How To Paint: Realistic Watercolor Strawberry | Step By Step

1. Introduction: Hello fellow art enthusiasts. My name is Agli Clef, a botanical watercolor artist on a mission to share the joy of creating lifelike botanical watercolor paintings. My artistic journey started seven years ago. When I was pregnant with my first child. I stumbled upon a captivating world of botanical watercolors. Despite holding a degree in public administration, my heart have always earned for art. But I could never place myself in any specific area or medium. Therefore, I quit art entirely. But the discovery of botanical watercolor art have marked a beginning of this profound artistic journey. So after graduating from society Botanical Artists Distance Learning diploma course realized for need for more immersive learning experience course. Do not contain any tutorials, demonstrations or techniques. And made this journey as a beginner watercolor artist, very challenging. What was hard to find is to find an artist to work that they really love and enjoy. And you just wished that you knew how he did it. All the techniques and tips the process you took to paint something this complicated, realistic looking, or just simply beautiful, to see fully what it takes to create piece of art that you like. Especially when it comes to watercolors. Because watercolors are quite difficult and challenging medium, but it's absolutely fascinating with its fluidity, transparency, create something really realistic and detailed. It can be challenging. So it took me quite a lot of trial and error and quite a few years to learn to control it. And so that's why I'm here to try and tell you some tips and tricks and techniques. I wished I had. I am chilled to be your guide as we embark on this artistic journey together. Thousands have found already inspiration from my teachings, whether it's here or patron, and now it's your turn to bring your botanical visions to life. I hope you will stick around. 2. The Project : This course isn't about marks or assignments and grades. It is a journey into the heart of botanical art. I will personally guide you through every step. Unveiling the techniques, thoughts, and creative processes that define my realistic and highly detailed painting style. In this course, we will be painting juicy, delicious, shiny strawberry. The reason I chose it because when you first look at it with all its tiny, tiny seeds and little heads and the shine and all those little crevices, you just really don't know where to start and how to paint it. I have tried to do with this course is to create clear, understandable steps and techniques that you can actually follow. It is, however, a very detailed, small object to paint with all its tiny, tiny crevices. And seed painting, something that fully requires my full attention brings me comfort. It is something profound. Being fully immersed, examining every centimeter of a subject that is so small and so beautiful. I have never really noticed that much beauty in small things and mundane things until you actually try to paint it without further ado, let's paint. 3. Before we start: Before we start, I would like to mention a few things. If you are an absolute beginner and you are not familiar with basic watercolor techniques, I would like you to check my class specifically dedicated to those main botanical watercolor techniques called master and main basic botanical watercolor techniques. I explained there in great detail how the technique works, how to do it correctly, and how to practice it with simple shapes. If you do that, you will feel much more comfortable painting a subject. Also, if you would like to know how to stretch a watercolor paper onto the board, for example, if you're using 300 GSM or lighter watercolor paper. I do that to prevent paper from buckling and settling unevenly. Or if you would like to know how to transfer your drawing onto the water color paper from either your sketch or from the line drawing that I'm going to provide you with. Or if you would like to know more about the materials that I use in greater detail, like what type of paint and brushes and palettes I use. Then I would like you to check my very first Sola class called Botanical Article Painting, Learn to Paint Iris. But step by step and choose a lesson accordingly. You don't have to watch an entire class, just the topic that you're interested in. Then without further ado, let's get started. 4. Materials: Hi again. Let's go quickly through the materials you're going to need for this project. To start with, you will need watercolor paper. I recommend to be 100% cotton so it can handle the layers and water. If it is 300 SM Ora, I would recommend stretching it onto a board to prevent from buckling. For that, you will need gum tape and sponge a paper if you would like to know how to do it. I have a class on my first skills course, Water Color Iris Bot, where I show you how to stretch a Watclor paper onto a part next to transfer your drawing onto watercolor paper. From your sketch or the line drawing I provided you, you will need tracing paper if you would like to know how to transfer your drawing onto water color paper. I have a class on my first skillshare course as well. Watercolor, Iris Bud. Choose the class accordingly for that. You will also need pencil and an eraser. You will also need a container to clean your brushes. I use 21 to clean my brushes and the other one for clean water glazes. You will also need a towel where you can wipe your brush and a palette. I recommend ceramic palette because the colors flow much nicer on the surface and you can see the correct color of your mixes. The pigments that we're going to be using are Senelia, red, rosemary, lake yellow, blue Nacua, and gold Arland yellow and neutral tint. We're also going to need round brushes, Number 42.0 We will also be using masking fluid, which is watercolor medium that repels moisture and is used to help artists leave small areas white of the paper. That's it, those are materials, and let's get straight to the painting. 