Watercolor Yellow Swallowtail Butterfly Painting Tutorial for Beginners

Hello and welcome back to the blush studio! Today we're going to continue our little butterfly series by studying the yellow swallowtail butterfly. So this is a beautiful yellow butterfly with some black stripes in it and even some blue details. So I'm really excited to show you how I created it, some mistakes that I ran into, and different ways that I fixed it, and just some techniques that I picked up along the way to create a more realistic looking butterfly. All right, let's get started! Now because I'm right-handed and I foolishly started on the monarch instead of the yellow swallowtail, I do need to make sure that I'm protecting the monarch painting. Because of the oils in my hand and just general risk of dirt, I do need to either lay a piece of copy paper or a tissue over that just so that it doesn't mix with the paint. Especially with watercolor, if the oils on your hand mix with it, it will create not only a resist, but it could actually pick up and move the paint itself. Next I'm going to take my kneaded eraser, one of my very favorite drawing tools, and I'm just going to lighten the details that I've illustrated in the butterfly itself. So I want it to serve as a guide, but I don't want it to show through the paint. And because watercolor paint is semi-transparent most of the time, I do need to make sure that I'm lightening that overall. Now I do freehand all of my butterflies, meaning I don't trace anything, and I just follow the drawing techniques that I share in my floral drawing challenge. The great thing about that challenge is that it applies to all subjects, not just flowers, but flowers are a great subject to practice on. So I just follow those techniques, and if you are interested in learning or expanding your drawing skills, which will also help your painting, I'll have that linked below. It's totally free. I do have courses as well if you're ready to get really serious about your drawing, but otherwise let's get into the painting. So now that my drawing is ready, I am going to start mixing the paint. I'm starting with a lemon yellow hue base. This is a Winsor & Newton color, and I do have a whole palette overview video coming out soon, and once that is uploaded I'll link it down below, but until then I'll just tell you what colors I'm adding. I did add a touch, the tiniest bit, of ultramarine blue to try and desaturate it, but I was instantly concerned about how the yellow was getting too dark. So instead of adding more of the blue to kind of desaturated it, desaturated it, desaturate it more, I went in with some china white. White is an excellent way with watercolor to desaturate a little bit without having to completely water down your paint so that it's super transparent, and then it like desaturates everything without it getting darker. So that's the reason that I chose to do the white, and I really I do this trick all the time. Now we'll start in with the blue. Because I used ultramarine blue to desaturate the lemon yellow, I'm going to be using that again. I'm just testing out different blues and trying to figure out which one I want, but I do believe I end up going with ultramarine blue. So that is indigo, and I decided it was a little bit too dark, but when mixed with ultramarine blue, I really got the color that I wanted. It was not too bright, and that was one thing that I really love about the indigo is it's a rich color without being too bright, but the ultramarine blue brings out some of the slightly greener undertones. And then adding in a little bit of the lemon yellow just to kind of keep things consistent. If you're new, if you've been around here for a while, you know I like a limited color palette. That will help to desaturate a little bit more, give it that green edge, and then just bring everything all together. Now I'm starting with my first pass. The first pass in painting just means the first layer, and it's a very light layer. I'm just kind of overall putting down the general hue, and I'll kind of work in some of the values. So I'll have some areas that are a little bit deeper that I'll be building up later. So I decided that I needed a little bit of that cadmium yellow, and so I added that in just to warm up everything a little bit. I felt like the green kind of cooled it off, or the green, the ultramarine blue cooled it off a little bit too much for me. I'm just making sure everything has been touched. Because this is a first pass, it's very watered down, and I'm using watercolor brushes, so thankfully it holds the pigment in there quite a bit, as well as a lot of water. So I don't have to dip back into my palette as often as I would with a more traditional or more all-purpose brush. So you'll see I'll kind of go back for some water, or add a little bit more pigment in there, but I won't have to- see, I didn't even have to go back for water. I don't have to go back as often as- so if you have kind of a standard brush, instead of specifically a watercolor brush, you'll probably have to go back for more water. And you'll see I'm using kind of the main base that I created, that's mostly the lemon yellow and the china white, but I'm adding a little bit of that more orange tone with the cadmium yellow, and into kind of some of the interior areas. That's just kind of to warm it up and add a little bit of visual interest and variety in my yellow, just so that it's more interesting. So that one is a little bit more of the lemon yellow, repeating the same thing on the other side, and then on that left side I have a lot more of the cadmium yellow. So it's much warmer, and that's just going to create some definition and some visual interest. It's very subtle, but it's something that I notice and that I look for when I'm critiquing either a student's work or looking at professional. So this is about the point where I noticed that I had covered too much in yellow, so I'm going over with just more of a standard brush. So this isn't specifically a watercolor brush, and I'm just massaging the section where I'm going to be applying the blue paint later. So just to pick that pigment up, the nice thing is this was the first pass, and so it wasn't a big deal. I just kind of had to lay some water down, allow the paint to be picked up by the water, and then pick up the colored water after that. So the way you do that, you just add the water on top. You might need to massage the paper a little bit, and then clean off your brush, dab it so it's mostly dry, and then you pick up the remaining water. And then I'm just kind of adding a little bit more of the layers, adding a little bit more detail, making sure that it's built up. The yellow color is built up where I want it to be built up, especially on those edges. The body of this butterfly also has some yellow on it, so I'm just applying that base and kind of defining where that's going to go to serve as a guide for when I add the color of the body later. So it looks like I'm going to be diving right into the body. Just that's one thing that I like to do, especially if the body is really dark. So I'm using this brown that I had mixed previously, and I'm just adding a little bit of basically a warm black to it, just to desaturate it more, get it nice and dark, and just kind of finding the value that I want it to be. Back in with my watercolor brush, I'm going to slowly build up this body. I'm using short flicks kind of on the sides just to add the texture, so this body, sometimes a butterfly's body will be very smooth. This yellow swallowtail, it's very fluffy, if you will, so it's got a lot of, I don't know if they're small feathers, or if it's fur, but whatever it is, there's a lot of fuzzy texture, and in order to capture that, I'm just doing these short little flicks, and that not only helps me to kind of define the space, it makes the contour, the outline of the paint that I'm applying, very irregular, and that gives the illusion of more of a textured surface. So there's the first pass on the body. I'm mixing up a slightly darker value for the same color just to kind of help define it a little bit more. I'm pretty happy with how everything was laid out, but I know that it needs to be darker, so I'm going in right away, just being really gutsy with it, and applying that darker value. One reason I do the body right away is because I want it to flow with everything else, and since I'm going to use more artistic prerogative, so that's kind of like cheating for artists, but basically where I'm going to decide what looks aesthetically pleasing, not necessarily what is always in my photo, but I do want it to flow with the body. So I want to make sure the body is as dark as I want it to be. It has that really nice deep value, and then everything else kind of flows with it. I realized that I forgot to make some red, so I went in, I think that was alizarin crimson, oh nope, that might have been deep scarlet. That one right there I know is deep scarlet. It looks like I went in with pretty much pure deep scarlet, and I'm applying that right to the painting, but it was a little bit too saturated, so I applied some sap green to just desaturate a little bit. So red and green are opposites on the color wheel, which allows them to, which means that when they mix in different varieties, you'll either get brown or sometimes black. So I'm just building that up, it is nice and deep on the underside of that circle, and so I'm just kind of applying that to get it where I want it to be. Now applying the first pass of the blue. So one reason I'm doing this before adding the black lines is that I can add the black lines then right over top of this color. So I want to make sure that I get the gradient established and that color in there properly, so that when I add the black, I don't have to go back in and add too much of the blue. So now that that first pass is dried, I'm going to go back in, and I'm basically using the same color that we've created for the body, and I'm going to start adding the details for the wings themselves. I usually like to start with exterior lines, partially because I will use those lines and different sections of them to determine where other parts of the wings kind of start and end. So especially when you have a butterfly like this with