Watercolor Backgrounds: From Beginner to Advanced

1. Introduction: I get it. Watercolor backgrounds can be very tricky, but what if I told you that we have options? Lots of them from a very simple beginner-friendly abstract look that works practically on any subject. The trickier but no less beautiful flat wash that will give you full coverage and beautiful depth with just one color to my all-time favorite negative painting technique, my most requested style that I already introduced you to in the previous class, where we used it to paint beautiful greenery. Many of you asked for a background example because it is a complete game-changer, especially if you're into botanical art. My name is Anna Bucciarelli. I'm a professional illustrator, designer of Canadian money. I teach watercolor here on Skillshare and also on YouTube. In this class, I will show you three methods for creating watercolor backgrounds in real-time step-by-step, using a simple palette that you can adjust to your own style. As always, I will share a ton of tips for creating smooth visually stunning backgrounds. We'll talk a little bit about some of the common challenges that you might encounter and how to fix them, so your watercolor background really enhances your work. As part of this class, you're getting access to a full list of materials and reference images. Of course, as a bonus, you will learn how to paint these beautiful color lilies. For your class project, you can focus on learning just one watercolor technique at a time or tackle all three. By the end of this class, you will have a beautiful painting, or maybe three, and a whole new set of skills that you can apply to any subject of your choice to enhance your watercolor work with a beautiful background technique. I look forward to seeing you in class 2. Supplies & Color Palette: Welcome to the class. Before we get started, let's talk about our watercolor supplies. I will show you the tools and pigments I use to create all three backgrounds. You will find a summary of my products along with some alternatives I tried and tested in the resources section of this class. But keep in mind that you don't need to use the same brushes or even the same colors. The focus of this class is practicing specific watercolor techniques that will be useful in your future practice. You have a ton of options to play with depending on your style, your budget, and availability of different brands in your region. The only thing I would stress is the quality of your paper. In general, it is very important to work on cotton paper when it comes to watercolor medium. But especially when you're planning to use background techniques that require a lot of water and a lot of layering. Cotton paper will absorb lots of water, allowing you to create gorgeous effects. But student grade paper, or even 50% cotton paper will buckle and warp. The effects will simply not be the same. I will be using 100% cotton Arches paper in cold pressed finish, which dries a bit slower compared to hot pressed, allowing me lots of flexibility for wet on wet washes and multiple layers. The weight of my paper is 140 pounds, but if you can splurge on 300 pound weight, it will be even better. I will be using masking tape around my artwork. This will ensure that the edges are smooth and the paint doesn't ruin the underlying clean sheets of paper in my block. We will also need a hard pencil to create outlines. Try to find 2H, or even 3H pencil, these letter number codes indicate how hard your graffiti is. Anything higher than 2H is ideal, anything lower might be a little bit too soft and leave some smudges on your paper. You want to avoid that. In terms of the brushes, we will need at least one flat brush for wetting the larger areas and at least one round brush with a pointy tip for smooth edges, I will actually use two round brushes to give me some flexibility when it comes to those tricky, smaller segments where I want a super accurate silhouette. Finally, we will need two jars of water. Always keep one clean. You need a pallete to premix your background colors, and you may notice I'm occasionally using a glove. This is totally optional of course, but it helps me protect my paper from smudges. Now, let's talk about our color palette. At first, I will explain which colors I used on the color lily. Then we'll talk about the background and discuss a little bit of color theory and which pigments and hues work best for background layering. For the lily flowers, we will need one yellow pigment. It doesn't really matter which brand or hue you decide to use. Just pick your favorite yellow. These are small segments we will cover. Towards the end, you can add some definition on the stamens using a more saturated orange. Once again, just go with your favorite orange, the one that you have on hand. For the white petals, we will need two colors. Even though on the petals they're white, we still need to create a sense of form by painting very light shadows. In order to simplify the process, I'm going to use the same pigments here as I will in the first version of the background. First, we need a light blue or greenish blue and my favorite is aqua green from Winsor and Newton. You can use phthalo blue or any greenish blue of your choice. When I was doing a study of these color lilies, I used all sorts of different colors. It's all very light, so matching the color doesn't matter as much. Just again, use what you have on hand. If you have a light blue, it will work just fine. Second, we will need a warmer brownish violet hue. I decided to use perylene violet from Daniel Smith. It's a rich, transparent pigment, works super well for subtle shadows. Once again, I will apply it in the background in a much more saturated form later on. You can use any violet or brown hue, I've listed some alternatives in the class handout. We will need a warm green color for the leaves. My go-to here is Hooker's green. It's the same green that I will use in the third case study and something to give the leaves a little bit of that sunny glow. You can either recycle the yellow color from the flower stamens or go for something more vibrant with a hint of green. I decided to use green gold from Daniel Smith. For the second and third background case studies, we will need a deeper, darker blue for our background elements. I decided to go with indanthrone blue. Again, you have lots of different choices and alternatives that I've listed in the class handout. The reason why blue is so helpful for backgrounds has to do with color theory. All colors on this side of the spectrum closer to blue tend to appear further away. They are ideal for background elements as well as the shadows. You will see me use these different hues, like indanthrone and aqua green to help us create a sense of atmosphere and depth in these different case studies that I will take you through in the class. In the next lesson, I will give you a high-level overview of each technique and the key steps so you know what to expect, and then we can dive in 3. Process Overview: Welcome back. In this introductory lesson, I will provide an overview of the key steps for each background technique that we will cover in class. The whole class is roughly three hours long and each case study will take about an hour. You will see my every brush stroke and I will be talking about my process and giving you lots of tips. It's important to first go over the general steps so you know exactly what to expect. You can also refer to this section as well as you start thinking about incorporating various techniques into your own work. I will start every case study by painting the color lily flower. Then depending on the technique, I will show you the leaves and the background. We will finish each case study by adding finishing touches to accentuate the leaves and the flower so you can have a complete painting for your class project, but feel free to focus on the background techniques alone as this class is designed to give you lots of tools and necessary knowledge for your own compositions. The first case study is the most beginner-friendly background technique that uses so-called wet-into-wet wash, meaning we will cover the surface of our paper with clear water and then add some color onto wet paper. You can use just one pigment or a variation of pigments I will be using two just for fun. I will be giving you lots of tips on how to make this process better and how to enhance your results. I will also show you some extra effects that you can introduce while painting using this background technique. It's all down in one layer. There are no mistakes, so I encourage you to have fun and experiment as much as you like. The second key study is a bit more controlled and it uses wet-on-dry technique. Our goal will be to create a solid, smooth coverage on our background. I will start by putting down the first layer of color, giving you lots of tips for creating an even wash. This is probably the most common traditional way of creating a background. You can follow with one more layer, which is optional, but it's always helpful for more even effect. It's a bit more opaque. I will be using one color only, but you can always experiment by adding more. In the final and third layer, I will add some additional details, some organic elements using the darkest color. This will bring the whole composition closer to a more decorative look, which I quite enjoy, but you may not. Either way, I want to show you the entire range of applications and techniques that you can use to create more depth. You can follow along all the way through if you like or move on to case study number 3. In this version, I will be using negative painting technique, which is my absolute favorite for backgrounds. It's trickier to master because it requires a different way of thinking about shapes but it's so worth it because it will give you a ton of flexibility when it comes to watercolor painting. I have an entire class on this technique that you can find on my Skillshare channel. There are a few videos on my YouTube channel. In this case study, I will show you how to apply it to background painting specifically. We will start with a solid background layer around the flower. Very similar at this stage to the second case study, flat wash. But then we have three more layers of color that we will apply, getting progressively darker with our pigments. Painting around the leaf shapes, first around the lightest sections, then around the larger foreground leaves. Then finally one more time around the background, greenery. Every time we apply a layer of color, we will need to have our underlying layers dry out completely, so all our edges are crisp and you will see how the shapes of the leaves emerge from the background as we paint in the negative space around them. This is the essence of negative painting technique, adding color around the objects, revealing the shapes, and it adds a fantastic sense of depth and atmosphere. I absolutely adore this technique. I'm very excited to share it all with you. Let's get into it. In the next lesson, we will get started with the first case study 4. Lily #1: Flower: Welcome to the first case study. Before we get started on the background, let's put down the first layer of color on the flower. I'm going to get started by just painting the stem in with a solid layer of yellow. All I'm going to do in this very quick lesson is paint the main background areas of color on the flower and I'm going to do this two more times. For each case study you will see my process and the colors I use. The next thing I'm going to do while my yellow is drying out, is prepare the white petal by wetting my paper with clear water. We want to add some very subtle shadows to show depth and dimension. In order for our shadows to be very smooth, we want to use the wet into wet technique, meaning we're going to be applying our colors very lightly onto the wet surface. It might be difficult to see exactly where I'm putting down my clear water, so I'm going to help you in two ways. First, I saved a quick snapshot where I've highlighted the area that I'm focusing on. It's mainly in the center of the petal. I'm leaving the front fold and the second larger fold without any water. I'm going to lift my paper block slightly so you can hopefully see the light reflecting against the wet surface. Notice too, that my paper is not