 Hello and welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins. We're gonna have some fun today And if you're new here, please subscribe and hit that little bell icon to be notified of future videos Welcome my friends and subscribers in Monet Café and visitors and patrons. This video is for all We're gonna have so much fun doing some watercolor sketching in this video with multiple types of subject matter And even a few recipes. So get ready. Here's a little intro from me and we're gonna have some fun Hello, welcome to Monet Café and to my patrons I'm artist Susan Jenkins and this is P.E. Friday I call it P.E. for patron education and sometimes I make the video available on the Monet Café platform as well For all of you guys now this one I am doing that particularly because I got an overwhelming response from you about doing some fun simple relaxing Watercolor sketches. I recently did one just for that purpose myself to be able to relax after a long day I love filming and a lot of art. Sometimes I need an artistic therapy session myself And I just did a quick little painting of a cute duck and it indeed was relaxing I shared some of the results asked you guys on Instagram. By the way, follow me on Instagram I always forget to say that at Susan Jenkins artist and so on the YouTube channel I made a little comment in the community tab and to my patrons and again you guys Really wanted to see some watercolor sketching examples and to have a fun little session So I'm gonna go into just some of my watercolor supplies that I have just a basic I don't want to get too deep into this video and then we're gonna get into some fun watercolor sketches where I will give you some Suggestions tips and techniques for relaxing and having fun. That's what we're gonna do and patrons You know, this is your homework for the weekend. So I can't wait to see what you do. All right Here we go with some watercolor sketching. Oh and I also wanted to share that once again I'm wearing one of the awesome t-shirts from the company love and faith I love this company. I love the fact that these t-shirts have messages of hope and encouragement and We definitely need that today and they are offering a coupon code For people who see this on Monet cafe So you have to click the link in the about section of this video and you'll get 20% off So check it out check out all their styles and a personal Thank you from me to the company for providing me these awesome shirts for my videos. Alright guys now We're really getting started Now I'm gonna share with you some of the supplies that you will need and fortunately, most people most artists have some watercolors now I know some of them are smaller sets, but if you find you like this It would definitely be worth the investment to get some more colors of watercolors and perhaps a better quality So I'm gonna show you what I'm using As far as the watercolors go but as far as the water color Pad that you want to use or papers that you want to use I Recommend if you're gonna do watercolor sketching to keep some sort of a notebook So you can just always pull it out and it's ready and once again the stress on these is they're fun They're fast. They're carefree. I shouldn't say fast. They're relaxing and they're carefree and they're simple We're not getting into things too complicated So I'll talk more about that in a voice over as I paint But you can either have a watercolor notebook such as one that I have here The reason I like these notebooks is because they have a spiral you can open it up and lay it flat No telling what I'm coming up with here. This is a pastel sketch. I actually did From the sketchy app so you can use these for mixed media if you want, but they're great for watercolor The other thing I like about these is they have this is a watercolor and a pastel sketch They we're not going to do anything this complicated. Okay, they also have a little perforation here if you want to tear it out Of course, you could still rip it out and cut it if you need to if your pages don't have this But I like the fact that it lays flat. This is another style of notebook. You could use I got this from Arteza They actually are great and send me some complimentary supplies to share in my videos and these are great That it is a watercolor notebook and let me get the one that I already have opened It is acid-free cold pressed And it's natural linen bound. Okay, but one thing I don't like as much This is just me personally is being able to lay it flat I can get it to to lay down or I can sometimes sit something else on top of it like Bob Ross here Who hangs out in my studio with me? I really relate to Bob Ross because I feel like I'm a happy painter, too You know, I didn't even know he closed his videos with happy painting I started doing that in my videos for so long and saw an old video of his and I was like, oh my gosh I had no idea but I relate to him because he just did it for the joy of painting. I do the same thing I love sharing. I love teaching. I don't think I'm a you know The greatest master artist by any means, but I certainly love teaching and I can kind of relate to that with Bob Ross So thanks Bob. Sometimes he holds my pages down or whatever else you can find so you can make these work but that's just one of my personal things and I did the Little duck watercolor sketch. This is more along the lines of what we're talking about here is just a little sketch or something fun That's kind of easy with a simple background to relax and enjoy and De-compress. One other type of paper I'll show you just because I have it on hand if you've ever heard the term a block a watercolor block What that is, you know watercolor paper will warp and and get kind of buckled and a block sort of prevents that I wouldn't say it does it a hundred percent, but it's literally Watercolor paper all compressed together or sealed along the edges so that it's stuck These are I don't know how many pages this are but these are paper pages of watercolor paper Okay, and to get it off. I used to try to use an exacto blade. You literally once your paintings done I kept cutting the paper, but I realized I don't know if anybody else has a better way to do this But I realized if I just stuck my metal ruler under here I don't have it handy right now Something that won't cut the paper and just kind of went around the edges. It comes right off So basically that's all you'll need is is some sort of a watercolor paper or a watercolor notebook And I do recommend the notebook now, of course, you're gonna need some watercolor like I said and I use this set a lot another product that Arteza sent me I do like the fact that it has this little ring on the bottom of it and you