5. Applying Masking Fluid: Hi everyone. We're going to be painting Strawberry. It's one of those, a little bit more challenging and detailed paintings, but they're really fun to paint with our little brushes and lots of dry brush and get the shine and they just look really pretty painted. For this project, we're also going to be using masking fluid to mask out all the seeds and the high lights, really white highlights. There is a way of painting without it that would be then probably not using what we techniques and just dry brushing all the way. That is a little bit more, maybe complex and it takes much longer. For the purpose of tutorial, I'm choosing ways that are a little bit straightforward, though slightly, maybe easier and faster together. I mean, if you painting with watercolors, this is very useful to have. I'm going to be using N Newton. Here's the strawberry, you can see now where are highlights though here. Tiny little dots here and there, and those seeds as well. First step, before we start painting and mixing the colors, let's go and paint and cover those parts with masking fluid. And then we leave it to dry, and while it dries, we're going to mix up some colors. What we want to cover with masking fluid now is we want to cover all the white parts. All the white bits you see right here in this part. We're going to just tipple with masking fluid to create this busy and even texture. You see those highlights here, those little dots we're going to try to cover the seeds, even the ones that are really dark in the side. And that's it. Once it's dry, we're going to apply our base layers. Pinks and reds. Yeah. And then we're going to start doing all the details. Let's get on with the masking fluid. A little tip with masking fluid, if you don't want to ruin your brush. I'm going to be using brushes that I don't paint with. These are some little synthetic brushes. Very small, because those are really tiny pieces. Yeah, I don't paint with them. I'm going be using them for masking fluid. Even if they get ruined, I won't be very upset about it, but you're going to use my tip. They shouldn't get ruined. The tip is, dip your brush into the liquid soap before you dip it into the masking fluid. And that way it just doesn't stick to the bristles. And it washes off in the water very easily. Right. I'll pour a little bit of masking fluid on my little plate. That's way too much. You're going to need just a tiny dip actually. For this, I'm taking my smallest brush. I make a little dip in the liquid soap and then in masking fluid. Then we're going to start covering all those parts that we need to. I'll start covering the seeds and then we'll pay attention where are the highlights or we can do it all at once. Maybe I'll do that too. Here, I know this highlight. No matter how small is the brush, I never managed to do a perfectly as I need to. I'm not worried about it. Once we remove it, we can define the shape of those marks with color and make them a bit more even because they won't be very even. They won't be very nice. And that's all right. Yeah, let's go and cover all those parts now on all the strawbery, right? So now, while the masking food is drying, we can mix up some colors. 6. Mixing Underlayer Colours: Now, while the masking fluid is drying, we can mix up some colors. By the way, if you know, does it say it's a latex? I think based substance that when you apply and once it's dry it becomes waterproof. The water color is not going to go through the layer of masking fluid. Once we finished with, let's say, and ready to paint the detail and all around the highlights, we can remove it. And it's going to be white of the paper with the first layer with wet on wet. Wet on wet is our base layers as we usually paint with the first layer would be to paint in the lightest colors would be this reflective light which is pink with tiny bit of blue. And on the other side it's a little bit more red, gray, red. That would be our first layer. Also on the first layer, I see here the red looks a little bit more orange, means it has some yellow in it. So we can also apply some yellow patch here on the first layer. Then once that layer is dry, we can apply second layer with wet on wet. And we're going to apply our main red color with a little bit shadow and a little bit more pink maybe, but mainly red color. Then once that layer is dry, we're going to go and paint in all this detail in those creases, right, those circles were around the seeds. Once that is done, we're going to go around and fill in the gaps where we need between those red parts like here, everywhere. And then a little bit more pink on top, right? That's basically the plan at the end. Once done, obviously the leaves, if you see very closely right, the pink is around. But what we need to paint now is what's underneath, because we're going to be painting that pink after we painted all these red circles. What we need is the color that's underneath, which is a little bit grayish, bluish pink because we're going to be using pink on top. I'm going to use for that underneath color is also Rose Matter Lake. We're going to be adding a bit of fallow blue to it to make it a bit more bluish, purplish. Let's get some paper, maybe a bit more blue. Water it down. I was testing it yesterday at home and I was using cobalt blue instead of palo blue. While that color is great and looks great. But then I painted with white on wet. It really separated on a paper and that's why I just don't like using it. So I'm trying to use my regular blue, which is low blue. That sometimes maybe it's not the best option but just I like the way it looks on a paper. Just always very smooth. Right? So something like this, maybe I'm a bit scared to add this blue. I don't want to make it too purple, but I think that's what we need. Just maybe water it down a bit more. Right? Something like this. Maybe it's a little bit too dark. But when we paint, wait on what? It's going to get diluted and it's going to be lighter, right? That would be for the left side. And on the right side we have this red. Our main red for the strawberry here will be Scenellia red. I'm using Scenellia red for this part as well, but to make it as it is, we're going to be adding blue as well. Lots of Sceneliia red, adding same fallow blue. You can see it's look this dirty red. That is great for that shadow. Let's see. Right, that looks pretty good. On the first layer we're painting those lighter parts, maybe we're going to need to just water it down a bit more. We're going to mix up a bit more because we're going to need it for a second layer too. That looks for the same first layer we're going to need as well. Yellow. I'm going to be using my land yellow. Add a little bit of anacdon gold just to make it a bit warmer, just a bit. Okay, that's our colors