7-day Watercolor Challenge: Paint and Explore Beautiful Spring Flowers

1. What is this Class About?: [MUSIC] I often associate spring with beautiful soft and delicate flowers. The colors are vibrant and just so full of life. Looking at flowers really inspires me to paint and express my creative freedom. Of the many spring flowers, I have chosen seven, which I found interesting. I'm here today to share with you how to paint them in loose style. Join me and let's explore one new flower each day for seven days. [MUSIC] In this class, we will use our creative freedom to translate a spring flower into a loose watercolor painting. [MUSIC] Hi, my name is Joly, and I'm a watercolor artist, an online art educator based in the Philippines. I'm also known as Jolypoa on Instagram and that's where I share my art and my process videos. I have been painting since 2013 and I'm a believer of the thought that practice makes progress. I have taught many in-person workshops over the years and have been invited to do stage demos and big art events. I also collaborated with different famous art brands. [MUSIC] This class is in a daily watercolor challenge format, which means that we will paint one project per day. May be your nervous because you haven't tried painting these flowers yet. But don't worry, because each day I will be giving you an overview to prepare you before you start each project. We'll discuss the materials needed and the colors to be used. We'll simplify the flowers through sketching and you'll discover different techniques to create unique petals. All the skills that you will learn in this class can be applied to other flowers too. [MUSIC] At the end of the class, you will learn to paint seven new flowers in different styles that you can add to your collection. This class is suitable for beginners and watercolor enthusiasts who want to learn how to paint spring flowers in a loose style. I'm so excited to start this class, so let's jump in. [MUSIC] 2. Class Projects Overview: [MUSIC] Before we start the class, I will quickly show you the projects. This is a daily challenge class, which means that one flower module will be uploaded per day. By the end of the seven-day challenge, all the modules will have been uploaded and it will be available for you to watch. You can join me daily or you can just follow me at your own pace. Now let me show you the projects. For day one, we're going to paint sweet peas. This is the easiest project in the daily challenge. We're going to treat this as a warm-up exercise for you. On day 2, we are going to paint lilac, so we're going to do a more expressive style. What I love about this project is that we get a different unique painting each time we do this technique. Let me show you another painting. You can see that this one on the right doesn't have as much details compared to the left painting. Let me grab another painting. This one has more contrast because we added darker colors. With the techniques that you'll learn in this module, you'll be able to paint lilac in your own style. On day 3 we're going to paint magnolias, so we're going to do a simple take on this flower but we'll add this beautiful background. I'll show you how to add those textures in the background. On day 4, we are going to paint ranunculus. There are different types of ranunculus. For this project, we're going to do the tight ones or the ones that look like a rose. This is one of my favorite flowers. On day 5, we are going to paint peonies. I still find it hard to pronounce this flower. In this module, we are going to learn how to paint those fluffy pink petals and I'm also going to show you how to paint the expressive leaves. On day 5, we're going to paint tulips. I used to have a hard time painting tulips because they always end up looking like blobs. But I discovered a different technique that I really want to share with you guys because I feel like it will really help you paint these beautiful flowers. Lastly, on day 7, we are going to paint irises. At first, they can be daunting to paint because of the shape, but I will be showing you how to achieve those nice, expressive, and organic shapes. You can also paint this in another color, and we're actually going to do that in the overview of this module. Those are all the seven projects in seven days. I hope that you will enjoy and learn a lot from this class. Let's now move on to the next video where we will learn about the materials. [MUSIC] 3. Materials: [MUSIC] Let's talk about the materials that we need for this class. For the paper, I'm going to use the Baohong artist grade paper. It's 100 percent cotton paper and cold pressed. This is in a block form, which means that all sides are glued except for this part. You can use a palette knife or a cutter to slide off one sheet. Remember to let the painting dry completely before you take out the sheet. Because we're using 100 percent cotton paper, you'll see that we have a nice blending on the petals of these irises. Now, if you are on a budget, I would recommend using the Baohong Academy. It's the student grade paper. Let me show you what it looks like. This is also 300 GSM. It's the idea of thickness for watercolor paper. I would say that this is one of the best student grade papers that I have tried. This is also in a block form, and now I'm showing you some paintings done on both papers. You might just get more patches on the right side as the student grade version. Then on the left side, you'll see that there's a more beautiful blend and more texture on the paper. If you want to practice on a sketch book, but you're on a budget, I would suggest using caddy paper. I love this book for doodling every day. It does have a texture on the paper. That's something that you'll have to get used to. The only downside of using this paper is that it has its limitations, so you can't really use all the watercolor techniques on this paper. Let's now move on to the brushes. We are going to use the sizes I have here. Silver brush, black velvet, round in Size 6 and 8. Then I also have this 1.5 inch flat brush. When looking for a good brush, you have to look for a brush that can hold a lot of water, but it can still keep its point. Now if you don't have a flat brush, that is definitely fine, you can still use your round brush. This 1.5 inch flat brush is very useful if you are painting up to nine by 12 inch paper. On the other end of this brush, you have this bevel tip. You can also use this to add some veins on the leaves. Now let me quickly show you the sample of the veins that I'm talking about. You can also use just an old credit card to add some veins on the leaves or petals. Next, of course we need watercolor paint. I'm using the branch Shinhan PWC. It is a Korean artist great paint. They all come in tubes like this, but what I do is I transfer them into smaller half pans. The colors that you need per module will be indicated before you start the overview. Next, we need a mixing palette. I'm just using the lid of my metal pan. It's from the brand core, but I've changed the paints inside this watercolor palette. You can also use a ceramic plate or a plastic palette. That's also okay. Of course we need a jar of water and then you also need tissue paper to blot out the excess moisture in our brush. So we are done with the materials. Now let's move on to the next video. [MUSIC] 4. Tips Before You Start: [MUSIC] I'm sharing with you some tips before you start, and this is specifically for beginners, but if you have already taken my previous classes, then you can skip this video. Let's start with the basics. The first question that most painters would ask is how do you hold a brush? I always say that initially you hold it like a pen, and then just adjust your hand until it feels more comfortable. It's also best to start at a 45-degree angle when you are painting. If you want to paint some small details, then you want to hold your brush near the bristles so that you have more control. It looks like this. But if you want a looser way of painting, then you hold it towards the end of the handle, just like this. Your wrist will immediately feel loose and free. Most of you probably have half pans just like this, so before you start you can get a spray bottle and just spray some water onto the half pans and let it sit for just a few minutes so that the paint will be nice and moist. This way it will be easier to pick up the paint. When we're about to start, the first thing we need to do is to wet the brush and then now let's grab some paint. I'm going to grab permanent rose. Then just swirl it on your palette to make sure that you are mixing the paint well and that there are no clumps of paint. You can grab some more water to thin it out. Now let's just swatch this paint. You will see that we have a nice bold color. Now let's grab our water jar and I'm going to just dip my brush in the jar and tap the excess water. This way, we can create a lighter color. You'll notice that we now have a lighter pink and you can dip your brush again to get an even lighter color. Throughout the class you'll see me use this technique. Now let's talk about controlling the water in your brush. When you dip your brush in the water jar, you will notice that the value will become really big. It's really loaded with a lot of water. What you need to do is just to tap it on the rim of the glass to get out that excess water. There you go. But of course, it depends on the type of brush that you're using. Some brushes may absorb more water, so we have to try it on your own and observe. But at least for now, you have a starting point. Another way to control the paint or water in your brush, is to dab it in tissue paper before you start painting. I just grab some paint and dab the excess moisture in this tissue paper. Now I have a nice and even brushstroke. Sometimes when you have too much paint in your brush, then you'll get lots of puddles on your paper and that doesn't really look good. Let's do some simple brush drills. I'm just going to grab a green paint and you're going to use the tip of the brush to create some hairline strokes or some thin strokes. When you're doing this, you need to apply it really light pressure onto your brush. Then when you add more pressure to your brush, you can create a thicker stroke. Let's try that out. Now this is also a good way to get to know your brush better. If you really press your brush onto the paper, you get a very broad stroke. You will see that the are bristles are fanning out. Now let's try a C-shape petal. This is what we normally use for painting roses and other flowers. Let's start at the top and then we're going to slowly press our brush and just move it in a curve manner. You can see it, we have pointy tips. This is something that you can practice for painting petals. You can also try to vary the shape and the size so you can paint some smaller ones right here. You can make it thin or thick. The point of this exercise is really to get to know your brush better. You can also try to paint some dots and this is a technique that we'll use to paint some fillers later on. Another exercise that I usually do for brush control is to do some wavy lines like this. You can start with the thin pressure going up and then when you're going down, you add more pressure to your brush. Let me show you the fading technique which we will use in this class. Let's just paint a C-shape. After that, let's rinse our brush and just tap the excess water. Then you're going to try and feed one side of this stroke. You will see that this side on the right has really blurred edge. You can see that it looks very soft compared to the left side, which has a sharp edge. For some of the projects we are going to use the wet on wet technique and let me just give you some tips. I'm just going to quickly wet a small area with just clean water. Then let's grab some paint. I'm going to drop it on the wet paper. You will see that we have some soft edges over here. It's also spreading a bit wider. To control that paint, what you need to do is to dab your brush in a tissue paper before you start adding the paint onto the paper. This way you'll be able to control how much the paint spreads on wet paper. I hope these tips were helpful. You can check out my other classes for more in-depth tutorial on brushstroke gills. I will see you in the next video. Let's start day 1. [MUSIC] 5. Day 1: Sweet Pea Overview: Before we start painting, let's try to sketch some petals so that we can be more familiar with the overall shape of this flower [NOISE]. You can see that the petals have a lot of frills towards the edges, so you can see some wavy edges. You also have different shapes depending on where the flower is facing. Let's also try to sketch that so that we can have different shapes in our composition. I love the organic shapes of this flower. Because the petals all look different from each other, we can be more creative in terms of translating this flower into a painting. We can do [NOISE] petals that are overlapping, and later on I will show you how to separate those petals so that they won't look like a blob of paint. I will also include the link of this book in the Resources section of the class. Before we start, I'm just going to show you the colors that we need for this overview and also for the final project. The first color is permanent rose, next we have permanent violet, and then we have some lilac. Next we have lavender. For this stem we're going to use sap green and we're also going to add in burnt umber to give that nice earthy green color. I'm going to show you different approaches to painting this flower. Right now I have here permanent rose so we want a more pigmented mixture. Using just the tip of the brush, we're going to create a jagged edge. We're trying to wiggle our brush to create these frills. Once we have that outline, I'm going to rinse my brush and tap the excess water, and we're just going to fade away the inside and then I will slowly start to shape it into a petal. You can try to experiment with the shape, you can add more frills, and then you can also grab some more paint and just drop it in some area so that there's contrast. Right here I'm doing a more simple interpretation of this flower and now we're going to add this sap green as the stem. Now we're done with this approach, let's move on to the next one. We're going to do a wet-on-wet technique. Now, let me just tilt my paper so you can see the reflection of the brush strokes, I'm using just water. We want it to look uneven and organic. You can also leave some whitespaces if you want. Well, this petal is still wet, you can drop in some color. I'm using just permanent rose, you can also use different colors because sweet piece comes in different colors. You can leave it as is or you can try to fade away some of the colors and just mix it and blend it. While this is still wet you can also drop in another color, so I'm going to add some permanent violet and this will make it look more interesting. You can see that I did not touch the center of this petal, I kept it white just so that it will look more interesting and it won't look flat. Now let's try an overlapping petal. One is at the back, one is in front. Now I'm going to paint the back petal. I started with this really faint color, and now I'm going to add one more petal in front. You can see that there's a space in between, and that is to separate these two petals. To add more contrast let's add permanent rose and you want a more pigmented color, so I'm going to add it just stores the outline of this flower. I'm also trying to fix the edges, so we want more frills. When you're painting simple flowers like this, you want to add more contrast on the petals so that it won't look flat. To try to experiment, this is a fine way to try out different brushstrokes as well, so you can lay your brush really flat on the paper like what I'm doing here. I have already dark violet on the left side and now I just rinse my brush so I can create a lighter color. I'm going to attach these two petals together. You can see that as I'm painting this petal. I'm also trying to wiggle my brush so that I can get a more organic shape. Now we can add a stem using sap green. You can go ahead and clean up some areas or add some more pigment to some areas. If you want to add more punch and more color to the flowers just wait for it to dry, and then we'll go back in and add some more strokes. Right here I just have a more pigmented permanent rose, I'm going to do some outline. You can see I'm trying to just wiggle my brush. After that let's rinse our brush and just fade away certain areas, so blot the brush onto the tissue paper to absorb the excess water. We don't want our brush to be too wet at this point, and this will look a lot better when they are put together in one stem. [MUSIC] I think we're ready, so now let's move on to our final project. 