Botanical Illustration: The Fundamentals | Watercolour Tulip

1. Introduction: For me, botanical illustration reflects the beautiful synergy between art and science. Were able to absorb the benefits of being surrounded by nature, as well as the benefits of sitting in a moment of quiet, putting brush to pay path. Hi everyone. My name is Helen and I am a battalion illustrator living and working in England. I have been a botanical illustration now for about 12 years and I am often found painting in my camper van sky. In this class, I'm going to be taking you through all the steps that I take to create a botanical illustration. We're going to talk about the materials that are yeas, how to prepare your workspace. Color mixing, watercolor techniques, how to transfer a drawing onto the watercolor paper and ultimately pulling it all together to create a beautiful painting of HCI Lab. I really hope that you can join us. 2. Materials: So let's talk a little bit about the materials that we're going to need to create a botanical illustration. The first thing is a surface to work on. Now, I choose to call a piece of ply board rather than expensive drawing board. Now this is nine millimeter supply. You can get it from any local DIY store here in the UK. I got it from somewhere, cool being q, where they actually also cut it to size for you. It doesn't matter what size you use. I would say a good starting point would be say like 60 by 40 centimeters. But yes, it's really cheap, really terrible, and works perfectly. So the next thing we need is some paper to draw on. Some artists draw directly onto the watercolor paper. And I don't favor this technique. And I'll tell you more about why later on in the class. I draw onto a drawing paper or cartridge paper as it's otherwise known. I use this one by data routing. It's an 80 pounds in weight, no cost paper, and it's just a really good quality plane. Join me back. So this is definitely one of my staples. Along a similar line. Later in the process, we're going to need some tracing paper. Now, I also use a daily around a tracing paper. This one is 62 pounds in weight anyway, just a really good quality tracing paper. In terms of watercolor paper, there are a couple of things to consider. First of all, always use an actual watercolor paper. Painting on something like cartridge paper will be really, really difficult because the watercolor paper has absorbing properties for the paint to settle on. The other thing is that I always recommend using a hot pressed paper. This gives a much, much smoother finish and it's much better for capturing fine detail like we're trying to do in botanical illustration. Otherwise, in terms of the brand watercolor paper, every artist will prefer a different paper. So it's really about finding a paper that works best for you. I personally favor arche, which is a really popular watercolor paper brands. The reason I favor is because I've been using it for 12 years and it's what I'm used to, but it is a really, really lovely paper to work on. In terms of drawing materials, there are a few essentials that I use. First of all, pencil. There are two types of pencil that I use. One as a mechanical pencil, and it's a nought 0.5 millimeter pencil, graphite. And I prefer a mechanical pencil for getting really fine, crisp lines. But do you also use a standard HB or H or 2 H pencil? And they weren't perfectly fine if you don't have a mechanical pencil. Next, we can think about rabbits. So there are two different types of robots that I use. I use a normal rubber and I use this on my couch paper when drawing paper where I can be much more vigorous with my rubbing out by also have a potty rubber. And I love my potty rubber because it's much gentler. And so when I'm rubbing out on watercolor paper, I'm much less likely to damage the self as watercolor paper. Something else I'll talk a little bit about later on in the class in botanical illustration. And there is a focus on accuracy. And so measuring tools can be really helpful. First, Fool just as improved ruler to document dimensions and size. And then secondly, I use a pair of dividers. Now these are really, really useful because they allow you to measure your subject directly and either transfer that directly onto your paper or transfer that to your ruler and document dimension. So these are really, really helpful, non-essential, really helpful. Finally, I use an ink pen from time to time, and we will be using this in the tutorial. I use a Pigma Micron pen. These are archival quality and really, really lovely and nice to use. In terms of painting materials. There are a few things that I just can't do without. The fast thing is a pallet. This is a porcelain palette and I'm much favored these over plastic. They just mix paint so much better. I have some A-flat like this. I have some with Welles, doesn't really matter personal preference. You can even just use a white China plate if you don't have a pallet. So the next thing is mortages. Now I say plural, I always paint with two water jars. One is for cleaning my brush, and this one will get really dirty with color. And the other one is for clean water to put directly onto my watercolor paper. Really simple tip makes all the difference when you're actually painting. So in terms of watercolor brushes, over the years, I've gotten my favorites. The brown that I get my brushes from cold versus wrinkled, or a UK