Watercolor Realism: Learn How To Paint Realistic Grapes With Simple Layers

1. Introduction: You feel like watercolors and it's endless possibilities that the watercolor provides. Then you came to the right place. Hi, my name is Angela cola. Number of times a watercolor artist and illustrator. I love to paint realistic, vibrant botanicals with watercolors. And I'm here to show you the appendix and be very realistic and very detailed that they have to be complicated. I like to say very limited palette for all of my projects. So in every project with me, you will learn how to mix your own colors with just a few constant pigments. For this class today I chose to paint these delicious grace. They have so many different colors and shades, and hues and detail. And a lot of people might find them intimidating. But I wanted to show you that it doesn't have to be. I split the process of painting this grapes into individually, very simple and achievable steps so that even a beginner can do it. But when those layers and those steps are layered and they come together, they create this beautiful painting. I will also provide you with the reference photo, line drawing and full material list down below and resources section. The only rule I have in my classes is that you enjoy the process. Try think a little bit less about the end result and try to find the therapeutic and relaxing nature that watercolor provides. And if you do it as I guarantee, you will always have a wonderful time. So let's get started. 2. Before We Start: Before we start, I would like to mention a few things. If you are an absolute beginner and you are not familiar with basic watercolor techniques. I would like you to check out my class specifically dedicated to those main botanical watercolor techniques called Master main basic botanical watercolor techniques. And I explained it in great detail, how the technique works, how to do it correctly and have to practice it with simple shapes. And if you do that, you will feel much more comfortable painting a subject. Also, if you would like to know how to stretch your watercolor paper onto the board, e.g. if you're using 300 GSM or lighter watercolor paper, I do that to prevent paper from buckling and settling and evenly. Or if you would like to know how to transfer your drawing onto the watercolor paper from either your sketch or from the line drawing that I'm going to provide you with. Or if you would like to know more about the materials that are used in greater detail, like what type of paint and brushes and palate to use than I would like you to check my very first Skillshare class called botanical watercolor painting. Learn to paint iris, but step-by-step and choose a lesson accordingly. You don't have to watch an entire class, just the topic you are interested in. So then without further ado, let's get started. 3. Materials: Hi again. So let's go quickly through the materials you're going to need for this project. So to start with, you will need watercolor paper. I recommend to be 100% cotton so it can handle the layers and water. If it is 300 GSM or liar, I would recommend stretching it onto a board to prevent from buckling. For that, you will need gum tape and a sponge, the cumulative paper with, if you would like to know how to do it. I have a class on my first Skillshare course, watercolor iris bot, where I show you how to stretch your watercolor paper onto your board. Next, the transfer your drawing onto watercolor paper from your sketch or the line drawing I provided you, you will need tracing paper if you would like to know how to transfer your drawing onto watercolor paper. I have a class on my first Skillshare course as well, watercolor, iris, but choose the class accordingly. For that, you will also need a pencil and an eraser. You will also need a container to clean your brushes. I used to want to clean my brushes and the other one for clean water glazes. You also need a towel where it can wipe your brush and a palette. I recommend ceramic palette because the colors flow much nicer on the surface and you can see the correct color of your mixes. The colors used for this project is lemon yellow, permanent rose. Scenario, read, perylene, maroon, phthalo blue, and neutral tint. I will also be using round brushes number 3.1, and also use a little bit of blue tack to remove the excess graphite off my drawings. So that's it. Those are materials and let's go straight to the painting. 4. Mixing Colours: So I'm very happy to have you here and we can start working on painting this beautiful grapes. So first step, mixing the colors. And we're going to be starting by mixing the colors for our underlayer, the bloom color. So that's the color that's underneath all this red, dark red patchwork. So now, when we start looking at those grapes, you can see how many colors there. And not as many cars, but different shades of a single colors. Just to look at the main red color. So it is more orangey red, then it's more purply red here is very dark purple. Now if we try to look beyond those dark colors and Marx looking at the bloom. So the most obvious blue Here's a bit more pink, a little bit more purple. So it's quite a few shades of colors. So we're going to try to capture those colors to make it look realistic. So now for the first tab, so at this, for this painting, we are going to be probably using more wet into wet techniques because when you paint circular shapes and those colors, different shades of colors, they flow into each other very seamlessly. So it's easiest and best to do it with wet into wet. When it's when, when the different colors flow into each other on one shape. So you will do it if you want it to look natural and not to have any hard edges or watermarks. So you're going to have more wet into wet techniques for this project. Right? So for the first step, I would like to paint in that bloom because it is a lighter color so that our colors would go on top of it because it's much darker. And so even if it's different colors on that bloom, if really showed through very much on those markets because those markings I've really, really dark anyways, so we can paint full grape all grave with that blue color. And then we're going to put those dark colors on top. Now, try to look beyond those marks and try to see what colors you can see on that blue. So even on this grape now, you can see there's blue around the edges. It's like grayish blue, slightly more pink towards the middle. Right here is very dark, blue-gray. Here's Very, think a little bit of blue around the edges here as well. Pink halfway through then. Bluish gray, hair, bluish gray and pink and so on. So now we try to see those colors and try to ignore those markings. We're not going to be painting them in the first couple layers. Right? So let's mix up dance. I'm not going to mix all the colors, so we're going to start by mixing the colors for the blue. And once we think we are done