Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi everybody. I'm Amy Stewart. I'm a writer and an artist. Lately I've been on kind of a kick with laurels. And I put this class together to show you how I approach painting a still life of a bouquet and a vase. Let me show you. I'm going to show you just a few examples out of my sketchbook. A lot of these are inspired by Matisse paintings actually. And what was so revolutionary about Matisse was the way he took these flowers and he turned them into almost abstract shapes. He wasn't trying to make an exact copy of a flower. These are very loose, almost just iconic ideas of what a flower is. He was trying to say something with color and composition that just happen to involve a vase of flowers. And he also used his imagination a lot. He wasn't necessarily painting what was in front of them. And as a result, he would invent wallpaper or patterns like On the vase or on the table. And gave his paintings this really wonderfully fresh, almost childlike sense of wonder to them. And that's what we're gonna do. One reason why I love painting these bouquets is that it's a classic still life subject. And it lets you explore the most interesting parts of painting, a still life, which is choosing a color scheme and a composition. I mean, we're gonna paint flowers too, but in some ways, the flowers are almost secondary to this really fun puzzle of choosing colors for your background, your vase on the table that the base is going to sit on. Those are the colors that really have to harmonize. So we're gonna do just a little bit of color theory and color mixing to help you figure that out. We're also going to be looking at some basic flower shapes and how you can make those shapes even with a really small brush. Now one more thing, when a florist is arranging a bouquet, they're thinking in terms of shapes as well. Like is something round like a rose? Is it like a bunch of petals coming out from the center like a daisy? Isn't a cluster of flowers along a spike, kinda like foxglove. When they're arranging flowers, they're thinking about where they went harmony and where they want contrast. You know, maybe you want some spiky flowers or some long strappy leaves to break up all those round flowers. They're also thinking about repetition. You generally don't just see a flower once in a bouquet. You might see a couple of different clusters of them in the bouquet so that your eye moves back and forth between them. And of course, they're thinking about a color scheme as well. So we have a lot in common with florists where we're using the same ideas of color and composition. So as artists, we're gonna consider first the color scheme of the painting, overall, the background, the vase, the table. And we're just gonna kinda let the bouquet harmonized with that. And I'm going to encourage you to really use your imagination, you know, inventive vase and paint flowers and colors that you've never seen in nature. And add patterns and accents and paint or colored pencil or markers or Inc.. Now you're welcome to work from photographs or from life set up a still life with some flowers herself for this class. But you can also just make it up like I'm going to. So you can just follow along with what I'm doing step-by-step or do your own thing. You know, I think painting is little bouquets is such a fun way to fill a sketch book, but they're also sort of grade as little gifts. They make nice cards. So it's a great project to do. Alright, let's get going.
2. Project: The project for this class is obviously going to be to paint a bouquet like this one. I really wanna encourage you to use your imagination and paint from what you already know about flowers and faces. Put a bouquet together, worked for life. Gather up photos that you've taken a Flowers and bases. Maybe you want to visit a flower shop or, you know, just look online. Maybe on Pinterest or Instagram for inspiration. And I will put in a few links below that. Might give you some places to start with that. But I'm also gonna give you a copy of the bouquet that I painted and you can download this and work with it in front of you if you'd rather do that. But whatever you do, I hope you'll post it in the project area so we can all UW and over your bouquets. I would really love to see him.
3. Supplies: Okay, let's talk about supplies. And I'm also going to say a little bit about the type of the range of colors, but I'm gonna be using a little bit here as well. So first of all, paper, you're going to need paper that says specifically that it's for watercolor to be pretty good, heavy paper. I tend to like hot press, especially for guage because I like that smooth finish. But whether it's hot or cold press, it needs to say that it's for watercolor. My little sketchbook that I did a lot of these bouquets IN is a Canson mixed media, but it does say that it can use wet and dry media and it's pretty heavy paper, a 138 pound in normal normal watercolour papers, a 140 pounds. So it's good heavy paper that can handle wet media, so that's what you need. You're going to need a pencil and eraser. In terms of brushes, I'm going to use a flat brush this time. I also paid an oil and I like these flat brushes. They're good for things like backgrounds. But if you don't have one of those, just a good sized round brush, this is a twelv, This would be fine. And these are inexpensive synthetic brushes. You don't need fancy brushes and in fact, synthetic brushes are a little bit better with guage. This is a very small one, this is a two and we will be doing some fine work. So a really fine brush can be helpful. I have this watercolour brush, it has a water reservoir and I don't really use it for that. I just like that. It's a brush with a really fine tip. So you'll see me use that a little bit as well. We're going to be using some markers. Whatever kinda markers you have is fine. Colored pencil would also be great. I'm gonna be using these Tambo brush markers, but again, anything would work. This is just happens to be what I have. Also some paint pins. These are pasa, acrylic paint pens. And so it's a good way to put a light color down at the end. So I have these in white and ivory, but if you have a white paint pin like that, it'll be helpful. And now let's talk about the paints themselves. You can do this class or watercolor or wash. So I'm going to be using my trusty watercolor travel palette. And I'll give you a list of the colors that I'm going to use. So everything we're going to do, you can do a watercolor and I'm going to demonstrate it. And for Guassian, I'm gonna also give you a list of all the colors I use, but just any basic range of paints, it's fine. You don't have to go out and buy anything special for this. And I just want to say a word about pallets. You're going to see me use just a dish that I bought at the thrift store. And this is a great way for just mixing up colors would are just temporary. You're going to wash this off and reuse it over and over again. I'm always going out and just buying white dishes at the thrift store that I think will work for that. But you will see me with a couple of other palettes that have a bunch of dried pain in them. So what I do is if there's a range of colors that I'm just interested in and I'm just working with. I'll just leave them set up in here for awhile and then just spray it with a spray bottle and I'm ready to start painting and add colors to it. So the bouquet I do is going to draw a lot from this kind of soft, dreamy palette of pinks and purples and pale greens and pale blues. These are just some colors I'm into right now. So this is what I'm going to use. So you'll see me using that. And another thing that I do is I just have a basic range of paint colors in one of these and I tend to, again spritz it down with water at a little bit and just keep using it like this. And eventually I'll wash this out and start over again with it. But the reason I just leave these dried guage paints in here is that sometimes I like to add a few little highlights to my watercolors using wash. And just, just by spraying them with water and dipping into this, I can get a good, strong, vibrant color where I really wanted in a watercolor as well. So I just leave him. But however you choose to do it, you're just going to need some kind of palette where you can do some basic color mixing. I think that's everything in terms of supplies. So let's get to work.
