Watercolor Blueberry Muffin

1. Class Intro: Hello. I'm Daniella Melon and author and artist here in skill share. Thanks for joining me for today's class Watercolor Blueberry muffin. We'll paint a richly colored muffin full of texture and brilliant blueberries. We'll practice wet on wet techniques to get a base for our muffin. Then they had lots of layers of both wet on wet and wet on dry. To achieve a very developed image will use basic painting supplies like water color pigments, six by nine watercolor paper brushes and a pencil sketch. We'll start by sketching her image, then building a players with pigment. I've included a template to help you with your sketch, and I've included some variations for the blueberries to use other striking colors as well . For your class project, create your own watercolor muffin. Using the techniques shown, take a photo of your work and posted in the project section. Be sure to follow me here on skill share to get notified of future classes and please consider leaving a review. Now let's get started 2. Class Supplies: for our watercolor blueberry muffin class, we'll need the class template that you confined in the project section. Just download it and print it out to a piece of standard copy paper, and on it you'll see there is the blueberry muffin that will paint. And then, if you want to change the blueberries, there smother accessories, a carrot and raspberries that you can alter as well. For your image, you'll need six by nine watercolor paper. A jug of water. I use a spray bottle, toe wet. My pigments, my pigments and a list of the pigments I use will be in the class supply section that you can download another hand out there. I use a six, a number one brush and a pencil. The next chapter we'll go over using the template. 3. Using the Template: to use the template you just downloaded onto her paper and print a copy from here. You can use it as just a reference sketch and sketch out your image. It's just a line aren't drawing that I made or you can modify it, Um, and instead of using the drawing that exactly as you see it, make any changes you'd like. You can also cut out the perimeter of their template, creating a stencil and then trace around that, Or if you have a light source with, um, you can just use your light source, put your template down and then your paper on top of it, and you get a very faint outline, and you could just trace around it. For a light source, you could use a window with light coming in behind it. Just put your template down in your paper on top. You can use a glass picture frame with a light source underneath, fat with the picture removed to make a makeshift light box. Or you can use this this late pad that I have. It's a very thin piece of plugs into either the wall or ah computer, and you just put on the light, the strength of light you want. And then you could trace around that to create your template will do that and then we'll start our painting. 4. Muffin Layer #1: to create my first layer on my blueberry muffin. I'm gonna create a faint background on both the muffin top and the muffin itself. So just with some water, I'm just gonna loosely go over the base of the muffin and the muffin top just around the areas that I think that the actual pastry part of the muffin will be. And then I'm gonna mix a little color here. I'm gonna take some yellow Oakar and a little bit of burnt sienna until I get a warm color . Oh, at a brush full of water to that. So it's nice and light, and then I'm gonna go and I'm gonna faintly color in the muffin base. Here. I'll leave some spots of white just for variation. But I know that I want tohave the darkest color underneath the muffin where the shadow would cast and at the base. So I'll go around those first, creating the perimeter, and then I'll just add some color in between. Over here on my actual muffin. It's gonna be full of nooks and crannies. So I think I'll start by doing the perimeter, and I'll leave a little bit of space between the base of the muffin and the this pate part here. So it's a little bit of white showing, and then I'm just gonna go around creating just a light layer, with some areas having a little bit more pigment than others. Just like this, I'll go back in, drop in some pigment in different spots and let this layer completely dry. 5. Painting the Muffin Top: So for our next layer, I want to make the top of the muffin here a little richer in color. So little warmer. So I'm gonna take some yellow Oakar here, a little bit of burnt sienna, similar colors to what we used for the first layer and just a little bit of sepia in there . And then I'm just gonna carefully place it in some spots, and I'll start with just half of it first overlapping the colors we did wins my brush, blend out spots at times just so there's nothing no harsh lines. And then I'll go back in at a little spot here. I'm being somewhat careful. Tow. Avoid the areas that I want to put the blueberries on, but I'm not worrying about it terribly much, and I'll at this layer completely dry. 6. 6 Painting the Muffin Base: So now we'll work on our base a little bit more, gonna use my number one brush, and I'm gonna make some more of that color that we mixed here with a little bit more sepia . So it's not as warm. So I'll take the yellow Oakar a little sepia. And now I'm gonna carefully just with a light stroke painted perimeter here and the base. And then I'm gonna carefully go up here and mimic the outline of the top of the muffin here to create nice shadow. Going with a thick brush pushing my paint down my pigment down the length of the brush I'll go in and went my brush and pull the paint pigment down even further And now continue to add Clearwater and move that pigment around No harsh edges and you get it will get a nice Grady. It will start to achieve that from the top here. Now we wanted darkest atop, so I'm gonna go back in with a little sepia on my brush. Mix it with the color we already have. Just so it's an additional layer darker. Get a nice thick amount of my brush and now, very carefully I'm gonna drop it in up top. I want any witness that remains on the paper that we've already, um, introduced to blend that color. If they're areas where it's dry, dip my brush just slightly and go back in and let it help it to run. But again, I'm trying to achieve my darkest color up top again. I'll go back in dipping my brush and pulling that color down. I can see here on the right side it got very dark. So I'm gonna just going with some Clearwater introduced some clear water and push that pigment back up. Then I'll rinse my brush and come back in here with this yellow Oakar, maybe mixing in a little more and adding some places here. We're working to achieve a Grady int and a variation in color in the base of the muffin. I'll go back in, put a little color pigment from down below, and when I'm confident that we get nice blends of color, I'll stop and let this layer dry. So right there, I'm gonna stop. We'll let this layer dry and we'll come back and start working on more layers on the top of our muffin 7. 7 Painting the Muffin Top Blueberries: to work on the top of our muffin. We're gonna introduce the blueberries, so I'll start by mixing my color. I'll use my big brush to start with. So I want to keep my browns If I have any leftover if not all mixed new ones but for my blueberries I'm gonna take some purple and then I'm gonna add some blue to that And this is a deep blue. Now go back in. Add some purple until I find a color that I like. There we go. That's a nice color. And then over here, I'm gonna take what was left on my brush, make another little pile and add a little bit of this crimson lake to it To get a nice deep purple switching brushes, I'll move to my number one brush and with this purple here, I'm going to start by finding spots of blueberries. But I'm on the top of the muffin. I'm not going to try and make them look like typical blueberries. Traditional round blueberries, these air blueberry set of baked in the oven so they're gonna be unusually shaped, melted, burst. So I'm gonna make my shape leaving lots of white for highlights on each one. Typically, I'll stick to an odd number, so I had to more. They could be even little splotches. And then I'm gonna go in with that deeper color, pick it up on my brush and just drop it in and bought at the bottom of the blueberry. Some areas it will bleed in some areas. The blueberry has dried already, and that's OK. I don't mind harsh lines on the blueberries. I think it gives in a effective look as if the blueberries bursts in the oven and I'll let this layer completely dry. 8. 8 Painting the Whole Blueberries: So now that we have our blueberries, dried honor muffin, the first layer I want to go on, I want to actually just start the first layer of the blueberries that haven't been cooked. The garnish that's around the base. So I'm gonna base them off the colors we used. But I'm not gonna make them as deep because where they're not cooked anymore. So I'm going to start with a little bit of this deep blue mix a little purple in with that , with a sharp point. I'm just gonna go around creating the edge of my blueberry, the nice round shape of the uncooked blueberry. And I'm gonna leave a little barrier between the blueberry and the muffin. I'm also gonna make sure to keep plenty of highlights, and then I'll just go around and create the shape of these additional blueberries again. I'm leaving plenty of highlights, and I'll continue over here. I start with the perimeter, and then I just go in and create the shape. Add a little water, a little more pigment. Whether blueberries meet each other. I'm gonna leave a little space of white. I don't want the colors to bleed too much and each individual image to blend into each other and want them to look like separate blueberries. Now that I have the first layer done, I'm gonna take a little of this purple, mix it in with the color we already mixed. So I get a darker version and just add it to certain spots of the blueberry, particularly at the base of them. This creates kind of a natural ish looking shadow, and it is a little variation. And while we're here, I'm gonna take a little bit more purple, mix it into the color we already created, and just with a little sharp point of my brush, I'm gonna go and add a little bit of pigment to some of these cooked blueberries, particularly the ones that the color may have dried very much lighter again. I'm still maintaining that organic cooked blueberry shape not feeling in the entire area, but just enough of it to make that color really brilliant, and we'll let this layer completely dry. 9. Muffin Layer #2: So now I want to go in and start adding dimension to my actual muffin. So this is gonna be the pastry parts. I'm gonna go back to my Browns here, gonna mix a little sepia, a little more water. It's a little sepia in, and then a little yellow Oakar, and that's just to warm it up. Take a very sharp point of my brush and just enough pigment that I can control. And I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna outline that muffin again with short little strokes and I'm gonna go over the lines for the for the muffin. Um, liner is well and again, I just do short little strokes. I'm not trying to get a single line. It's OK if it looks a little jagged, turn my paper around you the base. And then I'm gonna just underline in a single line the top where the base on the muffin top creates a little shadow. I gotta go back in there with that same color and I'll start in the center and I'm going to just put the point of my brush down, and I'm gonna make jagged lines so that none of these lines are straight. I'll continue that with all of them making sure it touches the base. And I wanted to be a little thicker. A top on the line to go down thinner, so thicker up top with the shadow is heaviest and then just down a little thinner. If it looks too perfect, I'll go back in and make it a little, um, asymmetrical. Say, let us finish up. Then I'm gonna take my brush on the two ends here, and I'm just gonna create a little bit of unusual line here. A little bleed through the color will be much lighter than the one we've already put down. And I can go back in there and add a second layer at the base here. I'm gonna just was short little strokes. Pull my color up. I don't want the baseline to look perfectly straight. I'm only going up a little ways an eighth of an inch in some spots, even less than others. From here. I'll take my brush point again and the area closest to these lines I'm gonna go up even further. So down shorter strokes in between them and nice high strokes up against them again. I'll do the same thing from the top, but this time that exaggerated even further. So I want the strokes to be a little longer than they were at the base, which is where I create a lot of pigment up against the top of the muffin, and we'll let this layer completely dry. 10. Muffin Base #2: to complete our base of the muffin. I want to go in there with my number one brush and some of this dark purple that we made. I think I'm gonna go here to this darker purple Lee made originally for the melted blueberries. And that was just purple with crimson lake and a little blue. So I get a nice dark color. You can add as much as I like just a little on my brush that I can control. And I'm gonna go here and just add some lines going down and then maybe in thicker in some spots. And I wanted to look like there was a blueberry in the base that may be melted or some of the color flowed into the base. This does a couple of things. It unifies the painting by tying in the color from above the blue, and it brightens it up a little. Then I'm going to switch to just some sepia on my brush. This is the nice dark color We want just enough that we can control Turn my paper on the side and I'm really gonna carefully outline that shadow coming from that muffin top. Rinse my brush, so it's just damp. Pick up the color again, and now I'm just gonna blend that color out, pull it down, rinse my brush till it's damp again and blended out. So there are no harsh lines, but I definitely want it to be darkest right underneath the muffin top. I'll go in there with some of my deep purple and put that in spots as well, again helping to unify and tie it in and with a damp brush. Just blend out any areas that may have dried. We'll stop there will come back and work on the top of our muffin. 11. Muffin Top Layer #2: to work on the top of our muffin. I wanna go around the edge with an extremely sharp brush and just a little pressure, just barely touching the outline. So get my sepia. And if my brushes too wet, I'll drop dip it in the paper towel. I want to be able to control this and just add a little bit of pigment. So I'm gonna just go around the edge, make little jagged marks. I don't want a perfect line. Some areas I'll skip altogether and let the I just follow that and make that line complete . I'll leave the base alone because we have our little white shadow. And then, with that same amount of pigment on our brush, just gonna go and create some ridges here. So some organic shapes of lines that just continue, then convince my brush we'll start one section at a time, just adding a little color here to blood bleed out that line not so much that I can't control it. I'll go in there with some of that deep color and just deposit a little bit here and there again to look like the blueberries are coming through in different areas. then I'll going with just a light amount on my brush. So a little more water, but still enough to control but a lighter hue. And I'll go in there and just paint in some areas of that blueberry color. There any areas that look too perfect, I'll go in there with a wet brush and just bleed the mount somewhat, and we'll let this layer completely dry. When we come back, we'll work on a shadow. 12. Adding Cast Shadows: to work on the shadow. I'm gonna take my number six brush with a sharp point. I'm just gonna go around the base of the muffin here, not touching the blueberries. Just wedding it a little, and then on the left hand side of the blueberries and just gonna go around them, not bringing the shadow to the blueberry. Just a little bit of dry paper in between. So then I'm gonna come here with my sepia and either mix the dried portion or start a new with just a little sepia and a little bit of purple in that I'll go in at a little bit of black and then I'm gonna switch brushes. Could use my number one brush, Pick up some of this pigment and I'll start with underneath the muffin. Just gonna drop in the pigment. The shadow will be a little space between the muffin and the shadow. Once my brush so it's clean and just blend that shadow out at the edge so it doesn't have a harsh edge. Then I'll go in with that color. We did create a shadow by the blueberries as well. Again, I'm leaving a little space between the blueberry and the shadow. Then I'll go in the clean brush and bleed that out. No harsh lines. This is where I can work on my shadow a little further for my muffin. I'm gonna come back in here with us a little of this blend that we had of the Browns, the yellow okra and the sepia and just just drop a little of that in the shadow to make the shadow match the cupcake. And again I'll blend that out and then for the shadow for the blueberry. I want to go in when there was some of that more of that blue color. Just mix a little of that with our gray and add that as well. And again, we'll blend that out on shadows. The darkest part of the shadow is closest to the object, so that's why we're blending it out to give that little radiant that little variation again , I'll take my brush, blend out any harsh edges, and we'll let this layer dry. When we come back, we'll add some final touches that are completely optional 13. Final Details: to finish my painting. I like to add just a little bit of areas of contrast. So under start with these blueberries down here with my number one brush, I'm gonna go in there with a little sepia in a very sharp point. And I want a lot of pigment and not a lot of water, so I might have to dry my brush, but I'm gonna go in there and just on the edges of the top. Good. Add just a little bit of sepia right on the top. So it's gonna create a very, very dark point on these blueberries. Did it come in here? I'm going to switch now to my number six brush and with some Clearwater just gonna go around the cupcake. I want to saturate this paper, and this is gonna go around the top of the cupcake, Not the area where it's sitting on little say counter or a dish. So I'll have an imaginary line here, but I won't go past. So I've added my water, wet the area, leaving a little dry area between the wet paper and the muffin. And I'm gonna take a little of that blue that we have left over any color that you like of the purple or the blue Load up my brush and I'll just spatter a few areas. This gets a little on the area we put and made wet as well as the cupcake. And I like this because it makes this run but makes little spatter here. So then I'm gonna go in there with my wet brush again. I'm just gonna deposit color on the wet part of paper that we already added. I'm gonna mock the shape of the cupcake with my wet brush, my light color. So I'm gonna try and emulate those ridges and then I'm just gonna pull that color out. My If I start to hear that the paper is drying, I'll go in there and just dip my brush in looking for a very subtle background. You can always add a little pigment on areas that didn't get a lot of pigment. Then go to take my brush with that same color. So I'm gonna have a lot of water. Not a lot of pigment. I'm just gonna go down and create a little spot here just of that blue to tie it in then I'm gonna go back in here with my yellow Oakar. Some of the browns we use doesn't matter which brown. And I'm gonna just put a little color down here on the area that becomes the counter or that where the cupcakes sitting on go in there with a wet brush, Blend that out. And I wanted to look just very haphazard where it's just a matter of picturing and capturing some of the colors we used. It's not creating a definite dish or anything of that nature. We'll let this dry. It's gonna dry nice and light, and then we'll come back in and just do a little bit of spatter. So I left this drive for 10 hours, 15 minutes, and we'll be right back. So now that our papers dry, gonna go in there with just a brush and I'll take some of this purple re wet the pigments we have on the palate get a nice dark color, maybe a little blue to that, and just add a few more specs here and there. I could go in with a little bit of the brown as well, to unify all these colors at a little more yellow Oakar to that and add that as well. And there we have our image 14. Wrap Up & Variations: So here we have our completed blueberry muffin. We have a nice contrast between the muffin top and the muffin base. We have some brilliant blue, and we have a little difference between the cook blueberry and the whole blueberry. And we covered the entire image with spatter at the end, and that kind of helped the image become coordinated and cohesive, and it was kind of a fun effect, it reminded you. It echoed the texture of the cooked muffin top. Now, if you want to do some variations, I've included on the template some other additions that you could make instead of a blueberry muffin, perhaps a raspberry or a carrot muffin. So for the raspberry muffin, it's the same technique. But we use raspberries instead. So it's the same technique. We just added raspberries on top. We still added the crunchy texture and raspberries with a little shadow on the base. We also added the background, echoing the colors of the raspberries. And lastly, here's another variation of the carrot muffin. And so we used orange and yellows as opposed to the reds or the blues, and it gives a nice effect. I hope you'll try your hand at one of these watercolor muffins and post your favorite one in the project section. Be sure to follow me here on skill share to get notified of future classes. Please consider leaving a review. Thanks for watching.