dripping with water, it's just wet enough for me to start adding a little bit of color. The colors I'm going to use are exactly the same as the ones I'm going to use for the background coverage, but here I'm going to apply them very lightly. You can see on the right-hand side in my palette, well, my mixture of aqua green and water is very watery. I'm going to drop a little bit of that greenish blue on top of my wet area and maybe drag my brush a few times following the natural direction of the petal veins because there's a little bit of shadow there as well. Another thing I'm going to do is add just a tiny hint of a shadow under the petal fold and I'm going to blend it with clear water. While my paper is still wet, I want to add a warmer shadow around the stamen. I'm going to use perylene violet, once again it's the same pigment I'm going to apply on the background just for continuity. There's so many different hues that you can use in this case. When I was doing a study for this class, I've painted several color lilies and I've used different shades of brownish violet, so don't fuss too much about matching my pigments specifically. Use something similar or you can even use a mixture of brown and violet if you want. Once again, I'm going to drag my color out to identify a few petal folds just with the tip of my brush, creating these subtle thin shadows. You can use your damp brush to soften the edges if you feel like your shadow is churning out way too harsh or maybe there're a couple of edges that you don't like. Just clean your brush, tap it on tissue paper and drag it along the edge of the main shadow. The last thing I'm going to do is add a subtle shadow effect using that same aqua green all around the front fold. I'm just going to paint the silhouette with the tip of my brush and then once again, with a clean, damp brush, soften the edges of that shadow leaving a nice highlight in the center. That's it. For the first layer of color on the petal, you can add a tiny bit of your green or yellow on the tip. Blend the edge once again with a clean, damp brush. In the next lesson, I will show you how to put down the first layer of color on the leaf. 5. Lily #1: Leaves: Welcome back. In this lesson, I will show you how to paint the leaves on the color lily and then in the next lesson, we will finally look at the first case study for the background. So I'm going to start with this front leaf. The tip is facing all the way up, so it's receiving a lot of sunshine and I'm going to apply my greenish yellow there. Then move down using hookers green. Cover the rest of the leaf and maybe add a little bit of that same hooker's green on those grooves on top of the leaf and on the tip. Wet into wet, very subtle. If you want to simplify this process, you can just cover the entire surface with your favorite green color. This extra greenish yellow hue is helping us create a little bit of volume and dimension because we're using color theory to help us create a more realistic effect. I'm going to mention it very briefly here as it also relates to our choice of the background color. So remember when we talked about our color choices for the background, we discussed how colors on the blue side of the spectrum always look like they're further away, or colors that are on the opposite side of the spectrum closer to your yellows and reds always look like they're closer to us and like they're more illuminated by the light. So that's why I'm introducing this yellow color here to help me add a little bit more dimension on the green leaves and you don't have to use the exact same shade. Any yellow or a mixture of green and yellow will help you create a very similar effect. I'm going to finish by working on the background leaf, once again, applying my warmer greenish yellow on the tip, the side that's facing towards the light. Then switching to my Hooker's green as I move down and closer to the stem and the lily. You can use slightly more saturated green here because that leaf is in the background and it's probably getting a little bit of a shadow from the lily flower. Moving down, notice again we have a fold that's probably getting a little bit more of a sunlight effect. I'm going to use my green gold and finish this section with Hooker's green. The last thing I'm going to on do in this lesson is cover the stem and the beginning of the flower. Again, using my Hooker's green very lightly, and maybe on that portion of this section that's closer to us, that's getting a little bit more light. I'm going to add a little bit more of my green gold. That's it for this first background section. In the next lesson, we will go through the background technique in detail, and in the final lesson for this case study, I will add another layer, just a few quick accents on the flower and the leaves to add a little bit more dimension so you can look forward to that as well. 6. Lily #1: Background: Welcome back. Let's make sure that our flower and the leaves, the first two layers that we've painted are completely dry, so we can start working on the first background study. I'm going to be using aqua green from Winsor and Newton, the same color I've used for the shadow and the lily pedal. Just for some visual interest, I'm going to introduce the secondary color, once again, the same one as I've used on the lily. A combination of two will give us a nice atmospheric look behind the flower. Just like I've mentioned in the materials section of this class, feel free to improvise. You can use any color combination you like, so don't be stuck if you don't have the same pigments. One of the more fun options that you can explore is granulating colors. They're going to give you lots of texture. In general, leaning towards blues and greens will give you more depth because those colors typically look like they're further away. They are more appropriate for shadows and backgrounds, so you can improvise as much as you want. Our goal in this case study is to create a very abstract blend of colors in the background, indicating just a bit of depth to help create a more atmospheric effect around the flower. The first thing we're going to do is pre-wet our paper with clear water. There are a couple of tips that I'm going to give you here to make this process more successful so you can create a much more smooth background towards the end. This applies to the more abstract, simple version of the background that we're going to do in this section of the class, and also to the next example that I'm going to take you through that will include more of a smooth flat wash coverage. In the first phase of the background work, I only plan on putting color down in the top area of the painting, but just in case it's spills over down at the bottom, I don't want any hard edges, and so I'm going to pre-wet this area in the bottom corner as well, just in case there are any particles of paint that might rush down, I want that transition and that flow of color to be very smooth. Be mindful of any areas that are connected to the area that you plan on working and putting the color on. I'm going to lift my paper block a little bit so you can see what my paper looks like right now. Not dripping with water but quite wet. My next quick tip is on the type of brushes that I recommend. For this first, initial stage, I use the larger brush. It's a lot faster and more smooth to work with a larger flat brush as you're working on a larger areas and covering the edges. As you get closer to your foreground elements where precision is more important, you can switch to a smaller round brush. For example in this area between the leaf and the petals, it's particularly important to have a precise tip on your brush so you don't cover any areas that you don't want to have a background color on. Now as I'm waiting for my paper to absorb all that water, I'm going to make a light mixture using my first background color, my aqua green. Then using my smaller brush, my round brush, I'm going to start adding that color around the lily. My tip here is to try and create a wave of color that extends beyond the edges of the page, like an imaginary diagonal. One of the things that you will see, and I've done this as a beginner, is a lot of people add background color just around their subject and it looks a little bit unnatural, like a frame around your subject. You can create a much more dynamic background, much more natural effect if you extend your background color beyond the area that's immediately next to your subject. In this case, I'm going to create a wave that starts in the bottom left corner and extends all the way out to the top-right. I'm roughly going to be dropping my color in this area right here, avoiding the top-left corner and bottom-right corner. Notice that it also follows the natural curve of the lily pedal. There's a lot of movement, not just depth that I'm trying to create by adding this color. But take your time, experiment and see how far your paint spreads. This process is rather unpredictable and we're really taking advantage of the natural properties of watercolor. Every time you create these effects, they look slightly different, but that's the beauty of this process. There are no mistakes. There's just experimentation and following the natural properties of the medium. You can see there areas that are a bit lighter, some are a bit darker depending on how much pigment I've added. If by any chance you see the edges of your paper are drying out and the paper stops spreading, just grab a little bit of clear water. This is why we need that second jar, and add a little bit of moisture in that area. Because we've pre-wet the paper, it will reactivate all that initial water that's already absorbed into the cotton paper and your paint will continue spreading. I slow down significantly as I move to those areas, those intricate sections in between the leaves and the petals, working just with the tip of my brush. A little bit more controlled. In those areas that are out in the open where I want my paint to spread freely, I'm simply dropping the pigment in. Try not to move it too much once it's already there. At this stage, I'm quite happy with the overall shape. As I mentioned, I'm trying to create this wave of color that extends up and towards the corner of the page. Now I can add my secondary color. This is entirely optional. I just wanted to show you that you're not limited to just one pigment. It's always interesting to add other pigments, complimentary colors, darker colors, your favorite colors. I'm simply playing around. I went with my violet and other option would be purple or maybe a deeper blue. It's really up to you. For as long as your paper is wet, you can continue adding additional colors. Another interesting effect that I wanted to show you, completely optional, but very fun to do, it's called watercolor blooms. Sometimes these occur by accident when we maybe drop some water onto the wet paint or add a watery mixture, but here I'm going to do this on purpose because I quite like the effect it creates. You can see with the tip of my brush, I'm simply dropping clear water onto a surface that's damped. Quite a bit of time has passed. It's not dripping with water. The paint is sinking in. When I add my clear water to damp surface, it pushes the particles of paint out creating these so-called blooms. To me, they look like shimmering light. Like I said, it's entirely optional, but just something that you can add for some texture and visual interests that I wanted to show it to you because I think it's a lot of fun. I'm running out of time for this section. I'm going to continue right into the next lesson and finish off my background using the same technique. 7. Lily #1: Background {cont.}: Welcome back. I'm picking up right where I left off in the previous lesson. Moving down to the next section where we need to put a little bit of color. So once again, if you imagine this background color as a gentle wave that starts in the bottom left corner and moves towards the top right corner, we need to add just a little bit of our blue and violet in this area right here in between the leaves. But just like I did before, I've pre-wet the entire corners. So in case a little bit of this color spills over into the whitespace, I want that transition to be very smooth. And I'm going to start with my aqua green. Once I'm happy with that coverage, I'm going to drop a little bit of my perylene violet. As I move closer to the leaves, to my main subject, I'm not afraid to go a little bit more saturated. I might add a little bit of aqua green on the other side of the leaf, which is for some continuity. Not too much, but once again, you can play around with this as much as you like. Don't worry about the exact placement of my brush. It's more of a general approach that I want you to see so you can apply it in your own work. Since my paper is still dry up on top, I might add a little bit of that perylene violet closer to the lily. I'm happy with how everything turned out at this stage. Before I move to the bottom left corner, I'm just going to paint this section on the other side of the lily bud and I'm going to try to match the value on the other side. So I want it to be just as dark as what I have on the right-hand side and I'm just going to put solid coverage there. Let's take one final look at how the background is turning out and maybe add a few drops of water just for fun. Once again, I'm improvising here. This is a really loose approach to backgrounds. I want you to feel free to take advantage of the natural properties of watercolor, play around with granulation, play around with blooming effects, and really have fun. The more you do this, the more you will get used to it and discover lots of beautiful unexpected effects. Now we can safely move to the left hand side. This one is very straightforward. It's a self-contained section that I can pre-wet very easily with my flat brush, making sure that my corners and my edges are all wet. Then start putting down my colors starting with aqua green. Once again, I'm keeping in mind that overall logic of a color wave extending from the corner and out. I'm following this shape very loosely, but I'm trying to put more color in this area closer to the leaf, just so that there is the natural progression on a diagonal behind the lily. Depending on how wet your paper is, how fast it's drying, you can put more or less color, see how fast it spreads. If your paper is very wet, it's going to spread a lot faster. If it's drying out quickly, it's not going to go as far. I want to maybe add a little bit more saturation, drop a little bit more color and I'm trying to drag it out, again, following the natural direction that I've established for my background color waves on a diagonal. I'm going to finish this process off by adding my secondary color. You can see I'm going to lift my paper block. You can see how wet my paper is. As I'm lifting yet, it also helps the color spread, so the particles of paint are moving in that direction down and on an angle. You can help create additional sense of movement by lifting your page and watching your paint spread, helping it move in the direction that you want. One thing I want to mention here and this might happen, especially if you've put a lot of water on your paper and it's totally okay, but you can have this effect of paint gathering at the bottom around the edges. Don't be afraid to just lifted off with tissue paper. Very gently, just press it in the area where you want to lift the paint. In the next background example, you will see me lifting even dry streaks of paint where I made a mistake. You can always just lift watercolor this way to fix any potential errors. In the last minute of this lesson, I'm going to leave a few drops of clear water just to add a little bit of visual interests. Once again, entirely optional. I find it beautiful, you may not. It's entirely up to you whether you want to incorporate this effect into your backgrounds. I just wanted to show you what's possible. In the next lesson, the final one for this case study, we will add finishing touches on the flower and the leaves. 8. Lily #1: Finishing Touches: Welcome back. In this final lesson for the first case study, I'm going to show you how to add finishing touches on the color lily and the leaves. We're going to be using wet on dry method so adding color to dry paper, accentuating shadows and maybe boosting our color in certain areas. You're going to see me do this for every case study using exactly the same method and the same colors. Starting with the color lily, I'm going to apply a little bit of my orange. I'm using Hansa Yellow Deep specifically behind the stamen and also a little bit on the stem in itself. Just pressing my brush a little bit, creating a tiny bit of texture on that beautiful yellow element. I'm going to add a little bit of that same yellow at the bottom, in the shadow area there, there's a little bit of glow. You can blend the color out with a clean, damp brush as far as you feel like. In this version, I'm not going to drag my brush too far, just a tiny bit to help that orangey color fade into the white background of the lily and maybe on the tip as well, just to add some continuity. The next thing I'm going to do is use my aqua green. The same background color that I used for the shadows and behind the lily and just very gently, very lightly mark up the veins up on top. Don't use fully saturated color, the lily is still white, so just like light to medium value and then using a clean damp brush, I'm going to help that color fade into the background. What I do is I just clean my brush in clear water, in my clean jar, tap it on tissue paper to get rid of excess moisture and then just blend my color out, and to finish the top of the petal, I'm going to add a little bit of extra color around the edges. Creating a sharper silhouette. Maybe a little bit of a shadow as the petal curves and disappears into the background. If you put too much color, the line is too thick. You can once again use your damp brush to blend that shadow into the background and that's more than enough for a white petal like this. What we can do next is work on the leaves and once again, I'm going to be working wet on dry, simply accentuating the shadows, making certain areas a little bit darker. If you followed any of my previous tutorials, you know that this is the last step where typically I look at the overall balance of values, meaning lights and darks, and see if I can bring certain areas closer, maybe add a little bit of depth. Notice that I'm working with my Hooker's Green simply putting it on those areas that I want to make a little bit darker, make them look like they're more in the shadow, so I'm adding a little bit of contrast and try not to create hard edges. Once again, I'm blending these shadows into the background color using a damp brush. For example this element of the lily bud I really want to add a little bit more shadow around the edges to bring the central area closer to the front. I'm creating a highlight in essences so I'm accentuating a highlight by adding a little bit of shadow around it and blending it with clear water. I'm going to continue moving down. Adding additional shadows on this large leaf and the background. Still using that same Hooker's Green, you can bring in a little bit of aqua green if you want to make it look even darker. Accentuate the shadows even further since, remember, as I mentioned before, according to color theory, pigments that are closer to blue on the spectrum will look further away, so they're very appropriate for the shadows and depending on how much contrast and how much color variation you enjoy in your work you can introduce lots of blues into your green. They look natural and they help you create nice shadows and a better sense of depth and every time I put in my shadow color, I blend it with clear water, helping it disappear into the background. All these color transitions are very natural, very smooth. A very quick tip here, completely optional, but it would be very helpful and will add that extra bit of realism to your work for your second layer on the leaves, try to leave the edges without any colors. Notice I left a tiny strip indicating that the leaf has a bit of dimension. It's not flat and so when you paint each side, paint them separately, leave a little bit of a strip in-between. It will give you that extra bit of realism, even in the most simple color blend, I'm going to add a little bit of my aqua green at the bottom. Just like I said, we can to accentuate that shadow even further and then move on to the front leaf and once again, notice that I'm going to leave the edge without any color. I'm going to gently follow the curve of the leaf. You can see how that edge will start glowing right away because we're adding darker color around it. Once I'm done with adding a layer of Hooker's Green, I'm going to add my aqua green so the deeper shadow will help me even more, create a little bit more depth and visual interest there. I'm going to try and add a little bit of extra shadow on the leaf veins up on top. Very gently. I'm not going to fully saturated color here. Medium value at most. Blending it with a clean, damp brush. Maybe a little bit of color on the edge just to make it more crisp and I'm going to finish this painting by adding another layer on the last leaf once again leaving the edge without any color. Using Hooker's Green at first, and then even darker, more blue pigment immediately under the fold. In the shadow area and then maybe in-between the two halves of the leaf. The last thing I'm going to do is accentuate the shadow next to the flower, even further. Blend it with a clean, damp brush and that's it for the first case study. I hope you enjoyed this quick exercise. In the next section, I'm going to show you a more complex way of painting backgrounds using a flat wash technique. 9. Lily #2: Flower: Welcome to the second background case study. In this version, we're going to create a flat wash behind the lily. But first, just like I did in the first version and just like I will in the third version, I'm going to show you how I painted the flower itself. If you've already seen this in the first case study, feel free to skip to the next section. Just like I did before, I'm going to start by putting a little bit of yellow on the stamen and the tip of the flower. Then I'm going to pre-wet the surface of the lily petal before I paint the shadows. As I mentioned in the first case study, there is an outline with that area that I'm going to pre-wet marked up so that you can use it as a reference because it's hard to see clear-water in the video. But just to show you that we're not bound to one specific method, I'm going to add an extra element and it's going to make it more interesting for me because I'm doing it three times. In addition to the top part of the petal, I'm also going to wet the area in-between the petal folds. Add a little bit of my yellow in there. In the first version, I showed you the step towards the end, but you can always mix and match. It's a little bit like cooking, you can improvise. Now I'm going to follow the same steps as I did in the first case study. I'm going to wet the petal almost entirely, leaving just a few highlights and just to show you how wet my paper is and where I put my water, I'm going to lift my paper block. You can see there are a couple of areas where I've missed that I need to add a little bit more water. But generally, it's the middle section, everything behind the stamen. I left the front side of the petal folds without any water so that they remain bright white and they will serve as the brightest highlights on our flower. Then just like I did before, I'm going to use my aqua green, very light mixture. If you look at the value scale, I'm working with the lightest values because the petal is white. We're just adding a little bit of a shadow. I'm going to focus on the top part, so the tip of the lily, dragging my brush out along those natural folds that you see in the reference photo. Because we cover the paper with clear water first, these lines are going to be very soft, very natural. If by chance you've created a hard edge that you don't like, an area that you want to soften, make it disappear into the background, simply clean your brush, tap it on tissue paper and drag it along that edge so your paint can spread and disappear into the white-space. I'm going to finish working with the section by adding my secondary shadow color behind the stamen. Still working with wet surface. I'm going to drag my brush out again following those natural petal folds. The next thing I'm going to do is add a shadow under the fold, so a little bit darker than what I've used before. Just a step or two darker, more saturated and then I'm going to gently blend it into the background using a clean damp brush. All we have left for the white lily petal is the front fold. As you will see, I'm going to do this three times in this class. We want to add a little bit of aqua green around the perimeter and then leave the space in the middle without any color so there's a little bit of a highlight. The way you can do this is start with clear water like I'm doing here, leaving just a tiny strip in the middle and then follow with your aqua green. You can start with your aqua green and then blend it into the background with clear water. Either way works as long as you put your color down around the edges, around the perimeter of this section. Then use your clean damp brush to let that color disappear into the background. Before we work on the leaves and the background, I'm going to add some definition around the edges, still using the same aqua green, still very, very lightly using just the tip of my brush. Then blending that color very gently with the damp brush so I'm not creating any harsh dark lines. This is a very light element, so I want to keep all my strokes very soft and natural. Now that everything is dry, it looks a little bit too light for me up on top, so I'm going to add a little bit more color in the corner there, just accentuating that shadow. That's it for the flower petal. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how I painted the leaves and then we're going to do the background. 10. Lily #2: Leaves: Welcome back. In this lesson, I will show you how to put down the first layer of color on our green leaves. I'm going to be working with two green pigments. You can stick to just one if you want to simplify the palate. One will be my main green, my Hooker's green and another one called green gold, which is essentially a golden yellow color, which I will be adding on those areas that are facing towards the sun, facing the light. You can use any yellow of your choice. It will simply add a little bit of dimension before we do all the intricate shadow work in the second layer. I'm working with my main round brush, working very slowly section by section. Our goal in this step is to create some very light background coverage that will give us a good idea of where our values, meaning our lights and darks, will land when we add the background. It's entirely up to you how you structure this process. You can paint the background first and add all your elements, like flower and the leaves or whatever it is that you're painting towards the end. But I find that having just the background color on my subject is extremely helpful because it allows me to judge how dark or how light I need to go. Oftentimes, I don't know which colors I'm going to use for the background until I put down this first layer of color on my main subject. We can always plan and imagine things in our heads. But sometimes the best ideas come during the process of creating something and so that's why I structure my workflow this way. I usually put down the main background layer on my subject first and then move forward with my background colors. We're almost done with this process and you can see for the top of the leaf, the one that's facing all the way towards the sun. I'm going to switch almost entirely to my green gold. Adding just a little bit of Hooker's green on the tip and around those veins. Once again, a more yellow, warmer color will give us a better sense of dimension and show that that part of the leaf is illuminated by the sun. The last thing I'm going to add is the smaller leaves, just the tip of the leaf that's visible behind the flower. It will help us break up the background segments a little bit and I'm going to use my Hooker's green, adding just a little bit of green gold around the edges. Let's make sure this layer is completely dry before we move on to the next lesson, where we're going to put down our first layer of color on the background. 11. Lily #2: Background Layer #1: Welcome back. Our lily and our leaves are finished. We're ready to start working on the background, and I've picked this aqua green pigment from Winsor & Newton, one of my favorites for background work. It is very subtle and natural. It has a little bit of blue, which will help the overall look, because as I mentioned before, blues always look like they're further away. But it's not too intense, and a subtle green undertone will help tie everything together visually and keep our palette consistent with the greenery up at the front. As I explained in the overview section of this class, our goal for this case study is to create a flat wash of color. Before we put down the colors, we need to pre-wet the surface of the paper, working in sections around the lily flower and the leaves. I will start by focusing on this discrete section up on top. Just in case any of my colors spills over into the next one, I will pre-wet that one as well, so there are no hard edges between every discrete section we're working on. That's tip number one. My second tip for this part of our work is to focus on wedding the edges of your paper first, because we want our background color to move freely and blend all the way, reaching towards the edges, creating a more realistic atmospheric effect. Now that the edges are wet, I'm going to switch to my smaller round brush, the one that has more of a precise tip, and continue pre-wetting the paper. But this time, as you can see, I'm moving a lot slower, because I really want to make sure that I don't cover any of the areas on the flower or the leaves. The ones that are not going to be covered by our background color. Occasionally, I'm switching back and just re-wetting those larger areas, making sure that they stay nice and wet all the way through until we're ready to add some color to the background. I'm making sure also to bring that water down to the small section that's connected to the one we're going to work on. Now I'm pretty happy with my coverage, and it's time to make the mixture. You can make it ahead of time if you want. But always make sure you have enough to paint with to cover all the areas that you're planning to cover ahead of time, so you don't have to make this mixture while you're halfway through a section, because it might dry out and leave some edges that are not desired. You can see I've added a little bit of extra pigment, and I'm going to mix it thoroughly, so there are no clumps. Before I start painting, another quick tip, lift your paper or your board up a little bit, not too much. I just put a tiny box underneath. Maybe 35 degrees to assist your paint with spreading. Because gravity is our best friend, it's going to pull those particles of paint down very slowly if you don't lift it up too much. It's going to create a much more even coverage. Notice my workflow. The sequence is the opposite from the way we wet the paper. We're actually starting from those areas that are closer to our subject. By doing so, our paint is spreading out towards the wet areas. Now you can see why we started by pre-wetting the edges. This allows us a lot more time to cover the larger areas without creating any unnecessary streaks or without having any small sections dry out. You can see I'm putting down the paint. My mixture is quite even. It's simply spreading out towards the edges. You can switch, again, to a larger brush as you move closer now to your larger areas. Your coverage will be so much smoother this way if you start from the center and move out towards the edges. Notice the particles of paint are slowly moving down. But I'm not putting too much water on my paper. So I have a chance to control the way my background color is spreading by directing it with the tip of my brush. Paying very close attention to those smaller areas like in-between the petals where the background is disappearing behind the flower. I'm going to add a little bit more color up on top while my paper is still completely wet and I'm not going to touch it anymore. Clean up the edges, and then carry my greenish blue all the way down to the next section. Another quick tip, you can gently lift and rotate your paper or your sketchbook to prevent the pain from gathering at the bottom if you were lifting it beforehand, just allowing it to spread evenly all around. Now let's continue to the smaller area that was connected to the larger area we started with. It was already quite wet. All we're doing right now is just moving all the way down very gently and now I'm just going to lay my paper block flat. I'm working with a much smaller area, so I don't need that extra help from gravity. I can just control the process gently with my brush. We still have to work quite fast, but not as fast as before when we were working on this larger area, making sure that everything was covered. Here, we have the luxury of slowing down a little bit. The smaller the area, the slower we can work, making sure that all the edges are nice and smooth, and I'm only working with my small round brush here. We have two more sections left. I'm going to start with a smaller one in the center on the right. I have more than enough of my mixture left for this part of the work. Once again here, I don't need to rush, I can just follow along the curves of the leaves, slowly creating a very even coverage, much easier now, and making sure that I get all the way to the edge where my tape starts. Don't be afraid to paint over the tape. Masking tape will protect the paper, and it will give you that nice sharp edge. I'm moving down to the last section, the bottom-right corner. I'm going to switch to a larger brush, just because I have a little bit more room here and I want again to have very even coverage. Here I have enough room to use my flat in the center. Then, again, around the edges and smaller details, I'm going to use the round brush. One thing I'm going to note is a tiny smudge that I left on the white color lily when I was working. Just a little accident, these happen and don't be discouraged, don't be afraid. It's really easy to fix. I'm going to show this to you in just a few minutes in the next chapter. What we need to do first before we fix it, before we lift the paint, is make sure that it's completely dry. I'm going to show you that trick in just a few minutes. The last thing I'm going to do before this portion of the exercise is done is just clean up the edges. My tip here is be very careful and only do this if your paper is still quite wet. If it's not, adding additional paint, additional watery mixture might create some ugly blooms. So be very careful with this additional step. You can see on the left already, there's a little bit of a bloom forming. The reason for that is because when we add more water to an area that's drying out, the water is pushing the particles of paint out, and so these blooms are unfortunate accidents that happen occasionally when we paint backgrounds. Be very careful about adding additional strokes on the area that you just painted. Try to avoid it, unless it's absolutely necessary. That's it for this portion of our exercise. Let's make sure the surface is completely dry before we continue working, and I will see you in the next lesson. 12. Lily #2: Background Layer #2: Welcome back. I'm returning to my color lily, after an entire day worth of drying time. I would say that at least three hours would be necessary if you're painting a full background like this. You can speed up the drying process by using a hairdryer on a very low heat setting. But I prefer to always leave it to dry on my table, giving it a little bit of extra time. As you can see, we have a nice, relatively smooth greenish blue background behind our flower. You can do two things at this stage. Either proceed to the finishing touches on the flower and the leaves, or add another layer, which is usually my preference. Adding another layer of color helps us achieve two things. Number 1, it will smooth out any potential irregularities, any small accidents like the bloom that I've mentioned in the previous lesson that formed on the left-hand side. Because I've added a little bit of my background mixture all the way towards the end or any streaks that may have formed potentially, I have a few up on top. The second thing it allows us to do is to create a much darker, striking look, especially if our subject is white or light. Because I like this high contrast style, I often go in with another layer of color, like I'm doing here. This time around, we don't need to pre wet the paper. We can simply make another mixture and cover the areas that are already light blue with the same color. Or if you want to experiment, you can add additional colors here. I think purple would look nice. You can create some really beautiful wet-into-wet transitions. The underlying layer is helping us by creating a very smooth light background that will mask any potential accidents or irregularities. The second layer takes a lot less time, giving you a much more striking high contrast result, just like I did in the first layer. I'm working with two brushes, my flat for larger areas and my round with a pointy tip when I'm when I'm moving closer to the details like those smaller areas in-between the flower and leaf. The top section is done. Now I'm going to zoom in, work on smaller sections. Still using the same mixture, this time my mixture is a little bit less even, a little bit darker. I have to be very mindful about leaving potentially clumps of paint or streaks. As you can see here, there's some smaller streaks forming. But I'm going to try to smooth it out. As I mentioned before, this first underlying layer of color is really acting as a protective surface. There's a lot more room for error. We can always fix our mistakes a lot easier because we're not painting directly on white paper. It's a little bit less stressful. This little section, I think I've put a little bit too much pigment, but again, it's not as critical in the second layer, it's going to dry out with just maybe a bit of a dark spot here. I'm going to zoom out. Once again, I have two sections left. You can see that at this point our surface is drying out a lot faster because we didn't pre wet the paper. You can already see up on top more or less what the final background will look like. It's not perfect. There are still some areas where there's a little bit of a difference in value, meaning light and dark. But it's a lot more striking. The smaller areas like the one I'm painting now will be a lot more smooth. In the next lesson, I will show you how to add additional elements in the background to mask any potential irregularities and add some more additional visual interest using even darker color. For the last section, once again, I'm going to switch to a larger brush, larger flat to cover the area very quickly. Much quicker than if I was working with my round brush. then finish everything with my round moving slowly around the silhouette of the leaves. I'm much happier with this look with this second layer. Again, because I like high contrast, doesn't mean that you have to paint this way, but high contrast is my style. I like how this color frames the leaves and the flower. In the next lesson, we will add some finishing touches and definition on the flower and the leaves 13. Lily #2: Leaves Layer #2: We're done with our background for now and we're going to work on perfecting our flower in the center. Follow along if you're interested in this section or you can skip to the next one where I'm going to add some additional details to our background. I'm only working with one pigment here, my Hooker's Green. You can use any green of your choice. I like this vibrant color because it has a lot of yellow undertones, and it really stands out against our bluish-green background. What I'm going to do is just work on different sections of the leaves, adding these darker shapes with my smaller round brush. If you want, you can add that same background color, that bluish-green, or maybe you used phthalo blue, whichever one, as long as it has a little bit of a blue undertone, wet-into-wet into your green just to add even more definition, but I don't want to over-complicate this step. We can stick to one color only. You can follow along. As you will see, I will pick one section at a time, adding a little bit of green color, making sure it's just a few steps darker than my background, green. If you look at the value scale, it's going to be somewhere around the medium value, so not fully saturated. Occasionally like in this larger section, I'm going to really focus on adding this color in the shadow area, the one that's facing away from the light, and then blending it with clear water towards the areas that are more lit up by the sun. In this section, my shadows would be immediately under the folded leaf and right next to the flower. The rest, I'm just going to clean my brush, tap it on tissue paper and then blend with that clean brush out so that I have a very smooth transition. I'm going to carry my color down, definitely, the area that's more in the shadow. I'm using lots of my Hooker's Green there. Then right next to the flower bud, as I mentioned, you can add a little bit of your bluish-green just to accentuate the shadow. A little bit of color theory here. Pigments that have blue undertones will always appear further away or like they're in the shadow. That's just a property of blue when you consider all the colors on the spectrum. Adding a bluish-green just pushes that area further away, adding a more definitive shadow wherever you add it. I'm going to clean up the edges and then add another small section right next to the flower stem. Once again, adding a little bit of my bluish-aqua green and wet-into-wet in the last step. Then just to keep that symmetry, I'm going to continue on the other side, starting with aqua green and then switching to my Hooker's Green. Once again, you can stick to one color, but adding that aqua green just adds a little bit more depth and definition, especially on those larger slices where we can play with light and shadow and color temperature a little bit more. Now, I'm going to work on the other side of this leaf. Another slice, very beautiful, curvy silhouette. You can take a look at step-by-step photos to see exactly what I'm working towards. Don't worry even if you lost your pencil marks, you can still find them by looking at the references. Another slice. Once again, I've painted using Hooker's Green and then added a little bit of my bluish-aqua green towards the end while my paper was still wet. Another leaf on the left-hand side. I'm going to paint the area inside the leaf, leaving those curved edges without any color. This way, the lighter, the green around the edge will have even more contrast against our bluish-green background. Now switching to the right, the back of this leaf, I'm going to paint with a very light Hooker's Green. Cover everything, maybe leaving just a tiny strip of paper without any color around the edge of the leaf because, of course, the leaf is not completely flat, it has a little bit of dimension. Just to show how thick it is, try to leave a little bit of a dry strip there and then add a little bit of aqua-green wet-into-wet. We're almost done with this section, the back of this leaf, I've added quite a bit of warm yellow just to push it forward visually when I was painting the first layer. Now what we need to do is just add a little bit of green. Once again, here we see the edge of the leaf, so I'm painting carefully around it to show that the leaf has a little bit of dimension. In the upper side, the front of the leaf that's facing the sun, we don't need to add a lot of color at all. We want to keep it super light, so I'm just going to paint two lines using very light, very watery version of my Hooker's Green and then blend those lines with a clean, damp brush, softening those shapes, making them disappear into the background. We're almost done. Now you can see how much more depth and dimension we've added with just one layer. I'm going to finish the left side of this larger leaf, maybe add a little bit of color up on top here, and of course, add a little bit of definition to the flower bud itself. All I want to do it's just a hint of depth and dimension. I'm going to put a little bit of my green under the petal where the shadow would naturally fall and then blend it with a clean, damp brush, making that color fade into the background. Last leaf at the bottom, a little bit of green, and then blended down with clear water. This step is done. In the next lesson, I will add a few very simple details to further highlight the flower and add some visual interest to our blue-green background 14. Lily #2: Background Layer #3: Welcome back. In this step, we will add additional layer of background elements. This is a very simple, entirely optional but very helpful step that I use in a lot of my paintings that feature flowers. I'm talking about the extra greenery, and you will find the look I'm going towards, I'm working towards in your reference photos. This will help us in two ways. First, by masking any potential irregularities in our flat wash because we will be covering the background with extra leaves. Second, it's going to help us create even more depth because I will be painting using in the throne blue, a few steps darker than our background so almost going to a fully saturated look, taking advantage of the fact that darker blue colors on the spectrum always look like they're further away. I have a few very faint pencil outlines of the color lily leaves that I've mapped out in the background. They're barely visible, but you can always refer to the step-by-step photos if you want to follow the same design. I'm going to simply cover each shape with a slightly darker blue color. Once again, the concept of color theory is at play here, because we're using the blue color, the shapes that we're painting look like they're really far away and in the shadow. Because blue always appears like it's further away than the shadow, and using this blue is helping us frame the warm greens and yellows in the center. This is probably the least stressful part of the process because all we need to do is just create an even smooth coverage but on much smaller shapes. We already have two underlying layers of color, so any irregularities, any differences in values that might occur are masked by these two underlying layers of aqua green underneath. I'm going to try to follow my pencil marks and maybe leave just a very thin white strip of paper in the center of the leaf marking up that main vein that splits the two halves. Just enough definition to suggest a realistic shape and I'm not going to add any more detail than that. Generally, when we paint, the more details we add, the closer something appears in terms of the visual hierarchy. As we move further away, less detail is preferred. It actually reinforces the sense of depth. I'm not too fast about adding a lot of details, a lot of shadows here. It's just going to be one continuous block of color for every leaf that I create with my pencil. You can of course, improvise as much as you want. I've simply follow the natural shape of the color lily leaf here. But you can add all sorts of organic elements. You can look into other leaf shapes. Maybe you'll find more intricate, more interesting designs. It doesn't have to be a color lily. All we're doing is just creating one additional layer that separates the flower from the background. Just another element in the visual hierarchy that we're trying to recreate on paper. On the left-hand side, I'm going to add two leaves. Once again, just the tips. Very simple, solid coverage, a few steps darker than the background, and of course, having that extra blue helps us differentiate the leaves that are closer to us from the ones that are further away. I'm going to try and paint around the central vein just so that we add a little bit of realistic touch to an otherwise very decorative looking detail. If you are adding additional elements may be other leaves and branches, my advice to you is to position them from the center and out. If you have a central element, it will help frame it better. Notice the direction of my leaves. They're following the natural direction of the main flower. As if this is a bouquet or maybe one cluster of flowers, they're moving out from the center towards the edges. This helps me create a more cohesive composition, much more stable, much more balanced than if I were to put these leaves randomly pointing in different directions. So far, all the extra color lily leaves that I've painted, I've been focusing on the tips. I have a few more spots and the stem, I think I'm going to make them actually move out and reach all the way towards the edge of the composition implying that there's a lot more background behind. That's another way of adding your background elements if you want to create a sense of more space behind your main subject. You can see this one I'm going to make it go all the way towards the edge on the left and imply that the tip is just following further, we can't see it. Then here on the left-hand side, I'm going to use the same principle. Making the leaf reach all the way to the edge, halfway through, implying that there is a whole other section that we're not seeing. The last one I'm going to add on the right-hand side. Maybe just covering that corner. That's it for the final step on our background. The only thing we have left is some finishing touches on the flower, which are entirely optional. But at this stage, I feel like my background is complete. 