Loose Watercolor Blueberry Branch: Full Tutorial

Hi everyone, this is Nia, and today I'm going to paint in this blueberry branch. I'm going to paint this loosely since I feel like I still need a lot of practice with it. So let's begin by sketching out the elements. Here's the reference picture on the left that I used. Like usual, I like to always take the overall idea instead of fully copying. I just find this also helps me to loosen up right from the very beginning of the process. I just drew out a couple of clumps of blueberries. And see how lightly I drew this out? The marks are still very scratchy, so it doesn't really take too much time to sketch out or even erase and move things around. Once I'm happy with the positioning, I'm going to erase the scratchy parts of the pencil marks and clean out the outline so the edges of the elements are clearer to follow as I paint. When I feel like there are still some space that I need to fill in order to suit the frame that I have, I'll either add more berries or leaves. Or as I paint later, I'm going to just add a loose background to fill in the space. Once the shape, size, and position of the berries are clear, then I'm going to indicate where they are all facing with the center of the blueberries. Sometimes it's easier to indicate the center by drawing out an oval or circle before adding the pointy details. But since I'm painting this loosely, I don't think I need to be so overly accurate. Or at least I don't want to get into the overthinking mindset. So I'm just keeping things as simple as possible for myself. Even if it's not completely accurate, I'm just going to let it go and move on to the next step. Once I'm done with the outline, I'm just going to tap my eraser to make sure the lines are light enough. And next, let's go over the colors. This is Permanent Green by Holbein, Tansy Yellow Medium by Daniel Smith, Sepia by Holbein, Quin Red by Daniel Smith, and Prussian Blue by Holbein. I'm also going to use Bleeper White by Dr. Ph. Martens. Before I paint, I'm going to start by dampening the surface very lightly and evenly. And I'm going to paint the blueberries. I'm going to use a light to medium consistency, and I'm just going to let the paint run. And again, I find that doing wet on wet in the beginning just somewhat helps me to keep going loosely. For the color, I'm using Prussian Blue with Sepia and Quin Red. And I'm going to make sure I mix quite a bit of this color, since I'm going to use it a lot. And this is going to be the base of the purple blueberries as well, the younger ones, where I'm just going to add extra Quin Red in the ratio. To adjust the colors, I'm just going to play with the ratio between the blue and the extra Quin Red. So obviously, the more Quin Red you add, the more pinkish or rosy the color is going to be for the young blueberries. But for some parts where the blueberries are still very tiny, like in the reference, I'm going to use a green mixture. And this will be from a mix of Permanent Green with Hansa Yellow Medium and a little bit of Quin Red to mute the color slightly. Once I've painted all of the blueberries, there are still some spaces in between. And for those spaces, I'm going to use any of the blueberry colors. You can use the pink, purple, or the blue or the green even. And I'm going to just fill it in or add berries in the background. And this will just suggest berries which are not in focus. While the surface is also still damp, I'm going to paint the leaves. And the mixture is from Permanent Green, some Prussian Blue, a little bit of Sepia or Quin Red to mute the color slightly. If you want the green to be less muted but warm, you can also add a little bit of Hansa Yellow. Like a lot of the color mixtures we've used so far, it's just a matter of ratio. So if you want the green to be deeper and cooler, you can add some Prussian Blue. If you want to mute it, you can add some Quin Red. Or if you want to mute and darken the green, you can add a bit of Sepia. This large leaf here looks a bit too bulky and dark, so I've decided to use a dry brush to take off a little bit of paint, especially for the midrib and a little bit of the veins. Now that I've painted the base color for the blueberries, I'm going to move on to the blurry background. So I'm still going to use the wet-on-wet technique. I'm going to dampen the area around the blueberries, and I'm going to randomly place similar colors for the leaves and berries. But this time, I'm also going to add some browns for maybe stems and things like that in the background. You can mix up a brown from a mix of Sepia, Hansa Yellow, and Quin Red. Even if the background is blurry, I'm still trying to keep in mind the elements that I'm painting, especially towards the edges where the area is no longer damp. I'd make sure that some of the edges might resemble the main elements, such as leaves, berries, or the stems. If you want the background to be more abstract, just make sure that they look more organic, especially around the edges. And I would personally avoid painting straight edges. To add to the looseness while the background is still damp, I'm also going to add some splatters. So some of these splatters might bleed and blur out. The page is quite full now, so I want to make sure everything's completely dry before painting on the details. I'm going to make more dark blue for the blueberries. And again, I'm going to create quite a bit of it. I made it quite thick on my palette, so I can adjust the consistency easier with water. So here I'm using a light to medium consistency, and I'm going to add on the details one by one, especially around the edge to outline the blueberries. And as you can see, when I'm building up the colour, I'm following the curvature or the cross contour lines of the blueberries, and this will help create the round form. As I'm doing this and covering a large part of the blueberry, and while the surface is still a little bit damp, I want to dot in a thicker consistency of the same blue. And as the paint blooms out, this will create the contrast between the dark blue and the silvery coating. You can see compared to everything else, now this blueberry looks round. So I'm going to apply the same technique to paint in the rest of the blueberries. You can do this a few berries at a time, and as you can see, I'm just following and using the same colour as the base, but in a slightly thicker consistency. You can start from the light consistency to the dark, but here's an example where I start with a slightly thicker consistency. Then you can also continue with a slightly different colour, if you'd like for a graded colour. I'm going to do the same for the green berry as well, and I decided to add another one behind this one, since there's an empty space. This is going to be quite repetitive as I do the same for the second cluster. Now that