Easy Acrylic Painting Vibrant Roses and Reflections: Stunning Contrast

1. Welcome to a wonderful class: Hello, and welcome to another marvelous painting class. In today's class, you will learn how to make this rose composition with a vase. Glass can be one of the most difficult and challenging things to paint. But in this class, you will get step by step encouragement and the knowledge to create all kinds of reflections on glass and glass objects. Hi, my name is George, and I've been a professional artist for over 11 years. Five years ago, I've fallen in love with teaching. Both online and in person classes, working with adults and children as well. In these five years, I've developed this interesting way of teaching that focuses on the project, on the experience, and having a lot of fun. Leaving the learning part and the theory part after you have the experience, focusing on the fundamentals and breaking everything down in easy to follow, encouraging steps. This composition might seem complicated. However, you will have all the guidance and encouragement to create a successful painting. You will learn about light, about color, about shadows, about reflections, about textures and mark making. And you will have a lot of fun making this wonderful creation. If that sounds like something you want to do, let's just jump into the course. 2. Materials needed: This course, you will need a 30 by 40 centimeter canvas. You will need some paper napkins, some paper towels. You will also need one big flat brush and one medium flat brush. You will need a water container. This is a recycled water container. You'll also need a plate for the colors. You will need acrylic paint. This is Amsterdam acrylic paint. This is white, titanium white. Brown. This is burnt umber, also known as brown. This is yellow. You can use lemon yellow or Azo yellow medium. It makes no difference. This is just some yellow with a bit of red in it. You can use carmine red. This is a very nice red. It plays very well with the blue and at making purples. But as you can see, there's not a lot of purples around, so don't worry too much about that. This is a brilliant blue, a very nice and intense blue. You will also need a round shape to create the vase. You can see it's not really perfect anymore. I went outside of the borders, but it doesn't matter. It's still round enough. And that's all you need for this painting. Now, let's go into the course. 3. Abstract background : Into the first step. We're going to need some brown, burnt umber. Just a tiny amount. This will be just because I don't have a pencil to make the circle. I'm going to try to position it as center as I can. Maybe this is the center. And the trick here is that right now 30% of the painting is just this vase, which makes it a lot more, let's put it a bit lower, which makes it a lot more easy to paint. Because you now have 30% with this vase, and this vase will be very easy to paint. Okay? It's a glass vase. I know that sounds intimidating, but it's a glass vase, and it will be very easy to paint. I'm just going to take some brown. Don't worry, we're going to cover all of this brown. And I'm going to make a circle around the shape. Don't be two, precious about it, put some brown and make a beautiful circle. The vase will be inside the circle, not on the outside. And that's probably the last time you're going to need the circular plate. Now, we're going to focus on building the background. For the background, we're going to use some yellow. Be generous with the yellows. And if you want to make the whole process of painting a lot more fast to not have to wait so much for the paint to dry. You can use a hair dryer. I have mine over here. This is a normal, simple hair dryer, and you can already see it has some paint on it. Oh, no. We're already making a mess. Don't worry. Messy is good. That's why we have gloves. Okay. We still have some brown, yellow and blue. We're going to have to also add some white. We're going to start with some blue. And the reason we're going to start with the blue is because we can move from the blue to some green, and then probably we're going to see where we go from there. We're going to go from some blue. With a touch of brown, we're going to create this beautiful color. It's a bit dark, so don't worry. I should be using the big brush. We're using primary colors in order to really understand how color behaves. We're muting down the blue. This is a very good technique that beginners overlook. They put paint straight out of the container. And mix this blue, try to add a bit more to have a generous amount. We're going to paint from here to a over here, maybe and over here. We're going to try to really position this and make a line that goes towards the vase. And from the top, just going down with this color over and start to add it. This brush has a lot of water. It shouldn't be like that because now I'll probably have to do two layers instead of one. As I go towards the vase, I can be a bit more careful. It can go as fast as you want and as slow as you want. Let's say we're going to have a table right about here that goes like this, on a diagonal, so we create a bit more interest. I've looked a bit onto the because I'm painting from here, I cannot really see if things are straight or if they continue like this. Now they continue. Let's check once again. And we have just created a beautiful color over here. And because this color is it's a Prussian blue, beautiful. It has some texture. We can even texture it more. But what we can do is something very interesting. We can create some more visual interest by adding more paint. In my case, it's totally necessary because I had some water in my brush. So the paint was a lot more translucent. And I'm just going to go and add some light lighter blue over here. Press harder a bit on the brush to just create this wonderful texture. Brush it around. Now let's take some brown and do the opposite. I'm just going to make a darker version of the first blue and add it over here, maybe around the vase, so the vase will stand out more. And I'm just going to add it over here as well. Notice that you need to be a bit more careful around the circle. This will save you time in the long term. This will save you a lot of time because you will not need to do a lot of painting over stuff. Look at how interesting that looks at a bit more over here. And now that the brush is almost clean. I can also do some shadow over here. With this blue. It's a nice, beautiful shadow color. Don't worry. You don't have to think too much, it's just going to go from this side and plus. We're going to, some pillage was done. We're going to go with other colors over here, but we're