The Complete Beginner's Guide to Watercolor

hey friend in this video i'm bringing you the complete beginner's guide to watercolor this is basically the in person watercolor workshop that i taught for over eight years so i'm covering everything from the supplies i use and why color theory basic shapes and strokes brush techniques compound strokes and leaves and then we're bringing it all together for a full floral wreath where i'm talking about composition and color theory and everything that we covered in this huge video now just as an fyi this is the big video so we have all of the chapters segmented out for you in the big video but we're gonna break off each individual chapter to be its own individual video so if you want for quick reference you can check out my watercolor basics playlist to go back to each individual chapter if you want for quick reference now we have a ton to cover so let's dive in okay let's talk about supplies the supplies that i use are all high quality but budget friendly at the same time for the most part and so i want to talk a little bit more in detail about the supplies i use why i use them so let's first let's talk about my palette this is a traveler's plastic watercolor palette i use this for filming i use this for traveling i've had this palette for probably about six or seven years whoopsie we've got a little i don't know where that came from uh i've had this palette for about six or seven years i love it i also have a ceramic palette by sylvan clay works that i absolutely love but that thing stays on my desk because it's pretty heavy um and i use about i think uh 14 of these colors now because i added a couple more this past year um so if you're looking at my palette and you're like wait that looks like way more colors than just 14 colors that's because i have this pink in here i i used for about a week seven years ago and i haven't used it since and then same thing with these two gr or these two greens i rarely ever use this is windsor green this is olive green and i don't use these this one um i thought it said the tube said watercolor but it was actually gouache and so it's hard as a rock in here um and i don't use it i could obviously scoop it out scrape it out but i have been lazy before i move on to the pigments that i use the colors and their names um one thing that i do get asked about this palette is what this thing is for and that is if you're standing and painting you can hold your palette with your thumb inside here and then you have little brush holders right here but i never stand in paint if you do stand in paint though that's pretty fun and then it folds up and can travel with you it's perfect for little art retreats or something like that if you're traveling and painting all right so let's talk about the colors that i actually do use in my palette starting at the top with mars black i stick with all of my cool colors on the left side and then all of my warm colors on the right side so if you're new to this channel i talk about separating warm and cool colors quite often we'll get more into it in the color theory video of why i separate my cool versus warm colors and which ones make up cool and warm but simply if i am mixing let's say orange and blue for example in the same mixing dish or mixing well area it's just going to make muddy brown colors so contrasting colors are gonna make brown and so i have all of my cool colors on the left side all of my warm colors on the right side so black um this is a cool black it's mars black by windsor newton all of my colors are bray windsor newton and they are professional level so if you are going to all the links we have in this video and you're looking up the paints and you want to buy or want to purchase the paints that i use you might be startled by some of the price tags however i always use if you're buying a 14 milliliter tube of paint of watercolor paint you're using about a quarter or a third of that tube to squirt the technical term squirt um a dish worth of paint in here and i let my pigment dry overnight so for about 24 hours and then i use it i just wet the area wet the pigment that i want soak up the pigment that i want etc and then go to my paper there's a couple reasons for this so instead of using paint straight from the tube like a lot of people do which is totally fine um i like to let it dry first because it's just like watercolor pans or cakes of pigment you can still get some really rich opaque pigment if you you know work your brush in there a lot but the number one reason why i do it this way is to not waste pigment if you are going straight from the tube you know with wet pigment a lot of people will waste the pigment and then along with that it lasts a really long time so like i haven't refilled eye paint every single day and i haven't refilled my my pigments in about three or four months i'm getting low on some of my yellows these are the same yellows by the way i'll talk about it in a second so i'm getting low and i'll just squirt a little bit more of the wet pigment and on top of it but so a 14 milliliter tube might cost you 15 16 but it's gonna last you eight to twelve months most likely if you're if you're painting every single day obviously certain colors will run out quicker i run out quicker of the yellow a lot uh quicker than let's say cobalt blue because i rarely use cobalt blue it's only for special occasions um so you know look at that when you're looking at the price tag up front and then maybe just start with a few colors or start with just primary colors in black or something to get you started and see what you see the difference between high quality paint and student level or something that is not as quality so mars black windsor newton professional level this is burnt umber um then we have ultramarine violet then i have prussian blue i've got cobalt blue phthalo turquoise again this was this weird turquoise gouache that i thought was watercolor this is winter windsor green blue shade that i haven't used in a few years i just add blue to my sap green which is the green that i use all the time i use this every single day if i'm painting florals this is my favorite green and then olive green i again i don't really use it that much because i'll usually if i want like an olivey green color i'll just add burnt umber to sap green so these two colors you really don't need unless you don't want to keep mixing up the the blue greens and the brownish sagey greens then maybe just i mean you can buy them if you want otherwise i just mix up secondary colors with sap green and then i have two dishes of lemon yellow deep on my cool color side because i like to mix up greens with sap green and then i also like to mix up greens with my turquoisey colors and so if i used the same yellow obviously you can see by my palette i'm very very type b and so i am going directly on top of dishes of color with other colors on my brush if that stresses you out then you can just go into your mixing wells but the reason why i do this is because it's quicker it's faster it allows me to work wet and wet a lot quicker and i can always just add water to this and dab it up clean it up with a paper towel if i need to then over here i have cobalt turquoise and manganese blue this manganese blue and cobalt turquoise i recently added i'm not a huge fan of the cobalt turquoise because i was looking for something that was like macaw feather blue turquoise the actual element turquoise so manganese blue is like a new addition to my palette as of a few months ago and i'm loving it great color and then over here on the warm side we have scarlet lake this is like an orangey tinted red so i'm not using cadmium red or you know colors that are your traditional reds or traditional blues i like to have that kind of like off what's the word not hipster colors trendy colors corally red you know it's cute um and then opera rose this is a bright neon pink color when you get it by itself in a lot of pigment on your brush it's beautiful i don't remember which orange this was but again this is one of the colors that's been in my palette for about seven years and i never use it i think it's windsor orange i don't even know if that's color anymore i haven't said that in like years so i don't remember cadmium orange i rarely use just because it has cadmium in it but it is a great orange if you want to mix up oranges i usually do some scarlet lake and yellow or opera rose and yellow for a bit more of a blushy orange but cadmium orange is a great orange it just is it has a toxic ingredient in it unfortunately again never use this color don't remember what it is i think it's also gouache because it's super duper hard um but never use it and then this is lemon yellow deep lemon yellow deep and yellow ochre so i use like i do lemon yellow deep over here two different um oranges or what i'm mixing up these are like for my muted oranges with yellow ochre or um you know not as vibrant and then over here i'm mixing scarlet lake or uh aqua rose with it so all of these colors are by windsor newton they're all professional level again everybody is going to be different every artist is different some artists have really great success with student level paints however i use professional level paints just because i love the rich pigments they are pure pigments there's less binding agent in the tube of paint so student level paints are less expensive because they're using a lot more binding agents to um basically lessen the intensity of the pigment but also bind it to the other mixture and the other ingredients in the mixture of the tube to make it cheaper so they're not like using pure pigment um and there's you know more binding agent in there so it's not as rich it doesn't blend as well i've noticed obviously there's a lot of people out there though that use student level have great success so start where you can with the budget that you have i love professional level though just because of all of the capabilities i have with it the rich pigment like i said so there is my palette now let's talk about brushes so for brushes for my brushes um i really only use these three brushes except for if i'm painting like a stripes pattern or something that you know is a big wash i will use a wash brush by the same brand or a flat brush by the same brand but my absolute favorite three brushes are these three round tip