Valentine's Day Card - learn Trendy Watercolor Techniques

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Lilian Jessica, Psychological Artist and Illustrator. Welcome to my Mother Colored channel. Here you'll find a big collection of classes for beginners. In today's class, we will be painting a Valentine's Day card. It is an easy and fun project. All my classes are filmed in due time, you can follow along. If you're new to this channel, welcome and thank you for joining. Press the follow button on top, and let's get started. 2. Supplies: To create a Valentine's day card, if you are going to create your own design, you may need some sketching paper, and tracing paper. If you are going to print the template from a project section of a class, you'll need a printer to print it. Also, we'll need a Watercolor paper. This is Cold Press 300 grams, or 140 pounds watercolor paper. Also watercolor paint we'll need, water, paint pallete, paper towel, pencil, eraser, a medium, watercolor brush with a good tip, this is Number 4, and smaller watercolor brush for the details, this is brush Number 2. An optional we'll need a whitewash, and if you want, some metallic paint. So we can get started. 3. Painting the first layer: First thing I wanted to show you how I came up with the design. I just transferred the letters and I sketched the elements I wanted. I used this Brock Kyle, elements of Rococo style which has very trendy to add this illustrative feel for the letters. Also this is the card, of a valentine card we'll be painting today. But I wanted to paint it on a bigger piece of paper so you can see better. It won't create any shadows and you can now painted on paper if you want to do a poster too. Or you can cut a postcard and decide what size you want it. You can do it square if you want, you can do it rectangle. After you've cut it the right size, the first step we have to do, is to transfer the letters. In the project section of a class, you'll find a template. However, if you want to paint a different word, you can print it yourself and just transfer your own letters. If you are painting with me, you can pause now and go to your project section of the class and transfer the letters on your piece of paper. Transfer them very lightly with pencils, you don't have all this harsh pencil lines, like I enjoy, but I did it thicker, so you can see it. Then with a medium brush, we'll be painting the letters in any colors you like. I decided on very limited color palette. I got inspired by Spring colors, because it's February already, I'm pretty much ready for Spring. So I'll take some magenta for my Xs, you can see it here. The first thing which we'll do, we'll just wave a plain a wash. You can do a gradual wash too if you want to. I was afraid that it will be too busy. We have a plain wash, we will be painting Xs in pink, diluting magenta with a lot of water and Os in the yellow orange. Make sure your paper towel is nearby. Just feel the entire letter with a beautiful watery watercolor wash. I'm starting angle this line. A thicker line. This is brush Number 4 with a good tip. Then we are drawing a smaller line. Make it very carefully all the way. Nice. Next what we'll do, we'll take the excess of water and paint and paper towel and will absorb this little puddles. Like this. Now lets paint the second X in the same way. Taking out some of the puddles just like this. For the O, we'll take cadmium yellow and we'll mix a little bit of cadmium orange to it, to make it more orangey. The again we'll diluted with a lot of water. Make it easier. If you're into graphic design, you can do some more chocolate wrappers with these too, for Valentine's Day. You can make it very cool. I think I'll frame this one. I think it's a nice some piece to give someone. Even to a friend or just someone you love. When you're mixing them and the color, make sure you have enough. If you don't, it's okay, of course, but its better to have the same tones through the entire wash and absorb excess. Next step is very important. Let it dry like really dry. It has to be as dry as the paper where we didn't paint. Have a cup of tea or coffee or something and come back when it's totally dry. 4. Adding Beautiful details: While the first layer was drying, I changed the water, I washed my paint palette, and I brought back the sketch I did for the references. I am not going to draw all of this swirls I did on the letters because I don't want more pencil on it because that's not necessary. I drew those little, little lines, maybe you can't see them, but not the entire flourishes. After our first layer is dry, now it's a good time to erase the pencil lines around the letters. Next with a small brush, add the paint in the flourishes on the drawing. Play so much freehand, just with a little bit of guidance and looking on the reference. I'd love my flourishes to be aligned blue. You can choose a different color if you want, and I want them to be see-through. So for the flourishes we can still see the entire letter. I'm taking the bright blue color and then diluting it with a lot of water. Always start from the left upper corner if you are right handed like me, and opposite, if you are left-handed, so you don't smudge whatever you did before. Let's start off with these flourishes and after a while your hand will get used to it and you will be totally ready to freehand and improvise and do your own flourishes, which are so trendy in next couple of years. There are other instances I'll do exactly what is on