Watercolor Flowers! Beautiful Watercolor Tutorial! Pink Flower Painting!

Welcome to Liesl's Artistic Studio. If you are someone who enjoys watercolor painting and wants to increase your knowledge and or skills with watercolor, then you are in the right place. You clicked on this video today because something about this painting caught your eye and I can't wait to show you how you can paint it for yourself. So let's get started. Really quickly, let's go over a few supplies that you need to make this painting happen. First I have watercolor paper cut to the size 8x10. I have also chosen to tape my paper down today because I will be using enough water I want to help prevent some of the warping. Then you also need a brush. I have here a large number 4 quill brush that also has a nice point for some detail work later. Also I have some important information that I need to share with you about the brush that you use today. So make sure you listen for that coming up in just a minute. Then I have water, a paper towel, and watercolor paints. One of the fun things about this painting today is that I am using a very limited palette of colors. I have here sap green, gamboge, and quinacridone rose. I've already added some water to these paints so they are ready to go. If you need more information about any of these supplies, you can find it in the description of this video. Now because of a large amount of requests, part of this updated video will actually include how to draw an outline sketch for these flowers that you can draw on your watercolor paper if you're interested. But that's not all. For those of you who want the outline sketch but can't or don't want to draw it yourself, I will also be providing a free printable copy that you can use to trace the outline onto your paper with. So stay tuned for both of those coming up. So let's start by painting a section of water for the entire area that will become the back or petals that are the farthest away. Then I'm going to start putting in bits of color and letting it spread. For all of the petals today, I am mainly painting in the quinacridone rose at the center of the petals and then I'll add the gamboge to more of the outer parts of the petals. Because this is painted more loosely, I'm really not thinking too much about individual petals quite yet. I'll emphasize that more later after I see what my color does and how it spreads. Alright let's work on that for a minute, but if you've made it this far in the video, you're the lucky one because now I'm going to tell you some information about this paintbrush that I promised earlier. So the first thing that you need to keep in mind when watching painting tutorials is that different brush brands, types, and styles can vary the actual size greatly in a brush even though they might have the same number. So this brush that I'm using today is really fairly large in size even though it's a number four. Just last week, the tutorial I did with birthday cards also was done with a number four, but it was quite a bit smaller. The reason I have chosen a larger brush today is because I'm wanting to paint this a little more loose, which large brushes can be good for. I am also painting a lot of areas with washes of water and color, and a larger brush can hold more of both. With that being said, you of course can use whatever brush works best for you or that you are the most comfortable with. Alright back to the painting. Now you might have noticed that I just went back in and added a little more pink to the centers of these flowers to darken them up just a little bit more, but I also want these first petals or sections of color to be lighter in value than the petals that will be painted next. Now I'm going to throw out there, if you don't quite get the hang of these flowers the first time you try, don't be afraid to try it again. Practice always helps. Sometimes people make comments to me saying that I make painting look so easy, but the reason for this is because I have practiced painting these things several times before I sit down and record them. So if you don't get the hang of it the first time, you need to know I don't either. Okay really quick, I am going to go back in and add some more dark pink right here in the center of each of these flowers. Alright, before moving on, let that part of the flowers dry and then it's time to paint the second half. This will be painted in a similar way as the first, but I do want the value of it to be darker and brighter than the first half, so I will be using more paint and pigment to do that. I will also point out that on each of these flowers I am going to be leaving a small area to be painted for a third layer and an even darker spot when I'm done with this section. Now these flowers do start out pretty loose at first, but near the end I will show you some detail points that really make these flowers pop and finish them off, so make sure you don't miss out on that. I do really like to try to give helpful hints and tips with each and every tutorial I put out, so if you're finding this helpful, I hope you'll consider subscribing so that you don't miss out on new and upcoming tips every week that will help improve your watercolor. So I want to share something interesting that I found out recently. This last week I did a post, just for fun, where I did a poll to see how often people sign their names to their artwork. The options to choose from were every time, only if I love it, only if I think about it, and never. I was so happy and a little bit surprised to find out that from the people that voted, over 60% of them signed their artwork every time. I guess I found this really neat because I am one of the people who really only sign my artwork if I feel it's worthy of it. I really have to love it and feel proud of it before I will sign my name to it. I am trying