brushes by princeton these princeton brushes are from the series heritage 4050 and i used the size 2 size 6 in size 16 round brushes most frequently um the size 6 being my all-time favorite brush if i was stranded on a desert island what what would be one supply one art supply like out of everything that i would take with me it would be this brush which i guess i couldn't use it if i didn't have paper so that's unfortunate but this would be the brush that i would take i love this brush it's very versatile all these brushes are synthetic sable hair brushes so no harming of animals very very high quality brushes they princeton i've been to a couple of in person like i went to a trade show with them back in 2018 in las vegas and i got to meet the founder howard who is like literally the sweetest man of all time we got along so well i love him so much the whole team at princeton is amazing um but i got to hear him talk about the making of these brushes and how um they've been handed down this japanese style of making these brushes with the ferrule and the the hair and the binding from a third generation brush maker in japan and all of this fascinating stuff and why they use these or why they created the technology for these brushes and no harming of any weasels and what you know the actual natural hair brushes which no shame on anybody who does that but i just prefer not to and they're at like an a quarter of the price of a natural brush with i believe better technology than natural brushes now i know i'm gonna get hate in the comments from the natural brush fanatics um actual sable brush fanatics because people are very very uh pearl clutchy when it comes to their brushes their natural hair brushes and i totally get it but these synthetic sable hair brushes from princeton are incredibly flexible they snap right back to form when they're really wet and you maybe push on it with a vertical hold like this and the brush fans out they snap right back to their fine point tip so they're really flexible really snappy they also hold a lot of pigment and water which is a huge advantage when you're painting with watercolor obviously acrylic oil all of the different mediums are going to have different technology and advantages with the type of hair that they use the feral all of that kind of stuff so you definitely want to check out the different series of brushes that princeton has if you're painting with acrylic and not watercolor obviously because it's going to be different but all these brushes are really snappy flexible and that was a huge uh like eye-opening thing for me when i first started painting with watercolor i didn't have these brushes and about a year into painting with watercolor i discovered princeton and i was like oh this is what painting with good brushes feels like so make sure you check out those brushes all linked below i use again size 2 6 and 16 the size 16 is for my big flowers big peony petals big leaves big or if i want to cover a large wash area and i don't have a wash brush with me then i'll use this size 16. um and then size 6 is pretty much what i use 80 of the time when i'm painting florals and then for small details i'll use a size 2. i love using this size 2 brush too if i'm painting something like architectural drawings or style paintings with fine details or portraits where i'm getting really really fine details as well so these are great versatile brushes you really don't need much more than this obviously i have jars and jars of brushes that i've just accumulated over the years i think that's just like an artist thing to do we love collecting brushes and we think we're going to use them all the time i use them very infrequently unfortunately and have been gifted to many many friends over the years and many kids who are starting to pick up watercolor so that's a good use for them but these three i always come back to love them tons all right next let's talk about paper paper i use legion paper stonehenge aqua cold press so the biggest question people have when it comes to what paper should i use for watercolor is should i use cold press or should i use hot press and there are many talented professional artists who use hot press there's many talented professional watercolors to use cold press like myself and the main reason why i use cold press is because of the texture so hot pressed paper the actual process of making the paper is going to use a hot press that basically smooths out all of the pulp all of the texture in the cotton paper so this is 100 cotton paper and it smooths it out in the process of making the paper cold press doesn't use that process obviously it's a cold press so it's going to have this nice toothy texture to it's got if you zoom in really closely which you don't zoom in with your eyeballs that's just with cameras i guess but if you look really closely at your paper and you have cold pressed paper you should see some bumps um in texture that toothy texture is what helps hold the water and the pigment in place while it's drying so i tried using hot press paper and i just i maybe it's my style maybe it's just the way that i paint but i do use a lot of water when i'm painting and so with hot pressed paper i kept noticing that i would have to come back to areas or petals when i was over painting something else to like mess with it and make sure that no hard lines were you know happening on the paper because a lot of movement happens on really smooth paper a lot of hard lines happen with on really smooth paper because it's not being absorbed by that toothy texture so i prefer cold pressed paper um just because of that but you want to make sure when you're using paper you want to make sure that you are using 100 cotton paper it's acid free and then i use a 140 pound or 300 gsm paper i don't really go any uh much above that so i don't use 300 pound paper um mainly because i found that it absorbs perfectly with 140 pound paper and then this is a block of paper instead of a pad so pads are glued just at the top or just on one side of the paper so let's say you have 15 sheets they're just glued at the top edge or one of the edges a block of paper you usually are glued on all four sides and there's either a corner that's left unglued or for the legion paper it's on the side right here like about an inch and a half is unglued so that is where you would slide your finger or a soft ruler or a canvas bone to lift off the top sheet and the reason why i paint with a block of paper is because it keeps my it keeps all edges of my paper completely flat while i'm painting because we're painting with watercolor we're adding water to paper and that's going to create buckles that's going to create warps and divots and dips and valleys in our paper and so if you're painting with just a loose sheet on your table and you're noticing that it's like creating this v with your water and pigment pooling into that v because it's creating a valley because you're adding water to your paper then you're gonna get some funky drying moments you're gonna get some hard lines and some wonky things that you don't want so i use a block for that reason if i do use just a single sheet of paper then i will pull out my 3m artist tape that blue painters tape and tape all four sides down on a piece of cardboard instead of taping it on my table because i like to rotate my paper when i'm painting so if you do work with loose sheets or you have a pad of paper and you don't want that to happen then just take off that top sheet from your pad or your loose sheet and tape it to something that you can rotate um you can even use if you you know just have like a used block or a used pad you can tape it to this but that way you can still rotate your paper so that is paper another great band of brand of paper is arch arch arches so many different ways you can say it i'm not fancy so we're saying arches but arches is great paper it's just slightly more expensive than this legion paper and i find that this in fabriano is an excellent paper as well still more expensive than legion so legion was my go-to after working on arches working on fabriano for a while a few years because i found that it was a great uh it was very similar to fabriano um texture wise and also the off whiteness it's not too bright white so i went with this paper because it's cheaper and because i'm recommending supplies all the time i didn't want to recommend you know 40 pad of paper like arches is so there you go and then one more thing that i always have on hand is paper towels or a washcloth or something i can wash or dry my brushes off and get rid of pigment onto and then i use two cups of water one cup is for you can rinse off cool colors and the other cup is for rinsing off warm colors or you can use it for your dirty cup of water where you're rinsing off your brush if you have pigment still left on it and then clean cup of water to pick up clean cup clean water before you go to your pigment or your paper so so we have a supply playlist all dedicated to my love of supplies many videos in there if you want to learn more about supplies that i use and why i use them check out that playlist we'll link it in this video okay so color theory wow this is old you see that oh wow okay so color theory i used to teach these in-person watercolor classes ever since what year do you think i started 2014 yeah probably 2014. so in 2014 i started teaching in-person watercolor workshops and calligraphy workshops but we're talking about watercolor today and i would bring along as a part of the watercolor kits for each student i would bring along these booklets i had them printed and they were basically you know they covered supplies they covered color theory and all of the things that you need to know to get started with watercolor and um we are going to link to this ebook so you can print it out at home if you want to but there is going to be a good section in here if you don't have my book everyday watercolor which goes way more in depth on color theory than this booklet does but if you don't have it and you want some you know reference you want some guide to help you along through this video then i definitely recommend downloading that freebie that we have it's free all you have to do is enter your name and email and it will be sent to you so you can download it and print it at home if you want to but let's talk about color theory because that is something that most beginners and even if you've been painting for a while most people kind of don't explore enough um obviously we know basics of color theory for the most part or most people do i think because it's just kind of taught in elementary or high school art class um but it's always a reference point it's something that i am very grateful that i've taken the time to study more um and just as from my experience in learning piano over the years when i i started learning piano when i was 12 and i started with a teacher that taught me how to sight read and that's very valuable obviously being able to sight read but then i switched piano teachers and he taught me music theory so he taught me the foundations of why certain chords work together and how they harmonize and thirds and fifths and tonics and subdominant and all these different things about music theory so that i could just sit at a piano and play because i understood relationships between chords within a single key and this is the same thing so color theory is going to teach you color relationships how they correspond with each other so that when you are looking at a blank sheet of paper you can pick up your brush and you can have more confidence of where to put certain colors you know how to blend how to mix colors a little bit more confidently and easily because you understand color theory so exploring color theory this is like i mean like you could teach a thousand hours on color color theory in the color wheel and color relationships and we're not going to do that obviously because that would be very boring eventually um but i'm going to briefly talk about it in this video so that you you can actually i think it's just so eye-opening and i think it's very um fun to talk about so obviously a color wheel consists of at least three colors those three colors being that always are on this color on a color wheel are red blue and yellow your primary colors so this is traditional color theory i'm not going to get in the more you know the battles between the different types of color theory i'm going with traditional color theory because that's how i was taught but red blue and yellow sit as a triad or triangle away from each other on the color wheel at all times different color wheels will have you know red blue or yellow at the top this one has red at the top then we've got blue over here and yellow is sitting over here so they always make a triangle depending on you know what type of color wheel you have this is a tertiary color wheel so we have 12 colors i mixed up more than 12 but this is a tertiary color wheel will have 12 colors or 12 little pie slices and so we've got red blue and yellow your three primary colors these are the colors that you can't mix up um you know just out of the blue without any other colors these colors mixed together will make brown or black sometimes depending on what type of red what type of blue what type of yellow you use but usually we'll make black so if you don't have black in your palette or you ran out or something just try mixing up your three primary colors but combined together in equal parts two primary colors combined together in equal parts will make what's called a secondary color so secondary colors are equal parts to primary colors so red and blue and equal parts parts makes violet or purple blue and yellow and equal parts makes green yellow and red in equal parts makes orange and then we're getting more and more into the family unit of this color wheel with tertiary colors tertiary colors are the ones with the hyphen in the name so red orange yellow orange yellow green blue green blue violet red violet and by the name the secondary name in the title of the of the color is going to be what it's leaning more towards or sometimes it's the first name so yellow orange obviously there's more yellow in the mixture than there is red um yellow green there's more yellow in the mixture than there is blue etc all right very basic but let's actually get into the relationships and why this matters so um there's a bunch of different types of color combinations when you're just looking at a color wheel you can combine obviously we can talk about contrasting colors those colors always sit directly opposite of each other on the color wheel and i want to talk about it in terms of because i'm such a visual person and this is just how my piano teacher taught me when he was teaching me chords and shapes of chords and how they relate to each other i'm just a visual person so if you think about opposites let's talk about it in our actual human interactions in relationships you hear that all the time opposites attract so contrasting colors can also be complementary colors but it's when they're used properly or when they um one is maybe a lighter hue than the other so one can shine and that other contrast or element of the contrast is a little bit more of a supportive role um or maybe this isn't a direct contrast obviously but maybe instead of having red and green you know traditional totally so instead of having just red pure red and pure green maybe you shift the green a little bit to the left or to the right and you add a little blue to it or you add a little bit of yellow to it to offset that direct contrast so when this comes to using contrasting colors or complementary colors in your paintings you want to keep an eye on areas where you can add contrast because contrast brightens the colors on your paper contrast adds a bit of whoa what's that it makes people want to look at it and maybe stay there for a little bit longer but if it's used improperly if it's creating a lot of disharmony then people are going to want to look away they don't really know why it's a subconscious decision and it's usually because you're using something that just causes more strain than people want to look at so that will typically happen if for example you're using equal dominance of value so a really deep rich powerful red and a really deep rich powerful green if that's used a lot or if it's used to improperly like if you're painting with a really light floral piece let's say and then you have a really bright or bold red next to a really bold green then people are gonna just land right there and stay right there and they're not gonna move across your paper so you wanna make sure that you're using contrasting slash complementary colors uh properly so that they create harmony however there are really interesting ways that you can use bold contrasting like what you would think would be you know grinding on each other colors red and green or blue and orange purple and yellow etc um on purpose and it makes the piece really interesting so if i'm using that bold blue or bold red and green i'm just making sure to create balance on my paper in terms of how the actual paper feels weighted so if i just have the bold red and green up in this corner that balance it's going to be tipping to the left corner and it's going to feel like the paper is falling off and people are just going to land and stay right there and that's we don't want that but if we're creating purpose with our balance and we're creating even weighted zigzag across our paper like this or an s curve across our paper our paper is going to feel like it's it's balanced it's even it's not tipping on one side or the other literally feels that way or looks that way with your eyes i know this may sound weird but i'm just a very visual person and it's the same thing with photography it's the same thing with creating balance and composition when you're painting you want to make sure your painting isn't feeling like it's tipping over so we've got red and green um our contrasting colors anything that's directly opposite of each other on the color wheel is going to be contrasting or complementary colors because they are literally the most unlike each other they're furthest away from each other on the color wheel um direct opposites of each other so um that would be a contrasting color palette combination one of my favorite color palette combinations when i'm trying to create a really subtle change or a really subtle movement with people's eyes when they're looking at a piece of paper or a composition is an analogous color palette so an analogous color palette basically uses three or four or more depends on you know the amount of colors you use hues that sit right next to each other on the color wheel so we could do red orange orange yellow orange and yellow this is going to be the most subtle transition with people's eyes might sound basic but think about it if people are subtly transitioning or moving to green instead of just jumping from red orange to green it's going to be a lot more easy for their eyes to move through these colors than jumping so it's the same thing with you know using secondary and tertiary colors are going to help bridge that gap between your contrasting colors so again if we are using a red and green element up here let's say i'm making sure to mix in some red orange some orange and yellows around it so that it's subtly transferring between red and green instead of just boom there's your red and green if that's my purpose there so analogous color palette is when you're using hues that sit directly next to each other on the color wheel their neighbors their family members they know each other quite well because they're very similar in hue and they help people's eyes move really subtly really peacefully through your piece which is lovely so secondary and tertiary colors are really key in bridging that gap because primary colors are always going to be you know far further not obviously as far as contrasting colors but they're going to be further away from each other um than any tertiary color would be so those tertiary colors come in handy when you're painting and a lot of people especially beginners kind of just mix up their colors quickly without intention and so think about how you could add a tertiary color on a p on let's just say a leaf where you have a lot of blue green and yellow green maybe adding in some or where you have a lot of just green secondary green maybe adding in some blue green and yellow green will help mix it up and bring in a nice peaceful movement element to the to the branch okay so that is extremely basic color theory um there's a lot more color combinations that you can research