Watercolor Sketchbook - Simple Holly Painting

1. Watercolor Sketchbook Holly Sprig - Introduction: Hello and welcome to this watercolor sketch book class, where I demonstrate drawing and then water coloring, a sprig of holly. This demonstration, I entered into my perpetual sketchbook. A professional sketch book is designed and mint to be filled up over the years. It is a sketchbook where each two-page spread is dedicated to two weeks of each year. And my goal is over several years to slowly fill up the sketchbook. I started it in 2018, which means that in all actuality, oh, probably be 2025 or 2026 when I truly finish it. And it is just a wonderful sketchbook because it grows with each year. Let's dive into the drawing. Thank you so much. 2. Watercolor Sketchbook Holly Sprig - Materials: Hello, I want to go over the materials that I am using for this class. I have gathered a piece of holly from outside. A piece of Holly I'm using have you used a kneaded eraser? I have this I've been using fabric and sales kneaded eraser. I used a 0.3 mechanical pencil with HB lead in it. And then I also drew with a puppet pin, the sepia color. I have a Stillman and burns data series book. Then I also have the Daniel Smith pre-made 24 palette half pan set that I like and I use. The only thing that I have altered a little bit is that I removed the deaf buff titanium and smashed all the pans to the side. And I have cobalt blue and I don't know how to pronounce the word, but it's pigment red, 177. It's a single pigment paint, the Permanent Alizarin crimson, which is this one right here, has three pigments in it. And I don't really like how this pigment mixes. It mixes slightly desaturated where this is a little bit more saturated, Permanent Alizarin crimson color. So then I have cobalt blue, which the blues that come in this palette set which are really nice, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, and it's true civilian blue, PB 36, fallow blue, and cobalt, turquoise. Those are for excellent blues, but I also like having cobalt blue, so I have added a pan of that as well. So these are materials that we're using 0 and I have to travel. Paint brushes are pretty small. 0.1. By accompany that I got off of Amazon. It's FU you MU UI. Then this is an old are like probably have probably five years old, five years old. It's a bay travel paintbrush too. So I love working with travel paint brushes because you can put them in your kits. They've got a hole on the end so they'll dry. The hairs will dry. And it just makes it so this one is the screw top. It just makes them so convenient to travel with and to carry them and put them places and not worry about their points. Getting the hair is getting ruined. Okay, let's get started. 3. Watercolor Sketchbook Holly Sprig - Drawing with Pencil and Pen: Hey, I'm going to sketch out this little bit of Holly and I want it to be sweet and cute. I want it to be about life-size. So that means my drawing. I want my drawing to start there and then approximately here and height twice. So I know that it will be about I felt like that. So it's going to take up about that much space in my, I'm going to first draw block in using a pencil. And the pencil is just to help me get the shape. And then I'm going to finalize with using a marker or a pen. And then from there I will, I will, you know that that's where I'll do the finalizing drawing. And I've got a circle. I've got Halle Berry right there, right there. When that's behind it. And then I have a leaf that comes out of, that goes to here, 234 and then down, down actually it's probably like that. Then there we go, that shape, and then the stem. Then there's two more berries and one is green because it hasn't fully ripened. And the other one is red, which I have a fabric Estelle, dark sepia, a small which is a 0.3 millimeter. And I'm going to start drawing in the outlines because this, this entry into my sketchbook, I want it to be more, I just wanted to feel more linear. So that means I want to incorporate the quality of line work. I'm just now fine-tuning, putting in a couple of details. Thinking about how, you know, where I drew one line. Now I'm thinking about the overall depth and width of that stem. That's this Halle Berry. And then there's like a little bit of a blip. And then I want to use my marker lines as a reinforcement of the design. So I have the overall shape but not, you know, it's not finalized. So I am gonna be a little bit more careful way I draw. And then I'm going to think, okay, So there's, I have a little bit on there. Then I have a point that goes here. Then there's a point about right there and a point right there, and then there's that point. And then from there I will connect the points, that approximate shape and then that approximate shape. And then on this side of the leaf, the point, there's only two points, which means that my stem might be in. Let's see, we'll see there's one point and then there's another point. Then holly trees are so pretty. However they are, they do really hurt. You don't ever want to step barefoot on an area where there's holly, holly leaves because those points become very sharp. Needle, needle like splinters. Central