Watercolour Sunflower

1. Sunflower Intro: Hi, guys. I'm Esther, better known as Esther Peck at Instagram. I'm a professional watercolrist, and I specialize in watercolor flowers. Today, I'm teaching watercolor sunflower. They are bright, cheerful and symbolize positivity, joy, and resilience. I will be teaching you three sunflowers, one flunter and two side views. This is a basic to intermediate class, as I will be guiding you closely from colors that we use suitable brushes to drawing sunflowers and layout, creating interesting textures, adding depth and highlights for more realistic sunflowers and leaves. You can paint these sunflowers as single stone inside a jar or paint with sunset or sunrise backgrounds. I hope you'll join my class and create sunflowers of your own. See you soon. 2. 1 Sunflowers Paintings: Hi, welcome back. Let me show you a very short introduction of what I have done before in the past. I did this three to four years ago. Looks a little bit different from the current one. I mean the species and also the sunflower. So can you see the progress? This is another piece also two to three years ago, but I have some references of some flower like this, some flower with quite a big center. So they are quite different from the first one. And these are the paintings that I have done before. Sunflowers are bright and cheerful, and they symbolize positivity, joy, and resilience. When I design these three sunflowers, I have three angles, the frontal, and the sides like this. This has a lot of wavy petals, so I came up with this design. What I'm going to teach you today will be sunflowers, and I'm following the step by step of the PDF attachment which I have given to you. So let's get started. 3. 2 Art Supplies: As usual, we like to prepare by getting ready the art surprise that we need. I'm using 100% cotton paper, Sabino, 300 gram, and copressed. The paints I'm using is chemical hoodm aquaria, and I'll be using these few colors. You will see that in my attachment file, six watercolors and two gouache for the center of the sunflower. For the brushes, I'll be switching in between Heritage six and eight round brushes for the petals and for the details, it will be heritage number two. I will need the half inch angular shader or flat brush. That is for the center of the sunflower. I will show you so that you will decide whether you want to have this brush ready. For shading this portion, you can either use an half inch angular or flat brush depending on what brush you have. And also, I use Princeton select Deer foot brush. If I'm painting a big sunflower like this, I need a three eighth inch brush. If I'm painting a smaller sunflower like this, I will need a one quarter inch deer foot brush. And, of course, don't forget the two glasses of water which are so essential for watercolor. One for washing your brushes and one to get clean water from there. And I also like to have a clean palette like this for blending. Actually, I already have another palette with paint already. There's a space here, but I like to have a cleaner mixing palette to stand by. We are ready to get started. Let's 4. 3 Drawing Sunflowers : First of all, I'm showing you how to draw these sunflowers. Basically, the sunflowers that I have painted are free hand for the frontal view, but for the side view, I will have to draw out the design, we have to draw all the petals like this before you paint them. I'm going to show you my composition first. I'm following this composition of my bigger sunflower being the focal point. It will probably be bigger than this. In the center of the A three paper, I will position the front of sunflower. My plan now is to paint one side of the painting. And for today's class, I will teach only how to draw these three sunflowers. And this side we will not deal with because that will be too much to paint. And for the daisies, we are not able to teach in this class, but I have it on another Skillshare online class. So I hope you'll go there. So without further ado, let me plan the class. As I plan and draw, I will show you. Basically, they are all in my PDF file attachments. You need to follow the sizing accordingly. Let's look at the sunflowers that I bought from the market. You can see that actually the center of the sunflower is very big, so you have to adjust the sizes. If you prefer a smaller center, you can draw it smaller. With a bit of study, we will go back to our drawing and layout. My layout is having the frontal sunflower in the center of my A three art paper. So it is somewhere here. It will be better for me to follow the measurements so that it is easier to work on. So I'll be following this 5. 4 Leaf strokes and Stippling: Well, before going into painting, let's look at the color sweaches. So I have prepared my pins here. I know that I'm going to paint a lot of petals, so I'm well prepared with a lot of pints and my sweaches already. I'm going to teach you how to paint the petals first, how to be more effective in painting these so that you will not be going through different steps and realize that, oops, it's not quite correct. So I have my paint prepared in this way. I have lemon yellow and cadenum yellow mixed. Not too much lemon yellow. My paint will be leaning more towards cadnum yellow. We also need a little bit of vermiion at the side. You will see that the color is very intense and strong. Okay, let's look at the sunflower which I have bought. I'm so glad that today I managed to get this sunflower. Look at the colors. They're so gorgeous. So, okay, I'm ready to show you. And I'm going to use Heritage Round six now. I always talk about leaf stroke. I'm showing you what a leaf stroke is. So here it goes. This is a leaf