How to paint loose Buttercups in watercolor - Day 5

Hello, welcome back to my channel. We are on day five of 30 days of watercolor flowers and today we are painting a buttercup. Buttercups are simple and sweet but they have really fun centers and I just think they are going to be a great addition to our guide. Again, you can paint along with us if you're not doing the guide because I'm going to show you how to paint them first, so let's get into it. Buttercups have really nice smooth circular petals and so I just keep adding strokes around the petal to get that circular shape that I want. So this helps me create white space because I'm able to really control every part of the petal. I'm taking the tip and controlling exactly how far down it comes but I'm able to continue to create strokes around and around to get the shape that I want. How you shape your petal gives a visual of how the petal is sitting. So these top two petals that are really nice and perfectly round gives the visual that we are looking straight on them. But these two side petals, I wanted them to be more slanted and curved, kind of like a moon shape, because that gives the impression that we're looking at them at the side because they're coming at a slant into the center of the flower. And these petals along the bottom, I think of this one as a funky banana and this next one as a funky triangle because they are going to be odd shaped because you want the illusion that they are kind of at an angle coming out more towards you. So they're going to be thicker towards the end and go thinner as they get to the center. So that's one angle of this type of flower and I'm going to show you a couple of different ways you can paint different variations. So again with this one I did two really circular petals and then I'm doing those slanted petals at the side. And then this petal at the bottom is kind of a mix between the funky banana and the triangle. Again it's just giving that illusion that that petal is coming straight at you. I added just the tiniest golden orange color while everything was still wet to give some dimension up into the petals. So for this buttercup I wanted to show how to paint one that maybe has more of the petals standing straight up and it's harder to see the center. So these back petals are going to be more circular like before with the side slanting petals, but then before you lose the center I'm coming through and I'm doing some littler petals around the front and then bringing these side petals down to connect. So just really keep your side petals slanted and you won't lose that illusion of the petals being more towards the side and standing up. And then I also wanted to show a buttercup that is totally open and it's pretty straightforward. You're going to have all of the petals be really nice and circular coming together leaving a nice open space in the middle for the center. When I was looking up reference photos for the buttercup there were a lot of variations in the number of petals from what I saw and so there seemed to be a range from five up to ten and so I just kind of did whatever, but if you want to specifically stay with five for the whole piece that you're painting great, but I think it's kind of fun to switch it up. So this is the last buttercup that we're painting and I wanted to show one that is maybe from the side that has all of the petals standing up and so you really can't see any of the center. And so same as before your center petals are going to be nice and round and even, but then as you go towards the end of the flower you're going to start slanting your petals to give that illusion of curvature that you're not seeing the entire petal anymore you're seeing only the side of it. So the buttercups that I was looking at online had a really nice bright green center and so I did not want the center to blend with anything else so I did a nice vibrant bright yellow green center and then I let it dry completely before I added any of the other stamen. So while that dries I did the stems and the stems are nice and thin really delicate they do like to connect at times and so I connected all of these because I thought that just looked really pretty and I made sure to really think about where the center of the flower was because that's where the stem is coming from underneath. So I know there's a lot of different variations that you can find with buttercups but the reference photo that I found online had these really grassy type leaves and they were just really thin and delicate and they were kind of all over the plant and I just thought that looked really nice with this really delicate flower. I also added this little like flower bud and so it has the same stem as the other flowers and then it just has a nice little circular bud shape and there's no petals coming out it's just the illusion that something's growing something's going to be forming and I kept a lot of white space so that it didn't look flat. Now that that light green has fully dried I'm going back in and adding those little tiny strokes for the stamen. I'm using a slightly darker yellow almost an orange color and see in this one because the center is half covered I'm only putting those stamen lines on one side and then I'm putting dots right there at the ends of the stamen and the bigger dots are going to be closer to the ends of those lines with smaller dots coming out off of them. Buttercup stamen really are more of a bright yellow color than the color that I'm using but I wanted it to stand out against the bright yellow petals so you know just use some artistic liberty here but I think that is the whole point that's the whole fun of flowers especially in this loose style. I mean at the end of the day hopefully no one is out there commenting about how too yellow or brown your buttercup stamens are but I mean you never know I'll probably get some comments about it now but that's okay. With that slightly darker orange color I'm also going in and adding some shadowing on that flower that has no center visible because that adds a lot of depth and contrast. And now that we have finished practicing our buttercup I'm adding it to our watercolor flower guide and I definitely wanted to do a shape of a flower that showed off that center because I just think it's gorgeous and that is it. Thank you so much for being here for day five of 30 days of watercolor flowers. We finished our buttercup I think it looks so great we have finished a whole row. Thank you guys so much for being here I will see you tomorrow for day six. Bye!