line goes right there. Oops, that was a little bit exaggerated. But the nice thing about drawing is that sometimes you make mistakes like that. And as a whole, it's no big deal. You just make it work. And the nice thing about drawing, like plant life and everything is that it's not drawing a person. So if you got a little bit off, nobody is going to really know that you were off like a millimeter to an eighth of an inch or whatever. Because well, they won't know it because in nature the leaves are, they, do. You know that you have a little bit of symmetry, but you don't have exact symmetry, like leaves and flowers. And so then that just allows us to be just a little bit more adaptive. And then there's a point here. There. Got one right there. So it's 1234. And then one goes like that. Then it comes down, and then we have this line that, and then we have 1234. The drawing is complete. So now what I wanna do is I'm going to erase my pencil lines. And then I will put in watercolor in the next step. 4. Watercolor Sketchbook Holly Sprig - Watercoloring: Now it's time to get watercolor going. And one of the things that I really admire and like about this setup, or the, is the leaves and then the berries. And the berries are a beautiful red. So I also cleaned up my palette, my watercolor palette. So I tend to keep this as my red pen. This is kinda my yellow, orange pan, this is my grain, this is my blue. And then I mix other colors down here. For today, I'm going to get started. This is PR 177. It's very pure color, but the red of the barriers is a little bit more orangey than that. I think I wanted to do a little bit of pyro scarlet to push that a little bit more. Yeah, that's really pretty. Yeah. So I'm gonna start with that first. So I've got that one. Go. This guy back here is read as well. It's a darker red. So I'm going to actually, I'm going to mix, I think, a little bit of blues, ultramarine blue to make it just a little bit darker because it's in shadow back here. In fact, that one is also a little bit darker. And there's a little bit of cast shadow over here. So I want to do that, that little bit of cast shadow going. Okay. So the browns, I want to work on my brown to next and see the brown is, if you look there, it's kind of got this purplish undertone to it. It's it's brown but it's not brown in that like one of the members or quinacridone, burnt orange or Indian red. It's, you know, it's, it's fighter. In fact actually it might be brown ocher. It's got a fancy name to it, to PY 43. Oh, that's interesting. That's, um, and it says it's a semi-opaque. Let's see what that, what is that color and how does that work out? Is very interesting, but it's a little bit too yellow. So I've got this Payne's gray right here. I wonder if that would work in this Payne's gray is P B 29. So that's all your ultramarine blue and PBR seven, which is your burnt number. So might be it actually. So let's draw that in and see. Might need to go just a little bit more brown. There we go. That's it. I think. There we go. So I drew this setup with pencil and then I went in and Mike outlined it with It's the sepia ink. And what I love about the sepia ink because sepia ink is kind of a dark brown. Another color we could use really nicely with a sanguine color, but the sepia color is just works so well with watercolors. It's gives you a little bit of that linear quality without being like to outlining, yes, it has the effect of an outline, but not as bold. I guess I need to mix a green. And I was playing with a couple of yellows. I want to mix my green instead of using sap green, the perylene green, or the undersea green. That comes with the palette. Because I see quite a bit of yellow. And then I do see the blue. And so I kinda wanted to play around with doing a mixed green. So I used ultramarine blue. And I started off with Hansa Yellow Deep. But I didn't like how that went. So I switched over to hansa yellow light. And I'm liking how it's shifting. You can see in this green, these green mixtures on my palette that they are a more yellowy green than a blue-green. Pigment ratio is probably two parts yellow to one part blue. And it will be adapting because what I want to do is. Along the veins is more yellow. And so what I wanna do is I wanted to highlight that and along the edges too. So I want to like where the edges are strong. I want to make sure that I and my little pointy brushes don't keep there. Don't keep, you know, they don't hold pigment as densely. So as soon as I start to notice that my, that my brush is starting to get extra dry or it's not depositing the amount of pigment that I that I want. I will reload. And if I want it to go lighter than that, then that's fine. But then this one doesn't have as yellow of a center line. And then this leaf is more in shadow. So I want to put this one's got a little bit, it's a little bit darker. It's more blue on this side and a little bit more yellow on this side. So I'm actually going to get, I'm going to cover this whole leaf, this whole side of the leaf with yellow. All right, go. There's just a little bit HER2. And I even have a pretty yellow leaf. I actually add a little bit of blue to make it just a