EASY Watercolor Tutorial: Forest Ferns

Hey guys, this is Nia. Welcome back to my channel. Today I will be showing you guys how to paint fern leaves, so let's get right into it. Fern leaves are basically like a large leaf made out of tiny little ones. There are so many different types, so let's just draw out a few. Once you understand the basic structure, you can mix and match different shapes and leaves to make your own fern. There is always one main stem with the leaves growing out from the sides. However, those can also be made out of tinier leaves or longer leaves. I'm not too sure about the technical terms, but hopefully you guys will understand what I mean through these drawings. As you can see here, I'm drawing smaller leaves on top and getting larger as I reach the bottom. This is not the only way, you can change the slightest things to the leaves. Like in this next one, I'm going to show you I'm making the leaves more of a squiggly shape instead. And with that small change in the leaves, even without tweaking the basic structure of what we've previously drawn, you're already creating a different type of fern. In this next one, I'm going to draw the leaves with the same size and length and see that we've also created something new. Now that you have an idea of the fern's structure, let's get to the silhouette, which means the main outer shape of the fern itself. The fern with the same type of leaves can also be varied from the silhouette. It can be long and thin or wide with more of a triangular shape. Give it a go and try to make your own silhouettes. Think of the silhouettes themselves as giant leaf shapes. And try to not overthink it, just draw and see what works. Once you're done making a few silhouettes of your own, try filling it out with the structure of the fern. As you can see here, after I've made the silhouette, I'm first filling the shape up with something that looks like leaf veins. This will help guide you when you paint the leaves. Those veins can also contain tinier leaves which grows all around it. Try to make as many as you want until you are comfortable with drawing out the structures. Keep drawing and practicing until you're comfortable with this, and once you're comfortable, let's break it down even more and take a look at those individual veins. Think of this as smaller leaves within larger leaves. You can either draw a big leaf of the vein itself, like we've previously made in the beginning, or even change the leaves to look more like long clouds like this one. When each shape is connected, it will make one big structure instead of individual leaves. If you'd like to make smaller individual leaves, you can draw either eye shapes or rounded leaves around the vein. Your leaves can also be varied from rounded, to sharp, to thin, to wide. If you're having problems thinking of leaf shapes, I also have a tutorial on this and I'll link it down in the description box and at the end of this video. Let's get to the colors. For this painting, I've created the colors using four main ones, which are yellow green, permanent green deep, lemon yellow, and cadmium red. Try mixing with only this limited palette, and see what sorts of green or even browns you can get from this. Depending on the ratio, you can create different tones and different temperatures. I personally like a natural, more muted green, so I used yellow green with lemon yellow and a little bit of cadmium red to tone it down. If you want a brighter green, you can skip the cadmium red altogether and use only yellow green and lemon yellow. If you want to create browns for the stem, you can use the same mixture but adding a bit more red. Give it a go and see what sort of colors you can make from this and which ones you prefer to use for the final painting. Let's try to apply the paint within the structures that we went through so far. You can make a big silhouette, anything that you want. You can choose the form that you're most comfortable with. Make sure that the silhouette is large enough so you can paint on the leaves within the form that you've drawn out. Apply the paint to the spine in the middle of the silhouette. This can be the same color as the leaves or it can also be brown. Then mix the green color that you like. Then try painting the leaves within the silhouette. You can make standard leaves but I'm showing you wavy ones by dragging my brush and waving it around slowly. Then as you come to the end of the leaf, slowly take the pressure off to create a nice tip. Next, I'm going to show you different ways on making the leaves on the veins. This is a larger version but on my final painting, these are going to be much smaller. So I suggest using a fine tip brush for the details if you're still not used to brush control. On this one, I'm just painting rough strokes around the sides with little space around. Not caring too much about how neat it is as long as they're pointing slightly up and not completely horizontal. Also, if you leave out some white, don't worry about filling it up because those small negative spaces give your painting a lighter touch rather than a bulky flat shape. On the next one, I'm going to do the same thing but this time I'm making individual leaves by making each stroke more sparse. Here, I'm just showing you two examples but feel free to experiment and see how many types of leaves you can make with different brush strokes. So let's get to painting the ferns. Here, I will be showing you seven different types of ferns but there are so many varieties you can make. Feel free to mix and match to your liking. The first fern is the simplest in my opinion. You just start by making a fine line for the stem then painting leaves evenly sized around the sides. If you accidentally start your leaf too far from the stem try to keep the same size but extending the end to a very fine tip to reach the stem. This creates a delicate feel to the painting. For the second one, I'm going to make the exact same thing but slightly changing the shape of the leaf from something more wide to thinner and longer leaves. See how even you can make the leaves as practice. Also, when you paint longer leaves don't get tricked into making horizontal lines. Still keep the direction of the leaf pointing slightly up to give it better looking structure. For the third one, I'm going to change the silhouette by making it more triangular in shape and I'm also going to make the leaf slightly wavy the same as the previous one that we've practiced before. The next four ferns are slightly different. I'm going to make ones with smaller leaves on each vein. This requires quite a bit of brush control but with a bit of practice, it's really doable. Like any other fern, I start with the stem. I then start making the veins one by one and doing fine rough strokes for the leaves. Another way of doing this, which is my favorite way is to paint the veins first on the overall fern then painting the leaves after. This gives you a better view of the overall silhouette and structure of the fern. Don't worry too much about making the veins look too straight. In fact, if they're a little bit wonky it actually gives off a different charm of its own. For this one, I'm doing one with the same silhouette, the same veins but this time I'm going to change the leaves slightly by making it a little bit more rounded and further apart. You will see what I mean when I say the slightest change will give you a totally different type of fern. For the last two ferns, I'm going to use similar characteristics as the ones that we've just previously painted but this time I'm going to change the overall silhouette by making it slightly longer and thinner. Those are the ferns. I'll leave you guys right to it. Feel free to paint along with this and I'll see you at the end of the video. And we're finally close to finishing the last fern. You can include these as elements in your paintings. Put them in a bouquet that you've painted or as a design element to an invitation. You can even create a fern pattern out of these. This was definitely a longer video than what I'm used to but I hope you guys enjoyed it and found this tutorial useful. If you guys give this a go, please let me know how you go by tagging me on Instagram at IG underscore nyanyany. I'd love to see what you guys have created. Thank you so much for watching to the very end of the video and I'll see you at the next one.