Transcripts
1. Class Intro: Hello, I'm Daniela Mellen and author and artist. In today's class, watercolor butterfly wings, will create two abstract paintings of the images inspired by the intricate and mosaic appearance of the wings of a butterfly. Now we're not painting a traditional butterfly shape, the cookie cutter silhouette. Instead, we're looking up close at the cells and markings of his living work of art. Will use basic watercolor supplies, our reference photos, and a template that will help you with your pencil sketch. You can download these in the project section along with the class supply list. Will use two techniques to create wings. The first uses blends of color and added texture to build up the layers. The second technique uses dabs from the brush to create the pixelated texture that we're trying to capture. Feel free to use your own original colors to make unique markings on your paintings as well. So gather your supplies and please join me today.
2. Class Supplies: These are the supplies we're going to use for our watercolor butterfly wing paintings. I have the reference photo here that you can download. And there are two separate zoomed up close ups of the butterfly wings, both, both very beautiful and very artistic. I've also made some templates that you can download and print, and we'll go over that in the next chapter, the procedure of doing that onto your paper so that you can get the image that you want from either of these images. I have some watercolor paper that I've cut down into five by seven inches. But the drawings that we're going to do today and the paintings are going to be for four by sixes. So there'll be a little border around your paper. And when we're done, I have a pencil and an eraser and a straight edge to make that nice crisp border. I have my pigments and I'll include a list of the exact ones we use in class today. But this project is very flexible and you should use whatever colors you're drawn to for your butterfly. I have to paint brushes here on number one and number 6. And then I have a light source. You can use a window, but I just have a light pad here and I'll go over that in the next chapter. And that's when we'll start creating our template.
3. Using the Template: Now to create our template that we want to put onto our five by seven watercolor paper. I have the reference photo here, and it's a little bit ornate, a little intricate. So I've created a template that you can download it, print it out, and then you hold it up to a light source. And here I'm just using a light pad, but you can use a light from a window, glass pane as well. Just tape up your template to the window and then you take your paper and you place it exactly where you want it so your template shows through. And then with a very light hand, you make your sketch tracing each of the cells for each of the image that you want. What I like to do is take a straight edge and I start by making the border. And this helps me to fill it in and follow through very gently. And then once I have my image, as you can see, it's still very complex. So what I like to do is just another little tip that might be helpful for you is I like to take that same pencil and I mark the areas on my sketch here that I'm going to paint dark. So there would be any of the areas here for this background. It's not really the background but the background of the wing. And so I just make little x marks all over the areas that I know I'm going to paint dark. And this helps me because when I start to paint, I'll know that those areas are going to be black or gray. And the other areas are the ones that are going to have that pop of color. So then it makes it easier for me to reference my photo. In the next chapter, we'll start our first painting.
4. Painting #1: Yellow Cells: So to start my painting, I'm going to start with the lightest color, and this will be on the bottom, bottom wing, the lower wing, with this very pale, yellowy orange color. So it was number six brush. I'm going to start by mixing my colors, put some water in my palette, and then I'm going to mix some deep yellow here. You could also use a Hansa yellow. And I'm going to take just a little bit of this vermilion hue just to warm it up a little. Then I'm going to rinse my brush and I'm going to very carefully start with just this bottom wing. I'm going to take the large cells and just wet them and I'm going to keep the water inside the cell. A little bit of a border separating that pencil mark the edge of each of those cells. Now if I refer back to the reference photo, there is a little bit of a white border. So I'm going to just keep that in mind. Will I create my color? I'm going to pick up that color on my brush and deposit it, pulling it around shape. And I'll just do this in creating my first layer here of this very pale color. Now some of these cells are white, the smaller ones. So I'm going to leave those alone. I'm just gonna introduce some color here. Again. This is not something that I'm going to fill in all the way. I'd like some white of the paper showing. Think that makes it a little bit of an interest, and it also plays on the watercolor effect. So once I have my first layer down, I'm going to mix a little bit of a stronger color. So I'll take a little more of that deep yellow and a little vermilion hue. I'm going to switch brushes. And then with my smaller brush and just going to introduce a little bit of that color just to one side, maybe the top side of all these cells here gets a little variation, a little interest. I can come back and introduce it to the bottom half as well. And that way it's the lightest part of the cell is the center. And that's kind of an interesting effect. Come back in, take a little more of that deep yellow little more water, and just deposit it in a few places gives us a nice little contrast for this first layer. And again, I'm not worrying about filling in all those cells with pigment, creating a nice little border of white and some nice variation. And I'm going to let this layer completely dry.
