Watercolor poinsettias tutorial paint along. Red color lifting solution

Hello everyone. How are you doing today? I hope you had a very happy Halloween 2021. It is the best time of the year for get together and lots of fun things are happening. Our area has some fall fun for young people, the pumpkin patch with rides and beautiful metal work for parent to buy. My neighbor was so excited to bring her three kids, the bright color of the pumpkins and the fun of picking the right ones are always the highlights. When my children was young that was always so much fun. Sometimes funner than the trick of treats, because they were overwhelmed by the different houses and spookiness. But the drive to get more candies kept them going, to the point of breakdown sometimes, but all worth it. We are now heading towards Thanksgiving, so much to be grateful for. But I am very excited to get this paint along up. I have been planning this for a while. I did a poinsettias few years back, and I am very glad to re visit this sort of painting again.

As I may have slightly mentioned in some of my other videos, red is a very challenging color for watercolor. It is very fugitive, temperamental, because of the easiness to lift this color. One can practically erase a whole red patch by using water and some light pressure, not like purple, purple’s challenge is you can’t change your mind, because it cannot be lifted easily. But since poinsettias has such a deep rich red color, it is needed to do layers. I know I am very careful, and don’t want disjointed layers and hope to achieve a very smooth harmonious look. I have to admit, during those earlier years of being an artist, I have cried many times over red, lol. I went for long time without red, but I love red. I am grateful we have red in our life. Our famous artist Minerva Tichert also are grateful for red. Sometimes I would avoid red, but it is not in my nature to not try to overcome or solve a problem. I have tried using graphite underneath red, and it worked. Sometimes try using a layer of red or yellow acrylics and that works too, because acrylics has glue in them. This time I venture into something different. So when you paint along with me in this video, you should be sick of me talking about red, but hopefully at the end you will be happy with the result. You will see me make mistakes, you will see how a little touch of water would send the red running, and couple of times how I rescued myself. It is all good fun. No anxiety or anyone crying during the making of this video, I remain in good cheer I think you can tell.

Here is a list of the color I used. As usual you can try some others too. I know I will in the near future, maybe the new year 2022, I will venture to do some kind of review for you guys. There are some very good student grade watercolor out there, I bought it for my children and grandchildren to use that I think will produce similar results. So stay tune would you? I just really want you guys to paint, enjoy it, don’t get frustrated don’t expect a lot in the beginning. Time is on your side, time is what it takes.

ok, Cadmium Red Medium plus Windsor deep red for the red petals. Occasionally for deeper red area we need pyrlene Maroon, and I didn’t hestitate to use black mix with it. Some part I will drop some Ultra marine blue. For the green it’s my standard, Indigo, pyrlene green, sap green and cadmium yellow light, Ultramarine Blue to lift the color and brighten things up, and I used that on the red petals too.

Other than talking about red challenge, I also showed how to separate overlapping petals. Drawing of a turning petal etc. I hope you have lots of fun watching and paint along. As always, be free to ask me any questions at all. I am here to help.

Below is a peak at what is coming up very soon. I did this clematis painting a few years back, and my nice customer Joann is asking me to do this one for her grandkid’s anniversary. So I thought I might as well do a tutorial, will be up in a week or so and we will talk more about it then.

Here is the sneak peak of the clematis. It will be a fun one to do together. Haha and yes we have to deal with purple, blue purple. I have the painting all drawn out and ready to film.

On the right side is a writing of my six years old grandson. He’s now in first grade. And his mom my daughter has been teaching him writing words. My daughter, Elissa Nysetvold, wrote a book and self published on Amazon and today is the first day we can order it. I have read the book and I loved it. She is very good, and had published with chicken soup books once before. She’s a big LOTR fan and told about her love story in the Chicken soup for the soul. This new book is called Nightwalker. It is a book on ancient evil and how a young group of people trying to overcome and destroyed the practice and their adventures. I loved it, it’s a very fast paced book and I am very proud of her. I hope you guys will order it, it’s a very good read, you can order the kindle version too. Her success this time will prepare a way for her future books and I greatly appreciate your support. My grandson Dan read it, I hope he understood all of it. It’s a very clean book, great for children of all ages, but especially teens and young adults and all adults for that matter. My recommendation is you should read this book too. Everyone needs support as we pursue our dreams and talents, thank you for your support of this blog by coming to visit often and really try to paint with me. As I always say, the only way to be better is by doing a lot of it. Get painting into your subconscious and it will be graceful. Thank you again for coming today. Keep your brushes wet and be sure to say hi to be on the comments.

I hope this link works. I will try it. Or else her book is Nightwalker and her name is Elissa Nysetvold. Thank you, love, Kathy