Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello wildflower. I am thrilled to bring you a class that explores the beauty of some very exciting paint, flowers, and greenery. Whether you're out foraging or you have a backyard garden, pigment is all around us and we have the opportunity to create some beautiful vibrant fine art pieces just from what's right of our door in our natural Earth. I love these projects because not only do they get us outside to smell the fresh air and taking our surroundings, they also push us creatively and they encourage us to embrace the imperfections of the unknown results as we work with flowers. I'm Peggy Dean. I am an author, educator, artist, and founder of the Pigeon Letters, a resource haven for all things creativity. Throughout the class we will create two finished projects and you will learn how to source flowers, how to test your flowers for pigment, how to create a desirable composition with flowers and greenery, along with finishing your piece off with some encouraging mark making. This is a class for anybody looking to play, you don't have to have any experience with any medium. I'm simply looking to unlock a door for you to dive into your creative instincts. This art form is so very exciting and experimental and I am so eager to sit down and play with you. Let's get our hands dirty. Shall we.
2. Here's What You Need: There are a few items you will need for this class. First one is, you'll need either mixed media paper or watercolor paper. The idea here is that your paper is thick enough to withstand moist media. These pigments are going to be a lot more wet than you might expect and you want paper that will be able to withstand it without warping. I do recommend watercolor paper, but if you have mixed media paper, that'll do the trick as well. Just make sure it's at least 90-pound paper. The next item that you will need is tracing paper. This is optional. You can use a different type of paper, printer paper, whatever. The reason that I like tracing paper, it allows me to see through it so that I know exactly what I'm looking at as we are placing our barrier in order to start pounding our flowers. We'll get into this shortly, don't you worry. If you have tracing paper on hand, grab that. The next item is a hammer. You could also use a mallet or any heavy-duty object that you are able to pound the pigment out of flowers with. The next item will be your flowers or your greenery. This can be foraged, it can be store-bought, whatever you have in your yard. Don't underestimate the power of green from just plain old grass. Pigment is everywhere and ready to burst, so have your flowers and greenery. Lastly, you need some energy because this is an exciting project that is going to literally pound color right out of the beautiful nature around us. Without further ado, grab those items and let's jump in.
3. Sourcing Flowers & Greenery: When it comes to sourcing your flowers in your greenery, it really doesn't have to be too complicated. You can go out into nature and find either flowers that are in bloom or even flowers that have fallen off of their branches or trees onto the ground. As long as they're not dried, you have pigment to work with. This is also a great time to be able to explore wildlife and your surrounding and really embrace our natural earth. If you don't happen to have a lot of flowers or greenery in your area, you could just jump right over to the supermarket or explore your own garden. I will be showing you a bit of doing that myself in this class. Take yourself outside for a little walk and meet me back here.
4. Testing Pigment: As I forage, I always make sure to get at least two of whatever it is that I want to use in my pieces. The reason why is because you need to first test the flowers to see what pigment they will leave behind. some of these pigments, while they might show up really vibrant in a flower, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will show up vibrantly in a transfer. I haven't tested any of these yet, we're doing it together. You will notice that I am arranging them. The reason why is because on the off chance, that I actually do have a good transfer the whole way. I'm not wasting these pigments. I still have a nice composition. This is a test, but I'm still being a little bit mindful as to where I'm placing the flowers and the elements to make sure I have a good balance. That being said, I love walking through and seeing just where my composition will go and I pay attention to color blocks and just how this overall color situation will look on paper. I'd use the rule of odds, like you do in gardening where you don't have too much symmetry. You can see that my dandelions, I've got two yellows on the bottom and I've got one at the top. Then I've separated this beautiful blue purple on either side of the top yellow. I do have that center of focus, is this camellia. Then the rest are really just accent colors that you can just bring in or out an of interest. I feel pretty good about this composition for a test. From here, we can move into actually transferring the pigment, which is the fun part. Now we will take tracing paper, and I like to use two sheets just because the pigment is wet, more so than you would think and you don't want it bleeding through. From here, I take my hammer and I start lightly tapping through all of the areas that my flowers are on the page. I will let you know that while you do this process, your flowers are most likely going to shift on the page, which is one of the reasons why I had them so condensed in the center because chances are they are going to spread out quite a bit when we are done with this part. I continue tapping and I go over each section a few times and then move over to the next section. I do this until I've covered my entire page. After that, I'm ready to view and see how things are turning out. When we do that, we want to be extra careful to hold the tracing paper in place or just gently remove it to see, have I gotten all of my flowers? Did anything shift before I got to it, and I want to push it back in place? Just a little check as I continue and then I can finish this off. You don't have to do this part, but just for extra measure, I do remove one piece of tracing paper to see if there's any area that looks like, maybe I could use a little extra love. But then from there, I can finally remove my tracing paper and my flowers and see what we have going on here. Already, I can tell that this bluish purple color is so pigmented as are the dandelions. This is great news. I'm very excited. Then I can use anything to scrape these off. I'm going to use the stick here. I will say in a perfect world, you would wait until these dry just to avoid smearing. But let's be honest, it's okay if it smears. It looks like the camellia didn't have any pigment transfer, which I actually am surprised by because it looks quite bright. But otherwise, it's looking like these dandelions are nice and vivid, the greenery that was included is nice and vivid. These are all great test to see. These are the things that I do want to use moving forward. Don't worry if your initial test didn't work out. That's a, why it's called a test, but also it will allow you to make more abstract projects after the fact, which I will give to you guys as a bonus in our final lesson, which is going to be a lot of fun. Now that we know exactly what we want to be using, let's move on to our first project.
5. Foraged Flowers Project - Part 1: Now you should know the flowers that you can use that will transfer pigment beautifully after your test. Some of these are actually some that I already used because I know that they have a little more life in them that they want to share with the paper, so I am bringing some of those over. Sometimes I do that when I don't get enough from when I'm out foraging. Maybe there isn't an abundance of that particular type of flower or plant and so sometimes I'll do that. But, most of the time it's because I want to make sure that I am really extending the life and the cheer that these pigments from these natural earth dyes can give us. Now I am arranging this, how I want it to look. I know that all of these flowers will translate beautifully. I have sampled them all, so now I can just place things where I want them to go. Remember that chances are it will shift, it will get larger and spread on the page and so I want to have them a little bit condensed toward the center, then I can go from there. I am tapping this the same way that I did the first time, just going around all the spaces that the flowers are. I might lift the tracing paper and make sure that everything looks like it's got the moisture from the pigment pretty evenly and just do a couple of taps more. Then I can add some greenery in which is not something that we did at first, but I do want to do it this time because it adds a little extra oomph to our overall composition and can we spread things out by doing that as well. I'll show you how I go about doing that, but first, I want to get these chunks off so that I can actually see what my paper is looking like and what was actually transferred so I don't have too many distractions from these guys. Again, if you want to wait till they're dry, totally fine, but I'm just going to get the bulk off now. One of the things that I think is so exciting about this project is that you don't know what your composition will necessarily look like or the profile that it should be, landscape, portrait, etc, until you do the reveal, which is I think pretty exciting. Then you can also make that creative decision as you go. I'm just taking some leaves and stems from the flowers that I have already foraged and I'm placing them again using the rule of odds where I don't want to have four quadrants of leaves so I place these asymmetrically. One thing to note is while it may seem like most of the green pigment is in the leaves, you will actually find more of that pigment inside of a stem, so I would be choosy with that in the way that you want to transfer it to the page. I am picking some leaves for this area because I want to have it be a little more subtle and then I can choose whether or not I want to add stems in afterwards. I'm going to go ahead and get these transferred. You'll know if you need to maintain some tapping a little bit longer than before, based off of how do you see your leaf as. If it's a dryer leaf it's not going to transfer