Watercolor Workshop Painting Petals and Leaves

This weekend, I taught a botanical Watercolor Petals and Leaves workshop out of my little space at Warehouse 55. I almost wish I had made it an all day workshop, because there was so much to do. We had so much fun, and even went an hour over. I felt like we could have painted for even longer. It’s funny how when you really get into the task of painting you really can lose time in a good way.

You can watch a video of the workshop in action, and also find all of the supplies we used in the workshop here.  I wanted to make it a beautiful experience for everyone, so I gathered flowers from my yard and gave everyone mini-bouquets that I put in recycled spice jars they could use as inspiration. They also received a watercolor kit with my favorite number 3 round watercolor brush, and two watercolor pencils (Raw Sienna and Sap Green), watercolor paper and a technique chart to take home with their little bouquets. I had bought vintage glass such as mini-pitchers and vintage salt cellars to use for our water.

 

I was so impressed with everyone in the workshop, even though some of them hadn’t picked up watercolors before.

We worked on playing with many different watercolor materials and techniques including wet on wet, adding salt, blooming paint, and brush strokes.

What I really love is how everyone did something completely different, and everyone’s work was so beautiful.

It’s amazing in the painting watercolor petals and leaves workshop that just playing with color and brush strokes can make a huge difference. So much of painting is just learning technique.

The other thing we explored was how leaves can look green, but aren’t necessarily the green we see. There are so many other colors lurking beneath the surface.

In watercolor painting, planning your white space with watercolor is really important. It’s completely opposite of acrylic paint. We practiced using masking fluid which quickly became a favorite way to preserve white space.

 

We ran over and people had to run, so we weren’t able to get a final class pic, but I was just so impressed with how everyone’s paintings turned out. It felt really amazing to run an art workshop again. I am planning on another painting workshop in late June, and also content for a few online workshops as well. If you want to learn how to paint, check out this How to Paint Clouds tutorial.

Thank you so much for coming, it was so much fun! See you at the next workshop!