MIMOSA BRANCH: Step by Step Watercolor Tutorial

Hi guys, this is Nia, and today I will be painting a yellow mimosa branch, which was a request by Operation D.I.P. These mimosa flowers are super cute and simple. They're basically a bunch of little yellow balls. So before we begin, let's just start by drawing it out first, like usual, to help you visualize them if you decide to paint along. I'm going to start with the flowers. The flowers are basically yellow balls bunched up together, and to depict this, I like to start by drawing a cluster of circles for the flowers, with the tip getting more sparse and where the flowers are growing from a little bit more dense. I like to draw them as separate circles in the beginning, then go over it again with the circles behind it, so there's a sense of depth within the composition, then finishing off with thin branches in some of the visible areas. It's up to you how dense or sparse you want to create these clusters, but it'll change the look slightly, and I also like to personally add more flowers along the top and the bottom, which are slightly out of place to give it more of a flowy composition. Another way of approaching this is to also just draw the clusters straight away, one flower at a time with the branches at same time, which I find easier to draw, but when we paint later on, I think that this will be too much of a hassle to switch colors constantly, which is why I prefer the previous method to draw the flower together first. I think that the most important part to bring some depth in the painting is by layering on the circles to give it a fuller look, but you can also draw them sparsely, but if you do, I would suggest to add some overlapping of circles. If not, the flowers might look a little bit flat. For the leaves, I like to begin by drawing the structure, which is a shape of a leaf vein and midrib without the leaf shape itself. This is quite large, and each one of the vein is actually a thin branch, which holds tiny leaves on either sides, in which I'm just going to paint them as single strokes. However, if it suits your composition more, you can also paint and draw them as individual branches with leaves to act as fillers. As for the composition, I like to start by drawing a main branch, and for the branches, I make sure that there are no straight lines. I like to make them look broken and separated to create a natural branch look. I like to start with a few main branches, then you can start to figure out how you would like to place the clusters of flowers and also the leaves, but as a rough sketch, you don't have to draw individual flowers. Instead, just draw a whole bunch together as ovals for you to get the overall look for the composition. So here are the colors that I will be using. The first color is lemon yellow, permanent yellow deep, cadmium orange, mineral violet, burnt umber, sap green, and also viridian. So obviously for the flowers, I'm going to be using those warm colors, which is the yellows, orange, and also I'm going to mix in some mineral violet and brown to get the different tones, and I'm also going to mix in the yellows with the browns and purples for the branches. As for the I'm going to be using sap green, viridian, mixed with the yellows or with the purples and browns to get different types of tones too, and you can adjust this to your preference. Here are the greens that I will be using. I decided to create two different tones of greens for the flowers. I used two main mixtures and another two main mixtures for the branches, but I also added small amounts of different colors too. So now let's get to painting. I'm going to approach this differently and I'm going to start by mixing a bit of lemon yellow with a bit of burnt umber, and I'm going to use a thin consistency to start painting the branch. I'm painting this slightly so I can keep building up on the intensity and texture later on. And once I've painted the main branch with smaller ones coming out, I use the lighter yellow color that I have which is the lemon yellow to start painting small clusters of the yellow circles. I try to paint a small amount first with a bit of space in between so there's a clear separation between each flower, and I also want to make sure that the clusters are quite clear at this point so I have a mapped out branch that I can visualize to work with. I want to paint this with a medium consistency since the lemon yellow is quite light in color, so I try to make it clear for me to see each shape. We're going to keep building on the clusters to make it look fuller, so I try to avoid crowding it too much at this point. Once I have the lemon yellow color down, I want to start building on a bit of depth for the clusters, so here I mixed in a little bit of permanent yellow deep to the lemon yellow to create a deeper yellow color, and I'm going to paint some parts or the sides of the lemon yellow circles so it doesn't look too flat anymore, but I can further build this up later on, so I'm just going to do this very roughly for some of the circles. Then I also want to map out some of the leaves, so I added the sap green to the yellow mix that I had before, and I'm going to paint the leaves very lightly at this point, because again, I only want to map it out, so this is sort of like a rough sketch, but using the watercolor straight away, so if I were to make any mistakes, the strokes that I made here would be subtle enough to cover up, and I'm just going to place them in between the clusters to balance out the composition. The way I paint the leaves out are exactly the same as how I've drawn them out previously, because the leaves are so small, I try to make the strokes very light and thin, and I also try to vary the angles of the leaves to make it nice and flowy and suit the rest of the composition. You'll see here that I've painted the leaves over the flowers. I just did this for a bit of variation. If you wish to do the same, I would suggest to not paint too many like this, just limit the leaves placed over the flowers as it might change the focal point of the painting. Once I've placed the leaves, now I'm able to see a rough composition of the branch and see if the weight of certain areas is as heavy or as light as I want them to be. So at this point, I like to adjust by adding more flowers, maybe at the tips of the clusters to make the tips look more delicate than the back of the branches. Now, getting back to building the clusters of the flowers again, I want to build up on the depth of the composition, so I want to add the flowers behind the ones that I've already painted here. And for that, I mixed in Permanent Yellow Deep and also a very tiny bit of Burnt Umber, and I'm going to paint circles behind the light colored flowers so they start to look like proper clusters. And the important point for this is for the Lemon Yellow color to stand out against the darker yellowy orange color, and this will start to add depth to the painting so it doesn't look like flat circles randomly placed on a branch. I think I have the very basic layout of the branch here, including an idea of the weight of the painting, so I'm going to continue on by adding some delicate branches which could connect the flowers and the leaves together. And to paint the branch, I'm going to mix in Burnt Umber, Lemon Yellow, and Cadmium Orange with a bit of Mineral Violet. I try to keep the lines nice and thin to keep everything delicate, especially at tips of the branches. After I've drawn some of the connecting branches, that's where I felt like some areas are looking a bit empty, so I can further add more flowers in those empty spaces to add a bit of density in some areas. Now I feel like I can add a bit of volume to the flowers now that I have painted most of them. You can always go back to it to fill in some more empty spaces whenever you need to, but here I felt like I've painted a fair bit of flowers that I can work with. So at this point, to add volume, I'm just going to use some Permanent Yellow Deep. So it's still lighter than the flowers that are placed at the back, and I'm going to use this color to line some of the Lemon Yellow flowers I painted at the beginning. The rough outline will give a bit of volume to each of the flower as the slightly darker color will help that part of the shape to recede back, but you can also change up the placement of the outline or shadow slightly so not every flower looks the exact same. And for some, I'm also going to soften the edges of the outline so the shadows look more organic. Here you will start to see the shapes evolve to look more three-dimensional instead of everything looking completely flat. In some cases, if I want to darken certain parts, I also add a touch of Cadmium Orange to further deepen the yellow color, and I just alternate between the two. However, in the case of the darker flowers, you can also create a darker version of the color and do the same to create the three-dimensional effect, just so it can be even all throughout. And I'm just going to continue on with this until I start seeing some of the form within the painting. Once I'm happy and I can start to see the overall form of the painting, I want to move on to the next step, which is to paint the leaves, since it's still very light at the moment. For the leaves, I'm going to use a mix of Viridian and Sap Green mixed with the yellow from before, and I want a fairly medium to thick consistency so the lines can be nice and clear. And I want to also create a second tone of green so I can alternate between the two colors, which can help prevent the leaves from looking completely flat. And for the second tone, I want to create more of a muted yellow-green, so I mixed in Lemon Yellow, Sap Green, and Burnt Umber together, and I also switched to my size zero brush here so I can create fine lines for the leaves instead of it looking too bulky. For some of the leaves, I also didn't paint the midrib, but went to paint the leaves on both sides straight away to make the leaves look more flowy. I find that this trick lessens the bulk or the weight of the leaves when you're trying to paint something quite delicate. Notice that I also didn't paint over the previous layer in complete accuracy because I want to fix certain positions slightly to suit the current composition of the flowers, and I'm just going to do this for all of the leaves until I finish painting them over. Then I like to also use a thicker consistency to intensify the color if I see that some of the leaves are drying a little bit too light. So for the moment, I'm just going to continue to do the rest of the leaves before that I already have on my palette to create a dark brown color, and use this to paint the main branch at the top. When I paint this, I want to make sure that the paint is quite thick, and I'm going to apply it using short strokes to create a subtle dark texture for the branch. And while painting this, I'm also intentionally painting some parts of the branch darker than the rest, so the texture becomes more visible. And I'm just going to use the rest of this color to further connect some of the mimosa flowers, as well as darkening the thicker branches of the flowers and the leaves. As a tip, I'd suggest to use a medium to thick consistency with little water to make the lines easier to control, because the more water you have on your brush, the faster the paint will flow out of the brush, making the lines look thicker. After the main branch is dry, I try to build on the texture by darkening some areas. And for this, I use the same mixture, but with a bit more Burnt Umber and Mineral Violet, so I can have a deeper brown color. And I'm also going to apply this the same way as before, by making small strokes. But this time, I also want to leave out quite a bit of negative space, so there's a variety of browns on the branch, making the texture more visible. Now that I have all of the elements down, I'm just going to do some final touches, like intensifying the colors of the flowers. So for some areas, I'm going to add a glaze of a medium consistency Lemon Yellow, and some areas with a touch of Cadmium Orange, for either a glaze or just shadow areas to separate the flowers, and turn them into individual balls. As final touch-ups, I would imagine that some of the branch would be too fine to be visible, so as an artistic license, I like to add some smaller flowers, which seem to just be floating on the sides. I find that this makes the composition feel more delicate, as the flowers are cascading down the thin branches. Then I just fill in certain areas with darker flowers, to give a fuller effect in areas I feel needs a bit more weight, to balance out the whole composition. So that's basically it for my painting. Just add any additional final touch-ups according to your current stage of your painting, and once you're happy with the balance of the overall composition, then it's complete. This is the final painting. This was such a fun suggestion. I didn't even know of these Mimosa flowers before. They look so fun and fresh, and I really enjoyed painting this one. Like usual, list of supplies, as well as my social media links, are in the description box, if you're still here. Thank you so much for watching till the end, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye!