Transcripts
1. Introduction to Floral Series and Today's Topic: Hi, I'm a watercolor artist and surface designer
based out of Canada. I've been painting watercolor, florals and other subjects
and slotted six years now. And my florals are the
very first thing you will notice if he was at
my Instagram page. This is my car class in
the watercolor florals. These comprising
20 shot glasses. The first two classes I've already posted here
on Skillshare. And if you visit my
Skillshare profile, you will find a separate
section where I've posted all the classes belonging
to this floral series. Be sure to check
those classes out. Each glass is dedicated to painting one particular flower. By main intention here is
to break down and otherwise lengthy gloves into
short bite-size gases, which will be easy to follow. They wouldn't bother you
to create many projects. Today in this class, we are going to paint
black died Susan. Together we will explore
pitches of Black Eyed Susan, followed by some color mixing
and warm-up exercises. And then finally, we
will paint the flower together step-by-step
as a class project, I would like you to paint this flower and then
pick a picture of your project and post it under the projects and resources
section of this class. I'll be more than happy
to provide feedback. If you liked this class, please do consider
leaving a review so this class can reach
maximum students. And I can read your
comments and suggestions. Are you ready to
paint florals with me? Let's get started.
2. Supplies & Brands: Let's look at the art
supplies that we are going to need for today's class. Now the art supplies overall that I'm using are
pretty much going to be the same for all the classes
in this flawed and CDs. And if there's anything
different that I will be using in
a particular class, I will cover a quick section in which I will describe
all those art supplies, which I haven't
mentioned in this class. So let's begin with
the paper first. I'm going to use Canson
Heritage Cold Pressed paper. Now this is a really huge blog. It's about 18 " by 24 ", so it covers pretty much more
than half of my desk size. So what I'm going to do is
I'm going to cut the sheets into smaller chunks and
then use this paper. So these are the sheets which I have got into different sizes just to make sure that I don't
waste any leftover people. These are the sheets
now this paper has beautiful texture. It's I think close to Arches, cold pressed paper if I have to compare two papers together. But this has recently
become one of my favorites. And I really like to paint
florals on this paper. For all the projects in this series are all the
classes in the series. I will be using this
particular brand of people. Now let's look at the brushes. I'm going to use my good old Princeton brushes in size six. This is the Heritage Series. And then I'm going to use a size six from the
Neptune series, size four from the
Neptune series. And I've got this size three
for all the detail work. And this is from the Aqua
Elite Series by Princeton. I will also be using bigger
brushes such as round 12, size 12, and size eight. But for today's class in
particular, these two sizes, particularly size six and
size three, are sufficient. For paints. I'm primarily using my dealer Romney
act refined set of 48 half pans and also a few assaulted tubes
from my Maddie Blue. So I'll be mostly using all my color choices or shades
from these two pallets. But I also have
my usual palette, which I've prepared from
assorted brands for the sheets that are
particularly not in either of these two pallets. I'll either mix it myself
using my custom palette, and I will let you know
the shades I use on the fly as we mix our colors. So these are the three pallets. You don't have to
restrict yourself to using a particular
brand that I'm using. Feel free to have any watercolors or you would
like to use for this class. But the main idea is to have
all the primary colors. Few shades of greens
are few shades of blue and reds and
pinks and a few Brown. So this is all you need
for painting pretty much all the flowers
that we are going to explore in this series. You're also going to need two cups of clean water to clean your brushes and a ballot. And you can also use one of these or
palette mixing trays. Or even a clean blend
ceramic dish is sufficient.
3. Reference Study: Black Eyed Susan: Let's study some Black
Eyed Susan flowers before we begin to paint them. Black card Susan's are quite straightforward in terms
of shape and color. They have a prominent
dark brownish, black center or a flower head. Then they have bright sunshine yellow petals that are thin. And most of them
have a zero point or the fine tip on
the outer edge. They have roughly
about 13 to 14 petals. These flowers have long, sturdy stems with
nice green leaves that are placed towards the
bottom portion of the stem. There are no leaves close
to the neck of the flower, so we will try to paint
them away from the flower. With these steps in our head. Let's try to paint
a loose version of the Black Eyed Susan today.
4. Swatches & Color Mixing: Now that we've studied how
the flower looks like, Let's do some color
mixing exercise, and then we will practice painting different parts
of the Black Eyed Susan. So in terms of color, I think the flower
is quite easy. So all we need is two or
three shades of yellow, some greens, and some browns, and that's about it. So that way the color palette
is very easy to comprehend, but we will still
make some colors. And I'll show you the swatches
of the colors that I'm particularly going to use
to paint this flower. I have Naples yellow
from my Maddie Blue. It's some kind of a yellow
that I really like. It's not as bright as primary yellow and it's
not very saturated. So I think this yellow
will form a good base. It's not very translucent. So this is going to be the first shade of
yellow that I'll use. Then I'm mixing some turmeric
yellow or Indian yellow. It's slightly
brighter than yellow, ocher and a bit more darker
than cadmium yellow. So I'm going to use the shade as the darker color or the
second layer of the flower. Then I'm going to use primarily yellow to add that brightness. You don't really need
three shades of yellow. But I want to experiment with all the three
yellows that I'm mixing. So I'm going to go ahead and use the darker shades
for blending on top of the mat yellow
that I selected. So mixed the yellows you like. And then as we saw, the flower head is
dark brown to black. So I'm going to just mix some
burnt umber and maybe add a bit of black into it to form a really
dark shade of brown. So that's burnt umber. And I'll probably use
two sheets of this like a light brown and then a
saturated darker mix of paint. Now as, as review
class projects, I often notice
that the petals of your flowers are a bit watery or they have
watery texture. So to avoid that, always make sure to have
the second layer or the darker color a bit more
thicker than your base layer, which is slightly more watery. That way you'll be able to blend your darker shade nicely
into the lighter color. And you won't get
those water droplets kind of a texture
onto the paper. So that's one tip I
would like you to follow if you're just starting
out with watercolors. Now, let's swatch the colors
that we mixed so far. Let's start with the browns. So the first brown is the darker shade that we mixed without
adding too much water. And then for the second one, I'm just adding some extra
water to make a lighter shade. The first one is the
Naples yellow or the mat yellow that I'm
mixed in the very beginning. The second one is Indian
yellow or turmeric yellow. And the third one is the
bright primary yellow. Okay, now let's
look at the greens. We're definitely going to need some sap green for the
leaves and the stem. So I'm going to use
some sap green from my MIT blue and also some green gold
to add a pop of color. Green gold has this really
bright saturated tone to it. And I really find that natural and organic compared to
all the other greens. So I'm going to add a bit of
green gold to my sap green. I'd probably use this mixture of sap green and green gold. And then maybe just a
green gold by itself. So it's all up to you what kind of greens
you want to use. But I'd definitely like to add other mixes to my sap
green to build up more shades. So you could also add
brown to your sap green, a bit of yellow ocher
to your sap green. If you don't really
have green gold. We are going to need
about six colors to paint this flower today.
5. Warm-Up Exercise: Now let's begin with
the warm-up exercise. As usual. We will start
with the flower head, which is brownish black. So I'm just going to
stipple some dots using my size six round brush from
Princeton Heritage Series. So the idea here is to
not have a blob of paint, but a few stippled dots. And this is how the center
of the flower will look. If we look at from the front or the center view
or the front view. We'll also paint one side
facing flower today. For that, we're going to paint the flower head a bit more
like the shape of a dome. So I'm painting one
more flower head, which is slightly more sideways as opposed to be
seen from the front angle. So this is a dome shaped flower head has
seen from the side. Next up, we're
going to water down the yellow color that we mixed earlier and practice
some petals. I'm using my same
size six round brush. And I'm drawing some
thin and long petals having a tip on the outer edge. If you have taken
the earlier class, you will notice
that the shape of this petal is somewhat similar to the shape of the
petals of a cone flower. It's just that the
petals of this flower are not as droopy
as the cone flower. So we don't really want
to give them too much. Then I'm using a darker
shade of yellow just to have some petals darker in color and some petals
that are light. So use the two yellows
that you mixed earlier to have a nice
gradient on the patterns. I'm also trying out
a few petals using the primary yellow
I'm mixed earlier. So make sure that you experiment with all the
colors that you have mixed. So that's a beautiful gradient of yellow colors I've got there. So try to practice a few petals. And then we will
practice the stem. I'm using a mix of sap, green and green gold
that we mixed earlier. Again, the shape
of the leaves is a way similar to what
we painted earlier. So this is actually something
you've practiced before. If you've been following
the classes in this series. I really liked the freshness
of this green color. We'll try to paint the leaves
away from the flower head, just like we saw in the
reference pictures. Now if you want,
you can always add a darker shade of
green to bring about that extra texture and
try to bring it to life. So this is all
about the warm-up. Like I said, the flower is
pretty easy to comprehend, but still do give a few
minutes to practice your brush strokes in order
to get that flower rate.
