Gouache Floral Painting: 3 Easy Projects

1. Intro: Thank you for joining us and welcome to another Skillshare class. This time up we have a fine gouache painting with some florals here. You will be learning how to paint three different florals. And these are great for some sketchbook exercises as well. You'll be learning all the basics of gouache and how to layer your colors and get ready for some fun floral painting. So let's jump right in and get started. 2. Project 1 White Flowers : For art supplies, you're going to need your watercolor sketch book. And you can tape down your edges if you like, that nice white border using some washi tape or masking tape. And I'm going to start off by using the aqua. That's a nice sky blue there in the Turner set that I have of the gouache. And I'm going to use my bigger brush because we're just going to fill in the background. Once your background is all dry, then you're going to pick out some of your smaller brushes. And I wasn't sure at first I ended up not using the larger brush for any of the flowers. So if you have a size eight and size two are the sizes that I use for my brushes there. For colors. I am going to start off with the white first. And I'm also going to pick out a middle shade of green and I mixed with some yellow in with that. You will also need a rose color as well, or whatever pink that you have for the middle flower, which is the PMI. Then I'm just using my plastic palette here. So a dish or whatever palette that you have. We're going to start off with the white flower first. And this is a really easy flower, is just the five petals we're going to do. Then the yellow will be in the center. So these are great for practice and like warm-up exercises in your sketch book too. For the greens, I have my middle green and a deeper yellow. I'm going to mix those two together to create those like a sap green. And then just the yellow is going to go in the middle. And I'm going to dab it on there. And more of an oval instead of just that basic circle shape to just make it look a little bit more natural. You can leave some of the edges were they don't have to be crisp and round. With the tip of your brush. You can start from the bottom and then you're just going to slightly curl it just a little bit so it's not straight up and down. And then you can start to add a few leaves. I am going to let that first flower dry a little bit. And then in the very end, I will show you how to put some shadows. But for now we're going to move on to the second flower, which is the peony. 3. Project 2 Peony Flower: So we're going to mix some of the roles or whatever pink you have. My rose color is a little bit dark, so I am going to mix white and with mine. So you're going to move over just a little bit in the middle of your sketchbook there. And these petals are going to be quite larger than the first flower that we did. And you'll see it almost looks like a heart shape when you're first starting out. We have the one large pedal there. And then on the other side we're going to create the same exact thing. And then work our way out from there. You can clean up your edges a little bit if you have two. And now you can see that nice heart-shaped. And now we're going to work on the outer edges here. And these petals are going to be slightly smaller. So everything is nicely balanced there. And then the little tiny ones will go on top. But make sure you leave space right there in the middle, we're going to put yellow there. Underneath. You're going to create two more petals. Going to put one on each side. And my pink was a little bit too dark. So you will see me lightening up here a little bit. For this stem and leaves, we're going to use the same green that we used for the first flower just to keep it nice and easy here. And then just the yellow goes in the center that we left that area blank. When creating your leaves on the second flower here, they are a little bit larger than the first one, just to give it some diversity here. The color is slightly darker. But we will be adding highlights and shadows later too. So that's okay because I know I didn't mention it's just the SAP shade, just the yellow and the green that we mix together from before. But I know on-camera here you can see it is slightly darker than the first one. For some of the details in this peony flower, I'm going to switch over to my size two paintbrush. And for the shadow color, I'm just going to use my rose straight out of the tube. You can see the color right there. And then they will blend it through with just a very tiny bit of water. If your paint looks a little bit too dry, you can add a little bit of water, but you don't want to completely thin it out to the point where it looks like watercolor, because that's just not the type of painting that we're doing today. With the gouache. You can use it thick and opaque or you could water it down for different layerings. But for today's painting, we are going to use it the traditional way. Lastly, I'm just gonna go in and add a few white highlights. 4. Project 3 Yellow Flowers & All final details : For the last flower here on the end, I'm just going to use some yellow and white mixed together. And these are pretty much the same flowers as the first one we did. These are just going to be a lot smaller and a little bunch. We're going to continue to use the small brush and then have your little tiny petals. And it doesn't have to be all five. That can be like a side view with three that I just did here. And then you can have fun with it and just create your own little bunch. These are great for little drills and exercises as well. You can get used to handling if you bought a new brush or just getting used to the thickness of the medium as you're putting the paint down as well. And depending on the brush that you're using, you will definitely get some different strokes and variation in your petals there. I mostly use round brushes like we're using today. But if you're using a fill bird's head or something that's a little bit larger and then you'll have that more rounded effect. So as you learn and go along, you can experiment with different brushes too. For the centers on this last flower here, I am adding some burnt sienna. And again, for the last final details here, I'm just going to add some white highlights on the leaves and you can't really see it on camera on the flowers. But I did put a tiny bit here and there. And it just cleaning up the stems a little bit here on the bottom. One quick thing here before we're all done, which is going to go in with some darker green on the first two flowers and add some quick shadows. Just a tiny bit here and there. That wraps up for today's tutorial. I hope that you did enjoy it. And now you can use these new tips that you'll learn and practice in your sketch book for your new and upcoming floral paintings. Be sure to check out my other classes and until then, I'll see you next time.