Scottish Wildflowers - Watercolour Crowberry Doodle - 2 Studies

1. Welcome!: So let's chill out. Join me in this relaxing doodle session. We're going to do two gentle projects in this class. Firstly, a doodly study fact sheet where we'll touch on the Roger's medicinal uses, Latin name, habitat, and practice, creating a very simple color palette. The little study is in two sections. The first, we're just going to familiarize ourselves with the shapes of the flowers and leaves. Then the second part, we're going to do a little bit of pen work and some doodly, you'll learn how to use thicker watercolor almost in a guash style. We'll then go on to paint a sprig of crowberry on the watercolor paper of your choice. This class is suited to both cold and hops paper and even sketchbook standard as we're using our watercolors in a thicker form. Who is this class for? Well, it's aimed at new painting level for artists looking for a warm up or a warm down for those who wanted to learn more about Scottish wild flowers. For those seeking relaxation and quality me time, it's provided in two sections. For those who need to be careful about their energy output, you can choose just one project or both. Of course, it's for those who enjoy doodling. As you'll probably know by now, Scusa has a really wonderful community. If you'd like to upload your project, you can do this in the project and resources section. I look forward so much to seeing your work. Let's move on together with the class. 2. Mixing Greens: Let's start off with acalmics. Just a very quick one, really. Going to use some undersea green, green gold. Prussian blue. This is for the leaves and then you can either mix it because we're going for a slightly opaque look with some buff titanium or anything close to this could even be a gray or white and I'm using my staple white, which is doctor pH Martins. Let's just pick up a little bit of this under sea green first. I'm going to lay it down quite thickly and we can pull it out a little bit. Wonder Sea is a beautiful natural green, and I know that a lot of you like it, so I'm trying to incorporate it into this class for you. Then we've got quite a contrast because we've got our green gold. Gorgeous. And we have Prussian blue. You don't need to have the same colors as me. A greens that you would like to use for this class. You really only need one blue, could be a turquoise, could be more like a frental tureen, whichever one you have. Beautiful color. I love that. Now we want to go just mix these two together, that's our undersea and our green gold. That would give us a mid green between these two. We'll get something like this, maybe a little bit more undersea going in there. I've already got a third color out of these two. Then let's mix our Prussian blue either with this mixture of the two greens, or you could use Prussian blue with onto sea green or Prussian blue with green gold. Let's go with the mix. It's a nice bright color. I like it. O 3. Mixing Opaque Colours: Now let's make these opaque. It's going to add a little bit more crushian blue. And more green gold. Let me show you what we could then do with the buff titanium. Let's go for green gold, a little bit of undersea green, bringing it over here and adding a little bit of the buff titanium. All that's doing is making it opaque and it can actually make it quite thick. Let me show you. This is going down quite thickly. Then if we pull that out, Okay. If we did that with Prussian blue and a buff titanium, Isn't that gorgeous? There's a variety of colors there already. What if we do it with the white? Let's go for this mix here. Now, this is what we've just pulled over from these two. I'm going to add a little bit of Prussian blue. A little bit more green gold. We've got so I'm just going to add a bit more of that green gold. We've got another bright green that we can use. Of course, we've got the variety as well between putting a lot of Prussian blue in this or just a tiny amount and more green. Let's do some white now. It's great to add some under seed green first of all. Pull that over here. So we've got our opaque colors as well that we can bring into play. There's no prescription as it were for this. You just play around and see which mixes you like. I'm mixing green gold there with undersea green and white. You get more clear color if you like with the white. But I quite like using grays and buff titanium lovely neutrons as well. 4. Mixing Pink: So if we go on to mixing the colors for our flowers. Again, any red that you like, I have perylene red. I came up quite quickly. We're going back to undersea green, we're just going to put some fresh here and we're to add a little bit more white. We're going into a fresh pot of water just to keep our colors nice and bright. Let's mix a nice. First of all, bright, neutral pink. As all of these colors swim together as you're doing the class, you'll get much more enjoyment out of your colors because they all mingle and you get colors that you wouldn't do if you were doing it like this. It's random after a while. I like that. This is our pink and that's just a red and a white. We're making this fairly opaque because we want control over the tiny little flowers that we're going in to do. Yeah, I think that's all right. Just add a little bit more white maybe. Then if you want a darker pink, now this is quite a delicate process because at first I used to mix in quite a lot of green. We don't want a lot of green, we just want a slightly darker pink. I added more red there. I just want to get something that's slightly darker than this. Bit more red. Just keep going until you feel you've got a darker pink. That's a lovely dusky pink, isn't it? Love that. So we can add a little bit more green. Bit more red and a bit more white. Let's just keep going till we get something that we like. If you think it's gone a little dull, just add a little bit more red. Yeah. That's heavy on the red and I quite like. It's still got that slightly dusky feel to it because it's got that green in it. That's our flowers. 5. Doodle Study Part 1 - Leaf, Stem, Flower & Berry Shapes: I thought it might be nice to do a little doo leaf fact sheet before we move on to our project. I did this recently with the wildflower Black medic, and I thought I would take my hint from that. So let's start with our colors first. And this is green gold. I don't want this to be perfect. I just want us to relax and throw some colors down. And let's see how it behaves with a little bit of water laid down next to it, and also allowing the different greens to mix together. So on the right there, we have Prussian blue mixed with green gold, and in the center water. And now let's add our darker green, and I'm using undersea green. And adding just a little bit of water to pull that out. So I'm mixing green gold and Prussian blue together again. But ring on the side of the green. And let's just play around with value as well. So that's quite neat under sea green. Let's bring in a little bit of white. And I'm just playing around with the greens that I've chosen. So you could take time to do that with your greens. That's the green with more white added. And I love the way that that's kind of flowed into the water. So let's practice painting the stem. And I'm mixing my red with some undersea green. The stems are woody, so I'm just going to use the tip of this small filbert. You can drop a little water in if you like. And the leaves are quite heather like. Soon as I have a little water there, I'm going to just bring a leaf down into that. And let's go in between all these different greens that we have mixed, and we're also varying the shape and size of our leaves. Nice and random. So going over the stock. These are very quick movements, but you could take your time and paint with the style that you like best. Then what we can practice doing is some dry brushing. So for that, I use thicker paint, and I'm getting quite a bit, and it seems counterintuitive, but I'm just going to dab off the excess of that. And then we've got just a tiny bit of paint left on the brush. And the way that it comes out will be different on different paper. So I'm using a journal here which is not designed for watercolor, and it has quite a tooth to it. It's quite grainy, if you like. So you can have a play around with different papers until you get the desired effect. And once you feel you have that, you can then go in and just add some texture, adding the odd little dry brush leaf throughout. So let's move on to berries. And this is the Prussian blue, but it does have some green in it. So for this little berry, let's do a sea curve and then complete the circle but leaving a tiny touch of white space. And we can play around with value as well and start off a more watery berry. And then we can drop in a darker green just on one side. I used undersea green. And everyone out a Prussian blue, so I'm just going to put some of that down. We could go in with mostly water. Or we could go in with almost neat color. And all of these strategies really bring the berries to life. There's a little bit of difference in each one. And I'm just building up one side, which forms that lovely sphere And then let's put some of the berries in amongst the leaves. You can see there's nothing really to them, little spheres and a little bit of white space. Let's now make a little study of the flowers. So the flowers are deep pink. But I'm just going to use what we have here just to keep it simple. And again, we could vary the size, the direction, the value. And these are pretty much the same brush stroke as the leaves. And the red and green have just mixed on this little palette. So let's just see what that color looks like on the page. You can always bring this color into adding a little bit of undersea green. Let's just put a very loose stem around the berries. And before we move on to our pigma micron, let's just go through the speed of the brush strokes so you could go in very, very slowly, tip, belly tip, or you could take your arm and hand off the table and do a very swift expressionful movement. I 6. Crowberry Study part 2: Doodling With Our Pigma Micron: So what do we know about the crowberry? Well, let's start off by writing down its name. And it's also known by its Latin name Em petrm nigram Nigram referring to the very