Paint your own loose watercolor florals!

Before you can start painting, you’ll need to find some flowers! Real flowers work best, but if you don’t have any, look through your photo albums to see if you’ve captured any lovely ones, or do a quick Google search for your favorite bloom.

Once you have your inspiration, you’ll want to get the rough shapes of your flower down on the paper with watercolor. Ohn Mar recommends squinting your eyes a bit to focus on the general shapes and colors rather than getting caught up in tiny details.

You’ll want to work quickly so that you’re able to play with adding in different pigments on the page while your paint is still wet. Let yourself try new things, get a little experimental, and be surprised by the results!

To finish up your piece, add some more illustrative detail using ink, still being mindful of avoiding the temptation to feel like you have to capture every single detail.

Once you’re done, feel free to share your work in the project gallery so Ohn Mar and your fellow students can see what you’ve created!

Looking for more specific techniques to improve your watercolor practice? Check out Ohn Mar’s watercolor fundamentals class!

Materials

Here’s what you’ll need to paint along:

Paper: Watercolor paper or heavyweight cartridge paper is best.
Watercolor paints: Ohn Mar will be using cadmium yellow, cadmium orange, olive green, and paynes grey (which you can make by mixing ultramarine and burnt umber, if you don’t have it)—but you are welcome to use any colors you want!
Brushes: Ohn Mar is using #10 and #12 round brushes.
Ink: You’ll want some kind of ink or pen to add details—this can be a dip pen and ink, gel pens, fineliners, or any old pen you have lying around!
Flowers to paint: Ideally, you’ll want to go out and pick or buy some real flowers to paint so you can look at them from all angles as you work. In a pinch, finding some flower photos on the internet or in your photo albums will do!

Resources

Connect with Ohn Mar on Instagram and on her website.
Check out Ohn Mar’s 20+ other classes on her Skillshare profile.

Explore More Classes on Skillshare

Watercolor in the Woods: A Beginner's Guide to Painting the Natural World — Rosalie Haizlett
Watercolour for Relaxation: Simple Projects to Help you Unwind — Sharone Stevens
Loose Watercolor Florals: Create Beautiful DIY Name Cards — Ana Victoria Calderón

Karen McNeely

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