based brush maker. Now I use two different types of brushes. The first is that Kolinsky sable brush, the Series 3 to 3. And Kolinsky sable is sort of the gold standard of watercolor brushes. It's really absorbent and it does paint beautifully. The only thing is that I've been trying to move away from using animal products in all aspects of my life recently. And so I have done a bit of work on trying to find a synthetic replacement. So the Series 3 I7 from rays Mankiw has sort of gone beyond my expectations is really fantastic and I use size is 420 in both of these series of brushes. Yes, I'll have you my choices. There's one other brushes as well that I use a lot. Now. It's called a mixing brush or a magic brush. And it's the Shirazi short flat from Rosemary and Co. It's a lovely short, stubby brush. And it's great for mixing and lifting. And I'll refer to as a debt in our tutorial. In terms of watercolor paints, there are so many paints out there and it can be really daunting to know where to start. I keep it really, really simple, both when I'm teaching but also when I'm painting. So I actually paint 95 percent of the time with just six paints and it works perfectly for me. I use Winsor Newton, but there are lots of brands out there that you can try. The only thing I would recommend is that you use artist quality, the best quality paints that you can buy. Now, there's a few reasons for this. The pigments Abeta much nicer colors. The pigments are also long lasting. So once they're on your painting and that's up on all that painting's going to stand the test of time. Whereas cheaper pigments might fade. Essentially, the more expensive paints have more paint and less filler. So it's really worth the investment and much better to buy fewer good quality paints and lots of cheap paints. You can buy paints in tubes or patterns. Again, this is just purely personal preference. I prefer chips because it gives me a little bit more flexibility with the amount of pain that I can have on my palette and I can mix up quite large quantities. But if you prefer pans and there are posted as well, they're much more convenient for traveling. I should really have the link sky, Medan. It would make more sense. But again, personal preference. The six Pape's? Yes, just six pains the IOUs and dumped three blue french ultramarine, Winsor lemon. You can buy SHE perylene, maroon and permanent rose, which is my favorite. I really do just use the six paints 95 percent of the time. And it's amazing what you can get from them. Later in the video, I'm going to show you how I stretch my watercolor paper. But to do this, we need two extra things in addition to our piebald and our watercolor paper. And they are some brown gummed tape. Now this you combine your local craft store. Essentially, it is a piece of tape which is papery, but on the back has gum, and when it's wet, it becomes sticky and adhesive. You can buy this. It's about 10 pounds. Local shop on Amazon, but yeah, really good stuff. And the second thing is a spray bottle, which we use to dampen our paper and tape. Last but not least, I find a little bit of kitchen towel really, really useful when I'm painting. It helps just remove a little bit of access water from my brush or remove paint from the surface of the paper as well. So I hope you found that interesting as an introduction to the materials that I find most useful for creating a botanical painting. Next up, we're going to think about how we prepare our workspace for painting. 3. Preparing Our Workspace: The next thing I'd like to talk to you about is preparing our workspace. The importance of why we work shouldn't be overlooked. Particularly with botanical illustration, where we could be sat here for a really long time. So the first thing I think is my desk height and my chair high and making sure that they're comfortable. The other thing that I do to make sure that my posture is right is I tilt up my board at about 30 degrees. And it means that I'm looking at the painting sort of more face on rather than craning my neck to be something that's flat. And I just find that a lot more comfortable. The next thing to think about is our light. Now, it's really, really helpful working in natural light wherever possible. If that's not possible, then you can get daylight bulbs to help you indoors. But you'll notice a big difference locking in natural light versus like him by lamp light. In terms of direction of light, I always try and position myself with my light source coming from the left. The reason for that is because when my hand is on my board, then my hand isn't casting a shadow. If I, my light source was coming from this direction. The shadow you can see here would be on my paper and on what I'm trying to paint. So having if you're right-handed your light source coming from the left, and if you're left-handed, your light source coming from the right, it will make a really big difference. Finally, the other thing to think about is protecting our work. So I keep my brushes and my palette and my water jar and to the right, again, being right-handed, that means that I'm not reaching across my painting to get and my paint or my water and then bring it back across my painting, risking drinks and drops on their learning or WACC. The other thing is tracing paper or anything to cover up the majority of your paper whilst you work. Sometimes you'll see me, I'm painting in sort of this tiny window of tracing paper on my work. And that's again, just to reduce the risk of little mistakes happening because they do happen. The last thing to say is try and find a place for you to paint. It doesn't have to be a campus or even just a tiny corner in your house where you don't have to keep putting things away and getting them back out. Again. The term out of sight, out of mind comes into my head when I think about that. And also try and make it a place that you want to come and sit downs. Whether that be lighting a candle or mesocolon and, or a cozy blanket or something. Make it somewhere where you get joy from being and brings me comfort. I've given you a huge amount of information if the last two classes, but now it's finally time to put pencil to paper and do some drawing. 