Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi. I'm Irina Trzaskos, watercolor artist and illustrator and I love to teach watercolor classes. Welcome to my studio. Mother's Day is just around the corner and today, I want to share with you how to make Mother's Day cards to honor special women in our lives. I'll show you three designs of the cards. Any card will take you 20 minutes or less. All videos are in real-time as always, so I hope you'll be painting with me. If you are new to this channel, thank you for joining and welcome. There is a follow button on top and let's get started.
2. Supplies & Colors: In this video, I'll show you the supplies and the colors we'll be using during the class. In this class we'll be using our usual supplies, our cold press paper. I'm usually painting on a regular sized paper 9 by 12 if I'm going to paint cards. After I can scan them in a scanner and send them to printer to print the cards, or if I want to print something else like posters or t-shirts, that's why I paint them on a regular sized paper, but if you want to make a handmade card, just cut the right size and use something like this or an old pen which doesn't try to make this seem like nicely. You can, so it doesn't break, so it looks nice. This is like a standard size. If you want to make a handmade card, just paint right on it and send it to your mom. Next we'll need watercolor paint. Whichever paint you have is fine. I'll mention them random. I'm using in the project section of the class, I'll need water, paint pallet, paper towel, pencil. In the project section of the class, you'll find the templates for all the drawings we'll use today. A medium watercolor brush, this is number six, synthetic brush. This is number four, synthetic. This is called skin brush, and a small watercolor brush, this is number two. Also I'll be using white ink, so I have a special brush which I use only for ink, which is not a very good brush but it works for ink well. Today I'll be using quite a bit of colors, so lemon yellow. If you don't have any colors I'm using, it's okay. Just substitute with whichever you have, or you can even use your own color scheme and it's going to be beautiful. Lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, cadmium orange, which you may notice I use a lot, cadmium red. Pretty much we'll use the entire rainbow today. Magenta. I love magenta. Then we'll use violet or purple, ultramarine blue and cyan blue, which is called turquoise in my palette but it may be called differently in yours. We'll use a little bit of paynes gray, and yellowish green. These are all the colors we'll be using today, but if you don't have them, just use any colors you have. Let's get started.
3. Painting a Floral Card: The first card we will be painting is this, a small but beautiful floral composition. You may remember how in one of the posts, for most of you who follow me, I sent a collection of flower compositions. Here are some of them. I'll share all the compositions I sent back then in the project section of this class. But for the first card we'll paint for Mother's Day. I want it to be more generic cards so you can use it for grandmas, for sisters who have kids or friends. It's going to be this pretty simple but beautiful flower composition. We have a one big flower. It can be any flower you want. You can pick from the collection of my classes or any other classes. We need one big flower here, one small flower here. I usually show the flowers in circles. Then we'll have a diagonal composition going right this way. Here we'll have another half flower, which is facing that way. We'll see some leaves or flowers in here. I don't want to do too much drawing because I want to leave as much freedom as I can just to be creative and create right on paper. As usually I like to start with the middle of the flower, so for one minute, I want to have paint in gray and for another, I want to mix some yellow, with yellowish green. This one, lets have yellowish green with some cadmium yellow. It can be a rose. It can be a penny. If you make a different middle, it could be a poppy flower. Any big flower you want, it can be ranunculus. For the petals, I'll mix some ocher orange with magenta. Just be creative. With some brush strokes let just paint a flower. Just like this, just by touching, by pressing at the brush to the paper, so you can see I'm using a medium-sized brush and it's important to leave these wide spaces between the petals and to keep adding magenta and orange to your mix or any other colors you are decided to use for your petals. Don't be shy. Just let your hand lead you. Again, if you're making smaller card, it will look a little different than these but I like how this looks. I'll leave this flower like this. For next one, I want to have Payne's gray in the middle. Again, I want to go with magenta. Just in a faintless style. This is a very quick last minute card, or if you need a lot of cards this is really easy to make and it's fun and it's relaxing. Here I'm taking only magenta and by the end I'll add some ultramarine blue to my magenta. You can see how beautifully it's diluting in our flower. We have two main flowers. Next, let's take some turquoise and with