From Bouquet to Painting: Floral Arranging & Painting for Artists

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Caitlin Sheffer from Emerald and Ivy Studios, and I'm thrilled you're joining me today. The idea of this class came to me as I was scrolling through Instagram and Pinterest one day looking for an inspirational photo, something that would help me with my watercolor paintings. It was so frustrating and time-consuming, and I often found that the photos lacked the right detail that I was looking for. It lost the nuance of the flowers in real life. There are classes for floral designers and classes for watercolor artists, but not a lot of classes that merge the two disciplines, which is why I'm here today to introduce us new concept that artists can also be floral designers, and that it can help them greatly with their own personal projects. Now, I have been a flower enthusiast as I call it or maybe my husband would call a plant lady. My mom is also a plant lady, and she taught me everything she knows. When I was little, I would walk into a room, and every surface would be covered with African violets, and ferns, and orchids, and if you walked outside, there were giant hydrangea bushes, and pinion bushes, and always tones of annuals, and potted plants, and hanging baskets. She taught me how to love and appreciate flowers, and not only that. She taught me how to take care of them so much so that I became so fascinated with them that when I was in college, I even took a floral design class. I even would spend my evenings reading library books on gardening, and flowers, and types of flowers, and I just loved it. It was a passion of mine to take care of flowers. So, no I'm not a professional florist, but I am what I consider a self-proclaimed flower enthusiast, and I feel confident that I can help you learn a few tips and tricks that will help you take care of flowers, and how to use them in your art. This class will cover everything from the supplies you'll need to where you can find flowers whether it's in your own garden, the farmer's market, or the grocery store. The flowers section of this class is aimed at beginners, while the painting portion of this class is aimed at intermediate watercolor painters. We will not be covering how to paint flowers specifically. We will mostly be focusing on composition and how to paint from real life. I'm so happy you're joining me. I'm excited to get started. So let's go. 2. Supplies: Let's quickly go over what supplies you're going to need for this class. They're pretty basic. There's not a lot that you need to take care of flowers properly and arrange them. Of course, you're going to need some flowers first and foremost, this class will be hard without them. You're going to need a vase or a container, I like to use pitchers, because they have a nice handle that I can use to carry, and, of course, you're going to need some water to put in your container. I also like to use and recommend using mason jars, I like to get the wide-mouthed version, just because you can fit more flowers in. I also like to do these cute little arrangements, this is a vintage milk bottle. I like to put them on my nightstand, so these are cute too. Then, you will also want some flower food. I got these on Amazon in bulk, but a lot of times when you buy a bouquet from like a grocery store, for instance, they will attach the flower food to the bouquet. Now, you want to use this. I promise, it will help your flowers last longer. So, great to have. It just feeds your flowers and you can get it in a powder form or kind of a liquidy form, but they are great to have. You'll also want some scissors or some pruning shears. These are more for when you cut very thick, woody stems, but usually scissors would be just fine. Now, lastly, for the basic supplies, I like to use an old T-shirt or an apron to cover my clothes because I have ruined some white shirts and khaki pants when I'm processing flowers, you just get stains or watermarks. So, it's good to have that as a backup. Now, for some of the more elaborate floral arranging tools, they're not necessary, this is just fine and what I've used 99 percent of the time, but for fun, I wanted to go over couple of these items. Now. this is a vintage rose bowl. It has a removable grid top and as you can see, there are holes and the idea is it helps you arrange your flowers because it gives you a space for each stem. It looks lovely. You get this nice, almost like a pomander sphere of roses. My mom used to have these, she had a collection of them and they were all over our house with roses when we lived in England. So, this concept is kind of what a lot of florists use to make things easier is that they use some sort of grid or some sort of apparatus that helps them place the stems. The same concept can be achieved by using tape. So, what you can do is, this is double sided tape, you would, for instance, take the tape and stretch it across until you make a grid similar to this and you can make the openings as wide or narrow as you want and then you can place the stems in and it's almost invisible, you really can't see it, because it's clear. So that is a great option. Then this is a thinner tape, same concept, and you can find those at your local craft stores. Another tool that a lot of florists use and that we won't be going over in class, but it's really fun and I suggest you looking things up on YouTube, is wet flower foam. Now, the idea with this is that you would cut it to the shape of the container you're using and you soak it in water and it will give you instructions on how much water to add. But basically, it becomes like a sponge and when you insert the stems into the flower foam and it feeds your flowers and they can last a really long time. What's handy about these is that it opens up the shapes of the arrangements that you can use. So, they are very commonly used in big centerpieces or in weddings. So, it's really a fun tool. Then I also like to use flower tape, which we will go over later on, but it's essentially like a stretchy kind of a tape material that when you have a bouquet, say of these peonies, essentially what you do is, if you pretend that this is a beautiful arrangement, you would be able to take the tape and wrap it around the stems very discreetly because it blends in with the foliage and then it holds it together really nicely. So, it's great for bouquets that are going to be held by hand, or a lot of times, if I have a very tall arrangement, I'll also just to keep it tight, nice and tight. If I want it to be loose and asymmetrical then I don't bother with taping it, but if I want it to be nice and tight, I do like to use a little bit of flower tape. If you do not have flower tape, which you can find at craft stores, that's fine, you can just use regular scotch tape, you can also use some green-coated wire. I found this randomly at Wal-Mart, it's same concept, it's just green wire that you can cinch things together with. So, it's a great option. The last tool I want to go over, very similar concept to the grid, is called a flower frog. You can find vintage flower frogs that look like a ceramic, almost like a ceramic jar, and they have little holes in them. The concept is that you would put it inside another container and it would sit at the bottom and you would be able to place flowers and the stems would stick into the spikes. It's very spiky. Actually, I scratched myself before we started filming. So, they are very sharp. I found this on Amazon and they are really useful, especially, when you're using shallow containers. So, imagine that this didn't have the grid on the top, you could place it in a very shallow bowl like this and stick the stems in it and it would cinch them in place. So, it lets you create flower arrangements in very shallow bowls. This type of flower frog is very commonly used in Japan. That's it for the flower supplies. For painting, really straightforward guys. If you're taking this class, you most likely already have your own supplies. If you don't, I recommend getting a nice quality watercolor paper. There are several brands that I like to use. I like Arches. It's not my very favorite, but it's great. I like to use cold press paper. Anything that you have is fine. You'll also need some brushes. I like to use round brushes in a variety of sizes and then you will need your paint palette. Whatever paint palette you have is fine. I started with a cheap $5 palette from Michaels. So, any paint you have is fine. That's it. That about covers everything you could possibly need. So, I think we're ready to get started. 