stroke. And we also discussed earlier that these sunflower petals are quite short, so we don't have to pull too long. Keep it short. First of all, I like you to practice painting Leaves stroke like this. You need to warm up with your round brush. And I'd like you to paint two of it, one this way, and another stroke this way. Okay, so we get a petal. Oh, my goodness. I have one petal that dropped out. I did not pull it up, I drop off from the flower, so you can see it is really almost this size. Well, so we practice again. One stroke. Two stroke join to form a petal, and we have vermiion here, so we get a bit. And while the paint is still wet, I like to paint it this way, like strokes because I want you to observe that these petals actually has some vertical lines. So you will get something like this. And while the paints are still semi wet, I'm going to blend the lines onto the petals lightly. I like the lines to look subtle. Can you see some light on the petals? Let's do this again as I need you to practice about 15 minutes later. One stroke, two stroke, and I'm adding a little more water so my color is not as intense and for the vermiion, add water for a less intense value, too. And while it is still wet, I add the lines lightly. Then I wash my brush and tap off the excess water, and I blend it very lightly. The lines are very subtle. They are not meant to be obvious. Let's see my painting again. Sometimes I like to show the details and a little bit more with more obvious lines. Let's look at our real sunflower. The lines tend to show when there is a shadow that cast and where there's some folds, the lines will be more obvious. Now, I'll show you how to use a deer foot brush. First of all, we need to wet it. Make sure that it is not too dry nor dripping with water. When it is wet, I can pick up the pain easier. If the brush is totally dry, it's hard to pick up the pain. So let me show you stipping round a little bit of the doughnut look. Let's continue to go round. You can practice a little bit. We will talk more about this in our lessons later. In my worksheet, I mentioned that we go around steepling this way. There you go, you can just turn your paper if you have to. And there are some of you who don't have a dear foot brush. You need not be overly concerned because if you don't have a dear foot brush, I would suggest that you use a round brush. But of course, to be honest, the effect is not as nice. And you need to pin it this way all over. So finally, it should look this way. After I stippled the center with brown, I stippled yellow gushed over. So let's take about 15 minutes to practice this and come back to learn how to paint the sunflower. I see you again. 6. 5 Painting the Sunflowers Petals: I'm glad that you are back so soon. So we are all ready and have done our leaf stroke practices. I'm going to start painting straightaway and painting the frontal sunflower first. You can see that the ends of the petals are sharp, but they are inside, so we can't really see the sharp ends of it. So when you paint, there's no sharp end. So I'm using a round number six. So now we paint one and two stroke. This is the sharp end that goes inside. I'm painting the frontal petals first. And earlier on, I mentioned that when it is still wet, we can add on the lines, you don't have to paint on all the petals. Or you can actually paint six petals, then you paint the lines while the paints are still semi wet. Because if you will to add the lines after two petals, the paints might be still too wet and the lines will disappear. So we are working on the fifth petals, which is good. I think I'm getting the sizes correct. I will keep the sizes of the petals a little irregular for more interesting looks. You don't have to turn the paper if you're comfortable doing it. But if it feels awkward, just turn the paper a little to a comfortable angle to paint. You don't have to be like, Oh, as the Peck said that two strokes, then I have to keep to two strokes. Not necessarily that way. Sometime after painting, I like the petals to look wider. So you can see that the earlier lines disappear as the paints were a little too wet. So now I will paint over again as the paint is semi wet now. It's so fun painting sunflower again as it makes me so happy with its sunny and cheery colors. Anyway, don't have to be overly concerned about the disappearing lines as we will be shading the petals again and again. Let's turn the paper to a comfortable angle. Let's come again. 18, I have 18 petals. While waiting for it to dry, I'm just adding more shading. You'll find that when the paint is semi dry, the lines look more natural and subtle. I have finished the frontal sunflower and now I will move to the side view A flower. Because it is side view, the petals are narrower and thinner. You can refer to my PDF painting to check the sizes. When it comes to the center, you can see that the petals got thicker again. This is something to take note. I'm adding the verminon shading over here. Let us just continue from here. Remember that we have more frontal petals and side petals that are narrower. These are the petals that are wider and will need to press more, and this is narrower. Sometimes my stroke goes inward as it is easier to control, you can try that too. And I add on the shading while the paints are semi wet to give depths. Now, the paints are slightly more semi dry, so I should add on the erminont lines. And they really look good. So referring to my design again, you see that these three petals that are behind the frontal sunflower are slightly smaller and narrower. So now we add on the profile petals and the small back petals as well. You can try painting the strokes inward. They