Vintage Cherry Blossom Watercolor Wreath

1. Introduction and Class Overview: [FOREIGN]. That's what I felt when I visited Japan in spring of 2019. I can't explain the feeling to see another one-of-a-kind creation of God in real life. The color, the form, and the way some petals fall from the tree, it's just so gorgeous. This inspired me to think more and more of this beautiful subject. Hi, my name is Jenny. A water color and calligraphy artist based on the Philippines. Welcome to my Vintage Cherry Blossom watercolor class. In this class we will explore the beauty of cherry blossoms. Learn how to mix colors in order to arrive on the beautiful vintage color mix of old rules. Learn these trucks and tricks in creating that beautiful vintage cherry blossom. Pick up your brush and let's get started. 2. Materials: For the materials, we will be needing two cups of water. This one is the clean water, and this one will be our dirty water. The dirty water will be used for the washing of our brush while this one will be used to activate colors. We will try to maintain this glass as clean as we can until the end of our class. Two cups of water. We also need a mixing palette. If you don't have mixing palette, you can use the back of your watercolor keys, but it would be better for you to have a mixing palette. I prefer ceramic watercolor palettes compared to plastic watercolor palettes. Watercolor palettes, and of course, we also need a watercolor paper. Watercolor papers, I would recommend for you guys to use 100% cotton watercolor paper. I am using 100% cotton Baohong watercolor paper in rough texture. This is a cold press watercolor. But if you don't have 100% cotton watercolor paper, you can also use on 25% or 50%. Again, I'm using Baohong, but if you don't have this paper, you can use any brand. I would also recommend for you guys to use Canson Montval or Fabriano 25% cotton or Canpack, whatever is available for you as long as it's cold press and rough. That's for our paper. For the brush, we'll be needing one round brush and one detail brush. For the round brush, I would prepare for you to use size 6 to 10. You can use silver black velvet, Princeton Neptune. You can also use Princeton Heritage, or just a normal synthetic brush like this scribble professional brush, this one size 4, but I would prefer for you to get size 6. Aside from round brush, we also need a detail brush. For the detail brush, you will be needing size 2 and below. The best size would be size 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, or 0, 0, 0. Again, you can use Princeton Heritage. I have Princeton Heritage size 2 or any synthetic round brush. This one's in triple zero size, or you can also use silver black velvet brush, so it's up to you whatever is available. What's next? We will be needing some tissue paper, so either tissue paper or a rag, or any cloth that you can use to damp your brush to remove excess water. For the colors, I would require for you to have a shade of pink and a shade of brown. If you have a shade of pink, you have to have a shade of brown too. For the shade of pink, I will be using shell pink and Van **** brown. I will be also using Rose Madder, Quinacridone Permanent Magenta. Those are the shade of pink that I will be using. If you don't have any shade of pink, you can use a shade of red. For the shade of red, I have Quinacridone Permanent Rose, Permanent Red Deep, Perylene Red, Perylene Maroon. This one's dark red, but you can use any of these or any shade of red that you have. If you have shade of red, you also need to have a shade of brown and a shade of gray. For the shade of brown, I'm again using Van **** brown and for the gray, I'm using Davy's gray. But you can also use any other shade of brown and green. But for me, the best shade of brown is really Van **** brown. If you have this one, use it. Whether you opt to use a shade of pink or a shade of red, you still need to have yellow ocher and Van **** brown. These two are the permanent colors that we have, so yellow ocher and Van **** brown. But again, you can use any other shade of brown. But for the yellow, I would really recommend for you guys to use yellow ocher, either yellow ocher number 1 or yellow ocher number 2, as long as is yellow ocher. Those are the colors that we need, and we can now proceed to our next lesson. 