4. Drawing: So let's move on to doing some drawing. Touring is the most important part of a botanical illustration. If you don't get the drawing right, no matter how good your painting skills though, it will never look right in the adult. So it's well worth spending a bit of time getting it right. I also find during the masterpiece ECPAT, it's amazing seeing something in front of you, you come to life on paper. So anyway, enough talk. Let's get during my workspace is prepared and with the dogs cracking outside my door, I ready to start drawing. You can see here that I'm using my dividers to measure the CI lab. If you don't have dividers, you can use a ruler. I'm picking out the key measurements, the height and width of the chip, the length and breadth of the stem and leaf, and the relationship between the flowers and leaves. I used this exact same process when I'm drawing from life, which I aimed to as much as possible. So it's a very helpful technique to master. You can take as many measurements as he fell will be helpful to you. But food drawing in the shape of the GI lab. Once you're happy you have some measurements to work with, we can essentially start joining the dots. I always try when I'm drawing to keep my lines as clean and crisp as I can rather than sketchy and nature. This type of line that comes from using your pencil with confidence, it's why the initial measurements can be so helpful. Creating crisp lines is a very valuable skill to master, but also will be helpful later on in the process to have a very clear drawing outline. Having said that, this is the time to make mistakes, to wrap out lots, make corrections and alterations. You'll see me remembering with my dividers, sometimes starting a set in part from scratch. This is what this part of the process is four. And this is why we do on cartridge paper rather than our lovely what kind of paper? A tip that can help when it comes to long smooth lines like the CI that leaves is to turn your paper to match the flow and movement of your rest. Once you have an outline, you are happy you have. We can then start to add some detail. Here. I started with the flower and then moved on to the leaves. The aim is to capture as much detail as you can in your drawing. It can be helpful to start with the main veins. As you can see I'm doing here the ones that your eye is really drawn to. And then start to add in some of the smaller veins. Pay close attention to the direction that the volumes are traveling in as these give your tulip shape and form. Remember, as I said at the beginning of the video, it's worth spending time on your drawing. You'll have this drawing forever. I tried to imagine painting this chewed up again in the future with Justice drawing to work from and no photograph for reference. Make sure you're completely happy with that. Moving on to the next stage. Well done. If you finished your drawing to take some concentration, and I hope you enjoyed the process. Next up, I'm going to teach you a really easy way to stretch your watercolor paper. 5. Stretching Paper: So now I'm going to show you such an easy way to stretch your watercolor paper. And believe me, I've been studying the bar off previously, drawn a stretch my paper, soaking it and doing all sorts of things to try and get the perfect stretch paper. This is the way to do it. It's so easy. All you need is your board, your paper, watercolor paper. You take, and your spray bottle. See firstly, I just wanted to tell you a few reasons why I stretch my paper. Firstly, if you ever been painting on watercolor paper and it's buckled where you've laid water down. You know how difficult that can be to paint on. There is no more buckling with stretch paper. Secondly, you'll end up with an infinitely better surface to paint on. Drum tight and smooth like guarantee. Sadly, there's no need to do any further stretching or ironing of your work when it's finished, which risks damage to your beautiful painting as it's already completely flat. So the first thing I do before stretching my paper is identified the side of the paper that I'm going to paint on, as each side of the paper is slightly different. One side has a more mesh-like appearance, whereas the other has a more natural, smoother appearance. Was there is no right or wrong. I prefer to paint on the more natural surface. This also happens to be the side that is face down on the glute Arches, watercolor block. Another reason why I take a sheet of the block and structured. Once I've identified the side of the paper I want to paint on, I paste this side face down on my board. Then taking my spray