Did you know that there are different painting techniques when it comes to watercolors?
Today I'm going to break two popular painting styles down for you so
that you feel confident with both and we're going to paint some lovely sprigs
of eucalyptus
Hi guys I'm Shayda welcome to my channel in this space I focus mainly on arts
like hand lettering illustration and watercolors so if you're into that stuff
consider subscribing if you haven't already okay let's get started so here
we are a nice blank page I've got a piece of cold pressed watercolor paper
here and as I said we're gonna paint some eucalyptus and I'm gonna take this
opportunity to paint two different types of eucalyptus and I'm gonna paint each
sprig using a different technique I hope you'll find this a very straightforward
how to perfect for even the absolute beginner now the first technique that
we're gonna talk about is called wet on wet and it's just what it sounds like it
means putting wet paint on wet paint so painting on a wet
surface what I'm gonna do here is I've got my green paints mixed up there on my
palette and I'm taking a nice big round brush and some clear water and I'm
making a circle on the page and it's puddle wet then you can see here when I
take my smaller paintbrush and start adding the green onto the water that I
lay down I get this crazy out of control but beautiful feathering there's all
kinds of texture happening and I can push the paint around push the water
around a little but in a very real way I'm not completely in control and that's
kind of what's beautiful about this and you can add in other colors and they'll
sort of sit there or they might splotch out so to speak and this is a really fun
technique wet-on-wet just means laying down that initial puddle and then adding
wet paint on top of more wet paint and you're really letting the paint do its
own thing with this technique and I think that's what's really cool about it
so now that you know that wet-on-wet is just exactly what it sounds like let's
zoom in a little closer here so that you can really see what's going on I'm using
my fat round brush to lay down a nice puddle of water so we would call that
puddle wet and then I'm taking my smaller I think
this is a number four round brush maybe a number three and I'm adding this nice
cool greeny gray to that puddle of water and the paint is just going crazy things
are a little hairy and it's great and I'm able to push the paint around just
speckle little other colors in there and I'm just giving up some control here
Now I'll also say a few words about painting the eucalyptus itself for the wet-on-wet
technique I've chosen to paint silverdollar eucalyptus you can google
that but that's the eucalyptus that has these big round flat leaves that are
singular so they each sort of each stem leads to a big round singular leaf that
has a little bit of a point at the end and so this is a fairly straightforward
strategy for me here I'm making these round puddles with my large brush and
then I'm going in and just allowing the greeny gray paint to give me this
wonderful look of a botanical of a real eucalyptus leaf at this point I'm going
to let my wet-on-wet silverdollar eucalyptus dry and I'm gonna move on to
the second type of eucalyptus and the second technique so the second technique
is called wet on dry and spoiler alert it's also just what it sounds like it
means applying wet paint to dry paint so that begs the question
well where's the dry paint? well that's what we need to start with we need to sort of do what I
would call maybe this isn't quite the right term but it's sort of an
underpainting it's just the beginning of the painting so here I'm going to paint
some argyle apple eucalyptus and that's the eucalyptus that's sort of on one
stem and it has these tiny leaves at the top and they get larger as they go down
the stem and I'm going to just do a very light green and I'm going to just do my
whole painting but without too much depth or shadow it's like I'm just doing
a very flat painting and you can see that coming together here and then once
I've allowed this to dry as in the dry and wet on dry
I'll go back with wet paint and I'll add that to my initial layer that I've
allowed to dry
now that you have an understanding of the idea of wet on dry
let's talk a little about how to paint this second type of eucalyptus this
Argyll Apple basically this one's all about the size of the leaves so you just
want to start small at the top and then get slightly larger as you go down and
you sort of have to have an imaginary stem there although you could draw this
first but I think it's sort of fun just to paint it and sort of see what happens
and a little secret here you can pretty much make these leaves any shape and its
gonna look like eucalyptus if you stick to that small at the top and larger at
the bottom and maybe put a few rounder ones at the bottom alright moving on now
we've got both paintings complete the first layer complete and you can see
here on the wet-on-wet that it's still quite wet in some areas there's a puddle
on that one leaf but it's starting to dry and you're starting to be able to
see the cool almost psychedelic puddly look that comes through as the
wet-on-wet technique soaks into the paper and dries completely and once that
wet on wet eucalyptus is dry I'm gonna consider it complete it still needs the
stem but otherwise I'm happy with the way it looks and my second eucalyptus
sprig my argyle apple has dried in the meantime and so now I'm ready to do that
second layer to add my wet paint on dry paint so I've just got a bit of a darker
green just a hair darker these differences in color do not need to be
dramatic in fact I think the more subtle the more sophisticated look you're going
to get so what I'm doing is I'm trying to add a little bit of depth and shadow
to my eucalyptus leaves as if they're sort of wrinkled not wrinkled but sort
of curved which they are of course like any leaf so just adding that little bit
of darker greeny gray to really bring these leaves to life and for the round
ones which are sort of flat on at the viewer I'm just giving them a little
of darkening at the bottom to just you know as a leaf would be it would be
different colors in different places so and this is quite simple I'm just using
a little bit of a darker shade and just you know taking my time and thinking
about where I want to apply it so you have a lot of control with this
technique as opposed to the wet-on-wet where you sort of have to give up that
control so with the two paintings done I am ready to add the stems and the key
with the stems is to keep the brown very cool the color very cool brown and the
stem itself very very thin so here I've mixed up some watercolor paint brown
with a lot of purple and blue and black in it to keep it cool and then I'm doing
this very almost pencil thin line so just using the point of the brush and of
course the Silver Dollar eucalyptus has a middle stem and then these little tiny
branches that reach out to each leaf and then the Argyle Apple just has one stem
going right through the middle any time you're painting botanicals you
want to have an image or the plant itself nearby to look at and it's not so
that you can capture its likeness perfectly you can do whatever you want
abstract it represent it any which way but what you want to do is capture some
of the plants unique features so that your viewer knows that it is in fact
eucalyptus and in this case the unique feature is the stem that goes straight
versus the stem that has the little twigs going off of it
all right painting complete I think at this point you can really see the
differences in the two techniques of course the wet-on-wet has this crazy
feathering and a great variation in color and then the wet on dry on the
right you've got all this detail and depth and I would be a very bad teacher
if I didn't mention that you can of course combine these two techniques and
you can start with a wet on wet wait for it to dry and then add all your tiny
details and shadow and whatever else you want by painting on it once it's dry
so I hope you've enjoyed learning to paint these two different types of
eucalyptus the silver dollar and the argyle apple and I hope that you feel
you've got a handle on these two very different but both very fun
watercolor techniques thank you so much for watching today guys remember there
are links to all of the supplies used in today's video in the description box and
please remember to subscribe and like and leave me a comment and I'll see you
Friday with a new tutorial