dark color of the berries. And then I just allow myself to relax and have a bit of a doodle. Anything can happen on this page. You certainly don't need to do the same that I'm doing. It's an experimental explorative page. What I'm doing here is just a few little lines with my pen to create a shadow on one side of the berry. And then we'll go in with our white gelpen or if you don't have a gelpen just a little dot of white gouache or watercolor on the opposite side to the shade. So what do we know about the berries? They're packed with vitamin C, and we know that it's full of antioxidants, which is a substance that protects cells from the damage of free radicals. Sorry, jumping around a bit here, but I wanted to remember that it's an evergreen plant. So back to our berry facts, it can be made into a jam or jelly if you're across the pond. It's often used with other berries because crowberry itself is quite acidic tasting. I have not tried them myself, but that's what I hear and read. They can also be used as an infusion, and you can't really go wrong with a cup of tea. Et's take it over here. It settles the stomach. And it was used in folk medicine as a treatment for epilepsy. It's also known as the Crake Berry. And as I know from one of our sharers in her project, it's also found in North America. So I'd love to know if you use either of those names or whether it's referred to as something else. So the translation of Empetrm means growing on rock. And let's just create a little area here about its habitat. It likes mountainous regions and is often found on cliffs. So it's a real survivor. Very hardy. So crowberry is part of the Heath family, which is why I think the leaves look very much like Heather. So the Latin way to pronounce its family name is Ecasii. And of course, it starts with Erika, which is also the name for Heather. So Erikse or EcceTok me a bit of practice to pronounce that. So I'm just going to do a very simple stem structure here just to remind myself that they are quite woody, broader than more delicate flower stems. And then it has smaller stems coming off that. And I may include that or I may just keep it really simple. And seeing that I have these colors on my glass palette, I might as well just put them down on the page. That's a gorgeous color. And you may not use all of the colors that you're mixing up, but that's okay, 'cause this is just a relaxing warm up. I do love that pink. So all these colours are merging together, but I'm mixing some buff titanium with green gold. And I really love that colour, too. So this would look lovely with that warm, dusky pink above in any of your projects, that's gorgeous. And some very watery undersea green. And then dropping in a darker mixture. I do like to do this. It's a very easy way of seeing how it blends, how it runs together. So it's always a good idea or just to drop some water in. So I fancy doing a little bit of a doodle or more doodling with my pigma micron. So I'm just going to roughly make some cute boxes around these color swatches. I don't really think ahead when I'm doing these practice sheets. I just imagine I'm a child again, and I have fun, and I tell myself there are no mistakes because there really aren't. And I might just add a little bit of structure around these dry brush leaves and a little bit of detailing around our small pink flowers. I do tend to do this a lot when I'm doodling, and that is just to box little areas around words, maybe some broken lines. And I think I'll do the same here. And around these little berries. Doing these little botanical sheets reminds me of all of those Victorian books, where every part of a flower was described unpainted and notated, and I really love it. And I'm just going to put in a little stem there. I just add some cute little leaves. And as I've got dark paint on my brush, I can add those over these pale leaves that we did earlier. What's handy about these little studies is it highlights areas that you might want to focus on as we do our painting. And also just the medicinal side of things. Well, I didn't actually know that you could eat that humans could eat crowberries. Too many is not advised, and I would definitely 100% check what you're eating before you eat it. So when you feel you've finished your craberry crakberryEpetrm nigrm fat sheet, let's move on to a painting now where we can bring together all that we've learned. 