How to paint wildflowers in watercolor easy tutorial Video Lecture - Master

Hi there! Lindsay here, the Frugal Crafter.
It is the first day of summer vacation. I
am so excited, and I just snuck down here
for a couple minutes to do a very quick
watercolor tutorial inspired by the walk
I took this morning with one of my
daughters and my dog, and I picked up,
actually I picked these up in my own
yard, some clover and some buttercups, and
I saw a lot of daisies out while I was
walking, so I thought we could do a
little quick and easy composition with
daisies, buttercups, and clover. So I think
I'm just gonna do one daisy and I want
you to start, I'll draw a little darker
than I want you to, so you can see it, but
I'd like you to start by drawing an oval
or an ellipse, kind of like, oh just a
little bit left of center there, and
then put a smaller oval in the middle,
and that's going to be the yellow center,
and then we're doing points
in a compass. I want you to put some oval,
long, oval petals around your daisy now.
See how they're shorter as they
approach the the thinner part of your
circle? That's a perspective and
if the flowers tipped away from you,
you'll see it more like that, if you're
facing it straight on, you would have
more like a sunray effect, kind of like
that sunflower tutorial we did a couple
weeks ago or week or two ago, I don't
know, whenever we did that, but
anyway, just go ahead and fill in with
your petals, you don't really need one to
look at for this, because we've all seen
a bazillion daisies, but I do notice that
once you start painting, I think you'll
notice this, is that you will begin to
really see things, instead of just looking at them, you'll really see
them and observe, and that's very important for a painter,
and then I'm just gonna throw in a
stem, alright and it wouldn't hurt to go
through at this point, this is a brand
new mechanical pencil, and just erase a
little extra line, you know, that first
ellipse line, you don't really need all
of that, and I know some of you guys are
bothered by the pencil marks. They don't
bother me anymore, I actually think it's
kind of like a road map to how I created
the piece, but if you don't like those
pencil marks, you can go ahead and lighten
them right now. Alright and the butter
cups, we'll sketch on a few of those, and
so these are kind of like circles if we
look at them, and it helps if you have
some in your yard, you can kind of turn
them away, like I love the way that looks
from behind, so I think I'll put one up
here from behind. I'll start
with an oval, and we can see the stem so
I'm just going to go ahead and throw
that stem from the center and you get
these five little, almost
like a little star with these green little bits there, and then
we've got these big saucery type
petals, and then just put those big
saucery petals in like that, see how
easy that is?
And you know, so that's a nice thing
about working from life, and you can throw
a couple little buds on there if you
want to, and a lot of times I'll just
kind of make it up as I go and I put a
couple down here that are more like
facing us, or facing off to the edge a
little bit, so take your time in the
composition, and it's going to make the
painting a snap. And these petals
pretty much fill out the entire
circle so you don't have to worry about
erasing too much afterwards, and then the others will be
clover, and we're going to paint those,
and I'll just put in a few little stems
for my clover because I just want to
paint that in, and I'll show you how to
do that without drawing, it's very very
easy. Maybe we could just... I don't
think we need to make leaves, we'll just
go along like that.
Okay, so we have our composition and
if you want to put a background in,
we're not gonna do background, we're just
gonna keep it nice and easy. I want to
work with a number six round or so, I
think that's what we got here or five
round, something like that I think,
that'll do. That'll work for
everything I'm gonna paint here, and let's start with our stems and a little
sap green or hookers green, whatever you
have, this is hookers green and I feel
like it's a little too dark, and I'm
gonna warm it up a little bit of yellow
ochre. Let's get a little bit of that in
there, that will give me a nice earthy
color and I'm working on dry paper with
a fully-loaded brush, and I'm just going
to pull down my stems. I had a very
fabulous cup of coffee, okay a couple,
okay you know the size of my coffee cups
right? So I had two of those coffee bowls
this morning, and I think my hands are
all shaky, oh my goodness, so
hopefully your lines will be a little
bit steadier than mine, and I'm just
going to kind of throw in the little bit
of a kind of, what do you call them?
Those little star things on
the back of this flower here, but they
kind of wrap up around a little, buttercup buds that we have and then I'm
gonna go right in with some cadmium yellow.
I just kind of tap it off on my palette,
make sure I don't have any lumps. I'm
just gonna go put that right in the buds
and let him blend. Alright and then I
think I will go right to the middle of
my daisy. I didn't need to wash my brush. Don't know why I did,
and I'm going to go ahead and put in
this nice yellow and then I think just
to add a little bit of contrast I'm
gonna go in a little bit of yellow ochre
in the center there, off to the edge
somewhere just to give it a little bit
of an extra texture, make
it a little bit fancier, alright now
we're going to paint our little
clover, and we're going to need some
purple, and if you have purple, you can
use it and if not, mix ultramarine blue
and alizarin crimson. I'm gonna use the
purple and then we're also going to use
some of this nice rose color that I have
on my palette, because it's just kind of
pretty. I like to sometimes
change my palettes I'm using. I
have several cuz I've been painting for a
long time, and then this is great, you
load up your brush with your lighter
color and then where you want your
clover you're just going to tap and
let your brush do
all the work, just kind of tap it in,
tap tap tap, your brush is pointing to
the top of the flower, and I just love
the way the colors mix and mingle and
just get that beautiful clovery look.
