Spring Blossom in Watercolor - Explore Different Styles

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Irina Trzaskos, water color artist and illustrator. I love to teach water color classes online and offline. Spring is here. In today's class, we will be painting spring blossoms in watercolor. During our class, we'll explore different watercolor styles and techniques. If you're 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'll be using the following supplies: watercolor paper, this is called press a 140 pounds. Water, paint palette, water color paint, whichever paint you have. Waterproof, fine liner or if you want to use waterproof ink, you can use it too, a pencil, eraser. You need some water color brush with a good tip, this is number four. A small watercolor brush, this is number two. The water color brush with not a very sharp tip. If you have it, if not, a very good brush will do too. Optional, a white gel pen, or white wash, or a white gray paint, and paper towel of course. 3. Cherry Blossom in Ink and Watercolor: Let's paint a branch of cherry blossom in ink and water color. I started by making a light sketch because I wanted to make sure if the composition looks well, and I have more flowers on the bottom and less flowers on the top, plus it goes diagonally creating a more dynamic composition. You can find the template of this drawing in the project section of the class. You can start also with a sketch. Now I'll be outlining of the past lines I did before. I'm using a fine liner which is a waterproof. Make sure your fine liner is also waterproof because, we will be painting with watercolor over it. Cherry flowers are very simple. They have only five petals. The beauty of the flowers is in their imperfection. We can't draw all the petals the same. We have to make sure they have a different shape, and they are different distance from each other and overlapping. Some will be more close. Almost far buds. At this point, I am not drawing the middle of the flower, we'll be doing it, then we'll add mockup, after we'll add some color. Here we have a bud. You can play with composition and add your own leaves and flowers. What you feel like it or you can just use a template, and draw with me together. Is another [inaudible] , they so look almost like ice cream cone and it has this bottom part and the petals on top. Again, try not to make a chipper effect some warmly lines are great for the branches. Feel free to add your own touch to your details, or even use your own reference. They don't look like much now, they mostly look like [inaudible]. Whoops. If you don't have a water proof fine liner you can use water proof ink or you can just draw it with pencil first. If you have other fine liner then you would go other way around, deal with, add the color first [inaudible]. After it dries, you can add some touches. But the easiest way is just to get the waterproof fine liner either and until this way. While we're drawing gold leaves, we are getting more used to blossoms and other three blossoms like the Plam and Apple, are very similar just for color is different and the size of a flower is so different. Here is our drawing. The lines are not perfect and purpose of sometimes is so fresh hand-drawn feel. After we are done with drawing the lines along, start painting the branch. Am using the meeting, water color brush with a sharp tip, and I will be taking some raw sienna. I'll add a little bit of magenta to it. It becomes like this, some peach, yellowish better gentle color. They may think it should have a branch here and there and I'll leave some white spots. Next what you will do we'll take some [inaudible] , which is the dark brown. We'll also add some magenta to it. We'll go again over the branches, and again not everywhere, just here and there plus will be getting it to this bottoms of the bonds. We need a little more magenta, so it will be more red in our branch. Don't forget to leave some of that peach color they had at the beginning. It'll make your branch look more interesting and more alive, like the [inaudible] before would, playing in the branches by leaving some interesting shadows. You can see how it starts looking more like a cherry branch, which is reddish. Still, it has an interesting texture and because we're getting some light spot. What will do next will take just pure magenta, and mix it to have a lot of water, and we'll add some color to our main leek flowers. You can see I'm not too careful with the shape of my brush strokes , that's how I want it to be. I guess, our soft painted layer shapes with the digit on a contrast with the digit ink lines. Now, we'll let it dry a little bit, and meanwhile, we'll be painting of the buds. This bud needs a little more attention here. For the buds, take some carmine and a little jaw magenta. It'll make them a little warmer than the flowers. This one, we'll leave a little bit while it dries, and other ones, we'll just add some color to them. You can see how it instantly changes the entire agent-based bright axons. We need one here. Even we didn't dry it before. As the buds are drying, we'll paint our leaves. We'll take yellowish-green and we'll add some magenta to it. As a result, we have this reddish-brown. Let's add some more green shade, but let's have the color of cherry leaves when they are just opening. We can always add some green as we go right on the leaf. Some can be greener and some could be more brownish-red. This is too much red. Let's add some of this brown shade. These are our