"Bridie" Wildflower Watercolour & Gouache Reference Sheet

1. Welcome!: Hello, and welcome to Brdie. If you're not familiar with me, my name's Holly. I live in East Lothian on the southeast coast of Scotland. As well as being a teacher, I am a surface pattern designer, specializing in bedding. In this class together, we're going to create a reference or inspiration sheet. It's where we can explore and practice floral and leaf shapes without the worry of it looking like a finished painting. And it's something you could definitely come back to time and time again to reacquaint yourself with the floral and leaf shapes. There are various motifs and layers, and you can decide to stop whenever you like, or continue through on the whole journey with me. I'll be running through materials for you and will also do a little bit of preparation with our color palette. We're going to be keeping in mind three art terms, Hue, which refers to the color itself, red, blue, green, purple, et cetera, and is also often called chroma. Saturation which indicates how vivid a color is and value, which refers to how light or dark a color is. An easy way to determine value is to squint, and that simplifies the tonal areas when looking at a painting. We'll be exploring how muted neutral hues can work so well with bright ones. I'll take you through some of our best loved floral shapes roses, delphinium, garden and Michelms Daisy shapes, as well as broad, elongated and ovate leaves. We'll also be breaking out our favorite pen again and having a wee doodle. So today is all about creating pretty florals, which you can adopt to create your own unique style. Subtitles are available for my deaf and hard of hearing followers. Start your lesson rolling, and you'll see the subtitles icon in the bottom right. Next to the volume icon. Subtitles are also available in Spanish, Portuguese, French and German. Before we move on, let me remind you that you can share your project with the class. No pressure at all to do this. But it's a really fun way to connect with others and share tips and feedback. If you're new to Skillshare, you'll find our projects and resources area underneath the class. And on the right, you'll see my project and submit project. So when you're ready, let's move on with the class. 2. Materials: If we look at materials, I'm using Osh, hot press paper, although cold pressed would be just as good for this class. 140 pound, and it's 20 centimeter by 20. Quite like working in a square every now and then. Now, it comes with this black safety sheet on top, which does freak me out a little bit, because I always think oh I've ordered the wrong paper. But no, it's just the safety sheet. Easier to remove than the other pieces of paper, but I thought I'd just show you how you do this in case you're not familiar with blocks. I tend to use this wedge because it's nice and soft and bendy, and it's not going to scrape the paper underneath. A lot of people use palette knives, but I find this a little softer. You'll find a gap at the top of the page. And if you just slide whatever you're using, palette knife or ruler to the left and right, and I'm going to slide right along the side there. Next corner. And I'm just going to be really safe here and just go right the way round. And that's the safety sheet away. We're left with this gorgeous paper, and I've only just started using this recently, but I love it. So this is my Filbert selection here. I got it from Amazon. It's called Master Touch, it was a set of filberts ranging from zero to, I think, six. And I have two memory points brushes. I've got the pointed filbert size eight and a small round brush size five. And you might also want to use a fine liner for some of the stems. So running through paints, let's actually place our paints down as we run through them. So I've got prussian blue there. This is permanent green light. These are both gouache. Any bright green that you have. I've got wisteria, opera pink, and this is still all gouache at this stage. Handsy yellow deep, or you could use any warm yellow that you have. And I have white gouache and white watercolor running a bit low on the gouache. And I also have one of my favorite colors at the moment, perylene violet. If you don't have periviolet, you can achieve this by mixing a purple and adding a tiny touch of warm yellow to it. 3. Colour Swatching: I thought before we move on with the class that we could do some color swatches. We'll be mixing colors as we go along, but these are some of the fundamental colors that we'll be working with. I'm starting with a wisteria which is a cool pink, adding a little white to it. And to create a peachy color, we could add some of the handsy yellow deep and a little touch of white to the wisteria. I love that. Neutral pink, gorgeous color. So taking over some of the white to the opera pink, and because we're working with brights and neutrals, this is a lovely combo. You wouldn't think to put these together, but because this page is going to be so full of motifs, it's really going to work together. But because we have such a lot going on on this page, there's room for us to explore. Sauces are very, very pale pink, lots of white and just a touch of the opera pink. So we got some cooler and warmer, bright and neutral colors there. This is Prussian blue, so it's a blue leaning towards turquoise. I spent some time off screen there trying to find my French ultramarine. I'm now thinking that I want more of a mid blue, a true blue, so I'm going to bring some French ultramarine in as well. Lends itself to mix really well. I'm glad I remembered the French ultramarine because I love it when it's mixed with white. Get this lovely powder blue. Isn't that gorgeous. How about a creamy color? And the quickest way really is just to add yellow to white. Any warm yellow that you have and lots and lots of white. The reason why I like this hands yellow deep gouache is it's so vibrant. I love it. You don't lose any of the vibrancy when you add white to it. Gorgeous. These colors, apart from the opera pink, kind of remind me of 1950s colors, particularly the color above the dusky brownie pink and this yellow. And again, with