4. Mixing Greys, plus Watercolor Swatches: This section is mostly for the watercolour artists that are taking this class. But if you're doing it in guage, stick with me for just a minute because I'm going to be explaining some things that'll be helpful for both watercolor and wash. And what I want to talk about is mixing in Gray's blacks and whites. So straight unadulterated color right out of the tube is referred to as the hue. That's just the color. Attempt is when you mix white. Tone is when you mix in some gray and a shade is when you mix in some black. And we're going to do this exercise and you'll see why in just a minute. But I just want to explain a couple of things about it real quick for you. Watercolour artists. I have a couple graze. I have a Payne's gray, and I have a shadow violet. And let me just show you the differences. Shadow violence, what I use the most. But let me get the Payne's gray, it's a very bluish grades, very pretty color. I'm just gonna put it I'm gonna put it right over here off to the side. It's a very pretty bluish gray, almost black. And then this is shadow violet, which I use a lot for shadows. And it's got more of a slightly purplish tone. Or you might even think that it leans a little towards brown. For blacks, I'm using Daniel Smith's neutral tint, which can be mixed with any color to make it darker, which is exactly the point of this exercise. So it's perfect. But if you just use it straight, it's a pretty good neutral, dark black. It so you can see as it drives but it's a little less blue. Then the then the Payne's gray. I'm also going to use buff titanium instead of a white. There is such a thing as white in watercolor, but I just don't find it that useful on my palette normally. Whereas buff titanium, I use a lot, it's great. And landscapes where you've got maybe sandy colors are rocks. It's also really good for painting food. Like I teach a whole class on sketching, doing food and drink and your sketchbook, and it's useful for that. But you could also, if you're a watercolor artist, get just one tube of wash. And make it white and mix whitewash. You can obviously get a much smaller, less expensive tube than this one and carry it with you. And I'm going to show you both. But I also want to make the point that you can mix grays. And this is for you, for those of you who are taking the class and guage, This is why I wanted you to see this, because I want you to understand that this is true in galoshes. Well, I've got a pyro red here and you'll put them out and got a pyro read. I have a Hans, a yellow medium, and I have a civilian blue. If I were to take Where should I put this? I'm going to put it way up here, get it kinda out of the way. And if I were to take some red and some yellow and some blue, and if I were to mix all three of these together, I could get a gray. Now the first thing I get is brown. But that blue didn't really want to join me. If I were to come in with more blue, I could push this towards gray. That's actually a pretty nice gray. So gray is really just a mixture of all your other colors. The other thing though, and if you don't want to mix a gray, I just want to remind you that you can get the effect of mixing gray with a color by just mixing that color with something opposite on the colour wheel. So in this case, if I were to take this read. That over there. And if I were to grab just the really what I want us to mix it with green, but I don't have a green here. So if I were to pick up the tiniest bit of yellow in the tiniest bit of blue, I've basically got a green on the end of my brush here. And I were to mix those in. You can see all the colors already changing. Needs just a little bit more of that. Or actually I could take it from here because that's what it is. Now I've taken this read and I've graded down. So I've just knocked it back or neutralized it. And that's what this exercise is all about. So this is just a reminder that you can mix grays from other colors in your palette. And you can also grade down a color or neutralize it. Or hang on a second. Let me get my little sign back here just to remind you or get the tone of that color, you can get the tone which is the mixture with gray by kind of going across the color wheel. But now, now what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna do this same color mixing exercise that I'm about to do and guage, I'm gonna do it in watercolor, but I'm just gonna do it with three colors just so we can kind of get through it quickly. And those of you who are watercolour artists, you're welcome to do as many colors on your palate as you want to if you've never done this kind of an exercise before, I think you'll be really surprised at the range of colors you can get from what you already own. And it's a great thing to do just for that reason. So the first thing we're gonna do, that's the hue, that's the unmixed unadulterated color. Now I'm going to take my red and I'm going to mix it with some some of these buff titanium, which is a creamy kind of off-white color. And by mixing it basically with white, I get the tent and I will do, I'll give you the example with whitewash as well in just a minute. But let's go ahead and just stick with watercolors for a minute. Now, if I take this same red and I'm going to use the shadow violet rather than the Payne's gray because it is the color that I keep on my palette the most. And it does not push it to blue, which I appreciate it keeps it pretty neutral. So if I take some red and I mix a little shadow violet into it, not much. I'm not trying to radically transform it. I'm just trying to see what else I can get here. Maybe that I'm trying to keep my brush pretty dry. If you're mixing with watercolor, you've probably been frustrated in the past by what can happen if you get too much water in your mixture, you just lose control of the whole thing. So I'm trying to keep my mixture pretty dry. So now I'm taking that Daniel Smith neutral ten. I'm going to get kind of a lot of it here. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go pretty dark and really see what it can do. So I've mixed quite a bit in here and I get a beautiful, really deep red. Okay, I'm only gonna do this with three colors for the watercolor, we're gonna do more in wash in a minute, but I'm going to, it'll be a sped-up version because I think you're probably getting the idea here, but let's go ahead and do these three colors real quick. So if I take that yellow and I mix it with the buff titanium. A little more of it. So it doesn't necessarily lighten it because of course would watercolor, The way we lighten things is to do a lighter, more of a watery mixture, right? We don't add white to something in watercolor normally, but this is a way to make a more pastel color. Now I'm mixing that yellow with shadow violet. I love, I love the kinda surprising colors you get when you do this. Because chateau Violet is not particularly blue. You get a really neat kind of Allah V. I mean, it does push towards a green at tiny bit because of course it's going to. But that wonderful just dial back. Olive color I think is just gorgeous. Now I'm going to mix it with a neutral tint. So now we've got and I did quite a bit. I really wanted to see like, how far can I go, how dark Can I get this? And you get this really incredible dark, dark color out of that. Ok, let's do the blue real quick and then I'm going to show you what happens when you mix whitewash. Just so you have that option as well. So I'm taking the same buff titanium. Now I'm mixing it with surreal Ian trying again, trying to always keep my brush real dry so that I can actually get a pretty rich mixture and really see what it looks like now I would need to add a little more water if I was painting with this because I'd want the color to move around on the paper a little bit more. But for this exercise, it's good to have pretty dry mixture. So that's a gorgeous color, I think. Now I'm gonna get that civilian and I'm going to dip into this shadow violet. This is, this is like an amazing combination and this is a color I would very happily buying a tube, but I don't need to buy it in a two because I've got it right here. It's a really deep I think it's like an ocean color, like a sepia CBO or an Indigo kind of ocean color. Now I'll take civilian and I'm going to mix that neutral tint her black. I also wanted to mention that with blacks. Blacks are made from a bunch of different pigments, so different manufacturers. And you'll notice there's always lots of different options for blacks if you go shopping for paints, that's because they're made from different pigments and they're going to do different things. They might lean more blue, they might lean more towards red or brown. This one, it's called neutral tint and it's meant to stay as neutral as possible, which I think it does a good job of that. So you can see what an extraordinary range of colors we have. I mean, even if this was all you had to paint with looking at how much you could do, like you can do some amazing paintings, just limiting yourself to that. Now I'm going to just real quick grab some whitewash. By whitewash is already drying. It drives kinda fast. And I'm going to just do a mixture of pyro red. Again, this is water color, mixing it with wash. So I'll just show you. Obviously it pushes your watercolor towards more opaque. I'm going to do an even lighter mixture, which I know is a little harder to see on camera, but it's just so pretty that I just can't help myself. I don't want you to see it. So this is what happens when you mix whitewash with watercolor. I wasn't planning on doing two different versions of each one, but now I want to, because I want you to really understand that this can be, this can be a regular part of your watercolor practice. And even if you travel a lot with your watercolors, which I like to do, it's no big deal to have one tube of squash. I mean, I don't like to travel with a lot of to paints because of liquids and gels and getting through airport security and all that. But it's really no big deal to have one little tube of white paint with you in tucked in with your tooth paste there in your bag. Okay. So this is the I've gotten a little yellow mixed in here. I'm going to try to get you a very clean version. Come here. See if, oh, here we go. That's better. Here's a very clean without any any yellow adulterated version of civilian. And let me do a thicker, I mean a mixture with a richer mixture with more Cyrillic. And just so you can see that you can, you can mix in a little tiny bit of whitewash and more of your watercolor and still get a pretty dark deep color. But that wash adds a level of opacity to it. Like if you compare this civilian to this, they're almost the same color, but this has a lot more opacity to it because I added the tiniest bit of whitewash and wash contains. I'm kind of a chalky substance that makes it more opaque. Now, transparencies, what's wonderful about watercolor, but this is just also a way for you to explore a little more opacity if you want. Okay, so this is what this color mixing process looks like if you're painting in watercolor. But there's a few more things to know about it. And I'm going to I'm going to show that to you next in wash, but I hope that whether you're doing watercolor or kwashiorkor watch the next one because you'll, you'll get a little more out of it.
5. Gouache Swatches: Before we get going, I want to do a little color mixing exercise. Now of course, you can paint a flower bouquet without doing this color mixing extra skies. But I think it's an interesting way to think about some of the background elements in a bouquet like this. So here's my range of colors that are in the supply list. I've put them all out on the palate and I've added black, white, and a gray that I just got by mixing Black and White together. And with these, we're gonna mix a much wider range of colors. I've sped the set because you probably don't need to watch an entire video of me doing color swatches. But I hope you'll do this exercise along with me. What I'm doing first is just the straight color right out of the tube, what we would call the hue. But it's just, it's just the unadulterated Color. And then we're going to start mixing. So I'm taking a little bit of white and I'm just using a palette knife, but you could also use the other into your brush. Just the end of your brush handle to distribute a little bit of white. I'm mixing up just a mixture of each color along with some white. Now you could go a lot lighter than I am with these mixtures I'm aiming for still kind of a midtone, but mostly that's because I want to make sure that it shows up well on the camera and you can really see it. But otherwise it's fine to do much lighter versions of these. And I hope you can see already that you get some really lovely kind of pastel colors. Adding white tends to cool it a little bit. And definitely to make this more pastel color, if you're doing this or watercolor, you could mix titanium buff, and there is such a thing as white in watercolor. You can also just get one little tube of whitewash and use that. I'm just fixing this one over here because there's a little too wet and I just didn't get enough color down. So now I'm doing the same with my gray. Now again, this gray is a mixture of black and white. But you could also buy Gray in a tube. And you could also mix, I mean, honestly, if you just mixed every color on this palette right now, you would get a grey. Like that's how you get gray is it's a mixture of all the other colors. So there's a lot of ways to do it. But I hope what you can see here is even just with my really kinda no-brainer mixture of black and white to get a grey. That when I take these really bright, brilliant colors and I mix a grey with them, I get such a wonderful kind of neutral knocked back. In some cases more of an earth tone. Like it's a whole different color palette. It's, it's seriously a whole different range of colors to work with. And then the last thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to just mix every just cleaning up the water a little bit there. Got it. Got a little and adding a little bit of extra paint where I used up where I kinda used up too much paint. You and the other two, I need a little bit more. So now I'm gonna take my black. By the way, there's a lot of different Blacks. Different blacks might lean more towards brown or more towards a blue. So depending on the Black you use, your results may vary. And some of these are going to look pretty similar to when I mixed with the gray. And it's just because it's basically the same color and so it's a little less white in it. If you were to have used a very different kind of gray, then you're black, then these would these would look even more diverse. But I wanted to do it with the kind of the smallest range of paint colors so that if this is what you have, you'll be able to do this exercise. And so here again, I get these really incredible, very dark. I'm kind of moody. So you know, considering web bright colors we started with in looking at all this happy pastel colors, you get these really wonderful, deep, deep Moody colors like that. Ultramarine just looks like a Indigo, like a sky. And so here's what these are called hue, tent tone. And when you mix it with black, that's the shade.
6. Color Wheel: What I've done now is I've cut up my color swatches into almost like paint chips, like you get at the paint store and you can write the name of the color at Pier if you think you need it, but you might just know a mall well enough. But I went ahead and wrote wrote the names here. And I've arranged them in kind of a color wheel. Now, if you're familiar with color wheels, you might think This one looks a little weird. And let me explain why that is. I teach a class on color wheels and color theory, and this more accurately reflects how artists actually use pigments. So where the three primary colors go, Here's yellow. And you might normally expect read to be right here, but I've put magenta right here. And you might normally expect blue to be right here, but I've put turquoise here. So I know that seems a little weird, especially if you've never taken a class on this. It's called the Munsell color wheel and it's how I work. But, but basically just make a little bit of a shift. If you have these colors, make a little bit of a shift so that your primary colors are magenta, turquoise, and yellow. And if you happen to own a color printer cartridge, you may have noticed that the three colors that come with your color printer cartridge or not, yellow, red, and blue. It's CMYK, so it's actually cyan, which is a fancy word for turquoise, magenta, yellow, and black. So this actually works more in the way that your printer cartridge works, which is pigments being put down on paper. And that's what we're doing is pigments being put down on paper. But anyway, so I've arranged this colour wheel. And you can see that what happens here is that yellow ends up across from blue and red ends up more or less across from like turquoise over here. So you get some very interesting color combinations when you do this. And that's the whole point. When we're thinking about a color palette for a painting, which is definitely this painting we're going to do is sort of all about just coming up with an interesting color combination. One neat way to do that is to do a split complementary color palette. So I'm going to explain what that means. A split complement means that you take you pick a color. Let's say I'm pretty sure I went to the ultramarine blue. And instead of going right across from it, which is its compliment, you take the two on the other side. So in this case it might be ultramarine mixed with a light green and an orange. And let's say I want to use, I want to use orange, but I also want to, and I'm gonna do a split complement. So I might come right across here. And instead of picking civilian, I'm gonna kinda go on either side of it. So it might be a turquoise or an ultramarine. And so that's considered a split complementary color palette. And it's very appealing, very pretty sort of color palette to work with. But I want to point something else out about it. And this is why I'm cutting these up. Because there's no such thing in nature as a color wheel, right? The light spectrum is a spectrum. There's, they're all arrayed right next to each other, just like in the swatches we just we just painted. So, so there is no wheel that happens in nature and you would have to be so wedded to a wheel if you want to move a little bit off of that idea of going right across and picking one on either side. Of course you can. You're free to, there's no one stopping you from doing that. So you could say, well, I like this orange. And so I want to kind of pick a couple other colors that are somewhere over here, but I'm thinking maybe it's going to be more in the purple and turquoise range. Maybe it's not going to be these two. Or you might go, you know, I like this light green and so I know I want something that's over here across from it to give me some interesting contrast. But I'm kind of, I'm not feeling the purple, maybe I'm feeling the magenta and the orange. The point is you've just, you've looked on the other side of the color wheel. So the reason that I've made these individual things that you can just kinda pick up and move and think about is so that you won't maybe feel that you have to be wedded to this rigid idea of a color wheel, which I think actually it kind of holds artists back. So what we're gonna do is we're just going to pick kind of a dominant color for the background and find another couple of colors we like that or just generally across from it, but it doesn't have to be perfect to just sort of over here somewhere. I think what I'm gonna do is I'll, I'll do something that's ever so slightly off from the perfect split complementary. I will pick this orange and I'll go with the turquoise and that purple. So I know I'm very interested in the orange and I know I want, I want to see a lot of orange, like an orange background or oranges are really dominant color. So I'm just wanting to be somewhere on this side of the color wheel for my other two colors. But don't get, don't feel like you have to get too fussy about it. So let's say I've chosen these three colors. I'm going to clear the rest of these away. Now, check this out. Maybe I picked that as a color scheme. But that doesn't mean that I have to work with these three. It could mean that I do this one and that one. And that one. You see, there's, even once I've picked three colors, there's a lot of ways that I can really mix it up and change it. Maybe, you know, maybe I do want this bright orange, but I want it with this extremely muted turquoise. That's pretty dark. Maybe gosh, maybe even that dark. That's kind of interesting. And a very light purple and that of course, that purple could go even lighter. It just depends on how much white you mix in it. So what I want you to do is just get interested in this idea of thinking ahead a little bit about a color scheme, but also remembering that you can, you're free to work from a wide range of, you know, you've got these tents and tones and shades that you could play around with. I mean, maybe I wanted, maybe I did want this ultra Marine with this orange. And this, I don't know. There's green may be. I mean, I'm just sort of improvising here, but just to, just to kind of show you like, let's say that I like this kind of very, I'm gonna do this very earthy thing with the orange. And I want to go with a very light ultra marine and maybe another earthy color for this Agreeing or that one. So you have so much flexibility. And remember, we haven't even mix these colors together yet. All we've done so far is we've just done the tenths and tones and shades, and we already have so much variety. Maybe with this red, I'm interested in the light green and and the turquoise. So the red. And then these two are kind of on the other side of the color wheel from him. I could go like, gosh, I could actually do something. I mean, it's sort of interesting to see that really dark red with this. And maybe a super light green could be interesting, or are these more earthy, that more earthy green with this very light turquoise and maybe a pop of very bright red. So by doing these just once, it kind of helps to remind you that you've got so many more options with your colors than you might otherwise remember that you have and that you can make those kind of choices. Like as I'm just looking at this and thinking about like, okay, well what really speaks to me about this? Like I love these really dark magenta edges. So, you know, there again, like gosh, bringing even these two together, like even this magenta and the US trillion which I just grabbed. They happen to be, they happened to be sitting next to each other right here. And putting that with a very light green that's sort of intriguing. So what I want you to do is to look at these colors and think about them in combination, remembering that you've got such a wide range of neutrals you can work with. Like, wow, actually look at that, that very dark magenta with this just beautiful grey down yellow like those are very intriguing together. So play around with this. I'm going to show you a color scheme that we can work with for this. But you are free to invent and explore and figure out what is exciting to you. I'm kinda dig in those three together, for example. Alright, let's move on.
