How to Paint: Watercolor Loose Florals (Part 2)

1. Intro 1: Hi there. I'm Audrey, and I'm a watercolors and calligrapher. Welcome to my class on how to paint watercolor loose florals. In this class, you'll learn how to paint six different flowers. The lavender, lilac, hibiscus, cherry blossom, calla lily, and magnolia. I'll walk you through how I think about floral shapes, how I choose colors, and how I use simple brushstrokes to capture the essence of each flower. More than half of my classes on Skillshare are about loose style painting. I just really enjoy it because it's really liberating, it's freeing, you don't have to be afraid to make mistakes because even if you do, you can quickly go over them, or erase them, or turn them into something else. I encourage you to just go with the flow, and just be bold in your painting in this class. Well, I can't wait to see what you create. Let's grab our supplies and dive right in. I'll see you in class. 2. Inspiration: Hey everyone. Let's talk a little bit about inspiration. Where do we find it, how do we get it, and how do we stay inspired? The first about how to find or get inspiration, for me I just like to go out and just be in nature. I like to visit gardens and parks, and forest preserves, just being out there and just always having my phone handy. I don't always carry my fancy camera around with me, so usually my phone is good enough. But if you have a fancy camera, you should probably use it. But if it's too cold to go outside or if it is dreary day, then your next bet is just to go online and there are royalty free images that you can use for your paintings. One of my favorite sites for this is Pixabay, and all of the reference photos use in this class are from Pixabay. You still want to be careful about how you use these, especially if you're going to be selling the work. But for the most part, most of the pictures on Pixabay are free to use without attributing to someone or without purchasing a commercial license. In terms of staying inspired, that's really hard sometimes, and I totally understand. I don't always wake up in the morning and feel super excited and ready to go. Sometimes I'm tired, sometimes I feel lazy, and yeah, we all struggle with that. Don't feel like you're alone in that if you feel like I'm not inspired enough, I'm not creative enough. That's not true. You just go through ups and downs. First you just have to overcome that feeling. The second is sometimes you just need to push through it and just practice anyway. Go back to the basics, practice your strokes, practice abstract patterns or practice the subjects and things that you know how to paint or like to paint. For me, it's usually leaves or roses or cacti and things like that. Yeah, just going back to the basics sometimes helps trigger something. Using a new color tends to do that. Something else I like to do is go through my old pictures. Were always snapping photos, and yes, some of those photos you just never look at again. This is the time that I sift through that, and then I also delete photos that are super old or blurry or I forgot to erase them or I end up keeping the ones that I really like. Yeah, sometimes I might find a picture of a flower that I had captured and just completely forgot about it. Or I see a picture of a cat that's hiding in an alleyway, yeah just little things like that may spark something. Go back into your history of pictures and maybe you'll find something there. Something else I like to do when I'm not feeling so inspired is actually not do anything. Sometimes I just need to just recharge, veg out, watch a TV show, eat some ice cream. Just taking that time just for yourself. Maybe you need to go to the salon. Maybe you need to get your hair done. Maybe you just need to play basketball with your friends. Whatever you need to do to just go away for a second and then come back, that sometimes helps me. Lastly, this may not apply to you, but it definitely applies to me. I have to organize my creative space. I usually function in an organized chaos, but every now and then, my place get super messy, especially when I'm filming for these Skillshare classes. I have papers everywhere, paint everywhere, brushes everywhere. If I come into a messy studio, I feel overwhelmed and I feel cluttered and I don't want to paint. In that case, I just need to buckle down, it's part of my business, it's part of my work, and I just have to clean up. Sometimes the act of cleaning my workspace tends to clean out the clutter in my own head. Sometimes that helps. If you're like me, always living in an organized chaos, maybe you just need to organize it even further in a neat and orderly fashion and then maybe that will help spark something new inside you to. If you're struggling with lack of inspiration, again, don't worry, everyone's been there. Sometimes we are there and sometimes we're there for a long time, but you will get out of it. Just try different things. Try journaling, go out in nature, talk to your friends, sometimes sleep. You know what's best for you, so I hope you find that and get back into this saddle and start painting and being creative again. That's it for me. 3. Lavender: Hey everyone. Welcome to this video and I'm going to show you how to paint the lavender in a loose style. Here I've got some different examples of the lavender that I've painted. This is inspired by a photograph that I saw on pixabay.com and it just had a huge field of lavenders. I just used very loose brush strokes as you can see. I washed out some areas like in this corner over here to just create the illusion of just masses of space. I also used mostly the same color, but I used its transparency to my advantage and to create just the layers and depths in this painting. Lavender is just so cool. I also painted this lavender plant more of a full bush looking lavender plant. Again, I used mostly just one or two different colors, but used transparency to create depths and layers. Even the greens, I used just one color, but used layers on top of layers to create these different colors. In terms of the petals, that's what we're going to be learning today. I use very simple brushstrokes, whether it's upstrokes or downstrokes. We'll practice a couple of those, and then I want you guys to have the freedom to paint whatever you want to paint. The colors that I'll be using mostly, this is the Winsor dioxazine purple. This is a mix of this purple and ultramarine blue, and this is just plain sap green, one of my favorite greens. I like this warm sap green color because it plays off of these cool colors here. To paint the lavender in a really loose style, we're just going to practice a couple of brushstrokes and then start painting the petals. First go ahead and pick up some of your color, you can wash it out a little bit if you want to. We're going to be playing around a lot with transparency. If you want to take some of that color, wash it out, feel free to do that. Always add a little bit more color to or even add some more water to wash that out. I'm going to start dark though so you can see my brush strokes. I'm going to pick up a little bit more color here. Like I said, we're going to practice in basic brushstrokes. Let's try a couple of simple up strokes. I'm using a size 4 round brush, and if you have a size 6 or size 2 or size 8, that's fine. It'll just be, if it's larger than a size for your petals would just look bigger than mine. If you have a smaller brush, then your petals will just be smaller than mine, and that's totally fine. Let's practice a couple of upstrokes and that's exactly what they look like. Let's practice some skinny ones. Just put your brush to the paper at an angle, and just practice just some upstrokes like this. Then to create thicker up strokes, just press down a little bit further on your brush so that more of the brush is touching the paper. Now you're creating thicker up strokes. You can do them at an angle too if you'd like, you don't have to go up and down. Just as long as you're moving in an upward fashion. Again, let's try out some more skinnier ones. You can try doing some smaller strokes. You don't have to fill this whole page if you don't want to. Now let's try some downstrokes. So this time instead of moving in an upward fashion, we're going to move in a downward fashion. You might be holding your brush a little bit differently. This time your brushes painting up and away from you and you're going to just drag your brush down. You can do skinny ones like this, you can do thicker ones again just by pressing down further on your brush, so that more of the brush is touching the paper. Just practice these strokes just so you have a sense of how your brush works and how your hand feels. I feel like with time, you'll start to develop brush strokes that are just part of your style. Doing drills like this are really helpful so that you and your brush become one. I know it sounds super cheesy, but yeah, this anyone can teach you and you can learn and anyone can learn it. But in terms of turning these simple strokes into your own style, that's really something that I can't teach. As you do this you'll start to feel, hey, you know what, I'm more comfortable painting like this or I'm more comfortable creating thin strokes like this. Again, you'll start to develop your own style and so yeah, just experiment and just see what you like. But yeah, just spend some time practicing those strokes. Next, let's start taking some of these strokes and now creating the petals. If you look at a lavender flower, they have clusters, especially up at the top of the stem. We're going to use the strokes that we just painted to create these clusters. I'm going to start with a nice dark color, I'm going to just really saturate my brush with this. I'm going to start at the top of the cluster with a nice dark rich color. I'm going to go ahead and fill up my brush with this deep purple color and then paint just one petal at the top. I'm going to make it a little bit thicker than normal, just like that. Now I'm going to wash out my brush, blot it just a little bit on the napkin, and then use my brush to paint just around it using the color that's already there to paint some of the other clusters. Now at this point, I can pick up some more of that color then wash it out just a little bit and then paint some more. Now, I'm feeling like this is light, so I'm going to blot out my brush to be almost dry and then pick up some fresh colors so that my brush is really saturated. Then punch in some weather color in there. Just remember, just keep it really loose. Let's try a slightly different method where we have our color, and then we're going to paint just a series of upstrokes and downstrokes just in a random format like this. Let's try another one where it's like, the half purple and then half of the blue purple mix. Grab some more of that color, it's going to do, it maybe like five or six petals there. Wash out my brush, pick up some of that blue, purple color, and then mix it in there. At this point, if you want to add some of that sap green, go ahead and pick that up and you can just paint the stems pretty simple like that. This time let's play around with a little bit of transparency. I'm going to start with a light purple, then start with a light purple and then paint some light feather or light petals there. I'm going to go in there with this blue purple and then paint some petals over that. Let's do some layering, so you can again start with the light layer. Again, just be really loose with it, up strokes and downstrokes. I'm going to let this dry completely before I go over it with another color at my stem here. While we're waiting for this to dry, sometimes on the lavender, there's a cluster of petals and then there's another cluster further down on the stem. So yeah, let's go ahead and add some of that. Again, just keeping it really loose not really concerned about what direction they're facing or what colors I'm using besides the colors I've already predetermined, yeah. This flower is now 75 percent dry, so I'm just going to go in there, pick up a color, pick up my purple. I'm just going to paint right over it. Now if it's completely dry, which again, it almost is then it's going to not bleed but just, so it's bleeding a little bit but that's fine. I'm going to use some of that blue purple actually. This way you can see the lighter color underneath, but you can also see the darker colors as well. I'm going to add some of those clusters there. That was some good practice on painting the lavender. How is yours looking so far? Pretty good. I like the color mixing that's happening here, but I also want to add, maybe just a little bit more definitions. I might just add some little bit more color here just to define some of the layers. Now that some of these flowers are also dry, I'm going to add just a little bit more sap green in the midst of these petals because it's not like the stem just stops right here, it continues up to the top. So if you want to add just a hint of that green, just to show that it still continues up, you can do that too. How are your lavenders looking? I hope you had fun painting these using just really simple brushstrokes. The upstroke and the down stroke, and the variety of different colors and using transparency and layering to create these lavender stems. Let's go ahead and paint the next flower together, I'll see you in the next video. 