Bold Watercolor Florals for Beginners

1. Welcome Video: Welcome to my studio and welcome to my Skillshare class. We've got some fun florals to paint today and I'm highlighting a special brand of paints. But whether you have that or not, whether you choose to purchase that or not, I hope you join me. And these florals are geared to the beginner. But you can of course elaborate that and make it more advanced if that's the stage of painting that you're in. We do some color mixing. I offer some tips and tricks. It's a lot of fun. Let's get started. 2. Class Materials: I want to go over the materials that we'll be using for this class. I have designed it for beginners so that you don't need a lot of materials. But I am highlighting these Viva color sheets as the paints that I'll be using. And I just wanted to show you very quickly. We have I have an original set and a spring set. Predominantly, I used the spring set because it just has some gorgeous colors. And if you're not familiar with these, I would encourage you to check them out. I do have a link in the materials in the information in the class, but they're so easy to carry along. And the reason that's important is the more you paint, the better you will be at painting. Too often in our busy lives, we are away from RStudio. This is something that I can literally put in my back pocket. You could take a water brush along or a travel brush and a little bit of water and paper. And that's all you need. If you're out at a coffee shop or something, it's easy to get a little cup of water. In my class, I will predominantly use this spring set, but I also have an original set and they do have different colors in them. They're all gorgeous, vibrant, beautiful paints. And it works sort of Appeals, sort of like an ink. I really like these as something that I wanted to highlight in this class. As far as a brush goes, you truly only need to start with one. In my opinion, this is a black silver Voyager. By that, It's a travel brush. You obviously don't need to use a travel brush, but I love this. To go along with my paints. You can see how compact that is. But a size eight, if it's a good quality brush, will have a nice pointed tip. And I really love this one. So if you're interested, I will put that in the materials list as well. I also have a drafting pencil and a white eraser. If you do choose to sketch first on your watercolor, I would suggest you getting a white tip eraser just so that it doesn't leave those heavy orange marks when you try to erase it. I'm using Fabriano. £140 cold press. I really like the tooth that this paper has, and I have 11 by 14, but you certainly do not need this size. But in an upcoming video, I'm going to show you how to break this down so that you get that really pretty decade edge on the paper. That's really all you need if you don't have these paints, I would encourage you to just use what you have. I would encourage you to have a decent brush. You don't have to sketch anything before you paint. I most often don't, but I will in a couple of the videos here, just to demonstrate some of the steps that I'm making. Paints, brush, paper, little bit of water. I just have a small cup here and maybe a paper towel to blot your brush off when you need it and you're ready to go. Let's get started. 3. Paper Tip: I like to include as much information in my classes as I can. And some of that comes as little tips along the way. As you remember, we started with the Fabriano paper and I got a pad that's 11 by 14. I don't necessarily want to paint that large this whole time. I want to start by showing you a few painting tips. So to do that and not waste paper, I wanted to break them down into smaller sizes. You can see from a full sheet, I'm able to get four that will fit in a five by seven mat. But I want to show you how to do that when you have a larger sheet to get that decade edge versus cutting it with scissors. I simply folded my sheet in half each way, horizontally and vertically. And I'm left with one of the edges are one of the ends here. I'm going to fold that in half and carefully. Pull it down so that you get an equal crease along this edge. Make sure you've got that tidied up. And you can see because it's a heavier paper, it is very thick. So you have to push down a little bit to get that to start to crease. And I want to fold it the opposite way to reinforce that crease and make sure that it's even. And I'm just pressing down with my hands at this point. If you have a hard edge or something, even the side of a pen, as long as it's clean, you can press that down. Then to get that decal edge, you're going to hold it in a tent. I've got my finger here. And I'm holding this pretty stiffly, pretty strong. I'm going to let these other ends layer out. Then this is going to be noisy. So prepare yourself. You're gonna give it a karate chop, really, really strong and fast. And see how that breaks. Turn it around. Do the same thing. That's why you want to make sure you've got that crease. Then you've got that decade edge. And it will sort of come apart on its own. And you get that pretty telltale watercolor edge. I just wanted to share that before we start. 4. Test Drive: If you're using a new art material as these Viva color sheets were to me. I think it's important to try them out and see what they can do before you use them on a painting that you quote unquote, want to keep. I have two different packs here. I have an original set. This is a spring set which has some gorgeous lighter airy colors and also some metallics in the back, which I have yet to play with. But I want to just give you an example of how vibrant they are, how strong they can be. And I think that's important for you to try as well. So I would encourage you if you're using this set or any of the other sets for this class to do this with me before you start painting one of the projects. I'm just using some scrap paper, some that I broke down earlier. We'll just start with crimson. I've gone and done a color swatch on some of them so that I know what the color looks like. Once it's activated. Dip into the water and get, get your brush. Belly full of water. Just a little soft circular motion really is all it takes to activate this paint. I don't have very much on there. As you can see. I just touched into that little area. I want to show you how vibrant these are. If you want to get a strong punch of color right away, use that full strength. But as you notice, as I moved along the page and I had less and less pigment, the color can actually be quite soft and beautiful and transparent. If I just dip my brush back into water and not pick up any more pigment. You can see that you get a really nice transparent blush of color. And of course that's true for all of them in the pack. But I think it's important to see how your materials are going to behave in the painting practice. And as they dry, does dry pretty quickly. You can see how transparent that is with the papers. So that's a beautiful, even though that's a very strong crimson color, you can get a beautiful transparent blush out of that. That's important to know. As you're creating flower petals, for example, a sky, you would want to soften it perhaps towards the horizon. These paints can do that. I would encourage you to just try a few of them, play with them, see how they work for you, and then come back and we'll get started on our first project. 5. Color Application: If you're just starting with watercolor, I think it's important to understand the different ways that you can apply the paint to the paper. And so I wanted to cover just a couple of those that we may use in this class. You may use in years to come. If you're familiar with watercolor, this might be a good refresher for you, or feel free to skip past if you think you have already got a good handle on this. Watercolor truly is about controlling your water. When you can take that into heart and really internalize it. It makes a world of difference. I've got an expanded view here just so you can see, I do have some water here and my bladder. I'm going to zoom in so that you can see these techniques. But know that I've got water and blotting paper towel here as well. Couple of the techniques I want to cover are painting wet on dry. Using a dry brush technique. Painting wet into wet and then lifting. There's actually two different ways that I wanted to do this. Let's start actually over here with a dry brush. Because I've got dry paper. This is just a scrap piece of paper. My brush is rinsed in clean. I'm just blotting it off barely you can see. And we're going to take we use this deep pink color here. I'm going to activate that and just get a little bit on my brush. My brush isn't completely dry, but I think this will still show you the technique. Can give you a rough texture like that. It's one way to get something that isn't a completely smooth, make it look like a wash for example, the dry brush is meant to sort of give you some spaces. There we go. In the way that the pigment is laid down. If you can see that here. In fact, I had a little bit too much water in my brush still. But this might be interesting. I don't know if you were painting trees or even trying to leave some sparkle on a water surface, it just allows some breaks in the paint. Then if we work wet-on-dry, which is closer to what I actually did there. I've got some water in my brush. I'm getting some pigment. Just want you to see how that gets activated there. And I do want a fair amount of fluids so the brush isn't dripping wet, but it does have you can tell it's got a full belly of fluid. And that's where you get the most release of the pigment, where it's wet because the water is carrying the pigment onto your paper. So it leaves a really nice even layered wash on your paper. That pigment is nicely dispersed there. Now if you wanted to paint wet on wet, I'm gonna do that here and here because there are two different ways that you could do that. For example, let's say I have a small wash of color and I just want to add a little bit of dimension. So I'm going to lay down a little swatch of color. Make sure that is wet. The paper may soak the water up depending on what your environment is like. If you're in an arid, dry type environment, it can soak up pretty quickly. So I'm going to rinse quickly and say I want to add a little bit of blue to that. I want to just add a little bit of depth. I'm picking up a little bit of color there and I want this to be darker. Do you see that moving? Let me zoom in. See how the color. It almost grabs it from the brush and it mixes with what's already there. You can see the lines, those are the two colors blending. Now the blue is very, very strong, so it's going to take that over. I'm going to take over that red pretty quickly. But you can see how you get an irregular blending of the colors there. That can be helpful if you're trying to put down a shadow. Just a deeper color, a deeper shade of a color that you already have. Now, another way to do wet on wet is if you want something that's very soft, just a little hint of color. So I've rinsed my brush, rinsing my brush and guess the water is a little bit dirty, but that's okay. I've got a full belly of water in this brush. This is the belly of the brush. It is full of water and I'm just laying down some water. I'm going to zoom in again so that you can see that a little bit better. You see the light reflecting there. I've just got water on this paper. And there's so much water there, it's actually running a little bit. I'm going to spread that out. And when you want to paint, just leave a hint of color. This is a great technique to use. I'm picking up just a tiny bit of color on the tip of my brush. You can see that right there. And I'm just going to go around the perimeter a little bit and rinse the excess off of my brush. Now I just have water, clean water on my brush. I can just very gently pull that color so that it blends across the area that I have wet. The pigment will only travel as far as the water does. If you wanted a very transparent petal, for example, or showing perhaps a glass vase, a highlight on a vase. That's a great technique to use there. And it'll dry pretty quickly. But this is all a very gradual continuation of that color. Now another way that you can approach the transparent kind of look is similar. I'm going to apply just clean water. It does have a little bit of pigment in it. That's okay. This is just a demo. Now I've got a wet patch there. I'm going to get another little bit of that. It's a viridian, like a turquoise see green. I'm going to apply some. You'll see it's doing the same because I'm using the same technique as I did there. But perhaps this is a leaf shape and I want a vein or something in the middle. I'm going to show you I've rinsed my brush and I'm blotting it. I'm taking off the water. It's not completely dry, but it's mostly dry. When I pull this through, it's going to lift some of the color. You may do that multiple times if you want to have maybe another vein here. Do you see that little V? It's not going to go back to completely white. Many of the paints, watercolors that you use, these the viva colors are very strong. Your paper will likely not get back to white. But you can add some dimension by lifting some of the color. That's helpful if you just didn't want it to be quite that strong. While it's still damp. You can pull some of that color back up. Once it dries. You may have to re-wet the whole surface to do that. It's a little bit harder. Might still be possible. But these are some techniques that I think it would be helpful if you try. Before we go on to our next lesson. 