with the bone, we're going to mix up some more colors for those marks. So let's start them. Thick piece of paper. Right? So I will be using for this project a little bit off. Neutral tint, my gray mix, just, just to touch for the balloon colors to grade them down a little bit. So first color we can mix up this slide bluish color. So I will be using failure blue for that. And I will turn it down by adding a little bit of neutral tint gray mix. Actually can add even maybe too much. So this scholar would be great for this dark color. And maybe some places a little bit of blue but diluted up bit more, right? So for the second color, I'm not going to even clean my brushes right here. And the same one, blue and gray. But this time I will add a little bit of permanent rose. Make it a bit more purpley. Maybe a bit more pink and blue. Too much gray. Maybe. Try not to overdo with gray because it's gonna be just too muddy them. Let's see what we have. So the first mix, those bluish colors couldn't be maybe more blue, I think. Stronger and slightly touch of permanent rose. Be okay. So we would need to really water it down here for the lighter areas. Criminal throws. All right. That's better. Right. Our purple gray, little more permanent rose. I'm getting too strong colors a bit. Rose, Permanent Rose, Sorry. For the foreplay places. So now we need something more pink curve. Start with permanent rose. The touch of yellow, blue. Touch provides strong water it down. Let's see. So this is for those pink areas. It looks about right? Right. So I want to add a bit more to the purple mix. This is gonna be okay. I know it is a little bit hard to see those colors because they all just very quickly jumping into one another. So it looks a bit bluish up with pink, but it doesn't really have to be exactly as you see it, right? So we just need to get something similar and tried to apply similar colors. Anyway, because each grape is different than if different shades. So those colors can mix and match as long as we can get something similar, it doesn't have to be exactly the same. But I think we got something, what we need so we can start painting them. Alright, so I'm gonna use my number three brush. This is a Newton CR7, have real at banded this brush. So I thought I will give it a chance to prove itself again. Alright, so I think maybe we need to go to lines a bit lighter. A little group of low-tech, one painting with watercolors. Watercolors make pencil mark permanent. So that's what you want to keep your pencil marks as light as possible. Specialty painting, something very light and they might show through. So using a little bit of blue tack on kneadable eraser, gently tap over the drawing to take the excess graphite off, leave it just enough for you to be able to see your drawing, but not more than that. And in the next video we will start to paint. See you then. 5. First Layer- Bloom Colour (Underlayer): I'm so excited we can start painting those beautiful grapes. And in this part we will start painting in depth, bloom color, the underlayer color of dogs, grapes with those beautiful pinks, purples, and blues. Alright, so I'm picking up some clean water. Then we're going to start with probably just scrape Maybe this one from the side. So when we apply water this time, I don't want to have too much water on the paper, so we're going to apply water in a middle quickly push it up to the pencil line. They take the water out of the brush and collect all the excess and then we'll go start painting right away. So I don't want too much water because it is small area and I don't want the paint to spread very quickly. I want it to be in control and how they very subtle spread. So if you put lots of water than the pivot to soak into the paper, the water talking to the paper. Then the people would be water for longer and the colors will spread more. And in that case, it doesn't really go for us for this painting because sometimes you need lots of time to do your glaze and maybe there's a lot of lifting of that needs to be a lot of colors and it's a big area, then you will put lots of water, let it soak into the paper a little bit, collect all the excess, and then start painting. But in this case I want to just a little bit damp surface or the color spreads nicely but not too much. So I don't want lots of water on the paper symptoms. So you're going to just apply water quickly in the middle. Not enough pencil line. We want to make sure we cover all grape very nicely and try not to come out of line. So dab the brush on the towel to take the water out. And I gently just run my brush over the paper over the area we covered the water to collect all the excess. And I just have a very, very gentle water glaze, very subtle and it's not very wet. It's just a little bit of time so that the color spreads nicely yet doesn't spread too much. So if you're not sure, how much more do we have, we can pick up a little bit color and just make a couple of dabs just to see how it spreads. Spreading very quickly into the edges. That means there's too much water on your paper or on your brush. Right? So I started with pink color around the area where I think I can see it. Then I picked up some blue go around the edges and I keep shorter a little bit of the pencil line around the outer edge of the grape. To have this a, when you paint something circular, we have this reflective light around the edges. I clean my brush, take the water out on my towel and run my brush around that edge grading the slider effect. In order to collect the color, you might need to do it a few times and cleaning your brush regularly. So we do want to make sure we have a very nice clean lines where the groups are touching, right? So now I clean my brush off the water out and I collect a little bit of color in the middle. And they leave the highlight bigger than what it appears. And then I pick up a little bit more color and just put a little bit more in the dark areas. And then again, I see the color starts seeping into the edges and I clean my brush, take the water out and collected, collected again. Right, so that's all we're going to do for this step one and try to move away from the area, so just paint it. So I go on the other end. Because you always want to keep the distance from the areas we just painted. Always try to make sure they don't touch. Otherwise, they're going to flow into each other and completely disturb your glazes again. So I placed a little bit of water in the middle, push corrupt and a pencil line, clean my brush and then collect the excess water and started painting right away. So when painting this bloom or foundation layer, if you will, it doesn't really matter which color you're going to pick. You do need to examine your reference closely and see where the blue tones, where the pink tones, where the purple tones and just try to match as closely as possible. There are a reference photo, but it does not have to be