6. Day 1: Sweet Pea Final Project: [MUSIC] Welcome to day 1. This is the sweet pea final project. To start, we need to just lightly sketch some long and curvy stems. I'm going to start with three stems. You can do more and also you can make it overlapping. After which we can try to draw some petals as a guide. Try to do petals in different shapes, in different sizes so that it will look more interesting. This is really just a guide. You don't really need to follow the petal that you drew. Also, I'm not really going to draw all the petals. I'm going to leave some spaces to give some creative freedom in adding some smaller flowers. Sometimes you can also just draw some shorter stem sticking out and then later on just paint a petal to attach to that stem. Now let's put some color on this paper. I'm using permanent rose. Let's start with the first petal. I'm going to just lay my brush flat and try to wiggle so that I can get those nice wavy edges. Then I'm going to rinse my brush and just fade away some areas of this petal. I'm also going to add some darker permanent rose mixture towards the edges. While this is still wet, you can try to fix the shape if you want. You can also add just a tiny petal right here. Just make sure that there's a wide space in between the smaller petal and the bigger petal. Now let's add some stem. I'm using sap green, and I'm going to draw it all the way down. With the permanent rose again, I'm going to add more petals. You can see that I'm just trying to wiggle my brush. I'm also going to change the angle of my brush so that I can get some more organic strokes. When you're happy with the shape, you can add a darker or a more pigmented permanent rose. If you want, you can also add some crimson lake. Then let's just attach this flower to the main stem using sap green. Now let's try a different approach. This time I'm just going to paint with water. You can see that I actually painted beyond the sketch that I did and that's definitely okay. While this is still wet, we're going to grab some paint and just drop it in. I will just leave it as is. You can also use a different color. Just try to have fun and experiment with colors and techniques. Now let's move on to the center stock. Right now I have here permanent violet and I really made it more pigmented. Then you're just going to wiggle our brush and do an outline of the petal. Then once you have this outline, I'm going to rinse my brush and just tap the excess water. Now we're going to fade away that stroke. Just add some water in the center. While this petal is still wet, you can fix the shape. You can also add just a smaller petal right beside it. We're done with this. Let's grab some sap green and add a stem. You can see that I'm going to skip a certain area because that's going to be the space for another flower. Just to make your painting look more interesting, try to face the flowers in different directions. Let's move on to the next one. I have here the color lilac. It's a beautiful color that I've recently added to my palette. Again, I'm going to do an outline. You can use just the tip of the brush to wiggle the outline so that you can have some frills. You can also try to separate some petals. After that, let's rinse our brush. Then let's fade the center. I do want to add more contrast and I'm going to grab some permanent violet. I'm just going to drop it in this petal while still wet. Now let's attach it to the main stem. Then you can also paint some shorter stem sticking out. Using the color lilac, we're going to add a smaller petal. Now I'm going to rinse my brush and just fade away that stroke. I'm going to also try to fix the overall shape. I'm going to mix permanent violet and permanent rose. Now let's move on to another flower. We want these two petals to be facing each other. This petal has an almost oval shape. Then with just a clean brush, I'm trying to fix this shape. Just keep on trying to wiggle your brush so that you can get that nice wavy edge. You can also try to rotate your paper so that you can paint at a better angle. The reason why I'm trying to fade away the strokes is because I want some areas to be lighter, some are darker because that will make the petals look more interesting and it will not look flat. With a sap green color, you're going to add the stem all the way down. You can see that I made it a little bit curved. The last flower that we painted looks a little flat right now. To troubleshoot that, we can add some more color. I'm adding a more pigmented mixture of permanent rose and permanent violet while this base flower is still wet. You can also try to lift the paint if you're not happy with it. I have here a damp brush and I'm just trying to lift or rub off the paint. [NOISE] Now let's try to fill in some areas. I have here lilac and I'm going to paint a smaller petal because there's a white space over here. Now, we can also try to add some thin leaves. I'm using also sap green and I'm adding it in between some of the flowers and also to fill in some of the white areas. Sweet peas has these swirly vines and I'm also going to add that element to this project. I'm just using the tip of the brush and just doing some swirls. It's really fun to do. Now if you have some leftover paint on your palette, you can use that to add some smaller petals. Now, this whole painting is already dry. I just have here a more pigmented permanent rose color. You can see I'm doing an outline on this flower. Then I'm just going to rinse my brush, dab the excess water, and just fade away one side of that stroke to make it look softer. I'm going to do this on some of the flowers here, just to add more definition and more contrast. Now let's move on to the center flowers. I have here a very pigmented, permanent violet color. I'm also doing the same outline. Now, we're just going to fade it away. Here's the fun part. We are going to add some splatters. I'm just going to tap my brush. I'm using just any color that's left on my palette. You can also brush some areas with just clean water and then try to splatter some paint on top of it. This way you can get some soft effect when the paint hits that wet paper. I'm just going to paint some more areas with just clean water. You can see that some of that green paint actually faded away and it also looks nice. When adding splatters. I usually don't use pigmented colors because I want just some soft splatters. Because we painted some areas with water you can see that there's a soft effect going on right here. Now let's also paint this area with some water. Then I'm going to grab some more paint and just add some more splatters. For the splatters so that it won't look too messy, my tip is to use the same colors that you use for the flowers. I guess we can stop right here. It looks really good, but you can also add some more splatters if you want. Congratulations for finishing this project and I will see you in the next video. [MUSIC] 7. Day 2: Lilac Overview: Lilac is mostly associated with love, happiness, and innocence. Today, we are going to paint it in a loose, soft and expressive style, so let's start. Here are the colors that we will use. Lilac, lavender, permanent rose, permanent violet, indigo. Then we have sap green, which is one of my favorite green colors. Next, we have cerulean blue. Now, let's just mix some of the colors here. Going to mix permanent rose and permanent violet. We're going to use this for the lilac later on. You can also mix lavender and lilac. Next, if you want a darker shade of green, you can mix indigo and sap green. Now, we're going to use cerulean blue to paint some white flowers. I'm just going to quickly dilute this in a lot of water so you can see that you have this nice light blue color. To make it a little bit more neutral, you can add a little bit of indigo and then you can also add a little bit of green. We're going to use these colors later on. Now, let's start painting. I'm going to show you different versions of the lilac paintings. What's great about this is that every time you paint, it always comes out different and unique. Now, you can create some soft lilacs, or if you want more contrast then you add more indigo, just like the rightmost painting here. Definitely by the end of this module, you'll be able to create your own lilac painting in your own style. Now, let's do some quick strokes. These will look like check marks and I'm using just the side and the tip of the brush to create these strokes. You can also try to wiggle your brush and these are strokes that we will use for the lilac. Try to vary the pressure in your strokes so that you can get different shapes. Let's rinse our brush and just tap the excess water. We can try and fade away some of the strokes that might look too sharp. Now, this is a technique that we will do later on. Let me just show you some reference photos from Pinterest. Always look for several reference photos so that you can see the flower in different angles. Now, for this exercise, we're going to do two versions. One is wet on wet and another one is wet on dry. Let's grab a flat brush. You can also use a round brush and we're going to grab some clean water. I'm just going to paint water on this side. We don't need a lot of water. We just want the paper to be damp. I'm trying to tilt the paper so that you can see the reflection. Now, let's grab some lilac and I'm going to drop it on the wet paper. You'll notice that the paint is spreading quite fast. If you want to control it better then you have to dab your brush in a tissue paper. Now, let's try it. You can see that we can control the paint better on wet paper. We're painting this lilac from the top going down and just make sure that you're leaving white spaces in-between your strokes. For the upper half, I painted it with lilac. Now, for this bottom half, I grabbed some lavender. We want this lilac to be multicolored. Let's grab some more paint. I'm going to mix lilac and lavender. Because we painted on wet paper, the effect is that it looks very blurred and soft. This area is already dry, so let's just go back in and paint the paper with some water. Again, we're going to use lilac and I'm going to use the tip of the brush and just dab it on the paper. You can try to slightly wiggle your brush. To add some shadows, let's grab a diluted permanent violet and I'm going to drop it in right here towards the bottom part. Using sap green, we are going to add some stems and I'm going to just dab my brush in the tissue paper. We don't want this green color to be too wet. This base flower is still wet and I'm just going to go back in and add some more color. This is a mixture of lilac and lavender. We don't want this to look too overcrowded. We need to space out the strokes. They shouldn't be too close to one another. We can also try to extend a little bit over here, and that will look nice. While waiting for this to dry, let's move on to the wet on dry technique. For the colors, we're going to mix permanent rose and permanent violet. I'm going to start at the top and we're just going to use the tip of the brush and stamp it on the paper. Just lightly press your brush to create these brush markings. Try to stipple the brush onto the paper and make sure that you have white spaces in-between. Now, let's try to soften some areas. I'm going to rinse my brush and just fade away some of the strokes to make it look softer. We can also try to fix the shape of this lilac. It means that we can try and extend some areas or fade away some strokes. To add some shadows or contrast, I'm going to grab permanent violet, I dilute it in a lot of water. I'm going to put this towards the bottom part of the lilac. Let's grab a more pigmented permanent violet. I think we need more contrast. Now, let's grab sap green, and I'm going to just add some stems in between some of the flowers and all the way down. Let's just add a few more finishing touches. I think we can add some more contrast towards the bottom part. We want this to be quite loose. It means that we shouldn't really add so many strokes and I'm going to leave some areas as is. Let's go back to the flowers on the left. This is already dry. We can now add a second layer. I'm mixing permanent violet and indigo. We want to dilute this in a lot of water. I'm going to separate these two lilacs and you're just going to paint a wiggly line. Now, let's rinse our brush and I'm going to fade away one side. By doing this, we're separating the two stalks and we're also giving an illusion that one lilac is in front and the other one is behind it. Now, let's grab some more paint and I'm going to drop it right here so that there's just more contrast. It's quite amazing that a simple technique like this can separate the two flowers. Now I'm mixing lilac and lavender and using just the tip of my brush, I'm going to create some wiggly lines. I'm also going to do some check marks. Again, you have to space out the brush strokes. We don't want it to be too close to one another. You might see some whites paces over here, so we're just going to leave it as is. We're going to add some darker color in between these two stalks. Now, I'm going to add a few more stalks towards the bottom, so this is just permanent violet with a little bit of indigo. I want more contrast. Feel free to use different colors for the lilac. We're almost done. I'm just adding some more definitions on the stems. Let's look at the two techniques. You'll notice that on the left it looks softer because we painted on a wet paper. On the right you have harder edges and that's because we painted on dry paper. Now, let's grab some indigo with a little bit of permanent violet. We can add some more strokes towards the bottom just to add more depth to it. Now, we can try to fade away some of the strokes to make it look softer. We can also add more indigo in this area. If you want a really loose style of lilac, try not to add too many strokes for the second layer. Both techniques produce beautiful lilacs. It's up to you which one you want to use. Now, let's move on to our final project. See you in the next video. [MUSIC] 8. Day 2: Lilac Final Project: [MUSIC] Let's paint the final