can hold it I'm left-handed so it works either way, but um You open it mine's dirty because I've used it for multiple purposes for some acrylic inks and things that kind of stain it It does come with this little chart that I highly recommend filling out because Watercolor looks very different applied than it does in the pans Once again, this is a 36 set and with this many colors. That's already a decent amount You can literally mix any color to your heart's desire So and there's plenty of videos on color mixing Maybe I can talk about that a little bit while I paint. All right, so some sort of a watercolor Supplies you'll need I Thought I would show you real quickly that I do have tube watercolor paints for more serious watercolor paintings And the brands I'm just sorting them in fast motion here I'm going to actually show you the colors that I have the brands that I have that I like are Mgram and Da Vinci. So I'm just kind of putting them in a better order I also have a watercolor palette with these that I'm going to show you also All right, so I have a Payne's gray and this one is an M. Graham I have a Prussian blue. These are all Da Vinci cobalt blue ultramarine blue and magnesium blue now in my Reds, I'm gonna just do the reds first. I have now these are M. Graham. I love these reds Notice one is is more of a red cooler red One's more of a purpley red elizor elizor and crimson. It's kind of a red red But it's a little cool and this one's a little warmer. So Quinacridone violet elizor and crimson and quinacridone red and the greens that I have are sap green and Viridian green once a little warmer once a little cooler Now the reason I don't have a whole lot of greens Again, I don't have the the vast watercolor selection that some people have but is because I Can mix green, you know with yellow and blue and so look at all the blues I have to be able to mix greens with these yellows down here. Okay, so here are my yellows I know some of them are more orange, but I'm just gonna read them across We've got these are Da Vinci the first three and the last one. We've got Hansa yellow deep vermilion Quinacridone gold. I love this color. It actually looks kind of brown when you open it up See that you wouldn't think that was yellow. Would you say it's a gold? It's really gorgeous But once again, these look different on paper with water added you can kind of tell the color right here This is a beautiful color. Okay, so I'm getting excited about color Indian yellow is a great color Azo yellow notice this one's warmer. This one's cooler and this one is Benzimita orange deep I don't even know if I'm saying that right. All right So you can get so many colors By mixing all of these but once again, this is just to share with you If you got more serious about watercolor, you might want to get some tubed watercolors. Now, what's the difference? these here are dry and Obviously they're just like the tubed watercolors just put in the little pans there and let dry While these are wet now the wet colors do go on a little bit more brilliantly I think a little more fluidly and I don't I think if you were doing something very serious with watercolor It would be best to work from you know, put them in a little palette now. This is another watercolor Palette that I have once again, this was from the tube watercolor and I arranged it like a color wheel, okay, somewhat and I love this one because it's got these big areas here for me to do mixing with and It's just a lot of fun when I get you know a little little more serious about a watercolor painting I would use this With my better paints rather than just the the dried what these are already dried, but it's a better quality paint Alright, so now let's talk about the tools to apply this with I Usually for this example all you will need I mean use whatever you want if you're used to watercolor painting usually all I use is a round brush and a flat brush Sometimes I use them in different sizes, but I usually use a brush bigger rather than smaller I feel like it keeps you more loose But I do have some better brushes. I like these watercolor brushes the ones that are red They are Princeton art and brush company and the number is just the different size of the round brush This is a 16. That's a 10 This is a 6. I'll probably be using a 10 or a 6 for this example And then you know just whatever flat brushes That you have so the size is up to you and whatever your preferences and your subject matter Now I also use just cheaper brushes like from Walmart or you know any craft store and once again, this is because this project is supposed to be fun and carefree and Really just something simple and inexpensive will work thing that I'm going to be using For my watercolor sketching is I love these micron markers Now micron markers are great for watercolor because they don't bleed you can sketch with them and paint over them And they're not going to bleed they also come in various sizes. This is the point two five five two point two five millimeter point three five millimeter Point four five millimeter. So they're just varying thicknesses Obviously, this is the bigger one the larger the number, okay? So so they're really great another product that I have come to like a lot are these Posca markers now This is a black one kind of like the micron okay for sketching and it's just it's made with acrylic I believe and they're just really good shake them and Also to the great thing though is that they come in white now one of the hardest things with watercolor I'll talk about it as I paint is it's opposite of pastel And with pastel you can put your darks down first and then gradually lighten it up by your layering Watercolor no no no no you want to preserve the light preserve the luminosity of the paper There's an area that you want really light you better leave it that way because once you put the dark down You can't get it back And with that in mind sometimes you want to get a little more white in an area that you may have accidentally Darken too much or you want to get some snow or some stars or a little highlight in an eyeball or something and The white Posca marker works really great. I'll see if I can use this as an example in one of my sketches All right, so but with all that in mind everything. I've shown you really all you need is a watercolor notebook some watercolor whatever you got and You know one or two brushes you can get away with all that you don't even need these markers You could use pencil or whatever you have so that's just information for the future in case you really love this All right, let's get started. I'm gonna show you some of the photos I'm gonna use and we're gonna keep it really simple and have fun I