 Welcome to Monet Café! I'm artist Susan Jenkins. I'm happy you're here to join me in this tutorial where I will show you how to create loose and free poppies. Now this is a watercolor demonstration. I happen to love watercolor even though I do a lot of pastel painting and I love all kinds of mediums. So we're gonna have some fun today exploring color and getting loose. Please subscribe if you haven't already and here we go. It's time to get started with some watercolor fun. So you're gonna need a few supplies, the obvious supplies for watercolor. Of course some watercolor paper. I am using an Arches watercolor block. I love these because they don't work as much when you paint but use whatever you have. I will of course have some watercolor. I'll be using some tube watercolor today. I will talk about the colors that I'm using but if you don't have a tube set and you just have a watercolor set, I've got a very messy one over here. You can use again whatever you have and we're gonna have some fun playing with color and I'm gonna get you to experiment with the colors that you have as well. You'll of course need some brushes. I'm using a Princeton brush from the Princeton Brush Company. This is a round 40-50 round and this is a size 12 and I'm also going to be using a liner brush. Okay these make the little nice lines. But if you have a brush with a nice tip, kind of a sharp tip, you can use that as well. I will be using some salt for this. Now I only had Himalayan pink salt. I don't use regular eye-dye salt so I hope this works the same as regular salt and you'll need a toothpick or I have some other options you can use if you don't have a toothpick handy. You might want to grab yourself a cup of coffee. You know this is Monet Café and I'm already a step ahead of y'all so you better go get it brewing. Alright of course you'll also need some water. You might you don't have a Bob Ross I'm sure in your studio but you know he's pretty cool. He'll be happy to hang out with you too while we do this video. The candle is always nice too. Oh and also too I recently got these little porcelain watercolor holders. I got it from DickBlick.com. I'm gonna be adding some colors to this that I'll talk about. The reason I love these, they're not very expensive. I think they're like six dollars. I need to add this to my Amazon store. I like these because they come so clean. Look at that and they're nice and heavy. They don't move around when you're painting. But let me show you what happens when you don't use porcelain. And these are fine. The plastic ones are fine but you really can't get, especially the yellows and reds, you cannot get those colors out of it. So if you like a nice clean beginning these are great. Alright I'm gonna use a mat to mark off an 8 by 10 area. I find these are very handy so I don't have to measure and mark it out. But I could get like two 8 by 10s. Let's see out of this close. Out of this watercolor paper. You might need an eraser if you do like me and you're messy. Alright it's time to get started. Here we go. I was a bit on a poppy kick. I had done a previous watercolor painting of some poppies and then I did a similar painting of poppies in soft pastel which is another tutorial I have here on my YouTube channel one that was fairly recent. Alright now I noticed if I go very close to the edge over here I will be able to get two 8 by 10s out of this. So why not maximize this with some, I don't always work in standard sizes like you saw the little poppy pastel painting I did. I love long formats whether they're vertical or horizontal and they're not as easy. Well you can't find custom or standard frames for it. You have to make a custom frame. So sometimes standard frames are better if you're going to frame it yourself and you just want to find a pre-made frame or you know sometimes people prefer that. I find a lot of people who buy my art they get a custom frame anyway you know they don't use a standard frame. So work in whatever size you want but this was conveniently laid out to have two 8 by 10s. Now before I get started on the final slower version poppy watercolor painting I am going to speed up the first one that I did and with this first one it was primarily red. I'm using Alizarin Crimson, Quinacridone Red, Cadmium Red, Light and some yellows. I happen to use a quinacridone gold and a yellow but really all you need is a red that's a little cooler maybe a red that's a little warmer an orange and a yellow and you should be able to do this first one. Now I'm speeding this one up but this is for if you do the tutorial that I'm going to have soon slower and you want to try doing it in red these are the colors I use but I wanted to kind of talk you through this before we actually jump into some of the real time. Now if you're a patron of mine on my Patreon page patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins it's $5 a month that you get a little extra instruction and you support the Monet Cafe channel. If you're a patron I'm going to provide actually this red poppy painting in real-time as well just one of the little perks of being a patron but don't worry Monet Cafe your real-time footage of the pink poppies is coming soon in this video. What I did was mostly a wet-on-wet technique you probably noticed I was adding a lot of water notice how