Learn Brush Strokes for Simple Watercolor Spring Flowers

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. My name is Nia, and today I will share with you different ways to create flower petals in order for you to mix and match and create your own simple and cute flower paintings. Flower paintings have always been one of my go to things to relax to just because you can make it as simple or as complex as you would like to. In this class, I will share with you different ways to control your brush strokes in order for you to create singular petals, which then you can combine into your own floral designs. I've separated these lessons where I'll be going over the exercises, so you can take your time and repeat the steps as many times as you would like until you're comfortable before applying them all to a final composition. I will also share with you my thoughts on brushes which will benefit for these sort of paintings. The final composition, I've created 12 different types of flowers that you can paint along to. These uses the techniques as well as the strokes that I've gone over in the previous exercises. However, if you have any other ideas for different combinations, feel free to put it into your composition or create your own variations as well. During the painting process, I will sketch as well as swatch colors. So for beginners who might feel intimidated to paint free hand might get used to this method. And get used to the shapes beforehand. And though I will be painting the composition freehand, for those of you who might be very new to this, I will still have the downloadable outline for you to have in the projects and resources section that you can trace onto your watercolor paper. You can also scale it up however big or however small you'd like it to be. With this said, the class is geared for all levels, including beginners, but I will be cutting through parts of the painting if my hand is inactive or off the camera. This way, you don't have to wait for me when I'm just sitting there idle, thinking or making decisions or even waiting for things to dry. And I understand that everyone paints at different speeds. So I would always recommend for you to pause in between each steps. This way, you can take your time, paint along or just even do little trials and exercises to get used to certain things. And you can paint at your own speed without feeling rushed. If this sounds like something that you'd be interested in trying, come join me in this class, and let's begin. 2. Supplies: Here are the supplies that I'm going to use. Firstly, I'm going to paint the final painting and my sketchbook. This is a square sketchbook by potentate and it's 12 by 12 centimeters, which is on the small side. I will give out the outline according to the size, but feel free to scale it up. Personally, though I just like mine to be on a spread like this, I really love the square spread. You want, you can also treat each flower as a single painting that you paint in each page or even one sheet of paper or another option is just to use any sketchbook that you have on hand. You can also use something like this, which is a bit different since this is a vertical composition, you just have to lay it out a bit differently to how I did mine. Before I paint each individual flower on the final composition, I'm going to be showing you or demonstrating how I paint individual petals. This way, you can create your own combinations as well. Now, this is from Canson XL 300 GSM and the size was originally an A three that I ripped out of my sketchbook. I've also cut out the side to switch my color as well as do little trials before I paint on my sketchbook. Next, I'll go over the brushes. I'm going to mainly use two brushes, which are my round brush and my Filbert brush. These are both by Giorgion and both have synthetic bristles. I would say that the round brush, this size is a size six, by the way, is the most versatile brush for watercolors. I find that a lot of people, including myself started with something like this. It's also very affordable. This costed me a bit less than $1, but of course, prices will depend on the country you buy it from. But generally, these types of synthetic brushes are basically the most affordable option. Other brush that I'm going to use is the Filpet brush. This is also synthetic, and you can see the bristles are also very snappy. Now, the difference is that this has a round tip and it's somewhat of a flat brush as well. This makes it much easier for you to paint rounded edges for petals. I will get into a bit more detail with these brushes and the lessons later on, but these are the main two brushes that I'm going to use. However, if you don't have access to a filpet brush, you can also make all of these paintings just purely with the round brush. For the demonstration, I will also show you how I use my small tiny brush. This is a small size zero brush by Windsor Newton, and this is also a round brush, but you can see there are barely any bristles, and this is great to paint really thin lines like stems. You can also use a smaller brush compared to the round brush that I'm using if you're not used to painting at such a small scale, or if you decide to paint your final paintings at a larger scale, you can, of course, use a larger size brush, whatever is comfortable for you to paint with. I'm also going to show you a short demonstration using this brush, which has softer bristles. The pencil that I'm going to be using today is by Pentel Sharplet and this is my favorite eraser by Boxy. As for the palette, I'm just going to use this, which is from dysos just a very cheap plastic palette and it's so old that you can see the color is a little bit yellow now, but I've used so much that the plastic no longer beats up and you can see it's very easy for me to mix colors here because this already has a lot of micro scratches. These micro scratches can make it much easier for me to mix colors as the paint doesn't beat up and I can control the load in my brush much better because these pritles are not going to absorb beads or puddles of paint. If beading is a problem for you, you can also use porcelain palette. If you're new to watercolors and color mixing is still a bit confusing, I would suggest for you to use white palette so it's a bit easier to see the colors that you've mixed, or you can also swatch the mixtures before applying it onto your final painting, which is what I used to do when I first started. These are all of the colors that I'm going to be using, but I'll go over them a bit later in this lesson. Next thing you'll need is a jar of clean water. You can use one jar or two jars. Personally, I just use one and if it becomes really dirty, I would just change it out. But you can also use two jars, and one would be to clean your brush, and the other one should have clean water for you to activate and pick up paint. Should always have tissue or paper towel right next to you as you paint. This will help control the load on your brush. You can see how much I use this. I almost use it every time I mix up or pick up more paint with my brush, especially when you're painting at a small scale. It's very important for you to mostly use a light load on your brush in order for the paint to not puddle up. This is optional, but I can be quite impatient when I wait for paint to dry, so I'm just going to use a hair dryer to make the process quicker. Next here are the colors I'm going to use. Firstly, this is Chinese white by Holbein. Shown Brilliant dark by Schminka, ugamboche by Daniel Smith, ultramarine finest by Sminke sap green by Holbein. Quinn Red by Daniel Smith, Burnt umber by Holbein, Vermilion by Holbein, and compose Blue by Holbein. I'll also have swatches of these colors in the projects and resources section for you to download. So in case you don't have the exact same color, you can find something similar. And here's a written list of the supplies. You can take a screenshot here or download it in the Projects and Resources section to get everything ready. 3. Intro to Round Brush: In this lesson, I'm going to give you an introduction to round brushes. This is a round synthetic brush on the left, and I've chosen this brush to use for these little trials and exercises just because I find that this is the most versatile brush. I feel like generally, this is what people start out with and it's also easy to find and it's the cheapest. A brush like this might cost around $1. I got mine for less, but it just depends on your country, I'm guessing. Synthetic generally have more snap and spring to the bristles. But there's also mixed hair brush, which is this one. They have softer bristles and because of its soft bristles, the more pressure we put, the more it's going to expand and spread. You get a higher weight difference, but this is generally more expensive. You can also use larger brushes like the one I have on the right, but I usually paint in my sketchbook, so I prefer to use smaller ones. Because I usually paint in my sketchbook. I'm very comfortable using my small brush. But if you're used to using a larger brush, you can just use what you have. But for the final painting, I would suggest maybe to use a bigger piece of paper or even a larger sketchbook, or you can also treat each flower as one painting that you paint on a single page. 4. Simple Petals and Brush Pressure: I'm going to go over different types of petals now, starting with the simple petals. In terms of the color, I barely use my compost blue, so I still have a lot of it. I'm just going to use this color. You can pick any color you have on hand. I'm going to activate and put a lot of paint on my palette and also a lot of water for easy access as I'm painting. For the first one, I'm going to show you how to do a single stroke because I'm using a round brush, and the tip has a fine point. You can see if I direct the tip at the top. Now you can see a really thin line weight. And I press down to widen the bristles. And as I take off the pressure on my brush, you can see it comes to a very fine point again. Now, let's repeat this again with a light pressure, then a heavier pressure, and I slowly take off the pressure for the bottom tip. Is not the only way we can paint this type of petals, but it is sometimes a good way to get used to the pressure of your brush. Feel free to repeat it as many times as you want until you're comfortable. And I'm just going to take this in a little bit closer so you can have a better look. Now with this pressure, we can also create smaller or shorter petals. But instead of dragging it as far as we did for the first type, we're just going to drag it very shortly and take off the pressure really quickly as well. To get used to this pressure, you can also create something consecutively like this. And you can also do this horizontally or in different angles as well. Just as comparison, I'm going to show you the same thing, but with my brush with softer bristles, I just want to show you that it's much easier to spread the bristles outwards when they are softer compared to the springy nature of synthetic bristles. Mm. These brushes are very similar in size, but you can see the weight difference with this one. Now, let's go back to the normal synthetic brush. I'm going to do a similar type of petal, but in a few strokes or a couple of strokes instead of just a single stroke. If you don't want to use the pressure like that, you can just draw it out and fill in the blank space. This way, we can control how wide we want the petals to be even when I'm using the same brush size. Now, with this petal shape, if we want to turn it into a flower, we just have to paint it in a radial way playing with the angle. Usually when I do this, I want to leave out a little bit of space in the middle. So sometimes if the bottom of the petals are too thick, we will have a bit of space to create a thinner connection between those petals, which in turn will make the flowers look less heavy and more delicate. Now, with the same simple petals, we can actually just group them differently. We can do them in groups of five, which is the most used, I would say, and we can do this in four, three, and two, even one for small flower buds. And by grouping them differently, you can create different types of flowers easily. Sometimes if we want to paint very small petals with a larger brush, some paint may puddle, and for this, we can control it by using a clean dry brush that I dab off the excess paint on a piece of tissue so it's no longer puddling. This is personally my favorite way of painting the petals just because I don't have to focus too much on the pressure and it takes less time to control. And just by grouping them differently, you can already create different types of flowers. 5. Thin Petals: Now let's use thin brush strokes to create flower petals. Is very, very simple. All I'm going to do is just think about the single strokes. I'm not going to worry about the tip at all, and I'm more or less creating similar type of pressure. If you want the ends to be thinner, you can also take off the pressure really quickly at the end. You can also do this looping motion to create a slightly thicker top and make them a little bit rounded and the tip comes to a finer point. Or just like the previous simple petals, you can do this in two strokes or even single strokes but with less pressure. Let's do this again. You can just create lines without any pressure. You can also create the slooping motion starting from the bottom tip and around and come down to a finer point or do this in a couple of strokes just like the simple petals, but make them very close together. Or with a single stroke, just like the first one with a bit of pressure. The top and the bottom are a bit pointy. Now, let's put this all together into flowers. I'm just going to do the normal lines and I do a small flick at the end to make it a little bit thinner and then I'm going to add some thin lines to combine them all together before it ends with the stem. You can make these go radially or put them just halfway like this. They look like a flower from the side that is not completely in full bloom. With these types of really thin petals, you can also create something like aster flowers that is seen right from the very top. This is a combination of the loop, as well as the two strokes to create those really thin petals. You don't have to worry about them looking exactly the same, but you do want to make sure that the angle is distributed almost evenly radially across the flowers, and the slight differences will just make them look a bit more natural. You can also do these with the single brush strokes with the pressure so the tip is more pointy. I'm just going to do exactly the same thing, but I just want you to notice the slight differences it creates. When you're painting single strokes in a radial way, sometimes it might be a bit difficult as you rotate your brush when you're trying to put the tip of your brush following the angle of the petals. If this happens, you can also just twist the paper around instead of twisting your wrist so you can paint in a more comfortable position. 6. Frilly Petals: In this lesson, we're going to create frilly or slightly textured petals. These are usually larger flower petals that I like to paint in a few brush strokes. For this, instead of connecting the tips together, I like to make them slightly separated at the top and slightly uneven. You can make them with thicker strokes or thinner strokes depending on how textured you want these flower petals to be. You can also play with the shape slightly by how rounded you want the petals to be or if they're going to be a bit more pointy at the bottom. Another way of doing this is by first painting an outline with the top tip of the petals being slightly curvy and then filling in the empty space. For any of these petals, you do want the bottom to be very thin, though, because that's where they're all going to connect together. If the bottom is too thick, they're going to look too bulky and heavy. Now, let's group these all together. For the first one, I'm going to do a combination of two petals and coming to fine point at the bottom before adding on the stem. I'm just going to keep adding more petals along the way for different types of flowers. By the way, by painting the flower petals this way, notice how I've accidentally left out some white space, but I intentionally don't want to fill it in anymore because I feel like this also adds to how delicate the flowers can look. While painting these frilly types of flowers, you can just combine the ways that we've painted them before, and the different types of petals will just make them look a bit more natural instead of something that is completely uniform and robotic looking. For this frilly petal, you can also think about it mixing all of the brush strokes that we've done so far. You can do a combination of the thick and thin strokes. 