How To Paint Photos In Procreate: Expressive Dogwood Flower

1. Welcome: Hi everyone. I'm Jay Johnson and I teach people how to paint photos. In procreate. Painting your photos is a fun and unique way to create art. In procreate. I've taught the basics of how to paint your photos using the Procreate app on the iPad. In several of my other classes. If you find your work looking too rigid and too tight, you can choose to get expressive for a more abstract look. In this class, I'm teaching you my personal expressive techniques I use to create looser paintings with excitement and interests. Throughout this class, you'll learn how to paint this dog would flower photo into an expressive work of art. You'll see me step away from the realism of the photo while still maintaining accuracy. You will learn how to set up your canvas about the huge brush set and how I use these brushes. How to edit your photo before painting. How to paint your background. How to paint the flower in concert with the background. How to take your painting from realism to expressive. How to use stamp brushes for unique mark-making. How to loosen things up. How to add interest and excitement by using expressive brushwork. In order to complete this class, you'll need an iPad with procreate installed. You will also need an Apple pencil. And you already need to have a basic understanding of using Procreate and installing brushes. You will need to understand how to transfer photos onto your iPad before starting the class. Provided with this class is my original dog with photo and my expressive painting brush set with over 80 brushes. So are you ready to paint your photos more expressively? If then? If so, then please join me in this class. I look forward to seeing your renditions of the dog would flower as well as your own expressive flower paintings featuring flowers you photographed and painted. 2. Canvas Set Up & Brush Tour: Okay, We're ready to start for our expressive painting of a dog would flower. I'm assuming that you already have downloaded and installed the brush set and the dog would flower photo I've provided you with. If you haven't, you might want to go ahead and get those onto your iPad before you begin. The very first thing we need to do is set up a canvas for the dog would flower. Now the dog would flower is a horizontal photo. And I like to paint square. It's just my preference. If you want to set up a horizontal Canvas, then go for it. But for me, the type of work I like to do, I liked I just liked the square. It's just my thing. So I'm going to set up a square canvas by hitting the plus button. And I'm going to choose, I've already got one set up here, but I'm going to choose this dark plus sign by the word new canvas. And this is where you would set that up. If, if it's on something else, these blue is highlighted something else. Make sure you get on dimensions. This is only thing I mess with. I don't touch anything else. Just dimensions. It depending on the iPad you have, how much memory you have and things like that will depend on the size image you can work on how many layers you can get. You've got a width, a height, a DPI, and a maximum layers here, I always work at 300 DPI. So if that doesn't say 300, click inside that box and change that. The maximum layers we'll adjust as you adjust the width and the height. Height based on what your iPad can handle. Now I do 6 thousand by 6 thousand because I print really, really big prints on Canvas. And that to me is the size I need to do to get the really big prints made. If you wanna do two thousand, two thousand or 3 thousand by 3 thousand, that's fine. But I'm going to do 6 thousand by 6 thousand. So you type it in. And it's already there in the second row, but you could type it there. And then after you've done that, it'll tell you how many layers you can get. The amount of layers doesn't matter if you run out of layers. You can always merge what you've done together and continue adding new layers, which you'll see me do. Just click Create. And it will appear. And it will also open up. And it will be saved in your list of canvas sizes for the next time. If you've already got one setup, that's a square, go for it. You'll need to import your photo on here. Insert your photo, which we'll go over in the next video. I'll show you how to do that and how to resize it specifically to fit the square. But I wanted to go into a little bit on the brushes. So let me grab a blue or pretty blue color. And I just wanted to quickly go over the brushes that are included in my expressive set. These are ones that I use most often. They are not all that I use. If you noticed in my brush library list, I have J marks 87654, etc. Those are all marks that I have made with real paint. And I also have purchased pretty much every stamp brush set out there that I could find that I liked. There is no limit to the amount of stamp brushes you can have when it comes to expressive painting. They are an integral part of the expressive painting process for me. Because they blend a real brush mark in with your painting, which we'll go into later. So in the set, I have a lot of stamp brushes for you included. I have three pencil brushes to mainly because I signed with a brush like this. Or if you wanted to add some unique line work in your art, marks, you want to make just scribbling marks or even do a sketch. Like an outline of your subject as you're going along on a layer on top. And I don't know what the heck That's supposed to be. We're starting to look like maybe it could be a dog of some sort. Yeah. But I mean, you could sketch with these. You can add line work, et cetera, with the pencil brushes. And then the main brushes to paint the photo or the smooth brush. That's the one I start with. The smooth brush. You can paint with it, but also blend with it. And that's where I start, is blending. And when you blend with the smooth brush, it creates a very nice smooth blend. I also have the painting, one brush which kind of blends as it paints. And it has a slight canvas texture to it. See if you can see that. It's really nice. And when you go to blend with it, it'll blend would that canvas texture. Then I have the mess it up one and mess it up to the mess it up one has a really rough edge. Great for adding some expressive marks throughout. And when it comes to blending with it, I do a lot of this to mess up the edges. Because in the process of expressive painting, you're going to paint the photo realistically first and then you're going to mess it up. Because messing it up is what helps make it become expressive. So that is an integral brush to this process. And the textural one is a heavy texture brush. I don't press very hard on this. Drag it lightly and you can see it creates texture. If you press it harder, it'll create a little darker texture, but if you press it too hard, it will just become solid. Say this one's kinda finicky. So you have to be a little bit careful with it. And when blending, you do get a little bit of the texture. If you grab a color and drag it another direction, you'll get some of the color and texture. But you can also actually soften up by holding it down and blending. So if you make a textural mark this real strong, then you want us to soften that. You can use it as a, as a blender and kind of soften that down like that. It has some really heavy texture. And this is one more for accents toward the end of things, which you'll see as we go along. The stamp brushes are pretty self-explanatory. If you're familiar with stamp brushes, you basically just stamp. You cannot. Like I'm holding down right now. You cannot paint with it. It just does one stamp. And you can resize these and make them smaller. And you can layer them on top of each other. It's really fun. And you can also reduce the opacity of them to a lighter opacity if you just want a hint of a brush mark. But we'll get into all of that later. But there's a wide range of them in here because you never know what kind of mark you might need. And the whole concept of the expressive painting is using expressive marks and then blending those expressive marks in with the painting. So this is my secret here on expressive painting is the stamp brushes. And the blending of those brushes. After you make the mark, blending of the mark in with what's already down. And you can alter the look of the stamp brush to buy blending. So therefore, person is not going to look at one of your paintings and say, oh, they did the same mark in this painting that they did in the last painting. So the blending of them is very important to really make it look unique and different. And I also want to mention when it comes to the stamp brushes, you'll see me just guessing and picking and choosing one. There is no set way to use a stamp brush. There's no set method to doing things with the stamp brushes. It's a matter of what Mark do you want where what Mark would fit in a good spot, and then toning it down using some blending and changing up the look of it by using some blending. And it's all a matter of what you like. You put a mark down and sit and you say, Oh, I like it, except I don't like this. One little part here at the top. That's at the point where you can choose to blend that out. And you can also erase with the stamp brushes. So if you touch on top of an area that you just want to add a little bit of interest to. You can tap and erase part of that with a stamp brush. Or like let's say you want to put some white dots in here, get on the one with the dots and just tap it. And it's just basically erased what's there. And which is I'm trying to pull down the size. It's not wanting to pull. There we go. So you could do and you can tap them together in one spot to create a really unique pattern or look. There is just no