for the first white and wet layer and second one we're going to need a little bit more red and rose matter leg. But we can maybe it later because it's going to dry on our palette. Anyway, let's get our first layer done. 7. Painting Underlayer- Wet On Wet : For the first layer, we're going to cover it with water. And we're going to paint this reflective back around and yellow here. And we're not going to paint anything in the middle, because in the middle it's very fresh, clean red. So we don't want to contaminate it with some blue tones. Only around the edges here. A little bit further down where we have this dark red shadow so we can apply this shadow color. Right? I'm going to be using maybe number four to paint with and number six to cover with water. It's just going to be okay loading my brush with clean water, dropping it in the middle. Masking fluid is already dry. And you can see I left the pencilight quite dark this time because we're using very dark colors. And after the first two layers, I can barely see anything. I left them a bit sharper because we're most likely going to cover most of them because we have very dark colors everywhere except around there. Maybe there we can remove as soon as we paint in those circles. Let's s but testing it yesterday a little bit. And I had the pencilines much lighter. After those two layers, I could not see anything anymore. And it made it very difficult to find where is what because you can see how detailed this is. We're going to be painting with small brush afterwards. Each detail and all circles, right, covering with clean water, entire strawberry, all the way to the penciline. As you can see, I dropped lots of water in a middle first. And then just using that puddle to move it around the rest of the shape. And all the way to the penciline, I'll have a little bit too much water, but you can let it soak into the paper a little bit or just collect it. Brush like all dab a bit on a towel and just sweep through collecting the As. Just making sure we have everything very evenly covered. No drying patches. We went all the way to the penciline but not over it because pain goes where water is. We need to try and be quite precise here collecting the excess. I just start to dry first, so make sure you revit them before with then glazing. All right? Okay. So now I'm taking my number four. I'm waking it up in my water. I'm going to start applying the color. I'll start with my purple first. I'd like to have a little bit of paper towel in my hand. Even though I have a towel right here, just a little habit, maybe it's a little bit light, but let's go and start. Let's see. Yeah, I feel like I wanted to make a bit thicker. It's just too watery. I watered it down a little bit too much because when you paint with wet on wet, I get diluted anyway. Maybe I shouldn't have got that watery. I'll make quickly. Right. Okay. I start to apply color a little bit short of the edge because it will travel the color anyways, for the color to go slightly lighter towards the edge, so we're going to be sweeping through with clean, um, brush a little bit to make the edge slightly lighter, a little bit short of the edge. I'll bring that purple to the side as well. A little bit as I can see. All right. All right. I'll clean my brush. Take the water out. Pick up the dark red bow on the other side there. I need some purple as well. Actually, let those colors mix a bit. This red, we can bring higher here where the shadow is anyway. All right. Now clean my brush quickly and pick up my yellow. Because the glaze is drying quite fast for me, I need to make sure I am able to cover what I need to cover yellow approximately here. I don't think it's going anywhere further than that. Clean my brush again, pick up a little bit more purple and drop it in here. Actually, right now, clean my brush, Take all the water out and we sweep through around the edge, making that color travel towards the edge, but in the softer manner. Right? If it doesn't, we can add a little bit. So it goes a bit closer. Started trying, I'll make sure I'll push a little bit of that color. All right. Collect a bit more in here. Okay. I know it looks weird now, but those are just first delays, not panicking, right? Maybe I'll collect a bit here. I don't need that much of darkness here. A bit here. Right? I'm just thinking that we probably can leave it and let it dry a couple more lips to make it slightly lighter around the edge. Right, That's going to dry lighter. I know it looks a little bit too dark and too strong, but it's going to dry lighter. Let's hope that, let's leave it to, once we're going to apply second layer, we're going to put our red color. 8. Mixing Main Colour: All right, now that the layer is dry, we can apply second layer. And this time we're going to apply red color. Let's mix up some red. I'm not sure if we're going to need this purple or yellow anymore. I think we might clean up. We can make space for our red if you will need it. We'll mix up, but I don't think we're going to be using it anymore. Right, Our main red is going to be sellados of it. We, lots of Stena red. I want to add a little bit, it's a little bit to brown. Now I wanted to make dark red, adding more stenea into it and leaving just a little bit darker. As you can see, we can still adjust it as we paint. If you need for now, leave it end. I don't know if we're going to need any pink for the second layer, but I'll just mix up just in case that rose matter on its own is going to be our pink if we need to. All right, so those are the colors you're gonna need right now. All right. 