on your own um but i would recommend creating an actual color wheel i have a tutorial where i teach you how to create this so i'll link to it in this video if you want to paint one of your own and set it up in your office or wherever you paint as a reference and a guide that you can always look back on but next that's kind of related to color theory i want to talk about warm colors and cool colors and value scales so if we look at a color wheel we're going to separate our color wheel based on warm colors and cool colors so anything that's from yellow and red violet up so this half of the color wheel is going to be warm colors so anything that has like a base or a base hue of red is going to be warm colors think fire and then we've got our cool colors underneath here this half of the color wheel is going to be cool colors so anything that's the base of water um or you know that feeling of water is going to be a cool color so blue greens yellow greens violet red violet i would consider a warm color just because it has that element of fire poking through or that reddish hue poking through there are we're not going to get into the nitty-gritty but there are blues that can be warm undertones there are reds that can be cool undertones but basically speaking red and cool colors are going to be separate halves of the color wheel what did i just say warm and cool colors are going to be separate halves of the color wheel and the reason why i i point this out is because if you're painting with two cups of water um a lot of people get confused on where to rinse off their warm colors where to rinse off their cool colors that's the the process that i use for cleaning my brushes off so if you do the same then you know anything over here is going to be in your warm cup and then anything that is a cool color is going to be in your other cup and the reason for that is you're always going to have with warm and cool colors you're always going to have one warm color one cool color in a contrasting uh relationship so red and green for example red is a warm color green is a cool color and contrasting colors whenever they're mixed together always make a muddy murky color it can be gray it can be brown and that turns your water brown if you're only using one cup of water or you're mixing up mixing off cool colors and warm colors in the same cup then you're always going to get muddy murky water and the style of painting that i do i like to have rich bold bright colors pure colors i like to keep my colors as clean as possible when they're on my paper and so if you like that as well then i like to separate my cups of water so that i rinse off warm colors in one and cool colors in the other so there is that and then let's talk about value scales so a color isn't just by itself um one shade or one value uh there are so many with this is why i love watercolor so much we don't need to use white paint to to lighten the color we're going to use water to make it more transparent and we don't need to you know multiple tubes of paint to make these different shades or values so a value is the lightness and darkness of a color the hue is the actual color itself or the pigment um and so right here this value scale is scarlett lake um and i started with you know a rich amount of scarlet like on my brush i'll just show you so to do a value scale i'm going to grab my size 16 brush and a lot of scarlet lake so that i can show this pigment in its darkest value so all of your all of your watercolors that you use you can get multiple values of that same color by just using water so right about here is where i'm swirling my brush and trying to pick up a lot of this pigment so it's more opaque or a darker version darker value of scarlet like then i'm just going to use a slanted hold about 15 degrees away from my paper with my size 16 brush and paint a little swatch area here so there is probably my darkest value of scarlet lake um using a lot more pigment than water but then to lighten the color i'm just going to lighten what i have on my brush by flicking my brush and my water cup back and forth a couple of times like so and making sure to always swipe off the excess water on my jar and then we have a slightly lighter value so one thing to notice or take note of when you are doing trying to lighten a value maybe in the middle of a painting you're trying to get a lighter value of something make sure you're not too aggressive with your flicking or not aggressive enough so there's two different types of people there's people that are really aggressive and they get rid of all that pigment in one foul swoop and then there's people who are really scared of the water and do it very delicately so take note of which person you are but if you're just trying to gradually lighten the value of a color um i'm going back and forth a few times and always making sure i'm swiping the brush off on the edge of my cup or dabbing it on my paper towel and we're just gradually getting lighter and lighter and let's say i wanted to get to scarlet lake's lightest value then i would basically just get rid of all that pigment from my brush as much as i can and obviously swipe off the excess water and we have basically water with just a tint of red or scarlet lake so value scales are a really great way to practice just gradually lightening a cup lightening gradually lightening a color um it helps you get used to the movement get used to that muscle memory of rinsing off your brush just gradually over um a gradual scale so i'd practice value scales again i teach you how to do that in this little booklet if you want to download it for free it's in there and then also about hue scales if you want to mix up two hues together you know creating secondary and tertiary colors obviously red by itself scarlet like by itself is going to be a primary color red and then the more yellow pigment i roll around in the more orange or red orange it's going to get and then eventually yellow and if this stresses you out going directly on top of your pigment you can mix up the colors in a secondary well over here in your palette um but this again can be wiped up with some water and a paper towel it can be cleaned up so don't you worry this is just a great way to practice painting quickly um because when you're in the middle of a big painting like a floral piece let's say and you you're painting a big red peony but you want another flower next to it that's maybe a red orange then you have red on your on your paintbrush you can all you need to do is just go to your yellow and make it move it a little bit more towards that red orange tertiary color so hue scale value scales all really really important stuff to practice especially if you're a beginner in getting used to color mixing getting used to gradually lightening a color with water because the more transparent the color is the lighter it is going to be the more pigment you have on your brush the more opaque or darker it's going to be and then again studying color theory and color relationships because we're always wanting to create harmony with our colors and finding out where colors are maybe creating an element of unbalance or it feels like it's tipping on our paper composition wise i also have a color chart video so if you're one of the people who really struggles with knowing what colors to mix together to make certain pigments or hues um i have a color chart video which is going to be really fun for you it it's it's i think one of the most beautiful things to paint even though it's just squares um but it's going to teach you color mixing it's going to teach you how to uh find certain colors out of maybe surprising combinations so definitely check out that video all right let's talk about two watercolor techniques you must know so the first thing that i'm going to talk about is going to be wet in wet painting so the two techniques that you must know with watercolor are wet and wet and wet and dry wet and wet is literally how it sounds two areas of wet pigment or water touch and blend and it it creates the magic moment this magic moment um that's the magic with watercolor is wet and wet painting it's the best i love it but there is a time and place for wet and dry i love wet and dry too it's for more layers for adding you know pigment on top of dried pigment so wet pigment pigment on top of dry pigment it's when you're going to be able to create a lot more depth a lot more detail and shading uh is using wet and dry so there's a time and place for wet and dry especially if you're painting realistic style florals or portraits or whatever anything that's more realistic you're going to use wet and dry quite a lot but wet and wet is you know you can use it for more loose style florals you can use it for blending and shading and creating layers of depth first with blending and shading before adding the detail in a realistic painting so wet and wet literally how it sounds wet and dry literally how it sounds but let's talk about wet and wet first because there's going to be three different methods that you can use to achieve wet and wet painting and this is again something that you really want to practice and tackle as a beginning watercolorist because it's where the magic happens it's where you're going to see those amazing blooms or bleeds between two colors or two hue values of you know lighter or darker values so you want to practice it for sure so let's talk about the first way to achieve wet and wet painting and we are going to talk about pulling so i'm going to grab my size 16 brush and let's do a prussian blue it doesn't matter if you're if you're following along in this video it doesn't matter what color you're pulling up you just want to make sure that you have a really dark or opaque value of this first swatch that we're going to do so i've got a lot of water on my brush so i can pick up a lot of pigment and this prussian blue all i'm going to do is literally just show you a demo of how to do this pulling method so it's not like a has to be exactly like this but let's just lay down a nice swatch area of this prussian blue so wet and wet like i said it's exactly how it sounds if your this pigment right here is too dry you're not going to be able to achieve wet and wet so see how i can move this pigment around in like this little puddle area that's going to be perfect for the pulling method but i also