Watercolor poppies. From sketch to finished work.

1. 1. About this class: Hi there. My name is Ann and welcome to my watercolor class Watercolor puppies from sketch to finish work. In this class, I will guide you step by step through the process of creating a stunning watercolor painting of puppies. Whether you're completely new to watercolors or looking to refine your skills. This class is designed to inspire and help you grow as an artist. We'll start with the basic, creating a simple yet elegant sketch. Then I'll teach you essential watercolor techniques like washes, blending and layering to bring your puppies to life. You will also learn how to add those finishing touches that make your artwork stand out. By the end of this class, you will have a beautiful painting that you can frame, gift, or simply enjoy as a reflection of your creative journey. Grab your brushes, some watercolor paper, and let's get started on this colorful adventure together. 2. 2. Materials: Hi, just a quick overview of the materials which we will use during this class. First of all, you will need watercolor paper. The perfect size is a four. I have here a larger one, but I will only paint on half of it, the perfect paper is with 100 cotton, 100% of cotton. But if you have just like me, 25% of cotton is also fine. Next, watercolor paints, of course, because we will use watercolors. We will paint with watercolors. I don't have any original palette. These are my colors which I really like. You can use whatever you have similar colors to mine. You don't have to use exactly the same colors, so you don't need to buy the same stuff which I have. We will also use gouache to add some details at the end. So guash or white posca, Japan will be fine and of course, some brushes. I recommend you especially rigor brush for this course and some smaller like number four or number six, will be fine, also water, a glass of water, some paper towel and mixing palate I think that's all see you in the next step. 3. 3. The sketch.: At this stage, we will make a simple puppies composition. To do that, we will use regular piece of paper. It's like a printing paper. I don't use watercolor paper at this stage because we will have a lot of raising and it will dematch our paper. I draw composition only with a pencil and with printing paper. I will use seven B pencil, but you can use some a lighter like HB pencil, which will create softer lines. I will use seven B because I wanted you to see what I'm drawing. That's why I use the seven B pencil. The first thing is I draw the rectangle where my composition should should be, I will try to stick within that rectangle and with the lighter lines, I will simply divine this rectangle just like in photography on three parts, three equal parts. And if I do that, I will have the main points. Just like in photography, if you know, what are the photography rules that you know that there is a rule of fruits and the rule of fruits state that the main focal points should be in these areas. So let's think about how many puppies we should have in our drawing. So for example, at the beginning, we will draw our puppies just as simple as a simple circles. For example, one puppy will be here, another puppy will be here and don't draw only two puppies because our eye don't like equal elements on the work on a photograph also. We usually place odd number of things. For example, three, five, seven. So we have two right now, and I will draw some shape in here, and I will only draw half circle because this puppy just goes beyond our composition. I know that it should end like this, but it's over our composition. That's why I don't draw it. And remember that puppies can also overlap each other. For example, another puppy will be in here, and we will think later which one is overlapping, which. For example, we can we have right now one, two, three, four puppies we need one more, for example, one puppy will be in here because our composition is like element of some bigger photographs. That's why we have this puppies which are not hole in the picture. So like here, if we need to place some more, I think it's too empty in here. But if we place another puppy in here, we will have equal elements, equal puppies on our composition, so we should place another one. For example, let's stop with the puppies and draw stems for them. They don't have to be the regular straight lines. They could have been a little curved. So for example, like that. So this line will go like this. The last one so it gets crowdy in here, so we won't draw anymore puppies at the moment. And let's move on to the buts. For example, and I draw buds like an oval at that stage. For example, one puppy but will be here, one here. So here, and here, here, a lot of puppy buds they could also go over our composition line. And so also let's draw some stems for them. Okay. And let's move on to the leaves. We draw leaves in the empty spaces. With the leaves, I like to go beyond our box. For example, our leaf will go like this and I just raise the border line in here because I don't want it in there. In here. I will look something like this. For example, here we will have a leaf. I don't have to be the whole leaf. It could be a half of the leaf drone. In here, we have a lot of a lot of spare place. I think one will go out of the porter in here. We can draw smaller leaves, bigger ones. You choose which one you like. I will erase border in here and make my leaf again something in here. Okay. We have some empty space in here, but I won't go outside of the border with that leaf. We could have a smaller leaf and perhaps something in here. Okay, so we have the main shape of our composition. I think here is the long straight line, and I think I will create that leaf bigger and overlap my puppy stem. I will make it like this. I think it's more interesting than that straight line. And let's go to the puppies. I will erase these lines which are in here. With these two puppies, you have to decide right now which one is overlapping which. For example, this one will overlap this bottom one, so I erase this line and now I know which one is at the bottom. Okay, so let's draw our centers of our puppies, so I will draw my one circle. Not every puppy is directed toward us. So for example, this first puppy will have the center somewhere in here, more at the top, and the first big petal is bigger because this puppy is directed more to top than to us. So we see it's bigger petal and the center of the flower is more hidden. Let's draw Other petals and don't draw these petals with simple lines. They should be shaggy. Try to shag your lines, make them more interesting. And the last petal is in here and we draw our center. The next circle, here we have usually it's a black or yellow circle and I draw something like that. This poppy is, for example, more directed toward us, so I draw center. And draw some petals for it because it's directed to us. We see all petals in its bloom in its full potential. So it's like that. Okay, I'm raising the first lines, which I don't want anymore. Okay. Let's move on to this flower. I think we won't see it because the whole, it will be similar to this one. So it's more directed. I imagine that it's more directed to the top and the sun than to us. I only draw some petal shapes for it. This one. I wanted this one to be directed to us, so I draw a center of that flower. I erase these lines. Okay. The last one, this one will be directed on the left side. So for example, the center will be in here, but it will be covered with the petal. So we see it like this. Okay. So now let's move on to the buds and create some shapes for them, so they will look like this. And the buds have these little hairs on it because puppy buds are hairy. Okay. So we have our composition made with a pencil. Right now, what I'm going to do is to fix it with my brush pen brush. I use pentel sign pen for that with the color gray. But anything which is a dark color will be fine. I usually use I usually use darker color like this dark blue, and I refine my sketch with this brush pen. So I will start with the flowers. And I usually draw some details with this brush. So I will mark some details on the petals to make them more interesting. And remember, don't draw don't draw straight lines. They should be curved a bit because it simulates the shape of the petal, which is not flat. It's more rounded, so it's rounded and full. That's why these lines shouldn't be straight lines. I. You can also do it with ink if you wish. At this stage, it doesn't matter what you use. I simply like to use a brush pen because it creates different lines. I could make fin line and a thick line. So it's a matter of your liking. H The border, I would like to have very thick, so I create this thick line. With darker lines, it gets more interesting just like you see. I like that sketch better. And you can create coloring pages like that for printing, for example, for your kids. For yourself, not just that one composition, but some more and paint it later with anything you want, exactly. We will paint it. In my course, we will paint it with watercolors. But you can paint it with everything you want with crayons, markers, it's up to you We almost finished. Just a few last lines. I have everything drew with my fine liner, and now I need to erase all the pencil marks. So it's not a watercolor paper, so we don't have to worry that we ruin our paper. Well, just like you see not all marks because I have very thick pencil, so not all marks, I could erase from my piece of paper. But still, it's just a sketch, and I simply transfer my sketch to watercolor paper with the light pad. And on a watercolor paper, I will use lighter pencil and do it very slightly. For the purposes of this course, I will make it more visible for you to see. But you do it with the very light pencil. I hope your composition is great. If you place it in a project section of this course and see you in the next video. 4. 4. Background - first layer: In this step, we will color the background. I have transferred my sketch on my watercolor paper, and right now we need some greens for our background, and we will make one trick. I will show you one trick while painting. Except greens, we also need to mix some red for our flowers. First layer of color should be very translucent. That's why I mix my colors with a lot of water for mixing purposes, I use bigger brush because it's easier and much faster to mix colors with it. And because the background is quite big, that's why we need to mix a lot. A lot of these colors. So first color, we need three or four. It depends how many you have on your palette greens. And the best greens are this medium value. So for example, my favorite one is autumn green. The color is named autumn green from Roman Schmal and this color is and this color is granulating one. So this will be my first color. The