Transcripts
1. Welcome — Let's Paint Some Roses!: Let's paint these
lovely, luminous roses. This beginner class will
show you how to create a lively floral painting step by step with radiant watercolor. Rather than trying to
paint every detail, we'll learn how to
use light, medium, and dark tonal values to suggest the form and
shape of the petals. We'll mix a variety of fresh, natural greens to bring contrast and balance to the
vibrant pink flowers, and we'll have some fun with the finishing touches as I show you how to use a magic sponge
to intensify highlights, as well as a simple
spatter technique for energy and texture. It's suitable for all levels, including beginners because I'm going to be guiding you
every step of the way. And I'll be sharing all
the techniques, tips, and tricks that I use in
my own professional work. I've included a copy
of the drawing in the project resources section so that you can download
it and trace it, and then not worry
about the drawing because this is a
painting class. I am a professional artist, author, and tutor,
and over the years, I've sold a lot of work
across the world and helped hundreds of people to
learn more about watercolor. You can see examples of
my work on my website. My style leans towards
impressionistic and contemporary rather
than photorealistic. I like to explore loose approaches that bring
out the colour, light, and essence
of my subjects. I've tried to
replicate this across all the many other videos
that I have on Skillshare. Now, don't forget to upload your own painting through the
project and resources tab. After all your hard work,
I'd really love to see it, and I'll be sure to give
you some personal feedback, and you'll be able to
see the artwork of other students and
get their support. At the end of the class, you'll have your own beautiful artwork to be very proud of. So let's swizzle our brushes and get on with the painting.
2. Materials • Composition • Petals • Tonal Values • Wet-on-Wet/Dry Watercolor • Glazing: For this class, these are the colours and materials
that I'm using, but do feel free to use
any that you already have. For information on brushes
and paper, et cetera, do check out the basic
materials document that I've added to the
project resources section. I've kept the drawing
as simple as possible, but with roses, there
are a lot of petals. Now, don't worry
if you lose any or alter them or add a couple,
nobody's going to know. There are thousands of
different roses in the world, and this is going to be your
unique version of them. And I've included a
copy of the drawing in the project resources section so that you can download
it and trace it, and then not worry
about the drawing because this is a
painting class. Before we start the
actual painting, I want to demonstrate the blending and
softening technique. It's fundamental to creating soft dreamy petals
without hard edges. To blend and soften a hard edge, you need to use a clean
damp brush to pull the paint away from the hard
edge and blend it softly until the color disappears
into the white of the paper or the underlying
wash. You may need to clean and dry your
brush and repeat the process several
times in order to get that gradual gradation of color until it disappears
into nothingness. It may sound like quite
a simple technique, but in fact, it is quite a
difficult one to master. So do practice it
because it will make a massive difference
to all your paintings. But if you haven't used
this technique before, I do suggest you practice it a little bit on some
spare paper first. The first thing that
I'm going to do is lighten some of
the pencil lines. I don't want to lose
them altogether, because the drawing is
actually going to serve as my guide as my map for
where the petals are. But once I've painted over them, it will be very difficult
to rub them out afterwards, and I don't want very
strong pencil lines showing in my finished painting. Starting with this flower
on the left and painting the tiny little petals right
in the center of the flower. Petals are very tightly packed
together in the center, and this is where
they are darkest. So I've mixed quite
a thick consistency of permanent rose. If you look at my palette on the left hand side
of the screen, you can see that I've
got quite a thick mix of permanent rose in the
middle of one section, and I've added some
water to it and let that float
around the outside. On the outside.