6. Brush strokes: Okay, friends we talked previously about how to lay down pigment in a variety of ways depending on how wet the paper is. Essentially how much water you have in your brush. I think it's also important to learn what types of strokes the brush can complete. In this case, I've chosen to use just one brush and one palliative paint because I want to emphasize you painting. We don't need to get caught up in a million different supplies. They're all out there, they're all fun to get, but you don't need them to know how to paint. So this is an eight or a size eight round brush. It has a nice belly, which is this portion, and a really sharp tip. When I need to, I can make fine lines or I can make larger swaths of color with this brush. I think painting is sort of like putting together a puzzle. If I wanted to complete a painting like this, I need to know all the elements that I would put together. For example, obviously the stems are straight lines. These leaves and that sort of a Hey, kind of weed are similar, similar in that way, they're straight lines. The petals, however, how do I make this shape? How do I make a shape similar to these that I can put together to create a blossom or a flower. Let's work on that. I'm going to use this dusk orange in my color sheets palette because it's pretty brilliant and you'll be able to see that pretty easily. So I've got a damp brush, I've got some water in there. I'm just activating the paint in to make those simple kind of petal shapes. I wanted to show you that you would put the brush to the paper, pushed down and allow some of the paint to come out of the belly of the brush. And then lift up, push down, and lift. If you wanted that to be a wider petal, you could start at the same place in the top. Enroll the brush outward and lift. I came over in this direction. Let me show you that again. Push down. And Lyft. If I want it wider, pushed down, roll it to the outside and bring it to the center and lift. Notice I went back in and fiddled with it a little bit. I want to make sure that the paint has touched all the areas that I want. But I also want you to notice that this amount of variation I think, is what makes watercolor beautiful. There's a little bit more concentrated color here than there is here. And this will dry to be a beautiful transparent. And it'll almost sing, It's gorgeous. So let's try that again. I'm just getting a little bit of water on my brush, picking up some of the paint. Now, if you want to keep more of a contained flower shape, perhaps you don't roll it to the side, you just push down and lift. I want another petal next to that. Push down and lift. Now I want to show you another way to create a petal shape that we might utilize in our next painting. You can kind of use the belly of the brush, push down, roll it towards the center of the flower. That looks kind of irregular. I liked that. You don't have to be precious with the way that you create these flowers. As we create a bouquet, the petals will be sort of all over the place. They're not going to be tight. Little flowers that look like this. For example, that's boring. This is exciting. This is more like nature. For example. If I wanted to create a bouquet, we've done some petals there now, a stem. You can get a very fine line with this brush, depending on how much you push down. If you want a thicker line is I did here. You push down just a tiny bit more. There is a very thin line right here because I didn't put much pressure on my brush. Another trick in achieving that is to hold the brush loosely in your hand. Don't grip it very tightly. Hold it loosely. Barely touch the paper. And use your wrist to move. Don't rest your hand and try to draw. It's above the paper. Barely touching. I'm moving my wrist. You can achieve a really fine line with this brush doing it that way. Now we've already addressed some of the stem shapes. The last one would be leaves, which can be very similar to these petals. They could also be, for example, the stocks that I put in that other, that painting I just showed you. I'm just barely touching the edge of the brush down. This lesson is about showing you what kind of marks you can make with this brush. And I would encourage you to play with it on your own. You'll be surprised at what you can come up with. If you wanted sort of a stem of Timothy hay at the top. It's almost just a flick of the wrist. You get some of the edges, some of these fine lines look like a taus, taus all of wheat or some wildflower type stems. Practice with this brush practice these strokes pushed down and lift up, push down and lift up. You can obviously modify this. If I want to have a heart-shaped petal pushed down, roll to the side and lift up. I can show you these all day long. I want you to practice them and please don't skip this step because you need to be comfortable with how you're handling your brush to move on to the next lesson. So go do that and we'll come back and we'll look at some leaves. 7. Practice Leaves: You'll hear me mention as we go through the class that working through a painting is often like solving a puzzle, breaking it into pieces that you can recreate or mimic. And one of those will be leaves. Keeping this class to a beginner level, we don't do a lot of elaborate leaves, but I wanted to point out that in florals they may not be as simple as a tree leaf type of shape. I just highlighted a couple of them here that you may want to use or you may want to just practice to get a handle on these. And then you can develop your own. Depending on what flower you're painting. They may have very tiny leaves or fillers. It may be something like this with the iris that we're going to paint or in a peony, they're very large and floppy. So let's go over a couple of these really quickly, just so that you can see how I completed them. I'm just using whatever green you have in your palette. I'm using the spring set and still using the size eight brush. Now a lot of people might think that you can't get very small shapes. But I in fact painted that with this size eight brush. Let's look at this is more of a tree leaf shape. And I just started by painting a very thin line with the tip of my brush. To get that kind of pointed. Lay the brush down, push to the side and lift up, and then do that again in the opposite direction. And you can adjust if you want it to be a little bit more shaping. Leaving that whitespace in the middle if you want, you don't have to do that, of course you can fill that in. You can also start from the top and pull down. As I did with this small one. Sometimes I find it just easier to start from the stem so that, you know, it's the right direction, it's connected, for example. That's a very basic leaf shape. For these tiny ones. I have just the tip of my brush loaded. Again. I started with creating a very fine stem. And you're only using the tip of your brush, barely touching it to the paper. Right away. You have a nice little. It could be like a baby's breath type. Plant. Anything with tiny leaves, they don't need to be perfect. But it gives that indication. Now this is a fun one. You might see something like this on a peony bush or even around a carnation or something like that. Again, the straight line. And I'm going to try to do this slowly, but it's easier if you do it quick. I'm laying the tip of my brush down, pointing and kind of twisting the brush to the end. Then you can kind of go back in and clean up those edges. But it's just offering some irregularity which adds interest to your painting. You can also do it starting from the other end. So just the tip is touching. Then I push a little bit heavier, role the brush and have it meet at the stem. You can go back in and add a little bit of dark if you want to add some contrast. I tend to like to do that. Now, the next one you will see in our iris painting coming up. And you can do this one of two ways. You can start at the bottom, pushed to the side of your brush, so it gives you a wider stroke. And then sort of twist the brush and lift up. And it gives you that nice little tip at the, at the top because only your brush, only the tip is touching the paper there. If you want to fill in, you can see that some dry brushing there, I needed a little bit more pigment. Just simply go back in and darken that. And what that does also kind of makes it look like the leaf could be folded. There's a center that's lighter, then this portion is darker. And you can always add a little bit more to give it some more contrast. Alternatively, I'm just getting a little bit more pigment on my brush. You can start at the top and do the same thing pulling down. Now what I did here to make this leaf look like it's behind this one, is I just simply stopped. Where it meets. The way that you set them apart is through value differences. I'm adding a bit of dark in the back. That really pushes it behind this leaf. That's an interesting way to get some variety in your painting as well. Then this last one, you might find, again, peony or Carnation or just practicing different types of leaf shapes. I think it's fun. You could fill a whole page. Simple line to the top. At the top, I mean, you do want to make sure you've got a fairly loaded brush. I'm going to do that kind of rolling technique again, pushing it out and then lifting it towards the end. If you'll notice. I'm not really being particular and how this has shaped. That's the fun part. It's very organic. Then in the end, you can always go back and tidy up or smooth the edges if you want. But I think it makes it much more interesting. If once you've created it, you just let the watercolor do the magic on the page. Add a little bit of contrast here or there. By contrast I mean more pigment. And then just let that dry. So of course, you can add to this repertoire and do some more rounded shapes that might be like a eucalyptus. I would encourage you to just look in a book, look online at different leaf shapes. Gather a few examples that appeal to you that strike you as interesting. And just practice those for a little bit. I do this when I approached my studio and I'm not exactly sure what to paint. Sometimes I just sit down and paint a page of leaves. It's always interesting, It's always useful practice. I would encourage you to not skip this step. They don't have to be perfect, but it will give you some confidence in building out the whole design of a painting later on. 8. Snapdragons Initial Design: Okay, So in terms of our puzzle and creating the painting, we've practiced some leaves, leaf shapes and different blending techniques. We've practiced some petal shapes which remarkably can be the same as the leaf, just depending on the point and how rounded you want your petals to look. Let's put it all together. And we'll create something like this. So believe it or not, we're gonna go from these two this. Let's get a fresh piece of paper. Again. It's all practice. Everything is practice. As much as you can approach this in a relaxed manner, the better you will do. Now, these are intended to look like or to mimic snap dragons. I want to point out a couple of things as we start. There are multiple stems in this painting. There's one that even kind of flops over to the side. There are variations in color and the shading. There's color mixing. In some cases. All of that is okay. All of that, in my opinion, is preferred. It makes it exciting, makes it interesting to look at. So don't be uptight if the green happens to mix into the pink or a yellow color happens to mix into a petal shape. It's okay. It'll all be okay. We're going to start with I have the original color sheets and I would like to start with the magenta, which is this color here. I'm going to flip to that. I have some water and I do have some paper towel off to the side so that we can blot or blend if needed. Position that so that you can see what I'm doing on both sides. Just dipping into my water and getting my brush relatively full. I'm just dabbing it on the edge. So my brushes full of water. And I'm going to start with a very light shading of pink in some of the petals. I like to start something like this with a little bit of direction. I'm not going to paint in a full stem. I'm just going to give myself a little bit of a guide. I want one stem to come down that way, perhaps another to come over this way. That's all I need at this point. To create some of these petals in a Snapdragon at the top, they're a bit smaller than they are at the bottom. I'm going back and forth across the stems to give some variety. Now notice I'm just pushing down and pulling back up. But the petals are somewhat meeting here at the stem. I'm allowing some of the paint to get lighter and lighter. I have not reloaded my brush. I'm going to go farther taller than the stem that I sort of put in there as my guide. But again, I'm simply let me zoom in a little bit. I'm simply just putting my brush down and lifting up and creating a pseudo petal shape. Just like we practiced. Barely any effort whatsoever. Do you have to be exact in this know? Some of these petals kind of flopped to the side. Some of them are different shapes. We're going to fix all that later without picking up any more pigment. I'm gonna do the same on this side because I want some of these lighter petals on this flower as well. So already we've got some variation in shape in color. And that variety, in my opinion, is what makes