Simple Watercolor Techniques: Loosen Up and Have Fun!

1. Introduction: Hi everyone. I'm Sharon from Atlanta. I've been an artist for most of my life, painting a wide variety of subject matter and in different mediums. I've sold paintings, taken on portraits and pet portrait commissions, and have won awards in art competitions. Right now, my medium of choice is watercolor. I also have fun with calligraphy and brush lettering, which I incorporate with some of my watercolor paintings. Today I'm excited to share some simple watercolor techniques as a way to relax and have fun. This class is about learning to paint in watercolor in a loose and abstract way. We'll experiment with a few different watercolor techniques that let the water and paint do most of the work by itself with very little manipulation from us. Very little supplies are needed and a detailed list will be provided. I will demonstrate that with an inexpensive set of watercolor paints along with some watercolor paper, a few brushes, you can achieve beautiful results. This class is ideal for those just learning watercolor, but also for those with experience that maybe want to learn a more abstract and painterly approach to watercolor. By the end of this class, you will have created two small expressive watercolor paintings. In addition to displaying them on their own, I'll provide a quick demo. I'm making them into a greeting card. I love to paint anything botanical from realistic to slightly loose and abstract. I find the loose and abstract approaches a bit more relaxing. Above all else, what I hope you achieve from this class is a skill that can provide many hours of relaxation and enjoyment. Now that you know a little bit more about me and the class, let's see what we'll be creating. As I mentioned before, by the end of the class, we'll have created two small, beautiful, expressive watercolors. They can be displayed on their own or with a few additional steps, you can turn them into greeting cards. Let's get started by gathering our supplies. 2. Supplies: Keep in mind there is a supply list provided for you. You see in this picture a plastic and metal ruler, a 2B pencil, a kneaded eraser, a plastic triangle, which is optional, three pieces of foam board, two cut out to accommodate the project watercolor paper, and one cut out to accommodate the six by nine watercolor paper for practice. Also, a roll of painter's tape, an X-Acto knife, and a cutting surface. This is a self-healing cutting mat. If you don't have a self-healing cutting mat, a thick piece of mat board will do. Be sure to have pure cotton, 140-pound cold-pressed watercolor paper. I like this six by nine size for small projects. I'm using an inexpensive set of watercolor paints by Prang. In addition to the paints, you'll need a few different sizes of watercolor brushes. You'll need two containers for water, one for dirty water, one for clean water, an old towel, plenty of paper towels, and a couple Gelly Roll pens. These supplies are optional and depend on how you choose to display your projects. There are fun way to display your small works of art without framing them. If you choose to make the greeting card, you'll need some double-sided tape or Elmer's craft bond permanent tape, a rubber stamp, and an ink pad. Or you certainly could choose to write the greeting yourself, which makes it even more personal. 3. Cutting the Paper to Size: The first thing that we'll have to do is cut our watercolor paper to size. Putting it in a landscape position, we'll be simply cutting it in half. Placing a mark at 4.5 inches, you will be able to get two watercolor projects out of this size paper. Next, we measure out the square, that will be our painting. It'll measure four-by-four and have a quarter-inch border around it. Always save your scraps of watercolor paper for testing colors. 4. Preparing Your Paper: This is a cut out piece of foam board. It's stiff and it's lightweight. It's a hard, rigid surface that won't bend. Once our watercolor paper is taped to the surface, it will keep our watercolor paper from buckling when we wet it. Make sure you cut out your foam board to accommodate the one inch painters tape around the borders of the watercolor paper. Try as best you can to tape evenly along the lines that you've created. Prep at least two pieces of watercolor paper for your projects. 5. Watercolor Bleeds and Brush Strokes: Tape down a piece of the bee watercolor paper to the foam board. Wet the white paint and a few other colors that you would like to experiment with. Using the large flat wash brush, wet your paper with clean water. You can wet the paper entirely or leave a section dry to experiment with your paints on. I'll be using blue and purple for this wash. When applying a wash, it's best to work fairly quickly so the colors blend evenly. The white paint has dried a bit here so I need to add some more water. This is what is called a wet-on-wet technique, we are applying paint to a wet surface. When your brush is fully loaded with pigment and water, you'll notice that you'll get more of a watercolor bleed or spread. Here my brush is fully loaded with water and pigment so you'll notice how it spreads. As I dub some of the paint off, you'll notice the less bleed I get. Experiment with some of the other colors. While the white paint is still wet, I'm just going to