bottle, I gently missed over the surface of the paper. A slight misting is enough. The paper doesn't not have to be very wet. Then I turn the paper over so that the right side is now facing up. And I repeat the process again. Just a very light misting is all it needs. What we will see over time is that the water is absorbed into the fibers of the paper and the paper will start to buckle. This buckling is what we want to avoid when we're painting. So what's going to happen to the dump fibers are going to expand. Then we're going to tape it down. And when the paper dries, it contracts and goes drum tight against the board. This means no buckling when we apply our paint. So whilst we're waiting for a paper to absorb the water, we can cut four pieces of gum tape to size. I tend to allow enough length to allow mind to wrap around the sides of the board. And then we wait. So what you can see is that after just a few minutes the paper has buckled and warped. That's great. That's all we need to see. Next, I'm going to take my strips of gum tape and lightly misleading as we did with our paper. Then I lay this down, taping the paper to the board on all four sides. What you see as the paper dries is that the fibers will contract and go drum tight and all those wrinkles would disappear and you'd have a beautiful surface to paint on. Next up, I'm going to show you the easy and magic way to transfer your drawing to your watercolor paper. 6. Transferring : Whilst we're waiting for our watercolor paper to dry, let's talk a little bit about how we transfer our drawing from our cartridge paper to our watercolor paper. That's going to be the next thing that we're going to do. You might think I'm crazy for adding in this extra step, but there's a number of reasons why I draw my cartridge paper rather than my watercolor paper. First of all, you offer as are going to have your drawing that you've done of your CI lab on cartridge paper. If you've done that straight onto watercolor paper. But a time you've led on lots of layers of pain. You've lost both the original image, but also you've lost your detail that you've put into your drawing. So you always have your drawing to refer to you while you're painting, but also you're going to have that drawing forever. So if you wanted to do this again in the future, you can. Secondly, we are during onto our watercolor paper without ever touching the paper. And this just sort of placed in mind. But it's really crucial because what can papers fragile, delicate, and if we're drawing onto the watercolor paper, then it's not so much the touring, but the rubbing out and scrubbing away at that watercolor paper, I will damage the fibers, damage the surface and make an uneven surface to paint on. Essentially the fibers get a bit fluffy. So it is an extra step, but it makes a huge difference. And I hope you enjoy the process to something simple like a CI left is it doesn't take much time, but when you're taking a complex composition, it can be more time-consuming. But it's also an opportunity using our tracings to lay out maybe different components that you've drawn and compile them together into a composition that you like and try out different compositions using tracing paper. Lots of good reasons behind doing this. Anyway, let's get started. Transferring our touring towards kinda paper is actually a very simple process. I take a piece of tracing paper and stick it down so it doesn't move around. I'm using a bit of potty wrapper for this. Then take white ink pen. I just trace over the drawing that we've done. He don't need to chase every detail that you've captured in your drawing. Just the outline and some of the main veins, if you would find that helpful. It is important to try and be as accurate as he possibly can. Once I've drawn over the whole line drawing, I turn the tracing paper back over, making sure I have something protective underneath the tracing. I take my pencil and retrace the ink drawing. I would advise using your HB pencil for this rather than anything harder like an H. And make sure you're using enough pressure to leave graphite on the tracing paper. As before, it's important to be as accurate as you can at this stage. Once you've done that tunnel tracing paper back, I said it's right-side up and place it onto your watercolor paper. For the purpose of this tutorial, leave some space to the side for a warm up exercises. Once you're happy with the placement of your tracing, we can retrace for final time. Now, imprinting the graphite onto a watercolor paper. Every so often IP company to make sure we're leaving a mark. Continue with this process until you've done the whole flower. When I think I finished, I take a final look and see if there are any places I need to carry over one more time to make them a little bit darker or more visible. If necessary. You can also gently darken some of the areas with your pencil. It's not such an issue with the dark flowers such as this tulip. But if you had a very pale flower, he may wish to lighten some of your lines by just lifting them off with your gentle potty rapid. So now we have our drawing on our watercolor paper. We can finally get our paints out and start playing with color. 