Transcripts
1. Introduction: Recently come to my attention
that wreaths pack so much learning in them that no matter where you are
in your art journey, painting a wreath is
going to teach you a lot, and you're going to love it
because it's so much fun and actually super easy once
you break down the steps. It's much less complicated
than you think. You probably have seen a
lot of beautiful watercolor wreaths out in the world, and you're like, How
do they do that? Well, not only will you be able to paint
one with me today, but you'll also be able to say, This is how to do it. So what are you waiting
for? Let's get painting. So
2. Wreath Tutorial: First, we need to
start with a circle. The easiest way to do a circle
is to stamp that circle. I'm going to be
using a glass jar. It has to be a material that
will not absorb the paint. Glass or plastic
is probably what most of you have and that's
going to work just fine, but you need to paint the rim with the color you want
your circle to be. Now, the easiest one,
in my opinion is brown, so it's the twigs or branches that are holding your
wreath together. You could also do the main
color of your wreath. If I did green, that
green probably get hidden by all the parts of the wreath. That
would be fine. To. So we're going to wake up, whatever color
we're going to use, I'm going to be using brown. It doesn't really
matter what brush you use at this
point because we're just trying to get the
paint on to the rim. I'm just going to
gently brush it on. I'm really trying
to get it again on the rim and not on the sides. Won't do anything if
it's on the sides. It doesn't matter if it
gets there on accident. I'm trying to get it everywhere, but I know that the
paint is going to bead and it might not
actually stay everywhere, which is fine because it makes a very pretty effect when
the paint is not everywhere. Then we're going to stamp this
in the center of wherever you're going to paint so we
have room to paint around it. I'm working in my sketchbook and so that's where I'm
stamping it. Excellent. I got mostly a circle, but there's some gaps
in it. I love that. I love the gaps, that'll create some fun variety and
interest for our wreath. Now, we're going to break our wreath down
into four pieces. You can make a wreath as
complicated as you want, but having four is a
great place to start. In this case, I have three
greenery shapes and berries. Three plus one is four. My three leaf shapes, I've got my clusters
of three leaves. I have my branches with
leaves that are light green. And I have my pine branches. Those are my three
different leaf shapes. When I say three shapes, you're just picking things
to go on your wreath. Then I have my berries,
which are the fourth thing. Then at the end, I connected
them with all the branches. Let's pick one to start with. I like to start with
the lightest first. We're going to be
doing our light little branches of leaves. First. One of the
big things you will learn when making a
leaf making well, a leaf too, a wreath. Is mark making. Have you heard of
mark making before? It is a very helpful thing to practice in painting
any kind of paint. But with watercolor, we use marks to make
a whole picture. It's very simple in watercolor. We want to be able
to make something happen in as minimal
strokes as possible. Mark making is us
learning how to make those marks look the
way we want them to with as little
effort as possible. Because we're going
to be repeating these shapes over
and over again, we're going to get
really good at those shapes and therefore, we're going to improve our
mark making abilities. I need to pick a direction
for my wreath to go. It's either going to go
clockwise or counterclockwise. Then I'm going to make my
shapes go in that direction. Let's say I'm going clockwise. I'm going to make my
shape go to the right. I'll start with my
stem. Then I'm going to draw my little leaves.
And fill them in. Now, if you don't fill
them in all the way, that can also be a
fun effect to have a little bit of white showing
since with watercolor, we don't paint with white paint. We just use the
white of the paper. I can let that white paper show through to get those
little bright highlights. I'm going to start
by doing three or four around the
outside of my wreath. I want them to be spaced
out but not perfectly even. I want it to be a
little bit random the spacing because I don't
want it to feel manufactured. I want to feel more realistic. I like to space them
out differently. One thing I like to do on
this shape is at the end, I like to make the end
of the line a leaf, so it doesn't just
end into nothingness. I'm going to do one
more over here. Again, the end should be a leaf and then I should have some varied every other staggered
leaves going down the stem. Now the great thing about
doing a wreath is that there is no perfect
wreath painting. Every leaf, every part
of your wreath is unique and different
and it's going to look different and it's going
to dry differently, and that's great
and that's fine. That's going to make
a really cool effect. I also want some of these stems on the inside of my wreath. I'm going to pick the
inside, I need them to go in the same
clockwise direction, and I'm going to make
those same little leaves. On the inside, I'm probably not going to put as
many because it's a little more crowded
on the inside of my wreath. I'll
probably just put two. If I want more, I can
always add some more later. Remember, it's always
easy to add more. It's not very easy, in fact, nearly impossible to get rid
of anything I've painted. It's not like acrylic where
we can paint over it. Now I have my first
step. My wreath is looking very wonky
right now. That's okay. I'm going to slowly fill it up with different
designs and shapes. Next, we're going to go
