Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. My name is Irina [inaudible]. I'm an Assistant Illustrator. Welcome to my studio to explore beautiful watercolor medium. In today's class, we'll be painting watercolor cakes, and after we'll be designing a beautiful birthday card. Hand-painted cards are beautiful and will make a great addition to your stationary portfolio. I have immediate or voluntary watercolor classes here on schedule. I hope it will help you develop a beautiful and successful portfolio. In the next video, I'll show you the supplies you'll be using in this class. Let's get started.
2. Supplies: In today's class, we'll be using the following supplies: A set of watercolor paint, whichever paint you have, watercolor paper, some office paper for sketches, water, of course, a paint palette, paper towel. Also, we'll be taping our paper to a board. It's a regular board, you can find in art store. We'll need a board and a tape. We will need a pencil, eraser, fineliner, just make sure it's waterproof and it can be any brand you like. It can be a Sharpie or Faber-Castell, anything you use. Also, we need a bigger brush. I hope its a big brush, but if you don't have a brush this big, a smaller one can work, too. Also, we need a pretty big round watercolor brushes, a medium water color brush. This is Kolinsky Sable number four, and this small watercolor brush. This is Kolinsky Sable number two. Also, I'll also be using white ink. If you don't like using white ink, you could use white gouache, too. You can find the list of supplies in the project section of the class.
3. Colors: Every type of cake we'll be painting today will have its own color scheme, but now I'm going to show you all the colors, so all three color schemes together, we'll be using today. The first one is, we'll be mixing lemon yellow with cadmium yellow. Because these are the cakes we'll be using cheerful, happy colors. So we'll be varying the proportion of every color in the mix. Sometimes we can put more lemon yellow and sometimes we'll be using more cadmium yellow. The next combination is turquoise with a drop of bright blue. As a result we get this aqua bright color. Next, we'll mix some magenta with cadmium orange and we'll dilute it with a lot of water. It needs more cadmium orange. Because as a result, we'd like to have this soft peach color. Again, we can put more magenta if we want it more pink and more orange if we want it a bit more orange. Also, mix magenta with a drop of bright blue, and I'll dilute it with a lot of water. So as a result we'll get this beautiful light lavender. Also I'll need olive green but that we'll mix with a glitter green with cadmium orange. This is just for details. It's not a very delicious color but we need it, we need some more neutral colors too. So that's why we need this olive green. We can always brighten it up a little bit with some yellow. Also, we'll be using cadmium yellow mixed with some cadmium orange, and to darken it up we'll be adding [inaudible] in the same mix. So here it is darker. Also, we need some neutrals, so we'll be using a little bit of yellow ocher, some red ocher mixed with a little bit of purple. So darken the top and makes it not too bright. Also, we'll probably use just a tiny bit of sepia. We can warm it with a little bit of a red ocher. Another neutral color we'll be using, well it's not with neutral, but it's definitely not too bright, we'll be mixing emerald green with some purple. We'll get this dark blue. For bright blue we'll mix bright blue, maybe it's called Persian blue or cerulean and [inaudible] We'll mix it with a drop of purple to make it deeper. These are all the colors we'll be using today for all our illustrations.
4. Painting a Floral Cake: For this cake, we'll do a quick, and easy drawing, just a rectangle. It doesn't have to be perfect, try not to make it too crooked. Here's our rectangle. It's good to find a middle of the rectangle, and we'll have a line here. That's all the drawing. You can use a fine liner if you want, or you can just paint like me straight with watercolor. What you'll do next, we'll mix some cardamom orange with a little bit of magenta. We'll dilute it with a lot of water. I'm trying to get to that nice peach color. First, it'll have more pigment and watch me draw. We'll paint one cake layer. Next, we'll add some more water to it. Then we'll paint the next layer. You'll see when it will dry, it will look lighter, it already does. It will look lighter than the first layer. Then we'll add more water, and we'll paint the next layer. Feel free to turn the paper any way you like. If it's more comfortable for you. Again, a bit more water. We have the last layer. Between the layers, we're leaving these white lines, which look like cream frosting. Wonderful. While our layers are drying. We'll take some turquoise. I'll mix it to have bit of bright blue. We'll paint our cake stand. It will help you to look in the inspiration board I created for different kinds of cakes stands and cakes. In case you want to paint something else, a little different than me. Our layers are dry. I mix some caramel yellow. Let's decide what our big flower would be. I think for me the other flower would be here. I would like another flower somewhere here. Then we'll decide maybe we'll add more. With the same peach, I'm painting the petals for this flower, maybe it needs a little more water. I'm trying not to touch the middle of the flower because it will bleed. If you touch and it bleeds, it's totally fine it's beautiful, and it's watercolor. It's supposed to mix. I like the petals to be curly, not a particular shape. Another one here. Maybe add a little yellow to our mix, make it more orangey. No, I think I'd rather add some magenta, make it a little darker. Yes. It's up to you what kind of flowers you want to paint here. You're welcome to follow my steps, or invent your own flowers. Add a little orange to magenta, to get back to the peach color. I think I'd like to have a flower somewhere here in the shape of a cup, and maybe somewhere here. I'm trying not to get too close to the edge, and keep the composition simple. Next, I'll mix some cadmium yellow with cadmium orange. If you have golden orange, you can use a red color, and with strokes like these. I'm painting a flower similar [inaudible]. One here, and the one with a little bit of magenta, somewhere here. Next, let's mix some green with some orange and paint these stems. Again, green and orange. If it looks too muddy we can add a little bit of yellow tint, and more green. A leaf here, and couple leaves here maybe. Now that some workflows. Next, let's take some bright-blue and add a thick consistency, a lot of pigment and not a lot of water. That will paint some leaves and drive them to be ideally painterly, just using the strokes of a brush. Don't over work them. So just press a brush on the paper and whatever shape it forms, it's beautiful. Also I would like to have a branch over here, tiny leaves. Here you can leave your imagination go and add whichever shapes, herbs, leaves you like. Also I painted some shadow to my greens with the same blue. Pay your details to the kickstand and maybe a line here and a stroke here. With some green, I am adding some shadows to the middle of the flower, just a few dots. Don't overwork it. We have to acquire and maintain more leaves and details. Now, going into add some texture to the petals. So with same peach, I'm just adding some lines, some shadows and out of our Sandra instantly getting some depth. Add some shadows to the [inaudible] I'm mixing orange with some magenta and of course to this ones. A few more branches here. Next I'll try to do, with yellow, I'll add some dots and our card instantly looks more festive. Just like this, add some dots with our peach-pink color. I think this is enough. As usually the last details, we'll be adding with light pink. Some dots in middle of a flower, some lines to random colors, some dots here and some dots on the cake itself. I feel that we need some dots here too and it seems this is our flower cake.
5. Painting a Vintage Fruit Cake: For this cake, which we do first, in a small jug will pour just a little bit of water and then this water will make some cadmium orange and a little bit of magenta. I think we need a little more magenta and then we need to stretch the paper, like I showed in essential watercolors in this class. Technically, we are just taping that paper to the board, a quarter of the inch from each side and then with the big brush, I'm just putting this big spot in a middle of the paper. It could be a little bit darker, so I'll take a little more color. This is better. After we're done with this, we need to let it dry. Now, our first layer is totally dry. With a spot background, we can start drawing our cake. I am starting from drawing the cake stand with a fine liner. You can pick any design you like. Because the cake is going to be to pretty tall, I'm going to make the stand not to tall like this. Next, I'll take a big brush and some white ink and I'll paint a big white rectangle, which is going to be our cake. If you have a big