How to Paint Realistic Bearded Irises in Watercolor

1. Preview: Hello everyone. In this tutorial, we are going to be learning how to paint this beautiful irises with deeper Burgundy petals. This is quite a long project and it requires a bit of patience. But I divided the tutorial into short, manageable parts. In each part, we'll focus on a different element of the painting. There is a lot to learn from this tutorial. We'll be using masking fluid, wet on wet technique with them, dry technique, lifting out even some negative painting. You will learn how to create that nice deep color of the petals without them looking to flat or pale will be using really nice colors for this one, you will see how to combine them in a beautiful way. How to create this nice color composition with contrasting colors. It's definitely something more challenging. If you really want to develop your skills, you just have to give it a go. You just have to give a go. Something more demanding. 2. Introduction and Masking: Hi, and thank you for joining me today. In this tutorial, we are going to be learning how to paint these beautiful irises with the burgundy petals. This is quite a long project, so please be patient and follow me step-by-step. If you feel tired at any point, just take a break, paint something else if you like, and come back to this painting later. Some paintings just need more time to complete. I also highly recommend watching each part carefully before you start painting. This applies to all of my tutorials. For this painting. I used to reference photos. As you can see, I didn't copy those photos and I didn't even follow those references very precisely. I created my own composition based on the shapes that I took from those photos. I made up the entire background, the leaves, and even the way I painted the flowers is not really similar to the reference photos. I was inspired by the deep burgundy color of the down facing petals. And I knew that was the most important part for me that I wanted to achieve deep dark color. I also think that it's a very nice painting color wise. We have complimentary colors here, purple and yellow. But everything is really balanced and tone down. Nothing is screaming here. I feel calm when I'm looking at this painting. The nice thing about this composition is that there are no big areas that are difficult to manage. The whole painting is divided into nice small sections, which will be easy to handle. So in this sense, this painting is really nice and easy. Some areas like those lighter petals will require slightly more patients and more attention. But remember that you don't have a deadline and you don't have to hurry. Take your time. Paint at your own pace and when you feel tired, just take a break. But please promise me that you will finish this painting. I'm sure you will benefit from finishing it and you will be very proud of it. I wanted to achieve a sense of movement and growth in this composition. The sense of movement is emphasized by spiky leaves pointed upwards. But on the left and the highest leaf coming out of the page, suggesting that there is more beyond the page. In order to avoid too repetitive composition to regular composition. The flowers are turned in slightly, just slightly different directions, and the crusting leaves at interests in the flow from the bottom to top. What is also nice here is that all of those elements overlap each other. Some flowers are in front of the leaves. Some leaves are in front of the petals. Some things are more in the back. This also gives a sense of depth. When it comes to the background, my plan was to make it lighter at the top and darker at the bottom. I knew that the flowers will play an important role here and the petals will be very dark. So I decided to paint the background with pretty light colors in general. Okay, So if you're ready, we can start painting. I already have a sketch here. I used the 140 pound Arches paper, made the drawing. Then I wet the paper at the back and in front, and I stapled it to my gator board. The next day when it dried, I added masking tape around to get that nice clean border around the finished painting. We're going to start by applying the masking fluid. You don't have to use masking fluid here because each section is quite small. There are no very complex edges that would be too difficult to paint around. So if you don't have masking fluid or you don't want to use it or can't use it, you can skip this step. I want to use masking fluid because it will be much easier to paint the background. I won't have to worry about the edges at all. I'll be using Winsor Newton masking fluid with a yellow tinge for applying it. I'll be using an old synthetic brush that I use only for masking fluid to prevent the bristles from sticking together. We also need a piece of soap. Here's the soap in this little container. And I also like to use an old cap from an old masking fluid. I pour a bit of masking that I'm going to use. I do that because it's best to keep the battle with masking closed. Oxygen in contact with masking will create ugly clumps of masking in the bottle. So keep your bottle open as short as possible. As a side note, I want to apologize for the look of my hand and the scars, but I was brutally attacked by this handsome gentleman. I'm starting by pouring a bit of masking to that old cup. Now wet your brush, rub it on a piece of soap. Dip the brush in water again, if you need to cover the bristles well with the soap. Now, dip the brush in the masking and start applying it to the edges. Try to carefully create straight lines. Because remember that those will be the shapes of your flowers or leaves. The shape that you are painting now with the masking will be the shape of the object you are masking. Also be generous. Thick layer of masking will protect your shapes better and will be easier to remove later. I'm now going to show you how I'm applying the masking to the entire painting because that would be too boring. Instead, I have prepared for you a sketch on which I have marked exactly where you should apply the masking fluid. When you finish this process, leave it to dry completely. I waited for about an hour. Now we can move on to the next step. In the next lesson, we're going to apply the first layer to the background. 3. Background - First Layer: When the masking fluid is completely dry, we can start painting the background. Further background, I'll be using a brush size ten. Let's start from the upper left corner. Prepare a very watery mix of burnt sienna, permanent rose, and a tiny touch of Windsor blue-green shade. This should give you a very subtle beige color. Mix. Also Payne's gray with burnt sienna and green gold. This makes, should give you a very nice neutral olive green. Basically, we are trying to create less saturated versions of pink and green. Keep also green, gold and permanent rose in separate petals, just in case if we had to add a stronger accent. I'm also going to prepare a darker version of my beige color. So a mix of permanent rose, burnt sienna, and Winsor blue. It actually reminds a break read, a desaturated brownish red. Okay, so we have some colors to work with. Now start by wetting this whole section. I think this is the biggest section in the whole painting. Apply a water layer and make sure that you cover this whole area entirely and evenly. Don't hurry. Make sure the surface is wet. It must have that nice high sheen. Now, load your brush with a bit of water. It shouldn't be dripping wet. Notice that I always dip my brush in water and then I press the resource to the wall of my water container to remove the axis. So the brush is wet but it's not dripping wet. Then pick up that nice neutral pinkish page and applied to the background paint around the bulb. More burnt sienna on the left in the corner. Then again, a bit of beige and change to that neutral green in the area where later we'll paint the leaf. Notice that I'm leaving gaps between my colors. You can see in the final painting that it resulted in those nice, lighter areas that gave a sense of space and light. I don't have a reference photo for this background and I don't really have any particular plan for it. I just know that I want it to be lighter at the top and darker at the bottom. I'm deciding which colors to use and where as I go along. I'm reacting to what is happening on the paper. Here in this corner. I decided to use a stronger pink just because they thought it would be a nice complement to that dark petal. In general, I'm trying to use the same colors in the background that I will be using later to paint the flowers. It's important to reflect some colors from the main subject in the background. This way the painting will be more cohesive. So this pink may be some suggestion of another flower for in the back. I also dropped in green gold here to suggest maybe a leaf in the background. This is all out-of-focus, which helps to create that depth of field. When you apply your colors, TLT are painting in different directions to get the paint moving. This helps the colors to mingle smoothly on the paper and create those nice color transitions. The nice thing about this painting, as I mentioned in the previous part, is that it's divided into small, manageable sections. Now when we painted that upper-left section, we don't have to wait until it dries. We can go directly to the next section. Paint each section the same way. Use wet on wet technique. So start by applying a nice and even layer of water. Then add your colors and tilt your painting to allow the colors move and blend. Here we have green above the peril, so we want to continue using that green in order to create continuity in the background. We don't want the petals or a stem to divide the background in terms of colors. If there is a green on one side, we want to add that green on the other side too. And here we can change the colors. So I'm back with my Muted Pink on both sides of the leaf. And I'm adding green gold to that leaf itself. Don't worry, if the green is flowing outside the pencil lines, that's totally fine. This is just the background. Wet another section, and this time start with pink because on the left side of the stem, we already have pink, so we want to continue that color and then add a different color if you like. I'm trying to use more green close to the leaf. My plan is to create a little contrast in the upper right corner. I know that the pedal will be purple. So I could add either purple or pink to repeat that color behind the pedal. But I can also create a color contrast. So that's what I decided to do here. I want to add more green in this area. I'm mixing green, gold, Payne's gray, and burnt sienna. When you go down, changed the color to pink. Again, notice that I'm using pink close to the pedal because on the other side of the petal, I already have some pink. Now let's paint the lower part of the painting from left to right. After a wedding, this small section, pick up Permanent Rose and add it to the upper part. Just above the pedal we have pink, so below the pedal, we also want to start with pink. Now mixed Payne's gray with green, gold and Winsor blue to get that deep, dark green. We added Winsor blue to make the green look a bit more fresh. Added that green in the middle part. Then at the bottom, at pink. This pink is a suggestion of a pedal that is behind the flower in front. Even though green is flowing too far, use a tissue and just remove the green. Another section on the left of this petal, we have pink, so I'm starting with the pink. And below I'm adding burnt sienna to reflect some colors from the petals. Another section, again, permanent rose, burnt sienna, but also green to suggest leaves. Now, this section requires a bit more care because we have to team two cars, two contrasting colors, and apply them next to each other. So start slowly with a light pink shade. Then add green on both sides. Notice also that in the final painting, there is an additional leaf that I didn't draw here. I added that leaf at the very end when I finished my painting with a clean, damp brush. Run your brush on the green edges to prevent the green flowing too far. Now, use a more concentrated, permanent rose with just a tiny bit of Payne's gray and add this pink at the bottom and along the edges. It's important now that this pink is drier or the paint should be more concentrated than the paint that is already on the paper. If you add too much water, the water will just spread out. It will push the paint away and it will create blooms. We want to attain this paint. We want to try to keep it within this pink area. Add more Payne's gray in the corner and a mix of green, gold and Payne's gray under leaf on the left. Finally, the last section, the bottom-right corner, start by applying an even layer of water and then apply the green on the right side of the stem. We have green on the left, so we needed on the right as well. If you want to darken the green, add more Payne's gray. Now here I thought that I would do something a bit risky. I looked at the whole painting and I realized that I didn't use yellow anywhere. And I knew that I would use yellow on the main flowers. So I thought I could add a very strong yellow accent here, hoping that it will look right next to the green leaf and Burgundy pedal. So in the upper part, use pinkish brown, a very light tone. And then when you go down, use a very strong Winsor, yellow deep. That's a beautiful sunny, yellowish orange that we are also going to use on the pedals. Okay, so we have applied the first layer to the entire background. Now leave it to dry completely. It must be bone dry before moving onto the next lesson, I left it to dry overnight. 