3. Color Recipe: For the mixture, we will be mixing shell pink and Van **** brown. Once you mix your shell pink and Van **** brown, this is the shade that you will get. So I'm using an old strip of watercolor paper. This one is an old project that I cut to turn into a swap sheet. Here it is. This is shell pink plus Van **** brown. Remember when mixing this, make sure that there's more of shell pink shade than Van **** brown shade so it won't look muddy. It's a beautiful old rose shade and you can use this if you have shell pink and Van **** brown. Next, for those who do not have shell pink but have Perylene Red or any shade of red and Van **** brown, you can combine Van **** brown, any shade of red, and any shade of gray and arrive on this mixture. This is quite of a darker shade of old rose. I will write the mixture here. It's Davy's gray plus Perylene Red plus Van **** brown. This one is shell pink plus Van **** brown. Now, if you have Perylene maroon, Davy's gray, Van **** brown, and quinacridone permanent magenta, you can arrive on this very beautiful shade of old rose, which is also the one that I use on our project. This is the shade that you will arrive; this one. This shade is a combination of these four colors. Our next mixture is quinacridone permanent magenta, Van **** brown, a shade of gray which is Davy's gray , and Perylene maroon. Mix them and try it on. If you want the lighter shade of this, you can add water and if you want a darker shade of this, you can add more Van **** brown and more Perylene maroon. Always swatch your mixture to check if you need to add some of the colors before you try it on your artwork. Mixing is a tedious work, so you really have to be patient here. Sometimes you'll accidentally put a color that you should not put or you will overdo it, but you have to do it because it's part of your art and it's also a fulfilling tasks. Aside from that, you might discover some shades that you don't usually use but could be part of your palate. Enjoy the process. This is the shade that we will use. I might just add some more red or brown in here to add depth and highlights on our artwork. If you're not satisfied with this, just combine the colors that we have earlier and you will arrive on the perfect old rose that you want. See you on our next topic. 4. Color Mixture: So once you have your desired color, your desired shade of old rose, we're now going to talk about mixtures. For today, we will be using three types of mixtures, tea mixture, milk mixture, and the butter mixture. Tea mixture is 75% water and 25% color. While milk mixture is 50% water and 50% color. Last is the butter mixture. Butter mixture is 25% water and 75% color. So let's try to do it. On your palate, you have to wet your brush and then get your color and put it here, and then add some water. Now, the reason why it's called the mixture is because it's like tea. It's more of watery shade and less color is visible. Let's try it. This is our tea mixture. As you can see, it's very watery, but there's still a hint of color in it. Now, let's try the milk mixture. Milk mixture is 50% color and 50% water. As you can see there is still water, it's still loose, but the pigment is more visible in milk mixture compared to tea mixture. Now, for the butter mixture, we're just going to wet our brush and directly get the color. Sometimes I still test it on my palette to see if it's too wet or too dry. So this is our butter mixture. As you can see, butter mixture is very pigmented and there's less water in it. Butter mixture is the mixture that we will be using for wet an dry techniques, which we will be discussing on our next topic. Remember, tea, milk, butter, these are the mixtures that we have to use on our class today. That's it, and see you on our next topic. 5. Watercolor Techniques: For this class, we will be having three techniques. First is the bleeding technique. Second is the wet on wet and thirdly, the wet and dry. First bleeding technique. For the bleeding technique. This is how it looks like. First, you get your brush loaded with color and add your first row. With old rows, I did this stroke and then wash your brush, wet it and activate another color. I will be using Van **** brown as my second color. On the edge of your first row add your second color. As you can see, the color, which is Van **** brown, naturally bled through my old rows. This is what will happen when you do the bleeding technique. It will mix slightly, gently and it will create a very beautiful bleeding. That's the bleeding technique. The second technique, which is also somehow connected with the bleeding technique, is the wet-on-wet technique. The wet-on-wet technique is the same as bleeding so you have to create your first row. While it's still wet, you will add your second stroke so let's see. I will create a strike here so as you can see, no matter how thick I create the stroke, no matter how pigmented my brush, no matter how much color I load my brush, the second stroke will bleed through my first row because it's still wet so that's the wet on wet technique. The third technique is the wet-on-dry technique. First thing you have to do is to create your first row. Let's say this is my first stroke. After creating it, you have to let it dry first. Sometimes you have to wait minutes before it dries up so you have to be patient. I usually leave it and create some more strokes on my artwork and just add the dry part when everything's done already. For here, we'll wait for it to dry. Once it's dry, you can add your second stroke. As you can see, since the first stroke is dry, my second stroke did not bleed through my first stroke. This is how wet on dry technique works. It's a very nice technique and it's actually my favorite technique. Always remember our three techniques. bleeding, wet on wet, and wet and dry. Familiarize yourself with these techniques because all of this will be used later on our final project. See you on our next topic. 