Ooh, composition, that sounds more exciting than it is. It's a lot of fun, because it's super useful to be able to draw before you start painting. That saves a lot of 'wasting' beautiful watercolor paper. It really helps you to sketch first and look carefully at the item you are going to paint. It may seem like a boring part, but you will see that as you start sketching you will find it more and more fun. That's extra fun if you use a real flower. This way you can see very clearly what shapes are in that flower and how the light falls on the flower.
You can use very simple paper for sketching. And don't just stick to 1 sketch, but feel free to make 10. It all starts with first looking at what shape and what light you see. Shadows, highlights? It all starts with looking carefully.
Find a twig or flower from the garden, or buy a beautiful bunch of flowers or loose flowers for yourself. You can use it to draw and paint. The best part is learning to paint from 3D to 2D. If you really can't figure it out, you can always take a photo.
Let's first take a good look at the flower. Where do you see the highlights and where do you see the shadows and what are the midtones . This variation means that a daffodil is not simply yellow, but creates a dynamic image.
In the video we study together the basic shapes of the daffodil, tulip and blue grapes. After completing the basic shape, we look at the highlights and shadows.
Keep this as simple as possible, don't go into too many details.
In summary:
- Drawing starts with looking carefully.
- What is the basic shape?
- Then you look at the highlights and shadows of the flower.
The basic shape is the shape that you could place around the flower. For example a square or a circle. this is already the first step to simplify the shape of the flower. This also makes it much easier to fill in the rest of the flower. You then already know where the center of gravity will be and how large the rest of the leaves should be.
Don't just make 1 sketch, but sketch 1 flower more than 5 times.
Next week a new video in which we start painting!
Love,
Judith
