Good Monday morning! You know it’s my favorite day of the week. You get to grab a new week to live life on the Blue Happy side. So on Friday I shared with you how to use watercolor pencils and promised a new lesson today using tube watercolor. Then guess what happened I decided to take the weekend off. It felt good not to do anything just enjoy the moment I was sitting in. About Sunday around 5:00 my way of life always being on top of everything little self started to get worried “oh no blogs not ready for Monday, what the heck was I think’n taken time off”. So bright and early this morning about 4am I was up painting the lesson I promised for today. As it worked out I so enjoyed the quiet time in my studio and so did Cooper and Cherry. As always at my feet loving the quiet time as well. I was inspired on Sunday to take photo’s of flowers on my patio so these photo’s became the inspiration for this art lesson!!!
SUPPLY LIST:
- watercolor paper
- watercolor brushes
- masking tape
- poster board just about 2 inch larger on each side than your watercolor paper
- tubes of watercolor paint
- paper towel
- small cup of water
- tray of some kind to mix your colors with water
- regular drawing pencil
So let’s get started with the lesson. I prepared my watercolor paper a bit different this time. This is the only way I will allow my students to do a piece in class. I use a small piece of poster board that is larger than the watercolor paper. Using masking take I tape the watercolor paper to the poster board. Try to get all the tape even on the edges so when you remove it when the painting is done you will have a nice white edge to your art work. The purpose of this is so that your paper will not buckle on you as you paint.
I think it would be best to practice on another piece of watercolor paper before you start. You need to practice how to fade your colors from dark to light. So think about the flower pedal it is darker up close to the center so that is where you will put your strongest color. Then you will use a clear brush and clear water to fade it out to the edge. Always start with your lightest color first, let it dry then move on to the mediums and dark colors depending on how many colors you have to layer.
When starting to lay in the colors I start with the back ground colors first. These are all in green to represent the leaves of the flowers. I started by laying in the lightest green first in each of the area’s and then started laying in the darker greens on top. You will see that I picked a few leaves in different area’s to give more detail. I didn’t give all the leaves detail because I didn’t want to give the back ground as much attention as the flowers. I used Per. green, sap green and Viridian hue green
Now moving on to the flowers and all their glorious colors of red. The flowers are painted the same as the back ground one layer at a time. The only difference is that you have to do every other pedal so the wet paint doesn’t run into each other and bleed. So I just start at the top and paint every other pedal and when it is dry I went go back and paint the others. I do full on detail on each pedal before I move onto the opposite pedals. I uses vermillion red and crimson red.
After the flowers are just the way you want them it’s time to add the center to them to finish them off. I used the crimson red and the viridian hue green mixed together to get that beautiful deep purple for my centers. Before I used that color I washed down the Vermillion red to almost nothing then washed it over the center area. I let that dry for about 5 minutes then I taped in the deep purple mixed color. I cleaned my brush and with fresh clear water I taped the purple with the tip of my brush. I made sure I tapped most of the water off on the paper towel before I did this step. It softened the purple and gave the flower its finish look.
Let your painting dry for at least an hour before you remove the tape. When you do remove the tape hold your hand over the painting and pull the tape away from you at an angle. DO IT SLOWLY DON’T GET IN A HURRY OR YOU MIGHT TEAR YOUR ART WORK. That’s it folks you are now a watercolor artist. Please don’t compare your art to mine. It’s all about the practice with watercolor. The more you do it the better you will become. I hope you enjoyed this art lesson because I enjoyed sharing with you. Monday is the best day of the week so go grab a Blue Happy Monday.