just developing a bit the composition. So think of the shadow as a mirror, just going and rounding out this color. We're probably going to use that shadow or not, we're going to figure it out later. But now we're just focusing on adding color, a bit more dark color onto the side, playing with this wonderful Prussian blue. Okay. Now, let's clean the brush just a tiny amount with some paper towels. Maybe not these this many. We want to save the turtles. And let's squeeze some of that color. We're going to You can still use those napkins later for other stuff. I'm just going to go over here and notice how this line is not really perfect. That's okay. I'm just going to take some white with some blue. Mix it in with a big brush. You don't need to mix it perfectly. With some more blue. We are not trying to go with this color too much into the white. We want it to be still a nice, beautiful blue color. Now we're going to just add, like, a beautiful light, array of blue light just here like this. See how the brush creates this wonderful Interesting line. And then I can even take more. You can take more color and accentuate this line on the side to add even more interest and light. Don't blend it too much. You don't need to blend it as much. Add another line next to it. The paint is still dry, so it's blending into the background. And then you can even go a bit over it and ruin it a bit and then go back over it. To understand that you can move paint around and you have the freedom to really play with the paint while it's still wet. Let's focus on this edge, and Okay. Perfect. Now we're going to clean the brush. Well, with the same paper towels, just cleaning up the brush, squeezing that blue out. 4. Green light background : And taking some more napkins, maybe a tiny amount of water and squeezing that paint out. It doesn't need to be perfect. And then we can take some yellow, add it over here. It still has some of that blue which will create. If you don't have enough blue, you can always go and add more, mix it in very thoroughly. We're trying to create a beautiful green, and we're going to start to add some of this brown into it to make it a bit more muted. This will be the darkest side of this green. So we're just going to start over here and press real hard on the brush to get this color. Maybe we should make more color. So we don't have to press that hard. I'm adding I'm slowly adding some of this blue over here. This is not the main blue. This also has a little bit of that brown. And I'm just pressing down. It doesn't matter if they're not the same colors. It doesn't have to be. This is an abstract painting at this point. It doesn't really need to be completely perfect. It doesn't matter that this blue is still wet. We can go a bit inside it and clean that edge with the side of the brush just like this. Take more paint, go around shape, press a bit harder to create some of that texture, go into this blue until it blends a bit more with the green. If your blue is not wet anymore, you can take some more from the palette and add it pressing harder. Now let's create a more vibrant green. This time, we're going to use the blue straight out of the tube. It can go over it to blend it. We're going to need more of this yellow. Okay. Let's add it over here. Press it hard. It's a tiny bit more light and vibrant. It can go as fast as you want and as slow as you want. Right now it's very uniform. The color. We're going to change that in a bit by adding more yellow to the color and some more white. Just go from top to bottom. Don't worry if you go a little bit inside of the shape. It doesn't really matter. We're going to take some white. Add it to this green and some more yellow to bring some of that vibrance back and then go over here the same way as you did with the blue, this time we're going to do with the yellow green. Okay. Let's add some more white. Just over here. Let's now add some more yellow into the color. You don't need to blend them that much. They will blend nicely into each other. See. And now there is a white line here. I can accentuate some of those beautiful lines and create some abstract shapes. See? You can create some abstract shapes like this, maybe one here. Okay. Can also go on the edge, maybe blur it a bit. Tiny bit. And now we've picked up a bit of blue, which means we can go and scrape some of it off and take more white, add it to the pile of yellow, take some more yellow. And now we're going to go with another beautiful line to accentuate this wonderful light. Perfect. You can go around the vase creating some more visual interest. Maybe there is a plant over here, and it goes in the background. Wonderful. For the next step, you don't have to really wait for the paint to dry because you're going to work on the vase. You're going to paint on the vase. Let's focus a little bit on what you have learned until now. You've learned that you can add a beautiful background and make it in five or 7 minutes and add a dark side, some textures, play with the paint while it's still wet. So it creates interesting, very nice textures. This will create complexity in the background, and it will make it a bit more blurry, a bit more interesting. And you have a darker side and a lighter side. You've also learned that you need to clean the brush in between changing colors to have the colors be more clean, but not very clean because we need to create harmony in the colors. You create harmony by having a little bit of this color in this color. So Se right over here, right over here. And also, you've learned that adding colors straight from the tube is a little bit of a mistake, depending on what you want to make. So you can go from the paint container if you want to create very vibrant and really intense colors. 