9. Painting Main Colour - Wet On Wet: So again, as we did the first time, let's apply clean water glaze first. Just dropping lots of water in the middle. First I'm just moving that puddle up to the penciline, try to have very even glaze. No drying patches. So I keep tilting my head to see if I don't have any. I think we could, right When we apply red color, we can apply in the middle. And if you can see there's like a line that Dd, We don't want the red to pass because in this around the edge, it's mainly those grooves that I painted in. But around is pretty light. We don't want to paint over the dark color. Let's push the red color up to this edge. So then once it strive, we're going to start painting the detail. But we don't want the red to gold way, the pencil line. We leave it clean, focus towards the middle and we can add a little bit more dark red in here. But mainly it's just the middle part of the strawberry. I'm picking up my number four again and loading my brush with lots of red. All right? And starting just dropping it straight in the middle. Right. You can see how the color just runs away where the masking fluid is. Okay, so let's move that red up to here. Now that shadow is shining through very nicely. Okay, so approximately like. So now we can see this yellow is shining through and it's giving this orange. That's the beauty of water, colors that are transparent. If you make a good plan and plan your layers, if you understand a little bit how the colors work when they layered, you can achieve very realistic looks. I feel like I might have went a bit too dark with this purple, but even I can sometimes just make everything perfect as I want to. That's okay. I'll clean my brush and I'll pick up some of that darker red. And so where we see that shadow red. Okay, clean my brush. Take the water out. We collect some color that starts to run towards the edge. After each little swipe, I clean my brush and keep collecting the color of that edge. We might need to do that multiple times because while the glaze is wet, it just going to keep moving wherever water is. We need to keep control over it constantly. Yeah, this is a bit, maybe too blue, but it's going to be okay. Right to keep collecting and keep cleaning up rush. Because here there's lots of light parts around those grooves. I'm collecting all around them because we're going to paint this detail later. We can't do it with what we just need to make sure we leave parts as light as they need to be in the places that we need to. I'm going to pick up a little bit more red and add a bit towards the center where it's very juicy. And bright red here, it's a bit lighter at the top. All right, but it's a middle. A bit juicier, just putting a bit more juicy. Red. Okay, but mom here, okay, left a little bit here that there's little light part in here. So anything here. Let's see. A bit lighter here maybe. Actually, no. Before I do mistake, I think I'll just leave it to just make sure we don't have anything around the edges. Now, layer is dry, it's a little bit too, but we can try to collect while we still have time. While the glaze is damp, just a little bit around few grooves where we see it needs to be lighter. There are some parts that's going to be lighter. It has to be lighter, but because you can't do that with water, we we will be able to scrub a little bit paint once the lay is already even dry. But now before it completely dried, let's go around some of those grooves and collect a little bit color around. You can see this around the edges on the left hand side, there are like highlights, right? Try to collect a little bit if you still can, but the glaze has to be not completely wet. It needs to start drying in order for you to be able to lift a little bit. It has to be still a little bit damp, but not too wet with clean brush. Making sure important, don't put any water because it's going to bloom right away and it will be las, ruined. Need to wipe your brush on a kitchen towel or paper towel each and every time you clean your brush with water. After each time you keep cleaning your brush because otherwise you just can't collect any color. I'm going to keep doing that, just here and there while I still got some time. Now you can see why kept my pencilinettle bit darker than usual. Because it is canty. I think even if I'm not very precise here, I'm not worried because when we paint with dry brush, the detail we will define everything that looks out of place. Not to worry, you think it's not in a perfectly right place. We can cover anything we need to cover and define anything we need to define later. Okay, we getting there? Okay, I think I'm just going to leave it already. I can't really lift anything anymore. Right? So let's leave that layer dry completely. Once it's dry, we're going to start painting the grooves around the seeds. I think to do that we will probably remove the masking fluid. Because masking fluid is not perfectly, it's going to be like in a perfect shape. In order for us to define the shape, it's probably best to remove it and then paint those groos and shadows around those seeds. Once the masking fluid is removed, otherwise we can define the shape. Let's leave it to dry. Completely, completely. It needs to be completely, completely dry because you're going to have to remove the masking fluid by rubbing the paper. And if the paper is a little bit dump, we're going to be damaging it, so it has to be completely dry. And then we can remove the masking fluid and continue painting the detail. 10. Defining Seed Beds: It took a while for it to dry because it was very wet. It's even now here where it looks a bit. But let's try and remove so you can do it out of it. Finger others are doing with but because I don't want to erase the pencil line, I'm going to just rub a little bit with my finger. Make sure your hands are clean. If there's a better way of doing so, let me know. I don't know it because anything sharp you might use would damage the paper. Like sponges or finger works for me. If you keep your hands clean, you don't smudge anything. We're going to remove it in a minute. I'll show you why I wanted to remove it now. And at the end. Okay, comes pretty Okay. Now you can see that those marks quite uneven. Even the highlights need to be very, very thin. They're very thick, big lines. And if we removed at the end, we would have to paint around them again. It's better to remove them. Now, even the shape of the seats is odd. That's why I remove it now. Because now we're going to paint in those grooves, right, those creases around the seats. While we do that, we can define those highlights and the shape of the seeds while painting it right, as I just mentioned, we're going to be painting in those seeds. I can take maybe my number one or zero, whichever feels comfortable. Or even two if it has a really good point. I think maybe I'll paint number zero because it's very small. We're going to be painting grooves around the seeds, everywhere here as well. But we're only going to focus on those darker parts you see. Because you can see when there's using red color, red groove around, there's some pink. But we're going to do that after first, we're going to focus on just painting in those creases. Then once we've done