as much as if it's a nice moist leaf, but again, I'm just a fan of finding what mostly is either pretty much done and about to die or has already fallen off. I think that these leaves are going to be a little drier but, we shall see what happens when we're done here. This is potentially the big reveal. I'm taking this off, I'm going to take these leaves off, get this debris off, and see what I find underneath. You can see the areas that those leaf stems were, which were closer to the center and that was more pigmented, whereas some of these leaves, it looks like it's not really given us much. One of those leaves looks like it was a brownish red, that's fun. Then this one here, looks like it revealed a bit of a skeleton to us, which is really fun too so it's happy surprises that we get to see here. I will finish this area off with some of these stems that I was talking about that I actually took from flowers and I'm just going to place small bits just around the part of the center where it's coming off, maybe in a trio. It looks like the one on the bottom left is actually doing pretty good so I'll just get this in here. You can see through the tissue just how much those flattened and spread, it's very, very saturated which is awesome. I'm going to do that to both sides and then I should be ready to let the rest dry and move on to the next step. That's probably the hardest part, is waiting for this to dry before you can move to the next part, but bear with me. You can always make a whole bunch of these projects and have them all dry and then by the time you're done with your 25th, you might be ready to come back to the first. We're going to let this dry, come back when it's dry and apply some really fun ink marks to really bring this to life. Now one thing that I will note is that you can skip over the next lesson and come back to it when your pieces dried because we are going to move into sourcing some more vibrant flowers in the next section and I will show you exactly what I look for as I am sourcing these. Hey, let's make a rainbow.
6. Foraged Flowers Project - Part 2: Once this is dry and I have brushed off the excess flower pigments, crumbles, if you will, it is time to make this our own. You have the option here to go as detailed or lack thereof as you would like. I'm not necessarily going to walk us through some crazy floral illustrations. I do have a class on botanical line drawing where it will go over like simple doodles, but also draw flowers from real life so that you can confidently move forward with your florals. But if you're going along with me, I'm just going to show you some really basic setups as far as what I'm going to do here, and I'm just treating this like a bouquet that is face up at me. Some of the stuff might have a little more detail while some others might not. This one I'm going to do a flower face up and I'm just going to add some details like this towards the center. All I did here was just a bunch of loops that were closer together. Then I'm going to do loops that are, not loops but like wobbly horseshoes, if you will. I'm going to do some that are further apart like that. Then I can darken some up. I like to do things messy and scratchy, imperfect. Those are the types of lines that I like in my work and I think it just makes things look a little organic. But then again, sometimes I'm in a different mood, so you just never know. I'm going to do that here again because I see that same color here. I'm going to go a little bit skinnier, so it looks a little more like it's on its side and I kept these lines closer together than I did these lines, which makes it look like it's angled that direction. I'll go over that a little bit to show some overlap just so it has a consistent style, maybe dark in the center, so you can see that that's definitely the center of those flowers. I can add detail later if I want to but right now, I'm just doing outlines, just focusing there because I want to see what everything's going to look like as a whole. There's another one right here, so the center. Notice that my hand has a really loose grip on this and I'm just loosely drawing that in. Then I can go in and do the rest of these. This one, I think it would be really fun to do just like some mark making throughout. I'm not going to go the whole way, where the whole thing's covered. That's just because this is like added interest where it almost shows, it tricks your eye into thinking, like it's seeing the rest of it without actually drawing it in which is a style that I really am fond of because I think that could just leave something to our imagination. It's like practicing that less is more. Anywhere that that blue is, then I'll go off of the color a little bit too. I'm going to bring that in. This one's just like a loose wild, flowery bouquet that just is more, what is the word I'm looking for, it's just more wild and free. It's got that loose personality, just adding some of this in. One of the things that also is really fun is if you go like way outside the lines. You can see, I started forming something here that wasn't even there and that was basically like my blob is a color assumption, but it's not necessarily like obviously what this is. You can also form your own and just have the color that is like filler. Like that. I have like an outline, but then it just fills. That's another option that's really fun. That's what I actually used to do when I got into all of this art to begin with. I sat down and I started water coloring without really a end result in mind. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just doing blobs on paper and then drawing flowers over them. This is bringing me back. I would just do some mark making like that. Maybe makes these flowers a little fuller so that they fill up a little more of that space. But you can see it's not taking much to really have this come together in this really lovely way. Note, your pen tip does matter because it will determine if your lines look more elegant, if you will, like these are pretty thin. Even if I do go over them like this, they're still looking scratchy thin, a little bit more, it's just a different style. Whereas if my tip size was like an 05 or an 07, then it would look a lot bolder, which would make it almost look a little bit like not more doodley, but have that more kind of effect. Now, I can play with leaves here. This one's a skeleton which I'm really excited about. I'm just going to do a little S curve and then a C curve and I'm just letting that middle line do the drawing for me. I'm not even going to bother adding anymore on to that. It's just going to be these loose assumed shapes, which I think is really fun. Then I'll do the same thing here and then maybe a few smaller ones coming off of that area. Maybe the same thing here. This one I'll form a little bit more just because it doesn't have a whole lot of form. This one, who knows what's going on here? We can really make it our own though. Again, my fingers, my grip is very high on the pen. I'm not being too deliberate and intentional with this illustration. I'm just letting it be loose, loose, loose and then I'll add some leaves coming off of the other sides. Then I do like to add some contrast. This area's pretty bare. This area doesn't have anything. They don't have to have anything. Actually, I like it this way better now. I think it'll be fun to put in a little more interest, I'm going to make this flower longer here now that I switched positions, just some contrast with different types of flowers. That might mean just doing marks like this, and it's like obviously petals. But what's happening is, it's denser when it is scribbly, overlapping like this. The closer lines are together, the more dense and dark it'll get. Remember, I'm intentionally making this pretty messy. It's not going to be everyone's style for sure, but it is an option and you can really make this your own. I'm just going to do a few more of those and then maybe add just like some twigs. I love adding twigs to bouquets. Since this is a brown area, I might start here, and I can just do that by having a straight line, a couple of bends, straight line here. It doesn't even have to be straight. It could be a little more wobbly like that. Then doing just little balls at the tips and maybe having some comma like this. See how it just adds a little more interest. I'm not going to go crazy with these because I already am pretty leggy with these stems, but I can add a few just to balance things out. That being said, that is my first drawing for this bouquet and it's definitely again, a specific style. I want you guys to just play with that and see what you come up with and definitely make sure to share it because all of these are going to be so different and I can't wait to see what you do. The next bouquet that we're going to do, it's a lot more colorful, it's a lot more, I wouldn't say, intentional. This isn't necessarily an intentional project, but it will be a bit different. I'm excited to go from this to that and see all of the different things that we can create. I will see you in the next lesson.
7. Garden Flowers Project - Part 1: This is when I get to be sneaky with you guys because my wife is gone and I'm going to be taking things from her garden without her knowing. Don't worry, I'll tell her later. But this is the best way to go about doing this in my current circumstance without having to go out of my way. I'm going to show you what I'm actually going to be looking for here. It's mostly just finding flowers that are near the end of their time on their stems. This one right here, it's a little bit sad, I'm going to take it. Just things that are a little wilty but they obviously still have some moisture to them, they're not totally dried up. Things like that are going to be great for transferring over to pigment. Really, I'm doing her a favor. Since I promised a rainbow, I'm going to make sure that I get all of the colors of the rainbow. I have got my selection now and I am not going to make you guys watch me test all of these. I've already done it, I've separated the colors, now all I have to do is place them. Because I want to create a rainbow effect with this transfer, I'm going to be positioning them from red to violet. If you are working along with me, you can do that just by working from red to violet. You can see that the flowers that I've collected, some of them are just petals that fell off, I didn't even