3. Where to Find Your Flowers: I want to talk really quickly about where you can get your flowers. Now, in my mind, there's three different places. I love to go to the farmers' market because I love supporting local farms, especially local flower farmers. So, this arrangement right here was already made. I love the shape of it. So, I just got this. I went to the farmers' market on Saturday and today is Friday, so this is a week-old bouquet. It's still looking really good. That's the one nice thing about buying fresh flowers, is that they can last long if you take care of them. So, I like to find them at farm markets, sorry, farmers' markets. The next easiest place to find your flowers is in your garden, or your mom's garden, or your grandmother's garden. So, I just barely before I started shooting this module, I went out into my yard and clipped some of the flowers that were fading from my garden. Just some really cute, little stems we've got going on right here. These are small, so I probably would use these in a very small bouquet with that little milk jug from my nightstand. But we have some really nice delphinium, some daisies, some dahlias, some veronica, and some phlox. My one tip if you're going to go out into your garden is, I would go out first thing in the morning and bring a little bucket of water with you so that your flowers will get nice fresh water right away, that they won't get the heat. The heat in the summer can really kill your cut flowers very quickly. So, I recommend doing that first thing in the morning, and putting them in a little jar of water as you cut, and to use really sharp scissors so that they don't get dull cuts. As I'm seeing this right now, there are ants on my desk, so be careful. Watch out for the ants because they do love your garden. Okay, so we got farmers' market, your fresh garden, and then, in my mind, the next place is the grocery store. Now, I grew up with my mom teaching me how to do my own arrangements, so I never shop at a florist's. I like to go to the farmers' market and shop from those farmers directly or I like to make them myself. There is nothing wrong with going to a professional florist. I highly endorse it. They're wonderful, they're talented, but I'm more of a DIYer. I love to spend time with flowers and it's very soothing for me. So, that's why I kind of consider the grocery store the third stop, but you can certainly go directly to a florist and order what you want or you can even buy a beautiful arrangement that they have. The grocery store is definitely more cost-effective, so if you can learn this way, it's definitely a fun DIY project and it's also easier on the wallet. So, those are the three places that I think in my mind. In terms of grocery stores, it's sometimes hard to find stores that will sell just one type of flower. A lot of times, they sell a mixed bouquet that is already pre-made in a big warehouse type of place and they mass produce bouquets. You know what I'm talking about. But, I like to find stores that carry just one type of flower. For example, I was able to find bouquets of just the Peonies, bouquets of just hydrangea, a bouquet of just greenery. It's just different types of greenery. So, I like to purchase them that way so that I can make them however I want. Last thing I want to touch on before we start preparing our blooms for the arrangement is, if you're shopping in the store or even at the farmers' market, you want to be looking for flowers that are going to last a long time. Now, for the sake of this class, I bought flowers that are already in peak bloom stage because I want them to look beautiful on camera. But if you were to be buying them for your house, you would want to buy them when they're in their early stage so that when you get home, you get a good week or two out of your flowers. So, for example, this particular bouquet of Peonies is still very tight. You can see the blooms are nice and round and tucked in, and these are going to open beautifully. Whereas over here, these ones are opening already and are at the peak of their bloom. So, just something to keep in mind, you want to look for nice-type blooms. 4. Cut Flower Care: So, now you have all the supplies you need and you know where to get your flowers, it's time to take care of those flowers. Before we can get to the fun part of arranging it we need to talk about how to preserve your cut flowers, so that they live longer and you get to enjoy their beautiful blooms for as long as possible. The first thing you want to do is fill your vase up with a nice lukewarm water, you don't want it to be too hot, you don't want it to be too cold, nothing that will shock your flower. So, I've already filled this and I've already mixed in my floral food or floral preservative and I've already pour some into this little vase and really quickly I just want to talk about why this is so important. Flower food obviously will feed your flower, it will give it some extra nourishment to keep it last, to keep it going for a little bit longer, but it also contains acid and it also contains chemicals that will fight off bacteria to keep the environment clean and to help your flower take up more water and stay nice and hydrated. So, it's really important you can get them online, you can get about florist's like I said earlier a lot of times they already come with your bouquet, so really great and important to use. This one is one packet to one pint of water, so I already mixed that in, you can use a wooden spoon to mix it. Now what's really important and we're going to use this throughout the whole class is when you are arranging flowers, you want anything that is going to be submerged underwater to be cleaning. So, I have already removed all of the leaves that were on the stem, that are going to be under the water. Okay, I'm not really going to be arranging this right now. I just need to get them in water which is something that you can do if you don't have time to do the whole arrangements, you can just quickly prep them, that's kind of what I called a processing or prepping. You can use scissors or you can just strip them down like this and give them a nice fresh little clip. I have a little trash right here just kind of handy, when you're processing flowers it's important to give them a fresh cut because that will help it take up water up the stem. Okay, let's just take those leaves off. One thing that's interesting about these were homegrown flowers is some of the species can make the water more murky than others and if that happens just keep an eye out and you want to change the water more frequently. Let's get all these off. I'd like to wait a little bit of time before handling my freshly cut flowers, because it gives them a chance for all the ants to get out. All right. So now I could just leave this as is or I could come back and arrange it differently later, the key is getting in to fresh water with fresh cuts on the stems. So, I'm going to walk you through how I take care of fresh flowers from the grocery store. From the moment I get home, this is what I do and a lot of times say I'll just be shopping and I'll see a bouquet of alstroemeria for $4 or $5 and I'll just grab a bundle, come home and stick into a vase and that's it, that's all the arranging I do most of the time. I just like a simple flowers on my kitchen table, I love having alstroes or white hydrangea just simple and beautiful. Now we are going to talk about arranging flowers because we want to paint them. This is how easy it is to take care of your flowers. So, let's just do this really fast. So, I like to take my scissors and slice through the plastic wrap. Then I like to spread out the plastic make it nice and open, because this gives you a disposable working space that you like can leave all of the greenery I'm going to pull off and then wrap it all up and throw it in my trash really easily. Okay. So I already have my water with the flower food mixed in and my trash bucket and scissors. Now, I'm just going to take these apart and make sure none of them start dropping blooms because every now and then, when you come home and you unwrap your flowers you realize you have a moldy bunch or some of them are dead. So, it's really good there's a rubber band I'm going to just slip that off. It's really good to assess your flowers when you get home to make sure there's nothing looks gross because I have taken flowers back and I will do that. I won't pay for moldy flowers. So, I do my best when I'm at the grocery store to make sure, but sometimes they're just sneaking. Okay. So, this one's really easy, they have a nice mold fix stem, they're dehydrated so I'm excited to get them in water and I'm just going to start pulling these leaves off and if I was on the kitchen counter I would just leave them right here but since I have my bucket I'm just throwing them in. Once it's prepped which means that I stripped all the leaves I'm going to keep them to the side so I know that they're done. This was done and if you see any that won't be submerged in water but this looks a little wilted, feel free to just keep those off too. Okay, this is so nice. Alstroes will last you a long time. If you do this they will last you a good two weeks which is why you see them on a lot of restaurant tables. I know Chick Fillet usually has them now or Carnations because they last a long time. They get a lot of them for their buck when they do that. All right. Last one. Now, what I like to do, let