Paint daisies with watercolors: Beginner friendly

Hi everyone, this is Nya and today we're going to be painting these 18 white daisies and for this video I'm going to make sure that it's a bit more comprehensive for true beginners and I'm going to approach it the same way as how I used to create tutorials back in the day because I feel that the subject matter is simple enough for me to apply to this lower breakdown. I'm going to start by drawing out the daisy and I'm just going to draw them facing forward which means there are no foreshortened petals. So I like to start from the center and then I like to just radially draw on the petals. You can make the ends pointy or you can make them rounded like this, it just depends on the style of daisies or the type of daisy that you're going to paint. You'll also see me leaving a little bit of gap in between the petals and the center. This is quite essential because generally when you're new to watercolors we tend to overestimate where we place the brush and sometimes we generally place it too close to where we want it to land and I like to give a little bit of space in case that happens because if all the petals touch the center a little bit too close to each other it might look too chunky whereas if you leave a little bit of space then there's a bit more air to the painting which makes the flowers look a little bit lighter and more elegant. Personally this is the type that I'm going to paint because it's easier and you can also make two layers of petals with some hiding behind the back. With these though I feel it's a bit more suited for intermediate to advanced painters because either you need to have good control over your colors placing the right value so the petals don't look too heavy and chunky or you can also do this with very controlled brush strokes leaving the right amount of space in between. A good way to practice drawing some flowers is to draw a big circle where the silhouette of the petals are going to be and I've drawn a smaller circle at the center which will be the center of the flower. Then you can just fill in the gaps in between the small and the large circles with the petals. You do want to make sure that the petals are radially going around the smaller circle but it's okay if some of the distance are not perfect next to each other because if they're too perfect sometimes it might look computerized. So personally I don't mind if there are larger gaps in between some petals. What you want to practice at this stage is also to leave a gap in between the petals and the center of the flowers. I feel like this is something that I had to get used to when I first started painting flowers with watercolors. This doesn't mean that the petals won't touch later in the painting because like I mentioned we usually overestimate where the tip of the bristles will land especially when we apply pressure. So it's safer to think of this gap instead and if there is an actual gap as long as it's not too far you can always connect it with thin lines using the tip of your brush later which will make the connection look more controlled and a bit more delicate. You also want to be mindful of the color that is at the center because when you connect the petals and the center if the paint isn't completely dry for the center of the flowers it will travel and bloom out into the wet petals. Just for the fun of it here's another variation of the daisy. For this one I'm going to make the center larger and I'm going to make the petals shorter and I feel like this is a cute version. It sort of looks like small chamomile flowers. You can also paint the daisies with other colors for different variations but I'm just going to stick with the classic white daisy and I'm going to paint using the first variation that I drew out. Now if you want to paint the daisies facing different directions you can use this trick. You can imagine an oval this time instead of a circle because there will be some foreshortening and from here you can draw the center as an oval as well then fill in the gaps with the petals radially surrounding the center. You can apply this trick at every angle and the more they're facing front on the rounder the overall silhouette and the more to the side they are facing the more flat the oval will become. Here let me just show you an extreme angle sorry for almost being off frame but this time when we're looking at it from an extreme angle I want the oval for the center to still be fairly plump so it doesn't look flat instead it looks three-dimensional. You can also curve some of the petals to make them a bit more lively and natural. Let me just draw another one facing upwards. At this angle you might be able to see the sepal and for a fun addition you can make the stems have a bit of a curve. Now let's look at a different growth stage where the flower is more mature and the petals are curving downwards. For this you can still apply the oval method but for the petals at the back they wouldn't be standing instead you'll only see the ends attached to the center. Now we are viewing the flower from the back we're going to apply the oval method again but in the middle instead of drawing a circle I'm going to draw the sepal and I'm going to draw the rest of the petals on the silhouette. You can also add some flower buds to yours and for this I'd like to just focus on the sepal and then I draw on the rest of the petals but they're still facing upwards and they're fairly short. For an even younger flower bud you can make the sepal smaller and only a few petals are showing. So those are the elements that you can combine into the painting. Feel free to repeat and practice beforehand until you're comfortable with visualizing the shapes as you paint. Once you're comfortable you can also sketch out a composition for ideas or go straight into painting. The daisy leaves are a bit complex they kind of remind me of celery leaves. I'm just going to sketch out a small one here but I feel like you can combine this with some tall grass or some standard leaves as well. Next I'm going to go over the colors I'm going to use. Firstly this is vermilion by Holbein, gold brown by Schmincke, azure yellow by Daniel Smith cobalt blue hue by Holbein, gray of gray by Holbein and chambrillion dark by Schmincke. Before we paint let me just swatch out some of the color mixtures so you have a better visualization of the actual colors. For the center here I used hansy yellow as the main yellow with a bit of gold brown and for the shadow around the sides I use a mix of gold brown with a bit of vermilion and you can play with the ratio the color will be more vibrant if you add more vermilion. For the flower petals I'm going to mostly use gray of gray but I want some of them to look sun-kissed so you can either mix in some chambrillion dark or if some colors bleed out from the center outwards then technically it'll be mixed with a bit of hansy yellow. As for any of the greens in the painting this will be the stems leaves and also the center of the disc I'm going to use the green from a mix of hansy yellow with cobalt blue and I'm going to mute it down with some gold brown. For this you can just play around with the ratio making the color warmer and brighter if you add more hansy yellow and if you want it cooler you add more cobalt blue and if you want yours more earthy and muted just add more gold brown. Now let's start to paint I'm going to mix the yellow for the center this is from hansy yellow with a bit of gold brown to make the yellow more rich and kind of orangey. When I'm applying the paint in such a small area I do want to make sure that the load of my brush is very light which means it doesn't