Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi everyone, my name is [inaudible]. I'm a watercolor artist and illustrator, also I teach many watercolor classes here at Skillshare. I'm so excited to be able to share my passion for watercolors from my classes. Thank you for being here. Today, we will be painting another fun and short summer class, we'll be painting a summer window with some flowers around it, and I hope you'll enjoy this project. So let's get started.
2. Supplies & Colors: Today, we'll be painting a summer window with some flowers around it in this painting. I put it in a frame. The frame is small, but let me show you the supplies I'll be using today. Some watercolor paper, it's 140 pounds. I'll be using both 100 grams, coldpress Canson. It's really affordable. If you're in United States, it's more affordable in Walmart than in art stores. It's the same paper, so just make sure to not overpay for it. Also I'll be using my watercolors, you can use any water color paint you like, water, paint palette, paper towel, pencil, eraser for drawing. Also we'll be using a round water color brush number six, number four, and number two. Use your favorite brushes. Also I'll be using and a fine liner. Just make sure it's waterproof and I'm using a black one. If you want to use a different color, you can see we used it for details. For curtains, if you'll mess them up, you might want to use some of white out pen or whitewash. Now I want to show you the colors we'll be using today. Gray is for branches and for building we'll be using cadmium orange with ultramarine blue. For window frame will be using a regular green and we'll mix it with ultramarine blue too for a nicer green. Also we'll be using the same green for our foliage and for warmer shades we'll mix it with a cadmium yellow. For colder shades, again for shadows will be using it with ultramarine blue. For flowers we'll be using magenta. To give it a warmer shade we'll mix it with cadmium orange. Also we'll be using a little bit of black. This is black adjust the water level out of water. That's it. Next, we'll start drawing.
3. Drawing the window: Today's drawing may seem intimidating but don't get scared. I'll be providing a template of the drawing in the project section of the class. If you don't feel like you're drawing it yourself, you can just outline my drawing and just start painting right away. We are starting with the middle line of our window. I made a quick sketch here and will be drawing minimum. As usual, my lines are thick in a pencil but yours should be really fine lines. If they are thick lines, just erase them a little bit after so it will be a really light sketching. I start with the middle line of our window and then I'd like it to be arched here like this. Here we have line where actually, this opening part of the window starts. I don't want it to be perfect, as usual. Also, you can paint your own window you like, from a photo, from your travels, or maybe you have a nice window next to you somewhere. This is a window from Paris and I just added some changes to it. Because the window frame is going to be green, I'm really not too much afraid of these dark lines. Also because it's going to be darker, I'm not thinking much about thickness on this line so I can always make more thicker and straighter right with paint. But if your window frame is wide, then you should add thickness to every line and just try painting around it, which is more complicated for this fun and easy course. That's why I decided the window frame to be just dark green. Here we also need some symmetry. It's not even a balcony but it's like a little gate, which would protect you if you're opening a window. Here behind is a small narrow window seal. There are some pots here, but we don't need to paint them because I'm going to paint them with some climbing roses here. I don't want to overwhelm the drawing with too many details. We're adding some décor. Not too much because we're still not sure how much will be covered by flowers and leaves somewhere. Just a little bit. This is enough. Here we also have some architectural décor, so typical for European buildings. Again, we won't draw too much, just a little bit. This is enough. Here we have some shutters. This has all the drawing we need. Just maybe here we'll add a little bit more thickness. Okay. Now this is all the drawing we need and we can start painting.
4. Painting the First Layer: Full paints and we'll need our paper towel. As usual in watercolor, we will start with a lightest parts of the painting. It's going to be some really light wash on a building, around the window. Just to avoid a bit feel of that window is somewhere in the air so that a little bit of this beautiful gray with the biggest brush. It doesn't have to be regular, it's better not to be regular at all, strike brush strokes here and there. Something like this. Then I'll mix some of this gray but a little darker. So more pigments, less water. Then I'll make a water inversion too and here behind the window will have some curtains, so I want to show them. That's why go this lines. Don't worry about window frame. Because as well it should be dark and it doesn't matter if I'll get a little bit obvious, I did a white wash it. You can see here we created just this appearance of some kind of curtain behind a window and just few lines. Here we'll have it a little darker because the curtain ends. So you can see it, we're good on the window frame here, but it's okay because it's going to be dark green just as I said before. Don't worry about that. Now I want to add some more orange into my gray, and because this part is already dry, paint this architectural, I think I need a small brush. Let's take Number 4. If you like painting with ink and watercolor, like some of you will do, you can do that and just a beam. So we have a central long architectural element. I think it's called cartouche. Here we'll have some more decorative details coming. So just few brush strokes, improvised roses made of stone and that's what we need. Also I'd like to add another shadow under the window here. Now I have to let this all dry.
5. Painting Flowers : After the first layer is totally dry, we'll mix some magenta with water, and add a drop of cadmium orange to two. This is too much. This is nice. We'll start painting our flowers with really watery mix. Just like little, tiny loose roses. I guess this brush is too big, so we'll take a smaller brush, so I didn't plan it where the roses will go. We can always add more if we feel like it. I think I'd like to have a big cluster here, some here, and again we'll be adding more details, so don't be afraid to play at this stage. Just wherever you feel like maybe a branch has come here somewhere. These rosebushes grow from somewhere here, so probably we'll have some flowers right here and here. Now we'll mix some more of our blue with orange, and it has to be not too watery, but still has to be easy to manage, so just the small brush. It's pretty thick, but it still flows nicely, that's what I was trying to see. We are starting painting our branches, and you can see how instantly the entire painting is changing. You don't have to show branches everywhere wherever flowers are because we'll still be adding our leaves too. I feel like we need the nodal branch here. We can add some more flowers on this branch we just did. Just decide yourself where you would like to be more flowers, so what you'll do next, we'll let all this dry again and when it's dry we'll come back.
6. Painting Foliage: While our drawing was drying, I changed the water and I washed the palette and had some ice cream. I hope you did to the same. You can see at the moment, our painting is looking more like spring because we have flowers and branches but we don't have leaves. If you want it to be a spring painting you can leave it like that. But because I planned a summer painting, let's make it summery. We'll start by mixing some cadmium yellow with green. What you'll do next we'll just start painting a lot of foliage to bring summer into this painting. We're starting with the lightest green we can create. It's a lot of yellow. I'm just putting some brush strokes. That is why we left some gaps without branches so we can fill them with leaves. That is why it's important to wait until the layer is totally dry because otherwise, our green would make [inaudible] aesthetically unpleasant. Just some brush strokes with the lightest green. Now I can say why we didn't paint with the shadow first because we don't know how much of it that would left. We'll be just painting it down whatever segment of it is left. Now I added some more green to my yellow and green mix and painting darker leaves. Just try to relax and enjoy this process. I know it's looking way more summer than before. I think I like it. Very nice. Some more here. Next we'll have to wait while this saffron green is drying. Meanwhile we can make some ultramarine blue. We wanted to see where we'll still have our window frame so we can start painting it straight lines. That would mean that we'll be able to fix it later with fine liner, it's okay. It's fine if you want to leave some white lines to give it some more casual look. Architecture always takes some patients and some firm hand to make those straight lines. However my painting is a little watery because I like keeping the transparency when it dries you can see some transparency, even if it's dark. I needed very tiny lines here and here. Also we have these part. Let's now look into what I'm going into. Always see some bending here. But because it's also green just like our foliage, it's okay. We're told the next step, I'll take a ginga brush and I'll cover with big brushstrokes. I'm trying to make this straight as possible. Yes, I like it. What we'll do next is the same color, maybe a little more blue and green on the darkest parts in our leaves. It instantly gives the image a more dimension. You can do it with small brush or big brush. It doesn't give us a feeling of that bright summer shadows in the midday. This is good and next we'll take some black paint. I'll do this decorative part, just make sure you don't touch this part which is still wet. We're painting only the parts we can see, which are not covered by foliage. We don't have to be precise with this decorative elements. But let's try to make them as symmetric as possible. I think this is looking good. We need to darken this window a little bit where we don't have the curtain. We'll have more blue with orange mix. We'll add it there, like this and here. Whenever roses are dry, we can add some more darker petals. Also we can add some more flowers, if you feel like it, somewhere here. You can paint flowers of different colors if you want to. Now I have to let it dry and I'm going to be adding last details.
7. Adding Final Details : The ink is almost dry everywhere, just few spots here and there are still shiny but we're going to work around them and what we will do next, hold on. Take some of this green, gray, with more blue than orange. We'll add some shadows on the wall next to our orange and not everywhere just here and there a little bit. Its getting way to this painting. I think this is enough and the very last details we'll be adding straight lines with fine liner. If you don't like this effect, you don't have to do it. You could do it with a water color too if you don't like straightening the lines we have some crooked lines but I'll add these lines too sharper. If you don't like fine liners, you could do all these details with a really small brush on a watercolor. I know most of you like fine liners so I hope it won't be a problem. I think it did some charm and here a little bit sketching and some leaves. We didn't have enough. I think that's it. [inaudible] This is our summer window with some blooming bush on it.
8. Thank you !: Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I hope you had a chance to paint along and I can't wait to see your beautiful artwork, I'm sure it's wonderful. So please upload it to our project section of our class and if you share it on Instagram, tag me so I won't miss anything. I'll be happy to leave you my feedback and I can't wait to see you on my next class. Bye.
Irina Trzaskos, Watercolor Artist & Illustrator
