Abstract Acrylic Painting for Beginners: Create Bold Abstract Roses

1. Welcome: Hello, and welcome to another marvelous painting class where you will learn how to transform an abstract painting into a beautiful, flowery painting. Almost all paintings start as an abstract painting. And if you add details and you refine the shapes, you slowly start to have a figurative painting. This class is perfect for beginners and intermediaries who want to either practice or understand the fundamentals of painting. Hi, my name is George, and I've been a professional artist for over 11 years. Five years ago, I've fallen in love with teaching. Both online courses and in person classes with over 20,000 students, both children and adults, I've developed this fun, interesting way of teaching that focuses on exciting projects and having a lot of fun just creating and getting the experience needed to know and understand everything about painting. This composition might feel complicated, however, it is not. You will get step by step encouragement to make each and every brush mark count, and you will feel freedom and flexibility to create other paintings as well. You will finally understand how to have clean colors in your paintings. You will really focus in on building textures and depth in your painting, how to make a wonderful, a wonderful background for your paintings. And, of course, you will have a great experience taking this class. And without further ado, let's go into the class. 2. Materials: For this course, you will need a canvas that is 40 centimeters by 40 centimeters or smaller or bigger. This design works on any kind of canvas. You'll be making an abstract painting for that. You will need two brushes, only two brushes, a big flat brush, and a small flat brush. You will need a place to put the paint. You will need a water container, use a recycled container. You will need acrylic paint. This is Amsterdam acrylic paint, titanium white. Brilliant blue, carmine red. Burnt umber, also known as brown and yellow. You can use lemon yellow or you can use Azo yellow medium. This is just some lemon yellow with a bit of red. It's a bit closer to an Indian yellow, so that's why it's just nice. But lemon yellow is good as well. And you will also need some paper towels. Okay. You will also need a bit of courage and a lit of patience with this painting because even if at times it feels like you're not really you don't really understand what you're doing and how it's going to end up and you feel like you're not doing the right thing. By the time you finish it, it's going to be looking great. And I'm going to give some pointers that you can use to improve it if you want or change some things in order to have a better painting, even if you made a few things that you don't like. Now, let's go into the first step. 3. Play with colors: For the first step, you will need some white. A generous amount of white. You will also need some blue. Let's add it over here and some yellow. Take the big flat brush with the corner of the brush, take some water, add it to the middle of the plate. Take some blue, and then take about half of the white you've just put in and mix it in nice and thoroughly. Just about half a very, very light blue. We should take a bit more blue and add it over here. Take a bit more water just so we cover the whole canvas very, very fast. Water is a lubricant. It will make the color flow a bit more. Take some yellow and add it over just to change that hue a tiny amount. By adding a bit of yellow into this light blue, this baby blue, you are making it a bit more turquoise. And now let's just start to make some abstract shapes, taking some more water, and right in the middle, press very hard on the brush and just start to go with motions like this. And start adding some shapes. Now notice that I've left some of the shapes open. This is basically a rectangle, but it's a organic rectangle. I'm just going to go over here and do the same. Maybe this one is not going to be so rectangular, even though it is and over here. So it's big, medium, small. And you can go even smaller if you want. Okay. Now, let's add a bit more blue into this mix. Notice how beautiful this color becomes. Just a touch of blue and a bit more white. And now we're going to do another color in between those beautiful stages. Don't worry if they're mixing. You can even go inside to add more texture or take away some of the texture that was created. So notice, this is a medium. These are small. And now this is going to be Well, we're going to need to make a bit more color. Don't worry if it's not the same exact color. You can always go and mix it in with the blue you've just created and add some of this into the color. You can go a bit faster, you can go a bit slower. All you need to do is focus and make these beautiful shapes. You can also add some pizzas, some flick of the wrist thing where you just go inside of the shape of the outer blue to create more shapes. Clean up the brush on the bottom side, make a very straight, beautiful. This looks like a sky. Of course, you can go any type of way. You can leave it as a sky or you can just add some white if you want to make it more like a sky, take some white on the middle of the brush of the corner of the brush and just brush some white just on the top. The key here to making these clouds is the fact that you are breaking up these shapes even more with your brush. Notice how easy it is to just break them up. You can always go and add more clouds if you want. Or you can just do something else like over here, just not make a landscape. But you now know how to make a sky super, super easy and painterly. Now, I'm creating the same almost the same color that we had initially. It doesn't have to be the same. You can have it a bit more white, a bit more light. So this is an abstract way to build some painterly clouds. It's a bit darker. It doesn't matter. With this color, if you have a lighter color, you can go onto the left side and add some of these clouds. You can also play with your finger and blend them in a bit. Can do all sorts of things. Another thing you can do is brush of some of the color down, just so it blends. Perfectly. Now, taking some more of this color and adding it just over here just because we don't want to create a sky. We're just playing with abstract shapes. But you're playing with color and discovering what you can do out of these colors. Notice I'm ruining the sky. You might feel like I'm actually it was a beautiful sky, but it doesn't matter. We're just playing around with colors. 