4. Background Leaves - Initial Layer: In this lesson, we will go over the background again, but this time our main goal is to apply a green layer on the leaves. But we will also paint some sections again to intensify the colors. Make sure that everything is really dry. This is extremely important. Let's prepare some colors first, the paint on my palette is dry, so I need to activate the paint and prepare some nice juicy colors. I'm spraying my paints with clean water because they are really dry now. Mix that green gold with Winsor blue to get that nice fresh green. Keep also darker mix of green. So a mix of green, gold, Windsor blue, and Payne's gray. Now I'm starting by applying permanent rose here in this corner. I want to make it more intense, but if you're painting looks good here. You don't have to do anything. I'm applying permanent rose. Then I'm adding my green. And after that, I'm quickly cleaning my brush. And with a clean damp brush, I'm softening the edges of that green. I want to fade it away. Then I'm dropping in some purple and mix of permanent rose and Payne's gray. I feel like permanent rose itself is a bit too boring and too intense here. So I wanted to tweak it a little bit and I want to refer to the future colors of the petals. So I added a little bit of purple here. Now we can apply the green to the first leaf. Notice that my paint is nice and watery. Make sure that your paint isn't too dry. It has to be watery because otherwise, we might get an overworked look. If it's watery, the pigment will be distributed evenly and it will nicely spread on the paper. If the paint was too dry, your brush marks would be too visible to dry. And you might even get some hard edges. After applying your main green drop in some darker green on the right-hand side of the leaf. And at the bottom. Continue painting the leaf between the petals. Change the tone of the green here and there. We don't want a flat green layer. It will look better if we have some tonal variations. You can see that my paint now looks pretty dark, while in the final painting, it's much lighter. That's because I know that watercolor dries paler. So when I'm painting, I'm using a bit darker colors than they should be. I also want to apply just one layer here. So I want to get the right tone in the first go. I'm picking up a darker green now with more Payne's gray and I'm applying it to the section on the left. I think I need to darken it. The colors are too pale. And as you remember, I was planning to make the bottom part of the painting darker. So I'm applying here the same colors as previously, but in a slightly darker tone. Now the leaves at the bottom, I'm painting wet on dry now. For me, wet on dry technique is a bit more tricky than the wet on wet because you really need to be careful when it comes to the paint consistency. If the paint is too dry, you may quickly get an overworked look. Notice again that I tried to keep my paint very watery. That's one thing. But another thing is that I'm using a pretty big brush. And this is also vital. It's a brush size ten. If your brush is too small, you will start making too many brushstrokes. And if additionally your paint is too dry, then failure is guaranteed. When you paint wet on dry. And you want to get a nice and smooth washes like here. You need to use a big brush, watery paint, and paint as quickly as you can. Okay, so we have applied green on all leaves. Now I want to improve tomorrow sections. I want to apply just a little bit more pink in this little section, just a tiny bit. And I want to darken the upper right corner. Again, I'm applying the same colors as in the previous layer, but this time using wet on dry technique with a big brush and a very watery paint. Thanks to that, my colors nicely blend on the paper. If the paper was dry air, I would see brush marks and green would not create that smooth gradient with pink. Now leave everything to dry completely. And in the next lesson, we will finish the background. 5. Finishing the Background: Everything is now completely dry. I want to start by darkening this pink area is just too light here. If you want to darken this section to, then makes permanent rose with Payne's gray and apply that dark pink to the bottom. Then switch to green and smooth everything out. Tried to work fairly quickly. We are painting wet on dry, so bland, all the colors before they dry. Now mix Windsor blue, green, gold, and Payne's gray. So our dark green. We'll now use some negative painting technique. Applied this darker green to the left of the leaf to bring out its shape. So we are not painting the leaf itself, but we're painting the background behind it. Here. Paint this triangular area between the leaves. Here at a shadow that will create a clear distinction between the two leaves. Leave this to dry. Now I'm going to change my brush to a liner brush size to you don't need a brush like that. You can use your regular brush tool or you can use a rigger brush if you have one. I'm using this one because it's nice to paint long lines. And that's what we are going to paint. Now. We'll start from this leaf. Rotate your painting if it's more comfortable for you. I prefer to paint along lines from left to right, from bottom to top. So I rotated my paintings so that I could paint it diagonally. Pick up dark green paint and paint along straight lines running through the entire leaves. Those lines don't have to be super straight. They should look natural. It may be counter-intuitive, but try to paint them quickly and make quick movements. Your lines will be more straight if you paint them using quick brushstrokes. If you'll be running your brush slowly on the paper, the lines may be much more wobbly. When the lines are finished. I want to darken the one more section. I think it's a bit too light. So I'm applying here a mix of permanent rose and Payne's gray. And I'm quickly blending this color with the background. There is one thing that bothers me here. I think I should add the tip of the leaf somewhere behind the stem to check how it would look like, I took a piece of paper, I drew more or less the shape that I thought would work well here. And I cut it out. Now I could add some green paint and check if that would look good. Now I am sure that I want to add it here. I think it will look much better. So I'm drawing that shape and I'm filling it with green. Later when this dries, I will add those lines. Okay. Everything is now completely dry and we can remove the masking fluid. I'm using this rubber masking pickup tool, but of course you don't need it. It's really helpful and I like to use it, so I recommend that, but if you don't have it, don't worry. You can use your fingers. When masking fluid starts to come off. I can just pull it like this and it comes off in one piece. That's thanks to the fact that I applied a thick layer of it. We can even use this dry masking ball to remove the rest of the masking. And then we have it. I don't know if you can see this, but my masking left that yellow tinge on the paper. That's because I didn't mix it well before using it. And also because it's very old already, but it's very, very pale. So I don't worry about that. It will not affect my painting in any way. Here you can take a closer look at what I have so far. In the next lesson, we'll start painting the flowers. 