that, we're going to go and paint around in between those grooves. And like here and connecting all these detail around. Now just focus on painting in those little grooves. It's pretty simple. We're going to use red color on this side as we go decide we're going to use our darker red, it's even black, but we're going to build up that darkness layer once we have all the detail we painted in between the grooves and we'll see how it all looks. And then we're going to darken those darker parts because we don't want to go too strong just yet, not knowing how everything looks in comparison to each part. Let's go and paint in those little grooves. Now, as I mentioned, I'm going to probably use number zero. See how I go with it. If it feels uncomfortable, I might switch, right? We're going to be using red color all around. I'm going to start by diluting it a little bit when I paint those slider parts, because I need to first test it on a paper and see how it's being applied and how it looks on the paper. And if I need to go stronger, I'll go stronger. We're mainly going to be glazing, not completely dry brushing, but it's pretty dry brush, I would say keep your mix is dry, I would say because you want to stay in control, we're just going to go and start painting all around. Then we need to define that set as you see in the reference photo and the highlights, right? It's very detailed work from now. I don't want to really rush that too much. You want to keep it detail, That's what I meant. It's very detailed process of painting strawberry and I'm painting that cred just like so I'm. Thinking that I don't really need to soften anything, but if some edge is a little bit too harsh, maybe we can have, on the other hand, small brush, which is clean brush and just soften a little bit around this outer edge where we're going to apply a bit more color around so that we don't end up with the hard edges. We can feather it away just a little bit. Continue painting, picking up more color. Go into the other groove. Let's see. This one, for example, has a little seed popping out, which I can see that. I can see that I missed it probably or we didn't cover properly with my masking fluid and it's not white. We're going to have to try and lift some color later on. But now I'm going to go and define that highlight paint in that groove painting around the seat and around the highlight. See, now I'm correcting the shape of that highlight. And that is why I wanted to remove the masking fluid now so that I could do it right now. With clean brush, I can soften a little bit this edge. We will need to darken and build more color. But once we have all the detail right, then we can build on it. But first we need to have the of all the details to just being able to even understand where is what. Once we have all it mapped out, we can just keep building on it. But now we need to focus and paint all the details. Yeah, just like so now we need to go around the entire strawberry and paint in all the groups. Just wanted to mention as we move towards the right side, we need to use darker color in those parts. It's really dark. You can add a little bit more blue into the red and make it really dark. But as we move and we reach the middle part here, which is something in between the red and dark red, you can just pick up some color, mix it with a little bit of that dark mix, you can get something not completely dark, completely red, but just something in there. And you can just paint in those slightly darker than red parts. Also, I'm going to mention that when you go into the yellow, orange part, we can pick up a little bit of Ireland here in a corner with a little bit of red, and you're going to have the slightly more orangey red to paint in those trees. Yeah, we just need to adjust slightly for each area because now I painted here and I noticed that it's a little bit too dark with red. We need a little bit orange red just here in a corner, mix with yellow, and you can paint that. 11. Lifting Off The Paint : Right? Well, that took a while. What we did now, we painted in the case of the strawberry. What we need to do now is we're going to go again with small brush all around, but we're going to be filling in gaps in between. What we need to do, we're going to be painting around the creases, creating the highlights. Like this one, we painted the middle part. Now we need to paint around, creating this ring of light. We're going to paint around creating this high light around each crease. And we're going to just paint in the middle parts, in between those seeds. Also, while we do that, while we paint, we're still going to go over exactly the same time on the crease that we painted and just darkening where we need perfecting the shape or something. Because once we start painting around, we can then make the shape of it, right. That's the plan for now. But before we start painting it, I think we can take our small brush and kitchen towel and go around a little bit and try to scrub off a little bit of paint and debit kitchen towel where we lost a little bit of light. For example, if I go here, right, I didn't even missed when I was applying masking fluid here. I'm not going to be able to lift off white of the paper, but I can make it lighter. Just go around your painting and see. Because once we start painting around those creases, if some areas are too dark, we won't be able to create a high light around. Let's go around and lift a little bit of color on those high lights where we think we lost, right? If I just go like here that I did now, then where I think I'm going to lose, for example, here I think I don't have enough light. I'll just scrub it, clean them, brush. If the paint is quite dark, it's lifting off quite nicely. You see nice little light, make it curve a little bit and where it's dark especially, it's lifting off quite easily. You see now we have a little highlight that we missed when you paint with wet, wet. But as I mentioned, you can lift off a little bit with clean ambush. Just go around now and lift off where we think we need to before we start painting around and creating. Now, for example, highlight, let's say here, right? It's a little bit too dark. I want to lift off that highlight so that when we paint around it, the contrast will be stronger. Okay, let's do that. 12. Painting In The Rest Of Strawberry: Right. Again, a detailed work. Again, I'm taking my number zero. I have my number