Step by Step Painting of a Moth Orchid

1. Intro: Painting has always been my form of meditation. And it's through illustrating. And same thing with optical elements that I feel reconnected once more with nature. This by being in the city. Hi everybody. I'm a visual artist based in folk beans. I'm very, very much inspired by nature and flowers are one of the favorite subjects that I love to paint. For me. I just love seeing that beautiful gradients. And each is a very, very nice color palette that nature brings us. In today's class, I'll be teaching you how to paint botanical elements using watercolors. You'll be learning how to adjust b values, makes collars and learn about them. Different watercolor techniques that you will need to be able to pay a beautiful botanical painting after. I'm super excited to share this knowledge to all of you. So if you guys are ready, prepare your materials, and let's begin. 2. Tools: You'll be meeting a watercolor paper. I'm using cold press, 300 GSM, that's made up of 100% cotton. It's really good for lettering. I also keep a scratch watercolor paper handy for swatching beat. You'll also need a watercolor B, I'm using a Mission Gold yellow paint around, watercolor brush, pencil and eraser I use for h, H B, or a green leaded pencil. You also need a reusable rag or a paper towel. And do small reusable containers with water, one for rinsing brushes and one for activate the theme. It's important to use the proper watercolor paper for your project. Regular legal Bieber, you won't be able to absorb multiple layers of watercolor paint. It's best to use the proper watercolor paper because it's more thought there as with water and leering. 3. Adjusting Values: Watercolor pigment values depend on the amount of water you put with the pigment. More pigment yields a darker value. But by varying the amount of water gradually, you can expand the values of your pigment from dark to light. Now let's try to expand the shade of red into different values. As you can see, I gradually added the little amount of water just to activate the beam. And almost pure pigment with barely any water is a dark as possible value of that beam. To get a slightly lighter value, add water to your mixture. You will see that as we go through the process of adding more water to our mixture, the big meant value becomes lighter. Now we'll just keep on adding water to our mixture. You can actually keep expanding a single pigment into multiple values just by varying the amount of water and pigment that you mix. It's important to note that you ideally start with the mid-range or second to the lightest value for your BSW, three years. It's always easier to build layers and details on top of this, then start with a very, very dark value of B. That would be hard to correct an add details do. Learning how to adjust values is also another way of expanding your palette. As you can see here, I added a lot more water to my mixture to make the faintest value of this red pigment. This type of mixture is very useful when you want to create a highlight for your petals. So again, just to recap, more water means a lighter value for your pigment and more pigment yields a darker value. 4. Mixing Colors: Reviewing the color wheel will give you an idea on which colors will look great on your composition. We have three primary colors, red, yellow, and blue, which then if we mix, can create other colors. As you can see, different colors farm in the parts where the primary colors intersect. Mixing all three primary colors can result in a shade of brown and even great adjusting the amounts of pigments that you use will definitely change the shade of brown that you can come up with. In botanical watercolor painting, we rarely use black because it flattens the image, but we still need to make shadows for our botanical paintings right? Here's a hack. I learned. Mixing 80 percent blue to 10 percent red and 10 percent yellow will yield a certain tone of gray. To adjust the value to a lighter shade, just add more water. Now let's talk about a JSON and complimentary colors, adjacent colors which are beside each other in the color wheel. These create beautiful gradient transitions and are perfect for painting petals and leaves. Complimentary colors are colors which are opposite each other on the color wheel. They also get the highest value of contrast in your overall artwork composition. Mixing any complimentary colors will result to a shade of brown. Here's an example of how varying the pigment amount of what you're mixing can change the shape of your mixture. I always give a scratch watercolor paper handy when mixing. Always swatch on the scratch watercolor paper to see if it's a call you're like before painting on the actual artwork and frequent cleaning of the brush in-between colors. Once you are okay with the color right down the pigments that you used. In this way when you want to create the same mixture, again, you have an idea of what colors of green, unique views. As a recap, varying the ratio of the colors that you use will yield a different sheet. 