Hi everyone. Today I want to show you a few different watercolor techniques that
I used to paint this little Bee in watercolor.
I would consider myself a tight painter I like detail. I'm drawn to it but I also
like watercolor to look like watercolor. I want to see those watercolor blooms
and that beautiful transparency and vibrancy that watercolor has. I don't
want it to be too tight so I painted these bees the other day with all of
that in mind. I forced myself to use bigger brushes than what I would
normally use for such a small detailed subject and once my drawing was done I
hardly looked at the reference photo. I glanced at it occasionally but I
didn't want to get drawn into all the detail and then try to start painting
all of it. I wanted as much as possible the
watercolor paint to paint the bee for me. I wanted the first wash to dictate what
I would do with each bee. I use a negative painting technique similar to
the technique I use when I paint bird feathers. I have a video about painting
bird feathers negatively so take a look at that if you're interested. When I
painted negatively for this Bee painting I painted around the little legs to create
the shape of them and I flicked the darker color into the yellow to create
the hair. I'm drawing on some Arches cold-pressed watercolor paper here. This
is A5 size paper which is five point eight inches by eight point two inches.
I've got it taped to some board with some wide samurai washi tape that I
bought at the hardware store. I'm using a Steadtler mechanical pencil. I think this
is 0.5 millimeters. I just want the basic shape of the bee with just a
little bit of detail. One of the brushes I'm going to use is a DaVinci mop brush.
This is a series 435 and it's a number two. I would normally use a smaller brush
to paint something this size but today I just want to loosen up a little bit and
get this paint on as quickly as I can.
This brush holds a lot of paint and a lot of water. The first thing I want to
do is paint the wings in and I want to dry brush them in so I pick up the paint
with my brush drier than normal and that way the paint will skip across the
surface and leave the white paper showing. The legs are next but this time
my brush was wet when I picked the paint up because I want them to remain wet
while I use the other colors around them. That way the paint I use around them
will bleed into them and it will create some interesting effects. This is just a
warm gray that I've mixed up from French ultramarine and burnt sienna. Now I've
got some sepia on my brush it's pale so I've mixed some water into it. I'm going
to paint this on all the darker areas of the Bee just on the dry paper. I
deliberately touch the brush against the wet legs to make this color bleed
into the gray. I've left a little white highlight on the eye there so I haven't
put any paint there. I'm painting fairly quickly because I don't want the paint
to dry yet. I want it to remain wet so that the colors will blend together and
bleed into one another. Once I've got the brown where I want it then I can
pick up some yellow. There's quite a bit of pigment in my yellow. I want it to be
quite bright. This is Winsor lemon that I'm using. You can see that the
brown is blending with the yellow that is bleeding into one another those two
colors. I deliberately touched the leg there with my brush just to make that
yellow paint bleed into it. Now I've got some burnt sienna and I'm dropping
that onto the yellow areas. Wow you're going to see me flatten out my brush to
paint the little fine hairs around the edge of the Bee. I separate the hairs with
my fingers and then I use it like this.
I took the water out of my brush and I separated the bristles with my fingers
and then I pulled that paint out onto the dry paper. You can buy brushes
that are specifically designed to do that. They're called comb brushes or rake brushes. This is them here. These are old
ones that I used when I painted in acrylic paint and they do the same thing.
So with these ones you just pick the paint up and it does a similar thing. As
you can see it's cut like it's a rake.
Ok back to the bee. I've just squeezed the water out of the brush and now I'm
using my fingers to flatten it out and separate the hairs. Then I use it like
this to pull some of that wet paint out onto the dry paper and that will create
those fine hairs around the edge of the body of the bee. Again I want to work
fairly quickly and get it done before that paint dries.
Here I'm pushing a bit of that paint onto the wing because the wing is
transparent and you'd see the body of the bee through the wing. Now as the
paint is starting to dry I'm dropping some water onto it to create some
deliberate watercolor blooms. That disturbs the pigment and creates some
beautiful texture on the bee. The painting is dry now and you can see what
the water did to that paint. I wanted it to do that just to create some interest
on the surface. I can now work with that and build some detail over the top. This
is a DaVinci maestro round brush it's a number 5. I'll use this brush to paint
all the detail. I start with the eye. I've got sepia again this time it's darker
so I've got more pigment mixed into it. I'm painting on the dry paper. Now I'm
going to paint the shape of the leg in negatively. so that just involves
painting around the leg and that will form the shape of it. Then I just keep
going and I flick my brush to create the hair. I'm using the brush right up on its
tip and I just keep going. I'll paint around the legs again and that just
helps to bring them out so you can see them.
Tthen when I've got a layer of that brown on there I start to drop in some Lamp
black just on to the wet paint and that blends with the brown and darkens
it. I've turned my board because I find it easier to pull strokes like this
towards myself rather than push them away from myself. I keep going
adding here until I'm happy with the way it looks and when I'm happy with the way
it's starting to look I can drop some more water droplets in to create some
more watercolor blooms in this surface.
I've painted a bit more burnt sienna onto that yellow area and now I
want to add the detail on to the wings so again I use this same brush. I'm not
switching down to a finer brush and I'm just using Sepia again running that over
the wing on the dry paper. I'm not looking at the reference photo. I'm just
doing my own thing with this. Some areas I will push down on the brush. In other
areas I'll be right up on the tip to get the fine line
and I can paint the antenna. I can
darken up the eye with some more black and finish painting the flicks. You can
see how that paint has bled into the legs there to make them more
interesting to look at. Then I can add some more black if I think
it needs it. So I'll just take the tape off and because I can't help myself I
put a little bit more black on. A touch more here on the back.
So there are the two bee's that I painted. A full-length tutorial on both of these
beess along with the line drawings and a copy
of my finished paintings will be on patreon soon. The link is in the
description. In my video last week I talked about how much it has helped me
to paint full studies before I paint the proper painting. Before I painted these
two I painted all of these. So I painted 13 Bees before I felt confident enough to
start filming myself for a tutorial and there's still room for improvement. So
I'll say it again. If you want to improve you've got a practice. Put in that
practice. It's the only way to get better.
Thank you for watching. I hope this was useful to you. Please hit the like button
and subscribe if you don't already and I will see you next week with a new video.