one clean and damp. On the other hand, if I need to soften anything, I'll just go and again, using red color here as they move towards the right side, I will start darker red. Right now I will start with red. Actually here in this part, on this side I might use a little bit of Rose, Mata Lake because it looks a little bit more pink. And then as I moved toward the middle will be red and on the right side will be dark red. Right? If I start with my rosemake, watery down, completely dry. Now I'll start with slightly watery, pale mix, right? We paint around those creases that we painted, right. And moving the color further as we see, I soften that edge with clean dombrush paint, very close to the crease. And just moving a bit further away. And softening like here as well. Slightly further and softening, it's all disappearing and soft. Then at the same time, we can pick up some more red. We can define, we can do them after we've done with that part. Painting in between decreases, it's up to you. I will start painting maybe all around the creases and then I'll see if I want to darken the creases now or later. Let's just start by painting around them. We'll see how it's more natural. Again, with very small brush strokes and soft with clean brush, which you need to clean as well every few uses here I see that I probably need to start picking up my red color pat, moving further away, making sure we still have those highlights in between and softening so the sole blending in very smoothly. There are no hard edges here, all right, when we paint next to decrease on the other side, we need to leave that little highlight and paint around it. It's very detailed and it's probably not the best project for beginners. So it's for advanced artists. Intermediate beginner might struggle a little bit too much. Maybe paint some easier projects. If you are a complete, complete beginner, well you can give it a go. Actually, when I started, I was very motivated. I was taking up all kind of projects, even though some of them were clearly more advanced artists. But even though I struggled a little bit, but they taught me a lot more detailed project. Yeah, give it a go. Why not? Right, connecting. Basically, I'm connecting those creases now with each other. Making sure I'm softening everywhere and leaving the highs now on the other side, I need to leave the sliver of light I'm painting around. I know it's very hard to find in a reference for what. That's why we paint the dry brush, so we can be very focused and we don't have to rush. I went a little bit too dark here with my under layer. If you are painting, maybe you go slightly lighter because that blue is a bit too dark. I should have watered down the mix a bit more blue on the very first layer that we did. Maybe you go a little bit lighter. Softening here, the stage between um, make sure I don't have too much water on a brush, just D, right? And we need to paint around of crees is creating this little highlight at the top of each. Right. Now we're just going to go all around doing just that. What we're going to do with this highlight once you reach the high light, pick up quite a dry paint, let's say red. Just scribble over it to create this. You see by highlight with lots of texture, just tiny little brushes. So like in all directions that one way when I go to the middle I start dry brushing is if I do at the very end where we usually dry brush, right to smooth. But now we just basically painting in rather than smoothing. But the same way literal brush strokes define the edge and then fill in the gaps. Very small brushes that we don't make any mistakes and slowly move constantly, referring to reference, photo paint, define that highlight. I didn't fill in the gap until I reach the decrease. Okay, let's go and do that now. Oh. 13. Painting In The Seeds: Right now we are somewhat done, but we still need to darken some that are really, really black parts. Right? Some of the creases are nearly black, so we're going to need to darken those also. There's a little bit more darker red here and a few places needs defining, especially around those seeds. But in order to do it correctly, then I think we should paint the seeds first. Because on this side the seeds are real and some have shadows. You need to have been painted those seeds already in order to define them and put like really dark shadows before the last step for the strawberry. Let's paint in the seeds. And then we're going to go around defining, going into like small detail if you need to for the seeds. I'll make a little bit of space on my palette, clean some of that pink. I can leave a little bit because even if you'll need to, we won't need much of it, right? For the seeds on the left, they are very bright yellow. We can using rely right linn, a little bit of Akon gold. There's like a little bit of shadows for this side. Going to use Ac gold and add neutral tint to get them really like gray yellow. On the left hand side where they barely visible, they almost see, it's like yellowish gray, dirty mixing some neutral tint. It's going to work, obviously we're going to have to make this little shape slightly lighter at the top and darker here. But when it's small, you can't almost see it. But try to create this tonal values. Lighter and darker land is going to go here and then connect on, go a little bit on a shadow here. As we move here, we start applying a little bit yellow and then shadow with this color, right? We can probably go and paint all of the seats with yellow, but then start painting on the shadows as we go here. They're going to turn completely dark like So the first step, I'll just get my number zero again. Just paint all of them with my Arlen or even those bigger ones you can add like this, paint with land Cont on gold and add a shadow. But because it's such a small area, I'd rather paint with the color first and then go around painting with the shadow color. Let's just go and paint just with land, all of them. Try not to wiggle around the red part because you're going to be lifting off the red part and they will get smashed. Trying not to touch the red colors. Okay, now we can go around painting in the shadows a little bit. Pick up a little bit of early connect on gold, slightly bigger, and put a little shadow on the knees. Pick on one side because the light is coming from the left. Okay. As we go down, I already want to pick up a little bit of our yellow weight neutral tint, just pain like. So we need to clean my brush and soften a little bit. I'll take my second brush for that will be easier. Some are just darker, so I'm painting over. Some has shadow just on one side like so and soften just a bit to leave the top. Okay, so it's turning into something. 