Botanical watercolour Tutorial. How to paint with a calligraphy pen.

I wanted to start 2019 by producing something useful for the  creative community. And what is more useful than a free tutorial? I decided to begin with something basic and easy to use in a daily art practice, even if you are a complete beginner.

When we think of botanical watercolour painting we usually imagine round brushes, but I wanted to show  that you can use various instruments and techniques from calligraphic practice to create appealing botanical pieces.

Tools and materials used in this video

I used Saunders Waterford  hot press watercolour paper.  It has a fine-grained, smooth surface, with almost no tooth. Paint dries very quickly on it. Hot pressed watercolour paper is often used by botanical artists and calligraphers. It’s much easier to control calligraphy tools and on smooth surfaces.

You can, however, use any paper at hand, especially when learning the calligraphic strokes.

My preferred watercolour brand these days is Mijello Mission Gold, but you can choose any watercolour brand, even a kids set would work perfectly fine!

And finally the pen is called Pilot parallel pen. They come with refillable ink cartridges, but for this exercise you don’t need any cartridge at all, because you are going to load your pen with watercolour using a brush.

I hope you can incorporate the techniques and strokes from this video into your artistic work.