tap in the middle with this red paint to see what happens. I'll start to experiment with some brushstrokes that might resemble blades of grass. The paper here in this area has started to dry a bit. Wetting this section here a bit more. Practicing a few brushstrokes with the small brush. While the paper is still wet, practice some more brushstrokes with other colors and see how the colors blend. Here, the redhead bled out a little bit and I want to see what happens when I come back with some white and put it around the red center. In this dry area, practice some brushstrokes with your small brush in leaf shapes. Simply just placing it down on the paper on its side, produces what looks like a leaf. You can see that placing your brush down in a certain way and in a certain direction leaves a specific shape like here you have the points and here it's like around into the leaf. If you want the same leaf on each side of the stem, then you'll have to lay your brush the same way on each side. I strongly encourage you to practice on a few more sheets of the bee watercolor paper. Get to know the strokes and shapes your brushes can make before moving on to creating your projects. 6. Beginning Project One: Get all your supplies ready to begin the projects. Don't forget plenty of paper towels and a few scraps of the watercolor paper to test your paints on. I'm using this plastic pipette to get the water onto my watercolor paints. You can simply use one of your watercolor brushes to do the same thing. Just making a nice soupy mix of my watercolor paints. Using this part of the paint palette to mix up some colors and make some puddles of paint so that they're ready for me to use. After I have all my paints ready, it's time to wet the watercolor paper for our project. I want to get an even amount of water on the painting surface, avoiding any puddles on the painting surface. Getting the light to hit the surface just right, you can see if there are any puddles. My first wash here will be blue and some purples resembling the sky. You'll notice that I leave it lighter towards the bottom where I plan to put some strokes may be resembling blades of grass. While the paper is still good and wet, I'll go in towards the upper part of the painting surface with some purple, darker blue. In the lower portion now, I'll go in with some greens that will represent blades of grass using just the tip of my brush, painting wispy strokes and keeping most of them towards the lower portion, but letting a few get up into the blue just a bit. Putting in some darker green, wispy strokes. Add maybe one more color, maybe just a little bit darker green now. I apologize for the change in lighting here. It's been a cloudy day and some of the frames will have a lighter look to them. Now for what I feel is the fun part, just loading up my brush with this white paint. It has quite a bit of water in it, so it will bleed quite a bit. I envision these to be flowers, and it can be very easy to overdo it. Usually less is more. I'm trying to decide just how many flower shapes to put here. Dabbing the paint off my brush to get a smaller shape right here. Before the paper completely dries, I'm going back in with just a little more white in the center of these flower shapes. Maybe just one more right here. Now it's time to let it dry. 7. Completing Project One: Now that the painting is done, we can complete the project. These white flower shapes remind me a bit of Queen Anne's lace. So I'll be creating a very simplified version of these types of flowers. What I'll be doing first is deciding which way the stems of the flowers will go and making sure to draw lightly with the pencil. I think it will look best to make two flowers here, one large one and then one smaller one behind it. I'm now sketching a very simplified version of Queen Anne's lace. I think they also resemble the seed part of dandelions. I'll be speeding things up just a little bit here. Before I use my Gelly Roll pen, I'm just going to dab the pencil lines with my kneaded eraser, leaving just a ghost outline of them. Now it's a matter of just using the white Gelly Roll pen to create these tendrils and dots that remind me of the Queen Anne's lace. Using this white Gelly Roll pen on this slightly rough surface of the watercolor paper can be a bit challenging. Just have to have patience. Speeding up things a bit here, since it's more of the same. I'll be using this green Gelly Roll metallic pen for the stems. I have to go back and get this flower that I missed. I find this green pen flow is much better on the watercolor paper. You'll notice that with some of these stems, I have them appear like they're behind the blades of grass. Once again, I'll speed things up, since it's more of the same. You could choose to outline some of these blades of grass with the Gelly Roll pen, but I think I'll probably just leave it the way it is. To avoid pulling up any of the watercolor paper, remove the tape very slowly. Congratulations on completing your first project. 