Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hey everyone, My name is L. In this class I'm going to teach you how I painted this bouquet of flowers in a vase. I am using golden fluid acrylic paints, but feel free to use whatever paints you have handy. I used a variety of filbert flat and round brushes for this painting, as well as pallet paper for my palette. This is an 8 by 10 inch canvas, and I also have water and paper towels to clean my brushes. I am going to list all of the paint colors and supplies that I used for today's class. In the About section below the video, I will also attach a photo of the reference that I used for your class project. I would love to see your version of this painting or a similar one. You can take a picture of your painting and upload it to the Projects and Resources tab, which is located below the video. All right, let's get started.
2. Block in the Colors: To start off, I am going to squint my eyes when I look at this image. And I'm going to just look at the large blocks of color. So I'm not thinking flowers, stems, vase. I'm thinking big blocks of light and dark. So that's what I'm going to start to block in at the beginning. And then as I move through the painting, I'm going to go down to the medium details and then the smaller details. So I'm going to make a quick sketch and just block in my colors. So I have turquoise, yellow, and red to start. I also have some Payne's gray that I'll be using. I'm going to grab I guess just a little round brush that I have here. A wet my brush a tiny bit so that my paint is really loose. And I want to just sketch in a simple composition. So I'm just thinking simplify, simplify, simplify. The vase and the image is kind of curvy. I'm going with a very simple vase shape, just something like that. And I'm going to just put in the placement of my flowers during the flowers first because this yellow, yellow, orange, it would look really ugly if I put it in over green and blue. So I want to get it in here first on the nice white canvas, and then paint my blues and greens around it. Because this paint I'm using is pretty translucent. We'd really effect that having a blue underpainting or green under painting would really affect the color of this yellow. If you're using a thicker paint, you might want to go in with your background first, it's totally up to you. My reference photo is just a reference. I'm not going to paint every single flower exactly the way I see it in the photo. I'm going to maybe paint most of them. I'm not trying to match the shape, so I'm just trying to get organic shapes in here with my brush. I'm not even using the tip of my brush. I'm dragging the side of my brush along the canvas. A bunch of red flowers. And here too, not thinking details. At this point. Just big shapes of color, big blocks. If you do too many, you can always paint some green and blue over these. That's much easier to do than doing it the other way around. I also like to have some of them touching and overlapping and helps to create that sense of depth and dimension. You don't want everything placed side-by-side. All right, so that would be a block in for the flowers. And then I'm just going to rinse this brush a little. I'm going to use the same brush though. And I'm just going to put a background color in my vase. There was still some orange on my brush, so my blue's a little more desaturated, but I like that. I don't want it too vibrant just yet. I'm just same, same process. I'm just kinda scraping the side of my brush to cover most of the white canvas. Don't worry about any mistakes, don't worry about other colors showing through. You can always go back and fix things like that later. I find the less I tried to worry about perfection, the happier I am in the end with the result. Don't set out to try to paint a masterpiece. Just practice and helps you. Just to feel a little looser when you're putting the paint on if you're not worried about every single brushstroke. All right. That's good. I'm just going to put in a couple of little stems. Don't really need to do this at this point. But it kinda just helps me make a visual, little visual map for myself. Putting a little red into the green to D saturate it a bit. There's actually lots of dark color in between the flowers. So well, I have my green paint. I'm just going to put in some of that darker green. And I'm going to even start to bring some of it down into the vase. It's okay that it's not dry yet. I don't mind. My greens and blues get streaky together. Remember the reference photo is just a reference. Don't try to paint it exactly as you see it. Make some different greens with whatever I have on my palette here for some variety. All right, and I'm also going to block in the background color. And then I'll start to do my layering. Think for the background, I'm going to go with Payne's gray mixed with some white and turquoise. Puts, put a little turquoise here. Might even keep a little red and yellow on my palette. And in case I want to desaturate it a little bit. In the photo, it's darker gray here on the right and a little bit brighter here on the left. The table's a little brighter. I'm not sure if I'm going to have a clear line between the table and the background are not am I just have the whole background blur together. But in order to make my, my flowers really pop, these bright yellows look really bright. I'm going to put some desaturated blues and greens behind it. If you use a very bright background, then your flowers might not look quite as vibrant. And sometimes to make something look more vibrant, you add something like desaturated next to it. I'm going to do a little more red and yellow. So putting some orange into my blue is helping to decrease the saturation. I'm getting a nice darker gray. I'm not worried if I ate and go over some of these stems because I'm going to layer them. More anyway, but I am going to be a little more careful around the flowers. And I am going to paint the sides as I go along. I don't like to do that at the end for some reason that's just kinda personal preference. Two more Payne's gray, I'm just trying to get different variations of this same color here, but not, not exact. I want the background to have a little variation. Kind of some gradient. You don't have to go right up to all of the flower is it's okay if you leave some white space around, because when we layer the flower is we can just make them a little bit bigger and cover that white part of the canvas. So I'm just gonna keep going. I want to make sure my paint is going on thick enough that I don't have any like white white spots that are parts of the canvas showing through. I'm still using a big brush. This is a size 12 brush because I'm not worried about everything being exact. I'm not going to use a smaller brush. I'm just going to fill in with this and I can always go back later and do some touch ups. There's going to be a lot more green in between the flowers. And so I don't need to cover every single little piece of the canvas right now. I just want to get the bulk of the background blocked in my sides covered up. And then I'm going to try to have a got a little bit lighter over here to the right, a little lighter and brighter. So I'm going to add in a little bit more of my turquoise here. I don't want it to be the same color as the water in the vase. So I wanna make sure you have something that looks a little different. And I think this is a good start. I'm going to give this a couple of minutes to dry. And I'm going to start to add layer number 2. So more details on the flowers, more detail in the vase. And possibly a shadow we'll see as we go along, if I think it needs a shadow.
