Watercolor Roses - Pro Techniques Explained

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Anna. If this is your first time seeing me on Skillshare, I'm a professional illustrator from Canada. I'm primarily known for my super colorful nature inspired art that appears in all products from Canadian silver coins to gigantic murals around trauma. I've also been quite successful licensing my Gaussian watercolor art directly to companies like Kohlberg and print on demand sites like write Bubble. My background in decorative art is what makes my watercolors style unique because I use a lot of highly pigmented layers and decorative strokes to bring out the most striking details in every flower and every animal I paint. Today we're going to paint a rose, a flower that's probably one of the most popular among artists because of its beauty and symbolism. It's very versatile, so you can use it as a striking stand-alone piece or come up with a pattern design for your business, you can also incorporate it in other work like portraits or landscapes. I've used this flower in all sorts of commercial work, including my recent Canadian silver $ coin. My goal for every lesson I make is to share my process with you and to give you the skills and confidence you need to approach any botanical subject. This lesson will help you master three things. First, I'll take you through my simple, straightforward step by step approach to applying color washes, including wet and wet and wet and dry. These are the main techniques that really make watercolors so magical and light, and unlike any other paint. The key, of course, is to have a solid plan for applying your layers so you can achieve that realistic look without over painting. We'll do that, and we will also build a perfect watercolor palette. I have a pretty good simple system that you can use to arrange colors for any flower of your choice. Finally, by the end of this class, you will have a solid understanding of the rows shape. See you can paint it from any angle and apply it in your future work. As a bonus lesson, I will show you a really cool brushstroke technique that you can use to create texture on the flower petals. I promise you will love it because it's a really simple way to go from something that may look okay, but maybe a bit flat to much more nuanced, textured and realistic look. To help you practice, I've prepared a whole bunch of beautiful reference photos from my mom's garden. So you can use these roses and the different angles and shapes to practice even after the class is done. This class is perfect for anyone who wants to improve their watercolor technique. All the key things we're going to talk about, like the layering technique, the way you approach the shape of your subject, and how you build your palate. All of these things can be applied to any watercolor subject, not just the flower. Everything I'm going to show you is broken down into small, easy to understand lessons. Even if you're a beginner, don't hesitate to jump in, this class will help you become better and more confident with watercolor medium. I can't wait to see you in class, so grab your paints and download the reference photo, it's in the project resources, and let's get started. 2. Supplies You'll Need: Hi guys. Thank you for joining me, and welcome to my Watercolor class. If you've seen my previous class, you know that I generally organize my materials in two groups. One is things that you will absolutely need like brush, paints, and paper. The second group is things that are totally optional, but I really like using them because they make the process a bit smoother. I'll share everything that I used for this painting. If you need more details or you want to go back and review the summary, there is a handout in project resources that you can download and see specifically what materials I use, what brands I use, and some of the alternatives that you can consider. Let's talk about things that you will absolutely need, starting with paper. If you see my previous class, you know that I like to use blocks, the reason being is blocks of paper are usually glued on the side so you don't have to stretch your watercolor paper. It saves you time. I have a bunch of these from Arches. You can use any other professional brand. The key is to keep the thickness of your paper appropriate, so you want to get something like 140 pounds because 140 or higher will sustain the number of layers that we're going to put in and it's not going to warp and buckle. Another thing to consider is what type of surface you prefer. You have your cold pressed watercolor paper, which has a really rough surface, and you have your hot press paper which is smooth. It depends on how you're going to use this work. If it's just a personal piece or something that you're going to give as a gift, the original, I think rough texture is quite nice. If you're planning on scanning the work and incorporating it into another piece digitally, then I would recommend hot pressed paper. Now, let's talk about the brushes. I'm holding a bunch in my hand, but I actually tend to use just one per painting, unless it's a really big painting where you need a humongous brush and something smaller. Depending on your budget, you may want to go with something professional like