Hello friends, Adrienne from @studio80design here today to share a tutorial on how to create a fall leaf watercolor illustration! Fall is here along with all the beautiful changing leaves. I love re-creating them in my notebook and playing with all the beautiful fall colors. I'm still in love with the new Archer and Olive Watercolor Notebook. It works so well with watercolors and there is no ghosting, bleeding, or wrinkling of the pages! 

Materials you'll need:

• Archer and Olive Watercolor Notebook
• Leaf
• Tombow Dual Brush Pens in fall colors (I used colors 947, 025, 993, & 837)
• Blending Palette
• Pencil
• Eraser
• Tombow Water Brush, Medium (or a medium sized paint brush)
• Glass of water
• Tombow Fudenosuke Hard Tip Brush Pen
• Ruler or piece of cardstock paper

Step 1

The first step is to draw a leaf! One of my secret tricks when drawing leaves is to trace them! As long as you have a leaf that will fit on your page, you can simply trace it and save some time! Place your leaf in the center of the page of the Watercolor Notebook. Then use your pencil to lightly trace around the edges of your leaf, making sure to include all the ridges of the leaf and the stem!

Step 2

Next, draw swatches onto your blending palette with the Dual Brush Pens, which we're going to be using as watercolors. These brush pens are water based, so all you need to do is add water and they turn into watercolors! 

Dip your water brush (or paint brush) into your glass of water to get a fair amount of water onto your brush. This next part requires you to work relatively quickly so as you work the watercolor doesn't dry. Start at the top of the leaf and saturate the area of the leaf on your page with water. Once it's saturated and covered with water, pick up some yellow from your blending palette and dab it onto your leaf. This is called a wet-in-wet technique, and the color will bleed into the water and move around nicely. Then pick up some orange and dab it onto your leaf, followed by red into the center.

Step 3

Continue to drop in color into the rest of your leaf. I added drops of brown around the edges of the leaf last. The colors should bleed and blend together nicely, but don't be afraid to help some areas out if they're not blending how you would like!

Step 4

While the watercolor is still wet, use the edge of a ruler (or the corner of a piece of cardstock paper works well too) and draw the veins of the leaf. By etching in the grooves onto the leaf, the nearby watercolor will collect into the grooves and create darker lines that look like veins of a leaf!

Step 5

Sketch out with pencil and then write in a fun fall quote with the Fudenosuke Hard Tip Brush Pen. I wrote in "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers" by L.M. Montgomery. Then erase any extra pencil marks with your eraser.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful and inspirational! For more projects like this, make sure to follow me @studio80design!