Watercolor Calligraphy 101

1. Intro: Hi. I'm welcome. Klein, a calligrapher, an illustrator living in Israel. I run my own calligraphy and finer studio where I work with brands, fries and other individuals from around the world looking for handmade custom artwork. I often incorporate clicker feed and water color into my work. But in general, working with my hands is really important to me and something I'm very passionate about teaching others to explore in this class on the subject of watercolor calligraphy, I'll be teaching the fundamentals of calligraphy alongside the essentials of watercolor and how you can combine the two for the class projects will be creating a kala graft piece with a simple, beautiful illustration, all using 12 of watercolors. It may seem intimidating at first to delve into two mediums at once, but believe me, they mashed together so well that you won't even notice that you're picking up two different skills. I will be sure to break down each step into bite size pieces that are easy to understand, even for a beginner will go through the fundamentals of calligraphy as well as the fundamentals of water color, and in the end you'll come out with a really great basic understanding off both of these different mediums that work together in such a satisfying way. I'm really excited to share my passion for expressing creativity through handmade artwork, and I really hope you'll feel inspired to try out these new mediums. Give yourself space and time to get comfortable with the tools so that you, too, can create beautiful pieces for yourself or for your loved ones. Don't forget to print the worksheet for calligraphy before getting started. You'll find it in the reference file section. Let's get started. I hope to see you in the first class of introduction toe watercolor calligraphy. 2. Your Class Project: Hi. I'm so glad you decided to join in on my watercolor calligraphy class. Let's jump right in and I'll introduce you to the front of Project that will be gradually working on throughout the class. So the final project is a kala graphs in what color painted wreath. And I decided that it would be the perfect project for a really fun skills share class that has a lot of value and that will be learning about click or feet and watercolor. But it's also a lot of fun and really seamless. So I designed this and why was creating it? I just realized how much fun I was having and it write me back, Teoh. Why I started my business in the first place. As a kid growing up, I was always creating stationery and elbows and scrapbooks, and this brought me back to that police. I was just doing it for fun. I was really happy with the result, and I got a lot of good feedback. So I thought that watercolor clicker fees surrounded by sort of a fun I'm Strack simple illustrations surrounding could be fun for you guys as well. In order to be successful in this class. Make sure to print out all the worksheets and also remember not to rush it. Calligraphy is an art that is meant to be done slowly. It's meant to be a meditative practice. You should focus on your breath, focus on remaining calm and having good posture. Remember, Teoh Kala graph three times is slowly on average as your regular handwriting. And also keep in mind that while calligraphy is a discipline and there are a lot of things to know about it before getting started, How fun with it. And please remember Teoh, upload your progress in the project gallery as you go. All right, let's get started. I'll see in the next video. 3. Calligraphy: A Background: So this is an introduction to modern clicker fee, but we can't jump into that without having a basic understanding of what clicker fetus in general, by definition clicker, if he means the art of beautiful writing. Cultures from across the world and across time have been using clicker feet and multiple formats to Mellish, Beautiful Documents and Holy Scripture Aires. What's so fun about modern calligraphy is not only beautiful outcomes, but that we were able to build off of traditional calligraphy, and we can throw away so many of the rules and just make it our own. Traditional calligraphy had really hard core rule, but modern calligraphy gives us room to relax and find our own style. Let's learn the proper materials and their usage. And then we'll go over my worksheets, though that you have some great exercises for getting your hand prepped for the final project. See in the next video 4. Meet The Calligraphy Tools: thin this video. I'm going to show you some of my favorite tools and materials for getting started with calligraphy, and this class will be making use of a pointed pen for the calligraphy style that will be using. This is made up of a pen holder and a clicker. Female. This is a Nico G is usually a pretty user friendly nip to get started with. Now we can compare this to the broad edge nip, which is used more with traditional click refuse, such as italics Gothic, and I use this as well for much of the Hebrew click. If you work that I do so modern calligraphy nib such as this one, they have something called times, which if you press down, they split apart and this is what allows for inflow. So this is what is particular to modern calligraphy and that if you look closely, there are thin strokes and fix tricks, and that basically come from the mechanics of nib, where any stroke that it goes upwards is thin because there's a light pressure being applied and when you come downward naturally, hand presses harder and the time separate and then more ink is released. So that is what creates the true collector. If you look and this is the name that will be using today, I also want to show you a few other tools that are really fun for modern clicker van traditional calligraphy, even though we're not using them right now, just to show you that there's a whole wide world of options and you should experiment and find what's fun for you. Most of these tools are pretty inexpensive, and it's really worth trying them out. So this is also a wonderful tool for modern calligraphy. This is a Tom Bo brush pan, and it's basically a marker, but it has a special tip that's flexible. There are tips that are longer or shorter, more flexible, less flexible, and this allows for really fluid and fun writing. But it's less traditional unless classic, because there's no dipping and involves. I thought it would be fun to work with you guys on the real deal, and this is another really, really fun tool for Hebrew clicker feeds. My favorites called the pilot parallel pen, and it comes in different widths, allowing for larger letters or smaller letters, and you'll see the tip is flat edge, so it's a broad edge pen, definitely something have on your finger if you wish. List Other three tools for calligraphy other than your depend itself are, of course, inks Or, in our case, what are colors. But traditionally there are lots of different Excuse. This is a Walnut Inc. Which is really beautiful and ink that has been used for centuries by the likes of Divinci . Shakespeare just kind of get a kick out of using it, but there are other kinds. There's and get anger. Sumi. Thank sound. Have a bit of machines to them. Some are suddenly more translucent. Last translucent. Just be sure that if you're ever doing client work with clicked and feet to be using archival ink that won't fade over time. Now to hold your ink, you'll need some sort of container because it's not really ideal. Teoh. Dip your pen into a deep tub and not be able to see how much you have on. The reason for this is because when you dip your neck into the equal, you want to dip it up until the reservoir that is usually about the middle of the nib, so What you want to dio is have ah, smaller container, and it's pretty studies just this one. You can get these from John Neil or their limes. You just have the amount of things that you need to know, more or less, and it's very clear how much you have and easy to work with. And there's also this little guy, which you called it. Think you did the funny name I know, and you can order this from John Yell as well. It will ask you to have multiple in colors, all right, one place, and it's impossible to knock this over, and it's really fun and easy to use. You should also have nearby a small cup of water for cleaning your nip. If you're working on a longer project, or if you leave your pen for a few minutes at a time to go grab another cup of coffee, you should clean your nip between every time so that it doesn't get crusted, and it'll it will affect the inquiry future. So you dip it in the water, just dip it up again until where he came, and then you can gently wipe it off with a paper towel. When using these, you don't have to worry about being delicate. They are small, but they're very tough. But in general, these can last quite a long time. Now, when you have brand new ones, they come with a residue from the factory that must be removed initially or else the equal beat off, and it won't ever flow properly from your name. So what you need todo is take people tell in a bit a little bit and clean off your name. With that, it's a little gross, but trust me, it works. Other materials might like to have on hand our pencils, rulers and erasers. So now we've had a quick introduction to some of the essentials of calligraphy. In the next video, we're going to take a quick look at the worksheets that I cooked up for you guys, and then you'll have more of an idea of how you can get started. I'm creating beautiful letter forms with your clicker fetal. Get those work. She's out and see in the next video 5. Exemplar Worksheets: The's worksheets are an introduction to the key terms and the keystrokes and my style of a lower case off of it, using this Nico G pointed pen tool that we will use for the final project. So inside I have all different forms for exercising your hand and gaining muscle memory in order to create beautiful letter forms and phrases and paragraphs. It was this one. I also include some example phrases, an example reefs that you can use later on in the project in case you're looking for inspiration and you feel a bit stuff. Now, the respect for you to these worksheets is because modern calligraphy is very flexible as I sat and allows for so much room for personal expression. But there are certain things that you need to know in order to get started on the right foot. So these are all things that I will walk you through in my demonstration. The next worksheet is a breakdown of all the foundational fundamental strokes that you use in order to create all the letters of a typical modern clicker v alphabet. These are applicable to you most modern clicker alphabet's, and this is where you're going to really get started and practice thes over and over and over and over until your hand is able to write steadily and create these consistent forms. They don't have to be exact copies of one another, but the goal is to have consistent shape that align with one another and are clearly from the same category. And once your hand develops