my sketch, but it's just more for guidance, so I'm not feeling honest when I'm showing this to you. You can come up with your own design or feel free to use a template. I provided ventures to learn by repeating after me what I'm doing. Repeating step by step is a nice way of learning. Only by practicing you can understand some processes, especially with watercolor, it's more about feeding the brush with paint and water. Now let's make our leaf which goes all the way on this letter. Why not? Maybe something here. So just take your time, no rush, just you and your favorite small brush and watercolor and me. So you can see the paint behaves differently when you're painting on the previous layer than when you paint just on paper. But I think it's very cool that you can see through the layers, and we see that effect you can get only through watercolor and traditional media. So we'll use it. So I didn't do both X's and O's the same. The viewer will be more captured by different designs. You can do this in different colors if you want or you can do your blue light, like I did on my other card, when I was coming up with a design for this class. I'll say if you like water color lettering or illustrative method lettering, I have a class on alphabets. You can watch it if you want or not. There you can see how to do the different letters with watercolor so you could have a different message. You can use those methods or you can use this one. It's important here to be creative and do the things you like, and listen to your own aesthetics. This was inspired by Rococo style. It's a historical art style. Very trendy now and still watercolor gives it a very modern, very fresh look. That's why I thought it's only very cool to use. It's relaxing painting on these swirls and I like it. So I think it would be ideal , if you like this style, just take different words. Try to decorate them. You can use this Rococo style, which is a good one to practice your brush strokes too or you can use other art styles. The ones which are your favorites. You can also do some flowers and branches. This is a good way to do monochromes too. You can see not all the flourishes have to be connected. I can go very close, but doesn't have to be one full branch of flourishes. It's important to have a good brush with sharp tip and it's nice to have a soft brush. Any watercolor brush is usually soft. One more here. Maybe some little leaves. Now we have to let it dry again. Then we'll be adding some details with white and gouache, and maybe with some gold. 5. Adding Final details: The last step, and my favorite one probably is to add the other final details using white wash or if you are using white ink or white draw pen and we can also use some gold paint. There are some points we'll be working with other media than water color. First of all, it's important you put away all your good brushes so you don't use them by accident and use some synthetic brush which is not as expensive as your watercolor brushes. If you are painting with metal paint, it's important to shake well first because metals are heavier than whatever liquid they are in. They tend to go to the bottom and on the top you would have only this water, which is not actually gold enough. Here I have some white wash and also I changed the water so the white stays white. I'm not going to add a lot of details because I'm painting [inaudible] design. This leaf here, for example, has a broken shade because you can see through x and it's so see through. The leaf itself is so see through so I did another line here just to show the shape better. Also these lines I will add a little more sophistication, especially very small, not too chunky. Maybe some lines on these ones too. Also I like adding dots on my paintings. Make it more whimsical. This leaf too needs some more structure and some dots here. Details are very important in design. They show your character, they show what you're like. If you don't like details or if you're not into details, it also shows your character. It shows the character of your brush stroke and you feel actual works small or big. I think this is enough white. Next up, if you have some gold paint or gold pen, you can add some more lines on the letters and on the swirls if you want to. I think it goes well with the character of our lettering because it's all this [inaudible] feel. Just don't add too much but if you want you can add much. I prefer not to add much. Just a little bit, really gentle touches here and there, even next to your whites. If you are scanning it just makes sure all the wash and gold paint is dry. Otherwise, it'll stick to the glass of your scanner. Like here. I'm having so much fun with this, so gold I think its already more than I would normally add. But it's shining so beautifully and it works well with watercolor textures. I hope you can see it. Very nice. I think one more here, and it's enough. Maybe a little bit here. I think my Valentine's Day artwork is ready, and I'm going to frame it but because I have already a card but if you painted the card just let it dry, fold it, put it in a nice envelope and send it to somebody you love and have a great Valentine Day. 6. Last Thoughts: Thank you for joining me in this class. I hope you can adjust to paint with me. If you like the class, please leave a review and upload the project to the project section of the class. If you are sharing your project on Instagram. Please tag me so I can see your beautiful artwork. I'll see you in the next class. Bye.