a Kolinsky sable round brush. I prefer these beautiful Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes. You will see me using just one brush for the entire painting. I prefer size 2 or 3. They are super versatile, they hold water, they have a lot of spring, so you can go from painting large surfaces to really small details. Now, another alternative you can consider is something like a blue squirrel brush. They are much softer, but you have a lot more flexibility with them, and I really like them for larger washes. Again, it's your preference. Finally, you can also use synthetic brushes. I find that synthetic sable brushes are a bit less flexible, so you may want to use a couple, a larger brush in size 3 or 4 for big washes and something like zero or one for small details. They have a lot of spring, and so if you want to have that resistance and control when you're painting small details, they are perfect. Again, you can get away with just one brush if it's a Kolinsky sable brush because they're super versatile and they will give you the flexibility to cover large surfaces and also paint small details just because of the flexibility of sable hair. You need a pencil and a soft eraser. One of the most important things to consider when you choose a pencil is to make sure that it's a hard pencil, something like 2H or 4H I'm using here. What this means is the pencil is hard and it's not going to leave a lot of marks on your paper, and you can find the numbers on the side of the pencil. You might need to erase a couple of things. I prefer retractable erasers because they have a fine point and they only erase what you need to and you don't damage the paper around. I also use these soft erasers sometimes because they cover larger areas. You will need paints, and we'll talk in more detail about specific pigments that we will use to paint our rose in the next lesson. Now, let's talk about some other things that could be really helpful. One of the things that I use occasionally is watercolor mediums. These are not necessary, but they can help improve the flow of your paint if you add a couple of drops and water. This one here is from QoR Watercolors. It's synthetic [inaudible]. You'll notice a very subtle difference, especially on the large washes, so this could be quite helpful. You'll need some tissue paper, one piece to dry your brush, and the other piece you can put under your hand so that you don't smudge the paint that's already on your paper. As an alternative, I love using a glove. This is a smudge guard glove designed for digital artists. They have an opening for your fingers where you can hold the brush and still have that flexibility, but this side on your hand is completely protected. If you put it on the area that's been painted, you're not going to damage it. I think it's really useful in some cases to mask the white areas of the painting before you start applying color because it helps you preserve the light. I'm a big fan of using masking fluid. Now, for this particular flower, I don't think we actually need a lot of masks. I say this is totally optional, but if you are interested in seeing what I use, I use Winsor & Newton masking fluid because it's a super liquid and it really feels like water when you're applying it, so it's super easy. In terms of the applicator, you can really use anything from an acrylic brush to these rubber styluses that I have that are super flexible. You can also just use a matchstick. 3. Building Botanical Palette : Now, let's talk about the colors, which is my favorite part. I'll explain to you exactly how I build my palette for every flower I paint. Here's a basic roadmap that will help you organize your colors for any botanical painting, and you can apply this structure to flowers and to leaves. There are four main categories: your base color, the colors you will use to boost the base, light and dark spots, and also your shadows both warm and cold. Now, within those categories, there are a ton of different options. Let's look at what we're going to use for our rose first and then I'm going to talk about the leaves. You have to first decide on your base color, which is the main color of your flower. In our case, we're going to use coral because these roses are coral and that will define the overall look and feel of our painting. Coral was named the official Pantone color of the year. You are probably already seeing a lot of this color in a lot of commercial illustration work and if you get really comfortable with it and if you learn how to incorporate it in your art either as a base or an accent, I think it will come in really handy, especially if you're trying to grow your illustration business. I'm using quinacridone coral here. If you don't have this brand, I'm using Daniel Smith, you can use another light pink or light red in terms of the logic of how you're going to pick the colors to complement it, it will be roughly the same. There are a ton of different pigments that will work really well with our coral. I'll just show you the ones that I have, but essentially they are all in the warm red family and I have three that I would recommend that are used in this painting. Permanent alizarin crimson from QoR works quite well. It's a bit more pigmented. Carmine works quite well, but be