Painting Trendy Greenery in Watercolor

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Irina Trzaskos, water color artist and illustrator. Welcome to my Skillshare channel. This channel you'll find a big collection of water color classes for beginners. During my classes we're exploring different watercolors skills and techniques. In today's class we will be painting different types of trendy greenery. Greenery is a great subject to paint and you can use the skills from this class to paint a collection of botanical paints, stationary, pattern design, or to use these skills to compliment your floral compositions with some trendy greenery. All my classes are filmed in real time so you can paint along. If you are new to this channel, thank you for joining and welcome. Press the follow button on top and let's get started. 2. Supplies: In today's class, we will be using the following supplies: watercolor paint, any watercolor paint you have, water, paint palette, paper towel, watercolor paper, cold press, 300 grams or 140 pounds. If you are using a different watercolor paper, it's fine, too. You can use hot press or a fecal paper if you want to. Also, you can use a sketchbook, if you have a sketchbook where you are painting your flowers, your greenery, or leaves. Also, we'll be using pencil, eraser, medium watercolor brush, round with a good sharp tip, small watercolor brush. If you have a liner brush, we'll be using that, too. If not, just use your small watercolor brush. Also, I'll be using a different, very small watercolor brush just for ink. These are all the supplies we'll be using today. When we'll be painting, I'll be showing you the colors I'm using, but you can use any colors you like. Let's get started. 3. Dusty Miller: The first step of greenery we'll start with is dusty miller. It's a very beautiful leaf and if you are drawing a composition, you can draw more leaves, not just one. But today, I will show you how to draw one leaf and how to paint it and after you can paint as many leaves as you need for your composition or it can be just one leaf and it's going to be beautiful if it's even just one single leaf. If you're making a print or for any other purposes. I'll be doing thicker lines and darker lines, but you can try to do very very light sketch. We need an oval to understand our general shape. It's like basic leaf shape printed oval. Here we'll have a stem. Then if you need to, you can draw a line too in the middle and even make some branches if you need to. But if you feel confident enough, you can start drawing with me. It's very simple and it's an organic shape so it doesn't have to be perfect. We'll start by doing this loops and then we go closer to the middle of our oval. Make a bigger loop and again, a series of loops. Usually I'll add the templates for the drawings to a project of the class, but I really encourage you to draw your own because this is fun and it's not difficult at all. If you even feel more confident, you don't need to draw anything, you can just paint the shape right away with your brush. When we go down, our little signs of a leaf are getting smaller. I don't really need a reference picture, but you can look at it if you want and the same way, the second part. The oval we need just for reference to know where the edges and here we don't even reach to the edged part and this way we can make sure it's not going in the wrong direction. Feel confident, feel playful and just keep doing this organic and fun shapes. I really like this leaf because of the shape, it's so lacey. Would be nice on wedding invitations or if you're painting a wedding bouquet. It's so beautiful. I think it looks very festive too. This is our dusty miller. I will suggest you to erase the oval, I'll leave it so we can start painting right away. You can always erase it after if you want to. What we'll do, we'll mix ultramarine blue. Dusty miller leaves are gray with a little bit of blue in them and I'll suggest us to add some teal or some emerald green to make it a little minty. We are mixing, cadmium orange and blue. It has to have a little more blue than orange so our brown, it doesn't look brownish. Then let's add a little bit of teal to it and a lot of water. Next we'll start painting. Let's test if it's not too dark. I think it looks good. Maybe a little more water. Again, in Trendy Greenery you can play with colors. You don't need to make leaves look too natural. Let them be more creative. They can be mint color, they can be blue, they can be purple. Just be the artist and decide whichever color scheme you need, you can use your shape and change the colors if you need to. You can see how beautiful this gray which has a little bit of blue and a little bit of mint because we added teal to it. Try to paint pretty fast, so you won't have hard lines, transitions and of course enjoy the process. It's good to mix enough or a little more watercolor with water than you need, so you don't run out of it because you need to work pretty fast and you want the color to be pretty consistent. It's okay if you'll mix in the middle of a process more, it's fine don't worry if it happened. But it's better to have just enough right here in the palate so you can just enjoy and paint and don't think about you'll run out of color. You can see how beautiful it looks. Its nothing complicated just to shape and the color makes it special, very contemporary. Again, you could do all this shape just with your brush, without having