flat brush, it will work great here. But if you don't, then you can use round brush like I do. Maybe, a little taller. Now you can barely see our cake it's [inaudible] light pink depends on how opaque is your ink. But after we decorate it, it will be pretty visible and nice. On the top of the cake, we'll have candles. I'm also painting them white and now we have to let it try again just like we make ground. After our [inaudible] cake is totally dry, it's time to start decorating it and I want this to be a vintage style cake. I've decided to paint it with fruits instead of flowers, plus will have some variety in our illustrations. Let's take some yellow ocher and mix it with a little bit of cadmium yellow to brighten it. Here we'll have a pear, you of course can paint any fruit you like, you will have another half of the pear. Also, I would like to have some apricot, so I'll mix cadmium orange, with a little bit of magenta. I'll be adding leaves later, maybe an apricot here and one behind of this pear, maybe one little here. You can see that all color is behaving different on the ink, but it's okay. It's an interesting look and I'm pretty sure it will behave differently on a gouache too. For the leaves, I'm mixing a little green with purple. I'm getting this vintage dark blue and then painting some leaves. Here, I like to have a branch of course. I would like to have a fig so I'll take some magenta. We'll mix it with blue, more blue then just a little bit of magenta. Right here is a fig plant and will paint some peaches side too and I'd like to have some berries, blueberries. Very old-fashioned vintage looking, I think we need some yellow on the top to, so let's now paint our candles like this. We'll mix some yellow ocher with a little bit of a red ocher and we'll add this lines like ribbons to our cake and instantly looks festive and we'll add some circles on intersections too to make it even more interesting. More dark leaves so I mix in more, I love green. Let's add another leaf here and this here, and darken these leaves too. One more apricot here. Let's mix some orange with magenta, add into our fig like this. Maybe here more fruits, just for variety. Let's add some lines on our candles. Perfect, if you still feel like you need more details, you can always add one with a fine liner. I think we still need to show where the cake ends and probably we add some lines on our fruits to, just a little bit. This is our vintage cake illustration.
6. Cake with Geometrical Pattern: The most of my designs are so feminine. I've flowers, birds, and butterflies and with this card, I challenge myself to create an original birthday card, just in case you have a man birthday party of our boy birthday party. We'll start with drawing with a fineliner. I did the lines sketch before, so just two rectangles, and on top we'll have a cake topper with inscription. Now, it looks just like a robot. What we'll do next, I thought it would be nice just to make some modern patterns on our cake, glad to have watercolor. We'll take some turquoise, lets try to keep the color palette prettier. We'll draw two, so we'll be using, blue is my favorite. So I'm mixing turquoise with little bit of blue, and I'll start making geometric shapes, triangles and then I'll take darker blue with a little bit of purple, I wanted it to be darker. I'll connect another triangle to previous one and you can see how beautifully my color is blending, and then we'll create next one. Again, I can see how the colors are nicely mixing when with triangles are touching each other. Just keep it simple and move in random directions without overthinking it and I think it's going to be nice. I'm alternating turquoise with brighter blue with a drop of purple in different directions, I'm painting the triangles. I wanted one here. I think we need some from this side too. I'll start in the corner. I'll need some pink, some bright like randomly, now that I'm trying anything and maybe even upside down, and the same way with turquoise. Nice. I wanted to go on diagonally with some other triangles on this part, take blue and then take some purple, and turquoise and then blue again, purple, then turquoise, then the blue one upside down. Why not try? Maybe another purple one right here. I think we need another one here, and maybe a tiny one upside down. Here we have a pretty interesting pattern. Also watch I want to add some just random dot. I think we need another triangle here and on top we can also add some stars, like extra topers with fineliner. This totally free hand, nothing planned really much. Just be playful and try the process. Now, let's paint the stars with yellow ocher. Don't worry if my paint is coming out of the line. I'll still like these two be a little different, so I went on to it, add some lines on this layer of the cake. Yeah, this is better. Maybe some lines here and there. Nice. I'll finish with some stars around the cake, using the colors on the cake, and one star here. I think this is a pretty and original cake. I will add this inscription here in their own handwriting and we have an original birthday card.
7. Last Thoughts: Thank you for watching my classes. I hope the adjusted painted me. If you like this class, please leave a review and upload a project or project section of the class. I can't wait to see your beautiful birthday cards. See you in the next class.
Irina Trzaskos, Watercolor Artist & Illustrator