Now, to be honest, that's not best practice. You should really have
a separate mix of the thinner permanent rose color in one section and a
thicker mix in another. But this is just a bit of a bad habit that
I have got into, and it does work for me. I just dip my brush into the
watery area where I want a lighter color and into the thicker mix area when
I want a darker color. Next to the permanent rose, I've got some rose madder. That's a little bit darker
than the rose color, and it's got a bit of a
blue, purple tinge to it. If you don't have it,
just add a little bit of zarin crimson to your permanent rose,
and that will be fine. In the center of my palette, I've got a peachy pink colour, which I've made from
mixing permanent rose with a little
bit of light yellow. I've also got some Alyzarin
crimson on its own, mixed in another section
and a violet purple color, which I've made from permanent
rose and cobalt blue. And these are pretty much all
the colors that I will be using to paint both roses
throughout this demonstration. Although the overall appearance
of the flowers is pink. If you look in nature
at any flower, the petals are a
mixture of many, many different colors
and hues and tones. For the tiny petals
in the center, I've used the
wet-on-dry technique, wet paint on dry paper, so the paint will only go
where the brush takes it. For some of the larger petals like the one I'm painting now, I'm going to use the
wet-on-wet technique. That's wet paint on wet paper. By wetting the paper first, you get a lovely diffused
effect with soft edges. Because the paint mixes into
the wetness of the paper, the color is diluted
and the tone is paler. Once I've got that
paler color on, I'm thinking about
where the petal is in shade and needs a bit
of a darker color adding to it or where
the petal is in light and need some paint lifting off with a
clean damp brush. And that's essentially
what we're going to be thinking about with every single one of these little individual petals that we paint. Where is the shadow needed, so we need to add a
bit of darker color. Where is there some
light on the petal, so we need to lift
color off and regain that highlight or that
sheen that you see on them. If a petal is
behind another one, then that will create
some shadow on it. Or if the top part of the
petal is curling over, there'll be some
shadow underneath the fold where it curves. Because I don't
want all the colors from all of these petals
to run into each other, which would lose any definition that I might be trying to apply, I am painting alternate petals. So I'm missing a
petal out here and there where the paint
is still wet and move into an area
where I can safely add some more paint without it
running into another one. You see here that the
petal I'm painting now is separated from the petal that I just
previously painted by this curving lip that's
folding over the top of it. So I can go ahead
and paint it without fear of the colors spreading
into the previous one. Having said that, I'm always keeping an eye on what
I've just painted, and I've gone back to
this previous petal because the shadow color that I put underneath this curling lip at the top has disappeared. It's gone into the overall wash. So I'm adding a little bit
more of my darker color, my darker pink, and even a little bit of the
violet in that corner. As long as the
paper is still wet, you can keep going
back and forth, adding bits of color to the
petals that you've painted. AOn as that paint starts to dry, you would need to
leave well alone because if you go in
with a wet brush, you'll just create
cauliflowers and all sorts of unnatural
edges and shapes. Popped up to the top of the rose now and painted
another petal up here. It's important to leave
some little slivers of unpainted white
paper around some of the tops of the petals where
they are catching the light. And it's those little slivers
of unpainted paper that are also helping to keep the paint on the different
petals separate. And that separation is
important because otherwise, we'd just end up with
a big pink ball, wouldn't we instead of a flower. It is useful to keep having a quick check of the
reference photograph. That's going to help you to see where there are
highlights on the petal, where there's lighter color,
where there are shadows, darker color, and how the
petals wrap round each other. But I don't want to be
looking at it constantly. I don't want to be
slavishly following the reference photograph
because to some extent, with watercolor,
you've got to give it its own free reign and let it
do its own thing, as well. That way, you'll get some very
happy, unexpected results. Reference photograph is exactly
that. It's a reference. It's not something that we are trying to slavishly reproduce. And the other reason that I'm
not going to be a slave to the photograph is
because I don't really like that rather
dull gray background. In fact, I'm not going to put much of a background on at all. And for that reason, I
can make my flowers a lot bolder in color
and contrast. And then before I go on
to do any more petals, I want to just have a look at
the ones I've already done and see if any of them need
titivating a little bit. Do they need a little bit of
a darker shadow anywhere? Do they need any
paint lifting off? So I want to do that before
they completely dry. If you haven't
already noticed it, as I've been painting along, I have added a little
bit of a pale to mid green at the bottom