7. Playing with Colour: Great, So now we've transferred or drawing from our cartridge paper onto a watercolor paper, is trying to get a paints out and start playing with color. The four paints out of my collection of sex that we're going to use in this tulip painting. A permanent waves perylene, maroon, Winsor, Lemon, and French ultramarine. I'm going to start by putting a small amount of each onto my palette. As you can see here, I have my water jars and paints to my right so that my paper is protected when I'm painting. I also have my reference image class by. Now, this is your chance to really get to know your watercolor paints and just have a play. As the name suggests, watercolor paint requires water to come to life. Sister by experimenting and adding different amounts of water to one of your colors. Here, adding just a small amount of water, it gives a darker and stronger pigment. And as I progressively add more water, you'll see the color becomes paler and paler. Next, try bringing in another kind of clinics. I stopped by cleaning my brush and then slowly adding one color to another. Then you can try adding in a third. Three is usually the maximum number of colors that I would mix. The mix tends to become muddy if too many annexed together. This really is an opportunity for you to get to know your paints and the amazing colors that you can create eating such a limited palette. I always keep a record of the colors I'm using to make mixes. This means that I can always refer back to it and match a color in the future more easily. It's a good habit to get into. When it comes to green. I never use achieve of green paint. I always mix my greens from a blue and a yellow. In this case from church marine and Winsor lemon. This always creates a much more natural green, which is so important in botanical illustration. Often the addition of a small amount of red or pink to the mix can be helpful. Continue to play with your paints for as long as you wish. Try Lang mixes over the top of each other to see what effect you get. Now you've got to know your colors a bit better. We're going to move on to learning about some more to kind of techniques that'll be helpful in this tutorial and beyond. 8. Watercolour Techniques: So in this next part of the tutorial, we finally get to show off our painting skills. Now, I'm going to take you through some of the watercolor techniques that I use and that we are going to be using during our cheetah painting. These studies that I'm going to show you are really useful warm-up exercises as well. And I actually do these before I start a painting. It's just like warming up before going for a run or warming up on the piano. It's a really useful thing today. So the first thing to do is draw a few shapes on your watercolor paper. About six should be fine. I've come variables that any shape put the next mix up a fairly watery mix of two different paint colors. I've gone for blue and pink. The first technique we're going to try is a wet on dry technique, essentially putting wet paint directly down onto dry paper. With this technique, we're aiming for a smooth and even wash over the whole shape with no brush markings. One of the most common ways to fall down in this technique is not having enough paint on your brush and on the paper. Keep going back to your palette to pick up more paint if you feel you're running out. A general rule if you're working with watercolor washes is that if the paint is starting to dry, either add more paint or stop. Here you can see we've ended up with a smooth and even finish. The next technique we're going to try is a graded wash. This is a way to graduate from dark to light. Start by adding a fairly dark paint mix to the top of the shape. Then add more water to your wash to dilute it and carry on moving down the shape. Finally, at a wash to the base, which is almost completely water. The aim here is to have a smooth graduated wash from top to bottom. As before, make sure you have enough paint on the paper to allow for easy blending of the washes. Next, we will work on a blended wash. This is a very similar technique, but we are blending two colors together. Start by putting your first color down on the top of your shape. Then, whilst it's still wet, pick up a second color and continue to paint the shape. Again, we should end up with a smooth graduation from one color to the next, rather than a very harsh line. Next we will talk about my favorite technique. Wet-on-wet. In this technique, we start by laying down a wash of just water. They should leave the paper surface glistening but without any puddles. Then we pick up some paint on our brush and drop it onto the surface of the paper. And watch as the paint disperses and blends softly into the water. You can use a damp brush. Was the wash is still wet to move the paint around the surface of the paper and control its movements. If you noticed the paper is drying, it's best to stop. Next, I will show you how we can use the wet-on-wet technique to blend multiple colors together. Here. Once the pink is laid down on top of my water wash, I'm adding some blue and the colors will softly blend together, aided by my brush if necessary. Finally, I'd like to show you a dry brush technique as a way to lay down details. I'm going to demonstrate this by painting some lines onto this last shape. For this, I'm using my smallest brush, a size note, with a mix of paint that is fairly thick without much water. This takes some practice. If you have too much water on the brush, you will notice it can be very difficult to get fine lines. Equally if you're putting a lot