5. Watercolor Techniques: In this lesson, we'll be learning about the different watercolor techniques. For the wet on wet technique. When you add a layer of wet paint to an existing wet layer, the paint spreads because both layers are still very fluid. Remember is a concept, pigment follows water. This technique is useful when you want to color transitions more natural. I do this also when I wanted to call her block the base, meaning I've tried to put in the colors on the first layer. So I have an idea more or less on where the dark tones and the highlights are. You'll have the option to let the blending be as random as possible because of the wet on wet technique. Or you can move around the pigment while it's still wet or moist. Brush. As a practice, continue painting the other leaf shapes on the worksheet using the wet on wet technique. Painted leaf shapes in the next weeks, W will be learning today. Watercolor paints appear lighter when dry. This is why most artworks require more and more layers to give it them mention and detail. Glazing is a technique of adding a wet layer to a dry layer. If the previous layer is still with the new layer that you're trying to put will just bleed and blend with the previous layer. And the process of glazing. You can actually still use the wet on wet technique to blend the colors that you want. From this, you can see that I have added another layer to the previous layer to give it more depth and detail. Continue building layers as you move along. Depends on how you want the artwork to look. In watercolor painting, we rarely use white pigments as they are also transparent. When leaf veins are lighter than the other parts of the leaf. I do the negative painting technique. My process for this is normally painting the base layer with a very light mixture, letting it dry, and then painting around the part that I don't want painted on. Negative b is still a form of in the sense that you are building depth and detail. That you are not doing things certain parts to leave it white and light. This technique is also useful in building highlights of the subject. Continue the process of negative painting, wet on wet technique and layering until you have completed the desired output for your artwork. Brush control gives you a wider range of strokes and details, and it allows you to maximize the full potential of fun brush. For thin lines are details. Use the tip of the brush and let the glide on the paper. I use my pinky finger as an extra stabilizer when painting these fine lines. To practice brush control, simultaneously apply pressure and release pressure to create thick and thin lines. Whenever you want to create thick lines or cover a wider area in your painting, apply pressure to your brush. Being able to utilize your brush to its fullest potential will be very useful in any form of painting lifting technique, The method of lifting or removing excess water or pigment from the paper. This technique is used to remove excess paint, add texture, or even create highlights in your artwork. I prefer using a dry brush to live, so I have more control on which specific areas that I want to edit or remove. When lifting a large area, you can use a dry paper that will, if the part that you want to live is already dry, reactivate the paint by adding a little amount of water. Sometimes using a strong pigment can make the details look harsh and thick to soften edges of any lines in your artwork. Or to blend the colors more. Soak a clean brush in water, remove excess pigment and gently dab on the part that you want to soften up. Make sure you clean your brush frequently and remove pigments that get caught up on the bristles. This technique is useful when you want the vein or full details of the petals to look more blended into leaf or tobacco. Another technique is a dry brush technique. And the previous one, we soften the details with water. But in this one we will paint details with a brush that's almost dry to give that rough texture on the artwork. 6. Illustration Techniques: Now let's sketch the line art from a reference photo. Botanicals can look very intimidating to draw, but to make it easy, we'll break it down into shapes. When sketching orchids, find a central reference point and draw the line guides from there. The lines will guide you in scaling your subject. Next, break down the flower into multiple simple shapes. If you look closely the orchid flower, it looks like a bunch of circles with the skeleton lines as your guide, start drawing the circles. Once you are okay with the shapes, start drawing the outline properly. Follow the curves of the flower based on your reference photo. Let the circular shapes guide you in terms of size and position. Important reminder, when sketching, draw as lightly as possible. Pencil marks cannot be erased anymore once you paint over it. I'm just sketching boldly here so you can see the lines better just for demo purposes. Don't worry too much about copy the outline exactly as it is. The important thing here is to make sure that the scale is correct. The general shape of the petals are correct. As long as you don't draw an oval petal like a triangle, and that the number of petals are correct, then you are good. Erase lightly, be other pencil marks. No need to add details as these will all be painted later on. 7. Final Art: Now that we've discussed illustration in watercolor basics, let's move on to painting our final artwork. First, you need to prepare the mixtures of things that you will use for the artwork. If you don't have think, try to make a purple shade or a just a red value and use that instead. The important part here is to have all of the colors for highlights, midtones, and shadows, ready. Make sure you have your line art as well. Remember, sketch a slightly as possible. It'll be more difficult to erase the pencil marks once you've painted over them. Now using the wet on wet technique, establish the base layer by color blocking in the shapes of the markets. Check your reference photo and identify which parts of the Bethel have the highlights, the midtones, and the shadows. Brush with water as necessary to make sure your callers are evenly spread out the way you want them to. Keep using the wet on wet that meet the color block and add the midtones are the darker don't space on your reference photo. Control the spread of the pigment using