Watercolor Insect Illustration

1. Intro: Hello. Welcome. My name is Louise. I'm a Swedish watercolor wildlife artist and art educator. I first discovered watercolor a few years ago, and it helped me heal from burnout and also start a whole new life as an artist. And nowadays, I help other people do the same. In this class, we are painting three little insect paintings together, and I will share with you my exact process step by step. Everything from drawing up the sketch, mixing the colors, putting down the watercolor layer by layer. Creating this nice, abstract, looking background and putting the finishing touches on your painting. I will share with you all of the tools and materials that I use, how I use them, and walk you through my thought process all the way through. Insects are just fascinating subjects to paint. Their beautiful colors, their weird alien looking bodies. And they really lend themselves well to painting these quick little paintings that you can finish in just half an hour or so. By the end of this class, you will feel more confident in the process of making a watercolor painting in this particular style, and you'll be ready to apply it to another subject, whether that's another insect or an animal of some kind. And you will have one or two or three beautiful little paintings that you can put in a cute little frame and put on your wall or maybe give away to someone you like. I welcome you to a nice, relaxing painting session, and if you're ready to jump in, I will see you inside the class. 2. Class Project: For this class, we are going to paint three little insect paintings together, a blue beetle, a red beetle, and a honey bee. And I'm going to walk you through the sketching and painting process of these step by step and share my process as I'm painting my decisions and all of the tools and materials and techniques that I use. If you want to, you can paint all three of these insects, or you can choose just your favorite one and use that as your class project. Reference photos that I use here are from unsplash.com, which is a free library of high quality royalty free photos, and they're all downloadable below. I've also included scans of my sketches. You can download them. You can print them out and have them beside you as you draw. And you will also find a list of all of the tools and materials that I use, including all of my colors. Recommend watching each video from start to finish and then follow along one step at a time. Or you might want to watch the entire class first, and then tackle your class project, that's entirely up to you. All of the demonstrations are in real time. Nothing is sped up or cut out. I am a fairly fast painter, I think, so if it takes you a bit longer or quicker, that's totally fine. Just go at your own pace. There is no rush. If you have any questions throughout the class, you can ask them in the discussion tab below, or you can send me an email, and my email address will be on my About page that's below this video. If at any time during this class, you feel an impulse to maybe use a different color or include more details, maybe remove some details or whatever else it might be, I invite you to follow that impulse. You don't have to follow exactly what I'm doing. And if you feel frustrated during the painting process. Just know that that is very normal with watercolor. This is a very difficult medium. It's a lifelong practice. I've been doing this for five years now, and I still make mistakes all of the time. I mess up a lot of my paintings. I even make mistakes throughout this class. That's part of the process. So much of learning watercolor is about getting to know the behavior of this medium. And the behavior of your particular paper and paints and brushes. And that only comes with time and practice. Many of the techniques that I show you in this class can take months to get the hang up. Like controlling the amount of water on your brush, for example. So don't feel disheartened. Just relax, be patient with yourself, be kind to yourself, and most importantly, enjoy your painting practice. If you're ready, let's jump in and talk tools and materials. 3. Materials: Let's talk painting materials. So this is what my workspace looks like. It's not a huge desk at all. It's a pretty tiny space, which is what I love about watercolor. I said, you don't need a lot of space. And I have my little papers here, and this is Arches, 640 gram paper, so you can see, it's really thick. It's not going to buckle at all. It can handle a lot of water. It's almost cardboardy and it has, like, this, I think it's quite rough, but it's just cold pressed 640 gram paper that I have torn into these little pieces. Then we, of course, have our paints, and this is just a custom, like an empty watercolor palette that I bought a few years ago was from Paul Rubens. And I have filled it with my favorite tube paints. And these are a mixture of Windsor and Newton Professional watercolors and Daniel Smith watercolors. So I have my blues, my greens, my reds, my earth tones, my yellows, some black, some white gouache. I won't be using most of these colors today. I will just tell you what color I am using when I am painting. And what I love about this palette is that it has this really big mixing area that I can remove. And there are many variations of these kinds of palettes. They are inexpensive. I like having plenty of space to mix my colors. And since we are painting small, we won't need lots of mixing wells because we will be using so little paint. So just putting our