to cut out some lines. Especially if you want to practice your brush strokes, I'll suggest you to try to do it just with your brush. You can now draw an oval, just for reference, but all this little details. The entire shape of the leaf can be painted just with a brush. You can paint towards the green area in pencil and watercolor, using left hand we talked about in watercolor trends class. Or you can just, it is very soft, hopefully they're way lighter than mine. It's nothing complicated, just filling them of a shape of a leaf with this beautiful grey-blue color. Never forget about the paper towel next to you if you have excess of water, just dry your brush in a paper towel and absorb excess of water, so it doesn't bloom back into that leaf. At this point we have to let it totally dry and after it's dried to erase all the pencil lines. After the leaf was totally dried, I erased the pencil lines. Next what will do is just add a little bit of texture. If you look at the similar leaves, they have a little bit of fluff on the surface, so we'll take a small brush. This is number two, and we'll take the same mix that will add some tiny, tiny lines here and there. Let's make it a little darker, so add a little bit of tier to add the main tier color. I'm making it darker just to conceal hopefully. There are short little lines I made in, here and there not everywhere. Just to suggest a little bit of texture. You have to give only a hint of texture to the viewer, you don't need to work or hide and cover the entire leaf in these lines. Watercolor has to be really, really watery when you do this, we don't need dark lines. I'm painting a little bit here and there. Very random. This is too thick so if it's too thick, just dry the brush and absorbing of the excessive paint. Next, I want to make the leaf look even fluffier. I'll take some white ink and I'll do some white lines with a white ink too. I'm using a special brush I use only for Ink, so I don't ruin my watercolor brush. On your paints and probably you can see better than on the camera that these white lines, add a dreamy fluffiness onto your leaf. I'm using the really tiny brush, this is number 0 and try to use a different brush than your watercolor brush. This is our dusty miller leaf. You can use it on itself as a plant, you can use it in composition with other greenery or you can use it in a composition with some bright flowers, it will look wonderful. 4. Prickly Thistle: Now let's draw and paint the prickly thistle. We'll start with the flower or the fruit, or I'm not sure how to call these prickly parts of a thistle, so it's going to be like an oval. But because we'll have it hovered with some leaves, I'm drawing it just like an egg shaped top part of an oval. Then we'll have some leaves. It's nothing complicated it looks a little bit like spiky leaves. If you've painted with me a maple or a holy branch then it won't be more difficult for you to draw this. We look like these, then we have a stem. Feel free to use the template with the reference picture in the project section of the class. Here on the stem we have more leaves. We don't need to be too precise just make sure they look pretty, nicely shaped. Then we'll have one leaf coming out here. I remind you of that your sketch has to be way lighter than mine. I'm just outlining it with thicker lines. You can see what I'll be painting, and again a stem. We're painting a pretty simple thistle, if you need to for a composition you can make more stems with more prickly parts on it and more leaves, however you like. The goal here is to learn how to paint one and then you can paint as many as you want. Another leaf. You can see the leaves are all different I just improvised and turned them anyway I liked, the way I felt would look nice in a composition. I'm leaving some space here in case I want to add the name of a plant if I will be using this as a print. After we draw our plant make sure you have a paper towel next to you and we can start painting. I'm taking yellowish-green, some bright blue, and I start painting this part and avoiding the leaves. I want my thistle to be a pretend bluish, and also I'd love to have some beautiful color transitions on the leaves. This is bright blue and yellowish green. While still wet, I'll take a smaller brush and I'll mix some violet with emerald green and I'll get a nice dark blue. While this part is still wet, I'll add some dots. Maybe I should have waited while it dries a little bit more, but I think it's okay. Good. While it dries, we'll take some lemon yellow, and we'll start painting the top of one leaf. Then I'll take some bright blue and I'll add to the same leaf. Some more bright blue and again some more lemon yellow. You can see how beautifully is some hooking with all the transition between yellow and blue, some parts it turned into green. Let's do some yellow here too. Of course it's not a neutral color of a thistle and if you want a natural color and tone, one bit a stranding but you can do it. Paint it all bluer, grayish with less transitions. Again, adjust it to your composition, whichever you have in mind. If you are painting a stationary or a wedding suit. You can see with these color transitions I'm avoiding to add too many layers because we already have this nice highlights and shadows. Here I can add a line right away. You don't have to go back in layers and layers to add all these details it will make our artwork look fresher. The less leaves we have, the more spontaneous, the more fresh it will look. So now let's paint the stem. I'm taking again lemon yellow and bright blue. Because of the shapes of the leaves of this plant, I am using a lot of small brush. This is a squirrel number two and you can use a small brush, whichever you're comfortable to use too. Hence the leaves, you can now make the transitions between green and blue even sometimes you can add some purple to them. Next to blue, not next to green or yellow. If you'll add purple next yellow, it would look beautiful because they're complimentary colors and they just don't neutralize each other and look dull. Again, I have a new yellow and blue on this one and I added some water, so it created this beautiful aqua and next I'll add more blue and just be patient and enjoy the process. Make sure your brush has a nice pointy tip. It will really help and in here, I want to add a little bit of purple. For this one, let's take some yellowish green, some red blue, and violet and again, bright blue and then at the top I want to add some lemon yellow. This leaf will be also lemon yellow with blue. The stem will be blue and closer to the bottom, I'll add some purple and let's drag the same purple into this branch and again, I made them blue. Next, let's add some yellowish green and more blue. You can see every leaf is like a piece of art as it is beautiful, colorful transitions. For last leaf, as a base I'm using a diluted blue. This a bright blue. It's warmer than ultramarine blue, some yellowish green. Now let's let it dry and next we'll add some details. I don't want to add too many details. I don't want to add any details on this leaves because they look painterly. They look beautiful. I don't want all of this painterly feel but I would like to make some blue with a little bit of purple and with liner brush, which is like this. I want to add some to make it prickly. I'm adding some lines to this part, so it can be tricky, but don't be afraid it's going to be all right. This is good and next I'll take some of this darker blue. When we mix the purple with emerald green and attempt again to draw this dots which diluted totally in our blue-green in the previous layer. With the same blue, I'll add some lines to this leaf. Again, it's up to you to decide to how many leaves you would like to add the texture and how many would like just to leave as is. I'm adding some texture to the stem and maybe to this one. I think this is enough. This is our prickly thistle. 5. Willow Branch: So for the next term branch we don't really need that drawing. I just draw like few lines. One branch, another and another. But we won't draw any leaves. We will be just painting them right away. So we'll be painting a willow, which is very trendy. We'll be using again, unusual color. For the branch I'm taking a pretty usual color, which is sepia. I'm taking this liner brush. It's called script liner by American painter. Make sure nothing is in your way and just draw a branch, paint a branch. Another branch. Just like this. Nice we'll take bigger which is number four and let's take some teal with a little bit of purple above it. I'm loading the brush with paint. I press it on paper and I just drug it by lifting it slowly like this. Again load it with paint with water and press it, drag, drag, lift again. This is a great brush control exercise too. That's very fast and very relaxing and very trendy. When I don't is this pointy end of the leaf, I will just add it like this. When l was little, we had these huge willow trees in our yard and we would also play under them with other kids. It really brings me nice memories when I paint willow leaves. I think they're very pretty. You can let them intersect if you want to. Let's try. Bleed into one another. I'm adding a lot of paint. I have some larger chunk here. We need the another one here and one more here. This is our willow branch. Very easy and beautiful. 6. Hops Part 1: Next trends of greenery we'll be painting are hops. Hops, which are used to make beer, are very trendy now as a greenery in composition, in stationary design, in invitations and even in flower bouquet. It's a vine, that's why I want to draw it from the top. I'm going from top to the bottom. The hops have a shape of a pine cones, but they are green. To draw a hop, we need to make this strawberry shape and we'll start drawing these scales, which look like this. Again, make your drawing very light. Today we'll paint some hops and leaves and of course the vine itself. It's irregular, sometimes they're longer than the strawberry, we'll make this one longer. Then we have the vine going, it's curly, very interesting shape. I never expect them to be used as a decorative plant, but now when I look at them they are very decorative, so it's not surprise why they're so popular. The leaves have different shapes, some looking more close like a grape and some are more triangle on the same plant, that's interesting. Here we have another hop. You can use the template in the project section of the class where you can just follow me, it's nothing complicated. They're like pine cones but fluffier. By fluffier I mean they're not as rigid, not as hard. They're soft green, beautiful. Another leaf, one more here. Give your hand some freedom to play with the shape. Don't try to copy exactly what you see. This is all the drawing we need and we can start painting. For painting we'll take a classic green this time, with a little bit of lemon yellow, so it will turn it into a heavier green. What we do next to just add a little bit of water, very light and we'll color everything with these water color gouache. However, I don't like having too many layers so I'll be adding some shadows as we go. For shadows I'll be using the same classic green and mixed with ultramarine blue. It's a colder shade of green. Let's add. Switching to a smaller brush because I'll resonate the stem which fix. Then the hop again will have a warmer and a lighter part on the top and a colder right here. Let's switch our brushes again, like this. Some bluer green right here and another leaf. Of course, you can use different colors if you want to, but for this one I wanted to use a more natural colors because I think hops are beautiful and they really transmit in their natural color. Again, green with some blue. This hop I would like it to be lighter than this one, so I might add more yellow to my green and covering the entire hop with this color. After we paint the first layer, we'll have to let it dry and if you have some harsh lines, you can erase them after it dries. I hope your sketch is very light, unlike mine. The leaves have a darker color and the fruits or the hops themselves have lighter color. This should be more watery. This one bled into a lighter yellow-green and it looks beautiful and few more leaves. You can see I'm switching brushes from smaller to bigger and back, depending which one I feel will be more comfortable for painting a certain leaf or detail and I suggest you do the same. Don't struggle with a brush you're not comfortable with. Just switch and it will make the process way more enjoyable and this is the point. We have everything colored and now let's let it dry and we'll add some shadows and details. 7. Hops Part 2: So I waited until my painting was totally dry and I erased the pencil lines as well as I could. I can still see where the scales are but it's okay. For shadows, I'll take some ultramarine blue and also take a thicker classic green. Sometimes I'll be mixing them with each other and sometimes I'll be using just as is. I'm starting with blue and I decide on which side my vine will be uneaten. So at this side the light comes from this side. So opposite side, the side on the right will be a darker one. Also, you can see that here my stem needs some more thickness. Well, now is a good time to add it. I'm just adding some ultramarine blue on the right side of the vine and on the bottom where it goes like here it'll be on the bottom. For the leafs so we'll just add some other lines. Not on all of them just some of them. Just to show some texture wherever you feel like. Otherwise it can stay painterly just showing beautiful washes. For the hops we will be adding shadows under each scale. Like here in between two scales, only water on the brush, I'm taking some ultramarine blue and adding of a blue between these two scales and the next two and so on. You can soften the edge of this blue by drying your brush in a paper towel and just softening the edge. Again, ultramarine blue and like outlining the scale. I'm softening the edge again. This blue are the shadows from the scales that are showing if a shadow is this big and shows that the scale is fluffy, so it's not too close to each other. They have a space from each other. Next I'll take a very thick green and add a little more shadow here and there. A very little bit just teeny-tiny lines. On the blue shadow I'm adding a little bit of green. On this side I want to darken it a little because this side is darker for light is coming from this part. It'll be darker in here than on this part. The same thing with this hoop. I'm painting the shadow and softening the edge a little bit. Next scale, the next. Take your time and relax and enjoy adding the shadows it's nothing complicated after you have a drawing. On this hoop add a little shadows with green. Now I'll go with ultramarine blue and I'll add some few more lines here and there. You can see that blue looks more interesting but still you don't want to have too much colors in there. Now let's add some lines on this leaf and this one. It depends in how wet it is you are drawing. Wetter color the lighter will be the color. But it doesn't matter even if it's still so watery you can still see the texture and some blue on this side and we have one hop leaf. One hop left. Let's add some shadows under it's scales. I'll take a bigger brush. The small one is very soft so it's hard to control. My small brush used to be all right. You can be as realistic or as painterly as you want, if you add more shadows, more texture to look more realistic. I like when it has this painterly feel, it's more creative but if you like realistic stuff add some that's good too. I'll add some more shadows in here and I want to add some scales like looking out. Let's merge something here. I'll clean it up. This our hop greenery. 8. Last Thoughts: Thank you for joining me in this class. I hope you had a chance to paint with me. I can't wait to see your beautiful trendy greenery. I will reply to your project as soon as I can, because I receive so many projects from you and I'm so excited to see how creative and beautiful they are, so I want to reply to each of them and I'll do my best to do very fast. If you're sharing your project from Instagram please tag me so I can see your beautiful artwork and please share your project in the project section of the class, and I'll see you in the next class. Bye.