for a more medium green. I'm going to I have two greens
on my paint palette and I'm going to mix them together
to make my medium green. Maybe I'll even add a bit of brown to it to vary
it a little bit. I like to add brown to my
greens to make it a bit duller and it feels more like real life to me if it
has a bit of brown in it. Now I'm going to make
some clumps of leaves. These leaves are bigger
than my branches. They're individual little leaves that have a nice
point at the end, and I want to make
them in clumps. Usually, I like clumps of three, but they don't have
to be all the same. I like if some are hiding
behind other ones. Look how this one's
behind the other leaves. I'm going to do a
few of these clumps trying to again
vary where they go. Maybe this one will
be actually really close to that vine. In fact, it can
overlap a little bit. We're going to get
crowded in this. It's okay for wreaths to
overlap and things to touch. I'm going to let it do that. One thing I like to do too
is if I have extra paint, I like to drip it in in
places where it's still wet to let watercolor do its
pretty thing when it dries. It's okay if the leaves are
not all consistent green. Now I talked about
the direction. However, these little
bunches don't need to be as directional because they're
in these little clumps. They can point out
in all directions. They don't have to
be as clockwise. However, you can make them
clockwise if you want to. I think I'll also do
an extra one over here to again create a variety. I want things to not
be perfectly even. I want them to be varied. I also want them on the inside. I'm going to go ahead
and do a few clumps of these leaves on the inside. Again, not as many
because it can be more crowded on the
inside and maybe I'll even have a few single leaves on the inside or
maybe just pairs. It's looking good. I'm going
to go to my next step, which is the pine branches. Now, I'm going to
switch brushes. So far, I was doing
everything in about a size two, maybe even smaller. It says three, but it's a liner, it's a very thin, very small round brush for
those first ones. Now I'm switching
to a flat brush. A flat brush is much easier
to do the pine branches in. I'm going to get my
darkest green next. I'm going to add more
of my dark green to my mixture I've been using and I might even add
some more brown to it because I like
when it's muted. Now the pine branches
are really fun and actually fairly easy with a
nice flat brush like this. I'm going to pick some spots. Again, they can
be varied and I'm going to do mostly pine branches for the rest
of this painting. They're going to
be lots of them. Once I draw my line
of where it goes, I'm going to stamp and
poke my little flat brush. Aiming all those
little lines up. I also don't want
them to be perfectly in a row so I'm going to create some other uneven spots and
it's still going clockwise. There's my first pine branch
in my clockwise motion. I could even give
it a little friend. Maybe it's got a
short little one next to it because again, I would want a lot of
these pine branches. Now notice when you paint two things that are
wet side by side, they're going to merge
and blend together. I didn't want that
to happen, I should have come back later
and waited for that first pine branch to dry before I added
my second one. Now, one thing it's hard
for me to do on this video is turn my sketchbook to make
my hand more comfortable. However, that is
something I want you to pay attention to is the direction you are holding your brush and how easy it
is for you to make the mark. Because sometimes all you need to do is turn your
paper and the mark will be 1 million times easier to make just because of
how you're holding your wrist or the paint brush
or how all that connects. Experiment with
where your paper is positioned and how you can turn it to make it
easier on yourself. The easier it is, the more
successful you'll be, especially when it comes to just holding your brush and figuring
out where to paint it. How easy it is to throw these
little pine branches in. They've got beautiful texture. They look really
nice and wintery. I'm enjoying the
cold weather where I am right now, but we
don't have snow yet. I know that these little
pine branches will be so pretty once they
have snow on them too. But I'm just trying
to clump them. If they overlap another
leaf, that's totally fine. I'm looking for any
big gaps that I have and areas I can add
these pine branches. I'm going to go ahead
and keep adding these. Again, my goal is variety. Even though I'm adding a lot of the same type of
thing right now, I'm trying to change
the size the quantity, the direction just a little bit because obviously I
don't want them going the wrong direction on
my spinning wreath, but I do want to change the
angle of how they go and maybe I'll have a few
little stubby guys. It'll be a little pine branch that barely sticks out at all. That length is a
good one to vary. With any wreath that you
make anytime of year, variety is going
to be your friend. But if you have
too much variety, it turns into chaos and
your wreath will feel disorganized or just confusing to look at because there'll
be too many different things. That's why I like
the number four for the amount of pieces
that go in your wreath. When you're planning
your wreath, you can either
plan out all four. I want these four
types of things in my wreath or you can
just start painting. Once you get to four, then
stop adding new ones and go back and fill in the gaps with the designs you've
already been using. Just again using variation. If you've added four
different things and you're like, it's
still not full enough, then add some shorter
or longer versions of things you've already added. Look to see which
value is missing. Do you need something dark?
