How To Paint Lavender | Beginner Friendly Watercolor Tutorial

Hey everybody, it's Sarah Curry with Let's Make Art, and today we are painting our lavender project together from our Farmer's Market Watercolor Mini Workbook. These are for sale at letsmakeart.com. I just wanted to make something, I mean, we've been doing workbooks for years, but they're a bit bigger and a little bit more like commitment, you know what I'm saying? And this, I just wanted it to be fun, easy, stress-free, all that kind of stuff. Also more affordable, so you guys can just like grab and go and not have to worry about like really messing it up, because you can just get another one, it's not a big deal. Perfect. It's a piece of paper. Okay, we're gonna be doing this project in four steps. Our very first step is we're gonna paint our flowers. Our second step is we're gonna do the stems and the leaves. Our third step is we're gonna paint our cute little string. Our fourth step is just adding medium or dark values on all of those elements, okay? All right. We gotta do our oath. All right. So if you can raise your right hand and repeat after me, I promise to be kind to myself. I promise not to compare my work. And I promise to have fun. I promise to have fun. Thank you. Okay, now, if you don't have the workbook, you can still absolutely paint along with us. You'll just have to kind of sketch your lavender on your own, which you guys can do, sure, no problem. Okay, I'm using a round two and a round six paintbrush. Please use whatever paintbrush you have. Now, the paints that I'm using are our in-house liquid watercolors. So this is a brand of paint that we manufacture on our own. Liquid watercolors are super vibrant. The reason why they're super vibrant is because they're dye-based as opposed to pigment-based, which means that we can go crazy with vibrancy and color, more than you can with pigment-based paints. I will say that the only problem with liquid watercolors is there's kind of a learning curve with how to use them, and simultaneously, they are not lightfast, which means if you paint this and frame it and put that indirect sunlight, it will fade over time. That's also true for some pigment paints. So it's not only liquid watercolors. It is true for some pigment watercolors, but depending on the pigments used determines the lightfastness of it. And honestly, sunlight is like the enemy of all artwork. It's not just watercolor. It's like sun just destroys things. Sun will fade your car's paint, and your car's paint is like thick enamel paint. Yeah, so I just wanna be like, just don't put things in direct sunlight, but because we're in a workbook, and when I work in workbooks doing fun illustrations, I want vibrancy, I want color. Just because this is what fills my creative soul, it's not something that I'm like, this is gonna be framed and held in a museum forever, okay? And it's okay to use different materials. And if you really want them to be lightfast, then use lightfast paint. You can use whatever paint you want in here. All right, now when it comes to liquid watercolors, what I like to do is I like to use a butcher tray palette and put the paint along the edges because the top actually has a bump to it. This is great for mixing area, but if I were to paint liquid watercolor right here, probably go off to the edges because of gravity. So that's why I put the paint along the edge here. That's the lowest part of this palette. Now, liquid watercolors are used the same way that other watercolors are used, but they're in liquid form. And what that means is if you want a light value, you just add water to the paint in order to get a lighter value. And that's why I like to use all of this mixing area because I just grab here and pull, and then I have control over the paint-to-water ratio, which then informs my values. Values is the lightness and darkness of a single color. Okay? All right, so let's start with step one. I'm going to paint the cute little lavender blossom. So I'm gonna take some purple, this is orchid here, and I'm pulling it to the center, adding water to it. This is creating this really gorgeous like light purple-y color. If you want your color to be more pink-purple, you can add some magenta, which that's gonna give you a more pink-purple. If you want your purple to be more blue-purple, then I would take my orchid and grab some taffo blue. And now I have like a range of purples here, okay? So notice that I'm pulling here and I'm adding water, and that is what is creating this lighter value. Now I'm gonna take these colors, and I'm just gonna start to kind of loosely paint in. I like to put colors down and then rinse my brush, and using water, pull from the color that's already there. And because of that, when I do that, I'm gonna get a natural value change. I also like to just drop in hints of pink, because why not? It's pretty. I'm a fan. The other thing that I kind of wanna give you permission for when it comes to these watercolor workbooks is yes, I provide the outline, it's pre-printed here, but it is not like the only thing you have to follow. If you're just like, you know what? I really don't like that there is not a little lovely flower right here, add it. There's nothing wrong with that. You can make your lavender go more, you can do whatever you want. The whole idea of an outline is essentially just for you to have a starting point, and then you can play off of it. Look at the colors of these. They also blend really well. Like, look at, ugh. And I'm not even worried about staying within the lines, okay, you just paint. And I'm just using a round two for this. But if you like to use a larger brush, you can. I love also while it's wet, like, what if we go really crazy and we just like drop in pure? I mean, like, look at the colors that's happening here. And you can exaggerate it by being like, okay, I have some pretty pinks, purples. What if we add just like blue in there too? You know what I mean? Like, you have such a range. Range. Sorry, I said that weird. You're all right over there. All right. Okay, that's step one. You guys did a good job. All right, now we're gonna move on to step two. We're gonna paint our stems and our leaves. Now, you'll notice if you purchase the Dandelion set that goes with this, I did not include a green. The