drippy this whole process is it's flowing and beautiful and loose and I added some salt we're going to talk about that. I'll also be sharing about how to mix your own darks I'll be adding some darker centers to these poppies using some blue green and some of my red to get a nice dark for the centers and I'm going to also share you a little technique for getting fine lines if you don't have a liner brush look at that I'm using the backside of the watercolor brush isn't that cool so we can really just get loose and carefree and have a good old time often we get too stiff and too serious too soon in our art career and it stifles creative energy and fun. All right here we go and this was the first one that I completed with more of a red orange gold color palette but I want you to experiment with color you may want to try a color palette different than even the ones that I use so it's a really good idea I'm just showing you here how you can play with colors with this second one I'm speeding it up again trust me we will get to some real time I was playing around with mixing some purples and using some yellows kind of a complementary color and some greens so even though you may want to first follow the tutorial more closely the final one that I'll do with more real time is going to be more of a pink color palette that doesn't mean that you can't use the same principles and do a few of them with some fun and creative color palettes of your own but that should give you a little preview of what's coming up. Since I'm left-handed I just flipped my watercolor block over and I'll begin the painting on the left side and now for the real-time pink poppy tutorial because I wanted more of a pink color palette with these final poppies I chose quinacridone violet you could use anything that's violet I did not use the one I have in the middle the quinacridone red it was too warm I'm sorry it's out of the frame there you'll see what I use in a second and some alizarin crimson so the final colors were this color that's called permanent rose you see how that looks more pink than the quinacridone red now you can see why I didn't use the quinacridone red that's the alizarin crimson and that's the quinacridone violet so try to steer away from any reds that are a bit too orange in color stay more towards those cooler reds if you want to get more pinks once again I'm using the Princeton brush company brushes again use whatever you have just a big brush is better for these initial poppies especially if you're doing a size as large as I am an 8 by 10 but I find I could have even used a larger brush with this but notice now this is real time I'm getting in some poppy shapes I'm using my actual painting as a reference image so you can I did this out of my imagination so you can follow along based on the actual painting but notice how I have a little hint of some of the pink before added that violet to it even though I'm doing a wet on wet technique sometimes if you have a little hint of a color it helps you see where you put the water so water is your friend that's something that I included in another beginner watercolor tutorial I did you want to be very generous with your water now notice how I'm laying my brush on the side we have a tendency when we first start watercolor painting to use the tip of the brush and we start to paint almost like a paint by number and that is usually going to make your painting look stiff so see how I have my hand almost flat or parallel kind of to the paper and I'm letting that brush just lay flat move around basically using a broad stroke of the brush rather than the tip and at this point you're just getting in poppy shapes and adding some of those cooler reds and if you have a purple if you don't have this cornucrid own violet I know that's kind of an unusual color but you're basically gonna pick a cooler red and a purpley color a couple of other things I'd like you to notice is that I'm letting these colors mix on the paper rather than mixing them up in one of those little wells and it creates more beautiful color and kind of like the colors are playing actually on the watercolor paper now to do this you need to remember water is your friend don't be too stingy with the water this is what makes these poppies look so loose and carefree also notice that with especially this arches paper that I'm using when I use the brush on its side like this notice how there's like some areas that look a little more dry like that top poppy you see embrace that everything doesn't have to be filled in we don't need any hard edges or lines also notice too that the darker values and the poppies are more where the stems would join the poppy flower and typically the petals will receive the outer petals will receive more of the light especially those ones where you see I'm going to be adding the golden color and you can find a warm yellow whatever you have to basically give the impression that sunlight is hitting some of these petals and it gives a lot more color interest than if I just left the poppies just these pink you know colors I really liked the gold and the pink combination together so here comes some of the gold again I'm being very liberal with my water I'm sorry don't have it where you can see how much water I'm adding to my brush but I recommend playing with smaller studies first just like I said before with the purple one you saw a little bit of my what I call color notes it's always a good idea you can't over prepare even though I don't want to lose the spontaneity of things but especially with your color palette get your colors play around on a little piece of watercolor paper put down a lot of water in one area and just drip some color also be not too stingy with the color that you add if you have a real light application of watercolor when you do the wet on wet and you add it it's going to create a very pale color so don't be afraid to really grab some of that watercolor to lay into the water and I say that with reservation because with watercolor you can't really get the light back but because watercolor dries lighter often we put down something that's a little too light and then it dries and it looks really pale or washed out so that's why I say play on smaller pieces first because that's one of the challenges when you're first starting watercolor is what is the water to paint ratio and that's just something you learn with practice now also to see how I'm using the paper towel when your painting is still wet you can actually dab off areas if you want to light them lighten them up a bit as in some of these pedals I really wanted those outer pedals to feel like they were catching the light and you see how that was just a neat little technique in order to do that now on these I still have another poppy I'm going to do at the bottom but because they're still fairly wet I wanted to go ahead and add the salt this salt technique is not going to work if you add it when the painting or the watercolor is a bit too dry once again you don't want it too wet or too dry just a little bit damp and then you can add the salt now what the salt does is it just creates a bit of random texture once again these are impressionistic loose and free so we are embracing that spontaneity now you don't even have to use salt at all on these I was just really having fun all right now let's move on to the third poppy I like compositions in thirds or odd numbers with things like flowers rather than even numbers that's actually something that I learned about landscaping plants is if you have a little area and you're going to add some plants it's much better to plant five than four there's just more interest in that odd number of things versus even and even though I have smaller poppies in the background the main larger poppies are in the thirds okay so there's and you want to create the poppies to where they are turning maybe some are showing the centers where they're turned facing towards you some may be facing away where you don't see the actual center of the poppy so try to create a little bit of a variety and you know follow my tutorial here if you would like but look at some poppies yourself in some reference images and maybe reproduce some different shapes of the poppies as they would appear in nature and this poppy that I'm creating at the bottom here will be one where the center you can kind of see how I'm developing it here the center will be visible to the viewer and just like with the other poppies I'm going to use the paper towel now just to dab and lose a little bit of that color on those outer petals and my source of the Sun in this you probably could tell is like the upper left that's why the petals are lighter there and why I'm adding the bits of yellowy or gold now I did grab a little bit what am I grabbing here a little bit of the cornacridone gold is what I'm using but like I said if you just have a warm yellow and be really generous with the water here we don't want to over saturate this yellow it's just basically giving a little bit of warmth to the pink that we've already added and also a really neat color palette combination here now I'm also grabbing sometimes a little bit more color to let the centers of the poppy perhaps be a little darker than the outer petals that are catching the light and now I'm just going to speed up this little section here and describe what's happening I've got my basic poppy shapes in and even though I've added a decent amount of color there are some areas where I want it to just really have that beautiful rich or color that's perhaps more deep also to you see how just kind of added an indication of a lower petal kind of coming off the side for that top poppy so you know I'm just develop developing them a little bit further giving a little bit more of the deeper darker colors especially down closer to where the stems are and having a little bit of fun here perhaps notice too that sometimes when I add a little random petal that's kind of branching off to the side somewhere I use a little bit more of a dry brush technique where I'm allowing the texture of the paper to show rather than using a wet-on-wet technique this also adds to the feeling of impressionism and a term that's often used called lost edges where you don't have any stark lines it's just suggested I kind of wish I'd have used a larger brush for all of these because if you use a brush that's too small it can create splotchiness there's the dry brush technique right there and little bits of random almost patterns so definitely use the largest brush that you can especially for the initial large poppy shapes and petals and now I'm going to mix a dark for the centers of the poppies I mean of course you could use whatever premixed watercolor dark you may already have I mean you could even use black if you want but I find darks that I mix myself are much more interesting so what I typically do when I mix a dark is use three colors something that's a blue basically a darker blue usually an ultramarine blue a green and a red or a purpley color which I have here and I usually just work with whatever colors I have on my palette so I've got I think that's an ultramarine blue I'm using there and then I'm also using the quinacridone violet which is kind of purpley and the green which really darkens it up you know how in school we if you combine all colors they turn to black so we're really just combining three colors to get a dark color and I experimented a little bit with this dark and realized I like it a little bit more purple so I went back and didn't add quite as much of that green I thought the purpley dark kind of suited the color palette better than the green which really neutralized it made it more of a neutral dark so you know you might want to play with that too you see that purple really is a better combination with the pinks than too much of the duller dark adding the greens so you play with what you have I just want to give you those options I'm just speeding up the section just ever so slightly so you can see me adding the centers once again the top poppy we can barely see the center it's turned a little bit away the center poppy actually you won't even see the center at all of the flower because we're going to see the back side of it kind of the stem and then the lower poppy is you know just kind of turned a little bit more towards the viewer so that's what I mean about varying the shapes and examine things in nature that's one of the beautiful things about being an artist some of you guys may have noticed this if you're just getting back into your art career or you've always dreamed of wanting to paint and you just never had the chance have you realized how much more you look at our world our beautiful world and you become a student of nature I think that's as wonderful of a quality of being an artist as the painting itself we just start to really appreciate the beauty on our earth and the creation that surrounds us and you know try to emulate it as artists but even whether we can or cannot create it the way that we like at least we're paying attention and enjoying the beautiful view that the Lord has given us and now let's do another fun little technique that also adds to the impressionistic and spontaneous feel of these poppies many of you may have seen this technique before but basically we're going to add some splatters to the painting sometimes as a beginning artist you might think oh boy that is scary what if they don't land in the right place but that's all part of the spontaneity and fun now I did on my little palette I grabbed a little bit more of that permanent rose color and I'm using more of the quinacridone violet so basically a cool red and a purpley color and once again you want to get enough water on your brush and enough paint for it to show up not to be too diluted so play around with that maybe on a separate piece of paper before you commit to this and all I'm doing is taking my brush tapping it against my hand in different areas you can also take your brush and kind of splay it with your fingertip on the brush to create a little bit of splatter almost like you would with a toothbrush you know rubbing your finger across it and now we need to add some stems and some leaves for the stems I'm using this little thin liner brush and if you don't have a liner brush just a brush that has a pretty good point to the tip and I find that the delicacy and the gestural quality of the stems makes such a difference in your painting feeling more true to nature stems are not often just really thick straight lines they have some energy to them and so what I typically try to do is get a general idea of where I want the stem to come out of the flower and reach out of the painting and just create a nice thin loose and when I say the term gestural when you get better at this I'm always trying to get better at this and you can create some little quick strokes rather than strokes that are too slow and you press too hard that's how you're going to create those really really delicate stems that just look more carefree and natural so I've got a general idea of where they're going to be now and I'm going to add in a little bit more of that green kind of at the base of the flowers and by the way I'm sorry I don't have the name of the color of the green that I use but I actually used a green that was just already on my palette and I mixed in a little yellow with it too I wanted it to be not a dark evergreen but more of a golden green so that's kind of why I'm adding some of the yellow back into the green I apologize here I wanted to zoom in and my head's going to get in the way and cause it to go out of focus but I want to show you I'm using the backside of my watercolor brush here to make some of these linear strokes that are coming off of the base of the flower there and you have to do this while the paint is still a little bit wet but you literally can use the backside of the watercolor brush if it