did decide to use the Arteza notebook watercolor notebook because basically I had more pages in it It was cleaner. This is me doing my crazy setup You guys have no idea doing a YouTube channel and filming yourself is not easy Now there is one other very important thing you need you can't do without this one thing I forgot to mention water, of course, okay So and another thing I also have on handy when I'm painting is some paper towels I usually just use this you'll see as I work just to kind of dab my brush when it's a little too wet control The amount of water and I usually just fold a few of them up to use like this. So So I'm gonna get started. I'm going to pick some images. I went outside and I encourage you guys to Go outside in your environment and find just some interesting Textures shapes sizes or you can even do it in your own home with items such as an avocado My patrons, I'm gonna provide all these images for you guys And I'm purposely including some that are just very simple Simple shapes once again the goal is to relax now. This one's a little more complicated But I really like this jar this pickle patch jar Jars of jam things like that are really cute Cups cute little cups and saucers perhaps a little more difficult, but still kind of fun challenge at my beta fish Isn't he pretty? Oh my gosh, you actually his colors are way prettier than that Strawberries just a simple little strawberry or you could do them in Groupings as well, which I have a few that's a cute little trio of strawberries and in our patreon group I talked about this From a lesson that I had about creating some dynamic shadows. Don't just rely on the light from overhead sometimes Get you a lamp or something and shine so that you get some neat shadows packs of seeds Now this one's not my favorite to paint, but those are kind of fun a can of soup Once again, these are sketches. They're fun. I love this little shadow of this plant. That's cute Some neat textures and once again, I'm not focusing on all of this stuff around it Just the object and the shadows look at the cool shadows on these tomatoes. So cool. I might do that one All right, so I'm just an app simple apple And if you're new at this or you want to just get warmed up You may want to pick just something super simple pairs are always a favorite for artists to paint Is it their shape because they're curvy like a woman? and Just some some neat shadows again outside once again pots of plants Even just do like a leaf study studying some things these this is my little basil plant I've had one basil plant up for this whole summer that I've pinched off and rerouted to have basil for the whole time I use it every day to This neat butterfly plant. Oh my gosh. I love it. Look at the textures and colors of these coleus So obviously I could go on and on forever and I absolutely love photography. So you get me outside with a camera It's hard sometimes to come back in so some of these are the ones that I'm actually going to do for this lesson I will put the photo next to me while I paint and You know you guys are welcome. These are my photos. So you're welcome to paint along with it Now my husband would consider that art But anyway, so get outside get you some photos or paint along with me whatever works for you Now I have about five paintings. I'm going to share with you guys of different subject matters So I'm speeding it up only slightly to just to be able to get through these without the video being like, you know Two or three hours long so often what I do I'm just using a pencil here before I commit to the pen even though sometimes I just start with the micron marker I often like to make myself a Border around what I'm drawing or sketching not only is it kind of graphic and cute, but it gives you some Relationships proportional relationships to be able to draw better actually just had a patreon lesson on this On Wednesday with what I call story time to give little tips and things on how to Symmetrically draw things and just some basic drawing tips really to so the little border I'm going to end up doing these little boxes around all of them Just so you know, but I'm just focusing on the strawberry and the shadow I will zoom in a bit more in a minute, too But I kind of want you to see my technique here This is my micron marker and if you're working with your surface flat like I am I kind of like to purposely hold it Straight up and down almost and keep a real loose sketchy look and at first it may seem like oh my gosh That doesn't look so great. I'd like a solid line But I actually end up liking this real Scratchy kind of sketchy technique and just so you know, I'm going to share multiple Techniques with each one of these little Watercolor sketches that I do so I'm just kind of looking at some where some of the leaves are and once again if you're Kind of new or beginner at art or you just kind of getting back into it again. I really recommend Some drawing skills, so I actually do have some older videos a lot of my videos actually have a lot of Tips and techniques just for better drawing but that's really gonna kind of help you now if you're brand new and You'd like to just trace it you can do that just to get started and learn the watercolor techniques There's nothing wrong with that. I have my paper towels handy my water and my round brush That's kind of a small to medium-sized brush and what I'm doing is what's called a wet-on-wet technique I love this technique because I feel like it Emphasizes and utilizes the beauty of watercolor anyway, you know when I first started watercolor painting I Was too stiff now. I'm gonna be using some combinations of reds here Some cooler reds to begin with but I was so stiff and I didn't really know about how The water is your friend notice how because I put the water on the strawberry part I'm just kind of letting the water do its thing basically what happens when you do this Now I'm gonna go to a little bit of warmer colors right now Which is kind of the upper left hand part of that strawberry and a little bit in the middle, but um Basically at my head kept hitting the camera. I'm sorry I had a bun on top of my head if you could see from the beginning of the video later I I lose the bun because I was just too tall for this setup But anyway back to now I'm gonna give some shadows and and cool off some areas where it's in shadow But back to the water being your friend I didn't realize that I could put water down and it will act like a channel and When you just put a little dollop of color on it. It just it's like magic. I love it So that's the technique that I'm using here And I'll talk about this a little bit more in some of the other examples So all I'm doing is kind of