project for Day 2. You're going to paint lilac. For this project, we are going to paint five stocks. What I need to do is we need to draw five lines and this will be the guide as to where the lilac will be. I am drawing lightly because once you paint on top of this pencil sketch, you won't be able to erase it anymore. Let's do a wet on wet technique. I just have here my flat brush and I am just painting the paper with clean water. We don't really need a lot of water. We just want the paper to be quite damp. I'm tilting my paper so that you can see the reflection of the brushstrokes. You can see that there are no puddles, which means that I don't really have a lot of water on this paper. The first color we need is lilac and I'm just going to grab a pigmented color and you're going to dab it on the paper. I'm starting from the top of the lilac going down. Now, I'm just grabbing some lavender and just tapping my brush and trying to also sway my brush so that I can get some more expressive strokes. Make sure to leave some white spaces in-between your strokes. Now, let's move on to another stock. I'm doing just the same technique. Towards the bottom, I'm adding more lavender. Now, we're done with the two stocks. We're moving on to the middle. This is the highest point and you can see that we have a really soft effect because the paper is still wet. You can also grab a little bit of permanent rose. That will give it a little bit of warmth. I want this lilac to be multicolored. You can see that I'm switching colors again and again. At the same time, I am making sure that it's still looking really soft. We don't want super pigmented mixtures. We are now painting the fourth stock, which is on the rightmost. Later on, we're going to paint the fifth one in a different color. Now, let's grab something darker for shadow. I am just using permanent violet and we're going to add it towards the bottom part of the lilac because that's where the shadow is going to be. At this point, the paper is still wet so that's why we have to work quite fast. Once the paper becomes dry, then our strokes will be sharper. Now, let's go back into some of the stocks. We're going to extend some areas or add some more shadow. At this point, you just want to fix the shape. For this area, we're going to paint a white lilac. It's already dry, so I'm going to add some more water on the paper. Now, let's grab some cerulean blue. I'm going to add a lot of water and then we can add some indigo just to give it a more neutral color. I'm going to do the same technique. We're just going to dab our brush. At the same time, we're making sure that there are spaces in-between our strokes. Then you can also grab a little bit of green and add it to your cerulean blue mixture. Now, let's grab sap green. We are going to paint some stems. I'm going to add the stems just in-between the flowers. I'm going to skip some areas to give an impression that some flowers are in front, some are at the back. Now, we can extend the stems all the way down. Now, some parts are already dry and now we can add some layering. I just have here lilac, and I am just trying to scribble some strokes. Just use the tip of your brush to create the small checkmarks or they actually look like letter U. I'm going to grab some lavender and you're going to add it right here towards the bottom part. Try to space out the strokes randomly so that it will look nicer. It's also best not to put too many second layer strokes because it will look too crowded. We still want to preserve more of the first layer that we did. Now, I'm just going to mix permanent violet and indigo. We can do this to separate the lilacs. I just drew a wiggly line and then I'm going to rinse my brush. We are going to fade away one side. By doing this, you are putting one lilac in front and another one at the back. You can see that this area doesn't have a lot of details. You can just add a few more strokes using lilac. We can also add a little bit of violet to that. Just dab your brush, then you'll be able to create these beautiful organic brush markings. We are almost done with that. Now, let's try to separate the other lilacs as well. I'm going to do another wiggly line over here, then let's rinse our brush and fade it away. Did you see the difference? Let's do one more on the other side. This is just a subtle technique to separate the stocks from each other. Now, while this area is still wet, you can drop in a little bit of that darker color. You can use permanent violet with indigo or just use indigo as is. For the white lilac, let's scrub a very diluted cerulean blue and just dab our brush. We can also add a little bit of that sap green. Just make sure that the color in your brush is really quite translucent. You don't want it to have a really dark mixture. You can also add some diluted indigo. It's actually coming altogether now, but we can add some more contrast. This is just permanent violet and indigo again, but this time, I made the mixture just darker. You're going to add a few brush markings towards the bottom part. You can also add some darker areas in between the lilacs so that you can just give it more emphasis that they are two separate stocks. Then you can also try to fade away some of the strokes if they look too sharp or too bold. At this point, you can look at the overall shape of your lilac bouquet. You can try to just extend some areas just like what I'm doing here. Don't forget that you have the creative freedom to paint this beautiful bouquet. Now, let's add some leaves. I'm using just sap green. We are really going to just press our brush onto the paper to create these nice expressive strokes. The brush is a little dry, that's why you get those nice brushstrokes. To give more contrast to the leaves, you can add some indigo to your sap green and just drop it on the leaves. At this point, you can add some stem sticking out or just give more emphasis on the color of the stem. We're going to add a darker green color. For me to make this look really loose, the trick is really not to add so many details. You really need to be more mindful when it comes to adding a second layer. To make this look more dramatic, we are going to paint the white areas with just water. You can see that some of the leaves have started to fade and that's definitely fine. I'm going to tilt the brush so that you can see the sheen on the paper. I'm going to grab some lilac and just add it onto the background. You can add some lavender or violet. I suggest using the colors that you use for your lilac. I love doing this technique because it just gives off that soft effect. When you're adding color to your background, make sure that it's not too dark because you do not want to overpower the main flowers. Now, you can add some splatters. I just have here permanent rose. You can use any other color in your palette. I think we need more contrast for the stems, and what you can do is you can make sap green and indigo and just paint some more stems. You want a nice balance of contrast here. You want some soft flowers, but we also want some darker stems. I'm just going to go back in and add some finishing touches. What you can do is you can take a photo of your painting and just look at it from afar so that you'll know if you need to add some more details or just leave it as is. That was a really quick project. I hope that you enjoyed painting this today. Join me on day 3 as we learn to paint magnolias. [MUSIC] 9. Day 3: Magnolia Overview: Before we start, I'm going to just list down some colors that we will be using for this overview class, and for the final project. We need permanent rose, and then crimson lake. Next we need sap green, this is a beautiful all around green. Next we have burnt umber, and lastly we have indigo. Here are a couple of photos from Unsplash and also Pinterest. I usually get different photos of the same flower just so that I have an idea of what it looks like in different angles. For this class, I do want it to be more approachable, so I want to simplify the way of painting all the flowers in this class. We're going to paint magnolias that are facing on its side. We're going to try one that's about to bloom, and one that has a more open flower. My advice when trying a new flower, you can get a photo, save it on your phone, and then just loosely draw the shape of the petals and the overall shape of the flower. Right now let's get into some simple sketching. Let's start with a center petal. I'm just going to loosely draw this shape, and then on each side we are going to attach one petal each. As we go down to the bottom part of the flower, it's a little bit narrower. It almost looks like a letter V, but of course you can definitely change the shape. Now let's start to fill this with some color. I am missing just permanent rose. This is a really diluted color, but you can also use just clean water. I'm going to paint on the inside of this outline, but you definitely don't need to follow the shape. What I'm also doing is, I'm leaving some white spaces, so I'm just going to tilt my paper so you can see it. I'm going to leave it as is. Then now, once we are ready, we can add some more color towards the base of this petal. We want a more pigmented mixture. We're doing the wet-on-wet technique so that we can have some softer petals. You can see that the colors are blending nicely because the petal is still wet as we add more color on it. Now, let's start painting the petal on the right. I started from the bottom going up. I'm also making sure that there's a space in between the petals. Now we can start adding a darker color. You can also start fixing the overall shape of this flower. Let me grab some permanent violet, and I will add a lot of water. We want this to be really light. I'm going to add it towards the edges of the petals. This will give that shadow look. This looks like it needs more contrast. I'm going to grab some more of that permanent rose with a little bit of crimson lake. Let's tap our brush in a tissue paper because we don't want it to be too wet. Now, I'm just going to add more color towards the base. You can see that we have more control over the paint. It's not really spreading like crazy, and that's because we absorbed the moisture into the tissue paper before we paint on the paper. I'm going to add this green area over here that holds the petals. For the branch, let's just grab some burnt umber. Now let's do one more. This time I'm going to freehand the shape of this flower. There will be no sketching for this part, so I'm just using a really diluted permanent rose, and I start with this thin petal on the left, and then now we're going to add the thicker petal in the center. We're doing it really slow and also making sure that we have some spaces in between the strokes. If you're happy with the shape, you can grab a more pigmented permanent rose and just drop that in the center. Now let's grab some crimson lake, and dumb the excess moisture in a tissue paper, and you can add it towards the base. You can also use this to separate the petals. When you're happy you can add the stems and the branches. That's looking really good as you can see. We're just trying to interpret this in the simplest way, so that it's just easier to paint the magnolias. Now, let's move on to another flower. This is going to be more open. It means that there are also more petals. I'm just using a very diluted permanent rose. You want the light pink color, and also making sure that there are some whitespaces that I will leave behind. Let's add some more petals. They are all meeting at the base of this flower. You can see that they're all pointed at this part. For this flower, maybe I'm just going to settle with four petals, but you can definitely add some more. Then with a more pigmented permanent rose, we're just going to add it in between the petals, just to separate the petals. Now let's put some stem and a branch. I'm just using sap green, and also burnt umber. It looks a little flat, I'm going to add some shadow. This is just a really diluted permanent violet color, I'm going to add it towards the tips of the petals. To add more contrast, let's grab some crimson lake, I'm going to dab my brush in a tissue paper. Then we're going to paint some strokes in between the petals and also mostly towards the base of this flower. We really just want to capture the essence of a magnolia. Now let's try to do a recap. Let's try to do some recap. We need one petal. We want it to be elongated, and we also want the two sides to be pointy, at the same time leave some white spaces. For the petals on the side, you can do an S stroke. You can see that I am just doing this S shape. Let's try to do that one more time, but from the other side. Now let's combine these three petals, so we're going to start with the center. Next, let's attach the side petals. It's usually easier to do it from the bottom going up. You can do an S curve if you want. Like what I always say, one good thing about painting loose florals is that they always look different and unique every time you paint it. Now I'm going to grab just some more pigmented permanent rose. I'm just going to put it at the base of this flower. Then we can grab some crimson lake and just dab the excess moisture in the tissue paper. You can use that to add contrast to this flower. You're done with practicing this flower. Now let's move on to the final project. See you in the next video. 