puddle up on my bristles this way when I add a different color the paint won't travel too fast. So here while the surface is still a little bit damp I added the shadows using the reddish brown mix which is from vermilion and gold brown. At the center I'm just going to add a light yellow green dot and you can see that the paint doesn't travel too much because the surface is not overly damp. Now for the petals I'm just going in straight with some gray of gray. As I'm painting the petals I'm imagining that gap I mentioned before and what I want to do is only touch the center ever so slightly so after creating that gap I'll just continue it down to the center with a really light touch using the tip of my brush. In between the bottom of the petals you'll see a bit of gap because the bottom of the petals are thinner than the middle and those gaps will help make the flowers look more delicate. Some of the yellows dispersed outwards into the petals so here I'm just going to enhance the brightness of the color and I also want to add that reddish brown. Now let's make another one and I want this next one to be on a slight angle so here you'll be able to see the center from the side which makes it look a bit more plump. I use the light load to make sure that the yellow isn't puddling wet and then I follow it up with some of that reddish brown. For the petals I'm going to paint it like before but for some of the petals which are facing towards us I want them to be slightly shorter to give the foreshortened look. For this one I feel like the center was a little bit more dry so the yellow didn't travel into the petals so here I'm going to introduce a bit of brightness by adding a touch of Sean Brilliant Dark. This edition of Sean Brilliant Dark or a bit of yellow in the Grey of Grey is optional. I just think that adding this variation of light yellow will make some of the petals look a bit sun-kissed or sun-lit but if it's too complex to do you can just stick with the Grey of Grey and the painting will still work out well. Now for this one I started with the sequel because we're going to be painting the flower facing the wrong way and for the petals I decided to start with some Sean Brilliant Dark instead of Grey of Grey. Then towards the sides I'm going to start introducing the grey. I quite like the look of the sequel showing so I'm going to paint another one here. Because this flower is slightly closed I'm going to show some flower petals that is shown in between the ones which are closer to us and for these ones I'm going to make sure that they're thinner so it fits the gap but I'm still going to leave a bit of space in between. For this one the center was still a little bit damp and since I'm touching it with my wet paint you can see some of the yellow traveling towards the petals and I don't mind this. I actually like letting my colors flow lightly into each other however if you're new it will be best to wait for all the center parts to dry so the colors can stay in place. Of course you can try this approach as well but you do have to make sure that the center isn't puddling wet it's just slightly damp because the yellow will travel too far and too fast if that's the case and if this happens you can just take off the excess with either a dry brush or with tissue. When you use watercolors in a light to medium consistency sometimes it will dry lighter than you expect and if this is the case it's okay to keep adding more layers to increase the vibrancy or the saturation of certain colors. Since I've painted a few large flowers I'm going to paint some budding ones to fill in some of the space that I have in between these ones. For these I like to approach them the same way but I'm going to play with the size depending on how open or close they are and for some of the smaller ones sometimes I just do a single brush stroke for each petal. To add a bit more form to the sepals I like to add a darker value of the green and for this I just use a thicker consistency and this also has a bit more gold brown and cobalt blue. I'm not sure if you noticed but on my palette here how I've mixed up the green is to have little sections. I have the yellow green on the left side I add a bit more brown at the top of the palette and on the side I add more cobalt blue. This is why I have access to different tones of greens all at once and you can adjust it according to what you need and it's already there without you reactivating the paint on your palette. Now with a similar tone of green to the sepals I'm going to use a medium to thick consistency to paint on the stems and when I'm painting on the stems I want to make sure that I visualize where the center of the flower is and that is where the stem will come out of and you can also make the stem a bit wavy to give more movement to the painting. So here you'll see me aligning the stem to the center of this flower and then extending it down. As I was painting the stem I realized that the composition would look a bit weird if this stem on the left looks too long so I decided to cover it up with another flower. Because the yellow was quite damp I didn't want to add more of that brown mixture so instead I painted the petals first which turned out quite yellow but I don't mind this because as I mentioned before I wanted to look a little bit sun-kissed anyway and towards the end I decided to add more grey of grey because all the petals were quite yellow. I feel like I can add more paint to the yellow center now so this is where I add the reddish brown. For some small sections if some colors travel further than you want them to you can always take off the excess using a clean dry brush. Looking at the overall painting I feel like adding more of that reddish brown would be nice and makes the center pop out a little bit more so here I'm just layering a bit more and after this I'm going to start painting on some leaves. There's a small space here I'm going to show you how I simplify the leaf shape. Instead of focusing on the wavy edges I treat it as single brush strokes touching each other to create a rough silhouette of the leaves. I feel like in a natural setting these would be bigger in terms of the scale or ratio to the flower but I don't want to over complicate this painting so I'm only painting one and as for the rest I'm going to fill in the space with more flower buds and also some tall grass from the bottom up and in between the flowers. For fun I also want to add some splatters using grey and some green at the bottom. I wasn't able to get some larger dots so I decided to manually move the paint around for some of the splatters just to make it look a bit more visible and intentional and since the colors are very wet I'm going to take the excess paint off with tissue after some of the paint has seeped into the paper. Now for the rest of the space that I have I'm going to paint the tall grass and for this I want to take advantage of my brush pressure putting a bit more pressure for thicker line weight and less pressure with the tip of my brush for finer and thinner lines. Once you're done with all the elements you can make some final adjustments to increase the saturation or value of certain colors if you feel the need to and that's basically it for this painting. I hope this tutorial was useful for you and if you gave this a go please let me know how it went in the comments. By the way I know I painted this freehand but just in case I'll make the outline and upload it in my Ko-fi shop. Like usual the list of tools as well as my social media links will be in the description box. Thank you so much for watching till the end and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye!