Paint Delicate Cherry Blossoms For Our May Watercolour Calendar!

And they don't have to be done like perfectly well or like super detailed and perfect at all by any means. This is loose. Hey friends, welcome back to another video. My name is Emily Fave and I can't believe it but we're already approaching the month of May. And you know what that means, we are on to painting our next monthly calendar. So let's paint some cherry blossoms for the month of May. Okay friends, we are on to our May calendar. I am once again using this Lightwish watercolor calendar. If you do not have a watercolor calendar, you can just paint this on watercolor paper. You can turn it into a calendar, turn it into a card, whatever you like. I will link this down below. Although we are approaching kind of the middle of the year, so I don't know if it makes sense to buy one now. But you can always create your own with the design we are doing today. So I'm going to start by just taping a border like I have been doing for these. And the tape I use, I get this question a lot. It's actually just painter's tape from the dollar store from like the construction not construction section, but you know what I mean where they have like painting stuff like to paint your home, not like art supplies, but like to paint your home. So that's where I get it. It's like two bucks. And it's some of the best tape for watercolor paintings that I've ever had. So that's where I get it at the dollar store, taping off a nice border. And for this painting today, all you really need are two colors, and that will be pink and green. Because pink and green are contrasting colors. And if you mix them evenly, you'll get brown, which we are going to need for the branch. It's going to be fairly easy. Now I don't want to do necessarily a detail realistic version of cherry blossoms, I kind of want to do like a very watercolor-esque kind of version, if that makes sense. So the first thing I want to do is actually wet up the background. So I'm going to take a large brush, I have my Shinhan watercolors here, actually, you know what, if you want to add blue in the background for a sky, maybe you can, you know what, I might do that. I don't actually have a concrete plan here. This is kind of how I do these, I wing it and hope for the best since I only have one sheet of each month of these. And you know what, I just try not to stress, you just kind of got to go for it. So I'm sweating up the background because I want to do some washes in the back. So here we go. It's all nice and wet, not too, too wet. Then I'm going to take my size six round or size 10. I'm going to grab some blue. I'm going to grab this pale blue, and I'm just going to kind of throw it in parts of the back background. I'm actually going to grab a bigger brush that's too small. I have a size 10 here. This color, I get also asked a lot what color this is, it's called pale blue from Shinhan. It's very similar to like a cerulean blue, but you can use whatever blue you have, you don't have to use the same colors, exact same paints that I do, by any means, okay? But it is a nice color, it's called pale blue. Shinhan paints I get from a store called Desiree's, or sorry, Desara's, I've been saying it wrong for years, in Canada. I don't know where else they sell them. I think they have them on some Amazon websites, but it really depends. Okay, so I just did a little bit of blue there. I don't want to cover the whole thing. I'm going to grab a little bit of my permanent rose, which I recently just put in my my palette, and I'm just going to kind of just throw it in there, just like a little bit, really light wash. I don't want it to mix with the blue. I just want like hints of this watercolor-y wash of pink in the background, but not too dark, like that's too dark. I want some white, I wouldn't even mind some like little bits of blooms, just kind of tapping some color in there, like that. And then I may even do like a really loose branch, kind of just going across, just like really loosely. Hold on. So I'm going to grab a smaller brush, and now I'm going to grab my size 6. Now if you have a brown in your palette, you can use that, or you could always mix a brown by mixing pink and green. I'm going to use a darker green. Actually, I have some of my olive here too, and that also makes a brown. It's up to you. Okay, and I might just do a little branch here like this. I'm going to do it more like detailed once it's dry, but I'm just kind of marking out where it is. Now I don't actually want it to go all the way across. I do want there to be some white space, because I want a bunch of the flowers over top of it. So I'm going to, you know what I'm actually going to do? I told you I'm winging this. I'm going to grab a tissue, I'm going to bunch it up so it's kind of like wonky like this, and I'm going to do this. I'm going to just blot it, and that can also help with some of the highlights of where some of the flowers are going to go. Okay, maybe do a little bit of brown here, just like kind of just a little hint, and you could always, if you wanted to, like if it's not showing enough of that definition from like the pink and the tissue, you can always make it a less red. What am I doing? You can always make it a little bit darker and then try the tissue thing again, just so you get some like cooler shapes. I don't know. We're playing here. This is what we're doing. Okay, now