limit to what you can do with stamp brushes to create something unique and different and interesting to your painting. And that's, that's just a quick rundown on the brushes. And I've included a wide variety here for all different kinds of situations. And I use these and every expressive painting I do, and I don't just use these I have purchased, I've made several others and I've purchased others from other people and installed them and I will use them in the same manner. But stamp brushes, I collect them. I just, that's my thing. Stamp brushes are what makes the paintings unique and different and interesting in the end. So there was a, there was a quote I heard one time that said, when people see something that's painted real expressively, they think it was painted real loosely. And that's not the case. Expressive things. Some of them are painted real loosely and very quickly. And certain paint mediums can work very expressively just because they're loose. But when it comes to this on Procreate and other paintings methods, I have found that to really paint expressively and make it all tied together. It's a lot of careful thought and placement of Marx and blending those marks in with what you've already got down there. That's what makes the biggest difference. In a variety of expressive paintings. It's not just slapped something down and just, you know, paint. Just get real loose with it. Although getting loose with your painting and just sweeping brushes and doing things like this can create some interesting effects. Definitely. But, um, it's, it's, it's a wide variety of choices and picking the right marks for the right places. And pretty soon here as I keep tapping on these, you'll see that I'm going to end up having sort of an abstract painting without even intending to. And this is all done very quickly and very loosely. And it's very fun. But when it comes to painting your subject expressively, have to be a little bit thoughtful and careful with the placement and the size of your marks and the colors of them as well. So let's just something I wanted to go over a little bit in talking about these stamp brushes. And there's all kinds of abstract marks in here I've created that can really add to your, your overall painting. And you can even use marks to fit into a certain section of your painting, which you'll see. As we go along and paint. You'll see where I place a mark within the subject. And a lot of times right now I'm working on just one layer. But most of the time when we're actually doing the painting, the subject will be on its own layer and the marks will be made on a layer on top. That way, if you want to adjust the opacity of the marks layer, if you want to turn to mark around, resize the mark, you'll have the ability to do that and we'll get into all of that. But just kinda wanted to go over that real quick like before we get started and now we're ready to go and get moving on. This dog would flower painting. And I encourage you to paint the one I've given the flower I've given you. But if you have your own flower, you want to try to paint. Feel free. I love to see people explore and do different things than just trying to do what I do, because that's what makes you, your creativity come to life for yourself, is to pick your own photo to work from, and to paint and pick your own colors to. These happened to be some of my favorite colors, which is why you see me do these demos a lot in using these two colors, the orange and blue, and the black and the white. And that's just favorites of mine. You may have your favorites. Don't be scared to mess things up. Don't be scared to change colors. Don't be scared to choose different marks for your painting and don't be scared to use other stamp brushes made by other people. There. They're definitely when you're doing expressive painting in the way I do it with the photos are even with an abstract piece like something like this. They're definitely something that needs to be in your arsenal of supplies with Procreate. But let's get started on the dog would painting so you can see how this goes and how I create it. And then you'll have your opportunity to create it yourself as well. We'll see you in the next section. 3. Paint Background & Mask Flower: Okay, I'm ready to get started on the first lesson, which will be on the dog would flower. I've got my canvas setup at 6 thousand by 6 thousand, the layers already there. I'm going to insert a photo and go to that album where I've stored the photos I want to paint and I'm going to pick the dog would now the dog woods rectangular. The canvas is square. So I want to resize this flower to fit my Canvas better. So I click this arrow up here, and this gives me the options Freeform, Uniform Distort and warp. I use uniform when resizing this layer. If you use free form and you go to drag from the corners out if you want to re-size it accurately, it's going to possibly distort your image, so I keep it on uniform. You can use your pencil and grab one of the corners and pull like that. But you can also put two fingers on image and just squeeze out. And you can even turn your image and put it however orientation you want on your canvas. Now I want this to be tilted a little bit, and I want it to be big enough to cover the whole canvas so it's outside the corners. And that looks pretty good to me because I want the flower to fill the painting. The very first thing I'm gonna do with this is I'm going to flip this image because I like to paint with my subject is facing the left. You don't have to flip it. But I'm going to show you how to do that. You click that arrow up there again. And there's a button down here that says Flip Horizontal. And you can do that. And then the orientation you want, then just tap on the layers. And that will set that in place. To get started. I'm going to duplicate this twice. Now. I'm going to duplicate it once first. Okay? So when working on the duplicate layer, when it comes to photo painting, as you start painting this with the blending brush, you're going to be painting the exact colors that are on here. And if you want to add color later, that's fine. If you'd like the colors that are here now, that's fine. I tend to like my images a little bit more bolder and color, a little bit more saturated. So I'm going to click this Adjustments button up here at the top. And I'm going to click hue, saturation and brightness, and click the layer. And I'm going to pull the saturation up to about 90% range. I'm also going to pull up on the brightness just a little bit. Just a little bit. Not too much. You Brian, The too much it'll get baited. If you wanted to change the color hue. You could do that to get some really interesting effects. Um, I like it the way it is, so I'm going to leave it at the 50 per cent, but then tap on the layers and you can see the difference when you turn that one off and that went on. I think we're gonna get a much more colorful painting with this look. Now, I'm going to duplicate that layer. And I believe the bottom one alone. You can rename your layers if you want. If you want to keep track of where you are, but I don't usually do enough layers to have to worry about renaming them. So the very first thing we're going to do with this layer of the flower image is this is going to become the background because we're going to use the blending brush, the smooth one. At a fairly large size, fairly large size. I've got it about 31. And try that. And I'm just going to start blending this color out just short marks. And I'm going right over the flower because this is becoming part of the background. And I'm pressing pretty hard as a stroke. And I don't know why that is showing that flower underneath. Okay. Sometimes with this blending brush or any of the blending brushes. Let me try the paint blend ones that for some reason it's blending what's there, but it's showing what's underneath. And I don't know why it does that. Um, so I'm gonna shut the two underneath layers off so I can really see what I'm doing here. There we go. Now you can see the solid blend. Like so. I'm just going to blend it all out with the colors that are there. Every bit of it. Just very short strokes going different directions with the strokes. So that gives me a nice blend to start with for the background. Now I'm going to go to the paint and blend brush. And I'm going to blend with that one in certain spots. Play with size a little bit. If you do different sized brush marks throughout, that gives some interests to your work. But this this pain blend one, I'm going mostly on the edges where there's like sharp little edges and blending those in from that smooth brush. Just here and there throughout, not everywhere. I don't need the canvas showing everywhere from that brush just to soften it up a little bit. Like so. All right, that's a good start for the background. Now, this point, I already know, I'm going to turn the bottom one back on so you can see. I already know around this flower, I would like to him bring in some blue. It's not a real greenie turquoise, but a kind of a really pretty ocean, rich blue, not dark blue. But I haven't painting here at home that somebody else did that's hanging on my wall and it's a white dog would would this really pretty blue background? And I thought that this would be pretty, but I also like this orange tone that's here off to the side. So I'm also going to bring in some of that orange tone into the background. So let's grab the orange first, the orange color. And let's turn the background back on and turn the flower layer off. And let's just using my brush in my own, using the paint and blend directly on this layer. Let's paint in some strokes of that orange in this area where we know it's at in the photo. And let's even bring some of