Gouache for Beginners: How to Simplify a Tulip Garden

1. Class Introduction: Hello, everyone. I am Chen Chibi, an artist from Vietnam and welcome to my new class. Was for beginners how to simplify a tulip garden. In this class, you will learn how to analyze a reference photo, simplify tunip shapes, and the oven garden, create some new sketch, and finally paint a beautiful tunip scenes step by step in your sketchbook. If you enjoy glass painting, feel free to check out my Bfi. I offer a variety of glasses, especially focused on flowers. That's on for now, grab your brushes and paper, and let's start painting. 2. Tools and Materials: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the class. In this lesson, we go through the tones and materials. You will need for this class. First, you will need a set of glass paints, I'm using a 12 color set from ini. But any glass set work just fine. We have a dedicated lesson on today's color palette, don't worry, your colors aren't exactly the same as mine. Next, we need some brushes. I using four brushes, Filbert brush for the flower petals. A large rough brush for the leaves, a smaller rub brush for the stem, and a flat brush for the background. For this project, I will be working on graph paper. I've painted this design in a graph sketchbook before, but I've also tried it on white paper, and it also turned out beautifully, feel free to you and sne what the colour paper you have. That's it. This design really pops on graph paper. Finally, you will need one or two containers of water to clean your brushes and a mixing palette. I'll be using the container and the mixing palette from the Himi pset. Uh, and if you use this type pin box, you need a punt line to pick up the pin, and we also need pensaw which I believe everyone has. And that's on for the tones and materials for our today's lesson. So in the next lesson, let's analyze our reference photo and create some new sketch. 3. Analyzing the Reference Photos & Creating a Thumbnail Sketch: Before we start painting, let's take some time to analyze our reference photos and create some new sketch. As you can see on my scenes, I'm using two reference photos of a tulip garden and combining the best elements from both. Before painting, I always spend time observing the shapes of the flowers as well as the shadows and highlights. Nowadays, I do this mentally, but here I will walk you through my process. So first, let's analyze the shape of the flowers. So as you can see, it has the cup shape. And some flower will have a big upper part like this one, and some flower will have a big lower part and this one depending on how opening the flower is. And I also try to analyze the shadow and the highlight. So if you look at this photo, it seems that the light is from the left hand side. So we have more why the highlight is quite random. We have more highlights on the on the left hand side of the photo. And the shadow part here. We have the shadows at the bottom of the flowers. And we also try to analyze the shape of the leaves. If you are a highly detailed person and you want to create something which is more ret, you can try to, to paint, I mean, the curvy shape, I believe here. But for me, I will simplify it. So it just kind of a long oval shape like this one. And if you look at this reference photo, you can see that there is no flower which really opening up. That's why I will borrow some flowers from this reference photo. You see we have some flower which really open and you can see the essential the flower here. I have this type of and we have just analyzed the shapes of the flowers and the leaves. And now let's create a thumbnail sketch. I will create the thumbnail sketch on this book create, but feel free to use any paper and pen and sketchbook you have. We just want to make a draw before moving to our final painting. So I will start. I will I will start with a rectangular back ground. But feel free to explore other saves if you like, for example, layer this one on my sketchbook. So it has a brow shape. But for today's demonstration, I will put the rectangular one here because it is easier easier for everyone to plan. And we also have some If you look at this, we have routes here several rules. So I think I, I will being some storm foot. So the flower ft. So it have several roots like this. So if you look at the reference photo here in this photo, the flowers seem to have quite a similar highs, but I will vary them to make the conversation become more dynamic and interesting. So let's paint some flower. We will vary the high. Add some flower with open shape and this one. Not important for now, but I've been asked here. And some So I think that's on for now. I won't try to create a very detailed bending here because it our thumbnail sketch. So in the next lesson, we will explore our today's colour palette. 4. The Color Palette: Now let's talk about our color palette for this bending. For the flowers, I'll be using orienal red as my main color. This is orienal red. It is a warm slightly melted red, so I will mix it with some white, gray, a lighter tone. Since I'm painting on grabbed paper, the color will naturally appear a little bit softer. If you're working on white pal, you may want to slightly darker shade to achieve the similar effect. For the leaves, I will use olive green as the base colour. This is olive green. And in order to have the light or shade up the green, I will mix it with lemon yellow. And if I want to make it darker, I I will mix it with a little bit, black If you don't have olive green or orient red on your color palette, feel free to use any green or any red color. If you want to be more creative in today's demonstration, we use the red colour, but you see we have tulips in many different colours, feel free to use, I mean, purple, orange, yellow, any colors that you like. Term for the serm I will create a muted green by mixing, I mean, this cha mixing with green with olive green here. So this color is suitable to paint. I mean, the stem the flowers. And that's it for the colour pant. So you don't need to have the exactly similar colour as my. I mean, you can use another shade of bread, for example, maybe mil may be a scallet anything you have on your paint box. And for green, I really like olive green. If you don't have olive green on your colour panette and if you really want to try to mix one, I have a dedicate lesson about this on my class, how to paint with glass, you can check my profile, but any green will be fine as long as you find it natural enough. And that's it for today's color pant. In the next lesson, you will start painting. 