Focusing like I you know, there's a lot of things about different mediums that are the same Value and color are the same whether you're using watercolor or pastel or acrylic or oil or whatever It's just the medium that may be different and your techniques may be different. So once again I'm using wet-on-wet for these leaves and You want to be a little careful if you're doing wet-on-wet wet right next to an area You just did or it might bleed a little bit into the other area now. I'm choosing my greens I'm gonna go with a little bit of a cooler green right now and then some warmer greens So I'm not as worried about things bleeding as much right here because this is really loose and it's a watercolor sketch and I'm just kind of dabbing some of the colors in the areas now where the Leaves are a little bit more in shadow And I'm really just the more you can learn to generalize when you paint especially with these watercolor sketches The better you just looking at shapes colors and values And I know with these leaves for example that the leaves that are more in shadow are going to be cooler So I use the cooler blues there or greens I should say cooler greens and warmer greens where I thought it looked a little bit lighter or brighter in the light So I'm going in and kind of reinforcing some of the cooler and darker values now with watercolor Again, like I said at the beginning you want to preserve the light Don't resist the urge to get too dark too soon keep it light because you can layer over it with a darker value or color As you go so keep keep the light preserve that beautiful luminosity of the paper that is one of the Inherent beauties of watercolor or beautiful aspects of watercolor now wet-on-wet technique again Now this shadow is really going to ground the strawberry. It's going to make it so it's not floating on the paper and Like I said at the beginning now. I'm going to use some of these indigo blues Colors there they're again shaking my camera with my big head again So often we can give color to shadows more than just the standard gray or Black like you know, you might think a shadow is when you look at the photo You're like, okay, that's kind of a grayish shadow but purples and blues are often good for shadows and It's it really worked well with the strawberry too I thought the the purple kind of enhanced that and these things get easier the more you do it now I was noticing that the shadow was lighter on the right side than it was on the left I think I have my I definitely have my shadow way too long, but but again and oh and also too I meant to mention that these get easier more fun and better as you go along The first one's usually kind of stiff and then the more you do. Oh, I added some kind of a cooler I'm sorry. I should say warmer blue to the right side because it was a little bit more in sunlight So again, these are the same rules and if you haven't seen my video Called five ways to create depth in your artwork That's been a real popular one because I think it it really breaks down a lot of these rules that if you can learn these about color Temperature about value about focal point You can really really learn to paint, you know, it's not rocket science. These are just rules that you can do All right, so now I'm using my little micron marker. I did wait until It dried and I'm just going in I know that these little seeds Are like little divots. They're pushed in so I'm first just Getting an idea of where some of them are and just so you know you all you have to do is get a general idea But it does help if you angle the seeds in the direction of how it would be look what I did I put my hand right in my watercolor if you angle them in the direction of how they would show the roundness and It's like I always say draw what you see not what you think you see our brain would have us just draw a real Geometric pattern, but we've got to pay attention to how are these going around the great thing is you don't have to draw every seed And it's actually better not to you pick the ones that are kind of more of the focal point And then the other ones you just suggest that's back to my flower video. I just did on The three ways I think to make flower painting easy or something like that And I'm gonna do some flowers too, and I'm gonna talk about that how we just that's what makes art art Is that we don't have to spell everything out? We can just suggest things. I'm speeding this up just a bit more But I wanted to mention that around the little seeds, you know, they're kind of pushed in There's gonna be a little bit of a shadow around them So I just went around them and I did kind of add more shadows to underneath the leaves But I went around where the seeds are and added a little bit more Value to suggest that they were pushed in and I had a little bit more red and you know Whatever I was just playing around having fun at this point I know the shadow was a little darker on the left side But I also want to show you my little technique of drawing the box around it With this one I used my ruler and my Posca marker and I purposely wanted the strawberry to be protruding out of the box and the shadow it gives an a neat effect kind of a graphic effect and I do this with actually all of these that I do and it's kind of cute to label it. So I just wrote strawberry All right, let's move on to an avocado. I'm on a food kick so kind of the same deal I'm just getting in the basic shapes and proportions of the avocado in this one I didn't draw a box around it to begin with and I decided to do this one just a little bit larger than the Strawberry well an avocado is larger than a strawberry so But anyway, I'm gonna speed up the sketch and then I'll talk about the watercolor Once again, I'm adding a shadow to kind of create a three-dimensional feel and effect and I've got a basic shape I don't think it was exactly accurate, but that's again the point. This is watercolor sketching We're relaxing. We're not getting too serious and we're having fun This is the same wet-on-wet technique I'm focusing on that light area of the inside of the avocado and I'm gonna go with that kind of warmer I can't remember what the name it it was that yellow And if you buy this Arteza set you can actually just choose the same colors that I just chose They come, you know in the same spots obviously So I noticed it was kind of a warm yellow and what did I say about watercolor that we want to do? We want to preserve the light so I don't want to get this too dark too quickly Which again makes sense using the wet-on-wet technique your paints are already going to be more diluted Now I'm going to use these greens and I notice I brought the warmer color all the way to the edge We