Watercolor Roses: Loose Floral Vase Painting | Series Week 3

1. Welcome: Painting Loose Watercolor Roses in a Vase: Welcome back. In today's class, we're going to be painting a loose watercolor bouquet of roses arranged in a simple glass vase. This painting brings together several of the techniques that we've been practicing throughout this series, including painting without sketching, using a larger paintbrush and allowing the paint to move more naturally on the paper. This is a helpful warm up that will give you the feel for the brush movement and the soft spiral shapes that create the center of the flower. Once you see how the rose is formed, we'll move on to the full class project. For the main painting, we'll start by establishing a vase and a table so the composition feels grounded. Then we're going to build up the bouquet by building three expressive flowers followed by loose greenery and a soft background wash that helps the flowers stand out. The goal of this class is not perfection, but instead to focus on keeping your brush strokes relaxed and allowing some of the edges to say soft and unfinished. Those small variations are what's going to give your loose water color its natural beauty. When you're ready, gather your supplies, and let's begin with a practice rose. 2. Practice Exercise: How to Paint a Loose Watercolor Rose: This class, we're going to be painting a vase with a couple of flowers, trying to keep our watercolor nice and fluid and loose. This is Daniel Smith's buff titanium and it's such a great color because it's just this soft creamy color. I'm going to use this little plate. It's just a little flat plate that I have for my kitchen. I'm just going to put a little bit of it down here. I don't need much. I'm just going to put a little bit in just to get started. I can always mix up more later. Then I'm going to add some water to it. Then I want to just show you it's just so creamy you can see here that it's just this beautiful creamy color. Today I'm going to be mixing that with my pink specifically so that I can create a really soft pink. There I just put pink right into it. My red. Do you see how beautiful that is? If I dive, let me just use my other brush and dive right into that same paint. This is the same paint that I put in here. You can see how different it is. Then I'm going to make my first little flower here. It's just a little sample. If you missed that last class, you can practice it right here, you can go back to the other one. I'm going to be creating a circle here with lots of water and it's jagged. Maybe it's opening up in different spots little jaggedness over here and over there. So on this paint brush, I just have some of the paint straight out of the palette. And I'll just start to put in a little circle there, little semicircle, C shape for the center of the rows and then maybe a couple more around the outside edges. You know, just kind of like kind of random You can always just play around with it. If you want to make them a little softer, you can come back in with a bigger brush and soften them. I really kind of want a little darker center, so I'm going to use this darker brown. Just add a little bit of darker paint in here to the middle. Maybe even add just some shadows out here. Not many. Just a couple. Again, using an almost dry paintbrush, you can move this around. Soften them. Remember that they're going to dry lighter than when they're wet. When they're wet, they are the darkest that they're going to be, and then they always dry lighter. Red tones, but instead of being really, really pink, I'm just choosing a little darker red to add another layer of interest, some little green around the base. This is another wash. If I wanted to, I could also just pull up some of that color that's in there and just push it out push that pink out in there, just to create a wash effect. Drop some greens in. I'm not going to get real detailed here because you can go back and watch that other class where we talked about this. I do want to get onto the whole lesson, remembering to keep your darkest edges right along the edge of the flower because that's almost like show your back shadow. Think about where your son is coming from. If my son is coming this direction, down here is going to be the darkest over here would be the very darkest. I can even just add water. Just pull that out. Add in some more dark shadow. Okay, I think you're getting the hint as to what we're doing. You can go ahead and practice this creating one single flower. Adding some greens around it in this variation, maybe keeping one area lighter and one area darker. It's okay for it to get a nice little wash across it because we're making it a really, really soft loose atmospheric style. 3. Painting the Vase and Table Foundation: So for this class, I'm going to be using my ten by ten Academy watercolor paper pad. This has the glue that anchors the piece of paper down. This is 100% cotton. I'm going to be using that and painting within here. We're going to go ahead and paint a vase sitting on a small little table and some greenery and three roses inside of this vase. But we're going to do that. Without sketching anything, we're going to leave our pencils put away in the drawer. We don't need them. So I am going to be creating the vase and I would like to have the vase about if I think of this as being a halfway point, I want it to start a little bit below halfway point. My point of my vase is going to the top of my vase is going to be here and I'm going to come down and around like that. I think I can create this by just saying it's going to come down and then I'm going to make it bobble out just slightly, something like that. Then I'm going to have it come straight across for the base. I'm just going to put a little bit of more water onto my brush. I didn't rinse it out completely. I just dipped it in the water. Now I'm going to do it the opposite direction. I have my vase branching out that direction, coming across and then I'm going to start here again coming down to about the same point. I'm just going to push it out that way. See how it's not anywhere near perfect, and that's okay. It doesn't have to be perfect. Rinsing out my paint brush, I'm just going to bring in just a touch of the paint that's already in here and filling in the middle here a little bit. I'm calling that done for now. I might come back in here and add a little bit