10. Day 3: Magnolia Final Project: [MUSIC] Welcome to day 3. We are going to paint the final project in this video. To start, we need to just draw some markings. I'm just drawing a letter U shape, and that will be the mark for the flowers. We're keeping it simple. I'm only doing three flowers here and then we're going to be adding a background later on. Let's prepare the colors first. I'm going to be mixing some permanent rose on my palette and then we are going to add a lot of water. We want this to be really, really light. We're going to start with the center petal first. I'm just going to slowly build the shape. I'm using a size 6 round brush. We do want this to be quite wet because we're going to do the wet-on-wet technique. I'm going to add another color later on so you can see the sheen on the paper. I have a more pigmented permanent rose on my palette and I'm going to drop that in towards the sides of this petal. Now we are going to add some more petals on the left and right side. I'm just going to make sure that there's a white space in between the petals to separate it from each other. I usually find it easier to add petals starting at the bottom or at the base of the flower going up. Now I'm just adding some more color towards the base of this flower. I'm also being more mindful about adding white spaces so that it won't look like just one single shape. To add some shadow effect, I just have here some indigo. I'm going to mix that to my permanent rose. You want to really add a lot of water so that you just get a subtle violet color. Let's add that towards the tips of the petal. If you already have a violet color in your palette, you can just use that and dilute it in a lot of water. Now let's look at this from a top view. I think we need more contrast. I'm going to grab some more crimson lake. I really want a very pigmented color. Again, I'm adding it towards the base of this magnolia flower. Now let's grab some sap green and attach it to the base of the flower with some burnt umber. Let's just add a branch. Just to make it look more natural, I'm going to slightly wiggle my brush and I'm also going to dab my brush in a tissue paper. This is the way to do a dry brush technique so you can see that texture over there. It's looking good. Now let's move on to the next magnolia flower. I'm going to use a very faint color. This is just permanent rose with a lot of water. I'm going to start with the center petal. I'm going to add just a few more curved strokes on the side. You can see here is a reflection of the brushstrokes that I'm doing, and you can see that there are some spaces in between the strokes. Then now let's just grab a darker color or a more pigmented permanent rose. I'm just going to drop that in at the base of the flower and just let that bleed into the wet brushstrokes. Again, we're doing the wet-on-wet technique because we want a soft effect. You can also try to fix the shape, and then now I'm going to add more contrast. Let's just grab some crimson lake and permanent rose. I'm going to dab my brush in the tissue paper, then you can start painting some strokes. This way we can try to really control the paint in our brush. You can see that the paint is not spreading so much because we are able to control the amount of water in our brush. I think we are good. Now, let's just attach that to our branch. It looks a little flat, so I'm going to add some shadows and we want this violet color towards the tips of the petals. Let's now move on to the third flower. I just use a very diluted permanent rose color and we're going to start with the center petal. I'm going to do an elongated shape and at the same time I'm leaving some white spaces inside the petal. This magnolia is going to be more open compared to the first two that we painted. I'm just going to do some more curved strokes. I'm trying to tilt the paper a little bit so you can see the sheen on the paper. Sometimes it's difficult to see the shape if the color is really light. Now let's add one more flower on the left. You can see that it's pointing towards this part where the petals meet. I'm going to add one more petal. This will look like the petal is just hanging. You can see that I'm really pressing my brush so that I can get a broader stroke. While the base is still wet, we are going to grab some permanent rose with a little bit of crimson lake. I'm going to add it towards the base and in between the petals. If the strokes are too bold in color, you can just grab a clean brush and just lift or fade away some of the strokes. I'm now going to add some really diluted violet color and you're just going to add it towards the tips of the petals. You can actually stop right here. But if you're like me who wants more contrast, you can grab some crimson lake, dab the excess moisture in a tissue paper, and just dab your brush lightly onto the base of this flower. We're almost done with the main flowers. I'm just going to grab some burnt umber to paint some branches. You can try to slightly wiggle your brush so that you can get a more organic stroke. I'm trying to look at this from a far and it seems like we need to add just a small petal over here to make it more balanced. I think I'm happy with that. Now it's time for the fun part. I'm just going to grab my flat brush and just paint the background with some clean water. If you don't have a flat brush, just use your ordinary round brush. I am not going to paint over the magnolias. I am instead going to create an outline around this flower. You'll see that there's actually a white area that I will leave behind. I'm just going to slowly paint around the flower. I'm trying to tilt the paper so that you can see the reflection. Now in this area, you can paint over the branches. It will look beautiful because it will slightly fade away. You can see that the brown color is bleeding. Just continue adding some water all around. Here comes the fun part. We're going to add a splash of color onto the background so that it will look happy. Right here, I have some sap green. You can also use yellow green or green gold. I chose some sprinklers for the background. You can see that I'm doing an outline on the edges of the petals and I'm leaving just a small white area. It's not the same tone for the entire painting. You can see that I have a more pigmented green. Then towards the bottom, it's a lighter green color. We don't want the background to be too flat. Now I'm adding some cerulean blue towards the top portion of this painting. I feel like it will give the impression that you have a blue sky in the background. Now I'm just going to try and combine these two colors. We can also try to fill in those tiny gaps in between the flowers. Now on the right side of the painting, we are going to use a pink color for the background. I'm using just a very diluted permanent rose. Again, if you're adding some color in the background, you might want to use a color that you have used for the main flower. You can see the beautiful faded effect, and that's because we're painting on a wet background. That's going to give us that blurry effect. Just to give a more dramatic effect, you can grab a more pigmented permanent rose and just paint some quick strokes. We're almost done, but I'm going to add one more magic effect. But before that, you can see that there's a little bit of sheen on the right side. On the left side, it's still a little bit damp, but it's more dry compared to the right side. What we're going to do is we're going to grab some water and I'm going to add some splatters of just water onto the background and you'll see that effect. You have like a bokeh effect and you can see that beautiful texture. I'm also going to do that on the right side and I want you to just observe the difference. Let's try that over here. You'll see that it's more dramatic on the left side, and that's because the paper is more dry on the left side. While on the right side, you still have a little bit of that sheen, so the water droplets on the right had more time to really blend in with the background. Just remember that the paper shouldn't be too wet or else you won't get this beautiful effect. It really is all about timing and it's something that you do need to practice. Over time, you will get to know more about your paper and your paint. Just be patient. Now I'm just going to grab some burnt umber and I will try to add more details on the branches. Let's add some finishing touches. I just have here some permanent rose. It's a little bit darker, and now let's add some thin veins. I'm going to start from the bottom going up to maybe midway, not really all the way up to the tip of the petal, and this small detail will really make a huge difference overall. If you want to change the color of the background, it's definitely fine. Some people like to add indigo so that you have a dramatic dark background and it's definitely up to you. I hope that you enjoyed this project. I will see you in the next video where we will learn how to paint a ranunculus. [MUSIC] 11. Day 4: Ranunculus Overview: [MUSIC] Welcome to Day 4 and today we're going to learn how to paint ranunculus. This has a rose-like shape which has some thin petals. Now let's start. Here are the colors that we will use for both the overview and the final project. We're going to use brilliant pink, permanent rose, permanent yellow deep, permanent yellow light, sap green, indigo, cerulean blue, and burnt umber. Right here I have a reference photo that I found on Pinterest. You'll notice that this type of ranunculus has a really tight shape. Like what I mentioned, it has a rose-like appearance. Let's just try to quickly sketch it so that we can understand it better. You can see I have that small dot in the center and then you're just drawing some C shapes. This one has more petals bunched up compared to a rose. Then towards the outer part of this ranunculus, some petals are getting bigger. We are also going to draw it bigger as well. That's just a very quick sketch. Now let's try to look for the different reference photo. It's always nice to look for a lot of photos and look at the flower from different angles. I have decided to use this photo. You'll notice that there's a green part in the center and then towards the middle and outer part, you have the pink petals. Let's start with sap green. I'm just going to paint some small C strokes. I'm going to leave the center blank. You can see that there's a white space in the center. Now let's mix the pink petal. I'm going to use brilliant pink with a little bit of permanent rose. We want to add a lot of water because you want this to be quite translucent. Around this green ring, I am going to paint more C shapes. After that, we can rinse our brush and just fade away some of the strokes. We want this first layer to be light in color because we're going to do another layer where we will add more details. Now let's just continue adding some more petals. I'm making some bigger size petals. I'm also adding a lot of water so that I can get that nice light pink color. We need to let this dry but as we wait, let's try to move on to the next exercise. Let's paint a ranunculus that is at an angle. I'm going to start with this oval shape. I'm going to use the same pink color and now let's paint some C strokes again all around and make sure that you have some white spaces in between. Right here I'm trying to vary my strokes, you can see that some are thinner, some are thicker. You can see that the color turned a little bit brownish pink and that's because there's a little bit of green in my brush. It might have mixed up with the pink color. To make it look like it's on its side, we want to add more petals towards the bottom layer of this flower. Now you'll notice that the left flower is top facing flower and the right one is facing on its side. Now, this is already dry. Let's grab some sap green, I'm just going to add more color on that green area. I'm using the same brilliant pink and permanent rose mixture and we are just going to paint some thin strokes. These thin strokes that we're doing will look like the petals. When you look at the ranunculus, you will see that it has some tight petals. For some areas you can try to fade away some strokes if it looks too strong or too bold. Now towards the outer part, we want to really soften it. What we did here as a summary, we painted the base color first for this ranunculus, and then for the second layer, we're just adding those thin C curves that will represent the petals. Moving on to the second flower, I'm just going to add some more details in that green area just to give it a pop of color. I'm still using the brilliant pink and permanent rose color. We're just going to paint more C curves. Just make sure that you are leaving some spaces in between and then after that, you can rinse your brush and just fade away some of the strokes. For the bottom part of this flower, we're going to make the petals bigger. If you want more contrast, you can go back in and just paint some darker strokes. You can also make their strokes thinner than what I had painted here. To complete this look, we need a dark center. I'm going to use indigo, but you can also use sepia, or if you have a black paint that will work well too. I'm just going to use the tip of the brush and just tap it on the paper to create these small dots. Now if you want to add the third layer, just wait for this to dry and when you're ready, just grab that permanent rose and brilliant paint mixture so you want it just maybe shade darker, and just try to paint some thin C curves again. You'll notice that on the left side it looks more like ranunculus because we added just more details. Now let's try adding some more strokes. On the right are ranunculus. Then of course you can also try to fade away some of the strokes. Now we're done. I'm just going to quickly add some stems so that it will look nicer. You can definitely do this in a different color using the same method that we did to paint this flower. Now, you're ready for the final project. Let's move on to the next video. [MUSIC] 12. Day 4: Ranunculus Final Project: [MUSIC] Welcome to Day 4 and now we're going to paint the final project. To start, we're going to paint three main flowers. When you're repeating a bouquet like this, make sure that the flowers are painted at different heights. It will look good if they are diagonally across each other. I have chosen some spring colors, but you can also paint it in other colors that you like. To start just try to sketch some circles on your paper and that will be the guide on where the flower will be. Let's start with the center of the first ranunculus. I am going to grab some sap green. Let's paint some C-shapes. We are going to form a circle and we're going to leave the center blank. Now let's rinse our brush and grab another color. I'm going to use brilliant pink and I'll just add a little bit of permanent rose to make it warmer. We really want this to be quite diluted. Now let's start painting some thin C-shapes and it didn't look like it's hugging the center. Of course, don't forget the spaces in between your strokes. You can also rinse your brush to create a lighter color. You'll notice that we're trying to build this slowly. We're adding just some small C-strokes all around it because we don't want to overdo this flower. The main center of this flower is in the middle, it means that this is a top-facing flower. Let's move on to the second flower. I'm using sap green again for the center. Just use the tip of your brush to create these tiny strokes. We're going to switch to a different color for this flower, I'm using permanent yellow light. You feel like using a yellow paint for a flower really makes your painting look happier. You can also add a little bit of permanent yellow deep to get a warmer color. Another combination you can do is get the yellow paint and one that's yellow, orange. You can do that for this flower. You're just going to keep on adding some petals. It doesn't have to look perfect. Remember that this is the first layer or the base. It means that we can try to fix the shape again on the second layer. It's looking good. Now let's move on to the third flower. I'm using the same sap green for the center. Just scribble some small C-shapes. Once you have that round shape, we can now move on to adding some more petals. I'm using permanent rose here. We want this to be more pink and I just made it a little bit more pigmented. You'll notice that the flower at the bottom looks more like a pastel pink. It also helps if you do the strokes quickly so that you can get those nice pointy tips. Now let's paint some bigger size petals. I'm just really trying to press my brush to create a broader stroke. This will be a ranunculus that is on its side. You can see that we have more weight towards the bottom part. Before we start adding some fillers I'm going to establish the stems first. We're using sap green again. It looks nice when the stems are overlapping. Because by doing this, it also gives an impression that some flowers are in front, some are at the back. Now let's add some small green buds. Just going to add this to the white spaces in between the flowers. This is a great way to add a height to your bouquet. Just to add a little bit of warmth and just more contrast as well, you can add some burnt umber to your sap green and just drop it on the green bars that we did. Let's grab some cerulean blue and dilute it in a lot of water. We're going to use this for the filler. But you can also grab a little bit of indigo and you can see that