15. Lily #2: Finishing Touches: Welcome back. In this lesson, I will be adding some final finishing accents on the flower and the leaves and fixing my mistakes, like the blue smudge on the white petal that I promised to show you before. Follow along if you enjoy a more detailed, more contrasted style or meet me in the next lesson where I will show you a completely different way of painting backgrounds using the so-called negative painting technique. You can see already the beginnings of this different version of the flower in the right hand side. But for now, I'm just going to focus on this flower on the left that we've been working on for almost an hour. The main thing I want to do is accentuate the shadows. Once again, this is completely optional but I like adding more contrast to my work. This will give us an opportunity to define some of these areas further. I'm going to be using the same Indanthrone blue that I used on the background greenery. This will help me create some continuity in my palette, tying together the background leaves that are all the way in the shadow and some of the stronger shadows on the foreground greenery. My technique here is very simple. I apply a little bit of my blue color in the shadow areas, so typically that part of the leaf that's either covered by another leaf or is facing away from the light like I'm doing here. I'm using medium value, if you consider the value scale. Once I put down enough color for the shadow, I blended with the background using a clean, damp brush, spreading that blue color out, making it disappear into our background green that's a little bit warmer. If you look at the final photo, you will see the areas that I focused on primarily again, the ones that are covered by other leaves or are facing away from the light. I think that's more than enough in terms of the accents, I don't want to make it look too dark. The last thing I'm going to show you is how I fixed that smudge on the white petal. I'm going to grab my flat brush, make sure it's completely clean, so no residual color left. I'm going to tap it on tissue paper to make sure that it's damp, not dripping with water, and then gently rub it over the blue smudge, lifting the paint with every stroke. This might take a minute or two depending on how dark the smudge is but eventually, it will come off, maybe leaving a little bit of a faint outline. After every stroke, I clean my brush one more time so I'm not spreading that blue around. Again, tap it on tissue paper, and continue lifting until you're happy with the result. Now that my white petal is white again, I can add a few finishing touches on the flower. I'm going to work with two colors only, so my orange, specifically I'm using Hansa Yellow Deep and a little bit of aqua green, which I will add on the petal veins. The first thing I'm going to do is just add my Hansa Yellow Deep all around the main stamen and the shadow, making sure I don't cover the white petal fold at the front, the one that's facing us. Then using my flat brush, spread that color out and up, making sure it disappears into the background. I'm going to use that same Hansa Yellow Deep in between the folds, very gently not a lot is needed here. Once again, I'm going to blend it with a clean damp brush. That's it for my Hansa Yellow. You can use any transparent yellow or orange here. Now, just a few final strokes using aqua green. I'm going to reinforce the shadows on the petals and add a few very light thin strokes up on top to indicate the veins. The small grooves that are visible on the color lily. That's it for the second lily. I will see you in the next lesson where we will start working on a completely different background using negative painting technique 16. Lily #3: Flower : Welcome back. In this portion of the class, I'm going to show you the third, my favorite background technique called negative painting. But before we start, let's put down the first layer of color on the color lily petals. I'm not going to go into too much detail because we've done it twice already. The process will be exactly the same. The only difference is we have an extra lily bud in the background. I'm going to start by painting the stamens with my warm yellow, both lilies, and also add a little bit of that same yellow on the tip of the petal may be helping it spread and fade into the background using a clean damp brush. I'm going to put that same yellow at the bottom on the back of the petal and blend it into the background there as well. The next thing I'm going to do, just like we did in the first two versions and you can see one of them is drawing on the left-hand side. I'm going to cover the lily petal with clear water. Make sure that you have a second jar of pure clean water. You can use that to prep your background and leave a couple of spots without any color. I'm going to lift my paper again and show you the exact area I covered. Leaving the petal folds and the tip of the lily completely dry. Those areas will remain bright white and look like they have the strongest highlight. My paper is not dripping with water, it's just wet enough to start adding a little bit of a shadow using your bluish green color. I'm using aqua-green, which is the same color I'm going to use for all three backgrounds. Here I'm using it very lightly, focusing on the tip of the lily. Focusing on the top corner just under the yellow tip and maybe adding a few lines wet on wet along those petal veins. If your paint is spreading too fast, creating a sharp edge that you don't like. Simply clean your brush, tap it on tissue paper and drag it along those edges, making them a lot smoother this way. Making them fade into the background. Right before we're done with this section, let's add a little bit of our brownish shadow. I'm using perylene violet once again behind the stamen, making sure we don't put any color on the petal fold that's facing us and then you can drag that color out using the tip of your brush again along those petal veins. Very subtle. Don't go to full saturation. Just a little bit of color is enough. You can see on the left-hand side, the look I'm working towards and a few more finishing touches, starting with a shadow under the pedal for that, I'm going to apply using aqua green. Then you can blend it with a clean damp brush. If it makes us a little bit with the yellow, that's totally fine. It's just a very subtle warm and cool shadow transition and then the last thing we're going to do is just add a little bit of shadow on the front fold. Here you can pre wet the surface again with clear water this time, make sure that your brush doesn't have any residual color, and then you can add a little bit of your shadow, aqua green, along the edge. Maybe even on both sides if you want. As I mentioned in the beginning, every time you follow these techniques, it turns out slightly different. So don't worry if it's coming out lighter or darker, you can recreate the exact same effect every time. Just the general logic, the general steps is what matters and I'm going to wrap this up by putting a very thin outline along the edge and we can move on to painting the background layer using negative painting technique 17. Lily #3: Background Layer #1: So for this first step, our goal is to cover everything with a very light first layer of color and the technique and the key principles and tips that I'm going to mention are exactly the same as the ones we've applied when we painted the flat wash on the color lily before, so the one that you see on the left. I'm going to start in exactly the same way using a flat brush and clear water, I'm going to wet the paper starting from the edges. So I want to eventually have my paint spread out towards the edges because it does ensure a much more smooth coverage. So let's prewet the paper this way but this time we're covering everything so it's a lot easier. The only area I would prefer to leave without any color in addition to the main lily is the second lily that I've added in the background. The other tip I mentioned in the previous background was premixing your paint, so mixing it with water ahead of time. So you have enough paint with similar consistency to last you through the entire section. So you can see on the right-hand side, I have a fairly large amount that I can dip my brush into and I can start applying my paint gradually, eventually switching to a smaller brush. Now that the edges are sufficiently wet, we can switch to our color mixture and here I'm using my green gold. You can use a yellow or mixing a little bit of green into your yellow if you don't have the specific shade. Don't worry about matching the colors exactly, it's more of the technique and the overall effect that matters. So you can see I'm using once again, my flat brush, working around the entire area. The only thing I'm going to leave without any color is that secondary bud, the rest will be covered completely. Once I'm done taking care of the larger surface, I'm going to switch to my smaller brush to make sure that I can give very good, very detailed coverage around the edges of the flower so I don't accidentally paint over any white petals. But these are the final strokes that we need to put down and you can see I'm really able to get into all the tiny details with the tip of my brush, on each side. This is the third time I'm painting this lily and so I know that the most tricky part will be in-between the petal folds, on the left-hand side. As you paint other things, flowers, birds, whatever is your subject matter, you'll always find these smaller trickier areas where you need to really slow down and take care of the details with the tip of your brush. So just allow yourself some time and using your flat brush on a larger surface at first really makes it easier because you know that the main areas are already covered and you can focus on the smaller details. I'm actually going to spread this yellowish green or greenish yellow over the folded pedal of the other lily, since it will be in the shadow and for now, we're done working on the background, let's make sure it's completely dry and I will see you in the next lesson where we will continue using negative painting technique. Final tip for this part of our work is to use gravity to help the color spread more evenly. So I'm just going to lift my block a little bit and let this first background layer dry out while my block is positioned maybe at a 35 degree angle to let those colors spread down very gently. 18. Lily #3: Background Layer #2: Welcome back. Our first layer of color is completely dry. I gave it a couple of hours and now we're ready to put down the second layer of color, and just like we did before, we're working with the entire surface, so everything, but the white flowers in the center and using negative painting technique, so painting around the objects rather than on the objects. We're going to paint around some of the lightest parts in our composition and you can take a look at the step-by-step photos to see what I'm working towards. Using Hooker's green or whichever is your favorite green, my favorite for this type of background is Hooker's green at this stage because it's the color that I want to be left on the green leaves all the way towards the end. Right now we're covering the green leaves and also the background layer which we will continue adding color to, but right now at this stage, Hooker's green medium value, I would say light to medium, so quite watery, not fully saturated. I'm going to go around the composition covering everything except the lightest areas, so for example I have a couple of folded leaves where the edges I want to leave light, so I want to preserve this first background layer on those areas. Everything else I'm going to slowly cover with my green mixture. I'm working left to right to avoid smudges and so far I've covered the top-left corner and I stopped at that natural border, the curvy edge of the leaf that I want to preserve as being the lightest, so I left to dry and now I'm going to switch to a larger flood brush because I'm going to be covering a lot of surface, big strokes and I'm going to continue working on the top right corner, slowly moving down and again I'm going to be leaving certain areas without the second layer of color. I'm going to be leaving them quite light, so just that first layer of green gold and notice that overall because we're working with transparent watercolors, my green gold is shining through, so you still get a little bit of that golden glow visible through the green layer that we're putting down right now. I'm slowly moving down and switching once again to my smaller round brush that has a more precise tip, so I can get into smaller areas and I recommend having both brushes on hand, so you can pick and choose which one you're most comfortable with. Once again, flood brush will give you instant smooth coverage, but it's a little bit trickier when you move to closer areas that require a little bit more financing, so you may want to switch back and forth between the two brushes or use one whichever method you prefer. The top part is covered. I'm slowly moving down. You can see in the second section of this work, I left just a tiny bit, the top of the leaf visible without any color and now I'm moving down. What I want to do on this larger leaf that's closer to us is leave two things without any color, so leave two things bright gold. One is just the top of the leaf, the part that's turned towards the light and you can see on the left in the second color lily version, it's also quite bright. It's facing towards the sun, so I went to leave it very, very light and also just the edge of the leaf because I want to show that the leaf has some dimension, so maybe just like a millimeter or less as much as you can get, leave it without any color. In the final stage of this work this layer, I'm going to work on the bottom left. First, let's add a little bit of green on the inside of this top leaf, closer to the lily again leaving the edges without any color. I'm really slowing down as I get in that area in between the petals, making sure that I cover everything and my edges are very smooth. Now to make it a little bit easier for me to work on the bottom left-hand side, I'm actually going to turn my canvas around and feel free to rotate it in the way that works best for you, so you don't create any smudges. Here I decided to turn it all the way around and continue with my Hooker's green just gently covering everything, leaving just some of the parts blank for now. We're almost done. I just have the corner that I need to finish and note how I'm going to leave the larger leaf without any green. We're going to do some definition work on that area later on. Right now it looks flat, but this is all in the name of preparation. We're establishing a really nice contrast between lights and darks. I'm going to cover the corner with green and then add a little bit of color inside the leaf starting maybe with a much more watered-down version of Hooker's green up on top, painting very carefully between the two edges that I want to leave light and then carrying that color down making it much darker as I move down towards the shadow area and then we have a few nice folds in that area that will give us a good start before we move on to the next layer. Let's make sure we leave this to dry completely and move on to the next layer of color using negative painting technique 19. Lily #3: Background Layer #3: Welcome back. We've put down two layers of color on our background so far, and we don't have a lot of definition just yet. Simply the beginning of the leaf shapes in this third layer of color using negative painting technique, we will finally arrive at a much more realistic look and feel. The nice thing is that this third layer is quite straightforward in terms of the colors we're going to use. Simply go for your favorite greenish blue. I'm going to use aqua green, which is a very mild greenish blue. There are lots of alternative versions that I've mentioned in the chapter where we talked about the color palette but the main thing that you will note is that A, we're going to be painting around the main leaf shapes. Only focusing on the background painting around the leaf shapes, which is the essence of negative painting technique, and you will see them emerge from the background. The silhouettes will look bright green. In some cases, like the one I'm painting next to right now, they will have very light, warm yellow edges. But this is the stage where these leaf shapes will finally emerge from the background. Notice an interesting thing, because we have two layers of warm yellowish green. Even though we're working with what's typically considered a blue color, so this aqua green is very frequently used for water scenes, painting the ocean, here because it's transparent, it's coming out looking a lot warmer and a lot greener. Because the first two layers are shining through. I recommend not going to full saturation. Keep this third layer quite light. If you consider the value scale, we're working with a medium value. You can see the difference between the way aqua green is coming out right now on top of the green-yellow, and the way it looks on the left where we used it as a standalone color for the background. A lot warmer, a lot closer to the color scheme of the color lily leaves. A little bit different than pure aqua green, because of this transparency. You can see the overall effect is coming out looking a lot more matte now because we're putting down the third layer of color. There's one more optional background layer that I'm going to put down in this section, but not yet. For now, let's just focus on using this one color on the background, and maybe in some cases where we have very large warm green areas and some of the larger leaves, we can also create a little bit of definition. On this leaf here, I'm going to put that aqua green around the shadow areas, so right up on top and next to the lilies, and blend it with clean damp brush, clear water, and those other areas where the leaf is getting a little bit of sunshine. Very similar to the definition layer technique I showed you on the leaves in the previous two versions of the color lily, but this time we're doing it at the same time as we're doing the background negative painting. Putting down this bluish color everywhere that we would consider a background or a shadow. I'm going to continue moving with my small round brush, taking care of the sections up on top, in between the leaves, and then moving slowly down. Once again, we have another large leaf here that may use a little bit of a shadow. I'm going to put my shadow aqua green along this beautiful curvy silhouette on the left and then blend it with clear water all the way down. Let's continue moving to the right. I'm still working with a smaller round brush. You can switch to a larger brush in certain areas. But here I decided to just stick to my round brush with a pointy tip because I want to make sure I don't accidentally cover any of the leaves or edges that I don't want to cover with my background color. I'm painting around these elongated leaf shapes with the tip of my brush and then just filling in the rest of the background. Moving very gently, I'm not pressing my brush too much, because I don't want to lift the color layers underneath. Recall, in the first two versions of the color lily, I gave you a tip about helping your paint spread. A tip that will help you create a more smooth coverage when you're covering larger areas. Here when I have a larger area to work with, I'm going to lift my paper block a little bit, not too much, just to help my paint flow down very gently. Gravity is our best friend when it comes to creating smooth color washes, and so that's where at this stage, it helps to have my paper block positioned on an angle a little bit. I will move it back down, lay it flat when I'm done with this larger area. For now, I'm just covering everything with my color mixture being mindful of the edges, not covering the leaf edges that I don't want to cover, but when I move all the way to the paper edge, I want to drag my brush out to make sure there are no dry spots. Now, the left-hand side and the top of the painting is done. I took a little break, so you can see it dried out, and now it looks a little bit lighter as watercolors always do when the water dries out, everything looks a few shades lighter. This is just something to keep in mind. Now I'm going to lay my block flat and continue working on this layer of color. Starting with those smaller areas next to the color lily, moving very, very slowly, there's no need to rush, especially when you're working on a smaller area. When I'm done with those sections, I'm going to move on to the back of this leaf. What I want to do here is maybe just put some color around the edge and then blend with clear water. We'll see if this makes sense or maybe I should just cover the whole thing and then add definition later on. Let's just try this now, see what it looks like when it's a little bit more dry. For now, I'm going to move down and paint another section of the background in between the two wavy leaves. You can see as soon as I'm done with this section, this front leaf will emerge. The overall silhouette will become much more obvious. Now that I see where I'm heading towards in terms of this third layer, I think, just as I suspected, this may not work with the background leaf having that bluish color. I need to extend it over. Continue with my aqua green all the way down. We'll add more definition in the fourth background layer. For now, I'm just going to cover everything and finish this section by painting the bottom right corner, moving carefully around the silhouette of the leaf with the tip of my brush. You may see there are a couple of pencil marks indicating additional leaves. Those will emerge later on when I add another layer of blue. For now, this section is done. Let's make sure it's completely dry before we add more color. Before I show you the final, the fourth background layer, I'm going to spend a few minutes in the next lesson adding the definition on the leaves 20. Lily #3: Leaves: Welcome back. We've put down three layers of color all over our color, lily background and the leaves. So what we have at this stage is a very nice definition already, where we see where the leaves are, where some of the highlighted parts are in those leaves. We have a nice greenish blue background. There's one more layer of background color that I'm going to put down. You can see in the step-by-step photos where I'm going to land all the way towards the end. But even at this stage, it's already taking shape. What I want to do in the next five, six minutes is just add a little bit of definition, a little bit of light and shadow on the leaves. The pigment I'm going to work with is that same aqua green, but I'm going to be working just on the surface of the leaves at this point. Painting the shadow areas with aqua green and then blending those shadows with a clean damp brush. As you can see here, for example, I've painted a shadow along the edge and then blended it with a damp brush so that my shadow color just disappears into the background green. Very similar. Next leaf, this one is quite open. We see a lot of it on the top. But at the bottom where it disappears behind other leaves, I'm going to put a little bit of aqua green. You can use a different shade of green or even blue. You can play around with different hues here. Just for simplicity sake, I'm applying the same aqua green so that the overall effect is very cohesive. I'm not using a very big variation in color, although, if you follow my work on YouTube or Instagram, you know that I usually bring in all different shades into my