it down here underneath. Like so just hearing they're not anything really extraordinary. And then you can play with the orange tones and go to maybe a little lighter shade, dot some of that in there to get some variation. So that's pretty good for the orange areas. Add a little bit more there. Now let's get some of that turquoise ocean he blue and I just went there on the color wheel to a spot that I felt looked good and I'm pulling it. I don't want it super saturated, so I'm pulling it more toward the middle. And let's go down a little bit, kind of a medium tone like that, back to that paint and blend brush to paint with. Maybe make it a little bigger. And let's bring in some of that blue all around where we know the flower is. And even underneath here. And even over here, right on top of the orange area. Bring in some of that blue. Because I want this background to be a nice mix of colors. So now that I've done a medium blue, Let's move it up to lighter blue area straight up from that medium color. And let's do some of that in here with the same brush. Let's make the brush a little smaller. Because the lighter areas is going to be here at the top of the flower. You can even bring some right over where the flower is going to be. This just gives some variation. Then down here at the bottom right corner, let's pull down past the medium blue to a darker blue. And dot some of the darker blue here in this lower area where we know it's in shadow. And that's going to be a bit darker. Now I feel like I've lost a little too much in my orange. So I'm going to hold down, grab that same orange and put a few little marks of that back in there. And then maybe even go straight down to more of the brown area and put some of that down here on this very lowest corner. Maybe even over here on this side a little, and even maybe come up a little bit more in a few lighter shades. This is just putting some of the background colors that you might want in your picture into the background that you're making. Now, you can just choose any colors you want for the background, if you would rather have purple and pink behind your flower, or yellow and green or whatever you might want to choose. You don't have to use these colors. These are just the colors that inspired me when I was looking at this flower. So now this needs to be blended a little bit. So I'm going to go with, Let's try the mess it up one brush. And I have this opacity set around 60% on it. Because if he used at full strength, that makes it just a little bit too strong on this brush. So I'm just going to tap in here. You can see on some of these areas, just to blend in. Some of that gives a little texture to it That's different than the canvas. And I'm not gonna do it all over here in there. And it pulls some of that color around. Just to give us a good starting point. And make, basically we're making a mess. But that's the whole point of this, because this is about being expressive and being expressive does not mean being very diligent to every little detail. And I know this is the background, so you don't usually have a lot of details in the background. But still there, you know, you can paint a very realistic painting keeping everything detailed. But that's not what I'm after here. That's a good start to the background. So now it's time to bring in the flower. So I'm going to move this layer with the flower up and turn it on. And now we're going to tap that layer to make sure we're on it. And what do we wanna do is we want to mask out the flower to lay on top of this background. So I'm gonna do that using the Smooth paintbrush, which is great for masking. And you want to pick black on color wheel. So if you'll just double-tap near where the black is on, the color wheel should go to straight black. And then you want to add a mask layer. If you tap on the layer and click Mask, There's your layer mask. That's what you want to paint on with the black. When you paint the black, even though it doesn't look black, what it's doing is it's erasing what I'm painting on and revealing what's underneath. So see, that's the background that's underneath that we're revealing. So make sure you're on the layer mask when you're doing that. And you've got to also decide what part of this do you want to keep and what do you want to get rid of? These leaves in the back behind this petal? I want to get rid of this little pokey leaf right here. I don't need that. I'm not interested in that much detail. This leaf over here, I would like to keep, and obviously the stem I would like to keep. So I'm using a fairly big brush right now and just getting rid of the bigger areas. It looks like it's erasing, but with masking, It's not erasing. It's just simply hiding it. And if I need to bring it back, I can do so with white. If I need to bring something back. Like let's accidentally go over that leaf right there. Oops, I've lost my leaf. To bring that back. I would get on the color wheel, double-tap near the white. And it will go to white. And then I can bring that Leaf Back by painting with white. And then if you go back to black, double-tap near the black. You can also choose the color from down here in your history. Black and white are right there. So now I can continue painting with the black and try not to go over the edge of the leaf and get as close in around the petals as I can without going over. So let's go with a little bit bigger brush to get these larger areas that are away from the petals. Oops, I went over that a little, I could fix that later. I'm holding down on this brush and pushing pretty strong as I'm doing this masking to just mask away all of that background from behind the flower. Like so. I'm getting a little close to the stem. Close as I can. I think it's time to make the brush a little smaller and go around some of these areas here. So let's start with this petal right here and get close. I'm holding down, pressing pretty hard. So I'll use this size brush in the areas where I can. And then I'll reduce the size two more and getting those little actually the smaller areas that I need to get. I'm just kinda carefully going along without trying not to go over the petal. The background we've created is a mix of the colors that were already present in the background plus the new colors that I added in and sort of blended around. That's just a really quick way to start with the background. Go around this, getting as close as I can. All right. We need to keep this stem accurate. So I'm gonna get close to it without going over. Now I have to get a smaller brush to get in-between the two pieces of the stamp. Some people forget that there'll be doing legs of animals and they won't mask between them and it becomes very obvious later. So we will have to come back with a little smaller brush and fix that up. But right now with this size brush, I've got it set at, I figured I would do everything that this size can handle at the moment. There. Now, time to make that brush a little smaller and get in these areas where I needed to have a little more control. I'm not worried about the petals staying exact because this is going to be an expressive painting. So they're not going to be exact. But for right now, just to see how everything I want to try to stick, keep them exact and not really go over the petals yet. And anywhere where there's a little dark along the edge, trim that up and get in this corner. If I go over the edge of the petals a little, it's not that big a deal. But I'm really trying to keep them fairly accurate. So when it comes time to painting the flower, I can see good as to what's where. Because even though it's gonna be expressive and a little bit on the abstract side, I like to be able to tell what it is when it's done. I don't want to be able to tell it's a dog would. Now I'm getting this area in here. Kind of looking around at little areas I've missed. I'm around here with this leaf is getting their head around this edge of it. That's pretty good. So now look at what we've got is quite a bit different from the original photo. Is if you turn this off and this softened turn the original back on, That's what we started with. And that's what we have now. But when, for some reason it's not even when painting the layer as a blending tool, it's revealing some of the original photo there. And I don't want that revealed, so I'm shutting off the original photo just to be sure on that. Because whatever is turned on when you go to save it, it will save that in there and I don't want that original photo in there at all. So now we have a good starting point for the flower. At this point you could squeeze the Layer Mask and the flower together. And that flower is now mass, the backgrounds masked away. So when you will, almost except for a little part I missed up there. So when you turn off your background completely, if you see this checkerboard, you could save this as a PNG file transparent image to be able to put it on top of another background if you wanted to at a later time. My mask wasn't quite entirely accurate. I missed a few little spots, but it doesn't need to be when you've got this background involved that you've already made. So now we can add some details to the background. And we can also paint the flower. And I like to add a few stamp brushes to the background first, before I paint the flower and I will paint, you can paint the flower on its own layer. You can definitely do that. I tend to merge them together and work on it as a whole. But in the next section we're going to just bring in some stamp brushes into this background to dress it up a little more. And then we'll work on painting the flower. 4. Enhance The Background: Alright, let's work on adding some more interests to this background using some of the stamp brushes. So make sure your background layer selected. And just to be on the safe side in case you don't like what you do just to add a new layer, hit the plus button, add a new layer right there under the flower. Leave the flower turned on though. Make sure you're on the new layer. And let's pick a color. Let's pick this blue color that's already there. And let's alter it just a little. Let's go just a tad lighter from that color. Pull it up, straight up and pick your stamp brush to paint with. So this is one of my favorites for adding to the background because it adds some neat interests. And I'm going to tap that right above the flower. And of course that's too small. So let's bring up the size o. When I accidentally hit it again at the larger size right there. And I kinda like that. So I think I'm going to leave that. But I don't like the little hole in the middle of that stamp there. So what I do with the stamps, as I get on the mess it up, brush as a blender and as I stamp, I will then switch over to blend the areas. I don't like that little that little hole right there. I don't really like that. And like where there's a hard edge, maybe just pull out a little bit. And down here I like this hard, I like this edging of the stamp here, but I'm the part where the leaf is. I'm just going to pull down behind that and maybe even pull out on the side toward the flower. So that gives it a little bit of interests that may be a little strong right there. So I'm going to pull down some more on that and then pull up a little from under it. It kinda breaks it up. Oh, that adds some good interests there. Let's pick a different stamp with that same color. Let's see. And you just go through the marks here. It is helpful to look at the area where you might want to stamp something like right here above these petals. I might like to stamp mark there. I'm looking through here for a mark that might be interesting. If a mark, if you put a mark and you don't like it, you could just double tap to undo that mark. Or because it's on a new layer, you could just erase that mark. Let's pick number 12. Let's see what that looks like. I'm just going to tap right above these two petals. And that looks like it's just kind of floating there. So it's double tapping, undo it, make it bigger and try to stamp closer to the top. Maybe a little bit more over the top edge. That adds a little interests there. Maybe break that up a little with the mess it up brush. And on this side just pull out just a little over to the left. Blended in a little bit. That's pretty neat. I feel like this little gray area in between the petals might, could use a little color. So what if we grab a color from the flower? Because I like to pull colors from the flower into the background. And I like to pull colors from the background and put them into the flower with the stamp brushes. As I go along, Let's try this golden color. Maybe a little strong. So let's go more to the gray side. And maybe up a little lighter, something like that. Let's pick another stamp that might look interesting right there. You just scroll down until you find something you would like. How about this 37? There may be a little abstract. And I'm going to tap right there where that gray area is. O double-tap there. That's kinda interesting. I'm just tapping it and undoing and tapping it in different places. Okay. I kinda like that the way it looks by the petals. I don't like the way it looks up here at the top. So back to the blending brush. And let's just pull some of that blue towards it to tone that down. I'm not really pulling the blue. I'm pulling against the golden, which is showing the blue from underneath. Whoops, that's too strong. Pull some of the golden color out. But that tones it down. But there's a little interests there and I'd like to bring that color in somewhere else. So maybe around the leaf area right here. So let's pick another stamp. About 36. What about that one behind the leaf? It looks like I'm tapping on the flower, but I'm tapping behind it. Well, that's kind of interesting. Just try some different places, but I kinda liked that. I really like this one right here, the way it made that mark. Let's go to the blending brush and let's pull some of the blue down in there. Kinda mess it up. That's why this brush is called mess it up. But I'm leaving that little mark right there because I think that's interesting. But at least it brought some of that color in there. Very nice. Now let's go to the orange, grab that color. And this go just a little bit brighter, a little bit up and brighter on that shade. And let's pick your stamp to go there. What about this watery one, number 44. Let's tap up here at the top and see how that would look. A little too bright. Pull it more toward the gray side. That's interesting. I liked some of that, but I think it needs to be blended some and tone down. So I'm going to use that same blending brush. And well in some of that end just to soften that. Very nice. Now here in-between these puddles where there's a little bit of gray. How about we bring some of the actual oranges closest to that in there. So let me pick there and let's pick a stamp to go there. Um, how much? 62. Let's see what that looks like there. Oh, that's a little big. Doubled double-tap. There's still a little big, It's actually that's a very big stamp brush going behind the whole flower. I might want that brush to go in a different orientation. So one way to do that is to add another layer. Add that stamp brush mark on another layer which is on its own layer. Now. Now touch the arrow appear. Once you're on there, you can take that with your two fingers. Held down on it. Squeeze it, turn it, place it exactly where you might want it. Just try to position that there. All right, I'm going to tap on that layer, set that in place. See it turned it around for me, said that in place. And once I tap the layers tab, while this needs some blending now, so back to the, mess it up. This harsh edge right here. I'm going to blend that out a little bit to soften it. Mess it up. And this edge right here, just little short taps. I'm not really pushing hard at all. And that lets me pull some of the blue or pull against it. Was her worldview reveal what's underneath. You'll get the feel of this as you do it more often. Now that's pretty good there. I liked the way the edging is now, but I feel like it may be a little bit of strong orange right there. So I'd like to bring in a little of the blue tone. So let me find a blue. Just hold down and move it around. That's a good blue. So let me find another stamp brush that I could put right there. Thinking of something soft, Let's try number 80. That's a very soft one. And you can always lower the opacity of the stamp brush. I'm just going to stamp right in there and bring some of that blue over in there. I must have done there. I did a blue stamp by accident. I knew something didn't look right. Double-tap is your friend. Make sure I'm still on Layer five, which I am now tab. And there just to add some of that blue, just tapping in a couple of different spots. I'm going to double-tap again and undo some of that and do a bigger, bigger mark. I think that blue's a little dark. So let me grab a lighter gray blue stain. There we go. That tone that down just a little bit. This is all just personal preference here at this point. All right, I think we've added some good interests to the background for now. So I'm going to squeeze the background and these two stamp layers together. So now they're all one. And then it's time to paint the flower. So that's what we're going to do next. And like I said, I like to merge the flower and the background layer and paint them that way. That's just my personal preference. You can paint the flower on its own layer if you wish. But I like to merge the two, so I'm gonna do that now in squeeze those two. Well, what I just did double-tap to undo that. There we go. I'm going to squeeze those two together. So now the flower, that's how it was, that's how it is. Turn off the original photo layer. And that's a true representation of what we're working with. So now it's time to paint the flower. And because I'm merge them as I paint this flower, some of those strokes are going to come over into the background. But that's okay. Because when you're doing a real painting, you are painting a lot of times on different layers, but they're not stacked on top of each other. It's still all on one piece of paper or one piece of canvas. So I like to try to replicate that same feel. And that's why I like to merge those two layers together. And when I paint the flower, it will actually bring some brush marks from painting the flower right in and mix with the background brush marks. So that's next painting, the flower. 5. Painting The Flower: Okay, Now before painting this layer, I'm going to duplicate it. This is a safety feature. As you can tell, when I duplicated it dark in that upper right corner. For some reason that right corner was being disagreeable when initially masking away or painting the background. So, um, I don't need the layer underneath on. I just need to save the layer underneath. In case I screw this up, I'll have a backup. I can go to just a safety feature. So I'm actually going to start painting the flower now with the blending brush. And I'm going to use the smooth one. And I'm going to start with this little petal up here that's too big of a brush. Lower the size. And I'm going to try to paint it fairly accurately. Blended. You notice I'm going outside the lines. That's alright. I'm doing short little choppy strokes in different directions that creates interest. Now this petal, where it's really lower that a little more, where it's really bright white. I want to maintain that brightness. So I'm just gonna go carefully along that edge and follow the direction of the flower. Along this edge, a little short strokes. And then here this dark area, I want to maintain this. So that same size brush, I'm going to paint that. And this white edge right here, bring this up in here and go along the edge of that pedal. And this little dark area here, pull that up. So anything detailed that you want to maintain, you use a smaller brush for. Now, let's continue on down this petal toward the middle of the flower, where it's lighter. So I want to maintain that lighter area. So anything you want to keep, you might want to use the smaller brush. And then as you get away from that, you can then move your brush size is larger. Let's go back up here to the top and do strokes with the larger brush, pulling in the direction of the petal. At this point. On this petal, I'm just sweeping up and down. I'm going outside the edge, which will sweep that color into the background. Let's get this petal right here where I did the darker areas. And let's mess with that a little bit. Go over that. And then you can also get down here close to the center of the flower and sweep upwards on this petal. Then we have this really large section in the middle that I haven't done. So we're gonna go with a bigger brush and sweep that upwards and then back downwards in the direction of the petal. And get him, get a little free on those edges and just sweep right over those edges where it meets the background. So that pedal is done. Then let's go do this pedal that's kinda heart-shaped. Once again to keep, maintain the lighter areas, I'm gonna go with a little smaller brush and go around the edge right down to where it meets the middle. And this little dark strip in the middle. I want to maintain that. So I'm going to paint that with that small brush straight down. Any of these little areas coming off the top of the petal. Maintain those. So I'm going to go in the direction that those areas are going. Maneuver that brush around. All right. Now let's make it a little larger to get the middle areas, like I said before, go right over those edges and bring them right into the background. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to mess it up. We're getting expressive. I'm staying away from that middle part of the flower though. At this point. I'm getting close to it. I'm going one direction downward and I'm sweeping back, afford to pull these colors in with each other. And then at the top, I'll just go over that just a little and pull that into the background. And even that dark area there. Okay. Now I've stayed away from the middle at this point because I'm working on these petals right now. So let's go. Let's go to this pedal and you can grab with your two fingers and turnaround to work in the direction you want to work in. Now this little dark orange area here on the tip of this pedal. I want to maintain that some painting that with a small brush and kind of going around that edge near it with the smaller brush. And we're the edge meets the stem. I want to maintain that. So I'm going along that edge in the direction of the edge. And then this dark area of this petal meets the other petal. I want to maintain that. I don't want the two petals to blend together. I want them to be separated, so I need to maintain that and even these dark areas appear like to maintain. So using that small brush and even do some little short choppy strokes in there around that orange area. And then obviously were these two petals meet, I don't want to maintain that. And I'll go toward the green and then pull the green out. And then toward it, pull it out. And then we have this little circular area right there painted in the direction of the circle. Kind of work into that. Pull it out and then pull back towards it. Now we can go with the larger brush and I see there's a little imperfection right there. Little purple and perfection. I don't need the imperfections. We're not painting a realistic painting. We're just trying to get the general overall shape and look in there with a bigger brush. In short strokes, mostly in the direction of the petal. Because these petals are smooth, but they're not going to look smooth. And I get done. Right now. I'm trying to keep them kind of smooth. You can go along the outside edge. A little. Mess that up. Alright, there's that pedal. Now we have this pedal and there's a little yellow spot right at the tip. Small brush. And then a dark gray right above that. Try to keep that. And along the edge of that pedal, this dark area here, these little dark areas and light right in-between them I'm trying to keep so I use a small brush. And then down here along this edge of where the center of the flower, nice short little strokes following the direction of those sections of the center of the flower. And where it meets the pedal. Be kind of careful around that. And kind of go around the outside edge. And there's where the leaf comes into. We need to be careful with that. So I'm gonna go down that edge with the smaller brush. Alright, let's get a larger brush now. And this puddle, starting at the top, sweep downwards a few times and even outside the edge. And then sweep upwards back toward what I just did from the lower area and then downwards, then upwards, back-and-forth, upwards and downwards. Come out over the edge of that. This top looks a little choppy, so I'm just going to use in that bigger brush sweep over that a little. Alright, that pedals down. All the petals are done. Now let's do the leaf. Smaller brush, get this tip area. Follow the edge of the leaf. This leaf isn't very big. So I can keep the colors in the leaf by using the small brush and just doing each section of color separately. You'll get a feel for this the more you do it. Or it meets that pedal. Bring that pedal down over that leaf a little. Alright, there's the leaf. Now we still have this center area left to do. And this little yellow flower in the middle section of it requires a pretty small brush. Little short strokes. Any of these areas that are super bright. Be a little cautious with those because you don't want to lose them. And the super dark areas you don't want to lose. The small brush works great, but you can do this small brush on this whole section of the flower. Just treat each little portion and each little puddle of that area separate and go in-between them. Anywhere that's real spectrally from the noise and the photo. You need to paint. If you see specular areas, you haven't painted it yet and other spectrally can add texture. So it's not a bad idea to have some of that in there. And I'm working my way around that now. Just little short strokes in the direction everything is going. It's good to work on one little section at a time. I know you can hear my pen hitting that. So we've got part of it done. Just pick a section and start working on that one section. Trying to keep your lights and your darker areas from blending together too much. This is the smallest part of the flower and it's the longest part to paint because I'm using such a small brush. But I really don't want to lose any of this detail right now. I'm doing this very fast and very loose with the brush marks in different directions. Crisscross and over top of each other, up and down. Just a little bit left to do here. And I also get in-between it where I see speckle on the pedal, still in those areas as well. But leaving a little speckle is not so bad because it does add texture. And we're going to mess this up a little more anyway. Because the whole point of this is painting it realistically and then messing it up. That's what makes it expressive. Painting realistic. And then mess it up. Working very quickly. Little short strokes all the way around that middle section. Now I still see some speckled areas in the petals that I may have missed. So I'm going to just zoom in close and because this is so light, you might not be able to see those areas going right near the flower. And at this point, if I mess up a little portion, that's fine. Adds to the expressiveness. The more you mess it up, the more expressive it looks. Might even want to get in here and just tap in a few spots inside the center portion of the flower. Just here and there. I know you can hear that caffeine was shorter and harder you tap the more messier it looks. All right. So let me turn on the original flower layer. That's the original that's the painted. Let's see. Original. Painted. So you can see the difference there. Now we solve the stem to work with. So once again, small brush to maintain some of the detail in the stem. And then try to paint the same way we did the petals one direction and then pull back and come the other way. That blends the colors together without losing them. Because we're using a very small brush right through the stem. We're not losing the stem and not losing the colors. I mean. And then this part of the stem where it goes off the edge. Same thing, one direction than other direction. Anywhere that it's spectrally is not been painted. Right now the stem has been done. So the entire flower has been painted with a smooth brush realistically at this point. Now it's time to mess it up and get more expressive, which is what we're going to do next. 6. Getting Expressive Part 1: All right. It's time to mess up this one. The very first thing I want to do, make sure I'm on the correct layer is I want to bring I'm a little bit of the paint and blend in there. So using the blending brush with this particular brush. I'm going to test this out on a few areas around the edges. Sweeping just little short strokes in different directions. Maybe go a little bigger. The bigger the brush you go, the more you see those little white lines, the more it actually adds that texture. You can