me tidy up my spot and here's the flower food that came with this. So, I'll set this aside and save it for future one. So now that I have them all prepped and beautiful what I like to do, so I'm not really arranging this with other flowers. It's just give me a really simple nice bouquet on my table. I like to put them altogether so that the flowers are all at the similar height if that makes sense. So, I'm not going to go from the bottom and tap it, even I'm going to go over the top because sometimes the flower stems are not equal length. So, if I do it from the top that I know that it's the right length. These ones are all pretty similar, but as you can see they are not all equal. So that makes it easier when I'm going to trim, so I'm going to put it in this container. So obviously, these are way way too tall, so I'm going to go ahead and cut a good of them off and I always make sure I'm more conservative so it's always easy to go back and cut more but if you cut too much you're kind of in a pickle, as my mom would say. All right. So, this is still too tall, I like for these arrangements to just be nice and tied to the vase, that's just personal preference. In floral design they teach you to use the rule of thirds. So, you would want the flowers to be a third of the vase, you don't want the flowers to be equal to the vase, so you want the flowers to come up to here and you might want it to be two-thirds higher because that would just look silly. So, you want it to be about a third of the height probably about right here is what I'm going to aim for. What you could do is you can just bunch them up, you can use some floral tape if you want. I'm not going to simply because I know that these will just arrest and look beautiful. So, let's go ahead and keep trimming. Let's see how that looks. So, it's a little bit too tall. One thing that is really nice if you have a garden or if you are eco-conscious is you can can use your flower cuttings in your compost pile. So, let's just see how that looks, it's nice. So, as you can see nothing fancy I would call this my farm table bouquet, it's just instant fresh beauty for your kitchen. Nothing fancy like I said, we're going to be doing more actual arranging in a minute but this is just a quick way to take your grocery store bouquet and get it onto your table and it's going to be so healthy and beautiful because you have that flower preservative, you have fresh water, you give it nice fresh cuts which let it take up the water. It's really great. Last thing I need to tell you is you do not stick this on your table and then walk away and expect it to last for two weeks. No. Guys, water evaporates and your flowers drink the water, so your water level is going to go down and you will know this if you have ever left your bouquet come back and there's no water left in there. So, I like to change the water every one to two days, one every day it can be unnecessary. I would say for sure to change every two days. You can add a little more flower food or flower preservative and give it just a little bit of a quick trim on the stem just because after a while they can start to deteriorate and a fresh cut will help it take up more water. So, that's pretty much all there is to know. One last thing is if you start to see some greenery or some blossoms that are totally dead and dying look brown, look awful, go ahead and remove those because they produce ethylene gas which is the gas that plants produce when they're dying and that's all well and fine, but the ethylene gas starts to kill the other flowers. The same thing is with fruits in your fridge or on your counter, they will start to poison the other fruit around them and make them deteriorate faster. So sometimes I'll have a beautiful floral arrangement and I'll have some long lasting flowers like hydrangea with some shorter lasting flowers that are dying and they will start producing ethylene gas and that will affect the flowers around it. So, it's important to watch your flowers and thin out as needed. So, if you do those things get a fresh water, fresh flower preservative you will be on chart for some beautiful bouquets that will last a long time. 5. Basic Floral Arrangement: With this first basic arrangement, we are going to use the method that I learned when I took floral design which is really simple. We are going to start with greenery and that's going to be the framework of our arrangement. Then we're going to add in some of our flowers, the stunners of the bouquet, and then we'll finish off by filling in the gaps with what I call filler flowers. So, let's first start off with some of this really beautiful lemon leaf also called salal. I'm just going to go ahead and sort of see what's a good height. So, that's too tall, and there has been some discussion, some debate about if you should cut the flower stems on an angle or if straight across is fine. So, if you want to do it at an angle or straight across. Most of the literature that I found, that I talk with florists is it's personal preference. I don't think there's really too much of a difference. But in terms of cutting your flowers in your house that are already cut off the bush, it really doesn't matter if you do straight or angle. Some people say that if you do angled you have more surface area for water to be taken up. But I've done years of cutting straight across and it's been just fine. So, it's really I think perrsonal preference. If there's anyone out there who really strongly disagrees with me, just comment we can talk about it because I'm definitely on for learning new things. So, we just want to make a framework, and I like this height of this lemon leaf. You'll get faster as time goes on. It's really simple. Now, when I'm placing them in the vase, I like to create a framework. So, if I put everything right next to each other in the vase, like this, then it's easier for it to float around. If I start crossing my plants like this when I put them in the vase, then slowly I'll be making a grid system in the bottom of the container and that will help me as I start adding in flowers to lock them into place. Let's put it a little bit shorter. So, have got them crossing, perfect. I like that flow. Now, I'm going to go ahead and use my big stunner flowers which are made my beautiful peonies, and I just love the contrast of the green and the pink with the white container. It just looks so classic to me. Now, on the color wheel, you should know that red and green are complementary colours and since pink is in the red family, I think they contrast really nicely. So, let's go ahead and put this in. We are going to go a little bit shorter. Remember, it's always good to be conservative. Have this sit right over here. Beautiful. Let's go ahead and get one more. So, here in the grocery store, you'll want to get some that are a little more tight but I bought these purposely to be more open so that they look beautiful for our course. Okay. So pretty. I love this already. I'll be good to just stop right here because peonies are my favorite flower and I just don't think you can get much better than peonies. The other thing I want to mention is that. This class is all about floral arranging for artists. You need to be thinking ahead about what do I want to paint? I'm I going to pick flowers that are going to challenge me, that are new to me. I paint peonies all the time. So, if I wanted to challenge myself, I would probably want to do some of these snapdragons because I really don't ever paint snapdragons. I don't paint solidago very often. So, these I picked out at the store because I knew that it would be a new challenge. If you want to stay in your comfort zone, that's fine, but if you want to grow as an artist, it's good to try new things. So, I think I'm going to add a few sprigs of this solidago which is a good filler. Let me strip this stem a little bit and you can pick each leaf off or you can hold it above, take your fingers and pinch it and then just strip down. It's a quicker way to do it. Just make sure you don't have a thorny rows or some of you have nice slice down your fingers which is not comfortable and I have done that before. So, let me demonstrate that one more time for you. I'm just going to pinch, slide down and look at that, clean and it's all right here, I can just throw it in my bucket. I love how these little solidago sprigs are looking and they're walking in. I've just inner released the stems a little bit to hold them in place. It's good to just look at it from a tabletop standpoint every now and then to make sure it's looking even because it does look different as you're looking from above. So, just keep that in mind. Now, I think I want to add just a little more filler that's colorful and I think this really pretty snapdragons that I got from the farmer's market. I think these will look really pretty. Cut a little bit of height. Intertwine that right there. We lost a little bit of a solidago. Now, let's go ahead and save these and put them at the end. There will be a little more interconnection that we can work with to get them nice and tight. One more snapdragon and this one should already be nice and tall. You can either place them across from each other. Just play around with where you want to place your flowers. It can be right next to each other, it can be across from each other. You match whatever you feel like. This is looking so pretty. I love it. If you get say for example the snapdragon, if push it in too far, it really crowds the peonies. So, I pull it out just a little bit. Get this nice whimsical asymmetrical look and this is just so pretty. I love it. Let's go ahead and try adding in this solidago again. A little bit more. Add this snapdragon and then let's see if we can get one more on the other side. See now this would be a fun bouquet to paint because there is a good variety of colors. It's not just all pink, we have some peach and some light orange, the yellowy green, solidago, and then you have some snapdragons which have some buds on them, some really open blossom. So, this would be a really dynamic arrangement to paint. But you can keep adjusting things or you can leave as is. But I think that look really nice and I'm excited to paint this. That's something that's really fun. Is that you're creating your own masterpiece that you can put in your studio and paint. It should last a week if you have your are a flower preservative and just keep an eye if some of the flowers start to die just pluck them out. It's just fun to paint something that you arranged and it's really nice because it's so loose. If you're painting and you don't love how it's composed, you can just tweak it a little bit. So, there you go, really easy. We start with our greenery as a framework, we add in some of our main flowers. We can do some secondary flowers and then you do a little filler. Really easy formula to follow. 6. Painting the Basic Arrangement: It's time for my favorite part of the whole class which is when we get to paint our beautiful flower arrangements. Now, I've already gathered my supplies, I have my paint palette, my brushes, my water, my paper towel, and of course, my flower arrangement in real life. Because after all that's the point of this class to use real life bouquets instead of photos. I'm just mixing up a nice pink. I love the color peony, so I'm starting off with some upper rows. I'm mixing in some yellow, some orange to make it a little bit more muted, to make it a little more of a peachy pink, as you can see though there is some variation in the color. So, i'm just loading my brush up with paint. I tap that and has to get the excess water and paint off. Now, I like to start my composition with flowers. I find that it's easier to start with the pink flowers, and then to add in my filler and my greenery as I go. It can be tricky to find your perfect shade of pink. So, just keep playing around with it until you're happy with the shade you've got. Now, I'm just doing light curved brush strokes, very lightly pushing my brush down as I go creating the shape of the peony, which is my first step just creating the basic shape of the flower. Nice C curves. I alternate between using the very tip of my brush to create just little lines, the tips and the pedals and then I'll go back and forth between that end pushing down on my brush to make the thicker fatter part of the petals. So, I've got my first one almost done, and get started on the second one here shortly. Now, I know there are lots of artists who like to mix their color palette before they get started, and I try to do that when I can, but I am on the go painter, which means I like to mix as I paint, I like the variation that I get and the color that is not always the same. Now, this palette that I got is a new palette, and it builds up a lot really easily, and so I don't love how it's a little more challenging to mix up my paints on this palette. So, I'm working on my second flower. I always start in the center of the flower and work out. That way I can define the petals as I go. As you can see in the arrangement, the petals are super roughly and especially on the top edge of the petals. So, that's when I now use my brush tip to create that texture. See that beautiful texture. I'm just doing nice little lines to give it that roughly effect. Pretty much finished up my base layer, and so now I'm going to start mixing up color to use to start adding some dimension to the center of my flowers. What I'd like to do, is start off with a nice pastel lighter shade, and then as the paint of my base layer are starting to dry, I like to go in with some darker pigment and add some deeper colors to the center. Because the inside of the flowers, typically are darker and fade as they grow outward. So, the trick is to give your painting a little bit of time to dry out, but not dry completely. If I were to go in right now and add in the paint that I'm doing right now. Right when it was originally wet, it would bleed too much. It would not give quite the effect that I'm going for. So, if I wait for it to be partially dry but still a little bit wet, it bleeds the perfect amounts. You might just need to play with that for a little bit. So, I'm just adding some dimension to the center of my pedals. Going in with my second layer makes it not look quite so flat, and I'm following the general shape of the flowers. So, the upper left peony is growing towards the left and the peony on the bottom is growing towards the bottom. So, that's the direction that I'm making my pedal's form. Now, that I have some good first and second layers of my main flowers, I'm going to start mixing the paint for my secondary flowers, which is usually the next step for me when I'm composing a floral arrangement. So, I'm just mixing up a little bit of a more fuchsia colored pink with a little bit of purple, a little bit of blue. I'm trying to get the right color for these snapdragons. They have such amazing shape and detail. I am so excited to paint these. I'm just going to use sharp little brush strokes to create the shape of the Snapdragon, they're angled little petals that float off in different directions. Really fun to paint. I'm just going to keep tweaking the color until I am really happy with it. If you notice, in real life, the Snapdragon petals are not all the same color, there's a lot of variation. So, if that is reflected in my painting, that's perfect. Just a little bit too much paint my brush just tap it out, got a little bit of a darker color for this outer Snapdragon, and don't be afraid to layer your flowers on top of other flowers. If you give them enough time to dry, they won't be significant bleeding. So, here's an example of what I mean by layering my new flower over my previous flower. Because I've let them dry enough, I can overlap the flower types and it's not going to bleed into the peony petals which sometimes is really beautiful, and I like to do and I add greenery, but sometimes when I'm doing my main composition, I want them to remain defined. Just mixing up another color. So, I'm going to add in a few more snapdragons. I'm just going to do what I feel balances out the painting, and it doesn't necessarily reflect what is in my arrangement. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and start mixing my greens to paint my leaves. Now, I have an entire class based on how to paint watercolor greenery. So, I'm not going to go over extensive detail here, but essentially I'm just mixing up a natural looking green by adding in some red, some yellow, it helps mute the green so that it's more earthy and natural looking. The lemon leaves, or this yellow is so beautiful it has such a vibrant color and I'm so excited to start adding this to my painting. Green is a complimentary colour of red, and like we mentioned when we were making our arrangement, pink is in their family. So, green and pink are very beautiful contrasting colors. So, I love adding greenery to my paintings, because it just gives it a nice pop. I like to leave a nice little bit of negative space a line in the center of my leaves to give the illusion of the stem or the mid line of the leaf. That's a good little trick. I go over that a lot more in my watercolor greenery class. I'm just going to keep adding greenery in the approximate places of where they are and the arrangement. Like I said earlier, I'm not literally following it to a T, I'm just going to go ahead and start placing leaves where I think they look the best. I'm now going to add in some filler to my painting. So, my formula for painting is flowers greenery then filler. It's just a good way to fill in empty spaces from the main pieces of your composition. So, I'm going to mix in a little bit more yellow because the solidago is more of a lime green color. A little more yellow, I'm just mixing that together until you get the perfect shade. Then, I choose where I'm going to place the solidago. I think great here looks perfect. Again a nice thin line down and the solidago has really tiny little branches that go off of the main stem as well as little tiny leaves that curl off and accentuate the little branches. I'm just going to add those little leaves using my arrangement for guide referencing it often so that I get a good idea of how I should be painting it. My solidago is done, so, I'm going to add in some greenery to my snapdragons since I only have the base layer on those. I think this will add a little bit more detail and make them look a little more lifelike. I'm using my bouquet as a reference to show me the shape and where the green attaches to the stem. Almost like a sunburst shape. So, I'm just going to put in some strokes of green and because my pink and my purples are dry the green doesn't bleed into them too much. It's a nice layering effect. To connect it all together, I have mixed a little bit of more yellow green and I'm adding in some hint of stems for the snapdragons. I don't want it to be predominant in the composition but I want them to be there very subtly. So, I'm just adding in a few lines to suggest where the stems might be. Just like we did with the peonies, I'm now going to layer in some more detail on top of my snapdragons or my secondary flowers. I've mixed a darker shade of pink, so, I'm just going to go ahead and add in some more layers and give the composition more dimension and detail and an overall more finished look. I'm going to continue adding more detail to my painting and I'm going to focus on the center of my peonies.Right now they're looking a little flat. I know that if I add some color to the center of their bloom that it's going to make a more realistic painting. Most peonies have this gorgeous yellow centre. So, I just want to have a hint of that. Don't go too crazy but I just want it to be a little bit of an addition of color to give it some depth. I'm now going to go ahead and add in some snapdragons and some more greenery in places that I feel are too empty. So, right here by this leaf and the bottom of this peny just seems a little too empty. So, I'm going to go ahead and add in some more snapdragons even though they're not there in the real arrangement. That's the beauty of this exercise is that you get to use your creative freedom while still referencing live beautiful models. My last step is to add just that last bit of detail to my leaves. Right now they're looking pretty flat. So, I like to take this opportunity to go in with a darker green and paint in where the veins of the leaves are. And there you have it. We're all done with our painting of our basic floral arrangement. Composing it doesn't have to be hard. Just start with the flowers, add in secondary flowers, greenery, filler and final detail and you will have a beautiful painting. 7. BONUS: Intermediate Floral Arrangement: For the next arrangement, we're going to go one step above what we just did. Still really simple. Just a little trickier. So, I'm going to start adding a little flower food. I haven't done that to this one yet. And I'm not going to use the whole package, and this is actually one that came with my flowers, and is an example of the liquidy flower food. The ones that I bought online are powdered. So, this is a good example for you to see one that's a different consistency. I add some of that in there. Grab my spiral, just give that little stir and it'll kind of just disintegrate as time goes on. So, for this example, we're going to actually reverse the formula. Instead of going greenery, flowers, filler, we are going to start with flowers and work our way out, and we're actually going to make the bouquet in our hand before we insert it in the base. And this is a good time that you can use your floral tape if you have some, or just some twine or string or even some scotch tape, and you'll see how we use at the end. But this is a method that is used commonly when you're making like bridal bouquets or bridesmaids bouquets, but it works really well if you want to have a nice tight arrangement for say your mason jar and it will just fit really nice. You don't have to do any of the layering and adjusting, you do it all right in your hands. So, for the sake of it, I'm going to take some these peonies because they are so pretty right now, and what you're going to do, let me make sure that you can see this, let me grab a couple at one time. These babies are really nice and open, look at that. They're gorgeous. Oh, this is their peak bloom. They don't get much prettier than that. So, I'm just kind of sorting out which flowers I want to use before I start arranging. Let's go ahead and get started with our main flower. I think I'm going to keep, because we're starting from the center of our bouquet and going out, I'm going to start with one that's nice and tight. I think that'll look really nice. I'm going to hold it in my hand like this, with my thumb pinching it. And the best way to explain it is, we're kind of going to be just layering the next each stem on top of the one that we just did. So, for example, if I wanted to do this, I'd just keep them in my hand, one on top. The next one's going to go on top. The next on is going to go on top. The next one is going to go on top. Until you start, all of the stems are going in the same direction, kind of in a spiral, and what happens is you get this really beautiful nice tight bouquet. Now, I could just keep going with peonies but I want it to be a little more dynamic and I want to be able to paint something other than just peonies. So, I'm going to go ahead and start over because I don't want all of peonies just right next to each other. So, I think I'll start with this beautiful bloom. I've got to pinch nice and tight in my thumb, and I think I'll layer this right next to it. So, I've got these two next to each other. Let's see if I can add one of these more roughly ones. So, I've got them on top. This one's also going to go on top, and you kind of keep them apart. So, there was an X and now I'm basically just making Xs as I go, and it gets a little trickier the more flowers you add, but as long as you keep adding the stem onto the one on top of the next, sorry, on top of the previous one, it'll work out. You got that one, let's get another tight one since they're right across from each other. As you get more and more, you can start closing them in, closing the gap. So, if you can see they're all just kind of spiralling in. Let's add in a nice, let's get one of these babies. I'm going to look for one that's kind of straight up. Vernaculus can be a little bit curly. So, I love how that matches these. Oh, it's so pretty. I love that. So, let's see. This is when it gets a little trickier to hold, but keep trying. It might take a few practice trial runs before we get the hang of it, but that's why the flower tape comes in handy. If you get a little bit lose at the end you can fake it with the flower tape. Let's see. I want the vernaculus to be on the center. Oh, that's so pretty. Let's see. You can kind of start to see it take shape. It's starting to look really nice. You can adjust as you're going. I want these to be front and centered. We'll kind of pull up a little bit. Let's add in another peachy, pink vernaculus. This one is nice and straight, so add this one right here. We'll add another pink peony, and I think we're getting pretty close to finishing this arrangement. Just laying right on top. I'll do one more of these. Probably one more vernaculus. Let me find one that's nice and straight-ish. Beautiful. Then I think I'll do one more peony, then we'll tie it all together right here. Beautiful. Those are all kind of one on top of the next, and I love how that looks. That will be such a pretty bouquet. Let's see. We're going to add that one right there. Beautiful. Now, I'll get this nice and tight, and we can just adjust a little bit. Kind of pull some things down. These two vernaculus are right by each other, and I'm just going to seamy them up a little bit. Beautiful. I love that, it looks so nice. So, as you could see, the stems are all kind of in a spiral, and I'm going to take this opportunity to go ahead and use some of my flower tape, and the best way to describe it is kind of it reminds me of crepe paper for a party that's kind of sticky. So, it's really pretty loose and it's helpful that you can just kind of wrap it around your bouquet several times, and it's not very difficult to work with. So, I'm just going to slide my finger out of there. Just easier said than done, and I'm just going to wrap this around several times. Get it a little bit tight. You still want them to have room to breathe. There you go. Just pinch it off. All right. Now that it's kind of formed, I'm going to get a little more. Keep taping. They have a really beautiful nice, tight arrangement, and then you can feel in as you need. Fill in with little gaps. So cute. Beautiful. Now, I didn't any greenery but that is definitely something you could do, or I could go in and add some solidago as a framework. I don't have quite enough greenery right now, so I'm going to just have it be beautiful blooms. Now is the part where going to go ahead and