Materials:
*Daniel Smith Essential Mixing Kit Watercolors - This is a great set if you know you want to paint for a long time to come and if you want to get really good at mixing your own colors
*Porcelain Palette - The plastic ones don't tend to wash off as cleanly and the paint beads up in a way that you can't really see what color you mixed. I also love that you can leave your paint on this palette, let it dry, rewet it and use it again the next day or week or month ect! You could also use a simple white plate if you already have one of those at home!
*Brushes - I used the AIEX detail set for this painting
*Paper - I used Master's Touch 4x6 for this project (I use the back of the paper because the front is weird) it is super well priced though because it will go on sale for 50% off pretty often
* Watercolor Pans - Optional - A lot of people suggest moving tube paints to pans and letting them dry because it helps you use less paint. I chose to put mine in these little tins and then I wrote the name of the paint on the bottom and glued a paint swatch sample to the top. I love that they are really easy to store this way and are easy to travel with! You can also use them straight out of the tube so this pan step is optional!
* Mini Spray Bottle - Optional - Spraying your dried paints with a little bit of water before you paint makes it much easier to lift off color
*Two Water Cups - Empty Jelly Jars, spaghetti sauce jars, whatever you have on hand
*Thin Dish Cloth or Paper Towels - Great for picking up paint if you went too heavy and drying off brushes
*Pencil and Eraser
Other Notes:
* If you feel like you added way to much water or color dab it gently away with your wash cloth
* Leave white spaces, this is an easy way to give your painting dimension (and you can always fill them in later with a light wash if you don't like them)
* Use one cup of water for rinsing and the other for getting clean water
* Watercolor dries much lighter than you may think so if you think you laid down too dark of a color, it will probably still dry fine
* Try not to mess with a "mistake" usually the more I try to fix something, the worse it looks! If you just wait for it to dry and look at it later you can address it then! Most times mine dries fine and I think, ok I like that now!
* Your brush should have enough water on it so that your color moves easily and you can get good coverage, but not so much that your color pools out instantly on your paper, this just takes practice.
* If you feel like a color is too saturated and you want to tone it down add a little bit of the opposite color on the Color Wheel (complimentary color).
* Be careful when mixing with French Ultramarine as it is a "Granulating" color. These colors tend to separate on the page which is awesome in landscapes and other less detailed projects but tends to frustrate me when working on close up detailed projects.
* To make brown mix three primary colors.
* At the end of your project tell yourself three things you like about your painting, this habit has been a game changer for how I perceive my paintings!
Step one is to draw the outline of your project onto your watercolor paper! You can print off the template below or draw your own freehand. To trace it I use a lightbox or a window during the day. You could also use your phone, tablet or computer screen! Whatever works for you!
I chose to only draw the umbrella, a few floral guides, and the umbrella handle because I want to be able to just go for it! Obviously you can draw out as much or as little of the template as you want to.
Then I erased my lines until they were barely visible (you can't erase once you have painted over a pencil line).
At this point I like to mix all the colors that I think I will want for the painting using the handy mixing chart that comes with the Daniel Smith paints. It's insane how many colors you can make from primary colors!
I chose to mix up a Black (Pyrrol Scarlet + Phthalo Blue with very little water), Purple (Quinacridone Rose + Phthalo Blue), Green (New Gamboge + Phthalo Blue) and Peach (Quinacridone Rose + Hansa Yellow Light) but you can choose whichever colors you like best!
Using the number 3 size brush (I used this size brush the whole time) I painted four different flowers first starting with the bright yellow wisteria type thing. (It's my painting so I can just make up flowers, right?)
For the wisteria (Hansa Yellow Light) I used small circle shapes, making sure to leave in a good amount of white for highlights.
For the roses (Quinacridone Rose) I offset petals in a spiral shape still making sure to leave white for highlights then I went it with a clean lightly wetted brush and pushed my petals together a little to make it more cohesive but I still left some white highlights.
