Pansy Flower: Watercolor Tutorial

Hi guys, this is Nia and today I will be painting pansies. A couple of months back I went to Singapore and I went to Marina Bay Sands to see all the flowers or the flora attractions and one of the flowers that captured my attention are these pansies. So today I'm going to break it down for you so you can follow along. Because there are a few steps to this painting, I will only be painting one flower after this but I'll do a bunch of three flowers and budding flowers as a In any flower drawing or painting you want to make sure that each petal looks organic or natural which means it shouldn't have any hard edges, neither should it look boxy. So I like to always draw a circular shape to guide me as I draw my petals. This flower is shaped quite weirdly in a sense that not all of the petals look the same. So I like to first start off with the petals on either side which are a normal shape and I continue on to draw the one at the bottom which is a heart shape and then I finished off with two more petals at the top overlapping each other. You can draw this as many times as you want until you're comfortable with it and after a while you can also try to draw it out without the circular guide while still being able to keep the shape nice and natural without it looking boxy. I'm not going to go too overboard with the angles here because these flowers look best when they are facing forward in my opinion but you can shift the center slightly and maybe also create small folds to suggest that the flower is facing a certain direction. And then to draw the center of the flower I just draw a mini version of the petal shapes and then for this one I'm going to finish it off with some veins from the center going outwards. There are a lot of different types of pansy flowers but considering this is the one that captured my attention when I saw them this is the one that I'm going to draw and paint later on. Next I'm going to go over the budding flowers and for this you can either draw an oval shape or an eye shape whichever type of budding flowers you'd like to create. I personally like mine to sort of be like a flame with a little bit of the petal sticking out and then finishing off with the leaves and also the stem at the bottom of the budding flowers. And for the leaves I want to just create a basic leaf shape but besides I'm going to create it with curvy lines and also with the veins or the midrib of the leaves. I'm just going to keep this very simple so it doesn't take away from the focal point of the flowers itself. I'm going to go over the colors now and for this painting I want my pansies to be purple mostly but there are a lot of different color variations that you can also come up with so I'm just going to list down the colors that I'm going to use and show you how I apply it later on in the painting. For this painting the colors that I'm going to be using for the flowers are Lemon Yellow, Permanent Yellow Deep, Cobalt Violet Light, Mineral Violet, Quin Red and this one is by Daniel Smith and Ultramarine Violet by M. Graham. The rest of the colors I'm going to be using for my Holbein set and for the leaves I'm going to be using Olive Green and Hansa Yellow with also a little bit of the Ultramarine Violet to deepen or darken the color. You can also use a little bit of white gouache to mix it with some of your colors if you want to make it a little bit more pastel in terms of the tonal value. You can also use the white gouache in case you made any mistakes in certain parts of the painting that is already a little bit too dark. As you've probably noticed I've been drawing this flower and before I paint I always like to draw out or doodle out roughly the composition that I want. There are several ways you can go about this but for this one I'm just going to stick with the simplest one which is the first one that I drew out because it does take a while. There are a few steps in order for you to finish this painting but I'm also going to separate another video where it will be formatted as more of a paint with me video where I do a little bit more of complicated composition which is this one that I'm drawing right now with three of the pansies looking forward and also embellished with more of the leaves and also some flower buds. You can draw more than what I have here but I'm quite happy with these ones so I'm just going to move on to the painting right after this but as I mentioned you can really experiment with how you want the composition to be like. I'm going to get my colors ready now and the first color that I'm going to be using is the cobalt violet light so I'm just going to prepare it on my palette. I'm going to be painting the first composition that I made which has one flower to keep it nice and simple so I want this color to be very light to begin with so I can sort of map out the petals and the basic shape of the flower. I'm using sort of a medium-sized brush this is a size 14 by Reeves and I'm just going to paint loosely here as I mentioned this is just mapping out the basic shapes and I'm using a lot of water because I don't want this to be too dark so you can still go over them if you make any mistakes. I'm only drawing the outline and I'm keeping the lines quite thick and also a little bit frilly and once I've got the outline of the bottom part and the sides of the pansies I use more water to reactivate the paint that I already have on paper to make it even lighter and coat the inside of the outline. So at this point the center of the pansy should be lighter than the outline of the pansy and for the top petals because I want them quite dark I'm just going to paint them with the remaining paint that I have on my palette using a curvy vertical stroke that goes from the top to bottom so I have a little bit of streaky texture from the brush. What I'm drawing here is the movement that I make with my brush as I paint the outline of the pansy and that's to create small curvy lines to give a frilly effect to the sides of the petals and give it more of a light and delicate feel. Next I'm going to create a pastel yellow color and for that I use the white gouache and also a little bit of the lemon yellow to keep the yellow nice and light and I use a lot of water again for this because I just want to overlay lightly on top of what we've painted before because the sides of the petals are a bit darker and the inside is lighter you're going to see more of the yellow on the inside of the petals instead of the outside. I'm going to accentuate this more by layering a bit more of the cobalt violet light to outline the petals. I'm still keeping this nice and light though so I don't overpower the painting and I'm going to build the layers slowly because I want the tonal value of these petals to stay very light compared to the petals at the top. After I place the purple I cleaned and dry my brush and I use a slight dry brush technique and I pulled the purple inwards so it creates a little bit of texture from the dry brush. I'm quite happy with the base color of the flower petals now and I moved on to the center of the flower and I took a thick consistency of permanent yellow deep and just placed it in the middle and after I've placed down the yellow I use a mixture of mineral violet and quinred and I use quite a thick consistency of this to continue on to paint from where I placed the