Fun Floral Abstract

1. Intro: Sometimes when you're creating, it seems to flow, but sometimes it doesn't. And I fell in the class. I named the painting persistence because we attempted a pretty challenging project, which was to take a painting that I created in Procreate with layers and masks and things like that and recreate it on paper. So that was a tall task, but I loved working through it. And you'll see what happens when you get to a place. And you're just, I've talked about the ugly stage before, but where you just really want to take the paper and throw out the trash. The benefit of not doing that and sticking with it and learning the what, how can you find the solutions to the problems? And hardest one said, I wish I could remember her name, but she said that art is about creating problems and solving them. So we create problems in this painting and maybe more than usual and then take the time to solve them. The result ends up being really lovely. So it'll take a while to get here, but you're going to learn what it's like to be persistent when you create. And here's the thing. The reason I love this process is I feel like you really learn in those places that are uncomfortable, where you don't know where to go next and you don't know exactly how to solve a paintings problems or parts of the painting. That's where the learning is. So that's why I wanted to film this and show you how you worked through all that in order to improve. So join me, we'll have fun persisting on this painting. 2. Supplies: Okay, let's talk about supplies for this class. And the whole start with paper. And I'm going to show you some supplies that I don't necessarily use all of in this class. I'll show you what we use as well, but I have my stuff here and I figured I might as well show it to you. Paper. I ended up using acrylic paper in the class, but watercolor paper is fine. And I ended up just selling it. And covering up the texture of this linen, which is kinda acrylic Anyway. So whatever you got on hand, I would just say, generally don't use the cheapest paper available, use 140 pound or heavier, whichever paper you use just because it just did. You get it stays flatter. It holds me, throw on it better. And you don't need a fancy watercolor paper like arches certainly. But a decent one. This trough, more, middle, middle, better, but not their best. And then they do that. They did it for 300 series and then 400 series is the best. I have links to all these at Suzanne outer.com under supplies and pretty much all the supplies are listed there. Links to them. Okay. So paper and I used a nine by 12, then the main paint that I used as the Nova Color Paint. I don't know if you've seen this, but this is a beautiful paint that is available only through mail order. It's made in California. So some of you folks overseas, it's the shipping is probably not worth it, although some people order it because the paint itself is like an artist grade paint pit, a student grade price. But anyway, I recently collaborator, collaborated with them on a bundle. If you go to their website and look at the artists bundles, you'll see the Suzanne Howard bundle there. And you can also see get a link to it on my website under supplies or I believe I put the link in the supply list for this class. I also use some acro gouache on top for layers. You don't have to do that. You can stick with acrylic. Any acrylic paint is fine, just use a good quality ones. So it could be nova, could be Liquitex. It could be, you know, you don't need to use one as expensive as a golden. But anyway, you could use Liquitex basics. You don't need the article gouache. I just like it for layering because it gives that chalky finish. Then I've used in this. Sorry about that. You've probably heard that I've knocked the microphone over. These are neo color crayons and I use them. I'll show you how to use them for texture on top of the acrylic paint. Sometimes I often use oil pastels. I don t think I use them on this piece, but those are fun too. And then we do just saw the paper just so as a primer, if you're not familiar with it, it it seals the surface of the paper so that the paint stays on top. You'll find that if you just a preference. But when I paint on watercolor paper, especially the if you don't gesture with the page is soaked into the paper and you just it's just feels like you keep putting more paint in and adjust, keeps absorbing it and it just doesn't give me the layers that I want with the paint on top of the jostle and then the media. Now if you use this particular acrylic paper, It's almost like it's free, It's very heavy. It's 246 pounds. A little linen finished. I love this paper. I have it on my links, but you do not need to adjust on this. So far. The paper, the paint does just sit on top and it is for acrylic painting. Brushes. I use, I used mostly for the, most of the painting these shape which is called a bright. And I have a for a size four and a size six here. You could get away with one or the other of these. And then there's some finer detailed work that the leaves and things that it's helpful to have a round. And it could be a size four is fine. I've got a variety and I like these. These are the Princeton velvet touch. I have a link to those, I love those. And then I also like these Winsor Newton Cotman brushes that are, this is a two. They make really helpful for details, dots, things like that. Some smaller detail, brushes, palette. You can use glass. Like you'll see me use a piece of glass or glass cutting board basically. And, or you can use pallet paper, which is a product you can buy. Again, links to it on my website that you just use. The piece of paper is your palate and then toxic when you're done. This is something from a different painting. I like those colors. So okay. Pen. Let me show you the pen is my favorite white pen. I haven't linked to this one. On my website. It's the unit ball signal. I just, I love my posca pens. That's these guys. Grab them. But they just don't have great luck with the thinner white ones. They just don't sit. They don't they don't behave as well in the lighting doesn't show up like it does with this one. Alright, I think I have covered all the suppliers that we use in this class. And let's get to it. 3. First Layer: For this abstract, we are going to use this as inspiration. This is a painting that I created on the iPad and procreate. But I really love. I named it, you are loved. And it was a series of processes which I don't need to go into because we're not doing appropriate class. But I just love how it turned out. So I wanted to do something in this kind of vein on paper. So there's a lot of texture and probably would be helpful for you to have this in the class resources. You can download