more of this paint at some point when that dries a little bit more. But for right now, that's all I'm going to do. I'm also going to create a table platform down here in maybe like a gray blue color, but I need to wait for this to dry first. So I'm going to wait for this to dry a little bit, and then I'm going to add some details, and then we're going to get started up there on those flowers. This is dried enough. It's not completely dry, but it's dried enough that I can just come in here and add just a little details of little touches around the outside edge. I'm going to be showing that my light source is actually coming up and so this is going to be in my lightest and then my darker area is going to be over here for this particular one. I'm darkening these areas. I think I'll even add in a little bit of that pink from the palette just to add in some extra little fun details right along the edge. Show that it's the darkest spot. Notice that I'm using this great big size ten brush because I want this to be really loose and not feeling like I'm trying to make it exact. Now I'm going to create the little table. I'm just going to come up and just touch that pink and come all the way across, maybe fade it out a little bit. Over there. Again, we're not drawing. We're just making a line that is about straight, but it's not going to be completely straight. Using lots of water on my brush. I put my paint brush into the paint, and then I even dipped it into my paint water over here so that it's not real pigmented. I'm just going to put some of that right down into my wet area. Drag that across. Because this is my lightest side, my light sources coming up here, I'll just fade over to that side. You'll still be able to see that it's blue, but it's very faded. Because this is the base of my vase, I will probably put it in a little bit extra underneath it to create a shadow. Okay, so that's dry enough and there's enough shadow going on here. I might come back to this later. I'm not sure. I'm going to move on and start working on the roses. Come back to the next part of this class project and we're going to start working on those roses. 4. Building the Bouquet: Painting the Roses: Welcome back. We're going to start working on those roses, but I want to highlight something here. I want to show you that I did not finish off the top of this vase. I didn't give it a lip. I didn't finish it. The reason I didn't finish it is because I'm going to have leaves coming in here. When I make a vase or a container, a basket or something, I like to have the top of the vase actually covered with either a flower or leaves or something else, a ribbon instead of showing the vase top and then having all the stems coming up from there. Because I left that open, that's going to give me an opportunity to actually put in some leaves and a little bit of a flower. So I'm going to have my first flower just using plain water. I'm going to actually have my first flower all the way down here at the bottom of this vase. I'm going to create a circle. I'm going to make it jagged because all of our flowers are very jagged around the outside edges. Making it loose, it's not a perfect circle. And then I'm going to create a second one because I'm going to create all three bases at the exact same time. I'm going to create another one up here and this one is going to be almost oval shape because it's maybe looking up the tip of it's the center of it's going to be up here. I'm just going to make it jag it around the outside edge and make it more of an oval shape. Just plain water, no pigment at this time, no paint. Okay if my two circles touch. If you find that your two circles are touching, that's going to be okay because everything they can bleed together. Then I'm going to put a third one up in here. Again, I'm going to make it a circle, but maybe more oval shaped and just tucked in here. This is going to be my background flower. Again, I'm going to make it jag it around the outside edge. And that one's looking that direction and so the tip of it is going to be all the way up in here. Now, I know that's hard to see because of the camera. I'm going to see if I can pull it up closer to you so that you can take a look at it. Okay, here's my vase and you can see that I put in this bottom flower here and it's all jagged and it's touching into the vase base, and then over here is my oval, and that one is up in here, but oval shape, and again, jagged and there's my third one. Hopefully that comes through on the camera. But the buff titanium with lots of water, and I'm just going to drop that right on in. It's the same color as my vase. I did that on purpose because I really want to be able to have this very nicely coordinated. I'm just going to put in that color, this is still wet so I can add it in over here. I'm not painting it in it's a coloring page. I'm just dropping in some paint where it's still wet and letting it bleed out. If they touch, it's okay. If I put my paint and it goes outside of where it's wet, that's also okay. Remember, no rules. We're just experimenting and just having fun. I want to get that center going, so I'm going to pick up some of the pigment right from my palette. I'm going to be putting in the center of this flower up higher to indicate that it is looking up. This one is going to go over that way. And that. That's how we're going to get these flowers to look like they're going in different directions. Using just the tip of this brush, even though this is a size ten, I'm just using the tip of the brush to add in some C shapes, even along the outside edge. I hope you're painting along with me and having a good time exploring. I'm going to pick up some of that brown mix it in with some of the pink. Then in areas that I want to have it a little darker. I can tap that in there. Keep remembering where your focus is on the sun. M or my light source is coming up. This must be up on a higher shelf the window coming in. Most important is that you are having fun. Fun experimenting. Fun figuring out how much paint you need or how much water you need or which colors combination. Just adding in some really dark brown here into the centers. Let that bleed out. Before these dry completely, I'm going to come in with my larger brush. I'm using this quill brush and I'm going to get some of these areas wet because we're going to be adding in our background now. I'm going to be actually