3. Layer the Flowers and Stems: For my next layer, I'm squinting my eyes again and I'm looking for large shapes and the flowers. So you can see right here is dark, this is middle value and then this is light. Same thing with the red. There's dark in the middle and there's some light around. That is what I'm going to do. So I'm not painting every single little line and the flowers. I'm going to go dark, medium, light, as fast as I can. Glancing at the reference photo, but not doing anything to try to match it exactly. Same thing. And the vase here, right? Dark. And then this gets much lighter and there's some like whiter or very light green in here. I'm going to just paint a few of these stones, right? Not every single tiny little detail. So just think how you can simplify everything that you see in the reference photo. There's some blue in red. So I'm going to give it a different brush here. And I'm going to get a some, some clean red. And I'm going to mix a darker orange. Not even over mixing it. It's okay if I get some streaky lines and my flowers. So I'm going a little darker. I'm not trying to paint perfect lines. I'm actually trying not to. I don't want anything too straight or two geometric. Nothing perfectly circular. You'll want my flowers to have more of an organic shape. And I'll start to add a little bit of white and get that next layer of color. The shifts and color are what are going to give your flowers dimension or the shifts and value. So going dark, medium, light, trying to find the different colors all within the same flower and different values. What is going to give your flowers some dimension? I'm just kinda dragging side of my brush again so that I'm not not completely in control of it. I guess I want to make weird shapes and wanted to just kind of embrace what the brush does. While it's somewhat in my control. But I find that it's those quirky lines and marks that you make that end up. That's what makes your painting end up looking cute in it. It's what ends up making it look like. It's more your style. Just glance at the reference photo. Don't try to follow it perfectly. And I want some dark, some medium and some light on these white flowers as well. Now the red flowers, I don't know. I said white. Don't get too caught up in on one flower either. Just put down some paint and move on. You can always come back and add more layers. But it's easy to get caught up fussing over one flower when it really doesn't make that much difference. Once you kinda step back, everything sort of kind of comes together and you don't notice things that you noticed when you are right up close. All right. I think that's a good second layer. They definitely need some highlights and some areas, but I'm going to let everything dry for a few minutes and work on my vase and my stems a little bit more. Now, I'm going to grab some smaller brushes. This is a bright and a flat size 32. Doesn't really matter what the shape is. If you have round or filbert, just use whatever you have, especially with small brushes like this. I don't think there's that much of a difference in with the brush stroke ends up looking like. I'm going to put a lot of red into this screen just for some variety in my greens. I don't want to paint everything the exact same color. I want cool colors and warm colors. So some of my greens will lean a lot more yellow and some Molina lot more blue. I want to kind of fill in this top part of the vase here. It's very filled in up here. So I want to have some dark, some medium and getting lighter as I go down. But again, not, not trying to paint in every single one of these, just trying to get a general the general look, the feel that it's filled in. I'm going to start to be a little more mindful of some of these whitespaces near the flowers that I didn't cover earlier and fill those in as well. But I think I'm going to work on my base a little bit first. Things should crisscross. And you should have some some different shapes I going in different directions. And then I'm going to keep working on that. And I add in the stems now is a lot coming off the side of the vase. I know I'm using a lot of muddy, ugly green right now, but I will add some nicer warmer greens as I go along and some highlights on top of it. So don't worry if your painting looks ugly, all paintings go through a really ugly phase. You just keep working them until you make it beautiful or until you throw in the trash? No, you can always paint over acrylic paint. So don't ever throw it in the trash, just paint over it. And if you don't like what you made. But really if you think what happens with newer artists as they don't realize that it's normal for every painting to have a really ugly phase. And they stop there and they think they're just not good at painting. But that's not the case at all. It's not that you're not good at painting. It's just that you stopped too soon. That was something that I used to do as well. And I had all these canvases that I thought were failed paintings and I still have some of them. And when I look at them now I I realize it's just that I didn't know to push through the phase that it was in. And so it looks like an ugly unfinished painting, but it's just not done. So I'm adding in some brighter colors now. Bases a little wonky. Think I'm going to try to make some gray on the side so I can get the shape a little bit better. I'm just trying to make just kinda suggests the bottom of the vase but nothing. Nothing that's going to read to realistically just kinda some loose brush strokes. And I'll go over, layer over it a little. Something doesn't look right. You just keep layering. Let it dry, step back. And it's always a good tip. Walk away for a few minutes and let your eyes kind of refresh. And then come back. If you look at your painting from 8, 10, 12 feet across the room at a look completely different to you than it does. Like my face is about one foot away from this painting. And I know that it would look completely different if I took several steps back and raised my painting so that it was eye level with me standing. I do that a lot throughout a painting. Not as much when I'm painting on camera like I am now. Alright. I'm gonna stop working the vase because I feel like it might be overworking it at this point. There's a lot going on in there. It's all kind of mixed, but I like that. I'm going to add more green detail work up here. Now. I'm really not using the reference photo at all anymore. I'm just kind of doing what I think should look good. And I'm covering a lot of those white spots. And I'll also do that on my layer over my flower is at least one more time putting some some dark like a Payne's gray or your turquoise. Any, any kind of darker, cooler color and between our underneath and around your flowers is going to help to create a sense of depth. So I always try to do that a little bit. The warmer colors will come forward and the cooler darker colors will recede. And you'll get a more dimensional looking painting. Great. I think it's time for me to go back and layer my flowers at least one more time.