6. Basic Strokes: Our next topic is strokes. Again, we have to activate our color. For our first stroke, it's called thin curved stroke. The tip of your brush will touch the paper, and try to do it as thin as you can. Just create a curve with your brush tip. That is our first stroke. Our second stroke is thick and thin stroke. Thick and then release, thick, release. Third stroke is the same as this one, but going to the other direction. One, two, one, two. This one is like creating a leaf. The next stroke is the inverted version of this one. It's thick down. It's maximizing the belly of your brush and then releasing it. Now, when you're done with those strokes, you have to combine it in order to create a petal. First stroke is up and up, and then add thin strokes around it, so random thin strokes up and down. This is how we're going to do a petal. Next is the branch. For the branch, I'm using the Van **** brown. You just got to create a mixture of thin and thick strokes. You can add white spaces in between them , just like that. If you're doing a small branch, just use the tip of your brush. That's our stroke. Let's go to our next topic. 7. Side View Cherry Blossom: Before we proceed and creating our first cherry blossom, we have to familiarize ourselves with the shape of the cherry blossom. The cherry blossom is a five petaled flower. Somehow the shape of the cherry blossom is like this. The petals are bigger. Something like that. When it's viewed on this side, so it will look like this, 1, 2, and 3. This is the side view version of the cherry blossom. Now, when we paint it, we just got to create three petals. First petal, second petal, and third petal. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be equal in size. It should not be equal because nature is not perfect. Now, create a butter mixture of your old rose and put it here while it's still wet. To connect this, you have to use Van **** brown as your color for the branch. This one looks awkward because it's still alone, but when we add more side version of the cherry blossom, it will make sense. Let's add another one here. That's our side view cherry blossom. Now, if you want to add a little depth on this cherry blossom, you can add some milk mixture strikes here to separate the petals from each other. That's our side view cherry blossom. 8. Front View Cherry Blossom: Now let's go with the front view cherry blossom. The front view cherry blossom, as I've said earlier, is a five-petaled flower. You can combine milk mixture and then the tea mixture for one petal to create variation. Remember, it doesn't have to be perfect. The size of each petal doesn't have to be equal. In the middle, we will be adding butter mixture. Let it bleed. You can use your detailed brush here. But if you're using a very pointed round brush, you can use it. You can use a duplicate. Let's create another one. Now, this time, I will be using a detailed brush size number 2. Then you can connect these two with a branch. If you want to add separations from each petal when it's a bit already, you can add milk mixture to create separation. Not too wet and not too dry. We'll let it dry, and then once it's already dry, we can add some details. For the last part of the cherry blossom, we'll be adding a yellow ocher in the middle and some dots. This one's a bit wet, but we can already add some details. That's it. 9. Fallen Cherry Blossom Petals: Now, you already know how to create a side cherry blossom, and you also know how to create a front-view cherry blossom. Now, the next thing that we'll be doing is a fallen petal cherry blossom. This one is so easy. If you were able to do the side view and the front view, this one is pretty easy for you. So all you need to do is to strike it, create a triangular strike with your round brush. So just the tip of your brush. So just create a stroke as if you were dotting something. That's it. That's the fallen petal cherry blossom. So let's go to our next topic, which is our final project. 10. Class Project: Now for our final project, we will be doing a cherry blossom wreath in vintage use. We will be applying everything that we learned from the past lessons that we had earlier. For the first step, we had to create a circle. So you can use any stuff that could guide you create a circle, or you can do it just like what I'm doing. Just create it. Anyway, we'll erase it. After creating a circle, erase it. [LAUGHTER] I'm not kidding. You just need a guide, so you don't have to create a very visible circle. Once you have your guide, we can now start painting. The first element that we'll be putting on [inaudible] is, the front vintage blossom. For our wreath, there are three, from new cherry blossom, which is located here, I mean six front view cherry blossom. Let's go. If you happen to put the next cherry blossom too close from your first one, or your petal is too big, it's okay. You just have to