8. Beginning Project Two: Before starting the next project, make sure to have all your supplies ready. I've wet my paints and I've made the paint puddles of the colors I plan to use. As we did with the first project, start by wetting the paper entirely with clean water using the flat wash brush. Similar to the first project, I'm using a combination of blue and purple for the wash. Starting in the lower section and wiping some of the paint off my brush, so there's not a great deal of bleed. Painting wispy strokes to resemble blades of grass and using a combination of a few different greens. I usually like to add a bit of yellow as it produces a nice blend with the green colors. Getting a darker green creates a nice contrast. Before the paint dries, we'll need to paint in our flower shapes using the same technique as we did on our first project. I plan to make the center of these flowers white. You can certainly choose a different color. Remember, you can control the bleed by how much water and pigment are on your brush. This flower right here, I felt like the white had bled too much so I'm going to go back in with a little bit of purple and see what happens. I like the result I'm getting adding this purple. I think I'll do the same thing with these other flowers. The paper is drying but still retains enough moisture to have a wet and wet effect. Now it's time to let it dry. 9. Completing Project Two: Now looking at the painting after it's dried I feel I want to have the center of these flowers a bit wider, so I will be going back in and adding more white paint. I'm coaxing the paint out with a damp brush since we don't have that same wet-on-wet watercolor bleed. I'm adding just a little bit of clean water to the center of this flower to see if we can get a little bit of watercolor bleed when I add more white paint. Once again I'll be coaxing the white paint out just a little bit around the edge here to mimic maybe a little bit of that watercolor bleed. If you end up with a big blob sometimes you can take your paper towel and just dab it slightly. I still feel that this flower could use a little bit more white in the center. It does appear to be the star of the show. I'm deciding which way the stems will go, and keep in mind when you are working out the position of the stems, they should always appear to becoming from dead center of the flower. At this point, I'll speed things up just a bit. Just checking to make sure the stems appear to be coming from the center of the flower. I think I want to change the direction of this stem on this flower. I'll also be adding just a few little leaves to the stems. You could use the jelly roll metallic green pen again, but I'll be using the small brush with some green paint. To achieve a grade down green I'm going to add just a bit of purple to this green mix I have. I want the strokes of these stems to be thin so I'm wiping a bit of paint off my brush, and now testing the color and the thickness of the strokes. For me, it's easier to start the stroke below and then move up towards the flower. With this one, I think I'll start just under the flower and then take the stroke down towards the bottom. I think it looks better here to keep the stroke in the foreground and not having it appear behind the blades of grass. Remember you can always rotate your painting to make it easier to make certain strokes. Now I'll add the little leaves to the stems. Just practicing, dabbing my brush on its side to see what stroke I want to use. I'm trying just to use the tip of my brush here to keep these leaves very small. Speeding it up a bit here since sign painting more of the same. You could choose to outline the flowers with one of the Gelly Roll pens, but I like it just the way it is. Just like that you've completed your second project. Congratulations. These mini tabletop easels make a fun way to display your projects. 10. Greeting Card Demo: With just a few additional steps, you can create a greeting card with your finished project. Start by simply folding one of the six by nine, be watercolor papers in half. Crease the edge well with the edge of your plastic ruler or plastic triangle. Simply cut along the edge of your finished painting so that you will end up with the four-by-four painting without the borders. Then decide where you want your greeting to go, above the painting or below. Once you've decided where you want the painting to go, make a line on the card so you know exactly where to place your painting. Once you have put the double-sided tape or the Elmer's adhesive tape on the back of it. Using the double-sided tape or the Elmer's adhesive permanent tape, tape right along the very edge on all sides of the back of your painting. Then carefully place the painting along the line that you have made and press down firmly. Mark exactly where you want the greeting of your rubber stamp to go. You could also write the greeting in your own handwriting, which would make it even more personal. Now, you have a handmade greeting card to give someone. 11. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] I hope you've enjoyed learning this loose form of watercolor and hope that you will continue to explore this magical medium. [MUSIC] I would love to know if you have any thoughts regarding what you would like to learn in my next Skillshare class. You can leave them in the comments section along with any other questions you might have. Make sure to post your finished paintings. I, as well as the other students, will certainly enjoy seeing them. Also, you can find me Instagram as well as YouTube. [MUSIC] Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my artistic knowledge with you. [MUSIC]