5. Simple table: Now, picking up the small brush, it has some blue, some of this beautiful blue. But if you don't have it, you can always recreate it with some blue, some brown, and some yellow. This is a very intense green. We need to add more brown to it and more blue to make it darker. Let's mix it over here and add a bit more blue over it. It's still like a Prussian blue green color. This will be for the sticks, for the leaves and the sticks that go inside of the vase. And we're just going to draw some sticks. Imagine this is the center. Well, it is the center. And we're just going to draw some sticks in like this and like this, and like this. We have one over here. Let's take a bit of water, just a tiny amount of water. And now let's put in some leaves, some foliage. This is the moment where you can edit a bit of the shape of the vase and go over And over here, leave some room inside with the hit, don't go overboard and clean everything. You're just going to need to paint some of this beautiful sticks. Maybe some of them go lower, maybe some of them go higher and creating more lines and dots. And then you can go over just on this side, take some water, clean off that edge. Be careful not to go over the edge, go slow. And as you practice, you can go faster and looser. We're going to go with another green over it. Right now, by adding some more yellow just to add some textures. I'm just dabbing. You're just dabbing some paint over the sticks and color and start blending a bit of this. So you don't need to think of it as foliage or as sticks or plant materials. You're just thinking of it as color. Let's make this stick a bit longer. Let's add another one just going like this. Let's add a bit more yellow. Don't go too light. If it's too light and too intense, you need to take some of that brown. We're actually going to do this because this area is too light. You want to keep it very dark, especially around this side, because this is where the big highlight will come and play a big role. You can add some blue with that brown and add just a tiny amount of color variety. Color variety is very important in painting because it gives it that interesting and nice professional look. Okay. This is all we've done until now. We're going to take this beautiful brush. Since we have this yellow, we can make the table. All we need is a bit of red. Just add it. Right here in the corner. Usually red is very intense. You're gonna need to clean up this brush a tiny bit. Just a tiny amount. And then take some of this red and go over in this area. Let's take some more yellow and create this wonderful color. You might call it an orange, a green, whatever it's called. Until now we've painted with kind of cool colors. This will be a more warm tone, and you're going to see how much it pops, and it really gets interesting because you can see it over here with the brown. But once we add it, it's going to really change the whole composition, the whole painting. See how beautiful and nice and warm it is. It's not too warm. We're going to go even warmer. All you need to do is really play around. We're creating this space to add the pink roses, which will make the painting just really interesting because you've built this dark moody, cold colors. You're gonna have when you add the roses is just going to go and create this wonderful contrast. Just the tiniest amount of water. It's very simple. What I'm doing right now is creating a bit of a table. Filling it just like kids. Just going and filling it in just over here on the corner. You can go a bit faster once you are not touching colors or you are not touching any of the vase, get a bit more comfortable with adding this color. 6. Color variety : Okay. We're going to add a bit more red to this color, and we're going to start to go inside the vase with this beautiful orange. Just over this color, see how now the color that you've created, you've just changed from blue. You're now going towards the orange reds. And it's a very easy and nice transition. You can you can start by adding this color also onto the sides to create a bit more visual interest onto the painting. Now going inside of the vase in between the stocks. You need to be a bit careful not to touch the green yet. So cover everything except be careful around the green. You don't need to be perfect. We're not touching it yet, because we want to blur it up a bit more as you go around. And as you go to the edge, you can be a bit more careful or not because the color, this color is very interesting in the sense that it blends almost perfectly with the background of the table. Let's connect this over here. Even if it's not perfect, just going around and making this layer opaque and trying to not leave any of the white on the sides of the vase. And on this side, going and adding a bit of a cut And now you can start to go over the green a bit and blur it down just a tiny bit, leave some areas more unblended and some areas blended. The goal is to get rid of that harsh white, and then you can lose into the color. You can also go like this a bit. Look at how interesting that looks, and just take more color. Notice, I've taken a bit of this green as well. Maybe there is a bit of a hue shift, a tiny bit of color variety. Make it a bit more complex, add a bit more over here. Don't be afraid to go in the green and create some textures. You can always bring back the green at a later stage if you want. See, this is a simple and easy painting. 7. Table harmony : Now, I'm just going to blend some of this color. This blue is very, very harsh. So we need to take some of this green. If you don't have it, you can create it, add some yellow and some blue. Let's just add some yellow, add some blue, so you have the reference. And then you can go over in between these colors. So you're blending a bit of that background table into this blue. And then slowly, just with some nice textures. Don't get rid of all of the blue. This is such an easy painting to do. Now we're going to clean this brush, just a tiny bit. Maybe I used way too many napkins. And we're going to take some white, put it over here, where it's a cleaner area, and some red, and some yellow to create a more vibrant pink. Orange color, to add some of that highlight. Let's add some more yellow into the color to create some of the highlight of the table. We're going to want to edit this shape of the vase onto the side and then go and add a bit of an edge. And then you can lose into the color blend a bit more if you have a lot of color here, or if you find that it's very difficult to add this color because you have a thick layer of paint. What you need to do, because it's blending too much, you need to take a lot more color on the brush or wait 5 minutes for it dry. But if the layer you've just put down is a bit thinner. If you go a bit thicker, you can add color. That's a bit of a rule. If it's thicker, it's going to consume all that color because you're going to have a lot more paint on the brush. So even if it blends, the fact that you have a lot of it, it will mean that this color will stand out more in the blend. Adding a bit of this interesting thing. And now let's imagine this is a light like a garden or a window. So if light is here, we're going to need to have a bit of light just passing through, and now the finger technique, the famous finger technique, squiggling. If you got a bit of white, that doesn't matter, add a bit more color, doesn't matter how it looks that much. Just needs to be a bit whiter on this side. And now let's go and add some more finger technique just going down because this is a glass vase. It has some transparency. So the light comes like that, and we're just going to edit it a bit later if it's needed. But if in the end, we don't really need to edit it, that's fine. Another cool trick with shadows is that you can intensify them by going around the shadow. Not too much, just barely touching the canvas. You're just creating a bit more light ad the vase can even go a bit into the shadow just to pick some of that green up. And you can also blend by very, very gently pressing and going over the green. You can blend a bit of this color, just going around it. Perfect. Now you're going to need to let this dry completely for the next step. 8. What you’ve learned so far: Fore the painting is dry, let's go over a little bit of what you've learned, and you might have not noticed that you've learned. So adding colors, that's easy. Blending them together to create harmony. We went over that, of course. Now, you've also played around with a different type of thing, which is negative painting. Negative painting means we're going from the outside into a little bit of the shape to edit the shape. You've also played around a little bit with contrast. So you have dark here, light here, dark here, light here. You've also learned how to create some harmony by staying very close to the colors. This is a very cold painting. It has some yellows and some greens, especially around here. It has some orange, so it has some warmth, but you're building up to something greater. You can change the vase, make it square. You can also play around with the colors. Maybe you don't want this blue. You've learned how easy it is to play around with the brush, and there is a point at which a painting looks at its worst. Every painting has this, but go beyond that, and it only gets better from there. If you feel any kind of emotions where you are discouraged or you feel like this is not going to end up well. Don't worry about them. Continue on the process and don't look down. As in if you're always afraid of falling, just don't look down, look forward. Try to understand that the painting will become better and better as you work on it. Even though sometimes it might feel like you're making mistakes. Those are not mistakes, and usually in painting, you can really fix things up. So right now, the painting is almost dry and notice there is new water The paint brushes are completely clean, but the painting plate is not. That is for a reason because you still want to use some of these colors and still want to get some of this mess onto the canvas before you go into some more vibrant colors. We don't clean the palette, and we usually clean the brushes a bit to get a bit more harmony. We don't want to jump straight into some red and some purple and some pinks because that will create a lot of disharmony. You need to create a substrate for the colors to really have a place to live, to sit, you know? 9. The secret of round shapes: And let's go into some red. Let's add it over this red. Maybe add a splotch just over here as well. We still have some blue, but we need some brown. Brown is a very interesting color because it makes other colors a bit duller. Brown is like a very dark orange. So it makes blues and greens a bit more dull. It can make the reds a bit duller depending on what red you are using. But it doesn't do that because it's a bit more worm. It's an orange with a red will create a bit of a different more orange red. Take your big brush. Always start with the big brush. Take a tiny amount of water. Take some red. See how it already blends with some of that blue. We're actually going to add it as well. So even if yours, you didn't put the red over the blue, This is just a good color, but it's too intense. So you need to put some brown into it, creating this very interesting brown, dark red. There is an interesting phenomenon. Whenever you want to paint like really round objects, if you paint them a bit more squaish, they look more interesting. They look more painterly. Painting is about emotion, about vibration, about complex things, about paint playing with itself. So just over here, we're not going to start with the middle rose. This will be a rose. We're going to start with the side. Let's go just over on this side. It's almost at the edge. And that's all you have to do. One simple little triangle. Now, we're going to imagine a bulb. We can even paint it right next to this petal. Notice how they're barely touching. The bulb is like a triangle that's rounded at the bottom. See, a triangle. And it has a bit of a more rounded shape. Now, let's make it a bit bigger. Start to paint from small and then see if you like the shape, and then you can make it bigger. Let's add another petal over the triangle. And now let's go to the next rose. Very easy. Add a bit more water. And now next rows, we can go over this one with a line. Make the bulb like a triangle, add another petal, and maybe this one has a petal behind it. They've both merged. So we need to make this one clear that it's a different rose. So we've created a bit of a mouth to the shape. I've made it a bit bigger. This is one. Now, let's put one a bit higher. Same type of thing, triangle, like a tulip, a bit rounded. You can go a bit more square. And as you go a bit more square, notice that the petals just go outside. See? And maybe I want to put one behind. You can go a bit faster if you want. I know this looks like a tree right now. So let's change that and make it like this. Okay. This is a very simple shape. It's a triangle. And then it has a few petals on the side. Don't worry too much. Now we're going to go with the middle rows. This rose is a bit more different because this rows will look towards us. So one line over here, one line over here, one line over here, one line over here. And then on the top the same. You don't have to fill it in completely. We're going to do a few more layers. And then after you have this hexagon, you can start to add a bit more petals to the side. So it's a simple hexagon, and you've added a few more petals to the side. Now, you can accentuate the middle by making a darker version of this red and accentuate the middle of the rows, which is a little bit of a square. Se? Square hexagon, add complexity to the side. You are not really drawing the roses. You are now looking at the shapes. Don't worry too much about them. You can edit them. You can go a bit bigger. So try to try to go a bit smaller so you have space to out of them. Let's connect this with another rose over here. Notice how much more contrast there is on the right side because there is green. This is a very simple shape, one, two, and three. Maybe it's a different type of flower. Let's add some in the background, just a little bit of a shape. Okay? And let's add another one over here. This one needs to go a bit towards the vase. We want them to come towards the vase like this. Rhombus petal, another petal, and maybe rounder bottom bigger bottom on the rose. Now, let's add the mouth of the rose. It's just a shape. It looks like a frog, like a little red frog. 10. Cleaner edges: And now let's add another one just over here. I'm just starting to paint, and then I go into a triangle. Mouth of the rose. Maybe I make it bigger, so it connects a bit, and then add some petals. Another beautiful frog. Maybe this is a plane. Okay. And let's go a bit outside over on this side with a more open rose. See? Oop. Just like a little grabby hand. Okay? We can add a few more just behind the vase. See how you can go behind the vase with some more abstract roses, being careful not to go over the edge. And now it's the time to look at what's going on. Look at the interesting play that's going on right here. If yours are not so organic, take a bit more color and just start to focus in on making abstract shapes. To make them seem a bit more organic and adding some edge to the roses. See. It's easy. You just have to add and fix some of these edges that are very furry. Roses are not very furry. They have very strong edges. Don't do it on all of them. You can do it later as well. Furry edge over here. Maybe we add a bit of another beautiful, interesting petal. This hand started to shoot lasers that way. Let's add a small little plump over here, a small little plump plumpy plump. Maybe it's a different type of flower and a smaller one here and a smaller one here with the corner of the brush, you're just adding big shape. Small shape, and maybe one here. Perfect. 11. Details on the roses: Now, taking the small brush, with a tiny bit of water, not too much, just a tiny bit. Go with the red and start defining some of the petals a bit more. So they stand out. See? So the way you do that is by taking a bit more red, a bit more color, and adding cuts. This is a very interesting way of adding petals. You're just adding cuts. One cut over here, one cut over here, following that shape of the rows, being a bit more abstract with it. Just a few. And around here, it's even simpler. We're going to focus on having the light from the left side, so you can add them on a bit more of this red on the left. Notice one, this is small, this is a bit bigger, this is a bit smaller. You're playing around with shape. Now, one behind it, one over here. If you're having a hard time doing this, take a look at the reference image or look at some roses on the Internet. You can also go because this color is quite dark. You can also go on and add in the shadow side as well. This is just a very abstract rose in the background. It doesn't need to really do anything. Let's add some color to this. And now let's add on the other side, some more cuts. Maybe this rose is a bit more open. Maybe it has some interesting things over here. You can also complicate those cuts by going around the edge and creating more lines and dots. Creating a lot of complexity. On to the left side, the light comes from the left, so we're going to add this color to the left side of the rose. Maybe this one has a bit more red in the middle. Onto the side, Don't think too much. This is abstract. This is still abstract. We're just adding a bit of structure to the abstract painting. That's all. See? Notice how when you're going to this side, the cuts start to become a bit more to the left. I can also add some of this color inside. It doesn't really matter that much. It's not a high light. It's just ale bit of light, a little bit of different color. Okay. Now we can go even lighter, add some red, a touch, just a tiny amount of white. The tiniest amount of white will make all the difference. Tiny tiny corner of white. Look at how interesting it looks. Notice how it brings everything out. And you can go over these cuts to make them more interesting this time. You can add new ones if you want. Don't worry, these are not the highlights. These are just adding to the colors going around. I just see how this has become so round. You can add back some of that hexagonal shape. Even if it's not perfect, so it looks a bit better. Notice this cut and this cut, and now this one, take a tiny amount of water, some red. Now over here. Now over here. On this side, going and adding a bit of a cut on the beautiful lip of the rose, and on these sides, you can go a bit more abstract. 12. Simple foliage: Next step, you don't need to let the painting dry. You don't need to clean your brush. You're just going to go with some greens and add some, some dark foliage. To do that, you're going to need some yellow, some blue, some brown. Foliage is even simpler than roses. This is a lot of red, so we need to clean a bit of it out with some of the paper towels we used earlier. Eco friendly painting. Yellow. It has some of that red, so it acts just like the brown. It cuts the chroma down. We are also going to add some brown to make this darker color. This darker green. Notice how everything is very dark right now. This is so that you build the light out of the dark and you build those interesting colors and variety. Okay? Right over here, you can start to cut some leaves around the roses. So you get some of those little holes that are very close to the middle. You can close them up. These are very simple shapes. This is a cut that goes down in between the petals. This is another cut over here and another one over here that has a little bit of a corner to it. Let's close this up a bit more. That's why you're using flat brushes. If your colors are mixing too much with the red, you need more green on the wonderful brush. L et's go behind these and create a leaf over here, maybe one over here. You can also start to think about big. Take just the tiniest amount of water. The brush just flows a bit better. You can go as fast as you want and as slow as you want. Try to make the edges a bit more clean on one side and a bit less clean on the other. Okay. Let's go with one stick over here. Out of this stick, let's add a beautiful and let's connect it. Now let's add another one over here, super easy. Stick and a leaf and another one. Let's make it a bit more organic. Now, big medium, small. Wow, still medium. You are opening up the composition by going this way, you are opening up the composition and also putting those rows is a bit behind. Let's open up the composition on the top side because there is this big hole over here, right in between these leaves, add a little bit of a stick. Even if it's not perfect, even if it's not perfect, it's fine. You can add a leaf and another one, maybe