don't have a little bulb of puddle situation happening that would be too much water so to use the pulling method i'm going to just grab water on my brush it's okay if there's still a little pigment on your brush and i am going to swipe just that very bottom edge of the blue with water like so and then pull it down so as you can see that prussian blue is bleeding as far as the further down i go with my water the further down this bleed is going to go so that would be called pulling so you can pull pigments or areas of pigment or water down with swiping and then working your way down with water or with a color you can do pulling with colors too and not just a color and some water you can do the same thing blue or red or whatever color you're using and you can pull down the color with let's do yellow green but this pulling method is my favorite way to show a gradient between dark and light colors um or between two different colors so you can pull it like so and it will gradually bleed and you can help it bleed a little bit more if it's not bleeding the way you want it to or how much you want it to then just go back on that edge and kind of poke it same thing over here if you want it to bleed a little bit more just kind of do that so pulling pushing would be the next uh way of using wet and wet it's literally the same but opposite so we're gonna push two colors or a dark and a light color into each other so let's say we have this swatch area here maybe it's a petal or a shape of some sort and next i am going to push opera rose into my prussian blue create a slightly different experience of these blends but you want to make sure you just barely touch the edge so that it does the mixing for you and again if you want it to blend a little bit more we can just kind of scoop that in there [Music] but these areas where you see some shading or gradual blending those are called blooms so those blooms um depending on if there's too much water like right here is gonna dry kind of weird so i'm gonna soak that up there's too much water that water is gonna act like a wall and it's to block the blending from happening so you want to make sure that you're not using too much water when you're painting with wet and wet obviously we need water for this magic moment to happen but just keep in mind that it's a balance between not enough water and too much water and you always want to make sure you kind of dab or soak up the excess water on your paper towel or swipe it off on the edge of your cup so pulling pushing and then the next one that i'm going to show you is poking let's say i have a petal or something that i'm painting that's a really light blue first and i want to add some let's just do a circle shape i want to add some dots to it or darker color to it this is where some really fun magic happens maybe you're painting a night sky or you're painting a ocean this is manganese blue and i'm just going to poke it on this area of wet either pigment or just water so you can do this to add texture or ripples to water it's a fun way to create water effect or to sit on a color and add more on top of it like so but it creates a fun and the more you sit on the same spot the more it's going to burst open or the bigger it's going to be and right here i have some water kind of pooling so this burst didn't happen as big as these ones because the water is too puddly it's acting like a wall so up here it's going to do more than the areas that are puddles so you can use poking for a spotted effect on an animal like maybe a cheetah obviously this is a funky colored cheetah moment um good to use in water or to darken certain colors fun effects with wet and wet painting so practice these three ways of wet and wet painting and wet and dry is going to be exactly how it sounds you're going to add detail on top of it so let's say this is dry and i want to add some detail on top it's still a little wet so it might not work but you know maybe you're adding some petal details or if it's an abstract you're adding some pattern on top of the wash so this dark blue is the wet on top of the light blue which is dry wet and dry it's where you add details so wet and wet is perfect for soft gradients or soft blends between hues and values bursts of color blooms and then wet and dry is for adding details fine lines and crisp hard lines so with watercolor there are two different holds that i'm going to call out or handles so you can have a vertical hold which means that your brush is pointed more vertically up and down and a slanted hold a vertical hold can get you a wide stroke and a thin stroke but with a round brush this is the reason why i use round brushes with a round brush your brush is you know a fine point so if you wanted to get a really thin branch or outline of a shape like a circle if you put little to no pressure on a vertical hold with your brush you're going to get a really thin crisp line but if you do the same thing vertical hold and apply pressure then the hair of the brush is going to spread out and you're going to get you're going to fill in let's say a circle a lot quicker and so we're going to practice painting circle totems like just columns of circles while we're also using wet and wet technique um so don't stress out too much this is just to get you to focus on brush technique and going between a vertical hold and a slanted hold slanted holds i use slanted holds most of the time to blend something in or to soften wet and wet blending or to color something in quicker than just sitting there and coloring in the circle with the tip of my brush because the slanted hold allows me to use the belly of the brush vertical hold again we're going to be using the tip of the brush the stroke is going to look very different than if we use a slanted hold the stroke is going to look very different too depending on what you're painting so let's say i'm painting i'm just going to grab a little practice sheet here this is going to be in a future video with compound strokes but the way you hold the brush is also going to affect the way the stroke or the subject whatever you're painting the shape looks so if let's say i'm painting a leaf it's going to look a lot differently if i'm using a more vertical hold like this with the tip and then i'm putting pressure on it like this than if i'm using this the belly of the leaf so obviously i'm using the same pressure and technique belly of the brush so obviously i'm using the same technique i'm putting pressure on my brush and then releasing pressure but one i'm using the tip of the brush the other one i'm using the belly of the brush pressure release and it looks more like a finger or just as more of a sharp edge so the way you hold your brush is going to be really important with the overall shape of whatever you're creating so for this exercise i'm just going to use my size 16 brush and my 16 round brush and we're only going to be painting circles i'm going to start with you know a darker color it can be anything that you want it can be a lighter color too if you want but i'm starting with prussian blue and a lot of it on my brush and to create a circle a smooth edge circle i'm going to use a vertical hold so my brush is pretty much straight up and down if you start to see a little droplet forming make sure you dab your paper towel or swipe off that excess water so it doesn't create a big blop on your paper so i'm going to use a vertical hold and the way i'm holding the brush is whatever is comfortable to me but i want to get kind of down on the ferrule or the handle of the brush pretty far and i'm just going to use my fingers to swirl around the edge of this circle and you can put pressure on this brush or no pressure so you get like a really fine line but the less pressure you put on the brush the more wobbly it's going to look so i'm putting pressure on it as i swirl it around the circle and then i'm not going to sit there with a vertical hold and color it in i'm going to use a slanted halt to quickly color it in because we're painting wet and wet galaxies or totem whatever you want to call this and so my next circle i am going to just use water you can use turquoise you can use pink whatever you want to but i'm just going to use water for mine and i'm going to do the same thing swirl around the outline of this circle and then color it in quickly first but now i want to show how i would believe these two shapes are using wet and wet so i'm going to swirl my brush gradually increase the width or the circumference of this circle swirling around and then just barely swipe and we get some magic we're creating like snowmen next color let's do a warm color i'm going to use opera rose you can stick with just cool colors this is just practice brush technique practice so we're not really thinking about color theory and composition and where it's landing and all that kind of stuff we're just practicing our brushes maybe i'm gonna do a small pink circle here color it in with the belly of my brush with the slanted hold and then gradually increase the size and touch clean it up maybe some orange for my next one so practice bigger size circles and smaller size circles so you can really get used to how it feels we're doing the same vertical hold to start and then slanted to color it in unless it's like tiny tiny circle then there's no need but practicing getting really really smooth and um smooth outlines of your circle even because the smaller you get the harder it's going to be so just be really delicate and patient with it if you have a really shaky hand you can put your free hand down like a fist and stabilize your painting hand on top of it that really helps just you know lay off the coffee maybe while you're practicing your brush techniques so this is a super super simple painting just circles outline with the vertical hold slanted hold to color it in but it's so fun to look at like just these lined up galaxies or circles so these smaller ones you can just color in with your vertical hold if you want something to blend a little bit more you just gotta scoop scoop it in just do a bright yellow next [Music] [Music] and maybe back to some pink some manganese manganese blue for a bright purple pink yellow and purple are contrasting colors we've got yellow green and pink pinkish purple so we're not still got some contrast but not crazy fun stuff we can come over here and create