How to paint LAVENDER with watercolor

Hey guys, this is Neal. Welcome back to my channel. Today, I'll be showing you a little tutorial on how to paint lavender flowers. First off, before you paint any loose painting, it's always a good idea to have the basic shapes in mind. You can always look up for references to help you out, but as long as you have the understanding of how the flower grows, you can mostly paint anything you want from different angles. If you find it hard to figure out how to break down the shapes, you can always try to draw it out first, like what I'm doing here. So as an example here, I drew out very long ovals to indicate a rough area where the flowers will grow. I'm not sure if you can call them petals or flower buds, but I'm sure you guys know what I mean. After you separate the area of the flower and the stem, I start drawing the little details of the flower that grows roughly like this. They're always pointing up towards the light and they can bunch up around the stem or be a little sparse, and the top will always be a little bit pointier than the bottom part of the flower, meaning the bottom is usually more dense than the top. A good way to keep things looking natural is to vary the density of the petals around the stem. As you can see here, they're not all the same length and some parts are more sparse than the other, making it more elegant composition and a little bit more loose and natural. I think there are a few types of lavenders, but as it's a loose painting with not much detail, you don't have to worry too much about what specific type of lavender you're painting. Of course, it's a different story if you're painting something much more detailed. The next thing I drew was the leaves. They are quite fine leaves with rounded tips. Remember to vary the angles, placing, and the length of the leaves to keep the composition natural. Keep repeating these shapes until you understand it, and try different angles, different lengths, and flowers facing different ways until you are comfortable with it. Remember that these are loose paintings, so also try to draw loosely with only simple but confident strokes to get used to the fact that there will be no erasing once you start painting, which can be nerve-wracking, but this is why drawing it out first is a nice practice before you go on with watercolors. Once you are happy and you've got the feeling down, let's move on to colors. As you all know, lavender is basically purple or maybe it can be royal blue or ultramarine, so lucky for us, let's just play around with these colors, violet, ultramarine, blue, and crimson. For the first one, I swatched violet and I added a little bit of white to create more of a pastel purple. And the second swatch, I used ultramarine blue and mixing it with a little bit of violet to see the nice gradation it creates and a little more cooler blue. And for the third swatch, I used ultramarine blue and crimson, which I like the most because it can give you a larger range of purple hues. Either you want it to be more warm or cool purples, and this gives you the flexibility to play around with the colors. Now, I don't think the colors are showing that well on camera, so I apologize, but they are just slight differences. I ended up using all three mixtures to vary the depth and the richness of the colors of the lavenders, but as usual, this can be done out of preference. Before I move on, I'm just jotting down the colors I used to keep in mind when I'm painting. I don't usually do this step, actually, when I paint, but I'm guessing that this would make better sense in a tutorial rather than me just saying which mixtures I used for every single stem. So, I hope you guys understand this approach, but it did give me a little bit more confidence going into the painting after I swatched the colors down, so I hope you guys feel the same way. Now that we got the colors that we want to use, I tried using the mixtures while painting the lavender shapes on the right to see the effect it has, because seeing the colors as swatches and seeing the colors with the shapes of the flowers look kind of different. Plus, you can also consider this as practice for your final piece. I just dab lightly with a brush, creating fine strokes and pointing the brushes at the direction of each petal or each buds. It actually doesn't matter whether you just use dabs or you use strokes, as long as you get the round shape that you want in the end. So, find the type of stroke that suits you more. Different brushes also gives different strokes, so as long as you have in mind what shape you want, which direction you want it to be at, you can always go over things and fix it. It's better to also start with thinned out paint and go over it after you're happy than the other way around. In the end, I really liked all three mixtures and I decided to use it all, because I really like the harmonious colors combined. I personally think it gives more of an interest to the painting. If you're still not too comfortable painting straight on paper, this is also a good time to keep repeating the shapes until you find the right feeling. So, make the most of it by painting it over and over again. I can assure you, it will get better in time. The next thing we want to do is sample the colors for the green, for the leaves. I just tried using two types, which is slap green with cerulean blue and the second one is a mixture of permanent green pale with cerulean blue. Here, I much prefer the slap green, because I find the permanent green pale is way too bright and when choosing colors like anything else, it's good to have reference and keep in mind having colors that are a little bit too bright might look tacky. So, I usually prefer colors that are a little bit muted. For a little color theory, when you want to mute any color, mix it with a little bit of the opposite color in the color wheel. So, for example, if I want to mute the permanent green pale, I could add red because red is the opposite of green or sometimes I add orange depending on the shade that I want in the end. Usually, adding a cooler color to a warm color and vice versa will do the trick. So, enough of that. Let's go back to the lavenders. After I wrote down the mixtures, I did the exact same thing as the top. I used the colors on the left to try painting the bottom part of the flowers, which are the stem and the leaves. So, the same concept with the flowers itself, but instead of doing small dabs, I do long strokes instead for the leaves. The cerulean blue in the end acted more as a darker shade or as a shadow rather than a mixture like the lavenders on top. So, what this means is you can either place the blue lightly after you've painted the leaves using the green or what I ended up doing later is using a wet-on-wet technique to dab a tiny bit of the cerulean blue either on the bottom of the leaves or around the stem so it has more of a subtle transition. And then I did the same thing with the second mixture. Don't get me wrong though. If you like the shade, then go for it. It's your art in the end. So, if you like the brighter green, then go right ahead. But for me, I much prefer the sap green because I also want the purple colors to pop out more. So, if the green is as bright as the purple colors, it might take away the vibrancy of the colors, the vibrancy of the flowers in the end. So, just keep that in mind. But of course, it's up to you. So, now I'm just going to paint a bunch of flowers using the same techniques that we used. Play around with the composition and also the darkness of the colors. The darker the colors, the more the flowers will pop out. And the lighter the colors, the more it will recede to the back. So, when you make the most of the shades, it will give your painting depth even if you're using the exact same color palette over and over again. So, make sure you play around with the consistency of the colors to make the full effect of it. When your paint is still wet, you can also dab darker colors in or even a different color or shade to make a really cool wet-on-wet effect. So, when you realize you painted the lavenders a little bit too light, pick up some colors with your brush and just dab the tip of the brush to the wet area and let the paint travel naturally on the wet surface. So, I think everything else is self-explanatory. Just play around with the variety of angles, lengths, colors, paint concentration and build up the composition that you want using what you have practiced previously. So, that's it. I'm just going to speed through the rest of the video on my approach on painting the lavenders. I hope you guys enjoy the rest of the video and I'll see If you end up trying it, please let me know how you go. If you have any questions, I'll try to answer it as best as I can. So, just leave it in the comment section. I hope this was entertaining as well as informative for you all. Have a nice day or a good night depending where you are from and I'll see you at the next video. Bye!