has a bit of a point to it to just kind of pull off some of the wet areas now I'm using the liner brush again but that's just something you may want to experiment with and try I really like that technique I saw it from another watercolor artist I also had a at the beginning of this video a toothpick as one of the materials you can use for this painting you can use the toothpick in the same way that you use the backside of the watercolor brush and here I am actually intensifying the darks of some of the centers now what this is going to do is create contrast once again watercolor dries lighter than when you first apply it but you still don't want to be too heavy-handed with making everything so dark so that you have the option at the end like I'm doing here to determine what is going to be my focal point area and then you can intensify the darks don't do it everywhere because if it's everywhere it's nowhere I can't remember which artist said that but we want to create some strategic focal areas now here you can see me using the backside of the brush like I mentioned before I'm pulling out some of those centers of the poppies where they sometimes have those little spiky things that come out of the center and I just really love this technique of you have once again you have to do it when the paint is still wet but creating those little strokes with just the backside of your watercolor brush is kind of fun but back to the focal point again contrast that means that the difference between the darks and the lights is one of the key ways to create a focal point meaning where you want the viewer's eye to go we naturally have a tendency to go where there's a big difference between lights and darks and so that's why the darks of those flowers are going to kind of pull the eye in to the dark center at the bottom and hopefully lead the eye in kind of an S-shaped curve up to the top poppy now let's do these leaves these are kind of fun once again I'm using a green that's a little bit more of a warm green and practice with some leaf shapes on another piece of paper if you haven't done many leaves but typically the leaves are very thin coming out from the stem and then if you learn this little technique of pressing your brush if you're using a round brush like I am so you start thin at the where it meets the stem pull out press down and then pull up again you make a nice little leaf shape once again practice some of these I probably should do another video although there are plenty out there where you can just type in watercolor leaf you know demonstration and there's a lot there's a plethora of watercolor artists on YouTube that have some great instruction so you can definitely find some nice little demos for you to practice some leaf shapes and I didn't want to do too many here the poppies with the star of the show but I did want to add it's a little bit bare right now I wanted to use my liner brush and create some stems of or grasses of things kind of reaching up to give a little bit more interest to this a little bit more depth to the painting now notice how I'm using the liner brush almost in a pulling fashion I'm doing a lot of these behind the poppies and this is again that gestural stroke you you want it to be kind of loose and quick if you can paying attention to you know the general location of the grasses or the other stems in the painting and I think it really added to the composition to have more interest it's also nice to have broken edges in your grass shapes to again not a thick strong line that's solid all the way from the base of the grass to the top and you can create this broken this that's probably the best word for it a kind of a broken line but also changing your pressure of the brush and pressing down and lifting up another great thing to practice on another piece of paper or watercolor paper is not only your leaf practice strokes but also some of your grassy practice strokes and also I'd like to share often in my videos that if you're just a beginner artist and your piece doesn't come out like anything you thought it would or you're just like not happy with how it came out do not let that be a deterrent to trying again trust me that's what happens with everyone when they first try these things so don't feel like you're alone in that trust me artists who share videos on YouTube are not going to share their failed paintings I had so many paintings that I was unhappy with but I I just kept trying I'm perhaps a bit hard headed when it comes to things and I don't want to let it beat me but it doesn't always come out perfect the first time so keep that in mind and don't be afraid to just throw something away try to remember that no painting is a failed painting even if you're not happy with the results because I guarantee you learned something and the more failed paintings that you have the more you'll be on your way to become a better artist if you're a patron of mine I can't wait to see your results in our homework album I just love getting to see what you guys are painting and for those of you in Monet cafe if you haven't become part of our Facebook group Monet cafe art group I hope you will and if you haven't yet subscribed to this channel what are you waiting for it's a great place to learn and grow artistically and have fun all right guys happy painting