Spicing-up Your Watercolours: With Gel Pens and Markers

1. Welcome!: Hello, my name is Ruth, and I create designs for fabric from my watercolor paintings, which I sell in my online shops. I've been working in watercolor for about four years now. Before that, it was mainly in acrylic and sometimes oil. I have also published adult coloring books filled with hand-drawn flowers, berries, and leaves. My inspiration comes from the surrounding countryside. But sometimes just what's in the fridge. D1, your watercolors to stand out from the crowd. In this class, I want to share with you my technique for painting in watercolor and in particular, how I embellish my paintings. But media such as gel pens and fine liner pens. This is a fun way to add your own personal stamp to your paintings I designed. My goal is that by the end of the class, you will be able to develop this technique in your own style to make your art unique and to complete a final project to submit to the class. I'm so looking forward to seeing them, Let's get started. 2. Final project: For your class project, you're going to add a decorative textural layer to a watercolor painting of a stem of leaves with flowers if you like. Something from the garden or pictorial I provoke. If you can't go out or you don't have a garden, one or two sounds like leaves, herbs and vegetables that might be in the fridge, or leaves from a house plant. You can also use a reference for tool which you can find on Pinterest. Make sure you have all your materials to hand. And I will go over these in detail in the materials lesson. 3. Materials: This lesson, we will be looking at the materials you need for the class. First, watercolor paper. The best weight is around 300 grams, or a £140 weight as it absorbs water well. You can also choose between cold press on top press paper. I always choose cold press because it has a texture. Tooth, which I like. Hot press paper is much smoother. But you might prefer that for lab work. Mixed media paper is okay too. I use it for experimenting with different mediums. Watercolor paint is a personal choice. This is my box of severely pants, but I don't stick to one brand. If you don't have any watercolor paints, choose a startup pan set of perhaps 12 colors in a box or tin with a lit for mixing. Next brushes. These are my current favorites and a good place to start if you're buying brushes. They vary from afford to attend. Thereby nice point, but different minds can be made with practice. I also use a quill brush when I want to make martyrs shapes. Liner pens are essential for this class. You need a white pen and a black liner pen to start with. I would recommend a white uni-ball signal, broad nib under black, micron size, nought 0.3. If you have different sizes and brands, that's fine. Use what you have. However, make sure your pens are waterproof. Because if not, this may smudge your painting, especially if you want to add another layer of paint. The next lesson, warm up. We will practice mark making and trying out the different media. Let's go. 4. Warm up: In this lesson, we're going to practice with our brushes and paints mixture. You have a good quantity of paint on your palette. To make a leaf shape. Start with the point of the brush to make the tip of the leaf. Then press down. Gradually lifting the brush backup. Keep practicing until you're comfortable. Try different sizes of brushes as I have done. Don't worry if it's not perfect. And all adds to the texture and uniqueness of your painting. A good exercise is to move across the page, making the leaf pattern without stopping. It develops muscle memory and you will soon be able to do it easily. Straight lines are created by using the very tip of the brush and giving your arm room to move. Swing your arm from the elbow and the wrist, increasing the pressure on the brush or thicken the line. Now if Japan, the white gel pen is easy to use, but makes sure the ink is running properly before you start. Try it out on a piece of scrap paper first. You can practice on one of your watercolor leaf shapes. But only vanitas, completely dry. Liner pen that just Micron have a smooth texture. Especially on hot press paper. Cold press paper may affect this. The marks will vary and texture different sizes of nibs or create a range of marks which you can combine. Practice by filling up page, making marks and creating designs. If you want. You can print off my painting and drawing from its sources and use them to practice on. In the next lesson, we are going to have a play with watercolor, then paint a stem of leaves. Let's get started. 5. Final Piece: In this lesson, we will practice mixing paint and creating blooms and defects. We will then paint her final piece and decorated first 22 colors. I have chosen. Payne's gray, indigo, cobalt, blue, sap green, lemon yellow, and green brown. These colors will help me to create contrast in the painting. And interesting tones and shades mix up a quantity of your chosen colors in your palette. By practicing painting a leaf, I'm mixing the colors directly on the paper. Because I like that effect. You can create blooms by dropping in water or another color of paint. I love how the watercolor has a life of its own and creates its own shapes and colors. You can fill a page with leaves if you like. Next step, I've chosen the small self periwinkle or think of major. I liked the deep green of the leaves and the purple flower. I've started by painting the stem, then adding the leaves. Remember you're painting doesn't have to be an exact representation. You're capturing the essence, the shape, colors, and movement of the step. I mixed my colors as I paint, making sure there's contrast by adding dark colors such as integral of Payne's gray. On more water, there needs to be more light. Try not to use the same shade of green throughout because you're painting will appear flat and lifeless. My watercolor of the periwinkle, it's now completely, completely dry. Make sure the water, your paper is completely dry before you start to use your gel pens. I'll just move this away. I've chosen that moment to use our signal unit ball. This is a broad size. To get me started. I may change. That just depends on how I feel. Always start with a scrap piece of paper. Just to test my pen out. Makes sure that the ink is running. Okay, got it going. Point where the leaf joins the stem, not my pen, up the middle of the leaf to the point like that. And then I'm going to just to make a curved line to the edge of the leaf. And I'm going to make it, even. Again. You don't have to do this. This is entirely up to you. What you decide to do. I'm going to do the other side as well. Give us a nice curved shape. It gives form to the leaf. And that's also quite decorative. Now that's very simple. Here I've printed off my watercolor because I want to show you what it looks like with line work and blocking. 6. Thank You!: Hello, thank you so much for joining me in the class. Well done, I'm finishing it. I hope you have fun and learned something along the way from mixing paint to farming leaves and adding decorative line work. If you take one thing from the class, I hope it is that you are free to use your imagination and to try to fit things. Be creative. Please remember to post your class projects so that we can all enjoy them. And I would be really happy to hear your review some comments. This is my first Skillshare class. So I'm learning to just stop following me. You will hear about my next class. Keep watching for a sneak peak. We will be concentrating on adding color. 7. Bonus: Winter Wreath Elements: Hello, I hope you enjoy this bonus lesson. Remember to upload your work. Please leave a comment or review. I'd love to hear from you. I have chosen to pin to when to read, and I've used some gold paint, sparkly pens to give it to Christmas C or holiday feel. Put together some reference material and decide on your color. We will practice by filling a page with leaves and berries. This way help us to decide which elements we will use. And the reason we do this exactly as we did in the previous lessons. You can follow me in the demonstration, where I will show you step-by-step. 8. Bonus: Winter Wreath: In this lesson, we will put our elements together to make our wreath. Start by drawing a circle lightly with the pencil. Mark the circle and three equal places. Then choose the largest element. Painted. Hey, places around the circle. Next, fill in the gaps with the second largest, and so on. This is the fun part. When the paint is dry, I start to embellish and decorate each element of your wreath. I've chosen sparkly gel pens and gold, dread and green signal pen and some colored pencils. Here I've decided to add a touch of gold by painting some gold leaves, some berries to fill in those little spaces.