Folk Art illustration: Paint Decorated Butterflies in Watercolor & Gouache

In this class, I’m going to show you how to paint butterflies in a decorative folk art style. We’re going to look at two different techniques today and paint some pretty butterflies in watercolor and then in gouache. If you only have one of the two available, that’s no problem, you can achieve beautiful results with each.

First we’ll take a look at some of my examples, learn how to work with different kinds of paint, and explore painting different decorative elements.
Then we’ll choose a nice color palette and start painting our butterflies. We’ll explore layering and decoration techniques to add more visual interest to your painting.
We’ll do two different exercises, one in watercolor and one in gouache. If you only have watercolors, that’s absolutely no problem, just join in and find out how you can improvise to get that gouache look. If you prefer gouache, that’s great, you can work with gouache for all the exercises in this class.

At the end you’ll have learned how to paint your own beautifully decorated butterfly. Butterflies are wonderful and delicate little creatures, and I love watching and painting them in both realistic and abstract techniques.

• Introduction
• Tools
• Examples
• Pencil drawing
• Watercolor
• Gouache
• Final thoughts