6. Black Eyed Susan Main Flower: Let's begin painting
the main flower. I'm going to paint this
flower with a front view. So we're going to start by painting the
center of the flower, which is the flower head. So I'm just stippling
some brownish black dots. And then I'm going to
mix my yellow colors. And I'm going to start to pull out petals from the center, coming all the way in
the outward direction. Now as my brush touches
the center flower head, it will slightly bleed
into the patterns. And I'm really liking that mixing of brown into
my yellow petals. It just looks a
lot more natural. Let's take a closer look. So it's okay if some of the brown color bleeds
into your petals. Don't worry about that. We really want that in
organic and natural look to the petals or else it will just look like a
graphical image. And we certainly don't want that when we're painting
with watercolors. Be intentionally
unintentionally to letting your petals
touching the center. For some petals, you can keep it away from
touching the center. And put some petals, you can intentionally
bleed some brown color. And then I'm using
a darker shade of yellow to brighten
up a few petals. You can use this color
only on a few petals and a few others can
still stay light. So have a beautiful blending
of the shades of yellow. As you can see, the
darker shade of yellow that I used earlier was we take go or a lot more saturated compared
to the base layer. That's exactly what I
mean when I say add less water into
the darker shades. So that's the Black
Eyed Susan flower. Now we'll go ahead
and add a stem. This flower and few leaves. I also intentionally started the stem right from
the top because I wanted a little bit of
that green color to blend into the petals
and the center. Then I'm adding a couple of
leaves on both the sides. And that's it. That's our front-facing
Black Eyed Susan flower. In the next part, we
will paint a side facing Black Eyed Susan flower, tilted at an angle.
7. BONUS: Side Facing Flower: In this section of the class, we will paint a side
facing Black Eyed Susan, tilted at an angle. So we will start
with the flower head and draw it in the
shape of a dome. And then we will come down
to the petals and the stem. So I'm starting out by drawing
a side facing flower head, just like we practiced earlier. That's the shape we want to try. I'm using my size
six round brush. And once my dome shaped
flower head is in place, I'm going to start pulling out some petals similar to
cone flower petals, but not as droopy as them. We will still try to keep
them a bit spread out. So I'm using the same
shades of yellow. And then I'm pulling
out the petals. Just like before. I'm going to let some of
the petals bleed into the flower head to get
that slight brown tinge. Okay, So these are all the petals that
I see from the side. And then we're going to
paint some back petals. So for those you're
just going to see the start of the
petal as if it's calling at the back or it's getting hidden when you
see it from the front. So that's how I want to
show the back petals. Draw about three to
four back petals. And then I'm going to drop
in some darker shades of yellow near the outer
edge of the petals, and also a bit near the center. And then once you're happy with the way the
petals are looking, go ahead and add a stem
tilted at an angle. Tried to pull down the stem from the imaginary center
of the flower, which is underneath
the flower head. So that way you
will stem will look a lot more attached
to the flower. And then I'm going
to add a couple of leaves further down away
from the flower head. Make sure you add
some variation in the sizing of your lips
and also its shape. So I added about three leaves, and that's about it. That's our side facing
Black Eyed Susan flower.
8. Next Steps: As a class project, I would like you to
paint Black Eyed Susan flower from
different angles. Submit your projects under the projects and resources
section of the class. And I would be glad to
provide detailed feedback. Be sure to check out
other classes in this series and do
paint along with me. Like I always say, if you like the series, please do leave a review under the review
section of the class. Also dropping your
suggestions if you would like to learn any
flower in particular. Thank you so much for
painting along with me today, I will see you again
in the next class.
Pooja Kenjale-Umrani, Author of MODERN WATERCOLOR WORKSHOP