5. Painting the Orange Cells: So now I have my first layer dry. I like the way that looks if I wanted a deeper color, I would go in there and just do a second layer using the same colors we had just to intensify it. But now I want to work on this wing here, and I want to introduce the colors just to those cells that have them. And there's only 123 here, my three main ones, and then a little bit peeking through in the back. So with whatever I have in my palette, I'm going to add viridian hue to that. And that gets a deeper color. Add a little more of that. Deep yellow as well. Play around with it till I get a color that I like. Going to turn my painting to my painting to the side. And I'm going to introduce a little water to these main cells that I want to add the deeper pigment. So it's these big cells here, again, keeping a little dry border around the side. And then going to my reference photo, I want to add a little bit of orange here, here and here. So I'm going to take my pigment and I'm going to add it to those little ones first. Just a little bit of pigment on my spot there. And I'll work on those in a moment. But now I want to introduce color to these large spots, these large cells. Again, I'm leaving a nice little white border around the edge, creating that shape. And I'm leaving some white of the paper as well. And it will just deposit color as I see fit. Same thing with the next cell. And then this last cell here. Now I'll come back with my brush, deposit more pigment, so that's nice and vibrant. Because we know it'll dry lighter anyway. Carving out just to echo that shape that we have here of these interesting cells on the butterfly wing. And I'll switch to my smaller brush because it gives me a little more control for these smaller cells. But it's going to create an outline, still maintaining the white of the paper in spots. I can send that image a little more. I'm just going to deposit just a little bit more color, a little more pigment here and there. And using that smaller brush helps me to have a little more control over that. And when I'm happy with the way that looks, I'll let that dry. I'm going to leave the color on my palette and let that dry case. I want to introduce some more at some point.
6. Painting the Dark Background Top Wing: So now I want to work on adding my background color to the wings, and that's going to be that dark color. So I'm going to mix a lot of that color because I know I have a lot of space to cover. So I'm putting some water on my palette. And then I'm going to take some of this Payne's gray and mix it down. Mixing a little more water. And then in the second spot, I'm going to add, just add an element of a pop of color to that. And you can use any color you want, blue, purple. I'm going to go here with a little as violet and just mix it in. Still want there to be a darkness to it. But just introducing a little violet, I think, changes the warmth of it as well. But a rinse my brush and since I'm starting with the upper wing, I do have a lot more space there, some spacing on these other parts with a white cells. So I'm going to rinse my brush. And then I'm just going to start in the center here. I'm going to put some water on the area that I exed off for my background piece. And I'll start and I'll just do the center going right up to those pencil marks. And I'm going to come in there with some of my darker color. And I want to keep the area moving, the pigment moving and that none of it drawing on the paper. So I'm going to start right here with this center cell. Pick up more pigment. I'm going to come down, starting my outline to the next cell. Playing around, keeping it moving and not letting the pigment dry. Continue pulling it down further Around the next white cell. Now when I come to the orange cells here, what I'm gonna do is leave a little bit of white dry paper and just bringing my pigment up to that new boundary that I'm creating. I have not wet this background yet. And so now I have a lot more control here. And I'm just going to create my shape. Because I'm using a little brush. I can just gently pull it in ever so slightly each time given me a lot more control. And a turn my piece on the side all the way around. Tilt my piece so that my pigments run wet my brush and I'm going to stick to a small brush this time and I'm just going to wet the background. I'm overlapping the area that I've already done on that white cell in the center, creating that white background. And now I can introduce pigment. This part is a little more finicky, little more precise. So I have that top most upper wing. The background done the first layer of color and it's still damp. So now I'm gonna take my brush and deposit some of that purpley black that we added. And then we mixed over here on our palette just in splotches. This creates variation and because it's still wet and the background it runs and it creates a very nice effect. I'm not trying to fill in the whole area. Create my shape. And then once I have that shape, I can turn it around. I can see that it dried a little over there. So I'm going to dampen my brush so that I can just get that pigment moving. I can come back in with that first color and deposit that in spots. And I really like the variation that I'm seeing here. So once I'm happy with that, I'm going to let that dry. Maintain my palette the way it is. And we'll come back and we'll work on the lower wing.