it and print it off and have it next to you or up on a screen like I have it here because you probably getting a glare here from this. So anyway, you can see that we're starting with some just neutrals, quite a few neutrals off white shapes. So that's how I built this with just some shape and color. In fact, what's great about Procreate is I can go back to, I can turn off everything that I added on top of all this so that you can see just what I started with. And we'll start there. Turn off a little bit more at thrown off these leaves. You can see that that's how it started. So we'll use that. In fact, I'll include this as well in the class resources so you can just see how it starts. And we'll look, I've got a piece of square. I don't know why I chose square. I just thought it'd be fun. Hello, it would probably be better to start with a rectangle. I have this out, but now that I'm looking at this, let's just start with a regular rectangular piece of paper. And you can use watercolor paper, you can use acrylic paper. I've been experimenting with lately. I'll grab a piece of acrylic and or you can use mixed media paper. This acrylic paper, which I got at Hobby Lobby in the US, is just a Master's Touch brand and I like it, it's bits. And sometimes they have 50% off their products. So I think it can be a really good deal and it's very heavy. There's 190 pound. So let's start with that. It already has some built-in texture to it because it's thick. It's kind of like a canvas would be, but also a little bit of watercolor. So as long as you use, I would say, for this kind of effect, you want something with some texture, so watercolor or, you know, nothing really smooth. Although then if that's what you have, I always encouraged people to use what they have, then you could you could just add texture. Okay, so I'm gonna try not to get paint on my iPad here. And we're going to start with a gesso layer for added texture. And since we know we're using a lot of this, sort of It's a really pale sand color is I guess what I'd call it. Not quite a pink, not a peach. But let's just go ahead and just fill the whole thing in that color since there's quite a bit of it. So first we'll need to make that color, which is the Jess, I was gonna be our white. And I'm gonna get a good size brush of that. And then to get that color, we're just kinda need teeniest bits of red. This is a maps all crimson, crimson, but let's just see how it's gonna be. That's gonna be way too much red. You see here if we can. And then there's a bit of yellow or orange. I still might have too much red in that. To pink. Good Lord. Yeah, we want a much lighter shade of this. So it is kinda the right shade is just not enough white. So I'm gonna go clean my brush. Just like that. I've got a big old chunk of gesso and mix up here and see if I finally got the right ratio. I think so. I really pale sandy color. And of course it doesn't need to be all uniform. We're creating texture. After all. I get is a scrap piece of paper. How paper? I do have plastic on this table, but I find that if I if I get Jess on it every time I just saw something, then it just ends up pretty filled with gel. So every time, so when I am doing something like this, I just stick a scrap piece of paper behind it. Keeps me from having to clean the plastic on the table. A lot. Of course I can vary this in terms of light and darkness. Kinda grabbing whatever I made over here. Some places will be later in this shape and some will be darker. And then I'm just painting everybody, you know, I'm gonna move the iPad right now because I know I'm gonna get jostle on it. And that's a little different than getting just the one a piece of paper. So I'm just applying it without a lot of care, just trying to get coverage. Spot down here. I'm still got more pink than I wanted there because I have the pink on my brush when I first started with mixing the red end. It's amazing though. How little of a color it takes just to get a very subtle shading. Okay. I'm just going through I don t need big raised paint globs on this just because it will make it harder to paint some of this detail later. So I do want to texture, but I don't necessarily want ridges for this effect. So we're good. I'm just kinda brushing away any ridges. And that's a great start. So we'll let that dry. 4. Beginning Shapes: Hello, Caleb, please. Let's let's get to this now. Don't be alarmed to see what I want to leave it like this to show you that curled a little bit. No big deal. Just going to gently. Ivory paper behaves differently. But most of them will do this. My studio here is pretty dry and warm. So just kind of as we put more paint on it, it'll straighten out and then it might curl again. And just when you do those, you try not to crease. It gets more of a gentle massage. I'm massaging the paper. When we're all done. There are techniques to flatten it completely. So we just want to get it flat enough that we can paint, which we did. Alright, so now we're gonna go and do our shapes. We don't have to do exactly this, obviously because we're just using this for inspiration. But we're gonna, we're gonna try to keep the texture in there, kind of roughness of these shapes. They overlap a little bit. I'm going up so we're not going to make perfect shapes or edges or anything like that. So the brush would be that you want to use would be a bright, which is the square. And you can use any, this is a size six, but you could use a four or you could even Let's see, what is this one? Yeah, brush sizes are, so it just doesn't really help. Sometimes this has this as ten and this is six. And this, so this is supposed to be bigger, but it just depends on the manufacturer and the short handle, long handle, watercolor, acrylic, so don't worry about that, I guess about maybe this is a third of an inch wide, but something like this or something like this would be good. And let's start with some of these reds. And I'm going to go, I think I want to go a little bit more of an orangey red on this one. So let me get some red and some yellow. And we always meet our white out. It's gonna get a tiny bit of yellow, more red, little bit of weight. Making kind of a coral red. And just make some shapes, squares, Arches, letting that texture show through. Let's see here we can do to Archie thing here. So I could put water on my brush too. This is kind of a dry brush effect. So you get that nice graininess almost. You see it here. If I put water on it, just a different effect. But if I put water and it's going to fill that in, and I do kind of want that scratchy looking stuff. So I'm not going to add water even though it feels dry. Okay. Then you're welcome to It's just a personal preference. I'm just trying to get a certain effect here with the dry scrubby look. More water. Just needed to mix up a little bit more. Let's see here. Let's do kind of a thing like that. And, um, that's enough of that color. I'm going to switch to magenta ish color. And I don't really need to wash my brush because then it's gonna be all wet again. But I can get most of the er a lot and at most a lot of the red out with a paper towel and then keep my brush dry. So I'm going to a similar color, magenta. It shouldn't matter if it shows up too much. If I see too much red, then I'll go ahead and wash it out. I think we'll be fine. Little bit of white. This is the quinacridone, red. Love that color. A little bit of weight to it and it was pretty magical. Okay, so scratching in some shapes to one kinda coming off the page here. And maybe something going like this. And then I can lighten that a whole lot and make even out a little tiny bit of blue. And I can add like a cabinet in blue or a cobalt blue and get a periwinkle color. You more still pinky. Just makes it until I like what I see. I don't want to have even more blue. Okay. Let's see here. Not gonna get pain in my iPad. I'm just gonna make this shape kinda look like it's behind that one. Okay. Still trying to keep that scratchy effect with a dry brush. Alright, and this is looking cool. Let's do a yellow for that. I will need to wash out my brush. Loaded with red and pink and purple at this point. I think we'll do yellow first because then from there, we shouldn't need to wash out our brush too much to go to the turquoise. Okay, pretty clean. So let's grab some yellow. And I know we're going to need some more white because the yellow, It's pretty out of the container, this cadmium yellow. But I'm just going to soften it a touch. Still see some of that red in my brush. Red is challenging to wash out. You can see some of the road that was for the magenta bear that hadn't tried is coming down. No problem. Just adds interest. So you can see them overlapping a little bit. Just like our inspiration painting is overlapped. Still kinda doing threes. I have done 3s, three of each color, 50 k2, but I just like to stay with the odd number. Of course we don't have a finished composition which we're gonna be adding other colors so we don't need to worry about too much. Let's make a green now I've still got some blue here. It's got a little pink in it and that'll make it more interesting. I really like that blue, her green. Nice, kinda neutral. Okay. You get C, you just get pinched interesting colors by leaving just a little bit of color on your brush. Depends, depends on what you're trying to make. So I mean, I definitely have failed is doing now really go now and this is draining the mode, time to clean the brush. But more often than that, I end up with a really pretty color that I, you know, made my accident, which is how I make most of my colors. See here. Let's come into here. And leaving that kind of the background showing through. And remember that the background color is one of our colors. So I'm trying not to cover I have to remind myself, don't cover up all of our sand color. Now, we're going to make some turquoise. And I am going to have to watch this because that'll really make it too. So remember what the turquoise, unless you have it, you're mixing. If you're using nova there, turquoise with a light yellow. That's probably too much yellow because it tastes just a tiny bit. Oh, look at that beautiful color. Okay. We're going to maybe make some come cross here, overlapping a little bit. And you know, to keep that brush dry when you wash it, just use your paper towel to blot it. Just going to put a bit of that and Lieber other color behind. I think something like this. I kind of like how the brush scratched over the edge there. So there are two colors that are in this that we haven't done an aswell, probably more but the cobalt periwinkle blue and then the Navy. So let's do the lighter blue first. Because it's easier to start with a light blue and not have to clean our brush. Then if we start with the Navy, well, either way you would just add more weight. Okay, so for our Navy, We're gonna get the Payne's gray. Didn't want to open and don't go to sleep. And then not the cobalt blue. Another, you know, a darker blue if you haven't, this is the fellow blue deep, but something dark. Energy, dark blue. Payne's gray itself is, it's called Payne's gray, but it is pretty much a really dark blue. It's a cool, cool, dark. So you don't need a little bit of blue. You could just use straight Payne's gray. All right, and I think I'll make a square type image here. Her chic leaving at scratched through and maybe color this in up here. Yeah, like that. Now let's see if we can just add weight and get a nice cobalt blue, more of a baby blue. But if we have a little grid, I could let me just grab my cobalt blue might make it easier. I don't want to cover too much more App Bot. Let's scratch in a little something here. Maybe. Something like that. We're going to bring, we can bring those other colors and with the elements too. So I think that's a good place to stop and let it dry and then start to build on layers. 5. Adding Elements: Alright, so the next thing we're gonna do is add some of these elements, will do these lines and these lines and some dots and some marks. So to make a line like that, we can either use a narrow, bright or angle, you know, filbert as long as this narrow, because then you can go like that. Probably the best thing to use, or a narrow, bright. This one's not narrow enough, but you could turn it this way and you could go like that. So you might want to practice a little bit kinda warm up around will work too. It's just, there'll be pointed at the end, which is fine. I mean, these are kind of pointed, so whatever you kinda look you want, but you can practice on a piece of paper with different brushes and it's trying to curl up again, isn't it? And I'm going to grab some Navy. I already have made my alcohol goulash, black, blue to do. Let's see. Yeah, probably do it here because I think it'll make the cascading leaves here. Now, the blue down here. Because if I do the cascading leaves in blue, in the same color, there'll be here. So we'll do our mark somewhere here and get some water involved. You can even practice on your palette. That works. Maybe a bit of the Payne's gray so that it darkens it up a little bit more. And this is a free form. That's why you think you wouldn't need to practice, but you really kinda do, um, at least I do, to kinda get my brain saying, okay, you know, just be free form about this. And you're gonna get, you know, kind of variation. The practice is good to see how much water you need. Oh my gosh. I just put I just put the wet palette on the painting. Suzanne. It's good for you to see these kinda things happened because you can see how I deal with them. Well, my gosh, that was actually, it'll probably add some interesting stuff. You can tell I've done that kind of thing before, right? So I'm going to scrape off most of the paint. And then since this is all dry, I'm just going to use a wet paper towel and get the rest of it. The beauty of acrylic and aqua brush compared to say, a regular gouache will never tell. Well, we, alright, let me get a clean piece of paper and practice. Lines on. Goodness, I don't need these pallet paper. I could use any paper, but it's handy. So we're just gonna kinda come in and do like a swirly thing. The main thing is you'll want to have plenty of paint on your brush. Okay. I'm gonna come in here. There we go for that one. We wanna do some dots. So we'll switch to any number of little brushes. Or if you have an EV marker that works fine too. Drop of water on that one. When you use a brush. And this happens to sometimes the water, a water drop will be C right there, stuck on a brush. And so it's a good habit, which I didn't do just to have a paper towel just to dab to the body of the brush so that you don't get that big data water. Just making these kind of random size and where they are. But they do kinda bring the viewer into the painting. All right. Now let's do a squiggly over here and kind of a magenta color, which will use this quinacridone magenta. Not only think I used the red because that's what I used before. And use the same brush for it. First I'm going to mix it up with some wait, just a little bit of white. I just got three new pads of paper on Amazon. You know, Amazon basics has that brand of their own. And that's what it was. It was a good price. I go through a lot of it. And then I use glass to just a piece of glass. Okay, That's good. Now I'm going to grab the brush I was using doing the dab my brush this time. So it's not water all over it. Okay. Because his dry. So let's see what's next. So next I have some other elements like this flower. Let's see here. We can still got these plots. Some more spots and things like that. And some little I do like the way that cobalt blue showed up there. Probably use an oil pastel for that. Or you could use paint. A few more squigglies and things. And then of course, the big leaf, which I'm gonna put kinda coming down here. You can put these elements wherever you want and of course, as much or as little as you want. So I think what I'm gonna do next is make a color to do a kind of a large leaf. Similar to this one here, but something a little different. I don't want to copy this exactly, even though it's pretty darn close. So I'm going to make a green and get my round brush. Kind of yellowy green. So we've got some blue I already, Let's get some of this yellow and see what kind of green that makes very bright, which I can knock back with a little bit of a magenta. Remember that you want a duller colors. You use something in the opposite of the color wheel and it'll bring it down. I think I want some weight in that. I'm just looking for a color that makes, gives me the feeling I want. And you know, you can always go over colors. That's the beauty of them. So let's do the technique with drawing at first. You can use a yellow color to CRAN, you can use a water-soluble colored pencil, or even when it's not because we're going to paint over it and just use a similar color. It just, it's somehow easier as far as sometimes for some people to draw with an instrument other than a brush. And what's also good about it, as you can see now that this got a bit too large, that top leave, so I just can wipe that off with some water. Okay, So I finished that little plant and I did the oil pastel here and here. And the color is my favorite. One of my favorites, light has x4 violet. And I thought I'd come over here with the same green and make just a little leave anything like this. This is, I added more weight to it. I think I'm going to darken a backup. I liked the green. I like that green. I just want to make sure you have enough water to get the lines that you want, a movement that you want. So again, I'm with these things coming into the painting. See they're pointing in. I'm bringing the viewer into the painting. So that's, that's kinda just the loose thought about it. Okay, Now we can take a white pen and do some of these little details. Now, this is where it's helpful to get out a scrap piece of paper. Ideally, a dark one to see if things are working right. Because sometimes they, they won't work right on the, on the, on your sample or on paper. And that way you can kind of go back-and-forth. And the squigglies, I just I'm just kinda go by where I think it'd be fun for them to be. There's no recipe except that I guess I would not put them where it's already really busy, like right in here is pretty busy, so I wouldn't add these there. I think some of the little flowers will look pretty here though. And this is my favorite white pen for small work like this. And I believe I have a link on my website. So this applies for this one, but it's a uni-ball signal. Broad. It says, just have not, I love Posca markers, but I've not had good luck with the white Posca markers. So here I'm just varying the size of these little guys. And doing five of them. Could do any number you want, of course. And maybe some dots. That's with a pen or so much easier than where the paintbrush. That's why if, if I have the color and a Posca or another pen, it's much more effective. If I don't, then I got to make the color with paint. And there is a white outline in this one on here. So we can go ahead and do that brings a little bit of the weight down here. So I'm thinking, you know, then I'll have sort of weight here, here and here. It doesn't need to be super intense, just kind of a hint of a heavyweight line. And you might see, I don't know if he can tell him having to kinda coax it to go over some of the colors. It likes going over the green. More than it likes going over our background. I think it's maybe not. Okay. So I just go like this and kinda clean the head off. It might've gotten some oil pastel on it or something. So funny, it was not liking to go over there. Right after I talked about how I like this pen. It's giving me problems. So let's try another option. I have a jelly roll. Sometimes it likes certain papers better. It's not my favorite seat because it's just too thin. Let's try another ONE. We can get that going. Let's see how you behave. Better. You're not, I think is going on. I think that my paint is completely dry yet. So we're going to let it dry. I've noticed that happens sometimes we'll let it dry and then come back and do that. Okay. So we've got wristwatches, we got our various leaves. We'll let that dry, and then we'll come back and do these cascading, pretty elegant branch there. 