Watercolor Fundamentals: Easy Winter Snowflakes

1. Introduction: Hi, welcome to watercolor fundamentals, winter snowflakes. My name is Charlotte DeMolay. I'm an artist and instructor and I have been for over 25 years. I work in a variety of media and I loved to experiment and try new techniques going beyond just the traditional methods. In this class, we're going to use a couple of very simple techniques to create a wintery snowy scene. You can do this at any skill level. This is even a great project for kids or teenagers. Will go over the supplies we need using masking fluid. And how to get this interesting textural technique. Join me for watercolor fundamentals, winter snowflakes. 2. Supplies: This project doesn't require a lot of supplies. You'll need some watercolor paper. It doesn't need to be super high-quality. I'm using a student grade paper that I got from Michael's. You'll need watercolor paints and a brush or two to apply it. You'll also need masking fluid for this project and a dedicated brush to apply the masking fluid with. Don't ever put this brush back into your watercolor paints. I actually marked my brush with a bit of blue tape so I know not to use it in my paints. You will also need some regular table salt for this project. It doesn't need to be sea salt, kosher, anything just regular household salt. To create the snow and snowflake images. I'm using paper doillies, these are the kind you can use for like placemats or decorations. You can usually find these at craft stores or even Walmart. You don't have access to doillies. You can make some snowflakes the old-fashioned way, like we use to in grade school. I've got a quick demonstration to remind you how to do that. Okay, so just take a regular piece of printer paper folded up in half again, and then keep folding towards that center to you have a triangle shape. And I just cut the end off. That's going to be the shape and size of my snowflake. And from this point you just make tiny cuts, especially through the folds because they'll be repeated around the flake. I'm not doing any specific shape. It's a little bit tough to cut this so make sure you have some good scissors. And I cut little nicks, triangles, rectangles, just whatever you can. Try and take tiny little cuts because it can create them too big. It loses that snowflake effect. If it gets too hard to cut the fold. You can open it up and make a few more snips in it. If you do in this project with children, you may want to do this part yourself depending on their skill level. And you open it up and you have a snowflake. 3. Masking Fluid Flakes: I'm going to start by having my paper taped down. You can do it on a watercolor board or I use foam core. Gather your doillies, or snowflakes, your masking fluid. Start arranging them around the paper, however you'd like. I have mine sort of going off the paper. Take your masking fluid and you're going to fill in the holes either in your doily or your cut snowflake. If it helps to lightly taped down the paper, you can do that. I just hold it down because it doesn't have to be very precise. I'm going to go around the edge of this snowflake as well to give it just a little bit more of that snowyflake look. I'm not being precise. I'm not painting it in an exact line/ Just dabbing it around and getting in the little cutouts that I made. Carefully lift it up. If you take too long with it, it's gonna peel up some of the masking fluid you may need to go back and dab down a few spots if it gets peeled up. Now I'm gonna do this with the doily. This goes much faster because the holes are smaller and it lays flat because it hasn't been folded up where you cut it. If you're able to use doillies, you'll find you'll be able to work a lot faster. You're doing the same thing. You're just quickly filling in all the cut open holes on the doily. When you lift it up, it gives it that snowflake effect. Again, I didn't go around the edge on this one, but you can. However you'd like to do it. Go around and do some overlapping. The more masking fluid you have on your paper, that's more of the paper that's going to be left white as part of our snowflake snowstorm look. Again, you do want to work quickly because like I said, as masking fluid dries, it will stick to the paper and peel up. Now I'm cutting a little section from that placemat doily that I've used before on other projects. Putting this here in the middle, so it sort of breaks up that circle look that I created with the two other doillies. Now I'm going to load up my brush heavily with masking fluid and tap it around the paper to give it some falling snow look. Now we set this aside and let it dry. You want it fully dry before we go on to the next step. 4. Paint and Salt Magic: Now we're ready to put some paint on this wintry scene. Again, be sure that your masking fluid is completely dry before we start on this step and have your household table salt nearby because you'll need to use it pretty quickly. I'm only using two colors in this painting, ultramarine blue and Alizarin crimson. Keep your palate limited during this project between the white of the paper from the masking fluid and the effect that the salt will make in the paint that adds enough interest to this painting. As you're applying the paint to the paper, keep it very, very wet. You will need that for the salt effect. For that reason, I'm using a mop brush so that it'll hold more water, but any sort of flat brush or even a fat round brush will do. I'm just dropping in that crimson here and there. You can tell I have my paper tilted. I generally work that way with watercolor, but it might be running just a little bit, so I'm going to tilt it up so it doesn't all run down to the bottom. Watercolor dries lighter than it appears when you put it on the paper. So I'm trying to get some of the colors deep and heavy in here. Add a few paint flecks. I'm going to add a little bit of dark splatter in there as well. This helps with that snowy wintery blizzard look. I'm putting in some splatter of both, ultramarine blue and Alizarin crimson. Get your table salt ready, make sure again your paper's fairly wet. And just sprinkle it randomly around your paper. Try not to get too close to your paper when you're doing it just so that it won't clump up in spots. After this dries, we will finish it. If you'd like to watch the effect the salt has on a pigment as a painting dries. That's what the next video is. It's just for fun. There's not really any instruction or demonstration in it. So if you don't want to watch that, feel free to skip it and go to the finish video. 5. A Fun Salt Timelapse: The chemical reaction between salt and water is what creates that interesting textural effect. Essentially what's happening is salt absorbs the water but leaves the pigment. So as a painting is drying and the salt is absorbing the water, it creates that crystalline look where it's pulling the water away from the pigment. This is a neat technique for backgrounds, or in the case of this project, the crystalline adds to that snowy effect. 6. Finishing Your Painting: When your painting is completely dry, we'll go to the finishing step. First, you rub off all the excess salt from the painting. Then you're going to peel off the masking fluid. I prefer doing this with my fingers. You can also use a kneaded eraser to erase off the masking fluid. I've sped this up a little. It's not super exciting to watch somebody rub masking fluid off a painting. Then peel off the tape that you use to hold the paper down to your surface. Now, I painted this on a 9 by 12 sheet of watercolor, but I'm gonna put it in an eight by eight frame. I did this because I knew there would be some areas that are more interesting than others, but I'm going to take my frame and decide which I liked best to cut it down and frame it. This area has a lot more of the snowflake. This area has a lot more of the salt effect, but not as much of the masking fluid and snowflake look. I think I'm going to go right in the middle and capture a little bit of both. To get that eight by eight size, I'm actually going to use the glass from the frame to trace. If you do this, be extremely careful with the glass. You don't cut yourself. You can also use the frame and just trace around the inside of the opening instead of using the glass. This is what that finished eight by eight looks like. Okay, let's go over and talk about your project. 7. Your Project: Hope you enjoyed watching the demonstrations for this class. If you painted along with me, you already have a finished project. Go ahead and take a photo and upload it to the project section. I would love to see how you got creative with the fluid and the salt. Then to finish it out, you can frame it like I did mine. Or you could use it for cards, bookmarks, really anything. I framed mine because I'm planning on using it as seasonal decor in my house. If you'd liked this class, please click on My Profile and follow me. And feel free to explore some of the other classes I've created here on Skillshare. Thank you.