7. Painting the Dark Background Lower Wing: So now we've tops drying. I want to work on this lower wing here. It's important to note that we have this line here separating the two wings. And I want to keep that line white. So we're working with a little more smaller areas here. So I'm going to work sections of this and go start here at the top. Now that I've turned my piece around. And these are areas that are very fine. They're small little white cells. So I'm just going to go over a few of them very carefully with my wet brush. And I'm going to come in here with my Payne's gray mixture. And I'm going to deposit that. And we're starting to get the background for the lower wing. Now I'm going to speed this along because I'm going to use the same technique that I used when I did the dark background on the top wing. But I want you to see all the little nooks and crannies that I go through here. So there I have a little spot of dryness of white between my color and that dark area that we have here. I'm going to take one last thing. I'm going to make a very sharp point on my brush and just create that line, that border of that top wing. I like to do this while some of that area is wet so that the line just blends nicely together. And we'll let this layer completely dry.
8. Painting the Dark Background Upper Wing: So now for this upper wing, the area we haven't done and want to get started with that could start on the larger areas. So I'll use my number 6 brush. Could a wet that background. And I'll speed this along because it's the same procedure we've done. So there we have the base layer for the wings. Well, let this dry and then we'll come back and we'll work on these little background spots.
9. Painting a Blue Background: To add some color to the background, and it's going to wet the background. We'll start with this little bottom panel here. And I want this to look like a butterfly outside. So I'm just gonna do a little bit of a blue background, kinda of like reminiscent of a sky, going to take some cerulean blue here. And then this very carefully deposited here. I'll rinse my brush, wet this side. Go to my smaller brush and add some of that blue. Don't have to fill in the area completely. I don't mind white of the paper, but I just don't want any harsh edges. I don't want any straight lines. So that's a nice little pop of color. And I chose the blue because it was the opposite on the color wheel of that orange. So it really makes it pop. Can I just play with those edges? And we'll let this dry.
10. Adding Glazes: So now that everything's dry erase my pencil marks so I don't have a crisp edge. If I wanted a crisp edge, I just outline it with some marker. But I like the way this looks. I want to add some touches here to make this a little more interesting. With my small brush, I'm going to re-wet some of this dark color that we have here. I'm not going to make it more intense and I just re-wetting it and I'm going to re, applied more pigment to that line that separates those two wings to sharpen that up a little, make it a little darker. Just like that. I'll do the same thing up here on this little border. On the upper wing. It doesn't separate the wing into two parts. So much as it's like a little bit of a crease in the wing. So I just want to emphasize that as well. I'll come around here, emphasize the border. These are just little touches. To make this a little more interesting. Come here to the base of that wing and do the same thing. So now I want to switch gears here and go to my larger brush. And I want to introduce a little pigment here to some of these cells. So it's, everything's not quite so white. So I'm going to wet my brush and pick up a little of this orange hue. And I'll introduce that into the water that I had, so it diffuses the color just a little bit more. Again, I just want to think faint. And now I'm just going to pull some pigment. Just done a couple of cells here to give a hint of that color. I like some of them being white, but I'm going to stick to the smaller areas. And I'll just leave the soft, muted color right there, just like this. Then go even introduce a little bit of soft pigment up here. I could go in there and deposit just a little whatever's on my brush. I'll wet my brush and I'm going to re-wet the entire area here. Of these three main darker colors. I'm going to re-wet the darker pigment, introduce a little more vermilion hue. And now I just want to add more pigment, make that really pop, make it more intense. Rinse my brush and I'm gonna take just a few cells here on the bottom wing, wet them and I'll try and keep them together as a group. And then I'm going to take some more of this deep yellow. And just introduced that again for variation, pop of color. Colors are nice, unmuted, which is very beautiful. But I want to introduce just something a little more, little more pop. Just in some places. Gonna let this layer dry. We'll come back and add just some interest with our dark color.