of this particular petal, and that's because it's
positioned over a sepal. Those sepals are going to
be painted green later, and you often get what's
called reflected color or reflected light from an object that's nearby if it's
a different color. So there will be a little
bit of green reflecting upon this petal from
the sepal below it. Obviously, car't yet because
I've not painted it, but I am aware already that
it's going to be there. Now, to give those petals
a bit longer to dry, I've moved my
attention over to the little rose bud and painting
it exactly the same way, putting on the pale
pink color first, then thinking about,
where is it in shadow, which will be just
where it's beneath the little green leaves that are going to
be added on later. And I've added a little
bit of yellow just to the base where it's
emerging from the bud. Okay, so back to the
flower and painting this rather large petal
or shape as it is, might help you to think of
them as shapes instead of petals and adding
the pale pink color and then thinking again, where is the shadow Because it's underneath this petal
in front or above it, and also just around the lip of the petal below it
that's curling round. I'm imagining that the light is coming more from the
right hand side. And so this petal here on the left is going to
be more in shadow than some of the others because it's got these very
tightly packed petals, the very coarse center
of the flower behind it. So I'm being quite
brave with my dark pink and my violet colors
here for this shadow. Remember that
watercolor tends to dry about 20 to 30% lighter than
when you first put it on. So what looks quite
dark is going to be a little bit lighter
when it does dry, and it can be quite
hard to judge that, but it does come just really with experience and practice. On the petal that
I'm painting now, I've added a little bit of light yellow to the base of it. If you look at some roses, you do get that
little yellow tinge at the base of some
of the petals. So it does also brighten it up and give it a little bit
more added interest. But if you don't like that,
you don't have to go with it. It's your painting, so do
what feels right for you. I've got a couple
of little petals at the top that have dried
a little bit flat, so I'm just going to
touch them up with a clean damp brush and then lift that paint off with my paper towel
to recover the highlight. Have you noticed
how much I'm using that blending and
softening technique that we looked at earlier, and I'm using a clean damp
brush to pull that color away, and then I can add
a little bit of darker color to give the
petal some structure. Because I've zoomed
in, you can't really see very clearly what I'm
actually doing with my brush, but I am constantly
cleaning it in some water, drying it a little bit
on some paper towel, so it's just damp and then using that clean damp brush to blend, soften and lighten
some of the paint. This petal here has completely lost its she
lost its highlight, so I am going in with a
clean damp brush and just lifting some of
that paint off and then wiping it onto
some paper towel. You do need to do
this several times, if you want to get right back
to some almost white paper. Having another check with
the reference photograph, can you see that right in
the center of the flower, where those tiny little
petals are tightly packed, the little sliver of white paper around the tops of the petals
is not actually white. It's slightly toned
because they are packed down and in
shadow from the light. So I've just gone over with a clean damp brush and just
softened the tone in there. I've only got a couple more
petals now for this flower, but I'm also thinking about the petals that I've
already painted that have dried and where these might need a little bit
of an extra glaze. Glazing is simply applying
additional layers of thin, transparent color or
paint on top of another, and it allows the layer
below to shine through. And it's often used to add richness or visual interest
or depth of color. And a layer of glaze can cover a whole painting or just
a portion of the subject. So I'm going to use it. I'm going to use glazing to
just add a little bit of depth of color to some of the petals that
have already dried. Now that's important
because each layer of paint must be completely dry before
you apply the next one. Otherwise, you will mix
the pigments together, and that can often create
a sort of a muddy look. You also need to use very soft gentle strokes
so that you don't disturb that underlying layer of paint with too much
brush pressure. And you can add a glaze at any point in the
painting process, you don't have to wait
right until the end. So I'm just having a
look now at where some of my petals maybe have
dulled down a little bit. The color hasn't got quite as
intense as I wanted it to, so I can just add a little
bit more color over those dry areas to give that depth of color
and intensity. I'm adding a few little
touches of the light to mid green to the base of these
petals at the bottom now, where they are sitting
on top of these sepals. Just as a reminder from
what I said before, you often get reflected
color or reflected light from anything that's
a different color adjacent to the subject. Because I know that I'm going to be painting those sepals, some green colors later on, I know that I'm
going to get some reflected color from them, so may as well pop it in now while I've got my
petals nice and wet. The other thing to
take note of here is that I am actually adding some color to this curled lip