sweep from the background over onto the flower, or from the flower out into the background. Either direction. And even in the middle of the petals do a few strokes, like from the dark area toward the white or the white area toward the dark. Just working on the area of the petals right now to add a little bit of texture here and there. By sweeping gently just around the edges and down the middle of the petals and a few spots sweeping darker against lighter and lighter against darker with this brush. Who that was nice. And I'm doing a fairly large sized brush working on the just the larger areas right now. Here in there. Let's make the brush a little smaller and do some of these little dark areas. Sweeping one-color against another. To add that texture to it was to work on the center and do a couple little touches in there. If it messes up and drags it out. That's fine. The whole point of this is being expressive and this is the beginning of the mess it up stage. Just tapping and dragging in certain spots. And then let's go to the leaf area, turn. Just dragging in a few areas with this brush. And let's go to the stem. Field, little taps and drags on that. I mean, that's very subtle. But it has made a little bit of a difference. So now let's go to the mess it up one, brush. Pick a size to do a test mark with. And you want to undo it, just double-tap. Just do it in a few spots. Short little quick marks. Just kind of working around that center area. You can go with a smaller brush and touch it on a couple of these center area spots. Little short touches, taps and drag. Not even worried right now about keeping everything super realistic. It's more about messing things up. At this point. Let's go to this area here. Bunch of little short taps. They're sort of carve-out around the areas you want to mess with. How about this leaf? Making go a little bigger on the brush. Just add some really nice, messy texture to it. Messier it looks the better, more expressive it looks. If you don't like a mark, just double-tap. I didn't like that mark. I'm going to turn it around and gonna go this way there. This little piece up here and messed up a little too much. If I wanted to bring that back, I could always go to the layer below and mask this out, this little spot. But I don t think I even need that in there. Honestly. That's what you'll find is you mess things up. There may be some elements that you don't really need. This is one of them I don t feel I really need. So I'm going to make the mess it up, brush a little bigger and I'm just going to pull from the background right over top of that, which then basically eliminates it. At this point, you can also bring the mess it up, brush a little more into the background itself and make a few little marks. See, it doesn't even bother me that that's gone. Alright. It's mess up this stem a little bit more. Loosen that up, especially at the edge. I liked that. I tapped right there and it brought some of that orange into that stem. That's kind of a big brush though. Now, what did I do with my there we go. I'm accidentally lost my stuff. My brush sizes. Tapping on the edges around that stem will loosen that up. If you pull too much color to the background, just pull some from the background towards it. So we're starting to look pretty painterly now. And if we, there's what we started with, there's what we've ended up with. So now it's time to add a little bit more darkening and brightening. And bring some colors from the background into the flower. And bring some colors from the flower into the background. So we're going to do that on a new layer. And I will paint these with To start with. Let's do, let's just paint it with the mess it up, brush. See what happens. Let's paint some. Now. Change my mind. Let's use the pain but blend brush. I'm were these grays are these grays area? I'm gonna get on the gray color, but I want it to be a little darker at sort of a blue-gray. So I'm just going to play with brush size a little bit and weren't doing this on a new layer. So if I get a little too dark, I can reduce the opacity. Just going to add some darker marks where I want them trying to look at, you know, where they were before. All right, now let's there's sort of a creamy tone right here. It's not really quite creamy. It's a blue-gray. When you hold down and may get grab a color. It's interesting what comes up. I'd like to bring some of this yellow tone in there. So let's see. Let's go with a bigger brush. Bring some of that into that petal. This petal, this petal, a little right there. I'd also like to bring some of this turquoise into the flower in a few spots. So let's put a little dab, their little dab there. This is all just guesswork at this point. And let's bring some of this yellow and maybe even go a little brighter and a little lighter with that. Let's bring some of that. Oops, a little too big. My stomach just to ground. I don't know if you can hear that or not. Alright. Let's bring some of that. Yellow I got from the flower. Grab some more of that. And let's bring a few little marks of that into the background. In a few spots, mainly at the top. This white right here. Probably going to be on the blue side. I want to go a little brighter with it. Let's do a few little taps where the light would be hitting. In certain areas. Going back to the yellow from the flower and bring a little tiny bit of that into this leaf. And then get some of this orange. Bring it in there to just add a little color. Just trying to tie everything together. Now, that's all on a new layer. Say that's before and that's after. So now we need to blend this a little bit. What we just did. So I'm going to use the mess it up brush and fairly decent size. And over those areas where I've added that, I'm just going to tap and blend some of that. Of course that one's too big. Go a little smaller. Just very short. Loose taps. It was too strong. You can pull from around it to tone it down. That's too strong, so I'll pull back towards it. But all of this with these different brushes on top, add some texture to this while still bringing in those colors. Then when you zoom out, you can see where it's too strong and you might need to work on those areas. Don't forget where you added in the background to actually blend a little bit of that out to zooming way out and kinda see where you're at. I think I need a little more of a lighter tone brought in. I'm going to actually use the mess it up brush and make a few little marks. Still needs to be lighter and not so big. So strong, just a little dab here in there. That's too strong. They are just a very light touch. Now blend that some more. And you have to play with brush size and see how much of this you really want to be in there. And like I said, because it's on a new layer. If you don't like something, you can mask it off, he erased it off. You can also reduce the opacity of the layer. If you find a too strong, and I do this a lot, I'll reduce the opacity down to about between 80, 90%. When I kinda liked the way that looks, I still feel the flower looks a little bit structured. So I'm gonna go ahead and blend or squeezed these two layers together. There we go. So that's before and that's after. All right, keep that original flower layer turned off so I can get a true picture of what I'm looking at. So I do feel we need to mess up the edges of the flower a little bit more. Let's play with the textural brush. And let's see what we can accomplish with that. And I'm gonna go along the edge and pull some of that toward the background and pull some of the background toward it. Just to kind of loosen up those edges a little bit. Even working in the middle of the flower. Just tap and drag very lightly. This adds a little bit of texture and it'll pull a little bit of color Around. Let's work on the left. As you pull. I lost a little bit of edge to the leaf there. Let's reduce the size. Stroking different ways. With this will create a different effect just very, you have to be careful with this brush. It's very finicky, but it's very fun. Alright, let's go a little bigger on the brush again around some of these flower edges. Pull from the background toward the edge. That's kinda interesting. You'll get a lot of happy accidents with this brush when using it. But it's a lot of fun. And I'm just, like I said, doing very light marks, very light strokes and blending with this brush. Let's actually try to add a little color with that same brush. Let's get this little tan color right here and see if I can. But some of that noun. So you think it needs to be a little smaller, a little more to the yellow side and maybe even a little brighter. Oh, yeah. Little lighter. On top of that. That's too dark. Now let's blend that in a little bit. Soften it up a little too strong. Grabbed some of the blue dots, a few little marks with that. Around in some different spots. Whoops. Too strong, undo it. I'm just putting the marks wherever I want. And how about some of this dark gray? Let's enhance that a little bit. Maybe even a little smaller. One mark is a little strong. Let's blend it. Blending it will really help tone some of that texture and mark down if it's a little strong. I like some of it. I don't want it to be like super overly textured. 7. Getting Expressive Part 2: Let's bring some of this textural marks into the background as well. Just grab a color that's there and go with a really big brush and do a mark or two here and there. And then grab some of that orangey color. Touch and drag some of this yellow color down here. That's too strong. I don't want to lose my mark there, but I want something kind of close to it. As too strong. Very light. Maybe even that was kind of interesting. How about some of the slider? Blue-gray down there? You don't like what, how it comes out. And I'm getting a real loose and messy now and just picking different colors with that textural brush and doing marks. How about this blue? Bring some of that blue down in there and then blend it. Fairly good size brush, which will help soften that up. Lost part of my stem there. Don't really wanna do that. Don't want to soften too much. I'd rather grab a darker color and go from nearby and go over it. Not too strong though, lighter. I'm telling you this brush is finicky, go from a different direction, zoom in very light, drag just a little touch of it. And they're not getting the right consistency. Sometimes changing the brush size will help that one's too strong. A lot of undoing like to get this bright orange in there. How about some of this yellow gold? I don't like that. Bigger brush. Later, drag. There we go. Got a nice little light stroke and texture in there. You just have to play with it and go right over that stem. We're starting to get some more now. Where else do I want to add that? Over there? Down here. Oh, yeah, I kinda like it down there. Maybe even under the flower a little bit with that same color. All right. I feel like I'm getting somewhere. This is all just play. At this point. Don't like it double tapping, undo it. I want to bring some of the white of the flower in, but I think I want to do some stamp brushes. So I'm going to add a new layer. I'm going to grab the white on the edge of the flower and I'm going to go get a stamp brush. Let's try number three, make sure you're on the new layer. Oh yeah, that's good. But it's a little bit too on the blue side. So let me scoot it up a little more white. Just tap very gently and I'm tapping off the edge. This is the actual stamp. But I'm tapping off the edge just a little bit to get just a little bit of it on there. That's pretty neat. Now what if I wanted to do that same stamp and a blue but down here in this bottom corner, the problem is the stamp brushes going that direction. So let's add a new layer. Let's go ahead and stamp the brush. Turn it with our fingers, and position it where we might want it here. How about that? So it's the same stamp brush. It's just turned a different way. But in order to make it look different, I'm going to use the mess it up, brush on the edges, and just kind of gently tap some of that out and around. Alright, now let's go to the white one and gently do this. Got to get on the white layer. There we go, tap some of that out, would that mess it up, brush. All right, Hey, that's looking pretty expressive there. Let's do some more brushes. Let me squeeze those layers together. Start a new layer. Oops, I got two new layers. Let's do, let's grab this, this color right here I've been kinda liking. Or better yet. Let's go to some of this yellow from the flowers is sort of a yellow-green. Get a real bright one. And maybe bring it a little bit more toward the middle to tone it down. And let's pick a stamp. Let's look at stamp 80. You can actually put that in the flower, but it's still a little bright and bring it more toward the gray. What happens is that stamp is going in the direction of the petal. So what happens if we put that in a pedal right there? And then using the mess it up brush. When some of that down. Here's a little interesting effect to that pedal. But I still want to go ahead and stamp some of that in the background. Stamp ten is one of my favorites. I'm just kind of tap around and see where I might want it to go. Tapping undo. I kinda like it right there. But I wanted to try to do this on its own layer. So I can then turn it and position it the way I want. That's kinda cool. Using the mess it up, brushing the blender again, Let's tone it down a little bit. By blending out some of that stamp. There we go. That's kinda neat. I think I want that color over here on the left though as well. So let's squeeze those together through another new layer. And you notice I'm doing this a lot. How about how about this one has a pretty strong stamp. That's probably too strong. How about let's do some dots. Stamp number 24. Put a few little dots in there in different locations. And using the mess it up brush just kind of gently. Loops. Generally tap around that to try to turn some of that down. Now have some lines in here too. So I'll make a new layer. Worse the lines Here's some minds, but they're going in one direction. But by being on a new layer, we can turn those lines and put some in here like that, and then use the mess it up brush. I want to pull the white over and the blue over into the yellow. Just to tone down the lines a little bit. Okay, That's kinda cool. What else can we add? Let's merge those together, start a new layer. So you notice I'll do a couple of layers, a couple of marks, merge them, and then start a new one. How about some splatter? Here's a good 128 in that same color. Raise the size up so I can see what I'm doing. Oh, that looks pretty fun. That looks good. Excuse the mess it up. Brush to kind of wondered off of the edge of the petal. Let's find another splatter here. 29 is another good one. Let's see where I might want that to go. Off the bottom. Oh, I like that. I like it. Just like it is. I'm going to leave that one. Let's see this bright green sort of olivine grain. Let's choose that color. Let's see what else we've got here. We've got I'm looking for some mark that will look kinda cool and the bright green. This one's a very big splatter. It's a lot of splatter, but you can re-size it down. That's too much splatter worth that other one I just used. Salmon looked like Oh, I like that one. Kinda messed up around the leaf but it got over the one Mark I really like. There we go. But let's blend that off of the flower. Using the mess it up, brush. When that off of that petal. Just leaving a little bit of it around the leaf right there. I feel that the white on the left is little too bright now. So let's grab a little blue that's nearby it. Actually, let's go down here underneath it and get this color something nearby and find a soft stamp mark like number 56. And just stamp that well, stamp that sum right there. Yeah, that tone that down a little bit, just stamping that their lead my eyes wander around the whole painting. Before I decide where I want to put a mark. And you use the stamp brushes and blending brushes to make those marks and enhance them. And I start looking. When I zoom out, I started looking for anything that's really bothering me. And I feel like this yellow color putting here's a little too strong. I think it needs to be lighter, so I'm going to take a white new layer. I'm gonna see if I can find a stamp mark that might work there. What about 50? That's a pretty good mark, but this is on a new layer. I'm let me resize that marked down, squeeze it down and position it where I might want it. Which that's pretty good. Right in there to tone down the yellow. Playing with it. There we go. But I want to blend off or it covered this a little dark area. I want to blend that away. Bring that back. Now let's get this blue from this other Shine. Do another mark. Mark might go good there. This Mark 13. That's too big. Pull that down. This is real subtle. I'm just kinda tapping it over that blue. I mean that yellow. Still think I need a little more of the white in there. Let's tap some of that over there. I know you probably didn't see that. I didn't hardly see it myself. To go more to the white. There we go. Let's put that on a new layer so I can bill with that. Turn it. Turn it. I'm just grabbing this in my two fingers. Turning it and resizing it, putting it in position where I might want it. Um, let me click on the layer, so show up. Well that gives a little bit more interests to that petal. Wonder, what about putting that same mark on another petal? You can go ahead and make the mark again, or you can just duplicate this layer and you can grab it and move it. What about up here on this petal? Let's turn it around there. That's better. All right. I've got too many layers going. August, start getting confused, some merge all those together and start a new layer. This orange right here. I feel like there needs to be a little bit of brighter orange mark in there. So I've selected the color. And I'm gonna go through quite a bit brighter. There we go. Let's see if we can make a stamp mark in there. How about this one? It's on its own layer so I can re-size it. Turn it turn it around where I might want it. How about that? Needs to be blended a little bit. So using that mess it up, brushes, tap around it a little. There we go. It gives a little bit of bright orange there. I'd like some more of that bright orange and a few other spots. So let's just do a new layer. Let's pick a paint marker. What Mark do I want? Stamp 27. That's a little too strong. It can reduce the opacity of it. No, no like that either. Not the right stamp. Sometimes what I like to do is grab these and because it's on a new layer, I can just stamp it, turn it, re-size it, resize it. I'm trying to do this with the pencil in my hand. It doesn't like that. All right, let's take that and blend. Using some of this. I actually don't mind a little bit of it coming on the petals. All right, let's do another layer of that. Let's pick a different one. I want that Mark to go. Move it. Let's turn it. See if I like it anywhere. Once again, try and do this with the pencil in my hand so it's not liking me. Try that and blend. Short little taps sometimes will blend just enough to bring some of that color in there. Which getting nit-picky. Now, I really think we've got quite inexpensive flower here. Let me squeeze all those together. And let me turn on the original flower there. And this is where we are now. But better yet, let me turn on the original photo. That's where we started. And this is where we are. And I'm actually liking that pretty well the way that is. And I think I might want to go ahead and sign this. Um, then pick a color and you pick a brush to sign with. Like the number three is one of my favorites. I'm going to pick a color that I want to sign with. Maybe this kind of neutral color right there. Let me try to just sign down. There. Might be a little big bring the size down a little. There might be a little small. Of course I signed it on. I always like to sign on a new layer. There we go. And now, once you've signed on a new layer, you can grab it and move it around where you might want to put it. I like to always put it down here in this corner. And you don't want it to be too obtrusive. I do tend to resize it down quite a little bit, but my signatures on that now. So squeeze those together. So that's a pretty good expressive flower. I'm especially when compared to our original photo. There we go. It's definitely brighter, definitely more fun, definitely more expressive. And if you want to at this point, you could duplicate this and you can edit using the adjustments. You can edit and brighten it up, adjust your colors a little bit, sharpen it, all that kind of thing. If you want to write right from here, I like to go ahead and save this image and send it to my computer, pick it up on my computer and edit from there using my computer monitor because I have found things look different on the computer than they do on the iPad. And when I print, I've edited on the computer monitor. My prints look exactly like they look on the computer monitor. But yet when I print from, directly from the iPad, they might tend to be a little bit different looking and I like to not be surprised when I get the print. So I tend to edit on the computer, but you can edit here using the adjustments tab. In Procreate. You can edit for a lot of things in here and print right from here. Either way you want to do it. Anyway, that's the dog would flower. And I think that turned out really, really cool. And after a little bit of editing for contrast and sharpness, which is basically all I do at this point. I think this will be a great print, especially when printed large size. So I hope you guys have enjoyed this and kinda get a feel for how I work with the stamp brushes. And I can't wait to see what you do with the dog would flower be sure to download the original photo from me and play with it and create your own look for it. Or if you want to, you can use one of your own flower photos that you might have. And I hope you guys have enjoyed watching this. Thanks again for being here. And I look forward to seeing you in the next class. Have a great day. 8. Final Thoughts: I want to give you all a few final thoughts here. After we've done this painting. In the beginning, most learning my photo painting methods tend to gravitate more towards realism. It's only natural to be worried about getting everything is accurate as possible, which is what we did in the beginning of this class. But that result can be just a re-creation of the actual photo your painting. And that's fine in the beginning. Staying accurate can help you get a good feel of the subject and how the painting works. Um, but after completing the accurate renditions, It's more exciting to get more painterly, at least to me. Because if I want an exact rendition of my photo, I could just put the photo out there. And I got started in this way of painting because I wanted my photos to look different and I do edit my photos a lot using textures and backgrounds and other things to make them look different. But then I wanted to take it a step further. And that's how I ended up painting expressively in procreate. And it's hard to step away from what your subject actually looks like when painting a photo. And I'm sure you've struggled with that as we've gone along. But I hope that this class has helped you to feel a little bit freer about loosening up and getting more expressive. And I wanted to mention a couple of things to remember. I'm a major key in becoming more expressive and loose is how the edges of your subjects are treated. Let me, let me just make some marks on here. So I can mention a few things. Let's go back to the go grab a pencil there. But look, look right there. Before I mess up this, let me put this on a new layer. Okay? Look right there at those edges. You see how they're treated. Messing up the edges in these key areas like this will loosen up your subject and it gives your painting and more interesting and energetic feel. Another major step in becoming more loose and expressive as the mark-making that we did with the stamp brushes. We did a lot of mark-making in the background using the stamp brushes. But we also did some mark-making actually on the petals. Actually on the subject itself with the different marks. Like little splatters and little things like this. Don't be afraid to do that. Using the brushes to apply unpredictable marks on a new layer and then blending them in with the realism that's on the layer below adds more interest to the final painting. And the fun part is about the marks as you can not only stamp the stamp brush on there and make a mark, but then if you decide, I don't like that mark and it's entirely entirety, you can blend it, but you can also use the eraser with a different stamp brush and erase part of it, which creates even more uniqueness and interest. The background is very important because it defines the center of interests, which is this. The background and the subject needs to be tied together, in my opinion. And I did this in this painting with color choices and with brush marks. The color choices repeating in the background, like this blue and this blue, repeating in the background and the subject tie it together. Brush marks that repeat in the background. And the subject that tie it together to like this really textural brush here and here. It ties the two things together by repeating those. So that's something to remember. Repeat some of your background color actually in the subject. And repeat some of your subject color in the background like that. Bringing the white from the flower out into the background. The, the, I think the most important thing when painting like this is to ask yourself what if What if I use this color? What if I use this particular stamp brush? What if I loosen a certain edge? What would that look like? What if I use a larger brush or a smaller brush and just make a sweeping mark or a real tight scribble mark, like something like that. I didn't really do a lot of that in this painting, but it certainly can be done. Um, all of those questions help you to achieve a fresh and loose style. So what do you want to avoid when doing a painting like this? You want to become detached from the photo in the beginning. You won't, you'll be painting it realistically, so it's really hard to do that. But then later on when it's time to get expressive, don't be attached to that photo. And that's why I turned that photo layer off and I don't really turn it back on. There's numerous ways to treat your subject and play with your subject and don't be afraid to try those. Don't fear fragmenting the form of your subject. Don't fear breaking up a line where the petal edges supposed to be sharp list. Let's just do that here. Let's just grab the mess it up brush, which is one of my favorites. And let's just pull down right there. Don't be afraid to do that. What if you were to put a stamp on that, you know, across the edge of the flower. Let's pick one here. What if you were to paint a drip, something like this? And well, there it is. Obviously that's too big, but don't be afraid to try stuff like this and then use the mess it up brush to take out what you don't want like that. See it left that little bitty mark right there. Don't be afraid to do that stuff. And don't care about the outcome. Because you'll be surprised when you get done and you zoom out. And you look at things, at how good it really looks when you're done. So what's going to happen after you do all this? Through experimentation like this, your personal style will come. You may decide you like to stay super realistic with your paintings that you don't like this and that's okay. You may decide you prefer warm colors, are cooler colors in your work. That comes from playing with the different colors, putting different colors in the background and bringing those into your subject. And you'll say, Do I like that, do not like that. You'll learn that as you go along, you may decide you like a really obscured subject and making this even more abstract than I've done here. You may decide you prefer dark over light or vice versa. This is a real light image. I've made it quite a bit lighter than it was in the original photo. And you can see the original photo here. And layer one is really dark. And I've made it quite a bit lighter, but you may decide to go darker with your work, and that's fine. You may decide you want to incorporate a favorite color too. And every painting like I did here with my oranges and my, my blues, I like those two colors. I incorporate those two colors a lot in my work. I feel like that makes my work me. And you may decide you like really heavy texture or you may decide you like a softer texture or very little texture at all. Um, as you continue to experiment, what you love to create in a painting will come to light. And I hope I have guided you into feeling free to experiment with this class. And I hope you'll try this image and you'll try some of your own flower images and see what you can come up with and kinda get a feel for what you love to do in a painting. Thanks again for joining me and I look forward to seeing your class projects and what you create. Have a great day.