the permanent green light guash, it's a very vibrant green. It's not one that I would use just on its own, but I love it for mixing. So if we mix some yellow in with that and a little bit of the opera pink, we start to get a warmer green tones it down a little bit. I like the control that using bright colours for mixing offers. So that's a lovely forest green. Now, if we take some of that over into this well and add some white, we can get almost a minty green. So what if we should need a brown? And we've covered this in a few classes where we can use all primary colors to mix browns and grays. So let's move this round, and we'll start with the blue. And my primary here is the pink. It would obviously be red, but I'm leaning towards the CMY color wheel, especially when we bring in the Prussian blue, which is what turquoise. So we got our French ultramarine. I'm having a love affair with French ultramarine at the moment. That's gorgeous. And we're adding in our pink or red or magenta. And that gives us that lovely violet color. So a little bit more of the blue and pink, just so that we can then start to turn this into a lovely earthy brown. And then the final color, of course, is a yellow, and just a tiny touch of this, and it turns into this plum color. This is one of my favorite colors as well. Gorgeous berry colors. So that's leaning towards the pink and blue with a little bit of yellow. I now, if we add more blue and replenish the pink as well, and we add a little more yellow, we start to get this lovely neutral brown, like an earthenware color. So you can see we have a lot of wiggle room. There are artists who use only the three primary colors for all of their palettes. So I just want to note down how I reach that color. So it was French ultramarine. Opera pink and handsy yellow deep. Just to reiterate, you can use all watercolor, all gouache, or a mixture of both. And I just want to make note that that is permanent green light. But any green of your choice, really, let's move on and create our lovely reference sheet. 4. Pastel Pink Roses: So let's start with our centers. And I'm just putting some white gouache down. And let's pick up our size five round brush. The size four or six would be great for this, too. And I'm just taking over some of that permanent green light and mixing it with the handsome yellow deep and white. So we're doing very light touches, very loose and throw away. So let's go back to the handsy yellow deep mix. And I'm just pulling that out with a tiny touch of water and adding white to it. It's such a bright, joyful colour. Just dotting in some yellow amidst the green. What we're aiming for here is getting a few colors into our centers. So just moving between a whiter yellow, a more creamy mixture and the brighter yellow. And now adding just a little bit of water to wake up the brown that we mixed. So we have the two paler colors, and now we have a deeper brown, and adding this just really starts to bring them alive. I found it helpful not to think about them as flower centers, but just little abstract shapes where I'm dabbing in different colors. So adding a bit of white to that brown now. Again, just to mix a slightly different color to add. So we have the deeper brown and a much more neutral brown with the white. And a little tip when you're using a round brush, you can get an almost flat brush effect by flattening out to round brush and then turning it on its side and printing almost these little dots into the center. And adding little sea curves of the minty green that we mixed. So we want to create some lovely petals cradling around the center. And let's go into the Wisteria mix. And I'm adding some white. And this happens to be white watercolor. So let's start by creating our lovely rounded petals. This scribble movement, I think, is so easy and yet gives you these effortlessly intuitive marks. So I'm picking up my size, too, Philbert now. And I'm now adding just a bit of that white gouache. A so going back to our little dabi movements and little scribbles. And we can change the direction of the flowers by the arrangement and size of the petals. So this one is looking up to the left. So I've done smaller petals on the top side and larger beneath. I'm just adding a little bit of white there over the pink. We start to see a little bit of layering. So finishing off this flower, I just want to add a few little petals. And also some petals that go slightly over the center. I'm just going around now, and we're moving between that opera pink, the white, and the Wisteria. When layering, using three different hues around the same area on the color wheel is a really gorgeous way of bringing interest and detail to your work. So let's move on to our next lesson. 5. Rose Leaves, Delphinium, Cornflower & Michaelmas Daisy: Let's add some leaves to these flowers now. And I'm going back to the green mix that we did earlier. Just waking it up and adding a little white. I've just added a touch of yellow and a touch of the opera pink. I'm trying to reach a more natural organic green, a little bit more white. So I've got my size two Philbert. So slightly over the center. So using just the tip of the brush and adding little features. Remember also, we can add some dry brush technique here, where the brush will be slightly drier and the paint very tacky. I'm also going into that slightly warmer green on the right. I do like a bit of dry brushing, but you might find that adding stems, you don't have the same control. And I'm just adding touches of that warmer green against the cooler green. Why don't we mix up some blue? So I'm, first of all, adding white to the French ultramarine. I'm aiming towards a mid blue and a more turquoise blue. So over here, I have Prussian blue, and I'm going to add white to that, too. Again, with the petals on the flowers, what we're trying to do here is bring in two different variations of blue. And let's start off with these tiny little daby movements, moving down an imaginary stem. And you could always actually paint in the stem first. Little scribbly marks again, tiny brush strokes, and a few little marks and dots. And then interchanging between the French ultramarine and the Prussian blue. They can be any flower that you see. So I'm going to add a stem now with my liner brush, and using that same mix of green. I don't feel that it has to touch every petal. I want to keep that expressive style. So I'm just adding little dots and dashes. Bringing all the little florets together. So we've got a few darker elements, and now it might be fun just to go down to a zero, either a filbert or a round brush. And I'm just picking up a little bit of white and adding little highlights, very gentle touch as we don't want to overwhelm the blue. And now I'm adding a very pale white blue mix. Let's do another blue flower. I'm just adding a very quick center and some little dots. I've just mixed up a little darker French ultramarine with that white mix. And I'm just starting out by pulling in some very small petals. I don't really think about the name of the flower that I'm painting, I just seem to paint flowers, and then afterwards, I kind of decide or can see what they are. So I guess this could be a cornflower. So I'm just slowly building on these petals and changing their direction a little bit, just so the flour doesn't look static. I'm mixing a paler green just by bringing down some more white. And I'm dotting around the center to add some highlights to that darker green. Going back to that darker green and very sparingly, just adding a few tiny little leaves in amongst the petals. So I'm still using my size zero, Philbert. I've got white again, and I'm just highlighting one side of the middle of the flower just to create a dome shape. Let's do another one here. I'm starting out with a very rough center, a little bit of white in there as well. I do like to mix colors on the page sometimes. So I've cleaned off my brush, and I guess I'm thinking more about maybe a Michelmas daisy. I'm mixing a very quick, almost like a lilac color using the opera pink and French ultramarine with white. Just wanted to vary the blues. So I picked up my line of brush and let's add some white dots around the center. So I'm just putting down some more hands yellow deep and dabbing that in as well, just to vary that center. It's a technique that I've started to use a lot more, adding a few colors to the center of different value and different hues. And drawing out some little stems. And then going back to my size five round brrushG back to a warm green again. And I want to vary the leaves this time. Why not do some slightly more elongated leaves? And we can always add the tips of the leaves separately afterwards. I love doing that. A 6. Opera Pink Flowers: So I've picked up my size four fiilbt and we're going to create some lovely bright opera pink roses or daisies. I tend to paint flowers and then decide what they are afterwards. Mixing the opera pink with some white. And we've got a lot of paint on our brush, and the brush doesn't have a lot of water on it, so it's quite a dry feeling. And what we're getting there is an application of paint. And when it's lifted swiftly like that, it provides these textured brush strokes. It is really simple, very swift movement. Pressing down the brush, flaring it a little bit, and then bringing it up very quickly. And we're leaving space in the middle so we can add details. Let's do another one. Using the side of the brush there so that we get a half open flower or one that's pointing in a different direction. What's great about gouache or thick application of watercolor is that if you're not happy with a brush stroke, you can always go back in and correct it. So now let's pick up our round brush, and we just need a small round brush. This is size five memory point. So for the center, we can mix a deeper pink, and the way that we can achieve that is to add some of our French ultramarine to our opera pink. And then add some white to that. I and you can keep mixing those three elements until you get the color that you'd like. What I was trying to achieve here is just a deeper color of the opera pink. So that was still the dominant color when I was mixing those together. And I'm just doing these little scribbly dots. Very light touch, not pressing down on the brush too much. Using just the tip to create very delicate marks. And just to make note of that, again, that mix, it's French ultramarine, opera pink and white, leaning heavily towards the opera pink. And let's add another color to the center. And I like to do a little sea curve of green. So handsome yellow deep mixed in with the green that we mixed earlier, and that's giving us a very warm green and keeping in awareness that actually very small slight touches can make a huge difference. So we're just doing tiny little sea curves, and that's it. Very, very simple. This is going to be a very busy page, so we can always come back and add details. So let's leave it simple for now and move on to our next motif. 7. Neutral Brown Star Flowers: So now let's mix handsy yellow deep with a white, and this could be white gouache or watercolor. And what we're aiming for here is a buttery yellow, creamy yellow. It's one of my favorite colors. And there's a little green left in my palett, but that's okay. The handsy yellow deep gouache is such a vibrant color that you have to be really careful about how much you add to white. And I've got a little area here where it has a little more white added. And now let's mix a slightly darker neutral color that will complement this. And the easiest way to do this is to use a color opposite on the color wheel. So the opposite to yellow, of course, is purple. So if we add a purple to it and just keep mixing until we get the color that we're looking for. There's so many variations, so you may plump for a different color than me. Adding opera pink and French ultramarine. There was still a little bit of purple left in the palette there. So I just kept going and just adding a little bit more blue just to cool it down. Just keep going between the pink or red and blue and the yellow until you get the color that you like. And that's a lovely, kind of peachy brown. I love that. I'm so pleased with that. So let's have a wee practice with this color, and I really like the idea of just doing some very sketchy, daisy shapes. And this, again, is highlighting how we can mix neutrals and brights together. And again, you can play around with how much water you add to your cue, and that's quite thick, so I'm just going to add a tiny touch of water to the mix, still with my small round brush. And again, very swift movements like the opera pink petals, but more elongated. So I'm not pushing down on my brush too much. I'm using the tip to about a third of the way down, we can vary our petals that way. They remind me of stars. I really like this shape, and I love this color. I'm definitely going to be using this again in the future. And some of these can be half open flowers pointing away or to the side. So a mixture of pushing down a little on the brush and using the tip. A little sketchy one there. And now we can go over to our brighter color, getting my little bit of scrap paper again and having a quick practice. So I'm going to show the process here because as I'm laying this down, I'm not really liking it. I don't think it works. So I'm just going to pause for a minute. I really love that neutral, brownie pink color, and I'm not sure that the yellow is working. What if I mix a little more of the neutral in with the yellow? Let's have a go. How does that look? No, I'm still not liking it, so I'm just going to stick with that lovely, neutral, pinky brown. And, of course, not all flowers can shine. It would be really overwhelming. So sometimes it's nice to have flowers that are not the star, but supporting actors. So I might bring in a little bit of pen detail, and I have my pigma micron. This is a 01 in sepia and just practicing those squiggly dots. So these are very simple flowers. And this is one of my favorite things to do. These lovely scribbly centers. Centers scared me for the longest time, and now I realize that actually they're a lot simpler and they look better when they're kept simple. I think I felt I had to really work hard on getting the centers right. They're very delicate, and they're going to showcase the other flowers. And of course, this page is gonna get really hectic, so it's nice just to have some simple motifs. And while we're here, we can always add a little touch to the centers of the opera pink flowers. 8. Yellow Flowers: It might be nice to bring in some sprigs of yellow flowers. So I'm going back to my size zero Filbert, and fancy yellow deep and white mix. And this brush stroke is somewhere between the neutral daisies and the opera pink flowers. So just pulling down very swiftly, fairly dry brush with lots of pigment and creating very loose shapes. So I'm going to do a few so that we can draw down some longer stems. When you're painting flowers with stems, you may find it easier to paint the flowers first and then add the stems. It keeps it nice and random and natural. And as I move down, I'm just adding some larger flower heads. And let's add some green. So I'm going back to our green mix and just adding a little bit of the yellow mix. This will give us almost like a lime green, nice and bright. And I'm just adding a few little details. A So let's add some stems, and I'm picking up my liner brush and adding a tiny touch of water and a little bit more green. Now, here we're going for a much more watery feel because it will give us enough paint to pull through. If it was very dry and you may want to go with a dry brush effect. But I want these to flow, and therefore I need enough water and paint on my brush for that to happen. And I'm just pulling these through quite quickly, not pressing down on the brush, but just continuing that movement on the tip of the brush and then quickly down. And, you know, again, these are very loose flowers, so the stems don't all need to connect. So I'm going to bring more handsy yellow deep over to that green mix because I want a really zingy, bright green. And let's have another wee practice. So what we're doing here is very similar to the brush strokes we've already done, but we're just pulling the brush through for a lot longer. And as we pull the brush through, we can also add movement. You can take your time and add different size of leaves. So going down to just the tip, really, to a third of the way down for those last two, I do like adding some tiny little dots and details. I guess these could be buttercups, but the leaves are not buttercup leaves. They just belong in my imagination. And I do like adding tin little dots to the top of some other leaves. So cradling the actual flower head. And of course, we can go over the flowers when we're doing that. And I really like the way they look as if they're growing away from us. That's because we've done larger flowers towards the bottom of the sprigs. 9. Leaves: Let's move over to a slightly larger Filbert, and I'm using my memory point size eight. I'm going to practice on this piece of paper because this is a very intuitive process. So I'm just testing at things, making sure that what I am envisaging in my head, I can actually bring to the paper. So I have some French ultramarine, and I'm going to bring in some more of that permanent green gouache and adding some of the French ultramarine to it. Because, as well as focusing on different shapes of flowers and leaves, we can also think a little bit about warm and cool colors. So let's see what that looks like on the paper. Adding a little bit more blue. This is such an easy three step way of creating different greens. So we've added a blue to the green. And now let's go for either a red or pink because we've already used opera pink, I'm just going to go with that, and I'm adding some of the permanent green to the opera pink. That's a kind of a gray green. What we're aiming for really is like a khaki green, olive greenish. And I could be a stickler and bring out some red. But I also believe in mixing with the colors that we're already using as that brings a lot of harmony. So just as we did with the blue and red or pink, we're going to do the same with yellow. And because we're using enhanced yellow deep, we're going to go with that. Adding a touch of white to that. So we've got three very different greens there. We're going to do one of my favorite little leaf shapes, and it's one we did in the class mimos. So I'm starting with that very bright green, and my number five round brush. Any small round brush would be great. We're going to keep the leaves changing direction, changing shape a little bit, so adding tiny little details. And as we move down, we get a little larger each time. And again, I'm using that technique where I'm putting my leaves down first, and then I will add the stem. And I just find that it brings out a more natural feel. So let's move over to our olive green color. And I now have my fine liner brush. And using just the tip, I'm adding tiny little stems. Not every leaf needs to be connected. And I love that. I really love this shape of leaf. Talking about a glossary or a reference sheet of motifs, this is one that I will definitely be coming back to. So this time, let's do the stem first. Still with my liner brush. And I'm creating these broken lines just because I find I have very wobbly hands, and I can never get the stem just the way I want it. And it doesn't have to be perfect, does it? I mean, I really like the fact that it's a broken stem. It's more natural. So this is size two Filbert. Still out of that range of filberts that I bought a few years ago now. So with our filbert, let's pick up some of that earthy olive gray green. Adding a tiny touch more blue. And just brightening it up a little bit with the permanent green and the yellow. So just making sure that I have enough of that olive green for this leaf. This is very similar to the leaves on the yellow flowers, changing direction, changing shape and size of each leaf as I go down. So some tiny leaves clinging to the stem and some leaves branching out. And it's that very swift movement again. Not a lot of water on the brush and alter pigment, and that gives us control with this particular leaf shape. So I'm adding two larger leaves here, but that doesn't look as balanced, so I'm now going to just go in, correct that a little bit by drawing a leaf over that. Showing process, not perfection. I don't like that leaf, but, you know, we're doing a whole page here, so there are gonna be elements that we love more than others. I feel bad for that leaf now. I do love leaf. So I've got my size four, Philbert. So how about some wider leaves? Just dipped it in the water and take the excess off. So it's nice and primed. And going back to that lovely limey green color that we mixed. So let me just show you that. So I'm going to add a touch of white and just mix that in. I think it might be a bit too white now. So I'm just tempering that by adding more green. Just adding a little bit more pink, just a tiny touch. So these are a slower movement, and we're fanning the brush out, so down little wiggle, if you like, and fanning the brush up to a tip. Such a simple and gorgeous leaf. I use this a lot in my work. We can then vary the leaves and do little two stroke leaves, one large, little accent leaf. And this is where our chaos starts, as well as we're going to start overlapping some of the motifs we've already placed. And in the case of that one, it also helps out that leaf that I didn't like. So good thing about these leaves is you can add a lot of detail to them. 10. Perylene Violet Flowers: So it's time to bring in one of my favorite colors, which is perylene violet, and this is a wood color. Too much of this becomes overpowering, so I tend to use it a lot in my meadow paintings as it's a very lush, deep color, and we're looking for a little bit of contrast now. So I'm just cleaning my brush and adding a little bit of water to the peri violet. And I think it would look nice as neutral. So let's add a little bit of white. So it's like a dusky purple now. This is definitely a purple red. It leans very much to the red. And I'd like to create some filler flowers. So these are very simple to do. It's like a miniature version of the opera pink flowers. Little scribbles and the odd dot. And as if they're being blown around by the wind darting in and out of the other motifs. And placing these next to a lighter value flower really makes them pop. And I'm just doing a tiny little second layer where I've added a little bit more white. These touches are small but significant. And these little flowers tend to allow the other motifs to come forward, especially around the paler colors. I just love the way that the light and dark work together. And just as the leaves below, we're going to bring in a little bit of layering where some of the motifs are colliding a little bit. It's a little opportune leaflet here, sewing to add a little flour to it. So cute. Mm. And smudging in some of that paler violet. These little details are done when the petals are still wet. So what we're doing is mixing on the page, basically. Referring back to the intro, this is also where we bring value as Perlin violet is quite dark in color, as are some of the leaves in the bottom half of the page. So I turned that into a little flower, kind of borrowed one of those tiny neutral flowers to leaves instead. I just adding some little impressionistic petals randomly, really. I do believe in finishing touches and one of my great loves little petals and dots. So I'm adding a little bit more white. And it's almost pure white. And I'm just adding a third little layer to these flowers. It tempers them a little bit so that they all fit in, but also doesn't uh that lovely deep quality that the peri violet has. And we've done this movement very often, I think, in other classes. Very abstract, little dots really of paint. It gives our brains a little bit of extra work to do, which I think is a good thing in art. It's very pleasing. Favorite little motif so far is this little flower here. It's adorable. Mm. 11. Pen Doodles On Leaves: So I'm just going to mix up some more green. And I'm using that permanent green gouache. And I've got a little too much water in there, I think, so I'm just going to lift a little bit of that paint. Not all of it. I don't want to waste the color, but I just want to take some of the water out of it. Some opera pink. This makes a green more natural and kind of leans towards an olive green. It just knocks it back a little bit, but it's still nice and cheerful. Just adding a little bit more pink. So it's really nice that that little flower and leaf motif happened. Now I can go in and do a similar thing to the other peri violet flowers. Just those very simple almost side sweep. It's like the tip going down to the right side of the brush. And also using the side of the brush for the smaller marks. It just lifts this violet really nicely. And I also like that we've got these very small elements and the larger pink flowers and large leaves below. So I'm still approaching this very much in the sense of it being a reference page that I can come back to just so I remember different elements that I like. Yeah, I really like those. It's nice to have added some leaves to them, padded them out a little bit. Now, might it be nice to add some details to these larger leaves? So using the green that we've just mixed up. I'm going to use the brush, as we have with the smaller leaves above. I just add some little details, maybe some lines. It looks like maybe there could be buds or flowers that haven't opened fully. So a mixture of lines and small leaves. And I'm just outlining some of the leaves there. Gives them a little bit of character, makes them a little bit more sketchy. This is my favorite little sprig of leaves, and I'm loath to add too much, but I'm just going to add some little accents on this one. I don't want to go overboard. Sometimes simple is best. So we're wanting a very small brush here. I'm using size zero Filbert. Hardly any water on the brush and just pink, and that will give us the control that we need. And then for these on the left, let me have a think. It might be nice to go back to our pen. So I'm using the pigma micron, but you could use a dip pen or any of your favorite pens for this. And I'm just going to outline the leaves. I'm not going all the way around the leaf. I want to make them slightly sketchy and messy. It's always nice to go out beyond the painting or just over it or off kilter. I quite like that when you use a pen over some watercolor leaves and it's slightly off. And do some stems. And go back to these ones on the right. And I'm just using Filbert on the tip. And maybe while I have the green on my brush, I can add some details to these leaves here. 12. Cream & Neutral Peach brown Roses: So let's go back to the mix that we did for our little neutral starflowers. And that was a mix of hansi yellow deep, French ultramarine, and opera pink. And now I'm adding some green because I want to mix a nice kind of ginger colour for the centers of the cream roses. And I'm just tapping in the centers, doing very small rose shapes. Quite like that gingery brown. And just as we did with the other centers, let's bring in a slightly different color. So I'm mixing the French ultramarine with the mix that we've just used. So I'm going to switch up to a size two Philbert. I'm going to turn my page round so I don't smudge my work. And I want it creamier than the yellow flowers. And I'm adding white this year's watercolor, giving my brush a really good clean and mixing that very easy cream of white and hands yellow deep. I'm using my size four Filbet here. And just as we did with the pale roses above, we're going to add these very soft petals. Slow and swifter movements. And going over the center there. And then some curvy petals around this third one. Taking the petals over the center there just makes them look a little bit more real. And I'm adding some of the cream to that gingery brown mix. So we can add some very gentle shadowing. I'm using the full brush and the side of the brush. I'm showing you here how I develop the shapes. So there's a lot of control because there's a lot of pigment and not a lot of water on the brush. It gives us these lovely textural brush marks. And if you wanted to flesh out the flour in any way, you could always pick up a tiny bit more paint or add a tiny touch of water to your brush. Just adding a touch of the periviolet that will bring us to a neutral violet brown. And let's continue to do a few more of these rose shapes. And I mixed it a little darker just because I felt that lighter ones weren't really adding anything. You couldn't see them against the white. And I also wanted, at this point to bring in that lovely play between the neutral hues and the bright hues. So this is where we really start to embrace that. Very quick movements like the Christmas roses, actually, that we did in the winter doodles class. Using the side of my brush. They're very easy to do. And they just take moments per flower, which is really lovely. This color reminds me of white mixed with caput mortem. Might it be nice to go over some of our motifs now? Et's get this page teeming with wildflowers. Might dot one up here where there are some white spaces, and we can afford to be quite throw away with these shapes because there's a lot going on already, so they don't all need to shine. As I've said before, some flowers are there to support others. Just doing some tiny buds. Oh 13. Highlights on neutral roses: So what about if we add some white? Because I'm thinking we could create some highlights. And let's use the paint quite thickly and go for some brush marks. I think that would look really sweet. So very swift. Gestural strokes, not obliterating, obviously, the color beneath, but going over it. And what that does particularly with the contrast in value here is it creates really three D kind of depth feel because we have the lighter petals at the front and that lovely warm, rosy brown in the background. It's such a simple technique, and all we're doing there is just adding one color over another. So I'm just casting my eye over everything. It is getting busy, but that's what I'm wanting. And I think what would finish these off really nicely are some leaves. So I have the Perlin violet and some white. So going back into that perivilet hands yellow deep and white because why not do something different and use this color for leaves as well. So it's slightly darker than the original layer that we put down. And using that side sweep motion that we use quite a lot in other classes as well. You could either go for the stem first and then attach the leaves or do the leaves first. Really relaxing to do. And adding some little flyaway petals or leaves just to bring that colour in across the page. And we're going over elements beneath now a little bit more. Quite often when I have quite a busy piece like this, I like to use a color which is calming and also brings everything together. We've got a little bit of blue up there on the right, top right, and I think it might be a nice idea to bring in some more watercolor leaves in blue. So just got my scrap piece of paper. So this is definitely leaning towards how you would normally use watercolor. I'm just practicing my brush strokes. I'm thinking maybe the size eight memory point might be nice. So let me just see how that works. It is lovely for watery marks, but also more gouache thicker style as well. Okay, let's do this. So I'm going to mix this blue up, take some of the white up there. And I just remembered that that is actually Prussian blue. It's not French old tamarin, but I quite like it, though. It's nice when this happens. If we added some of the green, it would look more kind of like a duck egg blue or going towards that, still quite bluey. But yeah, I love that. I've got a lot of green as well, so it'll blend really nicely. So this is very similar to the movement that we did with the normal filberts. And this is a pointed filbert. So we're going to get a slight point on some of them. It depends on how you use your brush. If you're using the side sweep, you'll get a nice kind of rounded petal or leaf. If you start with the top and then pull down towards you, you'll get, like, a spear shaped petal. And I want to thread these in between all of the motifs. And already you can see how balancing that color is. I really love doing this, especially when I'm unsure. I'm not unsure just now, but if I'm unsure about how to bring everything together, I always like to add either a blue or pink, and that's just my preference, but I just find those very balancing. And I think the other reason why this blue is working is because it's a neutral. We've added white to it, and we've also done that with a lot of the other colors here. So it's really working on a few levels. Always a good time to turn things upside down. It gives you a new perspective. Very similar shapes to the ones we've been using already. At this point, you might think that I would stop, but not me. Not when I have a nice color on my brush. What we're doing here is providing a pathway for the eye to follow like a pathway in tall grass. Otherwise, our eyes can get stuck on one or two colors or motifs. And in this way, we can gaze over all of this and just follow through all of the different elements. I love that this is a greeny blue, and the delphiniums and daisy shapes are much more of a French ultramarine mid blue, so really liking that. What I always suggest when we get to this stage in a painting is to take a photograph of it and just have a look at the photo, and it will start to give you some ideas about what you would like to do to complete. This is slightly different because it's a reference sheet, but I'm still going to do it. 14. Pen details on yellow flowers: So what I noticed from my photo was that the pink flowers were still quite bright and slightly dominating and that this blue wasn't really showing up over the green. I also want to add some detail to the yellow flowers. So I think some more pen work would be lovely. So I've got my 003 pigma micron in sepia, and I've promised to myself that I would not use this over wet paint. So I know that these yellow flowers are ready, and I'm not going to spoil the nib on this pen. So just some very simple outlining of the petals. And some of the sepals. I'm going for a very light touch here, and it certainly doesn't need to be on every flower. I don't want the pen to overpower this element because if we do that, then we have to start to change the other motifs, and we're trying to just keep a balance, even though it's a reference sheet, it's still nice to practice that. So just some very swift light pen marks. Okay, so now I have Moko, my main coon. Who's coming into the room and demanding a hug. So I'm going to have to halt proceedings, while I do that. He's so cute, I can't say no to him. So let's move on to the next lesson. He 15. Additional Blue Flowers: So so looking at these pink flowers again, I was going to knock those back. But rather than subtract, I'm going to add. And I'm still with my pilbet, and I think this is the size tube. So when we get to the end of an exercise like this, colors become a little bit muddy, and so does the water. So I'm just trying to make sure that everything stays fairly clean, and we're not getting lots of colors that we don't want the mixing in. Getting some of that opera pink down again. And it wasn't neat, was it? I think I added some white, so let's do that again. So giving that quick mix, and it's not necessary, but I'm just going to do a quick color match. I am aware that this page is getting very busy. But I really want to echo some of this pink in the page. So I'm just trying to work out where I can fit some little pink flowers in. I started out, I suppose, just keeping these separate, but now it feels like it's come alive in its own right and looks like a lovely summer meadow or cottage garden. So I'm just going with the flow really and echoing some colors. Going over those dark green leaves. And another way to add this pink is to go over some of the other elements. So I don't need to create new flowers. H. And another thing to bear in mind is when you're going over a darker element underneath, use slightly thicker paint, and then it will sit on top of that. So I'm still a bit bothered about this flower here. It's not coming out from the leaves underneath, so I'm just mixing up some more pearl and violet and adding some opera pink, which has a little white. Just adding a little bit more brightness of color to that would help. And I'm just going to add a little bit more white on that. I'm now looking at the blue flower, and that also is not poking out from the leaf underneath. And I'm going with one of my golden rules, which