Paint a vibrant Scarlet Rose! - The Spirit of Watercolor

Hello and welcome back to The Spirit of Watercolor with Linda and wow we're almost to summer. We're a few days away from the first day of summer. Welcome back to my channel and welcome welcome to the new subscribers. I hope you're finding what you like here and how to use watercolors, you know, in the magic that they do. And as you've seen I think some of the most popular videos that I've done are about how to use watercolor, letting it do what it does best, which is flowing, gorgeous colors, luminous, transparent, and we've been learning along the way for some few years now. And you know I'm a student from Eastern, graduated, concentrated in watercolor, but I'm still learning. So I mean it just never ends. In fact I think I'm enjoying my own work more now than I did in the past, you know, and I think that's just keeping at it. And you help me as well as I hope I help you to do that. So look back at some of the loose ones we've done. A lot of landscape, seascape, those kinds of things that are fun and flowing. And I want to just move into another subject because I feel like you know I did a fish not that long ago. You know sometimes it's good to move into a different subject area. And I've done some florals in the past, but my favorite flowers, which I would like to do with you today, and also learn how to do this loose thing we do, and this, you know, fast get the paint on there fresh, not labored, right. I want to show you things like this. These are roses, okay. The one that I did in the past, which is very loose and flowing, is this one. And if you take a look, it's, if you look close, well first look back, but look close, there's, there's flower, rose here. But things are very loosely done within each petal, within each leaf, and therefore it still looks like a fresh, bright, loose watercolor, okay. So we, we, we see the rose, and yet it's watercolors that are flowing. We have the wet-on-wet within the petals, and some graduated washes within there, and flat washes that are basic technique are in there. It's not that hard, so I'm going to show you a way to quickly draw this rose, and then, you know, and what's going on around it. And then we'll just get in there in each area, and do what we did in the water, you know, and in the skies, that, you know, you can even take a flat brush into these, okay. And I'm going to talk a little more as I've been doing more about flat brush and pointed rounds, large pointed rounds, to get your information on, okay. This is the one I'm doing recently. I just wanted to give you a quick peek. Different paper, so it's responding a little differently. These are red roses, and you know, we got the baby roses, and we've got the large mature ones here. And each petal, again, it's kind of flowing. It's flowing a little differently. I think my, it's not quite as wet as that other one. So, and also, you know, I'm, but you're getting that graduated wash within the, you know, shadows and the petals, and so forth. So, but, you know, it's, it's similar but different, but, you know, we could talk a little about that. But just to show you another example. This one I need to finish. I'm, I may be finished. You could tell me, is it finished? Anyway, so let's do this. Let's go to the table. We'll do, I think, to start simply, a rose, okay, and some petals, and, you know, get that atmospheric, colorful, beautiful thing going with me. So, again, if you like these videos, and you're getting motivated, and inspired, and, you know, some spiritual connection with them, please continue to join me, and like and subscribe if you would. And let's, let's get to the table with the pencil on the good paper, and So, in painting our rose today, our wet-on-wet loose rose, I showed you this, and I showed you this, right? But I got inspired by my book that I used to do these, right? And it's, it's a Michigan rose, Roses of Michigan. Whatever state you're in, you might find one that has roses, you know, that are common, more common in your area, and that's kind of neat. So, or you can get this one. It's really good. I mean, lots of pictures, you know, to inspire, and what I like is, you know, that they kind of show you the flower, and they describe the flowers, and the particular roses, and their characteristics. I flipped through this, and I found a couple I really like. This is the one that I just like today, okay? So, I will show you here. Since I did a yellow and a red, let's do an orange. But this orange one is so, like, nice, and that it's easy to draw these shapes, right? These kind, you know, make a contour drawing, they call it in drawing class. Just around the outside, and then some of the petals inside, and so that's what I did here, okay? And so, if you look at that, you can see I've got the shape. The leaves, I did just some of the lines, just to identify where they are. I might get more loose and abstract with that. And then, right here, I love how it just fans out and blurs out in the background. So, I like that, and my composition is going to be kind of on this side, you know, more toward that, and then maybe, maybe that'll be left white. Maybe it'll be just a soft wash, which is kind of what we did in this one, right? Although, I need to get a little more color. This is very, very soft, this blue, but I think I need to bring in a little more of that there, but this one, we'll decide that later. But we're going to get wet on wet with this. We're going to follow this, you know, getting inside each petal, getting wet on wet, okay? And it'll be fun, just like the fast, easy, breezy ones we've done before. I might get a little more, you know, defined around the edge, right? But then, let the color flow into the petals, which, if you really look at roses, they do that so well. They just kind of fan out into a white or a yellow, something softer and lighter. Any of them do that, and, you know, the ones that are more, I guess, duo or tricolored do that. Some of these that are just one color, you might not see it as much, but you could play with the shadows instead, so. But I really love these that really vary. I'll show you one quick one. I have another one marked, or I did. Well, here's one. You see how it goes from pink to white? That's a graduated or graded wash we'll be using for those, okay? So, let's get started. So these are the three tubes that I use for the flower. I start with the Pyrrol Scarlet, which is a redder, intense red color, and then I use Pyrrol Orange, and I mix them together for the outer parts of the petals. And then we use the Nicolazo Yellow in the centers, so that it will look like what you see in the photo here. And the Pyrrol colors are like cadmiums, but more intense and beautiful to me, and also they are very more transparent as well. And then I use Deep Sap Green and Sap Green and Green Gold for the petals. Here you see me mixing the Pyrrol Orange with the Pyrrol Scarlet to get that beautiful, rich, reddish orange. And we put the Nicolazo Yellow on the palette too, and then we're ready pretty much to begin our flower. We take our wet mop brush, wet with water only, and wet a few of the petal areas, different petals, and then we are ready to start with our intense, almost a vermilion color it's become, right? And let that kind of put it on very highly concentrated, right? We want that vibrant color. This flower is called Playboy, by the way, if you see it up there on the print, and it has beautiful waves, it says, and rich, you know, velvety color. So we're trying to basically recreate that with our watercolors, and it looks wonderful. I love this color combination here today. And then I add the Nicolazo Yellow in the centers to just kind of run or variegate, if you remember, variegation is the name of when the paints just kind of run together. They blend themselves just by just running into each other. It's a wonderful effect, right? And so we just keep going here. Sorry that my head gets in there sometimes, but I have to get close. I use highly magnified glasses because of my vision. So, but you know, if it gets where you can't see what I'm painting, I'll probably just clip out some parts, but mostly we can see what, you know, the brush is doing. So I'll just keep on going. I took a break from the petals and pulled out the Deep Sap Green to see how that looks in the leaves, and as far as the color, and I just did a small section, but I'll go back to that later and complete the leaves. I may go back and forth, which I like. I think it's not good to get labored over one part of the painting, but to move around and, and, you know, go back and forth. Let it dry up there and then go back, and then when the green dries, go back there. And really here, we just keep doing more of the same. You know, I usually start around the outside, but first, of course, wet with clear water in each petal, like I did before, and then, you know, we'll bring in the Nicolazo Yellow or whatever yellow you have and love. You don't have to use my exact colors, right? But I just, I just highly recommend these, but you don't, like I say, you probably have some favorite yellows and reds of your own, or cadmiums would be great too. Okay, so we're going pretty full speed ahead here, and the reason is I'm cutting this so the video is not so long, and we're doing the same process over and over again here, you know, where we're wetting with actually a little flat brush, a half inch flat, and then each, each petal with clear water. Then, you know, we come in with the pointed round around the edge with the red, and then the yellow is inserted with just a regular round, not a pointed round, so I know which is which, and it's, you know, I got three brushes in my hand, and we're doing this, and it's working very well. Sometimes, though, I'll just, I'll go in with the yellow and the inside first, just, I don't know, it doesn't matter which way you go, because these colors are just going to variegate or, you know, blend into each other, run into each other, basically. That's variegation, so you'll just see this at a little faster speed, just so you can get the idea, and then I will also go down and do some of the leaves pretty soon, because the petals that I've done have to dry before I can go in and do a little more detailing work. You know, you can keep going, and then things start running into each other that you don't want, so you've got to let things set up and dry, and now, let's see, we're still, like I said, doing that, so inch, my large flat, and use it clear and wet the area where the leaves are down there, and like I said, I didn't really put them in, because sometimes I just like them to flow and kind of create themselves, so I, you know, I want to get that water flowing and then, or the paint flowing into the water, excuse me, and then, you know, I just keep adding a little more concentration with that deep sap green, it's just so gorgeous, and, you know, letting it spread out and kind of create variations in the leaves, like leaves would, the way light hits them, and, you know, they may be kind of, how do I say, wavy, so if the color kind of is changing in concentration a little on there, you kind of see a little more natural, just look to the flower, or the, to the leaves, excuse me, yeah, so I'm just doing a few of those, and I'll come back and finish those later, but I'm just kind of putting some in, like I say, letting those set up and dry, and then I love that wet flowing area on the photo, if you see where it's just kind of blurring in the background some of the greenery back behind the flowers, so I will go back there soon too. Oh, I went back up, which is good, you shouldn't go back and forth, the flower must have been dry, so I went up there and started coming back in with those reds and the yellows, just, you know, like I said, wet it first with the flat, little flat I've got, or whatever brush you have, and then again, you know, bring in the outlining and let it flow in of the red, or the orangey red, and then bring that beautiful nickel azo in, and let that just keep developing, that flower just keeps developing. It really looks a lot like the photograph, which I'm really pleased, maybe I even like it a little more than the photograph, which is always really fun, watercolors are so beautiful, aren't they? And finally, we do the soft wash to get that blurry background of greenery, wet on wet, very wet on wet, and my flat brush. So you can see this here is dry, and comparing it to the picture, the photo, I need to put some more in the middle, a little more of the red-orange to define a few more petals, but we're almost there, and it looks good. So here it is finished, and I think it looks pretty nice, and I think you also can see I like it sort of, you know, toward the left in composition like that, it's kind of neat, or you could, I also matte it at the end, a little more centered so you can decide, you know, how you want the piece to look finished, totally how you matte makes a huge difference too. So thank you for watching, thanks for joining me again, and learning more about watercolors together, and enjoying the spiritual nature in the spirit of watercolor, and I will look forward to seeing you soon in our next video, and thanks again.