touching into the pink and spreading that pink around and bringing it out because we're going to be creating a really loose back. 5. Adding Greenery and the Background Wash: And I'm okay with touching it and letting that all bleed. I know that it feels unusual to do that because you feel like you just ruined your painting that you did. I'm not trying to finish. I'm not trying to take away from what you've accomplished. But this style, this atmospheric style really allows for some fun movement and experimentation. Now I'm going to be starting to put in some greens and some yellows. I know I'm going to want some greens in here. I'll put a little green background in there. Now I want some green here and some green in the middle. I am going to be working quickly because I don't want this to dry. I want to keep working while this is very wet. Maybe we want to have some greens that come up. You know, maybe we'll add on a little bit of blue. I do like a little bit of blue in here too. That same blue color that I had down here. I just some pulling that up here too. Dropping that in. This is where it just becomes very intuitive and you have to just kind of go with what makes you feel right. Okay, maybe I think I need some yellow. What do you think? Little yellow always makes everything happy. So I think we'll add in a little yellow, but my light source is down here, so I don't want to put too much yellow up there. Put more down in here. I do want to be careful of putting my yellow next to my blue because yellow and blue makes green, and sometimes you can put in green where you didn't really want it. So just be careful. Just be aware of it. It's fun. Nice background. Remember it's going to dry lighter than it's showing here. Leaving lots of white space. You know, the white space all the way around. I'm gonna leave all that there. I'm going to come in and add in a little bit more green and create a little green bringing it down in here. Up in the middle. Right now, it's not leaves in particular. They're just shapes of color, swashes of color where I'm going to be adding leaf shapes on top of this in a minute. Even some darker green this is nice and dark here in the center. Okay. What I'm going to do is wait for this to dry or go ahead and use my Okay. Now this is mostly dry, I'm very happy with the background. We're going to have to come back and put in a few more details into the roses, but I also want to add in some real looking leaves. I'm going to branch off and bring out some small branches that's going to help me remember where I want some of my flowers to go and my leaves. I'm going to branch out like that. I think I'm also going to come up here and have something coming out that direction. Okay. That's going to help me with a little bit of my guidelines. Using my size ten, using a nice soft green, natural green. I am going to create some leaves by pushing down and pulling off like that. Just right on top. Can even create some right on top of that. All that is is just laying my paintbrush down and pushing off, laying my paintbrush down and pulling. Letting this big paintbrush do the work. Okay. So let that go for a second and then come back over and grab this pink again and create some more big petals right on top of what we've already done. Because this is very diluted paint, it's just going to glide right on top. Okay. Let that dry. Coming back over to my paint brush, I'm going to grab a lighter green. Mm. Got another one down in here. Well, I think I'm going to add in a little bit more detail into the flour now that that's dried. We're just adding it back in. Not a lot because this is a very loose watercolor feel. Soften those edges if you want. Or texture down in here. I'm using that paint brush with a little blue and a little brown and almost with a dry brush. Going to create just a little dry brush effect. Really lightly laying it on its side, just very lightly touching that edge. Want you to take notice of the top of the vase because I didn't finish that top of that vase and I left a lot of space there that allowed me to anchor in my rose here at the top and also to cover some green leaves right on top of that. It really finishes off the piece so that it doesn't feel disconnected. This really makes it feel like the arrangement is part of the vase. I also want you to take note of how my vase is not perfect. This side is a little bit more rounder, this side is a little bit straighter. I'm okay with it because it's the style of painting that I was trying to achieve, which is a very loose style. What was more important to me was that I had my light source correct, that I had my lighter things on this side and it shows that my darker things are on here. This is the shadowy spot, and this is where the light source is coming in. There's a window over here looking at it. And I really like the way my table worked out, and I think the background is cool. I hope that you go ahead and do this. I'm going to go ahead and put this into a frame so that you can see it. Come back to the next lesson so you can see this framed and talk about next steps. 6. Framing Your Painting and What to Paint Next: Once your painting is dry, take a moment and step back and take a look at your work from a distance. Loose watercolor often looks best once it has had time to settle and the colors have fully dried. The soft edges, light washes and small variation in brushstroke all come together to create a natural and expressive floral arrangement. One of the things I love about this style of painting is that every version turns out different. Even if you follow the exact same steps your roses, leaves, and background washes will develop into their own unique way. That individuality is part of what makes watercolor so enjoyable. If you like, you can also try painting this bouquet again, using different colors or a slightly different arrangement. Repeating the same subject in a different wonderful way will build confidence and develop more relaxed brushstrokes. I would love to see your finished painting, please upload your project into the class gallery. Seeing all the different interpretations of the same lesson is always so inspiring for both me and the other students in the class. If you enjoyed this lesson, be sure to follow me here on Skillshare so that you'll be notified when the new classes are released. I sure hope you took all the other classes that are in this series.