Top 10 watercolor leaves - how to paint them what colors to use

Coming up in this video, I'm going to show you how to paint my top 10 watercolor leaves and foliage. And after watching today's video, you'll not only know how to paint 10 totally different leaves, but you also know which colors to choose, and you'll feel more confident when you're adding greenery to your floral composition. Hi everyone, welcome back. My name is Kristen, and today I'm going to show you my top 10 most beloved, most used leaves. So we're going to start with the supplies. I'm using watercolor paper that is 140 pounds cold pressed. You can use any brand that's at least that way or higher. I love cold press for the lovely texture. Today, I'm going to be using the paints in my travel palette. They are Windsor Newton brand, and I get them in the little tubes. When using tube paints, you put the paint from the tube into the palette, let it dry overnight, and then you can use it with water just like any other watercolor. As you can see from my palette, I really love color mixing, so I'll get into the specific colors that I use in a little bit. Today, I'll be using a Polina Bright round brush size one, but any round brush will work. This is a Windsor and Newton round brush size eight. I also have a Princeton round brush size four, so you can see the size comparison. Even though Polina's is a size one, it's a lot bigger, but just use whatever is your personal preference, and we will also be using paper towel and water. Now, let's talk about color. What color should we use for our greenery? Well, the obvious answer is green, and I have green on my palette. I have three greens on my palette. They're beautiful. I'm swatching them along the top, but actually, I don't usually use the straight green color from the tube very often. I'm either mixing it with the more obvious choices of yellow and blue, which you'll see here. I'm doing a lot of yellow and blue mixtures, but I also really love adding orange. Orange into a green mixture makes the prettiest shade of forest greens and khakis that you'll ever see, so go try that out for me because it's really, really fun. Also, if you add red, which is green's complementary color, you get muted, darker green colors as well, and I know it's going to bug the heck out of some of you that I do not rinse my brush between dipping into colors, and that is just the way I do it, so sorry about that in advance, but you get to do whatever you want with your colors on your palette, and this is what I do with mine. I mix things up until they look good to me. Once I have a green mixture, I add reds, blues, yellows, oranges, and the original greens to get the colors that appeal to me the most. Now, you might be thinking, that's super great. I know how to mix green, and that's awesome, but I don't know when to use it with which flower color. Like, if you're going to add it into a floral composition, how do you know what color to put it by, and when to not use dark color, and when to use a lighter color? Well, I would also suggest swatching some of your favorite floral colors onto your paper, and then putting these green colors next to them. This way, you can see which colors look the best next to your flowers. So, what I like to do is, I cover up everything except for one of the flower colors, and I just really try to feel out which color would go best with that color. A rule of thumb I like to go by is, light flowers with dark leaves, dark flowers with lighter leaves. For me, it's all about contrast, so you could do that by doing lighter leaves and darker leaves together. Also, just have fun. There are no rules. Do whatever looks best to you. And now, it is time to paint our leaves. So, with this very first leaf, we start with the tip of our brush, push down on the body of the brush, and then gently lift back to the tip of the brush to create that end point. So, the shape of your brush is going to create the shape of your leaf with this stroke. So, starting with the tip, pushing down on the body of the brush, and then ending at the tip again. So, this is another variation where we are creating a longer leaf, so you are just going to drag with the pressure on the body of the brush for a longer amount of time. On to leaf number two, which is my personal favorite. We are doing that same stroke we did before, but we are doing it twice, leaving white space in the center. So, starting with the tip, pushing down on the body of the brush, ending at the tip, and doing it again on the other side, leaving white space in the center. So, leaving that white space in the center is important for this leaf because it gives the illusion of the veining of the leaf without having to paint it in. And just like on the left, we can do a longer leaf in this same method by holding down on the body of the brush for a longer time, but leaving white space in the middle. Leaf number three is a jagged edge leaf, so you'll just paint any leaf shape that you want, and then you use the very tip of your brush to create that jagged edge by starting outside the edge of the leaf and bringing the paint inward. In this example, I didn't want the paint to dry before I created the edge, so I did one side, painted the jagged edge, and then the other side. Leaf number four is an oval type leaf, kind of like eucalyptus, and I'm using the bottom half of my brush to create this stroke. So, I'm kind of doing these little side swiping motions, and I'm using pretty light pressure because I don't want them to be too big. So, the more pressure that you put on your brush, the bigger the leaf will be. And because it's eucalyptus and the leaves like to overlap and be at different angles, I have different shapes to my leaves to represent that, and they are touching to represent overlap. Leaf number five is very similar to leaf number one, where we use the tip of the brush, the body of the brush, and the tip again, but this time we are pulling the leaves towards us, and that will create an entirely different shape to the leaf than when we pulled the leaves away from us. Again, we can do this type of leaf in long or short based on how long we stay on the body of the brush, but I like to do this type of leaf where I am pulling the leaf towards me on one branch with lots of little leaves coming off. Leaf number six I like to think of as some type of wild clover. So, I'm using the very tip of my brush, very light pressure, and doing these wild quick jagged strokes. This is giving a lot of texture, a lot of movement. This will add a lot of needed contrast to very smooth leaves when you're painting a floral composition. So, the trick is to just keep it organic and random. Do a variation of bigger circles and smaller ones. Leaf number seven is a grassy type leaf, and I totally dropped the brush there, but we're moving on, and I use the very very tip of my brush and do light quick strokes. Keep some of them short, some of them long, some of them thicker, some of them thinner, and just do them in little bunches. This adds great texture to floral pieces as well. Leaf number eight is super fun because we get to use this wavy wiggly stroke. So, I am using a lot of pressure to get these big waves on my brush. So, I'm using more of the middle of the brush to paint the stroke. So, I'm doing a big wave that comes to a point, fix the line down the center, and then doing another wave on the other side that finishes the point, and then fixing the line again. Leaf number nine I like to think of as a tiny fern type leaf, and I'm just using the very tip of my brush and making very tiny almost circular strokes, maybe more like a teardrop shape, and they're all coming together connected to make one leaf. And leaf number ten, I think you will love this one, is the heart-shaped leaf. So, you do a really big wave and using lots of pressure, the full body of the brush, and then you come down to a really thin point with the tip of your brush. So, really big wave on one side, nice and thin tip, and then you can fix up that edge so that it's nice and neat when you go to leave white in the center, and then you do it again on the other side, a really big wave, and then bring it down to a point to meet the other point, leaving that nice white space in the center. And that is it, my top 10 watercolor leaves. I really don't paint any other leaves besides these, and what I want you to consider when you're adding leaves to your floral compositions, it's really about contrast in color, contrast in texture, and contrast in size. I will link to a few videos at the end of this that will help you with composition and painting flowers, but as long as you like it, it really doesn't matter. Don't overthink it. Add your leaves. Play around. It's all for fun. It's all for art, but I hope you learned something new and that these tips were helpful for you in your leaf watercolor journey, and I will see you all next time. Bye!