little pools of paint on this on a flat surface is going to be just fine. I, of course, have my water, two simple containers. I have a small one that I like to keep as clean as possible. And then I have this larger container for, like, rinsing out my brushes, like, fully rinsing them out. And this is a piece of dish cloth that is wet but not sopping wet. I've just rinsed it out and, like, squeezed all of the water out because I don't want my brushes to get too dry. So if this was to be dry, it would just be sliding all over the place, and it would be hard for it to absorb the water and the paint from the brushes. I use it to dab out excess water from my brushes and also excess paint. I also, of course, have a roll of tissue paper or toilet paper or whatever kind of paper you want to use. But this is more for, like, completely drying out the brushes or I can even use it for testing the hue of the paint if I want to. And also to fix mistakes. As I'm sure there might be some mistakes. During the painting process, there always is. That's completely normal. Tissue paper is awesome for that because you can use it to just dab. Uh, on the painting and suck up the paint and even get almost, like, the white of the paper back. And then, of course, I have some brushes, and the only ones I'm going to use for these paintings, since they are really small, is this. This is a number 12. It's an Escoda and it's just a simple round brush. A synthetic brush, and I like that it has this really fine tip, but can also hold a lot of water, and I like that it's kind of it's a bit bouncy. I like that about synthetic brushes. So it's a preference thing. But I can get a lot of precision with this, and it's just right for this kind of tiny little piece of paper. And then for my finer details, I have just a tiny little brush. This is just a really cheap, simple, fine liner brush that I got with. I think it was a set of watercolor pencils, actually. I get a lot of precision with this, and it's also a synthetic brush. So it's really stiff and it maintains its fine tip really well. And then for my sketches, I'm just going to be using, like, a regular little pencil. I like these. Like, they're just sticks of graphite with some thin plastic casing around them. And I also have mechanical pencil, I have a needed eraser, which is good for just when you want to lighten up your sketch. Not really good for erasing fine details. That's why I have this little guy, a fine tip, mechanical eraser. It's entirely okay if you don't have all these things. Just use whatever you have, use the paper, you have the paints that you have. You don't have to use the exact hue that I'm using. Just pick something as similar as possible. Yeah, that's it for materials. So let's get started. 4. Blue Beetle Sketch: We're starting off with the Blue beetle here, and our first order of business is to draw up a sketch, a really simple sketch with just the right amount of information so that we know what we're doing when we're painting. And the way I approach all of my sketches is to always start with something super basic and refine from there. So I start by squinting at my reference to get the main gist of the basic shapes and angles that I see. Here I'm looking at the angle of the beetle in the picture, and then I transfer this line to my sketch, and then I measure out the length of the body where I want it to start and stop. And then the relative size of the upper and lower parts of the body. And then the general shape of the beetle, which is a kind of egg shape. When I have my simple basic shapes in place, I start refining my edges a little bit more. This is eye measuring, and it's the most critical skill to learn as an artist if you want to be able to draw accurate sketches. Eye measuring is a collection of tricks to use when looking at a reference or a subject, such as comparing the lengths and sizes of different parts of the subject to one another, like I just did. It's squinting and mentally simplifying what you see so that you can filter away the noise and get the basic shapes right first. And what I'm doing here is looking at the negative space, the shape of the background around the subject to help me get the shape of this leg right because often the shape of the background can be much easier to get right than the shape of a limb, for example. I also mark out where my brightest highlights are going to be. That's where I want to keep the white of the paper. And sometimes also where the darkest shadows are, the more of these decisions I can make now, the more I can relax during the painting process where I won't have the same freedom of fixing mistakes. So that's my sketch. This is the level of detail that I prefer. I know where everything will go, but I can always refine the exact shapes and details later on as I'm painting. 5. Blue Beetle Background: Since this beetle is much darker than the background, I'm actually going to start by laying in a background wash first. And this is because I don't want to have to paint around all of these little legs and antenna and risk re wetting the paint there and having it bleed out into the background. I'm choosing some Raw umber, this lovely muted beige color. Some burnt sienna, a rich reddish brown. These warm colors are going to nicely complement the cooler, darker tones of my beetle. And that's a good trick when choosing your colors, having a mix between warm and cool. And to mix them up and get a more neutral gray, I'm adding some ultramarine blue. I don't want the background too saturated because, again, that's going to steal away the focus from the beetle. And also, it's just a matter of personal preference. I prefer more muted colors in my backgrounds as it makes it look more natural. I like to be super simple and abstract with my backgrounds. Really just drop in one or two or maybe three colors and swish them around. To give an impression of the environment, but not spelling it out completely. I want the subject to be the clear focus, not the background. So I'm starting with wetting the paper around the subject with clear water. And so I will have some areas where I can just drop in some color and have it mix on the paper. If the paper were to be completely dry, I would get sharper edges to my brush strokes, which I don't want in this particular case. And then I drop in some cooler tones first. And then gradually add more color. Watercolor always fades and lightens as it dries. So these colors won't be this dark and saturated later. And if they do dry too light, I can always add a second layer with more color depth if I want to. But this is it for now. I'm going to let this dry and then come back to add the first layer to the beetle in the next step. 6. Blue Beetle Layer 1: I'm going to go ahead and mix up the colors for this beetle. Since we're working ourselves up from light to dark with watercolor, I start by identifying the lightest parts of these colors that I see. And I see a kind of a primary blue color somewhere between cool and warm blue. I see some purple, I see some pink, and this beautiful, cool, bluish green over here. So I'm going to mix up a blue by adding some ultramarine and then warming it up with sal blue. Also adding in some black so I can darken my colors when I want to. Some Jadeite genuine by Daniel Smith, which is a nice cool green. And I'm cooling it down a bit more by mixing it with my blue. And this is Quinaquidrone magenta, which is a vibrant pink color. And mixing that with a dark blue will give me those dark purple tones. And I can also use the magenta alone for that more pinkish spot on the beetle. Okay, so here we go. Starting with the blues. Painting around the highlights I've drawn out. Okay. I'm adding some green to the upper part of the lower body. And then some purple in the middle. And then leaving some pink over here where I can see it in my reference. And I see that I can immediately drop in even more color here because I know these will dry lighter and look a bit faded. I know that I will need to add several more layers of paint to get this beetle as dark and vibrant as I want. So that's enough for this layer. I'm going to let this dry and then come back to deepen those colors even more. 7. Blue Beetle Layer 2: So now we're dry, and I'm basically going to just go over the beetle again with darker, more saturated mixtures of those same colors. And this time, what I'm focusing on are the mid tones and the shadows, laying all of those in while still leaving my highlights and leaving some room to soften these edges with a damp brush. H. Okay. 8. Blue Beetle Layer 3: All that remains now are those darkest darks, which also includes the legs and the final details. This time, I am only going to work with black or a very, very dark blue and really punch up the shadows. This is what's going to make those highlights really pop. One of the most common mistakes I see and make myself in watercolor is not being brave enough with the shadows. Since watercolor is a transparent medium, we often need several layers and really dark saturated color mixtures to reach the level of contrast that's going to make our painting rich and vibrant. This is also where I'm going to add some more details to communicate the texture of this shell, these thin little lines, for example. So I'm switching to my smallest brush now for the legs and antenna. It. Trying not to overthink my brush strokes. I want them to look loose and spontaneous. And I can do that with confidence because I have my pencil sketch underneath as a guide, but I can also add to it by looking at the reference a little closer and adding in little details where I see them. And finally, adding some extra blackness and refining some edges. And my beetle is done. I'll see you in the next lesson where we'll start working on Be painting. 9. Bee Sketch: So would this B, I'm starting my sketch the same way I did with my beetle by identifying the most basic angles first and getting the size and the placement right. So here I can see this V shape of the upper and lower parts of the body. I'm making use of negative space to determine the angle between these two body parts. And then the simplest shapes that I can see, which is the round shape of the upper body and this long oval shape of the lower body. There are a lot of little confusing details in this image, and so I'm trying my best to filter away some of them and just add the most prominent parts. The simplest version of those parts. I can't make out the exact shape of the head here, for example, but I can see the exact shape of the eye. So I'm adding that and leaving the rest a bit diffuse for now. I don't have to spell every single part of this B out. It's still going to read as a B in the final painting. Also marking out these tiny little highlights that I want to make sure that I leave white, getting the angle of the wings right. And the wing is also a part of the reference that's a bit diffuse and hard to make out. I'm not even going to try to spell that out in detail. I just want the general gist of it, especially the part close to the body that is more