4. Lilac: Hey everyone. Welcome to this video and we're going to learn how to paint the lilac flour together. The lilac has just really beautiful pinks and purples and sometimes a little bit of bluish purple flowers and petals. In this lesson we're going to use, again just really basic strokes to create these pedals and leaves. The palate is going to be really similar to what we used in the lavender video. So I have the blue here or the Dioxazine purple. This is my ultramarine blue and purple mix here. This is my original sap green. Over here I mixed some permanent rose and the Dioxazine purple. Here I mixed sap green, Hookers Green Dark, and Payne's Gray to get this nice dark green color. So go ahead and grab your supplies and let's dive right in. Similar to the lavender painting, we're going to use a size four round brush and the lilac is special. It's got some of the buds are opened up and some of them are close. So let's practice a couple of the closed petals or close buds I was going to choose just one of these colors doesn't really matter which one. For the closed, we're going to use two up strokes right next to each other or two down strokes. The down strokes or the upstarts are going to be slightly curved so that we're creating a nice oval. Something like that and then what right next to it leave just a little bit of white space. It looks like an animal's hoof. But that's not what we're going for obviously. But that's what it looks like. So again, try it again just right next to each other. Let's try a different color. You don't have to have this point if you don't want to, you can just you can just have it just rounded off like that. They don't necessarily have to be touching either and then some of these buds, you might be looking from a different angle. If you're looking at it from the top down, you're going to see, because there are four sides to these buds. So you might want to do like one, two, like that, but then also two smaller ones like that to just give it that 3-D shape. You can try that again and two big ones and then two smaller ones. If you're looking at it from the side, but also still from above, you might see one big one like that and one smaller one right next to it, then other smaller one right next to that and then the fourth one to finish it off. Again, just depending on what angle you're looking at, you might want to create those different shapes. This one, I forgot to leave some white space, so it just looks like one blob. That's okay, we can practice again. Something like that. You can have it facing different ways too. you have it going down. Just keep it loose. Try experimenting with one thick, one thin or the first one, then the next one thick. Just fill in this corner with just different types of the close buds and just practice to brushstrokes. Just keeping it loose. Now we've practiced a bunch of those, if you want to keep practicing, feel free. You don't have to stop now just because I'm stopping. But now let's practice some of the open petals. So for them it's just as simple for petal flower. I'm just going to have, was going to use the same steps that we did here, but this time keep them together. Just a simple straight one has one and all four sides evenly distributed like that. Let's try another one. You can have a slight white space in the middle. Just personally I like to. But it's okay if you accidentally covered it up too. Now you can fill in this center space or you don't have to. What we're going to do after these are dry, we're going there and either use a pen like an archival ink pen, or we're going to use just a Payne's Gray to just dot the middle. So you have a couple of petals like this and then if you want to show some of the petals that are being curved, all you have to do is just paint just a slightly different shape. For example, if you have one that's opening up to the left, you'll have two big petals like this. But then the other two petals will be a little bit smaller like this. It looks like it's opening up to the left. Just the opposite for the right. So you'll have two big petals going this way but then two small petals like that. Play around with the size of the petals, with how close they are, how far they are. When I experiment some more you can have, three that are pretty big and then one that's a little bit smaller like that. That's some pretty good practice with these petals. Now we're going to start putting it together into one cluster of lilacs. If you look at one, any one cluster of lilacs, it's a combination of both of these. Some of them might have more of the closed buds and some of them might have more of the open petals. It's just a combination of using both of these. You can use your preference and your personal eye to dictate these colors because we're going to use just a variety of wet on wet and yeah, just blending these colors together so that it creates a really unique flower. We're not going to really going to be using green just yet. We're going to stick with these three colors that we have here. I'm going to start at the top of the cluster and move my way down. Usually at the top of the cluster, it's just the buds. I'm going to pick up a color and then create some buds, small buds up here. Then you've got a couple of stems like this. I've kept it really loose and you can barely tell what's going on up here. But that's okay. I'm going to keep moving down. I'm going to pick up a little bit of the just purple and create some more just simple stems and then some more buds. Now I'm going to vary my colors a little bit, add some of that bluish purple in there. Now I'm going to pick up some more of that and then do some more over here. I like to let the colors just bleed as they want. Now as I move down, I'm going to add in some of these open petal flowers. I'm going to keep it really light first. It's going to just water that pink down just a little bit. I'm going to do an open flower here. I'm just going to continue to let that dry, but I'm going to keep on painting around it. You might have another, a couple of more buds here. This top of the cluster is looking really nice. Now I'm going to start branching out a little bit wider. It's going to have a general like a general triangular shape, a rounded triangular shape to it. Very long triangle shape. I'm going to add just a couple more of the open flowers over here, just randomly. Just very lightly. Now I'm going to do a darker one right next to it and let the colors lead in. Again, I'm going to continue just with the buds. These buds can be coming out of these petals too. You don't have to be afraid of painting over them because that's what happens. I'm starting to create just a little bit more width in my painting. Now if you want to, you can leave a little bit of space. I might add some leaves right there, maybe a small leaf here. You can add leaves to fill in the painting too. But for the most part is going to be mostly petals. Again, just play your play around with transparency to use a more watered-down color to create lighter values. As you get to the bottom of your lilac, it's going to be a little bit more spaced apart and we're going to start to see some more of that green. I'm going to add just a couple more open flowers right around here and then come in with the green. I'm going to pick up my stem green. I'm going to imagine that there's a stem running all the way down and then I'm going to start my stem right around here. I want this petal is still wet. I want the green to blend in there and it's going to come up right up against it and let that green blend. Then continue my stem. You can make it a shorter, as long as you want. It doesn't really matter. Then this stem isn't just one stem, it does split off into smaller ones. I'm going to have just another one coming into their, just have maybe two or three stems coming off. Since I drew this one accidentally without drawing some more flowers over here, I might have to. Then just continue the stem throughout the plant. You don't have to put too much green just because we already painted some stems. No, I guess and I'm going to go back in there and paint just a couple more buds. This is what our plant looks like so far. How did your lilac look? It's going to add in a couple more buds just to fill it in a little bit more. Now once your lilac is dry, you can go back in there and where we painted the flowers. Hopefully you can still find them. We're going to use just a very dark Payne's gray or you can use a archival ink pen and just draw it just a small simple dot right in the middle so that we can distinguish the buds from the open flowers. I've got some Payne's gray on my brush. I'm just going to go in there and just put a really small dot. This also helps bring the painting more to life. Because you get the sense that, you have that mixture of the petals and the buds. Think that's it, oh, here's a couple more. Yeah, I think that's it. Now when you zoom out, it just looks more like a complete flower. Great job in painting the lilac, and let's make the next flower together. I'll see you in the next video. 5. Bonus: Lilac timelapse: 6. Hibiscus: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this video. We're going to paint the hibiscus flower together. I love this flower. It just reminds me of summer because it's such a fun tropical flower. We're going to paint it using a couple different techniques. In these two techniques, we focus just on the outline and then use a watery brush to draw that color out. In these two examples and also this one, I used first a very light color to paint these pink side and then dropped some color in while it was still wet. Then for this one, I started out using this same method where I painted light colored petals and then I layered a darker color on top. We'll explore all of these different kinds. Again, you can use different colors if you want. I'm going to do mostly pinks and reds and just a little bit of purple. In terms of brush sizes, I'm going to be using a size four and a size two. I might use a bigger brush for maybe this one, these kinds over here. I just find that it's easier for me to paint really loosely with a larger size brush. If that's how you feel too, by all means. But I like this size two to get the nice small details of the stamen over here. For the colors, I'll be using three main colors. This is yellow ocher and bright yellow mixed together. This is alizarin crimson. We're not going to be using the greens, these are just from other videos. This is a mix of payne's gray and the alizarin crimson colors. It makes a really nice dark purple color. Then here in the middle is just a watered-down red. Those are your basic colors. If you want to use some orange or paint a yellow hibiscus flower, that's totally your choice and I welcome you and encourage you to do that. But for this video, we're going to focus mainly on the pinks and the reds. Go ahead and grab your supplies. Let's dive right in. I do have a size six and a size eight on hand just in case I want to paint with a larger brush, but I'm just going to have them off to the side and see if I really need them. Let's first start with these guys, painting really loosely. The hibiscus flower has five main petals and they usually overlap each other. You can see that this petal is on the foreground. This petal is behind this petal and behind this petal. This petal is behind this one. Just keep that in mind as you're painting. That not all of them is going to have this general rounded diamond shape. We will paint like one rounded diamond and then we'll paint the one that goes behind it, then we'll paint another full one and then maybe another full one, but then paint another one that goes behind it. Just keep that in mind as we're painting. I'm going to go ahead and grab my color. We're going to start by painting that main outline of the first petal. Again, just keep it really loose. I'll wash out my brush just a little bit, and then fill in that petal. I'm going to skip this area and I'm going to move down here, and then paint the next petal. Wash out my brush a little bit. Notice that I'm keeping this imaginary circle here in the middle because that's where we're going to add in some of our darker colors. We want to keep that area bare. I'm going to do one more full petal in this area over here. Wash out my brush a little bit again. Now I'm going to paint the petals that would go behind it. There's going to be a nice dark color right there where it would go behind it. I'm just keeping it really loose. Now that you have this general shape, I'm just going to add just a little bit more water to this middle section here and some more paint right there. Now I'm going to grab my darker color here to add to the middle because the center of the hibiscus flower is really dark. While we're waiting for that to dry, let's try another smaller one right down here. This time, instead of just using one color in the petals, I'm going to use that first petal, but then use some of my darker colors to just add some more interest. I'm going to paint a little bit smaller in this area. I go in there with a second layer up here. I'm leaving just a little bit of white space, but not too much. Most of these petals are drying out, so then I'm going to paint this stamen. For the stamen I'm just going to use my red, and I might actually mix some of my yellow. Let's just add a little bit of that in there. I'm just going to have it just coming out this way. Now, this stamen, it's usually skinny and then it ends with a couple of little thingies sticking out like this. Then it has like little circles at the end. I want to do one more down here. But then all around it is also the yellow, the pollen all around it. Make sure to add some of that just using the tip of your brush to add that. Let's revisit this one down here. I like the values of colors I have in there. I'm going to add some of my dark color, to let that really nicely spread. I'm going to use this color and this time I'm going to have this stamen coming out this way, and I'm just going to keep it short. Then I add some more of pollen red around it. That's just one way to paint the hibiscus. The other way to paint the hibiscus that I'm going to show you, is to first paint a light layer of pink and then go in there and drop some other various colors in there. I added some purple and some light pink over here, as well as adding the darker color here from the center. The very, very dark color we're going to add towards the end, and then we'll add this stamen. Let's try that. I'm going to use my very watered-down red that's here on the center. Maybe I'll add just a little bit, but definitely more water. It's similar to this. We're going to paint the basic shapes first, but this time I'm going to go one by one. I'm going to use my size 4 for the light red color and I'm going to use my size 2 to hold the dark red color so that I can quickly go in there and drop that dark color in. I'm just going to have this ready on standby. Again, I'm going to keep my brush strokes are really nice and loose. There's one petal, I can probably do this second one too. Now I'm going to drop my dark red in, I knew it was too wet. That's okay. You can always erase some of that and draw it back in. Reign it back in if it's too dark. Let's do the next petal over here. Now it looks pretty good so far. I go in there with that much darker color now. We're going to let that dry before adding the stamen. Let's just do another one. I forgot to pick up the red. Now