want to learn that colors play upon each other often And we don't have to color like we're coloring in a coloring book with sections things are always bouncing off of each other with color and light and so they can Kind of be throughout your painting. I noticed the greens on the outer edge were a little bit darker Maybe a little bit cooler So I got more of a olive-y kind of a green and I'm just getting If you look at the avocado and the picture you can see it's gradually going from yellow to a little bit of a darker value green not a lot, but just a little so I'm just kind of suggesting that and Then I am going to Blend I had too much of a line. That's kind of what I was talking about with the coloring book example I don't really want that and watercolor One of the hardest things I learned was the timing of things You know if you wait too long To add to a wet-on-wet you can create these little you watercolor artists can tell me is it called a Burst or a it's something where it just makes a your color Bleeds into each other and that's something you don't want to do so you want to take advantage of The surface while it's wet and then if you miss that window of opportunity You might as well. Just wait till it's dry. You have to wait till it's dry And then you've then you're back in business, you know now I know that underneath is very dark, but what did I say about watercolor? Let's resist the urge to go too dark too quickly and to opaque if I got my paintbrush so thick with paint Or I didn't already have it as a wet-on-wet. It's gonna look more flat. Once again. This is the beautiful Quality of water. Oops. I dropped some water on it quality of watercolor is the lightness of the paper showing through there are a lot of mediums that don't have this that are more opaque and gouache is more opaque than watercolor and You know acrylic and oil and pastel so watercolor is kind of unique in its little aspect of Being able to have such brightness. I think that's what I love about it. You can really create a a bright airy Light effect with your painting Okay So you see I've added a little bit more dark underneath because I know the underneath part of the avocado is darker Mine shaped a little bit more like a coconut or something right now Think that my seed was a little off. I think I do kind of correct that as I go But what are colors pretty forgiving you actually if you get something in that you don't like you can wet it a little bit Grab a paper towel. You'll see me do that a few times now I am looking at the seed now if you look at the picture if you're Whatever you're looking at this on is big enough. I see that it does have some browns in it But I'm going to resist the urge to go too dark like I said and I'm noticing that on the seed the left side is Light like a like a light was shining on it and the right side at the lower right side of the seat It's a little bluish. Can you see that? And when you can learn to sometimes turn our brain off and see the color that's actually there then you can exaggerate it and Our brain would just say oh, that's a brown seed. It's dark brown at the bottom It's light brown at the top, but my brain tells me. Oh, I see blues and purples over there in that right side Oh, I see how I can add some purples to Create interest and to cool it off and to create more of a sense of three Dementiality if that's a word and I decided since I had the purple and the blue in the seed Look how much interest that adds rather than just that boring brown one of the most common questions I get from a lot of my tutorials is how do you know what color to use? How do you exaggerate color like that? It's just these rules guys. It's the simple rules colors cool off in the shadow Values get Darker in the foreground lighter in the background and and it's also just doing it a lot I am Really, I wish I could had shared more of my beginning artwork. It was terrible. I was just so frustrated It's just a wonder. I didn't quit. I didn't have all this YouTube stuff when I got started I started when my kids started to get a little bit bigger in school and I was just searching This is why I started Monet cafe. Okay, I'm gonna give you the little story is I searched to find information I found this one site called wet canvas that is still around today that it wasn't all just wet medium It was pastels. They had forums for artists to be in I met some neat artists that I still follow today and But it was harder to find lessons and things and I just had to Really try especially with pastels. I bought the wrong materials. I did the wrong techniques the wrong papers And so I was like, you know what if I ever get in a place in my life where I can start sharing some of the stuff I'm gonna share it. So that's that's my story and I'm sticking to it. That's how Monet cafe came into being I started doing this. I don't know how old is this channel? I don't even know maybe five years old four years old I don't know but um, I love it. I love sharing and I love you guys We have the greatest greatest Subscribers my patrons our Facebook group Monet cafe art group on Facebook. I always go on these tangents, you know that and So anyway, and I get the greatest messages From people all over the world and Monet cafe that are so appreciative that might not have any other resources to learn to Paint so anyway, I just love all you guys. Alright, so yeah, why not? Get fun. Have some color add some purple my patrons know and one of my last videos I was like when in doubt add some purple. It's gonna add some interest I think I even add some purple down in the shape. See what that did. Do you see how fun that is now? it was boring before and Now I told my patrons I said now everybody's probably gonna start adding purple now. You see how I'm darkening it I Resisted the urge to go too dark too quickly And now you see me blowing it dry because I'm gonna use a technique to get those little fine lines that are kind of running throughout the dome part of that avocado and I have this Kind of brownish tan color pretty diluted Because I don't want them to be the the lines to be stark. I want them to be very subtle So I'm just kind of working it over the top now I accidentally darkened that up more than I wanted so I was trying to use my technique Which works a little bit of wetting it and then blotting it with a paper towel, but well, let me do this first I actually decided to add a little bit of the micron marker Not everywhere I just picked some strategic places where I wanted a little bit more focal point or where there was an edge that was a little bit more noticeable and the trick with this is not to overdo it and I decided I wanted to kind of give some color but keep it light with that reflection So I'm using gouache. This is my gouache set and I'm using a blue you could see there at the bottom and That just got the kind of bluish tone that I liked in that kind of highlighter reflection But now I'm going to add a lighter blue now. Why am I not able to do this with watercolor? Have you ever noticed in a watercolor set? There's no white. Well, that's because watercolor is translucent gouache is opaque you can paint with white with gouache But you cannot with watercolor so that's why it's kind of handy to have some lighter colors of gouache paints available now I am going to be doing a gouache video you guys. Let me know in the comments If you like that idea if you'd like to see the gouache video I've already got some of the footage together, but I've got to finish some stuff So anyway watercolor and gouache can be combined and they both have their own Benefits I decided afterwards to go ahead. There was a lot of blank space there and make like a little recipe Writing next to each one. This is a strawberry shortcake recipe. I didn't have room to write the actual directions part But on the avocado one I did so I just you know use my little micron marker and Make the ingredients list and then the directions. I happen to love guacamole So this is kind of neat. You can make your own little homemade recipe book So lots of options with these watercolor sketches and like I said, it's a lot of fun Let's move on to the next demonstration, which is three pairs now This one's going to be a little bit more simplified. First. I'm cleaning off my watercolor palette It's really a good idea to start with an unmuddyed surface. So your colors are fresh and clean I'm doing like I did before a basic sketch just in a light pencil I'm fast forwarding this part because there's not a whole lot to see you just want to get in a basic sketch And I'm using my micron marker this time Unlike the avocado one to go ahead and sketch in The outline to the pairs now notice I keep my line kind of broken and sketchy rather than a hard Stiff line we want to keep our strokes gestural And you can see here. I'm using my wet on wet technique basically creating a channel For the watercolor to play around in and explore and have fun So I'm choosing a little bit of a cooler and a warmer yellow combination And I'm see how I'm just dabbing the color and letting it play and have fun And I am even though it might look willy-nilly I am paying attention to where some of the values are I noticed where some of the More yellowy colors are and I'm just dabbing them in And then you'll see these pairs have a little bit of green in them too. So then I'm going to go ahead and find A nice subtle that's my brightest green that I have there So I'm going to use that green and I have it pretty the the application is pretty wet as well Because I want this to be light once again preserve that luminosity I think when I and see how I'm just dabbing it in in a few strategic areas I think when I started watercolor anyway, and I think probably a lot of people do this we have a tendency to have our paint too thick and We have plenty of time to add applications that are thinner maybe in water Now notice my Application is a little bit thicker in paint Because the bottom areas of the pairs are a little bit more in shadow. They're a darker value So the paint's a little thicker. I also was seeing some blue In these pairs like where the curves are once again blues and purples There's some purple there are really good for shadows And so I know the bases of these pairs are a little bit darker in value. So hence the purple now I'm creating a channel Little shapes underneath the pairs for their beautiful shadows once again a wet on wet technique I'm just going to let this blue shadow color that I choose Just play around and do its drippy runny Thing that's kind of what watercolor does anyway. So just use that to your advantage shadows are kind of flowy and luminescent And now I'll be adding some color to the stems I noticed that the stems were darker on the left side Than the right side though. You can tell the light source is kind of from upper right And behind a little bit because you can see where the shadows are And so I wanted to get the light in first and then I go in and just add a little hint of dark to the left side Now I also too decided I wanted to have them sitting on some sort of tabletop or something And so I'm doing wet on wet once again. The blue shadows have dried And in this case, it wouldn't have been so crucial to let them dry as much because the shadows could kind of Drip into the background or the tabletop that I'm putting down. I was deciding on a color and I the tabletop actually was kind of Tan brownish. So I just went with that color Even though they were kind of the same color as the pairs. So again, just letting the watercolor flow around adding The more water where I want it to be lighter and more color or watercolor A thicker application where I want it to be a little bit darker same thing with the background I decided to go ahead and give background rather than just the white of the paper So I made it kind of just like a blue blue sky color and Worked my way around it. Now once again, this one was a very simple one and I Stress doing them this way especially to begin with so that you can just have some fun and move on and do another one and not get so hung up and trying to create such a serious piece And I do end up now. I added the purple there They create a they kind of ground the pairs They feel a little bit more like they're sitting on the table because that purple's a little bit darker than the blue Now I did decide to go ahead and add some red I felt like it needed another pop of color and I noticed the pairs did in some of their Little shadowy areas felt like it was a little warmer So I thought the red was kind of fun and brought some life to this painting And you know one of my one of my patrons said that she was looking forward to these because she has a tendency to get too serious And want to you know do a more serious detailed perhaps painting and I Am grateful to be able to bring you guys this because I think we often do that I have definitely done that in the past to where I Wanted the final piece to just come out so good And sometimes it's okay to play and I think that's what this watercolor sketching Promotes is just playing and having some fun and doing some loose little sketches So just blowing it dry here now and I decided on this one not to add like the box Like I did around the other ones because it's you know kind of larger But I did decide to get out my micron marker again and give this one a name I called it trace pairs traces like spanish for three. I don't know how to say pairs in spanish All right, let's move on. These are going to be fun. I love these florals And if you'd like to know a little bit more about floral painting and some of my suggestions I have a video. I think it's the one on this youtube channel right before this one on painting flowers and some three easy tips to really help you make them more suggestive and Free and fun now for this one. I took a picture of some I believe the flowers are called blue days That's what I've always called them. I think it's daze. I love these little flowers They just bloom all year long and they're the most beautiful blue But I corrected myself there. I was going to use the marker first But I decided to use my own strategy from my lesson. I just did on flowers and Go ahead and simplify the shape by just looking at some of the shapes Some of them were more like blooms some were turned one way or the other And then I go in and add the petals within the simplified shape. Once again, go go check out that video I'll try to put a little card It's it's those little things that pop up in the top right hand corner where you can see the other video So I do that after the fact when I create these videos So now I'm using the micron marker actually to go into my simplified forms And I I just kind of analyze the flower. They are kind of like little star shapes Once again, they're kind of turned in different directions. So if I make my little ellipses, they're just the little cylindrical or Circular shapes once again, some of them are turned a little differently So when you make that little ellipse or shape, then you just fill in the petals of the flower from there It makes it so much easier. Now. I'm just giving some ideas of groupings in here and kind of where some leaves are And I know it might look, you know, just kind of haphazard But I really am looking back at the reference photo a lot but doing One of the other steps of the floral videos is just suggesting things We don't have to draw every leaf and every flower so perfectly and you could probably see there I'm choosing like some cooler Uh, I guess you could call them cool greens or warm blues kind of some teal colors And what I did is I haven't totally wet the paper, but I have a little bit of very diluted watercolor On my brush so I can kind of see where I'm putting the water That's a strategy if sometimes you can't see the clear water So that helped me to kind of know where I'm going with it. So I'm just gradually adding Water a little bit of wet on wet and in some areas just more Runny watercolor or have more diluted watercolor And I'm looking at the shapes and the values and the energy that's in my little photo I don't have to stay strict with the photo those colors I just looked at had a little more green in them So I'm going in and my paper still a little bit wet in areas You notice how the watercolor is still staying very suggestive because of the wet on wet technique and I am you might see me going back and forth and back and forth and also using the paper towel Which comes in handy to blot off if I have too much color or too much water on my brush And again, I'm just giving these little suggestive fun free marks They don't have to be just like leaves or anything as long as you're suggesting Something similar to what they're like and I love painting for One of the beautiful aspects. I think is it gets us out into nature Oh, let me pause because that's I'm mixing a green my own green now I'm the only green that I had on here. The brightest green was that bright I can't remember the name of it. You you can see it on the card when I show the card It's the only really bright green and it was just a little too bright So I decided to mix the lemon yellow and the blue violet to create my own green It's kind of like I was saying at the beginning of this video when you have Yellows and blues and you know a decent amount you can make your own greens Some of it's just fun and playing around. It's also a really advantageous just to make your own little color mixing chart So you can refer back to it and find out. Oh, what what do these color combinations make? What kind of green is this one? The more you do it the more you You don't have to rely back on a chart. You kind of know what color combinations work and what your favorites are What works in what application? So there's that blue violet by my finger there that I mixed with the lemon yellow that was right above it That's how I made that green. So you can still see it's still very suggestive Now this has been real time up to here, but I am going to speed it up Up my video is already at an hour. So I got to hurry I am using a decent amount of water for these flowers once again wet on wet technique because they are very Translucent looking they they're not opaque and dark in value. They're light in value And like I said, we have a tendency sometimes to just grab color and start painting And when we lose that translucency, we've really Lost what I think is the beauty of watercolor So I'm adding the water on each of the other flower petals And I'm using that blue violet that I showed To put down in kind of in the centers in the darkest value and I'm letting Like I say I'm letting the water do its magic. Then I'm adding a little bit more of a A teal blue To the outer parts and letting it just kind of run and do its thing keeping that pretty pretty color of the The blue days flowers. They're just I love these flowers. They're just so pretty Kind of a violet blue and you can make these paintings as suggestive as you want I mean really at this stage if I just added a few stems and a bit more Information with some leaves you could leave it, you know very very loose So it's really up to you and I definitely have found that the more you do like in one session If you spread it out over weeks, you know, you got to kind of get in the groove again, but the more you do as you're Working You will find they just get more Carefree fun relaxing and you just really start to enjoy the process Now you saw it took a paper towel and dabbed on one of them where I had the color a little too dark The flowers that are more closed up Like they're about to bloom. They're going to be darker Just because they're compressed, you know, they're all combined the leaves haven't opened yet and So, you know, you're just keeping in mind the way once again The color and value and color temperature and some of the rules that work like I said before in all mediums And when you get those down pat you can really start I feel like that's when you really start to become an artist is when you've done these rules You've painted enough to where you just sort of know