exactly like mine are exactly like the reference photo because each grape is very individual. If you pick up a little bit of a different color in a certain area, there won't be the end of the world because those grapes are very colorful and as long as you use all the same pigments are no extra ones is going to be good no matter where you're going to place them. So just try to examine your reference photo. Try to see where your pinks and blues are, but don't get lost into following every step that I make. So I placed my colors again and I clean my brush, take all the water out. I keep collecting the pigment in the lighter areas or where the highlight is, and keep cleaning your brush regularly, right? So now the first group is already dry. We can paint next to it. So I'm going to tackle this biggest grape at a center, putting nice water glaze. So good way to know whether you don't have too much water on your paper is once you apply the water on your paper, tilted head to see the light reflecting off that glaze. And you should have a gentle shin rather than glossy shine. And you should still be able to see a watercolor paper texture through that glaze. That means you don't have too much water. So I started with the BlueMix, picking up pink one on the other side, it looks much more pinker. Over here. You can see I leave the highlight around the edges and in the middle, there's very, very little highlight in the middle, but it's better always to live bigger than what you need. You can always narrow it down in a layer of glaze is, but if you leave too little right now and the wet on wet, it might just quickly close up because the paint is going to be moving towards that anyways. So we can make a little dab, dabbing motion with your brush because it's a little bit more textured in patchy those grapes, so it's not very like even glazes. And again, with a clean, damp brush, I collect the paint around us. Nice reflective light on the grape. I clean my brush after each stroke always if you want to lift up the paint, otherwise. You can note that if you will try to run your brush a little bit longer, depend won't be lifting off anymore. You will be just dragging the paint with your brush so we need to clean it regularly. And then just keep repeating the process as many times as you think you need to. All right, so now I'm just thinking Which one I can paint right now. So let's just go with that one because it's not touching anything. All the other groups sort of close to the one we just painted. So dr. to keep my distance, again, nice water glaze. Pushing up to the pencil line and collecting all the excess water. Just tilting my head to see if I don't have any dry patches. So this one is quite pink one and has a little bit of blue Bloom around the edges. So putting a little bit of blue around, still keeping a little bit short of the pencil line. I'm not going all the way to the pencil line, so picking up my pink and pretty much covering the rest of the grape. And so you can see that my pain doesn't spread very much. It just gives this very smooth spread, gentle one, but it's not spreading very far. So that's why I wanted not to have too much water on my brush because the area is very small. Those grapes. So if I have too much water, it will cover all grape and we won't be able to get those highlights and reflective light before it dries out because this, this glaze will dry out much quicker because we don't have much water on it. So you need to work fairly fast. And as soon as you place your primary colors, you need to collect the highlights. Otherwise it's going to dry out and you won't be able to lift off the paint anymore. So hooked up with a color, your brush, and then collect around the grave that highlights, the reflective light highlights. And then if you need to add more color, then you can add more color. Then again, if the color started spreading too far again, you can collect just, you need to do it quite, quite soon, otherwise it just drying very fast. So by now I think you already noticed the pattern. We wet the paper, we placed the colors that we can see. We clean the brush, we collect the color, then we can add a little bit more and then we collect some color from highlights and around the edges once more. And so we need to do that for all the rest of the grapes. Going to add a bit of pink to my pink mix. It just looks a bit bluish here somewhere. And a little bit more pink into my purple mix too. Just to make them look a little bit more fresh. This grape is a little bit darker, so we're going to have to put a little bit more stronger color. So I'm going to start with my pink mix and loading my brush a little bit heavier. Still not going all the way to the pencil line. Keep that edge clean. And even on the reference photo, you can't really see too much of that reflective light around. But once we put all the glaze is, it will soften for us as well, but it just looks a little bit more natural. And that you paint circular forms if you leave this reflective light, even though in the reference photo it's not that obvious. It's quite subtle, but it's there. If you examine closely, right, so this is the last grape. And so now you can leave all the glazes to dry completely because after this, we can remove all that pencil line of the grapes live on a stem because we're still going to have to paint it. But just where you think you're not going to need it anymore because all those pinks might make pencil lines permanent. So I would like to get rid of them at the beginning. So first step is done, and I'll see you in the next video. 6. Second Layer- Bloom colour (Underlayer): We have our first layer of bloom color. Now as we look at the reference photo, I can see that this blue color is still really too light. So what I would like to do in this step is do exact same thing we did in step one. In the first layer. Just to apply a second layer of this bloom color so that we give depth, they mentioned to our grapes. And you can only create that with layers. So better with more transparent, lighter layers, but more layers than try to go very strong at first. With less layer. Layers are very important in realistic and three-dimensional painting. So we're still going to be using wet on wet technique. We will do pretty much the same what we did. We just need to give some more color, somewhat tabs to that bloom under layer color. And of course, until we put our darkest tones with dark red, those patches in the next step, we won't know how dark our bloom color has to go. Because only in comparison to the darker stones, we can judge our lighter taught. So dark is very important for that. But for now, I still see that the blue color is still too light, so we can go ahead and give a second layer of that. So start with by loading your brush with clean water and applying on paper. So the only difference on this step from the first step one is just that on a few grapes, I will apply color in this dabbing motion that I'm doing right now, just to give a little bit more patchy texture for the grip. I'm not gonna do that for all of them because others seem pretty smooth, but just on a few where it seems a little bit uneven. So other than that, you're gonna do the exact same thing as we did on a first step. Just give a little bit more depth for the grapes. Are we doing the second layer just to darken everything? And because the more layers you put them more depth, the object will have. So yeah, let's get it done and we will start putting this dark patchy pattern. After this. We have done the second layer and you can see how much more vibrant our bloom is right now. So now we need to live all the layers to dry completely. And in the next step we will start. I'm mixing up some colors for now. Those are very dark and red patches. So the fun part we're going to start, I'll see you in the next video. 