For the daisy shaped flower I used the peach I mixed up before and painted two full flowers and then two half flowers. For the half flowers I gave them only three petals sticking out from behind the other flowers.
For the snapdragon flower I used the peach color but add a little of the Hansa Yellow light to the side to get slight variation on the color and used the tip of my brush for make little dots of petals in a spray shape.
And that really completed the bulk of my florals!
Next I added in some of their greenery using the green that I had mixed up. I really just added a few random leaves around the flowers and then a few green dots into the snapdragon petals (I added a little more yellow into the green for the snapdragon too). Since the snapdragon was still wet the green bled into the peachy color a little bit giving it a really pretty effect! If you don't like this then maybe wait for you florals to dry.
Next I started adding some color to my umbrella using the black that I had mixed up. I chose to let the undertones of the black lean more to the blue realm but if you want to tone down the blue then adding a little bit of its complimentary color (orange) would help!
I decided that my "light source" would be coming from the right of the painting so I tried to make my different umbrella panels reflect that by having them darkest on the left and then slightly lighter on the right side of the umbrella.
I started with a thick line of black in the center of one of the umbrella panels, then rinsed my brush to get clean water. Using the clean water I started painting the panel from the outside in. When my clean water finally hit my dark shadow it started spreading into the rest of the panel creating a really great effect!
You can leave the dark spot mostly in the middle or you can push the color around a bit with your brush. It is important though not to mess with it so much that your panel all becomes one color though because then you will lose the shading you put in that give it dimension.
I skipped a panel to give my first one time to dry and then used to same technique the third panel.
When my blackish blue got close to my flowers I kind of dotted it in so that sometimes the colors touched and then sometimes there was a bit of white between the two colors. I didn't want to outline the flowers with the new color because that would have looked very forced.
Then I did my second panel in the same way making sure to leave the tiniest white space between the two panels. The white gap shouldn't be too perfect though as that would look forced as well.
You can see my panels from left to right are getting light in value and that helps give the umbrella a interesting look!
The fourth and last panel is next and it is the smallest of the four so it was quick!
Since this panel touches the ground I let the darkest value of this color touch the bottom center edge to show the shadow from the ground and spread that just a smidge along the whole bottom edge of the umbrella.
Also, now that the daisies were dry I added in a little dab of purple to the center of each flower.
That's the majority of the painting and then the rest is just details to add more depth!
I, of course, painted the umbrella handle with my black (using not too much water to keep the color dark). I may have needed slightly more water because I have some white spaces on my umbrella handle, but I didn't care!
Then I added a touch of orange to the yellow wisteria to give it more shape. I did this using the tip of my brush and tiny half moon shapes.
I added a couple more smaller snapdragon flowers in purple to the left of the roses using the tip of my brush to dot them in and of course making sure to leave some white negative space.
The roses looked a little flat so I used a darker red to add in some arcing petals, starting in the center and working my way out. Keep the center darker will help the viewer see that the petals are getting closer together in the center and less light is able to get in.
I felt like the right side needed more interest so I added three tulip (oval) shaped flowers to the right of the daisies in a purple shade.
Still not quite there! The leaves were all one color and I don't love that so I added a smidge more leaves in a yellower green for variation.
Ok, flowers are looking pretty good now! Time for the pavement!
I added a wet pavement below the umbrella using French Ultramarine. On the left side of the umbrella I laid down the color with horizontal strokes and then picked up water to soften it out with more horizontal strokes. It is important to leave horizontal spaces of white here because that is what gives the pavement it's shiny and wet look.
I used the same technique on the right side of the umbrella but with a much lighter value of the same color (by adding more water). If the two sides of the umbrella were the same value it wouldn't look like there was a light source anywhere which would be odd.
The last thing I did was I added a darker orange to the bottom center of my daisy petals and the bottom of my snapdragons because they looked a bit flat.
All done! If you make your own version of this tag me on insta because I would love to see it!
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