Botanical Watercolor Sketchbook

If you're looking for inspiration for your illustrations, the answer may lie in stepping out and contemplating the nature around you. Its perfection, subtlety, and extensive variety could be the key you've been searching for. Illustrator and watercolor specialist Paulina Maciel is passionate about the natural world, which is evident in the creations of her studio, Canela Estudio, for branding, packaging, book covers, invitations, and more, as well as her other course Botanical Illustration with Watercolors.

In this course, learn to fill a notebook with botanical watercolors, including illustrations and handwritten notes, by studying nature. This practice exercises your capacity for observation, visual description, and rapid interpretation and helps you understand many of the species that surround us.

Start the course by getting to know Paulina Maciel, her work as an artist, what inspires her, and how illustration became her whole world.

Paulina shows you some illustrated journals with various themes from different artists to get your creative juices flowing. Learn how they work and how they can help you improve your drawing skills to create a consistent drawing habit―something you can take anywhere so you can gradually build confidence in your watercolor technique.

Include some handwritten notes to exercise your observation skills, something that will help you understand many of the species that we encounter.

Paulina also goes over the few materials you need to take this course. The goal is to work mainly outside so you only carry the basics with you on your trips.

Move on to some color theory exercises. In watercolor painting you can achieve a wide range of tones and shades with a relatively small palette of pigments.

Practice the basic illustration techniques using graphite, fineliners, and watercolor with some exercises to loosen up and let your creativity take the reins.

Now it's time to do your first naturalist sketchbook illustrations and, with Paulina as your guide, learn to illustrate a page in grisaille. Familiarize yourself with basic steps for interpreting a tree drawing with watercolors. The next step is to use a piece of fruit to analyze and understand the values of light, shadow, and volume in a study of continuous tones with graphite. Once you have grasped this, get ready to illustrate your piece of fruit in watercolor.

Continue the illustration exercises using some mushrooms as your subject, and include them in your journal illustrating them with both fineliners and watercolors. Finally, Paulina teaches you to draw the outline of a flower in pencil, adding volume with watercolors in a botanical print style.

By the end of the course, you have the first pages of your botanical sketchbook, which serves as a progress log in the different fundamental and mixed techniques. You have the rest of the notebook to discover and interpret the natural world through your own eyes!

Take the first steps towards creating a botanical sketchbook that you can carry with you to capture your observations of nature. Explore illustrations in pencil, fineliner, and watercolors as well as handwritten notes.

To all illustration afficionados, art enthusiasts, watercolor lovers, and anyone curious about the nature that surrounds us.

No prior knowledge is required for this course, although if you already have experience illustrating you might enjoy it that little bit more!
In terms of materials, you need a suitable notebook for watercolor painting including wet techniques, pan watercolors, a fineliner, a graphite pencil, paintbrushes (waterbrushes would be especially useful). Remember to take a good hat to protect you from the sun if you decide to paint outside!