Do you need something light? Then that's the thing
you'll want to add. If you're mixing up colors, then keep in mind, try to mix up a lot so you
have it to work with. That way, if you run out, you make sure you have the
same color to work with. But if some of your leaves are different
colors, that's okay. A little bit of
variation in tone or hue can also be variety. At the end, I'll go back and
add some more darks as well, and that'll help me
with the variety of my pine branches because when I'm painting
them all wet on wet, then there's not
a lot of variety because all the color
is bleeding together. If I wait once it dries, I can go back and truly add some darker values to
them. I'm getting close. I still want a few
more pine branches, I'm going to stop
babbling and go ahead and finish those and we'll talk
about the fourth shape. And I'm pretty happy with my pine branches. I also went back
and I tried to add a bit more straight pigment
and add some darker values. I can also do that even
with just a little bit of brown inside
those pine branches, especially in the
center where there's supposed to be a stem that the pine needles
are growing from. Don't be afraid to go
back and add layers in your wreath just for
each individual item. Time for berries. I'm switching back to my round
brush for my berries, and I'm going to be using a red. The red I have is a fairly
bright red scarlet, which is a little too
pink for what I want. I'm going to be adding
some brown to it again to neutralize it
and make it a bit more of this cooler muddier berry color
that I want to use. I'm going to look for any last gaps that I need something in. I can put some beries here. I'm still using a very small brush for these
berries because I'm going to try to leave some
little bits of white showing. For a little highlight.
These berries are going to be in clumps again, but I don't really care how
many berries. It's nice. Three is always a good
number just like our leaves, but I do want variety
if you can't tell, and that means maybe
sometimes I'll have five, maybe sometimes I'll
have a lone berry. But I'll try to again
create some variety in my berries so that you can't
predict what you'll find. It just keeps our brain
interested and fresh to that. Know exactly what
will be next when I look around the circle if
things are more random, which is how life works. Life is much more random than we give it credit for and
that we try to believe. It's nice when things follow. The randomness of life makes
them feel more realistic. Even though this is a
fairly loose sketch, we do want to follow
some of those rules of reality to make sense and
that gives us guidance. If we just had a blank
paper with no ideas, we wouldn't have very
much fun painting. We do need some guidance and ideas to get started and have somewhere
to go with it. It's a good amount of berries. The final thing I'm going to do is add some stems to
connect things together. I'm going back to the brown that I used in the
beginning with my jar and I'm going to look for leaves that
need little stems. I might even add some
strokes of green brown on these light green leaves that are fading into
the background. I'm going to of course, add
some stems to my berries. I'm not going for exactness. I'm just again, suggesting some little stems to make it feel a bit more
like real life. Then this will also
add some contrast with the nice dark brown of the
little stems of the berries. Again, trying to go
in that direction, so the berries should
look like they're growing clockwise, just like my other
objects and shapes. And as my leaves
pine needles dry, I can add some brown to those in the center as well as a stem, especially if they don't
connect to anything. I also like to add a
few just empty stems. If you've ever made a wreath or even bought a
fake wreath from the store, you'll know that things
don't stay on the wreath, some things fall off and
we end up with a few of those empty twigs poking
out and sticking out. I'm going to allow those to just be part of the
composition to add a few little extra
twigs that are just empty because they
are. That's how life is. Not everything stays perfectly
the same. And just play. Look for areas that need
contrasts that look too light, look for areas that
still need something happening and add a
little twig or a branch. This is a great way to just
continue to push yourself. But knowing when to
stop is also important, which is almost one of
the hardest things. Here's a few ways to
know if you're done. One, you don't know
what else to add. That's a great way
to know you're done because you're
stumped for ideas. Two, it feels
generally balanced. Doesn't feel like one side has something sticking off,
the other side does not. Three, it looks
randomly balanced. If it feels too symmetrical, then add a few clumps of
things that don't match the other side while keeping
it balanced compositionally. Mind feels balanced, but there's a different number of
berries in different spots. I can't divide it in half
and say it's symmetrical, even though it feels balanced. Those are some of the ways
to know that it's done. Also looking for
contrast in value. How many lights do you
have darks do you have? If you look at an area, if it feels like it's too light
compared to everything else, then add some dark shadows. Squint your eyes. That's a great way to
look for darks and lights and look for any areas that need something
and then add it. But remember to just stop step back and admire it because you're probably
done sooner than you think. Even though this
wreath might feel complicated and look
complicated at the beginning, when it's broken down into simple steps one
piece at a time, you can make a wreath out of
any shapes for any seasons and it actually is super fun and relaxing and it's great
practice for your brush work. I hope that you
practice this one, get out that paint
and paint brushes, really give it a shot and be proud of something
you create, and then try pushing
yourself to make it unique to you and
something that you will be excited to show others because
you've come up with even more ideas built
off of these basics. Happy painting, and
I'll see you next time.
3. Conclusion: Now you know how to break down a wreath into
simple, easy steps. You can take inspiration
from anywhere and then pick four shapes to put together to make
that wreath after you've stamped your base
circle to build it from. You know, to think
about clumps and the direction that all
those pieces are going, you know how to balance it and create an even composition. Without creating
perfect symmetry, you can still make it feel balanced and even
all the way around. Have so much fun using these techniques to
make your own wreath and take it a step further and make something you've
never made before. Happy painting, and I'll
see you in the next course.
Alyssa Whetstone, Pen and Watercolor Artist & Art Teacher