careful it's a bit darker than your coral, so you're going to have to use light wash. Another alternative is simply quinacridone red, it also mixes very well with coral. As I mentioned, we have two categories of shadows. There are shadows that are really cold and these are primarily in the areas of the flower where the sunlight doesn't reach the petals. What we're going to use is purple and I'm using Dioxazine purple from QoR. It works really well, it mixes very well with our base coral. The second category of shadows is warm shadows. The ones that are being cast by other petals that are already illuminated by sunlight. Even though it's a shadow, you want it to appear a bit warmer and you don't want to mix a lot of purple there. What I found that works really well, surprisingly well actually, is transparent pyrrole orange. It sounds a bit counter-intuitive. It's not quite brown, but it comes across as brown after you layered on top of your coral. Transparent pyrrole orange, if you don't have a transparent pyrrole orange, you can use any warm brown that you have in your palette. In terms of the light areas, now, for the rose, these will be the areas of the petal where the sun hits the petal and they're really illuminated. We're going to use yellows. If you look at your typical dot chart, there are a ton of yellows that you can choose from. You want to go for something warm. You can use something like cadmium yellow medium hue or Hansa yellow medium. You want to avoid colder yellows like lemon yellow, but even if you do only have a lemon yellow on-hand and use a really light wash, it will work just fine. But warmer yellows are preferred. There are going to be some really dark areas of the flower where you want to use your darkest pigment, primarily in the center of the flower and also there will be some areas between the petals and the shadow where you really want to create high contrast. I mentioned this in my previous class, I never use black. It will really make your botanicals look unnatural, so what you want to do is create your own mixture or use something like a perylene maroon, which has a hint of brown and purple in it and it comes off very dark if you layer it two or three times. It's almost like black, but not quite. It works really well with coral. It will work just as well with blues and purples if you're painting irises, or peonies, or any other kind of flower, I think you'll find it handy. Now, let's talk about the leaves and the palette we're going to build for the leaves. This is actually a lot more straightforward. We're going to use less of a variation of color, but the logic of the palette is the same. For the base, you want to go with something warm like a warm green. The reason why we're going with a warmer green versus a colder green is because our overall composition is quite warm. Our base color for the rose is coral, so you want to go with something that complements it. I will show you some options you can either use, sap green and I have these tubes from QoR. You can try hookers green. What you want to do is pick a yellow or a yellow green that's very similar to the yellow that you used in your flower highlight. If you do that, then the overall composition will be more cohesive. You can use the same yellow or you can use something very similar and there are lots of beautiful green options that you can pick from, something like green gold or quinacridone gold from QoR, work really, really well. What I did actually as I used perylene maroon again, the same perylene maroon we used in the flower and using the same pigment will actually help you keep the overall painting look cohesive. To boost your primary base green color you want to choose a brighter, warmer, more saturated green. In this case, I'm using sap green to complement my base of this green color. Now, the edges of your rose leaf have a bit of red and you want to use the same red as the one you used to boost the coral color in the flower. The reason being is, again, we're trying to keep the palette consistent, so you want to recycle your colors as much as possible. On the edges of the leaf, I used a lot of carmine and a lot of quinacridone red. Finally, we need to paint the shadows and you can use purple, again, the same purple you used in the flower. You can use a darker green, for example, if you used sap green for the base, you can use a sap green deep for your shadows. 4. Understanding Botanical Shape: I'm going to take you through a side view and front view of the rose and we'll talk about how light hits the petals and what you need to do using your paint to really reflect it in your work. Let's start with a side view and break down the structure of our flower, I want you to think about our roses having three tiers of petals. The first tier is almost vertical, it's pointing up to the sky, and the edges of each petal are curved. Here's your front view and here's the side view of this type of petal. The second tier is basically horizontal and what we're seeing here is just a little bit of this horizontal plane and the curve of the petal going down. Petals on the third tier are pointing away from the center and sloping down, we see a lot more of the front surface here. The key thing to remember is our source of light, the sun is shining from the top