I've added indigo to cerulean blue. Then now we're going to tap our brush onto the paper. The small dots will look like small flowers. But when you're doing this, you have to make sure that the mixture is quite translucent. Using a smaller brush, I'm going to grab some sap green, and then now let's add a stem to attach through those small flowers. We're going to keep on adding these fillers. It's a good way to add more color to your bouquet without the need to paint another main flower. I also think that this brings more texture to your bouquet because it has a different shape. You can also add some stem sticking out and that will be your guide later on when you want to add some leaves or fillers. I think we can add a spray-on small flowers over here. Mixing sap green and any brown color like burnt umber gives an earthy green color that looks quite natural. We are going to use this for our bouquet and add some leaves. I'm going to try and add more leaves near the flowers to make it pop up even more. You want to highlight the main flowers. That's why we're adding some fillers and leaves are all around it. This layer is already dry. We can add a second layer. I'm just going to add some more sap green. Next, let's just grab some brilliant pink and add permanent rows. We're going to use this for the second layer. I did not use brilliant pink alone because it's too light in color. You want just a bolder color. Now let's just rinse our brush to fade away some of the strokes. We can paint broader petals towards the outer part of this flower. You can hold your brush towards the end of the handle so that it feels looser when you paint these petals. Let's move on to the second ranunculus I added some green in the center again. Now for the petals, we're going to use the same mixture of permanent rose and brilliant pink. Now you can paint just lines or you can paint a thicker C-shape. You can also vary the gaps in between the strokes. Some will have huge gaps in-between brushstrokes. Some will have smaller gaps. Now onto this third ranunculus, I'm using permanent yellow deep for the second layer, so you're going to do the same C-shape strokes. If you want it to look tighter and with more details, you can paint thin lines instead. For the outer parts, I'm just going to quickly fade it away to make it look softer. Now for the center of the ranunculus, I'm going to grab a very pigment and indigo. You can also use sepia or black color, using just the tip of the brush, lightly tap it on the paper to create these small dots strokes. Onto the finishing touches, you can add some more strokes just to add more contrast to the flowers. You'll notice in this part I painted a really thick stroke and I just plotted out with some tissue paper to erase it. Now it's gone and it looks a lot better. Whenever I make a mistake in my classes, I usually try to still include it because I want to show you how I have tried to correct it. Looking at this from afar, I feel like we need to add some more fillers just to add more volume. So we need the pop of color. I'm going to just grab this pink color and just paint some small flowers. We're just going to dab our brush to create some petal-like strokes. Can also grab this permanent yellow deep and also put a pop of color on the left side. Let's add some veins on the leaves to just give it more texture. When you're painting a bouquet don't forget to add details in between the main flowers. Usually, there are small gaps that you need to fill in. You can also try to extend some areas, like in this part, I just added a longer stem. Sometimes you just need to add more weight in some areas to make it look more balanced. Then right here we can add a spray or flowers again. You can also paint smaller leaves. Adding a variety of leaves will make a bulky look more interesting as well. We are done. Congratulations for finishing this project. I hope that you enjoyed painting this flower. Now let's move on to the next video where we will learn how to paint peonies. 13. Day 5: Peony Overview Part 1: [MUSIC] Peonies are one of my favorite flowers. They just look so gorgeous and feminine. Today, we will capture the essence of this flower and turn it into a painting. Let's jump in. Here are the colors that we will use for this module. Let's start sketching. We are going to simplify the shape of a peony. I'll start with two petals and front and now we have this letter U and right behind it we are going to add some more petals. Now onto the sides. I'm still trying to maintain that cup-shaped. So since this is a peony at a side view angle, we want some petals facing down. So that's a simple shape. You can add some details in the center as well. We'll be using this as a guide for painting our loose peony later. Now let's try to draw a top facing peony. We're going to paint full petals here. This will be the first layer, and then right behind it, we're going to draw some half petals. This is just an given illusion that some of the petals are at the back. For the bud, I'm going to draw an oval shape and then a letter C shape beside it. There you go. You have a peony bud. let's start painting. I have here permanent rose with a little bit of burnt sienna. This is just one way to create a peachy pink color. Let me just swatch that. Then I'm going to just add some more water and you'll see that you have that nice light, peachy pink color. Let's try to practice some petals. Just slowly pressing your brush onto the paper and then on the right side I'm just painting some lines. Now you can grab a little bit of water to extend some areas. Don't forget to leave some whitespaces. Let's do this one more time. I usually put more pressure on the first stroke so that I can get a thick stroke. Now just add some texture. I'm just going to use the tip of the brush to create some lines. Now let's move on to painting a full-sized peony. Again, I'm going to start with a thick stroke and then I'm going to build it up using some thin strokes. Now I just rinse my brush so that I can extend some areas. That's the first petal. Now let's grab some more paint and I'm going to paint one more petal on the right side. Now we have the two front petals. After that, we're going to add some petals at the back. It's better to start with a small petal and then you can slowly extend it. Then I'm going to use just the tip of the brush to add some more lines. I know it looks a little odd right now, but don't worry you will keep on adding petals to make it more beautiful. Store is the bottom side so we're going to add some petals. You see this white gap over here. We're going to try and combine the petals. On the other side, I'm just going to paint some quick strokes. Now you can grab a more pigmented paint and just drop it in some of the petals that will make this flower look more interesting. Now to paint this bottom petal you can paint a loop to create that nice shape. I also kept this part white, so we did not paint anything on this area. To add more contrast, you're going to just drop in a more pigmented mixture of permanent rose and burnt sienna. We're doing this while the base peony is still wet. That's because we want some soft edges. So add a darker color in between the petals. Now I'm going to grab some permanent yellow deep. You can also use any yellow color and add it in the center of this peony. Let's go back to the peony in a while when it's dry. For now, I wanted to show you different versions of this peony because I think that you can paint in your own unique style. Now I'm just loosely drawing some petals but I'm not really going to follow the exact sketch. Instead of two main petals in front, I'm going to start with just one over here. This will be the main petal in front. You'll see that I actually left some whitespaces. Then I'm going to attach some petals beside it. So we want the petals to meet right here. That's where all the petals come from. For this style I'm going to make it more loose so I'm adding more water to my brush. Right now we're just trying to seal the top and add some petals. You can try to combine the top and bottom petal so that it doesn't look like it's separated from each other. Now let's add one more petal on the lower left side. This is going to point towards the base of this peony where the petals come from. We don't really need an exact number of petals when painting in a loose style. Just add the petals as needed. If there are some white gaps, you can just paint some lines, you don't need to paint an entire petal. You will immediately see that this second peony that we did looks different from the first one. Now let's add some contrast. I have here just some more pigment permanent rose and burnt sienna mixture. I'm adding it towards this area where the petals meet. For the center, let's add some permanent yellow deep or any yellow color in your palette. I'm just going to leave it as is and go back to it later on. Now let's do a different style. This color has more burnt sienna in it that's why it's a bit more brown compared to the first two flowers that we did. We have two main petals in front that is in a letter V position. Then for the top, we are going to just paint one petal. Next, for the lower left side, we're going to attach one more and also on the right side. Now let's close off this area. For the bottom petals, we're going to paint it on its side. That's why it looks shorter. When you're painting in a loose style, sometimes you lose those important details. That's why it's important to add some contrast. I'm adding a darker color. We add the darker color where the shadows are. It's usually in between the petals. Now let's add the yellow center, just let it bleed into the petals. Then later on we're going to add more details. Let's wait for all the flowers to dry. Now let's go back in when it's ready. I have here a permanent rose with a little bit of burnt sienna. You're going to add the second layer. This second layer with more details to our flower. Right now I'm just painting on top of some of the petals. Then I'm going to try and fade away some of the strokes. We still want to see the first layer, so we're not really going to cover the first layer entirely. You can also paint some wispy strokes just like this. Now let's add in some more contrast towards the base of this peony. You can grab a more pigmented permanent rose. Now for the center, I'm going to use permanent yellow deep, going to paint some thin lines. Now let's grab some burnt umber. Again, I'm going to paint some thin lines. This is just to add more depth to the center of the peony. Then now you can add some small dots. I'm just going to add a few more finishing touches. The more strokes that you add on a second layer, the fluffier it will look. Just make sure that you have some spaces in between your strokes so that it will not look too crowded. Now moving on to the second peony. You can see that we don't have a lot of details anymore, that's why we're adding a second layer. Right now I'm going over the petals in front. Then now onto the sides, just paint some quick strokes first and then later on you can try to fade it away. This area looks too stiff, so we're just going to try and fade it away. Now let's move on to the center. I have here permanent yellow deep. You can also use yellow orange or burnt sienna. Now let's grab some burnt umber just to add more depth. We're doing two colors for the center. Let's go back to the first peony. I'm going to add some darker lines just to add more contrast then I think it looks a lot better now. Now for the third peony, you'll notice that we've lost more details. I'm going to go back in with the second layer and add some petals. Now, don't worry if you made a mistake on the first layer, you can definitely still save it by adding a second layer. You can also try to reshape the flower and extend some petals. It's time to add some more contrast. I'm just trying to swatch the color to see if it looks right. Let's add some more color towards the base of this peony. Now for the center, let's use permanent yellow deep and just add some thin lines and some dots. Now grab burnt umber or burnt sienna and just layer it in the center. This already looks good. Now let's move on to painting a peony bud. I'm going to use a really diluted permanent rose color. Then let's paint one oval shape. Then on the right side, we're going to paint just a letter C shape. Then I'm going to attach those two strokes and add some more thin lines. Now let's grab a more pigmented permanent rose and drop it at the top of this peony bud. Then towards the bottom we can add a stem using sap green. Now let's do this one more time. You can paint an oval shape. Then you can paint a leather C shape on the right side, or just paint some thin lines. Then drop in a more pigmented color towards the top of this peony bud, make sure that you're leaving white spaces. Lastly, we are going to add a stem just using the sap green color. I think we need more contrast, so I'm just going to lift some color on this peony bud. Then now let's grab a darker pink color. I'm going to just drop it back in at the top of this peony bud. There you go. It looks a lot better now. [MUSIC] All right, let's move on to the next video. 