have to cut any of these pieces off. But what I want to make sure that I'm doing is really getting rid of the stem because these stems sometimes are more pigmented than the actual flowers themselves, in which case they will turn very green. This one I'm just going to grab some petals from, place those down. I'm doing a little bit of an overlap. As far as pigment, my red will blend with my orange, my orange will blend in with my yellow. I do have two different tones of orange, so there's going to be maybe some ombre happening there. But let it surprise you because sometimes the petal color isn't the same as the transfer color. I'm going to be a little bit careful with how much green I put in here because, remember, the stems are very pigmented. I'm not going to go crazy with how much I put down. I'm just going to put them criss-crossy-ish so it's not just a straight line in the skinnier area here. Then I'm going to follow up with these flowers. When I tested them, they come out a lot more blue violet than a cool pinkish violet, which is what I want. I didn't have any blue flowers, then I will follow up with some of this purple. I'm pretty sure too this red is going to come out a lot more fuchsia than red. It's a let's work with what we have but it's also part of the magical part with putting these together because you can see the artwork. Basically, it is art the way that you're laying this out and it's a magical experience to be able to work with nature with your hands. Once you have this positioned, now it's time for magic. As we did before, we're going to place a tracing paper sheet or two, preferably, over our design and make sure really hold this in place. Since I'm being very intentional with this particular design, I want to make sure that they don't shift too much. What I'm doing, instead of just going into town, I am going through everything and just lightly tapping it down before I go crazy with my more pressure. The reason why is because it can get it to initially stick on the paper and then I can transfer the rest. Just an extra holding. Now I can really hammer those down and make this transfer happen. I am so excited to see how these colors blend together. It's one of the most exciting parts, is that reveal. You will notice the more that you do this, what this should feel like underneath. Depending on, if you're working with a thicker flower or the head of a flower or petals or a stem, what that's going to feel like as you are working it into your paper and how much more you might need to do versus having to continue to check over and over because it's better to not have to lift up as much and that way you're going to get a clearer transfer all. Now I can do my reveal, I feel good about this. Maybe I'll have to add a little bit more and push it in more but let's see. First reveal is just to see if there's any area that looks like there could be a little more pigment, ready to give to our paper, give to us, grace us with this natural earth die. Now I can peel this off and see the imprint that it's left. Already I'm loving this, this is so much fun. You can see that on mine, they have staggered in position so I have some that are a little higher up on the page than others. I think I'm actually going to like this the other way around like this so that I can add some stems to the bottom and create almost a wildflower field out of this. You see my streak, that's why I say let it dry first, because that's not ideal. But such is the life of an impatient creative. I know this is a jump around so you can wait for this to dry, head over to the previous lesson and start adding line work or you can just wait for everything to dry and we can jump into it. But it's linework time, regardless. I can't wait to turn this into even more magic.
8. Garden Flowers Project - Part 2: Just as before, I'm using an O3, this is just the mood I'm in. It's like not necessary to use a particular size. I usually go with O5, I'm just filling a thinner line. The one thing I will say is that because these areas are thinner, like the color chunks, if you will, are thinner and longer, I'm going to make this more of a wild flower type of assortment. I'm going to let the color really do a lot of its own speaking and then I'm just going to enhance it a bit. The first thing that I'll do is add some stems in here. You can see that this is a blub together, I'm going to separate it. I'm going to add a stem at the bottom of this, and then I'm going to treat this one separately and add a stem here. I just want to get this in place so that I can really be intentional with the way that I draw the rest of this. If you like them to go off the page, you can totally do that, I don't know my reasoning for not doing that right now, but it is what it is. I might end up doing it later, we'll see. You can see that after it's dried, my colors lightened up quite a bit. Looks like this one, I don't even know, let's see. I flipped it upside down so it's red, orange, yellow, green. It looks like this was a form of yellow that was overlapping and it looks like it really was just the outline, which I think is really pretty actually. I'm not even mad about it. But that is something to note, is that you will have very unpredictable