a lot of intricate lines and things that build off each other, starting with something that's a little more simple and go-to is a great way to kind of avoid the paranoia of the blank page and where you're just afraid to get started. Sometimes doing something that's really simple, like this first top arch, which is kind of foolproof because it just follows the contour of the wing, that's a great way to get started. And I find that usually I'm not even worried about doing the rest of them. So then it has this black contour over the top, and then it dips into these scallops along the edge of the wing, and that's one of the reasons I actually picked this butterfly. I just fell in love with that implied texture, and it ended up being a ton of fun to create. So again, just building off of this so I know that there's that thin yellow section that kind of just bleeds into the top line. And so I'm going to kind of build that up until it's right where I want it to be, and then continue to add the other sections. Like I've emphasized with all of my paintings, and I talk about all the time, it is so helpful if you're working from an actual photo. So I have a photo that's on my laptop right in front of me, and I'm looking at it all the time. So I'll actually have either the photo or a similar photo linked down below so you can use it as a reference, just so that you can see what butterfly I'm working off of, and it will help you if you're mimicking this painting as well. So again, this is a very complicated butterfly. There's a lot of different shapes and lines within it, but breaking it down, starting with something that's really easy to follow, like that interior line, and then just going one step at a time, breaking it down, and going back and forth into smaller shapes, it makes it much less overwhelming. Now one thing that I do right now is I'm going back and forth between the two sides, because they are symmetrical, but I actually ended up doing the right side in full, making some mistakes with that, which I'll show you in a moment, and then doing the left side. Now because I'm going to digitize this, I took the opportunity to kind of try two different techniques with the right and the left side, just seeing which side I liked better, because I knew that I could take the side that I liked and flip it over. Now obviously if you are not going to digitize something, I highly recommend sketching it out really well first, maybe even having a test sheet nearby, so that you're able to kind of explore different ideas and work from there. So I didn't do that because again, I know I'm digitizing it and I wasn't worried about it. Now this is where I started to get kind of lazy. I just started to, I just kind of decided that I knew what was going to happen and I wasn't working off of the reference photo, and so you'll see in just a moment here that I end up having to correct the mistakes that I made. So right here is where you can see I'm looking up at my photo and I'm like, uh oh, this is not what was supposed to happen. So I'm kind of trying to fix it. I should not have made those arches thicker because it was actually the space in between, kind of in the cavity, that should have been thicker. So I'm going back in and I am going to lighten everything a little bit. So I have my thicker brush, or my stiffer brush, so this isn't a watercolor brush, this is a small, I believe it's a four round, and I'm just taking some water and I am lightening everything. So instead of having like these thick arches, it should be thinner arches with these kind of bulbs in between. So just going back, kind of massaging it with a mostly clean brush, and there's some water on there just to kind of pick up the pigment, and then I'm taking the towel and just dabbing it. You can also use toilet tissue, so I usually have either paper towel or toilet paper on hand, but I apparently didn't have it so I was using the towel that I normally will dab my paintbrush off on. So quickly fixing that, and this is why I actually ended up doing the two sides separately, because I wanted to just see if I could save this side, but I wanted to have the other side just in case this didn't work out. And actually, I ended up liking this side better, which I didn't expect. So just kind of fixing things. I am going to kind of go back and adjust it, but I don't want to do it too quickly because then the paint might bleed some more, so I'm trying to like just go in lightly as I notice that the paint is dry and the spot that I tried to fix is dry. Let's zoom in so we can see this detail. So I'm starting on the scalloped edge at the bottom here, and I really, this is one of the reasons I picked this butterfly in particular. I just love the way that this edge looks, but I'm noticing right away with my paintbrush that there's kind of an arch, a funny arch and difference in the width as I'm applying this paint. So it's almost like it's a calligraphy nib rather than a paintbrush. And I looked at my paintbrush and sure enough, I'll show you here in just a second, one of the tips, the tip that I'm actually using right now, was bent. So I'm not really sure how that happened