leaves. Now we'll add more magenta to this brown and drop a bit to the middle of every flower, at the ones which are open. Next to this magenta which is darker with some carmine, let's add some shadows, especially where flowers are bending a little bit. The bending will be lighter and next to it, will be darker, where the petals are overlapping. Try not to overdo it. We'll be more precise when we'll be painting the realistic blossom. This one has to be more alive than painting at fun. Next what will I do? I'll add some dots with the paint. Again, I'll use this brownish. This one is still wet. Meanwhile, lets take some sepia and add some more shadows on all branches, because now it's dry and we can see where it may need some more texture and more shadow. Usually, I would do it on one side only, so let it be here. On this side, on the right side. Now I have to let it dry and add the last details with our ink pad. When our painting gets totally dry or almost dry, we can get to the fun part and just add some lines that is still wet. Some dots and some lines like this. It instantly make our cherry blossom look like cherry blossom and interesting to look at. Eyeliner doesn't want work where I saw our flower is still a little wet. Some dots and some lines. Also, we finally can add, if you see of it some spots are not dark enough, darker lines. If you feel you can add some white leaves somewhere, or petals can make it interesting too, or even a branch. This gives it a fresh look of unfinished flower piece, but unfinished in a good way. Still looks finished. The very last step, that's totally optional, you can add some white dots with white gelpan, or with whitewash, or white clear paint. It always makes [inaudible] look more magic. This is our cherry blossom in ink and water color. 4. Plum Blossom in Painterly Style: In painterly style, I would like to paint a vase with a bunch of plum blossom in a paper view stamp. Here in this part I'll have a vase. I'm making a quick outline. I want to get done today. So we want to get it totally crooked just a little bit, and I'd like the branch to go somewhere in this direction, like this. That's why I moved the composition to the right. So we branchial balance it and we'll create it dynamic diagonal. Well, usually I suggest you to get the brush with sharp point, but for this painterly style, I proceeded to get a brush with not a very sharp point, like this one, but if you have only one brush which is a good brush with a sharp point, it's okay, you can paint with it too, just that they'll give you a little different result, but it's okay. So I'm taking some magenta and adding a little bit of red ocher to it. So a red ocher looks like this, and after I did that, I have a direction of my branch. So I'd love some flowers not to be covered by the branches. So I'm going to paint them right now just by pressing the brush to the paper. Sometimes twice if the petal didn't come out wide enough and will have half flowers in this, but just around a little point here. So just have fun and the longer branch here in there paint's some flowers with five petals and make sure they're not perfect. So at this point I'm not painting all the flowers, just the flowers I'd like not to be covered by the branch. You can make some lighter and some darker by adding water, and we also have clusters of flowers, it's how they usually grow, one really close to another. I must open to one and one here. I think this is enough for now. So let's next paint the branch. For the branch I'll use the medium brush. So I'm taking Payne's gray, mixing it with water. So I don't want to have a lot of control with my brush. It means I won't hold it like this close to the tip, I'll hold it further from the tip. So I'm going along how I was planning, and then I'm just improvising. I got inspired by Japanese painting, and of course I'm not good at it because I didn't practice enough, but I think it's a good technique to get inspired and do a painterly style, watercolor painting. I like how it looks. I don't have much control because I'm not holding the brush I usually would and I like it. This branch, I don't want to have any leaves. Now, I want to let it dry and meanwhile, I'll be painting these. So for this, I want a beautiful parabola, because I want it to be white and blue. My favorite type of dishes. I'm taking our bright blue and mix it with ultramarine blue, just like we did in color trend class, if you've watched that. We need more ultramarine, and just do some loose brush strokes and I'm going to paint some flowers and birds. I want the brushstrokes to match the painterly style. So I'm not really careful, I don't really want it to be too perfect. This is our bird here, sitting. So I don't want to outline the vase but with the borderline of the vase, so I would like to show where it ends. So here we'd have like interrupted leaf or a flower, which ends right at the edge. Here we have one. So I don't want to make the shadows on anything. I want it to be really stylized flat, at least to give it to fun. You can take as an inspiration ideal vase and you can use this one up. I think this is enough for the paints, and now when I look at this painting, I probably would like to add another branch to balance it on this side because it looks like it will fall on one side. So with Payne's gray just like this. Now, when some of our branches are dry, well let's add some more flowers. Again, magenta with some red ocher and here I'm trying not to touch the branch, but if it does touch its okay. I think it's already beautiful, but let's add some few more touches, I would like to have some petals falling and it looks empty right here. So let's add the another flower, pointing a little bit, and also will have a smaller brush. Let's mix some magenta with a little bit of Payne's gray we used for of the branch. Add some darker details to the flowers, especially the ones which are already dry, otherwise we'll just bleed like this. You can now just let some flowers need to connect, so just with the same color, let's attach them to the branches. I'm on purpose adding some details outside the flower right there and a little boundary right here, let it show. So this is our plum blossom in painterly style. 