on the top of this petal. And that's because
even where there is a curl or a fold of
a petal coming over, there will still be some
light and shadow on it. There will still be some color. It won't be completely white. And here's a really good
example of where I need to put another glaze of colour
on this bottom petal. The color had really sunk
in almost disappeared, probably because I'd put
too much water on it, but just adding that glaze of color has brought
it back to life. And this is where you
really need to stand back and have a look
at your own painting. Take a few minutes out
to just think about, where do you need
any extra shadow, where do you need to add a
bit of extra dark color? Where do you need to
maybe lift some color, recover a highlight or
the sheen of the petal? Your paintings going to
look different to mine. It won't be exactly the same. So don't just follow what
I'm doing slavishly. Sometimes it's good to actually walk away
from your painting, leave it for half an hour or so, come back and have a look at it with a fresh pair of eyes. One of the biggest
dangers is that you start to fiddle too
much and overwork it, and it starts to lose that loose, fresh,
spontaneous appearance. And I think I'm
probably at risk of doing exactly that myself. So I'm going to add one or
two more tiny flourishes, and then I'm going
to take a break, have a cupper and
probably some cake or biscuit because that always really helps a
painting to go well. And I'll join you
for the next flower.
3. The Second Rose — Building Petals, Colour & Depth: Well done on completing
the first flower, and we did cover quite a few different basic
watercolor techniques. Good news is that although this second flower on the
right is a little bit bigger, a little bit more complicated. It's got a few more petals
than the first one. We're going to use exactly
the same techniques and the same process
as we did before. And hopefully you'll feel a little bit more
confident this time. And just as I did before, I'm starting off with my darker concentrated color in the center for those
very tiny petals. I'll be moving on
to do some blending and softening for
the larger petals, working wet-on-wet
for the larger petals or wet-on-dry for
the smaller ones. I'll be thinking about where one petal is in front
or behind another. So where does it
need some shadow? Where does it need some light? Does it need some
color lifting off it to recover that
high light and sheen? I'll be using different
tonal values in order to give each petal
its rounded shape. And where needed,
I'll be adding some of those transparent layers, those glazes of color to bring back some
depth and interest. And I'll be using all my
different pink colours to keep the painting
lively and interesting. Remembering to leave some of those little slim slivers
of white unpainted paper, where the petals at the top
are catching the light. So I'm going to let you
watch the video along now as I continue to
build up the colors, tones, and layers of paint. But I'll hop back on
if there's anything I need to explain or point out.
4. Leaves, Sepals & Stems — Mixing a World of Greens: To paint the foliage
on this rosebud, I'm starting off with a
base layer of light yellow. Putting it on wet-on-dry. So wet paint on dry paper. And then while that yellow
paint is still wet, I'm adding in some little
touches of mid green and letting those two colours
blend and mingle on the paper. I've made that mid
green colour by adding some green appetite genuine
to the light yellow. Now, a lot of people don't
have green appetite genuine, but they do use sap green. That's quite a popular green, but it is a little bit acidic. So the best thing to do with sap green is just add
a little bit of pink or red to the mix to tone it down a bit and
make it look more natural. And then I'm using some
dark green colour, and that's my green appetite
genuine straight out of the tube to paint the
areas that are in shadow, away from the light, those
dark areas of the rosebud. Again, if you don't
have that green, you can add some
French ultramarine or even a little
touch of indigo to your sap green and still add
that little touch of red to turn the acidic nature
of sap green down a bit. Essentially the colors that
we're going to be using for all this foliage
is the light yellow, a mid green, a dark green, and perhaps a little bit
of indigo here and there, where we need some
really dark accents. So that's the colors that
you're going to need. Moving on to the little sepals
below the left hand rows, I'm painting those in with
the light yellow again, adding my touches of mid green, letting that just
trickle in, drizzle in, and then strengthening
the structure of the sepals with a little bit of the dark green at one side. They will be darker,
where they are in shadow just below the base
of the rose itself. I've got a little
clump of sepals here, so I'll add the color, but I'll probably need
to come back and just define some of the edges later on when that
paint has dried. When it's all wet
and runny like this, you can't really
get the definition that you need straightaway, so we can always
come back to it. It's not going to go anywhere. The same process
with the leaves. So once again, the light
yellow base color, and then I've still
got my mid green and my dark green mixed all ready to drop those colors in and let
them mingle on the paper. I'm painting the foliage in a much looser way than
I painted the roses. I don't want the