because I don't store my brushes in such a way that that should happen. I store them top up. So see how that was kind of flat and bent? So I ended up switching brushes. So this is a, it's not a watercolor brush, it's just kind of a standard brush. So it's a little stiffer, which allows, means it doesn't hold as much water. So I'm able to put thicker pigment down much faster, which for me for these lines is ideal. Where something like applying the first wash or the blue area where I want there to be some opacity there, that is not ideal. So I would use a watercolor brush for that. Now specifically brushes, I have mentioned this before, but just to reiterate, I feel like if you're just starting out in watercolor, I actually recommend just getting kind of some standard paint brushes rather than watercolor specific paint brushes. Just because it's, because they hold more water, it can be harder to control. And when you get more used to even just being able to sense when, as you're putting the paint down, there's too much water or there's not enough water or something like that, that will come with practice. But it's a lot harder when you're holding a loaded brush. So if you're just starting with watercolor, like this is one of your first paintings, don't worry about going out and buying super high quality brushes right away. I actually think it helps you to get just a feel for the media itself by using more of a standard brush. So with these beautiful lines, I of course could have gone through with a pen rather than with this watercolor. Actually probably would have been faster, but I like the variation in the opacity. So you can see the top row of arches is a little bit lighter than the lower row, and I like that variety. That's something that's awesome with watercolor. You do have to be okay with the fact that things are not perfect, but that's just the nature of watercolor and that's why I love it so much. There's not a real rhyme or reason why I did these lines in this specific order. It was just the way my eye was traveling across my reference photo. So as I looked at each line and saw where it went, I would connect it to other lines that I found. It was kind of, it's more like hide and seek or following a map than necessarily making sure that I'm drawing everything super realistically. So I just kind of follow it with my eyes and then have my paintbrush follow my eyes. Now another thing that I love about this butterfly is the subtle gradient in here. So I'm adding it right now. This is a very light wash of kind of the black that we've been using. So I just mostly water just a little bit of that pigment on there and I applied it to this intersection and I'm just using a mostly dry brush to pick up the excess. And that will just kind of help with the gradient effect that I'm going for. So I'm doing the same thing here, mostly water with some of that black, spreading it out, then tapping my brush either in a little bit more pigment or this time I tapped it on my towel so that it's mostly dry. And I'm using that along the edge that I want it to fade and allowing it to just kind of soften. So that is mostly how I create a seamless gradient. So you can with watercolor create a gradient that is more blocky and that is definitely a technique but I prefer, probably because my background is in colored pencils, I really want a seamless transition. So I apply a lot of color, well a little bit of color with a lot of water and then I go back with a mostly dry brush that I've tapped off and every time I go back I'm either tapping off or getting more pigment. So this time I went back to get more pigment. Now I'm going to tap off and just allow that to fade. Just kind of softening the edges. So more pigment, tap it off, maybe get a little bit more water. Nope, this is more pigment again. So I'm going to let that dry and then you'll see I'll kind of go back between the two because I'm going to let one dry, see how it fades, and if I don't like the gradient then I'll kind of fix it. So deepening that blue up now you can see that the first pass wasn't quite as intense as I wanted it to be which is very very normal for watercolor. So apply that now so that it has a chance to fade. I found that at least with the reference photo that I was using it was more constant. The blue color was more concentrated toward the top of this section so there's kind of same thing. I'm adding a lot more pigment and then I'm going to go back and kind of blend it out. I really want those edges to be soft. There's a lot of harsh edges with you know the lines and the just the natural texture of the butterfly. So with kind of these gradients I want to really emphasize how soft they are and delicate. I feel like it's a nice balance. A feminine aspect and a masculine aspect. So now I'm just continuing to deepen up that intersection and I'll start mapping out the rest of the lines for that upper right hand corner. So you can see I'm adding that pigment going back in with a full brush of water and just kind of helping to blend everything out. So I'm going to just soften those edges with that water. Tap off any excess and continue to blend. So