second color will be most green. It's similar, but with a different tunnel value. This color is one ton different from the previous one. And once again, I mix it with a lot of water. Okay. I need color which is light gray. And for that, I use golden cream. It's like a yellowish shade of cream. So I also mix it quite a lot. We also need some dark green. For that, I use green color. This color is from white knight and it's green. This is quite dark shade. I'll add more water to it and more paint. Okay. And we need one shade of red. We also need one shade of red. So in the last area, I will mix because just like you see, my reds are almost empty. That's why I mix my magenta. And I will add to it some red cadmium red. Because this magenta is quite dark and intense, I would like to have some more muted colors. So I'll add to it more reddish than pinkish. So I'll add to it a bit of cadmium red. Once again, water. Okay. So I think we're ready. So I will put away my palette and change my water. I need a clean water for the stage. So I will show you my previous work. So the first layer of green will be around our flowers. So we need to at this stage, we need to leave the flowers white unpainted, and paint everything around with leaves and buds. So we can start even with water. So the first And I think also easier is with the bigger brush. So I start with the bigger, my number 16 brush. And I think I have not cleaned my brush enough. Okay. So I had some water. I put some water on the piece and I don't cover the whole work with the water at the moment. I will paint it step by step. And when I'm starting, I'm starting adding colors. The one which I have on my palette, simply I simply pick from one of my shades which I have on my palette. When we are around some flower, we need to take a smaller garush and put some red in here. On the border on the edge of this flower. And this will bleed with our brains and create very interesting effects while it dries. Let's move on to the next flower. For example, in here, I will paint around my flowers. Add some other green to it. So you need to be careful not to paint on your leaves flower petals. And once again, I will pick my red and leave it in here. And I don't care that this goes onto the leaf. I quite enjoy this effect. Let's put some red in here. Well, if it goes like this, if you do that, just like me, you can simply take a bit of your paper towel and lift the paint when it's still dry. I will switch to smaller brush because I see that. But I have too many petals in here, and I need a I need to be more careful and with the bigger brush is harder to be careful. I use one brush for my reds because I don't like to clean my brush all the time. That's why this one in this stage, I only use for reds. Nice. Let's move on. Okay, let's again add some red. So we need to add it in here. And you still, you need to remember that this is the first layer. It will be very light, and we will paint on it later with another layer. So don't worry or think that this looks quite strange or something because it will be different when we finish our work. We will put some more layers on it, so don't worry that perhaps it looks a bit off or something. The first layer don't always look good in most of my paintings, so I don't care that perhaps this is, for example, that it has this not very perfect connections of color. It doesn't matter at that stage. This layer is for you to have fun simply. So paint and don't worry much. Okay. And the last area. Okay. And once again, red, I simply just touch with my red and it flows, and I like the way it flows. Okay. So it's all for that stage. We need to leave it dry. In the next step, we will start painting petals, our flowers petals, see you there. 5. 5. Flowers - first layer: So my background layer is dry and we can at this stage, move on to the to the painting flowers. We will paint the first layer of flowers, our puppies. So to do that, we need to mix two or three shades of red. I place my palette with my colors for you to see which color I pick. I don't have many colors, many reddish or red colors on my palette. I will pick the ones which I have. This one is this one is like rose one. I will mix this color with water on my palette and I will mix it in the proportions. I call it 50, 50%, 50% of water and 50% of color. I don't want this color to be very translucent and transparent. But still, I don't need it to be very thick because I have five flowers to paint, I need I need quite a lot of this color. This is my first shade. The second one will be more orange one. This one is from Roman Smeal and this orange is reddish orange. I can see in the scrap paper how these two colors mix with each other. This will be my second color. I place a lot of watering here on my palette and add my color Okay. And the last one, perhaps maybe the darkish one. For example, here will be magenta. Magenta and because it don't for the moment, I thought that perhaps maybe this magenta won't much with this color. But this crepe paper shows me that this magenta blends quite well with the rest to colors. I think I will leave it that way. I will not mix it with we can paint our flowers in a few ways. I will show you exactly my strategy of painting on few petals and one more role, we don't paint petals which are next to each other because we don't want that the colors bleed. Between petals. For example, we paint one petal, move on to the other petal on the other