Daisies in Gouache or Watercolor | Mixing & Naming Neutrals

1. Welcome!: Welcome to this grassroots introduction to mixing neutrals. In this series of classes, we're going to be creating effortlessly beautiful neutral backgrounds. We'll be using gouache, but you could also mix your favorite watercolor with white gouache. In some classes, the focus will be on the neutrals with a brief painting and in others, on the studies. In this class, we're going to create a daisy study, and I chose a deep violet for the background. Neutrals make the best background, as they don't compete with your paintings, but rather offer a balancing, supporting role. Neutrals can be warm or cool near two hues like pastel peach, green, mauve to deeper hues like rich violets, brownie pinks and Russet red hues. We'll be using only the three primary colors plus white and black. If you found even getting started on neutrals, a bit overwhelming, then this is your space to develop and explore, to tune into your intuition and relax, to challenge art world ts, shods and have tos and allow yourself to mix colors with abandon. We're going to engage with our curiosity to ask ourselves, what would happen if and then do it? The great thing about neutrals is you won't mix any yucky colors because the white or black is so balancing. The addition of these transforms even the muddiest colors into sumptuous neutrals. We're going to reach a place of confidence where we'll feel able to replicate our neutral recipes time and time again. Even better, we're going to name our curated colors. So I invite you to explore, experiment, and express yourself. Before we move on, I just want to take you through quickly all the different sections underneath the class. So our About section is full of class details. And it's also where I leave materials lists. Next, we have our projects and resources area where you'll be able to submit your class project and access any additional class resources. Next, we have reviews and a huge thank you to all of you who have taken the time to leave a review. It means the world. Discussions is our lovely community area where you can ask me questions or share tips and feedback. And in our last section, you can find a full transcript of the class. So shall we get started? Let's go. 2. Practise | Mixing & Painting Our Background: So let's prepare our background. And because this class is part of a series of classes, I often came about a color through mixing other backgrounds. So let me show you how I reach the liquid all sorts for our practice. So I started out with white and Pyl red. Then I added some French ultramarine and a tiny bit of handsy yellow light that mixed a lovely green, a little bit more pyl red. And then I just added touches of that green to the pinky white. And I called this color chemise. Then I added more white and red. Some more water, a little bit of the green. And I called this one rose quartz. Then I fancied making a peachy color. So I added quinacridone gold, a little bit more Pyl red, a little bit more white, but a lot more white. And I just gave that a really good mix, a bit more quin gold, and I just kept pushing that way with the quin gold to see what kind of peachy pink I could mix. I called this water AvnPeach. And I like that, so I added a bit more quin gold. Interested to see how far I could push that and some more white. Then I was interested to see what would happen if I added some black. So that's lamp black, a small amount, and some more white. And then just mixed it all together. Such a pretty color. So that's our summer storm a little more white, and some Pyl red. Now, this color cloud Blush is the one that we used in our rose leaf study, another class in this series. So added some Pyl red. Isn't that a gorgeous color? Now, this one I called freshwater pearl, adding some handsy yellow light, really changing the nature of this. So that's our freshwater pearl. And then I mixed a color pewter gray. So adding some Prussian blue. This is a cool color. And I really loved the mix of using this cool blue with the very warm red. So I then decided just to use up the paint and create a very quick sheet to work on. So I put some of that down, and then I added some white. And I called this wind vane. I can't say that this sheet is very neat, but it did the job. This one I absolutely loved called it pink pigeon. And then we're going towards a peach again with the quin gold and bringing in all of your white, mixing everything in at this stage. And this I called wet sandstone. Cool sun took us in a cooler direction. So I added some handsome yellow light and white. Love this color, too. And then finally, liquid all sorts, which was just me mixing everything that I had on my palette together. Just added a little bit of ultramarine. I had the cool blue of Prussian blue there, little bit of py roll red, gorgeous. So white. And then I wondered what would happen if I put some ultramarine in and a little handsy yellow light a little bit more red, and it gives you a really natural gray. And we can use that now for our practice daisies. Mm hmm. 3. Practise | First Layer Daisies: So let's start mixing a quick palette for our practice run. So we have ultramarine, quin gold, and hands yellow light. I'm going to add some white. And so we want this nice and opaque. And we're to start off by mixing a green. And then I'm going to mix a pale yellow here with some white hands yellow light with a little bit of that mix. And then over here, let's mix, what I would call a neutral mauve. So we've got our quin gold, ultramarine and pyrole red. So give those a mix together. And because the Pyle red is so dominant, it's kind of taken over the color, so I'm just going to balance it with some more ultramarine blue. And then let's add some white. And whilst we have the mauve and light green together, let's just mix some neutrals on the side. So on the left there green added to the mauve and on the bottom right there, a small amount of mauve to the green. So picking up the stippler now, bobbing up and down with that, the stippler brush is very dry. And then let's just stipple in some daisy heads. This is perfect because we want this first layer to be very much in the background. We're going to be working with a much darker background for our class project. So all we need to do really is concentrate, getting used to our brushes and mixing the paints that we want to use that will allow us to get some dimension and depth in there. So now let's mix a paler color of the mauve. Adding a little bit of that darker green, and that will mute it even more and make it into a very dusky mauve. And then with the size five or close to that, size four or six would be perfect. Let's just add some petals to these centers. A little bit of a wiggle on some of them. And I'm painting some petals larger than others. It's so handy having this little sheet. I think I will do this more in the future, just so I can grab it and, you know, just do a little studies or map out some ideas on it. So our little two stroke petals and little dashes and dots. So I'm working in to the flower head and outwards. And we don't need to worry about which Daisy is going over, which Daisy, because we're going to be adding another layer on top. So this is really just the groundwork. It's going to really allow us to create depth. I'm going to add another one up here. And add some little highlights to the other petals. At this stage, we're just experimenting. 4. Practise | First Layer Leaves & Top Stippling: I think it would be nice to add some leaves. So let's go into that quin gold and ultramarine mix. It's such a lush color. And you can start to experiment here and just mix in all of the colors together, see what you like. It doesn't have to be the same mix as me. And then let's just do some really simple shaped leaves. This is the same stroke as the petals. And we can keep this layer dark, as well, because we're going to be adding a second layer of leaves. Keeping it really simple. And, of course, these aren't really daisy shaped leaves at all, but I don't really mind. I just want something simple, and a nice blanket of flowers and leaves for us to work with. I do love that green. And that's cute. So this is a bit I really enjoy, and that's adding our top layer of daisies. So we're continuing really to use neutrals for these layers. Let's mix a lighter version for our top daisies. And I've gone with that lighter mix where we use hands yellow light and then mixed in quin gold ultramarine mix. And you can see here that I've not really mixed that in. I've left the colors semimxed. That will allow the stippler to pick up various colors so that it's fairly uneven on the brush. That just really adds interest to these daisy centers. I just felt I needed a bit more paint, so I've added more handsome yellow light and quinacridone gold. And some of that lovely green mix. That's looking a lot better. Bit of everything going on. When I'm stippling, I always have a scrap piece of paper because getting just the right effect can be a little challenging. I'm just adding a little bit more white there, as well. Let's see. Yep, that looks nice. I like that it's a lot brighter than the bottom layer. Oh. So just two, three, or four bounces on your stipple brush. Okay, there was a few more there. And already, these are really popping. Oh, I love that over that green. That's so nice. So random placement again. I do like that these really shine through over those dark leaves. And just bringing them up to the edges. Uh 5. Practise | Top Layer Petals: I went on awe side quest, as my daughter calls it. And just on that pink background, I'm neurodivergent, so my brain does tend to skip around, and I generally follow it because I think that's really important. Follow the energy. But back to the daisies now, and let's prepare for our top layer petals. My palates got a bit messy, but I'm just gonna wipe a little area. This tin tray is really easy to clean. So we have some white there. And it doesn't need to be kind of like a clean white because we're going to be mixing a neutral. So a bit more white. And then borrowing from the colors that we've mixed already, slack gives us a kind of a blush white. Watch out for drips. Drips are gouache paintings nemesis. We're just going to replicate the daisies underneath two little strokes for the petals. And again, we can change the direction of the daisy depending on how big the petals are. So you can see on that one, the petals are larger towards us. And then as we work round the daisy, I've just done two little petals, and it looks like it's then facing upwards. I do like that they're escaping the little swatch area, so I might do that in our class project. Might be quite sweet. I think I'll make this a whole daisy. So very simple petal shape. Working outwards and inwards. And then this one, I'm just going to do some smaller petals around the edges so that looks like it's heading up and right. Nice big daisy head here. I love the white over that dark green leaf. That's lovely. So, have we got them all? Yep, I think we have. Oh 6. Practise | Warm Green Leaves: So let's bring our black down and add some of the handsy yellow light to that. To create a lovely rich green. I think I'll add just a little bit more handsy yellow light. Because we want these leaves brighter than the dark ones. So I'm washing my brush, and this is a tip that I recommend before going into painting with gouache. If you've been mixing with the same brush, just give it a quick wash, and then you can go in afresh to the paint. Just gives you lots of control. And then just the same two stroke leaves as we did underneath. And we can go over some of the flowers and the darker leaves. Going over the flower there. So I've gone over the darker leaves with most of those. Now I'm just feeding those into the daisies a little bit. And then doing some tiny leaves. Now, I'm just putting a little bit more white down. And as I have a little bit of green on my brush anyway, I just started with that and then let's move up some of the mix that we've just used. Just to create a paler version. And I really like these now. And this paler mix really ties in with daisy petals. Very sweet. I'm just scattering them around. Some are just tiny two stroke leaves, and others are just dashes and little dots. Super restful. Love, love, love. So simple. Really love that now. 7. Class Project | Mixing Neutrals Part 1: Because we're creating backgrounds, there's quite a few papers that we can use. I'm using Fabriano studio hot press paper, 11 " by 14 ", 28 by 35.6 centimeters. But you could use your favorite watercolor paper or mixed media paper. And you can see here I just folded it in half and creased just one tiny edge, and then cut that in half. And then I did the same again, creating a little crease. I couldn't see that one, so I'm just making a pencil mark. And there we have our study papers. Now, as the class went along, I did actually cut those in half again to create some smaller backgrounds. One of my favorite all time colors is cap at mortem, so I thought it would be really nice to mix something close to this. This is a watercolor, but I'm just going to do a little swatch of this so I have something to refer to. So we're going to use our primary colors to reach this color. I hope. Just go to get some scrap paper. I'm using my half inch flat brush. Now, obviously, this will be en a mix because it's watercolor. But I'm just wanting to look at the properties of the color. So lush. There's a great history surrounding cap at mortem. I don't know if you know you probably do, but they used to make the color from ground down mummies. Um, which is so weird. Obviously, now it is a synthetic blend. So let's put down a cool yellow, and I'm using handsy yellow light. And ultramarine. So we're going to start by mixing those together. And because the yellow is so bright, that will mix a lovely bright green on the cooler side. And then I'm adding pyrrol red. This is a warm red. I need to put plenty down because red is going to be the dominant color in this mix. And then just look at that forming so quickly, a beautiful, deep red, rust red. And I'm just going to adjust that slightly by adding some more ultramarine. Let's have a look at that. Now, it is hard because the swatch is watercolor, but I think this is very close to cap at mortem. I'm really happy with that. So nice. Now, the final ingredient is a tiny bit of black. That deepens it a little bit and really brings out that cap at mortem feel. Okay, so let's put this down. It's a veritable feast, fuddy eyes. What a beautifully deep and yet vibrant color this is. And the great thing about it is you don't have to buy lots of tubes of paint. So whenever I'm going to want a color close to cap at mortem, I now know that I can mix this myself really easily with the three primaries and a little bit of black. So I've got a tiny bit of water on my brush, and I'm just going to meld this together a bit more. I could have done better. It's a little bit patchy, and that's because I added water to try and make it go further, and it watered it down too much, but that's okay. I don't want my backgrounds perfect. And I do love the rough little edges. So that's our first background. So I want to use all of this lush color. So how about if we added white? So it's really lovely, actually, that we're using both black and white with this color. I find that so balancing. So giving that to really good mix, and I'm just seeing what it looks like with even more white in it. And I like that, so let's go for it. I do love Earthy pinks. That looks gorgeous on the paper. The one thing I am finding you don't need loads of tubes of paint, especially when you're starting out. I have got loads, and I don't use them all. I know now that I've got all of these mixes with just primary colors black and white. It's a thrifty way of looking at things. So I am really going for a very textural background with this. Oh And that's another lovely color from those three primaries. What next? And you know what? I'm not planning too far ahead. I just like to work with the energy and see what comes up. Doing some little studies would be nice now, so I'm just going to cut the quarter of the page in half again. So I'm just going to add a bit more white. I'm going to bring in the black that's left over. Adding a bit more red, bit more ultramarine. At this stage, I really don't have a plan, and I think that's the beauty of mixing neutrals. It's a process which requires a little bit of trust and surrender, I would say, kind of playing with color and allowing the colours to come forward. So a little bit more handsy yellow light, that is. And really just playing with the margins of this space color of cap at mortem. Bit more white. It's such a natural and enjoyable process. I just want plenty of these backgrounds so I can have a wee practice. Another slight variation, which is lovely. Scooping up all of that gorgeous color. That is pretty. Then I'm just going over again with a slightly damp brush to merge it all together. I'm now adding a little bit more pyrol red, seeing where it takes me. Me white. Mm. I don't think I've ever enjoyed mixing colors as much as this. It's so much fun. So this is a more opaque white version. Again, very pretty. I can see me using this. And I hope you feel the same way that you feel inspired by the colors that you're mixing. I like that one better, I think, than the one on the right. Lovely blush color. 8. Class Project | Mixing Neutrals Part 2: So onto another color completely, and I have Pyl red and handsy yellow light. Just starting off with those. I have a kind of an idea for what I want. This is Prussian blue. Cooler blue than the ultramarine. So we're going to get different colors from that. It's wonderful to work with cooler and warmer colors when you're mixing neutrals. Tiny bit of white to this. I adore this color, isn't it lovely? It's almost matching my gloves there. It's such an easy mix. I mean, how quick was that? Chocolate brown. It reminds me of a very specific thing, and that is the sandstone soil that we have in Eslovian. And when it rains, it kind of grows this color. So now I'm going to push this in a different direction. And I've added a lot more Prussian blue. Quick test of that. And then I'm going to use all of this to make a larger background. And this is the one that we're going to use for our study. You can see as I'm brushing through there, the kind of red undertones. But the blue I can't describe that color. It's just so beautiful. You can experience the different layers of the two colors working together. It's gonna look lovely for our daisies. 9. Class Project | First Layer Daisies: So I decided to use that color and call it Ud because it just reminds me of don't you know what I don't know? Ud to me, sounds earthy, very deep. So I just kind of went for it as a name. But again, very excited to see what you call your colors. So a bit of a messy palette here, and I am adding quin gold, Pyl red, and ultramarine. So our three primaries together ring on the Pyrone red. And I decided that I wanted to use the colors that we used for the background for the foreground. It's not necessary to do that. You could bring in new colors, but just something I wanted to do. So I'm adding dutch more blue there, and I'm just mixing with my size five round brush, a little bit of white there, so I'm just going to mix that in. Because with this study, I really wanted to work with depth and dimension. So we're going to aim to create the first layer of daisies, which is going to be darker and setback. And then we'll start to layer up our daisies. So I'm trying to aim for a color which is just slightly lighter than the background. I'm just going to see what that looks like, and it's still a bit too dark, I think. So I'm going to lighten it up with a bit of white. And I'm going in steady with the white because I don't want to lose the depth of the color. So now we're going to stipple in some daisy heads. I'm using my deer foot stippler there. But if you have any old kind of roughed up paint brushes, that would be great for stippling, as well. Or, as I've used in other classes, makeup brush. Makeup brushes have all the same shapes as artists brushes at the fraction of the price. So I'm just kind of experimenting there first off. I think that might be too light. So I'm just going to add a bit more blue. Et's see what that looks like. Just making sure that my stipple brush isn't too wet. We're trying to attain a very dry stipple effect. Those look nice, though I'm just going to dot them around the page randomly. Some larger than others. So closer together. I love it already. Using the same colors as the background is going to create a very cohesive study because they're going to be talking to each other closely, and that's going to give us the effect that we want. Don't want there to be a huge dynamic between the colors. For this study, I really wanted to explore working around those same neutrals. Oh, So, as I've been talking, I added more white to this mix. What we're doing here is creating that base layer of daisies. I'm thinking that's too light. So I'm just going to knock those back a little bit by adding some of the darker hue on the left there. And that's perfect. So I'm drawing in petals from the outside to in and adding tiny little petals in between in places. And then also drawing from the center outwards. I just like to vary my brushstroke slightly in size and direction. Mm. We can slow right down here. It's such a beautiful process. And, you know, if you wanted a simple study, you could stop right here with this layer. And when we want a petal to be facing upwards, it's fairly easy to create the direction of the daisies just by your placement of the petals. Mm hm. I like that that petal went off the page. Sweet. I think I'm going to make this a full daisy. And while I'm here, I'll just add a couple of petals there. And you can decide whether you want your petals to go under or over neighboring motifs. So I've got this small one here, so I'm just going to paint in the petals for that. I see how I want those to react with each other. And I think I'll just leave it as it is, actually. We've got quite a few daisies altogether here. I've chosen this one that I'm painting as the dominant one that's going over that larger daisy. And then over that one. I never tire of these two stroke petals. So restful to do. Mm hmm. Lovely. Just having a look round. And I'm really liking the placement, actually, of these daisies, because it's going to give us lots of scope when we get to our upper layer. And just because, you know, I like kind of stray petals, I'm just going to add some little kind of dashes like little daisy confetti. And that's our base layer of our daisies. 10. Class Project | Dark Green Leaves: So now let's do some dark leaves. And we want these to stay in the background. So I'm going to mix French ultramarine. Really need to buy some more. I have been hitting the ultramarine a bit hard lately. I love it as it is, and also for a mixing color a little bit of quin gold. My favorite green one of them. This mix is a lovely warm green. And I want to keep it on the blue side so that these really offer a kind of a lovely cushion for our additional daisies and leaves. So because I mentioned earlier that quingld is fairly transparent, I am adding a little bit of white this is something I learned when I was doing a background with this mix, and it just wasn't settling very well, and I realized it was because of the properties of the Quin gold. So I would recommend just adding a tiny touch of white. That makes those colors meld together, and it also gives you that lovely opaque coverage. I might add some of the mix from earlier from the petals. Because I do like colours that kind of contain other colors. So just borrow one color, to mix with the other. Just a tiny touch, really. And then I'm going to do some scribbly leaves just seeing what they look like. So I'm adding more blue ultramarine. Yeah, that's better. That was kind of a forest green. So I'm doing a little stem first, then this is one of my favorite ways of doing leaves at the moment. I do these little scribbly lines over them on either side. I'm just working around the petal there, so the petal lies on top of that leaf. Let me just show you here because I did a different leaf in the practice. A little line here and then just little scribbles. That's one side, and then this is the other. Very simple. In some of them, it leaves a little white space, but of course, that's going to be ood or whatever colour that you had mixed. I love these. They're just like little zig zags. Doing it this way across the page, you adjust your scribbles. In some ways, that's an easier way to do them. And then going a little faster with these Just a little two stroke leaf there underneath the petal. So we want these traveling in different directions just to give us that all over coverage that we want. Squiggly line. Perfect leaf. And again, deciding whether I want to go over or under the flowers. So we can vary that as we go along. I'm gonna go over the page there a little bit. Quite like the idea of the flowers escaping over the edges. These leaves are so restful to do. I love them. And I'm going to ease that in underneath that daisy. And then just another two pronged leaf there. I want this one just going out towards the edge. And here just showing you slowly. Like the fact that one of the sides is darker than the other. That's quite sweet. So there's a bit of space here I want to fill in. I'm working that around that petal. And again, from underneath. I like working around the edges. And some little filler leaves. I find the best way to do these is not think of them as leaves, but just blobs of green, really, poking out from underneath. These soften the other leaves, I think, 'cause they're slightly softer look. So I like that combi. Oops. I noticed there was space here, so I'm just going to add another leaf. Our second layer of daisies are going to sit on top of these anyway. So I try not to worry about placement too much. It's more about a blanket of leaves and daisies to work on. I didn't like that those two sets of leaves at the top left were very similar, so I just added another leaf there and one at the top. Just want to come out of the edges a little bit. Sweet. 11. Class Project | Stippling Centres: A little bit of handsy yellow light. And mixing that in with the ultramarine and Quin gold mix. So we're borrowing some of the warmth from the green gold, adding a touch of white. So now let's do what we practiced. And I'm just loosely dotting in colors. We don't want a very neat, flat color. We want different colors to be mixed up on the brush. So this is my stippler now, and I'm using a deer foot artist's brush, but you could use an old brush that you might have or even a makeup brush. So I'm just plunking my brush around all of those different colors, taking the excess paint and water off. We want this to be quite a dry effect. Touch more white. We want these to sit really well on top of those background daisies. And as we know, handsome yellow light and quin gold is going to make a lovely orangey yellow. So now, making sure that my brush is as dry as it can be. This is why I always try this out because going straight into the page, you don't know what it's gonna look like. So getting that little comb of colors on your palette is gonna be well worth it. And don't they look gorgeous already. I love this. I really love stippling. So we're not really aiming for the spaces that the base layers created. We're kind of just, again, approaching this in a fairly random way. Some are going to land on daisies, some on leaves, some on the space in between. And we're definitely looking for that. I always think that these would look lovely for pineapple weed. I love pineapple weed. So sometimes just one is enough. That's something I've learned about stippling. The more you try, the more you lose, if that makes sense. So just kind of one or two, three bounces, and that's it. Alright, a little bit more for that one. Oh, lovely. So much. And now, just kind of aware that I want this random feel. So doing some smaller heads and putting some close together and some apart. Now, what I'm doing here is going in with neat white. And again, just like bouncing in very small amounts because we don't want to obliterate that gorgeous yellowy green. 12. Class Project | White Daisy Petals: Hello. So I want a nice, clean, whitish gray. So I'm just going to clear an area on my palette. For the background layers, we wanted kind of muddy colors, which transform into these beautiful neutrals. But for the top layers, a trick there is to use brighter colors, and it creates that separation between the background and the foreground. So here we go with our white and quin gold. Touch of pyl red. H. And ultramarine blue. So our primary colors again. Again, I'm choosing the colors that we've already used for the background because I wanted to use colors that were close to each other. So that's very similar to the pale caput mortem. But I want it a little darker, a little bluer. I was quite red, so a bit more ultramarine. And some more white. Let me just try that out. It's nice and cool, and that was what I was aiming for because I do think we need to add a color to the white so it's not so dark. Oh, dear, running out of white. And now we're really proficient at mixing grays and browns. It is no problemo. Look at my fingers. Verily, I say, such a ky pop. Okay. So size five again, and one thing to bear in mind because I've learned the hard way. When you're using Gase, just be really careful of drips, because once that drip falls onto, particularly the background, it will blemish it. You can paint over it, but it's a bit of a faf. These are going to look stunning. I can't wait to see this all over the page. So we're doing the very same movements, those two stroke petals. Little filler blobs and dots, and I'm varying the strokes again, working from out to in and into out. And also just deciding on the direction that I want them to go. If you're wanting them to face upwards, larger petals at the bottom, smaller petals at the top. You can also decide as you go along where these are going to poke out from. Are they going to be over the one that you just painted or underneath? And I'm just going to leave that one as it is. So it looks like it's facing left. The stippled centers have really set up this beautifully. I do think it's one of my favorite ways of creating flower centers. Because they're kind of multifaceted, there's a lot of texture, a few different colors in there. It would take you a while to try to recreate that. I love how these daisies have a mind of their own seem to decide themselves which way they want to go. And I'm embracing that little one that's coming out of the page. I really like that. So, again, this process very meditative because we're doing the same stroke, and it's a beautifully repetitive thing to do. Plus, there's something comforting about daisies, don't you think? I kind of remember them from my childhood making daisy chains. A little tiny one there. I love that. So sweet. Could you tell I love daisies? So I'm just looking at the direction of the daisies, and I do want them generally moving upwards. Some off kilter. But I think I would like that direction. So decide what you want. You might want them multidirectional and That one, I've decided is very much facing to the left. I do love this process because one by one, you're going to see these daisies bloom towards you. Love that. That's a closed one or semi closed one. Each one has its own character. Ultra sweet. I also like that we plan to keep these random because now we've got that kind of second layer, which is also random. And the interplay between the layers is lovely. I'm really liking that. Being careful not to smudge the lower daisies on the page. And just that mix of strokes again, one little petal stroke or the larger two stroke petals. Deciding that that will go over that one underneath. This one I'm going to bring out over the edges of the background. Okay, only two left, I think. Uh And one more here. Just those tiny dots on the top side of the flower center. So looking around and just taking in how balanced it is. And I do feel that there's a bit of a space there. I think I might do an extra flower head. So just mixing up