I'll continue to build up like that color but to keep the edges soft I go back with a clean mostly dry brush and just kind of buff the edges and you'll see that I continue to do that really throughout this butterfly series. It kind of becomes a common theme but I think it's most obvious and most consistent with this butterfly. So because I didn't want these two colors to bleed into each other at all I really wanted to keep the saturation of that red. I just kept that section blank and so that I knew I could fill it in later. All right now we're already working on the other side. I did take a break and went on Instagram live just to share this technique that I just shared with you. I do that once in a while where I'll just share like a quick tidbit or something that I'm working on on Instagram live so if you're interested in that you can join me over there. But there's been a break and so I'm kind of starting in with something that's really simple. Just kind of what I did on the left hand side or on the right hand side and making sure that it goes onto the left hand side. But because we already did this and I kind of gave you some tips for that I'm going to speed this up for the sake of respecting your time and if you need a little bit more help go ahead and go back and watch when I did it on the right hand side. Now if you're following along with this side you might notice that I'm doing everything in a different order and that's totally fine. That's another great thing about watercolor is you don't necessarily have to do everything in the same order as you did before especially because there is a learning curve so you might learn you know like oh you need these colors to layer better or you want things to go a different way or you want to try something different and that's another great thing about not only butterflies but being able to work in art. So now I'm going to slow us down again a little bit now that we're working on the upper right hand side. So just like on the lower side I'm just going piece by piece and I'm mapping everything out breaking it up into smaller shapes. The great thing about this is that there's a lot of triangles and rectangular shapes and even though they're irregular that actually just adds to the beauty of the butterfly as a whole and adds some visual interest. It also gives you a little bit of a safety so if something doesn't look exactly like the photo it's okay because nobody's gonna know it's a butterfly. So same technique I'm blending that in because I really want that gradient to be nice and smooth. Softening that edge a little bit so adding a little bit more pigment going in with a wet brush and just softening it. So it ends up taking a lot of back and forth if your paper holds water really well. It doesn't take quite as long but this paper tends to dry pretty quickly which is something that I like it holds the paper really well but it doesn't have a super long dry time. But if you're one of those that you like arches or something with a slower dry time dry down time then you might have a little bit more play time with this where I usually have to add quite a bit more water. You'll see those frays on my brush because this is a pretty cheap brush I'm actually just going to cut them off. So first I just pull them off to the side so that they're kind of curled out of the way just like if you have a ribbon and you're going to curl it with a pair of scissors. I'm just going to curl them out of the way and then later when I have a free moment I'll cut them off. Now this section it is really important to have your reference photo handy. Even though I was working off my reference photo I felt and my sketch that I had down below I kind of felt like I got lost at some points and struggled to keep everything as consistent and realistic as I was hoping. But like I said the great thing about doing butterflies or something kind of more organic like this is that no one's going to notice unless they're a butterfly expert they might notice that something's off but in general no one's going to notice and they're going to still admire the beautiful technique and the beautiful butterfly that you are capturing rather than necessarily noticing that your lines are off. That's something that with figure drawing which I also love is very tricky because everybody knows if you messed up somebody's face right? Now unfortunately I lost some of the footage that I have but I'm going to be repeating the same thing on the upper left hand side as well so we'll be able to watch that and kind of follow along. I do try I come from the left to the right which is what I did on the other side but instead of it being center moving out I'm starting from the outside and moving towards the center of the butterfly. This is just to try something different I'm also right-handed so it's more natural for me to work left to right but like I said I wasn't initially happy with the right hand side of the butterfly and so I wanted to try something different and just see if I could get it the way that I wanted to be and because I was so unhappy I knew I wanted to make sure that I had everything sketched out. So