 Welcome to Monet Café, I'm artist Susan Jenkins bringing you a watercolor tutorial. You guys voted on many of my watercolor paintings and this is the one you chose, Spring Garden for me to create the first watercolor tutorial in April. And on this channel, if you've been a subscriber long, you've probably noticed there's a lot of pastel painting tutorials, but I happen to love watercolor as well. And over the years I've learned a lot being self-taught, so I think I can come about it with a fresh approach as I teach you how to paint in watercolor and some of its amazing qualities. And this video is all real time, so I hope you enjoy. Also I hope you will like this video, subscribe to this channel, and hit that bell icon to get notified of future videos. And I'm able to keep these free lessons coming because of the support from my patrons on my Patreon page. If you would like to consider becoming a patron, it's only $5 a month and you get extra goodies and extra content. Now let's talk about these supplies and I will change the angle soon so you can see a little bit better. Of course you'll need some water, it is watercolor. I like to use two containers of water, one to clean out the majority of the brush and then I can clean it further in the second jar. The brushes that I'll be using are mainly for this painting from the Princeton Art and Brush Company. These are some of my favorite watercolor brushes. This is the 40-50 round and this is the size 16. I believe I used also this size 10 probably for the majority of the painting that had smaller work. Now I also sometimes use a liner brush for finer lines or stems for flowers. And by the way, a lot of the products that you'll see me using in today's video tutorial will be on my Amazon shop. I have something called Idealist that I'm clicking right there. And there are categories of different types of art supplies. And I do have one category at the end there, watercolor products. In this list I have the paper that I used, which I'll talk about soon. I have the palette tray that I use and these Princeton watercolor brushes. Now the one I have in my Idealist, I believe it's a size 12, which is really a good size. Also it's the 40-50 round series. These work great for watercolor painting. Also it's always a good idea to have some paper towels handy when you're painting with watercolor. I can't tell you. You'll see how much I use these paper towels to blot my brushes sometimes to take excess paint off of the watercolor paper as well. Also you'll see me using a spritzer bottle to literally spray some water. This is not some sort of body spray from Victoria's Secret. I filled it up with water. I think a cup of coffee is pretty essential when you're painting. And also to set a mood to light a candle. I just love the experience of painting. The surface I'm using is an Arches watercolor block, also in my Amazon shop in the watercolor section. I do love the surface because it keeps the watercolor paper nice and flat. It's literally glued around the edges. I have a product tutorial video on this particular watercolor block if you're interested in how it even works. Now it is pretty pricey, so there are other options. This is a nice 9x12 Arches watercolor paper. And I really like the Arches brand, but use whatever you have. I do recommend 100% cotton papers. And what you see me doing here is taping off sections on this Arches watercolor block that happens to be a 12x16 inch size. I wanted to create a series of spring watercolor paintings. So what I did, I'm going to show you my measurements here. On the 16 inch side, I came over just a quarter of an inch to start my tape. And the tape is one inch wide. And then in between each section was little four inch wide sections, then a piece of tape, four more inches, a piece of tape, and you get the idea. And then I did the same thing going the other way. For the 12 inch side, I came in a quarter inch. I wanted a little border. That's why I did that. And then I made five inch sections that way. So each little section is four inches by five inches. And this is my Aqua Pro watercolor palette made by Mastersons. This is the bottom or the top, however you want to think about it. I actually use this part that I just put on, sometimes just as a large palette to mix paints on as well. Now I stress, use what you have. You don't even have to use tube paints. You can use a little watercolor set. So don't let some of these products intimidate you. I certainly couldn't afford some of these things when I first got started. I like to show that I do this with watercolor paint just like I do with pastels. I love to have a chart, a color guide of my colors. And I actually forgot to list a couple. So I'm going to do it right now. I love these micron markers. Sorry to talk about these products, but you guys are always asking me. I recently added these two new colors. This one was called, what was it called? It's such a pretty green. And then also an indigo cascade green. And I have a few examples in my list, my watercolor product list on my Amazon shop of some of the paints that I like. But if you're a patron of mine, remember how I talked about extra perks patrons, you will get an