that ability, you will use it in order to create consistent letter forms within your alphabet. Now, the way to use these worksheets that you don't have to print them out over and over is to take some tracing paper. What I have here is by Strathmore it ISS £25 or 41 grams. But you can really use any trade. In Bieber. You have. It's not too thin. Mattress. Don't Ringgold. You can even use something layout paper you just want to be able to see through so that you can right on top of the worksheet without ruining it. So what, you want to dio iss take some tape and tape down the worksheet or you can clip it into place so that it doesn't shit when I'm practicing strokes and I will show you how to load your depend with watercolor beat so that you can practice, take out, try some kind, or in this case, I have a glass plate here, and what you'll need is a bit of water. A tuba. Watercolors. I'm just using 12 of watercolors throughout this entire project to keep things simple, so I would recommend just choosing a color that you really like and going ahead with it. This happens to be by a company called Talons, and the color is deep green and green to my favorite. So let's get started with us. So choose your color Open up to, and you will just put a dab on your dish right here. Take a brush. Size doesn't really matter, but what we're doing essentially right now is activating the water color paint with some water. And the more water you put in the paint, the more translucent the watercolor will be. I don't take your clean clicker Phoenix, and you will Pete the watercolor on. If it's beating away like this, that means that there is probably a bit too much water and not enough pigment, so I'll just add a bit more pigment side. It's here. It's staying on a bit more now you may find as you're working, that the doesn't flow very well. This can happen for several reasons. This can be either because you're not holding the pan the right angle or because the pain in this case is too thick. So what you can try is teaching the ankle of your hand. Or you can just press down lightly on your paper or do a little squiggle on Scott paper to get it flowing. And if none of those things work, you can dip just the tip of the nib into some water, and that usually get things going up really well. So now that we have some paint loaded onto our, we can get going with the foundational strokes, see in the next video. 6. Foundational Strokes: So we have our workbook set up. We have all fastened. We have paint loaded onto our Kliger of U Penn, and now we'll start the exercises that will need in order to develop the skills and muscle memory required for starting an actual clicker. Few peace and ending with a nice result. So wanting it, looting may brush and to reactivate your paint, By the way, with water, College will review this more in depth in the water color paint video, but you just wet it again, and then it sort of wakes up. And remember, last time I needed a bit more pigment, so I'll go back to the source over here. I don't make the whole thing. I put on a bit extra, so I'd like to leave it over there and use it as needed. It looks like this should flow nicely, they said before we'll test it on a little piece of scrap paper over here. Now, keep in mind, I am a lefty, and there are differences between the order of strokes and the angle of the hand for lefties in Brady's. But for the most part, the idea is the same. And if you find that holding the pen at the exact angle that I dio or using the order of strokes exactly as I listed them isn't working for you. Just switch it up and keep trying until you find the angle or the pen. That's right for you, either, right with my paper street in front of me or at a bit of an angle. Now this is not the same as a pencil. You never want to end up having the point directly facing down onto the paper. You want it to be gently resting. And while you can press firm, as we said before, you don't want it. Teoh be doing any unnatural movements. You don't wanna be pushing hard. That's why we push upwards very lightly. And that's why our up strokes are lighter than are down strokes. Depending on the neighbor you use, there could be more or less of a contrast here. The contrast is not that blatant, but you can still see that the up strokes are thinner than the down strokes and let me demonstrate Teoh Why so, as I said at the beginning, with my explanation of names, when I pressed down the times can separate, and that is what causes the inflow. So when you go upwards to, it's ready gently. Okay, I get it running. Here we go. And so the times don't really split on the create this nice hair line. So this is the idea here with the worksheets. Don't be frustrated if it's finicky at first. Calligraphy requires really good set up, and you have too often adjust in order to make sure your tools are working out their best. And that's OK. And that's why it's not a fast process, and it's not meant to be. It's meant to be slow. It's not to be intentional. Okay, so I'm doing my up strokes. And what's really nice with this is that I can just throw the tracing paper away, and I can keep the worksheet and redo it as many times over as I wish. They never get old. So practice like this is essential for anyone at any level of Kliger fee because these are the foundations. Everything is based off of these, and we can always improve the steadiness of her hand. No one is perfect. We're not machines, so it's always worthwhile to start with the warm ups, we should value our practice time. And we should look back on how far we've come and and appreciate how we got there. These are the down strokes, and again, they're not perfect. That's okay. Getting the hang flow right. At first, it takes a bit of time. Each project takes a few minutes to get get in the groove and realize the right balance of water and paint or ink. Okay, so these are the up strokes in the down strokes. So under turns are one of the combinations of up and down since is down hard pressure. Light pressure on overturns are the opposite compound. Curves are the combination of the two. I'll give you a few examples of these in real time. Pressing card, right? Pressing hard. Okay, So I'm just demonstrating for you how I'm going along. The lines, each kind of stroke, and I will do that all the way through so that my hand is warmed up. I'm working on my muscle memory and then I'll move on to letter forms. Now everyone's hand is different and some will release more pressure than others. So your results may vary for mine or from the person sitting right next to So that's fine. And it's all a matter of preference and the heaviness of your hand and there's no right or wrong See in the next video. 7. Learn Your Letterforms : thin. This video will just be continuing an explanation of how to use the worksheets before we move on. Teoh Qala graphing on our final piece on getting started with that. So again, I'm taping this down with a fresh piece of tracing paper, making sure my name is ready to go. Adding a bit of paint not too watery, so that hopefully won't spread too much on the tracing paper. But it's OK if it does, because again, this is just just to get us started. Just get her hand warmed up. Okay, so this is my minuscule off about one of my signature styles. Minuscule meaning, lower case magic school would mean upper case. So I suggest here basically just traced the letter forms and then use a line. Teoh, try it out on your own. See what feels good. See what doesn't feel good? You can feel free, Teoh experiment. But if you're a beginner, I recommend trying to stick as much as possible to my guide so that you have a good basis to start out. So on the next page I have the order of strokes per letter in case you're having a hard time understanding how each letter is built just to help you out. I'll show you with the letter A. I began doing this half oval extra paint on my nib, so I'm pressing down hard, so lots of it is coming out. Now I'm gonna light and I picked up the pan and impressing down again and then of them coming up words. And ideally, it's supposed to be a bit a bit later. Let's try that again. Now that a bit of the excess paint is off, What I do here is I kind of make little marks to get off the extra. Okay, let's try that again. Well, still, uh, it's really is the tracing paper that can sometimes got issues. You'll see watercolor is so much fun to work on with calligraphy, So I did my little over. Not exactly an oval, but it does resemble a shape. Hard pressure going applied pressure. Pick up the pen, do the second part of the letter down Stroke pressure. I have a joke, right? Okay. And again, this name doesn't create the most contrast between six and tens. But it's just in general a pretty good news for control. So we're gonna go ahead with it, OK? I will leave you to it. Work on these sheets as much as you like. An order guest or any. Suggest at least 10 minutes on the fundamental strokes and another 10 minutes on the alphabet so that you have a good starting place on. And I'll see you in the next video. Where will make some big progress towards our final project? 8. Set Up & Layout: thin this video. We're going to make big strides toward our final project by taking the skills that we learned from the worksheets that we just practise done and starting out with watercolor calligraphy were ready. Dio really get started, so I'll be working on watercolor paper from my final projects. Obviously, it's perfect for watercolor painting, but it works for calligraphy to there are different kinds of watercolor paper. My favorite companies are arches and can send on a good watercolor. Paper does not come cheap, but it's really worth it because there's a massive difference between the cheaper brands and the more expensive the better brands are able to hold so much more water on. It's a beautiful archival paper, and it can have really nice tooth to it, A really nice texture. So I will be using arches. I love using cold press because of the nice texture that it has. 300 grams is amazing for Kliger Fee, and it's nice and firm and it won't buckle much, and you can also use hot press for this video. I'll just using cold press, but I just want you to know that this is another perfectly good option to use for watercolor paper is just smoother. So it's even easier to write on honestly, but has the last of the interesting texture, which I really like to see in my work. So this is a water holder block, while this one is a watercolor pad. So this just has individual sheets that you re about as you go. But this is what I have right now for cool press. So it's gonna block, which means that all the papers and this notebook are glued together. This is actually sort of falling apart because it's well used but confident block, so you can't just easily rip off individual sheets. But what's really nice about it is that if you got the page really saturated with tons of water, if you were doing a full page watercolor, it stays really nice and still and doesn't buckle because when you're using