are easier to handle so that you need not to turn your paper frequently. Now we add the shades and the vermillion lines as the paints should be semi dry. So you see that the colors are very good. Capum yellow is a very close color to sunflower, and I only need to add a little vermilion to get the right color for this. It is really not difficult to paint this sunflower. For beginner, I suggest that you try the frontal sunflower first, paint a single store. It will really be a good gift to cheer up a friend. Okay, just a few more petals to finish. You'll see that it's not exactly a two strokes petal. Sometimes you paint it bigger with an additional stroke for a plumber petal. The petals here, I want it to be a bit darker as they are behind the frontal sunflower. Times you might need ocher or brown for more depth. Well, so we have finished the petals and moved on to the bigger sunflower. So this is the biggest sunflower side B. I'm going to use Heritage Round A. Earlier on, I had drawn this interesting turn petal, adding on the sheets while the pins are still wet. So now I'm adding on more depth again. And I also mentioned that if you have to turn your paper, just do so. And adding that to these petals again, as you can see that sometimes you have to work two to three rounds. We do have some smaller petals that add interest to this sunflower. And the same sequence of adding vermiium for depth again. Any petal that is behind another petal, we give more shading. Add on vermil again for more shading and the vertical lines too. Earlier on, I show you the real petals, and the colors are really name yellow, and it's orangy. Theise sunflowers that I painted are leaning towards orange. But if you really don't like too much orange, you can add a little lemon yellow. These two petals has a little bit more lemon yellow. Yeah, you can see that as they are nearer to us. As these petals are nearer to us, we also like the petals to be bigger and brighter. I'm back to the sequence of adding vermilion lines while the paints are still semi wet. By now, we should have seen and learned that when the paints are semi dry and you add on the lines, they will look natural and subtle. Now I'm painting the petal that's turning in front and this petal that adding in the shading at the same time. And this petal that is behind, I will paint inwards and add shadings of vermilion as I finish it. Um, so let's check again and adding on lines again. So you can see from my original big painting and postcard that we can see the lines quite clearly, and we can see from the petals the lines are subtle. It's interesting to have this line. If I like to have more shading, I can add a little bun umbrella to the vermillion just a bit, and I'm still using a number eight. So let's add on more distinctive lines for the tiles. O so finally, we are moving to the back petals and I'll do a mixture color first. I'm going to mix vermilion into cadnum yellow and a little burnt umber. It's just a shape darker. Try to mix a fair bit so that they are enough for all the back petals. Now and then we probably will add a little bit of vermilion or burnt umber to make it slightly darker on some areas. And we like to create the back petals in this way as shown in my painting, a little wavy like this. We are going to work on it now. I will switch to round number six again as the back petals are much smaller. The insides are also darker in shape and I mentioned that we will paint it freehand and make it a little more wavy and you see from this that they have sharp tips too. But the color difference is not exactly that different. But still, there's a shape, so we need to take note. Sometimes I like to add more shades in between the petals in order to show the separation of the petals. But just watch out. Not every petal needs to be so dark in shape. Now, back to the back petals with the wavy strokes. In between when the petals are very close, I will draw a thin value line to show the different petals. So you can see that these are all joined up, and I need to define the petals with the thin like value lines. Okay, so now we have finished the frontal sunflower. I'm using around six brush again, wavy back petals and drawing out the lines at the same time. Remember the three color mix again, cabin yellow, tinge of vermillion and bent umber for these petals. And for these spec petals, you can't apply the stroke techniques that you learned earlier. Just draw the interesting shapes that are also sharp and wavy. By the way, if you think brush size six is still too big, switch to size four if you have or size two. I will add on more petals to make it a fuller look. And I think we are nearly done for these two sunflowers. I'm quite excited to show you the last one. So for the last sunflower, I will switch back to round eight as it is a much bigger sunflower. This back petals, as we had painted earlier, we paint them with the tucker mix at the shades at the same time and the separation lines too. We can't just let have frontal petals like this. We need to have variety of interesting petals. You see my petal is turning this way. It's a lot easier to paint on the drawn petals. If not, it will be a little bit more difficult to imagine where the petals go. And so for behind we add more shape. These small darker back petals add a lot of interest to the sunflower and notice that they are facing different angles, as you can refer to the PDF attachment for free hand drawing. Let's check on the petals again. For this in between petals and the smaller back petals, we need to paint a darker shade. Let me see we are finishing almost all the back petals. So the inside of the in between petals, I need to add more shades. Let's see. I add a little vermillion so that the colors will not look too dull. Yeah, they look a lot brighter and prettier, of course. And not forgetting our lines again, as the paints are semi wet, they will show subtle lines. Let's just look through to see if we have all the back petals done. Yes, I think I have them all done. Well, I'm pretty happy with the effect. Okay, for this special petal that is folded, I will create a fold like this. So if you have a fold like this, add shading and keep the fold as cadnium color, keep it clean. There's a little bit of pin. I will clean the fold a little with my clean brush. Also, I wanted to make the tip sharper, and now I add on the lines. For this turn inward petal, I need to add a sheet, turn in like this, and I'll just use a clean wash brush to blend it lightly. So this petal is done. So we have finished painting the sunflowers. I hope you enjoy this class. 7. 6 Stippling the centre of the Sunflowers: Let's move on to our stippling. We will need two brushes. We mentioned earlier, one for smaller area and another for the bigger area. In my earlier lesson, I taught you how to play with the deer foot brush. Whether your brush is new or not, you have to wet it first. So you pat it lightly on your kitchen towel checking that it is not too wet. Earlier on, I have this paint prepared and we can just pick up the paint. Let me show you as the paint is a little wet, it will look this way. Let's dimple the bigger sunflower first. Trust me, this is the easiest. Simple around the edges carefully, and for the center portion, you can just stipple to fill up the white spaces. I'm using the three inch brush, and later for the smaller area, I will need the one quarter inch brush. So now to go near the petals, making sure not to stipple on them. So let's just be careful stippling since my brush still have the paints, I will work on the frontal sunflower, stepping it round. Let's do it slowly. The paints are a little wet, so be careful not to stipple out. Turn the paper to a comfortable angle so that it's easier to stipple. A deer foot brush is a good brush to invest, as you can use it to paint foliage, trees, and even animals. We are using the toe of the brush to create more textures, as you can see. Now, I'll go back to the big sunflower, and I will simple again. What I think you can do is this portion is quite difficult to work on, and it will be easier if you use around number six to paint and fill up the spaces. Because to stipple near the petals, you might accidentally go over them. So by painting these corners, it is a lot easier to handle than stippling. Next, we work on the side view a sunflower. I will use round number six to fill up the odd corners and edges again. The bristles of the deer foot brush is too big and you can't reach these corners, and they might mess up. Well, I trust that you will take my suggestion. Going back to the big sunflower, picking up paints on the toe of the deer foot brush and stipple for more texture. This is our second round. Turn the paper so that you can stipple better and creating the textures that you need. Again, for this area, I need to go over again to show more texture. Well, I think we have finished. I will let them dry for a short while. Now back to the frontal sunflower. I will stipple a second round for more texture. Quickly moving to the side a sunflower again with the toe facing outwards so that it will create a nice texture. I'm using a smaller one quarter inch brush now. I will fill up some of the uneven patches too. Well, it's not finished yet. Come back for my next lesson for highlights. See you again. 8. 7 Stalks, Stems and Highlights: Welcome back. We are going to paint the stems, stock, and leaves of the sunflower. The colors that I've chosen is a mix of chronium oxide green and lemon yellow. The color is very similar to the real sunflower stem. Don't you think so? I use round number eight to paint this stem, which is very thick. I also paint the sepals with the same green mix, and these are the leaf strokes. For the shading, I paint with a mix of perilin green and chronium oxide green. We call this a darker green mix. Now I paint the side B sunflower stop with the lighter green mix. While the paint is still wet, I add on shadings of the darker color mix on both sides of the stem. This will create a three D effect. I love these textures that was created on this stem. It looks a little hairy. The stems are actually still semi wet, and I'm adding some lines on both the sunflowers with reference to my sunflower. It helps me to study the details of the stems. I'm painting the leaves soon, and I'm getting ready my heritage flat tan for the lifting out of the paints. As I have drawn the leaves earlier, I'm painting with the light green mix, and I'm very careful with the tooth edges of the sunflower that they are not being missed. While the paint is still wet, I add on paralleling green mix. This is wet on wet technique. The area behind the sunflower will have more shading and it will take a while to dry. And I will not lift out the paint so soon. I'm also adding on a little light lubent umber. Wow, I love these gradients. While waiting for the leaf to be semi wet, I paint another leaf. This yellow and green is analogous colors on the color wheel. They are pleasing to the eyes. Now I'm adding on palling green on this leaf. So I'm using the heritage ten to leave out the mid rib, and sometimes we have to go over a second time. And turning to an angle, I left out the pains for the veins, making sure that they are not too strict, so they are following the control of the leaves. I'm going over again to lift out more pins. Well, this is called lifting out pins