down and this will determine how light or diluted our base color will be and how much shadow we will add. It will also determine where and how we will be adding those yellow highlights. Tier one pedals are vertical, the sunlight is illuminating the center of these petals but what we're seeing is mostly the back, this reverse side of the pedal will be much darker, even though they're barely any shadows hitting these petals from the back directly. The second tier, as I mentioned, is almost horizontal, meaning the entire top side is in direct sunlight, let's keep it just as like as the curved parts of the tier one pedals. The third tier, none of these petals are indirect sunlight because the first two tiers are covering them, go with the same darker, more pigment at coral base all across. Let's talk about the yellow highlights and where you will be adding them while your coral base is still wet. It all depends on how and where the sunlight hits the petals, so much yellow for tier one, but only on the back of these top petals, the reason being is the sun is shining and the center of the flower and as it passes through the petals, it mixes with the base coral color, what we see is actually the result of these two colors mix together. This will also affect how warm or shadows will be, and we'll talk about that in a second. For tier two, just a tiny bit of yellow on the edge of the petals and the same thing for tier three. Let's talk about the shadows, the color of the shadows on the back of tier one petals will be super warm, that sunlight coming through will make us more to use pyrrole orange, very warm colors here, instead of say purple or blue, which we will save for cold shadows. Tier two and tier three pedals will have shadows as well and much darker, colder and closer to the base of the flower. Here we will use some pyrrole orange, but mostly purple, and even some really dark parallel maroon. The lower the pedals the colder and more purple the shadow will be. You could apply the same logic to the flower that's facing us, you have three tiers of petals, but you have to slightly modify it because the sunlight actually hits from this angle, you will see that the first year, the middle tier is going to be much darker because it's for the most part covered by, the second tier will have a lot more sunshine, it will be lighter and only the top petals will have yellow. When you're building your base layer, that's when you are going to draw a lot of yellow to blend with your corals. Finally, the third tier, the petals that are going all around, it's going to be darker, but the darkest part will be right here at the bottom, these petals are completely hidden from the sun, women actually cover it with a glaze of light purple because there's not a lot of sunlight unless it's reflected from other objects and we really want to show that this part of the flower is in the shade. 5. Class Project & Process Overview: For your class project, we're going to paint a rose. First, I'm going to show you a very quick overview of the painting process step-by-step so you know what to expect as we're moving through the lessons. In the next six lessons, we'll focus on each step in a lot more detail. The first step is to create a lied outline and mask some of the areas that we want to keep completely white. You can either use a reference Photo or use a black and white outline that I created and saved for you on the Skillshare website under class resources. When it comes to our outline, the key here is to keep a very hard pencil, make your marks very light and avoid erasing on your watercolor paper. Of course, you may choose to mask some of the areas to preserve the white color. We'll talk about the masking fluid application as well in the next lesson. Step 2 is our first color wash. Remember the water color is translucent. First layer of color will always show through the next layers and it will help us define how all colors will look in the end. We will use a technique that's called wet-on-wet, meaning we will make the petals wet with water, or a very light color wash, and we will be quickly adding more wet colors into wet paint, allowing the pigment to spread out. The colors we will use here are our base coral color, a few yellow highlights in the areas where we know there is some sunlight and some purple in the areas that are in the shade. We can also occasionally add some deeper red and crimson to boost our base color. This process can be a bit unpredictable because we don't know exactly how far the colors will spread. But I want you to stick to our plan and make sure we drop those proposed and those yellows exactly where you think they should go and according to our plan. You will end up with a nice blend. Another thing to keep in mind here is we need to keep this layer quite light as with any watercolor painting, we're painting from light to dark. The first layer is our lightest layer and we need to keep it so and add more pigment and more shadows in the subsequent layers. Step 3 is where we're going to start defining the shapes a lot more, using wet-on-dry technique. This means that the previous layer of color should be completely dry. I would give it a day or at least two hours. Once it's dry, you can use a wet brush to add some warm and cold colors building volume on each petal. Step 4 is our accent layer. This is where we get a bit more loose with our technique and add some more decorative touches like sharp outlines and more pigmented colors. Using your reference photo, we want to pick the areas that are most colorful and add more of our boost colors, like quinacridone red or magenta or crimson. You'll also want to make your darkest shadows even darker, so don't be afraid to use a lot more of your purple in parallel and maroon glazes here especially under the petals and between the petals. Finally, we will use what I call interrupted stroke technique to add a lot of texture to the petals. This is a very useful technique for any botanical work. We will talk about it in more detail once we get to that lesson. Finally, in step 5, we will erase the masking fluid and add some finishing touches. Our pigments will be very intense here, and this will be the final step for our rose flowers. Now in the final lesson, I will show you how we're going to paint the leaves. This will be just one lesson, a lot less complicated, because we want to keep the leaves in general less detailed and less pigmented to really maintain the focus on the flower. This is our process and you can apply it to any botanical project, simply by adjusting your base color palette. Now grab your paper and pencils and let's dive into each step in a lot more detail. 6. Rose Step 1: Outline & Mask: Before we start painting, we need a really good outline. There's only one rule here and it is to minimize the use of erasers because they really damage the surface of your watercolor paper. You can download the reference photo in class resources, or to make it even easier for you, I created a black and white outline of the painting that I did and you can also download it in the class resources. The key difference that you will notice is that in my painting, the top rows, the one that you're looking at from the side is actually bigger and it's shown in its entire form because in the original photo, part of it was hidden. I wanted to make sure that as we're going through the painting, you see all the details. You can print the outline and then use your light box to trace it. If you don't have a light box, you can use a window, which is what I do quite often where I put my black and white outline and I put my watercolor paper on top, and I just trace it with a pencil. It doesn't matter what method you choose, the key is you have to put down enough pencil lines to guide your brush work, but not so much that you can still see the pencil once you're done painting. That's the most important thing, and of course avoid applying eraser on your watercolor paper because it damages it. There might be some cases where you need to do it. What I like to do is to use retractable eraser with a very fine tip, so you really only touch the paper where it's necessary. Now it's time for masking fluid. Our roses don't have a lot of pure white areas, so you may choose to skip this step altogether. If you do have masking fluid on hand, here's what I will do. First, I mask some of the edges of the petals that are facing the sun. This will help keep these edges really bright and create a nice separation between the petals. I also use the back of my brush to put a few round drops of masking fluid in the middle of some petals. I will make them into rain drops in the final stage of the painting. 7. Rose Step 2: Background Wash: Now we're ready to paint and we'll start with a background color wash. This is our first layer of color and it's extremely important because it will define the way your other layers of color will progress. The way we're going to do this is we're going to use our base color, which is coral, cover the entire surface of the flower. Then we're going to put just to very light wash of yellow on the areas that are in the sunlight, and a very light hint of warm purple on areas that will be in the shadow. [MUSIC] Once you cover the entire area with color, allow you flowers to dry. Remember that right now your paper's still holds water and the overall color actually looks a lot darker than it will look in the end. Give it a good hour two, or if you're like me and you have a bunch of kids, go pick them up from school and continue later at night after they go to bed. 8. Rose Step 3: Definition Wash: Okay, now your first layer should be completely dry, and now we're going to move on to the next layer, which I call the definition layer. This is where we're going to boost your colors and really you will see how the shape of the flower emerges, and the petals have more definition. 