How to Paint: Watercolor Cacti & Succulents

1. Intro: Hi, my name is Audrey, and have the creative behind Things Unseen Designs. Welcome to my Skillshare class on how to paint watercolor cacti and succulents. In this class, we're going to paint in a loose style, and that just basically means that we're not going to sketch and that we are not aiming for scientific accuracy. Instead, we just want to have fun, keep our wrists loose, and our brushes free. This class, we'll go over four plants, the beaver tail, the saguaro, the zebra plants, and the echeveria. With each of these plans, you'll learn how to use different size brushes. How to use different techniques, such as wet and wet, dry brush, and glazing, and you'll learn how to create a color palette. All of these tutorials are going to be done in real-time, so you can take your time, go at your own pace and just have fun painting. I can't wait to dive into this class with you, so gather your supplies and let's get started. I'll see you in class. 2. Beaver Tail Cactus Tutorial: Hi everyone. In this video, we're going to paint the beavertail cactus together. The beaver tail cactus has one or two pretty large shapes like this, and then it has a couple of extra little arms. It often has that little pink flower. So this is a color palette that we'll be working with, just to give you an idea. We'll have our greens and then this darker green we're going to use to accent the prickly parts, then we'll use this shade of pink. You can even go a little bit brighter if you want, for the flower. For this beaver tail cactus, I'm going to use a fairly large brush, I'm going to be using this size 12, and this will help us just fill in these large areas. Then for the prickly parts, I'll probably use a smaller brush and I'll show you which one I use when I get there. The key to painting this, you'll see a couple of different techniques that I used. First of all, I left some white space and that helps to give the shape and dimension. Then over here it might be a little hard to see, but I used the wet-on-wet method to add in different shades of green. We'll just go with the flow and see how it goes. Maybe we'll paint it a few times, but grab your supplies and then we'll get started. To get us started, let's try to match our colors, here I have just different shades of green. For this one, I think I mixed some sap green and then hookers dark green. So let me try to get that color back. I'll create my palate, maybe up here somewhere. Yeah. That's a pretty good solid green color. I think I mixed in some blue for this darker one. I think I mixed in some actually Payne's gray. Payne's gray has some bluish undertones to it, so I'm just going to grab some of that and then make a little bit over in this corner with this green, and then we'll see how that turns out. Yeah, Like I said, I think this lighter green is just the sap green. So I'm not going to watch that just because I know what it is. Then this, I think I mixed upper rose or permanent rose, we'll do that when we get there. But for now let's focus on the body of the beavertail cactus. So what I'm going to do, I'm first going to draw this shape, this left side, and then wash out my brush a little bit and then draw out the color leaving this white space. So let's try that together. I laid down some color and I'm going to wash out my brush, bloat it on my paper towel, and then draw this color out, finish the shape. I want to make it a little bit more pear-shaped like that, and then leaving some white space like. Then I'm going to go ahead and add some more color, so that we can darken it up a little. Now because our pink color is still pretty light, if you feel like, "I don't have enough white space," you can wash out your brush, and then bloat it and then pick up the paint color, we call that lifting. In this area, I'll just pick it up a little and you can start to see that the white is starting to show. Bloat out your brush again and then lift it up. It'll never be as white as the paper, but it'll be definitely lighter. So I'm just continuing to lift that up. I'm going to mix some more paint and then add some more paint to our layer. I do want some dimension, so I'm not going to add this darker green to the whole body. I'm just going to add it just to the left side. Now let's make the other arms. It's a similar green colors, I'm not going to mix a whole new color, but let's make this larger arm here. I'm going to have that branching off on the right side. Again, I'm going to have some white space in between. If you want to, you can add some brighter green or something to add some dimension. So I'm just doing the wet-on-wet by adding some green there. Lastly, we'll paint the small green arm right there. So I like how this is turning out and now let's mix the pink. So it my palette, this is my opera rose. So I'm going to grab some of that and I know my pellets are really dirty, but this is that permanent rows there and it is really pink. So I'm going to grab a little bit of the red just to darken it up a little bit. I like that. You don't need that much because we're going to just one small flower. So I'm going to pick that up and this green might still be wet, but that's okay. Even if it is, you'll just get a cool effect, that bleed effect. So like this flower, we're going to just loosely draw some quick strokes up and down with our brush and now we'll do the top of the flower and again, just some quick strokes. Now at this time, if you feel like you want to darken up your greens some more, that's really up to you and if the green is dry and then you put more color on it, that's called glazing or layering. So I'll just do one example just so you can see. So let's say that I wanted to darken up this side even