27 Sep A Beginner’s Guide to Brushwork, Lesson #9

Today we are moving on in our brushwork series to lesson #9, which is a design of yellow dahlia, a beautiful flower with many pedals. We are working through the book, Brushwork Elementary Brush-Forms by Marion Hudson, and are enjoying it immensely. Brushwork, lesson ##9 is taking what we learned from lesson #8 on yellow dahlia, and creating a beautiful design that uses all of the skills we’ve learned so far. I am just amazed how our initial lesson in brushwork have been developed into this design! This also underscored the importance of doing each of these brushwork lessons in order, as each lesson builds on the lesson before.

Redrawing the Design on Our Grid Paper

As we’ve mentioned in previous lessons, your grid paper is probably going to be different than that in the book. I say this because I looked everywhere for grid paper that was similar to the book yet never found it. So, we settled for what we could find. I would estimate that the grid paper in the book is about 1/2″ squares. Our grid paper is twice that, with 1″ square grid paper. As well, our grid paper is probably a different size overall. Because of this, the pattern in the book does not translate well onto my 1″ grid paper, so with each lesson I am redrawing the design with a few adjustments, as you can see below.

Materials Needed

• The book, Brushwork, Elementary Brush-Forms by Marion Hudson (also available online HERE)
• 1″ absorbent grid paper
• Watercolor paints
• Watercolor Paintbrush, we used Princeton Velvetouch round size 6 or round size 8
• A glass of water (not used for drinking)
• A small plate for mixing paint and water
• A napkin to dry the brush

Happy Handicrafts Video: Brushwork for Beginners, Lesson #9

As with the previous lesson, we just use 2 paint colors, yellow and green. When using just 2 colors, it’s best to plan out your project so that you are first painting all the yellow, and then move on to the green. This prevents the mixing and dirtying of the paint and water.

Start with the Yellow Paint

In this case we began with the centers of the flowers. There are 5 flowers and 4 buds. By placing the centers first, you are able to plan out your grid, helping with placement. I did all 5 centers, not worrying about how full they looked. My plan was to go back and fill them in once they had dried. The paper we are using allows for a very quick drying time, so once we finished the centers, we immediately went back over them, filling them in with a dotting motion. This helps to create a pleasing dimension of color.

Once the centers were completed, we moved on to the pedals of the flowers. As we learned in a previous lesson, we began by placing 4 equally spaced pedals. We then added 4 more. As these 8 pedals dried, we moved on to the next flower until all had 8 pedals. When all 5 flowers were done and had 8 pedals, it was time to complete the flowers by adding an additional 8 pedals. This left us with sixteen perfectly spaced pedals.

To complete the yellow paint, we painted the 4 buds. These were made by laying down 3 brush forms, and joining them together at the base.

Next is the Green Paint

When finished with all the yellow paint, it is time to switch over to the green paint. It’s fascinating to me that there is no rinsing or washing of the brush at this point. The yellow paint is delicately incorporated into the green paint, almost imperceptibly.

I began with the green by lightly drawing the stems of the flowers, joining the 4 buds and the 4 corner flowers to the center flowers. I then added the larger leaves, and smaller bud leaves to complete the design in this brushwork, lesson #9.

The final design is really quite striking.

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Be sure to follow along on our YouTube channel, Happy Handicrafts, where all of these descriptions are paired with video to make things so much easier for you! There you will also find other handicrafts that you may want to incorporate into your homeschool curriculum. We create these videos in our own homeschool to be able to help others who may struggle with the creative side. Come join us – we’re crafty so you don’t have to be!