inherently it's kind of like I I Give an idea of playing guitar Oh, now I am I'm mixing up another green that I I kind of want my own green that has a little more yellow in it But just like playing guitar when I was young my whole family is very musical from the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina Bluegrass music can sing my uncle could sing like Hank Williams the original not Hank Williams jr And uh in hanging out with my family there. I just really wanted to learn to play guitar And uh just had a musical Desire my grainy bought me an old Gibson guitar and I bought a little book now you can learn everything online I would just think of what I might have learned if I had the internet back then like we do now Oh, notice how I'm doing darker leaves. I've increased the value down in the shadows Okay for those greens and even adding some blues because things in the shadows cool off But anyway, so I had my little book where it literally I had it had a sticker thing You put these stickers of different colors on your fingers and the book showed you where to it was a guide that would show You where to how to hold a certain chord based on the little stickers on your fingers Well, I started out. It's like a lot of things you feel like you're going to quit It's just too hard a lot of things are that's why a lot of people quit But I kept at it kept at it. I played until my fingers bled literally And I'd get back up and I'd try it again until eventually I developed some calluses on my fingers And then eventually muscles in my hands started to strengthen and have that muscle memory of knowing where that chord is And now you know and then trying to play and sing together. That's a whole another thing, you know But the more you do it, that's my analogy is the more you do it the easier it gets and the more natural the The motions or the um The strategy becomes so it becomes effortless after a while and like I said, that's my point Then you can start having fun and not working so hard at it, you know So but I know that's how it is to begin with so a lot of you may be feeling that way when you get started And you're going to have a lot of mistakes. Uh, you're going to have paintings You know how many paintings I've thrown away? I have no idea, but it's a lot. The number is big I still throw I throw things away if I don't like it. I'm like a trash bag I mean trash can file 13 they call it and um, I know that it was just one of those things and I look at it as a learning experience Now I'm saying this now because I've learned to do this. I didn't always do that a lot of times I was very frustrated, you know, like you guys get I'm sure so Oh, I want to mention here. I'm using what's called a rigor brush. Um, I know it's going fast But the the brush part is very thin and long the bristle part And so it creates really nice stems and just little fun lines and what I'm doing If if I want the stem to be more, um, noticeable It's going to be a little bit, uh, more saturated with color with the watercolor If I want it to be less noticeable, it's going to be more diluted with water and I'm also using more broken lines I think that is also something that helps your painting look painterly and loose Rather than so stiff and heavy and, um, these little lines It's good to have them thick in some areas thin in some areas with little Gestural flicks of your wrist keep your hand really fluid and moving to create things like this You can do this with a small brush as well But the rigor brush actually it holds more of the watercolors so you can get a stroke for longer And I'm just dabbing in once again like my flower tutorial Suggestive marks of where leaves would be they don't have to be perfect And I've already created a a background of looseness To lay these shapes upon so All right, so I'm finishing this one up I did decide to add the box around it and notice with my box that I don't draw the lines through areas that might be Sticking out, you know the box is like behind the image. Okay. Here's the next one I also missed a little bit of the footage for this next floral. I'm doing I literally my even though I have a A new one of the newer iPhones and the battery charge it would last forever Which is awesome as you as you keep your phones the batteries tend to get weaker But even though I have like such a great battery on this phone I ran out the battery from all of this Filming so I literally had to put it on the charger for a while And I painted the first part that you didn't get to see so notice here. Well, I'm probably not going to add music I'm going to talk I'm giving suggestions to these flower shapes and the leaf shapes I know that these little bouquets. That's what they're like. They're like bouquets of flowers All on their own little individual stems and each one has these little pointy type of petals pointing up and reaching So I just gave some areas with more suggestions Of those flowers and some just kind of used the watercolor as a little reddish pinkish background with the leaves. I added previously a cooler green notice those Cool greens kind of underneath and then I added the warmer greens the more yellowy greens Kind of on tops and some areas very similar to the photo Now if you just look at that reference photo, you can see that there are some of the leaves that are brighter There's some of the leaves that are more hidden. I decided to keep this one very loose I did go ahead and do the box around this one too. It was a lot of fun Um, I went ahead and just gave them some titles. Hey, somebody tell me the names of these flowers I always call them butterfly flowers. So I wrote butterflies welcome and thanks guys for the last video I did I got many of you telling me what the names of a certain flower was I was painting So we all work together as a team, right? So here are the final fruits and vegetables and recipes You know, you can have so much fun with these and get very creative and florals And I thought I'd share with you very quickly here at the end what started this whole watercolor sketching video Idea was my little Duck sketch that I did just a whimsical little duck. I love the way He was just strutting out and doing his thing look very confident And so I just recorded this literally while I was sitting at my kitchen table And shared it and a lot of you guys wanted to see more about watercolor sketching. So it's a lot of fun It's energetic and free. So I want to thank you guys I really want to thank you for your patreon support That is what is allowing me to continue to make these videos that have a little more content So I appreciate you guys. I hope you learned something. Please like comment subscribe and come back happy painting