clearly defined. Now that I have the wing marked out, it's easier to eye measure where this arm is going to go. Another eye measuring trick I use is starting with the shapes that are the easiest for me to make out. So with this leg, the one part I can easily grasp is this bright orange shape here. And so I look to determine where it sits in relationship to the lower body, and I draw that in first. And then I build the rest of the leg around that. I use it as my anchor point. Since these other parts of the leg are going to be black, I can draw that in so I won't make mistakes later on when I'm painting. Here's another instance when looking at the negative space, the space of the background helps me get the placement and proportions of this other leg, right. And now that the legs are there, I can determine if the rest of the lower body is proportional. Is it long enough? And in this case, it is, but in many cases, I might have needed to lengthen that part a bit to keep the proportions right. Sketching in some of these markings because I don't want to have to make those decisions on the fly later on when I'm painting. This will be the darkest part of the bee later, so I won't see my pencil lines through anyways. And now I'm evaluating, do I like this sketch? Is it accurate enough? Is there any more information that I need? Is there some I can take away? So I'm cleaning up some of my support lines, especially in the areas I know are going to be the brightest in the painting, tidying up and making sure my lines are clear and easy to read. 10. Bee Background: Okay, time to mix up some colors for this painting, and for the first layer, I look at the brightest colors I see in this reference. And that's the yellow beige of the upper body and these more amber tones of the lower body. I'm using the same colors I used for the background of the beetle painting, so Raw umber and burnt sienna, my favorite earth tones. I also want a nice, cool, muted green for my background. So I'm using my Jadeite genuine again and darkening it with some black. And also desaturating it. I'm muting this color with some of that Burnt sienna. Burnt sienna is a very red earth tone, and red is a complimentary color to green. So mixing those two colors together is going to neutralize them and make them more grayish. I won't be going this dark for the background, though, so I'm diluting it to check what it looks like when it's more transparent. And I am happy with that. So let's start laying in our first wash. What I'm going to do here is called negative painting. That's when you paint around your subject, painting the negative space of the background to carve out the shape of your subject. Since these upper parts of my B are really bright, almost white, the only way we'll be able to make them stand out is with a darker background. This is a tricky skill to master, but it's made much easier with a pencil sketch. So here I am just laying in some abstract background shapes around my pencil sketch. Going darker in some places, especially the places where my subject is really bright, deliberately messing up my brush strokes to not get too tight and controlled. This is something I have to force myself to do being a perfectionist control freak. I have to remind myself that the point of the background is just to set some tone and atmosphere. And the more I overthink it, the more blotchy it's going to look, and that will steal the focus from the main character of this painting, which is the B. I don't have to worry about painting over the darkest parts of my subject because those will be black anyways. I don't want any white edges around them, and same with this lower part of the body, which is in shadow, and I can actually see some of those green tones there in the references. So adding some of that background green will make my subject blend into and sort of harmonize with the background instead of looking like a sticker that I slapped onto it. Adding some more water, adding another nuance to my green to make it come alive a bit more, making it warmer here at the top, where the sun is shining, and then cooler on the bottom where there's more shadow. I'm also going to negative paint around this flower to just sort of hint that there is a white flower there. The flowers not the main focus of the painting, and I don't want to get carried away by it. So just a few loose brushstrokes will do. Adding a bit more darkness and saturation. Blending it up a bit. Wiping my brush on my damp washcloth and then using it to lift out some paint here and controlling my edges a bit. And that's it. That's my first layer. Now I want the background to dry before I add the first layer to the bee because otherwise it's going to bleed out into the background, and I don't want that. So I'm going to let this dry and then come back to it in a few minutes. 