more. So I grab some more of my sap green plus huggers green dark and just going to touch it lightly to see if it's dry and it's mostly dry. So I'll take in the color while, so you're just putting in the same color or it could be a slightly darker color just on top of the previous layer and you want to use slightly less water because you don't want to reactivate the previous layer and I just blotted out my brush just so I can make this color transition a little smoother. Let this dry and then we'll pick up our darkest green color and then come back to draw all the little prickly parts. Welcome back. So now my cactus is dry and I am going to use a size 2 brush and pick up my darker green color. The way that I'm going to put all of these prickly marks is, it goes in a diagonal format, I guess. Up here is where a lot of the pricklies are concentrated. But then line by line, it goes diagonally. So that's what we will do. So let's start with a little less guy or medium guy, I guess here on the right and I'm just going to do some tick marks right there. You can have them sticking out the sides as well. Makes it a little bit more realistic. You can add a couple extra if you want to make it look more realistic. Let's do the second small guy over here and let's do the big one down here. Again, I'm going to have some concentrated up here at the top and then move in a diagonal form. Most of hair is straight right here, but you can definitely vary the angles, just makes it look a little bit more interesting. There you have it. I love this beaver tail cactus, I love the contrast with the bright pink flower and the greens. We practiced a little bit of wet on wet when we added some of that extra green there and leaving this white space is so crucial to just making the cactus look a little bit more dimensional and giving it that shape. We used different sized brushes to paint these little pricklies and overall, I think this looks great. The last thing you can do if you want, you can add a shadow like I did in my original. In my original, I painted a very faint shadow right here and you can do that by just grabbing some light gray or light Payne's gray or even light black, just add a lot of water to it, maybe some clean water and then all you're going to do is just draw oval or a tear drop shape over this way at an angle. So let's do that. You can make it as long or as wide as you want because really it depend on how the sun is hitting your cactus, it's going to be long or short. Yeah. That's hard to see because my gray is, really light. So let me just bring it up to the camera so you can see I do have a very faint shadow right there. Well, pat yourself on the back because this is an awesome beaver tail cactus. Let's continue painting. 3. Saguaro Part 1: Hey everyone, welcome back, and in this video we're going to paint the Saguaro together. Here I have my beavertail, but this Saguaro looks like this, it's those tall, cacti with the arms, that come out almost on a 90 degree angle. Ignore some of these searches, my previous attempts and I cut them off. Just, what we did for the beavertail, we're going to leave that whitespace in the Saguaro as well, and you can see here, I have two side-by-side. This is what it looks like when you just color it in, just drawing the shape and color it completely in, it looks a little flat, I mean, granted, I could add some more details to this, but you can already see that it looks a little flat and uninteresting. But you come over here and I do have the lined details, but even without them, adding these or leaving this whitespace is going to really give a unique look to our Saguaro. For this, we're going to use a pretty light green and you can always darken it up by layering on top of it. We're going to use this darker green to outline our Saguaro, and then we're going to use a light brown to just create this bottom stock. Here we go, for the Saguaro, I'm going to use a slightly smaller brush, I'm using a size six, and I'm doing that because this is just a smaller painting, but you can use the 12, those have to paint a little larger. Then a leave that right there and let's try to color match these. Honestly, I don't remember what color I mix to get this green, but I'm just going to try, so for this, I think I mix some burnt sienna and Sap Green, and that looks close, I'm not going to agonize over the exact color. Then for this, I think I just added some bright green to it. Let's do that, I think I also added some darker brown, that's a little too bright, so I'm going to add some more darker brown to it to warm it up, and now it's a little bit too warm. But again, I'm not going to agonize too much over it, I think if I get somewhere in-between those two, that's fine. See my mistake was not writing down the colors. Now for this brownish tarnish color, all I did was mix some burnt sienna and yellow ocher, I add some more water to it just to lighten it up, so there's our color palette that we'll be working with, and now let's paint our Saguaro. One of the first things we're going to do is paint this main stock, and just like the beaver tail, I'm going to paint this left side, and I'm only painting the left side because I'm right-handed. If you're left-handed, you can certainly start with this right side. I'm going to paint this outline here, add some color, and then wash out my brush, and then draw out the color, leaving this crucial whitespace, so let's try that. It doesn't look like much now, but that's okay, we're going to continue adding colors, so I'm going to add a little bit of that darker green, and then add some more depth to it. Then again in the beavertail, if you feel like, I should have added or left behind some more whitespace. Then you can always wash out your brush, blot it, and then lift, like what I'm doing right now. Just to lighten those areas, I'm going to go over it with one more layer of green. Now at this point, I want the bottom part of my Saguaro to have that bleed into the into the brown, so I'm going to pick up my yellow right now, add some water to it, and then let the two colors bleed into each other. Let's continue with our grains and I'm going to paint these arms. I'm going to do the one on the right first, and we're can to continue going and then painting the arms on the left. Now the arms on the left are interesting, so what we're going to do, we're going to paint this arm first because it's the front most arm and then we'll go back and then paint this back one. I like how that color is bleeding in right there, it's cool. Then now let's paint the arm that goes behind it, I'm first going to paint the bottom part of the arm, and then paint the top part. Now I know that these green's still look really light and that's okay, the good thing about watercolors is that you work from dark to light and so I'm just going to add a little bit more color just to make my green stand out a little bit. Now this color bleed here is bothering me, it's a little bit too much, so I'm going to just take a clean brush and just let that color merge in with the body there. It's a softening up the edges, like so. 4. Saguaro Part 2: I'm liking how this is looking, so the next step is to draw in these outlines, but before we do that, we need to let this saguaro dry, so I'll see you in a little bit. All right, welcome back. To draw in the details of a saguaro, I'm going to use a size two brush and then really lightly drawn in these lines. If you look really closely, you can see that some of my lines break up like there, there too and then even down here. That's totally okay, again, it just adds character to the saguaro and it'll just make it look more interesting. The other thing that I also did was I added some detailed lines right there where the arms meet, so we'll be doing all of that. Let's go ahead and start outlining our saguaro. All right everyone, so great work on our saguaro, similar to our beavertail cactus, we worked on painting and then leaving some whitespace. We also practice the white on wet as we added some more colors with our greens and then we also practice some detailing using a finer brush, and I think it looks great. Let's look at our saguaro and the favorite tail cactus together. Yeah, I think this looks really awesome, so join me in the next video and we'll paint the zebra plant. 5. Zebra Plant Part 1: Hey everyone. Welcome to video 3, where we're going to paint the zebra plant here. The zebra plant is one of my favorites just because I love the deep dark greens and the white fuzzy details. So one of this special tools that you're going to need for this is Dr. Ph. Martin's Bleed Proof white. Now, this product is amazing and it's very opaque. It lasts forever, and it'll really make the white pop against this dark green. If you don't have this, you could use a white pit pen, you could use white gouache. But I highly recommend this and you can also use this for a calligraphy and a lot of other things. So, but there are other options, the only thing that you can't use is white water color paint. It won't be bright enough and it won't be opaque enough to stand against this dark green. So again, Dr. ph. Martin is a great product. I'll show you how to use this later, but for now will set it aside, and I have my large piece of watercolor paper here. So I'm going to draw my zebra plant down in this area. For this zebra plants, we're going to do a couple of different things. We're going to work on some of our brushstrokes as we try to create fluid lines. We're also going to do some layering and glazing, as you can see here, I have this one leave, but there are two different tones, and the same thing here, same thing there. So we're going to work on that, and you can also see here in the middle where all of the leaves come together. I added some more color just to create some depth. So we'll practice all of that. In general, we're going to paint about a dozen leaves or so. This look a little bit messy, but sometimes that's what nature is. Then I said it is a little messy and unpredictable so you don't have to make it look exactly like mine, but we'll do the zebra plant leaf by leaf. So follow along as best as you can. Let's just quickly do the color palette together, and here I have two pretty dark shades of green, and then I have this light sap green, and that's what we're going to use to layer on top of some of these leaves to create that depth. You can see I used that sap green right there as well, and a little bit here, and then this light tan color I used for just is gravel the area here. Let's go ahead and mix some of these greens, create our palette and then paint the zebra plant. Here we go. For the zebra plant, I'm going to use a size six brush. It's not too big, it's not too small, but I can paint pretty precise lines. Let's go ahead and do some color mixing. I think I already have this dark green ready to go. So it's going to grab some of that. This other darker green, I think it's just my [inaudible] dark green and maybe some of this sap green mixed together. So I'm just going to create that row fast. I'm going to grab some sap green, add some water to it, and then that will be my lightest color. Then for the gravily part, just to light brown. What I'm going to do first, I'm going to grab some of this green and maybe some of this dark color, I'm just going to go with the flow. I'll do my best to try to talk through my steps and then show you which leaf I'm working on. Some of the first leaves I'm going to work on are the ones that are up in this area. I'm going to paint maybe this one first and then this long skinny one, than the one behind that, and then the other one behind that, and then once I paint those, then I'll start branching off to the sides. Let's focus on these four first. Now for this one, you actually do want to color it in completely, unlike the beaver tail and the Saguaro. Because the bleed proof white is going to create the shape for us. Instead we're going to use darker colors to create dimension, okay. So this is my first leaf, let's do this tall, skinny one up here. Now I'm just being very loose with my brush. Just letting the brush determine the shape. If it's a little too thick that's okay, if it's a little too light that's okay. Just go with it. Now, I'm going to paint the leaf that come s behind the first one that we just painted. I'm going to have it end right about there. The next thing I'm going to do with this long skinny one, I'm going to create a lighter color right next to it. So that gives you the perspective that the leaf is folded up. As you can see right here, I have that lighter color on the left side. So it gives you the idea that you're looking at the leaf from the side, okay. That's what we did over here and here and here. So let's do that for the tall leaf there. So it just wash your brush out a little bit, pick up a little bit of the paint, add some more water if you need to, and then just paint a light line right next to that leaf. Next I'm going to do the leaf that is behind this long skinny one. You can see in my original, I have it so that you can see that occurs, and then you have that tiny sliver right there in between the leaves. You can do that if you want. You don't have to. Yeah, it's really up to you. Let's go ahead and paint that one. That's coming along nicely. So we've done our first four leaves. Like I said, that we were going to concentrate on these top four leaves. Now, let's do these four leaves to the right, and these are just going to come out from this middle section here, like that, like that, like that, and then we'll do that lighter color again and a little bit. Then the last leaf that I'm going to do right here, it's almost as if it's popping out of the ground there. It doesn't really connect to the middle, and that's okay. It's going to have that one just sticking out of the ground. Okay. At this time, we're going to paint, if you look closely at my original, I actually have one leaf right here. It almost seems to come out of the page towards you, and the way that you're going to recreate this is by painting a really dark green color over our existing leaves. You want these leaves to be dry because you don't want to reactivate that color. We're going to come back to that, but just make note of it. Then lastly, we're going to paint these four leaves off to the side. 6. Zebra Plant Part 2: Now at this time, we're going to concentrate on this middle part here. As you can see, we want to give the illusion that all of these leaves are pointing to here and it's darkest because there's going to be a lot of shadow. What I'm going to first do is paint the first layer here just bringing them all together. Then I let that dry a little bit and then I'm going to add some color. Let that dry. We'll come back to it. At this time, let's add in some of those extra colors to give the impression that we're looking at the leaves from the side. Then I take my greens, add some Payne's gray to it, darken it up a lot, and then paint the bottom half. I'm going to do the same on some of these other leaves here. It's really up to you if you want to darken it up even more. At this point, you can always darken up some of these other leaves as well. Maybe you want to add some dimension down here because the leaf is hiding behind the other leaves. Maybe you want to add some more color right there. I want to darken up this leaf here. Really liked that dark blue green, want more of a Payne's gray, bluish green colors. I'm going to really darken that up. I just really like this color. Now we're really starting to see some dimension in our plant. Then hopefully by now, this middle section is a little bit drier. I'm going to come in with some of that darker green with that Payne's gray and greens mixed up in it and then again, just going to dab it in there. I'm going to have it coming out towards some of the leaves. This is all just very loosely done. There's no set method or anything. Going to let that blend in. Then the last thing we're going to do, I completely forgot about this one leaf that comes out almost towards you. I'm going to paint that one real quick with our dark color before it starts merging in with these. I'm going to paint it right there. That's going to have to be pretty dark because I already darkened these two leaves. That might be hard to see. At this time, I don't like how this is too dark because now this leaf gets hidden. It's lost. I'm going to do the lifting where I wash out my brush, blur it and then lift up some of that color. Then you can always blend it back in with each other. I feel like that's a little bit better. That's a little bit too dark. At this time, I'm going to add my gravelly area and I'm just going to very loosely create this little cloud down here, and you can let that green fade-in or bleed in to the ground as well. I'll just give it a unique look. Again, leave some white space just so that it looks a little bit more natural. If you want to add some dimension you can while it's still wet, do the wet on wet and then add some darker brown. When this area is a little bit drier, I'm going to go over one more time and then define some of these leaves and how they end up here in this middle. Yeah, right there, it's still too dark, so I'm