the watercolor is beautiful. Again, I'm still not picking up any pigment. There's quite a bit still on here. These are very light. Hopefully you can see that where I've put the water down. I'm also going to add one over here. I'm not really looking back at my reference because I don't want to be stiff, I'm making a whole new painting. This one is going to be what it is. Now see, I just barely touched that and it bleeds a little bit, which is great. No problem. It's okay if you have some lighter petals in the background because we're going to add stronger ones over top. To add a little bit more variety. I want to flip up to one of the yellows. If you look here, I have a chrome yellow. And the yellow ocher. Yellow ocher is very warm. This Chrome is very bright. I'm going to back up just a little bit more so that you can see, I'm just getting a little bit more water on my brush. And I'm going to just get a touch of that chrome yellow while I'm working. Because when you add that to the pink, it's going to create a lot of vibrancy. I may have some solid yellow there. Some of the background. I'm doing this while some of these petals are wet because they're going to blend. And doesn't that look fantastic? It's just, it's beautiful. Add in a touch here, there. The petals again gets smaller. As you go up and potentially lighter. We'll see how it all balances out later. But with that yellow still on my brush, I can go back in to the magenta and pick up a little bit more. And we're going to get some more variation in color. That one's pretty deep. And I'm just toggling back and forth between these two stems. If you notice, these petals are not necessarily attached right there, there may be a hidden stem coming up behind. I'm just going to continue. Add a little bit more water to my brush and create some other bigger, lighter petals towards the outside. I know this is going pretty quickly, so if it's helpful, watch it while I do this first round. Then you can go back and watch it again while you're painting. Again. This stem is coming down here. This one's going to crisscross over here and go in that direction. I'm very generally following those lines and going back and forth between the magenta and adding in a little bit of that golden yellow. I want some deep colored petals. I may add a little bit more color up there. Maybe a touch over here. A little bit more water. We practice these strokes of just touching, pushing down and lifting up both in the leaves and the leaves and the petals. Now, I want to allow some of this to dry. I'm going to add just a couple more petals up here. To try to fill this out. I'm going to pause there and come back with the next lesson and we'll fill it up some more. 9. Snapdragon Additional Stems: To fill out these two stems because we've got a little bit more paper down here. I'm going to just touch into that chrome yellow just a tiny bit, and then go back to my magenta. I love how quickly you can flip back and forth and get some more pigment. And I'm going to fill in some of this bottom area because there's going to be a shorter stem here that comes right down the middle. So there's still going to be petals in this area. And typically, again, they're a little bit darker. Then they are up top. Those are quite yellow, which I actually really like. I did not plan that. But I'm going to pick up a little bit more magenta. And I'm going to sort of attach some of these a bit and add some on this side. Do you see how beautiful you can create this bouquet of flowers with just two colors. One brush and a little bit of water, which you could get at a restaurant, for example, if you wanted to paint while you're at a coffee shop, which is something really fun to do. Ask for a little cup of water in addition to whatever yummy drink you get. Pull these out and get started. This variation of just two colors. Look at how different there's very light pink, very dark. A warm sort of Fuchsia, golden yellow and really light yellow up here. That's the beauty to me of watercolor. I love seeing this come together. Add a little bit more water because I'm getting a little bit of a fuzzy look there. Maybe there. Let's move back up to the top. As I mentioned before, I kind of mentally visualized a stem of flowers here. A stem there. I think there may be a short one in here because I've got some color on my brush. I'm just going to make sure I've got a little water and we'll do another smallish stem right here. Maybe it kind of falls behind one of these. If you wanted to create a petal that looks like it's behind another one. For example, let's go right here. I'm going to zoom in just a little bit. I love that color. It's light. It's interesting, but maybe I just want a little pink peeping out from behind. I'm creating that shape, but I'm ending it at the edge of this petal. So that gives the indication that that one is behind it. And that'll dry a little bit lighter. Once it's finished, it'll look it'll make sense visually to you. I'm going to fill in just a couple more here and they're kind of look for some spaces. Because I love this light color and having that variety while I've got it on my brush. Let me zoom back out. Just like that. In a couple of minutes, you've got your first big puzzle piece put down by getting all of those petals in place. When we come back, we're going to add in some of the stems. I'm going to allow some of this to dry a little so that there's not too much blending when I add in green. But some of it may still be wet and I'll show you both so that you understand. Either is okay, it just depends on the look. Let's hop to the next lesson. 10. Snapdragons Adding Greenery: Okay, we're ready to add a little bit of greenery to this and make it look like it's a little pulled together. So I'm going to flip to the two shades of green that I have here. There's a light green and sap green. Again, I love these colors. If you don't have them, simply use what you have. Or you can hit on the link at the bottom. I've got these links in the notes. And you can order some for yourself and take them with you. Let's get a little bit of water on our brush and we'll start with the light green. I'm just loading so that I have some on the tip of my brush, you can kind of see it there. I want to give the indication of some stems. So I did that over here. Make sure you can see that there. I'm just adding in a little bit of green color here, there. Now mentally, I'm thinking this stem comes down and curves this way, which would be natural. Doesn't have to be perfect. I'm just laying that in behind most of the petals. I don't want this stem to be the star of the show. I'm allowing it to just be behind some of the others. This one comes down this way. Again, I'm just barely touching with the tip of my brush. There's an indication of the stem. It doesn't have to be perfect. And maybe some of the petals go out that direction. This one might come down here. One way to do that is to, without touching your paper, just follow that line. Does that make sense that a flower would sort of bend that way? I think it does. I'm going to pick up just a little bit more pigment here and do this last one. Just an indication. I've done this after most of these petals have dried, but it doesn't have to be. For example, maybe up here. Now that's not still wet. It prevents the green from blending with the other colors. But again, I don't, I obviously don't mind the blending. I think it's beautiful. I want to add just a little bit more green to balance this composition out. And snap dragons often have some little buds sort of sticking out of the top. I'm just pushing my brush down on the side and allowing some color to come off. Maybe there's one out here or a leaf. It's adding some variety. And it's adding some amount of realism to the plant. I'm sort of picking and choosing the elements that I want to have incorporated into this painting. But you can see I've essentially got three stocks here. Now, these petals aren't necessarily just floating out in space. Maybe give some indication to that there's a stem coming off. That one perhaps doesn't go all the way up to the top. Look at your painting in sort of balance where you think it needs something to ground it. So too many of these, for example, look like they're just floating. Perhaps you need one there. I want to add a little bit of contrast to this green too. I don't want it to all look so bright green and fresh. I like to add a little bit of dark. I've just used a little of the sap green where this was still wet. It will blend a little bit or you can just go in and mix and grab both on your brush. And you get sort of a combination of the two. So don't be afraid to play around a little bit and see what you think you like. You may not like these colors mixing. To me, that's what makes this painting. I love that. Maybe I want a little bit darker green. Add a little variety to the top. Typically, I'll go back and look at where I've got enough contrast. Maybe that's a little too dark. I can lift up on that a little. Yeah, that's better. Pull some of that color away. I'm doing this with you real time so that you see actually how I'm painting. You may choose to paint differently. And that's perfectly okay. That's what it's about. I want maybe these to mix a little bit more. The stems look like they're a little fuller. I'm just going over them again in some places with some more color. Look how quickly that came together. Ten minutes or so. Not including my chatter box. Let's pause there and let that dry a little bit and we'll come back and see what else it needs. 11. Snapdragon Final Touches: Here's our finished piece from the project, and here is the painting that I had done previously as and use it as an inspiration. I never intend to exactly copy another painting that I've done because what I've found is in doing that you lose the magic that this painting held. Now these are comparison looking at them two different styles really, this one is much looser and fuller. This one is a bit tighter. I did use colors from the original color sheet pack for this one. And for this one I had used the spring set. You can make adjustments through your color choices, through the way that we placed these petals. These are much freer and looser. Perhaps it's not as Snapdragon stem, maybe it's just a big bouquet of flowers. What I want you to understand is that it doesn't have to look exactly like this for it to be beautiful. This is another iteration, if you will, of a bouquet. And I like this one just as much. I want to encourage you as I'm teaching you how to paint. I'm not necessarily teaching you how to paint like me. I want you to paint like you. You're going to bring your own special touch, your own color choices, your own flair. That's what will make your paintings beautiful, and that's what will keep you coming back to paint again and again. Now I just wanted to point out one thing. If you did want a tighter stem, kind of look, you could go back in and adjust just a few of these flowers, for example, and connect the petals a little bit more. That's the only difference here. It's not true with all of them, but there are a couple of indications where the petals meet in the middle. So I would encourage you to re-watch the lesson and do it again. Practicing is the only way to get better and no one is ever perfect. Let's move on to the next lesson. 12. Peony Background Petals: For this next lesson, let's paint a basic peony. So we've been focusing on painting some bold vibrant flowers with this Viva color sheets. But I wanted to demonstrate a peony because they can be both bold and very soft. And I want to show the versatility of these as well. One of the aspects of these packs that I find really interesting and helpful is that in the very back, there is a space where you can mix colors. I've often just done it here on the sheets that separate the color sheets. And you can see there. But there is a much broader mixing palette in the back if you need to. What I would like to do is start with a very light sketch of a peony and show you how you can make subtle, subtle petals in the background or throughout the flower. But then these colors sheets allow you to give a vibrant pop as well. We're going to paint a pink peony. I've got the spring set that I'm going to work from. You could also use the original if that's what you have. But this one has some beautiful pinks that we've worked with. This gorgeous happy yellow still have a size six or eight brush, whatever you have, it's a round brush. Just one is fine. You can use either. And my water and paper towels. I'm wetting the brush. I'm going to dip into this. Let's use the cherry blossom again. Just a tiny bit if you can see how very little it will take. And I'm going to go ahead and use this back mixing palettes so that you can understand how it works and how you can use it when you're out and about. You can see it repels the paint, it doesn't soak it in. Basically. If you wanted a soft, soft color, use very little bit of paint. Pick up very, very small amount of pigment and use a lot of water. I've dipped into my water a couple of times here. To paint a peony. The shape has some, it's not always a rounded petal. It can be a little bit pointed in the back, so I'm using the point of my brush. I'm laying it down and I'm kind of zigzagging it up and down. That you get a few of those little kind of not jagged really, but it does have some definition. The layers of a peony. I'm going to rinse quickly and block some of that out and pick up