11. Adding Dark Details: Now the last thing I want to do on our painting, It's really create some of these interesting speckled edges to the cells, particularly on this wing. There are some on this wing, but mostly on this wing. Could take my small brush, re-wet the gray color that we have here, get it on my brush. So it's a little bit of a point. And I'm going to start here, the base of these longer cells, just going to be dabbing some shape here along the cell. And then I'm just going to be overlapping it still leaving a little white border. But pulling it up. I'll do this on the next cell. You can make this as thick as you'd like. Then I'm gonna come over here and I'll skip this one because it's coming off the page. But I'll work on his largest one here. Playing with that border where it meets the white of the cell. Same thing over here. And I like that interests that it's adding, think of it a go all the way around the cells. At least those cells doing that. It kind of overlaps the black background with a white border. And it lets me play by making the shape a little bit different to those cells. So you can take this as far as you want, go around as many cells as you'd like. And I like the way that looks. It makes it look very magnified, like we're looking very close up at this butterfly wing. Continue with this. Blending those two areas, the dark with the white. Now that I have my colored cells here on this lower wing done, I'm just going to add a little bit of touches to this. And around some of these white cells, I'm not going to do too many, just enough to imply that the edges are a little jagged, good. Just like that. I'll let this dry. We'll come back and work on the upper wing doing the same thing.
12. Adding Upper Wing Dark Details: So now we have the lower wing with some jagged edges so it looks magnified. I just want to continue that. I like the way that looks, so I'd like to continue that. On the upper wing. I'm going to start again bringing the little jagged edges and I'll use my colors, my very pigmented cells first. Just using the bottom of the brush, dabbing it as I go. I'll expand to the next size cells. And again, a very haphazard. Depending on how much pigment is on my brush, it'll create a little bit of a variation. And I'll just do a little bit here on these white cells. Just to give a rough edge. I'm going to let this dry and we'll come back and I just some final touches with our colored cells.
13. Adding Final Touches: And now to add just some final touches, because we want this to look like a magnified butterfly wing. I want to have a little texture in each of these cells will start with a lower wing. Going to take my deep yellow here, mix it. And I'm going to add just a little Scipio with that, trying to darken the color slightly, but still maintain a little bit of that. Yellow, deep yellow sooner with a very sharp brush. Just going to create a very light lines here. Kind of striations. And you can make them as thin or a stick space as far apart as you'd like. I'm just trying to create the movement. That shape of the butterfly wing, echoing this shape here. The rounded edge, not going for a dark color, one that competes with the wing itself. Just something to add a little texture. Then I'm going to jump up here to the upper wing, grab a little bit of that orange vermilion hue, going to mix it in with that color remixed. Do the striations on the lower wing. And again, I'm just going to pull some pigment right across just to create a little texture very gently. And I'll do this over here as well. Again, following the direction of the wing. Just like that. And there we have our first completed painting. In the next chapter, we'll start our second painting.
14. Painting Green Cells: So now for our second painting, we're going to start with this green color here. And it's going to be a slightly different technique than when we did our first painting. And we're going to start with this green color. So taking these larger cells and just a few of them as referenced in the photo, I'm going to wet them and let the paper really absorbed the water. And that way I can go in there with my color and add it to the paper just so that it's a nice look. I'll take some civilian blue and some yellow green and just mix that in and just use a light green if you don't have the yellow green and add some yellow too. And that way you can play with it until you get the shade that you want. Now in the painting, it was a little more bluer than I'm using here today, but I'm going to add a layer of blue at some point. So I'm just gonna go with the green. And then just slowly dab that on. And I'm making interesting shapes and textures are not going for a unified shape. Perfect oval. I want paper to show through some of the white of the paper behind my pigment. I'm just dabbing it in and I want to get like a pixellated look. So by adding lots of dabs, I don't get a perfectly rounded shape. I get little almost ruffled edges. The only areas that I do keep straight or right on the border of my painting. So I continue to dab and I'll do this with all of the green spots on the cells. Now fast-forward this so you can see where I'm going. Once again, I make any of the edges straight where it meets the edge of the paper, the artificial edge shall we say. But anything within the actual butterfly wing, I keep very organic and using I dab shape, I also want to keep a white border between each of the main cells so that each part of the wing really stands out on its own. Don't be afraid to refer back to your reference photo either to get the placement of where you want to add this color. And now I'm going to make some certainly in blue into just a portion of that green. So I can get two tones here. And I'll play with the color until I get it the way I like. And then I'll just dab in the color in spots along the area that was wet of the green that we dabbed the first layer. In the next chapter, we'll go to our next color.