I made sure I sketched out that first section the part that I was super unhappy with first and then started working on the paint. It's me checking back at my reference photo making sure that I'm following along correctly and I'm not getting lost. So by now you can see as I'm adding each arch and kind of the larger section of each arch it's almost like a diamond in between each one I'm pulling a section out because that is where we're going to build our next row if you will. So just kind of working in a different way I noticed that each arch kind of turned into a diamond that had a longer section falling off of it and building off of it not falling off so that's the method I decided to take this time around. And adding the second layer of arches to my already protruding kind of little stems there. So technical I'm sure you are learning so much but this is just the technique that I decided to try this time around. I found it was just a little bit easier and even though I ended up not liking the results as well it was a little easier to follow and it was harder to get lost because I wasn't trying to figure out where the arches should go because it was already mapped out for me. So and this is actually where I ended up feeling like I didn't love the way it went. I made that section too large and so that black section that I just laid down it was just way too large. I should have gone a little bit slower but I guess I was feeling really confident and gutsy and so I just went for it and then started to build off of that there. Well as I'm going I'm applying more color just so it's a little bit more opaque. I have my first pass down just to kind of map things out but as I'm going along as the first pass is drying I'm just applying a little bit more pigment so that that stands out a little bit better. So made a mistake there. A little bit of water. There's the toilet paper and it's gone. So if you catch it quickly it's not a huge deal. If you don't catch it quickly it's a bigger deal. So this is where I'm noticing I have run out of room to create all of the shapes that I need to fit in here. So I should have made that section smaller but we make it work. I still think that both sides ended up looking really good. I just ended up preferring the right side which is initially the side I thought I wouldn't like. So you can see this section right here. So on the left hand side the top section is just very large where on the right hand side that that divide that I just made both sections are a similar size. So I don't know I just I'm not sure really what happened. Maybe it was a rough nap time but it didn't work out quite the way I wanted it to but that's okay. So again because I'm digitizing I can go a little bit faster and be a little bit more gutsy with it and just try different things. If you're just learning watercolor just assume that this paper is going to be thrown away and try things until you're able to figure it out. Then when you are doing final pieces I don't recommend filming them because that adds another level of stress but you know just like once you are able to have the confidence you are working on a final piece then you can kind of focus on that a little bit more. Now here I'm starting to build up the pigment so I have all the black lines in but I'm noticing that my yellow is not quite as saturated as I want it to be which again for watercolor very normal the color lightens up quite a bit. So I'm just adding a wash of the lemon yellow hue over top of everything so I don't even think it was the color I initially mixed up I think it's pure lemon yellow hue just to brighten everything up a little bit. And you'll notice I'm doing flicking motions this will just kind of mimic the texture on the wings themselves. I did this as well with our monarch video and if you haven't seen that I'll have that link down below so it's kind of the first one in this butterfly series that I'm creating and it just kind of helped to brighten everything without necessarily adding too much weight and also with those little flicks I'm able to create a little bit of dimension and just a little bit more visual interest than you would normally see. So I ended up really loving it. So being really careful not to blend too much of the black but to lighten up the areas underneath and just add some brightness in those gradients. My brush does not have a lot of water on it so you can see the blue handle means that I'm using again my standard brush not necessarily a watercolor brush and just really creating that dimension without adding a lot of water. So if you have too much water on your brush that will cause the black to bleed. I'm just adding a few finishing touches as I see fit. But there she is our beautiful butterfly! What do you think? I still like the right side better but do you like the left side better? What are you thinking of our butterfly series? I'm thinking I might actually do a bumblebee next but of course we will go back to flowers soon. If you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up or leave me a comment down below and let me know what you'd like to see next and until next time happy painting!