Live Watercolor Painting

Today we are doing a live watercolor session! Get your questions and your paint brushes ready, because we are going to be painting watercolor flowers live today, Friday July 9th at 12 PM EDT. Chris and I are just getting back from maternity leave and we thought, what better way to reconnect with all of you than with a livestream?! If you miss it, the video will still be here afterwards with some more photos.

Join the live session here:

Shop My Supplies:

• Mungyo 48 Pan Paint Set

• Sakura Koi Field Set

• Strathmore Watercolor Notebook

• Arches Cold Pressed Paper

• Arches Hot Pressed Paper

• Raphael Kolinsky Sable Hair Paint Brush

• Princeton Synthetic Brushes

• Cheap Synthetic Brushes

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post contains affiliate links from which, at no additional cost to you, I earn a small commission from.

Today was a lot of fun! Thank you to everyone who joined us live. We had lots of requests for different watercolor florals and you can see those results here. I warmed up with some greenery and leaves and then we jumped right into the requests: peonies, daisies, eucalyptus and milkweed.

We talked about making mistakes - everyone messes up! I try to share those mistakes on the channel sometimes. I find, as an artist you are always harder on yourself, so you'll always see errors where others don't. Like one viewer shared: "you're not a fan of your finished product until you come back later." Always let your art breathe, don't throw it away!

Today I learned that milkweed is known as the butterfly flower! I've never painted this before so it was a lot of fun to figure out as I went. It's a burst of tiny little flowers and big oval leaves. I took paint from different spots on my palette to get a gradient in the color, let them get more abstract at the outside of the circle, and just managed to fit the floral onto the corner of my sketchbook.

Daisies pop up on the channel pretty often, but since white flowers can be so challenging, I wanted to still paint some today. Using the gray paint, I outline the edges of the petal so as much as possible is still white. It is all about negative space and the shadows and highlights. Check out my last blog about daisies here, or search my YouTube channel for even more.

The supplies listed above this week are ones I used in the video, as well as the links to supplies I spoke about. I am using my Mungyo paint pan, but recommend the Sakura Koi series as well. They are affordable, not professional quality, but more of a student level. I find this is sufficient for creating your own art, whatever you are doing, as long as you aren't selling it. The main difference between student and professional quality is the longevity of the pigments. I am also trying out a new synthetic brush, the Princeton series.

I get a lot of requests for real-time painting, and always want to respond to this. If you haven't seen last week's Timed Watercolor Paintings, check that one out as well. I hope if you were able to join while we were live, that you had a lot of fun and I was able to answer your questions. Otherwise, the video is still available and provides some real-time watercolor painting. Sully didn't wake up so there were no crazy surprises, but we had fun talking with everyone. Thanks for tuning in!