I'm making this one a bit more round, and another one just going out. You can connect them if you want or not. This one I'm just not going to connect. And now one behind this can go a bit more abstract. And because it's green, it's creating this beautiful play of colors. Let's cut another leaf over here, behind this rose. One over here. Easy shapes. They are very simple shapes. Now, an interesting thing that you can do is kids draw these kind of leaves. They are simple. What they don't draw is this kind of leaves, like a squaih kind of leaf. And now if I go with a stick out of it, see how it goes over the stick. And now, you can go with another one here and a smaller one here, maybe make the stick a bit higher. They don't do this kind of more organic, more abstract shapes. Notice how everything here is like that. I can add another one a bit more squish and different. Maybe add a cut to it, like this. See? It's a bit different. Let's go onto the side over here and add a leaf. Maybe we can add a leaf just over here and one here. 13. Famous finger technique : Okay. Now, let's add some more yellow. To this color, a bit more. Not too much. A bit more. Now let's add some highlights. Remember the light comes from the left. You can also add a few leaves of this color. If you find it too strong, right here, you can add a bit more brown and a bit more blue. If you still find it too hard, it means you have too on the brush. Just adding a bit of a highlight onto the sides. Don't go overboard making a of leaves. You might be tempted once you find out how easy it is to put a lot of them. Just a few. You can count them on two hands. Maybe more. Let's add a highlight here. Another leaf over here, this color. Maybe one behind this, so we are editing. You can also edit at this point these roses. Notice how there was a little bit of a thing over there. You can add one here. Let's add another small one here. Add a highlight to this, a highlight to this. Maybe a highlight to this one. Add some highlight to this one. This one as well. This one as well. A cool trick you can do is the finger technique, the famous finger technique. Another one just over here. Maybe it's too light the color, so we're going to try not to go with this color on this side yet because it is too close to the background. You can go over the leaves but not really create some edges. We can also go on this side, create more visual interest, maybe a stick. That goes like this outside and maybe a beautiful leaf that goes over here and another one that goes over here, small one. They don't have to be connected, you know? They really don't. Now, let's add a bit more yellow and a tiny bit more white. The paint is still wet, so it creates this interesting effect. You can also go with the side of the brush and add just a few dabs. Go with the back of the brush to create a line. You can start to see how interesting you can make this whole paint. You can use your pinky finger like this and to get more precision. Very high end painting technique. Only the greatest masters. Know about this. The famous finger technique. Let's go with a lighter leaf over here, maybe another one just coming over this rose, and then going over this leaf again. If it's too light, you can always go and add more brown and blue and edit the color. Sparingly. Using this color sparingly, let's connect this over here. Maybe I'm connecting this beautiful leaf that goes outside and adding some highlight to this one and this one as well on the side, this one. If you are not creating textures, like if all your highlights are very blended, like this. Just go over with the finger and try to unblend it or try to make the shape a bit more abstract. Look at how interesting that looks. If I just dab. Se Notice, maybe I'm creating some texture. You're creating some texture, and then you can always go and blend it over. You create the texture like this, and then you can go over it, recreate a bit. So you're not just putting simple little leaves. They have a bit of complexity. You can. And I think that's enough for this step. You don't need to let the painting dry. All you need is a little bit of a space on the palette, a clean space. You need a clean brush. 14. Dark of the vase: Don't need a lot of things to make an interesting painting. All you need to do is really play around. You've learned how to create from abstract shapes, more roses and petals. You focused on the dark and then created some more light out of this dark, and you're going to create even more light as you go. But before you do that, Going into the next step, you're going to need some brown, some blue, and water, and some yellow to create a dark green. Just a dark brown green. If it's too brown, just add a few dabs, and then go a bit lighter. Now, let's add another one over here. Super easy. This is just to get a bit more interplay and to get a bit more interesting shapes happening in the vase and also prepare the vase for the highlight. We're going to focus on this side, making it darker, this area, add a bit of water. Water is your friend right over here, but not too much, so you can still add the sticks back. See, you're adding the sticks back over the orange. So it's back and forth, back and forth. You can also edit some of the shape of the vase in case you have wobbly sides. Don't go overboard with this stage. It can also go and add at the end, even if it's not perfect, some of this color, see? Notice how just at the end of the stick on the side, and then going towards the top. Add some abstraction, just some dabs, and you can also erase with your finger if you don't like what's going on too much. Don't go overboard. This is just an intermediary step just to prepare this area for the highlight. Speaking of the highlights, for the next step, you will need to clean the brushes and the palette to add some highlights onto the roses, even if they are not completely dry. 15. Secret wash technique: The painting is dry completely. Make sure you have a nice clean surface for your new colors and some water, and the brushes are thoroughly cleaned. This is going to get a bit more messy in the sense that you will create light on the roses, and It's going to feel a bit out of place, but don't worry. By the end, it will feel amazing. I have this one secret technique that will make the whole painting amazing, and you can add with this technique color variety in all the paintings. It is one of the most interesting ways to add dimensionality and color in a different way using acrylics. You can unlock this secret technique only after making 500 paintings. So today you're going to be lucky and you're going to get this technique that only people who have painted 500 paintings know about. Let's add some red to the palette. So yellow, and some white. Until now, you've been using quite a light amount of color. You haven't put a lot of intense thick paint. This time, you're going to need to be a bit more thicker. Notice, red and yellow creating a very red orange. This is the first highlight. There are going to be a lot of highlights. But this is the first one, and it's a bridge between the color you're already having and the one you're going to create in the end. Always on the left, let's not start with the middle, so you can get a bit more comfortable with adding this color. You can go over the areas and still keep some of that red or create new cuts. Just one cut over here, one cut over here, maybe make it a bit more complex, add a bit more over here. Let's get closer to this leaf. And then just a square in the middle. Maybe add a bit of a puzzaz over here, and then 123. Notice it's so simple, so easy, and one over here. You don't have to go fast. You might see that I'm probably going a bit faster. You shouldn't go fast. If you want to have control over the brush, you should go a bit slower actually to gain more control go slow, go slow. And as you practice, you can go faster and loser. As you understand how much control you can have over the brush. Noe just one line in between just going over that blue. There was a bit of blue just showing. There is a bit of water so that the paint flows better. But actually, it's always better to have a bit more paint instead of water to make it flow because the paint already has this interesting watery texture, this color to the left side of the rose. Maybe this one has a bit more red. You can also go on to the right side because this is an intermediary color, so it can have a bit more onto the side. Let's add some visual interest by adding some dabs and cutting and connecting these cuts a bit more. Not too much, just a tiny amount. Let's add some of this color here, maybe over here. And on this side, these roses might end up just like this, a bit more abstract. So they connect the more abstract things of this painting with the roses that will be more interesting. Let's add a bit more red into this orange and start with the white. Add white and red to a new area to create this rose color. Notice that it's a bit more rows than the orange. And go over these marks you've already made with the orange. So they blend a bit with the maybe don't start with the middle rows, but it doesn't matter. You're already an expert at this. Go over the marks you've already made. You can also create new marks or angles the Communist manifesto. Okay. And notice how interesting these marks are becoming because they are blending into each other. Perfect. Just a few touch ups. 16. Final rose highlights: Now, going a bit lighter with more white. You want to build some more contrast, make them thicker, make the paint thicker because you already are putting down thick paint, so you need even more thick paint to have this wonderful. Now we're going to focus a bit more onto the left side of the canvas. See? Notice, it looks like a candy color. Just adding it over and focusing, making with the flat brushes, can always go like this on both sides and create an edge, so you can really go in and add that cut. Maybe add one here, and another one here, and another one here. Don't worry about the middle. You can let it darker like that for now. Now let's add some more of this candy color over here, and maybe over here, let's connect these areas, going at the top. Onto the left side of this one. Notice how easy it is. Let's add some over here. And some over here. Now going even lighter. Don't be afraid to make it very, very light, very, very light. Now going over on top of the left side. Just a few of these touches. Maybe don't even touch some of the other ones too. See notice here, I don't like it. Just going to erase it a bit. Now, maybe this one and on here and maybe one behind. Let's accentuate it like that and like this. Okay. Now it's the time to look around and with the other side of the brush, you can go and create some more interesting textures and a bit of lines. Don't be afraid at this step. You can go get make some lines. You're only creating abstract more abstract shapes because the brush just created these interesting shapes, but you can also create some lines and maybe some more texture. And after you've done that, you can also calm them down a bit. Notice. Beautiful. You can take some of that orange or red, add it back in, just a tiny amount. L et's add a bit here and a bit here. Let's add some beautiful, small little flowers, pink flowers. Over here, rotate the brush a bit so it creates some more interesting flowers. Maybe on this one a bit and next to it, a few other ones. Perfect. Now, clean up the brush. You're going to need to clean up the brush. 17. Vase reflections and highlights: For this next step, this is going to be a very short step. You're going to need to clean up the brush. The small brush, add some water, squeeze it out. The roses are still wet. You're going to work over here onto the This area of the vase. You're going to add the beautiful highlight. For the highlight, you're going to need a bit of blue. Just add it to the plate. A tiny amount. And you're going to need some white. You're going to need some white. Mix it in with a tiny bit of blue, just the tiniest amount of blue. Okay. And you're going to go and create this beautiful square shape just going a bit round on the edges. Going to the side like this to create the top and the corner over here, make it a bit bigger. On the lower side, you can have it a bit more textured. But on the top side, it needs to be very squish, and it so follow the form of this side of the vase. Now going way lighter. Just take a lot of white, mix in just a bit of blue and on top of this one, add So lines just going this way. So paint just going this way. You can make it bigger at the top and as it goes down, it's a bit less. If it blends too much with the blue, just wait for it to dry and add a bit more. Perfect. Now, go with the finger, take your finger, make sure it's clean. It doesn't have any green or anything, and start blending a bit of this. Maybe take a tiny amount of water onto your finger. And you can blend some of this edge over here, just going down to make a little bit of a reflection just going down. Now, the brush, clean it up on the side of the on the side of the plate, and add more blue to this brush and some water, and you're going to create a beautiful reflection just over here. This is too white, so you need to add more blue add it, and then finger technique. It works very well against the blue dark accent onto the