of pressure on the brush hairs, bending the tip, you struggled to get a fine line. The trick is to think about just tickling the surface of the paper with the brush has, as I say, it can take some practice, but it definitely is a practice exercise that's worth doing. Final thing to say is that these techniques don't have to be used in isolation. We can layer them. As you can see here, I am laying another wet on wet wash over our blended harsh. You can lay on top the same colors or different colors to get the effect you desire. When laying washes on top of the dry brush details. This can really soften detail. And this is a technique that we are going to use in R2. Let painting spend as much time as you can practicing these techniques. A promise. It won't be wasted time. It's the perfect way to get to know your paints and brushes and build confidence with detailed watercolor paintings. Now that you are fully warmed up, unprepared, we can move on to starting Archie, let painting. 9. Tulip Painting: Part 1 - Dry Brush Detail: When I'm getting ready to paint, I make sure that I have my original drawing as well as my reference image or the subject that I'm painting nearby and easy view to refer to. The next thing I do is to mix up large quantities of the paint mixes that I'm going to use for majority of the CI lab. I make large quantities at the beginning of a painting because it means I'm more likely to keep a unified color across the piece by reducing the number of times by mixing colors from scratch. The first mix I have made is a mixture of permanent rose and French Ultramarine. The second makes us similar, but this time it would be addition of perylene maroon. You can see clearly here the discrepancy between the mixes. This stage will always be a bit of trial and error. Take your time referring to the reference image all the time to make sure you're mixing accurate colors. The first parts of this painting is actually going to be laying down the detail that we can see in the GI lab. It may seem a little counter-intuitive, but stay with me. To do this, takes some of the paint too, You've just mixed. Here. I'm using the perylene maroon mix and remembering what we've learned in the techniques for D. And referring closely to the details you captured in your pencil drawing. Tickle the surface of the paper with your brush to create very fine lines replicating the veins in the petals. I apologize for the out-of-focus video at times where it does get Clara. Don't be afraid to lay the paint down quite dark. It will look quite alien, but if your lines are too light, they will disappear when we start to lay down the dark watercolor washes on top. Trust the process. You'll see that I am varying my color slightly and each petal, I can see a blue hue to the right-hand petal. So this is more purple than the left, which has more of the perylene maroon color. I slowly build as much detail as I can until I've completed the whole of the flower. The next stage is to start adding some beautiful watercolor washes on top of your detail, which will soften the painting and bring it to life. 10. Tulip Painting: Part 2 - Initial Washes: Now that we have captured all that beautiful detail on Archie lip, we can move on to adding some washes of color. I'm going to use a wet on wet technique initially to soften the veins that we have painted him and allow for lovely blending of the paint. I'll be using. Size is 42 of my brushes for this part of the painting. Don't worry if some of the paint in your details picks up and merges into the water wash that you're applying. This is okay to minimize it. Try and cover the area with as few brush strokes as possible. And each time you need to get more water, make sure you're collecting it from a clean water jar. Next, we take the mixes we made earlier, add some water to them and make sure they are milky consistency. And then we can slowly start to apply these to the water that you've laid down. As we've practiced before, you can keep moving the paint around the paper until the paper starts to dry. Note that at the very base of the petals, it fade into a soft green. So don't be too bold with your purple colors here. Keep in mind whether light is hitting the petals. You want these to remain pale, even completely white. Similarly, think about which parts of the tulip aren't getting much light at all. These parts will be very dark. It's just the difference between these very light and very darks, otherwise known as the turtle values. That will give you a tulip, its shape and make it pop off the page. I always try and my paintings to have every shade from completely white took almost completely black. Once you're happy with your first layer of paint, stop and wait for it's dry. It's really important to wait for fast petal to dry because otherwise when you lay water down on the petal beside it, your paint will bleed from one into the other. That being said, once it's dry, we can move on to painting the other main petal. You can see here that on this petal I have used slightly more of the perylene maroon mix, giving a little color variation that I can see in the photograph. Once your paint on the second petal has completely dried, we can move on to adding a second layer of watercolor paint to the petals, just as we did with the first washes. This is the joy of watercolor. We can lay a paint creating more depth of color and layering different