7. Red Patches-Third Layer: In this lesson, I'm going to start painting down all this beautiful red and dark red patches so that this bunch of little circles would start turning into actual crepes. So let's get started. So first what I would like to start with is by making some space for some new additional red colors on my palette. Right? So first, I would like to mix maybe this red, orangey color. So I will be using scenario read. Read a bit of Ireland. Let's see. Maybe we can add a bit of perylene maroon. That's better. Second one, just Berlin maroon photos, darker parts, darker red. Then we need this purply red maroon. I want to add a bit scenario to scenario. Alright. So you see e.g. here, it's perfect for this grape. For this one, you need the first one. So when we paint this grape, we can just add a little bit more blue somewhere in the corner of this glaze. Just slightly adjust for each grade because on each grave stone is slightly different than so. You don't have to bother, you can just use one color and if it looks a bit different from the reference photo, it's not a big deal, but if you want to really get perfect for each grade, we can slightly adjust the tone someone at the entire mix, but somewhere in the corner, just add a little bit of blue or a little bit more red, just so that you can pick up that tiny piece that you just mix that up and then paint that. Decorate. Alright, so these are the colors. We can start painting. Maybe we just want to adjust my ugly. Now you see now we're going to dry and it looks a little bit too brown. Add even more red into this dark mix. Be better. Right? Let's start. Again. We're going to be painting wet into wet, still using the same brush. And again, we don't want to have too much water onto the paper because we want to have the control and we don't want them mixed to spread too much because we don't want the paint spread all over. We want to have those patches of color. Same way we can. I walked onto the paper and then mop it up quickly, the excess so that we have only a slightly damp surface. So for this part, for this stage, it's even more important that the paper isn't too wet because those patches, if it's too wet, we'll kinda lose the pattern that we want to grade. So it needs to be very uncontrolled, yet it needs to, needs to have a very subtle edges, meaning that you do need to paint on a wet on wet, so that it spreads very nicely, yet they stay in shape. So before you start painting everywhere, just dab couple of times just to see how much it spreads. If it's too much, just wait a few seconds for the paper, for the water to soak into the paper, it will get a little bit drier. I'm also this point using pretty sticky and goopy color mixes because for the same reason we don't put too much water on our paper before we start to paint so that those patches would stay quiet and control and don't spread all over the grave, but only in little patches. So you can see I'm painting with a tip of my brush in little dabs so that I can make those little patches and closely monitor how the color spreads. So you do need to closely monitor your reference photo and don't be bothered about tiny little dots and speckles here you can see on a grape, we only want to paint in those big blobs and patches of red color, but also don't get lost into too much reference. Because if those patches slides in a different place, that is alright. Because when you paint something busy and colorful, it's not about where exactly you put those patches, but the concept of them, so they can be in completely different places. You can use the reference for just purely as the reference, but you can paint wherever you want them. Don't be too worried if they don't seem exactly in a place where I put those patches or the reference. They will still look good and ignore all the little scratches and little dots and speckles on a grip. We're going to do them in the next step, so only the big patches of red bloom. I also cleaned my brush to the water out and slightly softened one edge of this patch that goes towards the pencil line to make the grip look a little bit more circular and preserve this reflective light. So I see that my glaze is still a little bit damp. I can pick up a little bit darker, stronger color and still apply a little bit in certain places because you see those patches and not very even colors. So while the glaze is damp, we can just add a little bit more variation of those patches, not as smallest detail just here and there. The very end there, there's better very dark little patch. So I'm just gonna quickly mix up the same color that we had for the bloom. Just a little bit darker. Philo blue with neutral tint to have this very dark color. And right here at the tip of it, There's properly dark patch. So just applying some color there in a little dab and motions. So now clean my brush, take the water out, and just sweep through the highlighted area in the center. Again, does highlight as much lighter than it's supposed to be. But it's okay once we do all the patches, who reminded to read glaze, the bloom, we will make that highlight as big as it's supposed to be. But right now I'm just leaving more than I need to just to be safe. So as the glaze tries, the marks will make their sharper and the color doesn't spread too much. So I'm going to have to stop, but I'm just adding Karen there and just making my patches look closer to give reference photo. And if you need to soften around the edge, just clean your brush, take the water out and just sweep around slightly making the edge towards the pencil line. Slightly softer. Last little detail, still picking up a little bit of my dark, dark red and is placing few dabs in the center. As my color doesn't spread as much as I can make slightly darker patch. And so now you can see those dark patches. The bloom looks so light and will probably need to darken it. Now we can leave that grip to dry and move on to the next one. Again, applying in ice water glaze that doesn't have too