Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi, and welcome to my
studio. I'm Sarah. And today, in this tutorial, we're going to be
painting a sunflower, which is a beautiful,
bright and fun painting. So with just a few supplies, we're going to make
it nice and easy, keep it loose, and
have a whole lot of fun and learn a little bit about watercolors along the way. So in the tutorial, I will be demonstrating
with the Mcador discs. These are the discs
that I'll be using in the tutorial. But don't stress. You certainly don't
need to use those. You can use any sort of set. This is another one that I
have that I use a lot of. Just some of my favorite paints. This is another one that I use that is also one
of my favorites. So don't stress as
long as you've got some colors that are sort
of sunflower colors, which is basically yellow. And green and a few more. So even if you've
got just tube paints and something to pop them out on, that's
all you really need. So while you're getting ready
to paint the sunflower, I'll see you in the
next video when I explain to you
how to download the printable and get that onto your paper. So
let's get into it.
2. The Printable Line Drawing: Okay, so this is the download that we're going to
use so that you can copy that onto your paper for just to give you a
guide on where to paint, so you don't have to
draw the sunflower and it's all going to be done
just nice and easy for you. So this is the
printable download, and I have just printed
it onto letter paper, whatever you have at home, just some nice light paper and just a printable like that. So also, we're going
to use some paper. So in Australia, this is a four. It is about eight by 11 to your regular sized paper
in the US or anywhere else. It's 300 GSM or 140 pound. So I like to paint
on that weight of paper because it holds up with the amount of
water that we use. And when we're
painting loose and freely like we're going
to paint the sunflower, we're going to use
quite a bit of water. So you need to use some paper that's going to
stand up to that. So 140 pound or 300 GSM
is what you should do. I'm using cold press, so it has a bit
of texture to it. But experiment, get some different paper
and see how it is. So cold press has a
bit more texture, and hot press is smoother. You think of an iron has smoothened it out.
Think of it that way. Also, try not to touch the paper too much because your
fingerprints will get onto it, and it causes the oils cause the watercolor to not take
so well onto the paper. So that's something to remember. Okay, so we're going to transfer this onto this very easily. Let me show you how to do that.
3. Transfer The Sunflower Onto Watercolour Paper: Okay, so we've moved
down onto my desk. So this is another piece
of this is a piece of 300 GSM watercolor paper that I have used the printout
or the downloadable, and I've actually printed
straight onto this. So you can have a
try at doing that. I can put this straight. This paper goes straight
into my printer, and it will print straight
onto it, and it's perfect. Otherwise, if you don't comfortable with
doing it that way, let's show you how to do it. I have a piece just
an ordinary piece of my watercolor paper, not printed or anything. And here's my printout. Okay, so I've just done that on just regular computer
printer paper. So what we're going to
do on the back side, we're going to transfer it over. So I'm going to use
something soft, a four B pencil and behind it, I'm going to it's a
little hard to see. Okay, so wherever I'll just
do the leaf to show you. So around where the leaf is, I'm just going to
color the back. Okay. Okay. You hold it up. You can see where the leaf is. See through it to see
where the leaf is. Okay. I've got it all. Through here. So using a
soft pencil to do this. And then what we do is to put that onto our paper,
lay it on top, and then we'll outline
it all the way around, and it will transfer the print onto your paper so you
can go ahead and paint. So I'm going to fill this in
and then transfer it over. I will show you how it works, so you don't have to
watch the whole thing. I've swapped over to HB so
something a little harder. And I'm just going
to outline where that leaf is just so you
can see how easy it is. Okay. And there's the vein. The little ones coming off, just so you can give
yourself an idea. And there you are. It's very faint, but that's
all you really need. Can just see it. There you are. So use a
nice soft pencil on the underside underneath and you can see the picture
of the sunflower. When you hold it up
to the light, you can see exactly where
the sunflower is. Use pencil so then you can come back and rub it out
if you want to. So I can take that all the way off and start again.