right. You can also add it just a little bit over this texture. And then maybe go with the finger as well. On this side, you can add a big one, a big one. Then with the finger. Then you can add another one just over here. Maybe there is a reflection of something. With this one, with the central one, one over here, you can go a bit lighter on the edge. And maybe add a bit of a sparkle over here as well. Maybe it needs to start at the same exact spot. Can always go back with the green dark green and just change the shape of it if you want. Let's add a bit of this lighter highlight. Don't go overboard. They need to be subtle. Let's add some of it over on this side. Just to clean up that edge over here as well. Notice that on the yellow it's not really creating the same effect. But that's fine. To create the same effect on the yellow, you can add some water to the brush, take some of that white, add it to the side of the plate where you don't have anything. The tiniest amount of yellow mis it in very thoroughly. It still has a bit of blue. So it needs a bit more yellow. K? It's not going to really create the same effect because this is way too light, but you can still just dab a bit onto the bottom right next to the shadow. And then with your fingers, you can go over it to blend it. Once you have blended it, you can go add a more intense one just over here and maybe over here to accentuate that color. Look at how interesting it looks. Maybe we can add this color as an accent. Let's say here. Maybe there is something just reflecting on the side. Okay. Notice how beautiful it is. You're not even thinking of what you're doing and you're creating glass. Glass is simple. You just have reflections on top of a dark area and then reflections around and a big highlight on the side. 18. Dark reflections: This next step, we're going to focus on the secret technique that you can only unlock after you've made 500 paintings. And it's a very easy technique. We're going to start slowly with some brown. You will need a clean brush. So let's use some of the old napkins, going to start to add water. This is going to be a more water based technique. The brush is not clean enough. So let's clean it a bit more. Add some brown to an area where you don't have a lot of color. Starting with brown, Let's fix this brush a bit. Starting with some brown, you can add it in the middle just as a wash and make some cuts on the opposite side if you lost some of the shadows. You can also go and edit some of the go with the finger. It's a combination between the finger technique and water technique. This is just adding a bit more different colors here and there to add more color variety. Now going into some blue, and some brown, focusing first on the dark colors. T on the dark colors. Let's accentuate this leaf over here. And this one over here. Also add some of this blue over in this area. It will create just a nice and interesting contrast. Don't go overboard. I know it doesn't look as impressive as you might think, but this is just the start. Let's take some fresh napkins, add some water. Clean up the brush with some fresh expert napkins. Now, yellow. We're going to add some yellow to this side and the touch of red, maybe too much red, but that's fine. Let's add more yellow, and then water it down. Can you see the water? Yeah. You can take some of the water out by going on to the side of this recycled bowl. Just going over some of this ros and maybe over here, and maybe over here a bit more. Just a few touches to add more color contrast. You can also go on the side of the bowl. And if it's too intense, you can go with the finger technique. Notice how it just changes that color changes and makes it more interesting. You can go over the brown, the blues. You can go over these flowers to make them a little bit less intense. Again on the side. Can also go onto the lower side of the painting. Inside here, maybe making this a bit more yellow. 19. Finishing touches: Now let's go a bit more red. S. This one, you can use on the darker sides to add some more darker highlights. Just simple touches, just a few different splotches of color and let it play a bit. Notice how it intensifies everything. If you had a very white area, like let's say this, it will just become more intense. And you add more and you make it more intense. L et's add some more red. This time, let's add some white as well to make a pink, and let's go over this. It's still a bit transparent. But it gives just a little bit of a interesting highlight. And you can go on the side. You can scratch a bit with your finger if you want. If you don't like some areas, maybe they're too green like on this side. And then you can go on to the brown, add some brown to the red, make a darker red. Just so you bring back some of those darker sides. And once you let it dry, it will have so much more intensity, so much more color. Notice how beautiful this oh, no. Oh, no. Here is where the napkin strategy goes very well. 20. What you've learned, Thank you!: You can notice that after it dries, you can start to see how much more complex and subtle the transitions and everything is because you've added a thin film of paint and just adding in the middle of the rose, some blues, and some yellows and some oranges, and some purples as well. Added some reflection of the rose over here, some red over here, over here, some more complexity down here, with some yellow. You've just made the painting a whole lot more complex with a simple wash of paint in different colors. Look at how interesting this one is. After it dries, it looks much more organic and nice. It creates this depth, this interplay between colors. This red goes very well with the dark green. Now over here, some red, right next to the blue, some blue over here, some orange, orange here. A bit of dark, a bit of light, It's interesting to play around with these washes at any stage to build more complexity of color. It just makes it more interesting. And you can go as far as you want with these washes, and you can also go over with some more highlights if you want, or whatever it feels like the painting needs, if you lost the shadows over here or you don't like an area over here or over here. Just think of the colors that are underneath or adjacent and just start editing maybe some of this shape, like this with the color underneath, maybe add another leaf. You can go back and forth in between stages to play around. You decide when the painting is done. In my case, this is the level of detail that really still adds that vibration, that painterly feeling. And you've started from abstract, and you've ended up with a nice glass vase and roses in a very easy and free flowing manner.