14. Final Dry Brush : Okay, so we have our seeds painted in. What we need to do is now put the finishing touches. For most, that would be it. It's usually not for me. Again, I'm taking my number zero. Now I'm going to do proper dry brushing with tiny brush strokes, pick up little color, just go around each defining those seeds. For example, you can see some of those seeds have dark, dark parts. I'm picking up some of my dark red, dark, dark. And just go and define the edge, right? Define here. Those crystes need to be darken in a lot of places. Here, for example, really, really dark. And then with lighter red go all around filling in those little gaps, defining everything. Basically all the lines, all the seeds, making a bit sharper on one end where the shadow falls and putting a little bit more color where needed. Also, some of those highlights are too light. We can see reference photo, they are red. Once we apply a little bit more darker red in these parts, then we can pick up a little bit of Arland yellow. Mix it with a bit of red to make a little bit brighter and lighter, slightly more orange, just with pale color. Go over that highlight, making it red rather than the pale gray, right? But we need to make contrast, so we need to put a little bit more color around it so that we don't lose it. But we do need to put a little color because it's just a very wrong color right now. We need to be just slightly lighter, but not completely like gray needs to be red. Still go over the highlight legs, but we need to put a little bit more cola around. Let's just dry grape, almost grape, entire strawberry. Just defining things, making a bit more perfect. And if you knew watch dry brush tutorial that's available, you will know what I'm doing Now, filling in little gaps, defining lines, just putting the last detail that it's still missing. Now I'm focusing rather like at one, grease. I'm focusing just a tiny area at the time. Because I like making things like extremely detailed. That's why I always do the last step with dry brush with very pale colors. And we can go over those highlights here and create slightly smoother transition. The tiny tiny brush rocks almost dot, see, just diffusing the sharp line like this is maybe not for everyone. You don't have to necessarily go to this a detail. It's just a possibility if you want to. Right, let's go and dry brush. So, okay, so we are done with a strawberry part. We can clean up the palette and paint in the leaves. 15. Mixing Leaf Colours: Right, let's mix up the colors for our little leaves. Leaves are not too much detailed. Maybe this one, I'll start by the way, I usually start on these leaves. You can see there are some blue tones and green tones. We can paint them in like two layers. First applying blue color and on top then applying green. Let's have slightly lighter bluish tone. We'll start with my land. Add a little bit flow blue. We need to add a little bit more palo blue to have this bluish stone very light and pale. Okay, perfect here. Second one is with the same pigments but slightly more green. So more yellow than blue. Maybe we can make slightly darker. Okay, then we need dark green. For that, I'll use two yellows. I'll start with my Arland yellow con golds. Give some worms and add palo blue. But in quantities, strong consistency, more saturated. All right, let's see like a base for here. For here I need a little bit even darker. Again, the same colors but even more saturated for real seniarly black parts. More saturated, but all the same pigments. But this time to make it even darker, I'm going to have to add some red and it's just going to go dark right away. Okay, so I'm adding Senala red and you can see it just going dark immediately. Yeah, that will be okay. He lost. 16. Painting Leaves - Layer I: Those are very small leaves. I'll maybe number two, al right, so we're going to start with water and white as we usually do everything. So let's start with this main big leaf, for example. Put a little bit of water first. Pick up a little bit of my lighter green and drop it here at the top. And then go to my darker and cover the rest of the leaf there and details, but they are light dark. It will be easier for us once we paint to be lifting off little brush once the glacier is dry, because those fans are like lights and very small, it will be easier for just to keep scrabbing off each way at a time. All right. So okay, I can even pick up some of my dark green. Drop it at the bottom. It's really dark here. C f take the water out and lift a little bit here. There are some like hairs actually here. Okay. And I'll leave it to dry. We can move on so we can't paint anything next. Because it's drying, we can go and paint this one, for example. Apply a little bit of water. Those leaves are going to be easier, not as detailed as the strawberry was. This should be easy for you. If you already painted strawberry, there's getting in the way. Okay, Picking up my bluish green, drop it in, and so let's leave it to dry a little bit, and when the glaze still damn, but slightly dry, we can add green color so that it wouldn't spread as much. Let's give it a minute. Can load my brush with quite sticky paint. Don't make it too watery, so that it doesn't spread too far, too wide. Okay, let's add a bit of green. Go with like little tabs like, because that's what I see in the reference for all here. And then there's a little line here. That's it. That's what we see. Let's leave it to. Right. We can this leave behind it is small, we don't need to wear it before. Maybe I'll just pick up much more watery and pale mix of blue that, that would work as we're going to drop in some green in it while the glaze is wet. But we're already painting it with light blue. I'll drink that down, clean my brush, and just soften around the edges. I'll quickly pick up my green even Actually, it's darker. Probably go here at the top. Put some of that paint down, and it goes lighter there, dark in this corner here. So here we go. Don't forget to paint this little tip of it, right? What else we can paint This little thing that speaking out again, picking up my blue, picking