technique, which explains itself that pain is removed from the paper to create highlights. I'm painting the third leaf with the light green mix and adding paralleling green for shading. For this smaller leaf, I will add on a stop and paint the leaf and add the shading at the same time. I love the brooms here. It adds interest to the leaf texture. Taking note that I'm holding the number ten flat brush perpendicularly. I lifted out the pins for the mid rib, and the veins. Now I work on more details for this leaf, adding on more shedes of parling green and also creating more veins. Right, I will teach you how to paint this leaf that has a fold. Painting it with a darker shade of paraling green and chro ofside green on the inside and drop more paralleling green again while it is wet. Wait for it to dry. In painting, we need to be patient. Now we go back to stippling. The center of the sunflowers are dry by now. I load the deer foot brush with yellow gush and stipple around the edge of the brown center. You can see the difference, I'm sure. We will come back again for this in our next lesson. See you then. 9. 8 Highlights and Shadings: Welcome back. Continuing from the center of the sunflower, we are working on the highlights now. I have a mix of yellow and white gouache. I'm using a round number six to paint on the center of the petals. Woah is an opaque watercolor paint, and by adding this layer of lighter yellow on the petals of the sunflower, it creates a more brilliant shine. You don't have to paint over every portion of the petals only on the parts that you want to highlight. I mentioned that this is my focal flower, so this is the sunflower that I would like to highlight more and give details. I like to show the sharp tip of the petals here. Let's work on this. We mentioned in our earlier lessons that petals nearer to us will be larger and brighter. I'm adding the highlights in the center of the petals. So now I work on the smaller frontal sunflower. Don't you think that it really brightens up the whole sunflower? Yes, I think so. I know it looks very fun painting this. Trust me, it is really. I hope you will try the frontal sunflower for a start. Yeah, let's move to the site view a sunflower. Highlighting on the petals are essential. But as these two sunflower behind are not my focal flowers, I will not giving that much details. Now I'm working on the shading of the sunflower petals to give depth for a more three D effect. I'm loading brush on only half of my damp brush. I'm not sure if you can see this clearly, but the shadings are showing. I'm adding in a bit more umbra and verminium for a more vibrant color. As you can see, the sharp tip of the angular brush is good for shading here. The shadings give more depth. And I will be shading also behind the first layer of the petals so that they will look more three D. I'm sure you can see the difference before and after shading, right? I'm loving it. Add more sheets if you need to for more depth. Let's check at some of these details. Oh, well, I think I might miss out on white holes here and I should be filling it up with cadmium yellow. Yeah, it looks more natural this way. Let's move to our side view a sunflower, shading it with a mix of vermilion and burnt umber. It looks so much nicer with the shading that adapts to it. And you can see that the sharp tip of the angular brush allows me to go in between narrow corners to shade. This frontal sunflower is flat without the shading. So I'm going to do some magic. I'm shading with the same mix again. Can you see the difference again? And I add more burnt umber with vermilion again for more shades. Turning the paper to a more comfortable angle to shade if you need to. Wow, this looks good too. So now, do you remember the leaf that I had left unfinished in the earlier class? I haven't forget it. I was just waiting for it to dry. So we are going to paint the lighter green mix and adding shadings below. I'm adding some smaller leaves here, free hand painting with my brush loaded with chromium oxide green and paraling green for shading. And I'll be adding another leaf again. Also cranium oxide green and paraline green for shading. So I have finished for now. Do come back for my next lesson for wrap up. 10. 9 Wrapping Up: Welcome back. Let's do a wrap up. When we are finishing, we need to check through our painting. Most of the time, I let my painting sit. We say that we let our food sit, allow it to stand at room temperature after being removed from oven. But for my painting, I let it sit at my easer. I will study if I like to improve on it. If there's any part missing that I need to touch up. So even when I'm looking at my painting now, I saw something that I need to improve, like this dm. The shading disappear, and I have to add on more shadings of paraline green and also add on a stalk for this leaf and adding shade to it. Mm. So I have two leaves here. So going back to my own reference, the cut that I'm selling, I have three sunflowers. I mentioned that I can't teach the daisies in this class, as it will be too long, but I do have an online class also at Skillshare, called filler Flors and leaves as daisies are filler flowers, and that is my most popular class. So please go in to check on that class. So for this painting, I will finish painting two other sunflowers and filler daisies on my own, and it will be considered complete. Looking at it again, the big sunflower is my main focal flower in these three sunflowers floral composition. And because I painted them with different angles, it makes this painting very interesting instead of just painting a frontal sunflower only. And I hope that you enjoy this class and go and create more sunflowers