your brush. Remember that as long as the pigments are still wet, you can move them around using a damp, moist brush. Applied the lifting technique for parts that you want to lighten up or do edit and remove excess pigment. I normally being flowers one battle at the time. So in this case, I painted Dubai those across each other to prevent the pain from leaving. Now once this first layer is dry, then I can proceed with painting the other petals that are beside them. Again, I do this because I don't want the colors to bleed from one bottle to another. Repeat the process of applying the wet on wet technique. For the first name. Try to add the mid-tone colors. Spread evenly with water to blend it properly and to make sure you don't beat over the highlights so much because we want to keep those parts as light as possible. I'm trying to fill in the shadow parts with a darker shade, soften the edges and even them out with water. To rinse your brush frequently. To ensure that the painting doesn't become muddy. Lift the parts that you want to be lighter. And repeat the process of applying all of the techniques in the other petals. For the first layer, we really just want to be able to establish sections of highlights, midtones, and shadows, but don't worry about putting the colors because again, water color painting is a lot of layering and glazing, so we will be adding more details later on. Just keep repeating the process until you've finished color blocking the first layer of the orchid flower. Let it dry for awhile. So take a short break, stretch your arms, your fingers, and relax. Once the first layer is dry, we are going to apply the glazing technique or layering, or also known as the wet on dry technique. Again, I am just color blocking first putting in the different shades that I need and then blending everything using the wet-on-wet technique, but instead using another pigment. I'm just blending them with water. Do we learned earlier softening technique? We are doing it here. Keep checking on your reference photo to identify which parts should be painted more or which bards should we add more details? Do add more pigment as necessary. Water color painting really requires a lot of patients because we need to let the layers dry before we add more WMD delta them. For now, continue repeating the process of applying wet technique, glazing, softening the edges, and just building the details of the orchid flower as we go along. Repeat the process until you have completed the second layer for all of the other battles. Let it dry and we will be painting the finer details of the market battles. After. Now let's paint the central part of the market, which has the column and the limb. Blend and soften the edges with water. We'll just apply the wet on wet technique once more. Spread. Add more pigment as necessary, continue blending and let it dry. Using the brush control techniques, start putting in the finer details of the orchid Bethel. Use your pinky finger as they stand today, I do have more control over the brush. And again, to create thin lines, just use the tip of the brush and glided gently on the surface of the paper. Repeat as necessary. Keep checking back on your reference photo to see which parts. You need to add more details to soften the edge is a damp brush with water. Again, this will help you blend those fine lines properly to make it look like they're really an integral part of the petal and not just harsh lines. And the other details to the other petals as well. Again, use brush control. And the pigment daughter fine lines. By letting the tip of the brush just glide gently on the paper. And then slightly with water to soften up the edges. The whole process until you've finished adding all of the details in. And more depth and detail. Through layering or glazing. Water color is really a simultaneous application of all of the techniques that we learned earlier. Make sure that you change your rinsing cups once in a while to make sure that your brush is always clean. And now I am going to try the dry brush technique just to add a little more texture on the upper petals of the market. Previously. The shadows. I created a shadow mixture for this. It's made up of permanent rose. I am blending and softening up this shadow detail by using a brush with clean water. Now we are adding the finer details for the live part and the column part of the Oregon. Again, the whole process of water color painting requires a lot of patients, a lot of practice using the techniques simultaneously in order to build more details in your artwork. And learning how to control your brush will give you the flexibility and capacity to create fine lines even without using a small brush. Remember that you can always adjust the values of the pigments that you are using by adding more water. So in this case, I did my green mixture with a lot more water to make it very, very light. And just enjoy the process of creating your final artwork. Water color painting is really a lot of layering and application of numerous techniques like wet on wet, pleasing, lifting, softening, dry brush, and even a lot of brush control. All you need is a lot of patients and a lot of practice. Today we just painted a single orchid flower, but as a challenge, try to paint a full stem of orchid flowers. 8. Class Project: Now that you've learned the basics of watercolor painting, it's time to create your own botanical artwork. In the class we only bated one flower. But the challenge yourself. Try to paint a few more flowers or a full stem of orchids. Check out the reference photos that I uploaded in the class description. Good luck and don't forget to upload your final projects in the class project section. Have fun.