Wednesday WarmUp Floral Resources

Welcome!

For the past few weeks, this blog has hosted “Wednesday Warm Up,”— a day of usually quick drawing, inking, brushing as warm up to our serious art. I share a strategy to try each Wednesday using the iPad app ProCreate. I only use the brushes in the app— there are so many I haven’t tried that warming up with a new brush will be an added bonus and challenge.

This Week

This warm up is about resources for inking florals– inking, drawing, watercolor, gouache– digitally. From this category on my blog, you know I love florals, as indicated by the many posts about florals.

The books in the picture were suggestions from my friend Susan Watson when I first began my journey into art back in 2016. Doodles were the first learning– basic shapes and illustrations that brought smiles. If you like to have something to hold in your hand to fill you with inspiration, these two books are awesome:

• Florabunda Woodland: Super Simple Art Doodles: Color, Craft & Draw: Trees, Owls, Leaves & More (Design Originals) Over 300 Nature-Inspired Doodles like Birds, Flowers, Animals, Bugs, Branches, & Roots by Susanne McNeill
• 20 Ways to Draw a Tree and 44 Other Nifty Things from Nature: A Sketchbook for Artists, Designers, and Doodlers by Eloise Renouf

Also, this blog has referred to the courses I’ve taken on Skillshare— well worth the investment. I can watch and rewatch and relearn techniques and strategies for exactly what I want to learn for digital art. This link will get you to a 14 day free trial: Skillshare Free Trial. Once I tried my free trial, there was no turning back.

Let me share some teachers who have many courses in florals and more:

• Liz Kohler Brown
• Brenda Bakker
• Cat Coq [Cat Coquillette]
• Every Tuesday [Teela Cunningham]
• Jennifer Nichols
• Tracey Capone
• Barbel Dressler

I’m looking forward to the workshop by Tracey Capone on florals and birdhouses in Affinity Designer. But first I need some new flowers and foliage before I start the advanced repeat pattern class by Jennifer Nichols and finish the pattern class by Barbel Dressler.

Teela Cunningham [@everytuesday] shares on YouTube a beautiful floral Mother’s Day illustration in Procreate. Here’s what you’ll learn:

Gorgeous, isn’t it? Although she and I both used her gouache brushes, you can illustrate it with the native watercolor brushes. In my last post I shared a process, a video, and a slideshow that includes how to find all the native watercolor brushes Procreate: Learn Inking with Own Photos.

Three other florals classes on YouTube by Teela, who shares something “every Tuesday [see her website], are listed here:

• 3 Flowers Anyone Can Draw in Procreate
• Easy Floral Borders in Procreate
• How to Intertwine Elements in Procreate
• And a free course on How to Use ProCreate for Beginners

Teela offers some fantastic florals classes on Skillshare here, including the flowers in the image at the top of this post. I loved the florals courses there so much that I checked out her website for other courses, and decided to take the following to help me prepare for the patterns I want to create:

• Watercolor Florals in Procreate
• Gouache Botanicals in Procreate because I love gouache better than watercolor!

Both courses include the commercial license for her brushes and the palettes and resources and many video lessons. Below are more florals I’ve learned from the course. These are part of the mentioned Skillshare class, but this course has much more, and I’ve just started.

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Just an aside: the paper I used for each of these is St Petersburg from Calvin at Drifter Studio. He includes a layer to “turn off” when you need to print without the texture paper. Works sweet. Calvin offers a playlist of tips for Procreate as well: Playlist. [Calvin’s shop on Etsy— for the paper and his watercolor brushes].

Note– I’m not receiving anything for sharing these, except perhaps if you decide to use the link above to join Skillshare. I just want to share the marvelous teachers who have inspired me to grow as an artist– and the resources that help me with my goals.

If you’re a newbie artist and need resources and inspiration, these teachers on Skillshare and YouTube, the books, and the courses are great places to start.

I adapted a combination of strategies, processes, brushes, and paper to create this pattern, now on RedBubble. And mostly, I just create these for my own purposes. [no laughing; be kind]

Try it!

Go ahead –check out the resources so you can learn and adapt and mix to create your own original art. Think of all the designs you could create!

Enjoy the process of inking and watercolor. Be sure to check out Skillshare and the many teachers if you’re really wanting to up your art game. And, please remember to add any suggestions or ask questions here if it’s not clear, Let’s share #warmup4art .