up my dark green, and oops, going at the top here. Okay. So this is drying. Still damp in the dark part. We can wait a bit longer. Let's see, this is dry around, we can paint, apply just a little bit of water just so that colour is moving around slightly easier. Just a little bit. Picking up my dark, I'm just painting entire leaf with just dark green. Okay, cleaning my brush. Take your wood and collect some of that in the middle. Alright, that's it. Pick up my light blue and just straight in. Let's paint this little part. Get my green and add a little bit things. I'm moving fast now, okay? All right, so this one is dry enough. We can paint this one again. Is also quite small. We can start painting it maybe right away without vetting it before I'll water down my green. Start painting and I leave a little C there is lighter and there's some hairs as well. Just leave it like so right now clean and I pick up some of the dark and drop it in the nctnal values. Okay, continue painting in the rest underneath. I'll start with putting some light blue glaze first and then I'll add green. Just step to make it an even texture. Okay, I can paint this one as well. Put a little bit of water on this one because slightly bigger I'm leaving that little end that's curving upward. Can I paint it separately? A little bit of water. Started my blue green mix. Put it all the way all the way in the in the shape the sleeve. You're just, we're going to be adding some darker color, picking up my green, darker green. Start from the top and it has those lines sweeping through like that, creating those lines a bit green down here, picking up some dark green on the top, on the very tip of my brush, what I meant to say. And there's very, very dark shadow here. And here we go, something like this. Okay, we need to paint that one. This one is just a plain black green color. So I'm just going to load my brush with dark green and just paint straight in as well. All the way to that top of the leaf. Clean my brush to the water out and smudge some of that paint here, and even a little bit on the strawberry with this green to create a shadow. You see that we ignored here from that leaf. Here we go, as it needs to be. We can even drag some of that green here. It darkens the strawberry underneath those leaves right away. Okay. Pick up a little bit more green. And there of the other leaf that's finishing, that's painted. Okay. That was very quick first layer and there's not much that we're going to have to do after this. What we need a little bit of tonal values and a little bit more definition and you get that layers. 17. Painting Leaves - Final Layer: What we need is we need a little bit of tonal values and a little bit more definition. And you get that with layers. Let's just go with wet and dry can have a second brush to soften the edges, but on the other hand just go glaze over like in areas where we just want to darken it. Here we go, just give a strong contrast here. Soften, pick up some darker. This corner, the sounds really dark. Can't seem to get very sharp at the foot of the sleep. I just keep curving it, so let's build up almost like dry brush here to build that dark color. On the other side, it is a bit darker since there's not much detail captured. We paint as we see. Okay, let's paint this T here that we left out. And with dark green, let's build up some of the colors. I'll go and glaze it. A little bit of pale colors all over. That's it. So, all right, so this one has a little bit more work. Let's build up some color first, let's start with this edge. Let's darken it and then we're going to be lifting off some of those veins. Let's define this edge, right? And dry brush with the tip of my brush sweeping across that leave building up the color. It's too harsh here. You can soften with your T brush just when you dry brush, you build up the darks much faster just with the very tip of my brush, going like this and building that darkness in the direction of that petal. Sorry, the leaf a bit moved towards the petals, really dark there. Okay. Leave it to dry for a minute, and then we're going to go and lift off a little bit of those veins. Okay, a little leaf is dry. I pick up my number zero kitchen towel and just go and scrub a little bit of details. I'll start with main vein here in the middle. You have a little bit of water on your brush. You have damp brush. Not because you want to scrub off very thin lines, it needs to be just a little bit of damp and on the other side. Not completely straight. Okay, On the side as well, you don't have to go as detailed as the sleeve is. Maybe just indicate those veins left off here and there. All right, do we see them? So we see them horizontally all over. They're not very even going in all directions. You don't even have to do exactly what you see. Just since you know they're going horizontally, just lift them off wherever you want. It's still going to look natural and realistic. I'm not even paying attention to the reference for, I don't know exactly exactly each vein. I'm just, I'm lifting off wherever. Okay. I'm going to even do more. I'll just do a few hairs in here going to be white. Maybe we can scrabble a little bit with something sharp. I can use white paint if you want to, just never use white paint. I don't see anything wrong with that. If you do right, then I'll go with the same brush and same dark paint. Just go a little bit around those veins to just define them a little bit everywhere. Just wear the veins I think a little bit too thick. Just go around and defining them just a little bit. I didn't lift off exactly as I see in the reference. I just wanted to make some indications that that's how it is because it's a pretty long Storiallready. That's going to be fine for me. I'll take my compass, which is very sharp, and you can go and scrub a little bit here and there if you want. There's also few has on the actual strawberry. You can also scrub if you want, but it's not scrubbing in a perfect nice line. I would probably suggest leaving it if you are able to do scrubby, very nice. You can like somewhere here. They came off quite nicely. So you can go and do that, but it's not necessary because it's all finished. That done? Yeah. That is our tutorial. I hope you enjoyed it. It's a challenge. But, I mean, strawberry is one of those subjects that every botanical painter wants to paint at some point in their lives. I'll see you next time By