much water. Here I applied all over the grip and then collected all the excess and starting to paint right away. Picking up quite right. You can see the paint on my palette is dry. Ash doesn't have a lot of water. So everything's a little bit more concentrated to make sure that those colors don't just spread all over the grape. I needed very, very gentle spread the color. So I'm starting with my lighter red first. And again, you see I'm painting with my tip of my brush with little dabs, making sure the color doesn't spread too much. If it does, make your color stickier or a little bit less water on your paper first. Picking up some darker colors as I go into the shadow area. And so you can see I'm working in those very small motions, just little dab at a time. You do need to work fairly quickly because the glaze is drying. But I'm not trying to make any big strokes. So just little dab and I'm moving along with quickly but in little tabs so that in case I do a mistake, I had only one little dabs always using big brushstrokes, just little dabs at a time so that we see how that color spreads everywhere and so we know where to make this pattern. Even you can see mine is not identical, the same those patterns, but we just want to get similar as close to their reference. And if it started spreading somewhere, you don't need it and just clean your brush to get the word out and wipe it away that color. So my glaze is almost dry. You can see the colors not sprinting anymore. So I'm going to just add a little bit of blue into my dark red mixture here in the corner now, nuts all over the mix just in the corner to have this really, really dark color, purply red color for the shadow area in here, I'm going to apply in this dark, dark corner here, again with small little dabs. No sudden movements. And make sure I have a very clean line around overlapping grape. Because when you paint grapes, it looks like it's a very simple subject dose. Paint circled, but it's actually quite difficult because you need to make sure your lines are very tidy. Because whenever you just go over the other grape and all of the sudden death grave just doesn't look natural and realistic anymore. So we need to make sure you don't come out of the pencil line and they stay nicely circled. So as you can see, now the colors no longer spread. That means the glaze is already pretty dry, so I'm adding the tiniest little mark here at the edge. Cleaning my brush, taking water out and softening that side towards the pencil line to make it a little bit transitioning into the lighter as the grip curves and make disappearing edge. Right. So I can now leave that to dry and move on to the next one. So now that we've painted a couple of grapes, I think now you will be able to understand why the step is and what we need to do. And so I'm gonna leave you to continue and finish all the grapes. So what we do is apply clean water glaze first, making sure we don't have too much water. Once you apply the entire grape, clean your brush, take the water out, and just collect all the excess. And then closely monitor your reference photo and apply lighter red, darker red patches where you think they are. And if they're a little bit in a different place, Don't panic. They will still look nice and still looks like rape because nobody will see the reference photo, but you, nobody will know where exactly those patches have to be. So enjoy the process and just make sure you don't have too much water on either your brush or your paper or the mixes so that you can stay in control. Sure. Right, So this is our last grape. I hope you enjoyed this step and it was clear and understandable. And in the next lesson we will start painting down those really fine details and little scratches and little dots on those grapes so that we further enhance our crepe painting. So I will see you in the next step. 8. Fine Detail-Fourth Layer: We are so close to the finishing line, and right now it's time to paint in all this fine detail, little dots, little scratches and markings, everything that we couldn't do when we were painting those big red patches. So all the main layers are done and we have the bones sort of speak and, but it's not very detailed. So I'm gonna take my smaller brush, which will be probably number one. And we no longer going to paint with wet on wet technique now we're going to paint with dry paint or a wet paint on dry paper or dry paint on dry paper, depending on the area, but primarily it's going to be quite lucky dry brush I would say. And so we're now going to try to capture all those little dots, little scratches. And in some areas you can see some of the patches have sharp edges, so we're going to paint over those as well, making the forum a little bit. What we see in the reference, there is a little darker areas and those patches so we can paint those students are basically all the fine, fine detail, all the finest detail we're gonna do now. So now that we have our darker tones, we can clearly see that the blue needs to be darkened compared to the reference photo. And as I mentioned, that you can only judge a lighter tones once you have your dark tones. So once we're done with all the detail, we will do a binding layer where we will glaze over with our bloom color underneath color that the colors that we started with to sort of tie everything together, diffuse a little bit of all our markings that we make. And that's a good think to do at the end because all the markings and fine detail that we're gonna do, my look a little bit disconnected because they're going to be a little bit too sharp and too strong. So when we'll do the binding layer at the very end, we will tie it all together and it just will look like it belongs. Right? So we can go and start painting rights fault for the smallest and this fine detail, we're going to be using the same colors that we used for the red patchwork. So again, I don't have too much water on my my colors. I don't remove wet and remix them. I just pick up a little bit of water on my brush, diluted mix, and loosen up the paint on my palette and then load my brush and I dab on a kitchen towel to take the excess water and they start painting. So this is will be like a dry brush so we don't want any droplets, so you don't need to how much water in your brush, just if your pigment, but it has to be diluted because when you paint, dry paint or wet paint on dry paper, the color doesn't dry much lighter, it stays pretty much the same as what you see. And it's quite different than you paint with wet on wet, that you'll probably notice the colors dry, much lighter. So this step again, it's not very complicated. It's quite easy one. And because we don't have wet glaze on our paper, we can take all our time, just as much time as you need because no colors are flowing everywhere, you don't need to manage anything. So now we'll really focus on the smallest of the parts of each grape. You know, when