Easy Watercolor Watermelon Painting Tutorial Step by Step // Beginner

Easy Watercolor Watermelon Painting Tutorial Step by Step // Beginner

96 Articles, Blog


The first thing to do is load your brush with
lots of water and paint out the shape of the part that will be pink. It’s just a simple triangle with a rounded
bottom and I’m just using plain water. I mix a nice reddish pink and start dropping
paint into the water, then I add in a slight purple color that has a darker value, and
notice how random my placements are. I want the colors to blend on the page and
make even more colors. I don’t want the paint to gather at the
bottom in a puddle because it will dry with hard edges and I want a softer look down here,
so I use a piece of paper towel to lift the paint and then continue to add different purples,
pinks, and reds in random places. The water puddled on the sides and that’s
ok because that will make a beautiful texture when it dries and I want that area to be hard. If you have too much water on your page you
can just dry your brush on a paper towel and pick it up with the thirsty brush or you can
use a paper towel to pick up the excess water. If there is not enough just simply add more. It’s a balancing game, but the more you
do it the better you’ll be at it, just like any other skill. When I’m happy with how it looks I leave
it alone to dry. Remember that watercolors always dry lighter. Next I pick up a light green with a good amount
of water and paint in the bottom by using the same rounded shape as I did for the bottom
of the pink part, make sure to leave a decently sized space between the two, you don’t want
the colors touching and bleeding into each other and watermelons do have white between
the pink and green part. I pick up a darker green and drop it in the
randomly spaced, you can leave it like this, but I let them blend a little more by lightly
moving the paint with my brush. Next, I use a hair dryer to speed up the drying
process, make sure to set yours to low and go around the whole painting, don’t just
sit in one spot. I find that puddles dry with more defined
edges when I use a hair dryer and I really like that, plus it’s a good remedy for impatience. It’s mostly dry now, but there was a little
too much water at the top, so I picked it up with a dry brush. Now we’re doing the second layer. Since watercolors are transparent when you
layer them you get more intense colors and unique color mixes, this is called glazing. It’s also really great for layering cool
textures as you will see. I paint over the same shape but this time
I use a little less water so that the paint doesn’t spread too much and stays darker. Notice how I laid down some dark shapes but
the edges are very defined, to fix this I simply dampen my brush and just smooth out
the edges by painting next to them with a tiny bit of clear water. I add a little more concentrated paint in
random areas and leave I it to do its own magical watercolor thing. The green part is almost fully dry and now
is a good time to introduce some yellow to make it pop. It blends in the parts that are still wet,
but in the middle where it’s almost fully dry, it stays where I put it and I paint in
a random texture and this will be more visible once it’s dry. I use a hairy dryer to finish drying and now
it’s time to add seeds. I never use pure black, because I like a slight
coloring in my blacks, this time I’m using concentrated Sepia, to do that just load a
little water and lots of paint on your brush, just make sure to have enough water or you’ll
do the dry brush technique, if you’re not sure you’re doing it right you can use a
piece of scrap paper to test it out before painting. I use the tip of my brush to draw in tear
drop shapes. I messed up one of my seeds but I don’t
panic because that’s easy to fix while it’s still wet. I simply half wet my brush in plain water
and put it over the seed, picking up some paint and replacing it with water. Then I use a paper towel to pick up the rest
of the paint and water. Notice how it took some of the paint below
with it even though it was dry. This technique can also be used to add more
highlights or texture to your paintings. To fix it I just used a damp paper towel to
pick up more paint around it, making the light area more random and large. Now it fits in with the rest of the piece
and it actually made it more dimensional. You can also use this technique with a damp
brush to add highlights and we will do so in future lessons. I dry the area and continue painting my seeds. Vary the size of your seeds and whether it’s
just an outline or it’s filled. The trick is in not overdoing it or underdoing
it. It’s always better to do less than more
so stop yourself as soon as it looks done. Now you can stop here or you can add white
in. To do this you can use white ink, white gouache,
a white gel pen, or any other white media safe to use on top of watercolors. I use a white gel pen to add slight highlights
on every seed. Just drawing a dot or two or a line is sufficient
enough to do this, I don’t care about lighting sources because this is a loose piece and
doesn’t have to make sense, so go crazy and do what feels right. I also add a lot of little dots to the bottom,
I love to use this technique to make things look shiny or like they have glitter on them. It’s easy to do, it’s just a lot of dots
clumped together getting sparser and sparser the more you go out, varying the size of them
can make them look like stars. I also add in some white seeds with just simple
white tear drop shapes, notice it’s only three, I don’t want to overdo it since it
already looks done. The end result is gorgeous and was made easily
using only simple shapes and layered washes. If you squint your eyes you will notice the
value constantly changes throughout the piece and notice how the piece is not perfect, none
of the lines are straight and every brush stroke was loose. Also, notice how cool this part of the watermelon
looks because we layered two loose washes on top of each other. I use this same technique to paint galaxies. This was a sample lesson from my skillshare
class Easy Watercolor Sweets & Treats! I left a free link below but you also have
the option of singing up for 99 cents for three month membership and you will have access
to thousands of other classes from other teachers and all my classes. Stay sweet my friends!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

About The Author

96 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *