Traditional Chinese watercolor tutorial | Water Lilies & Dragonfly

Hi everyone, it's Kate here. A few days ago I went to the most beautiful monasteries in Hong Kong. My favorite place in that monastery is the water lily pond and the water lilies are in full blossom now. There are two colors in the pond, one is in white and the other is pink in this one. Water lilies are different from lotus which is a lot more popular in traditional Chinese painting. I guess in terms of flowers and the leaves, lotus could have a lot more variation. Anyway, so we're gonna start. In Chinese watercolor there is no pink so I'm gonna use red to mix it. This red is rouge which has a bit of pink tone and this is the scarlet or the China red which has a slight tint of bright orange color and the third one is crimson color. These are the English names that I use for reference of the shades of the red. If you're interested in knowing the Chinese name, I'm gonna leave the names in the description below. Please check it out. I'm going to take some white color first, dip the tip of my brush into clear water before I take some rouge and that's the way to create the shades of the pink. Water lilies have multiple petals so you can paint as many as you want. And I'm starting from the middle and slowly build it up. To achieve the full gradient from red to white, you'll have to tilt your brush and use the whole brush to paint because the white color is in the brush belly. I'm using another size of the mountain card which is very white in the middle so the white color isn't very obvious. Particularly I am painting under a very bright condition. I like to paint in the morning and make yourself the daylight to paint and film my painting videos because color and gradients are very important in Chinese watercolor, particularly my kind of painting. I would like to show you the true color. While there may be some variations of color through your monitor or screen, the color that you've been looking at should be pretty close to real life. Water lilies do not grow out of the water so the flower basically just flows on the surface of the water so you don't have to paint the stems. But for aesthetic purpose then I will paint a little bit just sticking out so that you can see that it is a flower instead of just the flower head. It is the same for the leaves because the leaves just basically flows on the water on a flat surface and they're round so unless you are drawing a top view which is not very common in painting. So what I'm doing is to use a large brush to paint the look of a side view of the water lily pond. These diamonds are in yellow color usually. Instead of using just yellow color I've mixed a very light green first with some white color and then yellow on the tip of the brush to make it stand out a bit more. The color is very subtle but it does make a difference if you take a closer look. Try it! Now I'm painting a dragonfly. Instead of using just the china red I've added a bit of crimson color to create a deeper red so that it stands out from the water lily. There are also a lot of different species of dragonflies. Some are red and some are blue and some are amber black with large wings. So there are a lot of variations and different species that you can paint. I'm adding a few veins on each of the leaves. Since the leaves are in light green I'm going to use just darker shades of green to paint so that it blends well. One thing about Chinese watercolor is that we don't tend to correct strokes and cover the first layer of color if we make a mistake. So we have to be careful when we make a decision. Well sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't and we'll have to start over again. Mistakes and failure are part of the learning process. Yes there are some wastage of paper and that's why you don't throw away the used paper even if you don't like it or you made a mistake. You can still use the empty space and practice strokes. Don't waste particularly when you know how expensive the papers are. I'm still using the paper that I purchased 10-20 years ago and I've been searching for affordable and good quality materials and I'll share them with you when I find them. So stay tuned! Thank you for watching. I hope you like this video. Please subscribe and hit the bell notification button if you'd like to see more demonstrations. I'll see you next time!