Watercolor Tutorial: textures with hairs and thorns

How to create textures in leaves and stems with Paulina Maciel

When we face botanical illustration one of the biggest challenges are the textures of leaves, petals and flower stems. In this tutorial Paulina Maciel (@pau_maciel), designer and illustration artist specialized in watercolor technique, and creative director and founder of Canela, will show you some tricks to get more realism in leaves and stems by working on textures.

Discover the tutorial in the following video:

1. SEPAL

As an example to illustrate a textured leaf, Paulina has chosen a sunflower sepal. It is a leaf that has a velvety texture and to illustrate it we will need to use a cutter. Once we have the first two layers of watercolor dry, which begin to give volume to the leaf, we will scrape the surface of the leaf with the cutter to generate that "hairiness" of the sepal.

2. SURFACE OF THORNS

Many plants and flowers have a stem full of thorns, and to illustrate this we must take into account the volumes it generates and the diversity of textures. In Paulina's example, the thorn is reddish in color and this is something to take into account when painting it. It is important to let the green color dry first so that when the thorn is included they do not mix. Then it is important to take into account the volumes that we want to replicate to imitate them, in this case the stem is cylindrical and the thorn, a cone.

If you liked this tutorial by Paulina Maciel, discover more of her tips in her online course "Botanical illustration with watercolor" where she will teach you, step by step, the processes to make botanical composition illustrations accurately, taking as a model real flowers and plants.

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