6. Add Sweeping Leaves: Okay, back to creating, which is the best thing in the world. Okay. I just wanted to tell you a couple of things I did before it dried, but I thought of after I stopped videoing as I painted over this to cover up the way those lines were going. And I'm not going to fuss with that. It just didn't want to draw on there. But there's a hint of them left, which is kinda nice. Alright, now, the next element I want to do are these leaves cascading down. They can be painted or they can be done with paint marker. And as I was saying, it's much easier. It depends. It depends on the person and so forth. But I've got an AV paint marker, posca. So I'm going to do it with that. Let me show you if you're going to paint them though, how you would do that? Because chances are you probably have some kind of paint marker. But in case you don't. I will show you how I paint them and what brush to use. For something like this. A thin because these are really thin leaves. So something like this, this is a two round would work. I also have this longer almost like a liner, but it's not quite as long. But the longer they are, you know, they can create that long leaf, but they can also be harder to control. So we can try them both. I'm just gonna do a couple of leaves here to show you will get the I'm gonna do them in the Navy. Again. With the Payne's gray. I'm mixing acrylic, an aggregate. No big deal. I'll just kinda show you the paint version versus the marker version. You just want to have too much as I'm dragging my brush and twisting it to get it was just too full of paint, so it would have made a big blob. These are cascading down. It might be easier for you to do it from here or to flip your paper around and do it from here. Sometimes I do boss. And you know, I'll do the stem first so we're coming from here. So it'd be something like this for the stem. And then I am applying pressure. If you're if it starts to run out of paint at the end, that just means you need a little more paint here and go like this. And this is why the practice is so important, because it takes practice to get that effect. You know, I like the way these look, so I'm gonna do mine and paint. So let's just switch over. You get up, you get definitely get a more natural or cool color variation when you use paint versus a paint marker. Alright, so I wanna make it kinda and you'll notice that some of the leaves are doubling over each other. It just creates kind of a beautiful movement and the painting will come out. Let's come up here. Try to keep my stem on the thin side, which is sometimes hard to make your hand remember. I'm okay and I'm going to come just work on these leaves. Take your time. A little bit of pressure at the beginning of the leaf, press down and then lift that the tip. Just go slow. Make sure you get enough water in your paint so that it moves. Okay. It ended up being bigger than I was thinking for the scale of the painting. If you look here, it's, I don't know, maybe one-sixth of the painting and here it just seems a little bigger. But that's okay. I don't think it's I don't think it's definitely makes it obviously a focal point, but I don't think it's a disaster. Okay, the next thing I wanna do, I'm deciding if I want to do any more of this. Navy. Maybe I'll do just a little squiggle over here. And a little bit of decorating on this flower. Maybe with kind of a, you know, it'd be pretty used to get something close to our background color there. Which would mean, meaning now there's already some pink and my brush. So all we need is a tiny bit of yellow. We can get that sand color. Tiny bit this time. Maybe just maybe I want it more pink, we'll see. It might end up just looking white. You get the idea though. You're just decorating. Read that decorating stage. Yeah, it does look like. So let's just add a teeny bit of pink. Pink and green are some pretty together. This is the navicular hot pink. I don't think it's a hot pink myself. But if I wanted height and I can add some fluorescent to it. So now the last effect to try to create this is that I took something over it and I'll see him, he get all the parts back. Yeah. I had colored combine my signature. I can either I'll throw on there. And I had There's a wash almost in a circular kind of outline of a large, large flower. Kind of just, you can see the parts here and here. And it seemed kind of a peachy, super pale pink. So that's what we'll do next, but this has to be completely dry. And we may end up saying we liked it better the way it was. But it definitely comes down some of these colors because it's just too, but to me this is too aggressive right now. So this is going to calm things down. We'll let this dry and come back and do that. 7. Wash Layer: Here is our painting. It's doing that thing again. So I'm going to massage it. Alright, so now what we're looking at is coming through with some layers to soften some bits, particularly up in here. And there are a number of ways you can do that. One of the ways I like to use as my really fat Posca marker. So I'll kinda demonstrate the different days. And then the color of the wash I want is either off white, we'll see how that looks. Maybe kinda going toward the peach, pale peach that was in the background. So I have some colors. You can make that kind of color with a pink little bit of a, actually just a tiny bit of red and yellow and mostly white. I have this color from Turner, April, June, brilliant, which is kinda strange because I think Zoom is yellow and French and this is not yellow, but this is a ivory white in Holbein acrylic wash. And then I have this on bleached titanium screw, the Liquitex, gouache or acrylic. This is called, this is the Liquitex soft body acrylics and this is called parchment. You get the idea though, you don't need these colors. I have them because I do use an off-white or ivory a lot. And so rather than having to mix it every time, it takes awhile, because you've got to put a little bit of yellow, teeny bit of blue, teeny bit of red and white and kinda get it to the shade that you want it to be. So I usually start with one of these and then modify. Alright, so this is going to seem scary to paint over this. Give it a go and see how it turns out. What I'm gonna do is grab a hold of my square. I know they're called bright, but it makes more sense to me to call them square tipped brush. To make this, to paint a wash. And let's start with this color and mix it. Maybe some white and see where. Because it's too it's too bright. Little bit of this. I'm bleached titanium. We don't need much because we're adding water. So we're making a a very thin coat of this, a little bit white, kinda mess