9. Rose Step 4: Texture Stroke and Accent Wash: Now that your first couple layers are completely dry, you can already see the shape of the petals. The flowers are starting to look more realistic and we're ready to finish it off with our accent layer. This is where we're going to use a lot more of a darker, more pigmented colors. We're going to start outlining our petals and really get into the kind of a decorative art territory, if you will. I will show you my favorite technique for this stage of the botanical painting. I call it uninterrupted stroke, which is essentially a very jittery stroke that will help you create texture on your petals. It will really make the flower overall look more realistic because of the more nuance and detail that you will add. Here's a quick overview of the brush stroke technique that will help you add lots of realistic texture to your flower petals. Pick a round brush with a very fine tip, something in size one, two or three. The color we will use should be one or two shades darker than the background of the pedal. You want to put very fine lines starting from the edge of the petal and all the way down to the base of the petal. Your line will be thick at the start and get thinner in the middle, and then right as you're approaching the base of the petal, it will be thicker again. You can achieve this by pressing the brush down when you start and slightly lifting it as you progress. As you're applying your color along the line, you can even lift the brush all the way up, interrupt your line and then come back down along the same line. It will leave some areas along the line blank, and that's why I call it an interrupted stroke because you're essentially interrupting your line. Now, the last thing to keep in mind is that you want to keep these strokes very close to each other and blend them both at the edge of the petal and at the base. Play around with this technique and I think you will find it can really enhance the look of your botanical water color. [MUSIC] 10. Rose Step 5: Finishing Touches: Now it's time for finishing touches. First, you can remove masking fluid with eraser, press away, whatever is left on paper. Now, that masking fluid has been erased, you can start by fixing the edges were the masking fluid was removed. You can add a little bit of your coral or even darker reds and really make those edges smooth. Then we can deepen the shadows, especially under the petals. You can add very pigmented color here using wet and dry technique, making sharp outlines between the petals. You will use a lot of interrupted stroke here, adding more and more texture as you move from petal to petal. You can use a smaller brush to add very precise outlines for your rose petals. Using my acrylic brush in size double zero here. I'm using some of my darker reds to create very sharp outlines. Now we want to define a raindrops. It's really a two-step process where first you cover the entire area of the raindrop and the surrounding areas with a very, very light wash of coral, but keep just a tiny highlight without any color on top of each raindrop. This is where the sun hits the raindrops, so we are keeping that little highlight there without any color. Add a little bit of darker color on the petal at the base of each raindrop on the side that's directly the opposite of your highlight, mainly at the bottom, this will be our shadow, it doesn't have to be super dark keep it light but you really want to make that side behind the raindrop a bit dark. 11. Painting Rose Leaves : Now the flowers are finished and it's time to paint our leaves. Let's refer to a leaf flower palette and apply the colors using only three washes. We'll use a lot less pigment and less detail throughout to keep our rose leaves very light, we want to make sure that the flowers remain on focus and that the leaves are just as our supporting players, so to speak. For the background layer, we'll apply our base wet on wet as a mixture of green I'm using hooker's Green base color here. Our highlight color, I'm using green and gold. We'll boost our base color with quinacridone red and Sap green. Mostly around the edges of the leaf, we'll also make the shadow areas more dark with a drop-off purple. We will repeat this process for all remaining leaves, making sure that the layers stays light overall. This is our base layer. For a second definition layer, we will continue to boost base colors with quinacridone red and Sap green using slightly darker grays, closer to the edge, adding more definition. This will mostly affect the backside of the leaves, the side that's facing away from the sun, we will further deepen the shadows with perylene maroon or purple. Finally, our accent wash is very quick and very light. We'll do two things. First, we'll add leaf veins with Sap green and deepen some of the darkest shadows with purple. Finally, we will warm up the shadows with transparent Pyrrole orange or if you don't have it, you can also use quinacridone red, or even your base flower coral, to make sure that any warm light reflected from flowers is captured on the leaves, creating a very cohesive and harmonious look. 12. Final Thoughts: We've covered a lot today and I hope you feel inspired to paint something beautiful, I can't wait to see your projects in the class project gallery. If you like the class and you want to be the first to know when I post my next one, please follow me on Skillshare, you can just click the follow button down below. You can also follow me on social media, on Instagram or Facebook. If you have any questions whatsoever about any part of the lesson, you can post the question in the discussion section of the class, and I'm usually very quick to respond. Your reviews and your comments really help me get better as a teacher and come up with better content for you. I really appreciate all your comments and all the information you share with me. Have a fantastic time painting and I'll see you in the next class.