If I want to. So a nice soft pencil. I'm using a four B,
six B be even better. Fill in all the way
over, all the way over. Hole area where
your sunflower is. Fill it all in and then go
over your whole sunflower, all the dots so that you
know where you're going. Okay. Have fun and
relax and enjoy it.
4. Get Started With The Painting: H. Okay, so we're going to
paint the sunflower now. It's a beautiful sunflower
and a lot of yellow, orange, some brown, a
little bit of brown. So here's one that I've
painted earlier as well. So we've got, you
know, as usual, we paint the light wash, and then we pick up
some colors with some darker colors in
here in the center. It's more orange might be a
bit red in there as well, just to give it a
bit more depth. The center, we do with some
brown and some yellow. Then there's a little
bit of black as well, just to give it lights
and darks and shadows. The leaves are probably more an autumy color,
autumn palette. There's a bit more
yellow to the green, and then there's some
darker bits as well, just to pick up some edges
with just some darker bits. Ia a lot of fun to paint, so let's get into it and see
how it comes out this time. As always, I've got two
jars of water beside me, my mica door paints set
up with the colors, the light color at the top. I've got the discs that
we painted before. We swatched out colors. A little reference to some of the brush strokes
that we'll do as well. So paper towel to dry off
my brush when I need to. My palette for
mixing the colors, and some toilet
paper for mopping up any extra water that we want to pull back
off on our artwork. Okay, so we're going to start off with a light wash of yellow, making sure we go outside the lines and making your
artwork interesting. We'll start off with the yellow, I'll activate that with
some water that working. That will be just
our light wash. Let's put it in the corner here. Okay. We're also going
to use the orange and maybe some red as well. We'll see how it's looking when we're pulling it all together. Then the green is probably will stick with this green
and the yellow. If we want to neutralize it, we'll use a bit of red. By giving it a bit more of an autumn tone to
neutralize the color, we will use, let me
find my color wheel. There is Anyway, when we're
doing it, here it is. Here's my color wheel. When we're doing it, so
we're using green and to neutralize it to make
it a little more muted, we will go to the color on the opposite side
of the color wheel. We'll go directly over, add a little red to it and
that will neutralize it. That's something
new that we haven't done before in any
of the paintings. Using the color. If you want to neutralize yellow to bring
it back to a more muted, you'd add a little bit
more purple or purply blue to mute it down just to give it more of a more
natural color as well. There we go. Okay.
Using my color wheel, so I know exactly
where they are, I wet down my yellow
so it's activated. We've got just a little bit
in the corner of my palett. Now I want a watery wash. I'm going to fill up my brush. I'm going to use it
right back here that keeps me nice and loose
let's get into it. I'm going to use these brush
strokes very much like the press drag and lift action
to get the petal shape. I'm going to pull from the bottom and to make
my petals that way, a C and then a back. I'm not worrying
about the lines, certainly not worried
about the lines at all. There we go. A light wash. Nothing more than just
getting a bit of paint on the paper and pulling it out as much as we can. Water. I'm not particularly
worried if I make more petals that aren't even in the diagram that
I've accompanied here. Okay. There we are. Quick light wash, not being fussy and that's probably a
big key is to not be fussy. Let's mix up some green
to do the leaves. Same again. I'm going
to activate my green. I get that off my artwork. All right. Activating my green. Bring it over to
my palette because really there's only two
colors to this one. I'm just going to
use this corner of my palette, activate some green. I only want a light wash. Now, I'm going to add some
yellow because I wanted a yellowy green.
Quite a bit lighter. Now, it's a bit lime.
This is where I'm going to add just a little bit of red. I'm going to we'll
start with the orange. See what we can do. We're
just adding a bit of orange. It's not really the
color that I want. I'll go back into the green. Still looking a bit too lime. Let's put some red in. That's much better.
Using the red rather than the
orange. There we are. That's the color
I'm looking for. Quite a bit more muted
than anything else. Mix a bit more of that up. There's the green.