to be better about that though and sign my stuff more often because I do think it's important. So kudos to the majority of you out there who already do. Alright let's finish off the petals of these flowers. So after that second half is dry, we'll add in the third and final darkest petal area. This time I will not be painting the area with water first, I'm just going to apply the color straight onto the page so that it won't get thinned out or diluted. But it will be painted in the same way as before. Something else you should know about me is that I generally am more of a tight painter. I really enjoy painting things slightly more realistic and with more detail. Painting more loosely is just something that does not come very natural to me. But it is something I want to be able to do better at and am working on. So even though these flowers aren't super loose, for me it's a step in the right direction. While those last sections of color finish drying, let's go in and work on some of the greenery. So take some sap green and paint some thin stems from the flowers curving to the ground. After that main stem has been painted, go back in while the paint is still wet and using just the tip of the brush, paint another very thin line of green off to one side of the stem to create a bit of a shadow and give it some dimension. I also made it a little darker right at the top and the base of the stem as well. This brush is pretty big for some of this detail work, so if you need to switch to a smaller brush to gain more control, that's totally fine. In my attempt to make the leaves a little more loose than I usually do, I wanted to try something that I hadn't actually tried before. But I'm not sure that I would do it again. But basically, I painted water for half of the leaf and then the plan was to paint color on the other dry half with it just barely overlapping the water. My thought was that the color would slowly blend over to the other side, creating a gradient of color with one half being darker and the other half being lighter. But it didn't work out like I thought. So if I did this over again, I would probably just paint the leaves right where I wanted them to be without the water first. If you choose to use a large round brush like I'm using, then you really can paint these leaves using just one stroke. Just start out painting lightly with the tip of the brush and then as you move, gradually press down harder on the brush and let it up at the end. I'm ready now to paint the center part of the flowers. So I've mixed up some brown by adding some quinacridone rose to my sap green. Then I'll put some dots of color into the center of the flowers, creating sort of a semi-circle shape. If you ever feel like you've painted something a little darker than you intended, you can always use a rinsed out brush or a paper towel to take off some of that excess color. Okay, congratulations if you've made it this far in the video because now all we have left to do is add in some detail work, which I think is key to really finishing off a piece of artwork. So what I'm doing here is taking just a small amount of some of the pink and make sure it's not too dark. Water it down a little if you need to. We do want this to be subtle. Then start adding in a few lines of color stemming from the tops of the petals downward and maybe even the center of the flower moving upward. Creating the look of separate petals, folds, veins, and shadow areas. You can even add in some green vein lines on the leaves if you want to. Okay, for those of you who want to see how to draw a quick outline sketch for these flowers, let me show you how I did mine. Each of these flowers has basically three sections of petals and all the edges are fairly jagged and uneven except for the base area that connects to the stem on this droopy flower. Now, I really didn't have a specific flower in mind when I created this, but the top or the flower head resembles or reminds me of a poppy. But then the leaves turned out more like a tulip, so this flower probably doesn't actually exist, but I guess that's the beauty of creating your own artwork. You also need to know that this was really just a guide for me. I didn't follow or stay perfectly within these lines when I was painting. This was really just to help me with positioning, size, and placement. And even the stems and leaves could easily be painted without any base drawing at all, but sometimes it's nice to know where everything is going to go. Okay, now some information about the free printable of this sketch that I promised you at the beginning of this video. Some of you may or may not know that I have a Lisel's Artistic Studio Facebook page. So to easily get to my Facebook page, just click on the description for this video and then click on the link that will take you directly to my Facebook page. Once you're there, message me personally and I will send you a PDF file that you can then download onto your computer and print out right at home. There is a catch to this, however. This is a limited time offer and will only be available until May 1st, 2023. After that, I hope to have it available for purchase on my new and upcoming Etsy shop. So don't wait, get it for free while you can. Then you can use it as a guide to help you draw it if you need it, or you can literally use it to trace these flowers directly onto your watercolor paper using a light table, or if you don't have a light table, just hold it right up to your window and trace it on. Anyway, I hope this helps and I hope you have much success with your painting. And here is your beautiful and fun watercolor flower painting that I hope you feel proud enough to sign. Thanks so much for painting with me today. If you enjoyed this tutorial, please consider subscribing to my channel so I can continue to help you discover your artistic side.