5. Realistic Apple Blossom: Now, let's paint an apple blossom in a realistic style. The important part of realistic style is to have a detailed drawing, and I attach to the drawing of this apple blossom to the project section of the class, and I have it drawn here in the light lines, but I'm going to make it in darker lines so you can say it. We have a bond here. Your drawing has to be [inaudible] light, not in the dark line like mine. We have one big flower here, have open flower here, and some bots and some leaves and a little bit of branch. In this way, you can see how we'll work on different types of flowers. I mean, half open and branch and the leaves. Here we have middle of a flower with this yellow circles. Again, we'll have five leaves, which we're making a little band that overlapping, so they will look more ideal. Then if we would make them equally distant from each other. They're all looking the same, they wouldn't look. It don't make this composition with more flowers because it would take us a way longer, but even with two flowers and some buds and some leaves that will look as a finished, beautiful composition you can use for a card or for an invitation. We'll just frame it. Give it as a gift whichever you like, but it's a finished composition. They are going to look. We'll have a drawing. Next, I'll take a medium brush. Realistic drawing is always at least three steps. We would start covering them subject with the lightest tone of a color for each color. Then we would add shadows and after we will add texture and details. Those are the three main steps, could be more in-between a font depending on them. Drawing, depending on the complexity of painting. Sulfur bonds, we have a darker pink for the lightest tone. Even if the look dark, but it's the lightest tone for the buds of the apple. Next for the flowers, we'll have a very light pink. We are diluting the same magenta. and carmen mix. We need a lot of water because this pink is still not quite enough. I'm trying to avoid this yellow circles in the middle. Here between the petals we have some space which is going to be green, so we are trying to avoid it too. Just the decorate flat wash with really light pink. I know it doesn't look like much at the beginning, but it's going to be beautiful. Beauty of realistic style is much, you can take your time and just paint [inaudible] Then take a break and take a paint few days. You remember that in realistic style, it's important to let the layer dry before you paint the next layer. Here's our lightest layer. I'm trying to fill this some gaps between the yellow circles. Next I have leaves, branch and the nominal bud. Here we'll have yellow and green, yellowish green leaves and our branch is going to be brittle and light. I'm taking the regular green and they maintain some condominium yellow to it. We have a beautiful spring green. If I want to darken my green, I will add some ultramarine blue to it, we did in many classes. This yellow green to, let's go over again with a lot of water because we need the lightest tone of our leaves. Even if it looks too yellow at this point, it's okay. Pink wasn't dry. The petal wasn't dry at all, so the leaf green, magenta petal. Let's try to avoid it next time. If the areas which are touching are not dry, just try to let them dry first, before you will be painting another paint in just yet. Otherwise, it will bleed on into another and we would like to avoid that. I can't paint the branch or the node because the green is still wet. Let's let all this dry, and next we'll be finishing to paint the first layer, and we'll start adding this shadows onto the second layer. You can see that I erased some pencil lines so it'll be lighter. I noticed that because I hadn't before. What we'll do next, we'll start adding the shadows at the bottom of the petals and where the petals are overlapping with each other or with something else. I'm taking the magenta and some common red, mix them together, and I have more pigment than water in this mix. For the bottom add a little bit of green to this mix because our buds are darker than the petals. I'm taking a little bit of this mix to the bottom of the petal, then I'm washing the brush and then drying it into the paper towel and I soften the line of this shadow, and I repeat it again until I'm happy with the result. This is a synthetic brush number two, with a good tip. You don't have to soften all the edges, for the shadows, you can leave some. It also looks good sometimes. It's really up to your own taste. If you want to leave it like this, like harsher shadow, you can leave it or you can soften it. Both ways are right, so however you like. You can see our buds are instantly looking more real and more alive. Next, we'll take some classic green. The young leaves are not very dark, so we'll try not to darken them too much, and try to leave some of it yellow green under these alone. This process takes time and patience, but I find it relaxing so I hope you do too. Sometimes it's just enough to add shadow ones, you can switch your brushes depending on how big every leaf or the object is. Here I took a bigger brush. This is number four. The leaf always, the bottom part will be darker than the top part because the sun is hitting from the top. You can rotate paper as you need. I'm trying not to do it so you wouldn't get confused with what we are painting, but you can. But with bigger leaf, I'll add some ultramarine blue to my green where we have most shadow. You can add it right on paper or you can add it in your drawing paint palette. We need some blue. Because the sunlight is yellow and it's warm, so in the sun, the light will be warm and the shadows will be cold. That's why we are adding a little bit of blue to create the cold of the shadow. Next, I have a flower, so we'll be adding shadows petal by petal. Again on the bottom and then washing the brush, drying it, and soften the lines. Add the same thing where the petals overlap like here. There will be the darkest next [inaudible] where petal overlap and then it becomes gradually softer and lighter until it gets back to its color. Here we are following the rule like if we would have a sphere, so it creates the shape of the petal and the shadow repeats the shape of the petal. It doesn't have to be perfect because it's not a perfect globe. Here we are trying not to touch those yellow circles from the middle of the flower we have. At this stage, every single detail looks way better. We've got some shadows and instantly, everything looks more alive. Let's take some green again because next we have a normal leaf. We're still leaving some of that really light green. I'm just afraid it will bleed into this petal. Next to this petal, it will be dark again. The same thing with the small leaves. Switch your brushes as you need, so take a smaller brush if you're need it and take a bigger if you are painting a bigger object. Next, we have our main flower, but before we do that, I'd like to paint this yellow circles in yellow. We'll take some yellow with a little bit of green, just a drop. I'm using cadmium yellow for this. It has to be pretty watery, because this is just the first layer. All of them. If this petal is dry, we can paint these ones too. I have to let this yellow circle dry now and then we can add a shadow to these petals. Otherwise, we'll bleed into the yellow. While those dry, we can paint the shadow on this leaf and this one. We should switch the brushes, because that one's too small and it doesn't do the right thing. I'm mixing some ultramarine into my green and I'm adding this shadow. Next on this leaf, we'll have a tiny shadow here on the bottom and soften it. Then, I have the shadow inside this, where the leaf bended. Some shadows on this little stem and leaves. While it dries, let's paint the branch. For the branch, I'll take some Rosina and I'll add some purple to it. Add some Rosina and some purple in different proportions while we're painting the branch. Will give it an interesting look and texture. Browns and purple usually work very well together. I just take either the shadow on this side while painting the first layer. Next, let's paint this bud, magenta with some cadmium red. With the same mix, we can start painting shadows on these petals. Make sure it doesn't bleed into your yellow, I think it did in mine. This brush is too small for the petals, so I'm switching back to big number four. The same thing with every petal. They don't have to be this dark, of course. At least a little bit of shadow on each of them. Some can be darker and some can be lighter. I'm adding the pigment and then I'm just creating this gradient. Also, we can add some texture just like this, by dragging some shadow into the petal, some lines. This yellow is still not too dry, so I'm really careful around it. Here we have a petal and here we have a little bit of bending. So set some texture like this. Then next to it, bending. Bending will be the lightest and the shadow next to it will be really dark, like this. Add a little bit, really tiny bit of shadow right here, and the same at this bending. Next to it, it will be with darkest. You can even take a small brush here and add a really dark line with a lot of pigment in this. Then to water everything with water with a big brush. It instantly gives dimension to our petal. A little bit of shadow here and, of course, here. Now we can get back to the part which is already dry, and mix some classy green with ultramarine blue. Then few details here and there. Very watery magenta, I added the texture to every petal. Just drag this lines, not everywhere, just here and there. Also with green, I added some textures to the leaves. I mixed yellow with magenta and I did with shadows to every circle, and filled the spaces in between with dark green. It was too much dark green, so I'll add some white dots to make it look nicer. Add some white dots here. This is our apple blossom in realistic steps. 6. Thank you!: Thank you for watching my classes. I hope you've had a chance to paint the [inaudible]. If you liked this class, please leave a review and upload a project to project section of the class so I can give you my feedback. If you're sharing your project on Instagram, please tag me so I can see of your beautiful artwork. See you in the next class. Bye.