going to wait for it to dry. That's fine because then that's when we can also go over it with the bleedproof white. I'll see you in a little bit. So as our little end is a little bit drier. What I'm going to extend some of these leaves into the center so that it looks like it actually leads to somewhere. While that is drying, we can go ahead and get started with the bleed proof white. The bleed proof white, when you first open it, it's going to look gooey. It might look a little bit like very viscous and very thick. That's okay, that's how it's supposed to look. All you need to do is just add some clean water to it and then mix it in. What I'm going to do, I'm actually going to use what little I have right here in the jar lid. Then I'm going to use that to paint on our simple plant. I'm going to use maybe my size 2, again. Can grab some clean water. I'm going to just activate some of that bleed proof white. Once you add water to it, it'll fit out a lot. Now with that, we're going to draw or paint on our zebra plant. What you want to do is you want to focus on, especially if the leaf has the two tones, you want to draw the white only on the darkest area. I'm going to start with just the front leaves that we did. You want to draw the white in a zigzaggy up and down motion, if that makes sense. Because you want to give it the effect that it's fuzzy. Again, doesn't have to be all connected. It can be a little bit separated if you want. It's zigzaggy. The zebra plan also to give it a little bit more dimension. Instead of going straight, you can go down and then up almost in a v motion. That will also help make it look like it has a shape to the leaf. I've had the blade profile is just so opaque and it just really stands out. Let's go ahead and do the same to this guy. You can go in a diagonal motion if you want. Then just keep going until you've got all the leaves done. At this point, I think,my center is almost dried, so I'm going to continue the white down into the middle so that again, it looks like the leaves all converge at one point. This looks really great. I love the zebra plan just because that dark greens and the bright white. I can't wait to paint the next one with you. I'll see you there. 7. Echeveria Part 1: Hey everyone, welcome to the last video of the cacti and succulents series. So far we've painted the beavertail, the saguaro, the zebra-plant and in this video, we're going to paint the echeveria. The echeveria succulent is really beautiful, it comes in a couple of different kinds of colors. I'm going to do a bluish-green-color just because I like it, and then the tips also have this little red on it. This is the color palette that we'll be working with, mostly greens and blue hues and then a red. You'll notice that my colors here are very concentrated, or they're very saturated. So we're going to definitely paint in layers, and we're going to start from this center paint the Green Center and then slowly go layer by layer and go outward. You'll notice that these leaves in the center are more circular and then as you come out, it gets a little pointed, so we'll, practice that as well. Let's get started for this video. I'm going to use two different brushes. I'm going to use a size six and a size four the reason why I'm doing that is because they're pretty similar in size, and I'm going to use one to paint with, and then I'm going to use the other to be clean and wash out the color a little bit and you'll see what I mean when I do the demonstration. If you have a smaller brush or larger brush, that's fine, just try to find two brushes that are somewhat similar in size. Again, if you work with larger brushes, your succulent is just going to be larger and that's okay if you're okay with it, and if you have smaller brushes and it'll just be a smaller succulent. I'm going to use a six to paint with, and before we get started, let's figure out our color palette. Again, I want to use bluish-greenish tones so I have a couple of blues and my palette here, and then some green from the previous videos that was going to mix a fresh batch over here, is going to take some of the blue from here or the green from here, and then drop it in there. Yeah, I what I'm seeing, let's see how it looks on the paper. Yeah, that looks pretty good, it's a little bit too blue for my taste, but that's okay. That just means I just need to add a little bit more green to it, now let's try to get some of the green in there. Let me try one more color combination and see if I can get more of that green that I'm looking for or more of that green-blue that I'm looking for. Yeah, I think this is right on the money, that's pretty good. The last color that I need is just a little bit of the red, I'm going to grab some red wash it out. You don't need too much of it and we won't be applying it until towards the end, so this is more just so that we don't forget to add it in our painting. Let's go ahead and get started by painting the center of our succulent. The center of our succulent is mostly green but you can add some blue if you want, it's really up to you and you'll see that it's like a crescent moon shapes, we'll do a couple of those in a circular formation. I might just do another small one here. I'm pretty satisfied with that. Now we're going to move on to the next layer of leaves, I'm going to explain what I'm going to do first, because it happens a little bit quickly. First, I'm going to paint these leaves right there that are closest to the center, and what I'm going to do, I'm going to paint that crescent moon, that half-moon shape and with my six brush and then with my size four brush, as soon as I paint that I'm going to bring my four brush in and then draw the color out. I'll do one really slowly so that you