Simple Watercolor Leaves To Paint For Shavuot!

As you know, I love to create with a wide variety of media, and recently I’ve been devoting just a tiny pocket of time to filling my watercolor paper art journal with simple watercolor paintings. Check out my watercolor carrots, watercolor feathers and watercolor ferns. It is true, I’m loving the watercolor exploration as it is a relief from the intense oil pastel paintings I’ve been doing, though to create the kind of art I love with watercolors I’d need to combine them with acryla gouache and also get some liquid watercolors with intense colors, ah yes and huge pieces of watercolor paper! That said, my little travel watercolor palette is just so cute and fun to use, and there is something about the simplicity of watercolor that is just so very very wonderful, not to mention all the cool results one can achieve by letting the watercolors move where they like, on paper to which you’ve applied water first. And when the time comes to travel once again, I’m all set! Especially since I treated myself to some travel watercolor brushes, that come apart and form their own little protective case, lucky me!

Right now, as we approach the holiday of Shavuot for which we decorate our homes with greenery and flowers, decorating with watercolor paintings of greenery is certainly a wonderful way to go. So take a look at this layered watercolor leaves idea, do it on sheets of paper, and then hang them for wonderful and artful greenery! Keep on reading for a few helpful tips!

You’ll Need:

• watercolors
• watercolor paper or journal
• a black waterproof pen
• a white paint pen

How To:

1. Choose a favorite plant for reference that has interesting leaves, or groupings of leaves, which works really well. I based these leaves on the schefflera plant, though whoops, they generally have more like 6 or 8 leaves on each bracket, which I should know, just my plant it outside so I didn’t actually look at it. So, either look at an actual plant or photo reference, and draw a few examples of how the leaves might look from different angles, on a separate piece of paper. For this I recommend NOT drawing the leaves first, you really don’t need to.
2. Mix a variety of greens from light to dark. Starting with the lightest shade of green, paint your leaves the same way you drew them, without worrying too much. You can always paint over mistakes with more leaves. Try to leave little pockets of white while painting the leaves, meaning don’t fill them in entirely if you can.
3. Once the first layer is dry, paint another layer using a few darker greens, and remembering to vary the size and angle of the leaves.
4. Add some very thin stems using brown or dark green, and add some interest with the addition of some gold/deep yellow color to some of the leaves.
5. Once totally dry, give definition to your leaves with a fine black marker, just don’t outline entirely, here and there and loosely outlined looks the best. You may want to skip this if your results are lovely as is, mine needed a boost.
6. Add white details with your white paint marker, some dots and little lines on the leaves look great!
7. That is it, now go paint a different houseplant or the lush plants of your dreams!