Floriography & Art: Create Floral Art with Meaning

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Do you find it hard to answer when people ask you the meaning behind your floral painting, or you always wonder how you can really create a floral art that conveys a message? My name is Jenny Flores. I'm a creative coach and artist from the Philippines. My creative work revolves around the subject of botanicals, bouquets, wreaths, and different floral arrangements. Just like most of you, I also struggle when someone asks me the meaning behind my art. I wanted to tell them that it represents something, but I can't find the exact adjectives to use until I learned about the secret language of flowers. In today's class, I'm going to teach you how to create an art with meaning using floriography, the Victorian secret language of flowers. Every flower carries their own meaning, from roses being the symbol of love to [inaudible] that reflects innocence. Initially created to give meaning to bouquets and arrangements, I realized floriography can also be used to add meaning to other floral compositions such as painting. We're going to start by learning the wonderful history behind floriography. Then we will dive into creative process from identifying the message that you want to convey, choosing the right flowers, planning your composition, and creating the color palette that will match the emotion of the artwork that you're planning to create. By the end of this class, you will not only create a beautiful painting with a secret message behind it but more importantly, you will also gain the knowledge on how to research, thoroughly plan, and combine history and psychology to your art. Whether you're a beginner artist or an experienced one, as long as you're someone who's craving to learn how to add meaning to your floral art, this class is for you. I'm very excited to share this one topic with you. Now let's get started. 2. Class Project Overview: For our class project, we are going to create an artwork with the message behind it. You can use any medium of your choice from watercolor, gouache, acrylic, oil, or color pencils. It's up to you. I, however, will be using a combination of watercolor and gouache paints for the demo project. We will start the project by identifying the message that you want to convey, then we will start checking our floriography resources, which I will share with you later on and then look for the flowers that represents the main points of our message. After that we will gather our reference images as well as create our own color palette. Finally, we will paint our artwork with a meaning. Once done, you can upload your project on the Project & Resources section. This is where I can give feedback to your project and a place where you and your classmates can encourage each other. I'm excited and so passionate to share this topic with you, so let's start now. 3. Supplies: The supplies that you will be needing on the class mainly will depend on the medium that you will be using. As I have mentioned in a previous video, this class is open to any medium, as we're going to focus on creating the artwork with a meaning rather than the step-by-step of painting using a specific medium. For this class though, I'll be using a combination of watercolor and gouache. Here are the specific colors that I'll use : Holbein Primary White Gouache, Nevskaya Palitra Petersburg Ocher Watercolor, Holbein Elm Green Gouache, Himi Miya Olive Green Gouache, Daniel Smith Undersea Green Watercolor, Holbein Sepia Watercolor, Holbein UltraMarine Gouache, and Daniel Smith Lunar Red Rock Watercolor. Now for my paper, I prefer to use this mixed media paper from Clairefontaine. It's a mixed media or multi-technique paper in 215 GSM and in size A4. I'll be painting botanical elements in a loose style, so I'll be needing a couple of brushes for that. I'll be using crystal-pointed oval brush in size 3/4, ultra mini brush in size 4, Silver Silk 88 chisel blender brush in size 6, Black Velvet round brush in size 6 and Ruby Satin Cat's Tongue brush in size 4. All these brushes are from Silver Brush Limited. I'll also be using a cup of water, tissue and a mixing palette. Again, the materials that you will be needing will mainly depend on the medium of your choice. But if you want to paint along, you're very much welcome to copy what I will be painting and use the same supplies that I'll be using. I'll see you on the next topic. 4. What is Floriography: What's the meaning of that artwork? That's one of the questions that I really hate but was asked multiple times all throughout my creative journey. Truth is, most of the time I really never thought of putting any meaning to my floral art. I just painted them because I want to, not until last year while searching for a reference photo, I got lost in the Internet and landed on this side where I was introduced to the long lost language of flowers, floriography. I thought, wow, this is something. This is new to me and I was so excited to learn so much about it. Unlike today when people are so free to express their feelings and emotions in social media, people in the Victorian era weren't allowed to express much of themselves. Basically, everyone during that time was shy. Not only because they're afraid of rejection but also because they live in an era or in a culture where vocalizing feelings is considered social suicide. That's big. Anyway, that's the reason why they learn how to communicate through flowers. During that time they use flowers and herbs as a way of expressing feelings that they normally would not allow to be openly expressed. For example, if you had feelings for someone, you can send them a rose which means romantic love, or if you want to cheer a sad friend, you can hand her some chamomile which means energy in adversity. The secret language of flowers became so popular in that era that they started publishing books and dictionaries to decode the meaning of the flowers they receive and to use as a guide in creating and enrichment. I'll share more about these books later on. Each flower has a different meaning and sometimes the color and variation expresses another message too. For example, red poppy means pleasure while a white one means peace. I'm personally amazed with the floriography and as I study more about it, I realized that it can also be applied in painting. Yes, instead of just picking random flowers that you thought could look nice together, wouldn't it be better if there is a secret message behind those composition? I'm so excited to share more about this topic with you because once you learn and understand the meaning of flowers, you can start experimenting with your own floral compositions and give secret messages through your artworks or maybe not secret. It's up to you. Let's go to our next lesson and discover more about combining floriography and art. 5. Identify Your Main Message: Now that you have an overview of what choreography is, it's now time to learn the process of building a composition with the meaning. The first thing that you need to know is your main point. What is the message that you want to convey? Do you want to confess love? Do you want to say sorry? Or do you want to express gratitude to someone? Knowing your main point would make your process easier as this will be your guide in choosing the main subjects of your painting. Just like any other message, it is best to be straight to the point. Know your intention and be clear about it. In this artwork that I'm planning to paint, I wanted to use it as a way of sending love and care to someone who is sick. Basically, the point of this painting is to remind her, which is my friend, that I love her and I'm here to support her throughout her healing journey. Before we proceed to the next lesson, I want you to think about the message that you want to send to someone. Write it on a piece of paper, then proceed to the next lesson. 6. Choosing Your Flowers: You already know the message that you want to convey. The next question is, where are you going to find the perfect flowers to represent that? That's where the floriography books and dictionaries will come in. During the Victorian era, floriography became so popular that they started publishing books and dictionaries to decode the meaning of bouquet series C. Some of the popular books during that time were Drops from Flora's Cup or The Poetry of Flowers with a Floral Vocabulary by Miss Mary M Griffin, The Language of Flowers, A Token of Affection and Esteem Comprising the Language and Poetry of Flowers by Henrietta Dumont, The Language of Flowers, Including Floral Poetry with original illustrations printed in color by Frederick Warne and company. I know that you're not ready to visit the nearest library and dive into the vintage books yet. That's totally fine because there are tons of new floriography books available in your local bookshops and some articles that you can find on the Internet, and we have our modern-day authors to thank that for. I've gotten a lot of books which I always use, and here are a couple of recommended books for floriography that you might want to check up, as well. Floriography, An Illustrated Guide to Victorian Language of Flowers by Jessica Roux. The Language of Flowers by Sarah Cray. The Complete Language of Flowers, A Definitive and Illustrated History by S Theresa Dietz. Floriography, The Myths, Magic and Language of Flowers by Sally Coulthard. If you don't have any of these books, and you don't want to spend money on floriography yet, you can always use the Internet. To search for a certain flower, just type the meaning of, for example, sunflower. Or you can also type what does sunflower symbolize? Or, if you want to create a bouquet with a certain message, you can search flowers that, insert the topic that you want to search. For example, gratitude. You can die flowers that symbolize gratitude. A couple of articles will pop out, and you can start reading and researching about the bouquet that you want to create. Pick about 3-5 flowers around your topic, and if you can find more than five, that's even better. You need a range of flowers because you will still filter them and choose which set of flowers will look nice together. Remember, aside from sending a message, we also want to ensure that our floral composition will look balanced and beautiful. In the next lesson, we will filter these flowers that you have initially chosen, and I will share some tips with you on how you can create a well-balanced flower composition. 7. Planning Your Composition: Now that you have a couple of flowers to choose from, it's now time to choose which of these botanical elements will look nice together. Let's be real. Even though all flowers look beautiful on their own, not all of them complement each other. For example, a foxglove won't look nice if it's tied up with the Queen Anne's lace and hydrangea in a bouquet. There's just too many details going on, so they just don't look nice together. In creating a well-balanced composition, you need to pick one to two main flowers. These flowers will be the focal point on your painting. Without a subject, your viewer will just wander around your artwork and looking for nothing. In choosing your main flowers, it is best to pick those that are big, fluffy, and attractive, like roses, peonies, sunflowers, and camellias. Aside from the main flowers, you also need some fillers. Fillers are small flowers that you insert in a bouquet that serves as an accent to fill in the spaces between the big flowers within the framework of a flower design. Let's go back to the composition that I'm planning to make. As I have mentioned, I wanted to use it as a way of sending love and care to someone who is sick. Basically, the point of the painting is to remind her that I love her and I'm here to support her throughout her healing journey. I look at a couple of flowers from my floriography books and also in the Internet, and I ended up getting these flowers. To represent love, I found dahlia, rose, lilac, and tulip. For healing, I got anemone, eucalyptus, chamomile, and calendula. Then for support, I found sweet pea, ivy, pansy, and dogwood. With these given flowers, I decided to pick two main flowers, which are anemone and rose. I looked at some photos and I can see that these two flowers would look nice together and their size are also perfect for my main subject. I also decided to pick sweet pea, which means I think of you, because it can perfectly serve as a nice filler in my composition. Lastly, I added eucalyptus to my list. Even though eucalyptus is actually a leaf rather than a flower, these botanical elements would look very nice in my composition, so I decided to add it as well. Once you've chosen your flowers, it's time to look for a reference image for your composition. You can use floral books, actual flowers, or my favorite, Pinterest. Let's try it on my painting. First, I'm going to look for anemones. There's so many flowers to choose from. When choosing reference, I usually pick about 3-4 photos for a flower in different angles, so I can have choices later on. Guys, I'm not too concerned about the colors of the flowers yet, I just want to get some reference for the shapes and details. Later on, we will plan our color palette and I'll share some tips on how you can create a color palette that looks balanced and pleasing to the eye. Before we end this lesson, I want to share another tip when it comes to composition. Use odd numbers for the number of times that you will paint your subjects. For example, in my composition, it is best to have three roses and four anemones to get a total of seven flowers. The reason behind this is that an odd number prevents your viewer's brain from pairing or grouping them easily because there's always one subject left over, which causes the eyes of your viewers to move around the composition. Imagine if your viewer has already paired up every flower in your painting, they'll easily get bored and they'll be looking in vain for more for sure. Of course, we don't want that. Instead, we want our viewers to see every element in their composition. We want their eyes to move and notice even the leaves and the fillers around their subjects. In our next video, we'll discuss the process and how to create the color palette that will not only look balanced, but will also match the emotion that your artwork wants to express. I'll see you there. 8. Color Palette & Psychology of Colors: Ever wonder why you feel romantic when you received some red roses, or why do you feel powerful and confident when you wear black? Colors don't just add you to our life, they also have a huge effect on our emotions. Each color represents different emotion and while I cannot enumerate everything in one lesson, I can give you a general guide about it. Warm colors including a warm white, red, yellow, orange, can trigger a variety of emotions from comfort to love, but make those use a little bit stronger and darker and they could instantly produce feeling of hatred and anger. For example, dark red roses, so strong red. Now for a cool use like cool white, green, blue, and purple, they can revoke both the emotions of serenity and sorrows. How can we apply that into photography and painting? Well, if your main message wants to convey a feeling of comfort and love, you have to stick into warm colors. In my artworks case, I want to convey a message of love, support, and comfort to a sick friend. I will focus on warm tones. With the message in mind you can decide if your artwork will lean towards the warm tones or cool tones. From there, you can start searching on Pinterest for some warm color palettes. There will be tons of sets of colors that will pop out, but you still need to filter them out and make sure to choose a set of color that will resonate to your message. Then top of that, makes sure that the color of your choice will also fit the flowers that you have chosen. For example, you can choose a color palette that leans toward pink and red if your subject will be daisies and sunflowers because these flowers don't have other color variations. Spend time looking for the color palette that speaks to you. Enjoy this process and once you find the colors that you like, test it on your paper and practice painting the flowers that you have chosen. 9. Painting Your Artwork: By this time, I assume you are ready and eager to begin your project. Well before we begin, let's go over the details of what my artwork will reflect. First, my main subject. My main subject is to remind a sick friend that I love her and I'm here to support her throughout her healing training. The main subject, I've gathered a couple of flowers which are anemone that represents healing. Roses that symbolizes love and sweet peas, which mean, I think of you. I also decided to add a couple of eucalyptus leaves to emphasize the healing message of my artwork. Since I want my artwork to create an atmosphere of love, comfort, and war, I choose some warm tones for the flowers that I will be painting. I have here a shaded warm white, which I will be using to paint my anemones and roses. I also pick this beautiful pink shapes, which perfectly represents love and comfort. I'll use this for my sweet piece. For my leaves, I'll be mixing a couple of colors to arrive in different shades of greens. I think I've covered everything already, so let's start painting. The first thing I'll do is mix my colors for my main subjects which are anomalies and roses, I want it to be in warm white, so I'll mix white gouache, which is primarily white gouache and Petersburg ocher watercolor. I'll mix these two colors to produce a warm white shade. I will be using this pointed oval brush to paint the petals of my anomalies since it has a very nice depth which mimics the shape of an anemone better. Let's go and start painting. I'm just great thing flat strokes here and completing the petals of my anemone. Notice that I did not use a very opaque consistency of paint here and that is because I want the artwork to look soft. Let's create another flower. If you want a guide for the painting, you can be the photo of the finished artwork on the project and resource section. All the supporting details of this class including the supplies that we need, are listed there. For our third anemone, I'll make it a little bit side view. I'll change the angle on the lower part of the flower, like this and some more. Let's take a pause in anomalies and do roses for now. For my roses, I decided to make a side view version as well. I'll do the tip of the flower first. I'm just dabbing my brush here. I'll be focusing on making the layers visible. As you can see, the color that I'm using here is a bit translucent. All the layers that I will be doing will be very visible. I hope the consistency of the paint that you're using is similar as mine, so your ears will be visible as well. Let's work on another row. I turned my papers so I can see the angle vector. For a second rows, it will be just similar as the first one. It's going to be inside view version as well. Let's complete the rest of the flower. I'll add one more anemone here, and another anemone here inside view. Now since the first layer is that we did earlier are dry already, it's time to add the second layer. For this one, I'll use a little bit more opaque consistency for the paint. When doing the strokes, it's okay to just cover the first layer, but makes sure to add a little bit of strokes on the empty sides to create a more fluffy looking flower. Time to add the shadows. Since we are painting white flowers, we will use a concentrated mixture of Petersburg ocher watercolor for our shadow. I have here my ultramarine round brush. Here I'll just add a few thin strokes on some areas to create an illusion of shadow. By the way, if you're looking for an in-depth explanation when it comes to painting complicated flowers, you can refer to my class, watercolor florals, learn to capture and paint the essence of a flower. To watch this class just visit my profile here on Skillshare and you can easily find it there. Now we are on my favorite part, the leaves. Before we start painting, let's mix a nice shade of green forest. I have here the undersea green water color and green gouache, olive green gouache, sepia gouache, and of course, white. If you check our reference image, you can observe here the shape and color of the anemone leaves. You can see that they are a little spiky and for the color they are bright and lively. With that, I'll be using olive green gouache. For the brush, I have my ultramarine round brush again. This is the perfect brush for the anemone leaves because it has long pointed bristals as you can see. Because it has a long point in bristals, it can really create a sharp strokes which is perfect for the anemone leaves. Increase you to add leaves on all the anemones and spread it. Don't be afraid. Just be careful so your artwork will look full and loose. We are done with the initial set of leaves we will be adding more later on. But for now, let's work on the center of the anemones. This part of the process is very important because this is the very soul of our anemones. For this, we're going to use a dark blue shade of paint, and we're going to create the shade by mixing ultramarine, deep gouache and sepia Using a size six round brush, just create an imperfect circle in the middle of your anemone. Do this in this anemone as well. Of course, in this anemone also. This anemone though since it's a little angle will make the center a little bit flat to create an illusion that the center is a little bit covered by the petals. It's time to create those little strands surrounding the center of our flower. For this, we will use the Ultra menu round brush or any small detail brush. What we'll do here is we'll create small dots and thin strokes. Don't be shy, create as many strands as you can, but make sure that your brush isn't too wet so you won't create a blob. For this angle anemone here, we're going to skip the circle part and just jump into adding the strengths. Since this one is two angled, I'll just add the tip of the strands and we'll just add a few of them. Thanks to move to the row says, I'll be mixing undersea green watercolor and sepia gouache to create a dark green mixture. Let's start adding the leaves. I'm using a Size 6 round brush here. I'll add some random leaves and stem tomorrow's to connect it to the main bouquet. I'm going to add some more here also. Let's add vigor leaves using the same brush. I'll be distributing the leaves on different areas especially on those areas with big spaces. Let's also add some smaller leaves. I'll be using the ultra mini round brush again and add some leaves here. Notice them. Also adding some random thin strokes because it adds a really nice interest on our painting. Let's go to our next choreography element this week piece. For us to paint this flower easier, I'll be sketching the flowers on areas where I will put them. Again, you're free to decide where you want to place your flowers. Just some rough sketch in here. I'm not really copying everything on the reference image. Time to paint. To achieve a beautiful light pink color. I'll be mixing the lunar Red Rock watercolor and some white gouache. Using a small chisel brush will do one stroke technique in painting our sweet peace. To do that, you need to load your brush with the main color and dip the tip of it on the darker shade, which is discolored the lunar red rock. Let's start painting. Just do flat strokes and wiggle it, and that's it. What I love about sweet peas is that they don't require you to make them look as sweet peas. They just want you to capture the essence of the flower, which is something wiggly, something soft with a darker shade of the color on the tip part. You can always look back on your reference image so that it will be easier for you to paint your sweet piece. Now, let's connect these flowers with each other. I'll be using my ultra mini brush and this olive green shade of color to connect the flowers. For our next choreography element, we're going to paint the eucalyptus. There are different kinds of eucalyptus but I decided to paint this one, this one is also nice, but I prefer doing the smaller ones, which is the one on the lower right side. Before I start painting, I decided to mark the areas where I will place the stem so it will be easier for me to add them later on. No need to sketch the eucalyptus leaves, just focus on adding the stems. I have here my Ruby sadden get stung brush in Size 4 and I'll be using it to paint the leaves. As you can see, I'm just dumping it because it's already shaped like a eucalyptus leaf at different sizes of leaves. There will be variation and interest on your painting. If you find more empty spaces on your painting, feel free to add more leaves or even sweet leaves, but makes sure to not overdo it. I'll be adding some more here and a bit of leaves here. I'm done. I hope yours is looking good too. If you decide to create another art Greek word meaning please share it to the class project section as well and add a description to your project. Thank you so much and I'll see you on our final video. 10. Final Thoughts: We are done. Yay. Thank you so much for joining me and well done for finishing the lessons. I hope you found this class helpful and learned something new. Most importantly, I hope that you learned the beauty of choreography and how you can apply it into your art. I encourage you to practice more and apply the lessons that you've learned today on the next floral artworks that you will create. I'm very excited to see the projects that you have created so please take some photos of your paintings and upload them into the project section of our class. It will also be nice if you will include a note that will explain the meaning behind your floral artwork. If you found this class helpful, I hope you can leave a review in the review section. Let me know if this class met your expectations, what you enjoyed the most and what can be improved. This is so valuable and helpful to me as your instructor. Please don't skip this part. Also, don't forget to follow me here on Skillshare, so you'll get notified about my upcoming classes and giveaways. You can also follow me on Instagram to get instant updates about my latest works and events. Lastly, feel free to share your project on Instagram and Instagram stories and tag me @jennyfloresart and Skillshare's Instagram @skillshare, I will surely share your work with my community. I hope you love this class and learned something new. Thank you so much for joining, and I'm excited to see you in the next one.