can see what I'm doing and then I'll continue on. With my size six brush, I'm going to paint that half-moon shape, and then come in with my size four brush and I'm going to, it has a little bit of water on it and I'm going to draw that color out, I'm almost touching the center but not completely and I want the color concentrated on the, on the top part of the leaf. Let's do another one. I'm going to paint that half-moon shape, come in with my size four brush and then draw it out. Now it's okay if your succulent isn't or if you're leaves aren't perfectly spaced out, that's totally okay. Nature's not perfect, so just draw that color out. Then as I'm drawing it out, you'll notice that I'm making the leaves, the widest part is right there, but then I'm having the leaves come towards the center at an angle, almost like an ice cream cone or something. That'll just help shape the leaves, so don't go directly down but have it angled inward like a V. I know my leaves aren't perfect, but I'm going to go ahead to the next layer of leaves and we're going to start by filling in that area right there. Periodically, you might have to wash out your size 4 brush so that you have some clean water to work with because you want that nice gradient to be happening. You don't want to draw all of this color out. You want to just draw a tiny part of it out, and so a clean brush that's not too wet will do exactly that and create that nice, clean or smooth gradient. [MUSIC] All right. I still have a long way to go. I think I'm going to do at least, maybe one more layer before I do the pointed leaves. [MUSIC] Okay. At this point it's looking pretty good. Now I'm going to start painting the leaves with the pointed tips. [MUSIC] 8. Echeveria Part 2: Now that I'm done, I want to darken up these inner leaves. They're pretty much dry already, so we're going to do some layering and glazing. Pick up some more of that color. It can be exact or if you don't have that exact color, that's fine. When you go over it, it'll just get darker overall and that's what we want. I'm going to do the same thing, paint with my size six brush, and then with my clean size four brush, wash it out. All right. I'm getting near the end, and at this point I'm going to start adding the red tips. I'm going to use my size four brush, pick up some of that red, and then just drop it right there at the tips. I know some of your leaves are still wet, that's totally okay. It'll just create a nice bleed. Remember, anytime you put paint on top of another layer of paint, you want to use less water. In this case, as I'm putting down the red, I want to make sure that there's not a lot of water on it. Otherwise, if there is, it's going to look washed out, and it could possibly reactivate the layer below it, and I don't want that. I think I got all of the leaves. Here are all of the cacti and succulents that we did together. We have the echeveria over here, the beaver tail, the saguaro, and the zebra plant. We used a couple of different techniques. We used layering or glazing, we used wet and wet. We detailed, and we also used opaque white, the Dr PH Martins' bleed-proof white. I had a lot of fun painting these four plants, and I hope you did too. Well, I can't wait to see your plants, so don't forget to create a project and upload photos of your cacti and succulents. Thanks so much. 9. Final Thoughts and Tips: Hey, everyone. Congratulations on finishing this class on how to paint watercolor cacti and succulents. I hope you're really pleased with the plants that you painted. I can't wait to see what you've created, so don't forget to make a project and take photos of your work. If you are on Instagram, you can find me at Things Unseen Designs, and you can tag your work with #WatercolorWithTUD so that I can see our work and repost on my stories. The first tip is to practice observation. In this class, we looked at the paintings that I originally did. But when I painted them, I also looked at photos or from real life. So get out there, go to the conservatories, forest reserves, your own backyard and just practice observation. Look at the plants, look at the shapes that they have, and then analyze the colors, and from there you can start sketching and then break them down to paint them loosely. The second step is to invest in different sized brushes. Supplies really make a big difference and if you don't have the right tools, it's really hard to get the right work done. So in this class we use a size 12, a size six, a four, and a two. But you can even go smaller, like in my botanicals class, we used double zero brushes. We used, I think a size zero and a two. Four was the largest that we even went to. So investing in those different brushes is so important and my last tip is always to practice. You probably know this by now if you've taken my other classes. Yeah, definitely practice makes perfect. Even though I really enjoyed the first paintings that I did for these plants, when I did them again for recording this class, I liked some things even better. I tweaked my process a little bit and I used different colors, slightly different colors, and I just had a lot more fun with it. So the more you practice, the more you fall in love with it. Before you go, be sure to check out some of my other classes. If you like this loose style then I think my Watercolor Loose Florals class will be perfect for you. If you painted your plants separately, like I did on a large watercolor piece of paper, then digitizing that might be the next step. You can put them and print them on cards. You could make a pattern out of them and put it on a tea towel or on a mug. The possibilities are just endless, so I can't wait to see what you create. Thanks and hope to see you in my next class.