7. Choose Your Own Color Scheme: I want to show you a few examples of this in practice so you can see how I've done this in my own sketchbook. So like this is a color that I mixed. It's got a little more green in it. But you can basically see that that's a very dark, very dark shade of that turquoise. And then there's a little bit of, I kinda knocked that back a little bit too, but you sort of get the idea. And then that purple, so we've got orange, which is on one side of the color wheel. And we've got a turquoise in purple, which are more or less on the other side of the color wheel from it again, you don't have to be super precise with this stuff. Here. Kind of sorted this magenta. I mean, I'm mixing these colors a little bit so they're not straight out of the tube exactly these shades. But you can get the idea. And this is somewhere in there like a grade down version of that. So this one is actually this, this one's kind of cool because they are actually basically primary colors. They're sort of evenly spaced around the color wheel from each other so you don't have to be wedded to split compliments. But anyway, that's one idea. With this one, you can really see how that's mixed a little bit, but that's generally what that color is. And then here's the magenta and in this kind of peach colored vase. So once again, I've got the green and then I just went to the other side of the color wheel for these other colors. A couple more. Here's one where I, I love this magenta color, so there's a lot of that. So there's that. And then this is kinda hits somewhere. It's actually yellow ochre, so it's kind of somewhere in between those two things. I'll just put them both. It's sort of it's a little bit yellow, it's a little bit orange. And then this lime green color for the vase. So here magenta is really on one side of the color wheel and we go basically across the color wheel to find this light green. So you could say, I mean, this yellow ochre, It is kind of an in-between colors. So this one is again, a little more spread out on the color wheel. It does not have to be super precise. That is more of an ultramarine. So there's the ultra marine. And then this is probably the closest would be this super dark red. And then the pink is little bit right there. So there again, we've got these that are clustered on one side of the color wheel across from that. And this is a straight up Matisse. Colors came. So don't they guy invented this one. But anyway, that the red is just a hue. It's just a very bright, unmixed color with green that somewhere in there. And I blew. That's actually probably closer to that, sir, really. And if I had to guess so there again, there's red and then you go across from it for these greens and blues. So this is, this is kind of, I think that, that the cool thing to do here is to figure out a really appealing color scheme that you love for all these elements. And once you've done that, you can sort of do whatever you want within the bouquet. So let's, let's get going on that.
8. A Nifty Trick for Composition: I want to share a really cool idea that painters use when they're thinking about composition. And that is the idea of two-thirds, 1 third and a smidge. So ignoring the bouquet for just a second, you can see that we've got this big, big shape that's roughly two-thirds of the drawing. And the smaller shape that's about 1 third. And this could be considered a little smidge, just, just a little touch of something else. That two-thirds, 1 third and a smidge idea is greed for composition. And especially when you're trying to think about putting a background together for something. But it also applies to color and devalue. So in terms of color, obviously, I've got these three different colors working as a dominant color and less dominant color and just a touch of this. And it also works for value. If I look at this as a black and white image, I can see that the very darkest areas, the background and then the table, and that is the lightest and the vase is kind of a middle, so that two-thirds, 1 third and a smidge thing is visually quite powerful. And I'll just, I'll show you a few other examples where you can really see how this plays out. Now I said to ignore the bouquet as if that's possible because it's a still life. But the point is that of course this is our focal point. But the overall visual impact of these still lifes come from a big background shape. And then this smaller shape, which is the table and then this little very strong. And obviously this is what your eye is drawn to, that supporting, supporting the focal point, the bouquet. So and you can do this differently like in my case, generally I'm putting on making the background two-thirds and the table just 1 third, but there's no reason why you couldn't, you know, maybe raise up the table right here and have a still life that sort of, you know, maybe spilling down. So there's different ways to arrange it. And if you're trying to come up with more interesting ways to compose a still life. Think in terms of this, you know, two-thirds, 1 third and a smidge and see if it gives you some more interesting options for composition. But also think about it for color. And I also want to say that even if you're not doing a still life like this or you know, a bowl of fruit or any of the other classic still life subjects, even if you're doing a cityscape or a beach scene, thinking in terms of two-thirds, 1 third and a smidge might help you think about the, where do I put the ocean like Do I want just ocean down here? And it's going to be two thirds sky and 1 third ocean. Do I want beach down here and a little smidge of ocean and a bunch of sky in a cityscape. You might be making some choices about where you're going to put, you know, where you're going to put the street level stuff versus the buildings versus the sky. I'm always when I'm doing cityscapes, trying to decide how much sky versus how much side Walker Street to include. And so the point is that when you think about doing a still life, your focus is probably entirely on the flowers and what do I want the bouquet to be? But if you come up with a really strong composition for the background, then the bouquet can just do its own thing. It's the focal point. And I want to say here, this is very much, this is like a corner of a Matisse painting that I did as an exercise. So, you know, two-thirds, 1 third a smidge and Matisse gets all the credit for that one. And this one has a lot more variety in it. But I, the overall visual impact still you get this sort of two-thirds, 1 third. So it still has those kinda compositional elements, even though there's a lot more going on. Think about that as you're coming up with your ideas for your composition. But also think about it in terms of a really strong color scheme that's, you know, two-thirds 1 third a smidge. And also values like what is the darkest, what's the medium and what's the lightest tone? I mean, here, for instance, just adding in these little hits of white, just a little bit of it here. And there is another way to think about kind of a smidge, like there's just a smidge of white and it's around these leaves and it's also the dots on this this little pot or whatever it is. All right, so that's just something to think about as we're putting these together that hopefully you can use no matter what kind of painting you're doing.
9. Drawing Flower Shapes: Something else to think about for this class, since we're going to be drawing flowers are just basic flower shapes. And these flowers are going to be so small that we're not going to put a lot of detail to them. So these are really more like a, you know, iconic flowers. Like you could think of a rose like that just as a circle. You could also think of arose as a circle that maybe has a few lines in it like that. But anyway, so we always see round shapes and bouquets. Obviously. We see Daisy type shapes which could have kind of elongated petals. They could, let me just do a little center here. They could have very wide petals that come to a point in the center. Could be sort of the opposite of that, which is the case, say in and as sunflower type of shape, I would have to do a lot more overlapping petals here for that to make dozens. But you can see what I'm getting at. Like, why did the base, but then it becomes more narrow. And then of course, a sunflower would have a bunch more outside from that. It could be something that's very spiky. But its general shape that there are obviously lots of variations on. And then there's all kinds of things, whether it's Adelphi minium, a lark spur, a foxglove. All kinds of flowers that are long and spiky. And there again, you can sort of really improvise and do your own thing with these, but you'll see that a lot. And so that's a shape to think of. Are these longer spikier shapes and how can you work those into your bouquet? And then there are those flowers that are kind of more like fillers. And there's all kinds of things that might fit into this category. This could be like a spray of, of little berries, for instance, or just any really small delicate flower where you have a little flour on a stem like this. And so that's kind of another accent that you'll see a lot. I just wanted to mention with with bulb type of flowers like tulips, it's almost just in a really simple kinda bouquet like we're making here. It almost just goes up in this category of round shapes that you might do something like that with. A Dalia could either fall into this round category and kinda look like that. Or it could, there are, there is such a thing as like a spikier version of Adalja that might kind of come around and do that. It's also a good idea to remember that sometimes we see these flowers on their side. So you might see a daisy or a, you know, an explanation on its side like that. You might see a Dalia, like one of these kinda spiky Dali as you might see, something like that Only from the side. So you just kind of see what's coming out on top and not as much down here. Same thing with something like a rose. You know, you might. A sense that there's pedals up here, but then we're mostly looking at it on the side. So it's got this kind of flat topped feeling to it. So remember, we might see these from the side and the shape is different. And these are the kinda shapes that we're gonna be making with our paintbrush. And the same thing goes for leaves. So when you're thinking about putting leaves in a bouquet, you know, think about really long strappy leaves. That's huge. I don't know why I made that leap so big, but you get the idea. Really long strapping leaves, smaller leaves that might actually be quite round. So you might get lots of that kind of leaf shape. And everything in between. You know, you could have sort of spiky spiky or leaves like that. So think about different shapes for leaves as well and don't feel like you have to be tied into any one particular leaf shape. Let's see what else was I going to mention? Oh, I really like putting lilies and bouquets because they're like a big accent flour. And nothing else looks quite like a quiet like a lily. So, you know, you can, you can sort of think about how lilies kind of come down like this and then have now, so it's this kind of shape. So my suggestion to you is gather up some ideas. I mean, just look at the kind of flowers that you like and, or what do you have growing in your garden? You know, you look at these Daisy shapes and maybe you've got cosmos in your garden. And cosmos do have a kind of a particular shape. It's sort of like their petals are a little bit more squared off here. I am actually kind of proud of this. This is actually looking guy like a cosmos to me. So look for those shapes you can make. Now remember, we're going to be making this with a paintbrush and they are going to be pretty small. So you want a few distinctive shapes that really stand out from one another and at a bare minimum, come up with some ideas in your sketchbook for something that's round, something that's Daisy, Daisy shaped, something that spiky. Remember, spiky could also be something like a glad Eolas. This is going to be like the world's worst glad idealists, but where you've got a pretty strong Steyn and flowers coming down from it like that. It could be something like fox glove where you've got these more bell shaped, not doing a very good job of bell-shaped. But again, most of you know what a foxglove looks like. Got these kinda bell-shaped flowers that are coming down and they're getting wider as they go. And think about just drawing them as these very graphic, simple and shapes that are just nothing but circles and triangles attached to one another because that's really what the bouquet is going to consist of. And I would just say, draw some of these out in your sketchbook. If you don't have flowers in your garden that you want to include, you might think about, you know, looking on Pinterest, looking at your favorite florists website and just asking yourself like, okay, what are some flowers that I really like that I think I might want to include in this thing and build a little, build a little glossary of flowers that you might use. And that's what we'll put into our bouquet.
