Paint Realistic Watercolour and Botanicals - MAGNOLIAS

This lecture is our first real exploration of a multi element composition, and as such, I have tried to give you a greater understanding and connection to our subject in this lecture, and a little food for thought for independent painting too. We bring so much within ourselves from the field to the studio that matters, and this short lecture tries to provide you with a little insight and background on this magnolia journey to this point. It also serves to offer you some connection with our subject, the experience, the observations and the simple reasonings behind the final composition from afar. This helps you to understand the origins, and the composition process for yourselves far more thoroughly, broadening your knowledge, thoughts, ideas and approaches to your own work with time and practice.

The image and drawing transfer process is not the only method of generating an image on to your page, but it certainly is the simplest! By now you've all practiced this method in my previous tutorials, but whilst the technique remains the same, the complexity of our magnolia drawing takes a significant step up from the previous courses you've been enjoying. No fear... Take your time, and Ill help walk you through the process from start to finish in this lecture, helping you through some of the finer points of this exercise that are specifically relevant to the magnolia painting were creating. 

Kicking this Magnolias tutorial off, we wet our brushes up, jump right in and break the ice with a little watercolour petal play! This exercise will just help settle the nerves, connect with the medium, and to start familiarising you with this beautiful subject before taking on the finished Magnolias painting. With a focus on wash quality, line work quality and creating texture, this is a wonderful opportunity to explore and practice the watercolour painting techniques essential to creating gorgeous textural magnolia petals... Yum! 

Play. Plan. Paint... Thats the goal here!

Layer 2 looks at the process in painting our mid tones as we shift technique from wash work to glazing, developing our ground work or our 'roadmap' towards the final product... Each step along the way becoming more refined and specific as we progress through this stage together. This lecture looks at creating some beautiful form to your petal with glazing and prepares you for the third layer, where we continue on in the evolution of this exercise to completion. 

This petal lecture deals with the third and final layer to complete this helpful watercolour painting exercise. We shift out of wash work and begin to refine our petal with dry brushing, darks and detail for a beautiful end result. Once this exercise is complete and you have gained a solid sense of approach and direction, we can move on to complete this component in our final painting with far more confidence and ease. 

Taking what we've practiced and learned in the Petal Exercises Lectures, we now apply this knowledge to our final magnolia painting. Starting with Layer 1, our lights, we focus on our wash quality, tight line work and timing to create our 'roadmap' forwards. 

This lecture looks at layer 1 for flower 1

This lecture looks at layer 1 for flower 2, repeating the process once more, but adapting our wash to a new flower.

This lecture looks at layer 1 for flower 3, repeating and diversifying our application of our first wash once more to our new flower.

Dealing with Layer 2 now, we shift out of wash work and into glazing, building up our layers and our mid tones to create some beautiful delicate form to our flowers.

This lecture covers part 1 of this process. 

Still dealing with Layer 2, we continue our glazing work across all of our flowers, building up our layers and our mid tones to create some beautiful delicate form.

This lecture covers part 2 of this process. 

Working on Layer 3, our final step in creating our pink petals, we start to shift out of glazing and into dry brushing techniques as we develop our darks and detail with tone. With the completion of Layer 3, our darks and detail, we draw a close to the pink petals of our magnolia subjects. 

Dealing with whites can feel a little overwhelming, and for many good reasons. These lectures look at how we can approach the white petal elements of this painting simply... gently working up our strength and colours in layers to a beautiful delicate end result whilst maintaining our petal texture. As we break the process into simple colours and stages, youll soon get the feel for working in whites. 

Part 2 of the petal whites slowly weens you off the intensive step by step guidance of Part 1, progressively helping you find your own confidence and momentum through demonstration and repetition. At the completion of the final flower in this lecture, you should start to establish your process and understanding about this component of our magnolia subject. 

Its often components like the magnolia flower centre that either frightens us off trying, or let our paintings down in some way in botanical illustration, but dont be too concerned! I have especially selected a flower centre that is manageable in this painting composition, and I give you some simple approaches and strategies to complete this detail of your painting successfully. 

Of course, for those wanting to explore this detail in more depth, I have made a special mini extension tutorial on this detail in the NutShell Extension Tutorial included in this course which will allow you to expand, practice and apply these approaches to any magnolia subject you choose. 

Plenty of subjects in botanical illustration include furry features, perhaps none more so than the Magnolia. This exercise takes you through a simple process of creating a simple watercolour painting that has this furry look and feel, and helps you understand one way with many adaptations and variations on the theme to achieve this. 

Applying what weve learned in the warm up exercise for our furry leaf bud details, we should be feeling far better prepared to approach this element in our finished painting... so lets put it into practice!

A welcome change in palette sees the introduction of some beautiful rich green to our painting in this step. With just a few delicate leaf details to tackle in this composition, we have a wonderful opportunity to apply what weve already learned into a new colour. Breathing new life and dimension into our painting, we start to see and feel our painting coming alive now!

This lecture addresses layer 1, our lights, of our greens. 

This lecture addresses layers 2 & 3 of our leaves, developing the first layer into our rich mid and dark tones to complete our vibrant leaf details. 

The Stems Exercise component of this tutorial looks at 3 similar yet varying branch approaches in order to help you create the stems component of our finished painting with confidence and strategy. Taking advantage of the segmented nature of the magnolia stem, our focus in these lectures is 'section and speed'. Dividing the exercise into 3 approaches and 3 sections for each, demonstration, process and repetition will take you a long way towards understanding this element, and the watercolour medium better. Stem Exercise 1 pays special attention to creating a branch with a soft highlight through the centre of the branch.

A critical variation on a theme, Stem Exercise 2 explores a simple approach to painting a magnolia branch where the light source is on the top of the branch with a dark underside. This example shows you how simple shifts in approach, technique and timing can alter the look and feel of your branch to a far woodier result, an essential part of painting magnolia branches successfully. 

Stem Exercise 3 has some fun playing with the natural qualities and nature of the watercolour medium, and explores how a simple lichen effect can be created with wash and timing. This exercise is just plain fun, but there are many instances where lichen plays a critical role in the story of a botanical subject, and in our paintings it can be a simply divine component to include.... this lecture lets watercolour do what watercolour does best, but with intention and purpose!