15. Painting Yellow Cells: So now I'd like to paint the yellow for our cells here. And I'm referring back to the picture and you can see how it's actually two tones of yellow, a lemony yellow, and then a deeper yellow. So we're going to try and capture that with our pigments. So we'll just start with some lemon yellow. It's a little bit of a cooler yellow then our deep yellow that we use previously. I'll make two petals and with the second petal, I'm going to intensify it with some of that deep yellow. And that will give us that intensity that I'm looking for. I'm adding just a little bit of a yellow green to my lemon yellow. I just want to coordinate that with the green that we have already on the paper. And now I'm starting by just making my dabs. I'm using the same procedure that I used with the green, but I'm using it with the yellow. And I'm making all the dabs covering the lemony yellow areas first. And then I'll let that absorb into the paper just for a time being before I add the intense color into some of the areas. Again, I'm making this little dabs trying to create a bigger shape, but not a filled in shape or homogenous shape. I want there to be the white of the paper showing through some brushstrokes, some dabs. If I overlap the depths, the pigments look more intensified in some places. And that creates a little contrast and I loved that way. That looks, I'm also not hesitating to dab over the existing green on some of the sections here, the segments of these wings, I think that coordinates it adds interest and adds a bunch of layers that are very intrigued to the eye. Now in this section, I believe this is the section of the butterfly that's like the caterpillar body. So I'm going over this with the yellow and I know that I'm going to come back with a darker color at some point to really add details. I realized over here that I didn't add the green to my wing. The wing that's in the background. So I'm adding just a little water and then I'm going to dab those green sections onto that wing in the background. And again, it's the same procedure. This is just something you didn't notice when you catch any things you overlooked or any mistakes you made. And even though it's the background, I still want some of the areas to have a little more intensity and a little more contrast. So again, I just repeat the dabs. Now I think it's time to go back in and add some intensity to some of those yellow sections. So I'm taking my brighter color, my deeper color, and just dabbing in the center of some of those areas. And that gives a very nice effect, a little contrast. And it also draws the eye because it's brighter and heavier. In the next chapter, we'll go over adding some darkness to our butterfly.
16. Painting Dark Colors: So now our colors have drive and they look beautiful. We can start working on our darker colors here. I'm going to be careful when I do the dark colors to leave a little gap between each of the cells, just a small gap. Going to mix my Payne's gray with a little Prussian blue here. I want a nice dark color. Mix, a couple of brush moles of water. And now I'm going to take my brush and get to a sharp point and I'm going to start just at the top here. I want to make sure that I keep this top wing and this bottom wing separate. So I'm just going to work on that border first. And for each of the cells here, the sections of the wing, I'm just going to create my border and I'm not going to worry about making a straight line, except that I want to make sure that I have a clear border. So I'm just going to dab it, creating that line of the border. And now I'm going to turn my painting to the side. And with a sharp brush, I'm just going to dab inside each of those cells. I'm creating a border. But it's not a straight line except for the border of the edge of the painting. So I'm just dabbing all the way around, creating that border, continuing all the way. And again, I use the different parts of the brush, thicker parts in the larger areas and very thin the sharp point of the brush over here. And then I just want to overlap just a little bit onto that yellow area. But it come over here and do the same. So I create my border. Sometimes it's easier if I do my border. And then I can go and fill inside that area. Again, I like to keep the edge of the paper fairly straight. And so that's one section of the wing. I like to leave a little white of the paper over here. I'll come in right up here and fill in this black or this. We're using Payne's gray. And then I'm leaving a nice little gap over here. I'll speed this along and fill-in, finish up on the wing. And then we'll come back and look at our work. So now that I have my upper wing done with that Payne's gray, the speckling look, I want to work on this lower wing. I want the color of this wing in the back, the lower wing to be a little lighter. So I'll mix in a little more water with that in a little more Payne's gray until I get the color that I'm looking for. I'm gonna do the same procedure. Again. I'm leaving that little space between the two wings and a space between each cell of the wing. And so there I have the wing's done. I'm going to let this dry and we'll come back and work on our background.