colors on top of one another can give us different effects. Hello. Just a reminder. You can move paint around on the paper with your brush. Even left some of the paint off with a damp, clean brush across the paper is wet. But as soon as he feel it's starting to dry, stop, wait for it to dry completely and then do another wash on top if necessary. If you carry on with the paper dries, you'll get an uneven finish. Once I'm happy with the color, depth and title my petals, I'm using a blended wash to apply a green color to the base of the petals, blending it into the purple. The reason I'm doing this separately is because it can be easy when using green and purple together in a wet, on wet wash to end up with a muddy brown color. This way, you're more likely to keep the colors separate. Repeat the same process for the small petal hiding. You will see here that I've applied too much paint to this third petal. This is the perfect use for the magic brush. Here. It's as clean and damp and I'm using it to lift up some of the paint I have laid down. This is easier to do in the paint is still wet, but it can also be done when the paper is dry. I then just soften the edge again with a damp sable brush to finish off the chip flower. Now that we've got some beautiful washes on trochee lip, we can move on to the stem and the leaves. 11. Tulip Painting: Part 3 - Stem & Leaves: Painting stems can feel daunting because it's really important to try and get them as clean and crisp and smooth as you can. That being said with a few steps, is actually a simple process. The first thing I do is apply a water washed down the entire length of the stem. As always, I make sure the paper is damp and glistening, but that there are no puddles. Then I take a mix of green. I'm using a mix of fringe, ultramarine, and Winsor lemon that we mixed in our playing with color video. I use my smallest brush and apply this down the right-hand side of the stem, or side of the stem that is in shadow. I use smaller strokes of the brush because I find it gives me a little bit more control. As we discussed with the petals lighten, dark, give us shape and form. This is so important when painting stems to give them that rounded appearance. I then make sure I have blended the stem into the base of the flower. Then before the paint has dried, I'm taking a damp brush and softening the line of the shadow that I added, blending it into the stem. I then repeat the steps of adding shadow and blending until I'm happy with the depth of color and tone. Remember, let each layer dry before adding the next one. Same, happy with the stem. I start to mix up some colors to paint the leaves. I'm mixing up a yellow and blue version of the same green, adding a small amount of perylene maroon to make them a more natural color. Now, we're going to replicate the exact same processes we used in the chiller onto the leaves. Starting by laying down dry brush detail and following this with layers of washes. Don't worry if you can't see all the veins in the leaf in the photograph, it's just about giving an impression of diastereomer to give the leaf shape and form. Remember these veins that you painted it will soften and many of them will fade back into your later washes. Vary your colors was referring to the reference photo. And remember your lights and darks. Hi. Hi. Hi. While DOM, if he finished that stack OS so close to finishing this cheap at painting. I hope you'll please so far. We've just got a few more details to finish off next. 12. Tulip Painting: Part 4 - Final Details: In this final part of the tutorial, we'll be finishing off some details on our CI lab. This is your opportunity to tidy up any areas that needs some refining. This is also the time that I make sure my dogs as dark as I can be. Here you can see at the top of the screen, I'm mixing a very, very dark green in order to do this exact thing on my leaves. And those tiniest areas where very little light will be reaching. The smallest dot of dark pigment blended softly and the rest of the leaf is enough to throw that stem forwards and create a more three-dimensional effect. I will do a similar thing to other parts of the leaf that are in shadow. And if you need to, you can repeat the process on the chip. Mixing a very dark purple as well as the stem. I take this opportunity to tidy my edges to, to make sure they have crisp and clean. Well done. If you've got this far and you finished your painting, It's an amazing achievement and a huge amount of whack. I'm now going to show you the final things that I do when I finished my painting. The first thing that I do is I signed my WACC. I use a pencil for this and I write my name. And I will say sometimes include the date that I did the painting. Last thing that I do is to take the painting off the boat. To do this, I take root and the craft knife. And I simply very carefully cuts around the edge of the tape. The painting will pop out really easily. And then you have pets. Your CI let painting. I really hope that you are proud of what you've achieved during this tutorial. Please share your work with me. I would love to see it. And I know it would inspire many other artists to see your WACC. Keep an eye out for my upcoming tutorials here on Skillshare. I've excited to bring you some nice objects to further advance your skills and techniques and ultimately create some beautiful pieces of botanical art. See you soon.