little bit more saturated because this green berry is a little bit. Okay, so now I am going to start mixing my, the more blue-green. That's actually looks pretty good. Let's get a little bit. Hence a yellow in. Oh yeah, that works. Okay, so as you can see, my ratio now of the green mixture is more blue pigment to two yellow pigment. And that's, that was the goal. So I'm going to, this is this is the most dark is bluer, darkest of the leaves because it's so much in shadow. So I want to get that in it that down. And it still might need another layer of paint just because it's so dark. And when you're painting with watercolor, there is a, there is a color value shift as it dries. And so I always try to plan accordingly for that. Okay, And here we go. This one is a little bit more ultramarine blue. Little bit. Now, I do paint with my watercolor is kind of on the wet side. I like that. It gives us just a what is it? It gives a little bit of an unknown quantity of like what's going to happen. I'm adding a little bit of phthalo blue, green, green shade to add it just to make it just a little bit more of a saturated green. I like the kind of the surprise factor that you paint pretty wet with watercolor. Sometimes you don't quite know what's going to happen. And then I'm working on a very smooth surface too. So sometimes things puddle or just, you know, they just shift just a little bit. You don't always know what's going to, what the results are gonna be. Um, I, I kinda like that, so I like that. The surprise that happens sometimes when with watercolor. Wash my brush, pick up some more blue. And then I'm going to add more blue to that one. And then there's like some wrinkles over here. So I want to get that in. It's catching light differently. And let's get my brush. It's more, hence a yellow light. More ultramarine blue. A little bit more water because my brush is getting a bit too dry. Because I like that wetness. I like the unpredictability of it. A little bit more pigment, really dense right there. And I think actually, I'm going to take a little bit of That's the phthalo blue. Actually make it. That's my Hansa Yellow Deep. Because there's an edge over here That's pretty dark, that I want to get that darkness right there. We'll also helped me put in a darker yellow medium. Helps me get that in darker. There. It's this whole leaf is except for like this tip area right there is in shadow. Wash that pickup and put a lighter color there. Okay. So now this leaf needs a little bit of attention. Yeah. So it's a little bit darker, but there is I won't do lighter again. I want that to be softer. That's why I wanted to get that in. There we go. There. Okay. So what needs to be adapted? Little bit of, I think this is raw sienna hip. It is. So I'm mixing it in with the brown a bit because I need to put that in there. What's my shadow shape like my shadow shape. I'm going to use my bigger brush. And there's a little bit of I don't want to get it's going to bleed some. I probably should have gotten. Sometimes it's better to put your shadow shape in before you did the other stuff, let it dry. But I'm a little bit impatient today, so I'm going to try to get some of my shadow in. Okay, I'm gonna use my cobalt blue. I'm going to start off with just pure cobalt blue mixture. Really, really light. Really light. Because I don't want to, I'm thinking I don't want it to be too strong of a shadow shape that I wanted to stay focused on the actual berries. And also this is like practically I'm hot press, so I find that the shadow shapes tend to have a harder edge on a hot press paper than say, a regular cold press. So here we go. Here we go. Let's get this is the low green. But if you mix the yellow green, like e.g. you can mix it with the Permanent Alizarin crimson. It makes a very dark purple, which makes for, but it's a transparent mixture to then allows for some pretty kind of fun side effects. Okay, and then I went to the green. Want to put just a little bit more shadow shape? That was too too dark and still too much. So I'm not thrilled. So I'm going to wipe that up, pull that up, and start over. Here we go. Then I can actually go back over the red berries to where I wanted them to be a bit darker. Here we go. Sketch booking, a place where you can make mistakes. So I don't set myself up with really strict rules. When it comes to working in a sketchbook. I allow myself to make mistakes and explore being maybe a little bit impatient and push more pigment and before I would let it dry versus if it was like a final painting. I am a little bit more specific about scheduling and pacing of the painting. Letting areas dry land, areas not dry, but with a setup like this, this really enables a, an opportunity to push and explore with out being meticulous. 5. Watercolor Sketchbook Holly Sprig - thank you: Thank you so much for being here. It was a pleasure to demonstrate completing a fun and easy Holly watercolor and drawing. It is always a pleasure to share my love of drawing and thank you so much. If you have any questions, you are welcome to visit my website at Elizabeth floyd.com and please submit your projects when you've completed them. Thank you so much. Take care.