some of the color in blended at the bottom. Most paints and new beginners I find don't use a lot of color on their brush. They're a little bit hesitant. It's hard to avoid with these color sheets. They're so vibrant and beautiful. I'm going to go back and pick up a little bit more. And we're going to just sort of add some layers to this, this peony. So if you can imagine this is the back. The center of the flower will be maybe here. If you don't like how that, that look, you can go in and layer a little bit over top. I'm going to pick up a little bit more pink. See how that stays pretty fluid on these mixing sheets. So that's the benefit, that's what you want. The shape of the flower is fairly large. I'm going to continue some of these petals over this way. And I'm just gently pushing up and pulling down. I'm rinsing that color off. It's so strong. You really don't need much at all. Now, if I even wanted something even a little bit lighter in the back, I've got enough color on my brush still that I can add some other petals in the back, just layering up behind it. Essentially. You're just trying to capture the essence of the flower, the shape of the flower. It doesn't need to be perfect. Going to pick up a tiny bit more. And I want a petal that comes from the side towards the center. You can turn your paper if that's easier for you. This kind of lays down a little bit. It's flopping over to the side. And another in the front. And I'm doing this all with that first dip of paint. I haven't reloaded from the color sheets. Still have that same diluted pink. Pick up a little bit more. I am going to turn it so I can get the shape of the petal that I want. These are in the front. These are facing towards you, kind of laying in the front. Then I'm going to add one more over here. Mostly water. Picking up just a tiny bit. You can see that still very liquid. I'm going to add actually two more because I want one sort of to the side here. And leaving a little bit of whitespace is perfectly fine. Add a little bit more water. I'm going to lay another one in right there. Now I want to show you very quickly. If you want this to be much more vibrant, rinse your brush and just barely damp. So I blotted a lot of the water off and go back to your color. That cherry blossom. Just with the very tip. Pick up just a tiny bit. While this is still wet. Along the edge. You can add in just a little highlight of a pink. Kinda gives some more definition. Even if it's dried a bit. I'll show you how you can sort of blend that out. I've rinsed my brush, look at how much was still in my brush. Blot it that off. I'm just tickling the edge. Pulling that color down, softening that just a bit. I'm going to do the same over here. My brush isn't full of water. Damp. It does have some water in it, but it's just enough to activate that edge and soften it. You can see already, just with one little dab of color, how we can get very, very soft and transparent petals and more vibrant ones all in one go. As this has dried, this is much softer in the back. If I wanted to sort of reactivate this layer of petals because the peony has, is it opens it sort of like an onion. It's got multiple layers. I'm just going to dab just a tiny bit again. Or in fact, we can go back to our mixing page and pick up just a little bit of the diluted color. I really love how there's a little bit of whitespace there. I'm not going to destroy that. I'm just going to go in and emphasize one layer of petals here. I'm rinsing, blotting, and softening. That's essentially what we're going to do as we build up this flower. I'm going to let this dry for just a moment and we'll come right back. 13. Peony Foreground Petals: Another aspect of these colors sheets that I want to show you is depending on how you mix colors. As a painter. These sheets can lend to either way. So for example, while my, my watercolor is still wet on the page, I can add in some other color to blend actively while it's still wet. Or you can mix here on this color sheet in the back. Let me show you that quickly. I really like to add in just a tiny bit of warmth. This pink is pretty. It feels cool to me. I'm dipping in my water. I'm going to grab again just barely a touch. Just the tip of my brush is activating that paint. And then watch when I mix it in here with this pink. Grab a little pink, you get a nice warmish, almost a peach, which is gorgeous with this color. Let's add a little of that into the center with our next layer of petals, just to give it some interest in diversity. What I really like to do is emphasize the edge of the petal and leave some of the center transparent. And I do that by laying the color down, rinsing and blotting my brush and then picking some of that color backup. You can also use wet that use a tissue and block some of that color in the center. The BACC sort of shines through. You can do it either way. You can also add that warmth by letting it mix on the page. If I picked up some of my bright pink, flip back to that. Lots of water on my brush because I want this kind of soft, just barely touching, getting a little of that pink and a little bit more water. I'm going to layer over this petal who, that is so bright. So pretty though. Now notice I'm pulling the edges of each petal towards the center of the flower. I'm not just sort of layering squares. It is a sort of a petal shape. They all come to the center. If I wanted to add a little bit more variety of color there, I can pick up that peach color. Just touch into where it's wet. You can see that sort of blending with the pink. The color will blend where there's still water on the page. That gives a very organic feel. It doesn't feel forced and tight that way. That's a great way to get a little bit of visual interests without being too tight in your painting. I'm just going to continue and add a few more petals as we layer this in, just so that you can see how these can layer over top how you can blend with them. Get that transparency that I love. And I'm just dabbing in the center, leaving that perimeter intact there. They do dry pretty quickly as well. I've just got mostly water on my brush, but because the colors are so vibrant, it doesn't take much and I'm going to layer in some at the bottom again. So I'm going to turn this. Notice these petals don't extend out quite as far, sort of overlapping the ones that were there. I'm allowing some transparency there in the center as well. Let that golden yellow shine through. I like the subtle differences. If you ever need more, of course pick up more color. That's usually, as I said before, usually new painters don't have enough color on their brush. With these paints. It's easy to get it. Just kind of emphasizing the perimeter there. To have some definition. To lift some of this color, the center is still needs to be wet before it dries completely. You want to block the center of those petals out? I'm going to grab just a little bit more of that yellow mix up some more of the peach because I really liked that warmth. I'm using cherry blossom, just a touch. And happy yellow. I'm going to put the cherry blossom down on my mixing sheet. Grab a touch of the yellow. It's a little bit more yellow than it was before, which I like, I like the variety. And I want to emphasize this petal. So you just look at the design and have some of that warmth come down into the center of the flower. Add another right here. You can continue layering this. As much as you want. Some peonies have tons and tons of petals. I'm just trying to give you the basics here so that you can build your own flower. Again, I'm getting that center wet. I'm going to blot it out. I want to add just a little bit more. It looks a little bit too regular. What I tend to do is with some very, very light amount of color on my brush. I want to make it look a little irregular. I may highlight another petal in the background over here. By just going mainly around the top of what would be a petal. And then you can rinse and just use plain water to allow that to blend. I'm not touching this petal. I'm stopping before I get there. You can even block some of that out. Then. I want this to be very large or larger up here than down here. So maybe just one more. This is where you may want to have a reference photo and I can attach one of those. I'm not currently looking at a reference photo. I like to paint peonies and I kind of know what they look like. So I do this pretty often. But if you love the shape of one that you see, go ahead and snap a picture. These can be very, very subtle in the background. What I'm going to do is get just a tiny touch more pink. And I want to show you that technique again where I highlight the petals like this. I've got just a tiny bit. I'm using this mixing sheet in the back to block some of that off. Because I want it to be very subtle and where this petal is still wet, I'm just touching the perimeter. And maybe just a little over here. Just a tiny edge. Rinse your brush, blot it, then pull that color down. You need more water to soften it. Just dip your brush in clean water. You do have to move a bit quickly, these dry pretty fast. But you can see right there, it just adds a little bit more dimension. Little bit more visual interest. It implies all of these petals folding in. I'm going to let that dry and we'll come back and finish this off. 14. Peony Greenery and Final Touches: I was thinking it's helpful to pause at some point and see what your design looks like. As you can see, all of these petals are coming into a central point right about here. And that would be the deepest part of the flower. So if we want to emphasize that a little bit, I would I would take a little bit more of the pink whatever mixture you have in the back. If it has some yellow in it, that's fine. The flower is sort of a bowl, sort of a deep bowl. So it's going to kind of rest in here. Now if you notice, I do have some whitespace. I personally prefer that. I love that kind of highlight an irregularity. But what I might do is just bring some of these petal edges down. Just a little bit. Sort of emphasize where the center of the flower is and give it some depth. It doesn't take much, not much at all. I'm barely adding any color with my brush. And I'm not disturbing that white spot. But it's sort of provide some definition then that all of these bottom petals are curving in. These top ones are curving down and around. And in fact, if you wanted, you could even indicate that with a few lines. Add those, and then soften that pretty quickly. Again, this dries pretty fast. It provides a little direction then for the AI to understand that this is how the petals are laying in this flower and where the center is because it's a deeper color. You don't have to do this part. It depends on how subtle you want to have your painting. I like to have a bit more contrast in mind. As we named this class. These can create some bold paintings. We're going to use that to its full effect. That I love, that. You can just add a little bit, just tiny touches of definition to some of the petals. It doesn't need to be a full outline. You're just giving a little indication of where a petal is compared to the next one. Right away. That looks like a full Peony. To finish that off. Cash, it's gorgeous, gorgeous pink. To finish that off, you would maybe want to add some leaves. Let's flip up to our, Let's see what this lemon grass green looks like. That's really bright. I don't know if I want to go that far. Maybe mix it with this foliage green. That's a little bit more realistic. So again, this is where your mixing palette comes in handy. Both of those are a little bit Stark in terms of color compared to what I would want. You can just mix like this going back and forth and have those colors on your brush. Or you can utilize this page. What I would do here is to kind of tone that down so it doesn't look like kindergarten, bright grass, green. You can always add in some of a complimentary color, which for green that would be red, were in fact using a pink. You could just get a touch of that pink that we've been using and pull that back. It tones that green, write down into something that's much more realistic, gives you a little bit of warmth. Looks, It's still vibrant, but it looks more realistic. Let's just add maybe there's a stem right here. The underside of the flower would be where there would be a lot more greenery holding that up so the stem would broaden. You can indicate that there, but we can also add just some indication of leaves. I like to keep these loose. Let me demonstrate that again. I've got a little paint on my brush. I'm gonna come out from the tip of the stem up at the top and just kind of give the indication of the shape that I want. And there's an example of some of the dry brushing. It makes it look interesting. I'm not going to touch the top part of that. I like that. Additionally, I hope you can see this on the camera. There's some of that bright green and then the warm green and it's mixing while it's on the paper and moving. That makes it look more interesting as well. I would encourage you somehow use more than one color when you're doing this. To me, it's just, it adds so much to the painting. Maybe a leaf right there. Not a perfect leaf shape doesn't have to be. I want something very dark underneath that pink to make it pop. I'm just adding it while it's still wet. I'm adding a little bit more of the dark green. If you want to define the leaf veins, you can do that while it's still wet. Extend this May 1 be a little bit more. Remember the more irregular it is? In my opinion, the better because then it is reflective of nature. If you really wanted something dark, they've got a beautiful midnight blue. This palette. And if you drop that in there and let that move around, you're gonna get some nice color variation when it dries. And that kind of indicates a little bit of shadow makes the eye move around the painting a little bit. I just want to show you really quickly because I love that contrast that we just did there. This is very muted in comparison. If I want my focal point to be about here, I want to punch this color up a little bit. I might go back in and pick up some vivid red to mix with that pink. Let's see what that does. That's a little orange ear. But it's definitely can be darker. You may want to add in just some touches. You can continue to layer darker and darker. As you paint. It's difficult, very difficult to go back to white. In fact, with these inks, you won't do that. I have yet to do that. But adding that little, little bit of contrast right there, kind of rounds it out, doesn't it? If you want to soften that, you can in some places gives it a lot more dimension really quickly. That's one way to paint a peony. I want to see your way if you complete this project, please upload a photo for me in the class under the projects. And if you have questions, tell me what you had trouble with, Tell me what you liked. I'd love to see what you've done. 15. Poppy Flower Design: For our next project, we're going to paint some beautiful reddish orange or pink poppies. Poppies are one of my favorite flowers. They're so soft and vibrant and strong all-in-one. And that's one of the things I love about them. The structure is sort of loose, so the petal itself, the bloom is very soft. It's not always very defined. What I've found helpful is to pencil in just a little guide. I seldom paint over a drawing. I typically just go for it and paint. But in this case, I want to give you a little bit of a guide. And all I'm doing is making a very, very, very loose, sort of kind of a flattened oval or a wide oval, I guess. Just to give me some indication. Because what I found with puppies, as you can tend to just go all over the place and the flower loses its form and structure. Just for my eye, if you can see there, I've only put tiny pencil marks. I want one flower roughly there and another sort of roughly over here, directly under it. For example. Then maybe we'll have a bud or something as well. I'm going to use my spring set of the viva colors this time. Mainly because there are some gorgeous reds and pinks in here. I don't know if you can see those. That array right there. All of that is what we're going to use because they're so beautiful. The saffron is absolutely gorgeous. What I like to do is add variety in my paintings that way through color. I'm using just a wet brush. You can see my water, it's clean, clean water. At this point. We talked about making strokes that lay down. This one is going to be very loose. I'm going to just push and wash some water roughly around that shape that I just put down doesn't have to stay within it. It doesn't have to be perfectly oval. In fact, I want the petals to have some, some sort of shape and structure. You can see there the paper is pretty wet. I'm going to start with this cherry blossom. You can see how vibrant and pink it is. I'm just getting a little bit of pigment. And what I want to do is put sort of a light wash underneath the back. This will be the back of the poppy. And I want that a little bit lighter than what will be upfront. That is very, very hot pink. Maybe that's a little too strong. We can use our lifting technique where you have a damp brush and you pull some of that pigment up from the center because I don't necessarily want that pink all over. Now what I'm going to do is go back in with this vivid red. It's much more of a burgundy. And watch how this plays over top. When it dries, is where you will see some really fun things happen. Think about the shape of a poppy. I often like to look at some images of real flowers, not paintings. Before I start painting. That I have an idea of the shape that I'm going for. Just adding a little bit of that deeper color along the edge. The edge of these petals can be relatively, I wouldn't say rough but irregular. And as that color comes down, I want this area to be softer because I'm going to add another layer of petals in front. I'm softening this up just a bit. I may even grab just a little of this saffron because it's very warm. And it will add another dimension to this flower. This is the center of my flower here. I've got petals kind of flopping to the outside there. Love that, love how soft that is. The trick is knowing when to stop. I'm going to let that one dry. There's a little blue mark there. That's okay. Start on this next flower because we're working from back to front. This is the back side of the petals. We're going to add another layer here. Let's do the back side of this flower. Now I added a lot of variation with three colors here. Let's do that again on this one. Maybe not starting with the cherry blossom because that's sort of a neon pink. We could use the burgundy and add in some orange, perhaps. That's gorgeous too. So you can see the color right there. I've got more water than pigment on my brush because I want this to be lightly pigmented. I don't want it to be super-strong. Laying the brush down and just kind of moving it around the page. Now this is a little bit different than what I did up here. I added water first and then the pigment. You can do it either way. Because I want some back petals to be very light. I'm just going to go ahead and push that over to the side there. You can always add some later too. But I'll show you how I'll define this. Once this dries, I do want a little bit more red than pink. I'm gonna go back up into that vivid red. Grab some of that and just along the tops. Because the water is going to carry that pigment down. Maybe that's a back petal already. It kind of look at the shapes that you have there. Kind of what makes sense. So maybe there's one already here. It's defined that way. This is the beautiful thing about watercolor. Everyone thinks that, oh, I made a mistake, I can't fix it when actually you can. But it's not a mistake. It's going to look beautiful when that dries. We haven't defined any shapes really yet. This is just putting down some layers of color. Again, I'm just trying to keep the center of the flower a little bit lighter than the rest. The same that I did up here. I want that to be softer. Because when you look at poppy petal, often there's some transparency there. It just looks really pretty that way. I don't know if you can already see how many colors there are in there. That's just gorgeous. That's nearly dry. I'm going to give it just a little bit more time. But I love how this has blended in with the pink already. I'm going to stop there for a moment and come back and we'll do the next layer of petals. 16. Poppy Adding Petals: These layers actually dried pretty quickly. Once I complete this, you'll be able to visualize where I'm going, but I'm going to add another layer of a petal right here so that you're almost looking over the top of it into the center of this flower. I want that to be a little bit stronger color because it's in front. I'm going to use the vivid red, not a ton of it to start because I want to kind of lay out where this might go. I really love that. I can see that transparency right there. So I don't want to lose that altogether. So maybe the beginning or the top of this front petal is maybe there. And it overlaps with that one. Then a puppy is sort of a roundish, like we said, sort of an oblong oval type shape. There's one side. I'm just dabbing and getting a little bit more paint. And I'm using the side of my brush and sort of laying down and pushing towards the top. Maybe this one kind of falls off right there. I don't know if you can see where we're going with this now, but this is then the bottom of the flower and it's going to be behind this one, which is really cool, makes it look like they're smushed together, which often happens with puppies. I'm rinsing my brush a little bit. It's got a little bit of pigment. But I'm bringing that top pigment down to complete that petal shape. I'm allowing a little space in there and you'll see why in a moment. I want to show some of that dark black inner part of a puppy where the seeds are, maybe the stamen. I'm carefully just going around the top of that one. What I love is how in just one or two quick strokes that covered up all of that space and there's still some variety in the color there. And it's okay along this edge. I'm just cleaning that up a little bit so that it's not so obvious. I don't want white spots there, but it doesn't have to be perfect. And that contrast between the light and then this is a darker red will be really beautiful when it dries. I'm just dabbing a little bit more water because my brush dry it a little. Getting a tiny bit more pigment. Because I really want to emphasize this front petal. I want it to be more red than pink. Maybe even it's got a little flop out there that looks a little bit better even. See you can correct as you go, nothing is permanent. Completely. Once more of that red. I'm even going to flip over. Don't be afraid to use more colors. That's what makes it interesting. And grab a little of this burgundy, right? Wow, right along the top of that. Just along the tip. That really makes it pop. So color gets all the credit. But value does all the work. The value is how much darker that color was. The burgundy is a step change darker for sure. Then the vivid red that I was using. I want to do that again over here. It really makes that edge stand out. I'm rinsing just a little bit to get some of that off my brush. I want some water on there and I'm barely touching where I've put that pigment to get it to move. I don't want to destroy this, this effect that's happened here because I think it's beautiful. This is a little stiff. I'm going in and touching the edge and pulling some of that pigment down. Because my brush has some water in it, the pigment will move. It just breaks up that harsh edge a little bit. Notice I didn't cover all of that petal as if I were coloring it in. We want to avoid that. That's what makes a painting look flat. That's what makes it look boring. I like the variety of when the pigment has its own chance to dance on the paper and move around a little bit. That's what I'm letting it do. I'm letting some of these transparent areas shine through. That gives the petal some vibrancy that gives it depth, that makes it look real without fussing over it. I'm going to pause there and let that dry. And then we'll come back and do the same with this one. 17. Poppy Color and Shading: Okay, If you're painting along with me, you know how very little amount of pigment we've actually used will be picked up much color at all. And look how bright and gorgeous these are. This is my second flower. It's going to be in a similar configuration. I sketch the belly of the flower there. I'm going to allow that one to be sort of a petal behind, if you will. It's sort of flopping behind it. Another layer. But I want to go a little bit warmer. So this is mostly pink, similar to this flower. I want some of that orange in there. I'm going to start though again with the vivid red. There's variety of color here, but you also need some continuity. I'm going back and forth between these colors and just letting them dance on the page. For this, Let's see if that's the center. I want my petal. Maybe sort of dip down. That's nice. You can see the center there. Then maybe it comes up a little bit and then down again. They, some of them have a pointy kind of sort of like that edge. If the bowl of the poppy, the bottom. You don't have to exactly follow your pencil marks, but it's something around there. Kind of just sketching it in with my brush to see how that would look. I'm just pushing up a little bit of water to keep this area wet. That that pigment keeps flowing a little bit. Yeah, I liked I liked that. That one's behind there. Maybe I'll push this out just a tad bit more. Then down. You want it to make sense, but it doesn't have to be perfect. Hopefully, realize by now. I don't paint perfectly. Before I finish that area. I mentioned I want to grab some of that orange, the saffron, just a tiny bit. I'm dropping it into where there's already some existing color and then just pulling it back up. Notice I'm not being super precise with my brush. I'm not being super tight. I'm letting these colors play and dance. On this page. That's where you'll find the magic. I do want a little bit deeper color. That's a little too bright for me because I want a little bit of contrast. I'm going to just get a tiny bit of that burgundy. And typically along the bottom, maybe there's a little bit of a stronger color. Or if you want to emphasize that edge at the top, like, I really like how that turned out. Can add some there that I'll tone down that orange just a little bit. Because the paint is still wet. It will continue to mingle. Just straightening up that edge a little. That adds some depth to I'm rinsing my brush off, plotting it, and I just have a little, little bit of a bloom down here that I am not enjoying. Going to try to smooth that out a little bit and add a little bit of that pigment, kind of blends it in and then your eye isn't so focused on