I'm going to let this completely dry before we continue. Okay, now that it's dry, I'm actually going to start with, I think, my flat brush. If you don't have a flat brush, I'll show you how to do it without one as well, but these are fun to use for florals. So you want to make sure your flowers are really, really light in color. You don't want them to be too dark. I'm actually going to remove this orange. I'm going to remove all this color from my palette here because I don't need it, and I'm going to make a designated area just for my pink because I want it really nice and light. So I'm going to grab some of my pink, put it in my palette. That's way too dark, so I'm going to add water to water it down. Okay, then before I go into my painting, I'm going to rinse my brush off so it's like super light, just like tinted water, and I'm going to start painting these cherry blossoms. There's a hole right here where this branch is, so I'm going to put a cherry blossom right in the middle. If you want to check how dark the paint is on your brush before you start, you can always tap it on your paper towel to give you a good indication. Okay, so imagine a center for your cherry blossom, and you're just going to do these kind of rounded petals going around. I think they're about five. They're all going back, and we're making it really, really loose, and the reason why I love this round brush is it gives a nice kind of rounded, kind of blunt edge. I just, I don't know. I like the way it looks. So we have this kind of blobby shape. Actually, I'm going to take a little bit of my paper towel or my tissue, and I'm just going to blot the center. I'm going to take a small size 2 brush. I'm going to grab a little bit more color, and I'm going to kind of do these little taps towards the center so it's darker in the center like that. Okay, if you want to do a little like tap around the edges a little bit to get a little bit more color, you can as well. Just a little bit. Okay, and there's our first cherry blossom. Okay, so again, nice and light. I'm going to let's do a couple that are like face on like this one. So the center, imagine a center here where you can draw it out, and when you're doing the flat brush, I put it on the corner. So not flat, but on the corner. I tilt it, press down, kind of do a little curve, and then lift, and then do it to the other side so you get this rounded petal, and I just try and make it really messy. Like, I don't want it to be super perfect. Okay, and then I'm going to grab a little bit of my color, that solid permanent rose color, and just tap the middle a little bit. Maybe a little bit around the edges. Not too much. Okay, because I actually want to have some other ones that are darker behind. I want these ones that are kind of right in front to have less color to them, so the ones that are behind are a little bit darker. I'm just going to move some of the color within the cherry blossom. All right, then I'm going to do a couple more. Let's do some in these pink areas. I'm going to do it with my size 6 round to show you now. Same thing. It's just whatever's more comfortable for you. Again, really, really light. I'm going to do one here. Imagine that center, and you can just paint these rounded petals. One, two, they're like circles almost. Two, three, four, five. I don't know why that's so dirty. It's all good. That one has a little bit more shadow to it. Then take my pink, tap it in there like so. That one's like really gray. I think there was paint on my brush already. Hold on. Just clean it up a bit with some brighter pink or just clean water. We can always add more color and definition to these after. Okay, I'm going to do another one. You can imagine that the branch kind of extends out to here. Let's do another one around here. Really loose kind of circular petals, and then just tap that color in the middle, maybe around some of the edges. Okay, again, I'm going to do some more buds over here. Let's do a couple buds. So they're just kind of like little round bits like this. You can even do one that's kind of just like really light in color, and then just tap the bottom for a little bit of color like that. And then these will have kind of like these brownish pink stems. So I'm going to do like a stem coming from them, like they're coming back to the branch here. But I'm going to have another flower right here so you don't really see it attaching to the branch. So let's just do like a petal over here, another petal, and then like a flat petal on this side so it looks like it's kind of tilted that way. And this is a little bit darker in color than those, but it can vary. Grab a little bit more of that pink, tap it darker towards the center like that. Let's do another really light one up here, literally just scribbling circles. Okay, actually going to do another little bud down here and here and then have that brownish color kind of going back like that. Okay, so we have a bunch that are kind of forward facing. Now we're going to do some that are behind. Let's make sure everything is dry before we continue. Okay, now that they're dry, we're going to start doing more around these other ones that are just slightly darker. So I'm grabbing just a little bit more pigment and you don't have to see all of the petals for them. So let's say that there's one over here and it's kind of tilted. So you're going to see part of a petal here