10. Painting Flower Shapes: Now let's do a little bit of practice with, with some paints and now that you've had a chance to just draw some shapes, let's see about doing these with a paint brush. And I'm using this, I just liked the tip on this brush. It's one of those, it's one of those watercolor brushes that has our water barrel in it. I'm not using the water that's in the barrel at all. I'm just using it because I get a nice fine tip on this brush. And you can do this practice directly on top of the flowers that you drew or next to them. It doesn't really matter. The point is just to try this out and get comfortable with making these very small and really very simple shapes and just figuring out what your brush can do. So part of it has to do with thinking about, well, when do I use the fat side of the brush and when do I use the tip? Can I start with by pointing the tip straight down and then laying it down on the paper a little bit. So just experimenting with that and your results are going to be different depending on the brushes you have. So play around with what you've got and just see where you can get really fine shapes and where you can get kind of fatter shapes like here, I'm just using the tip and I'm going real fast, which gives me these kinda just really quick energetic brushstrokes. I'm just gonna switch to another very small brush and play around with that. You can see how I press down on the side and then bring it back to the tip. And I can get those different effects, those different shapes. So part of it depends on do you know if you start in the middle of the flower vs around the edge and I'm sorry, this is kinda hard to see. But sometimes starting at the edge of the pedal and working your way into the middle of the flower will give you a different effect than if you start in the middle of the flower and work your way out to the edge. You know, you can get a finer point. So just play around with all these different ways. You can see I'll, sometimes I'm doing it one way and sometimes I'm doing it the other way and just seeing what this brush is gonna do for me. And by the way, if you have a hard time getting really fine details and a really fine point, it might be time for a new brush. I tend to buy pretty cheap brushes and replace them often because I don't want to keep using a bad brush forever because I spent so much money on it. So just keep that in mind. In this case, I want these kind of square edges around the edge of the pedal and I'm just going around and using my brush as more of a drawing tool to get those square edges in. Here's one of these spiky flowers shapes. I'm doing this one in green. I hope you're noticing I'm very deliberately using these imaginary whimsical colors that maybe don't really exist in nature. I don't know of a flower with this kind of shape that exists in nature and this color green, but it's fun to play around like this. So, so be really free with your colors because we're just experimenting here. And I'm actually just using the tip of my brush. And drawing circles or using the tip of my brush to make tiny little dots. One of those two maneuvers. And this one again, I'm just, I'm making little circles. That's really all this is. But it is good to kinda practice it and see like, well, what will my brush actually give me and how is it different if I go straight down, if I point straight down versus if I hold it more like you might hold a pencil or a pen and come at it with a little bit of an angle. So I'm going to get into these lilies. And same thing, just thinking about should I start at the tip of the pedal and work my way in, or start in the center and work my way out. And what gives me a fine point and what doesn't. I know that this light green is a little bit harder to see on the, on camera, but I think you can get an idea of what I'm doing here. And then this one is a little bit rounder. So I'm just using my brushes like a, just a drawing tool and really just drawing that shape. So the thing that I want you to get out of this is just practice making some of these shapes. Figuring out, you know, what you can do with the tools you have. I'm just making sort of little leaf shapes here. Or this could be actually, this could be another allele as well. Really just kind of thinking about a lily that you're looking at kinda from this side. And so the pedal closest to you might be shorter and fatter, but really it's just putting these shapes together. Okay, here's an example of one of these big leaf shapes. It's sort of like some filler maybe that's long strappy leaf. That's could be a leaf like on a tulip. And you can see how like there I started at the base and worked my way up here. I'm going to start at the tip and work my way down. Do you see how different those look? This is going to be really a matter of your hand and how you work. It's going to be the angle of your brush. Of course, whether your brushes loaded up with paint well and, but also just, you know, how fast or slow you move with the brush and the angle that you approach the paper. So like little leaf shapes like this. Again, this is just a matter of getting used to what you've got. This could be like kind of a neat little Sing it kinda from the side maybe with a little stem on it like that. And in fact, let me, let me play around with the idea of stem. So getting a, getting a dark green color on my brush and coming at it really from the tip straight down, which I know makes it hard to see. But you can see what I'm doing here, where I'm just adding like, there you go. Like a really fine line like that. For stems, remember that all these flowers have to be attached to something. They're not floating in space. And now that this one is dry, I'm gonna come in and add some details to it that again, are totally imagined. Like there is not a lily in nature that is lime green with dark green stripes. But it's fun to just see the level of detail that you can get here. It's just going to go all the way around this one and maybe do this in purple. These are just the colors I happen to have right in front of me right now. So might as well use them. We'll crazy purple, little more crazy green. So those were really pretty nice, fine lines and you can get a pretty crisp effect. I mean, we're gonna be doing these kind of details also with colored pencil and marker. And that certainly works too. But it's nice to just see what's possible with your brush. And of course, the nice thing about doing it with your brushes that you can make such a huge variety of colors. And while you might not have colored pencils or markers in every conceivable colour you can imagine it's much more feasible that you can get real variety with paint because you can mix some of these colors. Alright, we're about done here. K0 plane around, build yourself up kind of a vocabulary of flower shapes. Here I am, I'm just going to put in some lighter colors on top of darker. So you remember that that's possible like these green leaves, maybe they're variegated and I'm adding a little bit of kind of line green on top. I mean, I think that looks really cool. Here. I'm going to take, this is actually pretty light white. I know it's kinda hard to see on camera and it is blending with that darker purple just a little bit, but I've added some stripes and some little dots in the center of a white that's mixed with just a little bit of pink. And, and let's make him look really interesting. So there's a lot you can do with putting lighter colors on top of darker colours as well. Maybe I'll come in. I had these kind of bluish little day IPsec got too much water on it. Little kinda Daisy shapes. I'm just going to drop a green center into them and give them some little stripes as well. That actually looks pretty fun. I like this more than I thought I would. It's actually pretty cool. So just mess around with these, gets some ideas together. You know, look at pictures of flowers, or just come straight out of your imagination. Of course, that's fantastic as well. Maybe put together a color palette that you like for a bouquet, as well as some ideas about flower shapes that are meaningful to you. And practice them a bit so you know what your brush can do that the small size. And maybe what I can do. One last one, I'm gonna take this. I thought maybe this was like a Dalia. And I'm just doing these little, what I'm imagining are kind of Dalia petal shapes to make this round orange flower and leave a little bit of whitespace, go around the edge. And that's it. Let's make a bouquet.