it. This hard edge up here, I'm just barely with the edge of my the tip of my brush. Just tickling that color to get it to move. I'm going to add another little petal behind here because this looks a little awkward that that one's flopped out there. Let me grab. The Cherry Blossom was sort of our medium color. Just gonna get a light amount of that. I've got a lot of water on my brush. And I just kinda want to put another floppy petal back here that comes around and balances this out a little bit. Notice I worked around the top edge of where that would be. Maybe we'll just define this a little too. It'll make more sense visually. I'm cleaning my brush, blotting off the excess water. With just water on my brush, I'm going to use the edge and roll up into that color and allow it to drift down without touching the top of this petal. I'm just allowing it to move to soften that edge. Because I want to create some contrasts there. I'm going to pick up a teeny tiny bit of that orange and drop it in there as well, and it'll start to blend down. It'll create some warmth. That pedal instead of just being hot pink. Very carefully, just going up to the edge, softening those colors together. Then I'm going to stop and let it dry. 18. Poppy Check the Design: I am loving the way this has turned out so far. I want to add in puppies typically have a black center. I want to add in something deep in here so that it shows that you're looking into the flower. If you'll notice this brings set doesn't have black. Most of them don't. You could certainly makes a black. But I want to show you it does have a midnight blue, which is very, very dark when it's concentrated. By concentrated, I mean, a tiny bit of water on your brush and more pigment. It's not a fluid wash. It's not very watery. I'm just going to dab that in right above that front petal using those little marks that we talked about in the beginning, how your point of your brush can make little dash marks. Essentially. I like that there's some of that white showing through. You may cover it as much as you like. But the fact that this isn't true black also helps let the AI play with that so that it doesn't look flat. It's deep and rich, but it doesn't look boring. I'm just dabbing a little bit of color again and adding it in that way. Maybe if you extend out beyond, certainly it would be deeper and darker towards the center. But that's essentially all you need are a few dashes like that. We can do the same here. Midnight blue. I'm turning it so that I don't so that you can see what I'm doing. I'm just adding some dashes in the center, then allowing those to come out in a direction towards the top of the flower. All of a sudden. That looks like the center of a puppy. It's very irregular, It's very loose. Some of the marks are smaller than others. Don't be so tight and nervous about it. Just let that play. Now that we have that. I want to add just one more really soft petal over here that just looks a little irregular to me. When I'm looking at the whole composition. Petal on the back there and this one and that kind of flops over. I think I need just a little bit something more. And I'm actually going to start by rinsing my brush and picking up just a tiny bit of the orange to start with because it's going to be lighter. But that will help balance because the orange is on this side of both flowers. I went a little bit more over here. Maybe it just comes around just just enough. Right there. Kind of looks like it's just flopping open, if you will. We could do the same up here. Actually maybe there's just a tiny, tiny bit showing on this one. You see how you can do this. Either way. We laid in the back petal first and then put the front in. But you can also add more behind it as long as you don't touch the paint that's in front. I have clean water. I'm just pulling a little of that orange color down. I want to add in just a tiny bit of that vivid red. Just to give it some continuity. Again, I want this all to go together. Just that is enough to sort of balance that composition a little bit better. Same with this petal up top. I just want to soften those colors. And that's okay. If you catch some of that, What's gonna make it pretty keeping it loose. But notice I I do want to keep the inside a little bit lighter. Then the outside. I would encourage you to get a feel for how much color you like. And notice how little it actually takes to make the impression. I'm not putting very much on here at all. That color will blend and move. It does such beautiful things. I want to keep those petals a little bit lighter. I want to go crazy to make myself stop early too. I don't want necessarily true white paper, but I want that lighter. There. I liked that composition a little bit better. I may even add, you could add another one over here. But you get the idea. I want to let that dry just for a moment. And then we'll add the stems and maybe a little bud just to complete the composition. 19. Poppy Stems and Bud: I think we're ready to add a bud and some stems. I'm going to flip to my greens in the spring set. And we've got a foliage green and an olive green. I'm going to start with the foliage. Sorry, I've just rinsed my brush. Blot it it off. So it does have some water in it. And I'm going to activate just the tip of my brush because I'm only going to use the tip to make a stem. I don't want it super loaded. Just want a tiny bit. You could certainly use a pencil if you wanted to sketch. For example, in this flower, the center of the flower is about there. The base of it is somewhere down here behind this front flower. It would likely come down. Maybe that way. This one, the base is somewhere around there. They're kind of floppy in terms of stems. And then maybe, maybe there's a bud that comes up this way. And they tend to kind of like flop over. So that's just a guide. You can do it either way. I'm just going to add some green. I'm using a very light. I'm kind of keep my hand moving. Almost a sketching motion so that that line stays very thin. You wouldn't, for example, want to put your brush down and push very far because that will widen the stroke that you're putting down. Just like we practiced at the beginning. I'm just very, very lightly sketching those in. And if we have a bud that comes up here, it's going to go, maybe the stem goes behind this flower. Maybe it bends like right there. Now this is a little bit bright green for me. I'm going to pick up with my wet brush some of that olive green. While this is still moving. And tone that down just a bit. You do what you like. It could be yellow, the stems could be purple. Totally up to you. Having multiple colors though, I think is interesting. And it makes it look more painterly and artistic versus cartoonish and colored in. While that's still wet. You can see that happening. I'm allowing some of that green to mix. Maybe it is lighter in some places. But what I don't want is for my eye to be drawn down here for a light color. I want my eye to stay up here where the flowers are. Just adding a little bit of depth. Trying to hold my hand to the side so you can see the same with this one. I don't I don't really care for that. Bright green. Didn't know that when I picked it up. So no harm. Just do another color over top. Puppies if you know, have some little they're not. It's like a little fuzz sort of around the edge of the stem. So it doesn't have to be a perfectly even straight line. Honestly, I probably wouldn't fuss over it that much except that I'm trying to show you and I know some students like detail. I want to do a bud up here. I'm gonna go back up to my pinks because I want some of that to show. I want the bud to show through. I'm going to pick up some of my vivid red. And the buds are kind of, they're heavy. They're rounded. And it's hanging down. Getting that angle. Kind of right is important. If you wanted to keep some variation in there. Just dip in a little that saffron. If you're learning anything, I hope it's that you can mix colors on the paper. And I want the depth of the color back towards the stem. I think it would be darker, so I'm just pushing, I'm just pushing that pigment back. As I do that, it'll tend to dry back there versus here at the front. We're going to add a little bit of greenery around this, so no worries about that. You don't want that definite hard edge there necessarily. To me, it's okay if you see some amount of the green blending with the stem of a flower, that's just the way it works. Even carrying that orange or the red down into the stem can do that. That adds some other color variation. And it will sort of soften that green because it's more of a complimentary color. It's going to cancel it out a little bit. While that is drying. I want to show you another option for these center of the poppy. If you wanted to, you could use a micron pen. This is 0.5. You could do the same, make some small marks. It depends on what you're more comfortable with. If you're a purist, you would stick with the watercolor. Either one works. That little bit of pen and ink, I don't think will cause any worries. I want to soften this front just to give it a little variation. I'm just lifting a little bit of that pigment. I would take a tiny bit of the olive green just to sort of wrap around that bud. I'm picking up just a little bit. And it would have sort of the foliage still coming up around it. In places. Maybe even at the top. I think that's all you need. You could go back in and tweak some little areas. However you like. Add a little more contrast to the stems. Maybe. If you wanted to create this on frame, something frame bubble. Maybe think about extending the stems a little or moving the whole design up higher, just so that it fits in something that looks compositionally correct. So if I were to put a mat around this, there you go. All right, Let's let that dry and we'll move on to the next project. 20. Purple Options: Welcome back friends. For this lesson, we're going to paint purple iris. I've had a lot of requests for those, but before we jump in, I wanted to just go over a couple of things. I have been using. Both of these sets, predominantly the spring set through most of this class. And whether you're using this or any other kind of paint, any other kind of watercolor paint. I just wanted to highlight a little color mixing. I chose to do this so that I could select the purple that I wanted out of this range of color. I actually, purple is not one of my favorite colors to mix, the one that I prefer. I guess I just wanted to see what the range was. And you can see there is quite a range depending on whether you like it to be a little bit more on the pink or red side, or lean a little bit more blue. Doing a color swatch like this will give you guidance on which colors you're picking up and how much of which when you're mixing them. Just really quickly. For an example, the indigo blue mixed with any of the reds in this spring set. Really kind of, even when I tried to punch it up, I get a much pinker type of purple. But when you look at the cherry blossom with the ocean blue, it's really vibrant purple. Contrastingly. If you move to the original set, the blue and pink or blue and red pink options there really lends itself to a more muted type, indigo, a little bit bluer. I actually prefer these. But when I look in nature, what I'm seeing for an iris lens itself a little more along these lines. So we're gonna go with some of these colors in this spring set. The second thing I wanted to show you is I did multiple examples of this before. I wanted to record this lesson. So I would also encourage you to do the same. Whether you've painted these or not, you get better each time. You might find intricate things like the way the color breaks here with the blue. I just absolutely loved that. I loved the contrast in those leaves. This one, I really like how that petal was predominantly blue. I just was feeling like pushing it a little bit more towards the blue tone. In this one, I really liked the transparency of these petals and how deep the center of that flower was. So think about some of these aspects they may or may not happen exactly the way that you want. That's why you paint multiples and you just keep trying. The last thing I wanted to talk about before we start is I mentioned at the beginning of the class, one of the items you may need as a drafting pencil, this has a really fine tip so that you can apply a very light sketch before you start if you so choose. I actually, for this one, I'm going to zoom in here and see, you can just barely see that outline. I actually used this colored pencil, so similar to colored pencils that you get in a pack. Only It's variegated, it has multiple colors in it. It's a tritone. I've never had this particular brand before. I just happened to see it. And what I like about using this, even a pale yellow or a very light green might work. Is that when you watercolor over top of that, the line just completely disappears. You will not see that after you've painted. Whereas sometimes, especially if you're a bit more heavy-handed, typical irregular lead pencil, that line could possibly show up. It's just a little tip. You can choose to do with that what you will. I didn't include this in the materials list because I honestly don't even remember where I got it. But I'm sure if you did a search, you could find something like that on the internet. With that, let's move on to getting this iris started. 