7. Combination Petals: Now we're going to do a combination of all these petals that we've painted so far and compile them into different shapes or flowers. For this first one, I just painted one single stem and I'm going to create single strokes just on one side and sometimes they're really random shapes like this for wildflowers. Sometimes they are also weed shaped ones. I'm not really sure what they're called but for this, I just did the double strokes to create the single petals and then I connect them all together into the stem. You can also paint leaves this way, and for this next one, I'm going to paint something like a lavender that I'm going to do the loopy type of petals, but I'm going to angle them differently and also create different groupings to make them slightly more randomized. For the next one, I'm going to create something that is a bit smaller, so I'm going to use the very tip of my brush or you can also use a smaller size round brush. I'm just going to stick with this size. I want to make sure that my brush comes to a very fine tip and it's not holding too much water. I can create really thin brush strokes. I want to paint in the main stem and paint some thin lines bunched together to create some small flowers. I want the top to be pointier, but as I get towards the bottom, I'm going to paint more of these so it becomes wider. The next, I'm going to extend the lines to connect them to the main stem. I'm also going to pair this up with very small frilly petals, creating different loops in different sizes. So some of the flowers are larger than others. You can also paint all of the tiny flowers first with a combination of thin lines as well as frilly petals to suggest individual flowers, then connect them all together into the main stem. Having different weights and variety of these petals will make it look more natural, and this is why it's fun to play with a different pressure as well as different line weights. Now for the stem, I'm just going to use the very tip of my brush in a really dry brush load, so you can see that the tip is very sharp and I'm just going to paint the main stem and connect the rest of the flowers to the mainstem as well. Now, of course, there are many more combinations on top of these ones that I've shown you today, feel free to try to simplify it using the brush strokes that I've shown you and try to play around and create your own flower shapes. Last thing that I want to mention in this lesson is that when you're painting something small like the last couple of flowers I've shown you, you do want to just use the very tip of your brush. You can see that if you're using an almost dry brush load, I can somewhat flatten my brush, and when I do this, there's one side, which is a bit flatter and wider and the other side is thinner. With a sharp tip, it's much easier to paint really fine lines, including the stems. When you're painting these small thin lines, it's important to use a light to dry brush load. If you've accidentally loaded your brush with too much paint, as you can see here, it's quite glossy from the weight of the water. You can take off the excess by dabbing it off on your tissue before applying the paint. You can try to practice thin lines by maybe trying to paint this fuzzy wildflower. But in the next lesson, I will go into a little bit more detail since I'm going to explain how to paint the stems as well as the leaves off flowers. 8. Stems and Leaves: For this lesson, I'm going to go through the stems and the leaves for the stems. I'm just going to show you again what I've shown you in the previous lesson and it's generally more about the load on your brush. Now, you can see here that my bristles are fairly wet. It's a little bit glossy and if I add more paint, you'll be able to see it even more. So let's have a look here. You can see that's fairly glossy, and this means if I have a larger load on my bristles, the paint is going to come out much faster and it's a little bit harder to control. I feel like I can still control this because I have practiced a lot and it's much simpler to paint a small line. But here I've added more paint, so you can see that it's a little bit more glossy than before. Though the lines are still fairly thin, you can see paint puddling at the bottom of these lines, and even when I'm not applying too much pressure, the paint is flowing really quickly. This is something that comes with experience, you do have to feel it yourself and you'll be able to feel the flow of the paint the more you do this. Now I'm going to lighten the load by dabbing off the excess. Now you can see the point a bit clearer and the brush is no longer watery. You can see that it's not even flowing out, so I decided to take a bit more paint. But with the same amount of pressure, you can see how different the lines can be. Now I'm going to use a thicker consistency and a dry brush load. So it's more or less the same amount of paint but with more pigment. Now I can create really thin lines, but the color is more saturated. I've also used the same amount of pressure and just have a look at the difference at the line weight. I can create something that is much easier to control because the flow is slower and it's not even puddling at the bottom just because of the brush load. Now as we're applying this to paint stems which might wiggle in different directions, we might put a bit more pressure as we paint, which makes it a little bit harder to control. This is why it's even more important to have the correct brush load. If you're still fairly new to this, I would also suggest for you to go slowly this way you have better control of the pressure that you create. Now, as you can see, even if I use this size brush, I can create those thin lines, but there is an option to use a smaller size brush as well. Here, I'm going to use a size zero brush, and you can see there's much less bristle in this one compared to the one before. And because of this, there isn't too much space for the paint to be soaked up, which means with the same amount of pressure, I can create really thin lines very quickly as well because I don't have to worry if I put more pressure, it won't become thicker just because there isn't much hair on this brush. Small brush also makes it much easier if you want to paint very tiny flowers so the paint doesn't puddle up and it's easier to control. Those are the options for you to paint the stems, and next, I'm going to go over the leaves. I'm just going to treat this like the simple petals before. As you can see, it also is a leaf shape for the single strokes, you can also add a wiggle to it and extend it a little bit further for larger longer leaves. These are the strokes as well as the shapes that I've pretty much covered earlier. The only difference is how they've grown out of the stem. As an example for this one, I did the double strokes. You can also mix it up with the loop, and you can also create smaller leaf shapes like the smaller flower petals. When you're doing this, sometimes the tips might not all be pointy and that's completely fine because it'll just make it look a bit more organic and natural. And you can also play with how the stems grow out of the main one and add bunches of leaves there. Just like the flower petals, you can also create rounded leaves and just like the petals, I prefer to draw out an outline first to make sure I don't accidentally paint pointy tips. With the leaves, you can also bunch them differently. As an example here, you can do bunches of twos or threes and create different shapes as well. Sometimes we may run out of ideas, but you can always look out for references to create different shapes and leaf shapes as well as flower types. 9. Intro to Filbert Brush: This is somewhat of an extra lesson. I'm going to cover round petals. We've more or less covered this in the previous lessons. What you want to do when you're painting round petals with a round brush is to basically paint the outline first before filling in the rest of the space, like so, and you can also extend the bottom of the petal downwards a little bit further into a fine tip. Another way to do this is to create a loop just like what we did with the long petals, but make this one a bit wider. The purpose of this extra lesson is actually to show you this different brush, which makes creating round tips much easier, which is the Filbert brush. You can see the tip is rounded instead of pointy on this brush, and it's also flat. There's one side which is flatter and the other side is wider. We can take advantage of this wide side and create those round petals. And you can somewhat flick up really quickly and create less pressure for the bottom, so it comes to a smaller point. You can see even if I'm putting such a light pressure, it doesn't become as pointy as the round brush because you can see from the tip is very different. With this brush, though, it makes it so much easier to paint rounded petals instead of doing a loop and filling it in. I can just do single strokes and you have a simple five petal flower. You can also put less pressure and create smaller petals. Or use the thin side to create thin rounded petals. Another way to use this brush is to first use the white flat side, and then you flick to the side in order to create a thinner weight. As you can see, this is so much easier to paint rounded petals. You can also use this to paint leaves. The only thing I would use to paint with this brush is things such as thin stems. I would stick to a rounded brush. But just look at how easy and quick it is to paint leaves as well as petals and single strokes with soft round edges. I feel like this is such a worthwhile investment. If you want to get into floral paintings, you can also create really thin leaves, such as ferntance it's quite easy to control as well. For the final flower painting, I'm actually going to use this brush for some of the flowers, but I understand that a lot of you might not have the Filbert brush and your collection of supplies, which is why I showed you earlier how to create these types of petals or leaves using the very versatile round brush as well. Despite the shape and the fact that I wouldn't choose this brush to paint really thin lines like the stems, it's actually still quite versatile, at least for flower paintings. So I'm just going to demonstrate to you some of the flowers that I've already previously painted using my round brush with this filber brush. Of course, though, as I'm painting the stems, I would always go back to my round brush. Lastly, I'm going to paint the aster flower with long thin petals. You can, of course, paint daisies as well with slightly wider petals. This Filbert brush that I'm using is also a synthetic, so it has the same snappy quality as my round brush, and it's also very affordable and I just really wanted to show you the difference in ease when it comes to painting rounded elements. It really does take less effort and it's much faster in my opinion. I hope you'll give this a go so you can feel the difference yourself. 10. Introduction to Painting: For the final composition, I'm going to be painting in my square sketchbook. Personally, I just love to have the flowers in a spread. However, this is a very small sketchbook. It is only 12 by 12 centimeters in size, which I find is actually too small and it will make the painting a little bit more difficult and require a bit more control in terms of the load on your brush. Usually, I like using the 15 15 centimeter size square book, but I didn't read the description properly when I bought this one. Either way, I still like to use it. I understand if some of you are not used to painting at such a small scale and if that's the case, I would suggest for you to either use a larger sketchbook or if you want to create a similar type of composition, you can also cut paper with a similar type of dimension, but at a larger scale. Another option is to treat these as individual flowers where you can dedicate one single page for one type of flower. Since I'm going to paint this free hand, I personally like to do a sketch prior to it just so I have a good visualization of the flowers, and this also serves as draft for me where I can try different shapes and combinations for these flowers. Later when I paint. I'm going to move on to a different spread, and I'm just going to erase all of these. So this is purely as draft, but I will paint freehand later on. I understand, though, that painting freehand can be quite intimidating if you're a beginner, and if that's the case, I will still have the downloadable outline in the projects and resource section. But if you do trace, please trace very lightly onto your watercolor paper. So the pencil doesn't show through the transparent watercolor as you paint. You can also erase some of the line very lightly. So the guidelines are mostly faded before painting on top. Most importantly, I hope you have fun with this painting and paint with what you're comfortable with. 11. Flower 1: Before I start to paint, I'm going to somewhat roughly divide up my page because I'm not very good at spacing. I'm just going to do a long horizontal line, and I'm also going to add some vertical lines to divide this into three sections per spread. I'm only going to create the three divisions at the top because I feel like this is enough guideline for me to use for the bottom section as well. After this, you can technically paint your final composition straightaway, but I want to show you a method that I used to do when I first started with watercolors and that's to use scrap paper to draw and paint things we might be unsure about. This is also a great opportunity to swatch colors and see if certain combinations will work or not. This might not be necessary for those of you who are experienced, but I just thought that this will be nice to share because I understand that free hand painting on a completely blank page can be quite nerve wracking. So what I've sketched out will be the design of the first flower, and for the color, I've chosen to use a mixture of ugambos and a little bit of vermilion. As for the center of a flower, I'm going to create a deep dark brown. And for this, I use burnt umber as the main brown, and I'm going to warm up the color by using vermilion and also darken it with the ultramarine finest. This is also a good opportunity for you to try different brushes. So I tried it with the Filbert brush, and now I'm going to use my round brush. Both brushes can do the job just fine, but I feel like I can control it a little bit better and get more accuracy with the round brush, which is what I'm going to use. As for the stems and the leaves, I'm going to use sub green as the main green. Then I'm going to add some vermilion to add warmth to the color. Then I'm going to also add some Jon Brilliant dark, which is a really light pastel yellow. And also a touch of ultramarine finest to create an earthy pastel green. This is more or less the same green that I'm going to use all throughout this class, but I'm just going to play with the ratio ever so slightly. For this trial, you can paint according to how you've composed it, but for me, this is enough to just somewhat get used to the brush strokes before applying it onto my sketchbook. Now, I'm just going to paint it on with the same colors and combinations as well as the composition that I've drawn out earlier. As I've mentioned in the previous lesson, this scale that I'm painting with is very small, so feel free to use an even smaller brush compared to what I'm using, or you can also paint at a larger scale. But if you wish to paint with the same skill that I'm painting here, I would suggest for you to really take care of the brush load. Always take off the excess paint with tissue whenever you feel like the flow of paint is becoming too fast and uncontrollable. I forgot to mention this earlier, but for the center of the flour, I'd like to make it slightly textured. So I'm going to create really small dots with the very tip of my brush, and I want to make sure that the load is very light so it doesn't puddle up too much. As for the stem of all the flowers, this includes all the other ones that we're going to paint. You want to make sure that it's directed at the center of the flower downwards. You want to create a very clear connection between the flower and the stem, even though it's not directly touching the bottom of the flower. But if it's slightly slanted, it's going to look disconnected. So try to avoid that when you're painting. As for the leaves, I'm just using the same green, but this is a slightly lighter consistency, so it just has a bit more water in the mixture. 12. Flower 2: Moving on to the second flower, this is going to be a very simple one, and I'm just going to somewhat try to paint it straight away on my scrap paper. I want this to be pink and I'm going to use a mixture of vermilion and Jamilan dark. I'm going to try it both with my Filbert brush and my round brush. I feel like the filbert brush creates thicker brush strokes, whereas I can get a little bit more detail with the round brush. This is completely up to you depending on the look that you're going for. At the bottom of the flower, I want to add more vermilion, and you can see at the bottom where I painted the flour with my round brush. The vermilion is blooming whereas there's a hard edge between the vermilion and the base of the flower for the previous ones because they're completely dry. And for this, you can soften the blend using a clean damp brush. So I'm going to paint it. I've chosen to use my Filbert brush. I'm going to paint a few of the frilly petals that we painted in the demonstration earlier to suggest the whole flower, then working very quickly while the surface is still damp, I'm going to.in a bit of vermilion, then use the same green as the previous flower in a thick consistency to paint the sepals at the bottom of the flower. Then using a dry brush load to paint the stems connecting to the sepals. To make the stems look more organic with a bit more movement, I made them slightly wavy. As for the leaves, I'm going to paint two small ones right at the bottom of the flowers by creating a loop for very small round leaves, then paint larger ones at the bottom. 13. Flower 3: Et's move on to the third flower. This is just going to be a very simple five petaled flower with a dot at the center. But I'm going to also add some small flower buds as well as large rounded leaves. I want the color to be a muted creamy color, and for this, I use John Brilliant dark as the main base. Then I added a touch of compose blue. Then I'm going to add a little bit of new gamboge into the mix as well. Let's just swatch it. I feel like it looks very green, so I decided to add more Jean Brilliant dark as well as vermilion this time. And I feel like I quite like this color, so I'm just going to use it to paint the flower. For this, I'm going to use my Filbert brush to make it much easier to paint those thicker round petals. And for the center, I'm going to use a bright orange from a mix of ugambos and a bit of vermilion. I'm just going to paint it on my sketchbook. You may notice that I don't really do the exact same trial on the scrap paper to paint these flowers. I want these triils to only be used for what's necessary for you. If you're confident painting certain part of the painting straightaway, then you can just go ahead and do it without doing a trial. This is just something I want you to somewhat get used to helping yourself only in places where you do really need it instead of overcomplicating the steps, especially when you don't need it or already have enough confidence and experience. When I painted the center of this flower, the petals were still quite damp, so you can see that the color is spreading too much, but I'm just going to leave it to dry for now. I actually like the transition of colors, and while I wait, I'm going to paint the stems and the leaves as well as the flower buds. Just like the first flower, even though you can't see the bottom of the flowers, I want the stems to connect right to the center of these flowers. For the flower buds, I'm just going to map out the placement first by drawing the stem and I'm going to go back in with the same color as the flower petals. But this time, I did one simple petal with an extra line on the side with my round brush. While the surface is still damp, I went back in with the green to paint the sepals connecting the flower bud and the stem together. Again, this is just the same green that I use for the previous flowers, and as for the leaves, I'm going to create an outline for the rounded leaf and then fill it in. Okay, now I'm going to go back to the center of the flower since the flower petals are a bit more yellow now. I just added more vermilion into the mix, so it's more of a darker orange, and I'm just going to paint a small circle on the dry surface. 14. Flower 4: Oh. This one is going to be fairly similar to the second flower that we've done, but it's actually going to be simpler. I'm going to treat this one more as a single petal. I might also add a line on one side, just like the flower buds that we painted in the previous flower. I'm just going to connect these two long wavy stems, one stem each flower, then finish it off with a couple of small leaves right under the flowers. As for the color, I'm going to use the orange mixture. This is from Nuamboch and vermilion, and I'm going to add a lot of shun Brilliant dark to turn this into a pastel yellow. I really like to paint this using my Filbert brush just so it's much easier to create those round petals. You can do single strokes or double strokes as well. I'm just going to use the same color mixture for the green, but I'm just making more since I'm running out. This is, again, from vermilion sap green, ultramarine finest, and Jon Brilliant dark. I'm just going to swatch it and see if it's similar to the previous greens that I've used and I'm fairly happy with it. Now I'm going to apply it under the flowers as the sepuls before painting on the wavy stems. As an example here, since I recently paint the flower and it's still fairly damp, color of the sepal is slowly blending into this flower. Whereas if I paint the seple on the already dried flowers, you can see a clear separation between the sepal and the flower. I'm just showing you because you might like a certain look, so you can pick and choose. Personally, I like to mix these two techniques together. Now onto my sketchbook, I'm going to add an extra stroke on the side for some of the flowers for a bit of variation, and I'm going to paint a few of these to cover a slightly wider space. As I'm spacing the flowers, I try to make some of them close together and others further apart. This unevenness will make the composition look a bit more natural instead of something that looks more like a pattern. Once I'm done painting a few flowers, I'm going to add the sepals before adding on the stems, and I want to make sure that I can control the tip of my bristle. So if I feel like the paint is flowing too much, I'm just going to take off the excess with tissue. So always have tissue right next to you, especially when you're painting at a very small scale. I want these to look different than the other flowers, so I'm making them individual flowers instead of connecting the stems together. As for the leaves, I'm going to use my round brush to create small loops. And if I feel like there isn't enough space to paint the small leaf, I'm just going to paint one side. And that's it for the fourth flower. 15. Flower 5: Let's move on to the next one. This is going to be daisy flowers. I'm just going to start with the circles, then I'm going to add the long rounded petals going radially around the circle. But this is not how I'm going to approach the painting. I'm going to leave the center last. For the leaves this time, I want them to grow out of a main stem, and I'm going to add thin long leaves on either side as well as the top. For the color of the flower, I'm going to use the orange mixture. Since I'm running out, I'm just going to make more. This is from vermilion ugamboge and Jean Brilliant dark. This time, though, I want the color to be muted, so I'm going to add some burnt umber as well. Once I'm done, I'm going to swatch it. I quite like the color. As for the center, I want it to be a muted dark brown. I'm using Brnnumber as the main brown with added vermilion, as well as a little bit of ultramarine finest. I'm just going to try to paint this with a round brush as well as a filbert brush, and I'm just going to see which one I like better. I really enjoy just painting the single strokes with the filper brush, but I feel like this is too thin. So later in the painting, I'm just going to apply a bit more pressure so the petals can be a little bit thicker than this. Once I'm done with the flowers, I'm going to connect them to the stems. This way, I can space out where to place the leaves. And for the leaves, I also painted the stems first, so it's easier to place the leaves on either side of the stems. Okay, so I'm going to start by painting the petals instead of the center of the flowers using my filbert brush. This time, I'm also applying a little bit more pressure and also making them a bit shorter so they don't look as thin. And remember, if your wrist starts feeling uncomfortable as you're painting this radially, feel free to just move your page and rotate it according to the angle that you're comfortable painting in. I'm going to paint the center once all the petals are completely dry. This way, the edges stays nice and sharp, and I'm going to paint this dotted texture. I want the color of the green this time to be a bit darker. I'm just using the previous mixture with added ultramarine finest. This will just darken the color slightly and also make it a bit more bluish. However, this is exactly the same mixture as before. This just has a slight change in ratio with added ultramarine finest. As you can see, it's just slightly darker, but it's still consistent with all the other greens, so it doesn't stand out on its own. I try to make the main stem of the leaves a little bit thinner, so I just use an even drier load, and I'm just going to paint each leaf with two strokes. Oh. 16. Flower 6: The next one is going to be a very simple three petaled flower with a large seple at the bottom, and I'm going to connect these two other stems as well. I'm also going to add two small leaves under the flowers. This is going to be the first blue flower of the collection, and I'm going to use ultramarine finest as the main blue. And to make it consistent with the other colors, I tried adding some jean brilliant dark, but I feel like the color end up looking a bit too muted for my liking, so I end up just mixing some Chinese white into the ultramarine finest. So the color is a bit more saturated and looks kind of like periwinkle blue. To sit the blue flowers, I'm also going to add more ultramarine finest into the green mixture, and I also added some jean brilliant dark. If I use a thick consistency, this is the color that I come up with. Just like the other greens, this is again the same color mixture but with a different ratio. You can see even if I lighten it by adding more water, the color is a bit more similar to the other ones. To paint these flowers, I find that it's much easier to use my Filbert brush. And before adding on the seples, I want to make sure everything's completely dry. If you want to make the process quicker, you can use a hair dryer. Here I'm using the green to add rounded seples underneath all the flowers. Then I'm going to pull it downwards to create wavy stems. I like to paint the taller stem first, and if I can, I like to connect the other shorter flowers to the taller stem. I'm going to add a few of these flowers to fill in the space that I have, just like the yellow flowers on the left. Since I'm going to paint a few of these, I want to make sure that I'm spreading them unevenly, making sure that some flowers are closer together, whereas others are further apart. This will just make the placement look a bit more natural. And on another note, I also want to direct these flowers towards the center of the space. So in a way, they look like they're coming together as a bunch. Once I'm done, I'm going to make sure everything's completely dry before adding on the sepals. I want the sepals of these flowers to look a bit more rounded compared to the yellow flowers on the left, just to make a different variation, and then I'm going to pull it down to add on the wavy stems. Just like in the trial, I want to paint the long stem first. So whenever I can, I like to connect these flowers together into the main long stem. If they're a little bit too far though, I'm just going to make them into a new stem. Once I'm done, if there's space for the leaves, I'm going to paint them right under the flowers on either sides. And of course, you can also add additional leaves if you feel like it'll support the composition. 17. Flower 7: Et's move on to the seventh flower. This is probably the most complex one out of all of the flowers we have so far. But this is actually one of the flowers that I did in the demonstration earlier, where I combined lots of different petal shapes, but paint them in a very small scale. I'm going to pair this up with some large leaves, so there isn't too much detail since the flower itself is quite detailed already. I feel like because of its complexity, I'm going to have some problems with spacing and the composition itself. I'm just going to draw it a few times until I get somewhat more comfortable with how they're going to be positioned. As I'm repeating and playing with the different angles, the final painting doesn't have to have the exact same composition, but I feel like this is good for me to practice with visually and just for my hands in general, to get used to the shapes. This is something that you can repeat over and over again until you're a bit more comfortable. You can also repeat the trials for the painting as well until you are comfortable. Now, after drawing this, I realized that the composition would look very bad if they're both around the same height and right next to each other. This is where practicing comes in handy. I feel like if I shorten the composition on the flower on the left and tilt them to the side, these flowers will have more of a harmonious composition. I want these flowers to be purple in color and for the main purple, I'm going to use a mix of quin red and ultramarine finest. Now, there are two options though, for me to turn this into a pastel purple, which is what I'm looking for. I can use the Jean Brilliant dark as well as the Chinese white. At first, I try to just use Jean Brilliant dark to make it consistent with all the other colors, but I feel like the color is a little bit too muted because of the yellowish Jean brilliant dark. It just cancels out and mutes the purple. So on the other side, I mix them with just Chinese white. I feel like it's too saturated, so I'm going to mix those two together, which means it's those four color mixtures, but with less on Brilliant in the ratio. So it's still a little bit muted but not as muted as before. Now, I'm quite happy with the purple, so I'm going to go ahead and try to paint these flowers. This is what's going on in my head as I'm mixing colors all the time. So hopefully, this gives you a little bit of an insight into my thought process as I'm picking out colors. As for the green, I chose a yellow green, I just use the colors that I've already pre mixed and since there was a lot of ultramarine fineness, I just added some new gambos in the mixture and also some added ran brilliant dark to lighten the green. To paint the flowers, I'm going to use the tip of my brush and you want to make sure that you're using a light brush load since we are painting small little shapes. I like to think of loops as well as those frilly petals, but in very small scale. I like to mostly enlarge the shapes as well as widen the spacing as I get towards the bottom of the stem. Once I'm done, I want to make sure most of those petals or tiny flowers are mostly dry, and I'm going to paint the stems in between, as well as add some extra flower buds, which hasn't bloomed using the same green and also attach some of those flowers into the main stems. Okay, now I'm going to repeat this on my sketchbook, but I want to make sure that these flowers fit in the space that I have. I feel like I still have space to fit another one, so I'm going to paint a short one on the right hand side. And as you can see here, the colors look fairly dark, even though it's the same mixture. This is because some of the paint is puddling up. The load on my brush wasn't light enough. So to make this a little bit faster to dry, I'm just going to take off the excess paint using a dry brush, taking off the paint one by one, and as my bristles gets loaded with these extra paint, I take it off with my tissue. With this, the paint won't really travel too much, and I can just add on the stems in between those flowers straightaway. To finish off, I'm going to add the tiny, tiny flower buds in between these flowers as well as the leaves. 18. Flower 8: We're going to do a simple five petal flower for this one, but I'm going to make the petals a bit more rounded. I'm also going to add some small flower buds as well as thin leaves. For the color, I'm going to reuse what I already have on my palette, and this is from new gambos vermilion, a little bit of burnt umber. And I just added a bit more on Brilliant dark because I want the color to be fairly light. I'm just going to swatch it out first to see if I like it. I'm quite happy with this color, so I'm just going to go ahead and try to paint this flower. I'm just going to do single strokes and I'm going to apply quite a bit of pressure to make each petal fairly thick, and I'm going to dry it off completely before adding the center. As for the center, I'm going to use an orange brown and this is a mixture of burnt umber with vermilion and new gamboge. As for the green, I'm just going to add ultramarine fins to what I already have on my palette for a muted pastel bluish green. This one is fairly easy, so I'm going to go straight to painting on my sketchbook. I'm going to paint around three flowers. And since there's still a little bit more space at the top, I'm going to add a tall flower bud. I use a fairly light load on my brush, so the petals are completely dry. Make sure yours is dry, too. You can also use a hair dryer for this. Then I'm going to paint the center straight away. I just created this very small circle with a thick consistency of the orangy brown. I'm also going to add this color underneath a flower bud. Next, I'm going to paint the stems, making sure that the stems are directly under the center of the flowers. Depending on where you've placed the stems, I'm going to look at some empty spaces and fill it in with the leaves. I like to map it out by drawing the stems of the leaves first before adding them in. Since I feel like these flowers are very simple, I'm going to add a few more leaves. 19. Flower 9: Next one is going to be another simple one. This is going to be a four petaled flower, and I want the petals to be pointy in this one. I want the flowers to be quite big. So I think I'm just going to paint two, but I'm going to add a few flower buds for this one to just bring a bit more interest. I want this flower to be orange. So this is from a mix of vermilion and Nu gamboche. This also has a little bit of Jan Brilliant dark, and I also added a tad of burnt umber, so it has the same muted tone. This one's going to be a simple one, so I'm just going to paint it on straight away. I feel like I'm going to make the flowers fairly big on this one to fill in the spaces. I'm only going to paint two. However, with any of these paintings, feel free to create your own composition as well. These are just ideas that I'm giving you, but you can also create your own combinations with different colors as well. To avoid smudging, I'm going to take the excess paint off this one since it's puddling up with a dry brush. I'm going to leave these petals to dry. So while I wait, I'm going to paint on the petals, still aiming to the center. I'm going to make this one cross, and with the large space that I still have left, I'm going to add on the stems where I'm going to place the flower buds. Once I've allocated the space, I'm going to go back in with the orange color from the flowers and add the flower buds. For the flower buds, I'm just doing very small simple petals and for some of them for a bit of variation, I just add an extra line on the side following the curve. Then to connect these to the stems, I'm going to add the sepals underneath the flower buds using the same green while the flower buds are still a little bit damp. Now that the surface of the petals are completely dry, I'm going to use the brown that I used in the previous flower for the center. But this time, I'm using a thick consistency and a fairly dry brush load to paint on dots. And you can see that everything's completely dry because the edges of the dotted texture is very prominent. 20. Flower 10: In this lesson, we're going to paint really tiny forget me not flowers. These are small five petaled flowers. They're very tiny, and there are multiple of them growing from one main stem. Later, I'm going to paint two main stems, and I'm also going to add some little flower buds growing out from the main stem as well. In this sketch, I decided to draw out the main stems first just to help me visualize, but later I'm actually going to paint the flowers first. So this is just to help me map it out in my mind what they're going to look like because I don't want the stems to go over the flowers if I paint them first. I'm also going to add some large leaves to frame these flowers. For the color, this one's going to be a bit different. I want the colors to be fairly vibrant. I'm just using compose blue and Chinese white. Because we used a different blue base, you can see that there's a difference between the three petal flowers we painted earlier. For this one, I wasn't sure whether I want to paint it with my filbert brush or with my round brush. I tried it out with my filbert brush. I feel like my brush size is a little bit too big for the scale that I'm painting. So I decided to go with my round brush instead. Again, because this is such a small scale, if you're painting at the exact same scale that I'm painting, feel free to change the size of your brush that you're using. I'm painting this with a very dry brush load, so they're quick to dry and once the base is dry, I'm going to paint the center using a very thick consistency of new gamboge. I feel like the rest of the elements are fairly straightforward since we've repeated them over and over again for the previous flowers. I'm painting straight onto my sketchbook. I'm going to spread out the flowers for the first tall main stem, and I'm going to do the same on the right hand side as well. Since I'm painting quite a lot of these flowers, just like the previous ones that we've painted, if I am including a lot of them, I want to make sure that the positioning are not evenly spread out. I want some of them to be closer together and some of them to be further apart. I'm also going to include some two petaled as well as three petaled flowers for a bit of variation. So not all of the flowers look like they're in full bloom. Once I feel like I have a pretty good amount, I'm going to use the green that I already have on my palate, which is a fairly yellow green from the previous flower, and I'm going to connect them all into a main stem on the left, and on the right, I'm going to paint another mainstem. Since there's quite a bit of space between some of these stems, I'm also going to add some smaller flower buds using the same green. To paint the flower buds, I paint a really thin stem if there's any space in between the flowers and I just add a really tiny oval on top. Once I'm done, I want to make sure everything's completely dry before adding on the center of the flowers. For the center, I'm going to use a very thick consistency of new gamboge. 21. Flower 11: Uh painted quite a few complex flowers, so I'm going to paint a simple one for this lesson. I'm going to make a frilly petaled flower with just five petals. But this time, since they're large, I also want to include a bit of foreshortening in the petals. So you can see at the bottom, they're a little bit more oval compared to longer petals. And this will look like the flower is slightly tilted up. So there's foreshortening going on with the front petals. Now, as for the color, I'm going to create a pink from a mixture of vermilion, quin red, a little bit of Jon Brilliant dark and also some Chinese white. Quite like this pink, so I'm just going to stick with it. Feel free to customize your color however you want. And since the flower petals are going to be fairly large for this one, I've chosen to use my filbert brush. I'm just going to do a few strokes for each petal and don't forget to create the foreshortened petals as well with just a tiny brush stroke if you want. Then for the center, I'm going to use a muted dark brown from a mix of burnt umber, vermilion, and a little bit of ultramarine finest. I'm just going to dot the center using this color in a thick consistency. The green, since I already have a lot of green on my palette I decided to just mix everything in and use this tone of green, and this is still going to look consistent with all the other flowers, since we basically use the same colors to mix. I quite like how it looks already, so I'm just going to go straight into my sketchbook, I'm going to paint three of these flowers in different sizes. And just like the trials, I'm going to start with the pink petals. Once I'm done, I'm going to leave it to dry, and while I wait, I'm going to paint the stems, again, directing it at the center of the flower. For the leaves, I'm going to add two small ones right under the flowers and some large ones to help frame them. Since the leaves look very light, I'm going to take a thicker consistency of the same color and paint a mid rib at the center of the leaves. Before I paint the center of the petals, I want to make sure everything's completely dry and I'm going to use a very thick consistency and a light to dry brush load to.in the center. I wanted to look textured, so I purposefully left out some negative space in between. 22. Flower 12: For the last flower, I'm going to basically create something that looks like a yellow flower but a simplified version. I like to make one main stem with small curve stems growing out of it. As for the flowers, I'm going to simplify it and the painting later as tiny little dots. As for the leaves, they're just going to grow out of the stem and have some tiny leaves on either side as well as the top. I feel like yarrow is mostly known for its white flowers, but I don't want it to be completely white, so I want to create something that's almost like a really light yellow green. So I use the green mixture on my palate and I mixed it with some new gamboge and Jean Brilliant dark. And as for the leaves, I'm going to use sap green, vermilion and Jan Brilliant dark. The green to look a bit yellowish and earthy, so I'm adjusting the color by changing the ratio slightly. For this flower, you do really need to control the load on your brush, since it's mostly just stems and dots, feel free to switch up to a smaller brush for this. I paint it just like how I drew it, and then I'm going to add the dots using the yellow green, and using a medium to thick consistency here, but I'm going to chase it with a clean damp brush later on to smudge some of those dots and to create some variation in the value with some lighter ones around the edges. I also want to make sure that the connection between the smaller stem and the main stem is thick enough to support the weight. There's nothing special for the leaves. I'm just going to paint them on either side as an example. Then after this, we're going to go straight onto my sketchbook. Again, starting with the main stem, I'm going to paint the tall one first, since this is going to be the main focal point of this flower, then I'm going to add smaller ones as well on the side. There's still a large space on the left, so I'm going to add another bunch of flowers. While I still have the green on my brush, I'm going to go ahead and paint the leaves straightaway. After I painted the leaves, I was kind of deciding what to do for this large stem. I feel like it kind of looks lonely, so I ended up adding another bunch of flowers, but just a smaller version. And after this, I'm just going to add more leaves to frame everything. I feel like I have enough leaves, and now I'm going to add the dots using the really light yellow green, just dotting it in a medium to thick consistency. I want to picture this as if they're growing out of those really small stems and also space them out a little bit so the paint won't bleed into each other, creating one big silhouette. I like to vary the dots by wiggling my brush slightly to create larger dots, whereas others, I just do a tiny little tap with the tip of my brush. Once I've mapped out the dots, now I'm going to lighten and smudge some of the colors using a clean damp brush. This is very subtle, but as you can see, some of the colors are now lighter than the ones that I initially painted and some of them might be a little bit puddlyT is just spreading out some of the paint and also creating different variations of values. And that's it. Once I'm done, I want to make sure all the flowers are completely dried and I'm going to erase the grid lines. And here are the completed flowers. 23. Closing and Class Project: Congratulations for completing this class. I hope you enjoyed watching the paint through and learned something new along the way. For the class project, if you're a beginner, feel free to paint along to these exercises for you to just get used to the feel of the brush and the flow of paint. Then once you get used to the shapes, feel free to paint along to the flowers that I've demonstrated in this class. You can paint all 12 or just pick some of your favorites. If you're an intermediate level, feel free to paint along to the composition that I've prepared for this class. Or you can also create your own floral variations and color combinations if you have any other ideas. Once you're done with the projects, please don't forget to post it in the project session, so you can share it with other students. I can also leave a comment and a like. It really excites me to see the kind of things you create with these classes. I would also very much appreciate it if you leave a review of this class. I always appreciate feedback and encouragement from you, and it also helps other people to discover this class if you enjoyed it. If you would like to see more art by me, you can follow me on my YouTube channel Nayani where I post weekly watercolor tutorials. Or if you would like to see more art by me, you can also follow me on my Instagram at IG underscore Nayani. With this said, thank you so much for sticking right to the very end of this class. I can't wait to see your projects. All the best, and I hope to see you again soon. Bye.