willow eucalyptus leaf. [MUSIC] 6. Willow Eucalyptus: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we will learn how to paint the willow eucalyptus leaf, which is a long beautiful leaf. Next, we're going to learn how to make the willow eucalyptus leaf, which looks something like this. For that, I'm using my bigger brush. This is the size 8 brush for the willow eucalyptus leaf. I'll show you how to do this. For the willow eucalyptus, I'm going to just make one stem first. It's going to be a single-stroke leaf. This brush is nice and big. So what you're going to do is just use the tip of the brush. Then press it to make a long leaf and pick it up. The willow eucalyptus has beautiful long leaves and I'm going to try and mimic that leaf here. Again, press it for a longer duration, and then pick it up to create these beautiful long leaves and try to make it in all different directions. They have a really beautiful flowy look to it. Again, pick it up. They can go overlap each other as well like this. Again. Just put the tip of the brush, press it for a longer duration, for a longer leaf, and then pick it up. I'm using the thicker brush so you don't have to make this two-stroke. It's a one-stroke leaf. It is nice and flowy so just have fun with it. Like this. Another character you can add to this is a bit of a twist, so I'll show you how you can do that. Again take your green on your brush. Create one leaf like this, and pick it up. Then again, take a dark green shade to your brush from the place where you had left it, put your tip of the brush there, again, press it, and pick it up. It looks like a twist here. You're going to give more details to this twist to enhance it. I'll show you again how we can make a twisted leaf. Put the tip of your brush and make first part of the twist. Then where you left off, just put your tip of the brush again and make a second part of the twist. Like this, you'll see a twisted leaf and it gives a beautiful character to this willow eucalyptus. To practice, what I'm going to do is create more branches out of this and continue painting my leaves all over and practice my brushstrokes. This is going to be super relaxing practice. For long, beautiful one-stroke leaves. For this twisted leaf. I'm going to show you how to enhance the depth to this. Here you can see it's dried up a bit. What I'll do is here is a twist, so I'm just going to take a darker shade of green with the tip of my brush I'm going to mark the edge to show some shadow and spread this color along the shadow. It gives a beautiful depth to this leaf and it enhances the twist even more. Just put it on the edge of this leaf. Let's do that again for the other one here. In this gives the twist is here and the edge is here. I'm just going to put this to the edge of the leaf and then spread it along or blend it with the rest of the leaf. I just want to enhance this twist basically. Give it a bit more depth. Let's do that here as well. In this leaf also, I see a twist and I want to enhance this. I'm just going to add that twist, the darker shade of green, and spread it. Then blend it here as well. To give it a bit of a depth. Now let's get into the next lesson where we paint, leaf using the turning technique. [MUSIC] 7. Silver Dollar Eucalyptus: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we will learn how to paint a beautiful silver dollar eucalyptus leaf. In this lesson, we'll practice something called as the silver dollar eucalyptus leaf. It's a round shape leaf. For that you will need again your round brush. I'm using size 6, and just take some paint on your brush. I'm mixing some water and making a bit watery texture. Now what I'll do is just create a stem. I want to have these leaves come out of the stem like this. Now if I want the leaf to come for example from here, I'm going to keep my tip of the brush here, and I'm going to just twist it around to make a round leaf. Again, I'll show you how. Just keep the tip of your brush here, and then turn it around to make around leaf. This gives a beautiful silver dollar eucalyptus leaf. You can make it simply by just making a round if you wish. But I feel that if I turn my brush it gives a more unique leaf every time I make it. I just turn it around like this, and it's also a good brush practice actually. Again, here, tip of my brush, keep the brush down and move it around, and then again move your tip to the starting point. Let's practice this again. Tip of my brush. Press it down, turn it around, and then just touch the starting point. Same again, press it, turn it around, and then come back to your starting point. You can simply make this by making a circle like this. But the twisting brush technique is slightly more relaxing I feel, and it's quite a fun practice as well. Go ahead and practice this. This is for creating the round silver dollar eucalyptus leaves. [MUSIC] Now let's get into the next lesson where we paint a beautiful leaf using the rolling technique. [MUSIC] 8. Rose Leaf: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we will paint a leaf using the rolling technique. This particular leaf resembles a rose leaf. So let's see how we can do this. Again, I'm going to just create a center line wing first, and like the previous silver $ eucalyptus leaves that we created, this is something similar. But in this case, I'll start with the top of the leaf. So I'll keep my brush like this and just roll it down like this. Again, I'll create the other side of this leaf. Let's roll it down. I think this beautiful rolling technique gives a beautiful new texture to every leaf that you create. Instead of painting it, it's like stamping. So again, I want to make a leaf here, so I'll keep my brush here and roll it down. I'll keep my brush here and roll it down on the other side as well. Let's do this for the entire branch. Keep your brush and just roll it halfway, so this is rolling technique. The previous technique was the toning technique in which we are turning the entire brush. Now we're just rolling it on one side to create one side of the leaf like this, and then rolling it on the other side to create the other side of the leaf. Whilst this leaf dries up, we can even add more wings and texture to this. For now we just create the base with the rolling technique. Feel free to overlap the leaves if you want to give a beautiful texture as well, so if something has dried up like this, I can just make it with a darker color on top of this to show a bit of overlap and then join it. This way, every leaf you create is unique and different and I really love doing this technique. So fill up the entire page again, use different colors of green if you wish. [MUSIC] So with this, we have this rolling technique and it creates this beautiful texture leaf. I hope you had fun painting this leaf. It can be a bit tricky, but it will get easier with practice, so keep practicing till you get a good hold of your brush. I'll see you in the next lesson where we paint a fern leaf using the dabbing technique. [MUSIC] 9. Fern Leaf: In this lesson, we will paint a fern leaf using the dabbing technique. In this lesson, we are going to practice how to create a fern leaf. For a fern leaf, I'll actually make a little bit of a drawing. How the fern leaf usually is like a triangle. I'm going to make a triangle. This is the center vein, and then I'm just making a triangle around it as a guideline. From the central vein, they'll have different branches coming out of it like this. You can even overlap these branches if you wish like this. Some of the branches may overlap. Something like this. Try to stick to this triangle to give it this shape. Now we can start painting it. I'm going to use a bit of olive green in this because I want to mix two different colors to give it a bit of a texture and depth. I'm using my favorite desert green as well in this. This is a very fun and simple technique. Again, take your Size 6 brush and create the central vein. You can use any color. Actually, this is just practice. I will just paint the central vein first very lightly. Then I'm going to take the olive green in my brush, just make a watery consistency. I'm going to dab it like this. Instead of painting, I'm just dabbing it along the vein that I had drawn. Try to keep it thick at the bottom and thinner as you go up on top. Again, this takes some and dab. Try to keep it thick at the bottom and thinner as you go up. You can even use a slightly darker shade of green now, and give it a bit of depth by adding that darker green at the center. Let's continue this with the rest of the leaves as well. Again, thicker at the bottom and thinner as they go on top. This is a fern leaf. Again, a beautiful leaf to fill up your painting. I'll also use a darker color to give some depth. I'm mixing some lemon yellow to give it a lighter shade this time as it goes up. Keep it light as it goes up. Then again, just follow this pattern. Thicker at the bottom, thinner on top. Follow this triangle that we had created. Yeah, this is the fern leaf and you can use this technique to practice and make more ferns. It's a beautiful filler leaf as well when you're creating your painting, finally. All right. Hope you had fun painting this beautiful fern leaf. In the next lesson, we will get a bit crafty and draw vase. 10. Vase Drawing: In this lesson, we will draw vase. For this you will require scrap paper as well as scissors handy to get them with you before you start the lesson. Now, let's get a bit crafty and I'll show you one simple easy trick to create a symmetrical vase, which I use quite often. But if you're confident with your drawing, then you can go ahead and draw vase directly on the paper. Otherwise, I can show you this technique that I use sometimes to make symmetrical vase. This is a scrap paper. You can take anything you like. I'll just draw a vase. This is the bottom of the vase. From here I'll just draw one. I wanted to make a vase which is something like this. I'm just drawing it. I want to make it something this size, so I'll just do it like this. What you can do is once you've drawn the vase, just cut it along this as a template that you can use to trace the outline of. I'm just cutting it. You can use this technique to even make wine glasses, bottles, jars. I find it very difficult to make symmetrical vase and I use this technique a lot. Once you have this half side card template, bring your final paper on which you want to create entire the painting. I just bring this. What I'm going to do is just trace this now. I'll just make sure that it is straight. I'm just putting it here and tracing this. Then I'll just turn it around and trace the other side, just like this. How fat you want this vase to be, it's your choice so you can just move it along. I'm just doing it here. I want it to be this thick. Like this, you'll get a symmetrical vase. This is the center line, but I want it to be a bit cold. Just draw half at the bottom, like this, along this line. Again here I want to make a lip for this. I'm just going to just make a slight drawing. This is a glass vase that I've made now. Very easily, very quickly, it's symmetrical, otherwise I would take ages to make this symmetrical vase. You are ready with the vase. In the next lesson, we are going to start painting this. Did you find this lesson helpful to draw vase. I personally love this trick and it works for me always. In the next lesson, we will start painting our class project. 11. Class Project Part 1: [MUSIC] Let's start painting the class project. To paint the class project first, we will paint the vase. While we were away, I made the vase again, and I moved it slightly in the center. I created a different shape as well. I cut up a new shape and I just made it similar in the same way that I showed you earlier. You can use this technique to create any different shapes and sizes of vase. Now that the vase is ready, let's start painting it. For the vase, you will need the size 6 brush, again, the round brush. I'm using indigo for the vase, but you can use any color. Vase can be of any different colors. But I'll just show you the technique, you can make it with any color that you wish. In this case, since it's a round vase, I'm going to keep the shine somewhere here. What I'll do is just mark that area out. I want to keep this area like really the highlighted shiny area. Because it's a round vase, it will give that illusion that it is a round vase at depth. Then I want to keep this area, as well, almost white. I'm going to keep this area white as well. Again, here, I'll mark some of the areas which I want to show as white, or the highlighted shiny parts because it's a round vase, something like this. Wet the brush. Take the indigo at the tip of your brush and go ahead and add this indigo right at the edge of the drawing that you have made. Again, be very gentle and just use the tip of your brush. If you wish, you can use a smaller brush as well if you're finding this challenging to use only the tip. Now, clean your brush. It's just clean. It's a damp brush. I'm just going to pull this indigo throughout the vase. I'm really not using any paint now. I'm trying to keep this highlighted area untouched. I'm just pulling this down. Again, for a glass vase, not all of it has to be defined, not all of the edges. Now that the water has been added, I'm just adding some color to define the edges. Again, just spreading it with a wet, clean brush. I'm going to mark this area as well with a darker color. Again, take some color on your brush and just put it here and the bottom of the lip because that's where it will be darkest. Then pull it with the clean brush, no paint on this. Try to keep this white parts untouched because that will be the highlight, and then spread it with your brush and the water. Throughout this, keeping the highlights untouched. I'm just wetting this entire vase now. I'm going to add this color again at the edge, just define the outline. Spread it along. Again, just spread it along with some water, keeping the highlights untouched. You're going to erase the pencil marks later when everything dries up. Try to not get your paint on the pencil marks, otherwise, it will not be erased easily. Again, take some paint and mark the edge of this base of the vase. I'm just taking very dark color. No water, very dark tinge and just marking the base. Again, you don't have to mark the entire base, just some of the edges and then spread it. Notice, as well, I'll just mark some of the edges and then spread it. Let's wait for this area to dry and continue with the rest of this. Let's make the lip of the jar. Now, I'm taking the paint at the tip of my brush. My brush is not very wet. Again, the lip, I want to show that the highlight is here. I'm going to keep that area white, but I'm going to keep this area darker. I'll just make the lip here and spread it, and keep some highlights like this. Don't do too much of spreading along because the lip is very thin. We need to have that white highlights to really bring out the look of a jar or a glass jar. I'm just marking the edge now. What I'm doing is just going close to the original edge that I had made and marking the edge to give the thickness of a glass jar or vase. Now, let it dry. Then we'll erase all the pencil marks and see if we need to do any adjustments. Now, let's continue this project. In the next part of the project, we will start painting the leaves. [MUSIC] 12. Class Project Part 2: [MUSIC]. It's time to fill up the vase with leaves. This is the fun part and you can paint the leaves any way you like it or follow the way I'm painting it. I'll start with the center, and I'll fill up the center first, and then I'll go ahead and add some more details and character to this vase later. From the center, I'm going to start with a simple leaf, which is the rolling technique that we had learned earlier. I'm just making leaves with the rolling technique. I'm just creating some leaves here. In the center, it will be a mix of dark and light as well. Keep changing the greens that you use to give a bit of depth and texture to this. I'm starting with the rolling technique and creating these first leaves. What I would suggest is try all the different types of leaves that were taught in the practice lessons and fill up the entire thing. Now I'm just creating some fillers here with the dabbing technique. I'm not making the entire fern, but just some fillers here. I'm using the dabbing technique that we used in the fern. Now go ahead and create the two-stroke leaf. For this I'm using a different green. For every leaf that you try, use a different green so it gives a nice, beautiful texture to it. I'm using all the techniques that we learned earlier in the practice lessons. Now I'm going to create one branch. I want to create a very stylized branch. In this, I'm going to start making leaves with the rolling technique again. This is one of the stylized branch. Then I'm going to start adding the eucalyptus, which was the twisting technique. Let's see how that is created. Don't be afraid to overlap the leaves. You usually want to make this nice and full. Fill up the entire page with as many leaves as you can. Now let's create the fern. I'll show you one fern. After this, I'm going to speed up the video to just fill up this entire thing, and you go ahead and use your creativity to create as many different types of leaves. Just keep using different colors and use different types of leaves to fill up this entire page. The next one I'll draw is the fern. I'll show you how I go about the fern. With the fern, I always find it handy to make that triangle first. For example, I want one fern here, so I'm going to just make something like this. I want a triangle, something like this. I'm going to make the veins as well. From here, I'm just using the dabbing technique. I'll use the sap green and lemon yellow mix. I want something lighter. Again, use a darker color to make the vein. Now I'm just going to go ahead and add as many leaves, and I'll see you on the other side. [MUSIC]. These are all the leaves that I created. I used all the techniques that we learned earlier, the single stroke leaf, which is here. The long ones. The single stroke leaf with the little bit of twist to it, and even add that twist by adding a darker color here, and enhance the twist. The single stroke leaves are here. Then we have the two-stroke leaves that we created in the beginning. I have the rolling technique leaves here. We have the twisting technique leaves here, which even the ferns with the dabbing technique to fill up this entire vase. Now what we're going to do is make the stems. If you haven't noticed, it's a glass vase and we need to make these stems. Let's do that. It's very simple. Again, just take any dark color and start making the stems. Make sure you try to avoid the highlights because when it's a glass vase the highlights will be too bright, and your stems should be lighter in that area. For example, I'm going to just create a stem from here. This is my first stem. Then use a different darker shade, maybe indigo as well to just mark the edge, give it some depth. Something like this. Then I'll make more stems here. Again, I'm avoiding the highlights , something like this. Now, in this case, the stem is going through the highlight. I'm going to actually just pull the paint to make a light, really light through the highlight because the highlight is going to be lighter and then make it dark again beyond the highlight. Something like this. This is what you need to keep in mind when you're making stems in a glass vase. With this, we have completed the project. There's one more last thing which is the shadow of the vase. Considering this vase is on our table, what I'll do is just take some darker color. You can even take the indigo a little bit of shadow here and just mark this here. Just give it a bit of a shadow. You can even mark a shadow of or mark a few leaves which have fallen down, something like this. Just to add some character around. With this, it's complete. We have made the vase, we have made the leaves, and then we added some details like shadows and stems to this. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm really eager to see what you've created. Don't forget to post your class project. [MUSIC]. 13. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Did you have fun painting all the beautiful leaves? This class is perfect for you to practice your brush strokes. In fact, if you have taken a small break from painting, it is a great way to come back. I also love painting these small projects of leaves when I get a new set of brushes of paints to just see how the materials work for me. If you are not able to complete the entire project, that's perfectly fine. I would even love to see the practice leaves that you've painted so post whatever you have created in the projects gallery. If you like the class, then don't forget to leave a review. Follow me on Instagram as well as on Skillshare for future class updates. I'll see you next time. Happy creating. [MUSIC]