21. Beginning Iris: I mentioned in the previous video some color mixing and that I'm going to stick with the spring set and just covering this in case you skipped over. What I liked about one of my practice, iris were these really transparent petals. So with that in mind, I'm not going to exactly copy because I've got a different shape, a different layout of an iris here. But I'm going to use similar colors. Go for that transparent type of effect. I've got my color sheets here. I'm going to mix some of the cherry blossom and, or actually really liked this burgundy. Let me show you how that mixes with one of the blues. I'm just getting that wet. I'm going to activate some color and I'm going to use my mixing palette back here in the back. I've got a little mixed up there already. No worries. If you'd like, you can always just wipe that off with a tissue. Just get it wet and it'll come right off. Then if I mix that with a little bit of this ocean blue, It's my gosh, I love this color, so vibrant. I get a really beautiful purple. If you prefer. Bluish purple, add more blue. It's as simple as that, but mixing purples can be difficult. So that's why I recommended doing those swatches before you get started just to know what you're dealing with. Sometimes reds can be tricky. If the blue has a mixture of colors, it might not end up the type of purple that you want, essentially. So the way that I'm going to get that transparency that I mentioned, I'm going to start on the center petal here is I'm just going to lay in a light wash. I already have a little bit of color on my brush, but even if it's clear water, this is actually a good thing. Either you can kind of see what I'm doing here versus just plain water. If you can see I'm just adding some water throughout that whole petal. And this is called a wet-in-wet technique that we've covered that at the beginning. If you wanted that even a bit lighter in the center, you can add a little bit of water and just lightly blot with a tissue and it'll pull up any of the color that you've laid down. I've got essentially that whole area is damp. It's not running with water, but there is a fair amount on there. I'm going to start at the center because the center of the flower seems to be typically the darkest. That's where you see the most contrast is the petals come in. I'm just going to touch. You can see really quickly how that starts to bleed up. And I'm not going to fuss with it very much because that's the kind of effect that I want. I'm just adding a little bit more blue just because that's my preference. You don't have to do that. The magic of these color sheets is the colors kind of it's almost like chromatography. They separate as they move. And if they haven't moved quite enough for you, I've just got a little bit of water on my brush and I'm just barely tickling the top of where that color ended. And pulling it a bit more forward so that it extends up to the top. And already you can see here how the blue is coming separate from the, the mixture. You can always go back in and add more. If you'd like it to be a bit darker. I'm leaving the base of this kind of irregular because I have a petal here and a petal here that will come in and meet at the center of this flower. Even going to add a touch more blue again, this is all preference. You paint your flower the way you like it with the colors you like. This could be orange if you prefer. Maybe it's a tiger lily. I'm teaching you the techniques and how to paint. But I want you to make it your own eventually certainly feel free to copy this because that's how you learn. But your natural style will start to come out. I'm rinsing because I want the top. First. I'm going to just smooth that edge. Just a little bit. I mentioned before, I don't want to fuss with this because as you can see, it's doing its own magic all by itself. If you wanted to move a bit more, you can tilt it in the direction that you want it to go. I want to add just a little bit of color at the top before that dries just a tiny bit. So I'm just picking up a little bit of color on my brush at the tip. I like that kind of it just sets it off. I'm not carrying that color across the whole petal. Just enough to give the indication that that's the top. That's where we're gonna stop with this one. It's tricky. It's hard to know when to stop, but always stop a little bit before you think you should. Because you can always add more. But more often than not. I'll speak for myself. I keep going, keep working, keep just touching and mixing a little bit and it destroys the effect that I'm looking for. I'm going to let that part dry just a little bit and we'll come back and do these outer petals. 22. Blurring the Lines : Let's jump back in and we'll do this side petal here. And I want to show you another way that you can get some of this transparency. On my brush. It's not fully loaded, but I have a fair amount of pigment. I'm actually going to drain a little bit of that off because I don't want it to drip. And I'm going to very quickly outline or lay in the edge of that petal. The way I want it to be. I'm sketching with my brush. You can do this free hand. You don't have to have sketched before, which is the way I typically work. Especially if I'm out in nature. Then I'm going to rinse fairly well. Just get try to get a little bit of clean water on my brush and just touch it off and come back in and tickle that edge. That's another way that you can address getting this transparency. Because there's clean water in the center. It's going to be very slightly tinted because this pigment will continue to move wherever the water is. But it's not going to be loaded with color. I'm very, very gently. I know I'm moving quickly, but very gently without disturbing that whole outer line. Just touching on the interior of it. And it's activating the color that's already laid down. I'm being careful not to touch that first petal. And maybe it's a little bit deeper color down here. So it's okay that the color is settles. If you wanted to highlight that even more. So perhaps this outer, the center part, in this outer part, maybe there's a little bit more color going on. You can lay it in that way. I've got some different shading there. I've got a little bit more of the red. Again, my mixture, I'm just picking up a tad bit more blue. And I'm going to mix that a little because I don't want it to be solid blue when I put it on my page, you could. It'd be fun to see what happens right there. Now we've got a second petal. You can decide either way if you want to fill with water first, use this approach for this petal on the left, I'm going to do the same. It's a little bit more blue, which is fine. I'll just pick up some of my color here. I like the blue. I think bluish purple is just such an elegant, rich, royal color. Gorgeous. I've tilted my paper so that I can address this a little bit better without putting my hand in front of you, the viewer. But certainly do that if it makes it easier for you to paint. There's no rule that says the paper has to stay this way. You move it around to however you're comfortable. I've wet my brush and rinsed it a bit and I'm just going in and touching the edges. Pick up maybe a little bit more of that pink. And of course that petal doesn't need to perfectly match this one in nature. Very few things are exactly symmetrical. The color variety, the color depth, so the richness, how dark it is. I think that's all what makes everything beautiful in nature. It makes sure I want to look at this even more. So as we're painters, we try to attract someone to stop and look at our painting into view it and to see what we see, feel what we felt when we painted it. Notice I didn't color in I'm not coloring in a space. I've left all of that white and I'm just going in with some clean water now. And connecting those two sides because that will maintain the transparency then in the center. Just as I deepened that portion, I want to do the same over here because it's my preference. There's no rule. I'm just picking up some color and touching it in. Maybe you wanted the tip of this one to be a bit darker. It's all up to you. You're the designer. Again, I love how this kind of grew up. So I'm going to just tilt and let that move a little bit more. While I've got this running here, I'm just going to come into the base of this just a little bit. I am a fan of blue. I'm not going to apologize. I'm going to just add in a little bit depth. Again, you can always add more color. It's more difficult to take it away. Once, once we get these other petals in place, you'll see how this kind of helps design the flower. That may need to dry just a little bit more before I add it, because I don't necessarily want this blue to carry all the way up. Let's see how much it moves. There is a timing issue. May want to wait just a little bit on this one. It dries pretty quickly under the lights that I have where I'm painting. All right, so we have the top of the flower. I'm going to let this dry just a bit and we'll come back and do the bottom. 23. Iris Bottom Petals: For the bottom part of the flower, I'm going to, actually, I want a third petal that comes down here. The iris kind of like all flows from the center. I'm going to add a third flower. We're still going to have a golden center of the flower, a little bit of yellow in the middle here. But I'm going to use some color. I mixed it up. You don't need to keep watching me mixed color. And I'm going to use that same technique, only just a little bit darker. In designing this one. I want sort of a little bit of yellow in there, but the center of the flower will be very dark. It's okay that this meets here. And typically there's a large petal depending on what variety of Iris. There are a lot. When I look them up, you can have really petite, beautiful purple iris or some of them grow quite large. So I was just adding a little bit of depth there. And I'm touching my brush. I'll show you this part. I'm just touching my brush in the water and you can see my water is dirty. It's okay. I continue to use it because I want more color here. I'm activating that while it's wet, I'm going to leave a little bit of that transparency in the very center this time. Again, I've practiced this a few times, just playing around to see what I like, to see what the paints do. And I've gotten a different sort of shape, different feeling with each iris that I painted. I would encourage you to do the same. That's the fun of this. No2 will look alike. Yours will not look like anyone else's for sure. I'm just leaving some marks. I don't want to paint purple in the center there because I'm reserving that for yellow. I'm going to mix some of that color off my brush just a bit and allow this to move just up to the center. Look how beautiful enrich that color is. And I'm letting it dry just for a little bit. So lot of what you will learn in your painting process, you must paint to learn this part. But a lot of it is timing and understanding how much water is either on the brush or on the page. Because I've played with this a little bit. I kind of have a feeling of when I can go back in and move this around a little bit more. I'm letting it dry a little bit and now I've got less water on my brush. That means it will move the paint less. So if I want that transparent nature, they're just barely moving forward. And it's kind of breaking apart in colors, which again, I just love. You might not understand. Either one is okay. I'm not going to touch that too much until that dries and then I can easily blend that together. I don't necessarily want a white stripe, but I do want to reserve some amount of light color there. In the meantime, while that's drying, you can work on another petal. And maybe we want a little bit of lightness right here at the top of this one. And this petal kind of comes down around the flower. I'm using the wet and wet technique here. I'm just adding the water. Now this class is geared towards beginners, so I'm trying to repeat a couple of things. A couple of the lessons are techniques that it takes a few times, sometimes before you understand what you need to do or how you need to do it. But by all means, if you're an advanced painter, you might develop a better technique to getting the kind of effect that you want. I'm just laying some color in along the edge. And maybe just some directional lines here is enough to give the indication that the pedal comes and meets right there. It really depends on how much variation like this that you prefer. I've given you the techniques now. You know how to apply the paint to get the effect that you want. I just think this is kind of a fun result. And it's fun to do. It's addicting. You'll get used to wanting to do more and more of this and watch this watercolor just play. Here. I'm just adding some directional lines. How petals often have some veins in them. And at this point, now I think that center one is dry enough. I'm just going to tickle the very center of this just to try to break some of that whitespace. It doesn't look so harsh. If you want to carry up some of the color. Again, wherever there's water, the pigment will move. I'm going to not touch that anymore, but I am going to make this just a little bit darker down here. You could pick up a different blue. Are the same blue, more of your purple. I think you're getting the idea now. I really liked the way that looks. I'm going to stop there and I am going to let this edge dry for sure because I enjoyed this break, this petal, that separation starting right about there so that it looks like it folds down. And I'll come back and do this petal in just a moment. 