actual JPEG image of my watercolor palette chart here. I love to make little color notes. It's so helpful when you go into mix a color and you're like, how did I make that perfect terracotta color? So that's a really neat way to do that. Also I'm using unsplash.com for the reference image. I gathered together all kinds of little flower images for these watercolor paintings. And this one in particular happens to be a reference image from Brian Ring. He's from Indiana. It's a lovely, lovely image. Now it was the second one that you chose. So you see me covering up the first one I did. And you will get a tutorial on that one as well. But I had to protect the other parts of the watercolor paper. Here I'm using the little spritzer bottle. I've recently come to like this technique. I like really loose and impressionistic paintings, whatever medium I'm working in. So I find this little spritzer method works well. Now I believe I got, let me see here, what did I get? I believe I used a sap green and an azo green and it made a nice sort of an earthy green. And you can see I'm using my large 16 brush that I showed at the beginning. Now I'm grabbing some yellow. I believe that one was a Hansa yellow light, but whatever, whatever yellow you have. One thing I loved about this reference photo is how bright it was. It looked like spring when the sun is shining and everything is that really yellowy green. Notice I am dabbing on the color. I'm letting it do its thing. The little spritzer sections of water is just going to let it play. But I will be putting the reference image up here in a second so you can kind of see the method to my madness. I'm avoiding some of the larger flower heads that will be more of the focal point. Definitely those first few flowers as you come into the image. And I'm just laying down color in areas that I see it. Notice the water. This is look how watery that is. Now why would I do that? Because I want to lighten it up. I would say when you're first starting watercolor painting, this is how it was for me anyway, because one of the hardest things to learn is the water to paint ratio. And it changes based on what you're trying to accomplish. And when you're first getting started laying down your first applications of watercolor, I suggest to keep it pretty saturated with water. You want it to be loose. You don't want to get color that's too heavy too soon. Because one thing with watercolor paper, very different from pastel painting or oil or acrylic is you can't get the light back. I do have a little trick I'm going to show you at the end, but you can't get that brilliant light white like some of these flowers and some of the grasses. If you squint your eyes and look at the reference image, you can see the lightest thing is the sky and the distance. Then the next lightest thing is some of those distant grasses, kind of like where I'm painting right now. And also some of the flower heads, specifically the first ones coming in. And you want to make sure you preserve that you cannot get it back. I actually get mine a little too dark in a little bit. And I'll show you a technique to really get that back a bit. But what I'm doing is I'm allowing the watercolor to do what it does so beautifully, which is to just find a way in the water that you've already sprayed down and I find it becomes kind of like a dance. You're in control to a degree. Like what I'm doing now, I used a paper towel to pull out some of the paint. I had gotten a little bit too much of that grain down, but you're in control, but you also want the watercolor and the water to have some spontaneity to it as well. And I really love that. Now I know that the darkest value in this area is this lower left corner where there are obviously lots of leaves and stems and flowers all in a mass together, but I still want to reserve or resist the urge to get too dark too soon. Now, one thing that does happen, the more you paint with watercolor, you'll realize as it dries, it's going to dry lighter. Already the areas that you can see are dry like that area. I said in the far distant right, uh, flat grass there. See how light it's already dried. So you learn about those things as you paint too. Now I'm using my paper towel technique. I got down some of the darker green, but notice there are a few little light areas where there's some little leaves where the light is catching it. So I just wiped out some of that. Now here's where I actually did after watching the video at the time. I didn't realize I was getting this a little, a little darker than I wanted. It's going to dry lighter, but I could have gone a little bit more, um, I don't know, a little bit more water to paint ratio. And have that first foreground flower a little bit lighter. Now I'm mixing some, one of my colors I love is Quinacridone, Nicolaiso gold with some yellow. I noticed there's one flower, um, the one that is kind of white, um, I have spaced out there is the red one. And these two I'm working on is this one right here is one that's behind the red flower. You can see in the reference image, it's a little further away. And there's another one in the distance, another kind of large yellow flower. Uh, I wanted to lighten