4. Add Highlights : I went to some freighter oranges. So I want to just get a fresh sheet of pallet paper. And that way I don't have to worry about mixing any greens or blues. And with my reds and oranges, really want my flowers to pop. Let's see, I'm going to grab a smaller brush. I'm going to try a round brush for this. This one is 3, might be a little small c, just going to wet it a tiny bit. And really just add more detail. Now I have a ton of detail and the vase, I might add a little more greenery and the top. I'm not sure yet. Hi Michael, or the background one more time. We'll just see as the painting moves along. And I just glanced at the reference photo one more time just to see where are the areas of light and dark are. And so there's definitely some some light spots. And I'm just trying to be loose with my brush. I'm not trying to create the shapes that I see in the photo. I'm not even looking at the photo anymore. I just know that I need to have some brighter highlights. And I also want to make sure as I'm going along, that I'm covering all these white spots on the canvas that are still popping through. I'm gonna do a few spots that have a lot more white in them. Putting the paint on a little thicker now, going to mix some orange is too much red, I think, and can use it on some spots. But I want to go with more of a medium orange covering the spots, the white spots on the canvas. So you can see the different values, right? The dark, the medium, the light. That's what's adding dimension to your flowers. A lot of people ask me or they tell me that their flowers look flat. And the answer is, you just don't have enough variety in your values. So you always want to make sure you're getting that highlight and shadow part of the flower. It's going to wait my brush a little. And I'm going to move back to some of these reds. Organic shapes. Don't want anything to be too circular. Cover those white spots. And see how they're touching, they're overlapping. That also helps to create a sense of depth and dimension. I used to be guilty of having all my flowers almost look like they're floating on top of the greenery because I was afraid TO MIX green, the greenery on top of the flowers. But now I would go back in and I would add some stems that cover little portions of the flowers and that makes everything look more cohesive. Painting flowers, I know it's hard. It becomes a little more intuitive the more that you do it. So the more you practice just like anything, the better you get at it, you're able to kind of see your mistakes. The more you practice, you start to see what your mistakes are. Once you can recognize where you went wrong, you're in a much better position because then you know how to correct it the next time or how to paint over it and correct it. I'm going to just stand back a little. Put in a couple of breeder pops here, almost white, light pink. All right, getting closer to the end, I think we moved past the ugly middle stage. I'm going to step back, maybe touch up the vase and probably touch up the background and then we'll see how it looks.
5. Touch up the Background: I'm going to go back to the background and just give it one more layer. Because I can see parts of the canvas showing through. Since I made sort of a gradient in the background, I don't have to worry about getting each part exactly. The same. Is it should just all kind of blend together. Once it's dry and it's a little more green than I wanted it to be. It should work though. Well, that's kind of ugly. Wait my brush on my paper towel and get something a little lighter over here. You can kind of, if you wanted to reshape some of your stems at this point to now's a good time to do that with your negative space color. I'm just going to touch up the sides since I'm changing that kind of a lot. Can you just go in, touch these up? Doesn't matter if you paint over them a little. Kinda want to add a little of that shadow in over here. I think it'll help read a little better. You don't even have to go all the way up to the flowers. You can leave some of that under colors showing the spot. So it kinda like how that looks right there. Get more of a gradient.
6. Final Details: I actually think, I think I'm going to go in here a little bit with a smaller brush. Get those little spots, and have that white canvas pumping through. I'm gonna do just a couple of touch ups and then I'm going to call this one finished. And a D saturate the screen a little bit. Do a couple of touch ups. Maybe add a little weight or some later. Pops in the v's. And I'm going to put a couple of pub-sub green touching the flowers so it doesn't look like my flowers are floating like I was saying earlier, right? It looks like it's, they're all layered together. A couple more dark spots. If you paint your own flowers, I would love to see them. I love when you guys post your pictures and the projects and resources tab below the video, makes me so happy when I see them. So please feel free to share your work. You can just click Create, Project and upload a photo of your painting. I'll also list all of my pink colors and supplies that I used for today's class. In the projects and resources tab below the video. And I'm calling this one finished. Thanks for watching.
Elle Byers, Artist and Teacher