I'm done separating and building the form on the first layer, I'm going to add a new layer on the dry surface. This time I'm going to use a slightly thicker consistency, but I'm basically painting more or less the same way as before, to bring more detail to the berries. I like to focus mostly around the edges where it's in shadow, and I'm going to darken the value there, slowly building the contrast between the lighter and darker values to define the form further. Sometimes I like to add random spots to suggest that the silver layer on the blueberries are slightly gone, but I try to not overdo this because my main focus and priority is still the round form. I want to also start adding some of the hidden berries at the back, and for these I like to start straight away with darker values to help the berries and focus to stand out due to more contrast. For the center of the berries, I like to use a really dark version of the same color as the berries, and I'm going to be very careful when I'm painting these, directing the tip of my brush according to where the points are facing. You can also use a smaller brush for easier control. For some of the berries which are leaning to the side, this might be a bit tricky to paint the form of the pointy center. I like to paint the back points first, then I'm going to direct the points in front, the same way as the back, instead of making it placed radially. Then at the bottom of the points, I like to slightly darken the color, so those tips look slightly bent. Now for the really young green berries, you can see in the reference that the tips are very red. For this, I'm going to glaze over the same green mix with a little bit of Quin Red, and I'm using a really light consistency to glaze it over. So those are basically the steps that I'm going to repeat for the rest of the berries. I'm going to paint the center and add a slight outline near the base of those openings, enhance the roundness by increasing the values and following the curvature on the sides of the berries, and painting any berries which might be placed behind the ones in focus to enhance the ones in focus, so the color pops out a little bit more. These are something that I'm going to layer little by little using mostly a thin consistency, especially for the roundness of the berries, so all the values and colors stay mostly balanced all throughout. For the green berries, I like to add a bit of Prussian Blue to the green mix and a touch of Sepia to create a darker value, but I'm going to apply it the same way as how I've painted the other berries. These ones are just much smaller, so I'm being extra careful, or you can also use a smaller brush. Going back to the green berries, once it's dry, I'm going to paint the tips of those points with a bit of Quin Red, then I'm going to soften the blend using a clean damp brush. Now that the center openings are completely dry and the color is slightly faded, they just look like a flat silhouette, so I'm going to take the same color and value according to the different berries to layer on top and darken one side with a curve, and this will show the round inside of the berries. Now I'm going to move on to the leaves. I'm going to make a lot of green here. I've used Permanent Green as the main color, then I've added some Pansy Yellow Medium with some Prussian Blue and also Quin Red to mute the color. And once you're happy with the tone, I'm going to first use a light consistency to paint some of the leaves. I personally like to leave the center line unpainted when I can as the midrib and also direct my strokes according to the veins of the leaves. I can see from the reference that the leaves are quite textured, so I'm trying to paint the small sections of the leaves while sometimes alternating with different tones or adding darker tones on a still damp surface. When you're painting according to the veins, I feel like if there are any empty spots or white space that I've left out, it should help with the texture of the leaves. What I want to be mindful of, if it's painted against the fibers of the leaves, if any of the strokes are shown, they will kind of look out of place. Now let's connect the clusters together with a stem. I've added more Quin Red and Sepia into the green mix, but I'm going to only use light consistency first to map out the placement. I'm going to wait for it to dry. And meanwhile, I'm going to add more into the background, like more leaves or berries to fill extra spots. I like to also darken any parts to enhance the berries in front. And at this point, I'm just refining the composition as a whole. Here, I'm going to go back to the stems and add a bit of shadow closer to the berries. And I also add more stems further in the back by using a thinner consistency. I feel like I'm almost done here, but I still feel like some berries or elements need a bit more definition. So I'm going to use my bleed proof white now to add really thin outlines for certain spots to separate certain berries. But I want to make sure that most of the white I use is not too opaque, which might end up flattening the overall painting. For some spots, I even lightly glaze over with a really, really light consistency. This is kind of cheating, and I try to not do too much of this, but it's just enough to clean certain edges without it looking like an outline for certain areas. I like to also use a really light consistency to paint the details of the leaves. I like to slightly outline some of the bumpy spots that I've painted earlier, but I want to again make sure it doesn't look too cartoony or flat. So try avoiding any thick consistency or even mix the white with the green base. I've also darkened the stems, especially closer to the berries. And now I'm just going to do some final touch-ups to balance and clean out any parts of the paintings. Since I've added some white, I feel like I need to rebalance the darker values. And I also add a bit more detail to some of the larger leaves if I feel they still look too flat. For some of the leaves facing the side, I like to give it a little bit of thickness by outlining one side. And again, I want to fix the contrast between the elements, add darker elements at the back, then finish off with some more splatters since the one before mostly faded into the background. And that's basically it for this painting. Personally, I feel like I could still add a bit more detail, but this year I really want to learn to hold back the urge to add too much because overworking a painting is one of my hard-to-break habits. And that's it. Let me know what you think in the comments. Like usual, the list of tools, as well as my social media links, will be listed in the description box. The outline will also be available in my Ko-fi shop. Thank you so much for watching till the end and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye!