Busy Bee: A Step-by-Step Painting Tutorial

1. Preview: Welcome to Z B a step by step painting tutorial, where I invite you to discover the fascinating connection between art and the beauty of nature. I'm Chris a watercolor and digital artist and your guide for the skill shared tutorial. Together we'll explore the delicate beauty of a B resting on a radiant flower with a vibrant yellow and captivating purple petals. Whether you're a seasoned artist or a beginner, I'll lead you through each step, unlocking your creative potential. As we bring the stunning painting to life. Grab your brushes and paints, set up your workspace, and let's embark on this inspiring painting adventure together. 2. Your Project: For your class project, I encourage you to follow along with my entire process and paint with me. However you have the flexibility to choose how you would like to approach this project. If the complete painting feels a bit overwhelming, you can focus on just the flower itself, capture the intricate details of the radiant yellow center, and practice techniques used to paint the petals. This will give you a chance to perfect your floral watercolor skills. Alternatively, you can choose to paint just perhaps with just a parta of the center as I did here. My other painting I painted a few years ago, or maybe a bee resting on a different, simpler and smaller flower. Concentrate on creating a lifelike representation of this tiny but essential creature. This will help you hone your skills in depicting wildlife and add a charming touch to your portfolio. The main objective is to put into practice the concepts and techniques you've gained during this class. Your artwork should be a reflection of your unique style and interpretation of the subject. Don't hesitate to share your work in progress shots and the final painting with the class. You can easily upload your images to the Projects and Resources section by clicking on the Submit Project button. Providing a brief description of your creative journey, the techniques you used, and any challenges you faced can be immensely beneficial for both your fellow students and me. Should you encounter any questions or run into challenges during your creative process, please feel free to ask for assistance in the discussion section. I'm here to support you and guide you. Before you dive into your painting, I recommend watching each lesson carefully. This will help you become more familiar with the techniques and make you feel more prepared for the painting process. It will boost your confidence and enhance your overall painting experience. If you find this class helpful, I would greatly appreciate it. If you could leave an honest review, your feedback will help me create better content and assist other students in deciding whether to take this class. Thank you in advance. 3. Resources: I've prepared some helpful resources for your project, which you can access in the Projects and Resources section. In the resources, you will find a PDF file containing a list of the supplies I used for this painting. While it's not necessary to use the exact same supplies, I recommend using 100% cotton paper. For the best results, you can use your preferred paints and brushes. You'll also find a reference photo, my finished painting, and work in progress photos, all of which can provide inspiration for your own artwork. Additionally, there are line drawings available in different sizes that you can print and transfer into your watercolor paper. You can choose the size that suits your preferences. Feel free to explore these resources and use them to create your unique and beautiful painting. If you have any questions along the way, don't hesitate to ask. Enjoy your project. 4. Introduction and masking: Hi everyone and welcome to this quite challenging, but really enjoyable tutorial. We're going to paint a bee sitting on a beautiful violet flower with a yellow center. Before we start, I'd like to tell you something about the colors we're going to use. If we look at the reference photo, we can see a very bright violet. This color is really saturated and intense. When we look at the photo on the screen, it's even brighter because the colors on the screen can be really saturated. This color is very unique and it's one of the colors that is impossible to mix with any other colors. We can mix something similar, but any mix will not be as bright, glowing as this color. In the photo on the market, you can find a ready made violet that looks almost exactly the same. It is vibrant and has that wonderful, unique glow. The color is made by, for example, Holbein Brand and its name is bright violet, luminous. It's one of those colors that contains fluorescent dye. In this case, it's BV seven, which is rhodamine B number seven. If you have ever seen Opera Rose color in person, you know what kind of glow it is. Opera Rose contains B V ten, which is rhodamine. B number ten, fluorescent dye. I have a tube of bright violet and I'm going to show you how it looks. I haven't made a swatch yet, so that's a good occasion also to show you how I make my swatches. Here I have a piece of arch, paper cut to size. In the upper part I write pigment, numbers, name of the color. I write the letter H, which stands for holbine in this case, and a small square that shows transparency. Bright violet is semi transparent paint. I also painted a black stripe using black ink. This line is for checking the transparency. I wet the bottom half of the Swatch. I'm picking up the paint and I'm starting from the top. I'm going down until the paint meets water. At the top, I'm applying the paint wet on dry. When the paint meets water, it's painting wet on wet. Then I allow the paint to flow down in the water. If it doesn't want to flow, then I spray it with clean water later when it dries. I'll also add a stripe on the right hand side, wet on dry. This will show me how the color looks when it's applied in two layers. I also lift out a stripe to see if it's easy to lift or not, compare it with other violets. And you can see that it's different. It's just one of a kind. That's the color that you may use for this flower. If you have the color and want to use it, feel free to use it. I am not going to use it because I want to show you an alternative for those of you who may not have the color. Instead of the bright violet, I'm going to mix quinacrdon, magenta and ultramarine blue. A mix of magenta and ultramarine will give the most vibrant violet. The reason of that is because they both have the same undertone, which is violet. In other words, ultramarine blue is leaning towards violet or red if you like. Quinacrodon. Magenta is leaning towards violet or blue if you like. They both have the same bias, hence they create the most vibrant M. When we play with the ratio of these two colors, we can get something very similar to bright violet. It will not be the same, it won't have that wonderful glow, because we don't have that fluorescent dye here. But we can get something very similar. In fact, in this particular painting, we'll also use more color theory. If you remember color harmony schemes, we can use complementary colors, so the colors opposite each other on the color wheel to create a high contrast, vivid, and energizing effect. That's the rule that we're going to use in this painting. Center of the flower is yellow and the petals are violet. These are complementary colors, which together create a wonderful glowing effect. The violet appears to be more vibrant than it really is because of the fact that it's combined here with the yellow on the other side. The yellow looks like if it was glowing because of the fact that it's surrounded by violet. For my painting, I'm going to use a mix of magenta and ultramarine blue, which generally is a muted down version of that bright violet. We enhance the vibrancy by painting yellow close to the violet petals. I hope that makes sense before you start. I also want you to make sure that your pencil drawing is really accurate, especially the center of the flower and the bee. Spend more time on those areas and draw as many details as you can. It will really help you later with the painting. The center of the