yellow before and I'm just going to continue on from the wet yellow paint so it has a slightly smooth transition between the two colors. I'm also going to place the same color on the side petals too and after I've placed them down I cleaned my brush and I make sure there's no excess paint and I use a touch of clean water to reactivate some of the paint that I already have put down on paper to create a smoother transition between the dark purple and the base color of the flower petals. For the top petals I want to give a richer and darker purple so for this I use the mineral violet straight up and I use a thick consistency of this color and I like to start near the center of the flower and then I cleaned and dried my brush slightly again and I paint from upwards down to reactivate the paint that I already have down. As you can see there's a slight streakiness to the paint and that is totally fine because I do want a slight bit of texture for these petals. Because I have spread the initial paint before as you can see the petal is looking a little bit too light at this point so I'm going to build it up again and use the same color and I'm going to add a thick consistency of it to darken the value of these petals. After placing down the darker tones now the base color of the petal is looking a little bit washed out so I'm going to add more the cobalt violet light again to balance out the whole painting and I'm going to use the same dry brush pulling technique as before. As you can probably tell by now I like to work on light layers so I can build up slowly to balance the whole painting instead of accidentally making too dark of a value and it's a little bit harder to take off the paint instead of adding it so work slowly and add thin layers one at a time so you can build up the colors at the right places. I'm going to go back to the top petals again and this time I want to add a cooler purple by mixing mineral violet and ultramarine violet for the center of these top petals so you can see a slight shift in temperature between the purples and this will create more of an interesting transition. Here I cleaned and dry my brush again and this is how I pulled the paint before to create the streaky texture. Now I think I'm ready to paint the stem and for this I used a mix of olive green and ultramarine violet and I changed to my size zero brush so I can create an even thin line for the stem of the flower. I'm going to add the budding flower and for that I'm going to add just a bit of quinoa to the purple that I already had on my palette and I switched to the bigger brush that I used before and I just paint an eye shape with a curvy shape on its side to depict the budding flower and I continued on with a cooler purple for the bottom of the flower bud. To connect the flower bud and the stem I added a touch of pansy yellow to the green that I initially had on my palette and I continued to paint the leafy area at the bottom of the flower bud and then I continue with the same dark green color that I used before for the stem. For the leaf I'm going to use the lighter green color from before and I start by painting a basic leaf shape first and I added curvy lines on the side while the paint is still wet so it becomes a flat surface for the light green leaf and I'm going to do a few leaves in different sizes. Another way of painting the leaf is also by drawing the center of the leaf first then continuing with diagonal lines going towards the center of the leaf on both sides and this is also an easier way for you to get some white areas for the leaf at the right places. After I'm done with the base color of the leaves I'm going to add another layer to the leaf by mixing in some ultramarine violet to the green mix to darken it again and I'm going to layer on a bit more detail while still leaving some of the base green color so the color doesn't look too flat. It's a good idea to color it according to the direction of the leaf veins so like before it's easier to leave negative spaces at the right area for the leaf. For this particular painting I'm going to create a slightly more detailed version of the leaf because there's only one flower and I feel like a more detailed leaf would suit it but depending on your composition or your style you can also paint it more loosely with less layers if you would like to. For the paint with me that I'm going to upload next week because I'm going to be painting three flowers and I feel like the leaf is just going to be a sporting element I ended up not putting too much detail on it because I don't want it to take away from the flowers so you can adjust how much detail you want to incorporate according to your own composition and taste. Here I just keep adding a thicker consistency of the darker green and I switch to my small brush again so I can get in smaller places and layer on darker values to add deeper shadows in some areas of the leaf. We're going to move on to the details of the flower petals now and for this I'm going to use a thick consistency of any purple you have. You can use the cooler purple or the warmer one and for this I'm just going to use a slight dry brush technique because what I find is that if you use too much water and the paint glides too easily the lines might not look as delicate so I'm going to paint this one very carefully and I don't want to create straight lines. You can make them slightly curvy and also some of it branching out in certain areas so the lines can fill the petals. I want these lines to also be slightly visible on top of the darker area for the bottom and side petals so if these lines are disappearing I'm just going to add another layer only on that area where you couldn't really see it and I'm just going to continue on with the lines using a thicker consistency of the color to make it more visible. I'm also going to add some lines for the top petals and because the purple here is already quite dark I'm going to use an even darker purple by mixing in more ultramarine violet to the purple mix and I'm going to paint the lines just like before so you can see a slight streakiness to the top petals. At this point we're basically done but I just wanted to add a slight accent to the painting so I decided to add a small butterfly and come to think about it it's actually a little bit too small I would actually prefer it to be a bit larger but I used the permanent yellow deep to paint the butterfly wings since I thought that it'll complement the purple flowers. I also added some black details using a thick mixture of ultramarine violet and a little bit of olive green for the body and the details for the wings. And lastly I used the same yellow color to paint a trail for the butterfly and I do this by just painting small dots and distributing it randomly near the butterfly. So that's basically the completed painting. This is probably my favorite flower to paint so far. I really love the colors and the unique shape of the flower and I hope you guys enjoy painting this one too. As a reminder I will also be painting a different paint along to this flower with a different composition next week so if you would like to paint along or paint a different version of this flower don't forget to check the video next week. If you're still here thank you so much for watching till the end. I hope you guys learned something new and I'll see you at the next one. Bye!