4. Landscape or roses: Now going into some beautiful Red. Let's add some red to the plate. Okay. And with some blue right in the middle over this color, so it doesn't feel so strange. When we add this color, it's not gonna feel so strange because it already has a lot of the color into the brush. It already has just a massive amount of blue and white. If you don't have enough, just build it again. Blue, white, yellow, and then mix in some red and some more blue two get this beautiful purple. And now let's just play around. We're gonna play around. You can literally go like this and make mountains. Just a straight line. Let's not make these mountains so hairy. See? Easy. Just with some cuts, you can create a beautiful line of mountains. In case you are picking up too much color from the background, just add some water, and then it will blend a bit better, and it will create these nicer mountains. But, again, this is not a landscape painting course, so we're going to add this color over here. Just add it over here. We're gonna probably touch. This is a very simple shape. Now let's add it over here. Let's take some more of it. And on the bottom, just cleaning up the brush on the canvas. We're just playing around with colors, just transforming everything and seeing what's going on. You can always go back and add other things. You can always change. Okay. Notice that the brush as I go deeper into the groove into the beautiful hair of the brush, it has a lighter blue, so I can go over here to cover some of that white. I let the paint dictate where I put this. I don't have to think that much. Let's add some more white and mix in some red with this white, making this beautiful pink. Very muted pink. It has a bit of blue, so it's muted. And I'm just adding it where I see some white, these colors are very close and they have a base, so they feel very they are like friends, like relatives. Now, a good way to really understand because you are always painting this way, like this way. It's always good on abstract paintings to just flip the canvas around so you know, you also start to see the whites a bit better. And you also start to see what type of things it needs. Like, for instance, let's add some more blue because this is a very it's still looking like a sky. So let's add some blue and mix in quite a dark and powerful blue and mix it in. Let's add it here as a shape. Let's create a bit of a bigger shape. And now let's add some weight on this side. So that it doesn't feel like a sky anymore that much. Let's add some of this blue over here. Let's break this down a bit more this volcano looking thing. Now, let's take some more of that blue and add it over here and a smaller one next to it. Maybe one over here. And in case you don't like something, you can just go and brush it a bit and then redo it. It's fine. You can even use your fingers. You can use a paper towel and take some of the color off. And once you take some of the color off, you can go back and add some more texture. You can go with the corner of the brush and add some textures and then blend them in if you want, if you don't like them. Look here, there is some white. So it's not a very difficult thing to do. You're just playing around. The only thing you need to be careful of is to keep some of the background colors you've added at the beginning still visible. So you don't add too many layers on top of the paint you've just created. Just focusing a little bit on the edge to see if it needs a bit more color. Perfect. Let this dry completely. And then go over with some other colors. This way, we're going to create a lot of color contrast because you're going to go from colors that are very close and very related to colors that are neighbors from across the street. These are called the friends and relatives colors. The siblings colors are called analogous colors. And colors that are opposites, they are called complimentary colors. You've played around with a little bit of analogous color contrast, a little bit of light, a little bit of dark and now you're going to play with some beautiful complimentary colors. If you have a hair dryer, you can always use the hair dryer to make it really dry very fast. 5. Give yourself permission : Course is all about permission to play. Give yourself the freedom to play around and not get attached, even though something is looking good or bad, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you are learning how to use your tools, how to use color, how to paint, and you're having fun, and you're understanding by playing even though it seems a bit fast, that's one of the most important teachings in painting. You don't really need to analyze everything and over analyze everything. You need to let a little bit loose and let the hand and the brush do the work and that's how you create organic looking shapes and organic. You have some guidelines that you can play around with. But of course, there is always this possibility that you don't even know how beautiful it can look if you just press and play with the color. You would never know. This is a very interesting way of painting because you are playing, and it gets very addicting once you get over that hump of anxiety and other emotions that stop you from the freedom to paint. You will start to understand that this is not such a big deal. We're just playing around like kids with paints, but we have a little bit of structure to really create something more interesting because we have a deeper understanding of how our colors behave. And that deeper understanding comes from a lot of play. The more you play around with colors, the more you understand how your colors behave. That's why this is a very limited color palette. It's a primary color palette with white and brown added as other colors to either mute or lighten up a color. Now let's go into some beautiful oranges. You don't need to paint oranges. But of course, if you feel like