a regular watercolor paper had you need to otherwise deep down the edges and prepare it before doing a full watercolor wash. Otherwise, things would get bumpy and it would dry unevenly. So if you can invest in a watercolor block and then you won't have that issue so what we're gonna dio right now is take a watercolor paper, grab a pencil. Nice start, pencil. That is hard. It should be an h pencil. Should be be, which would be a softer pencil, which would make more of a dent in the watercolor paper and be harder to a race. You should know that once you paint with watercolors on top of pencil, it's essentially impossible to erase the markings. So to get going with our final on project, we're gonna pencil things in. But using ah, hard pencil in each pencil and working as lightly as possible, we'll outline what we're doing. And then we'll rephrase that as much as possible while still being able to see our markings . And then we'll get started. Okay, so I am facing this project off of this piece that I did in the past. So it's a circle with florals around and Hebrew calligraphy in the middle. I'll be doing modern English biography right now. This is my reference. So have it on the side and my paper size ISS seven by 10 inches or 18 centimeters by 26 centimeters. But you can really work with whatever size you like this is just what I have on hand. Too big, not too small. So I'm gonna work off of a circle shape again. So that's what I'm gonna dio. And you don't get any special tools to make a a circle. You just need something circular in your house. This is the top of a random jewelry box, so I just place it right there in the middle, and I very lightly not pressing too hard. Well, I make sure it's centered more or less, and then I will trace around it. I pencil again. Not pressing too hard. Go over again. Gently. Yes, I missed a spot. Okay, See, it's not exactly even. That's OK. Go around yet. This is just our outline. Okay, that's better. I'm not focusing on the wreath at the moment. That will come later. What we're doing right now is deciding on our calligraphy content. So I think I'm gonna do is just right. A two word phrase. You can choose anything you want. That's not too long. That wolf it with in whatever space you choose again in the worksheet. I have some examples of phrases and words. If you would like to trace and copy those exactly. Or just to get some inspiration. Also, in terms of Flora Revis, you can look to this one that I did what I'm gonna dio. I think I'm just gonna right. Welcome home. So I'm going to find the center, Mr Cole. Measure it out. So I made my shape and I found my center, and I erased a line that was not in the center. So what I'm gonna dio is actually take a paintbrush, Teoh a race away some of that pencil shavings so I can actually add one more line to guide me. Okay, that looks pretty good. So now I'm going Teoh, do some pencil Kliger feet just to guide myself for a leader on what I'm doing the actual thing. So, in this case, the middle letter of the word them working on ISS see for welcome. So that's pretty much where I want my seat. And, uh, and the next word iss homes at h o m e. So there's no middle in the middle there, so I'll make sure that the middle Linus summer in between. Oh, and, um and now I'm going to pencil and the rest. Okay, great. So this is a nice little out when we have doesn't have to be perfect. Must be more or less what you like ends. Now that I have that I'm going Teoh erased my guidelines. You don't need them anymore. See in the next video. 9. Watercolor Calligraphy: now I'm ready. Teoh Telegraph. Make sure my name is clean. Then make sure it has activated paint on loaded onto the new. This is the final now, so I won't make sure that I have some test paper to use. Okay, I'll just get the access off and you'll see the difference right away between this and Cal graphing on that thin tracing paper. This is going to hold the ankle really nicely so, but with this texture, it's really beautiful. But a bit of difficulty comes with it, but it condemn finitely be overcome, and that's well worth the effort. So if you find that the name kind of gets caught on the texture, you can either change names or you can just work more lightly. Don't work so forcefully. And then I find that the naval kind of glide over the page as needed, especially with upward strokes. With downward strokes, you may find that you need to press harder than usual. Let's give it a go and see how it feels. Upstroke downs, joke upstroke, don't joke. Got a stroke? Tom's Joe. Now, honestly, this came out lighter than I liked by, perhaps didn't have enough water on on the name and I had a lot of pigment, but that's okay. It's still gonna look cool. Just gonna look a bit more delicate than I initially had wanted. So I'm gonna just continue now because you don't really. You don't want to go over again. If there's like one tiny spot that you missed out, you picked up the name too soon. Then you can go back and fill in. But you don't really want to retrace your letters. It just won't have the rate effect. That's what we make the guide lines and pencil markings for underneath. So that we follow them as precisely as possible is that we don't have any mishaps. You may find that you need to adjust your pay for an order to make Custer in shape, and that's totally fine. You don't have to remain perfectly still during this process. It's very dynamic, as it should be, slow and meditative, but it's still dynamic unchanging. No, I'm doing here ISS a little squash on me, the sender of the O really finding that the pain is not flowing out easily, so loading more. But as it's already pretty thin here I don't wanna lose too much because I want to keep the look and feel consistent. It's right over here. We got a really nice, um, thick, but otherwise it's proving to be quite thin, even on the down shocks. But that's cool is called more hairline. Look, I also have a very light hand for you. You might find that with the Nico Gee, you're able to get an even better in clo on the downward strokes, even on textured watercolor paper. But I'm working with Nico Gee regardless, because I know that it's it's a good starter in general. Okay, so I got my first word down. Welcome now on to home. So this came out a lot thinner than I'd like, but that's cool. We'll still upon drying your Sylvia would see nice color variations and the way that the water color paint dries on areas where I just apply paint and then went straight into calligraphy will be darker and areas where they can't started running out. We'll end up later, so I'm gonna let that dry and after that's completely dry. I'll go about erasing all the markings that are around it, and the next video will talk about water, color and more about how it works and some fun techniques that we can use to drop our floral wreath. We'll see in the next video. 10. Painting Techniques: in this video, I'll be talking a little bit more. About what? What are color paint really ISS, how it works, what's unique about it and some fun techniques that you can implement for continuing our final project. So, as we already talked about in terms of using what are colors for calligraphy, watercolor is what are activated, and the amount of water that you put into the pigment and mixed in will affect the outcome . What are colors really fun and unique? Because it allows for some really fun surprises that you can't achieve with any other medium wash and oils and other pains. What you see is what you get. But water color is really fluid and flexible, and it's actually a fun contrast to calligraphy, which is a lot more of a discipline. I find that after a day of calligraphy and trying to achieve consistent slants and consistent letter forms, it's really freeing for me. Teoh do some watercolor painting and just let go and see where the colors will end up and how the shapes will progress on their own as they move through water. So once again, with just one to put watercolor, I'm gonna demonstrate for you. Ah, couple of different techniques that we can use. And I'm going to talk a little bit about brushes now because I didn't mention it before we were using a brush. Teoh. Apply the water color paint to the calligraphy nib earlier, but it doesn't really matter what kind of Russia using for that. And for watercolor painting, the brush is more important. But once again, I don't really have a lot of, ah, brand preference. I know a lot of other artists use Princeton, so that's generally what I've picked up. And it's great to have brushes of various sizes and with some time oops, there synthetic brushes. There's real brush is made of horsehair, squirrel hair and all different sorts, and those will provide different flexibilities and fax different textures. So it's it's great to experiment. Some brushes will hold more water than others and generally for our purposes. You just wanna have one medium sized brush that gives you the ability to create semi fine details along with bulk your abstract shapes. I'm trying to keep things simple, one to put out a color, one paintbrush so that we can just move ahead and have something really cool without getting too finicky with trying out different materials, I'm gonna show, you know, the best set up that you should have. Have you wanna have a palate? I don't have a proper ballot. I just have a glass plate. You should definitely explore mixing different watercolors in creating radiance. But that's not the purpose of this course, but definitely something super fun to try out. So I have just this green and what you'll wanna have in addition to the paint and the paint brush is two cups of water, the bigger the better so that you don't have to get up and clean up your water so frequently. Anyone have a paper towel for dabbing mistakes or even just lightning a certain area on your paper and creating a cool texture with watercolor paper. So what I'm gonna do right now is show you two different styles. One is for more of an unexpected and abstract effect, and the other is for more precise details in outcomes. So first I'm gonna show you wet on wet, which is super super fun. Basically, you take a clean brush, you want it and then you'll take a piece of watercolor paper and you'll just what an area get nice and wet. Really good water quality paper can hold a ton of water. And now I'm gonna take this breast, which is already cream, and I'm going to make it nice and wet to with my already green water, and we will just drop it right in two. This area, which is already what can add even more pain and drop it again. Just show you and you'll see that the pain we'll start traveling on its own through the water and create really cool shapes all on its own. This is really fun technique to use an illustration and landscape painting, I mean at anything, and in the end, you just can't predict how it's gonna love. But it's it's really fun, and especially when you use multiple colors, this effect is truly special, and it can't be achieved with anything other than watercolors. If we check