6. Light Petals - Initial Layer: Okay, so finally we can start the most exciting part. In this lesson, we're going to apply an initial layer on the upper light petals. I'm thinking about the color of these pedals. In my reference photos, those irises have various colors. Some of them are more bluish violet, others are more creamy pink. I think I want to go with something in between, like a purple color that will complement my dark petals nicely. I'm preparing permanent rose. And here at this stage, I also added quinacridone magenta, but I won't be using magenta later. And I'm adding Winsor blue to that pink to get that purple. Because of the magenta. This purple is a bit too bright. And that's why I won't be using it later. I'm also preparing Winsor yellow deep with a bit of transparent yellow. We're going to use the wet on wet technique. So I'm first wedding the entire petal. I'm using a brush number ten, wet, all upper petals carefully, make sure that there are no dry areas. There are no dry spots. The surface should be glistening, you should see that high sheen and there should be no excess water. Now pick up your purple mix and drop in that color to the edges, leaving some gaps here and there. Now clean your brush blooded on a paper towel. And with this clean, damp brush, pull that paint toward the middle part of the petal. This way you can create those nice subtle passages of color. Add a stripe running along the middle, and then switch to yellow and added at the bottom. There will be green as well, but we don't worry about that. Green will be much darker than yellow, so we can easily paint over it. Besides, yellow will only help to intensify that green. We also want to create that nice transition from yellow to purple. When these two colors meet, they should create some brown. On the left hand side. Also add a subtle core shadow and then two lines running close to the middle. While the paint is still wet. We can also add some greens to the bottom of the pedal. The general idea at this stage is to add very basic colors, local colors, main colors that you can see on the pedal. You have to imagine this panel without the details, without any stripes. Veins are creases. Focus only on light and dark values and colors you want to use for this petal. If you want to add a darker tone, like I'm doing here, I want to darken this part and add some darker marks on the edges. Remember to use a thicker paint consistency. We already have paint on the paper. It's starting to dry out, but it's still damp. And if we added too much water now, it would just spread and create a bloom. We want the paint to stay more or less in the same place when we put it. And that's why we need thicker consistency. I also decided to darken the green part and add more color to this small pedal on the right. Now continue painting other petals, following exactly the same process. Start by applying a water layer. Make sure it has that high sheen on the surface is covered evenly. Drop in a purple mix of permanent rose with Winsor blue to the edges of the petal. Then with a clean, damp brush, pull the paint toward the middle part of the petal. Run your brush with a darker paint through the middle of the petal to create that nice line in the center. And to darken the top part of the petal. Yellow at the bottom. And a shadow on the left side of the petal. And finally, add green at the bottom. Notice that I'm painting all pedals straightaway. That is because later we will add some shadows, which will help to make a clear distinction between the petals. I'm not using exactly the same colors on all petals. I mean, I'm using the same colors but not in the same proportions. So two upper flowers are more purple. I added more blue to permanent rose. Wild to lower flowers are more pink. I'll leave everything to dry. In the next lesson. We'll finish these petals. 7. Finishing Light Petals: I'm sure you already know that before you start painting now, you have to make sure that the previous layer is boundary. This is how my flowers look at this stage. In this lesson, we're going to more details to the petals. I'll be using a brush size six. First, prepare more paint. We all need Winsor. Yellow deep will also need the brown. Now for these petals, I'm going to use a brown mix of a Winsor yellow deep, permanent rose, and Winsor blue. That is only because I have already used those colors in those petals. So I want to keep the color harmony. We know that yellow and purple quit brown. And the purple is a mix of permanent rose and Winsor blue and are a yellow is a Winsor yellow deep will also need green, so makes Windsor blue with green gold and Payne's gray to make a darker tone. And let's start with this green applied to that thin part of the petal and blend the color away. Switch to Brown and added above the green LED. Those two colors blend with each other. The more yellow and soften the edges. We want to see that nice yellow overlay mixed permanent rose and Winsor blue if you run out of it and use this mix to paint some shadows on the edges. Here is, when the fun part begins, you need to focus your attention and be very patient. Now, what do we want to do now is to paint all those veins on the petals. We need to paint many of those very thin lines that branch out toward the edge. It's not really something that we can see in the reference photo. But I just know that many viruses have this kind of veins so we can paint them even if it doesn't look super realistic. The direction of these veins is important because it also determines the shape of the petal. The lower part of the petal, we'll paint yellowy brown stripes. So paint those veins only until you get to the yellow part. And also similar veins on the small pedal. Trade to follow my shapes. Now with a darker tone of the same purple, we want to darken the ends of those veins. We actually want to darken those ends, but we also want to smooth out that color to one side. When you apply the paint, rinse and blot your brush and then smooth out the color towards one side. I'll go back to the right side of the petal to create that effect. As you can see after adding the paint, I'm trying to blend this color away. Try to paint two or three veins at a time and be very precise here. I'm using a mix of permanent rose and Winsor blue all the time. You can see in my final painting that there are more shadows on this petal. We'll add them later. Don't worry about them now. Now with your yellowish brown mix paint, the stripes at the bottom. Observed their shapes and direction carefully. They are slightly bent at the edges, which helps to create the effect of curl the form of the pedal. Now use a darker tone to darken the ends of those stripes. That adds some variety in tonal values, and it makes those stripes look much more interesting. This