you paint with wet on what you focused on hong grape. Because you need to monitor all corners when you paint with wet on wet. Now, we paint little section at a time. Color stays exactly where we need it to be. And so we can just take our time and it's quite relaxing now. And we can really focus on each grape and each corner and put as much detail as we want to. So I personally like to go into really fine detail and I examined every centimeter of a grape and I tried to match it on my painting. You don't have to do that. You can just capture the essence of a grape and you don't have to go into great detail, detail as I do, but it's up to you. But the step is generally quite easy. So if you're not sure a little bit about the step than maybe paint with slightly more diluted paint in case you might go too strong so you can always darken anything you need. But if you're a little unsure, maybe just start painting with slightly lighter paint and you can just darken the color as you go, as you feel a little bit more comfortable. So you see now I'm focusing on every little corner at a time and just paint little patch of the time. Really closely monitor my reference photo. And they paint in little patch. And maybe one edge of that little patch might be softer. They then clean my brush, take the water out and I just further away that corner with clean damp brush to create a transition or disappearing edge. And then I move on to the next little area. And so I am going into great detail here and I pick up the colors. According to that, everyday paint, e.g. I. Painted with my red. Now I'm moving to the corner that's very, that the tip of the grape, it's very dark. So I'm picking up my dark red mix that had some blue in it. So we just keep building that grape. So I started by painting in darker part on the red patches that we painted in the previous step. And slowly I will start moving into the light areas where it doesn't have any marks that, and I will start here making little lines. You see little scratches and literal little dots and I'm like speckles on each grape. And I'm trying to make them very fine and very small, just as I see in the reference photo, a little bit erratic, not perfectly rounded. Somewhere can be a dot somewhere can be a little line. And you can see that I'm using very dry paint. If I had very wet paint or too much water on my brush, then I wouldn't be able to make very fine lines, are fine dots that water would sort of drop off my brush and could create much thicker watery marks. So if you want to make very fine, very sharp details and paid just with the last sort of hair on your brush, then you need to have pretty dry paint. That's why I didn't really wet my paint on the palette. I love to dry and I just picked up a little bit of water on my brush just so I can loosen up that paint each time we need to pick it up. And if I think I have too much, I just dab it on my towel to take the excess so that I would have just the pigment without much water. So the previous step that we did where we painted those big red patches, it's like a groundwork for all this detail. Now with this dry brush, I sort of grade shape a little bit more what it looks on the reference photo. And I miss shaping a little bit those patches that we did just to match my reference. And again, it's just because I really like to go into like very fine detail. You don't have to do it. But now it does dry brush. You can create pretty much anything if you just take your time. So this step is, I would say quite easy. It's just that it's time-consuming. If you're someone like me that it gets lost in the details sometimes. But yeah, so take your time. Don't rush and just examine your reference and paint what you see, I guess. And just I would like to mention that you can probably notice that those marks that are making their slightly too dark compared to the rest of the grape. And that is because we still haven't put this binding layer that I mentioned we will at the very end in the next lesson. So don't worry if those marks coming off a little bit too harsh. They will get softened with our final layer and they will get diffused. So if they are two lights, they might get lost underneath that layer. So they do need to be a little bit stronger than what it looks right for the stage that we are. And so I think now it's clear what the step is. Using quite dry paint. Painting in all the detail. Little brushstrokes at a time. If you want a softer edge somewhere, clean your brush, take the water out and soften away, further away your marks. And just try to capture as much, as much detail as you can see. And let's just go and finish that step on all of the grapes. So we finished this step and we are very close to the finishing line. And I hope you enjoyed this step and you understood everything and you happy with the result. And in the next lesson, we will put down our binding layer to bring all of this fine detail together. 9. Binding Layer : Hello and welcome back to the next step of painting this beautiful grapes. So now we're in our last layer for the grapes. And then all I have to do is the stamp. So now looking at our grapes, we can see that after those markings, the bloom color is a little bit too light and we're missing a little bit more pinks and blues on our grapes. And also those marks and the fine detail that were put in looks a little bit too sharp and they a little bit to a parent. So, but I did want to make the fine detail before the last layer so that now you can glaze over with very transparent watercolors over the entire grapes. Just making this bloom color underneath a little bit more saturated, but also it will soften and diffuse the fine detail that were put in. And this last layer will bind it all together. And those details and marks and dots and scratches going to look a little bit more natural and software. And it just the last layer just going to bind all our work into this realistic looking grape. So what we need to do is now mix a little bit more bloom color. So I'm using the same dark blue color that we had in a corner. We're going to use it for this very dark grape, and we need a couple additional colors. So I see I need blue, but very, very pale blue, but with a little bit pink in it. So I'm using my fellow blue, adding a little bit of permanent rose and making it very watery and pale. Just keep adding those two colors. And let's see what we have on my piece of paper. That looks about right, so another mix, we need something much more pink. I'm adding primarily permanent rose and adding a touch of yellow, blue, just the pink should be dominant in this case, and this will be for those slightly more purple parts. I'm keeping my mixes very pale and transparent. This is how the dark blue gonna look. And I'm all using in all the mixes, I'm using the same pigments are fellow blue, permanent rose. It's, it's a different quantity of each. It creates different shades of