trim it, and I'm going to be using this mason jar. So, I'm just going to go ahead and start snipping them. Little bit more. It's really handy to do this with a little trash bucket, as opposed to running back and forth to your trash can every two seconds, or over the sink. So, there we go. We have this nice, beautiful arrangement and what you can do is, if you see a spot that's bland or bare, this is the part where you can go in and add a little bit here and there, and no one will know that it's not part of the original bouquet. Just gives you something really nice to paint, and especially if you use some greenery, poke in some greenery, that will cover up more of the vase. So, as you can see, right now I can see that I used flower tape which doesn't really bother me because it's for my own personal use. If I were arranging designs for a wedding, I would want to hide that a little more. I'm just tweaking things as I go, making sure these beautiful vernaculus don't get lost. Put this one down a little bit. But, there you go. Pretty simple. I mean, I think everyone can do this. The method of laying it on your hand, it does get tricky as you add more flowers, but it turns out beautifully. So, if you just give it a few tries you'll get a hang of it. So, yeah, just think how fun this will be to paint later. The pink and the green and the almost the fusure of these peonies. They're just beautiful. So, I think that turned out really well. 8. Advanced Floral Arrangement: All right, you're doing so great, we are finally on our last type of arrangement, which is our more elaborate type. Although, I think if you could master the layering with the thumb pinch, I think you can do this really easily. So, I recently found these. It's like the same concept as a flower frog. It's the same concept as the rose bowl we saw earlier. It's a mesh wire grid type of thing, that you place on top of your container and you just bend the wire to fit on top of your vase. The idea is that your arrangement would conceal the wire hanging over. So, this is a method we're going to use. Whether you have something like this or not, it's not a problem because you can achieve the same effect by using tape and taping a grid across the container. The only problem with using tape, in my opinion, is that it makes it very difficult to change the water. So, if you're wanting a quick bouquet that you can use for a painting or to give to someone as a gift, then it's fine. If you want to have a long lasting bouquet, then it can be really tricky to change the water and add flower food. Which is why something like this is nice, because you can just lift it off and take all the flowers with it. Dump out your water, change it out. If you have the tape on top, it's hard to get everything out of the tape because the tape is stuck to the side of the pitcher. So, if you are going to use tape, it is nice to use it on a pitcher that has a spout because then you can still tip out the water, and then you can use the spout to fill in more water. So, you just have to decide if you're going to be changing your water logistically, how you're going to do that, because remember, you want to be changing it about every two days, one to two days. Now, because I want to show the method that is most accessible to most students, I'm not going to be using this today because most people don't have one of these laying around. You can find them online. I'm going to go ahead and use the tape method. It's really easy. We're just going to take, this is double sided tape that's really transparent, but you can use other tape, whatever you have on hand is fine. I just like this because it's a little narrower. So, I'm going to go ahead and cut off the first strip. I'm going to start on the end, right here. Leave a little space to pour water. Okay. I'm going to have a pretty wide squares because I have some really chunky flowers, and I don't want to limit myself to what I can use. Some of the stems are really thick. So, I'm going to make these pretty wide. Okay. Perfect. So, this one, looks like I have one, two, three, I have four slots. Now, I need to go in and do the cross-sections. Now, because I want to leave this spout open, I'm actually going to just have the end touch the last tape instead of crossing over the spout. Let me make this a little closer. Okay. Nice thing about the tape is that it's really not too visible. One more. A little baby. You know what? If you really want, you can fold it in half because it's double sided, so, that you aren't wasting as much space with the tape. There we go. So, for that last spot, if you can see that, it's hard to see on camera. But now, I have a nice sticky see-through, grid system. Really cheap. You don't need to get online and buy one of these. These are nice to have around if you're going to be doing a lot. But I actually like this better because some of the circles are very small, and I have really thick hydrangea stems that I'm going to be using and I can't even fit them. So, I think the tape is a little more budget-friendly and easier functionally to use. So, I have a really nice, tall vase. I've got my grid system, it's going to be so easy to just place these in. What you can do is you can actually just start right away using our formula with the greenery, flowers, and filler. But, because I'm doing a bigger arrangement, I'm going to start assembling it in my mind, what I want it to look like. Because I have a large pitcher, I know I want it to have some height. So, I've saved my delphinium, which you can see right here. They're nice and tall, beautiful, vibrant blossom. So stunning. Now, these are toxic to pets and humans. So, if you have pets that like to get into your flowers, I would maybe steer clear of these, or keep them at a distance. So, I know I want this to be the center, because I like that it's high. In design-wise, I want it to be centered, tall, and then I want it to fill in, and maybe spill over a little bit. So, I know in my mind that's what I'm going for. So, I'm going to go ahead and pull out the flowers that I want to use. I know I'm going to be using some of these almost chartreuse color roses. They're like a greenish white. I want to use some of this really tall solidago as the center, I think. I'm going to be using colors that are all very close on the color wheel. I'm going to be using a indigo, a blue, yellowy-green, just very similar colors to each other. I think that looks really nice. I'm also going to using these beautiful blue hydrangea. There's more delphinium. Now, in the design world, often you're told to arrange things in odd numbers because it's more visually appealing or aesthetically appealing. Which is perfect because I have three hydrangea. What I'm going to do, is go use this formula where I start with one flower, then two, then three, and then use some filler. If I need to adjust my tape later, that's totally fine. But I just want to get an idea before I start putting it in my vase, what my arrangement is going to look like. Let me excuse this over. I'll also be using some of these really beautiful anemones. It's hard to say anemone. All right, so I know I want the middle to be this really beautiful bushy solidago. Just nice lime green color. I'm going to strip it down just a little bit. Because I know I'm going to be filling in flowers, I don't need this to be so bushy all the way down. Okay. So, we've got that. Then, I know I want some more height. So, I think I'm going to have something like this, where the delphinium cross. Okay. Then, I know I want my three hydrangea. This is the stunner of the bouquet, although the delphinium is gorgeous. I am going to go ahead and arrange the hydrangea around. Let's get those a little taller. Don't want them all the same height. Then, beautiful. We've got this nice arrangement going where we have one, two, and then three of one kind of flower. This is just going to be stunning, and I cannot wait to paint this because I think, it's so fun to paint such height difference instead of the bouquet we just did. Everything is very compact and tight together, whereas this has a variation in its height and it's more dynamic. So, I know this is what I want my arrangement to start out looking as. Then, I'd like to fill in with these beautiful roses, and I think I'll also do these in groups of three around the bouquet. So, I know in my mind this is what I want it to look like. So now, that I have a formula, I'm going to go ahead and get started. I'm going to actually start in the middle to make sure I have the right amount of grid space. Like I said, you can adjust it as needed. See how of that height is. I'm going ahead and cut this. Okay. It's about right, and I might need to snip off some of these flowers on the bottom. Perfect, I think I'm going to cut this Solidago just a little bit. Even though you have a grid on top, you're still going to be able to lock in or lock your stems. All right. So, I have my one Solidago, and I'm going to have my two Delphinium. Don't want it to be quite the same height. You don't want perfection. It's good to have a little variation, at least I do. I like things to look a little more organic because that's how we are as humans, we're not perfect. I like my flowers in the same way. All right. So, this Hydrangea is definitely leaning, which is nice for my arrangement. It's going to sit perfectly just outside of the vase. Let's find a nice spot for this. Then, we'll adjust the height as needed. Okay, so, I'm just inserting the stems into little grids. You can change which spot, I actually have all three, of the Delphinium and Solidago in the middle square. They're actually all fitting in the same one. Now, some of these thicker woodier stems, you might want to use the clippers instead of scissors. But, they're so far, it's working okay. Let's see how that looks. All right, let's add in the next one which is also curved. Perfect. We'll have beautiful Hydrangea leaves that I love to paint. They're just so vibrant and beautiful. Okay. Then, the last one, we're going to add into the back. This one has a really funny stem too. Let's see if we can get it in. Here, I'm just going to spin this around, see how it's looking. Beautiful. I want this Solidago to come up just a little bit. There we go. Perfect. Okay. So, as I'm filling this in, I notice that there's a nice little gap right here, and I think this is where I'm going to put in some of my roses. I also notice that there is two big Hydrangea blooms right next to each other. So, I'm going to probably put something in here to break it up a little bit. I'll either do some roses, or a little sprig of Solidago, just so we that don't have two clumps of the same color right next to each other. Let's see how this looks. Maybe too much height. Find a nice little spot. I'm not sure if I'm going to leave that there, but let's try it for now. Now, I'm going to go ahead and put in some flower right here and see how these roses looks. So, these roses are not ideal at this point because as you can see, there are some bruising on the petals. But, what I'd like to show you is that if this happens to you, a lot of times the petals on the edge of the flower get bruised during shipping, or during handling. You can just remove those. You will find that they look a lot better on the inside. Then, there is some bruising on the tips. There's not a lot you can do about that. What I want to say is just when you're looking for roses at the store, to just try and find some that aren't as bruised. This is pretty tight, and I can tell it has a lot of petals and it's going to open up beautifully, and be super lovely. But, if you say you want it to look really open right away, you can speed up that process by putting your roses in a warm steamy bathroom that will help them open up, or if it's a hot summer day, you can put them outside for a little bit, make sure there are water. But, another thing that you can do is put the stem between the palm of your hands, and like you're going to make rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. You're going to spin them. Spin it. Little top heavy. It just opens it up a little bit. You can also get in with your fingers, spread them. You can also blow it. You can see the wind from my breath opened it up a little bit. So, that's one little trick for roses which I like. Let's go ahead and add this in. I'm going to start right here. A little too low for that spot. It will go right here. Let's find another free. Oh, this one looks nice. Just trim enough a little bit. Check for petals that need to come off. This one looks pretty good. It's like a double ruffle, double bloom. So, pretty. I love that. Just finding an empty square to put it in. So pretty. All right, let's do one more. I like to work in odd numbers, groups of three or five. You don't always have to stick to that rule. Sometimes it's okay to break the rules. But, I do like to work in threes with flowers. We lost a lot, did you see that, that was awesome. That's one of the negatives. If your roses are on their way out and you do the spinning method, they might not make it, the roses' petals might fall off. That's so pretty. I love that. Okay. So, I think we're going to go add in a few things right here. Let's spin this Hydrangea leaf a little bit. I think I'm going to go ahead and do a couple more roses. Which of them looks the best? I think that's good for the roses. Now, I do want to add in some of these purple Anemones to give it a touch of whimsy. Right now it's pretty compact except for up top. So, I want to add some of the looser filling flowers to the sides. So, this will be just a little bit tricky, finding some spots that are open. I think I found one right here, going to have this coming out on the side. Let's see. I want It to come out just a little bit. It's tricky doing this so that you can see it too, instead of just, there we go. I love Anemones they're so whimsical. Right in here. Perfect. So, you just want to layer them. For me I want them to flow out, so it doesn't feel so tight. I want the Solidago out just a little bit. Then, I think it's pretty much done. I don't want it to become too crowded. If you feel like it's becoming too crowded, and maybe pull out a couple of the roses. So, I think pretty happy with how this arrangement has turned out. It was really, really simple. Just use a little double-sided tape. I've planned out in my head before we started, and I'm really happy. I'm really excited to paint this with you guys in just a few minutes. 9. Painting the Advanced Bouquet: It's time to paint our advanced arrangements. I've switched paint palettes to okurtotake Japanese palette and my other personal palette because I like how the paint mixes better, it doesn't beat up quite as much. I like to use these Japanese watercolors because they're so rich and intense. They're more opaque than Western watercolors. So, it's just fun to play around with different types of paint. These ones are so beautiful, strong, and vibrant, and there are several really great options for blues and indigos. Because I'm using a lot of purple and blue and green in this painting, I thought this would be a great time to use this. Now, I'm just mixing up a dusty blue to paint my hydrangea. Adding in a touch of yellow because in the center of the hydrangea is more. Instead of it going from dark to light like we did with the peonies. It goes from light to dark. So, I'm going to try and recreate that in my painting. I'm also trying to make a conscious effort with this painting to mix some of my colors ahead of time as opposed to on the go like I did with the previous painting. Either method is fine, but it does help with consistency throughout your painting. If you do mix your color palette ahead of time. Just like with our basic painting, I'm going to go ahead and start with my biggest flowers. My showy flowers, my stunners as we called it in our arranging section. So, I'm starting with hydrangea and each hydrangea petal has four or five oval shaped petals. So, I start from the center and just work my way out by pushing down gently with the brush tip. Doing nice curves gives me a really beautiful smooth petal. This is my wash layer. It's just really light, translucent, and I'm going to add in some more detail later. One of my favorite things to do is to use the wet on wet method, which means that I drop paint on a loaded brush onto already wet paper. This works really well with hydrangea because the tips of the petals are darker than the center. So, it allows the tips of my painting to be darker and slowly bleed down and create a really natural beautiful look that's very true to the actual hydrangea blossom. I'm now ready to star on the beautiful deep purple, indigo anemones. They are so rich and stunning. I'm so excited to paint them especially with these Japanese watercolors because they are so strong and vivid. For my first anemone, I'm going to paint it from the perspective that I'm viewing it from the side instead of from the top. So, I'm going to play around with how I paint my petals. I'm going to have the rear petals be larger than the petals in the front because the ones in the front the perspective is different, they're going to be thinner like you're viewing it from the side. The second anemone, I'm going to pant I'm painting from the top view, the aerial view. I'm leaving in a little white space to give the illusion that there is a fold in the petal and I'm tapping in some darker paint on the edges that they bleed down into the center of the flower similarly to what we do with hydrangea. Practice painting from different perspectives. This third one is going to be from a lower angle side view. So, the front petals are short and fat and the back ones are too with a line of negative space in between. Next time mixing up a green for my delphinium stem. The delphinium is the tall, beautiful, purple flower, blue and Indigo mixed in that flanked the solidago. You can see that they have a black center and have some stems branching off of the main stem where each flower is formed. It's also