I am Heena Siddiqui from Artfeltcreations and welcome back to another amazing tutorial. I am hosting a challenge on Instagram every month, where we simply celebrate watercolors. We have different themes every month, so I thought why not do something from the challenge itself????
This month it was still life and florals using ink and watercolors. I am doing my last prompt which is Bird Cage and Cherry Blossoms.
You already know about the new released colors and I still couldn’t get over the Gold Dust. I decided to do a golden cage and searched for a silhouette. (reference PINTEREST).
The absolute gorgeous Gold Dust’s close ups for you before we begin the tutorial.
I have also added the beautiful Silver Moonlight in the background.
Don’t worry about the unfinished edges they just make it all more beautiful.
Now that we have seen what we are painting up close, let us dive into some step by step instructions.
Step 1: Sketch with Pencil
I am using a Steadler 2H for sketching on Craftangles Watercolor paper, I am using Cold Pressed. You can search for multiple references and make them 1 single. Obviously you will need to draft some on rough paper or some rough sketch book. A good source of reference is Pinterest (artist needs to be credited), Unsplash, Pixabay,etc
Once you are happy with your draft out it down on your final paper. Use a kneaded eraser to correct all your mistakes. This eraser helps to keep the watercolor paper intact still gets all the lead off your paper.
Step 2: Ink it
Trace all the artwork using a waterproof pen or ink and nib, whatever is comfortable with you. Just make sure it is waterproof! I am using Posca pen in black ink and I must say it is quite an amazing pen to work with. However, if you notice I have left the bird cage untouched. If you ask me why? I will let you know in the steps below.
Step 3: Paint it Gold
It is difficult and has been always difficult to capture the beauty of gold.
Here I have mixed Lemon Tart with Gold Dust to get a beautiful golden yellow.Be careful and slow while doing this as we need to be crisp with the lines. I have used a size 0 brush to complete this step.
Step 4: Color the Flowers
Pretty Peony is my favorite color from all the shades available. Such a beautiful pink!!! I have used the same size 0 brush to carefully paint the flowers.
Use clear water and wet one petal and the add a diluted color in the petal. pick a saturated (no water) color and add from one edge. You can allow it to blend on its own or use your brush to slightly adjust the blending.
Work one petal at a time for a clean finish.
Step 5: Color the branches and leaves
This is pretty simple step. Just fill in the Oh Fudge color in the branches and Limelight is the leaves.
Step 6: Adding the Background
This step is crucial and at the same time it is the most fun process to see the colors blend.
Colors that I am using in the background are : Mystical Waters, Lime Light, Gold Dust and Silver Moonlight.
First things first keep your colors ready to make this process easy. Mix a little limelight with silver moon light and a little with Gold Dust.
Using a round 10 brush wet the paper on one side. Be careful with the edges of the rest painting and wet only the area that you will you can work on at one time.
Once fully wet, start adding Mystical waters at the edges and see the color blending with clear water. Add the mix of limelight with gold or lime light with silver as and when where you want to add.
Keep Repeating this at other blank spaces.
Once you have completed the background this is how it should look like!!!
Step 7: Adding Finishing Touches
It’s time to finish your artwork. For the birds I used a mix of all the colors on my palette including gold dust and silver moonlight, which turned into a metallic grey. Also I just Outlined the bird cage to make it pop. Here’s the reason why I didn’t outlined the bird cage at Step 2, Gold dust is opaque and would have covered the outlines unevenly which would either look bad or you have to rework!
So for a simple reason of avoiding the rework part I left it for the end. Also notice my line got shaky in the bird cage. Well there was nothing I could do about it, so I left it like that to remind me that I need to be more careful and patient next time 🙂
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Congratulations, you have completed the steps and are a proud owner of a beautiful artwork!!
If you have tried this I would love to see your work. So share your artworks with me on Instagram
http://www.instagram.com/artfeltcreations/ I will be more than happy to share it in my stories. Happy Painting!!!!!!!
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All the products have been individually tagged individually for your ease to check them.
Here’s the link to buy liquid watercolors and papers
Craftangles liquid Watercolors
Craftangles Watercolor paper
Until later folks, Thank you so much for dropping by 🙂
Heena
Heena, this is just stunning!