back on this in a few minutes, you'll see that the shapes just really have a mind of their own, and it's gonna be a prequel. The other technique I'd like to show you is wet, dry so what I'm dry allows you to have more control. It's more predictable. You pretty much know the result you're gonna get. It can be a great for when you want to layer You created, say, a leave and you just want to answer more dimension. So then you will paint Wait a little bit for that layer to dry, or you can blow dry it as well To speed up the process, you feel like there's no need to actually wait. You can just blow dry it and I will be done away sooner. And then you add on with some fresh water color paint this new layer that you have in mind . So I'll show you that right now I'll just draw. Using my brass just with one stroke will make cool. Leave she okay? I try that again with somewhere pigment just to compare Nice. So it's interesting to see her. The areas where I put more pressure are gonna end up darker. And when you go towards the edge the dryness of the brash or the lessening amount of pigment they all make cool effects that when it dries, will look lighter. But we'll still create really cool color variations, which is just so special about watercolor. So I'm waiting for this to dry. Okay, Now that that's dried a little bit, I'm going Teoh Ad somewhere peeing on top. Um, I don't want it to be too watery. I'd like to have a nice, bold color put and talk like a a line right here. And it's not fully dry because I don't feel like getting out my blow dryer. So you will still see a change in the stroke or I'll be making a sort of stiffs swift stroke. This is not completely dry, so it will spread out a bit, but that can have a cool effect. Okay, so you see what I mean here. When you dio wet, I'm dry. You can add really nice details, especially if you have a small detail brash or a fun shaped brush and wet on wet allows you to have these really cool, crazy effects that you can use for patterns or really anything on the sky's the limit over there. All right, so this has been more of ah, quick intro to watercolor in terms of painting specifically, and now we're going to move on to creating the wreath around our telegraphed piece in watercolor, and it's gonna be amazing. I'll see in the next video. 11. Watercolor Wash Background: what we're gonna do now is a race. The markings, Um, as much as possible so that they won't show up underneath our floral wreaths before my wreath. I will quickly add a bit of a background because I really liked Dimension that it added for this piece that had on the cover of the class. So I'm gonna really, really quickly load up my brash load up my bigger brush because I want to quickly cover up the side area. And because this is a block, I don't have to worry about taping down the sides. But this is an instance where I'm doing what's called a watercolor wash right now. And if this weren't a block of watercolor paper, I would need to take down the sides to prevent buckling and uneven drying. When I'm doing this, it's kind of mindless, but in a good way. And I just like to zone out and take deep breaths and check my posture, which is usually horrific. And just try and think about things to be grateful for how happy I am that I'm getting to do art in the middle of the day and painting and and just doing the things that I love and whether you're doing this at night or as your hobby or kids are running around screaming, just take these moments of long my list brushstrokes and reflects on and what you're doing and just doing out for men and todo So if I were Teoh, make a mistake right now, and I accidentally drop a whole bunch of green paint in the center or in a place I don't want it to be. What you can do is just put a bit of water on a piece paper towel and just dab it. You just want to do it as soon as possible. Or you can even use a little Q tip and do the same, but in water and dab it until it rubs out. You do want to make sure, though, that that area dries before you do something else to it, because otherwise it would be like painting wet on wet. And that may not necessarily be what you want to do at that very moment. Okay, before this wash dries, I'm going Teoh, just do a couple of drops. I really like this technique. Just adds hm someday. Now, Mick and dynamic shapes and some depths. I think it's a fun look. Okay, I'm liking how this background is looking, So I'm going to give it some time to dry, and then we will come back and start on the florals for the wreath itself. Us. You in the next video. 12. Painting the Wreath: Okay, Now I'm going to take my Princeton brushed. This is size six. Select round again. Can use whatever average sized breasts you would like. This is just what I have on hand. And I think it's small enough for some cute small details and big enough for some bigger floral things. Like I'm no large leaves. Okay, so I'm going to get some paint on my brush. I don't want it to be to what? I want it. I'm not looking really for the wet on wet Look, right now, I'm looking for more of the wet. I'm dry, so I'm gonna make sure my brushes pretty saturated in groups and not stopping. What? You can always test it on a piece of paper. I'll grab my little test paper from before. Just see. Yeah, that looks good to me. Not to what? I don't really have a plan here in terms of my Reese, but you're welcome to first pencil yours in on, then lightly erase it as much as possible before painting on top of it. I'm just going to sort of go with the