Botanic Living – beautiful watercolours with ginkgo, pilea and cactus

60 min Easy

You don't have to have a private hothouse with real plants to be able to conjure up an urban jungle look in your own home. DIY pictures can bring greenery that is just as pretty to your walls. Create beautiful watercolour images of ginkgo, pilea or cactus using watercolour pencils and a pigment liner. Colour-coordinated, they create a minimalistic, modern-look, evergreen wall of vegetation.

Direct to:
Cactus
Ginkgo
Pilea
What you need

First draw your outline onto the paper using a dark green watercolour pencil.

Now colour in your sketch with different shades of green. To give your cactus a 3D effect, use lighter colours on the insides and darker colours on the edges of your cactus leaves. Make sure you also think about what direction you want the light to strike your cactus from, and use darker colours in the shaded areas.

Then go over the coloured sections with a water brush (a paintbrush and water will also work, of course). The water will create a lovely soft look. Before you do anything else, leave it all to dry completely.

To make your cactus look even more realistic, take a coloured pencil in a dark brown shade and add dots and fine lines to represent the thorns.

First sketch the outlines of the plant and soft contours very gently on the paper using the Mars Lumograph watercolour pencil. When you are happy with your sketch, soften the pencil lines a little using the eraser.

Now colour in the leaves carefully with different green and yellow shades of the watercolour pencils, creating a slight colour gradient from light to dark.

Then go over the coloured sections with a brush. The water will create a lovely soft look. Before you do anything else, leave it all to dry completely.

Then use a black pigment liner to add details to your ginkgo along with accents and outlines.

Now colour in the leaves gently with the watercolour pencils, in shades of green, brown and black.

Then go over the coloured sections with a water brush (a paintbrush and water will also work, of course). The water will make the colours run into each other, creating a lovely effect.

Before the paint has dried, add accents and points of light using a cotton bud.

What you need

Product	Article no.	Quantity
STAEDTLER^® 989 Synthetic brush - Blistercard containing 3 brushes: #2 round, #8 round, #8 flat	989-SBK3-3	1
Mars^® Lumograph^® aquarell 100A Watercolour graphite pencil - Single product 4B	100A-4B	1