Paint Realistic Watercolour and Botanicals – MAGNOLIAS

MAGNOLIAS is the next step in my progressive series of online botanical painting courses and is a more thorough study of a single botanical subject. 'Magnolias' presents us with manageable areas of wash, glazing opportunities and simple dry brushing practice to complete our painting. These are all techniques so critical to watercolour painting and to creating successful botanical art. With so much diversity, painting the magnolia is also a perfect opportunity to explore creating texture with watercolour, whilst the intricate flower centre focusses on applying more detailed, fine line work to refine our painting. Practice exercises are included on the petal, furry details and stem elements, whilst the extension 'NutShell' section delves deeper into the finer aspects of creating a detailed flower centre successfully. Together with the in depth step-by-step tuition, this course will help you through every step of the painting process to create your own gorgeous Magnolia painting! 

This lecture is our first real exploration of a multi element composition, and as such, I have tried to give you a greater understanding and connection to our subject in this lecture, and a little food for thought for independent painting too. We bring so much within ourselves from the field to the studio that matters, and this short lecture tries to provide you with a little insight and background on this magnolia journey to this point. It also serves to offer you some connection with our subject, the experience, the observations and the simple reasonings behind the final composition from afar. This helps you to understand the origins, and the composition process for yourselves far more thoroughly, broadening your knowledge, thoughts, ideas and approaches to your own work with time and practice.

The image and drawing transfer process is not the only method of generating an image on to your page, but it certainly is the simplest! By now you've all practiced this method in my previous tutorials, but whilst the technique remains the same, the complexity of our magnolia drawing takes a significant step up from the previous courses you've been enjoying. No fear... Take your time, and Ill help walk you through the process from start to finish in this lecture, helping you through some of the finer points of this exercise that are specifically relevant to the magnolia painting were creating. 

Kicking this Magnolias tutorial off, we wet our brushes up, jump right in and break the ice with a little watercolour petal play! This exercise will just help settle the nerves, connect with the medium, and to start familiarising you with this beautiful subject before taking on the finished Magnolias painting. With a focus on wash quality, line work quality and creating texture, this is a wonderful opportunity to explore and practice the watercolour painting techniques essential to creating gorgeous textural magnolia petals... Yum! 

Play. Plan. Paint... Thats the goal here!

Layer 2 looks at the process in painting our mid tones as we shift technique from wash work to glazing, developing our ground work or our 'roadmap' towards the final product... Each step along the way becoming more refined and specific as we progress through this stage together. This lecture looks at creating some beautiful form to your petal with glazing and prepares you for the third layer, where we continue on in the evolution of this exercise to completion. 

This petal lecture deals with the third and final layer to complete this helpful watercolour painting exercise. We shift out of wash work and begin to refine our petal with dry brushing, darks and detail for a beautiful end result. Once this exercise is complete and you have gained a solid sense of approach and direction, we can move on to complete this component in our final painting with far more confidence and ease. 

Taking what we've practiced and learned in the Petal Exercises Lectures, we now apply this knowledge to our final magnolia painting. Starting with Layer 1, our lights, we focus on our wash quality, tight line work and timing to create our 'roadmap' forwards. 

This lecture looks at layer 1 for flower 1

This lecture looks at layer 1 for flower 2, repeating the process once more, but adapting our wash to a new flower.

This lecture looks at layer 1 for flower 3, repeating and diversifying our application of our first wash once more to our new flower.

Dealing with Layer 2 now, we shift out of wash work and into glazing, building up our layers and our mid tones to create some beautiful delicate form to our flowers.

This lecture covers part 1 of this process. 

Still dealing with Layer 2, we continue our glazing work across all of our flowers, building up our layers and our mid tones to create some beautiful delicate form.

This lecture covers part 2 of this process. 

Working on Layer 3, our final step in creating our pink petals, we start to shift out of glazing and into dry brushing techniques as we develop our darks and detail with tone. With the completion of Layer 3, our darks and detail, we draw a close to the pink petals of our magnolia subjects. 

Dealing with whites can feel a little overwhelming, and for many good reasons. These lectures look at how we can approach the white petal elements of this painting simply... gently working up our strength and colours in layers to a beautiful delicate end result whilst maintaining our petal texture. As we break the process into simple colours and stages, youll soon get the feel for working in whites. 

Part 2 of the petal whites slowly weens you off the intensive step by step guidance of Part 1, progressively helping you find your own confidence and momentum through demonstration and repetition. At the completion of the final flower in this lecture, you should start to establish your process and understanding about this component of our magnolia subject. 

Its often components like the magnolia flower centre that either frightens us off trying, or let our paintings down in some way in botanical illustration, but dont be too concerned! I have especially selected a flower centre that is manageable in this painting composition, and I give you some simple approaches and strategies to complete this detail of your painting successfully. 

Of course, for those wanting to explore this detail in more depth, I have made a special mini extension tutorial on this detail in the NutShell Extension Tutorial included in this course which will allow you to expand, practice and apply these approaches to any magnolia subject you choose. 

Plenty of subjects in botanical illustration include furry features, perhaps none more so than the Magnolia. This exercise takes you through a simple process of creating a simple watercolour painting that has this furry look and feel, and helps you understand one way with many adaptations and variations on the theme to achieve this. 

Applying what weve learned in the warm up exercise for our furry leaf bud details, we should be feeling far better prepared to approach this element in our finished painting... so lets put it into practice!

A welcome change in palette sees the introduction of some beautiful rich green to our painting in this step. With just a few delicate leaf details to tackle in this composition, we have a wonderful opportunity to apply what weve already learned into a new colour. Breathing new life and dimension into our painting, we start to see and feel our painting coming alive now!

This lecture addresses layer 1, our lights, of our greens. 

This lecture addresses layers 2 & 3 of our leaves, developing the first layer into our rich mid and dark tones to complete our vibrant leaf details. 

The Stems Exercise component of this tutorial looks at 3 similar yet varying branch approaches in order to help you create the stems component of our finished painting with confidence and strategy. Taking advantage of the segmented nature of the magnolia stem, our focus in these lectures is 'section and speed'. Dividing the exercise into 3 approaches and 3 sections for each, demonstration, process and repetition will take you a long way towards understanding this element, and the watercolour medium better. Stem Exercise 1 pays special attention to creating a branch with a soft highlight through the centre of the branch.

A critical variation on a theme, Stem Exercise 2 explores a simple approach to painting a magnolia branch where the light source is on the top of the branch with a dark underside. This example shows you how simple shifts in approach, technique and timing can alter the look and feel of your branch to a far woodier result, an essential part of painting magnolia branches successfully. 

Stem Exercise 3 has some fun playing with the natural qualities and nature of the watercolour medium, and explores how a simple lichen effect can be created with wash and timing. This exercise is just plain fun, but there are many instances where lichen plays a critical role in the story of a botanical subject, and in our paintings it can be a simply divine component to include.... this lecture lets watercolour do what watercolour does best, but with intention and purpose! 

As we commence this lecture, we move solidly to the completion of our Magnolia painting! Applying what weve learned in the Stems Exercises, we work our way through the stem details starting with Layer 1

Working in Layers 2 and 3, we complete our stems and pull our finished Magnolia painting to a close!

Components like the detailed magnolia flower centre can really be a sticking point for us as botanical artists. We often feel overwhelmed about how to go about painting complicated structures like these, and its the most likely aspect of our work to let us down. No one wants that!

To try and address the complexity and challenges around this kind of element, I have created this additional NutShell Tutorial to place this challenge under the spotlight, to deconstruct, reconstruct, strategise, to help you understand it better, and to be able to create this component of our magnolia paintings successfully.   

I have covered drawing the flower centre, then break the painting process down component by component to walk you through this focal point to completion in a way that can be varied and applied to any magnolia flower centre you choose to explore from here on out.

Lets break it down! The Structure and drawing lecture takes a closer look at the magnolia centre itself, breaking this detail down to single elements in order for us to gain a really sound understanding of this more complex aspect of our subject. Reconstructing and drawing this element in graphite cements our familiarity of the remarkable flower centre further. This exercise and knowledge can be varied and applied to any magnolia subject and will help you approach many of the fussier details in botanical painting. 

Transfer the magnolia flower centre image from the worksheet provided if you prefer, but for another challenge, why not try photocopying and transferring your own drawing to work from? The worksheet provided offers you a range of flower centre varieties and sizes to experiment with, and to extend your skill in painting this detail beautifully. 

If you dont want to try your hand at drawing the flower centre, or to work from your own drawing, the Heart of the Matter worksheet provides you with three magnolia flower centre in three varying sizes to work simply from. This range will give you some diversity in your play with this element, and allow you to choose just the right subject and size for your personal preference too... perhaps youll try it all! Just print out this worksheet and get started, or photocopy your own drawing, then apply the same transfer techniques to this to begin the painting process.

I have also included a bee because he is a lovely compliment to this play. There is no instruction on this element, it just a little sharing of my own reference for your own fun. 

This worksheet can also be located in the main tutorials 'Materials List and Reference Worksheet' section

By now you should be quite familiar with the drawing up process. Whether working from your own photocopied drawing or from the worksheet, this lecture takes you through the image transfer process in preparation to paint.  

This lecture looks not only at the colours we use for this magnolia flower centre, it delves a little deeper into the relationship of colour between one element of this subject to another, and helps you perceive and digest colour and its use a little more extensively, and to understand how you can select and apply colour in your own work with more awareness and beauty

Painting the Magnolia Centre takes a close look at the intricate flower tip with its tricky detailing and form, and helps you approach the painting process as simply and successfully as possible. Remember this is a small painting that rests so much on timing, so give it a go, several times over if you need... and take the opportunity to really explore and practice timing, so critical to watercolour painting.

Painting our gorgeous pink stamens looks exciting, but it possibly feels a little daunting too! With its tiny details and tiny size, this is a wonderful opportunity to practice rendering the tiniest of details in our work. Here I help you to break the process down into small simple steps that will help you feel some strategy and confidence in approaching this element. Just let yourself fall into this tiny space and really focus on your tiny detail practice.

With their delicate colour and furry texture, our leaf buds can also feel a little challenging to attempt when starting out, but no fear! This lecture helps you through the process of creating this delicate feel to the leaf bud details of your painting

A small section of stem is our focus here, as I walk you through the steps necessary to complete this element of our flower centre, and to this intricate subject.