Stunning Watercolor Textures - Unlock your Creativity

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Irina Trzaskos. Artist and illustrator. I like to teach watercolor classes. Today we'll be experimenting and creating beautiful watercolor textures and patterns. This class will help you unlock your creativity and add some unique, unusual textures to your artwork. In next video I will show you supplies we'll be using in this class. If you are new to this channel, press the Follow button on top and lets get started. 2. Supplies: For this course, we'll be using more supplies than we would normally use because we'll be trying new things and experiment. We need, of course, a set of paint, water guard paint, watercolor paper and a piece of office paper. Also, we will be needing painter's tape and a board to tape our paper on and will be taping like paper. One-quarter of the inch for every exercise. Your board can also look like this. Any kind of board you have. Also, we will be needing water, extra juice for extra water, paint pad, hand sanitizer. We experimented with it on my previous class and will do even more beautiful effects in this class with it. A flat brush, a medium size, this is number three, a bigger flat brush, a soft watercolor brush, this is natural number six. A watercolor brush you'll like. This is number four with a good tip. Liner brush, your least favorite brush for mixing, hand sanitizer with paint and member square. Also, we'll we needing salt. Don't worry we won't be doing snowflakes. To measure the salt we we'll be using measuring cup and a tea spoon but it don't have to if you can just experiment with salt and water. These are all the supplies we'll be using today and we can get started. 3. Gradients and ombre effect: So let's start our journey away of the dreamy ethereal color gradient. It's the gradient which for most people think when they talk about watercolor artists so that's usually this dreamy, ethereal feel. To have a nicer color gradient, we need to bring our colors' brightness a little bit down so we'll be mixing them with their complementary colors like to the blue I added a little bit of orange, cadmium orange and it turned into gray but I still want it to be a little bluer. You can totally do this kind of gradient with neutrals like using grays and browns and it will still be beautiful. On the top of gradient, I am adding blue and gray-blue and I'm not afraid to add a lot of water because I would love to have some of those water damages, which are beautiful I think. Next I'll make a Cadmium Orange with a little bit of magenta. These dreamy kind of gradients are so pretty just as a background for lettering, or some inspirational quotes, or stationary designs, or even fabric I'd say, melees a junk fabric to the mix. So next I merge more obvious gray, blue and you can see I'm leaving in purpose these bottles, which classic water colorist wouldn't allow, but I just think we're in 21st century so we can benefit from all the properties of watercolor. So now when I cover everything in color, I'll add some more water bottles. Make some more magenta with water and them here, then just let it dry and see what happens. So this is a dreamy gradient and the main point was to bring the brightness of a color and it's opened down by adding complementary colors to it and by mixing colors with a lot of water. Next type of gradient I want to show you is a dramatic effect gradient. It's more colorful so we'll mix more cadmium orange with some magenta. So it will be pretty much the same colors, they'll be just with less water and will work a little bit differently with them and a little bit of cadmium orange. To have a dramatic effect we'll need softer and cheerful colors and one or two moody colors. So we're starting with cheerful colors, this is orange with Naples yellow, cadmium orange with Naples yellow. So I don't want it to be here like whole structure than just starting way of randomly adding shapes. This adds more orange. So this is orange with magenta. I'm trying to be careful not to touch that one. Let's bring it right here and next let's mix our moody color. So for moody color I picked blue. My pen is gray so it's almost black but it's not, It's a dark blue. If you have Indigo you can do that with indigo. So next you can see when I'm edging this moody dark color, it instantly changes the entire atmosphere, entire mood of my gradient. Plus, It's so colorful and maybe it looks dramatic, I like it. More Payne' gray in here. You can experiment, I encourage you to experiment with different colors. Also, I'll take some magenta with a little bit of orange and set some Payne's gray and now add one dynamic diagonal, which unifies this soft colors with moody blue. Let's add some here too. This is our colorful, dramatic gradient, I think it's beautiful and just let it dry and then you can see if you want to add something else or not, probably not. The last gradient I want to show you is ombre effect which is also very requested in watercolor world for invitations and backgrounds. So ombre is like when we are adding, we have the gradient which starts with a color, and then we will wash our brush and would add just clear water to it. It's a gradient which goes from the color to the white paper and again, it's better not to be perfect because perfect is not cool. So we have our blue running from here and it's okay. On the bottom I want to show you another texture effect we can add which is, okay I mixed some magenta wave of blue and here let's add some blue. Maybe you do a bit of Payne's gray and see if is beautiful gradient, you can make so many color gradients with watercolors, it's already done, and less possibilities. So what you do next, I'll take a piece of this paper and I'll just rip it and where we have this irregular edge which is coming thinner. I'll just put it on my water guard paper and I'll press it down. Next we have a brush, I'll add some more color and again with water I'll bring it to the white paper. So here's our dramatic colorful gradient and this is ombre. Next let's wait and dry and see what's happens. So this gradient is dry and I think it's too perfect here so I would love to add a really watery pink addition here just to break this smooth surface a little bit. Just like this, it already looks more interesting. This one is not yet dry, but I don't think it'll change more so I like how it is shaped because of the water we added at the end and I like all the drama and colorful gradient is going on here. Here we have again, water affected this area which I love because we can see really this characteristic for watercolor texture and here let's see what happened. Nice, so we have extra texture from the paper plus you got a gradient coming from the dark to the light plus texture and still a little bit of extra shade to make it more interesting. So these are our color gradients, a dreamy one, colorful, and dramatic, and ombre. I hope you try them. 4. Flow textures: The next effect is based on a simple rule, which pigment always follows the water. Here is an example, I take a round drop of water in here, and the rule is that when I apply the pigment to it, it will spread only on a drop of water I have, it won't go anywhere else. You can see it's like trapped in there. I thought we could use this property of portico medium to our advantage. I have a liner brush here. I'm taking and dipping it into water, then applying some water lines to my paper. You have to work pretty fast. I did some drops of water and I'm just dragging them into organic looking lines. I hope you can to see that. But if not, in a second, I'll add pigment to them and you can see magic happen. Look. I'll add blue, and you can see how it's floating exactly in the lines and doesn't go anywhere else. It doesn't touch the paper when it's dry. I'll continue edging these water channels. The second property of watercolor mediums we'll use is watercolor blending. What I'm doing next, I will take some lemon yellow and I'll add it to the water channels. You can see how blue and yellow are mixing together right in this pattern we just created. I'm adding water lines as I go because I was afraid those will dry fast, so I wanted to add color and then continue. Adding more blue. You can use any other colors. I encourage you to experiment. This pattern is just of random lines and you can play by mixing the colors just like this. We are filling the brush with water, and I chose liner brush because has long hair, so it holds a lot of water. I have a lot of blue and don't have much yellow, so let's add some yellow like to this intersection. It's really fun. I hope you'll try this to think. It's like a magic wand. Let's finish it like this. It contains branches or what I knew, and you can apply this if you want to have more straight abstract lines. It can do any shapes. Next, let's try the same technique but with a round a brush, which is shaped differently than liner brush. This time let's take some color. Orange or some magenta, will give us another cut over here. Very watery and let's just start with some brush strokes, like these. Next, let's add more orange shade. By touching a little bit, you can see how color travels from one brush stroke to another. Next, let's add some more magenta. Next, I want to take some burgundy and continue with this color. You can see how this color is traveling all the way from the light peach pink, through orange, from magenta to burgundy. It's really awesome. These brush strokes are touching the previous brush strokes. Then what I add here is some indigo. Let's see what happens. Here it's not touching, so I'll just add some little water channel. I'm adding more water channels to it, in this case you'll get some umbra. Again, you can play, and you can turn and you can see like indigo flowing all the way their, I'll add a red to that. Another brush I want to try is this huge flat brush. I want to create some geometric lines. Let's see how it goes. Let's take this and add some. Synthetic brushes are not holding a lot of pigment, so it's not easy. I'll just add some ultramarine blue and then I'm going straight, adding another line. It's not as perfectly straight as I wished but it's still interesting. Okay [inaudible]. You'll have to press harder to get them better with indigo. I created this some geometric lines pretty much similar to this is but they are straighter, so I like it. Next I'll take a lot of pigment of ultramarine blue, and some magenta of course. Then I'll add the color to the intersection of this lines. You can see how colors are flowing. Again, this effect is possible only in lighter colors, so I'm using the properties of a medium to their advantage. 5. Tie Dye effect: So the next goal, think about whether color red spreads better on a salted water than on regular water. So here I took one quarter of a cup of water. I really like this effect in watercolor. Next I will take one teaspoon of just salt. My water is warm, so it will dilute faster and [inaudible] So next important moment, I have clean water. The second jar of clean water, so you can rinse truly your own brush before you go into a paint, so you go for two jars of water after it touches with paper. Plus I have a separate brush which I use only for salted water and I have this short really hard brush for applying the paint. Also for this technique, I use the paint from the tubes, which is extra security for my paint. I don't want to get any salt in my paint. It's easier to squeeze a big amount of paint in a pallet. What we're doing next, we'll take our designated brush for salt water. So my plan was because I know this property of watercolor to create this tie dye effects in watercolor, how cool is that? Just cover your section where you want to apply this technique with salted water. The quantity of salt may vary from the brand of the [inaudible] but I hope this one will work. Next we'll just apply this kind of rectangles just to see what it looks first because we got more rectangles to work in. You can see how it instantly spreads. The effect, which only water color can give you and non of any other mediums. I put so much paint in there. You have to have a lot of pigment and not much water. You can see why I took more water and here I took more pigment, how different it is. You can try to make lines too. This color applies too. You can see resembles of that tie dye effect I was looking for. Okay. After you apply the little bit in the second rectangle, let's try something different. Again, I'm covering it with salted water. You can play with different colors too. You don't have to go indigo like me. I think this effect is really cool. That's exactly what I was looking for. That water color tie dye effect, which we would get on a fabric. So now what I want to do, I want to add some dynamic to my composition. I'm starting from the corner and then I want a bigger brush strokes smaller, smaller, smaller and go up. They can be bigger. The paint normally wouldn't spread this well just on the water but because of the salt it gives this. Okay. We've got some dynamics here, just going from a bigger brushstroke [inaudible]. Again, as well as we are mapping it on a brush, you can see like this spread effect going from darker color to lighter ones. The last one. Let's get even more complicated. [inaudible]. Again, I'm covering it with salted water. The paint brush if you want to rinse it, it goes in the second one and then back in the paint because it already touched the salted paper. You don't want to get the salt in your paint. So next I'm taking a pretty thick paint and we will do the following, It's really wet and you can wait a little bit. Am just doing this. So we could wait a little bit so it won't do [inaudible] but I think it's still cool. You can see how true colors are interesting. Here it's almost dry. So let's see what happens. Here it doesn't have a dye effect anymore. That's the difference. We can see and then draw a line, some blue in here. It's very interesting effect and I think there's a lot of room for experimentation with this kind of effect. 6. Hand Sanitizer & watercolor: So next [inaudible] we'll be using hand sanitizers. We already used it in my previous class, also amazing on hands. Also you need a brush which is not a vehicle brush. You can mix how sanitizer with paint and make sure you are always washing your brush very well before you go into paint, so that hand sanitizer doesn't get into your paint. What you'll do first is to squeeze a little bit off, hand sanitizer in a palette. Next what you would do, you'll just take some any dark paint. This is indigo, and we'll create a dark color wash. Add some [inaudible]. To save your effect it has to be in dark, that's why I'm painting it so dark. You has to work fast because if it dries, it won't work. What we'll do next, is to take my hand sanitizer and my finger and just add different size circles, which is like glow. Let's have a paper toilet tissue. Next, I will take some magenta and mixed it into our sanitizer. Again, with your finger and just add some pink circles. By touching on more or less, you can make smaller or bigger circles. I think it's very cool effect. You can control it a little bit with size of the circle, more than if you're just dropping sanitizer. This is a glowing bucket effect. Next to watch will be triangular. What we'll be doing is we'll mix some colors with sanitizer. [inaudible] , wash your brush and dry very well, dry it on paper towel and then taking some magenta, you've got civic consistent or sanitizer is like instantly changing once it touches anything. It's going to be orange in a second one, and in the first one, I want to have blue. Next what we would, we will take on sanitizer in a bit and we'll just apply it through the paper, just like this. Then I'll take a different color and l'll mix a little bit of it of magenta on it again, and then I'll take blue with magenta and lead to bottom or edge of a color. Looks like kind of like confetti, some satellites. I think it's a nice effect. Just move it a little bid and next effect I want to show you, you can draw control this merging effect. Add some more sanitizer, and we have too much, okay. We'll take it and just using your finger and just merge, in every direction you want, also if your fingers says so, cool, beautiful and nice texture. I don't know how otherwise you could get this texture with watercolor and take on-off looks like make up. It differently could work for some packaging, for some advertising for makeup company. I think it's very interesting, it would work for a valentines day too. So here I have orange and magenta. This is set of three effects I wanted to show you with hand sanitizer and your hands. 7. Spritz & scrape: Our basic needs besides our regular supplies, like brushes, paint and water. We'll need a spray bottle. The kind of spray bottle which creates with drops not with mist. Also we'll need a [inaudible] or a toothpick or something which can scratch a paper. So what we will do, we'll take some magenta and we'll add a blob in one corner. Next we'll take blue and add it in opposite corner. A lot of pigment and try to work fast. Next tool, add the angle to our paper, and we'll spray enough so the color will start mixing between each other. So I don't want the blobs to stay blobs. I want them to have a different shape. That's what I want. You can change angle on the other side, a little bit just over blue goes into pink too. Next what we'll do, we'll just be scratching the lines. You can see when we are scratching the lines, the pigment gets in the lines and creates this beautiful texture. Pus the mist has it's own texture. You can do that as long as you want. I want to try the same things but with different colors. So I'll take a flood brush. But in this integral, and let's make the lines this time and then enough water so it will be flowing. Next color, we'll take this state clone, red [inaudible]. This time we'll have more neutral colors, not this colorful, spread side. But [inaudible] brushes are not, I'm sorry, the pigment has passed us, as softer brushes. So what to do next again, we add the angle like this way, some yeast. You can see how brown and indigo start mixing. Next we can add the scratches on the paper. You can create really unique, really interesting textures like this. So by adding different colors, you can have more cheerful atmosphere over your illustration or a module 1, and on [inaudible] or whatever you think of. So this is the technique. 8. Last Thoughts: Thank you for joining me in this class. I hope you had a chance to perfectly and create your own beautiful watercolor textures. If you liked this class, please leave a review in the part of projects or project section of the class. If you're sharing your projects on Instagram, please tag me so I can see your beautiful artwork and I can't wait to see you in my next class. Bye.