side of our work. And while this is quite dry or becomes dry, we move on to this place once again and paint another one. One way to paint our flower is to, for example, pick one color, add it at the top of our petal. My brush, dry it on a paper towel and pick another color. For example, clean brush, and with a wet brush, drag move this color to the bottom. Still, we can take the last shade and add it at the top of the petal to create this beautiful blooms. O Okay, this is one way, let's switch to, for example, this petal. The other way to paint the petals is simply starting with water. For example, I paint at the beginning only with water, then take one of my colors, place it in here, take the other color. For example, this one will be darker near the center. And clean my brush, try it on paper towel and pick the orange one color and add it in here. This way, we create interesting blooms, interesting transition between colors. Once again, let's switch the side of the work. For example, right now in here and you just pick which of these two ways is better for you to paint. It's okay. You don't have to be perfect. And what exactly means perfect, you know? The last three petals. So this one. I'm trying to be very careful, but it not always helps. And And the last one, I think it will be because we have a lot of wet paint in there. So some orange. But still, these colors work well together so you don't have to worry much that it bleeds because we checked on the scrap paper that they look quite interesting with each other. Okay, we have all flowers done. To the next stage, once again, we need to leave it to dry, see you in the next video. 6. 6. Background - second layer: Hello again. This time we will get back to our background. My work is dry, all layers are dry now, just like you see. And at this stage, we will go back and play a little more with our background. So to do that, we need some greens and I will mix few shades of greens. By few, I meant like three or even four and let's start mixing it. The first shade is my favorite autumn green from Roman Schma and you don't have to pick exactly the same colors as me. You can choose the ones you have on your palette and right now, I'll mix it with I mix it with 50 50 proportions, 50% of water and 50% of paint. So the colors are very transparent, not very translucent. They are not in milky stage. They are quite quite thick but still watery. We need to have a few shades few middle tone shades. I have this one, which is autumn green. The other one is golden green. It's also from Roman Schmal. It's also my favorite one. You can use the same colors just as you used for the first background, first layer. So this color will be green. This green comes from white knights and it's quite dark, not very very dark, but it's quite dark, just like you see. And I have some new shades on my palate. So let's try them. Well, this one is called Chromium green. Chromium green oxide dark. It's also from Roman Schmal and I will pick it and I will test it on my work. This one is quite dark, but this color is granulating one. It creates just like the autumn green. These two colors are granulating one and they create very interesting effects. I have my colors ready, but still I think I will mix something while I paint because I think it's not enough mixed. I will use them while I paint. I think I will mix in the meantime. Let's put away my test sheet. I have my two previous works, and right now we will create some darkness in our work. For example, we will make areas under the flowers darker, a little bit darker. We will use negative painting techniques. For example, we will leave the stems light and the rest will be in shadow. We will just play so you don't have to be nervous about the outcome, you just have to have fun and just play with the colors. I don't know, let's start. I think the easiest way is to think about the areas we want to make darker. For example, we will make this area darker and just like before, I switch between colors. For example, I will pick the first one, take the other one, and see what happens. We will leave this leaf lighter, so we paint rounded. And at that stage, I will take smaller brush and I will blend the edges of my color with the background. I don't want these hard edges in here. I want this translucent. Perhaps I will add some yellow, yellowish green in here. I think we also need to make this side darker, but I will add this medium to green because I don't want it to be as dark as this side. I think I want this puppy bud to be darker, I will take my darker green and make it darker. Also with the stem, this one, the stem goes like this. Perhaps the darkest tone. I think we should do similar with this leaf. So I will place my paint only on the half of the leaf and with the wet brush, damp brush, I will blend this color. Here, I think it would be fine if this leaf is darker and leave the red area in here just like it is. I will pick my dark green. I'm trying to not to smudge the wet paint here and make this one darker. And for example, we will pick the medium value while we go up. Let's see how it looks quite nice. But we need something in here because it's just like they look like the white one area, so we need to distinguish it. I put the light stone in here only like that simply to blend it with my wet brush this way. To create a little illusion that perhaps it's not one thing, but two separate things like puppy bat and