dark tone adds character to our petals. We can also use it in the middle part and even define the green element better by applying a darker tone. Now again, with a mix of permanent rose and a touch of Windsor blue field, that area between the two petals. And also burnt sienna and Winsor yellow deep. Use whatever colors you like. We just have to fill this space. Theoretically, this might be the background, so we could use green here, but it's also art. We can use whatever colors we like. With a darker tone define some of the veins have been more. This small pedal is tucked behind the main petal, so it's partially in the shadow. I think we can also darken it just behind the beard. Now with more watery paint, apply the pink glaze in the upper part and smooth it out. Prepare more mix of permanent rose and Winsor blue and darken the edges in some areas if you like. Lastly, prepare a dark brown mix, some mix of Winsor yellow, deep, permanent rose, and Winsor blue. And use it to define the edge of the petal at the bottom. And we'll finish up this stage and let everything dry. You can see that in the final painting, this petal looks a bit different. It has additional core shadow. We will add it later when everything is dry. Now, move on to the next petals and repeat that. Boring or relaxing if you like, process. For me, it's very relaxing. It doesn't matter. I have to paint a gazillion veins. I like it. There is no shortcut and fortunately, just be patient and calmly paint every petal one-by-one. You don't have to paint all of them at once. Now, today, within a minute. You can paint one today, one tomorrow. You know, nobody knows you're painting this. Nobody is watching you except me. Take your time and don't hurry. So here's again, a brief review of what we are doing now and what we want to achieve at this stage. We want to paint all those thin veins paying attention to their direction because it determines the petals shape. We want to add a bit of shadow at the end of those veins close to the edges. This shadow helps to create an illusion of wavy shapes or maybe ruffled edges, if you like. We also want the tip of the petal to be a bit darker. The color of the stripes is different and the bottom, when we get to the yellow part of the petal, we paint yellowy brown stripe. This drives our darker at the end. We can also apply more yellow at the bottom to intensify the color. And the more green if it's too light. This petal is a bit different. It's turned in a different way, in a different direction. So the direction of the veins is also a bit more tricky. It also has some additional shadows which I'm painting using wet on dry technique and softening the edges straight away. The main petal is exactly the same, so we just have to repeat the same steps as in the previous petals. Here I'm also adding a much darker shadow to push that pedal more to the back. Here we also need to feel that area between the petals and I'm using here yellow and purple. We have to react to what we see on the paper and adjust everything along the way. If I can now see that the shadows or the veins are too light, I can always go over them again, apply another layer and adjust the tone. That's why when I paint, I tried to use quite light tones. If I went straight away with two dark tone, I wouldn't be able to make it lighter. It's very difficult. If I paint light, I can always apply 123 or even more layers to darken it. And finally the last flower. Here's start by darkening the pedal in the back. Apply a dark purple, wet on dry and smooth everything out. Painted first and give it some time to dry. In the meantime, you can paint the main pedal. When you finish the main pedal, that one will be dry and you can then add some veins to it. In this flower, I added much darker green at the bottom. It also has three lines running through the middle and the veins come out from those two sidelines. I'm also adding that yellowish brown on the left-hand side and more yellow at the bottom. In general. The colors here are pretty strong in dark. What I love in watercolors, is there transparency like here, the yellow glaze. I can apply it over the previous layer and change the look of this petal pretty drastically. At the same time, what I painted underneath is showing through that yellow glaze. That's very beautiful. Okay, so these are our petals at this stage. They are now bone dry so we can apply more layers if we need to. And I think we need to. I have to. If your petals look similar than I suggest that you do. One more thing. We're going to apply a unifying glaze. It is just a simple glaze, just another layer that will bring everything together. And it will add a bit more depth and dimension to the petals. Now I want you to look at your petals from a distance. Don't focus on the details now, but rather try to assess a bigger picture. I think which parts of your petals should be darker or where you would like to add more color. In order to, not to get caught into details, use a bigger brush. I'll be using a brush size eight pickup, a watery consistency of your purple mix and apply it to the first petal to add some nice shadows, rings and blot your brush and quickly soften the edges. Add more paint, a darker tone while the surface is still wet. Darken the upper part. Each time you apply the paint. Soften the edges quickly. Add more brown on the left. Think about any other areas that you think would benefit if you added one more layer, your petals for sure look different than mine. So you may not need to darken anything. As you can see, I'm trying to work fairly quickly. This layer is like a subtle code that helps to define the form of the petals a bit better. It always surprises me how many layers I may apply until I get the tone that I want. But I found that this is the best approach, applying many thin layers, adjusting the tone and color with each next layer. It gives more body to the petals and makes the colors will look more interesting when all those transparent layers overlap. In this last petal adjusts have to add the brown stripes because I forgot about them earlier. I also darken the edges of this pedal. I will also come back to the previous panel and darken the edges a bit too. After applying the paint to the edge, I'm softening it toward the center. I think this also creates 3D effect. He gives more body to the pedal. And that would be all. Our light petals are finished. And now we are ready to move on and paint those nice dark burgundy petals. 