flow, feel free to refer to my worksheets and and feel free to refer to the artwork on the cover the class, so I usually start out with some larger leaves on. What's fun about brushes is that you can use their shape to make belief quite easily. Just half do you're in dent and used shape to do the work. I like to heat my reefs semi symmetrical. They don't have to be exactly symmetrical, but it's nice to keep an eye on what space and keep an eye on balance of color. You don't wanna have one area that super dark and everything else is really light and passed deli when you keep things feeling like they're meant to be together. Unlike there wasn't an accident, that if there is, it's OK. It's all part off the learning process. - No way coming along with filling up. I'm really just saying random shapes here. This is not planned. Outer and jerk. It is just what comes to mind and using the limitations that I have to my advantage as best I can. Now what I'm gonna dio rather than over filling this, whether an M shape since whimsical florals, I'm gonna start adding more energy tell with wet and dry peas so this is not fully dry, but it's mostly dry. So without waiting long, I can already add on some fun details of this one. Still wet. I painted that one recently. What are color? Just dry quite fast, though. So if you do want that wet on wet look, you need to move quickly. So here I see that this is really dark and I definitely don't want that to stand alone and be the darkest part of the whole wreath. So I'm going to make sure that this section also gets darker. I am more detail to the equivalent of these are here. This is really helpful to create a pop against that watercolor wash backgrounds. But the florals don't get lost to their uh, this is one of color, so we need to use color variation. Teoh me get interesting. That's what will make all the difference in the end. Now again, this is something you would ideally dio with the fine detail birth. So if you found get one you have on hand, grab one. It could be fun. But if you don't have one, don't feel bad. You can really work with with anything you have. I'm just tested out and see what's working for you. Um, that was not if you are totally new to weather color beans, and I would definitely recommend you're either making a few versions of these or pencilling it out beforehand. I'm just going with the flow. That's see, Well, they can dio I kind of want to fill in these holes of these fires, and I'm gonna add and some really translucent. He just really liked so that they're filled in, but that I can still see those funky shapes underneath. Okay, so they're definitely more I can add in here. Maybe I'll quickly add a couple of flowers, but for the most part, liking what I'm seeing here, This is everything that we said it would be. This is E kala graft, watercolor wreaths and were able to see how we learn to dio simple calligraphy freezes. And if you look closely you conceive color variation. You'll see it better in real time. Since this is a watercolor block, we can't just wait for it to dry and remove the tape and get going. We need to separate this piece from the block. So my block is broken, but let's ignore that. Let's take this section of the block and you'll see this black area is where they're all pasted together. So what you can do is take a rule her and just carefully stick it into the top sort of front Yet along the edge and you'll feel it dipping end. Do that all along the edges carefully on your sort of cutting it out. Tom. It's binding and then you can peel it. I will wait until it's completely dry before doing that, so that there's no worries of buckling it. And here you have it. All right, I'll see in the next video were all discussed. Ah, fun bonus project that I'm inviting you to and where will do a little recap of all the things we've learned together. See you in the next video 13. Recap & Bonus : all right, that wraps up your introduction. Teoh. Watercolor. Like a feat class. I really hope you enjoy yourself on that. You've gained a lot of value from this course. I put this together with hopes that beginners and more advanced artists could delving into something new multiple new things in an easy and fluid way. Remember that calligraphy is a skill learned over time. There's no short cuts to developing muscle memory. Make sure to upload your final projects on any comments, reviews questions you may have into the project section. I'm so excited to see everything that you guys have made, and I can't wait to connect with you. You can following in social media accounts and skill share here to be updated when I release you classes on subjects like uber calligraphy and in portraiture. I would like to invite you to join in online Passion Project, which is an alphabet Siris of watercolor painted postcards that include gold foil lettering in middle. I designed this post cars because I absolutely love handwritten correspondence. It's part of what brought me to my lifelong love of calligraphy. So if you'd like to join me, make sure to pick up that I use Draft more watercolor postcards and you can send them to my instagram or here. Basically, the idea is to design a watercolor postcards to sign on the front and Thio Khao back the letter on back and send the hatch friends and family. If you share it with me, I'll be sure to share it with my social media accounts and included in my blood. Thank you so much for joining me. Help You have as much fun invited Creating this projects, you know, future Still shared class.