I'm going to add some of that darker color here in the middle. I'm going to go back in there and then draw the stamen. I know these are really light so let me bring them up to you. Let's paint one or two more. I want to do the one where I showed you how I layered the pink colors too. Then I do another light-colored one. But this time let it completely dry and not add any darker colors into it. I'm just going to let that completely dry. Let me bring it up to you so you can see the generic shape of it. I'm going to let that completely dry before I do anything with it. Now that my first layer is dried, I'm going to go in there with a darker color and I'm going to use the same loose brush strokes, but this time I'm not going to cover all of it. I want some of this underlayer to show through, so something like that. You can wash it out and do some of the lighter colors too. This is when you definitely want to add the darker color. Well, great job painting the hibiscus flower and I just hope you had fun experimenting with different styles and techniques. I'll see you in the next video. 7. Cherry Blossom Part 1: Hey everyone. Welcome to this video where we're going to paint the cherry blossom together. In these two examples here I painted to slightly different cherry blossoms. One is just smaller flowers and this one is more of a close up one. We're going to use different brush sizes to get these different effects. For this smaller cherry blossom are going to use size 4 and a size 00 brush to get the tiny little details right there. For this larger one, we're going to use a size 12 brush for mostly these petals, and then a size 2 or size 4 for the little stamen. Go ahead and grab your supplies and let's dive right in. Here are the colors that we'll be using. This is an Alizarin crimson color and this is this reddish Alizarin crimson mixed with burnt umber. These are just leftover colors from other video, so we're not going to use those but this is the burnt umber mixed with Payne's gray. I'm also going to use Payne's gray probably just straight from the tube as well, but I just didn't add it to my palette. Let's focus on these two. I'm going to be using this and watering it down for a lighter color, and that will be mostly from my petals. This darker color is going to be used for the center of the petals and for creating the stamen. This dark mix is for the trunk and the branches. The first thing I'm going to do is water down this pink or red. I'm going to pick up a little bit of that, place it in here, and it's already really light, but I'm going to add a whole lot of water to it and that's going to be the base color for my petals. Now for the sake of this lesson though, I'm going to use a darker colors that you can actually see what I'm doing on the paper, so don't get confused, but in the actual painting we're going to use the lighter color. Let's get started painting, I'm using a size four round brush, so we'll going to be creating pretty small petals. I picked up some color, and again, I'm using a darker color, but you'll be using a much lighter pink but feel free to use the darker one just to practice here. The cherry blossom is a basic five petaled flower. You just want to do, and they're kind of rounded a little bit. Some of them are wider or longer, so you have that and do the one right next to it. You can do it in two strokes or you can go around in a circle if you want to. Like, so you can round it out and fill it up. That's a very basic flower, it's not perfect but that's okay. Now let's say that you wanted to do a flower that's opening up. Then you would have maybe three petals that you'd be able to see, and then two kind of in the back. You could have one petal like this, make sure they're all kind of meeting in one area. Then you might have the other two petals kind of peeking out there. Let's say that we're looking at it from the side, then you might have four petals facing one way and then one petal like so. Now as you're going along, you want to create that gradient effect. Again, it's going to be a lot more obvious when you have a lighter petal, but I just picked up some of that darker red color, and I'm going to just kind of punch it in there, then you'll see that the color start spreading because of the wet on wet effect. Just keep practicing, just the different types of petals, and you can vary just how wide these are. Again, just keeping a very loose. Now these petals, I don't know if you can tell, but they're quite wet because I added way too much water, and so I don't want to add that darker color in just yet because it's going to not really go anywhere, so these petals are okay, these petals or just what enough that it'll take the color. But if I were to add it in this petal, the paint would be added, but it wouldn't travel anywhere like these petals are. Just be careful as you add these colors because you want them to spread, but you don't want them to just kind of sit there and do nothing either. Let's just do a couple more just for practice. Over here, we're just going to do a couple of buds because not every flower is always blooming. For the bud is just going to be really simple, just one kind of thick stroke and then one thinner stroke right next to it. I'll demonstrate it again, so one thinner or thicker stroke and then one thicker right next to it and you can close up that circle if you want. You don't have to do one light, one dark, I just did that just to make it look cool, but you don't have to. That was just some simple pedal practice, and you're going to want to add the stamen once everything is dry. If you want to speed up the process, you can go at it with a blow dryer. But I just like to let it just dry naturally because there's always something else that you're going to work on. Let's take a quick look at some of these other paintings. Again, this is kind of what we just worked on. We painted some smaller petals, and then we'll go in there with a much smaller brush like a size 00 or even a triple 0 to create the stamen. What I did in this painting was basically create clusters of flowers and then use the branches to connect them all. While we're still waiting for this to dry, why don't we try painting some of the larger cherry blossoms. It's still the same brush strokes that we used here, but we'll just be using a bigger brush. So I'm using my size 12 brush and it's still the round shape because it has that point at the end. I'm going to pick up some color, and again I'm using a slightly different color just so that you can see what I'm doing on the paper but I'm going be using very loose brush strokes to create these petals. Let's do this kind of basic one. Really just keeping it loose. Let's try another one. Let's try this one where two of the petals are slightly smaller, so it looks like we're looking at it at an angle. Then let's do one more, maybe one where we're looking at it from a side view. Again, just keeping it really loose. Some of these colors have already dried and that's okay, but I should have gone in there and then added some of that darker color. I'll just do that quickly now and see if it'll take some of this color. Some of the petals are good. They haven't completely dried. How are your petals looking? Whether you're using a smaller brush or a larger brush, just keeping it really loose is key. By now, my top row of petals are dry. I'm going to use a size 00 brush and it's still a round size because it has a nice point to it. I'm going to pick up my dark red color. Basically, what I'm doing is just, and I'll demonstrate in this free space over here. Basically, what I'm doing is going to create just really thin lines. If you want, just go ahead and practice on this side. Make them as thin and hair line as possible. Then we're going to top it with a sideways stroke to create the stamen. That's what they look like. They look like really tiny enoki mushrooms or something. Again, just keeping it really, really thin, that was not going at all. Keeping it really thin and then topping it off with a slight side stroke. You can paint all of the stamen or all of the lines first and then go in there with the final stroke. That's fine too. Let's go ahead and do that on these flowers here. I'm going to turn this around just in case these petals are still reck, because I don't want my hand to mess them up. It's going to be doing an upside down real quick. For the stamen, you don't want to overdo it. For these stamen, I do about maybe 2-4 per petal area. Now, for this one is a little bit trickier because you won't really see them. They might actually be sticking outside of the petal, and some little ones here, and be very organic about the way that the stamens are facing. You don't want just straight lines, slightly curve them so that they just look more natural. You can also use different heights so that again, it just looks more natural. You don't have to stay within the confines of the petal, you can go between them, you can go outside of them. These large petals are looking good, but I want to add some more of that darker color. It's going to add some more red to my mixture. Really just let that center really dark enough. I love the contrast that you see in cherry blossoms. You see the really faint light petals but then you see this nice dark center with the stamen coming out. It's going to add a little bit more color there. I'm going to use my size 00 again to create this stamen here. Now these are a little bit different because this flower is facing the right. Most of the stamen are going to be focused on these four petals here and not this one. I have them coming out but then curved. Like so. For this one too, it's like the petals are falling upside down or downward. You might have some of this stamen not going downward. I mean, a few might, but some of them might actually be coming up this way. Let's have a couple of them going down really, but then the majority of them are actually going to be sticking out this way. Now it really looks like, and for this one it's your standard 5 petaled flower. You're looking just right on top of it. We'll have all the stamen going all around. Again, you don't have to be confined to putting the stamen only where the petals are. They can be outside of the petals too. It'll be more interesting if they are. Those are the cherry blossoms. If you need to practice some more, feel free to pause the video and then continue practicing. Remember just to keep your brushstrokes really light and use a really light pink. I know I use a darker pink here just so you can see. Use a really light pink and, yeah, just keep practicing. But when you're ready, let's go ahead and paint a branch of cherry blossoms together. 8. Cherry Blossom Part 2: When you're ready, let's paint the cherry blossom together. I'm going to be using my size 12 brush. I just really like how I can keep my brush strokes really loose. So let me using a much lighter pink than before, really watering that down. I'm going to create a cluster of flowers right here and then use branches coming up this way, and then continuing on this way. Again, just keeping it nice and loose. There is no need to rush. I know that's hard to see but I'll zoom in just a little bit so you can see that. Once the petals have dried, we can go in there with that darker color. I'm just adding some more petals here, I'm going to add a bud just right over here, and it's keeping it really nice and loose, I add another bud right up there, and maybe one more petal here. I like the placement of my petals so far, so I'm going to go in there and paint the branches. Again, I'm just going to keep it nice and loose. Not really thinking about it. I mean yeah, but not really. The general shape I want is to come up this way and then come out this way, so just keeping it nice and loose. I don't even have my palm on the paper. It's okay if the colors bleed a little bit, you can create some branches if you want. You do want to connect these buds to the branch and be sure to do that. Now part of me wants to define some of these leaves because they are hard to see, but that's really up to you because right now I think this painting is good. I can add some more paints gray to darken up these trunks or these branches, but if you light the petals the way that they look, all you need to do is just wait for it to dry and add the steam in. But for me I like to add just a little bit more dimension to my petals, so to the areas that are somewhat dry, I'm taking some of these lighter pink, and I'm just going to add just random brushstrokes. They might not make much sense, but this is your artistic liberty that you can take. If you don't like it, you can just water it down and then spread it out if you want, like so. You can still darken up these areas to grab some more of that paint and then just add some more if they're in the middle. I don't want to darken up my trunk, so I just grab some more pales gray and then I'm just going to concentrate where the branches meet each other. Again, just keeping a really loose. I really like how this is looking, I think I want to add just one more layer of that various pinks. Add some of these pedals. Once your petals are all dry, go ahead and grab your double zero brush and that dark red and start painting the stamen. Now the buds don't really need this stamen, so you can skip those, but I'll go ahead and do it on these. So those petals are not dry yet, so I'm going to wait to come back to those. There you have it. That is a cherry blossom. I hope you had fun just keeping it really lose and using a couple of different brush sizes to create the cherry blossom. Thanks so much for taking this lesson, and I'll see you in the next one. 9. Bonus: Cherry Blossom timelapse: - way . 10. Calla lily: Hey everyone, welcome to this video. We're going to paint the color Lily together. Try saying that five times fast. Here are some of my practice lilies, and I used really loose brush strokes, especially on this page. I tried to use really just very loose brush strokes. It's very impressionistic in its style. This one has a little bit more of a realism to it. I just used slightly different techniques, because I'm going to show you how I did both, to paint these lilies. We're going to use about three or four different colors. This is a mix of yellow ocher and bright yellow. This is my Alizarin crimson color. This is Sap Green, and this is Hookers green dark plus Payne's gray, one of my favorite green combinations. Go ahead and grab your supplies and let's dive right in. The first one we're going to paint is going to look more like this. I'll walk you through my steps and then I'll demonstrate. First we're going to take a pretty concentrated color and create this outline first, and then we're going to wash out our brush and then draw that color out, and just let it fade. Then we'll do the same on this side. Take a dark streak of color here, wash out our brush, and then use the water to draw the color out. Then the same thing was done with this third pedal over here. Then while these two pedals were still wet, I went in there with the green so that it has that nice bleeding effect. The similar steps were taken on this yellow color lily too, I took the yellow, did the outline. I think I may have added a little bit of orange to the mix. Washed out my brush, drew the color out, did the same thing on the other side, and then this little orangey part of the petal is the underside of that pedal or the flower. I just painted that very loosely and then allowed the green to blend in. Choose whatever color you want to do. I'm going to do mostly a red lily, but you can do a pink one, and you can do an orange one or a yellow one. It's really up to you. In terms of brushes, I'm going to use two sizes. I have the size six in my left hand and I have a size four in my right hand. I'm going to use a size six to paint the colors with, and I'm going to use my size four to wash out the brush and then use the water to draw the color out. I'm going to wet both of them, and then have them just ready to go. But this six is ready to go with the color. Let's start with one of the lilies. We're going to paint the inside petal first, to get a dark streak like that, and then it points down. Switch brushes, use the water to draw that out. Now I'll do the other side. You know what, I might bring this down just a little bit, and then do the next part of the petal. Then finally the other side. Now in my flower, well, a little bit of the petals are touching each other but for the most part they're not. Go ahead and wash out that color on this six brush. I had a lot of red in there so I'm trying to get all of that out. I'm going to pick up my green. I'm not sure if my petals are still wet enough to take the color, but we'll see. You can just keep that part really nice and loose. Make sure to have a little bit of whitespace. Let me bring it up so you can have a closer look at it. The only thing that we need to paint is just that center part. I'm going to grab a little bit of my yellow, I guess that's what it looks like. The next one, I'll zoom in so you can see a little bit better. Now we did one in this perspective. Let's do another one, just a slightly different perspective where you can see more of this main petal. I'm going to use my same colors. But now I'm going to have a rounded diamond shape going this way. Again, I'm using this six for the color and then the four for the water. You have a generic shape like that. Grab some water and then quickly just draw that color out. You can draw some more color into the center of the flower if you want. Then if you want to add some more color, use your size six brush to do that. Then again, you can draw that color out too, and then I'm going to pick up my green. This one is definitely still wet so it's going to bleed very nicely. Dry your stem, and then that's it. I'm just going to just fixed it a little bit, just add a little bit more details because, it made my flower really wide. Then go in there with that yellow center again. This is just a basic cylinder shape. How do your lilies looks so far? Now let's try painting some other more looser flowers. These are the flowers that I painted earlier. We'll try painting this one and maybe this one. I mean, we'll try painting all of them if I have enough space on my paper. This one has the same shape as this first one that we painted. But again, it's just very loose. The way that I approach these petals is again, just concentrating the color on the outlines. But I really just let my brush just dance on the paper. I didn't draw the outline completely. I left some breaks and then I used a lighter color to create just some more dimension to the flower. I encourage you to do the same, just keep it really loose. We're just going to draw the basic outline and then use more strokes to fill it in. I'm going to use my six for this as well. I going to pick up my color, and again, I'm just going to keep it really loose. I'm going to create that basic shape. I'm going to use my size four tube and I'm going to use a watered down red color. I'll just loosely fill that in, just very loosely. Then I need this part of the flower, and just very loose in there. Using my size four with the lighter color to fill it in. Then I'm going to add my green to finish it off. Then you can add some leaves if you want. Again, just keeping it really loose too. That is pretty loose, loosey-goosey. Let's paint another one where we're looking into the color lily but it looks like it's upside down. We're going to paint almost like a heart shape first. We're going to draw one-half of a heart shape, and then the other side is going to be much lighter in comparison. Let's take our dark color, create that heart-shaped there. I'm going to use my size four with the lighter color in there. Notice that I'm using a lot more water to paint this part of it. Now there's also going to be an inside and so, I'm actually going to lift off some of this color that I added down here because it's a little bit to wet. But I want to go in there with a new color. I'm going to try to take all that watery paint out and then go in there with a darker color. Hopefully I accomplish that. There we go. We have another layer of petals in here, and it's going to be really dark because we're going into the center of the flower. Just add a lot more color there. Again, I'm just keeping a really loose, so I'm just going to add some more colors just around it. Then add my greens, and then just a little bit of yellow. That is a color lily. I'd love to see your lilies. Feel free to use different colors. There are so many varieties of colors for lilies. You can even try the white ones if you want. But I just love the red because it's just so bold. But yeah, I can't wait to see the lilies that you create. Make sure to create a project. I'll see you in the next video. 11. Magnolia: Hey everyone, I'm really excited to paint the magnolia flower with you. As you can see, this is one of my loosest interpretations of this flower I use, just very loose brush strokes. I think I wanted to do that because when I look at a magnolia tree, you see the flowers, but they're always swaying in the wind. Sometimes the petals fall off, but they always seem to be in movement. I tried to capture that movement with these brushstrokes. I'll show you the kinds of brushstrokes that I used, and then we'll try to combine them into creating a very loose interpretation like this. The colors that I have on my palate are the Alizarin crimson. I also mixed a little bit of Permanent Rose, but it's mostly red. This is sap green, Hooker's Green Dark. This is a combination of colors. I've got my purple, my Dioxazine purple, and then some of this Alizarin crimson red. But then I also added a little bit of Permanent Rose in there as well. It's got a really deep red violet hue with some pink in it. Over here is my burnt umber, and some Hooker's Green Dark. In this video, we're going to paint some of the open magnolias because they're usually in the midst of being open, and then we'll paint a couple of the smaller, closed buds. Again, I'm going to use really loose brush strokes. I have a size four and a size eight. I might actually use my size eight more so, but to demonstrate the strokes, I'm going to use my size four. I'm just going to pick up any color just to demonstrate the strokes that I'll be using. For the most part, I'm going to try to keep my hand really loose on the paper. My wrist is barely touching the table. It's actually off the table. The kind of loose brush strokes I'm going to do is like a swoop and then press down, swoop, press down. Just try creating a couple of lines of that here. Try creating a line, and then swoop down, and then swoop up again. This time, try making a C curve. Do a short one, press down, short one, press down, short one, press down. This is very exaggerated, I go a lot faster than this. When I go little bit faster, it looks like this. It just creates some organic lines. I just let my hand apply a little bit of pressure but not really. We will do one going up this way. We're just creating some basic strokes here. Now, let's try painting just a main petal. The main petal has a rounded oval or pointed oval shape to it. I'm going to do the outline, wash out my brush, and then finish it up. Something like that. Actually, it's probably a little bit taller than that, add a little bit more color here, wash out my brush a little bit. That's an example of one of the main petals. Now, let's try to do an actual flower. When I take my purple, and I do what I did here, but just a little bit smaller. That's my main petal over here. Then I've got to have the other petals that come out, and just keeping it really loose. Usually, there's another petal just to the other side of it. Then you also have the petals that peek out from behind these petals too. I want to add just a really light pink in there. While this is still dry, we can go in there and do the stem. For the branch, I'm going to just have a coming down this way. I'm going to use that same motion that I did over here where I'm going to stop and go, and stop and go, like so. You can add another layer if you want to, but again, just keeping it really loose. Just to help me with the composition of the painting, I'm going to have a few branches. I'll have one coming out this way, another one over here, and then one more over here. We'll draw four flowers total. Then I'll have a couple other branches coming out, but I'm not going to paint flowers actually on there. I want this one to be the bud, and I want this one to be an open flower, and this one to be another open flower too. Let's do another open flower over here. This time, I want the petals a little bit more opened up. I'll have the main one here. For some of the magnolia buds that haven't quite bloomed yet, there's usually just a very small greenish bud right there. That's what I'm going to add to the ends over here. Here, let's paint an actual bud that's greenish. We're going to have two main shapes. Another one right next to it. You can draw some of that color out if you want. Sometimes there's another really skinny one right next to it. I'm not too concerned with how it all looks. Then there's usually some green covering around it, and that there. Just let all that blend in. There, one more open flower over here. This one, I'm going to have something in between a really opened Flour and the bud. Some of the petals are close together and just one or two of them are open. The main one, in the center, like that, and another one right next to it, nice and dark, another dark one right next to that. Maybe we'll do another dark one right next to that one too. Then have some of them, have a few just opened up like that, and then one thinking about opening up. Then add some of that green. There you have it. That is the magnolia flower. I really hope you enjoyed just keeping it really loose and just practicing basic strokes like this. I know it looks really strange, but when you combine it into shapes and use color to your advantage, it really makes the painting come to life. When I see this, I really see a tree or a couple of branches of magnolia flowers. I feel like they're moving, I feel like they're catching the wind, and just dancing in it. I hope this challenged you to let go of trying to be perfect, to try to make it look perfect, and just having fun with the process. I can't wait to see your magnolias too. Thanks. 12. Bonus: Magnolia timelapse: 13. Final Thoughts: Hey everyone. Congratulations on finishing this class. I hope you feel more comfortable and confident in painting in a loose style as you painted these flowers. Now, it's time for you to create your own project and share your paintings. You can post one or two or all of the flowers that you painted. You can also share your thoughts on painting in a loose style like this. If you're more of a perfectionist like I am, then you might have been frustrated at times or disappointed or things happen that you weren't anticipating or expecting, so talk through those things. It's good to process these thoughts and feelings because you begin to understand yourself better as an artist. Whether you processed out loud and explain it in your project or journal privately, I hope you'll take the time to do that. I also love to share students work through my Instagram stories. So make sure to tag me ThingsUnseenDesigns and use the hashtag, WatercolorWithTUD. Before I say goodbye, I have a couple of tips. The first is to practice sketching and observing flowers. Practicing in a loose style actually means that you have a basic understanding of the flowers anatomy. So you need to spend as much, if not more time studying the flowers. The more that you understand how the flower is constructed, the better you'll be able to deconstruct it and paint it in a loose style. It seems backwards, but sometimes the seemingly simplest things are the most complicated. My second tip is to practice. What you didn't see in this class is some of my failed practice pages and these are two of them. This was my original magnolias and they look like blogs. I could have enhanced them maybe with some line drawing or something but that's just how it is. Then these are some of my Calla Lilies that I practiced. I like them, but I wasn't in love with them. You don't see these during the class, but I practice a lot, I mess up a lot, but I also learn from all of those things. What's most important about practicing is that you practiced. It's not about creating perfection, it's about improving your skills and just capturing nature the way that you see it. So don't give up, keep practicing and share your beauty and creativity with the world. Well, that's it from me. Thanks again for taking my class. I can't wait to see what you create. Make sure to create a project and share it with me on Instagram, so I can show you off. I'll see you next time. Bye.