foliage, the leaves, especially to compete
with the roses. So they're going to not have the same amount of
definition on them. They're not going to
have the same structure. I'm painting them not
exactly haphazardly, but certainly I don't
want to have a lot of detail that distracts
the viewer's eye from my main focus, which is our beautiful
blooming roses. Painting like this is
actually quite liberating, especially after we've done all that quite detailed
work with the roses. It's very freeing, and
the important thing here is to kind of control
it to some extent, but also let the watercolor
do its own thing. You'll get lots of lovely
passages of colour, little blooms of color, and it really will look a lot
more organic and natural. Now, I do want to vary the color a little
bit on the leaves. So on the top palette on
the top right hand corner, you can see that I've squeezed out a little bit of cobalt blue. And I'm just touching
that in over the top of the yellow
and the greens, just to give that extra variety, that extra bit of
interest, really. Even though we're
painting the leaves in a much more loose and
semi abstract way, we can still inject a little
bit of lively color into them and make them a little
bit more interesting. And in fact, just
as I said earlier, about the roses, having a
myriad of colors in one petal, if you really study
leaves very closely, you'll also see lots of
different colours in them, too. Colors that I've been using for the foliage are all
quite warm in hue. So adding this little
touch of blue here and there just gives them a
little bit of coolness. And just as we need light and shade contrasting the painting, we also need some warm passages of color and some cool ones. With every painting
that you create, you want a certain
amount of harmony. But if you have too
much harmony in a painting, it becomes boring. So you've got to break it
up with a bit of variety. But if you have
too much variety, the painting looks chaotic. So it's just striking that
balance between the two. I've got a couple
of little sepals underneath this rose on
the right hand side, and again, they're going to be darker just below the
base of the flower. And then I'm hopping back over to these sepals that
I painted earlier, which I needed to give
some definition to. So that paint has dried pretty much dried quite quickly
today in my studio, so I can add a little bit of the darker color to give
them a bit more definition. I am actually a very
big fan of roses. As well as painting them, I've got lots of roses
growing in my own garden. I've got climbing roses, patio roses, miniature roses, standard roses, and they're all in a whole
variety of colors. And as you can imagine,
there's quite a lot of work involved
in pruning them, mulching them, treating them for the dreaded black
spot or green fly. So I've had quite a lot of time whilst I've been doing
all that to study roses and see how the structure of them falls
in different varieties. But they do reward me in a wonderful way
because I have lots of color from my roses right
through from early spring, sometimes till the middle
of December or Christmas. And, of course,
many of them give off the most fantastic perfume. So there's really nothing
not to love about a rose. I'm rambling on a
little bit here instead of telling you
what I'm doing now. And what I am doing
now is I'm painting the stems with some very
watery birch sienna. I've also got some darker brown, some burnt tumber
mixed in my palate. If you don't have burned tumber, but you have got the burtsienna, you can always add
a little bit of indigo to it to darken it. So essentially, you
want a dark brown color that I'm going to stroke just
down the left hand side. The stems are not flat,
one dimensional subjects, so we need to convey the
roundedness of them, and we do that again by
adding some extra tone, some dark tone down
the left hand side. And by just stroking in that darker color into
the light brown color, we get a nice blending, a nice natural
mingling of colors, but it doesn't go right
over to the other side. Although these stem
shapes are quite small in relation to the
overall composition, we still need to give them
a little bit of attention. Although they're not
in the actual drawing, I am adding on a few more very, very abstract leaf shapes in this background
area at the bottom, just to fill out the
white space, really. It's looking a bit
sparse at the bottom. If you like the way yours looks, then you don't need to do that. I'm also adding a little
bit of spatter to this lower area to give it a bit of life, energy, and movement. Now, if you haven't used
the spattering technique before, it's quite simple. You just load your brush with some color and then
use a wrist flicking action to force little drops
or sploges onto the paper. Alternatively, you can
just position your brush horizontally above the area that you want to
spatter the paint, and then just tap the brush
with your forefinger on the handle or even use a
second brush to tap it. If you're worried about
getting the spatter on your beautiful roses that you've just spent all
that time painting, well, just cover them over with a little bit of paper towel. That'll protect them,
and then you can just remove it when
you're finished. Well, it looks like we're
on the home strait now. We are pretty much nearly there, but I do want to show
you a little tip, a little finishing touch that might make all
the difference. So stay with me for
this last section.