mixes. So if we need to adjust lively when we start already painting, we can by adding same pigment. So I'm picking up my brush number three that I was painting area. And now keeping my mixes very pale and transparent, I will focus at the little section of a grape nut, entire grape, but just a one side of it and glaze over the darkest part of that part that I chose. Then clean my brush, take the water out and I soften around into the lighter areas, and then I pick up another color. So now you see I picked up a little bit of blue color. Glazed left side of this grapes soften into the lighter parts that cost over the pencil line, the edge and towards the highlight. Because when you soften the edge of your glaze with clean damp brush, you sort of feather with away and making it that transition lighter. Here I'm picking up slightly different color, slightly more pink and glaze the other side. And so you paint this little sections of each grape at a time with very pale and transparent watercolors. And you can repeat that step as many times as you want, and you can read glaze many times if you want to. But most important thing is to let those glazes dry before you come back to them. So you do want those layers. You don't want to rush this process and you don't want to come with strong colors because to create luminosity, depth, and dimension to your paintings, you need those layers. So better paint with more layers, with very thin transparent colors, but more layers than a single layer of very strong color, it will make a huge difference. And also when we paint with very transparent watercolors, even though we make a mistake, it wouldn't be very obvious and apparent because the painting very, very lightly. So that just helps you to avoid mistakes and going too strong. And it's just easier for you to judge them where we need to glaze again, where it's enough. So little sections at a time, each layer at a time. And you see I keep returning to decrypt the I already glazed because it has already dried and I can come back to the same grape and repeat the process as many times as they need to, but I need to let those layers dry. And so now you see how on, on those few grapes that we've painted, those marks look softer, more natural. They seem like they belong and they're not really. Just screaming too much and then that disconnected. So yeah, so what do we need to do now is take our time. We don't need to rush, enjoy the process and we need to finish this step on all of our grapes. So try to look at your reference photo and you do have time now because we don't have wet glaze waiting for us. That's trying and we need to rush and paint quickly. Now we really can take our time. And so we need to examine our reference photo closely and see what color do you see of that bloom because those colors are very subtle. Some are blue, purple, pink, but they are very subtle. So you need to try and identify what shade you actually see. You can really make a mistake here. They are very colorful. So even if you place a different shades and certain area, it will still look good and there's still will look natural. But you do need to try and make that decision for yourself so that you can progress. Just I want you to not to rush NOR and take your time with this step because this is a last step for the actual grapes. And you can take all your time. And if it's hard for you to understand whether it's dark enough, good thing is to make a little break. It doesn't have to be a long break and go on that tea break, five, 10 min. And then you come back, you will see with completely fresh eyes and it will be harder for you to judge whether you need to darken a little bit more. If you need to glaze a bit more or not, or just simply stand away from your desk and look at it from a little bit further away. And this will be easier to see because sometimes when we scrunched over the desk, it's hard to see. If you're not going too dark with something because it's very easy with watercolors to go too dark. So that's why you need to paint very lightly so that we don't overpower with our colors, especially the bloom color. It still has to stay pretty light. So let's go over and finish the stuff on all of the grapes. Here if you have finished with all our glazing and now you can see how this last layer pulled everything together. It looks very realistic, are fine detail is diffused software and looks just like the reference photo and also the game, a little bit of color. So now, before we finished with the grapes, what I want to do is take a clean brush, smaller brush, or a brush that has a good point and remove some of the paint of those few little white dots they can sue on few Graves is just the tiniest detail gifts. Something special to the painting. So I usually like to, to capture those smallest details. So clean, damp brush, put a little bit of water on the paper and with gentle rubbing, try to scrub a little bit of paint of the paper and then dab with kitchen towel to absorb which are lifted up. So I did that on all of the grapes that I can see requires that. But I can see that it doesn't lift off as wide as they need to be. Because in few grapes I can see those little white dots in the reference photo that I can really lift off. So what I'm gonna do now is I'm going to take a tool which is, I think it's called compas. That's the tool that you use to draw your circles. It's cool and I'm going to use the needle part of it. And it will gently rub the surface of the paper to scrub off some paint and you can see how immediately have really bright white dots. So I like to capture this kind of a last detail. That's not an, a technique that I highly recommend because it essentially is damaging the paper. But if you need for something this tiny, I don't see a problem with that. You can use a needle or you can also use white paint. It's just that a lot of botanical painters don't really like using white paint or specialty if you want your painting to be accepted to some calories, some don't allow white paint, opaque white paint. So therefore, the white paper isn't very widely used, but it's an option if that's what you would like to do. But you can see now I rub few parts and it just gives that really bright white little detail on all those grapes that require that. It's just something that brings something new to the painting and I like that, right? So I hope you enjoyed the process of painting those beautiful grapes and all is left now to paint in the stem and we will be finished. So I'll see you in the next video. 