with it. So they feel like it's not so peachy. Mixing acrylic because this color is a little bit cooler. Cool that down a little bit. Okay. That's a good color. Now got way too much paint on my brush. So I'm just going to dip it and then come over here to a new place. And you don't always have a test piece of paper because you can see, okay, What is that about? The opacity I want on this or do I need to wash my brush more? That way? You can. We can always, well, a couple of things. We can lighten the layer by blotting out with paper towel. And since everything here is dry, we can actually remove it if we decide to excuse me. If we decide that it's too opaque. Alright? So I'm gonna get some paper towel, blot. Bit more water. I'm gonna err on thin because I can always add right? And I'm just going to come through here through this leaf branch and make kind of a soft mark like so. I just want it to change the coloring, you know, was it goes over the leaves. And I let that dry and maybe do another one. And then maybe let's see where else would I want to soften? I think down here. Maybe come something like this. You don't have to obviously make these marks circular. Here. What I did was he was a large Emilia and I don't know if you can see the edges of it. Some of the petals, I blew it way up and it created these. So that's what I'm thinking about. The edges, petals of a flower that is laying on top of here. But it's huge and it just giving me some ideas of what shapes and how they interact with each other. So there were, if you look here. Some thinner lines and then some thicker ones like here. And maybe something across here. You know, abstracts are not representational. Actually heard an artist say, I'll work as abstract if you think about it, because even if you're trying to create exactly, you know, what a flower looks like, it's not going to be exactly like the flower. So it's still an abstract, it's still your interpretation of that, of that subject. And I thought that was interesting. So you're always getting inspired by something out there. You know, there's nothing new under the sun. And in this case, it's really large outlines of flowers that are informing these, these layers that I'm doing now has large one here. I want to cover up more of that dark navy leaf. And I can vary the opacity of my wash like there. I made that quite a bit more opaque. I think my ticket to the edge because I want that knocked back. Meaning that I want it to take you're not I think about when I think of not having a back or moving forward, I don't know if you've done any work graphically on computers where you have layers. And it'll say, Do you want to bring this forward or backward like in a PowerPoint or others? Well, that's kinda what we're doing. We're bringing things forward and backward with this wash. We're definitely taking them backward with our little design elements and media like pastels, we brought them forward. This is starting to dry. I like what this is doing though. And so thinking about where I might want to put a second layer, but I want to wait till it's dry. Otherwise, if you just kinda ended up not really adding, if you don't like that first layer dry, remember this is an acrylic gouache will mix with acrylic, so it will be permanent. If I were using gouache on this layer which I could I would just again let it dry and then just try not to disturb the layer too much because I put one on top of it. So while I'm waiting for it to dry, I'm thinking about, and I'm looking at my inspiration piece. And there's not just one color of this wash. There's some pink, the peach, it alters the colors below it. So I think I might want to make a soft pink and either go over some of the areas we've started or maybe even add a few more. And I'm just going for the whole look. Now. I know I see one thing that I don't like and that is that I've made these marks to kind of these washes to kind of focus. You're right in the center, almost as if the large bloom is sitting on top of here and that's the center. And I don't want my focal point in the center. So I'm going to have to figure out how to solve that by moving it even over here is better than dead center. So what I can do, in fact, let's make the soft pink. And you can grab really any, let's grab a just a red blush. Had some, some of his pH will make it a good pink, will say. Just the teeniest bit of red. That was probably too much. Yeah, that's a nice pink. Maybe a little more later. Now got a nice warm pink, warmer water. Check my opacity. It's pretty opaque. That's okay. We'll see how that looks. And I think I'm going to bring a line like this shape rather to kind of move that to the side a little bit. Remembering the same color and go over this. Did up here, we're still seeing the leaves underneath that they're changing color a little bit. Maybe bring that color over. I'm going over that first layer of washes are, you know, it's just a matter of layers. So you kinda just have to be patient and work the layers to your liking. I'm going to soften this edge because they're a little softer that way. So I'm thinking about now, do I want to leave those other bits the way they are, or maybe make them a bit more opaque. And I think I do want to make them a little more opaque. So I'm gonna get some of this parchment, but just a kind of a cool beige, like a stone color. I'm looking at the whole painting and just seeing if there's anything else I want to knock back a little bit. And I can, I don't need to just make these circular shapes obviously. So I can come here and knock back that dark blue a little bit by just going over it. Then I think it's interesting to see how the color changes with the layer. You can see that you could, I mean, I've done this before. You could take the whole layer that we have done and cover it completely with a wash. And it would just tone down everything. All your elements would still be there. But you, you've taken them back a bit. And you can even use the dry brush technique here where I've got paint on my brush, but it's scratchy because there's no water and very little water. And I can do bits like this to soften with more of a scratchy kind of effect. Texture effect. If I want, I can, I can do it randomly. The dry brush. See how it gives us leave some texture with the lighter color and soften the intensity of them. I'm almost scrubbing the paint can. I'm going to do the same thing down here with the dry brush. My other layers are dry. So this is knocking back, adding a bit of texture. I'm gonna do the same thing to this one because it's drawing my eye off the paper that back end of it. I can do it. Here. The dry brush is really helpful too. Texture. It's almost like a desaturation. You know, if we think of a color, it's really saturated like here, and we just do a little bit of dry brush scrubbing. I shouldn't say, you know, you don't want to use a great brush. This is, you know, it's hard on the brush. Okay, I feel like we've knocked back layers now Mel let it dry, and then we'll bring some more things to the foreground. 