some purple and paint this branch just like this. Let's add some [inaudible] orange to this mix and paint few more gray branches. Just let your hand lead you. Again, some purple with magenta away from turquoise for the beautiful blue, so I want to have a leaf right here. Try not to touch the flowers at this point because they're still wet. Then they want to have a leaf right here. Let's paint this flower. Again, I'm taking the same mix of magenta with orange, the one I had on this flower. We'll create some balance of color and then go just like this. Very easy. You can see the gray wasn't dry enough so it's a little bit more there than I like but it's okay. Again, I'll take magenta with some ultramarine blue and I will create these little buds. Maybe one here. These are balancing this flower and this flower is balancing this flower. It's already beautiful. Next, let's add few more details. Mixing again that beautiful blue wherever you feel like I just try to create a balanced composition, but it doesn't have to be extremely diagonal. I'm going to add more details in this side and few more leaves right here. I feel like we need more yellow, green because we have only that middle and in the [inaudible] color and so on. Let's add a few more details and the same color. Why don't we add some little leaves on a branch right here so they will respond to this part. This can be any card. You can use it for a birthday card. You can use it just like a thank you card or a note, or you can just frame it in just a painting. This is better. Now, let's mix more of this emerald blue which is turquoise but it's darker than my other turquoise. I'll leave you the code for this color in the project section of the class. Let's add some more on these colored leaves on this side. We'll balance this leave with that side. I'm just pressing the brush and I see what marks it makes. It's beautiful I think. I continue tuning print. I painted the entire composition with the medium brush. I didn't switch to a smaller brush if you noticed, but you can switch if you want to. Let's add one magenta petal here for more in depth. Then I want to add brush strokes here and maybe here. Why not? Maybe one more to leaf. Now, I feel like this flower needs to be attached somewhere. Let's make another leaf and maybe a little yellow branch right here. This is our simple Mother's Day card.
4. "Home is where Mom is" Card: The idea for next card came when I was looking at this little house on my shelf, and of the sentence, "Home is where mom is." We'll be painting a little house instead of the vase with some flowers in it. For the next card I thought of the sentence, "Home is where mom is.", it's a nice way to express your love to your mom and I'm sure my mom will love this. I took this sentence to inspire me for the next design, and I hope you like it too. I thought we will draw a small house instead of vase and we'll have flowers coming out of this house. Because I'm not a good letterer, I just transferred the sentence, and again, I will upload all the outlines to the project section of the class, and you can print them of the house and overwriting and maybe of the flowers too, but I didn't draw the flowers and I'm not going to draw the flowers. I sketched the house, and I will do a sketch harder with a pencil for you, but you should draw it very light. The watercolor will cover it and you don't have to raise it after. It's a very simple house with more intricate door to keep it interesting and then am going to make it in one color, in blue and white, because it's already interesting as it is and then I don't want overwhelm it. But if you want to do it more colorful or the colors of your house, if you want, you can do then chill. Here is my little house, and I'm not drawing the flowers, I will be just improvising about the flowers, so let's get started. I have a small brush number two and the medium brush number four, so four of them. Blue of a house again I will make some of this dark till with some violet. It will give us a beautiful blue. Keep our color palette consistent. I'm not a painting on top of the house because I want one flower or more flowers to overlap it, so it will look more like a base. Let's suggest, and again, it doesn't have to perfect remember, because I wanted to have this hand drawn fill. I was thinking, we can paint here like stars and moons or something cosmic, could be an idea too. I don't know if I want to do it with them. We'll see later. Then coalesce should switch to a smaller brush for the base details. I'm going to scan this painting and to print it on a card, and send I'll send it to my mom. She'll love it because it really feels like home when she comes to our house and cooks us all the delicious food, and fills the house with warmth and talks. This is the door. I wanted to make this more interesting design on the top and let's add some more designs right here, so of course they're crooked, but that's what we want. This hand-drawn fill, not too crooked, could be worse. I tried to come up with some interesting ideas for your cards so it's something there. There's something could just, your original hard to paint so many flowers, so you can paint flowers too. I would probably