17. Painting the Blue Background: So now this layers are dry. I'm gonna go in and work on the background very quickly. Just going to wet the background. And I could use a pop of color like an orange or a yellow, but I think I'm just going to stick with the blue like we did in the first painting. And I'm gonna make this a lot smoother than the wings. So I'm not going to dab it skin to let the pigment run, create the shape and just have a little bit of a gradient. Tilt this around back and forth. Maybe add just a little bit of a muted blue as well. And we'll let this layer dry.
18. Final Touches: So now we have our painting all dry. I went in with an eraser and erase any pencil marks that remain and they would just want to do some final touches. So this is where I'll take a look at my painting and see how I want to work it a little more. Maybe there are some areas I want to intensify the color or bring the color differently across. Like I want to add a little more yellow here to balance out this section. So I'll start with that. Just going to re-wet my deep yellow. And I'll just add in a little more of that. And I'll just elongate some of these others while I'm at it. And this just changes that a little bit. Then I'm going to look over here at my piece. And one thing I didn't notice is I really like the contrast of the darker black splotches against the lighter gray of the lower wing. So I'm gonna come in here, intensify my pigment here with a little more Payne's gray and some Prussian blue. But I just want to dab some areas, particularly on this side of the wing, just so that there's a lot of contrast between the upper and the lower wing. So I'm just going to dab a little more of the black. The very dark color that we mixed that is almost black here. Can add a little more Payne's gray if it's too blue. Or just to give a variation. And I'll add a little more speckled as I go up each of these little cells here, these sections of the wing and add some speckling over here. I'm going to switch to my smaller brush here. One thing I want to do is pick up some of that dark gray here, the Payne's gray. And just like in our reference photo, there is some speckling. It's not a perfectly green area. So I'm going to start with the lower wing here and I'll mix a little water on my brush just to get a fainter color. And I'm just going to add a few little dabs on the green haphazardly. Just a few little sections. Then I'll start here and just add a little more. Just a few sections that have a little bit of black specks. It will dry lighter and it breaks up the green. And then I'm gonna go to my largest piece here. And I'm going to start right on the edge, just adding a few little dots. I don't want it to be overpowering. Just interesting. And then I'll just add a few little specs. Just like that. And there we have our second painting. In the next chapter, we'll look at both are paintings that we created, and I'll show you just a slight variation as well.
19. Class Wrap Up: So in class today, we created our first butterfly wing image, a close up that really examines the little mosaics that are found inside the butterfly wings. It's quite beautiful and striking just to use the colors that we see here. In the second painting, we did something with more of a pointillism effect where we dabbed and put lots of dabs and lots of texture to get that really magnified looking image. It's quite striking as well. Now, there's also, aside from getting these rough edges that we have here around the cells or the overall texture from this painting, we could do a modification where we take that same painting and you can use either one of these and just create more straight edges. So it gives a different effect, more photographic than this one which is more up-close. So these are variations that you can do when you create your paintings using the templates that we have in class today, know if these butterflies aren't to your liking. I'm going to show you some other variations with different butterfly wings. Just find a photo of a butterfly that you like, the colorings and the patterns and you can do it the same technique. You just select a section from that image. Now I wanted to show you how I got started on this idea. When I was playing around in my sketchbook. I will look up close at some images of some butterflies. And instead of doing an actual butterfly with the shape of a butterfly, I just took portion of the wings and just copied it. And I thought, oh, that's so beautiful. Just that section, even if it's not recognizable as a particular animal, just the up-close version. And so here's another one that I did of the butterfly wing itself. Again, a slight variation from what we did in class. So here are the ones we did in class. Here are some of the ones that jump started my interest in the butterfly wings. I hope you'll try your hand at creating one of these butterfly wings using your watercolor pigments. Feel free to use your favorite colors, are very them accordingly to whichever butterfly you're interested in. Please be sure to follow me here on Skillshare to get notified of future classes. Please consider leaving a review and thank you for taking the time and joining me today.