is, it takes a bit of bravery. When in doubt, do more. It's an Angela fair. Angela FE HR, I think. You said that, and it just stuck in my brain, it's been there for years. So when in doubt, just go in there because it's always going to be a learning opportunity. And this is exactly what this sheet is for for experimenting and being able to refer back not only to the motifs that you like, but also the motifs that needed a little bit more work. So while I have a think about that one, I'm going to turn one of these blue elements into a Dlthinum just so that flour is duplicated. And I can remember how I did it. Moving between french terrain with a little white to a more opaque white. So almost neat white here over the darker blue, starting with smaller petals at the top and working our way down to larger petals. And I'm just weaving it behind that pink flower. I have to keep reminding myself that this is a practice page, a reference page. So it's also a record of the journey or the process, which is, I think, a really good thing to remember. So adding a few lighter petals over the blue. Adding this second layer does make your paintings more sophisticated, if you like, just that level of detail. To me, I like that kind of unruly wildflower look. 16. Finishing Touches: And because I want a little bit more blue, I'm going to turn some of that neutral pink brown flower into the one on the right there. So like a Melmas daisy shape, different color, but that nice shape, or maybe a cornflower. And another more leggy flower here, just wanting to fill that space between the larger leaves. So threading it behind and around. And I really do like that. I know it's busy, but I like that there's more blue. Feels like they're all working together now a bit more. Adding tiny flowers in French ultramarine. Adding details over that delphinium working around and beneath the flowers, that's so much better. I'm really glad that I've done those. That looks a lot more harmonized. Am I looking at this as a whole painting now, probably? I started out with it as a reference sheet, and it certainly still is that, but I do like to kind of make everything sing together, so I'm trying to eke out as much as I can of this green because I only want a small amount, and I'm just creating a center like the blue larger flower on the right. The tip of the brush, using the rose shape where we're wrapping around and also just the tip and almost tapping it on the page to create little dots. Such a simple thing to do and look so effective. And then I want to bring that flower out a little bit, so I'm just going to add some outer petals to it. Using blue and white kind of 50 50, and then a darker blue, more of a neat French ultramarine. There are a lot of small elements, so, I quite like the fact that we have a larger element now going on over there. Blue is such a harmonizing color. I'm using a very dry technique here, which I've just started using where the brush is very dry. You know, it's got paint on it, but it's almost like dry brushing. So you put your brush down, and then you just kind of bob up and down on the same area until you get to the texture and color and shape that you want. So I'm going back to my problem area. And again, process over perfection. I'm going to see what I can do here because the fear response is to try and undo it or do less. Sometimes going in and doing more is the only option. So don't be afraid to try that, especially with this thick watercolor or gouache style. So I am going in with a lot of pigment on my brush so that I can really start to make a difference here and bring it up towards us away from that dark leaf underneath. Sometimes we come across problems like this. And, you know, I almost didn't go ahead with the class because I thought, you know, I was so annoyed with this flower. But in the end, I decided it was really worthwhile sharing this because there's always one or two flowers or more that really irritate us or that we wish were different. And the truth is they're not. So I wanted to show how I got through this problem. So I'm mixing some of the French ultramarine in there with the green. This is almost like a deep turquoise color. I'm throwing in everything now. This is some of the periline violet. Why not? Let's have an experiment while we've got all of these colors. And I absolutely love that green, actually. So that's another thing that makes this whole reference sheet worthwhile and just tapping in those little dots into the center. So, already, I'm really glad I did this and didn't give up because I'm now seeing it come to life. Just tapping in a little bit of the yellowy beige color. And while I've got that lush green, I'm just going to add the center to a flower here. Going back to that blue and white. I'm just pulling down some very simple petals just to add a few more of the daisy motifs. I'm just going to mix up a warmer green now, adding the yellow to the mix that we've just done. Tiny bit of the bluey white, but mostly ring on the yellow. And I wanted to add just a little bit of definition to these leaves, but that wasn't quite enough. So I'm adding some white. And that's showing up much better. Just kind of making those feel a little bit more involved. They were quite flat before. Wants to have this color just a few swift leaves in amongst the yellow flowers. And there is the time, believe it or not, where we stop. So I put my brush down. That's it. Here we have our brdy vision of wildflowers, and I certainly learnt a lot. We'll definitely be coming back to some of these colors, some of the flower shapes, the brush marks, and detailing. 17. Thank You!: Thanks so much for joining me in our wildflower watercolor and gouache reference sheet. We've covered hue and we've used warm and cool colors. Saturation, where we've mixed bright and muted colors together. And value using dark colors like Perlin violet through to lighter yellow limes and pastel pinks. I'm hoping it's a reference sheet you can pin up on your Notice board and consistently draw on for your future floral artworks. Thanks again so much, and I shall see you over in discussions and on Instagram. Thanks so much. Bye for now. And