some oranges would be nice on the painting, that's okay. Let's add this orange wherever we see white. If we still see some white, we can add it over. This is a very thick paint. The painting is completely dry. And also where you feel like the painting is not so great. This is the way you mask things, remember to also go a little bit outside on the edge. Don't keep everything in the middle. Open up that composition. See? Now you're learning about composition and playing around. These are three small areas. Let's build a big one right over here. Let's build a big one. Let's add more yellow to it. Okay, bigger, better, stronger. Just press down. If you don't like the shape, doesn't matter. You can edit it later. Let's add some more yellow to add a few droplets around. Maybe add this color C. Now, it's all on the top. Let's connect this, make it a medium shape. Okay? Now, we need to add to break some of this area, maybe not right in the middle, but over here. It just feels a bit more interesting if you don't let it be like a log, like a big lump of paint. You can add some more water if you want to lubricate some of the paint, but don't take too much water because that will make the yellows and the oranges very transparent. In case your oranges and your yellows are transparent because sometimes they are, just let them dry and at a later stage, add another layer of yellow and orange. You're learning how color behaves and how to create abstract shapes. Maybe you are going to play around with some straighter edges. Let's see what's going on if you go with a more straight edge just on the side, and another one just over here, another one next to it. Let's make this one a bit straight. You're playing around with shapes and discovering what you can do. Maybe out of this one, No thinking is required. You just add paint. Not too much, not too little, create some shapes. Now, of course, adding some red because it's just here on the color palette. We're trying to use up almost all the color onto the palette. Just over the orange, the orange. Let's go over the orange over here as well. And a straighter edge just over in this area. This color is very rouge. It has this. Some people might not like it because it's a very, like, a lipstick color. But just adding a few dabs here and there, that's fine. Or if you take some water, you can really go ham. Just shoot, pom, pom, pom. A round shape. Let's take a bit more water, just a tiny amount, the tiniest amount of water. And let's figure out this shape. Like this, I'm trying to clean up those edges so they don't they're not so hairy. They are a bit cleaner. This can be a rose at some point, if you want. In fact, let's really transform this painting into a rose painting. Now, let's go over here and add over this orange. If you don't have the orange, you can go back and add some of that orange in. Notice, this is the dark part and the light part. It's just colors. Now, this one, it's going to be two roses. So we're cutting it like that, cutting it like that. And it's going to be another rose, maybe just an orange rose. This is going to be an orange rose, and this is going to be a more red one. Simple shapes. Don't make them that hairy. Try to cut some of the hairiness out of the whole thing. Maybe over here. Let's add another one over here. Notice how easy it is to just add some color and cut in some petals. Just add a blob, maybe right over here. You can also do these are all the same. Notice they are almost all the same blobs. Let's add a different type of blob that looks like a flower. Which is the it's like a triangle, but with round corners at the bottom. Notice round round. And then you can add some more on top just to round that corner as well. And then connect another one the same way, a triangle. Maybe this one is going to be bigger, just a triangle, and maybe it has a bigger bottom. Perfect. That's how easy it is to create some shapes. Let's change this color a bit more. On this side, just a blob of paint can go as fast as you want or as slow as you want. There is a misunderstanding in painting that you need to paint very fast to create these interesting things, but it's not. If you really want control, you need to go a bit slower. If you want to create some more interesting things. 6. Abstract shaping : Now, let's go and add some of this white over the red, creating this beautiful pink. Now, don't worry about the fact that some of them are hairy, but you can also go onto the left side and clean up some of the left side hairiness. Notice this is a cut. You've done this in the beginning as well. You've done some sort of like when you went into the edges, into the small crevices where it was white, you went and did some of these type of cuts. But because the red is still wet, these colors combine to create a beautiful petal like Thing. Now, let's add Roses become very beautiful if you add just like a circle in the middle like that. Focus in on just the left side. Let's determine that the light comes from here. So we're just focusing on the left side. The shape just going down, very simple. Maybe there is another one another petal here and another one just over here. Let's make this one bigger. You can also take some water, some more white, with some more red to create more color. And once you've created more color, you can also add some flowers. Like, let's say we add another flower just over here, and we add another flower just over here with this color. And we can add another one just over here because this one was a bit lonely. And let's add another one over here. These are just blobs of paint. It's just like in the beginning. Just playing around with blobs of paint. Let's connect these two areas. And you can go back into the red. Well, let's first finish the pink. We still have some areas over here. Can go as abstract as you want, or as figurative as you want. If you want to be more abstract, you just go like this. You don't care too much. You can take some of the red and add it back in. Take some of the red and add it back in to create more of a transition. You can also edit some of the petals if you want by going in between them with the red. Just add some shadow on this rose. We're just trying to finish the color off of the plate. There is