Watercolor Summer Flowers: Easy and Fun Watercolor Project

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. My name is Irina Trzaskos. I'm a watercolor artist and illustrator. Also, I teach watercolor classes here at Skillshare. In today's short class, we'll be painting summer florals in a composition. You can use this project as a birthday card, as a note, or as a print, or just as painting. So I regularly publish courses here at Skillshare. Press that follow button if you didn't do so yet and let's get started. 2. Supplies & Colors: In this class will be using the supplies were using and most of my classes. It's watercolor paper cold press a 140 pounds. Watercolor paint any set you have for the work, water, paint palette, paper towel, cut a size of paper you need, eraser and so medium watercolor round brush, this is number six, small watercolor brush, this is number two. Maybe we'll need a water pen, and probably not. If you don't have water pen , then a whitewash or white ink will work as well. Now let me show you the color so we'll be using today. For my farm again will get and you can use any colors you like, but if you want to follow along using cadmium yellow and then cadmium yellow, I'll be adding a drop of cadmium orange on the drop of a green yellow. It will look more moisture. Next, I'll be using Carmen red mixed with cadmium orange. Whenever we painting, we'll be mixing them in color in then the paint palate, and now I'll make some just on paper. Next I'll be using color green yellow with the drop of cadmium orange. Looks more nature. I'll say I'll be using magenta with some ultramarine blue in that one shade here of blue with a drop of magenta in it. I also need some red ocher. Will be using it as a skin tone, and also need a dark blue so mix some emerald green with purple and it'll give us a dark shade of blue. This are all the colors I'll be using today, but feel free to use any colors you like. 3. Painting the Summer Flowers: So for my flower composition, I'd like it to be a girl who is holding a flower bouquet and we can't see her face because the flowers are covering it all. You've probably seen a lot of pictures of this kind on Pinterest and magazines, advertising however, I always wanted to paint one. Why don't we do it in this class? We start with just drawing a really quick sketch. These are the hands of the girl and here we'll have a huge flower bouquet. Again, don't make the sketch this heavy. Little white lines and here we'll have a skirt. The dress probably will be white but we'll also have it with some more of water color. That's all the sketch we need. Also, we can adjust or make some circles where we'll have main big flowers probably, three of them and the rest is going to be medium flowers and a foliage and small flowers. That's all the sketch we need. We'll start with big flowers. So take some yellow add some cadmium orange to it and a little bit of green and just add some strokes where we'll have the middle of the flower. Next we'll mix some carmine with cadmium orange. So you can paint any kind of flowers you like. You can use some peony flower clause or poppy flower clause or spring flowers to help you or you can just follow me here. Just a brush stroke transforming petals and add on this our big flowers to be with a lot of petals something like peonies or cabbage roses. This is going to be a loose water color painting so you can't really understand exactly which kind of flower is that, and this one we can't see the middle, it's looking down. Again, I can add some more shading later. Now it's just first layer, loose layer. Usually in floral compositions, I would have like three or five big flowers and the rest would be medium. But we always start with big flowers in composition because they're the ones who will pay the most attention. When we just start painting, we still have all the energy to make them beautiful. While we still have this color mix, we can add few medium flowers the same color. Even few buds. I made these slides for composition, but it doesn't mean we can't do it to overflow which has made them to know where is the middle of the page so it won't be like totally off. I think this is enough for now. Next what I'll do, I'll paint the girl's hands because I want them to dry. So I'm using a red ocher. We can see the arms and we can't see the hands themselves because those are complicated to paint. So we'll just hide up under the foliage and legs too. A little bit of shade on the bottom. That's enough for now. Next, with yellow I'd like to add medium flowers which are going to be like yellow daisies or black eyed Susans So just, again, brush strokes to mix more yellow. So I'm working with medium brush. I'm just making some lines and we have a flower, and all the edges of the middle one they will dry. You can paint your favorite flowers, any kind of flowers you like. I would really love to see what you coming up with. Next I'll take some green-yellow, make some cadmium orange to it and a little bit of cadmium yellow. I will be making these clusters of really light green. Just be careful, when you touch other colors will blend in. So if you want to do that, you can do that on purpose but if you don't then just be careful, so again, very very loose, just like this. So what you want to do next, we'll outline the dress and we'll let it all dry. Mixing some warm shade of blue with a little bit of magenta. You want to keep this painterly feel to it, so don't be too precise. This is enough, and now I have to let it all dry, and then I'll be the adding more foliage more shading and details. 4. Adding Finishing Details: After the first layer is totally dry, we can get to my favorite part and start adding shading and details. Before I start painting with the second layer, I erased all the pencil lines. I suggest you do the same. I'm taking some thicker, Carmine Red, [inaudible] orange. I'll be adding some shading on this main flowers. If you want, I still want to keep them painterly, but a little bit adding some dimension. You remember the middle of them is the darkest one. The petals are lighter. Also, I'd like to add another flower here to break this perfection of the can because it's too right. I'm going to add the stem here, maybe even another one here. Let's ad some leaves here. It's a blue with a little bit of magenta. Also some stems, and the middles for these daisies. Just whatever you feel, some branches. Try not to overdo it, just a little bit [inaudible]. The flower still have to be the main focus. Also, I'd like to add some long flowers on this side to make it more dynamic and add the same color in the other parts of the girl, like here. Maybe here, maybe one different color here, and a few more shadows thrown in here. That's it. Our flower and can is ready and I hope you enjoyed it. 5. Thank you!: Thank you so much for watching my class. I hope you've had a chance to paint along. I can't wait to see your beautiful project. Please upload them to the project section of the class and I'll leave you my feedback. See you in my next class. Bye.