Simple Watercolor Autumn Branch | Loose Foliage Technique

Before we start today's tutorial I'd like to announce that I've made another Skillshare class where you can build confidence with your brush strokes through painting basic leaf shapes. In this class I'll compare basic brushes as well as run you through some simple brush pressure and brush stroke exercises as warm-up before painting freehand. I will be painting a set of 12 leaves but you can always find and create your own variations as well. Leaves are just one of those subjects that is great for practicing and doodling so I think this will be a perfect fit for beginners to practice their brush skills or for any level painter looking for a fun and relaxing painting session. My Skillshare classes are always divided into tiny little short lessons so it's easy to stop and pick up where you've left off and Skillshare also offers subtitles in several different languages so if you're interested you can go to the link in my description box for a free trial if you've never been a member before. Hope to see you there if you're interested in giving this class a go. Hi everyone this is Nia and today I'm going to paint an early autumn branch with yellowing leaves and some berries and I'm also going to paint this on a brand new sketchbook. This sketchbook is by Artex and it has cotton hot press paper. It has an interesting aspect ratio and I thought this would be the perfect framing for a branch painting and it'll actually be quite fun to figure out the types of paintings I can frame with this ratio. I'm going to freehand this painting so I'm going to go straight to the colours. Firstly this is Crimson Lake by Holbein, Vermilion by Holbein, Permanent Yellow Deep by Holbein, Cobalt Blue Hue by Holbein, Sepia by Holbein and this one is Quincyana by Daniel Smith but this colour isn't necessary you can actually just mix Vermilion with some Cobalt Blue and you'll come up with a close enough brown tone for this painting but it's just nice to have to not mix once in a while. And as for the whites I'll be using Bleeper White by Dr. Ph. Martens or you can also use Titanium White gouache. For this I'm going to start by using my Chinese calligraphy brush but of course you can paint the whole thing with synthetic brushes as well. I haven't used this in a while and I just wanted to try because I feel like the hairs are good to create colour variations and that's something that I'm looking for in a simple painting like this. It's just the way the paint flows off the bristles whereas with synthetic brushes it tends to give more of an even look but you can create something similar with it as well it just requires a different pressure and hand technique. Don't worry though I'll use both to show you what to do for the leaves. I'm going to first paint some branches and for this I just used a mix of Vermilion with some Cobalt Blue Hue and you can see I'm mixing my pressure and I'm also wiggling my brush to make the branches look more natural and I made sure that the top part has the thicker end. I made a bit of space between these branches because I'm going to paint some berries in front and I would leave this space if you're going to paint some elements which are overlapping the branches and for me it's much easier to build the painting little by little rather than starting with a page full of branches already. This way you can figure out the placement of the overlapped elements as you go. For the berries I just used Vermilion in a medium consistency and for the berries I'm just going to shape them as ovals. You can also leave a white negative space for the highlights but this is optional because we are going to paint the highlights on with the bleed proof white later on anyway. You see I switched from my Chinese brush to a synthetic brush earlier because the bristles on my Chinese brush is very floppy and it was quite difficult to draw the ovals without creating some uneven pointy ends. As for the leaves I'm going to paint mostly with a yellow green and this is from a mix of Permanent Yellow Deep with a touch of Cobalt Blue Hue. I want these leaves to look like they're in the transitional period so I'm going to have minimum green leaves, mostly earthy yellow green and a little bit of some browning leaves as well to give it some fun color variation. I like to paint either a single leaf or a couple of leaves at a time because while the surface is still damp I like to add in some other color mixtures. For the leaf earlier I added a little bit of orange from Vermilion and Permanent Yellow Deep and as for this one because this leaf is a little bit more green with more Cobalt Blue Hue in the ratio I added some yellowing edges. You can mix and match the colors. You can add some browns from mixing Vermilion and a little bit of Cobalt Blue Hue or you can also just use the Quin Sienna to dot in some of these spots. Depending on how damp your colors are I like to dot in these spots while the parts of the surface is just slightly damp so you do want to time adding these details and not paint too many leaves all at once because some might just be completely too dry before adding these spots so the color won't mingle and blend with the base color. So this greatly depends on your painting style. I personally like to paint a few at a time. So far I've painted with the calligraphy brush but now I'm going to show you what I would do with the synthetic brush. Synthetic brushes are generally more snappier. The bristles are more firm so you can put more pressure in order to open up the bristles and then take off the pressure if you want the bristles to come to a point. While playing with the pressure I like to also wiggle my brush around to create some of those uneven edges and slightly uneven color application. However if the color application still looks a bit too even then I would just add those extra dots using a slightly different color or even a slightly thicker consistency of the same color. It's actually not too different in terms of the movement that I create with my calligraphy brush but I generally would just put way less pressure and I would paint it in a much lighter hand due to the floppy nature of the calligraphy brush. So just to summarize, synthetic brushes have stronger bristles so I would put more pressure whereas calligraphy brushes, at least the one that I have, is very soft and the bristles are quite floppy so I put much less pressure. To make the composition feel more natural you can see I like to overlap some leaves and I also play with the angle of the leaves as well trying to make different variations and I try to avoid symmetry in any of the leaves. Once I feel like I have enough leaves for now on these branches I'm going to add another one to fill in the space at the bottom using the same method as before. If I'm connecting to a thicker branch like I'm doing here where it holds many leaves I want to make sure that it's attached to another thick branch so it makes sense physically where the initial branch is sturdy enough to carry the extra weight. At the moment these branches look quite flat since I've only used one flat color so I'm adding some of the previous mix with extra sepia to create a darker brown and this will just add a little bit of form to these branches. I'm just adding it to one side. As I go I like to connect the berries or maybe some of the detached leaves to the main branch. I'm just going to paint more leaves slowly to fill in the rest of the space that I have. This type of painting is very therapeutic as you're just playing with similar shapes and dotting in some color variation. It's just relaxing to see how the color reacts to each other and it's just such a good way to wind down I find anyway and I hope you feel the same way when you paint yours. My camera was a bit out of focus here. I don't know what I was doing. I think it focused in the area at the bottom so please bear with me for a couple of minutes if you're watching this from a big screen. Once I feel like I have a good amount of leaves I try to add the midribs of the leaves for added detail. I didn't want the details of the leaves to take away from the textures I've already painted so I start with a thin consistency of a light brown mix. You can use some vermilion with permanent yellow deep and a bit of cobalt blue hue for this and while I'm at it I'm also going to add some finer branches to add some extra delicate lines using a mix of just vermilion and cobalt blue hue and if I want the colors to be darker I would then add a bit more sepia. For the finer branches I'm just going to use my calligraphy brush since it comes to a very fine tip but you can also switch to a smaller synthetic brush. My synthetic brush doesn't come to a fine point anymore which is why I avoid using it for small lines like these. Since I have a lot of yellow green so far I decided to add some brighter orangey leaves here. This is from a mix of permanent yellow deep with a bit of vermilion and a touch of quinceana and as you can see I didn't really pre-mix the color instead I just picked it up with my brush so when I apply the paint it comes up with all the different colors. Some of the tiny brown things I think they're just like dried up berries or dried up buds or something like that and I think it just adds a slightly different texture and element to the painting. I'm sorry the camera is extra out of focus in this area for some reason but here I just added some deeper red using crimson lake and a medium to thick consistency around one side. I've also switched to my synthetic brush to make the rounded shapes much easier to paint on. I decided to add another bunch here and I just used the crimson lake by itself but used a lighter consistency so I can still build up on the form later on. As I add the darker values on the berries I feel like I can bring back more attention to the leaves again so to balance this out I decided to darken the details this time. I used some sepia mixed with a bit of quinceana and I repainted the mid ribs then I also added the veins and to make the leaves curve differently some of the veins I turn inwards while some I turn outwards. And again to paint the smaller details you can use a small synthetic brush like a size zero brush. I want to give a more loose type of style so I'm going to add small amounts of splatters. As for the color I used a green mixture and I add some orange mixture that I've already had on my palette. Now to add more depth to the and branches I'm going to paint some leaves without any detail in a light consistency using similar color mixtures but I'm not going to dot in any extra details or even add the mid ribs and the veins. These leaves will add depth because they look less focused due to the lack of detail and color vibrancy compared to the ones we've already painted. And I'm just going to spread them out randomly to fill in some of the empty spaces. For some of the extra tiny branches I decided to add some small tiny leaves as well since the ones we've painted so far are quite large. Lastly I'm going to clean up some of the berries since I didn't do such a great job with leaving the highlights as the white of the paper I'm just going to paint it on using leaf proof white and I'm also going to soften the blend between the first layer and the second layer just using a clean damp brush here. And that's basically it for this painting. The first painting on this sketchbook. It's just a simple and loose leaves and I really enjoyed the process. It's one of my go-to subjects to relax to and I hope you feel the same way if you decide to paint along with me. 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 again at the next one. Bye!