more totems more practice [Music] outline with your vertical hold and swirl [Music] [Music] slanted hold to color in and then just gradually get bigger so it may seem redundant or boring but this practice is very very valuable in developing that muscle memory for painting anything for painting flowers for painting portraits you name it the stroke or brush technique is very very important to practice [Music] do [Music] one more over here [Music] fun fun it's like kind of like moon phases but they're not moons they're just colorful balls [Music] so figure out what hold feels best for you if you like you know holding it further away from the tip of the brush or if you like being really up close when i'm swirling like this i kind of like to get further away sometimes because it feels like i have better control it's not it's not as wobbly but it may seem redundant and like we're just doing a bunch of circles over and over again but it's actually getting you more and more comfortable with how to hold the brush and how what types of holes slanted or vertical to use for certain areas whether you're coloring something in or creating an outline and different angles too are going to get you more or less coverage and then also getting used to wet and wet painting just a little bit more too [Music] you want to make sure you're focusing on painting relatively quickly if you're wanting to see these big bursts and blooms um because this is how wet and wet painting works if one of your circles is too dry and you put a circle right next to it to bleed it's not going to because it's dry so you want to make sure that you're working kind of quickly and that's what's also going to get you really comfortable with the brush too if you're not over thinking things and just kind of going for it and getting used to how the shapes form with the two different style holds like so and then you have a really fun and colorful painting at the end of it alrighty so now that we've covered all things supplies if you're watching this large video all together not pieced out we've colored covered supplies we've colored goodness we've covered supplies we've covered color theory we've covered wet and wet versus wet and dry and we've also covered brush techniques with our circle piece and that has gotten us comfortable with vertical holds versus slanted holds now we're going to combine over combine our vertical and slanted whole together in one foul swoop for using a compound stroke so a compound stroke just means we're going to be using a vertical and a slanted hold along with that with our vertical hold we're going to be using uh and slanted or slanted hold we're going to be using pressure and release of pressure so it's a compound stroke because we're doing multiple things in one stroke without lifting our brush and to practice this we're going to be painting leaves so i'm going to be using my size 6 brush and um i'm gonna show you how to paint some leaves individually by themselves first first and i'm gonna grab some water on my brush and sap green so you can see because we're obviously painting leaves but compound strokes don't just happen with leaves this is just a good example so to paint a leaf you want to point your brush handle the same direction the point of the leaf is going to point so if my leaf is going to point this way but the handle of my brush is going to be literally pointing the same direction if my leaf is going to point down at me then i'm going to point my brush down at me as well i'm not going to be using the side of the brush to paint the leaf that's going to look very differently i'm going to be using the tip of the brush to flow through this compound stroke so it'll make more sense once you start practicing it and just as a disclaimer before you actually start painting leaves leaves are tricky because they are compound strokes so this is something to always be practicing and to do it over and over again is this compound stroke because this is what's really going to make you very comfortable with with brushes and getting into that flow state and just kind of painting is practicing compound strokes so for my leaf i'm holding my brush at in between a slanted and a vertical hold so i'm right about 45 ish degree angle away from my paper and i'm gonna start with just a little stem because a floating leaf looks a little weird but this is with little to no pressure i'm just adding a little stem that's not a part of the compound stroke it's just so the leaf doesn't look like a floating taco uh so i got a little stem and at 45 degrees holding my brush at 45 degrees i am going to at the top of this part apply pressure and drag my brush in a straight line and as i do so i'm going to gradually release that pressure and get really really thin so this is a very fine point with your round brushes and i'm going to finish this leaf but then i'm going to show you what a lot of beginners do when they're painting their leaves is they don't get thin enough at the end so we did pressure which the fanning of the brush is what creates the width of the leaf and then you gradually release that pressure so it gets really really thin for the tip of the leaf so that's one side and then the other side you're doing the same thing we're starting at the same exact spot we're just kind of curving down with pressure and gradually releasing at the same spot like so so a lot of beginners when they're first painting leaves will go too quickly they'll apply pressure and then just flick and you get this weird texture at the top or they will be really intimidated it can go very very slow so their pressure pressure pressure pressure and then they just kind of lift it and it gives this like rounded leaf which is cute but it's not what we're going for so if you want a compound stroke leaf you're going to start with a thin stroke this is not the compound stroke but this is just the base of the leaf with the little stem 45 degree angle with your brush making sure your brush handle is pointing the same direction your leaf is pointing and just dragging your arm across in a straight line with pressure and gradually releasing that pressure to get thin so when i put pressure on my brush my brush kind of flips up into a straight up for a vertical hold so pressure and gradually release you're not a lot of beginners will do this too you're not curving your brush like this because then you'd have to color it in that's just a it's not a not a compound stroke anymore because you have to color it in so so 45 degree angle hold away from the paper pressure drag gradually release as you're dragging get as thin as you can start at the same spot pressure drag gradually release let's do a few more so you can see it up close and then we're going to create a full branch so 45 degree angle hold let's say i want my leaf to point up and down so my handle of my brush is going to point up wherever my leaf is going to point [Music] pressure gradually release [Music] see how thin you can get pressure gradually release now let's do a leaf pointing straight across this way so instead of angling my brush this this way or this way i'm angling straight across pressure gradually release see i'm going in a straight line too i'm not curving up or down the pressure is making my leaf fat release let's go this way pressure release pressure release if you're struggling with this stroke maybe the leaf is over too soon or you're working through it too quickly you can also practice longer leaves like tulip leaves so i'm doing the same thin stroke whatever direction the leaf is pointing and then i'm just dragging it out for a longer period of time and maybe curving with it and gradually releasing pressure so that could be like a tulip leaf but this compound stroke i use in leaves all the time but if i want to show fold in leaves i'll do pressure release pressure again then release but compound strokes are used all of the time in brush lettering so all your down strokes and your letters are gonna be pressure so they're wide and then all your up strokes or across strokes are gonna be thin um you'll use this technique if you're painting some petals i'll use compound strokes so it's used all the time and it's such a great thing to practice but i guarantee you if this is your first time painting leaves like this you're going to be frustrated and uh maybe feel like giving up but please don't it takes a while takes some patience to really get that muscle memory so do a few rows of these leaves by themselves and next i'm going to show you how to combine these leaves on a branch so i'm going to paint a few different branches and if i were painting a full floral piece or maybe a wreath with just leaves in it this is kind of how i would create color balance and whatnot with my leaves all right so now i'm going to show you how to combine your leaves on an actual branch for your leaves so a few different color ways but this is kind of my approach so i'm going to do for my stem i'm going to do some burnt umber with a touch of mars black in it for a smokier brown instead of more of like a chocolatey brown and i'm using my size 6 brush for stems i'm going to use a vertical hold you don't have to go straight up and down i'm going to use like a 80-ish degree angle away from my paper and i'm pivoting from my elbow so my elbow is resting on the table and i am using little to no pressure on my stem to create a c curve a lot of people do s curves or they put pressure put pressure on their c curve for their branch and it looks like an eyebrow or if you do an s curve it just kind of looks like a worm so i'm doing a c curve for my stem and i'm going to make the base of my stem just a little bit thicker and then we're going to go leaf by leaf with adding our secondary stems so i've got still this brown color i'm just going to pull out c curves i'm not going to curve in towards the stem because that's going to make it look like a saguaro cactus but i'm curving out from the stem and i'm going to add some darker smokier greens with a touch of brown and sap green and maybe a touch of mars black for some of them some lighter leaves i'm just going to whatever direction the stem is pointing is the direction my leaf should be pointing if i put a leaf here it's going to look like someone snapped it off so we want the stem to be growing into our leaf so our handle of our brush is pointing in line with that and we're doing the same thing compound stroke pressure release pressure release and as i'm going up this main stem i'm going leaf by leaf with my secondary stems and kind of staggering on either side so maybe this next one i'm going to add a little bit of blue to my mixture making sure to point the handle of my brush in line with that stem [Music] so now i want to create balance with this blue green color i don't want it to be green over here blue green over here so i'm gonna add a blue green leaf here but maybe it's a lighter value so i'm going to grab this pigment with my brush and just rinse it off with some water for a lighter value pressure release and i love when leaves with this loose style painting overlap and start to bleed into each other like this if you're noticing a little puddle on your leaves just soak it up with a dry brush or paper towel because that's going to create a wonky hard line next i'm going to do some sap green and yellow green i'm just staggering my colors and my values so that it's creating balance and it doesn't feel like it's tipping in one direction or another it's just creating depth and balance because some leaves are going to be overlapped some leaves are going to be hitting light and others will be more shaded you can even add leaves that are gonna overlap let's do more of that blue-green since it's on the left just pull it over here a little bit more darker blue green overlap maybe just sap green by itself for this one [Music] and it's kind of overlapping that middle [Music] stem [Music] [Music] so with every leaf i'm switching up the hue slightly creating balance across the whole stem with hue and value and let's do some more yellow green and practicing these leaves on a single stem over and over like this is developing that muscle memory so even if it's looking wonky to you just keep doing it until you finish the whole stem because you're practicing muscle memory with this compound stroke and it's not easy another thing that i want to mention too with stems when you're doing a full stem like this is a lot of people will bring their secondary stems really long and their leaf will be way over here and that's going to create a big gap between your main stem and your secondary stem and it's just going to feel really empty and weird so i'm going really close to the main stem i'm only going like a quarter of an inch out and i can always add more leaves in between some of these if i want to if their gap is feeling a little too spaced out but going between a mixture of sap green prussian blue mars black and burnt umber or sap green and yellow lemon yellow deep and mixing up values i'm going to add in some more leaves that are lighter kind of poking through maybe here and here [Music] so lighter value leaves but making sure i'm dabbing the excess water off on my paper towel so i'm not using too much water that will make a puddle [Music] so so everything i've covered in this watercolor basics video so far we're combining for this big stem with all these leaves so compound strokes wet and wet painting we've got some blending happening between the stem and the leaves and neighboring leaves um we could go back on top of these leaves once they dry and add vein details if we wanted to using wet and dry we're using vertical and slanted holds all of the things so these are great leaves are a great thing to be practicing over and over again because you practice so much pressure release maybe half a leaf poking up here like so okay so now we're gonna paint a basic flower combining everything i've taught you so far about compound strokes with painting leaves vertical and slanted holds and we're gonna paint a basic flower i'm gonna use a size six brush you can grab just opera rose or opera rose and scarlet like whatever color you want your flower to be and we're going to use a compound stroke but instead of painting a stroke like a leaf we are going to use a slanted hold about 45 degrees away from the paper and apply pressure and then as we curve around we're going to release pressure for this little teardrop so we've got an upside down teardrop so i'm going to do it again so thin pressure curve around and gradually release that pressure and then to make it look more like a flower you can do another smaller same stroke like this and maybe just have little petals that are tucked behind so this is our main petal and then we've got another bigger petal over here but all of our teardrops or our all of our petals are pointing to create a v shape so we're not doing our first teardrop and then our second teardrop is pointing down like this because then the stem would be here and that just doesn't make sense so you want to make sure you've got your first teardrop pressure gradually release and then you're pointing directly to that same spot pressure loop release and then i just do pressure and kind of curve in then from here i'm just going to add a stem maybe some yellow green with sap green and lemon yellow deep in whatever direction this v is pointing that's where my stem is going to be so i'm going to use little to no pressure on a vertical hold with my brush you can connect it or not connect it and then we can add some leaves using compound strokes that i showed you in the previous video or chapter [Music] so this is just a basic side view of a flower maybe it's a tulip but same thing that we were practicing with our wet and wet technique and the leaves when you're painting a full floral piece you don't want every single petal of every single flower to be the same hue and value so maybe some are more pink than others some are lighter but i've got just three compound strokes well two compound strokes in one little c curve situation and just pressure and loop back down and that white space between your petals is what's going to make it look like a flower because your petals are separated by that white space but you also don't want your petals to be too far apart where you have petal here and over here is your next petal and then over here is your other petal because then that looks too spaced out and weird so you want them to be touching but have little slivers of white space little little little slivers of white space so that it looks like separate petals then if you want to do a basic open flower we're going to use a very different hold on your brush we're going to use a slanted hold but instead of using the going in line with the handle of my brush i'm going to go perpendicular to the handle of my brush so instead of bringing my stroke this way which is in line with the handle same direction as the handle of my brush i'm going to go this way which is perpendicular so i'm gonna paint a basic open flower with just these kind of up and down wavy motions of my brush making sure every petal is pointing back to the same middle this could be a cherry blossom it could be an anemone it could be a pansy let's do a pansy with just three petals in like a triad so i'm using the belly of the brush for this simple stroke and then for the pansy i'm going to go back in and use wet and wet painting maybe up here too and for your anemone you could go back in with black or brown or yellow anemones will have black you want to make sure your petals are dry these aren't but we're just gonna be a little careful so with people painting flowers the biggest mistake i see is people unaware of how petals are connected together so you want to think about how a flower grows and each petal is connected to the same center of the flower which is connected to the stem and so you want to make sure that all of your petals are are pointing at the same center point so if we had this petal just slightly shifted up like this pointing up that way that would not look appropriate it would look really weird because it's not connected to the same center point so you want to make sure that as you're going around with these open shaped flowers all your petals are pointing in towards that same exact spot so that it makes sense and then same thing with your side facing flower you want to create that v that v shape like that v shape because all of your petals are going to be connected if you think about like an orange for example if you're peeling an orange from the top to bottom but you're leaving the peels connected to the bottom they're all connected to that bottom of the orange it's the same thing with petals as a petal or as a flower opens that those petals are still connected to the base so if i'm looking at the side view of a flower i'm seeing a v shape but if i'm looking at the top of a flower i'm seeing a circle like so so combining everything i've taught so far in this watercolor basics series for a floral wreath with flowers compound strokes with our leaves wet and wet technique shapes curves all of the things so i'm going to use my size 6 brush for this wreath and you can pencil out a circle very very lightly for following a specific shape if you want to i'm going to freehand it and hope it works out but it's just all about doing pieces of branches and seeing how the shape is forming so that you're eyeballing it as you go all right so first i'm going to start with the right side of my wreath kind of just eyeballing where i want to start it kind of in the middle and coming over here to the right side and i'm going to do my slanted-ish hold or vertical it's like in between hold and c-curve for my first little branch that i'm going to add leaves to and if you're like whoa that's going to be a tiny circle don't you worry i'm going to start piecing over here so even if you curve a little too far in or two over here you can just add branches to fill it in and design the curve so let's do some compound strokes i'm gonna do some blue green for leaves maybe a touch of burnt umber and we're going to start really dark then get a little bit lighter [Music] and right here is an open space where i can either add a flower or another leaf what i want to make sure of as i'm going around this whole leaf though or bran what is this this whole wreath is that i have balance so i've mentioned this before in this series but balance is really important in composition if something feels like it's tipping toward one side of the or the other it's gonna feel off to your viewers so i want to make sure to incorporate flowers along my entire wreath so that it feels balanced and not like it's tipping too heavy on this side with flowers and there's nothing down here so i'm going to paint in a little flower maybe part of a pansy an open-faced pandy i'm going to start with some cobalt maybe a touch of opera rose lightly and i'm using the side or belly of my brush to give it these little pokes here and then using wet and wet painting to give it that darker color bleed and we got a pansy going and maybe another pansy but it's more purple or has more pink in the cobalt mixture just right here [Music] so obviously i'm not sketching anything before um this is just allowing me to practice freehand and just going for it i'm focusing on balance and i'm focusing on shape and you get there by developing muscle memory for all of these elements so all of the florals branches and leaves if you're not comfortable with them individually it's going to be really hard for you to freehand something like this but i'm using the curves of leaves to help guide my the shape of my wreath and noticing areas where i want some bursts of color purple and yellow are contrasting colors so i'm incorporating some contrast down here i want to make sure to incorporate that throughout the wreath and not just have it right there so keeping that in mind for future and working my way up with another stem pressure release pressure release [Music] so making sure to not just have the same hue and value of all my leaves and flowers and whatever elements i'm painting because as you can see i've got blue green fading to yellow green and there's lighter values in between that's going to create a lot more movement than just using secondary green in the same value for every single leaf so it's going to create a lot more movement and fullness now i'm going to so i've got some with my floral elements i've got some purples and blues happening i want to get a little bit more like a rainbow vibe with all my colors so i'm gonna add some indigo or turquoisey color with manganese blue and a touch of prussian blue and maybe just do side facing flower here and here and a lemon yellow or a yellow green stem for these kind of not berries but just little buds of flowers i'm just tapering off here and following my my circle ish adding in little leaves to frame okay we've got a nice curve let's start to curve across and get into some more yellow orange and red pinky colors for our florals eventually [Music] so this shape i want it to curve down a little bit more [Music] pressure release [Music] [Music] nice open area here for a fuller flower more open flower maybe we do some yellow maybe take opera rose and cadmium orange to add the center bleed copper rose and lemon yellow deep for my side facing flower over here and get gradually more pink [Music] and curving with adding stems and leaves [Music] and as i'm starting to curve around here i want to see how it's filling out if it's feeling too boxy then i'll add little leaves here and there we've got a really dark leaf right there so i want to make sure it doesn't feel too heavy or unbalanced so i'm going to bring a darker blue green leaf here and bring in some more brown using all the colors yep got some water droplets we're gonna cover up with some leaves boom [Music] light values dark values looking as you're painting for shapes balance where it feels like it's tipping or maybe feels too heavy [Music] or not dense enough [Music] and i'll just get some more reds pinks and then a little more purple here to close it off [Music] off a rose man it's so bright [Music] a pinkish pansy open right here [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so with pink it's basically like red uh on the color wheel instead of adding secondary green so just sap green next to it for my leaves i'm gonna shift the hue a little bit more and add more yellow to the mixture this yellow green is really going to pop next to it because green and pink are contrasting colors but we're not using the direct contrast with yellow green i'm going to add some yellow up here it's going to get tons of yellow it kind of became orange pretty quickly so we're going to just do these little side facing yellows here poking out because it's also a little bit of a straight line from this leaf to that leaf so it's not curved enough or bumpy enough a little poke in here [Music] little fluffs and a bit more orange up here these side facing flowers are so easy to just add in these tight tight spots where it just needs a little bit more balance we've got a small cluster of turquoise here but everything's out a little bit more spread out so i'm going to bring it down here too so always thinking about balance in individual sections of whatever type of piece you're painting whether it's a wreath or a full floral piece thinking about balance how it's tipping incorporating movement with value scales within one section and hue scales all things that we've covered in the series but pulling together for one big piece [Music] now let's get a little purple so we can finish it off for a rainbow wreath just getting gradually more and more purple by adding prussian blue to this opera rose prussian blue mixture with these side facing flowers tulips whatever they are [Music] [Music] brown stems because it's a lot of green stems over here making sure my stem is pointing in line with the v of the flower and maybe finish it off with some leaves it's getting flat right here so we're going to want to come out a little bit more to make it heavier down here and incorporate that dark blue green so i'm going to make this a little darker so i'm able to paint this a bit quicker because i am so comfortable with how these strokes are formed compound strokes color theory color balance all of that kind of stuff that it takes practice and doing it something over and over again to really understand how to incorporate it in a bigger piece like this and make it feel balanced but any area where i feel like something is really standing out or calling too much attention i know it's either a shape imbalance or it needs some color depth like with values and hue variation just keeping that in mind we're getting heavy down here so we need to thicken this area out [Music] [Music] so [Music] knowing when when to stop is also a good thing too so we don't want to get too crazy with all these fluffs around our leaves but just looking at how it's forming areas that feel a little like this kind kind of comes to a point up here whereas this is kind of all starting to make a circle so i'm gonna add some yellow here something that i always find interesting about some comments that we get or messages i receive on instagram from people who are just starting out or maybe i've never painted like this before but they've been painting for a while is that there's a lot of people out there and i totally get why but there's a lot of people out there that are trying to hurry the process and be further along than they should be and maybe it's part of our culture or with social media and being able to see all of the brilliant work out there and getting discouraged with wherever you're at in your process but i think the most important part is of getting better over time is being okay with where you're at and that like mental mental muscle that you have to flex in order to not get bothered or frustrated or overwhelmed when something isn't turning out the way teachers is or the way you think it should um but not letting that overwhelm or that like discouragement get the best of you because a lot of people give up when something doesn't turn out the way they want to but they don't realize that every artist has crumpled up paper in their trash can so keep that in mind and then with our final details we're going to use wet and wet painting to add little stamen areas to like this lemon yellow deep here to this pansy [Music] just tiny little details [Music] you can use gouache which is a version of watercolor it's just more opaque if you want for this for it to stand out a little more but i'm just gonna use watercolor now i hope that video was helpful for you if you need further resources and research please check out that free ebook i mentioned i have a floral watercolor ebook that goes over all the things that i covered in this series which i cover brush techniques supplies color theory everything so if you need a guide to walk you through step by step as you're watching these videos make sure you go download that freebie and then also check out my book everyday watercolor if you want a bit more in-depth color theory and also basic shapes compound strokes all of the things and more in my book everyday watercolor which is an amazon and also available in local bookstores so make sure you check that out as well and we just recently launched a patreon channel where i'm going way more in depth with patrons who are spending five dollars a month and up with us where we've got a patreon only exclusive tutorial every single month going out for five dollars a month and up tiers along with a live monthly art class where you can sit with me ask me questions while i'm painting and teaching um while i'm going through things live if you spend ten dollars a month and up through our tier so make sure you check out our patreon my everyday watercolor books my freebie also i have a way more in-depth watercolor course in the works we'll link it below in the description right now if you want to join the wait list if if it isn't open click that link and you can find out more information on that also just remember if you want quick reference for any of the chapters in this video we segmented every single one of them out and they are available in my watercolor basics playlist make sure you go check that out we'll link to that here so you can check it out and i'll see you in the next video you

Channel: Jenna Rainey

Views: 1,951,890

Keywords: jenna rainey, jenna rainey watercolor, jenna rainey art school, watercolor painting for beginners, watercolor, watercolor for beginners, watercolor for beginners tutorial, watercolor basics, watercolor basics for beginners, watercolor tips for beginners, basics of watercolor, basics of watercolor painting, guide to watercolor, beginners guide to watercolor, watercolor supplies, color theory painting, watercolor leaves, watercolor flowers, watercolor techniques, watercolor tips

Id: tDdfPMTX15Y

Length: 111min 50sec (6710 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021