8. Adding Elements: Alright, it's dry. And now I was thinking about, I want to make a kind of a focal point on top here. And so I went through my pictures because I'm always taking pictures everywhere I go of anything that I think is pretty. And I thought that an abstract version of how these orchids are kind of cascading down. So that's just the shape we're looking for. We're obviously not going to try to recreate that. But these shapes maybe coming from like so they could come down here. I don't want to make them come straight from here because it'll look too symmetrical with that. They could also just kinda come out this way. Let's see, I'm kind of drawing with my fingers going, do I want it here? Or here? I think I want it up here. Maybe coming like this in this direction. So I'm going to take, since I'm gonna do, I'm gonna pink. A cool pink doesn't really matter as long as, you know, I stay in the same family. And I'm just going to sketch in this, you know, this kind of shape like that. Remember this is a Neil colors, so it doesn't really matter if we need to remove any of it. We just add water and remove it. It really kinda like figure eights are loose interpretation here. Vary the size a little bit and overlap them a little bit. Maybe have this one go like that. Since they're gonna be layered. All I have to do is think about which one do I want on top? So I'll put these below and then we'll go adding them on top. Might have to let them dry. All right, so I'm just going to make it pink. This is a color called carmine. Red will work. I just want a cooler pink. So you may, if you want to cool pink also, you may want to add a bit of tiny bit of blue to your, to your red and white. Let's see here. Which way do I want to use? I'll just use the clash. Could use acrylic gouache, I could even use Jericho. See so easy to put too much color when you're mixing with white. It's pretty it kind of goes with this. All right, so we said we're going to start here loosely following my drawing, my sketch. So I let that dry a bit and then I'll just continue. I'll I'll put the next one on top, let it dry. Next one, next one. But I'll speed it up so you don't have to sit and watch it, dry it with me. Okay. So while that dries, I'm what I did is I I'd have a little bit more weight with each same color, but just a little bit more white with each pair of petals. Just to give a little bit of dimension and to make these appear further to the front. So that's got to dry before we do anything else to it. And I was thinking that this branch of leaves needs to be more. It's just kind of faded and let the purple. So I'm thinking about what I wanna do to bring that out. Thinking about either another layer of paint, which is probably where I'll start, and then possibly some oil pastel. Color wise. The green is fine, but I think I'd like it to be a little bit brighter. So I'm going to reach for kind of a lime green color and just brightening it up a little bit and then maybe bring in some of that lime green. This is where I start departing from our inspiration piece. He just always your right artist's discretion getting a round brush. But that lime green. A very intense color by Turner, cold, fresh green. So a little goes a long way. Can also make a lime green by doing yellow with a tiny bit of green. But you want to use a lemony yellow, not a, not a dark yellow. You know, I'm not a gold. That'll get you a pretty green, but it'll be more like a olivine color. You can see how I've got water mixed in and this is just, I'm very bright. Like that. It's making me want to bring a bit of that into these petals. I could either outline them or I could just do like a little thing to imitator, a little stamen in the center. Just to, they have of bright. I'm feeling the urge to put some of that here with some white belt because it's, let's knock it back a little bit with some of those peach. Just to reduce the intensity. I think I'm going to take some over here. Let's see. Use it to change. It'll have the effect of changing some of those Navy Leaves to look like green. Once it dries. It's interesting. This is the process is experimenting and paintings don't just usually magically come together will after, if they do, it's after a lot of this kind of, especially something like this where I'm trying to recreate something that was created in Procreate, which is a fun, just an interesting challenge. So it's just a great way to learn about creating an effect that you want to create while also creating an entirely new painting. You know, and what's the composition like? And does it work? I still feel like it suffers from me. Oh my I still goes here, here, here and here. Which is okay. I mean, it staying on the painting. But I'm thinking about do I want to change the focal point? And I think once this dries and we can do more layers with it, we can make it more, especially right in here. We can sort of decorate these and bring out actually it's dry enough. We can do a little bit of that. Can do it with some white. Let's get some, let's try some weight marker, see if it's going. Now. It's kinda fun. And so I could do a really refined line where, you know, to kinda imitate the veins. It's, it's interesting in these abstract compositions to have something in them that has finer detail. That seems like a kind of a juxtaposition. And these are, these beanie lines in here. See those beanie lines. So let's try those and see what we think about. Do I want them to wait or dark? We'll see what shows up the best. Let's see if the weight doesn't show up, then we can especially doesn't show up on the marker. Pen doesn't work, right? Why did they make those work so hard, these white pens, this one seems like it might be on its way out of ink, but it's full. Let's see. Another one. Gold or silver to Alright, I did some white outline. I did these veins but not in all of them just to kinda bring them forward. And I made my way outline softer toward the back. And now I think it would be fun to pick some of these leaves and paint something bright over them and change their color. So I'm thinking about what color I want that to be. Well, it could be something bright or it could be white. Well, we can try both and see a movie like maybe an opaque. Let's try to correlate. This is opera read, they're very close, very similar. It's got a fluorescent quality to it, but not quite as right. Definitely makes things pop. I think some of it would be nice. In here. It