14. Day 5: Peony Overview Part 2: [MUSIC] In this video we are going to paint the top facing peony, so it can be quite overwhelming to see the many layers of petals, but we will try to simplify it in this video. This is going to be my reference photo on the left, I have here permanent yellow deep, and you're just going to paint some thin lines in different lengths. This will be the center of this flower. Next, let's grab a very diluted permanent rose and we're going to attach some petals. I started with a broad stroke. I'm using the side of the brush to paint this. You can add more water to your brush so that it's easier to paint these nice and loose strokes. I'm also doing a loop stroke, so let me show you one. We can also add some smaller strokes, you can see that I'm adding a variety of strokes. Some are bigger, some are smaller, and we're also lightly touching the yellow center so that it will bleed into the pink petals. Now we don't really have a specific number of petals that we need to paint here. So now let's just try to fix some areas. I'm going to extend some petals to make it look bigger. It's very important to leave some white spaces in between your strokes. Now to add more contrast, I'm just going to put a more pigmented permanent rose towards the edges of this flower. Using the tip of the brush, I'm just trying to wiggle it so I can get some nice jagged edge. You can also do it this way. Just try to wiggle your brush, you can get a nice organic shape. While this is still wet, I'm going to grab a more pigmented permanent rose and just add it in between the petals. Just for a more dramatic effect, we're going to add just a few darker areas towards the tips of the petals. Once this dries, you'll notice that it will look lighter, but don't worry because we're going to add a second layer. This is about one shade darker than the base color, so what we're going to do is we're going to add just some petal-like strokes, and I'm painting on the inside of each petal. Let's do that one more time so you can see it better. I'm going to paint it just like this, and you'll notice that there's a space over here, so this will give an illusion that you have layered petals. So try to do the strokes randomly so that it won't look too perfect or too even. If you've made a mistake, don't worry, you can always go back in and try to fade some strokes or blot out some paint. Now, let's go back to the center. I'm going to use permanent yellow deep and just add another layer of thin strokes. Next, let's add a contrast. I'm going to use burnt sienna so that we have a darker brown color. Now we can go back into the petals and add some more contrast. I'm using a more pigmented permanent rose, so we're adding the color in between the petals. Then now I'm going to add some towards the tips of the petals. The flower is still a little bit damp, that's why you can see that the strokes have soft edges. If you want this to look sharper, then you have to wait for the flower to dry before you add this layer. We can stop right here, but I think we can add just a few more darker lines in the center just to give it more contrast. Next, let's try to paint some expressive leaves. Let's make sap green and sepia, this will give you a nice dark green color. Let's start with a thin line, and then we're going to really press our brush and just slowly lift it towards the end. Let's do this in a different angle, then I'm going to just add some line. You can also dab your brush in a tissue paper if you want a dry brush technique. We'll start with the thin line, then just press your brush and also try to wiggle it. This one still looks a little bit wet, so let's try it one more time. Again, start with thin line and just press your brush onto the paper, and that's the dry brush technique right there. You'll see those white spots inside the leaf, now let's try to reverse our strokes, so we're going to start from outside, then going in, and just add the stem. This is something that you can practice and just paint it in different angles and in varying pressures, it will also help you learn more about your brush. Painting leaves is a good starting point to learn how to do some expressive strokes. We are done with this module. I hope that you had fun painting different peonies. Now, let's move on to our final project. [MUSIC] 15. Day 5: Peony Final Project: [MUSIC] Welcome to Day 5, and we are going to paint this beautiful peony. Now let's mix the colors that we need. I'm going to mix permanent rose and burnt sienna and then we'll add a lot of water. You can do a peachy pink color by adding more permanent rose but if you want a brownish pink, you can add more burnt sienna. Before we start painting, I'm just going to lightly draw a letter U. This also looks like a cup, and this will be our guide for painting the petals. Let's start with the first petal. I'm going to do a broad stroke and then on the right side I'm just going to paint some thin lines. Some of the lines have combined so I'm just going to try and fix the shape. Let's grab some more color. I'm going to start with the petal on the right side. This will be a little bit smaller. Now let's do the top petal and it will look like a dome. I will also leave this space blank because we're going to add a center detail later on. I'm just going to quickly attach the top petal to the bottom petals. You can see I just painted some lines. It's now time to adjust the shape of this flower. You can see that I extended some petals. We're doing this slowly, just painting one stroke at a time and you're also leaving some white spaces. We're going to do a slightly different approach to painting this peony. Just below this cup, I'm going to do some check-mark strokes, but it also looks like a letter C shape. Now let's do some loops over here and then let's add some more petals on the right to make it look more balanced. Let's soften this area. I'm just going to dab my brush in a tissue paper to absorb some of the excess paint. While this flower is still wet, let's grab some permanent yellow deep and add this color in the center of the peony. We will really let it bleed into the pink petals. Right now we don't have much details there, but later on, we will go back in to paint a second layer. Let's look at this from a top view. Now, I am just going to quickly adjust the shape. When you're ready you can grab some green paint. I am using sap green and you're going to attach a stem. Now I'm grabbing some sepia. I'm going to add it to the sap green to get a dark green color. We can now add some leaves. I'm going to do this expressive style that we learned earlier. Now let's try doing it from this angle. I'm going to start right here and just press my brush towards the left and then you can add another stroke below then attach that to the stem. Now if you want to make it look more dramatic or with more contrast, you can grab some more sepia and you're just going to drop in some darker areas in some of the leaves. All right, so we're done with the leaves. Now we're going to add a second layer, but it's still quite damp. We have to wait for this to dry before we add the second layer. Let's check this again. This is good to go. Now let's move on to adding the second layer. I have here, a permanent rose and burnt sienna. We really want a very diluted mixture. We want this to be translucent. Let's paint the two main strokes. This is too dark. I'm going to grab some more water and just try to fade it. Now let's grab some more paint, and this looks a lot better. We're painting some petal strokes on this base flower but we're not really trying to fill in all the petals. You can see that I'm leaving some spaces. Again, we're doing that because we want this to have an illusion that you have layers of petals. Right now I'm just trying to fade away some of the strokes so that it will look softer. Let's make a more pigmented mixture of permanent rose and burnt sienna. I'm going to add it where the petals meet. That's where the shadow will be. You can also add it in between the petals. You can see right here that it looks really beautiful because you have soft areas. Then you have areas that have more color in it and that gives it more contrast. When you're painting loose florals, it's always a balance of soft and dark colors. Now let's go back into the center. I'm using permanent yellow deep, I'm going to paint some thin lines to add some details. I'm also letting it bleed into the wet petals. Now let's grab some burnt sienna. You want a really strong color. I'm going to layer this with burnt sienna. I'm going to paint some thin lines and also some smaller dots. Now, if you wanted to add a darker color, you can use burnt umber or a sepia. Let me just show you what will happen if we add that. You can immediately see that the flower came alive because we have a dark center. We're on to the finishing touches. I'm going to add just a darker color right here. Just wanted to add more contrast, so it will look nicer. All right, so we are done. I hope that you enjoyed painting this quick project. You can do so many versions of this flower, like what we painted in the overview. [MUSIC] Let's move on to the next video where we will learn how to paint tulips. 16. Day 6: Tulip Overview: [MUSIC] Tulips look easy to paint because of the shape, but it's actually quite tricky because that simple shape can turn into a blob very quickly. For today's video, I'm going to show you a technique that is foolproof and will achieve a nice result. Are you excited? Let's jump in. Here are the colors that we will use for this module. The first one is Crimson Lake. Next, we have permanent rose, permanent violet, burnt sienna, vermilion, sap green, and lastly indigo. Let me just quickly show you how I usually paint tulips in the past. I usually paint tulips in broad strokes and with big shapes. It's a good technique, but the problem is that you can easily turn it into a blob of paint if you're not careful with adding the white spots or the white spaces in between your strokes. There's also a tendency for it to look flat because you're using just one color. For the technique that I'm going to show you we're going to paint an outline first, and then we're going to fade it and fill in the gaps. Let's just do some quick brushstrokes that we will use for painting tulips. I'm just going to grab permanent rose. Instead of painting just straight lines like this, we want more movement in our strokes. Let's start with the light pressure and I'm going to slowly press my brush and lift it towards the end. There is varying pressure in just one stroke. For this exercise, only the tip of the brush is actually moving. We're using just the tip of the brush so that we can create those nice wispy strokes. Let me just put an x mark on the straight line and a checkmark on those nice wispy strokes, and you can see that there is definitely more movement. Try to do this exercise over and over until you become comfortable painting this stroke. You'll notice that I start with a light pressure and then I'm just slowly pressing it towards the middle part and just dragging it again towards the end of the stroke. Try to change the angle of the brush so that you can get a variety of brush strokes. Let's go to sketching. Here is a photo of a bunch of tulips. It's always good to draw the shape of the flower before you start painting just so that you can get to know the flower better. Right here we have a bulb and you can see that there are flaps of petals, and I'm going to try and just draw it simply. Let's draw the main shape of the flower which is a bulb, so this is a letter U shape. We can do some flaps over here and you can try different versions, and then let's just close off the top part. Let's do one more. I'm going to try and draw this tulip. Right here we have just a thin flap. I'm going to try and do that as well and then on the right side you have a big petal. We're done with drawing, now let's go to painting. I have here two brushes. I have size 6 and size 8. We're going to use one brush to load with just paint and another brush to rinse or fade away some strokes. I'm mixing permanent rose and Crimson Lake, we want this to be a really pigmented mixture. Let's paint the outline, so I'm doing some wispy strokes. You can see that some are thin, some are thick, and I'm also not doing just one single line. You want this to have short strokes. Let's rinse our brush and we are going to fade away our strokes. By doing this technique, we can have a nice soft petal. Let's grab some more paint and add it to the tulip because we need more color for this flower. The colors look too strong, so I'm going to grab a clean brush and we are going to just fade away some of the strokes again. While this base flower is still wet, I'm going to grab some vermilion and we just want to mix that to our permanent rose. Let's add this color to the tulip. Adding an orange color gives some warmth to this flower. Let's just quickly add a stem, and I'm using sap green. Let's move on to the next tulip. I'm going to do the same strokes that we practiced. These are nice wispy strokes and then doing this outline of the tulip. I know it doesn't look like much right now, but once we start painting the final project you'll realize that this is a really easy and helpful technique. I notice that by doing this technique there's less chance for your tulips to look like a blob of paint. That's because we're doing it slowly and we're just painting thin lines and just fading it away. Let's add a stem. Don't worry about the shape of the tulip, we are going to go back in for a second layer. This is already dry, so I'm going to just mix permanent rose with a little bit of burnt sienna and permanent violet. We want a darker color for the second layer. We're going to do the same outline and you want this to be a wispy stroke. We can also add some thin lines towards the bottom part of this tulip. While the strokes are still wet, I'm going to go back in and fade away some of them to make it look softer. Let's move on to the second tulip. We can add the dark lines in between the petals or on the outline of the shape of the tulip. Just to add some texture on the petals, let's add some veins. We are going to paint more styles in the final project. For now, let's move on to painting some leaves. The leaves of the tulips are elongated, I'm going to use sap green. We are just going to start right here at the bottom and then I'm going to slowly press my brush and drag it to create these elongated leaves. Let's do it one more time. You want to lift your brush towards the end of the strokes so that you get that pointy tip. Now we are done. Let's now move on to the final project. [MUSIC] See you in the next video. 17. Day 6: Tulip Final Project: [MUSIC] Welcome to Day 6, we're going to paint the final project. Right here I just catch three tulips, draw an oval shape just like this. Then you can attach some petals right beside it. Right here I made the over quite big and then I'm going to just add a smaller petal right beside it. For the tulip on the left side, it actually looks like a heart shape. You want to position the tulips in different heights. It just looks more pleasing in the eyes because it's not too crowded. Let's start with our first tulip. I'm going to mix permanent rose with a little bit of crimson, but you can use just a permanent rose. Now, we want this to be quite pigmented. Now, I'm going to do an outline. Just remember to paint wispy strokes so we're not doing straight lines. It also helps to do it quickly. Now, let's grab another brush. I'm just going to add some water and fade this area. Let the paint flow into the wet area right here. I'm also trying to fix the shape of this tulip. Let me just close off this area. Now, let's add a little bit of warmth. I'm going to grab vermilion. This is just a very diluted orange color. Now, let's add a little bit more contrast. I'm going to add more pigment towards the bottom part of this tulip. Notice that we're not really moving the paint so much. We're just leaving it as is on the wet surface. That will give it a more natural look. For the second tulip, I'm going to add more crimson layer and maybe just a little bit of violet in it. Now, let's do an outline so it will look like the petals are overlapping from this perspective. I'm also going to do this area a little bit more rounded. Now, let's grab a clean brush. I'm going to fade away the inside. We're going to add just water. Now, let's close the top. You can add a little bit more color on the body of this tulip. Now the center of the tulip will look darker, so we're going to add just more pigment here. This stroke is two pigmented. I'm going to grab a clean brush and we're going to absorb that paint. I will also try to move it around. It's easier to fix some areas when it's still wet. Moving on to the third tulip we're going to do an outline again. We don't really have to do an outline for the entire shape of the tulip. We only want a few strokes because we want it to look soft. These tulips do not look flat because as you can see, you have different tones in the petals. Notice that there are darker and lighter areas and that's because of the technique that we're doing. Just continue to feed the strokes. I do think that this technique is more manageable for beginners because we are doing the strokes little by little. It's not too overwhelming. This is too dark. I'm going to try and leave some paint. Now, let's add some more. I'm going to add a little bit of that vermillion. Towards the bottom let's add a more pigmented permanent rose. Then we're done with the main flowers. We are now going to add the stem. We do want the stem to be straight or slightly tilted, but not too curved. When I was starting out with painting tulips, I usually painted it with a curved stem because that's how I paint loose florals. But it just doesn't look that natural. It always ended up really bad. Now, let's add some leaves. You can add some indigo to your sap green if you want a darker green color. I'm going to start from the bottom going up. We're just going to drag our brush. I'm also going to make sure that I have different shades of green. Some are lighter, some are darker. Don't be too nervous about where to put the leaves. We are going to fade it away in a while. The painting is still damp. I'm going to grab some water. I'm using my flat brush and I'm painting over the leaves that we just did. The leaves are still damp. That's why you can see that it looks faded now. I'm also going to fade the top of this tulip. Now, let's continue to add some water in some areas. Then we can grab some permanent rose. I'm going to add it near the tulips. It will look like the tulips are fading into the background. I'm going to add a little bit more over here, just near the flower. When you're adding this background, you want the color to be a little bit light. You don't want it to be overwhelming. We don't want to overpower the main flowers here, which are the tulips. We want the background to complement the main painting. I'm always painting in a diagonal direction. Now, you can add a little bit more pink over here. I'm still working on wet paper. Try not to fade away all the leaves. We want a mixture of faded leaves and sharp leaves. Now, let's grab a very pigmented sap green. I'm going to dab the excess moisture in a tissue paper. Now, let's add some leaves. You can see that the leaves has a very soft effect and that's because the paper is still damp. You'll also notice that the leaves are not spreading too much and that's because we were able to control the amount of moisture in our brush. Let's add more contrast in this area. I'm just going to add indigo with a little bit of sap green. We made a mistake here. This leaf is too dark and I'm going to rinse my brush and try to absorb this paint. I'm also going to try and move it around. Now, you'll see that the color is lighter. We can also go back in to add some color to some of the leaves. It's now time to add the second layer to the flowers. I'm mixing permanent rose and crimson lake. Now if you want it to look deeper, you can add a little bit of permanent violet. Using a smaller brush, a size six brush, we are going to paint some thin wispy lines. I'm adding it towards the outline of this flower. Now, let's rinse our brush and fade away some of the strokes. Let's move on to the second tulips. Again, I'm going to add just a few strokes on the outer part of this flower. Then we're also going to add a darker area in the center. Let's move on to the third tulip. I'm going to add some veins on the petals and add some thin lines. Just use a tip of the brush so that you can create some delicate lines. It's also best to paint small and thin lines so that it's easier to blend out. If needed you can grab a little bit of color and add it back into the petals. Right now, I'm just adding a few finishing touches. We're just adding back in more color to the flowers. [MUSIC] Now, let's grab a dark green color and just paint it on top of the existing stems. We want a darker stem to make the flowers pop up even more. Let's try to fade away this area. I'm trying to shape out the bottom of this flower. You're trying to spread this green color right below the tulip. Let's do this for the other flowers. You'll immediately see the difference. Right here let's grab a dark green color. I'm going to put it right below this tulip. You can see now that the bottom part is more defined. This makes the flowers pop up. Even if you have a background. This area has a little bit of smudge. I'm just trying to fade it away to make it look better. I can go back into some of the flowers if you need to fix something. Just use a clean brush and just lift off that color. We are done. I hope that you enjoyed today's project. Now, let's move on to the next video where we will learn how to paint irises. [MUSIC]. 18. Day 7: Iris Overview: [MUSIC] In today's video, we are going to learn how to paint an iris. Here are the colors that we will use in this module. We have permanent yellow deep, next is yellow ocher, and then burnt sienna, burnt umber, permanent rose, crimson lake, permanent violet, ultramarine blue, Prussian blue, and we have indigo, and lastly sap green. Here's a photo of an iris, so we're going to try and sketch this one first. You can see that there are a lot of ruffles and frills on the petals. I'm going to split this into two parts, we have the top main petal and then we have the bottom petal. As I'm drawing this I'm trying to wiggle my brush so that I can get some wavy lines for the edges of the petals. We also added those long and slender side petals, now we can just add some more petals at the back. There are different kinds of irises, I love the bearded iris. This is just one way to paint this. We're going for a shape that is easy to paint. Now I'm just mixing permanent rose and burnt sienna. We want this peachy pink color. Let's try to practice painting just one petal first, I'm using this color and we're going to wiggle our brush so that we can get those nice frills on the edges of the petal. As I'm doing this, I'm going to slowly form the shape of the petal. Now you can also add some more water because we're going to do a wet on wet technique. Just to add some more texture, you can use the tip of your brush and try to wiggle it so that you can get more frills. Now this is just an exercise, we're just going to have fun and just drop in different colors. I'm going to add permanent rose in some areas and because the base petal is still wet, you can see that we have soft edges. It's really fun to paint irises because they all look different and they have beautiful color combinations. Now I'm going to grab permanent violet. I'm just going to add it randomly on the petal. When you're done adding the colors that you want, we can now add some veins. I'm using just the tip of this brush handle. You can use a palette knife or maybe an old credit card. You must do this technique while the base petal is still wet. It also helps if you have darker areas in the petal, that will give you darker veins. I'm now using my round brush and just using the tip of the handle, you can try to explore that with your brush. We're done with the petal, now let's try to paint a full iris. I'm using the permanent rose and burnt sienna mixture. This is going to be my reference photo, which I saw on Pinterest. I really love the peachy pink and purple combination. Now we're just painting the top petal and I'm using a really wet brush. You can also leave some whitespaces. Let's move on to the bottom petal, I'm mixing permanent rose with permanent violet. I'm not going to attach these two petals together, I'm going to leave a whitespace in-between for now. Just using a really wet brush lets try to paint the bottom petal, try to wiggle your brush and also you can introduce more water to the paper. We're not really going to be strict about how we paint this. You can draw an outline first if you want and then just fill in the center. We really just want this to be quite wet so that we can add some more color later on. Now let's move on to the side petals. I'm using the same color and I'm just going to try to wiggle my brush going downward. Start from the center of the flower and just try to wiggle your brush again. Now let's grab some permanent violet, you want this to be quite pigmented, we can drop it in some areas. We can also add a little bit of burnt sienna. This is just to give more warmth to the color. Let's just try to make something more pigmented, it's permanent violet with burnt sienna. I'm going to try to add some more color on this petal. As you do this you can also try to adjust the shape of the petals. Now let's grab this permanent yellow deep. I'm going to add it in the center of this iris. I'm adding this while the base flower is still wet. We can try to just spread it around. Really have to do this quickly because we want the petals to still be wet. Now I'm just going to add some more contrast on the top petal, is the same permanent rose and burnt sienna mixture, but I just made it a little bit more pigmented. I'm going to add it towards the edges of the petal. When you're adding the colors, it really depends on your interpretation of your reference photo. I love how we can be creative in painting this flower. For the bottom petal, I'm going to add a little bit of pink or permanent rose. This is looking good now with a more pigmented center, I'm going to grab burnt sienna. You can also use burnt umber or any dark color in your palette. It's now time to add some veins. I'm using the handle of my brush again. Let's add some veins. I'm just grabbing some color from the darker areas along the edges of the petal. This will help produce darker lines. Let's do this on the top petal and you can see that this petal is already dry. The veins are not as prominent, but I don't really mind because I think it looks great that we have darker and lighter lines. You can try to wet the petal first before you add the veins. Now I'm going to add a stem. Let's just use sap green. Let's wait for this flower to dry so we can add more details. In the meantime, let's try to paint another iris. We have a blue iris here, but I'm going to change it up a little bit. You can definitely do this in your own style. This style, I'm going to mix ultramarine blue and add a lot of water. I'm going to start with the top petal, and then I'm going to grab some more water. I'm going to make this petal really wet. You will see that I'm also trying to leave some whitespaces. We're building this petal slowly. You can just try to wiggle your brush to create some nice organic strokes. Feel free to change the shape a little bit depending on your style. Now let's try to play around and drop in some color. I'm using just a more pigmented ultramarine blue, but you can add other colors. This is a very forgiving flower to paint, so don't worry about the shape too much. Now let's grab a little bit of cerulean blue, just to give it a pop of color. Let's change the color for the bottom petal, I'm using Prussian blue. Let's just try and wiggle our brush to create an outline first. Try to paint lightly because we don't want this to look too heavy. Now let's grab some water and just try to spread it around until we form the shape that we want. Now, let's start adding the side petals. I'm going to start with a light pressure and then just slowly press your brush and wiggle so that you can have a nice petal shape. You can also grab a more pigmented Prussian blue, so that you have dark petals. Think of it as standing with your brush. You can just try to wiggle it so that you have a more organic shape. You can always go back and fix the shape of the petals. I'm going to add more contrast. This is just more pigmented Prussian blue, going to add it towards the edges. Now for the center, I'm going to grab permanent yellow deep, and we'll use this yellow to attach all the petals together. You can try to spread it around. If you feel like the shape looks a little odd right now when you're painting, you can go back in and try to extend some areas. I'll add some contrast in the center. I'm using brown sienna, but you can use burnt umber as well. To give this a punch of color, we can add some indigo. This will give a really dark edge. Now that we're happy with the shape, we can try to add some veins. You can also try painting the veins from the center going out. This is like we're grabbing the color from the center and we are trying to spread it through the veins. I'm going to go back in and add some more petals. It depends on you on how fluffy you want the petals to be. Now let's grab a green color. I'm just going to add the stem. This first iris is already dry. Let's add a second layer. I have the same mixture of permanent rose and burnt sienna. We're going to try and paint some thin lines. This layer will give it more depth. We also want to space out the brush strokes. We don't want it to look too crowded. For the bottom petal, I'm using permanent violet with brown sienna. We have this brownish violet color, just like the wiggle your brush and add it on the edges of this petal. Now let's rinse our brush and try to fade away this color. You can also paint some lines. You can immediately see that it came alive. I'm going to grab a little bit more of that permanent violet and add it towards the edges. You can also try to paint some thin lines. This is going to add a beautiful texture. For the center, I'm just going to grab brown umber. You can put a few dots in the center so that we have a nice dark contrast. Some of the veins that we painted look a little messy right now. I'm just going to try and fade it away. Let's try to lift some of that color. Let's move on to the second iris. I have diluted ultramarine blue. We're going to do the same technique. We're going to add some thin lines, and we want this color to be translucent. For the bottom petal, you can mix Prussian blue and indigo so that you have this nice and dark, rich blue color. I'm going to try and add some thin veins. For the center, let's add some brown umber. Just add some finishing touches. We're almost done. This is just one of the easy ways to paint an iris. You can definitely try irises in different angles. Now we can still add a few more finishing touches. We're almost done. I think you're ready to do the final project. See you in the next video. [MUSIC] 19. Day 7: Iris Final Project: [MUSIC] I hope that you're excited. We're going to do our last project for this class. I really wanted to cover more color combinations and also different shapes of irises. We're going to paint the pink iris that is facing a little bit on its side, so the petals look different and then we have another iris that is facing us but the colors are white and yellow. We can try to sketch the shape of the petals that we want. This will be our guide when painting, but you can also do it free hand. In this final project, we're going to paint two flowers. Now let's try to add some color. I have here permanent rose and then I'm just going to grab crimson lake and vermilion. We're just going to prepare some colors. Right here, I'm going to mix vermilion and the permanent rose. The mixture is quite translucent, so we added a lot of water. Let's start with the first petal. Just try to wiggle your brush so that you can create that nice, frilly edge. You can also leave some white spaces in the center. Let's drop in a little bit of that vermilion to give it some morphs and on the edges, I'm going to drop in crimson lake. You'll want the crimson lake to be quite pigmented. Let's try to wiggle our brush from the bottom going up and this will be another petal. I'm going to slightly wiggle my brush so that we have a nice organic shape. Now we can grab a more pigmented permanent rose and just drop it in. You can also add a little bit of vermilion. When doing the wet-on-wet technique sometimes it's tempting to mix the colors on the petals, but I assure you that it will look better if you leave it as is. I added a little bit of vermilion in the center of the petal, and now we're adding a little bit of crimson lake on the edges. Now if you want it to look warmer, you can add burnt sienna, like what we did here. For a more dramatic effect, you can add permanent