flower will require a lot of patience and precision. Even though I thought my drawing was accurate, I lost a few times during the painting to avoid frustration and to make the process more enjoyable. Pay attention to the drawing. It's really important we're going to start by painting the petals to make it easier. I think it's a good idea to mask out the center of the flower and we won't have to worry about going over them with violet and painting around those tiny details. If you're not familiar with masking fluid, I recommend that you take a look at my lesson on how to use masking fluid. Here you can learn more about this extremely useful medium. Masking fluid is one of my mask. Hes apply the masking as precisely as you can. Your accurate line drawing should help you with that. We want to mask out the center with all those statements that stick out B. In the illustration that you can find in the class materials, you can see where exactly I applied the masking fluid when you finish, clean your brush and let it dry. 5. Fusion layers: Masking fluid is completely dry, so now we can start painting. In this part, we're going to apply an initial layer on the petals. Before we start, I'd like to show you something that maybe you'll find helpful. You may also think it through when you'll be painting your own paintings. I call this tonal fusion. The idea is simple. If the tones are similar, treat the area as a whole. Let me explain what I mean by that. It's best to identify tonal values when we turn the photo into a gray scale. Now we can clearly see what is light, what is dark, and we are not distracted by the colors. When we look at these two petals, we can see that their tonal values are very similar. It is difficult to distinguish these two petals. There is no big contrast between them when it comes to tones. If we look at the petals on the right hand side, we can also see that the difference between each petal, at least in some areas, is not big. They all have almost exactly the same tonal value, although their colors may be different. This is visible even better if we squint our eyes or we blur the picture. When the picture is blurred, we can see only big patches of light and dark tones, some of them are merging into one big shape. That's what we are looking for when tonal values of two or more neighboring objects or areas, no matter what the object is, are similar, treat it as one big area. Now the question is what for? What is the objective of that? There are three objectives really. First of all, this will help to paint big areas quickly. This is useful at the beginning stage where we want to create an underlayer. When we want to apply an initial layer, we can quickly apply it on a big section. Second of all, it will help you to unify the painting. We cover big areas with one fusion layer at the beginning. It will create a cohesive hole. In the following layer, we can develop tones, colors, and details. But the first wash will help to join all the shapes together. It will also give you instant success. When you quickly cover a big area, you may be less daunted at a later stage because you will have a good base, a foundation upon which you can build your subject. Now the question is, what if the neighboring areas have different colors? Let's look at the example. Here we have a detail from a photo with a rose. I can see here a few potential places where I could create a tonal fusion. The leaf in the middle with the orange, red petal behind it. The leaf on the left and the background, they don't have different colors, but their tones are similar. And the brownish stem with the green background. When I turned the photo into a gray scale, we can see that those three places have similar tones. As a result, we could paint it like this. As you can see, I created a fusion between colors where the tonal values were similar. That could be actually the end result. I think it looks beautiful like this. It's simplified and a little bit abstract, but it has that wonderful watercolor field to it. Other elements with sharper edges and more light Crete, areas that draw attention. But this could also be the base. We could develop more details, apply more layers, or use the negative painting technique to bring out some shapes. Now let's come back to our painting and see how we can use this technique. I think I'm going to use a brush size 12 that should do the work. If it's too big, I'll shift to a size ten. Let's start by mixing our base violet. I'm mixing quinacridon, magenta and ultramarine blue. Prepare a good amount of this color because we'll be using it all the time. It's totally up to you which shade you want to achieve. You may want to add more blue and shift the hue more towards that blue side. That is totally fine. Remember that you don't have to use the same colors as in the reference photo. I'm going to keep it more on the pink side. In my mix, there is much more magenta than blue. I want to get something similar to. The color that is in the reference photo, I'm going to use the tonal fusion technique. On the left hand side, I think I can apply one big layer on three petals. I'm wetting them first with clean water because I'm going to paint wet on wet. I'm painting around the inner lighter petals. We could also apply masking fluid on the edges of those lighter inner petals. But I think their shapes are not too complex and we can try to paint around them. But you can protect the white petals with masking fluid if you like. I went over those three petals with water, and now I can see that my first petal is not so wet anymore. The water has already soaked into the paper a bit, and the surface is not so shiny. That's a sign that I must add more water. The surface must have that high sheen, Should be soaking wet. What I need to do now is just to go over the whole area again with clean water. The second layer of water will guarantee that the surface will not dry too quickly. The paper will keep that high shen for much longer and I'll have more time for applying the paint Now load your brush with your mix and start applying it. I'm using a very watery paint here because the first petal is lighting tone, I don't want to go too dark later. I can always apply one more layer to darken it if there will be a need. Notice how wet my surface is. The paint is running down. I try to keep it all wet all the time. The tricky part is to do a few things at the same time. One is that we need to add paint. Second one is that we have to keep an eye on the paint and observe where it's flowing. If it's flowing too far or in the wrong direction, then tilt your painting to the other side to get the paint moving in a different direction. That's why I love gator boards. They are so lightweight. I can tilt my painting however I like. The worst thing would be to attach your painting to a surface that you can't really move, like directly to the table top. I suggest that you don't do this. You always need to have that freedom of tilting your painting to show your paint where it should go, close to the lighter petals. I'm using a smaller brush because it's easier to paint precisely close to those petals. We're applying now the first initial wash using wet on wet technique. And creating that tonal fusion layer. Fusion layer because instead of painting each petal individually, we combine three of them into a one big area in places where the petal is dark in tone. We can already apply a darker tone of our mix, slightly more concentrated paint. We can also use more blue to get more violet shade here in the shadow areas. One layer will not be enough for sure anyway, remember this is just the base. If there is excess water like here, try to distribute this or remove it with your brush. We don't want to leave that excess water there because it will create unwanted blooms while drying. Notice how nice, soft, and smooth those tonal and color transitions are. Light tones smoothly transition to dark tones. Purple creates a very soft blend with violet. There are three factors that help to achieve that. One is that I use enough water. As you can see, I keep my paper and paint pretty wet all the time. Second one is that I use a big brush, which eliminates the need of making too many brush strokes. The less brush strokes, the better. The third one is that I keep my painting at an angle. I'm tilting it different directions. I'm forcing the paint to flow and create those transitions by moving the whole painting, not by forcing it with the use of my brush. Now let's compare the colors of the petals with bright violet by hole bin. As you can see, it is different, but it's not that bad. In the end, it will all look really nice, especially when we add yellows. Don't worry, and just keep painting. Now let's go to the right hand side and apply a tonal fusion layer on some of those petals. Take a look at the black and white photo. See the colors here. But we can see that the tones are quite similar. It's better visible when we look at the blurred photo. There are some darker small areas and lighter ones. But in general, the tone is pretty consistent. Don't worry about darker tones because they are much darker. We will have to paint at least one more layer to achieve that depth. We can also consider those areas at this stage as a similar tone. This time, we have a different situation because apart from purples, we also have yellows on those petals. Notice that in black and white photo, the difference in tone between yellows and purples is not big. Only when we see the colors, can we say that we need to use different colors in this fusion layer before we start? Let me apologize for not showing you my palette now. Unfortunately, I must have missed the record button and I didn't record my palette in the rest of this part. The palette view will be back in the next part. Let's start by applying a water glaze first and then re, wet the whole area again to make sure we can see that high sheen and the surface is wet. In the illustration, you can see where I am applying a water glaze. Now on my palette, I still have my mix of Quinacridon, magenta and ultramarine blue. I also have a separate palette where I mixed Windsor yellow with Windsor yellow. Deep mixing those two yellows gives a very beautiful, glowing sunshine yellow. We're going to use those two yellows in the center of the flower as well. When I'm sure that my paper is wet enough, it keeps that high sheen, I can start applying my colors again. Notice that I'm allowing the paint to flow freely. I keep my painting at an angle with a clean dump brush. I'm trying to lift out the paint from the lightest areas. I don't want the paint to flow into the highlights close to the center. I'm adding a mix of my yellows. Winds are yellow and winds are yellow deep. This yellow here is really important, it helps to create that glowing effect. The yellow from the center of the flower is reflected on the petals. Which creates that magical glow. If I don't want the paint to flow too quickly, I keep my painting flat. If I don't want the paint to disperse too far, I wait a bit longer for the paper to be less wet, more water, more spreading. Less, less spreading. That's actually a constant assessment of how wet your paper is and how thick your paint should be on these petals. I'm using more magenta than ultramarine. When magenta meets yellow, it becomes orange or red depending on proportions. If I had more blue in my purple mix, it would make brown with yellow. We will need some browns here later. Try to paint around those lighter petals. You don't have to be very precise Now, just try to paint around the lightest areas. If the paint flows into those areas, clean your brush, blot it on a paper towel, and lift out some of that paint to clean that area. That's how it looks at this stage. Clean the edges and leave it to dry. When the left and the right sides are dry, we'll paint the upper and the lower part. Now, I'm wetting the upper part, not the whole area. I'm omitting the lighter petals. You can see in the illustration, again, where I applied the water. I'm adding my colors at this stage. I'm not thinking about any details. My aim is just to apply the basic color, Create that overall base for the next layer. Because we're using the fusion layer, the petals won't look disjointed. This layer creates that nice impression of unity. Remember not to hurry. If you're in a hurry, then it means that you're doing something wrong. There is no need to. If your paper is wet enough, you should have enough time to apply the paint without hurry. In the lower part, I only want to tinge the left petal and the petals in the middle with some light purple on the right hand side, I want to add a darker shadow straightaway. Try to keep everything soft and smooth. You should not see any hard edges at this stage. Tilt your painting until the paint stops moving and settles down. Clean the edges and leave everything to dry. 6. Developing the petals: In this part, we're going to finish the outer purple petals. Our objective now is to darken the petals, paint the shadows, and add some details. Make sure that everything is bone dry. I left my painting to dry overnight, so it's now completely dry, and I'm sure I can apply another layer. Let's compare the colors first with bright violet swatch. Both the swatch and the painting are dry. And now we can see that the painting still lacks that vibrancy that is present in bright violet. But that's fine. We're going to add another layer and make the colors more saturated in a minute. This time we'll be painting in smaller sections. We'll focus on each petal individually. I'm going to use a brush size 12. Now I'm spraying my paints with clean water first to activate them, and I'm mixing more of my purple mix. I'm using Quinacridon, magenta and ultramarine blue. One petal of paint contains more magenta, the other one more blue. I'm applying a water glaze on a half of the first petal. We need to darken the shadow here. I'm applying the paint close to the middle of the petal and I'm tilting my painting to get the paint moving. I wanted to create that soft transition from dark to light. In the light areas, I'm also dropping in some purple. I'm painting longer lines. I'm trying to keep everything really soft, don't worry about the hard edge on the left. We'll soften it later with a scrub brush. With a smaller brush size eight. I'm adding a shadow here. I'm trying to vary the color within the shadow. In the upper part, it's more bluish. In the bottom part, it's more reddish. Now, let's move on to the next petal. Here we need to apply this really dark shadow. I'm going to use the same mix of Quinacrodon, magenta, and ultramarine blue. This time, I'm using more concentrated paint, which makes it darker. After wetting the shadow area, I'm applying my dark shadow mix again, I'm trying to vary the colors within the shadow. I'm dropping in more magenta, closer to the light inner petals and more ultramarine blue, close to the edge of the painting. Notice that everything is quite wet. The colors freely flow on the surface. When I'm holding the painting at an angle, there is a puddle of us water gathering at the bottom. We need to get rid of it by either tilting the painting and get the paint moving until it soaks in a bit and settles down, or by soaking it up with a clean dump brush. I usually first tilt the painting to distribute the paint on the surface and create those soft transitions. And then when I can see that there is still way too much water, I use my brush to remove the as one more shadow on the petal. I apply the water glaze on the shadow area. Only I'm dropping in my colors this time I'm starting with permanent rose because I think I can see a bit warmer pink on this petal. Permanent rose is a warmer pink than Quinacrodon magenta. We're going to use it in a few places in this painting. Add the purple, use more concentrated darker paint, closer to the edge and close to the center. Drop in some yellow, a mix of Windsor yellow and Windsor yellow deep til the painting for a while in different directions until the paint settles down and we can go to the next area. Let's darken this shadow Now at this stage, try to use wet on wet technique to make all those transitions nice and smooth. Use our purple mix in the upper part and going down, shift the color to permanent rose. When the surface still has that high sh, we can add more paint with a clean brush. Try to lift out the paint from the lighter areas. Rinse and blot your brush, and run it in a place where you want to make a highlight. Depending on how wet the surface is, you may lift out more or less paint. This way, the wetter the surface, the less paint you will lift, and the smoother softer highlights you will create. To show you the difference, let's come back to the previous petal, which is already much drier. It doesn't have that nice, wet, glistening surface anymore. It's met at this stage, we must be really careful. We can't add more paint, because we'll get blooms for sure. We can, however, lift out some of the paint to create lighter lines. The trick is to keep the brush just slightly dump. It can't be too wet because water will flow down to the paper. It will push the pigment and create blooms with just the tip of my slightly damp brush. I'm running it along the middle part of the petal to create more distinct lighter lines. I'm lifting out the paint, but because the surface is not so wet here, I can create more precise lines. I'm also adding another wet on wet layer in this little corner. Now let's paint the petals on the right hand side. There are a few petals to paint and we have to paint them alternately. We don't want the paint from one petal to flow into the next one right next to it. We're going to paint every second one I'm applying a water glaze of. We need to paint wet on wet. Make sure the water is distributed evenly on the entire petal. We're now darkening the colors and making them more saturated. By applying one more layer of paint. We're adjusting the tones of each petal. It's important to use a brush that is big enough to cover each petal quickly without the need of making too many brush strokes. If you fiddle too much in one place with a small brush, you may get very easily an overworked look. As you can see, the paint on the petal creates very soft gradients. Try to achieve a similar effect. Remember about three main factors that will help you to achieve that. Use enough water, you need a high shine on the surface. A big brush and a few brush strokes as possible tilt your painting to get the paint moving. Let the help you to move the paint and create those beautiful gradients. Skip one petal and focus on another one. Wet it well first and apply more colors. On this one, I'm using permanent rows on the right and my yellow mix close to the center. Notice that the yellow here is not really bright and pure. It's slightly in the shadow, so we have to mute it down. How can we do this? We can add a complementary color, which is violet or purple. In our case, we can use a small amount of Quinaquidon magenta mixed with ultramarine blue. Remember that just a tiny amount of violet will darken the yellow. Don't exaggerate, we can always apply more layers later. Yellow and violet will make brown. And that's what we really need here. Another section in the bottom right corner that we need to cover. This time we have to create a beautiful gradient from yellow to pink and violet. The pink here is Quinacridone magenta. The deep violet is a more concentrated mix of magenta and ultramarine blue. The yellow is again a mix of Windsor Yellow and winds are yellow deep. Make sure you have enough water on the paper. Drop in the colours and allow the colors to blend at the bottom pedals. I think we can now apply some colors in the middle section. Again, wet on wet, start with a lot of yellow close to the center, and then going outwards at more pink. I'm using both permanent rose and quinacrodonmgenta. When permanent rose meets yellow, it becomes more red. I'm also leaving some lighter areas for highlights. Let's now come back to the petals that we have skipped. Repeat the process on each petal, wet it first, and then at pinks, purples, and yellows on some petals, you will only need to make a few brush strokes to indicate some subtle diffused lines. On others, you will need to use more paint to make the colors deeper and more vibrant. When everything is dry, we can make some final adjustments and add some details. We have to check every single petal that we have already painted and compare them with the reference photo that we have to assess what we need to do to make it look more like in the photo. Of course, it doesn't have to look exactly the same, but we want to achieve something similar. I'm starting by darkening the small triangular shape. To make my purple darker, I'm adding paints gray to my mix of quinacrodon, magenta and ultramarine blue. I'm also adjusting the brush size for the small area. I'm using a brush size four on this petal. I want to create those soft, diffused lines running along the left side of the petal. We can easily do this by using wet on wet technique. I'm wetting the petal first, only the left side where I'm planning to paint. Now, in order to create those blurred lines, we need to apply the paint at the right moment. When is the right moment? Obviously, we can't determine this exactly for each of us. It will be different based on our experience and observation. We need to judge how paint will behave if we apply it now or in a minute. We know that the more water on the paper and the brush, the less control we have over the paint. And the bigger spreading we have to find that perfect moment when we think the paint will not spread too much. We can run the brush once to see how the paint behaves and then assess whether we should wait a minute or we can continue applying the paint. If the paint is spreading too far, we can also lift it out from between the lines. We can also add more paint on the lines to make them distinct. I really don't like this edge here. It's not smooth enough. I'm using my scrubber brush to tease the edge and to lift out the paint. This way I'm smoothing out this edge. It looks much better. Now, this area is actually a shadow behind the leaf. I'm going to darken it with purple at the top and more pink at the bottom. Now let's see what we can do with this petal. Now we're going to change the technique. This time I'm going to use wet on dry technique. I'm picking up my pink. I'm applying the paint here, close to the edge of the petal, and then I'm quickly rinsing and blotting my brush. And I'm running my dump brush along the edge of a shape I have just applied to soften the edge. We don't want to wet the entire petal. There's no need to do this, because we want to apply a darker color only on a small area. And the lines should not be so blurry. The rest of the petal is dry. So we can also paint long lines indicating the veins, and they will stay sharp. I'm doing the same on the next petal. I'm picking up a color, applying it wet and dry, and quickly softening the edges with a clean dumb brush. I'm adding just a tiny bit of purple to my yellow to create a darker tone. And I'm painting shadows close to the center with a clean, damp brush. I'm again, softening some of the edges. I'm dropping in more brown to create more depth. The brown is a mix of my yellows with purple. I don't introduce any other ready made brown like, for example, burnt sienna. If I can mix it from the colors I have already used in the painting. This way I keep color harmony. Now. Similarly, add the details on other petals. Try to soften the edges as quickly as you can before the paint dries. But if it dries, don't worry. Later you can soften the edges using a scrubber brush. I'm going to skip a few petals and go to the ones at the bottom. I'm applying here a wet and dry and I'm softening the edge quickly. If you use too dry paint, you may have a problem with softening. The paint should be pretty wet. In the middle section, we're going to add much more details for now. Let's just darken this triangular shape. I'm also applying a gentle cast shadow on this petal. I'm starting with a light tone of pink, then I'm dropping in a bit more violet, which with contact with yellow and pink becomes brown. I can't really see what is happening in this area, because in the reference photo, it's hidden behind the petal. But we can improvise a bit. I'm adding shadows to make a clear distinction between each petal here. Notice how the previously applied fusion layer connects all those petals. They have the same fundament, but now each of them becomes an individual object. I'm adding slightly more purple to my yellow mix, and using the color to create a shadow on the next petal. Again, I'm starting lightly as if I was really shy and I'm painting wet and dry, trying to recreate the shape of that shadow. When I finish the shape, I feel it with some colors, various colors from the color families I have already used. I have some yellows here, Browns and pinks that create red when they meet yellow. This is a very colorful and very warm shadow. Try to vary the colors to add more interest. Let's also come back to the right corner. Everything around is already. Now we can bring out some shapes by using the negative painting technique. I'm using purple to paint this triangular shape. Now with a much bigger brush, I'm wetting the corner. And I'm dropping in the purple, more magenta at the top, more ultramarine at the bottom. Here, We want to add more dimension to the petal. I'm first lifting out a bit of paint to create a very subtle highlight. I'm using my regular round brush because it has softer bristles. I don't need a scrubber brush here. I only want to wet the surface gently. Lift out a bit of paint to make this area slightly lighter. Now, mixing a P with Quinacrodon magenta and paints gray, I'm applying the color under my highlight. I'm quickly trying to soften the edge at the bottom. I'm also adding the color in the lower part. Generally, I want to darken the shadow a lot. The last thing I want to do before going to the next part, is that I want to soften all hard edges on the inner lighter petals. I went over the pencil lines in a few places. Using a scrub brush will help to straighten those edges. Make them smoother and softer. We can, we can clean up any imperfections. I also noticed that this shadow needs more darkening and more lines. I'm going over it again with my mix of purple and yellow. It's a process of constant adjustments. These petals are not finished yet, and I will make some adjustments. But let's leave them now as they are, and let's move on to the next part where we'll be painting the inner lighter petals. 7. Inner petals: We'll have less work with the inner petals because they are smaller and also less colorful while you're painting them. Keep in mind that petals on the left have more light and they are much lighter in tone. In general, we will have more whiteness of the paper to show that beautiful light spray paints, if they are dry, to activate the pigment. And let's start by preparing a very light violet that we're going to use. For the shadows, I'm mixing in acid magenta, and ultramarine blue. I'm adding windsor yellow deep to the mix. We want to achieve a light muted violet. We don't have to use a lot of paint. Small amounts are enough. This time, we must add more water. Make the mix more diluted, which will make it lighter in tone. Quinacrdon magenta and ultramarine blue create violet. And Windsor yellow deep makes it less vibrant. Don't exaggerate with the yellow, we don't want to get brown, but slightly muted light violet. I'm going to use a brush size eight. The first petal has a pinkish violet shadow on the left. I'm going to start by applying Quinacrodon magenta. I'm starting with a light tone and then I'm dropping in more color to darken that tone in the upper part. And on the left side, I'm adding violet. I'm now painting wet and dry, and this is the technique that we're going to practice. Now, applying the paint wet and dry is quite easy. We just pick up the color and just paint on the paper, apply it on the paper. Depending on how watery the paint is, we can get a lighter or a darker tone. The tricky part is to soften the edges. My paint is pretty watery. After applying it on the paper, it doesn't dry in a second. It stays wet for a few more seconds. That's important. This is the time when I have a chance to add more color or quickly clean my brush, blot it on my blooding towel, and then soften the edge. Notice how I'm softening the edge. I apply the paint, still wet on the paper. I'm rinsing my brush in water and blotting it on a towel. Now, I'm gently trying to tease the edge. And working my brush along the edge back and forth. I'm softening that hard edge. I'm not trying to pull away the paint. I don't want to widen or expand that shadow. I want the shape to stay as it is. I only want to soften it. While doing that, I'm rinsing and blotting my brush a few times. It's important to use a clean brush. Otherwise we'll just transfer the paint from one place to another. Okay, now we need a lighter neutral color. Something between violet and big. I'm mixing my violet mix with yellow violet and yellow gives brown. I'm adding a bit more ultramarine blue to neutralize the color a bit more. Notice that I'm mixing a very small amount of paint and it's really wet. It's almost like tinged water with this neutral base color. I'm painting shadows in the creases of the petal. Again, I'm quickly rinsing and blotting my brush and I'm trying to soften the edge before the paint dries. I don't like this edge here. It's not smooth. I went over the next pedal with the paint. So before I start painting, I'm using my damp scrubber brush to clean up the edge. With the same neutral purplish beige color, I'm painting the shadow on the next petal. I'm trying to keep the color light. It's very easy to exaggerate and go too dark, especially on such light petals. I know that I can always apply another layer if I need to. I'm varying the colors here. The shadows always look more interesting when they are not just one flat wash of paint. This is a white petal in the shadows areas. We can use the colors from the surroundings because they are reflected in the shadows. When I want to create a smooth edge, I'm trying to quickly soften it before the paint dries. But sometimes it's difficult to do all those things at the same time We have to apply the paint. Take care about the edges, think about the tones and colors, et cetera. Some edges I may leave sharp, and later I will soften them with my scrubber brush. Here's another petal, and again, I'm creating this nice and smooth gradient from pink to yellow. I'm adding more yellow close to the center to increase that impression of glowing yellow center. Notice that I can achieve such a smooth gradient because I'm using quite a big brush. As for this area size eight, my paint is well diluted. When we paint wet and dry and the paint is too, then it may be difficult to achieve such smooth color blending. If the paint is too dry, there is a risk that the layer will have some patches. It will not be even, and the brush strokes will be visible. Make sure you have enough water in your mix. Another petal with a rainbow of colors from violet to pink to yellow. I'm changing my brush to a size four and I'm painting a shadow on this little petal. I'm starting with a pale color, and when I get the correct shape and the paint is still wet, I'm dropping in a darker tone. I'm back to the petal that I skipped. I skipped it because I didn't want the paint from the previous petal to flow into this one. Now when they are all dry, I can paint this one. For now, I'm going to apply just the base here because I can see it will need a bit more work again, think in big shapes, big patches of colors, and create those soft gradients. Notice that by making the petals darker, close to the center, and painting the creases. The petals in the correct directions, we are creating that impression of indentation in the center of the flower. I didn't mention this yet, but I think it's obvious that whenever we paint any lines, veins, or creases, we have to follow the shape of the petals. This helps to create a correct form of the petal and shows how each petal is bent. Let's move on to this one. Now on this one I'm going to first apply a water, but only on the left side of the petal. I can't see any hard edges there or lines. I want to apply this initial layer, wet on wet, and create smooth color transitions. Now I'm painting wet and dry again because I need to create sharper edges, but not all of them. Notice how I'm choosing between wet on wet, wet and dry and wet and dry with smoothing out the edges. I constantly looking at the reference photo and I'm thinking how I can achieve the particular result. I know what effect I can get if I use wet on wet technique. I know what I can expect. When I use wet on dry technique, I'm choosing the one that will give me the best result in this particular area. Let's also work a bit more on the two small petals on the right hand side. Compare them with the reference photo. And think how you can improve them. What needs to be done in order to achieve similar look as in the reference photo? Always remember to paint what you see. I'm starting by applying yellow and then I'm shifting to a very light, ultramarine blue and some pinkish violet at the bottom. As you know, yellow and blue make green. And we don't really want to see green here. To avoid that, add a tiny bit of purple or pink between yellow and blue. Let it be a bridge between those two colors. On the lower part, I'm just applying one more layer of the same colors as previously, Yellow, purple, and pink. Just to make the colors, there is one more area that is bugging me. I think I want to darken the middle part of this petal. I'm adding pink wet on dry, and I'm softening the edge. I'm also adding two violet lines indicating the creases. Okay. Now everything is dry and we can take one last good look at all those petals and see what else we can do. Go over each petal again and think if it looks good, or you would like to work on it a bit more. Most importantly, try to assess whether the tones are correct. Perhaps the shadows are too light and you should darken them. Maybe you'd like to darken the petals close to the center. That's very probable because when the paint is dry, it's always paler than when it's wet In this particular painting. Dark tones close to the center create that wonderful depth. Make sure you get the tones right. I'm sure I need to darken the shadows. They are too light on some of the petals in the second layer, I'm using the same colors as previously, and my colors have the same tonal value as previously. But because we have a build up of layers, the colors become darker. This pedal should be much darker before I apply the paint on the whole pedal. Adding lines indicating the cases when the lines dry slightly. I'm darkening the whole petal by applying the paint on the entire petal while the lines are still slightly dump. I'm softening those lines making them less distinct. Finally, with a clean dump scrubber brush, I'm trying to soften some of the hard edges. Now let's move on to the next part where we're going to paint the background. 8. Background: There are two small areas that we need to cover with green. Before I do that, I have to fix something. I went over the lines quite a bit on this petal. Before I apply the green, I need to get rid of that paint here and that hard edge. If I left it like this and I went over it with the green, it would become darker and more visible. It's a good idea to fix this. Now, for the green, we're going to use colors that we have already used in a painting. We used winds are yellow, winds are yellow, deep ultramarine blue, and paints gray. Let's mix them and see what we get. We need two shades of green. One of them is more yellowish and, and the second one is darker and more bluish. I'm starting by mixing windsor yellow with ultramarine blue and Windsor yellow deep. This should give us a nice neutral looking base green. Which we can shift more towards a light yellowish green by adding more yellow or towards very dark, a bit more bluish green by adding panes gray. Think for a moment why. A mix of Windsor yellow, ultramarine blue, and Windsor yellow deep gives us a natural looking green. Can you guess that? Let's see, we have three colors. Winds are yellow, winds are yellow, deep, and ultramarine blue. Let's look at their undertones. Windsor yellow has a green undertone, winds are yellow, deep, has an orange undertone. Ultramarine blue has a purple undertone. We can say that Windsor yellow in this case is neutral for us because it has green undertone. And we want to mix green. So it doesn't affect our green. But two other colors will affect the green because of their bias, their undertone. We can say that we are not mixing only yellow and blue. Here our mix, we actually have yellow, blue, a tiny bit of orange and a little bit of violet. That orange and violet will affect the resulting color. Our final color is green. Because of that addition of orange and violet, the green is not so vibrant. It's slightly muted down and it looks natural. Of course, there is no real orange and violet in those panes, but that's how we can imagine those mixes. If two colors have the same undertone, they produce the most vibrant, clean colors. But if there is a different undertone somewhere, then it affects the final color somehow. It all depends on what colors we're mixing. Let's come back to our mix. I added more winds are yellow to shifted towards yellowish green and paints gray to make a nice dark green. I rotated my painting because it will be easier to paint like this. I'm painting wet on wet. So I'm starting by applying a water glaze first, then I'm adding my colors, trying to create a transition from dark to light green. I'm using a smaller brush to paint precisely along the edges of the petals. Remove the excess paint to avoid blooms forming later. While the paint will be drying, clean the edges to keep them nice and clean, repeat the process in the other background area. Even though it's a very small section, painted wet and wet as well, it's important to be consistent this way each section will look the same. Before we move on, we can remove the masking fluid. 9. Center - Initial Layer: I have to focus on a small area and I know that there are a lot of details. I like to print out that area and keep it close by when I paint, I look at the reference photo many, many times. It's just much easier when the photo is close. I don't have to raise my head every time to look at my computer screen. Sometimes I also display the photo on my phone, but I prefer to have a printout. When we look at the black and white photos, we can see that the lightest highlights in the very center are not pure white, They are very pale yellow. This tells me that I don't really have to protect the highlights in any way. I can start painting by applying a light layer of yellow on the entire center of the flower. That's what we are going to do. I'm preparing two petals of color on my palette. One is Windsor yellow and the second one is Windsor yellow, Deep. I'm going to use spatter brushes now. Size two and size four interchangeably. Now cover the entire yellow center of the flower with those two colors to carefully paint around the bee's legs. But if you go over them, don't worry, they will be darker anyway. Make sure to cover every statement that is sticking out. Try to keep the center very light. Use a very diluted winds are yellow in the center. Use a darker tone, slightly more concentrated paint around. On the, on the left, winds are yellow, and on the right transition to winds are yellow, deep U U. When you finish, leave everything to dry. Now we're going to start the most fiddly part. And you must promise me something, Promise me that no matter what, you will not give up. The center of the flower and the bee are two important elements here they are in the focus and they must be painted precisely as many details as we can paint. It will take a little bit of time, but remember that you don't have to finish this painting today. Allow yourself more time today and tomorrow, and in a week to slowly build this painting. No need to rush. If you feel tired of this, just leave it. Paint something else and come back to this later. We can divide the center into the middle part and the outer ring with statements. Our aim until the end of this part of this tutorial is to apply middle tones in the middle part of the flower center. Let's prepare some colors that we'll be using now and at the later stages. First of all, we need a mix of Windsor yellow and winds are yellow deep. This will be our base yellow. For creating a shadow color. For this yellow, we need a darker tone of it. We can darken this yellow by adding an opposite color, which is violet. We have already used violet mix in our painting. Let's mix it again. I'm mixing quenacrodonmgenta with ultramarine blue. Now we can mix our yellow with the violet. In result, we get brown, which we can further adjust by playing with the ratios of those colors. I'm also going to keep one more puddle of color, a mix of Windsor yellow, deep with Rinachrdon magenta. This will be my orange, which I'm going to use in some areas. Now, identify one of those elements in the center. It can be any of them. It doesn't really matter, just pick the one that is easy to identify. Now you can see how important is the pencil sketch. If yours is not as precise, take a moment to draw a more detailed sketch. As you can see, I drew almost every element in the center. It will be really easy to get lost if your pencil drawing is not accurate. I'm starting with our base yellow. I'm painting wet and dry. I'm using a spotter brush size two. I'm painting each element with the highlight. Now I'm applying the paint around those highlights in order to keep track of where I am exactly. I keep my finger pointing at the element I'm painting. If you're painting on a bigger size, it may be easier for you. In the painting, it looks like it's quite big, but in reality it's all very small. I have to be very careful. I know that my tutorials may be demanding, most of them require a lot of patience and precision. They are long and sometimes daunting. But remember that if you don't tackle paintings like this, and you will keep painting simple things, you will not develop your skills. Sometimes we look at others. Paintings with lots of details, Big paintings that look really complicated to paint with subjects that we are afraid of to paint. We wonder how they do this. Remember that each of those paintings has been painted using the same basic techniques. More complex paintings just require more time, more planning, and patience. Subject doesn't really matter when I'm painting. I like to think about shapes, colors, tones, textures I need to create, and not the subject I'm painting. It all boils down to the techniques and observation. You can divide huge paintings into smaller sections and focus on one small section at a time. When you finish each section, like a jigsaw puzzle, you will finish a big complex painting. It is feasible, for example, these elements in the center could be just tiny details From a painting on a full sheet watercolor paper, we would just paint everything step by step. It would take time, a lot of time, but that's just how it's done. This whole flower with the B could be just a part of a big painting. If you like to paint realistically, you just need patience. Treat every little section of your painting with care and calmness. Okay, I finished the elements with the light highlights and now I can paint the rest. Other elements are darker, They have more shadows. I'm going to use my other mixes as well. But again, paint one element at a time. Focus only on one of them, and try to recreate what you're seeing in the photo. Start with a light tone and then drop in a darker tone. At this stage, we're just darkening those elements. We want to apply middle tones. Later, we will add the darkest tones to make clear distinctions between element. I'm adding my brown in the darkest areas, even though it's not the final dark tone yet. I just want to indicate for myself where the darks should be and I will make them darker. 10. Center - Dark Tones and Details: We have already applied light and middle tones. So now we can increase the contrast by adding the tones. Here in the sped up video, you can see what we are going to do in this part. I'm again going over each element, and I'm applying a final layer with the darkest tones and I'm adding details. This took me 1 hour to finish. Make sure that everything is bone dry. I'm going to use a spotter brush. So now I still have my colors on the palette, but this time I'm also mixing a darker brown. I'm using the same colors as previously. Quinacridone magenta, ultramarine blue, and Windsor yellow deep. But this time I'm also adding paints gray to darken the mix. Now, again, slowly, gradually, I'm going to focus on a tiny little section at a time. I'm going to try to recreate what I can see in the reference photo. I always start with a lighter tone and then I go over again with a darker tone. Sometimes a few times if there is a need, until I reach the desired darkness of color. This is a slow and very detailed process. It's very easy to get lost in all of those details. You may also want to simplify all those shapes and pay less attention to the details. But what I recommend you to do is to focus at least on tonal values and make those elements slightly darker. Not all of them, only those on the left hand side. And at the bottom, they create like a crescent shape. It's important to get those dark tones because they help to build the form of the entire center of this flower. As you can see, I'm enjoying the process and I'm focusing on every millimeter of this section. I want to be as precise as I can. These colors are calming and I don't want to rush with it. I'm painting wet and dry because these are really small elements. Painting wet and dry makes the paint dry quickly. So I can almost immediately go over the previously applied layer and apply a darker tone if I need to. It may be easier if you first apply the very darkest tone and then you darken the middle tones. I vary my approach. Sometimes I add more middle tones first and finish the element with a dark tone. But other times, when the dark tones are really prominent, especially in the darkest places between the elements, I apply the darkest tones first and then work on the middle tones. I don't think it would make sense to show you how I paint every single element. I'll show you a few and then I'll skip a few. I paint each of them in a similar way, they only differ when it comes to the distribution of light and dark tones. Most importantly, make sure that those deep crevises are dark enough. Notice also how I'm creating gradients on each element. When I add a darker tone, I immediately try to soften it and create that gradient from dark to light. If the elements with the lightest highlights look too light. Now, when you apply the dark tones, feel free to add one more layer on them and darken them slightly, but not too much. Look at this area as a whole and try to create a cohesive form that goes from dark to light. When you finish, take a break, give yourself an award for patients and come back later in the next. We're going to paint all those statements around. 11. Center - Stamens: Here is a very quick overview of what we are going to paint. In this, you can see that I'm going around the center, gradually building the shapes of the stamens by applying small amounts of paint and building the tones. This took me almost 2 hours to finish because I was lost a few times and I also took breaks. I'm using a sputter brush size zero again and the same colors that I still have on my palette. I'm starting with the lightest stones close to the B. I'm painting around the legs. While painting those statements, consider applying the darkest, most distinct shapes first and then build the tones around them. It was very easy to get lost in all those shapes because unlike the elements in the center, these are not regular, every shape is different, Every small section needs special attention and individual approach. Adding dark shapes will help you to create some reference points. You can use them as your guides and build the shapes and tones ad them. Of course, a good pencil sketch is also helpful here. I can still see mine under the yellow layer, but looking at the reference photo every second is inevitable. If I can identify a shape that draws my attention the most I start with that shape, Usually it's something dark. I paint it to have that reference point. Other times, I'm starting by adding more yellow to make the yellow more intense. And then I'm slowly adding darker and darker tones here and there until I achieve the correct tone and shape. That's I'm slowly working around the center. One of my followers on Instagram, Rosalie wrote, there is no shortcut for beautiful work. That's true. If we want to achieve that realistic look, we just have to spend time on this and carefully paint every detail. This is actually the most intricate flower center I've ever painted. That's a very good practice. So you can see how I'm painting it. And now allow yourself some time to paint it calmly. Don't stay within the same colors all the time and make sure your tonal values are correct. 12. Bee - Initial Layer: The center of the flower is completely dry. Now we can move on to paint the Be E. I printed out only the bee this time to have it close at hand and be able to quickly look at it. Let's think about how we can tackle this. E, the body of the bee is covered with hairs, so we need to create that hairy texture. This already tells us that we will need a round brush with a very sharp point, a very small spotter brush. I'm going to use a spotter size zero and see if it's small enough. Apart from the colors that we have already used, we also need black to create black. I'm mixing permanent rows, ultramarine blue paints, gray and windsor yellow deep. Why those colors? Permanent rows, ultramarine blue and windsor yellow deep. Because these are three primaries, red, blue, and yellow. When we mix three primaries, we get black. I use those particular colors because I have already used them in this painting. Permanent Rose, because it's a warmer shade than magenta. The same with yellow and blue. They are all warm colors. I want a warm shade of black. I added paints gray to darken it even more. When I water down the black, you can see a lovely neutral gray. I'm sure that if I apply a few layers of that color, I will get a real black Before I start, I want to soften slightly those hard edges in order to create that hairy texture. We need to build it by applying many short brushes. I want to create a roadmap for the next layer. This is again a very slow process because we have to be really careful and put those colors in the right places. I'm applying a very light tone of my black on the legs. I don't want to go straight away because now I'm testing whether my pencil sketch is correct. I want to apply a light tone and see how it looks. If I made a mistake in a pencil sketch, and the shape of the leg should be different, it's easier to lift off the light tone of gray than the black. If everything is fine, I will apply another layer with a darker tone. I'm also applying this color on the eye, on the head, wherever I see a dark tone in the reference photo. I'm also painting tiny hairs on the yellow areas. You can see that because I'm using those short brush strokes, the hairy texture is already showing up. Slowly, I changed my brush to a smaller one. It's a sputtered, triple zero brush. It's very tiny, just like the hairs, we have the lightest stones in place. And now we can go back and start applying more colors. Let's move on to the next part now. 13. Bee - Developing the Details: In this part we're going to paint the body of the E. In the next and the last part, we're going to paint the wing. Let's start by painting the darkest parts of the eye. Use our black mix, leave some gaps which are going to be lighter in tone and will have different colors vary the colors also brown. Don't worry if the tonal value is not dark enough yet. We will apply one more layer. Now, paint the legs. Try to use a dark tone. Now we want to be more brave now with the colors, because in this part, we will finish the body. We strive to achieve the right colors in the right tone. You may need to go over the same place a few times. Notice that when I'm applying black on the eye, I'm also thinking about the hairs that are around the eye using the negative painting technique. I'm also trying to bring out the tiny light hairs by applying the black between them. By painting the ****** between those tiny hairs. I'm using brown here to paint those straight, short hairs. Try to make those brush strokes from the eye outwards. This way, the tip of each brush stroke will narrow down and those hairs will look very thin. If you start outside, the beginning of your brush stroke may be thick and you won't get that hairy effect. Add more brown and black close to the wing. Use short brush strokes all the time. This way by applying many of them, one next to another. The hairy texture will be created when you dark tone, leave some gaps between each brush stroke later those gaps may be filled with other colors and this will create a illusion of hairs in various colors. Painting such a complex area with lots of colors and quite complex texture can be really tricky. The key is to work very slowly and build everything gradually. I like to skip from one place to another. This way, I give some time for the paint to dry and I can come back to the same area when the paint is dry. Besides every time when I go to a different area, I start with the fresh eyes. I can judge better what I should fix and what that area needs. I'm also trying to gently rub some of those areas to soften them and make it all look soft and fluffy. Notice that lines are not everywhere, hairs are not everywhere. Some areas are just covered with paint. The colors create soft color transitions, and we don't really have lines suggesting hairs in those areas. But we still perceive the entire body as covered with hairs on the abdomen. We need to create those sections, but most importantly, that lovely highlight, when you're applying the paint on the abdomen, keep in mind all the time that you must omit that highlight running through the middle part of the abdomen. If you lose that highlight later, you may use white guash to retrieve it. But try to paint around it, it will look more natural on the abdomen. I'm starting with the darkest parts first. I think it will be easier than to fill the rest with colors. If we indicate immediately where the darkest darks are, I'm using more intense yellows on the abdomen. I remember to leave a light area in the middle where I want to create my highlight. Now instead of brush strokes, I'm making lots of tiny dots. Those dots play two important roles. First of all, they add more texture to the body. And second of all, they also help to create that hairy texture. Because these dots may be hairs pointing straight towards us. Finish the body, and we can move on to the last part where we are going to paint the wing. 14. Bee - Wings: Let's start painting the wing by applying a water glaze first. At the first stage, we want to create a impression of transparency. We know that the wings are not made of air. There is that super thin membrane that is transparent and also catches colors from the surroundings. To create that effect, we first must apply very light colors, creating nice and smooth transitions. It's best to do this wet on wet. After applying a water glaze. I'm dropping in some pinks and yellows in two main places. Imagine that you can see through the swing behind it, there is a part of the abdomen and a part of the thorax. Because of the membrane, we can see them as blurred shapes, and that's what we want to create. Now I'm also adding more colors in places where the shadows are on the petals behind that wing. The idea is to recreate very blurry shapes of the elements seen through that transparent wing. Now leave that wing to dry and let's come back to it when it's completely dry. When the wing is completely dry, we can paint the veins, use black and shift it to brown in lighter places. Paint very precisely and slowly use the smallest brush you have or just the tip of your regular round brush. Try to recreate all those lines, that intricate pattern. I know this wing is super small. In the video, it looks big, but in fact, it's tiny in my painting. So take your time. I am starting with suggesting the lines with a very light tone in the thorax area. I'm adding darker tones to better indicate that there is the body of the bee behind the wing. Then patiently paint those super thin lines and the B will be finished and that would be all. I hope you enjoyed the videos and you found them helpful in any way. I'm looking forward to seeing your versions of this painting by