estimate, and create our petal as if it's behind the other petal. Still wet. We will be adding the core. Now we can connect these with our Vandyke brown. We'll be adding the branch. You can add extra branch here. It's okay if there's bleeding, it's actually pretty. Now, we'll add our first side view cherry blossom here. Again the core, and some branch. Now on the other side, you can add branch here also. Add another. Side view petal here. Again, it's okay if you will mix tea mixture and milk mixture. [NOISE] Now, let's go up, and create our front view cherry blossom again. Another side view cherry blossom here [inaudible]. Now connect these two cherry blossoms, and then we will be adding our loose petals around it. You can use variation of tea mixture and milk mixture for the loose petals. For the details, we will be adding double shade of the butter mixture in the middle of the cherry blossom, just to add details, and create depth. That's it. That's our cherry blossom wreath, and vintage hue. 11. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for attending my class. I hope you enjoyed and learned. I'm very excited to see your final artwork, so please upload them on the class project section of this class. Got something to share, suggestion, recommendation, or just want to highlight something that you love under our class. Please send us a review on the review section of this class. I would love to read them. Thank you so much guys, and I hope to see you on my next classes. Oh, don't forget to follow me on my social media accounts. See you. 12. BONUS: Blooming Flowers Part 1: Hello everyone. Welcome to the bonus topic of our cherry blossom class. I am so happy and excited to share with you how we can paint this beautiful composition made up of cherry blossom, of course. This is a perfect timing because we are celebrating the spring season right now, and yeah, I'm so excited to see how you guys will create this beautiful painting. Let's get started. Here are the materials that we will be using for this class. For the paper I'm using my favorite Baohong paper, and for the brushes, I am using the flat brush from silver black velvet. It's in three-fourths size. I'll also be using the size 4 round brush, again from silver black velvet. I'll also be using the size 8 round brush from the same line, silver black velvet. For the colors I'll be using perylene maroon. This one is from [inaudible] and I'll also be using mocha from Nev's Skype Electro White Nights. Let's begin painting. First task that we'll do is to wet our paper. I just dab my brush in a clean water and spreading the color on my paper. It is important to leave a little bit of margin, and it is so important to wet all of your papers. If you're having a hard time seeing if the area is already wet, you can tilt it like this, so you can see the layer of water from your paper. Make sure that all of the area is wet. If you accidentally consumed a lot of space and wet it, you can get a tissue paper and remove the water from the area that you don't want to get wet. The next thing that we're going to do is to get a team mixture of our mocha color. Then we are going to spread this beautiful color on our paper. If you don't have this color, you can mix it. You can actually check my dahlias and roses watercolor class to see how to mix this color. Again, I want you guys to spread the team mixture of this color on your paper. If you find the color too light, you can add a little bit more of the color, but make sure not to make it too dark because we're going to add a lot more layers later, so it is important to maintain the transparency of the color. Spread the color, but if some areas that are a little bit darker compared to the other area, that's fine because later on we're going to create something uneven as well. That's okay if the color on some areas is a little bit dark. Keep on adding color until you're satisfied. Now that I'm done with the background, I'm going to get my size 8 round brush and I'm going to load it with the milk mixture of mocha and then dab some colors on some areas. You may refer to the finished painting which is located on the project section or project resources area. You can visualize where to put dark areas like this. It is easier for you to put dark areas if you know what we are going to do later on. I hope you can check on the project resources so you can see our final painting. As you can see, I use darker color for the center compared to the ones at the side part is because our subject will be located at the center part of this artwork later on. Again, it is better if you will see the final painting so you can visualize where you should put the background or the dabs of color for the background. Now that we're done, we are going to let this layer dry, and then later on we will add another layer. Currently our painting is in its cold state, which means it's not too wet and at the same time not too dry. For this state, I am going to add another layer which will be more visible later on compared to the first layer that we have dabbed