reason why I don't include a green is because I actually love to mix my own greens. I like having control over the temperature of the green, as in, is it warm green or a cool green, which is blue? Like a blue-green, like a turquoise? Or do I want it to be vibrant or muddy? I just really like mixing greens. So, the most basic way to mix green is just to make sure you have a yellow and a blue. So, I'm gonna move my palette up. If you don't agree-n, you can buy one. That was a spin. That was still good. A green. Is my painting okay where it is placement-wise? I can move it up even? Move it right there? Okay, perfect. So, I'm gonna take my Tahoe Blue, I'm gonna take some yellow, and you can see that that's gonna make a super, super bright green. And if you love a bright green, perfect. You're ready to go. You can just go. If you don't love a bright green and you want it to be more earthy, then that's where you can introduce a color like Tangerine or the Magenta, anything like the opposite of green on the color wheel is gonna be red. So, adding reds or pinks or even oranges to your green is automatically gonna make it more of an earthy tone, okay? So, that's what I'm gonna go for. So, here I have this earthy green and I'm just gonna start by painting in the stems. Now, whenever I do thin lines, you're going to want to use the very tip of the brush and very light pressure. It's really tricky to do that, though. So, give yourself a little bit of grace if you struggle with thin lines, okay? It's okay, you'll get there. And then, what I like to do just while it's wet is just drop in a little extra color, kind of like where it's coming, like the flowers are coming out of the stem. And also, I'm gonna do extra swoops of blue in here because now I'm gonna start doing leaves and then I'm gonna add water to it and that's gonna give me this really gorgeous, turquoise-y color that's not super vibrant but still leans it. And I'm gonna start painting in some leaves. And then, you'll notice that I'm just gonna keep mixing greens because it's really important to me and as an artist for me to have a lot of variation within my greens, okay? So, I like my greens to have hints of blue, hints of yellow, hints of brown, and all different values. So, some are gonna be lighter, like this. Some are going to be darker. And then, we'll actually go back in after these have dried and darken them. This is just like the initial layer. That maybe got a little bit too brown. So, if ever you do a color and you're like, oh, that is just too brown, you just take your paper towel and lift. It's not gonna totally erase it but it's gonna lighten it enough that will make it easier for you to go over it with another color. Okay, that's all I'm gonna do for that. Good job. If you want another thing that I like to do. Okay, I will say the hardest thing about liquid watercolor colors is I easily muddy my pure colors. So, sometimes I'll have a couple piles of yellow or orange or something like that just to control or have options in terms of creating different colors. Does that make sense? And then, I realized that all of my stems and leaves were leaning really blue, which is not bad because that's actually probably more true to the greens that you would see on lavender. They kind of lean like gray, blue, green. But because I'm an artist and I get to make my own decisions and create my own world, I can say, you know what? I actually want hints of warmth within here too. So, I'm gonna actually mix a little bit of my yellow and a little bit of my either tangerine or magenta. And I'm going to add some warmth to some areas of these greens, okay? Just like that. And I don't know, I just feel like it kind of like creates another dimension of like color and vibrancy. Okay, that was step two. Now, we're gonna do step three. We're gonna paint the bow. So, we're gonna mix brown. So, I'm gonna take tangerine, which has bled into my magenta. So, that's pink. So, I'll just get some fresh tangerine. Now, the tangerine leans kind of red, which is great. If you want it to be more orangey, then you would just add more yellow to it. But essentially, I'm gonna mix a brown here. And how I like to mix brown is, like brown is essentially dark orange. So, I'm gonna take orange and black and I'm gonna mix those together. And that is gonna give me a brown. If my brown is leaning too red and I don't like how red it is, if I add green to that brown mixture, because red is the opposite of green, it is going to make it more of a neutral brown. Like so, okay? Lovely. So, now I have this brown and I'm just going to follow. I'm gonna add some water to it so it's a light value. And I'm just gonna follow the outline here. And you also can do this color, or this cute little bow in whatever color you want. I just did brown because I was thinking of like twine. But this is your painting, so you can change this. Okay, that was step one through three, good job. Now, what we're on is we're just gonna add some medium and dark values to all the areas that we painted. And the reason why we wanna add different values is because that is what creates form. So, when you think about the difference between the shape of a circle, like visually think of a circle, and then think of a sphere, the difference between those two are values, and the values introduced to a sphere is what makes it seem dimensional. A circle is flat, two dimensional, it's just an outline. Okay? So, right now we don't have a lot of different values in here. This is still beautiful, you can call this good if you feel good about it. You don't have to do anything more if you're just like, this looks great. But if you're just like, this is reading a little bit flat, I want it to seem like there's shape to it, or form, or more three dimensionality. Would you say you want it to have a little bit of? Pop. Oh. Wait, one more time, one more time. Okay, okay, okay. We want more pop. Good job, good job. I always end up smiling when my cheeks get too tight to make the pop sound. He's like so excited to make the pop sound that he's like smiling when he does it. Okay, so, I'm gonna go to my flowers, that was my first area. At this point, they should be mostly dry. I just wanna point out how gorgeous these different colors are because we used pink, and purple, and