leave a link in the description of a class for all of our flower classes. In case you want to pick some flowers, so which are your mom's favorites or your friends' favorites. I want to make a roof with this pattern, and I'm not touching the top because I want to have a flower here. Inclined blue needs more teal than it has. It's windy today. Probably you don't see how beautiful this blue is on a camera but it is some nice blue, and you can pick any color you want, it doesn't have to be blue, you can pick your favorite color, your mom's favorite color. This is my little house, and just be more careful with these top ones because we can have petals there, and you can always feel them later. This is our little house, mainly I want to color this too. Another can start painting the flowers, so flowers, I draw a circle here but ideally didn't plan much, so, but I was thinking, we can go this way like a symmetrical. If cadmium yellow with a little bit of green, I'm painting the middle, and then I want to have peach color, so I'm using cadmium, a lot of cadmium orange with water, which is becoming a little [inaudible] because the water is blue. Orange wave, magenta and a lot of water will give us the color peach. With brush stokes like this, we're making the petals of Icelandic poppy, very gentle flower. Again, I can paint any flower you want. It already looks very festive, I like it. Next part let's take some cadmium red and paint a half of the flower and then with magenta. Add some boldness to it. I'm washing the brush, try and get a little bit of softening. The petals and this watery hue is what we want from our watercolors. Let's do the same color flower here, just brush strokes like this. Again with cadmium red and magenta and cadmium red again. Add one here. Let's take some lemon yellow, with a little bit of orange and paint more flowers. Let this to be like buttercups. I think we need another Icelandic poppy, so let's make one here. I'm again starting with a yellow middle and I'll take some orange, a little bit of magenta and a lot of water. I'm trying not to touch the middle. For the leaves, let's mix some yellow with our teal blue and make some stems with this and some leaves. We need more yellow. Again, just do brush strokes like this. If you want this painted house to be playful a little bit naive, paint it a little wide doesn't have to be too complicated. It really has to be something fun. I'm taking the blue we painted the house with and I want to add some branches with little leaves. I feel like we need more flowers around here, so I'm leaving that area open. Let's add some leaves here. If you remember how we painted the cakes with flowers, this is very similar, it's just this time we have a house. Let's take some magenta and add it to the water because we already used it and add another flower here, like this and few more brush strokes. Let's take some orange and add a big beautiful tulip right here. Then I'll draw the stem and to balance all this, let's add the same color right here. The water is getting in the way. Add a stem here with a leaf, beautiful and a stem right here. Our teal needs more yellow, and I think we need one leaf here. Let's add some orange to our poppy and some magenta to this one, and few brush strokes just for fun. Those of you who like making splashes, you can add them too. The last bit you'll do, we'll just color the letters. I'm using the same mix of magenta and orange. You can use blue or any color that you want. In the word mom instead of "o" I'll draw a heart. This is our another mother's day card.
5. Painting a Unicorn Card: For the next card I was thinking, how magical and unique our moms are. So I thought we'll write the sentence, "Mom, Your Magical" with the height and unicorn, instead of O. My idea for this card, started with integral world mom to write instead of O, a heart. Then I thought we could have flowers in the heart. But then I thought, we can draw a unicorn inside of the heart. Then I thought, why don't we use the idea, "Mom, you are magical." So that's how we'll have a card with mom with a heart and the unicorn, which says, "Mom you are magical." So I transferred the letters. You can print them from the project section on glass vase, entire drawing. I already transferred it with the light lines. I'm outlining it darker. So you can see it. Okay. I was thinking to color the letters like cost me space. It's going to be the silhouette of this unicorn in the heart. This also is going to live in a space colored with some stars. When it dries, we can draw some flowers inside. I'll show you. So the main trick is to be pretty careful when coloring these letters. Because some lines are really thin. Here it says you are magical, I hope you can see it and we can start coloring. So I'll be using different colors.
6. Last Thoughts: Thank you for joining me in this class. I hope you had a chance to paint with me, and now you have a beautiful little collection of cards for Mothers' Day or other occasions. If you liked this class please leave a review and upload a project to our project section of the class. If you are sharing your art on Instagram, please tag me so I can see your beautiful art. See you in my next class. Bye.