earlier. I am getting my round brush in size 8 and I'm creating strokes like this. This is more of loose cherry blossom petal strokes. This will serve as cherry blossoms later on, which are not so defined, but at the same time more defined compared to the ones that we did earlier. I am using a milk mixture, but more on the concentrated side. It's something between the milk and butter mixture. Again, we will let this layer dry first, and then later on we will add another layer here down to the main subject of this composition. I'm going to get my size 4 round brush and I'm going to load it with the butter mixture of mocha. But actually for the subject, we will be mixing different water and color ratio for each petals of our cherry blossom. We will just apply what we have learned on this class on how to paint the cherry blossom. As you can see, I use milk mixture and butter mixture for the first three petals, and now I am using team mixture for the next few petals. Just mix different water in color ratio to give a nice effect on your cherry blossoms. You can also refer to the finished project of this painting, so you can visualize where to put the cherry blossoms. I am using different sizes of cherry blossom here, and later on I will add incomplete cherry blossom, which means I'll add just two or three petals only to give an effect that the cherry blossom is behind another cherry blossom. You can also do that. But if you find it tricky or if you find it hard to visualize things like that, it's okay to just put complete cherry blossom all throughout our painting. To make it more visible, I will use butter mixture or darker shade of mocha on the lower part of our composition, since this area is a little bit dark compared to the other areas. Later on, I will add lighter shade for the lighter background as well. 13. BONUS: Blooming Flowers Part 2: I'm going to go back to the top and complete this trail of cherry blossoms. Using the mixture, I'll also be adding some falling cherry blossoms on some areas because this really gives a nice soft effect on our painting. As I've mentioned earlier, since this area is light, I'll just use the mixture for this area. I'll also use the mixture because I want the focus to be on the center part of our composition. This will be just an accessory or some fillers for our painting, but I want the audience or someone who will look at the painting to focus on the center part of our composition, which is the ones that are in a little bit darker areas. As I look at my painting, it seem complete already. But I feel like the center part looks weird, this shape of my trail looks weird, so I'll be adding some cherry blossom on the middle part. But if yours is already complete and you feel like the shape is already okay, you don't need to do this anymore. You can stop already and let it dry before we add another layer later. The basic shape of my composition is all ready. I'll just let this dry first before I add the final details. For the core of our cherry blossom, I am going to mix my perylene maroon with my Van **** brown. If you don't have perylene maroon, you can use any shade of red and mix it with sepia or Van **** brown to darken it a little. Using my detail brush, I'm going to add some dots on the center of my cherry blossom and I'll connect it to the main core by adding lines from the dots to the core. You don't have to surround the whole core with dots, you can just do it on one side like this one. This is actually the more realistic version of the cherry blossom core because not all the details of the core is spread evenly so it is really better to just focus it on one side of the cherry blossom. Just keep on adding the details until you finish everything. Again, make sure that your cherry blossoms are already dry before you do this because if not, the colors will mix on their base cherry blossom and it will create a blob, which sometimes it could be pretty, but most of the time could be disastrous, so it is really better to wait for your base layer to dry first. We're done on the main subject. Now, I'm going to finish this last one and jump on the fillers. Since these cherry blossoms are light, I'll also tone down the color that I'll be using for the core of my cherry blossom. I use milk mixture for the cores of these cherry blossom instead of butter mixture, which is the ones that I use for the main subject earlier. Last part, I hope you guys were able to follow along. We're almost done with our composition. I'm so excited to see your final project so I hope you'll be able to upload it on the project section of this class. Final touch, I'll just add some dots of red here to give an illusion that there's a core, but not too visible core on this area. We are done with our composition. I thank you guys for watching this bonus class, and I'm very much excited to see how your painting turned out. I hope you can upload it on the project section of our class. Again, thank you so much. There's another bonus project, so I hope you guys can watch it as well. I'll see you on our next class. Bye.