7. Crowberry Sprig: Moving on to our crowberry, it has a browne ready stem, and then mix some of the undersea green into that. Let's start with just a few stems. Using our liner brush, I got quite a lot of paint and my brush isn't overly wet. This will just give us a little bit of control. We can draw another little line along to make it thicker. It's like a fir tree and it's got that chunky stem which the leaves come off. Just adding a little bit of water to my brush. When you're using a liner brush, of course it's going to run out of moisture quite quickly. Keep that nice and dipped into your water every now and then and just take the excess water out. We're just shaping this plant and pulling out some stems from the main stem. We'll just sit back to our number two. But you're going to love this one because it's so restful, because we're doing repetitive leaves. Really, it can be quite meditative. Actually, we're doing those quick, expressive movements that we practiced. It's nice to have a few leaves going in different directions and crossing over each other every now and then. I love doing these much. It's easy to get a bit carried away. What I advise is to out every now and then because sometimes we can get a bit tense in places and the leaves are closer together and now we start to relax a bit all the other way round. Just zoom out every now and then and just see where you would like to place your leaves. I'm just going to add a little bit more of the undersea green to my palette. Quite nice to vary your greens, just makes it look much more natural and alive. We're still using a 50, 50 mix here. Almost like we would use a slightly water down and it gives us a lovely control. It seems to work with leaves that are like this, very woody leaves. I love this style where it's a slightly less watery brush and almost like water color going into maybe a gas or even acrylic. Continuing our nice and expressive quick movements, changing our colors every now and then and varying from thinner to thicker leaves, depending on, of course, the pressure that you're putting on the brush. Another trick to integrate the leaves into the stem is to go over the stem in places. I'm just carrying on doing some thinner leaves and some fleshier ones. Actually quite like when things are imperfect because we're so critical of our own work, we can think, oh, that's all we notice, whereas somebody else looking on that does not notice that. I think that's because in nature, everything is imperfect. I'm doing here is a couple of dry brush strokes. This is when the paint is quite sticky but is still moving. This usually happens after you've done a few brush strokes and you've not gone back into water. But I quite like this. I often just throw in the odd little dry brush leaf. I think it looks gorgeous. I'm just looking over this plant now. I'm adding some green gold in. Now I just like to do that and it really lifts a piece. I often go in with a brighter green at the end. Again, something I always say in classes. You don't have to have exactly the same paints as me. Everything is very expensive. I try to use paints that I feel you might have. But if you have any questions, you can always drop me a comment. You can message me on Instagram if I can, I'll help. So now we're just going to rinse off our brushes. And one of the things I love about crowberries, the berries. And we're just going to go in now and use a little bit of a mixture. Blue with a tiny bit of green. We're going to do a little sea curve or a moon shape and leave a tiny little bit of white space but you don't have to with every berry. Want to differ things a little bit. This is Prussian blue, that's a darker color sea curve. And then finishing off the spherical shape with some water down blue or a little bit of green. Whatever you would like immediately makes it berry shape. You can always do it the opposite way and start off your berries with a light color, more water added. Let's do another one here. And how effective is that? I mean, it's just so easy really, just leaving that little bit of white space, a tiny bit of dark on one side, and you've got a berry. That's the berry. And now they have these tiny little pink flowers as well. So let's move on to those. I'm sure they probably don't have flowers with the berry at the same time, but I'm just going to do it anyway. I'm actually, I might just dip down at a size in a brush and I've got a zero here. Zero Filbert. I'm going to use that, but don't worry if you don't have a smaller bit, you might have a smaller round brush. Flat brush, Total flat brush, whatever works for you. This is a mixture of any red that you have. Mine is prelind with either both titanium or the ph. Martin's white isn't pretty. I love crow berries and these little flowers, florets even just come off the main stem, just adding these little touches of pink. And don't forget, you can go over a leaf so they don't have to all be spaced out in their own little space. Get in there and get them mingled with the leaves and berries. Okay, I'm in danger of doing too much, and it's always good to just take a moment, have a look at your flower and just see if anything is needed. I think I'll just pull out the stem a little bit at the bottom. I just want to balance it out again with some very gestural leaves, a dry brush, and quite a light color light value so that it brings it all together. Yeah, I quite like that that leaf is less developed than the rest of them, so I'm just going to do another one over here. So that's our crowberry. 8. Gallery to "The Sway": Sway of tree, I guess you, as we all live, I'm going to curse. And my P I have over spring time to one and the fold. A feeling. Hello. Hello. A mirror again hedged on your fore. A touching moments needed but you held me through. So how do you expect me to feed? Sway of tth curse my prompt. I have other friends, time fine, day to strings of all of the noise.