a theme here of finishing the colors. Let's add some yellow. Right over that pink and some white right where it was. I know I spilled a little bit here, but it doesn't matter. Just take a napkin, brush it off, and that's all. It's not a big deal. Let's first create a very light pink because we already have this pink in our brush. So let's create this beautiful light pink. And over the very light pink areas you already have, you can add another highlight. Don't worry if it's too strong. I'm going to teach you another technique that will integrate these colors together a bit more in the end. You can even add some of these colors to they don't go very well with yellow roses, so we're keeping that because these are colors that are very close to the red. They are actually white and red. So of course, you can also add some flowers, some other blobs, maybe one over here, transitioning into a bigger whiter. This is going to be like a white rose, white, very light and white rose. And let's make another one just over here, transitioning. Okay. And maybe one here. This is a simple blob of paint. This is exactly like you did with the blue or the orange before we decided to create these roses, too much white. It doesn't matter if it's too much white. Just blend it in a bit, take some of the color, add it where you have more red still wet, and that's all you have to do. Remember to sit a bit on the left side with these colors. Notice, if I roll the brush, notice what a beautiful color because it has a white and then more red and you pick up more red from doing and playing in the other shapes. If you do this kind of a role, notice how beautiful that is, how beautiful and textured that is. You can also do it over the white and over the white and over the white. If it's too crazy, can just go over it and create a bit of structure just like that. Perfect. Now, let's clean up the brush. 7. Ask the right questions : For the next step, you don't really need to wait for the paint to dry. You're going to paint some foliage. That's why the yellow is here. And even if you still can't clean the brush perfectly, that's fine. That's good. Because some of that pink will create some more interesting greens. Let's take some yellow and some red. Notice how intense this green is. We have a problem here. First of all, we don't have enough blue. And second of all, it's a very, very intense green. We don't want that. When you want to cut a green out, you think of the opposite, the opposite being red, but red would be too strong. So let's add some brown. Brown is basically a orange that is very dark. If you went too dark, no problem. Add more yellow. You shouldn't go in the middle like I just did. You should go onto the side like this and take some of the colors so you keep one side of the color clean. Notice how much organic this green looks now. It's a beautiful green. Let's add some water into it to make it a bit more flowy because we need a bit more flow. There's a lot of paint in this brush. And then don't go very close to the reds. You can go closer to the reds in the areas that are not very thick, right over here and add one simple brushstroke. It's like a square, and then you can edit it a bit to add make like a leaf. That's simple, very easy. And then try to really focus on the edge and not make it perfect because notice how ugly this looks. It's too perfect. So let's break it. Notice it now looks more integrated into the whole painting. Let's cut this over here. Over the yellow, you can go a bit more easily. This is exactly like in the beginning where you've created and you've added the dark blue in between the light blue parts. It's nothing different. You're just deciding where does leaf kind of end up. Look at how triangular this is. Let's break that down. Let's make another one next to it. Notice, such an easy way to just break things down. If you don't like a shape, ask yourself, what does this look like? It looks like a triangle. Too much like a triangle. What do I need to do to make it not look like a triangle? Add a little blob just next to it, or break the shape down a bit more. Okay. You can go over next wherever you feel. You can also touch to see if the red is dry. Over this yellow, it's going to look amazing because it's a yellow being a transitionary color in between the yellow and the red and the pink. Let's add another one here. Let's try to connect to make these areas a bit more feel a bit more connected. Let's add some sticks. Don't worry if you went over the pink. Let's add another one here. You're also trying to put the roses because they are all at the front. You are trying to bring them back. The way you do that is by adding some leaves that are over just a tiny bit over the Roses, like this. Perfect. Now, let's focus on this area being very careful because this pink is still not dry. At this point, the leaves look very, very flat. Don't worry about that. We are going to change them in a bit. Over the orange, you can go a bit inside, a bit more loose because the orange is very close and it plays very well with the pink. Remember that trick where you turn the canvas around just to look and notice that here, we don't have foliage. It's a stick, another leaf. These are simple, very easy shapes. And if you really want to correct them or you don't like them, you can just go and fix them a bit. And then make another one here. Let's add Let's take some water. With a flat brush, you can always create this edge, this beautiful knife edge. And with this knife edge, you can go and do some sticks. Even if the sticks are not perfect, sticks are just organic shapes. And even if you have an area that's a bit messed up, like, right over here, can just cover it with a leaf that comes towards you a little bit. Let's make it a bit more round, so it doesn't seem like it's going that way. And then add another one here, add a smaller one here. Make that knife's edge once again, just so you can dab it over here. Let's make this one bigger. Now let's add another stick, maybe, let's say, here. Let's add a stick just going this way. And then a leaf. Okay. Just fixing that leaf. These are two connected, but it doesn't matter right now. We're just creating some foliage. Okay. Let's add another beautiful stick just coming out of this. Add a leaf, add another leaf. Press down on the brush with color. You can also go a bit more into the very, very wet areas. You can create a lot of water, take more water and create this wonderful different type of leaf because it will become way easier to just control. Go very slow. And controlled. And look at how organic that leaf looks. Turn the canvas around. Notice how on this side, there is nothing coming in. Let's just add. And because this is so watery and you can add even more water, it will dry in a very interesting way. It will clump up. It will become very different than the other leaves. So maybe this is a different plant just going around and spreading its foliage. You can also go over the other leaves with some of this watery green. 