and I'm just going to carefully go around these flowers so it looks like it's behind and then a little petal down here. Like it barely looks like a flower, but it looks like there's something behind, like another one behind. Okay, I might even take a little bit of my green and add it to my pink just to dull it down a bit. It gives it more of like a shadowy pink look. Okay, so there's one. We can do one that's kind of over here. Let's do a circle here. Still a little dark. I'm trying to lighten it up a bit. One over here, just kind of like these really loose circular petaled flowers going behind these other ones. Okay, like that. Do another one maybe here because we do want the branch to show too. I'm trying not to go too far in front of the branch. As long as I kind of have an idea of where the circle is, I know kind of where to place some of the petals. Let's do one that's facing this way. So we're going to make it a little bit like the longer petals on this side and then just kind of like a curved one right here, and it just helps give perspective. Again, go back into those centers though and make sure that you're tapping in some of that darker pink like that. Okay, okay, then we'll do one over here maybe. This little like tiny petal there and then the bigger ones on this side. Again, not trying to make it too dark, but darker than the ones that are in front of it. We're going to add a little bit more detail to some of them just so you can see the centers and stuff and the separate petals. Let's do another one over here. Maybe just like a petally shape. We can even just have some petals back here, like maybe they're a bit more out of focus and they're not really attached. I don't know, it's a very loose painting. Okay, not everything has to be perfect or explained. Okay, I just want to kind of fill up some of these areas. I'm going to have some back here, maybe one right here, because it could be some that are just like starting to bloom too so you don't see the whole flower by any means, like it's all good. Okay, and then I'm going to take my brown and I'm going to go over where I had those stems, the branches, and I'm just going to sharpen it up now that it's dry there. I'm going to go through these areas here like that, and you can have some more branches obviously sticking out. You can even have like little stubs kind of coming off the branches. You could add a little bit of greenery to them if you wanted. Okay, I'm going to do a little bit of like a light one over here. It's just like it's kind of fully, they're not supposed to be in focus necessarily. There's just like essence of little pink cherry blossoms over here kind of faded like that. Then the ones that we really want to kind of focus on, I'm going to grab my size 2 round brush. I'm going to grab my pink and then we're going to do the centers of them and that's what's going to make them stand out. Actually before we do that, hold on, I want to separate some of the petals. So I'm going to take a light wash of my pink and I'm just going to kind of just add a little bit of kind of these like curved lines to some of the petals just so it looks like some of the petals are separated and a bit more distinct kind of that you can see that they're actual flowers. And you don't have to do this to all of them, just kind of the ones you want to stand out the most. Little lines just kind of curving back to the center, the light pink. You don't want it to be too dark. Probably mostly on the ones that we started out with that are like really facing us. Those are the ones you want to focus on the most like that. Then that's when I grab my darker pink, even a little bit of brown just so it's darker. And then right in the middle we're going to do like little taps like this and then really tiny little lines for the centers with dots at the end like that. So kind of fill it in and then really tiny fine fine lines and then dots for the the tips. Not a ton. Yeah I like the the pink with the dark brown color for the centers. See it's such a nice contrast having those dark centers and they don't have to be done like perfectly well or like super detailed and perfect at all by any means. This is loose. Okay so I think we got the majority of them. If you want to add a little bit of like extra shadow on some of them you can always you know darken some petals, some areas around. I don't know just kind of experimenting at this point. Just trying to get a bit of contrast in there on some of those darker flowers that are behind other ones like that but you don't have to do that. And then lastly these little buds I'm just going to add a little bit of like lines on them so it looks like there's multiple petals like that like that and then maybe just another bit of darkness to some of these parts of the branches like that and that's about it. And that is our cherry blossom painting. So let's take off the tape. I do like the blue sky I think in the background. It's subtle but it's nice and you could always write something else here maybe like a quote or you know you could always have some kind of poking out from the bottom if you wanted to expand on it but I think overall it looks pretty nice. Thank you all so much for watching. I really hope you enjoyed it and I hope you learned something. Don't forget to subscribe to this channel and follow me on all my other platforms for tons more content. Have a great day guys. Bye!