results, which is part of the fun. So don't be mad about them, basically let the pigment guide you into this art form because it's up to it. We are simply its translators or what's it called? The messengers, we're the messengers of its gift to us. From here, now I can do different wildflower stalks. There's some purple in here and who knows why, but I'm going to totally go with it. I'm going to just enhance this part by just forcing in what looks like a petal, and then maybe at the center of a flower right there, and it's very mild. I'm not doing a lot, I'm not forming a lot, I'm just assisting it with its shape that it wants to create. Then it looks like how I placed those stems, like there are little leaves coming off. So I'm not going to draw all of them because again, less is more. I'm just going to draw some tiny leaves coming off of the stem in a few places so that it gives the illusion of that happening the all way down. Then I'm just going to work as I see it. This one I think would be cool to isolate the center as if it's really light, so I'm just going to do these little horseshoes, and I'm going to have it deeper as it gets more towards the bottom. This looks like an overlap, so I'm going to allow it to overlap and let my detail hide behind there. But in the meantime, I'm going to do some heavier density with my horseshoes on one side. The reason why I choose one side is because I'm thinking about it like a light source, and so if this was legitimate and there was a light source coming from one direction, the other side would be more shadowy. So I'm going to do that and then just allow our eyes to put the rest together that yeah, this is like a tightly round, maybe it's like little balls, maybe it's a different cluster of flowers. We are putting that together just with the information that I'm putting down here. This one I think would look really lovely if it was a small buttercup shapes and more of a long wildflower positions. So I'm just going to add a few. There's not a lot of definition there, they are just three simple petals. Then I'll put a few on their side like this, make them smaller as they get higher, and then I spread them out a little bit. The reason why is because then I can look at a glance and see, "Okay, does it need more? Where does it need more?" I might add something down here just to have that stability and balance. I often take breaks and I put myself away for a second. I look away, and then I look back, and the reason is just because I don't like to overdo things and it's so easy to overdo things, and I really don't want to take away from what the pigment actually gave us. I'll bring some of this off because I love an overlap, I love it when the pigment or color either stops after or before a line. I just think it's really lovely. Then this part, I'm not sure. I have no idea what that is, but I want to play with it, and so maybe that might be fun to do a dandelion wish. I could create what the center might look like and then just have it be. I'm going to start light. I might add more detail, but for now, I'm just going to start light and see what it looks like. See, I totally see what it is without having to add more detail, so I'll just add a couple small little marks at the tips or the circumference of those longer lines that I made. It's just giving that illusion of it being a dandelion wish, and then I'll just do a couple coming off. Yes, thorn. This one I don't even think I have to do much too at all. Actually, I'm going to add this guy in here. The darker colors really do us a great service because they don't need a lot of attention. They are really formed on their own. I will just add a little bit of line work and it's not really forming anything, I'm just finding areas that have a harder outline so that I can add a little bit in here so that it looks like I'm not neglecting it, but then that's it. Do the same thing to this side. These ones, I'll make them longer and more oblong, and then maybe coming off here, just so I can see that I did interact with it. Then this line, let's see what can we do. Let's do longer petals that are more and bunches over here, and just have a couple of peekaboo in here off the side, and that's it. I'm going to make this a little darker towards the center. You can see that just with very, very little minimal effort, I now have this really lovely wildflower piece that is bright, colorful, vivid, and all that I did was just enhanced what nature gave me. I can't tell you how excited I am about this, and I hope that yours also brings you just as much joy. Just remember guys, that less is more, and so know when to stop. If you need to get up and walk it out and then come back and revisit it, you can totally do that too. That helps me a lot of the time so that I know like, "Hey, don't forget, stopping point matters. Don't overdo it." I love it. I can't wait to see what you guys create. Bonus video next, we're going to see how we can salvage the stuff that we don't like, but share your work in the projects. I want to see it so badly and I know that everybody else does too, so both share your work and check out other people's work, it's so much fun. All right, done with this. I'll see you in the next video.
9. Bonus Project: Salvage Your Test Paper!: I know that we all have work that we don't like and that we wish that we could undo or redo or salvage in some way. This one, yeah, it could be salvaged as a piece, but this was my test paper. After I realized that some of the flowers were not transferring, I ended up using this again as more test paper. I actually have that area filled again, or rather filled, and now I'm going to salvage it by creating some bookmarks. Now, this is actually super easy, but you can also go in and just cut random pieces and use these as collage papers, which is also really fun. But for this one, we are going to go in and create some bookmarks. One of the things that I like to do is just get an eye for. That's what will show up on this page. Am I happy with that? What can I do with that? How thick do I want it to be? They don't all have to be the same size. This one I'm happy with because I know what I can create with it, and it can just be like the focus here. My paper cutter is not happy right now. That's okay. All right again, right here, just position it where you want it to go and then continue. I'll show you how I'm going to visualize and isolate these objects to make them all intentional. This is great actually as inserts for original art that you've put in with packaging or if you're a hobbyist or like great gifts. You turned what could have been trash into actually something really memorable and special. Now that you have all of these, you can go to town with creating something cool out of them. I'm actually going to grab a thicker tip this time. I'm feeling like I want to be a little more bold. All right, so this one's actually perfect because it's got these two marks which can look like leaves, and it's got this that can look like the tip of a flower. I'm just going to draw a stem in like this, and then I can have this come up to take up that space for a leaf. This line can do the same thing and just go off the page, and then the flower, I can just add areas that would be petals and then just create the center. When it's dark like this, you want to make sure that the darks are actually really dark so that you can conceptualize what's going on here. Then I'll add some line detail and then that is that. I don't love this one as much as I thought that I would, but maybe if I add some more interest down at the bottom. Yeah, that's looking better. It just needed to be a little more full. There's that one, this one, I can already see a flower forming right here. Let's hope that I do this justice. I'm going to do it the same way that I did when I did those loose flowers, just by creating interest here. Yeah. Then do the same thing where I am just creating clusters and letting your imagination take over a little bit. The same type of floral situation I did, and then here I think just because it needs a little more, I will add some line work. Just a little bit though. Then I'll add some leaves then. You guys can see how fast I'm going. I'm not spending a whole lot of time on these. They're still really loose and fun. Then this one might be even worth just doing some marks just because this one has a solid, really defined outline depending on what kind of flower you want. I'm clearly in the mood for clusters right now, so I'm doing those little horseshoe shapes. But you can do any kind of flowers that you want. Then I might fill this empty space with something as well. Yeah. The overlap is just fine. Then I'll add a little more detail to the center. The center of the flowers are what really need the added interest. It's not so much the outer petals. Just because you want that to look nice and tightly bound so you can clearly see that, "Yes, this is a flower, it's opening up, it's so pretty." Then clusters. You can see I'm really just working this as I see it and it's all very loose. Again, I have been loosely drawing flowers though for a while, so if you're not familiar with these shapes from muscle memory, watch my botanical line drawing class. It really will help a lot. Or grab my book. Both of those things will help a lot. That one, and then I can do the same with the rest. This one so far is my favorite, but that's the progression of how this works. You either start liking them more, start figuring out what stuff you actually want to add in versus the stuff that you had been, or you can figure out as you go what stuff that you can add in later to those to see how to enhance it, blah, blah, blah. But this mostly will just give you a great straightforward vision of how you can turn what would have been garbage into something special. As I'm finishing up this last one, you can see now that I have five salvaged pieces that create some really fun interests with key limited color palettes, gifts for people, or I can just use them because I'm selfish and they're so pretty. That is the easy way to salvage your work and make something lovely out of your test pages.
10. Next Steps: Thank you guys so much for joining me in this class. I am so eager to see what you've created. Please share your final projects, and be sure to also check out everybody else's final projects. I know I mentioned it. It is really so worth it because everybody, first of all, interprets things differently, but second of all, this is an unpredictable art form, so to see the results from so many beautiful people, beautiful humans who are expressing themselves creatively is just so much fun. Be sure to check out my other classes as well, I have a plethora of a library. I can't wait to sit down with you some more. Until next time.
Peggy Dean, Top Teacher | The Pigeon Letters