Just a bit of red. There we are. It's
a real olive green. Perfect. Let's give
the leaves a wash. The leaves have a
jagged edge here. We really want to think
about press, drag, wiggle, and lift to do more of the jagged edge of
what we've got here. But don't get too fussy. Starting start here.
We'll do the stem, little bit of stem,
press, wiggle. And left. Wiggle, and left. Never wash through the middle. Press, wiggle, and left. Wiggle, and left. And
a bit in the middle. Press, wiggle and left. Okay. One more. Press, Wigle, and left. And left color through. A bit more color,
just on the stem, just so we know that
it's there. There we go. We can pop a little
bit of brown in here while we're
waiting for it to dry. Where's my brown up here. It's going to
activate the brown, so we've got that activated
for when we do need it. A little bit over here. Not much. I'm just
going to give it a little bit of a light wash,
nothing more than that. Just a bit and leaving some
white as well. There we go. That's a good start. I'm going to dry that off and
then we'll come back with the petals and give it a bit more depth
on the next layer. My dryer. This is
my little heat gun, so I'm going to give
this a bit of a dry off and we'll be back in a sack.
5. Layers For The Petals: Okay. It's dry. I'm happy with that. It's a pretty light
wash, actually. So we're going to start from the centers of the petal and
just pull out some colour. We're going to go a little
bit darker than just straight yellow this time and
less water in our mix. I've got some yellow
there. All right. We'll try it with the
orange just by adding some orange into it and
seeing what happens. How Oh, I like that. Oh, it might be a bit bright. Okay. Let's go back into
the yellow, some water off. Now we'll just use some pigment, try and bring that back
just a little bit. Okay. It's pretty sun
clot flower color. Okay. There we are. I'm happier with that. It's
going to be quite a contrast, so we're going to need to blend that in just a little bit. Okay. I'm just getting some
of my brush from my brush. I'm going to start
here at the top again so that I'm not putting
my hand over it. Are you going to put some paint? Actually, it's much better
than I thought it was going to be here on the petal here and I'll do
three to start off with. I'm just going to blend
that out a little bit. With the dirty water because
it's not really that dirty and I'm liking it. I like that. There we are. There we are. I
liking that already. Okay. Just dry that
off a little bit, pick up some pigment and
pull it up just a bit. This one out here. Well, it's on my brush. I'm
just going to get it around a little bit and then soften it off with some clean water. There we go. Just blending
it out just a little bit. Okay. But I am liking
how it's coming along. I think the color is
beautiful. There we are. Just softening it off. Pulling out the edges of that darker color just to
soften it a little bit. Okay. Back into my orange. Here. I'm still trying to keep
fairly loose and not be really particular
as to where I put it, knowing that I can just blend it just ever so much, so little, soften the bits I'm
not happy about, but still leaving
some of the yellow, the light lemon,
where I started. Let me go. I'm liking that. Now,
while it's still wet, I'm going to drop just the No. I'm going to change my mind. I'm going to drop some
orange straight out of the palette where it's just a
little bit wet in the disc. I'm just going to drop
some orange in here, where it's wet and
let it do its thing. Write the centers where I think the darkest part of
the petal is going to be. If you're not happy
with where it's going, this is blending beautifully. These are still a
little bit dry, so I'm just going to add a bit more water to that and just push it
out just a little bit. Okay. Softening it where
I think it needs. I'm going to add a
little bit more. Add a little bit more. Okay. I'm liking that. Mm. Okay. I think I'll let it dry and I'll give the
leaves a bit more work.
6. Paint the Centre Of The Flower: Okay. I'm going to
work on the centers, so I'm going to do a very quite detailed
for me and controlled. Little dots here the
center of the dark brown. I might use some black as well, but really not much. And then I'll have to dry
that off before we finish off the rest of the petals. Maybe. We'll see. Okay.
Let's get into it. A little bit of water
on my brush now, my brown is activated. It's just a little puddle there. So I don't need much on my
brush and just the tip, and I just want to
make some little dots. Random dots, not circles or
anything, just random dots. So big, some little.
So can join up. I'm not going to be fussy. But I'm going to just
pick up some marks here. Then I'll probably let these dry and then I might
just come over with a wet damp brush and
soften them a little. Okay. You've probably noticed that as an artwork progresses, I'll go further and
further down my brush. I'll start off up here and
then my marks get a little smaller and more deliberate by coming down the brush as well. It's not to say
either way is right. You can do the whole thing
holding on down here, but I think you get a more random mark by
moving out further. Let's add some
black in here just to make it a little
bit more interesting. The black is this one. Just want to activate it a little bit and get a little
bit on my brush. If you're not sure, dab it
on your paper towel first. You know how much you've
got that will just darken the brown just a
little bit, let it run in. Some will run, some won't. Now, the darker side of
my flower is under here. So I'm going to add
more black in here and just a little bit up the top just to darken
it, but not much. It'll be darker in the
bottom section down here. Alright I'm going to leave that because I don't
want it to go too far.
7. Another Layer Of paint: The leaves, we use the green. So you want some green. And some red to neutralize it to give it a bit more
of an autumy tone. I didn't pick up much red. It's a little bit.
That was okay. Pop a little bit more
red in. There we go. It's almost turned
it to a brown, but I'm liking that. I think I'm going to need more, so I'll mix that while I can. Some more paint in
the corner there. A little bit of red in there. Okay. I've gone too much red. All we need to pick
up some more green. Bring that back. Ah. That's okay. Yeah, we could
fiddle and fiddle, but let's just go with that. Okay, wiping some off, drying off my brush
a little bit. Now we want to just
pick up what I'm going to start with is
just some edges of the leaves and see where
it needs it after that. I'm just picking up
some rough edges and then blending it in. It's probably still
a little green. Well, we pop a bit
more red in there. Okay. Okay. Let's do it, and then we can always bring some brown in and make
them more interesting. It's just a little bit
around on some of the edges. A little bit under here as well. And a little bit on the stems. The stem as well.
Well, don't give that. Okay. Let's just
soften that off. Okay. Dear. You know, you could paint this a dozen times and every time, it's going to be different. Okay, run out of
paint, cut more green. A little bit of red. More green. And some red. Oh, too much. Green. Let me go. Okay. All right. Out here. Soften that off. Okay. Ol got this here. I'm going to add a little
bit of blue to it, as well. Just a little bit, and that
might just darken it up. Ah, okay. And while it's wet, I'm going to add just a
little bit of this in. Oh, I like that already. There we go. You know, just while
it's still wet. I'm just adding some highlights. There we go. I'm liking that. And if it has dried, just soften it off
just a little bit. Okay. Okay. The color. Now, while it's also still wet, we can do the veins
on the leaves. I'm going to use the back of my paintbrush and your
veins just by doing that. Just by denting the
paper while it's wet, we'll give you a beautiful mark when it dries for the veins. Let me go. Okay, this one. There we go. Soften a bit off where
I'm not happy with it. I'm going to go
back to my brown, which is this one. And while it is still wet, oh, that was a bit much. Oh, no. Actually, where it is
still a little bit wet, I'm going to drop a little
bit of brown in. Okay. I'm going to keep going. It
doesn't have to be much. Gives it that autumn
tiding, it's really good. Um, you know, blend it
in just a little bit. Just tip on the tip of the
brush and let it blend in. Just that little bit. Okay. Let me give that
a bit more here. Just a little
touch. Very little. Possibly that's all that the
leaves are going to need. I'll have another look at them. Soften off anything
that you don't like. I'm happy with that bit there. Let me see if I can lift. Okay. Add a bit of grin. There we go. And Okay. I didn't like what I did here, so I'm going to add some more green, maybe a bit of brown. Just a bit of brown. Okay. I think the leaves
are looking great. I'm going to add a little
bit of brown onto my stem. Just a bit of a
dance down the stem. A bit of a soften. There we are. Okay. Maybe a bit on some of these. Oh, yes, I like that. Just a little bit. There we are. I'm liking that. I'm
going to dry this off, make sure my petals are dry, and then we'll come
back and do the centers and then maybe just a bit of separating in the petals like we've done with other ones. I'm going to dry that off and then we'll be back in a sec.
8. The Finer Details Of The Petals: What I'm going to do
now is to go back into my orange here and separate
some of the petals. It's a little too mushy
through here particularly. I want to separate
some of the petals, which I'm going to
do with the orange with just a little bit
of orange on the tip of my brush and I'm going to
work fairly tight as well. I'm going to just pick up
just some of the edges of the petals and
then blend it in. On one side, just blend
it in on this petal. It's got just a bit of interest. There we go. It's a bit like what we've done with
some of the others where we've just separated the
petals by picking up a darker color to
separate the petals out. It's definitely going to be
darker down in the center of the flower and
lighter out the top. I don't want too
much on our brush when we soften off the edges. We just want to be able
to soften it a little. This is one of those
things that just takes a bit of fiddle and time and you need to relax
and enjoy the process. I go a little quiet, follow along fast
forward if you need to or pause me when you need
to do that as well. Okay. Just a bit in here. If you think you've
gone too much, pick up your paper and
blot it back out again. Let me go. This petal under here
is going to be darker. I'm just going to do that and then really
pull that out a lot. It should be sitting
underneath the other petal, so it's going to be
a little darker. Let me go. I'm just
going to move around. Don't be afraid to
turn your page around. But remember where your light and darkness is going to be. Is going to do a bit more here before I forget where I am. Okay. I'm I'm liking it. Um, yep. I'm pretty
happy with it. I think I might soften
in here just a little bit just before it
gets completely dry. Just by rubbing just
dabbing. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Just by dabbing a semi dry brush just
to soften some of that. There we go. I like that much better. Just soften some
of those edges of the marks off just a little bit. The other thing that I'm
thinking I want to do is to drop some red in here just to give
it a little bit more depth. I'll try it. It
may not be right. I'm going to pick up a little
bit of red on the tip of my brush and drop it in here. Isn't enough. That's exactly what it needed. While it's still a little bit wet in the very
darkest dark places, a little bit of a
dense of some red. Soften it off with just
a bit of a damp brush. There we go. Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna dry it off
and have a look at it, and we'll come back in a minute.
9. A Flourish And A Splatter To Finish Off: Okay. It's all dry. I'm
pretty happy with it. The only thing I'm thinking is that you can
still see some of my markings the original
guide markings, which what you could do is pick up some of
the darker color and use it on the tip of the petals and bring
it back a little bit. Let me just show
you a little bit. I'm going to mix up some orange. And we'll pop some yellow in it because that's what
we did. There we are. It's a fairly concentrated
mix and what I could do. Let's see, bring it up
here and around here, see where picking
up the very top of the petals and we'll just blend that back a little bit and
see how we like that. We go. Just takes away from
where the markings are. Don't mind. Here we are. The actual markings that
were on the paper from the original printout
that we did for you. Pull that back. And
it's up to you. I was pretty happy with it. I'm okay with the markings. It's not something that
you really see a lot of, but the lemon is
quite a soft color, so you're going to see them. It's fairly transparent,
the yellow as well. Anyway, you want to just
soften them off a little bit, bring in a bit
more darker color. Out here, perhaps. Go for a bit more
washy sort of on here. And I'm going kind
of loose again. But it's okay. I'm going to just lend those in just a little bit.
They're still there. I think it's, um, I don't
mind it, I like it actually. Let's just leave it at that. It's a bit more here. What we're going to do is give it a splatter and I think we're pretty close
to being done. I like the leaves. I'm really happy with them. I think they look autumy and
how a sunflower leaf looks. I'm just going to pick up some yellow in my brush,
a watery yellow. It doesn't need much
and you don't need to do much at all,
start at the top, there we go, and a bit more down here because it just brings
it through on there. There we go. I like that one. I think I've always
loved the sunflowers. It's one of my
favorites. There we go. It's not quite dry, but
I really like that one. There we are. One more to
add to your collection.
Sahra Raward, Professional Artist