leaf. I think we need something on the leaf. I will take my medium green and put a very light layer not on the whole leaf, but only on a piece of it and with the water, blended with the rest. In this way, we create some more depth on the leaf. Still we can add some darker tones. We can have fun, we can play with it. Okay, and we will see how it rests on the paper. I think this we will paint in darkest tone. So I think it's the swan. So it's darkest from the rest of the background. But still, we need something in here. I will take my medium medium shade and round this puppy bud, I will place align with the color and blend it with a wet brush. Or perhaps at the lighter one perhaps maybe the darker one, a bit. But every time I blend the edges, I don't want these hard edges in here. Okay. So I think we will put some darkest tones in here. Uh but still blend the edges. You don't have to paint the whole area. You can simply paint just a little bit of it, still, you see that the leaf goes in here. So perhaps to define this leaf, we need to paint to its edges like this one, this way. And once again, blend this edge. Okay, let's put some more green in here and blend it. I think some we need to darken this area a little bit, not much, but just a little bit to define this leaf more. So like that, perhaps one, this but should be darker. I'll pick my darkest tone and make it dark. I think to still define this leaf, we need to darken a bit this area, so I will do it with my medium medium value. And I will do it again in here, but just on the edge, I don't want to paint all the area. Just the edge, clean my brush and with the damp brush simply make the edges smoother. This is slide. For example, this will be darker. Okay. And this to a bit, just a bit, not much. And with my damp brush, make it smoother. I think I will dark this area and leave the bad and a leaf lighter. So I will place my darkest tone in here. With the medium value or the one, this we almost have done the left side of our work. H. I think we have to define more this leaf and the stem. The first is a medium value or the lightest I will add again, my darkest tone in here, but with a lot of water and I will dilute it. The same goes in here. We have to more define the edges of this leaf. Okay. It looks better now, I think. And what have we have next? I think we go back in here and create a little light layer in here and with the dump brush, make it smoother. Okay. Perhaps I will add once again dark color to define the edges in here. Okay. I think the left top corner will do similar to this. I will make it darker, the edge will be painted with the darkest tones, two tones, exactly. And here, I will blend it. Blend it with the background. I don't want this color to touch with this. I don't know. I know it's not a stem but I don't remember exact word. And here I will add with my latest value. And blend it. I blend almost everything, and let's move on to this leaf and add the ltus value, which I have mixed only on the left side of this leaf and blend it. Once again, blend it. Medium value, and we'll put this medium value in here and once again, blend it. Everything we need to blend. Every color perhaps we'll add some darker to make more interest. And I will add in here. This darkest tone and leave it to blend and my first layer created here sharp edges. I don't want these sharp edges, so I will paint over them with my darkest tones so they will not be visible in this way and blend the edges. I think I will make the puppy darker in here. I will take my darkest darkest tone. Okay. I will make this area a little darker and blend it Did you notice how beautiful effect we achieved in here simply by placing a different color to the wet area we had? Okay, I think I will add once again my arcos values in here. You still can return to the places which you have painted before. You can just move on and see how this looks and decide if you want to paint over them once again. I think we have only this site left. So with the lightest value, I guess, or with the middle one, we'll define it. And I will make this area darker. This is it. We have all the background painted. The second layer, we need to leave it to dry and at the next video at the next step, we will go back to the flowers once again and add some details on it. See you there. 7. 7. Flowers - second layer: Okay, so our background layer is dry now, so we can move on to the next step, which is the outline of the red flowers. To do that, we need, once again, two colors, two shades of red. So we can take the same colors just like before, but dilute it with the less water or we can take any other red colors we have on our palette so let's pick two different shades. For example, one will be red, cadmium red mixed with the magenta. The second one this time, I will take viridian, which is darker color, and let's switch to the smaller brush, and let's start outlining. You can pick one color or the other one. It doesn't matter which one of the sto peck at that stage. We just need to make some contrast on our work and make it more interesting. And we don't outline the buds. We only outline the petals red petals. Okay the one in here. Okay. And when we have our outline done, let's switch to the rigor brush and make some details on our flowers. So we will use the same two colors. And with the rigger brush and each of the petal, we will draw the details, these lines, details on on flowers. And don't worry about the lines. Then they don't need to be perfect to create effect. But remember, they don't need they don't have to. They shouldn't be straight lines. They should be curved a bit to create an illusion that these petals are rounded. So we don't make straight lines. We make all lines should be slightly slightly rounded. I move around my work because it's easier for me than to just move around with my hand. And the last flower. In the next step, we will move on to the center of our flowers, and I think we nearly finish. It's about two or three layers to finish our work. See you in the next video. 8. 8. Final Details: In this step, we will finish our work. First, we need to paint our center of the flowers. To do that, we need two shades of yellow. The first one will be cadmium yellow. This is our first color. Which we will use. I'll switch to smaller brush because the centers are not big and simply choose one of these two colors, sometimes the first one, sometimes the second, and I will paint the centers. I want the centers to be not flat and paint with only one color. But I want them to be more interesting. That's it when it comes to centers. We will leave our yellow centers to dry and we will move on to details on leaves. For details, I will only need one color and this is some darker green. I will use green from white nights. It's quite dark but not very dark green, so it looks like this. So I need some brush for details, and this will the rigor brush from renaissance and we will paint some stems on the leaves. We will add some details on the puppies and don't worry if you go outside of the line. It's not a big thing. Actually, we will add some details. We will add some details on a stem of the flowers in here, I need some more of my color. This way, I will define some stems, which sometimes are narrowly visible. So I will make them more visible. I will make them pop this way. Don't draw this stem on every leaf. You can leave some of them untouched. Okay, so I think I will leave it that way. I don't want to overdo it. I think this is enough. Let's move on to the centers because they dry now, let's move on to the centers. For details in center, we need orange color, orange and Sienna or something like that, light brown. I will use red orange. Straight from my palette, I only add some water to it because I need this color to be very thick. That's why I only add colors to my pan and my orange looks like this. It's reddish or orange with a brownish tint. The second color will be light brown and I do the same trick. I only add water to my pan. This is the second color which I'll use. They are both similar. If you don't have this orange one, you can simply pick orange color and add a little bit of red to it or even purple or even dark red or add some brown to it and mix it on your palette with little water. We will add some details like dots. On the center. It's super easy. But we don't want them to be flat. That's why we use two colors. Perhaps maybe I'm thinking that perhaps brown will be too dark, so I will pick my naples yellow once again and perhaps second color for dots will be the Snapples yellow. And again in here with yellow and with orange, some dots, and in here. You can even try to go beyond the center like that. Perhaps let's go back to this one again and go beyond the center. And the last flower, so my orange First, my orange color. And second yellow apples yellow. Okay. The last thing, you will need some white and you can do it with white quash, or you can do it with white posca, or you can do it with white alpin. We will add details, the last details to our work, the last touch, and we only add some details on our puppies. This should be dry now. I will add like these little marks on it to give them some shine. The specially visible on darker puppies on darker buds. So we can add some more details on them. Try vary the lines so they don't all be the same size and somewhere in here. And remember, we don't paint realistic realistic puppies. It's only our vision of puppies. Also we add some details on center of our flowers, but we need to make sure that the centers are dry now. Mine are not, so I'm trying to add the white dots between watercolor because I don't want them to bleed and the last two flowers. I think that's it. I think we have finished our work. This was the last details. I wonder how your work looks like. I hope you are proud of yourself because I am sure that your work looks beautiful. I will be very honored if you will place it in the project section for me to view it and see you in a wrap up lesson. 9. 9. Final Thoughts: Congratulations. You've just completed your beautiful watercolor poppy painting. I'm so proud of the work you've done and the creativity you've brought to this project. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced artist, every piece you create is a step forward in your artistic journey. I hope you enjoy this class and learn techniques that you will use in your future watercolor project. Remember, the beauty of watercolor lies in its unpredictability and the unique outcomes it creates. I'd love to see your finished artwork. Feel free to share it in the class gallery or on social media. Don't forget to tag me at Instagram so I can celebrate your amazing work. Thank you for joining me in this class. If you enjoy it, be sure to check out my other watercolor courses and share your feedback. Until next time, keep creating and have fun.