5. Pencil Sketch & Painting the Background: We will start our painting process by creating a pencil sketch. You may want to look at our thumbnail sketch we created on the previous section. But it is quite simple, so I don't think we need to depend on it, and we also may have some adjustment for our final painting. So I will start with square one. I want to make a signature here. I want to sign my name here, so that's why I think I will make it hi. I forgot to mention that we also need a wound in the lesson about tools and materials. But I do think that everyone has I think we will say something about this. If you are confident enough to draw a rectangular without the ruler, it is perfectly fine. And I think I know is too long too long for our table. Okay, so we just repeat what we just made on the Bi pass to a thumb sketch. So And I think that's enough for the pencil sketch because when we paint the background, we will cover everything in black and I cannot see the pencil sketch here anymore, so I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. So now let's mixing some let's mixing this is black. I mixing some black with olive green. I think it needs to be even more black. The loser a painting is the better. So don't try to create a perfect rectangle here. But now I find that this type of graph paper I am using don't billing like was pen, so I need to bid a lot. I to bit more than I expec pin here to cover the entire area in a black win pan That's good enough for now. So now we need to wait for the background to dry. So I will end this lesson here, and I also go to change my water container and see you in the next lesson. 6. Painting the First Layer: Now let's painting some leaves and some stems. You see the bail is not perfect. I don't really I don't really like scrap paper, but it is good enough. So I mean chose that way I mean, this one is olive green, poor olive green. We will add the highlights and the shadow later. Now, just Don't try to make the perfect leaves. So you may want to hold the brush up further from the I mean, the tip so that your brush shop will be naturally. You see, the grab people don't really like what I spend, but I think it's still good enough for our today spending. We even charge through it. Another leap here. I think that's enough lips for our painting. It is a very simple painting, and the loser we paint the better it looks, and we will mix this ochre with live to paint the stems. Have some flower here. That's good for now. We will make some adjustment later. So now because, I mean, the stem generally behind the leaf. So after painting after painting this stem, we might try to repaint some area of the leaf. I will try to add some flowers now. For flower on this part, you may need to wait for it to dry bud. But let's been some flower for now. So we have some wie here. So I mean, I am mixing oren red with a little bit of wie for the base colour of the flowers. I'm using my fibert brush. Actually, I plan to use fiber brush at the beginning of the lesson, but now I do feel that it will be easier to use this vow brush so I changed this vow brush because it is smaller, so it is easier for me to have some control over the shape of the flower. So generally for the flower, which is which is the highest I will try to make is smaller and it has oval shape. For the flower, which is at the bottom of this painting here, I will make it look good. And for this one, I plan to make it have the open shape thus we can see the center of the flower. So I will instead of the capsap I will make it wow like this. I really want to make the color more opici, but it is difficult for now because the paint is not dry yet. So again, let's take some rest we will need to wait for it to dry before painting the shadow and the highlights of the flower and the leaves. 7. Adding Highlights and Shadows: We'll come back to the glass. So now let's try to add some highlights and the shadows into this painting. And the first thing I will do is I win you my eraser to erase the pencil mark. There's not a lot here, wd. Try to make it. Try to make it clearer. So, so now the flower is a little bit pale. So I believe after adding some more shadow and highlight, ve been looking more interesting. So I will use this. So this is that is poor oriental wet. So now I don't mix it with with any Y. So I will try to add some shadow part of the flour here. So Because when we analyze the reference photo, you see that the shadow part is quite random, so you don't have to try to make any part. It is too perfect. But we have more shadow on the right hand side than the left hand side. This is open shade flower on why we have the shadow bad at the bottom of the flowers, so So you see, just by adding the the shadow bad on the flower, it looks less boring. Um we've been adding the shadow part of the leaves first before coming back to add the highlight of the flowers because I want to wait for the paint to be a little bit dry because I don't want to to add the highlight on the top of the wet flowers here. So I live green here. I will use a smaller brass to adding the highlight and the shadow because adding some black So, I mean, we assume that is the light so the light is from the left hand, so try to add more shadow on the right hand and the bottom of the leaf. Also, we can it's okay to bend some more leaves at this stage. Okay. We don't have to try to I mean, don't need to make this layer exactly on top on top of the previous layer, just as some random shape. And the more rolls out shop, the more beautiful the painting is. I do think that we need some more leaf in this area. And that's enough for the shadow of the leave now. And now I will try to add more highlight on the flowers before coming back to add the highlight for the leaves. So for the highlight of the flower, I will make actually the I mean, the flow I don't want to touch this right here because later I may need to put some black onto it to create even more dark shadow. So normally for my daily painting, I will use a big palette. But it is it is not very convenient for feming sodas while today I am using I think a little bit too small too small mixing palette. Shry this color first. If it is lighter than the reversal, it is good. I think I need to make it even lighter. I think more more we. Now, it becomes too light. So it is okay. We, we can add any many we want. Oh, I have an accident here. So I need to this in this too. So it is really difficult to cover the mistake now. But it is okay. It makes our painting even more more he paint. I think I've been adding more hal onto the leaves before we need to wait for it to dry before finalize out to the spending. And I've been adding this lemon, you know, into our olive green to create the very large shade of the leaf here. I think for now, I will leave the painting here and wait for it to dry before finalized, adding the final touch. 8. Adding More Depth: Welcome back to the glass. So if you look at the painting now, it already has the shapes and the light and the shadow part. So now we just need to add some final touch. So the first thing I want to add is I want to make the bottom of the flower even darker. I think I Okay, so we've been adding this IO and the red to the black. Now, it is too black, so I think I need to book. Okay, so it And if you remember we have sent the flower, it is kind of a brown. So I don't if you have a plant umber in your palette, feel free to use it. But here I only have ochre. So I will make it with a little bit black to make it a brown So just dot to mark the flower cential I don't look at the wifens photo now, baby, my flowers cential is not exactly similar to what we see in the wif and photo, but it is okay for out today spending. I don't think we need to be too realistic here. I think I want to ask and You might want to look at the reference photo if you want, but I do think that as long as the flower has the shadow and the highlight, even if it is not look similar to the reference photo, it still look good. There are some area which I think the pain has not covered the back well, so I add some pain here. Something like that. What I don't like on this scrap paper is not really watercolor paper, so it has a really good reaction with water. So there are some stem is too I think I, you know, I go into this to make it. It's more like the stem scallop. So we are adding some high ion to the stem. So this area, they will try to this ban to fix this area. I want to ask some area, which is really y on the leaf, so I will ask why here. Why and olive green and lemon yellow. This gallo I think we need some wine. One thing I think it is the drawback of what paints is because when you paint it with water, when the paint is still wet, you see one shade of color, but when it dry, you see the difference. So that's why I, it is a little bit difficult to say whether it is light enough. But, I mean, for this style of painting, we don't have to be too realistic here. Try to fix the safe of the flower here. Not got enough, so I think that's enough for our students spending. Ah. Not enough, because now I see the highlight of some leaves are too obvious, so I mean just like I mean, it is the just moist plus to to repaint the part between the highlight and lead to make it become more natural. I don't want the hana to be too obvious. And I think that's enough for our today spending. We need to wait a little bit for the paint to dry completely. And in the next lesson, we will review our final painting and I will I will also give you some more chick and lips to for spending and also show you some of my trinity painting. 9. Final Thoughts: Now the pen is already dry, so I will sign my name here. And also erase the pens mask. Okay, so I will take up the masking tape here. So you see the paper is still a little bit. It is not flat yet. So I normally, I have to put it inside a book to make it flat later. But that is the final reason of our painting session today. So I have painted before ending this lesson, I want to share with you some of tunips I have painted on my sketchbook. So, uh let's see. This one, I have a share with you. So you can try this design. I will put the photo a bit on the project session. And I also I also try to paint with the phone background here. That is yellow, that is red. And also on this grab sketchbook, here is the painting I shared with you in the beginning of the class and also I will also try the different color scheme here. So it is purple or white. So I will try to put on the photos of my actually painting on the pet session. So you don't have to copy the exact deside we made today together. But that the wrap of today's class, I hope you enjoy the process. Don't forget to upload your final painting onto the Bose gallery. I would love to see your work. And if you fled this class had phone, feel free to leave a review. It really supos me and hurts other students did cover the class. Happy painting, and I will see you in another class.