Watercolor Painting Ideas for Beginners | Masking Fluid Technique | Art Journal Thursday Ep. 42

Hey guys! In today's Art Journal Thursday episode, I'm going to show you three easy watercolor painting ideas you can create by using masking fluid. Let's go. By the way, make sure your notifications are turned on by clicking on the bell and to comment below hashtag myfication squad in the first 24 hours for a chance to get a shout out and to win arts and crafts supplies in my ongoing giveaway. For more info, please check out the description box down below. Now, for all the paintings, I will be using the blue masking fluid in a jar by Schmincke because it makes your life a lot easier by being actually visible to you while you paint. The first painting idea is really simple but super cute. Begin by applying the masking fluid onto your paper in any shape you like using a brush. For the first painting, I wanted to create something simple. That's why I created different flowers the same way as I would doodle them with a pen. But you can create any other shapes or patterns you like. Just make sure that you paint kind of over the edges to create a seamless pattern. Make sure you use a cheap brush for that and clean it afterwards because masking fluid isn't that healthy for brushes. Everything that is covered with the masking fluid is now protected from the watercolors. This means that all these areas will stay white while we cover the rest of the paper with watercolors. If you don't have masking fluid, you can also use a white crayon or a white candle for this design. But be aware that you will create a surface by using the crayon or the candle that won't allow to cover it later if you decide to. Now while the masking fluid is drying, we can prepare the second painting. Here I decided to create one part of the ocean with a few light reflections on top. Begin by applying the masking fluid in a wavy motion over your paper. Create thin lines and thicker lines from one side to the other and make them cross each other from time to time. You can use a reference picture to get an idea but I wouldn't stress too much. Just experiment and see what you can create with the different lines. And remember, everything that you cover up with the masking fluid will be white later so imagine where you will place the light reflections. While the masking fluid is drying, we can now prepare the last painting. Here we can paint something even more advanced but still pretty simple. Begin by sketching out a few daisies using a pencil. We just want to create the overall shape so we know where to place the masking fluid later. Next, carefully erase the pencil lines while keeping the lines still a little bit visible for you. And now we can use the masking fluid to cover the petals of the daisies, the stems and the leaves. Since daisies are white, it can be tricky to create an even background behind them while making sure you don't accidentally paint over the white areas. That's why masking fluid is great to make sure that everything stays white. But you can also create other flowers like a dandelion. Here you just need to focus on areas that are white and create them by using masking fluid. Once the masking fluid has dried, we can start painting. The first painting is very simple to paint. Here we basically just want to create a colorful pattern using different colors. Add them one by one and make them blend into each other. Since watercolors dry a lot lighter, I would recommend to use lots of paint or otherwise the result might look a little bit too pale. And since we covered the paper with lots of masking fluid, we will have a lot of white areas that would really pop with a vibrant and saturated background. For the second painting, I will be using blue and light green colored watercolors. Begin by applying a thin coat of water to the paper. And now with the wet on wet technique, we can apply the paint. Start by distributing blue watercolor paint starting from the top and blend it out while you move downwards. With this painting, I wanted to make the lower areas a little bit lighter than the rest. You can keep it the way it is, but I decided to make it look a little bit more ocean-like by adding a little bit of light green colored paint on top. If it looks too green, you can simply add more blue colored paint to the mixture. And for the last painting, we can combine both techniques that we used for the two other paintings. Apply a thin coat of water to the paper and then add different colored paint on top while making them blend into each other. Don't forget to use more paint than water to make sure that the colors will look really vibrant once they have dried. Now all we have to do is to let everything dry before we can add even more details to finish our paintings. Once everything is dry, remove the tape and carefully rub off the masking fluid. This masking fluid I'm using is great because it doesn't rip off the paper when you remove it, which happened to me a lot of times with other brands. And you can simply rub it off without pulling. And this is how it looks now. If you want, you can intensify some areas in the ocean and make them darker. For example, you can create darker areas by using dark blue colored paint to make a few areas in the ocean a little bit deeper. Or if you feel like you have too many white areas, you can split them or just cover them up. Masking fluid is something that needs practice, so don't stress too much and don't panic if it doesn't look the way you hoped the first times you try. There are so many ways how you can use them, so I would recommend to start by getting familiar with the medium first before you tackle more difficult ways how you can use it. Now we can move on to the third painting. Here we can use a little bit more masking fluid for a few small details in the center of the daisies. This way they will look a lot more interesting later. While the masking fluid is drying, you can go ahead and paint the stems and the leaves using green and brown colored watercolor paint. And to make the petals look more three dimensional, you can use a similar color to use in the background or a gray color to create shadows. Here I simply went over a few areas that are to the left or to the right of each petal to make the white areas a little bit darker. And now we just need to color the center by using yellow and brown colored paint and let everything dry. Once everything is completely dry, we can remove the masking fluid. If you want, you can add even more details and adjust things until you're happy and the paintings are done. Let me know in the comments below if you would like to see even more watercolor painting techniques. A huge shout out to Meinl Arts. Thank you so much for watching my videos. I really hope you enjoyed this video and find it helpful. If you did, be sure to give this video a thumbs up to support this channel. And if you're new here, don't forget to subscribe and to click on the bell to get notified when I upload a new video on Thursdays and on Saturdays. Thank you so much for watching, guys. Have a wonderful day and I will see you soon. Bye.