and then taking off the excess water of the brush, we want this to be really dry. That's not light enough, so I'm just going to add some handsome yellow light. Let's see what that looks like. I want it to match up with the others. Still quite a lot of water and paint on that. I'm just gonna keep going until I get the texture that I want. And let's go for it. I'm going in quite carefully. I don't want to upset the balance too much. So I'm just going to add I think three, maybe another one there. Okay, maybe another. Aid. Okay, that's looking good. Just showing you the different variations there, how you can add some drybushing. So that happened kind of accidentally, but I do love a little bit of dry brushing. And I find with paintings like this, just a little bit is great. If you did a whole daisy like that, I'm sure it would not look as good with the other daisies. So just like the odd one or two dry brush petals, I think is gorgeous. The and we have two left, little one here. Oh, my gosh, so sweet. And then our little daisy up here, little two stroke petals, little dashes in between. And maybe a couple of blobs. Yeah, that's really nice. It would have been so simple to go over the mid right there with the large gray daisy underneath, but I quite like that we chose to be random. Oh 13. Class Project | Warm Green Leaves : So I think it would be really nice to mix almost a kind of earthy green gold. We did those darker leaves purposefully dark to keep them in the background. I think these leaves are going to support the centers as well. We've got a lot of gray going on. And I think this green is going to really tie in with those flower heads. So I'm just having a think felt that was too dark, so adding a bit more hands yellow light and maybe some black. Now, I know it's controversial, but I do like handsy yellow light with black for a green. You've probably seen me use it before. It's a lovely, easy green to mix, if you ever need to do that in a hurry. I think I added too much black gone way. So I'm going to balance that with some white. All part of the process. I want to take my time and mix the colors that I feel would work the best, 'cause this is all about intuition and not putting any roadblocks up. If you want to try something, try it. Okay, so let's try this. Doesn't look much different, but gonna have a go. Yeah, I do like that. Yeah. So I'm going to do is feed some of them underneath the daisies, just so they're not all just poking out in full form, but like half leaves in places. Placing them underneath the daisies helps them come forward, as well. So I do love this green because it's not taking away attention from the daisies. I think if it was too bright, it would do that. So I'm really happy with this color. And pretty much doing exactly the same brush strokes as we did with the daisies. Little two stroke leaves. And just to add, these aren't really daisy shaped leaves at all, but I don't really mind. I wanted softer leaves to complement the more jaggy ones underneath. So in places, I'm doing this little group of three maybe more like rose petals. This area, I think, I just want to add something different here. So I'm going to go over that large daisy. And this green looks lovely over that background. So again, working that little group of leaves over that petal and giving that little daisy some sepals. And bringing the leaves down in size now, a variation in size, I feel is always a lovely tactic when you're painting a balanced variety of motifs. Going out of the edges. I just want to do a few of those. Taking my time there. So reducing now to little finishing touches of leaves. Just paying attention to the edges. Now, you could argue that it looks finished, but no. So I'm just referring back to the little practice that we did. And it's wonderful to see how it's evolved and how different it is with that deeper color in the background. So I want to just do some tiny little finishing touches. And I think it would be nice just to add some very bright, either white or yellow to the daisy heads. The reason why I'm doing it, and I often do this is because we've added the petals, we can just direct the stipple brush to go slightly over the petals. I'm not doing that intentionally too much, but it just feels nice to have that extra little layer on top once the petals are done. So we've got to have our brush really, really dry here, like really dry. If it goes into wet, it will disrupt the paint underneath. And just one dab. So this is pretty much mostly white with a touch of handsome yellow light. So this is a super light touch of our brush. And because I liked those scent so much, thought I'd add some little details in between the daisies. These might be seed heads or pollen and some just hovering around the daisies and in others over that lush, dark background. And I'm happy now. That's our daisy class. Daisies on what I called Ood. 14. Thank You!: I hope you're going away feeling so much more confident about mixing neutrals and using them for your own little studies. In other classes in this series, we're going to be painting yellow blanket flowers. Rose leaves. And Woodland motifs. So keep a lookout for these classes. You can build up your array of studies on your beautiful backgrounds. Any questions? Fire away. You can contact me through discussions when you upload your project or over on Instagram. Thanks again. Take care of yourself. Bye for now.