11. Painting the Scene: I felt myself sketching this bouquet, but it's so light that I've had better go over with darker pencils so you can actually see what I'm doing. So I'm just gonna kind of redraw this and show you this version. All I'm doing is just suggesting a table. I'm keeping it down in the lower third of the picture and putting it at a little bit of an angle, just so it looks kind of interesting. And I'm just imagining a vase that's this kind of open V-shape. And I want to point out this little trick. This is also helpful whenever you're drawing dishes, which is if you draw a line down the middle, you can compare the two halves. And it can sometimes sort of help you see if it's to asymmetrical. Now this isn't meant to be kind of a whimsical picture, so it's okay if it's a little bit off, but if you're having trouble, try that trick of drawing a line down the middle, either horizontally or vertically. Whatever you think will work for you for the bouquet itself. All I have to do is sketch out some general outlines and we're going to fill those in. So I've spent this part up because you probably don't need to see me doing all this lengthy color mixing. I'm sure you can do it yourself, but I'm taking these colors, but I picked which is the orange, the purple, And then I'm gonna do a mixture of blue and green. But look what I'm gonna do here. I'm gonna take a tiny bit of that orange and put it with the purple and the blue-green. I'm gonna take a little bit of the purple and put it with the other colours, and so on. So that I've got a little dab of each color mixed with the other colors. So by, This is a trick. I'm an oil painter as well. And this is a trick that oil painters have done forever, which is if you take a little dab of all the dominant colors in your painting and you add them to all the other colors, you create a little bit more of a unified palette. Now the idea is for that to be very, very subtle. You don't have to do a lot, but just, just a little tiny bit of it. And I want to lighten some of these two as well and get more of a tent. So I'm going to add a little bit more white. I'm mixing with the other into my brush. This is just a way to maybe not SOC so much paint up into my brush before I'm quite sure that I'm happy with the color mixture and it's very easy to just clean the paint off of the other tip of that brush. So feel free to try that out if you, if you want to experiment with a different way of mixing. And now I'm going to come in with a flat brush and start to fill in this background. I mostly trying to stick to horizontal brushstrokes. Fill unlike there's not quite enough green in there. This color sort of hard to see on camera because the light shining on it and it might just look kind of just dark to you, but it's actually got quite a bit more color in it that it maybe it looks like. And I'm just cutting in around the edge of this bouquet. My plan is that there's not going to be any of that background wall showing through anywhere in the middle of the bouquet. In other words, I'm imagining this to be quite dense flower arrangement so that I don't have to get a lot of little spaces in center of the bouquet. But if I did want some of that, I can go ahead and put some of it in now, but also, I'm going to save this color like this color's gonna stay on my palate. And so one useful thing is that you can add little hints of it later once the rest of your painting is done to show the idea of some of that background. Showing through like maybe if the flower arrangement is a little more open and not quite as tightly clustered together as mine is. So I've left these spaces for the bouquet. And those flowers are just gonna kinda have to fill that shape because that's the shape I left form. So once I'm pretty satisfied with that, I'm going to get in and start working on some of these other colors. So I decided I wanted the orange, this table to be pretty light. You know, one thing that happens with wash, as you put a really dark color down in a dries and it actually drives a little lighter. But when you put a light color down and that dries, it actually drives a little darker. So that's something that I always try to keep in mind, but I also have no problem going back over with a lighter or darker version if I decide that's really what I need. With Wash, it's very easy to just add on another layer like that. So now I've got this purple, I'm going to bring a little more white into that purple, make that kind of a lighter, a little bit lighter tint of that purple. And remember this does have a little tiny bit of that orange mixed in it and also a little tiny bit of that background color. So it's a little more muted in neutral because there's this kind of unified color palette happening. I'm just cutting and little spaces near the top there where the flowers are going to start a hang down over the top of the vase. Looks pretty good. I'm putting a little more white down here. And this is just an example like this. This layer has, has pretty well dried. And if I want to come in and just lighten this up a little bit, I can do it as it dries. It's going to be a little darker because like I said, lighter colors will tend to dry a little darker. And also it's just going to mix some with the layer below it. But maybe I just want to lighten that up a little bit. And just to show you, I'm really just doing this to show you examples of how you can go back and work with quash. Maybe I've changed my mind. I've decided I wanted that purple little darker. Well, I can still come over it and do that as well.
12. Painting the Bouquet: Now let's paint the bouquet itself. Now i'm working very much from imagination here. You can of course, work from photographs, have bouquets, but I'm using, it's kind of bright and very whimsical colors, including some colors that don't quite exist in nature. And just putting a bouquet together using kinda what I know about floral arrangements. So one thing I know about floral arrangements is that florists tend to repeat a flower over and over again. You rarely just have one of something, and often they're kinda clustered together. So like I'm doing these pink roses and this is just that quinacridone magenta mixed with white. And I'm, I'm keeping them all together and kind of keeping them in the same area of the bouquet. So a couple of things about bookcases. You'll see repetition and see the same flour used over and over, but you won't see an evenly spaced throughout the bouquet. Generally there'll be sort of near one another. Now, I'm taken this light green and the flower that I'm thinking of in particular here are these little kinda chartreuse green chrysanthemums that are very small, but they're sort of used as fillers and bouquets. And so I'm basically just making little dots with these. They don't have to really look like much. And because they're filler, they might show up kind of around the edges. And that edge could be at the base of the bouquet. It could also be near the top of the bouquet. And I'm just playing around. I just want to show you some different sort of floral patterns you can do. These are basically just four little dots with a dot in the center. So I'm making a little shape that you might think of as like a daisy shape. But it's, in some ways it reminds me more of maybe a periwinkle or forget me not. Anyway, it's just a little tiny floral shape. And I encourage you to be kind of imaginative with these shapes because people are going to be so small like you, like the bouquets so small and the flowers over all are so small that what you're wanting to do is just create this kind of iconic representation of flowers. The idea of the flowers more than any level of botanical accuracy. And just, you know, just have fun with these. And notice how I'm still sticking to keeping flowers together in one area. So now I've got this is Sir William blue. I'm mixing it in a little pallet that's got a lot of different blues have dried on there. So probably it's mixing with those a little bit, which I actually kinda like. But this is just a really in blue and white along with whatever else is in there. And this time I'm making kind of a spiky flower. There could be a minium, a large spur, maybe even some kind of looping. If it were pink, you might think it's foxglove, but again, we're not worrying about painting flowers and the colors that you actually find them in nature. So if you could imagine a light blue foxglove than you could pay one. And here again, I'm putting two of them together. So they're kind of they're kind of near one another. And I think this is important. Don't fall into the trap of trying to just evenly distribute things. So now I've got this is ultramarine mixed with some white. And now I'm doing Blue Roses, which I can promise you definitely don't happen in nature. But, but it's, I just kinda loved this color scheme. You know, I love these kind of pale creamy blues, along with the greens and the pinks. So I'm just doing them together. I'm making little spiral shapes. It sort of doesn't matter what anybody thinks these are, whether they seem to be roses or like a Renan keyless or, or even a small dolly or just anything else that can come in around shape. Now, I dipped back into this pale, mint green for lilies, which you've seen me do before. So this is, this is that medium green and white, which makes for a very minty green color, also a color that lilies don't come in in nature. Now of course, you don't have to do this if you, if you really want to make a particular bouquet with particular flowers out of your garden and you want to stick to what they really look like in the real world. Of course, Be my guest. I'm exaggerating this idea of invented colors for invented flowers just because I want you to really feel free to explore that. But, But of course you could do this Lillian, pink or yellow or orange or red or any of the colors that literally just always come in. Once again, I'm keeping them Canada together in the bouquet so they're near one another. I mean, if this were a real bouquet, these lilies might be on the same stock, might be two or three, Lilly's on one stock. So now I'm going in and I'm putting in some leaf, like long strappy leaves. And remember what I said about which direction your brush strokes can go. You can start at one end or the other depending on how you like the look and how it's working for you. And I'm not bothering to use a real earthy like a Sap Green, sticking with this pretty artificial green. Now there are times when all go grab my sap green because I definitely want more of an earthy neutral green. But I'm just deciding to have fun with these really kind of bright, crazy colors. And I'm getting some variations of last time I mixed it with some white. This time I'm not mixing as much white in just so they look a little different. And since I did leave room for these, I loved whitespace for where these are. I sort of have to, sort of have to follow that pattern, but it's okay to just leave little hints of white, the white paper showing through as well if you liked that. So don't feel obligated to absolutely perfectly cover up every little bit of whitespace that you left for yourself. Okay, so there's, there's the green and the leaves. Now, I can also come in, get a few more of these over here. So I'm adding these leaves and ongoing right on top of that background. And you can see how even though that background color is so dark, you can still, if you have a pretty dry mixture with your guage, you can still come in on top of it and get a lighter color on top of a darker color with Wash. Sometimes the two colors will mix together a little bit. Here I am. I'm coming in on top of that purple. And you can see that, you know, it looks different than how it looks just on the white paper. But basically I'm just going around and I'm looking for a few places where I want this sense that there's leaves that are just kind of filler. So I'm not really concerned about getting very precise leaf shapes. I'm just working some of that in. Now. I've got the same orange that I used for the backward for, for the table. But I went ahead and got some fresh pain out so that I could get some that's not at all neutralized by having been mixed with any other colors. It's just that orange with some white to make kind of a peachy color. And again, like what flowers this exactly. I mean, they could be poppies if poppies would stay open in the vase for very long, which they usually don't make a little small dolly is it could be it could be a rose. It kinda doesn't matter to me. I'm really just making circles here and now I'm making little dots. And so once again, this can be either flour that Scott along spiky shape to it. You know, like a fox glove or something like that. Only in this case the stem is sort of trailing downward. It could also be a spray of some kind of little ornamental berries like hyper, hyper carrion berries or something like that. It doesn't really matter. And I'm just going to sort of fill in. I'm gonna keep those little dots going into the interior of the bouquet as well. But it's nice to repeat that shape. And this is definitely something that Flores do like if they have one thing that's spiky, they might look for another way to just repeat that spiky shape somewhere else in the bouquet. So I'm doing that as well. And then I wanted to put in some white flowers just to point out how you can do this. It's a little bit hard to see on camera, I know. But when you add white wash on white paper, it does change the texture. So it looks, to my eye, it looks better than just leaving white paper to suggest that there are white flowers there. And in a minute I'll come back in and show you some ideas for how to make those white flowers actually look like something. Because of course, no flower is completely white in nature like in, in reality, if we were doing a very realistic bouquet, these white flowers would be picking up light and shadow, and they'd be picking up a little bit of reflection from the other flowers around him and that would change the color Sam. But we're going to, we're going to just sort of play around with that idea in a little different way in just a minute. So I'm just doing a few little touch ups here. Make sure I liked the shape of this. I'm going to come back in with this green and just fill in some spaces where I feel like it's just kinda whitespace. And I want to be able to suggest that there's some kind of greenery throughout the bouquet. And then we'll go on to the next step.
13. Accents with Gouache: Now I want to show you how I would add some accents with paint. We're also going to add some accents with markers and stuff, but let's go ahead and do this with pain as well. So I've gotten out my background colors and mixed in a little bit of extra green and wedded it down again. And I'm just going in and adding little bits of fine detail that I can do with the tip of the brush. So these, these lilies, they don't, they don't actually have these stripes around them. There's no such thing in nature as a, as a mint green Lily with darker green stripes on it. But it makes it pop out a little bit. And I like having this level of detail that feels kinda like there's pattern. There's little dots in stripes and I think it's, I think it's fun with guage to add that kinda stuff. And you know, honestly in some ways, like it's fun to do it because you can. This is the kinda thing that is a little harder to do with watercolor. And I just love the process of adding these really fine little details with the brush and just getting in there and kind of playing around with it. So I've added these kinda stripes on the inside of the petals and also around the borders. Just because I like the way they look so much. I'm also going to come in. I've got a darker, this is my quinacridone magenta again. And so what I'm doing with these white flowers is I'm sorting, pretending like there may be, there are white with a little bit of pink variegation in them or some kind of striper pattern to them. Again, these were totally made up flowers. But you can see how by adding these little lines, which I also could have done with pencil, you could totally do this. Colored pencils, great for this kind of thing. Or with markers or even with pen. Just by adding these little shapes almost like the, maybe the petals have a fringe of a different color on him. So you still get a sense that it's a white flower, but there's something else there to sort of show you what it is. I'm going to come in as well on these sort of orange, very light orange salmon color flours and just do something similar with a, with a darker orange red. And already like, I love the way these little sense of patterns kind of emerging. Now I'm dipping into my ultramarine and I'm gonna go back to these, whatever they are. These large birds or dolphins are lupins and I'm just dropping in little dots of a darker blue color. And it's sort of cool because it's not only darker blue, but it's actually a slightly different hue. So it's ultramarine rather than civilian. It leans more towards blue unless toward green. And I just love that contrasts like I think it looks really cool. I know it's a little bit hard to see on camera, but I'm just using the very tip of my brush and dropping in the smallest amount of that I possibly can. I'm gonna do the same thing with a little bit darker green. All of these little tiny, they're like star-shaped flowers that I made in very light green. I'm putting a little center in the middle of each of them. And I hope you can see how, even though these are very simple, almost childlike patterns already the flowers have more of a sense of depth than they did before. So now I have gone back to my little reservoir of Sap Green. This is more of a natural organic green like you would really see in nature. And I just felt like maybe adding that in a few places would help. Maybe tone this down just a little bit like it's a lot of very frivolous fun colors. I really got carried away demonstrating every possible way that you could do a really wild color. But I just wanted to tone it down a bit, so I just added a little hint of Sap Green doesn't just leaves or bits of Fern or something. I'm filling in a little bit of the white space on the papers just showing through more than I want. And just a couple more things I want to do. I went back to my purple and back to some of that super dark blue-green background color to just mix a very dark purple. And I'm just going to add some little accents onto the vase. So this is another great way to work in some pattern, even if your vase doesn't have any pattern on it. In this case, I'm just sort of imagining that it has little like little ridges in it. And I'm just putting in some curving lines that give it a little bit of a depth. And almost a sense that maybe there's a shadow underneath, like underneath the bottom of the vase. They're just brings it to life a bit. And I'm putting in some little dots, which again, I'm just sort of making that up, but I like these, I liked that kinda little sensor pattern there. But we're going to add even more to this. So stick with me.
14. Accents with Markers: Okay. So a lot of the accents that I just did in Guam, I also could have done with marker. And now I just want to show you a little bit more about what that looks like. So I've got these Tambo markers and I'm just using the very tip. And I'm adding in a little bit more of that dark blue just to show you that you can do this. And I'm actually going around and drawing like little curving lines around kind of the bottom of some of those flower clusters, which also give a little bit of a sense of a shadow or a sense of depth and coming in with the green. And again, I might not normally do all of these things in one bouquet, but I'm trying to show you what all the possibilities are. So I'm going around and I'm outlining some of those little four pedal. Daisy light. She liked the way that links. I have to say, I thought maybe I was taken this whole thing a little bit too far, but I'm I'm kind of into it. It does give it a little bit of a sense of depth and it makes things pop out a little bit more, kinda gives your, gives your eye somewhere to go. I'm adding some little stripes into these leaves and just putting some, some dark edges where I feel like some of the leaves need a little more definition or maybe they got a little lost as I was doing the rest of the bouquet. And that's nice. I like the way that looks in the marker also coming in over that background. It helps these darker leaves to stand out against that dark background. I mean, I think there's nothing wrong with having sort of a dark color in the foreground that just blends into the background like that. It looks sorta Unified and I liked the way it looks, but just if I can make it stand out a little bit more. Now, taking the red marker and I'm just going around and playing around with some of these rows is just a bit more. And really it's just to show you that you can do this with, with either markers. I could also be using colored pencil here for sure. Now with these acrylic paint pins, this is really, in some ways is my favorite part. So I'm starting with ivory and I'm adding, there's no real sense of a light source with this bouquet, but I'm just adding some little white glance to suggest that there is light bouncing off of this vase. The vase is going to be made of some kind of shiny material. So just a little bit of that. It's tempting to get super carried away with it, but just a few lines can really go a long way. And I'm going to come in with the white and maybe just punch up these roses a little bit and give them a little bit more obvious white areas within the pedals. And I'm just playing around and looking for opportunities to use these paint pins to do something interesting. So here I had this spray of some kind of salmon colored flour or berries or whatever it might be. And I'm just, I know it's hard to see on camera. Sorry about that, but I'm just adding little white dots to it. And it makes it stand out. Pops against the background. Doing, doing just little touches of it here in there. Because I like these very deliberate kind of accents. And then I also want to show you, I'm going around with the white. I'm roses as well and making sure that they have really defined edges to them so that they just, they stand out a little bit more and they don't seem like just places where there was blank paper, but it's their actual, the roses have an actual shape to them. So this is just a fun thing to go do you to go around and just to add some little details to better define things and make it real crisp so that it's not too much of a muddle. Now, there's just a couple of things that I want to go back and touch up. I'm gonna go back with my with my green, um, and make a few edges darker here in there. This is stuff that's almost hard to see on camera. They're just tiny little details where I just wanted to clean up the, the edge between the background and the flour. And then one other thing, let's say that you, you sort of regretted something you did and you wanted to use your white almost as a way to erase mistakes. So it's hard to completely go over and eliminate something. But in this case what I'm doing is I'm saying, well, let's say I decided I didn't like Quite all those pink lines and those white roses and I just wanted to knock him back. So I'm just drawing right on top of the pink lines, but I painted and it just knocks him back a little bit.
15. Watercolor Bouquet: If you're doing this in watercolor, I want to show you how it would work to do the very same thing. So I've got a turquoise here. I'm mixing it with some shadow violet just to darken it a little. And I'm using that same flat brush and just coming in during the background first, the reason I like the flat brushes that I can kind of cut some shapes in. This will be really important because watercolors pretty transparent and I won't really be able to do any painting on top of this darker backgrounds. So I want to be sure I've left myself some pretty obvious shapes that I can work with. And that's the pencil sketch really helps there. And there's a lot of, you can really see the brush strokes here with this flat brush. And I kinda like that. I like that there's some texture in the background and it's not just totally flat. So that's actually a good thing as far as I'm concerned. Alright, I left some of that turquoise on my brush when I went in to pick up the, the orange color for the table. Because again, this idea of mixing a little of every color into every other color comes into play here. I think it helps to unify the color palette. So this is that orange mixed with some buff titanium, Just a little bit of it, it just kind of it lightens it a little bit. And but, but not too much. Actually, what I want to have be the very lightest thing is going to be this purple. So for this, what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to clear off a little space here. And I'm going to put down some whitewash. And I'm going to be mixing my purple watercolor with whitewash. So this is the one place where I'm using guage, but you definitely don't have to do this. I mean, if all you have is watercolour, then of course you could just do a light wash of purple watercolor here. Remember to make sure that one thing is dry before you put the next thing on so you don't have colors bleeding into each other too much, but that's really all there is to the background. Now I'm going to start, I'm going to start with the flowers. And I'm going to use some permanent rose mixed with that buff titanium. And I'm really doing the exact same process. I'm just doing it with colors on my watercolor palette. This bouquet will end up looking a little different. But I'm trying to make it as close as possible so that, so that the class will be the same for everybody no matter what you're taking. So now just a little bit at Orange, also with the buffed titanium. And you get these kind of ever so slightly neutralized, I think, I think sort of pretty colors. Clean off a little space here. Alright. Now I'm going to come back in. I've got some, some brilliant blue. And I'm making these sort of whimsical kinda blue rows shapes. Again, also with a little, little mixture of ultramarine and civilian. I'm doing these spiky. They could be Delphi 10ms. Whenever they are, they're just little dots. These little dots over here for just another kinda long spiky flour or maybe it's a spray of berries. Now you'll notice when I'm putting these greens in, I'm reaching for my, my failure Green. I'm not really doing Sap Green, which would normally be the color I'd use for leaves. But I want this to be kinda bright and whimsical. I'm going to mix it with some yellow just to get a lighter more almost like a lime green color in a few places. And you'll also notice with the leaves coming out, that I can't really come out over the background very much. Like I said, I'm sort of limited because they are more transparent colors and they're just not going to show up. See if I can get some Stimson and a few places. And I'm going to let this dry and then we'll add some more details.
16. Watercolor Accents: Now that my watercolors dry, I can come in and add some more details and some more accents. And I'm starting with my purple and I just dipped it into the pain itself. It's a pretty dry brush because I really want to get these fine dramatic marks. And you can see how you can really do this and really get some lovely accents with the paint itself. But let me also show what it's like to work with markers here. The nice thing about markers on top of watercolor is that I can help to sort of define some of these leaves a little better against that background by coming in with a color that's pretty bold against that background, I can just make it pop a little bit more, make it stand out some more. And I'm just gonna come around. This is like that little green Lily that I did in the guage version. I'm doing the same thing. I'm just coming up with a darker color and also just drawing in some little leaf shapes. So you know, the thing with watercolor is the paint moves around on the paper a little bit. And you get these just sort of green blobs. And I can literally just draw some shapes and kind of give some form to what otherwise might just be a little green blob by just drawing right on top of it. And I'm going out over the background a little bit if I want, that's fine too. And so just adding in some little accidents like that, I'm going over the blue roses with a blue marker and just making them stand out a little more. Adding some blue dots into these tall, spiky flowers, just like I did in the wash. This part is really not too terribly different actually. But you can see how it really makes it pop and it really makes it, it gives you just a lot of definition and some clarity. This is kind of maroon, sort of a wine colored marker, just adding some little accents around those pink roses. And now I'm in a go and add a little bit of a red colour, but also come in with my paint pen. And this is where, especially with watercolor, if things ran together a little bit, this white paint pin can be really useful. Like going around the edges of those cream colored roses and coming in over here and just making some more dots and making it stand out against that background a little bit more. Everywhere where there's an edge against the background can be helpful. And just adding a few little suggestions of light on the vase there. And this is the watercolor version of the very same bouquet.
17. Final Thoughts: Okay, I hope you had as much fun with that as I did. Please post your paintings in the project area. I would really love to see them. If you did the color mixing exercise along with me, you saw how much you can expand your palette just by mixing the tint, which is a mixture with white, the tone, which is a mixture that includes some gray and the shade which mixes a color right out of the tube with black. It gives you such an interesting range to mix and match. And you know, that's before you've even mixed one color with another. And I want to point out that you get such a nice range of values when you think in terms of tenths and tones and shades, you know, look at this bouquet when I take the photo and I convert it to black and white, I have three distinct values here. Now a value is how light or dark something is. So the background is the darkest, it looks nearly black. The tables the lightest, and the vase is right in the middle between those two. I do this a lot with my paintings just to check and see how they're coming along. And it helps me decide what kind of adjustments I want to make. Because a painting that looks interesting and black and white is always going to look good in color. We actually perceive value before we even perceive color. So using a range of values actually makes your color scheme stronger. And mixing your paints with nothing but white or gray or black. But surprisingly easy and effective way to get a range of values. Okay, well, thank you for being here. Please post your questions or your comments if you have any and stay in touch with me. I have a website. I sent out a newsletter. I'm on Instagram and everywhere else on social media. And I teach a lot of other classes on both writing and art. So I hope you'll stay in touch. Thanks very much.
Amy Stewart, Writer & artist