That's the thing about wildflowers,
you have this very very nice light
splashy look that is so well represented
in watercolor, and I've got a
little extra over there, so I may end up
turning that into a bug or making
another clover over there. I feel like I
want another one too, because I just
really like to make them, so I think I'll
put one up,
tap-tap-tap and then go in with your
slightly darker shade, and tap tap tap on
the bottom. All right and then before it
dries, use the end of your brush or
credit card scraper and just scratch in
some of the leaf little textures,
little individual petals, just some lines
and it's just going to hint at it. I
think it's nice to have like a little
book of watercolor postcards, or maybe
make a little journal with some your
favorite watercolor paper, and keep a
little palette of colors with you and
then you can be, you know, have it in a car,
in your purse, and be ready to capture
wild flowers or whatever you see
throughout the summer, and we go back in
with some of that green. I'm gonna take
the Hooker's green this time, going to
add some the cadmium yellow to it so I
get a nice springier green, and I'm going
to add that to my clover
and just kind of follow my petals down,
and then I want to paint, I'm actually
gonna add the petals, they should be
more Hooker's green, they're a little
darker. I'm just going to press and lift
and twist, press and lift and twist, press
and lift and twist, and just kind of
throw my petals in like that. Just
make sure you have plenty of paint on
there, this brush I think
hass been used for things other than
watercolor, just not behaving quite as I
would like, but that's alright, there's a
couple little groups of leaves, maybe
from behind there, all right now, when I
paint the buttercups I'm just gonna use a
cadmium yellow, and I'll just go ahead
and color fill those leaves in, and you
can always go back in after
your paint is dried, and go in with
a soft white eraser and you can remove a
lot of the lines too, if they bother you,
or you could sketch it all in with
watercolor pencils, and then
they'll dissolve as you go,
use a little bit of a yellow ochre in
this
center. Just kind of tap some in and
then just tap in a tiny little bit of
green in there just on that one that's
facing us, a little bit more that yellow
on the edges, though it seems to be a
little pale.
Let it do its thing, yeah for the daisy
I'm actually going to water down some of
that purpley color and use a little
ultramarine blue. I'm just making some
pale shades. I can do the ultramarine
blue, let's do that up here, we can see it
ultra marine blue and a little yellow
ochre, and it will give me kind of a
grayish color that I can work with. Oops,
I just picked up some green, let's wipe
that out and try that again, all right,
we're gonna do a little ultramarine and
yellow ochre. Probably confused you cuz I put the yellow first, it does have
a little bit of a green bias, but it's mainly the ultramarine,
alright, so between that and a little bit
of watered down purpley color, and even do
some of that purple with the ultramarine
blue, we'll have some nice colors.
It's hard to paint white things and make
them still look white and that's what
we're going to do here, okay? And have a
napkin handy so that you can blot your
brush so you don't get too much color. All
right so now what I'm going to do is
just pick up a little bit of that
(stuck my finger on the purple there) pick
up a little bit of that. I'm gonna change
this brush, this brush it like, it feels
like I painted on sandpaper or
something with it. It's really unwieldy. I
think I was using that for ink and
acrylics or something. I'm just going
in a little bit of that gray on the
petals in the back, and take as much time
as you want with it. I'm just doing it
very quick, easy breezy, but you can do it
however you want. This is just a greeting
card. I'm not going to worry about it, and
then I'm just going to pick up some of
this other color,
see I blot it so I don't get charged
with too much color, and just kind of go
throw it in some of these other petals.
I'm just kind of defining it like I'm
putting in the shadows
a little bit more with a little bit of
the pink, and you know, blot it if you
need to.
You can press your napkin
right against the paper, nothing's that
permanent here, especially these Canson
watercolor cards. They have a good
amount of sizing. I think they're all, I
don't think there's any cotton in them, they're all paper pulp, and they
are heavily sized so you can get rid of
mistakes. Now I do want to warm it up a
little bit, so I'm going to do a little
watery yellow ocher on its own, see how
very very pale washes here, and I'm going
to throw a little bit here and there,
just to show the light hitting it,
alright so there we have a very easy
painting. Of course I've never think it's
quite done until I splatter on some
colors and I really need a juicy brush
for that. My desk is all
discombobulated today, so I'm going to
use some of that red,
I'm going to splash some of that on
there, then I'm gonna grab some more that
purple, and some of that green. Mix
it with that yellow on my
palette, and blot anywhere where I feel
it's a little too much, and then I can
just sign my name or my initials, with a
decent brush, better than the one that I
was trying to paint with. I'll just put
my initials down here in the corner L M W
14, and there you have it, a very quick
and easy painting that I do hope you try
soon. Thank you so much for watching! Have
a wonderful summer vacation. I'll be back
with daily quick and easy tutorial, so
please do give me a thumbs up and
subscribe so you don't miss any more of
them. Thanks so much for watching! Until
next time, happy crafting.