5. Finishing Touches — Highlights, Spatter & a Little Magic!: I'm adding a few pink spatters and splodgs around my roses. And then I want to introduce
you to Magic sponge. It's sold as a small white
block of sponge eraser, often used to clean
things like dirty ovens, but it works miraculously
to lift off unwanted paint. You just tear a little
piece of it off, dip it in some clean water, then squeeze it until
it's damp but not dry, and then gently rub away the unwanted paint until the colour is removed
or partly removed. And then blot it with
some paper towel. It's important to keep rinse
in your little bit of sponge so that it keeps clean or throw it away and
use a fresh piece. You can use it to lighten
an area that is too dark, or you can strip it right
back to the white paper, depending on the color and how you want it
to actually look. Now, you can buy this
from the art shops, but you can also get
it quite cheaply from the cleaning departments in
a lot of the big stores. So if you accidentally get
any sploges or spatters of paint in an area that you don't want or you just want to
light in a dark area. This little piece of sponge
will become your best friend. Earlier on, we did use a clean damp brush to
lift the paint off. That does do a pretty good job, but you can't beat
the magic sponge for getting right back
to the white paper. So I've been using
my little bit of sponge to rub away
some of the paint and really intensify
those highlights on the petals and the leaves. But this is where
you need to stand back and have a look
at your own painting. Does it really need
these extra highlights? Does it need a little
bit more shadow? These are only things
that you can decide. But if it looks lovely
and fine just as it is, then leave well alone and don't overwork it with
unnecessary fiddling. In fact, I'm going to
take my own advice now and call this
painting finished. I do hope you've enjoyed this painting and that
you've learned some tips and techniques along the
way that you can incorporate into
your own paintings. Now, don't forget to upload your own painting through the
project and resources tab. After all your hard work,
I'd really love to see it, and I'll be sure to give
you some personal feedback. You can follow me on Skillshare to get to hear
about new classes. And if you could leave
me a short review, that would be really great. If you've enjoyed this class, it might encourage you to look at some of my other videos. I've got lots of lovely
subjects loaded with more tips and techniques to help you with your own
exciting art journey.
6. Final Thoughts — Step Back & Enjoy Your Painting: A big, well done on completing this
beautiful Ross painting. We've covered quite
a few techniques as we've worked
through it together. And although we used a
reference photograph, we didn't try to create
a botanical copy. We kept our painting fresh,
lively, and energetic. We learned how to use the blending and softening technique in order to keep the
petals soft and luminous. We used the wet-on-dry technique where we wanted to
exert more control, and we used the
wet-on-wet technique where we wanted a more
soft and diffused effect. And where we wanted
more depth of color, we glazed over with thin, transparent washers of paint. Then for the foliage, we mixed a variety
of different greens to contrast with our
beautiful pink roses. Now, don't forget to upload your own painting through the
project and resources tab. After all your hard work,
I'd really love to see it, and I'll be sure to give
you some personal feedback. And if you've
enjoyed this video, do have a look at my other
classes on Skillshare, which are packed
with more tips and techniques to help you
on your own art journey. If you click the follow button, you'll be able to follow me, and then you'll be the first
to know when you upload a new video or any
exciting updates. And if you could
just take a moment to leave me a short review, that also would be really great. In the meantime, thank
you for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you next time, Happy painting.
Carrie McKenzie, creating painted visions