that one up. I could tell that one looked a little dark. I'd also like to point out how I'm using my brush, my brush strokes. Notice how often I'm laying the brush on its side. Often when we start with watercolor painting, I know I did. I used the point of the brush and everything looked so overly detailed. Now I'm using a combination here of the cad orange with the Hansa yellow deep to get in some nice, uh, reddish oranges for this flower. Now, if you notice this particular flower, I think some of these might be zinnias too. I have a lot of you guys who helped me. You guys are flower experts. What this particular flower is, it might be a zinnias. Um, notice in that particular flower and all of them, really the darker values are underneath or where some of the pedals are keeping the lower pedals from receiving sunlight. So I, but, but the top pedals are lighter and then that center is really light with the yellow center. So, and I'm laying my brush literally in just the direction of the pedals. And I want to still keep this loose, but this flower is going to have more focal interest than some of the others. You'll see me develop them later. They look like blobs right now. Um, but now I'm using my paper towel to kind of blot out that center area. I did add a little yellow there as well. Now I'm going to work on this a little bit. And then I'm just going to let it dry. Later I will add more of the darker values underneath these, these pedals underneath. So don't get overly fussy, um, with getting too many of your light versus dark values in now, because you really need to let it dry a few of these layers. Let them dry, then come back after they're dry because they're just going to bleed into each other. Like mine kind of did with that red flower or orange flowers working on. So just let it dry and move on. And I'll say this is similar to pastel painting in that I'm still working on what I would call the blocking in stage. I'm trying to get my composition right where some of these flowers are, but I'm also trying to keep it nice and loose. But I know that I do need to get color everywhere. I'm, I'm blocking in where things are. Eventually you'll see me add the sky. But what happens is if you get too overly focused on one particular area, as I say with pastel painting as well, what you're going to lose is the continuity of the painting. It all working together, especially with values, because values and colors actually are dependent on what's next to it. So what ends up happening is as I go in and add darker values around some of these flowers, especially the ones in the foreground, they're going to all of a sudden look lighter when I add another layer of dark green around them. So that's why it's a good idea to work the overall composition. Get it, get it in, get your big shapes in and your basic colors in, have your layout of your composition, where your flowers are going to be. And then let it dry and then start on your next layer, because these values will change as you add other elements to the painting. And also too, you can see, I'm just dabbing in where some of these flowers will be, and you can just use your reference image as a guide. They don't have to be perfect. Now I'm getting in the sky. Now I believe this was a Magnes blue. I wanted to use a blue that was a little bit more teal. I thought the sky would look better. This color versus like an aquamarine blue, like a blue blue. Now I believe I added a little bit, a teeny little bit of magenta to that Magnes blue to get a little purple. I often like a little bit of a purple color sometimes in the sky, especially where it's darker. If you look at the reference image, I don't know what's behind those flowers in the sky to the left, looks like a building or something. But I just went ahead and added a little bit of a darker value, which is like the purple that I said, I could have added ultramarine blue to that, maybe to the Magnes blue. But now I'm using, you'd see, I've almost got it all blocked in. So now I'm going in and adding some of those little spaces between some of those flower heads I've blocked in. Do you see how loose this is to begin with? I haven't gotten overly detailed with anything. And this is what's going to help keep the painting not looking like a paint by number. And that's exactly how I painted when I first started watercolor. I looked at other watercolor artists that had this nice, loose, impressionistic style, which I'm still working on, by the way. And I looked at what I was doing and I thought, what the heck? Didn't look anything like theirs. Now, I apologize, the shaky footage will stop in just a minute. I wanted you to see me adding. Now I'm going in. You see now how all of a sudden these values look so much darker whereas before the ones I put down before looks very dark. So that's why I say, let it dry, move on. Now I'm just going to get some of the stems. I'm using this big old brush and I knew these stems were a little bit larger. But I want to keep them kind of gestural. So see how I did a little quick, quick line down and make little breaks and little difference in angles when you make flower stems. And now I'm adding a little bit of more of a blue green to some of this background. I decided to make this, you can't see it in the reference image and it looks very warm. I wanted to push it back. So I know the rule of color temperature is that if things in the distance typically cool off, so I wanted them to have a little bit of a cooler greenish blue tone to them. And I add a little bit more of that down to the base of the bushes and where these stems are going down deep into the grasses, because that's what happens. It's going to be more shadowy and it's going to be a little bit of a darker value. I do go in and kind of connect to those things in a minute. But you can see how I'm filling in the blank spaces, still working on the overall composition. And this was really a lot of fun. I find watercolor painting is so relaxing. And I recommend if you're just getting started, do small studies. This one's pretty small, four by five, but just do small studies and even do exercises. I have a watercolor video. I think I make like these little watercolor caterpillars. And it's literally just an exercise in playing with color and seeing how the water and the watercolor behave, learning how much water to mix with paint, learning that it actually dries lighter. So playing is the best way to learn with this. And now you can see I'm adding a little bit, a little bit of that green on top of the kind of more bluish green I added before. And I did like how some of these other flowers in the distance seem to be popping up over those background bushy areas. And that was a lot of fun. And, you know, I don't consider myself a professional watercolor artist, but over the years, as I have grown to love this medium, like I said before, my first work was terrible. I didn't think I was going to like it, but the more I fiddled and played with it, I fell in love with it. And many of its qualities that I find is very unique to watercolor. Now, notice that foreground yellow flower is or it has areas in the petals that are darker if you squint your eyes. And I noticed they were almost like a brownish neutral color. And so, again, I'm not wanting to get so fastidious about everything being spelled out. But at the same time, I want to anatomically do you use anatomically with flowers? I know you do with animals be somewhat correct. You know, otherwise, it's going to look amateurish. So I'm just squinting my eyes and getting him in the general areas where there are some shadows. I did get this flower too dark. I realized after it dried, it was darker than it should have been. So again, I'm going to show you a little trick to lighten things up with watercolor. Usually you can't get the light back. And I don't think you can ever get it back the way it is originally when it has that. When I say get the light back, it's like in areas where you can still see the white of the paper showing through and it causes things to look bright, like the sun shining on them, like some of the areas, the orange areas of these petals of this flower. The more I add watercolor, the more I'm going to lose that luminosity of the paper showing through. But I did want this red flower to be more of the focal point. I felt like it was really just compositionally in the photo anyway. And I am striving to keep this nice and loose. And that's the style that I like the most. And I have the same habit with watercolor that I do with pastel is just to fiddle with something and fiddle. I think I'm just enjoying painting and I just don't walk away. So it's a good idea to walk away. Now, I'm adding a little bit of the darks. Notice that orange flower kind of on the left side going out of the frame. See how it also has some dark underneath. Now, why would that be? Well, it's because the sun is coming from up from above. And so petals and things underneath are going to have darker colors. I decided to make this flower a little bit wider, which would have been better if I did it before the fact, instead of after the fact. And now I'm working a little bit more on that kind of golden flower behind it. The same thing applies with watercolor painting as it does with any other paintings to see your values and compositions. Squint your eyes. You can see things so much better. Even now, if you watch me painting, squint your eyes and kind of look at the reference image. And you'll see that I'm that's what I'm working on. Getting those values and those colors right. I can change the positioning of the flowers a little if I want. But you do want to keep the basic elements of the flower, like I said, the type of flower, the way the petals grow pretty much the same. Now, you can see here, if you squint your eyes and look at the reference photo, the lower part or underneath the flowers and the stems is pretty dark. And I'm trying to preserve a little bit of areas where there might be light. There's a few grasses or leaves of the flowers that have light. I'm going to use a paper towel in just a minute to pull back some of the paint. And when the paint is wet, you can just take a paper towel and pull back some of that paint and get your light back again. You can even do it once it's dry. If you take a wet brush with clean water and certain colors lift off better after they're dry than others, but you can wet an area that's already dry and then get a paper towel and pull up some of the paint. So there is some flexibility to watercolor and again, it's all about playing and don't hold yourself. Don't be too hard on yourself, I should say, when you're first learning. I definitely was, but so what am I being a hypocrite? I guess I am, but I didn't have anybody telling me that. Look, just don't get frustrated and play. I think that's why I like to teach so much because I can tell you all the things not to do. I was back before there was a lot of online instruction, certainly not the things on YouTube that there are now. And so I had to hunt and pack all on the Internet to find groups and forums and try to learn things. And I share this often, but that was the birth of Monet Cafe. I decided, you know what, if I can learn some of the stuff and get OK at it, I want to share I homeschooled my kids, so I love teaching. And I think, you know, everybody has their gift. And I think sometimes I I'm a better teacher than I am an artist. But, you know, hopefully you guys will learn something. All right, so we are getting somewhere now. It's still very loose and impressionistic, which is what I wanted. But I am going to go in and get a little bit more detail to a few of the flowers so that they are the focal point. That's one of the focal point strategies. So now you can see it's dried and I probably could have focused a little more on the colors being a little brighter. That would have been done more by me really keeping the white of the paper behind some of these. Some artists do that early on by using something called masking fluid. It's literally like a little liquid glue. You can put down on your watercolor paper in areas like maybe a couple of these larger flowers and you can just do it. Once it dries, you can do like a wash of your grasses and everything over it and it keeps the white of the paper underneath that little area that you glued on it. Then later, when you've got your grass, everything down, you rub off the glue that's dried and you've got that nice white background of the paper still to lay down your flower color. I I have used masking fluid. I'm not a huge fan. I just sort of like to keep things impressionistic loose with painterly edges and just have some fun. Like I said, a lot of my watercolor painting is therapeutic. Now, speaking of getting the white back, this is that product I was telling you about or that technique. It's called Dr. P. H. Martin's Bleed Proof White. I have this in my little Amazon list as well. And also what this does is it's similar to white wash. You can use white wash the same as I'm doing here. What I'm doing is this right here, I think is pretty much just the bleed proof white. I just put a little bit in a little dish and I was using it just to get a little bit of light back in some areas. What I'm doing is kind of you see it. It's not getting totally white like the paper back again, but it's lightened it up a little bit. I could have gone even thicker with it. But what I did is I just lighten up a few areas and then once it dries, I can go back in and add a little more of a vibrant color on top. I want to keep it light, though. And it's you see how it's bringing the white back. And I'm doing this to a couple of the other flowers that seem to be pretty dark in value. And I'm using this to have the impression of that light of the sunlight hitting the tops of these. So it really does come in handy. I like this product a lot. And I my goal is to paint in a way to where you don't have to use this because really the white of the paper, there's nothing that beats that when it comes to the really brilliant light and bright colors that you're trying to achieve. But this this is fun and it does work. So you can see here there. And I think I had this, yeah, a little thicker and I added a little color to it. So this is actually definitely getting in some of that light back. And you see now the flowers are starting to take shape. They're starting to look kind of like those zinnias where before they looked a little bit like the blobs. So be patient. That's my point at the beginning or what I've said a few times is I like to keep things rather impressionistic to begin with and let things come to a final conclusion a little bit more towards the end. And I find it's more enjoyable that way and that your painting will be a little bit more painterly and impressionistic. I'm using the bleed proof white here mixed with some of the color to lighten up some areas in the grasses. And you can see it works quite well. And I'm going to show you the final in just a second. Sometimes my studio lights when I'm painting don't really show the vibrancy of the colors. So I try to get an image that looks more close to the painting. Here it is. Here's the final. It is in my Etsy shop, along with the other four watercolor tutorials that go with the series. I hope you learned something. Please comment. Let me know. A lot of you have been liking the watercolor tutorials. I love to hear from you. Give me some feedback. Like this video. Subscribe. Become a patron if you like. And as always, God bless and happy painting.