8. Dark Petals - Initial Layer: The upper petals are finished and everything is totally dry. So now we can move on to paint the dark parts. We're going to apply an underlayer first. Let's start from the bud. I'm cleaning up my palette on one side because I want to see clearly my colors and I don't want to have a mess here. We need a big puddle of permanent rose mixed with Permanent Alizarin crimson and a tiny touch of Windsor blue. And another parallel with burnt sienna, and maybe also Winsor yellow deep. But I'm not sure yet if I'm going to use it. The deep purple color of this petal turns into green at the bottom. So we will have to create the transition here. I already have some greens on the palette, so I'm sure I'll find something appropriate. Start by wetting this whole petal. We're going to paint wet on wet. Now pick up your dark red and start applying it from the top. You can rotate your painting this way. It will be easier to paint along the edge. Now pick up some green. It's mainly Windsor blue with green gold. Now I switched from a brush number eight, brush number six. To have more control and precision. We need to create that nice transition from red to green here and leave it to dry. Now we can start painting the petals, again, the wet on wet. So start by applying a water layer. We're applying this first, initial layer because it will help us to agree that nice deep dark color of the petals. If we applied a dark colors straight away without an underlayer, it would dry way too pale. This initial layer already has a middle value, so it's pretty dark. When we apply the second layer with a really dark tone. This first one will show through giving that nice rich glow on the petals like here, we need a color transition from red to brown and then to green. Notice that I'm applying now just main colors. I'm not focusing on any details or shadows. These are just the main colors that I can see in the photo and in my imagination. Continue applying similar layer to all other petals. Paint around the yellow beards. They need to stay white for now so that later we could apply yellow to them. The red color is mainly on the main body of the petals. And when you're close to the beard, use burnt sienna. Paint carefully around other flowers. Repeat this process on all other flowers. I'm not showing you this because it will be just too boring. There is nothing really new there. I painted all pedals the same way. But here you can see how it looks after I painted the rest. Each petal has that nice transition from red to Brown and two green. Now leave everything to dry completely. And this time, I really mean that we will be applying another layer on top of this layer. So this one should be bone-dry. I left it to dry overnight. This will not help to avoid some issues, but it will minimize the risk of tragedy. In the next lesson, we will apply another layer and you will see what issue we may come across. 9. Dark Layer: So here we are. The next day, everything is completely dry. It can be drier than this. Today we will apply the second layer on the pedals, the dark layer. Our dark color will be a mix of Permanent Rose, Permanent Alizarin crimson, and lots of Payne's gray. It's Payne's gray that gives us the darkness. On a side. Let's keep also a mix of permanent rose and Permanent Alizarin crimson. Start by applying this dark color, wet on dry on the small pedal. Create a gradient from dark to light. So I applied the dark paint, rinse and blot your brush and with a clean, damp brush to soften the edge. Wait a minute until the paint settles down and wet the bigger peddle, trying not to touch the smaller one. But if you do, don't worry, you can always fix that. On this bigger peddle. We have to make a few things. First of all, apply the dark color on the top and on the right-hand side. I'm trying to stay away from that smaller petal on the left. Now rinse and blot your brush and run your brush along the edge to smooth everything out. Make sure you don't have too much water or you will create blooms. Run your brush, blot it, run it once again, rinse it, blooded. Run it once again. Every time you need a clean brush. Otherwise you will be just dragging the paint from top to bottom instead of smoothing everything out. Now again with a clean, damp brush, lift out some highlights. You may need to wait a minute until the paint dries a little bit more. There is always that sweet spot when the paint lifts off more easily. You just have to try a few times. Leafed out the paint, creating this funnel like structure. Now leafed out the paint also here to create that nice distinction between the two petals. Then with a more concentrated paint, use just a tiny bit of paint. Paint that subtle shadow under the smaller petal. This will create that nice three-dimensional effect. You can also add a bit of the dark paint on one side of the highlights like this to add even more depth, notice how nicely our underlayer shows through when we are applying this dark bluish layer now it is transparent so we can partially see the colors from beneath. This makes the colors much richer and more interesting. And also our dark layer can be really dark because it's not white paper showing through, but a nice dark red layer underneath. That's why we needed that under layer. Let's move on to the next peddle. We're going to apply the paint using a wet on wet technique on each petal. So always start by applying a water layer. Notice where I'm applying the water here. I marked it with blue. Now, add your dark mix. Notice also that I'm using dabbing motions, dab, dab, dab, dab. This way, more paint is released from the brush. Now rinsing your brush and pull that paint away. Pick up a bit more paint to create the darker edge. Here we are painting wet and dry to have more precision and to create that nice hard edge. The first petal is ready on these six more left. So again, apply a water layer first. Here this petal is divided by the leaf into two parts. So paint one part first and then go to the other one. We are not painting the green underside of the petals at this stage. And that's why when you're applying the paint, Make sure you're done. Go over that green part. After applying the dark paint. We can also repeat the colors from the previous layer to make them much more intense. So here we can use also a mix of permanent rose with Permanent Alizarin crimson and burnt sienna closer to the beard. So we're darkening the whole petal not only by applying our dark mix, but also by adding another layer of the same colors as previously, which makes their tone much deeper and darker. On this petal, you can see an issue that we may come across. Like here. The paint on the paper is now bound dry. But even though it's bone dry, when we're applying a water layer, we're lifting out the pigment. You can see those lighter stripes here. That is very common when we don't wait long enough and we start applying the next layer too quickly, while the previous one hasn't dried yet. But in this case, it is dry, right? 24 h is enough. So here it's just a matter of pigments and particular colors. Some colors are just much easier to lift off. Usually those are greens. And also this burnt sienna, as you can see. While others are more staining, like Winsor blue or permanent rose, which are harder to lift off. So sometimes even if you wait long enough, we run the risk of lifting off the pigment like here. But sometimes there is just no other option like here. All we can do is just apply another layer and keep fingers crossed that it will cover nicely those later passages. I switched to a bigger brush, a size eight. We can load a bigger brush with more paint and cover bigger areas quickly. Take a closer look here. You can see that while I'm applying a water glaze, I'm disturbing that previous layer and I'm lifting off the pigment, which doesn't look good. But hopefully when we applied a dark layer, it will cover it. Okay, so we have our dark petals. Now, leave them to dry. I will leave them to dry overnight again to make sure that they are as much try as they can be. And here with the magic of editing, we're in the next day. Everything is completely dry and this is how it looks. When you are ready. We can move on to the next lesson and paint the yellow beards. 10. Yellow Beards: Welcome back. This part is short and easy. I don t think you will have any problems with this. We will paint the yellow beards. And for that we obviously need some yellows. We're going to start from the lightest tone and then we'll add some shadows and just a suggestion of a hairy texture of it. Let's start with Winsor yellow. This is the brightest yellow applied to the entire beard using the wet-on-dry technique. This is a very small area, so we don't need wet on wet. Now pick up a darker yellow. This is Winsor yellow deep and drop it in at the bottom of the beard. Just the creed that variety in yellows. Finally pick up a darker brown. Burnt sienna will be a bit too light for this. Some mix it with purple that we used for the pedal. Add this color at the bottom again to create that nice shadow and to connect the beard with the pedal. Now with a clean brush, just pull some of that dark color to create lines suggesting that hairy texture. And that's all. Of course, we could be much more detailed here. We could actually paint individual hairs. We could add some more details and generally spend much more time on this and be more precise. If you like, go ahead and add more details. It will look even more realistic. I decided to simplify this because it's not super important element of this painting. It's just a detail. And I think this simplified version, we'll just work equally well. So continue painting all other beards exactly the same way. Now leave it to dry. And when it's dry, we can move on to the next lesson. 11. Green Elements - Initial Layer: Now it's time for the rest of the green elements which are easy to paint. But unfortunately, we need to divide it into two parts. In this part, we will apply the main colors, and in the second part, we will add the details. Let's start from the bud. Apply a layer of water first, we'll be painting wet on wet, because here we have a few different colors. We want to create a smooth gradient. Start with a purple mix of permanent rose and Winsor blue applied to the top part of this section. And then change the color to green gold. A played in the middle. Then mix a bit different green and Winsor blue to green gold and fill this area. At the bottom we can see some browns, maybe some purples. So use they're burnt sienna mixed with your dark purple color. Now in the paint settles down, but it's still wet, start dropping in more colors. This dark purple is much more concentrated. The consistency is much thicker because we don't want it to spread too much. If we apply thicker paint consistency on a wet surface, it will just blur a bit, but it will not spread like crazy. As you can see, thanks to that initial layer, water layer and painting wet on wet, the colors are nicely blending with each other. I'm adding more dark purple or brown to make the colors stronger. The only thing you need to remember about it is that each next brush stroke should be dryer or it should have thicker paint consistency. If you use too much water now, it will push away the pigment and create the balloon. Now we can move on to this space. Here we can add some greens and browns. It's hard to say what colors I'm exactly using. I'm just using what I have on my palette. The color is not that important here. If we use the same colors that we've been using so far in this painting. It will all look good. More important is the tone of those colors. Here, as you can see, I'm adding more and more green. I'm looking for the correct tonal value to create that nice shadow. Thanks to this shadow, we can build the round form of this space. This one is quite colorful. It has browns, yellows, even some pinks and purples. Here I'm painting wet on dry, but I'm using very watery paint. This way the colors will blend on the paper. Remember this is just a basic initial layer. We want to apply the main colors that we see. Imagine there are no details, no lines, just colors. In some places, they are darker, in other places, a bit lighter. In the next layer, we can also adjust the colors. As you can see, the bottom part of this space in the final painting is green. I achieved that later by applying a glaze of green. Now here's start by applying pink to the pedal. Extent that pink to the leaf as well. Lead all colors blend with each other on the leaf. Use your greens. I'm using mainly green gold for the most part, and a mix of everything else, really. Mainly green gold with Winsor blue. But I'm also dropping in the purple from the panels to create that color connection between the flowers and the leaf. I'm dropping in a darker tone under the pedal to suggest the shadow. This space is more brown, so here I'm using more burnt sienna. And for the dark shadows, I'm adding our purple from the petals. I'm applying standard green mix of green, gold and Winsor blue to the stem. To darken that green, I'm adding Payne's gray. And lastly the leaf on the right. Nothing special here, just a layer of barriers, greens, again, green, gold and Winsor blue in various proportions. Close to the flower, I'm trying to use a darker green, and actually I'm trying to match the color more or less with the green below the pedal. Since this is the same leaf, I'm adding more Payne's gray. It may look really dark now, but as we know, it will dry much paler. So I don't worry about that. So we have applied our initial layer on all green elements. Now the entire paper is covered with colors. It all looks almost finished, but we still need to add some details. In the next part, we will paint the stripes on the green elements. And then in the final part, we will paint white stripes on the dark petals. 12. Details on the Green Elements: I'll be using a brush number six. Let's start with the green. Our aim now is to paint those nice, elegant lines on the bug. Tried to be really careful. These lines play an important role because they make the bud look much more elegant and beautiful. They are direction is also crucial. So make sure you're not painting them randomly. Start with the line in the middle, and then paint other lines, making sure you get the right direction. The general idea here is that those lines have to be darker at the bottom and close to the edges and lighter in the middle. You may have to go a few times with a darker tone until you get it right. In the meantime, you can also add some lines to the pedal and paint a darker shadow under it. This is really the last stage of painting. So now you can also publish everything. If some areas need darkening, then apply another layer to darken it. If you want to add more details somewhere, now you can do it here. I think that before I add any lines, I need to darken these green areas. So I'm starting by applying a water layer and a darker green paint. I will leave it to dry and I'll come back later to add the lines. In the meantime, we can add the lines on the space. Use a light tone of brown and carefully paint the lines. Observe closely how I'm painting them. Those are not just straight lines. You have to imagine that you are painting on a real 3D object. Those lines will be curved. They will wrap around this round form. They will be banned. They just need to follow the form. If we want to create a bit more realistic look. Again, to make those lines look better, more interesting, and more elegant. Use a darker green and go over those lines at the bottom and in the shadow areas. And another flower start by adding a darker green layer to the petals if you need to. I think mine petals look too light. So I'm quickly applying a darker green glaze over them. It's a very small areas. I'm just using wet on dry technique. Now with the brown color paint, the lines on the space, I must say that I used. Artistic license here, because the reference photo is not clear. So I just had to figure out how to paint the lines here. You may come up with something better. Most importantly, remember to follow the form. You need to imagine what form this object has and what would be the shape of those lines if you were painting directly on that object? The darker green to the stem. I think the space needs a bit more color. So when everything is dry, I'm applying another glaze. At the bottom part, I'm applying some green and in the upper part I'm darkening everything with browns and purple. Now I can come back to the previous flower because the green is now dry, so I can add those lines here. This leaf is easy, it just needs a few lines. Again, we don't want these lines to be flat and boring. So go over them in a few places to add some darker tones. They will look much better. There are two more elements. Just repeat the same process. We need to paint the lines on the stem. And on the last leaf. Here I decided to add that shadow that will help too, make a clear distinction between the leaves and just applying a third green. And I'm quickly smoothing out the edges. And that will be all for this part. I hope you're not too tired. And if you are, take a break because you will need some more patients and precision. For the last part. 13. White Stripes: Welcome back. Here we are in the last part. I hope you are excited because now we will finish our painting. In this lesson, we will add white stripes to the dark petals. To do that, we need white gouache. I'm using Winsor and Newton designers gouache. I bought this tube few years ago and I still have it because I use gouache sparingly. If you don't have white gouache, I highly recommend that you get one small tube because it's very helpful. Squeeze two little blobs on a pallet. I'm using a different small palette here for this because I want to keep it close. Theoretically, one blob is for mixing it with other colors with watercolor paint, and the other one should remain white. We'll see how it goes. Now. I'm sorry for this glare, but I didn't notice that I kept it at the wrong angle. I'm adding now all colors that we used for painting the petals. So I'm adding permanent rose, Alizarin, crimson, burnt sienna, Windsor blue, everything except greens. We get something like Brown. When it's mixed with white gouache, it's more pastel and it's opaque. And that's what we need. Now start by painting the widest stripes using white gouache. I'm not following the reference photo now. I'm just painting those stripes in a way that I think would look nice. Use that brown paint to paint most of those stripes. Add a bit of paint here close to the beard and smooth it out. This way we can create that velvety texture, that subtle velvety sheen on the pedal. Now with clean white add highlights to those stripes. Imagine that the petal is curled. If it's curled, it has a cylinder form like this. We can see that there is a strong highlight here. After painting the stripes. We then want to add highlights only in the highlighted area and then smooth out the highlights a bit. This way, we will also create a cylinder form of our petals. The stripes will add that glowing elegant effect to the petals at the same time, helping us to show their form. You will see it better on other petals. Here I added more Winsor, yellow deep. I wanted these stripes to be a bit warmer. Here. I'm also adding that nice velvety shame. After painting the stripes add more white close to the beard and the white highlights. Smooth out the highlights. Now mixed Permanent Rose, Permanent Alizarin, crimson and white gouache. Paint a few stripes with this pastel pink. This will add more natural look. Those pink stripes will be less visible. They are alike, fading stripes. And they suggest that maybe there are more stripes on this pedal, but we don't have to paint them. Repeat this same process on other petals. You can use different colors to. Here I'm mixing more burnt sienna and a Winsor, yellow deep with white gouache. I'm using this yellowish mix in the lightest places on this pedal. I don't think I can tell you much more here, so I will just stop talking and I'll let you watch the whole process. Well, not the whole. You will notice that when you apply gouache, it may become almost invisible. Sometimes it may become very transparent. And that happens when we use too much water. So don't worry about that. Just go over those stripes again with a bit more concentrated paint. Sometimes we don't want to see a very strong and prominent stripe. And only that faint suggestion is enough. I also want to mention that this is an easy way to paint light stripes, dark petals. We could use different methods. We could mask out those stripes or paint around them. But I think that would be too complicated. This way. We simply paint the dark petal first and then we add lighter, lighter stripes. This would not be possible without white gouache. That's why it's good to have a small tube. And so our painting is finished. So how do you like it? Are you happy with your result? I hope so. Don't forget to sign your painting. Now we can remove the masking tape and reveal that nice clean border around. Here is a closer look at the whole painting. So thank you very much for joining me. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed the videos and happy painting. Bye.