blue. When you mix colors together, I know color mixing is really scary, but don't be afraid to let the different colors have their moments because this is so much more visually interesting than if it was just one even purple. You know what I'm saying? So, I'm gonna take my purple and mix a tiny bit of blue in there. You can also mix green. I basically just want a darker value, so I'm picking up more pink. Using this darker value purple, I'm gonna go in and kind of where the buds are coming out of the stems. I'm just gonna do a couple strokes. And already, this is feeling like this has more shape to it than this one because of the introduction of this darker purple. And if you look at lavender, it's like they have this tiny little bud that comes out of the stem, and then this really pretty, petally, purpley edge. Right? I'm thinking of the right. That's what lavender does, right? I know, it smells nice. That's the extent of my lavender knowledge. Okay. And you don't have to, again, we're not covering up everything. It's basically just kind of the underneath part of where these gorgeous little things are coming out of. And at this point, I've totally disregarded my outline because I've put flowers everywhere, and I'm not mad about it. I'm just kind of going off of vibes. How we operate around here. Absolutely. And if you wanted to do some that were more leaning blue or more leaning pink, please feel free to. But the whole goal is just to introduce a darker value. That's it. And then if you want to add more darker values of different colors, feel free. But that feels good. Now I'm gonna look at the leaves, and I'm gonna make a dark green. The other beautiful thing is I have this wonderful green I can work from. I also have brown. Mixing brown in with the green or even black in with the green is an easy way to make a little bit of a darker value and a different hue. So I'm gonna take this green. Let's actually add a little bit of that brown. And maybe even, like, let's just see what happens if I add black. Like, let's just see. What's the worst that could happen? But you have to be careful because black is super, super strong. So you don't want it to be like, overtake everything. You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. Okay, so let's try this dark green. So kind of where the leaves are coming out of the stem, I'm gonna, and like the tip here, I'm gonna just introduce this dark value. And again, the whole goal is just trying to create different dimension. You can also just do a darker value along one side of the leaf, and that can make it seem like the leaf is turning or we're seeing the inside of a leaf or just giving that leaf a bit more shape. You can also put, like, I'm gonna do a dark value behind on the stems, right underneath this bow twine to show that the bow is in front of the stems. Anything that's in front of something is gonna be a lighter value. Anything that's behind something is gonna be a darker value. So as you make your decisions around these leaves, where it's just like, I actually want this leaf to be in front of this leaf, then I am going to darken this leaf, and that's automatically gonna push it behind it in space. And again, it doesn't have to be everywhere, and I'm going to kind of smooth out the lines of this here. You can also add a dark edge on some of these stems. That also is gonna make it feel more dimensional. The only thing that's kind of bothering me is this weird, that was that brown leaf that I changed my mind on. I'm just gonna go over it with more of a turquoise color just to make that saturation meet everything else. Now, the very last thing that I wanna do is I want to add darker values on my little string here. So kind of where the string is coming out, I'm gonna do a dark brown there. For my dark brown, I just picked up more brown, and then I also added a tiny bit of black to that brown. Here you can see that the bow is kind of turning, so we can insert that. We can do a couple swoops along here. And you'll notice that it's not anything crazy detailed. It's just sometimes a few strokes of a darker value is all it needs to give it that feel of form. And then if you wanna blend some of them out by just taking a damp brush and kind of just smearing that color and blending it with what's already there, that is enough. That's it. Beautiful. That's our cute little lavender. Love it. Okay, I hope you had fun with this. Also, I'm gonna do something a little bit edgy because even though I didn't do this in the project, I just think it's fun. Let's splatter some paint. I'm gonna take some purple. I'm gonna use my round six. I'm gonna just grab whatever purple is on my palette from painting, and let's just. Excellent. Like, how pretty is that? Now, the really fun thing about this, and I designed it this way, we do a lot of color mixing. And I know that for someone that's new, that can be stressful, but I need you to know, like, look at my face when I tell you this. The reason why we color mix is because then you are gonna have your own unique footprint on this painting, okay? Because everybody's is gonna look different from each other because the ratios of the color mixing will determine the colors that are being used. And as a beginner, that can be really intimidating where it's just like, well, what if I'm using the wrong color? There is no wrong color. You can do this lavender as yellow. You can make up the entire world that you're painting. Sometimes we feel really limited that we have to only create something that we think is realistic, but that's not the point of art. The point of art is to share with the world how you experience the world. And so if you want your lavender to be orange, let it be orange. Like, play with it, experiment with it. I gave you basic color mixing in the beginning of the book if you need help, but besides that, really just let it go. And don't put that pressure on yourself to make something exact or perfect or realistic because guess what? We got cameras. We can just take a picture of that lavender and that's all you need. The point here is for you to play. So I hope you play. I hope you have fun with this. If you need this paint, if you need this workbook, you can find it at letsmakeart.com. Thank you guys for painting with me. We'll see you next time. Bye.