5 tips for perfect floral composition - Watercolor floral arrangement painting tutorial

Hello and welcome back to my channel. Today I am sharing with you five tips for making perfect watercolor floral arrangements every time. And these are the same methods that florists use to arrange flowers in real life and we're going to apply them to watercolor today. So let's get started. So the first tip is shape. What shape are you making? What lines are you using? And what size is your composition going to be? So there are static lines which are vertical and horizontal lines. There are dynamic lines which move and curve and give movement to your piece. There are something called actual lines like the stem of a flower would be an actual line. And then there are implied lines so when you are creating flowers or objects within your piece you can create a line visually with your eye without there being an actual line. So you can use these types of lines to determine what shape you want to create with your composition. There are lots of different shapes you can do. A triangular shape with flowers being higher in the center. Curved shapes. More full and round shapes. You can do pretty much any kind of shape you want. So getting an idea and sketching out different shapes will help you think about what you want your arrangement to look like in the end. So the next tip is color. And you can do whatever colors you want but a good rule of thumb is to stick to three colors. Two that are complementary, that are dominant, and one that is an accent color. And so complementary colors are purple and yellow, green and red, orange and blue. And so today I have chosen red and green as my complementary colors with an I'm also using my watercolor flower guide that I created in November to reference the kind of flowers that I want to use for this composition. Because I'm going to want to use the colors within my palette and I'm also going to want to reference this for our next tip which is balance. Balancing your compositions isn't always about making things symmetrical which you totally can do. But it's also about making sure that the weight feels even to the eye. And so if you have a large flower in one corner you can balance it on the other side with a large flower or you could do a grouping of flowers that feels similar in weight to the large flower. So already when I went through the first step I really was drawn to the curved shape and I know my color palette and I know that I want my balance to be large flowers and small flowers, not all the same flowers. And so I'm painting some of my flowers from my watercolor flower guide that are giving me inspiration and also giving me that feeling based on the rules that I want. And also I'm getting some inspiration down for my leaves. My next tip is contrast. So you're going to want some kind of contrast within your composition. Light versus dark, big versus small, so here I'm doing a big flower versus a grouping of small flowers, or smooth versus textured. If you have too much of these contrasts though it will look chaotic. So stick to one or two of those for your composition. And my last tip is movement. So here I'm doing a rough draft sketch of my final piece that I want to paint but I am putting in the movement and visualizing it. So with movement you want to have a focal point, something where the person who's looking at the piece immediately is drawn to. So my focal point is this big peony in the center and I've kind of put it off center because I thought that was interesting. And then with movement I am using the curves and patterns of the colors to draw the eye to the right and to the left. And so I'm kind of using all of the different techniques with balance and everything to make sure that the colors are on each side, the weight feels even, while still maintaining the movement with my focal point. Now that I am starting on the final piece, because I know the direction that I want to go within each of those five tips, my whole entire composition is just going to look so much more intentional and thoughtful and artistic and more appealing to the eye. For this piece I am using 140 pound cold press watercolor paper, a Paulina Bright round brush size 2, and Winsor & Newton professional tube paints. So I'm starting with my focal point which is this peony and I want to keep it light because one of my contrasting points is the light pink peony with that dark red tulip that will be next to it on the upper right. I'm also keeping contrast with a small versus big flower with the peony and the yellow flowers, and just making sure that the balance is even. So as I'm adding these tulips over here to the right, I'm going to need to balance that out on the left side. This is a good example of how balance doesn't need to be symmetrical. So because I have two tulips on the right side and they're dark and they have a lot of weight, I don't need to put two tulips on the left side to balance it, I just need to put some of the red color for it to balance visually. So it can be symmetrical but sometimes that looks too matchy-matchy, you know, too much of the same, and it doesn't end up looking good. So balancing out just by putting some of the red and even here with the yellow, making sure that there's an even amount of color that your eye is drawn and that the movement is able to flow, like your eye has flowing movement throughout the piece. That is the goal. Balancing leaves is very similar, so we don't have to have the same amount of leaves opposite each other in the composition, but balancing out the color and the weight. So if I have a ton of leaves on the left side and not as much on the right side, it'll look weird. I don't need to have the same amount, but I need to have a balanced visual balance. And then also making sure you're adding the dark leaves for the contrast. And I really just step back a lot of the time and visually look at the piece and think, okay, that's an awkward space, what does it need? Does it need more of the dark leaf? Does it need more of a textural leaf? Does it need lightness? Does it need another color? Do we need more orange? Do we need more red? What does this area need? So definitely step back and look at your painting a lot. Also, don't be afraid of negative space. Not every flower or leaf has to be touching or right up against each other. You can have some of those empty spaces where maybe you just see stem, or there's just a lot of that white space in between them, and that's perfectly fine, normal, and visually appealing within a painting. And to finish off this piece, I'm adding a little vase along the bottom, making sure to drop in some darker pigments for shadows. I'm also going to be dropping in some shadows along the bottom to give the illusion of even more realism, and that there's a light source, that it's sitting on top of a table or on the ground somewhere, just to add a more artistic feel to this piece. Here's a comparison of a painting that I did without following the tips that we discussed today, and I don't necessarily think anything's wrong with it, I just think the one that we composed, and had well thought out intentions for, looks so much more visually appealing, and artistic, and it looks thoughtful. So I hope these tips really helped you, and that you apply them to your compositions. Tag me if you do use them, I would love to see it! Have a fantastic day guys, bye!