24. Consider design : I've zoomed in just a little bit and I'm going to continue painting this petal in the same manner as the other. And I just wanted to note a couple of things while I'm doing this. Again, same mixing. I don't want you to spend your time watching me mixed paint. That's if I'm using the same. You can leave a little break in the petal there if you'd like. But I wanted to note a couple of things about this. On this size of a piece of paper. I typically probably wouldn't paint this quite so large. I'm doing that one so that you can see some of the detail. But also to give you an idea of how I think it needs a space for the color to move. It's interesting. However, we are going to look at the design of this whole page when I'm finished here, that's one step that's important as you start creating your own paintings, you may want to think about the overall design. I've just added a little bit of darker color there so that it looks like these top petals fold in. Now I'm rinsing my brush and I'm going to complete this petal. But I wanted to get back to noting the practice sheets that I did. And depending on the size of your page, you want to think about the scale of your subject. Now that's a topic for a different class. I just wanted to note that if I were creating this for finished painting, for someone as a commission, perhaps, I probably wouldn't make it quite so large on this size of paper. But that's a matter of personal preference as well. I'm just moving that paint around with a little bit of a damp brush, again, allowing it to blend. My water is getting a little bit dirty, but as you can see, I'm still using the same. Actually, it's quite a bit dirty, but I'm still using the same pot of water. If you really, really needed a clean white area, you would want to change that. I don't particularly want white on my flower, the highlights, yes, but I didn't really want white. Some irises may have that though. I'm going to just deepen this a little bit more by dropping in a little bit more pigment while it's wet so that I can move. That looks like there's just this tiny point of attachment there. Sorry, I just want to make that look a little bit more realistic. And even perhaps this top petal probably meets up right about there. While I've got this deeper color on my brush, I'm just not wasting it. I'm just adding it where I want some more definition. Some more contrast. Perhaps you want a little bit of those veins, as I mentioned before, it really just takes the indication. You can see how that still remained as the as the petal dried. I'm just kind of barely barely adding something like that in. Again, the bigger issue is usually overworking. I'm going to allow that to dry just a bit. And while I've still got some purple, I've even got some water. I want maybe a bud or something else in the background so that it doesn't look like you just pasted a flower on your page. That's what I mean by design. Maybe there's one that's just about ready to bloom back here. I think I've got a little piece of tissue or something. The easiest way to deal with that is to pick it up with your brush and wipe it off. This bud maybe maybe lives right there. You could do more than one. Typically, odd numbers are best. Maybe there's another that's sort of starting off of that same stock. Then I would add some greenery over here. While we've got this bud wet. They're typically a little bit darker. At the bottom. You guessed it. I'm going to add just a little bit more color. I'm going with the blue. And the other thing I wanted to point out, it was I talked a lot about how these color sheets are so portable and you can take them anywhere to sketch. I obviously can't have a lot of quiet and recording setup and the microphone and everything else. If I were, for example, a painting outside in a park, obviously, I'm painting in my studio and that's where I'm using them. But I do very often take these with me. I've taken them to coffee shops. I took them on a trip and I paint it on the plane, painted in the airport. They really are really versatile and fun because then you continue to paint more often. I'm going to stop there. Because after this step, I want to add some greenery around those buds and then some stems so that it doesn't look like this iris is just floating in space. And we'll also add in that yellow center now that most of that is dry. Come back for the last part. 25. Add Iris Leaves: We're ready to finish off this design. I'm just going to use my dirty water and a tissue and wipe away some of that purple. You can see how easily this area wipes clean. And we're going to add some greenery around the bud to make it look attached. And then some over here to complete the design. In this spring set, I actually really like a little bit of a mixture of the olive and the foil edge green, depending on what your preferences. Again, the foliage green is pretty bright. Let me show you a really neon green. I don't particularly see that a lot in nature. So by mixing in some of the olive green, it really tones it down while still giving it a springy sort of feel. I'm going to go with that. I'm still using my dirty water. It's not affecting the color mixing at all. Let's just start here. Perhaps there's a bud up to the top there. I'm just adding a little bit of water to move the pigment and a little bit of green around this one. I didn't want to do this while that bud was wet because the purple and green would mix a little bit, I think is okay. A lot of times I really like that. I prefer it. But in this case, purple and green probably wouldn't give you the best combination. And maybe this one, it's sort of flopping over to the side. And I've designed this in my head such that these buds are behind the main flower. If I were to draw an invisible line, this stem would continue on directionally down about here. It doesn't have to be exact. But that kind of gives some amount of realism that it's grown that way. Then this one maybe over here. Again, not exact, and maybe this, this is actually attached to this stock. So it's the same. I'm just lifting a little of that color to provide some variation. Then this looks awfully stark. That's what I'm talking about when I say design. I want this to look cohesive and not perfect, but realistic enough that you may find this in a garden. There may be another leaf over on this side. I'm gonna pick up a little bit more of that Olive just to sort of deepen this color. It's got a little bit of a brown tinge to it, but I really like it. Maybe there's a leaf. They have long stocky. The plant itself grows fairly tall and sort of stocky. Maybe that's there. And then of course we're going to add some over here. I don't want one smack in the center. That would look kind of awkward if you can envision that right there. So maybe there's one that leans a bit to the side. Just a leaf kind of carries over. And it's okay if it comes down towards the center and maybe even fills in that space, that's kind of interesting. Now that kind of sets That apart there. So think about your design. It's helpful. Go into a garden or look at some photographs. Certainly don't copy anything that's copyrighted on the Internet, but you can look at some photos and make your own, make some changes to it in terms of design. But that will give you an indication of how the plant grows, what it looks like. I'm just adding some contrast here, some additional green. To make it look interesting, I just don't want it to look so plainly colored in. I don't like that. I'm going to do the same down here. I picked up just a touch of the tree bark, brown and mix that in with the olive green. And that really adds some depth and that I love. So don't be afraid to use some color. I don't like wishy-washy watercolor. I like it to have a little bit of oomph. It doesn't have to be weak. Then because there's some of that down there. I'm just carrying a little up to the top and see immediately now my eye goes all over the page instead of smack in the middle or those three, it kind of adds some realism. Adds a lot of interest. You could even add some blue or some pink into any of those. It does look a little bit in balance those, so this stock would probably have a good swipe there that probably scared some people. I went over top of what I had painted there. No harm. Can still recover. And maybe there's I'm thinking as I'm going here, I certainly want a little something on this side. Maybe one points this way. You could always put another button over here. Maybe the leaf kind of bends around the petal. Could even go over top. That's scary. You could if you want to. Anything can happen. That could be interesting. If you don't like that, certainly don't cover up your flower. But to me it's all a matter of keeping it organic and making it look a bit real. Maybe there is just one more little bud over here or in this space, a lighter green. This is mostly water on my brush. And we practice this stroke. At the beginning of the class. It's just touching your brush down and lifting. That one would be back there. I actually liked that design. I might add just a touch of color. Here's a thought. What if you add a little bit of the blue and the red mixed? You can add purple if you've still got some mixed up on your palette. Add a little purple to those leaves and it will be interesting. The red is going to add some contrast because it's a complimentary color to the green. Especially in this one. That's how you live and up your paintings. Don't be afraid to experiment, don't be afraid to. Again, make a few of these look at how many I did just in practicing. There's a lot of blue there. If you want to soften that a little bit, just rinse your brush. Come back in. That's pretty little bit of turquoise. See kinda color. I'm just giving you an idea of what you can do there. Of course, experiment on your own, make this painting your own. And we'll come back. There is one more. We're going to add that center. 26. Adding the Center : If you're still here, thanks for hanging with me. We've got one last step to do. And that's just the finishing touches. If you're following along in the spring set, there is a color called happy yellow. It's gorgeous, It's very strong and it's almost neon. So I toned it down just a little bit with this color saffron, adding a little bit of an analogous color, the orangeish yellow, tones it down just a little bit. But that's just enough to add in the center. And look at that right away. Look how much that pops. Because those are two colors, purple and yellow are opposite each other on the color wheel. You get a lot of visual interest. When you put them next to each other. If you were to mix them, you would get a lot of mud. Color theory is another lesson for another class. There's a lot to learn. If you're interested, I would encourage you to just YouTube a few of those lessons. At the total composition here. I'm really pleased with the balance, the visual interests. Obviously, I could do this a little bit different. I wanted that in the center to show you how to paint, to give you an idea of the detail that you can add. But this does having a couple of buds balances that a little bit. Having variation in the colors in the leaves. Notice I didn't color those all similar the way you would with markers or crayons. You don't color them in. I like when there are breaks in the color or this mix down here of the the pinkish red and the green. If you wanted to add a little bit more detail, of course, you can always go back in and possibly add, I've got just a little bit of blue. Just to show you. Iris sometimes have freckles. They may have some veins that carry up through the petals. There's lots that you could keep doing. But again, I would caution. There's a time and a place to stop. It's hard to know when. With that, I'm going to stop this lesson. I really hope you practice this. I hope you do a number of them. And I'm just going to preview. That was one of mine. This is one of mine. This is another project. I'll take photos of all of these and I'd be interested to hear. I'll number them. You can tell me which one was your favorite and why. And then please please please show me yours. If you have any questions, feel free to message me. And I would love to see your projects. 27. Closing: That's it for now, my friends, I hope you enjoy painting those as much as I enjoyed painting them with you. And I want to encourage you to keep painting. Whether you review these lessons and paint these flowers over and over again. It's almost never a one and done. As painters and we advance, we become better in our skill. We almost always do repeat versions before we're satisfied. So don't feel like you need to create your masterpiece after just one painting. And please keep painting these Aviva color sheets are so easy to take along. You can get in 15 minutes of painting a day and believe me, after a couple of months, it'll make a world of difference in how much you've improved. If you're not already, I hope you follow me on Instagram and joined my website, subscribe there, you'll be the first to know about new Skillshare classes. I update periodically about my work. And I do have a few more Skillshare classes. I hope you join me on those as well. And until next time. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for uploading your projects. I love to see what you've made. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to chat, send me a message until next time. Keep painting.