10. Stem: Right, so congratulations for making it so far. And now we're going to make some space on our palette to mix up some colors for our green stem. Usually, when I paint something, I tried to use the same pigments for all of them mix is required for the painting. So I'm using if I'm using one type of yellow, I've tried to use it for all of the other mixes that requires for that painting. But sometimes they do need to extend the options and I need to add other yellows because one is cooler, one is warmer. But generally speaking, I tried to limit my palette. So right now I'm using Ireland yellow and add a touch of phthalo blue, fallow blue is my favorite blue perhaps. Because I tried quiet and many different options of mixing your greens and I'm like mixes of migraines with fellow the most because they usually very smooth mixes. The color doesn't granulate and it was very fresh, nice, green. And if you need to make it a little bit more Oliver, you can add of your reds are a little bit of quinacridone gold. And it just, my favorite recipe, if you will, for Greens, is it pale blue, right? And now we need to mix a little bit of brown, again using the same pigments were used throughout the painting. So that would be filled blue, Ireland yellow. And I'm adding Sennelier red to make it look brown. And we can start, That's all we're going to need for the stem. So I need to apologize because my reference photo isn't very clear unfortunately, but we're still able to see what we need to paint. So generally, I would start something when you paint something that's a little bit messy. Suddenly unnecessarily complicated, but it's not very clear. So you start by blocking one color than the other. So I'm going to start painting from the top, going down. So I will be blocking green color first, but because at the very top there's a little bit of brown, so I'm going to start with brown just at the very top. I'm not wetting the paper before because it's very small areas. So don't require wet on wet. What I'm gonna do, I'll pick up at first slightly more diluted color, painted the area. And then while that glaze is wet, I can lift off a little bit of highlight with a clean damp brush and add a little bit stronger color in a shadowed area. I'm done with this brown part now. I'm picking up my green and we're going to start applying that green all over the stem and just blocking all those colors. Because brown color is darker, it can go on top of the green, so we don't necessarily need to keep the area white. So we're just going around and painting each little stem with this first color and you see me softening the edge where I want it to be lighter. And if you are a little bit worried, then paint with even paler color and then you can just keep building those layers until you like the color saturation. But generally speaking, always try to paint likely, especially if you don't paint with wet on wet because the glazes won't dry much lighter, it's going to stay pretty much what you can see now. That stem doesn't really have much light and shadow. So I thought maybe once we've finished with this foundation layer, if you will, we might add a little bit more shadow on one side to create the stem a little bit more circular and just exaggerate it a little bit more than what we can see in the reference photo. Now, let's finish blocking all the green parts on our stem. And then we're going to pick up, how about Brown and began to paint the brown parts of it. Right at the first layer with green is finished. Now we can pick up a little bit of brown. I'm starting with quite watery and pale brown just to start with. And once we block the main brown parts, we can pick up a little bit stronger brown and create. A stronger contrast for that stem and painting of really, really dark parts. So you can see the stem is a little bit not very well focused on reference photo. So just try to mimic something similar shapes that you can see in that stem. I paint a little area, then I clean my brush and soften away the edge that is softer, that sort of disappears in the stem so that you don't create those very rigid, hard lines. So whenever you paint something, you soften the other edge with a clean, damp brush where you want it to appear softer. So now that we did our first layer with green and brown colors, we are halfway there. What do we need to do now is to create slightly stronger contrast. So if you need to apply a little bit more shadow part. So now what I'm doing, picking up some green and I am building that tonal value for the green stem. And you can see that I am exaggerating the shadow a little bit more than the reference photo suggest, just to give a little bit more realism to the stem and look, make it look a little bit more circular. So I added a little bit of shadow in the middle and softened on either side so that it's lighter and it makes it look a little bit more circle. And I'm adding a little bit darker tones of green on a little parts of the stem. And we're going to be doing the same thing with brown too. So when you paint something, doesn't matter what it is. Contrast is very important for the object to appear realistic. So that means you need to have pretty light lights and some really, really dark parts. So there needs to be balanced of both, not everything, just too light or too dark. So the contrast is very important. So what I'm gonna do now, I'm going to use the same pigments that are used for Brown is Ireland, yellow, yellow, blue, and red, but make the brown a little bit stronger and a little bit more saturated and darker so that we can paint in those really, really dark parts and give that contrast to our stem so that it looks a little bit more realistic. So those very dark parts are very important. And you can see how now the paint is nearly black part. And it immediately lifts up the stem and it looks a little bit more realistic. So I paint the tiny little section, then clean my brush, took the water out and softened one side of it where it needs to be softer. And I will repeat that process on all of little parts where I can see some really, really dark pigments. If you want to paint or even almost you can call it drawing. Those really, really fine details and really dark parts. You need to pick up slightly a dryer paint. So when you pick up your son concentrated saturated color dab on your towel to take the water out. And with the tip of your brush, we can paint in those really fine lines. So the paintings to be dry on your brush. If we have more water in your brush, deadlines will come out pale and thick. So dry paint and more saturated. And you can draw really fine detail. Just adding a touch of red into my brown. It's the same pigment that was used in a brown just for little party that it looks a little bit more reddish. So here we reach the end for those delicious, delicious grapes that the paint that I really hope you enjoy it. You definitely can. I give it a try. And I really, really can't wait to see your painting. So please, please do share your paintings with me either on Instagram are here and I can't wait to see what you're going to create. You don't have to use my reference. You can maybe use your grapes. It doesn't matter. The process would be the same. So I hope you enjoyed it. Have a nice day, and I'll see you in the future projects. Bye bye.