violet towards the tips of this petal. Now I think it will look better if it looks a little bit pinkish, so I'm just going to add in crimson lake to that violet. Now we can start adding that to some of the petals as well. I usually add it on the edges or in between petals. Now onto the last petal, I'm just trying to wiggle my brush to create a nice organic shape and then we'll drop in permanent rose and violet. This looks like it needs a little bit of pink. I'm going to grab crimson lake. This is a really pigmented color. Now you can also mix that with the violet. As you can see, I'm just trying to mix the colors that are already on my palette. The base petals are all still wet. That's why when you add a new color on top of it, it just blends in with the base color. Now let's add a stem. I'm using sap green. Let's just do a quick stroke to paint that stem. While the stem is still wet, you can grab some indigo and just add that to some areas. It's now time to add some veins. I'm using the end of my brush handle. Just make sure that the petals are also wet when you're doing this technique. If the petals are already dry, you can try to re-wet it. Just paint another layer of water. Now let's add more contrast. I'm going to mix permanent violet and burnt sienna. Just going to add it right here in the center. You can also drop it in some of the areas of this iris. I'm going to add it towards the edges of the petals. Mixing violet and brown will produce a really beautiful color. Let's move on to the second iris. I'm going to mix sepia and yellow ocher with a lot of water. The top petal is going to be white, and we're going to use this color to paint the white petal. Let's start to paint this petal, but it looks too brown to me, so I'm going to try and fix that. I wanted to neutralize it, so I'm going to add a little bit of blue. I'm going to grab indigo and we are going to dilute it in a lot of water. That looks too dark. Let's just add in more water and I'm going to try and add that to the petal. Now it looks two-toned and I think it looks great. That's one way to paint a white flower. You have to really mix different colors. Also notice that I'm leaving some white spaces. Let's move on to the bottom petal. I am using permanent yellow deep. Just try to wiggle your brush. You can paint an outline first and then just fill it in with color or even just water. Now let's grab a pigmented burnt sienna, and we're going to drop it in this petal while the petal is still wet. It looks too sharp. I'm going to rinse my brush and try to fade away some of the areas. You can also try to move around the paint. You can go back in with a permanent yellow deep and just paint the side petals. Now, if you have the color quinacridone gold, that will look wonderful on this iris. As you can see, I'm not really attaching the petals yet to one another. Now let's add the center. I am using this burnt sienna. You can use burnt umber if you want it to be darker. Now we can go back and add a little bit of that indigo and just fix the shape of this petal. Now we're going to add some veins. You can use an old credit card or maybe your palette knife. Do this when the petals are still wet. Now I'm going to grab my sap green and add the stem. We can also add some leaves, these are elongated leaves. Then while the leaves are still wet, you can drop in some indigo so that you have some darker areas. We are now ready for the second layer of the first iris. This is just a mixture of permanent violet and burnt sienna, so we want it really a pigmented mixture. I'm going to add some really thin and wispy lines. I'm usually adding this towards the edges of the petals. Now let's rinse our brush and just tap the excess water and then I'm going to try and fade away some of the strokes. Using the color left in my brush, I'm going to try and also paint some thin veins. Let's bring back some more color. I'm using crimson lake here. This looks good. Now let's move on to the second iris. We are going to do the same technique. I'm just grabbing some burnt sienna. You want this to be quite pigmented. I'm going to draw some wiggly lines. Try to put spaces in between your strokes so that it doesn't look too crowded. I'm going to rinse my brush and just fade away some of the strokes. [MUSIC] I'm just going to blend in this area because it looks a little messy. For the white petal, we are going to use this very diluted indigo color. I'm just going to add some veins. You have to make sure that this is really diluted and quite translucent. You don't want some thick and bold lines. We want the strokes to look very subtle. Right now it looks a little dark, so I'm going to use a very diluted permanent yellow deep and just add another layer right here. Because we added that, you'll notice that there's a certain glow to this flower. For more contrast in the center, you can grab some burnt umber. I'm just going to put some dots in the center. I hope that you're enjoying painting this iris. It really is nice to experiment with different color combinations and also different shapes. You can stop right here and take a photo of your painting and then look at it on your phone so that you can have a different perspective and that way you'll know if you need to add some more petals or if you need to stop. Now we are done with our final project. [MUSIC] I'm pretty sure you have a very beautiful project in front of you so now let's move on to the conclusion of this class. [MUSIC] 20. Final Thoughts: We have reached the end of the class. I hope you enjoyed learning new florals and painting them in different styles. Continue to practice and explore these flowers in different colors. Here's a quick guide to start your projects. First of all, it would be helpful to the query reference photo. You can search on Pinterest or browse through a book. Next is to simplify the shape of the flower through sketching the petals, two-step main petals, and add details later on. After sketching identify the colors to be used and paint the petals individually as a warm-up exercise. Lastly, using the skills that you learned in this class in your creative freedom, paint the flower in your own style. I hope to see your projects soon. Don't forget to upload it in the project gallery section of the class. If you upload it on Instagram, don't forget to use this hashtag so I can see your work. Thank you again for taking this class, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye. [MUSIC] 21. Bonus Video: Spring Florals Bouquet: [MUSIC] Welcome to a bonus video. I'm really excited to share with you how to paint this beautiful spring flowers bouquet. To start, we're going to paint the main flowers first, which are the random colors, and then we're going to paint the tulips, and then the sweet peas, then after which we are going to add those smaller details like leaves and fillers. So let's start. Let's prepare our paints. I am just grabbing here some sap green, and then I'll grab permanent rose. Just add a little bit of that brilliant pink to lighten this color. But if we don't have brilliant pink, well, permanent rose is completely fine. Let's start with the center of the ranunculus. I'm going to paint some thin C strokes. I'm using a size 6 round brush. Just use the tip of your brush to create those nice thin lines. Next, let's grab this pink color and you're going to paint the outer petals. So this is going to be bigger than the green strokes that we did. So don't forget to leave some spaces in-between your strokes. We want the strokes to be hugging the center. Let's just go ahead and add some more petals until we achieve the right size, and the size will depend on the size of your paper as well. I'm using a seven by 10 inch paper here. So we're done with the first flower. Let's move onto the second one. I'm starting with that green center again. Then next, let's grab a little bit of permanent yellow deep. If we don't have this color, just use any yellow paint in your palette. You can add a little bit of orange just to make it warmer. Now we're going to paint some more C strokes and just vary the size and the length of the C-shape size you're going to paint to make it look more interesting. You can also raise your brush to get a lighter color. Now let's move on to painting the tulips. I have here a very pigmented permanent rose color in my brush. We're going to start with the outline just like how we practiced it. This will help us give an idea of the general shape of the tulip. Now I'm going to rinse my brush and tap the excess water. We're going to just fade away the inside of this flower, that will make it look softer. You can add some more strokes at the top just to close off this flower. I'm just letting my brush absorb all the extra water on this flower. Now let's grab some sap green and attach it at the base of this flower. Just to give this more contrast, we're going to go in and add just a little bit more of that permanent rose to give more color to this flower. For the next tulip, I want it to be a little bit softer. So I'm going to grab some brilliant pink and you're going to do the same thing. We're going to paint an outline first, so it looks like a letter U-shape. We're just going to add the folds of the tulip. Now let's rinse our brush and just tap the excess water and you're going to start fading the inside again to make it look softer. This is one of the easiest ways for me to paint a tulip without it looking like a blob of paint. While this tulip is still wet, we're going to bring back some color. I'm going to add a little bit of brilliant pink with permanent rose. So you want it to be a little bit darker. Now we are going to add some stems. I'm going to just extend the stems of the tulips so they go at the back of this ranunculus. Then now you can add some stems for the ranunculus itself. You can grab a little bit of water and just paint it on top of that stem. We are just doing that to make it look softer. It's now time to add some leaves. I'm going to just make sap green and indigo to get this nice dark green color, and you're going to add the leaves first in-between the main flowers. You can try to paint some irregular shaped leaves so that it looks natural. You can also paint some thin strokes that will look like stem sticking out. You can attach leaves or fillers to that stem later on. [MUSIC] Now that we have established some leaves, we are now going to add some sweet peas. I'm going to just mix permanent violet and permanent rose. We're going to add it right here at the top, and what you can do is you can just press your brush onto the paper and try to wiggle it so that you have a nice roughly edge. You can also try to vary the values. You can see that some of the petals are darker, some are lighter and that will make your painting look more interesting. Let's add another color. I have here lilac. If you don't have lilac, it's completely fine if you want to use just violet and just add some pinks. You can also add a little bit of blue. So on the right side we're also going to add some sweet peas. Just try to wiggle your brush to create that nice organic shape. Then you can just grab some sap green and attach it to the main bouquet. Now let's try to fill in some of those pieces again. I'm going to be using just sap green with a little bit of indigo. You can also add a little bit of brown to your greens. Just try to vary the colors as well. I also wanted to make this area look fuller. What I'm going to do is I'm going to add just some petals right here and that will fill up some of the white spaces. Now let's make this ranunculus pop up even more by adding some leaves on the edges of this flower. It's best to use a nice dark green color for this part. Now let's add some fillers. I'm going to use greenish yellow. Greenish yellow is a really beautiful color to make your painting pop up. It's a happy and cheerful color. You can just paint some petal-like strokes and attach a stem to it and that will already look like a beautiful filler. For this part, let's try painting a more expressive flower. I have here just permanent rose with a little bit of violet, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to just dab my brush to create these unique shapes. You can see that they are petal-like shapes, but they have different sizes. Now I'm just going to grab some water and try to just fade away some of the strokes to make it look softer. Next, let's grab some sap green and I'm just going to attach some stems. It's now time to add a second layer. I have here just a more pigmented sap green. We're just going to follow the strokes in the first layer. For the pink color, I'm going to use brilliant pink and permanent rose. We're going to paint those C shapes first, and then after which, I am going to rinse my brush and fade away the strokes to make it look softer. Try to vary the size of the C shapes, you want some to be bigger, some more smaller. Let's move on to the second ranunculus. I'm using sap green again for the center, and then now let's grab a little bit of that permanent yellow deep. This is also a good way to bring back the color to the flower. Grab a clean brush to soften the edges. To give it more depth, we're going to add some indigo in the centers of the ranunculus. Just simply dab your brush to get those nice dotted strokes. Now let's add some more details on the tulips. I have here just a permanent rose and then just painting some veins on the petals. Let me show it to you up close. The strokes look a little too bold right now, but we can always go back in and fade away the strokes to make it look softer. You can see this area doesn't look that good, so I'm just going to try and cover it up. I have here just permanent rose with a little bit of blue and you can add a second layer. I'm also trying to wiggle my brush to create those ruffles. If you made the same mistake that I did, don't worry about it, you can always go back in and add a second layer to cover it. It's now time to add those small details that will make a big difference. We're adding these small yellow flowers using permanent yellow deep, and I'm just scattering all of these small flowers just to give it a pop of color. Then, of course, don't forget to add the green stems. Let's add some indigo to the handle of this bouquet just to give it more depth. This already looks good, but I decided to add some white details just to give that extra character. I'm using just white gouache right here. We're adding some small circles that will look like pearls. You can definitely do a different design if you want. Now I'm going to add some strings. I'm using this Posca pen, this is an acrylic pen. You can also use your brush to do these small details. I honestly find it easier to add the small details using a pen. Using the same white pen, we can add some white veins. You can add some small dotted fillers or some berries. Feel free to add it according to your own style, and this technique will look good on a dark background. So you can see that I'm adding these white details on really dark green leaves. Just to make these pearls pop up even more, I'm going to grab a dark green color and add some outline to these round shapes. You will definitely see a huge difference when you look at it from afar. Right now, I'm just trying to fade away the green strokes that I did just to make it look softer and make it look more seamless. We are done. Congratulations for finishing this project. I hope that you enjoyed this bonus video [MUSIC] and I hope to see your work soon. Bye.