greenery to create a better variety. You can see some of these methods including mixing in reds and yellows into my green in the previous Skillshare class that was dedicated to negative painting technique as it applies specifically to greenery. You would get a lot more variation of technique there, different scenarios. Here, I'm simply showing you how to add very simple, straightforward definition on the leaves using a very simple blend. Here, I put down a little bit of color in the center of the leaf where the vein splits the leaf in two sections and then blend with clear water. Similarly, on the top part of this leaf, the one that's facing towards the light, we have actually two veins that split the leaf into three sections. I'm going to put a little bit of my light aqua green in those veins and then blend with clear water. A few more details that I think I want to capture. The center vein that splits this larger leaf up on top and two halves. Again, I'm just going to put the color along the vein and then blend with clear water. Same thing on this leaf, maybe a little bit more intense shadow, so a little bit darker color. Because there's more of a shadow there, I feel like it would be covered by the petals and be maybe a step or two darker. Similarly, again, I'm going to reinforce the shadow between the petals right there in that very tricky spot. We also want to add a little bit of definition on the green bud. So once again, following the logic of light that's falling from the top down, I'm gong to put a little bit of green on the left and under the petal, then blending it with a clean damp brush so that it smoothly disappears into the background. Another small vein up on top here, very lightly. Let's do one final assessment to see if there's anything else that may require shadow before we move on to the final stage and add another layer of color on the background, this area right here behind the bud and that's it. At this stage, we can move straight into the next lesson because our background should be sufficiently dry and we're going to be working on the areas around the leaves. I will see you in the next lesson. 21. Lily #3: Background Layer #4: Welcome back. We've reached the final stage of our work using negative painting technique. We've created quite a nice background for our color lily. There's opportunity to add one more layer using negative painting technique creating a little bit more depth and contrast. For this stage, I'm going to use my darkest most blue pigment that I've picked for our palette. It's the same one as you see on the left-hand side that I've used on the darker leaves. It's called indanthrone blue. You can use any blue of your choice. I like indanthrone because it's not quite as dark as indigo, which would be almost like black, but it's a little bit darker than say, phthalo blue, which is not to say that other blues won't work. Once again, don't focus too much on matching the color. It's more the general approach, the technique that I want to show you. That's what matters. As you can see, and I will show you side-by-side photos and you can find all of them in class resources. The step-by-step photos, you can see what I'm going to do is add another layer using this darker blue, and for the most part, I'm going to cover everything. All the background areas behind the green leaves. But in some cases, I can still add a few new leaf shapes by painting around them. You can see here, I've added one up on top, just a tiny section visible, and I'm just wrapping up, creating yet another shape in the background. These new leaf shapes are going to look a lot darker than the leaves that we have in the foreground, so as opposed to what you see on the left-hand side, we're in the final stage. I've added the darkest leaves. Here, we're using opposite logic, we're making the background the darkest. The last set of our background leaves is still a little bit lighter than the background, although it is darker than the foreground leaves. Just a little bit of variation and there's a lot of freedom in this last stage, which is why I absolutely love negative painting technique because it's almost like you don't need pencil marks. You can make these final sets of leaves, this greenery. You can make them up as you go. Or you can use your pencil marks as a guide. I'm improvising in some areas, just following the natural logic of my composition. Everything is organized from the center out, and so I want this last set of leaf shapes to also appear as if they're coming from the center and towards the edges. I'm going to make some of them fully visible and some of them I'm painting as if they're coming outside the boundaries of my painting. I'm done with the left-hand side. Before I move on to the right-hand side, I'm just going to reinforce some of the shadows because now that I'm putting down my darkest blue color on the background, I feel like I can bring in that same color inside my foreground leaves as well, just reinforcing some of the shadows. That's why, as I said in the beginning, it's always very helpful to paint your foreground and your background in stages, so you can go step-by-step and judge the values or your lights and darks and your palette, your variety of colors, and adjust it as you go. As you add more in the background, you can start adjusting the foreground as well, keeping your overall palette cohesive and your balance of values should also be cohesive. If you have extra shadows in the background, you can always bring a little bit of that high contrast into the foreground. It's going to make the overall effect that much better. This was just this tiny detail. I'm going to continue now with my negative painting technique on the background. Still using the same color, I'm going to move left to right and then down, for the most part, painting just over background, flat areas around the foreground leaves, and in some cases, I'm going to create entirely new shapes by painting around them, by leaving them dry. You can see right here, I've added a whole new leaf behind the flower. Now I'm just continue adding a little bit of my color. One tip here is try to minimize the number of times you put your brush down over previously painted areas because eventually it might lead to lifting of the paint on your background layer. We're working on nice cotton paper. This shouldn't happen the first couple of times. But if you continue rubbing your brush, especially if you're not gentle, there might be scenarios where the bottom layer gets lifted so that color gets reactivated and starts coming off. Try to be precise with your strokes, but also very light and gentle so that you don't rub that underlying layer too much. At first, 1, 2, 3 layers of color, we want them to stay put, and all we're doing is just gently painting one more layer up on top. I'm not super happy with the way this area turned out. I think there's too much of a sharp outline that unfortunately I created by putting too much of my saturated blue around the leaf. But I'm going to try to resist coming back and reactivating the color there for that specific reason, I don't want to rub my paper too much. Let's just see how it looks like when it's dry and whether or not I need to come back. In this area right here, I'm going to switch to a smaller brush and focus on really capturing those beautiful edges in-between the leaves, so I need a more precise tip. Similarly, here, lots of very beautiful wavy shapes. You can slow down as much as you need to. We're working on small areas. Let's make sure that in this final step, we create not just a darker background, but also very nice, crisp silhouette, beautiful edges for our foreground greenery. No need to rush. Take your time in this final stage, and you can see now on the left-hand side, my last layer of background color is almost dry, and it's looking a little bit lighter than it did when we first started. The top layer of blue is completely absorbed and we still get a little bit of that green gold and green color shining through. I'm quite happy with the way this turned out. I'm going to finish off by painting another section in-between this lighter green leaf and maybe creating one more shape at the bottom. To make this corner a little bit more interesting, fill it up with a little bit of additional detail. Our work here is done. This was our last layer of color using negative painting technique. Let's let it dry and add some finishing touches inside the lily flowers. 22. Lily #3: Finishing Touches : Now that our background is finished, we can add some finishing touches just like I did on the other two color lily flowers. I'm simply going to add a little bit more vibrant color and accentuate some of the details. As you've seen me do before, right behind the main stamen I'm going to add a little bit of my Hansa, yellow deep, my orangey color. Then blend that color out with a clean, damp brush to make it disappear into the background. Let's repeat the same process on the main flower. Notice just like I did in all the previous versions I'm spreading a little bit of that orangey color over the stamen. Just leaving a few dots to add some texture and shadow. If you want, just as an option, you can even draw up a little bit of that same perylene violet to make the shadow a little bit darker. Then grab your clean damp brush and spread that color out, following along the natural direction of the petal veins. I'm going to clean up the edges, maybe even pull out a few lines. My paper is still wet. Add a little bit of that same darker violet shadow on the top flower. Now we can move on to the other details that are visible. A little bit of the shadow at the bottom, warm glow. I'm going to mark it up using Hansa Yellow Deep and then blend it into the background with clear water. Here I see a little bit of an edge where I've blended the yellow up. I'm just going to clean it up further. The next thing I want to do is on this top bud I want to add a little bit of my perylene violet into the grooves. It's a wavy pedal. It has a little bit of a shadow. I'm just going to put some light color there, continue cleaning up the edges just to make sure that I don't have any harsh edges on that shadow. Let's see what else we have left. In the final stage, what I want to add is just a little bit of shadow under the petal fold. Just like I did on the one on the left, you can see I'm putting my greenish blue and then blending it with a clean damp brush. Similarly on the petal fold, just like I did before, very gently, a little bit of color in the main shadow area, helping it spread and fade with a clean, damp brush. Then maybe add that same color along the edge. A very subtle detail, but it's going to help create a little bit of volume, capture the curvature off the petal, and a little bit of shadow as it disappears into the background. A little bit more of that same shadow color on the tip. Blending it out with clear water. Before we do the final step, which is just a few lines, a few shadows marking up the veins of the petal. Note, again, they're not exactly straight. They're following the natural logic of this petal. A little bit more visible up on top, and then again at the bottom, right next to the stamen. That's it for the finishing touches. The third and final version of the color lily is complete. 23. Final Thoughts: A few final thoughts as we are wrapping up this class, we worked through three different backgrounds in three hours. I hope this process gave you lots of good tools and techniques that you can apply in your own work. I'd love to see your result. You can post your work in the projects section of this class. Don't forget that you can apply these techniques using any color palette on any subject. For example, if you painted another flower and try the negative painting technique on the greenery or maybe you painted a portrait and used a blue wash, do share those results as well. I think it would be super useful and inspiring for me and for others to see. If you enjoyed this class, don't forget to leave a review and let me know what you like and didn't like about the format and the content. This really helps me as a teacher to come up with new ideas and enhance the quality of my classes. Subscribe, of course, if you found this class of value, I have lots more coming up this year. Thank you for watching and painting with me. I will see you soon.