a good practice when you are painting a little branch off stems to play with the perspective of those as well. Don't just paint them directly off of the main stock. Start on the line that you just painted and then branch off. As you see right here. I have a drop of dark paint that gives the illusion that the branch is coming from the front of the stem, the way we're looking at it. It creates a lot more depth and looks more realistic. Just like with the hydrangea, I'm going to use really short, concise brush strokes to paint the delphinium petals. There are several petals to each bloom as you can see in the picture beside the painting and the color varies from flower to flower. So, I'm going to mix in some purple on this next flower and some more blue, so that it's not all one color all the way down the stock. We get a nice mixture variation just like we see in real life. Now for the trickier portion of this painting, I am mixing up the color I'm going to use to paint my very light colored roses. They're not white, they're not yellow, they're not green they're a mixture of everything. So, I've used a very pale tan color mixing in a little bit of yellow and a tad bit of green to give me this very almost chartreuse color. I'm going to add in some water so that the first layer is more translucent. I'm just using nice C shapes pushing down with my brush. As you can see from the picture, it's a not quite lime, not quite lemony, it's a really interesting color. So, if you have white flowers they can be really hard to master. Just practice, mixing different colors, painting the shadows is a really good method to do. Now, we can't forget the solidaigo which is the centerpiece of our arrangement. I'm just mixing up a nice vibrant green for the stock to go right up the center. It's going to flank the top of our painting, has a nice curve to it and lots of little branches off. This is a bigger piece of Solidaigo than the one we painted with our basic arrangement. So, there's going to be larger leaves and larger branches. Just use your arrangement as your guide. Now I'm ready to start adding some detail into my hydrangea blossoms. It's hard to see from the video or photo, but each center of each blossom has a few little teeny tiny ball shapes, just the center of the flower there's usually three or four. I'm just painting a few in each center, a nice yellowish green color and it just adds a little more detail to your painting. Hydrangea leaves are one of my very favorite leaves to paint because they have a really dark rich color. I love mixing that type of green, I add in some blue, some red, and some sap green and get this gorgeous nice rich tone. Just filling in the leaf shape as if it's draped over the vase. Now, hydrangea leaves have a really beautiful edge. They have almost like a serrated texture, it's ridged and so what I do is I take the very tip of my brush and I drag outward into the leaf to create these nice brushstrokes. Dabbing in a little bit more color where it's darker and shaded because the flowers are hanging over the leaf, dropping a little bit down the center of the leaf where there is a vein. Now, I'm mixing up a nice yellow green to be the stems of my anemone. Anemone stems are so curvy and really playful and fun. I love to use them in arrangements because they're very whimsical. So, as I paint them I'm not going to be constrained like I am with normal stems that are very straight up and down, I'm going to have the opportunity to curve a little bit more, which is so beautiful in arrangements like this where you have lots of flowers arranged together. They also have a very weed like foliage, which can be really fun to paint. It reminds me of the leaves you have on daisies or chrysanthemums. Here's another curvy stem with that very weed like leaf. This is the part of the painting where I'm going to go ahead and add in some detail like the little teeny stems that are on the hydrangea and the leaves that hide out right underneath the rose blooms. Now that my roses base layer has started to dry, I'm adding in some more detail. Just like we did with the peonies and the snapdragons, I'm going in with a little bit of a darker shade starting in the center of the flower because that's where it's usually darker adding definition to where the petals are. This creates a more rose like shape instead of just a white yellow blob. While I'm adding definition, I also need to work on the center of my delphinium. As you see in the picture to the left each flower has a black center almost like the anemones do. I'm just going to take a moment to fill those in. Last but not least, we need to fill in the centers of our anemones which is one of my favorite things to do. I love how they have a very dark, almost black center with little stems that stretch out and have little, almost little balls on the end of them. To create those really delicate line, sometimes I go in with a drawing pen, but here I'm just using my spotter which is a really fine tip to brush. Just like that we are done. See, that wasn't so bad, you can totally do this. Just remember basic composition roles starting with flowers, adding in greenery, then the filler in detail and you will be all set. 10. Practical Applications: All right. Now that you have beautiful floral arrangements, incarnating paintings, you might be wondering, what am I going to do with these? How can I use these in my life? Now, I'm a big fan of recycling and repurposing things. There are dozens of ways you can use your finished products to help grow your business, or just to make the world a little bit of a better place. So, let's talk about the two categories that I think of when I want to repurpose things. I can either use in my business or my personal life or even better, I can use in both. So, let's go over some of my favorite ways to use my arrangements and paintings in my business. My favorite way to use my materials is to post them as content on Instagram. Instagram is a really important place for me to foster community with my skills show students or followers who just enjoy watching my tutorials. So, what I'll do is I'll post a photo of my floral arrangement, and then I'll use hashtags that make it easier for people to find me like floral arrangement. As you can see here, when I click on that hashtag, it brings me to a bunch of photos that other people have posted. I also usually #emaraldandivystudios. So, that I can see what my students are tagging me in and other things that I've tagged myself in. I also like to create flat lays, which is a photo that's basically taken from above and I use those to make sharp pronouncements. For instance, here this was saying, ''Happy Thanksgiving!'' Another way to use your artwork is to of course digitize it and sell it as a fine art print, which is something that I really like doing with my paintings. It's really not difficult, you just scan, remove the background, touch up any errors that you might have and once you find a good printer, you're good to go. It's one of the most exciting ways for me to make money. A couple other ideas. You could create desktop backgrounds and give to your followers, you can give away your painting on social media or if you've a brick and mortar shop, you can put your flowers in a display or buy the cash register, and I promise when you tell your customers that you arrange it yourself, they will love it. If you don't have a business or even if you do, and you just want to use them in your personal life, here are just a couple of my favorite ways to repurpose my arrangements and my paintings. The easiest one is to frame your painting and hang it in your home or give it to a loved one. You can also cut your painting into a five by seven, fold it in half, and write a little note, send to your grandma. You can bring your floral arrangement to someone who might be feeling a little sad. One thing my mom recently did was she brought a floral arrangement to a hospice house. You could do the same thing with a skilled nursing facility, and I guarantee the patients will really love it. There are so many applications in your business, in your personal life in which you can use these amazing arrangements and paintings. I hope you get creative, I hope that you can put these to good use, and maybe make someone's day a little brighter. Maybe even your own. 11. Conclusion: Pat yourself on the back guys you did it. You have completed this course, and should now understand how to care for and arrange cut flowers. How to use them in your art and the practical ways to use them in your life. In the above section of this class, you will find two class projects, you can choose to do one or both. Either way I would love to see your work. Thank you so much for joining me and remember, never stop creating. I hope to see you in my next class, I'm Caitlin Sheffer from Emerald and Ivy Studios. Interested in receiving a full PDF guide to this class. Sign up with the link below to receive a full detailed comprehensive guide that covers all the material from this course.