also been eating something more here. So let's do some marks in the center of this. I like with active. It's kinda makes it interesting because you don't know whether these leaves are on top or below those layers are kinda what's happening. Now I think I just want some nice bold square shapes. Maybe right in here. I don't know why, but these kinds of shapes just make me happy. And I think we're at the stage where we can do dots. You know, the, some of the smaller decorating, finer details. So think about where I want to put some dots and that's maybe right in here. Going to fully saturate my brush. Make sure that my pink consistency is fluid but not drippy. Okay. I really think it started coming together when I added the opera, read, Chandra and I took it and just made a line around some of the elements. This is a good point to stop and stand back. I think that when I do that, I still want this more faded. So I'm going to hit it with this, the ivory posca, and then we'll let that dry and I think we're pretty close to done. Okay. Well, every time I say we're pretty close to down, I find more things to play with. Just playing with the layers on those leaves and bring them forward and backward. But I could keep doing that forever. I think it's time to walk away and let things dry and come back with fresh eyes and see if there's anything that this composition needs. 9. Finishing Finally!: Alright, I stepped away. I let it dry and I'm, you know, I'm glad I'm working through this with you because I want to show you how you work through challenges. And I knew, we knew this was gonna be a challenge with the procreate painting. But I wanted to show you the dry brush technique and I'm giving it a little bit of space. What I wanna do is knock back this turquoise a little bit and come over some of these leaves with sort of a green, a green color and see, this is the only part that's bothering me now. So that's why I'm focused here. So first we will knock back some of this turquoise just because I think there's too much competing here. And of course, when someone sees this finished painting, you know, I remember this when you're working. They don't know what you went through to get it there. You don't see all that they don't care about all that. You know, they're just enjoying the finished product. Some of my best paintings. I've taken the time to just work through their issues. Remember, dry brush doesn't mean that the brush is actually dry. It just means that there's very little water and just some paint. Okay. So Dr. For this green, I want kind of an olive green, which means a warmish screen. I want it different than these, but also not contrasting. So that's just going to mean kinda mixing and till it feels like the color I'm looking for. The reason I felt like green is if this was feeling a little red, white, and blue, these were pink, but on top of the blue, they, they read as red. So it's feeling a little American flag to me. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't want it in the painting. So I'm gonna just try some of the green. There's so many plants in Florida, they're just like this pink flowers or rather leaves, Navy part of leave his navy part of it's pink, yellow, all kinds of colors. It's liberating and you know, to be reminded that you don't have to make all your leaves green. We know that when we look in nature, but we forget sometimes when we're painting a bit of yellow, just varying the color a little bit. And see what I get lost in my studio for hours. But it's the only way that I know to get better and learn and develop. His is I wish I could remember her name and artists I heard say is hired is about creating problems and solving them. So you gotta get in there and create the problems and solve them. To just some. Some lines here and this looks angry, getting more green under here, but it's pretty want to make a bit of a turquoise green and do kind of a suggestion of leaves around those organs. So I'm just adding a little bit of turquoise to that green. I couldn't make these less representational in terms of petals. And I could make them just a square, a blob and very loose. Nothing wrong either way. It just kind of, I think it's kinda interesting to have the juxtaposition of very non-representational things along with things that are a little more representational. Meaning that they look like the thing. This looks like a paddle. All right. Time to let it dry. I had another, you know, walk away and come back. And it takes a lot of determination sometimes to get these where you want them. But I have some ideas. I want it to fill in these leaves because it's just too distracting the way it is to me. I want to take this new color crayon and just bring a little bit of texture to these and definition. At least for some leaves like that. And when you do the same thing for these leaves will move. Try this bright green. See if it shows up. If not, you can use paint or a lighter color. This is a step below pastel pencil, so it will be very chalky and I'll have to spray fixative. But you could just use a colored pencil. I just grabbed this because the color when I was looking for okay, I like that. So let's fill these in. And then I also want to do this. Now. These little white dots got kind of disappeared. Okay, now I'm gonna do some gold pen highlights here and there I have some ideas. I like to do minds through some of these, sometimes going every which way. Alright, I'm gonna proclaim it done, I'm going to sign it. And I like the gold highlights. I went through and did some of the veining here, but less, less painting than here. Just to differentiate. Got some gold stems and gold bits. And overall, I think it was a great learning about pushing back and moving forward. Is it my favorite painting I've ever done? No. But there's some parts I really like that are great. Um, and this is what happens when you paint. You'll find that every painting you do, if you just push through, you will learn so much. I really like this area in here, a lot. Right in here. I like this. I'm still not in love with that. But I think it was a great exercise. And as usual, probably when I walk away and come back, I'll say, yeah, I like that better with some time. So just be patient with yourself and know that every painting you're not going to love, but you're going to learn if you stick with it. Okay. Let's go to the next project. I just wanted to show you that after saying it wasn't one of my favorite paintings, I brought it outside and he came to life. The lighting in the studio is only so good. And I just love how it looks against these plants. And just the gold. Really pretty and it just is much more vibrant and saturated here outside. So I'm really glad we stuck with it. I think it's pretty.