8. Slow for control: And now a cool trick is to just add more brown over it and some blue and create a different type of bluish, darker leaves. Let's break this orange down. Notice it's a bit different. Look, I'm just going to add it right here so that you notice that it's a bit darker. Just a few. And you can go over these leaves as well to make them less flat. Let's add a tiny bit more blue and start playing around to really integrate and make this scenery a bit more interesting. Don't be afraid to expand. Don't be afraid to. Now, I think the pink is completely dry. It's not, but it doesn't matter. So you can go a bit into the pink as well, maybe separate this rose over here. Notice how the pink it's turning the green a bit gray. Let's add another leaf over here, maybe add a smaller one. The leaf. You can control the shape and the shape of the leaf by just going slower, pressing down, noticing what is going on. And notice how if you go a bit slower, you can really create these beautiful leaves. Notice, make another one just over here. Whoop. Just make it a bit pointy. Pointy. And then a smaller one like this, maybe make a stick that goes out of it. And add another one just over here, add a stick to it, continue to stick down, continue this stick, cut it with a leaf. 9. Leaf highlights : Now you can go into the yellows, add more yellow to this color, and some white to create some of that highlight. You can also create some new leaves over here. Let's create one. Let's add the highlight to this one. And if you don't like the highlight and it's too strong, go with the back of the brush and create some textures over it. And then you can go with the brush again and recreate that leaf. You can also go with the finger and play around. You can also think about let's turn this canvas around and play around with the fact that light comes from this side. So let's go in here, in here. Let's create a bit more order. Now that we have light, we can really focus in on the fact that light is hitting some of these leaves. Okay. Now you can also create individual leaves if you have the space or the need for another leaf, like, for instance, here and here and maybe here. Okay. Let's take a leaf and explain a bit more what's going on. Let's take this leaf over here on this edge and add a tiny bit of yellow, well, half of it, and then create some texture, just some dabs next to it. So it's a bit more organic. You can also do some sticks by carefully creating that edge, that knife and create these beautiful sticks, maybe a thicker stick over here and a leaf over it. O and another stick, maybe over here, connecting with this leaf and going behind this rose. Maybe we create some separation in between these roses by adding some green. It doesn't matter if it blends with the red a bit. It's okay. It creates more depth. It blends in the colors together, so it creates color harmony. Okay. And if you want, you can go even lighter by adding more yellow. Just a tiny bit more yellow and some white. Okay. And go even lighter. Let's add some more white to make it even more light. Even more apparent. You can add some leaves. Notice how easy it is to just build a lot of layers and a lot of depth with just three beautiful colors. We've changed this color just a few times, and it already looks like so much complexity has been done. And all we've done to achieve that is add just a few more colors. Just touching the left side of the leaves and in some areas, creating new ones, like, let's say, over here next to this beautiful rose and another one just here to cut that shape that was sticking out. Can also add some highlights, go with the finger, create some texture, add another one just over here. Just sticking out. If your colors are too intense, try to add a bit of brown to it to really cut that intensity out in order to create more pleasant colors so they don't scream at us. You can also use this to calm some areas down. You can take this color, take some water, and do that trick with the water once again, creating more flat colors. Creating some more flat colors. Okay. Let's let this dry completely, especially in the roses areas because you the leaves because you need to add a bit more highlights to the roses and also some color variety because this looks all the same. It's all the same dark red, all the same pink. So you're going to do some washes, some interesting play differently with the paint. If you have a hair dryer, just go with the hair dryer and dry it in like 10 minutes it's completely dry. You will also need to clean your brushes thoroughly. 10. What you have learned so far: Have felt at some point, like you are not doing the right thing or you should be doing things more carefully. And that comes from the fact that we don't tend to give ourselves this much permission to really go ham, to really do interesting things on the canvas. But it's important that we let go of these emotions and play and let go of the end result and really start to see what's going on. Let's recap everything that you've learned until now. You've learned how to build a basic sky. Notice that the sky is now on the bottom. Let's turn it around. Just like that. It doesn't matter which way it's up. This painting can go any kind of way. So you've learned how to make a sky, but then you painted over it. You added new colors, darker colors. You've also added some splotches of red, and then some oranges. You've transformed those abstract shapes into beautiful roses. Now the next step will be about the focus, the central focus of the painting, which in my case, is this one. But in your case, it might be here or here or here, and it might look way different. But these principles work as well. So you're just going to add, for instance, if you have a red rose in the middle in the center, you're just going to add some more highlights onto it and add some more color variety. In my case, I'm just going to add this define this white rose, maybe make another interesting flower that's a bit more white. And while I have that color, just touch up these ones, but a bit more abstract because these are not the center of interest. These can remain like that. Well, this one, no. It's too flat. It needs either a darker shade or a lighter or both. So take your brush, squeeze some of the water out onto the side of the container. Take some white. Can take this white, even if it has a bit of green into it, just the tiniest amount of green. And then some yellow and this will be the highlight for the white roses. It's a pink that has more yellow into it and just the same. Onto the left side, turn your canvas how it feels like it looks the best. And remember, this is the left side. So let's add some of these highlights. Left top side, left and top. Let's add some of this here. It's very intense. Doesn't matter. Okay, let's add some of this here, maybe here. And it's a bit more different than just a few touch ups. It's a bit more different than the rose, but that's no problem because look at this. Take some water. Take a bit of red if you still have it. Take some water and a bit of red, just the tiniest amount, brush it on the side of the beautiful plate, and then go over these areas, just a tiny bit over them. You can also create if it's too intense, you can also create some shadows with this newly found color. Can go with your finger just to create more color diversity, you can also clean up the brush and blend in a bit of this white. You can even pick up more if you want and blend it in with that watery rose because that rose that red that you've just put in is so wet, is going to blend super easily with with the white on the brush or on the area. So now you've just integrated that. And now let's take a bit more of this light yellow. Let's add a bit more yellow into it and some more white and let's add just a touch over here to create some interesting looking shape. And maybe this color looks good enough to be a flower on its own. You can also go notice how this color is very yellow now. And you can also now create some interesting highlights onto the yellow orange roses. Not thinking too much, just adding color. Add more water to the color just so it creates interesting cuts. Now, of course, it's going to look out of place. But as you did with this rose, now you can clean up the brush a bit. Just a tiny bit. Take some water, take some red. Well, some yellow, and a tiny bit of red. To create a little bit of an orange, wash. And then you can go right next to these areas. You can also create some highlights with this color if you want. Let's add it here. So we add some highlights, and maybe over here, not so much. Let's erase it maybe over here. Yeah, that looks fine. You can also add some Oh, no. You can also add some highlights over here, maybe. And blend this in with a different color. Maybe add some of this here. Okay. You can also take some more red instead of the yellow orange that you've created and go into the red areas with the swash, the red areas of the roses, next to them to add more color variety. Don't worry. At this point, it's just watery goodness. It's fine if it's very, very watery and it has a yellow streak. It doesn't really matter. And now let's build this middle of this rose and the side. And maybe this one, let's not make it so hairy. Perfect. Now, take your napkin. A fresh one. Fresh napkins, everyone. Fresh napkins. We have fresh napkins, three at the price of one. Fresh napkins. You don't need to take water. It's already watery. Now just try to blend, just a tiny bit. Don't go overboard. Try to blend some of these colors. Look at how beautiful and complex it looks. And now you can blend if some areas are too harsh, you can blend them together. If two areas if some area is not really defined, you can just blend it in just so it disappears. Blend in. Don't go too hard. You need to have some of these areas just have like an edge, the edge of the petal. Okay? You can blend. Look at how hairy this one looks. Let's just take the brush, take a tiny amount of water, and make it less hairy. Maybe some paint. Okay, can also add another highlight. So napkin action. Just brushing it off, just so you can blend discolor a bit. Don't go overboard with the blending because then it looks undefined and boring. Notice that it's even the more you let it dry, the harder it is to just find areas. With some orange, you can go back with some red, take some water, and some red, and not only use the brush as a empty vessel, but also with some water. So you create more intentionality. You can go over the middle rose and add some bounced highlights onto the left, onto the right. Maybe something is reflecting. Maybe this rose is reflecting. You can do the same on the orange roses. You can add some more highlights, some transparent, translucent highlights. Don't worry if you go too light on some of the roses, you can always go back with some darker color and accentuate those beautiful colors. 11. Roses focus point: Let's clean up the brush a bit more thoroughly this time. Let's take some brown. And unfortunately, we do not have red. We need to add some of this red. Back in. Let's take some brown and some red is a very dark color. Squeeze it out of the brush, add some water to it just on the corner, and start adding some very dark areas. These are especially nice around highlights onto the right of the highlights. Notice how much more texture it creates. Maybe I'm just going to add another one here. And another one just over here. You can go a bit more red. If you want to create a lot of this is a secret to creating very contrasting and very vivid colors. If your colors are a bit muted and you really want to add in the center area of your focus of your painting, if you want to add more intensity, this will really make it pop. You just add some clean with a clean brush, some red, some of this wash of red and it starts to become even more. And you can add two or three layers if you want to create this wonderful red hue over the darker areas and even on the lighter areas. If you have an area like this and you want it it's too intense, you can just also blend some areas more into the dark see. And now you can do another trick, which is to change the hue. So you've made this really intense red. Let's take some blue. You might think to yourself blue. What? Why blue for roses? We don't know. Let's find out. Well, I know, but you're going to see what's going on. So very watery. Okay? You can also test it out on a side. It's too intense. So let's brush it over the napkin and then take with the corner of the brush and do the same thing. Just play. You can also take it from here and play it around and add some more interesting color variety. Just adding some more darkness, blue darkness, coldness. It will dull down that pink. It goes very well. Over the orange as well. You can go over this. Notice how it changes this to a little bit of a purple hue. You can even add some red over it to make it a bit more integrated if you want. So let's take the example of this beautiful rose over here. Let's add some blue, and notice how the shift in color created a different type of rose. Let's add some red over it and maybe some brown let's clean the brush and start playing with some yellows, as well. You're just playing around with colors. Yellow, water, find a place to put it. Maybe over here. Okay. Clean it up a bit. And this is where the interesting thing comes in. Wherever you have big highlights like this, you can just change the hue of these highlights by making them a lot more yellow. Clean up the brush. It has too much yellow water. I can go over the areas over the highlights or even over the dark sides. Can go over some leaves as well with these colors with this yellow type of color. You can go inside the yellows, the pinks, all of the colors just changing some variety. I picked up some pink. It's fine. And after you've played around enough and you feel like the roses and the things are perfect just the way they are, and you don't know what to do next, 12. Contrast and focus: Don't have to let it dry. You can just clean up the brush, take some white. Make a very light pink or very light white, depending on what you have. What kind of rose and add over the top the highlights once again. Just to blend in those washes, you're going to notice that if you pick up some of the color, it will go so interesting into the highlights. It will blend so nicely into the highlights. Let's add highlight over here. Let's make this rose a bit bigger. Let's add some of this highlight over here as well. You can also add a few flowers like this, but that will mean you are going to need to make more shadows and more interesting things. Let's add this highlight onto this flower as well over here. And, of course, let's add it over here. Even though it's not really the color that it's needed over there, that's fine. You can adjust the hue. If it's light enough, you can just adjust the hue at some point. Notice, all of the work has been done over here. That's because this is the focal point of the painting. And that's one of the biggest tricks in painting. You place a lot of interest in the focal point and the rest can be abstracted away. 13. Tinkering : Cleaned up the brush just so we can do some more leaves. Some more light colored leaves. Take some yellow, blend it in with some blue. This is a lot of yellow, very yellow leaves. Just because we don't have a lot of yellow going into this painting. So let's also add some highlights with this color. Notice how much more light this is. Take some water as always, and you can blend it in just a bit on the side, or you can just create another leaf like over here. Create some sticks as well. And the leaf. It pops up so much because you have this interesting area that you've created of darkness, of dark leaves. And just a few of these lighter leaves will just create a beautiful, interesting look. Notice how we've just added another hue and that's how simple it is to change things around. So you had a darker one, the middle dark, then the lighter one, and now an even lighter one just to create a lot more interesting shapes. And at this point, you can just stop right here if you want. You need to let it dry, and that's all you need. But you can do something more interesting, which is let it dry completely and then try to step away for half an hour or 40 minutes or an hour and then go back and look at what you can do a bit more refined. What you can really put in that will change the whole situation. Like, look, this flower is too empty. It's not connected to anything. So let's add another leaf, maybe one behind it. Can always go back and create a darker green Even though if it's not exactly the same color, that's even better because you can now really focus and build those shadows this time. Let's build shadows onto some of the lighter leaves. Shadows on the right side, of course, shadows, shadows. And you can also take some water and go ham with the sticks. Go crazy with the sticks. Can add some highlights and shadows to the sticks, as well. This is a very hairy situation. Let's give it a haircut. Okay. Let's add this area needs a bit of a leaf, maybe a bigger one, and then another one just over here. Let's give it a haircut. And maybe a stick like this, a leaf, leaf another leaf going down. So you see you stand up a bit, you look, and you notice that this rose is too flat. So you add a leaf over it. You add a leaf over here just to bring that in the background a bit more. You add a leaf over here. At any stage, you can go in with different types of things and really create and recreate that edge. Like, notice that this is not very defined. You can redefine it with some leaves or you can go back with the reds and define it that way. 14. Finer details : Let's, in fact, go and see if we have more red, and we do. So let's clean this brush a bit. It should be a bit cleaner. So one way is to cut, cut the edges, which is called negative painting. That's one way to refine things. Another way is to work on the object itself, which means you're just going to take some of that red and redefine this shape, maybe over here as well. See? And then go again here. Maybe this one has a darker spot like here, and maybe some of this blue doesn't need to be there. This over here, and you can clean up the edge of something very easily by going as close as you can, not focusing too much on the color, but going as close as you can with the color and adding some of that edge back to the colors. If the highlight is too bland, too intense, to too organic, you can just add and look around. Lo where this color is found on the painting, maybe over here, and maybe over here, you can also at any point, add new things like flowers, like small dots, like another flower, well, not a flower, but a petal. Okay. So to change, you can always go with negative painting, which means just cutting inside of the edge of the shapes. These are just shapes, abstract shapes. We define them as being roses just because we know what a rose is. But if you played enough and roses did not exist, you would come up and understand how to make this sort of spiral looking thing all on your own. But because we know what a rose is, it's even easier to create it and flowers and things like that. And let the mind play and really try to see what's there. Why is this shape like this? Why is this interesting? Why is this so textured? It's like candies. 15. Thinking like an artist : Let's add another leaf here. Instead of looking at your painting and saying, Oh, what's wrong with it, instead of that, ask yourself this better question, which is, what can I add? What is something that I can add? And what is something that it's missing and where position it? Look where it's missing. And once you do that, you will understand at this point that painting is all about asking the right questions and letting yourself do and paint freely. The right questions would be, what can I add? What stands out to me and shouldn't stand out? What if it doesn't stand out, what should stand out? And you ask yourself, What color is there? I have green. This is too flat. What can I do? Can add another different color to unflatten it. The response is very simple and easy. You just listen to the words, say the sentence out loud. This is too flat. Add another. This is too round. This is too you go flat. What's flat? It's too uniform. The color is too uniform. So the more you go and be more specific, the more apparent the answer is. Like notice this is too gray. So it needs more color. See? It's like, No, no, this is too red. It needs more orange. You question, is it too much of this, too much of that? And then you ask the second question, the follow up question, which is, what can I add to make it different? To make it not so red. And the answer is just a yellow wash. Okay. If it's too much, too much, what's the question here? What's the problem here? It's too much water, too much yellow. So I cleaned up the brush and I take it away. And then now it's too little water. You can even go as far as to put the water down, clean up the brush, then take some water and blend it in you can just play around and see what's going on, see what's happening. Notice I've picked up some of the green and it looks interesting on the rose. So I'm going to add it intentionally. I picked up some of this green from this leaf. So I'm actually going to add it intentionally. Just because it gets a bit of variety, builds a bit of variety. This is too round. What can I do if it's too round? What's the opposite of round? A square. Okay, let's square this down. Okay, see. Now, it's too close together, too, you know. Let's add a break right over here. Now, this break is too dark. What can you do if that is too dark? Add a highlight. If you have some white still left, some of this light color. Perfect. It just goes in the background a bit. Now, it's unblended. Let's blend it a bit closer. It breaks over here. Now, let's add this highlight over here as well, maybe over here. And then whenever you have paint on your brush, ask yourself where this color can go and where does this color belong somewhere else? What area can this color be in? And would it look great? Would it look good over there? Like, for instance, some red. Where does red belong here, here, here. So here, it's not so red. Let's increase and create some more color harmony. You can also go over the highlights to dull them down. If you dull them down too much, you can go with the finger. Well, it was still wet. Doesn't matter. Right, over here, maybe 16. What have you learned Thank you: Painting could have been a painting of oranges or apples or anything else. You can really use your imagination. Have a few reference images to really understand how to paint that form. Just simplify it in three beautiful steps, dark, light, and highlight. So you have a dark area, a light area, and then a highlight. And it's the same everywhere, dark, light, highlight, dark light, highlight. Simple, and not all of them need to be treated in three different light shades. You can leave it just light and dark and then create some color variety inside of the shapes and inside of the things to create this interesting looking painting, roses, apples, whatever you are painting. That's just about it. At this point, you can go back in with some blue if you really want to but it's not really needed. It would really make this a bit more interesting. Like, for instance, if you take and create some of this blue, but never put it around here because it's going to be very obvious. Just put it over here. I will really push the things forward. But then you have to go back with some leaves over that, so those marks are not at the front. Remember, all the marks that you make last will be the last thing that is going to show up and touch the eye of the viewer. So be careful not to do the background at the end. Or if you do go back and add some of the same color, like, for instance, in this rose and add it over so that it really creates an edge over the color you've just put in the background. Okay. Now, thank you for watching. Thank you for taking this course, and don't forget to leave a review and see you in the next one.