11. Bee Layer 1: Alright, now for the first layer on this B, I'm going to loosely put in this raw umber at the top of the B and careful to leave a lot of white. That's one of the tricks for this more loose and expressive style of watercolor painting, not filling the entire paper with paint, leaving some white and giving the impression of texture and highlights. So I add this color in everywhere that I see it in the reference. And then as I move on, I switch over to my burnt sienna, and adding it everywhere I see that color in the reference and still leaving some white highlights to pop against the background. Okay And I'm going to stop there and let this dry. In the next up, it's time to add in the shadows and the details. It 12. Bee Layer 2: Okay, so time for layer number three. I'm going to use only black this time, but a more diluted black at first. So I'm squinting at my reference, and that will tell me where that black needs to go without trapping me into overthinking each brushstroke or getting caught up in details. Okay. And then I'll gradually thicken up my black and emphasizing those parts in the reference that are the very darkest. So these legs down here, for example, and the tip of the lower body. 13. Bee Layer 3: And for some final flare, I'm going to put in some of that yellow in the flower, really just a few brushstrokes. That's going to be just enough to sell this as a flower for the viewer without stealing the focus from the bee. And actually, let's add in a stem, as well. Just a few brushstrokes of really dark green, not overthinking it, not trying to copy the reference exactly, using it to balance up the composition a bit. And for a few final touches, I'm adding some background to the left side of the flower, refining that edge a little bit. Putting in some details, I'd forgotten. And punching up the background a bit more and the places where I want my subject to stand out even more. At this point, I'm not looking at the reference at all. I'm just looking at my painting and doing what I think will look good. Finally, subjective, of course, there is no right and wrong here, and you will develop your own taste and your own instincts for this with practice. And now, finally, punching up those legs with some really thick dark black. And I almost forgot the antenna. So there we go. My B is done. I'm going to step away from it now before I get tempted to go in and fiddle around even more. So much of watercolor is knowing when to stop, and I would rather stop too soon and let the painting rest for a day than risk overworking it. And that's also a skill that you will learn with practice. So I'll see you in the next lesson where we will kick off our final little watercolor bug painting. And 14. Red Beetle Sketch: So with this beetle, I actually want to include this leaf that it's sitting on because otherwise it would sort of just hover in thin air. So in order to place this beetle, I'll first need to place this leaf shape on the paper. And I do this by, again, squinting at my reference and finding the angle of this shape. And once I've done that, I can more easily place the general shape of this beetle, this kind of half moon shape on the leaf. And here I can immediately see that I placed it too low, so I'm adjusting for that. Like And then finding the larger shapes of the upper body and head. And what helps here is to imagine the subject as a set of geometric shapes, finding the central line. And then building the shapes around that. Working out the angles and the lengths of the antenna. But. And now for the tricky part of sorting out these legs that are a bit weirdly shaped. And once again, what really helps is to look for the simple lines first, simplifying the shapes and refining them later. And this is where negative shapes really help a lot. If I can get this shape right, I'll have a good starting point for the next leg. And there's another negative shape over there. I would like to keep this little highlight of the background there, so I'm marking out this little triangle shape. And also roughly where I want to place the brush strokes for the leaf. I'm not aiming for a complete copy of the reference here, just a loose representation, an abstract shape that gives the impression of a leaf. Now, for the highlights, I want to make sure I keep this little glare over here and this larger highlight and maybe also this glare here. I want to keep those parts of the paper untouched. Yeah, that's as far as I'm going with this sketch. I don't feel like there's any more information that I need to start painting. 15. Red Beetle Layer 1: So let's mix our colors. Starting with this bright green of the leaf. I'm choosing plain old Sap green for this, but I'm adding in some bright yellow, and this is Hansa yellow light by Daniel Smith. You could also use something like lemon yellow. And then I want a darker, more muted version of that same green for the shadowy parts of the leaf. So I'm mixing in some burnt sienna just a little bit at a time. And then some ultramarine blue to cool the green down. That's another good trick when mixing up shadow colors. Usually shadows are a bit cooler in their tone. Cleaning up my brush and then choosing my red. I want a warm kind of primary red for this. The one I have here on my palette is called Deep scarlet, and it's by Daniel Smith. Alright, I am ready to start painting. I'm going to start by laying in the shape of the leaf. Brightest color first. And then dropping in the darker green where the leaf is in shadow. Again, trying not to overthink my brushstrokes, not worrying about the colors mixing on the paper. I want no sharp edges here because that's going to draw attention away from the main character. Okay. And then the lightest version of this red that I can see, keeping it very diluted, painting around my highlights. And knowing this will dry a lot lighter, I'm dropping in some more color right away. I can see that I lost a bit too much of that highlight. So I'm going in with some tissue and just dabbing it away. As long as the paint is wet and the color is not too staining, this works really well. And then just a bit darker on some parts of the leaf. All right, so time for this layer to dry, and I'll see you in a few minutes for our next wash. Uh, 16. Red Beetle Layer 2: This is all dried up, and now I want to add the first layer on the upper parts of the body and head. So this upper body has a really deep purple hue. So I'm putting down some ultramarine and then dropping some of that magenta into. And for the head, I can see some blue green tones in my reference. So I'm taking my cool green, my ja dite genuine diluting it to see if the color matches. And then putting that in. I'm also going to paint a first layer on the legs with this because I can see those same shimmering green tones there in the highlights, and I can let that shine through later and just paint black around them. Adding in that purple and Okay. Keeping a fine little dry edge between that and the green so they won't pull into each other. There's also some of that purple on the front of the head, though, and here I do want it to blend into the green. So I'm just dropping that in and letting it touch the edge of the purple, leaving a little bit of white for the highlight on that eye so it doesn't disappear completely. That green got a little bit too dark. So I'm using my smallest brush damp but not completely dry and absorbing some of that paint. And now I'm deepening this red, but leaving the top of the shell a bit lighter. And to blend it together, I'm cleaning my brush and taking most of the water out of it using my damp washcloth so that when I blend this edge, I can get a bit of a dry brush effect and create some texture. And while this paint is still damp, I actually see a detail I would like to include, and that's this slightly brighter highlight on the shell. So I'm using a damp brush and carefully taking some of that paint away, dabbing it away on my damp washcloth and just gently carving out that highlight. You can do this when the paint is dry as well by using a wet brush to re wet the paint on that area and then dabbing it off like this. Now I'll let this layer dry and then go back in to deepen all of these colors some more. It 17. Red Beetle Layer 3: For this next layer, I'm going in with a really dark purple. I've added a lot of black to it, and I'm painting in this upper body part, leaving just the area around the highlight. Also adding the very darkest parts of this red shell. And deepening the colors on the head. Okay. Painting in the antenna. I can see some red in there in the reference photo, so I'm creating this very diluted mixture of my red and muting it down with some green. And then the legs and the final details. Now I'm just using black with maybe a little bit of green. And I'm trying to leave a little bit of that cool green from the first layer shining through in some places. Deepening those blacks as much as I can. And putting some final bits of shadows on the antenna because I can see that they've dried very light. 18. Red Beetle Background: Now, I could have left this painting right as it is. This feels more like an illustration to me, but in my other paintings, I've added more background, and I want this one to look well together with those other two paintings. So I'm actually going to drop in just a really bright wash of green around my beetle to make it feel more like a painting. So I'm diluting this bright yellow green and dropping in some pools of colour around my subject. And I'm really careful not to re wet the edges of this red shell. I don't want it to bleed out into the background. So I'm keeping a fine edge of dry paper between them. And then when I'm happy with this abstract shape, I can go ahead and drop in some darker greens to get some three dimensionality to the background. Pushing the paint around, messing up my edges. And creating the impression of other leaves of grass in the background. And now I can feel myself starting to overwork it. So I'm forcing myself to put down the brush and call this painting finished. And there we have it. All three insects are done. All that's left to do now is sign them. Put them in frames, and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. 19. Final Words: So you've made it to the end of the class. I really hope you have enjoyed spending time with me. I hope you are happy with your little insect paintings. They will probably not look exactly like mine, but that is not the goal. Your paintings will be unique to you. Your style, your preferences, the materials you use, and a lot of other factors. If you want to, I would love to see your finished paintings. You can upload them under the Projects and Resources tab below, there's a button called submit project where you can upload images of your final painting or paintings and get some feedback from me and from other students. I also invite you to check out my other classes. I have one watercolor course for complete beginners, where we only work with abstracts to sort of get to know this medium in a very gentle non intimidating way. So if you felt like this class was maybe a bit too difficult, maybe that's a great next step. I have another one with birds, which is my favorite subject. It's called watercolor Birds. If you want to stay in touch with me, the best way to do so is by subscribing to my newsletter. That's where I share behind the scenes for my creative practice. I share tips and resources and also update you on upcoming classes. And you can find the link to that in the about section of this course or on my teacher page. And if you enjoyed this class, I would be very grateful for a rating and a review. Thank you again for spending this time with me. Happy painting, and maybe I'll see you in another class in the future.