Learn to Paint Flowers in Acrylic

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to Learn to paint flowers in acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and I am so excited to have you join me for this course where we are going to go from a blank canvas to a beautiful floral acrylic painting. One of the things that made a big impression on me in art school was seeing how whole bunch of artists could be painting the same thing, and they would all approach it in a slightly different way. Seeing how each artist interpreted the subject matter and how they approached working with the materials inspired me and gave me a lot of ideas to try on my own. And that's where I really developed my philosophy as a teacher. I don't believe in saying, these are the steps. You have to do it exactly the same way as me. Because there are no rules in art. So in this course, we will be painting together, but I encourage you to try your own ideas, put your own spin on it, and use whatever tips and tricks you pick up for me along the way. I will be working with just a basic set of acrylic paints, including the primary colors, red, blue and yellow and black and white. And that's it, because I like to show you how to mix all of the other colors that you'll need from just that basic set. Have other colors that you want to use, go for it. This is a great course for beginning artists to learn the fundamentals. We will be going from start to finish, so you will see every step along the way and you can work right along with me. But it's also a great course. If you are more experienced artist and you're just looking to refresh your skills, maybe learn some new ideas, or try a different approach. So basically, it's for everybody. I've been painting and drawing and making art my whole life. When I was a little kid, it's all I wanted to do. And thankfully, my parents found an artist in our community named Linda Regula, who took me under her wing and started teaching me painting when I was just 4-years-old. Ever since then, I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life. And I've been very fortunate to have wonderful teachers and friends along the way that have inspired me so much. I've had the opportunity to share my artwork. In galleries, painting murals, even creating commissions for some celebrities, including Troy Sevan and Dolly Parton. But my absolute favorite thing to do is share my love of art with others, and that's exactly what I'll be doing in this course. So are you ready to get started? 2. Project: Let's take a closer look at the painting that we'll be making together in this course. Throughout the 14 bite size lessons in this course, I'll be guiding you through the steps to create this beautiful floral painting. You'll discover how to mix and layer vibrant acrylic colors, build depth and dimension with brushwork and texture, capture the natural beauty of petals, leaves, and light, and bring your own style. To the canvas. So whether you're brand new to painting or looking to refresh your skills, this course will help you gain confidence, have fun, and finish with a stunning painting that you will be proud to display. Let's do this. 3. Materials: You're welcome to work with whatever materials you would like. Here is what I'll be using. A nine inch by 12 inch canvas, acrylic paint, white, black, primary red, primary blue, and primary yellow. An assortment of inexpensive paint brushes in different sizes, a palette knife for mixing the paint, palette paper to put the paint on, a cup of water, paper towels, and the reference photo, which I've provided. So go gather all your materials, and let's start painting some flowers. 4. Mixing Colors and Base Coat: Hello, and welcome to Learn to paint flowers in acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we're going to be taking a look at the reference photo and putting a base coat on the canvas. So let's get started. I usually like to start from background to foreground. And so the background in this one, you might look at it and think it's white. But actually, it does have color, and it has more than one color. So when I look at it, I see it's a very light. It's kind of off white background. But do you notice how it goes from a warmer tone up here to a cooler tone down here? It's very subtle, but this part of the background has a little more blue in it. Up here has just a little bit more yellow. So we're going to start out by just covering the canvas, get some paint on there, and get that background laid in. So I'm going to put out a bunch of white. And I'm going to put a little bit of black. And Yellow. Don't need too much yet. I try not to put out more acrylic than I will need for each step because acrylic does tend to dry kind of quickly. First, I'm going to take my white, and I'm going to put a little black with it and just get a nice light gray that kind of looks like the same value as the background. So that's getting there. You don't need much black. A little bit will go a long way when you are trying to get a really light color. Now the black that I'm using this basic acrylic black kind of has a little bit of blue in it. So this already is kind of like the cooler color. But I am going to put out a little blue to just cool it down even a little more for that part. Okay, so now I've got my light gray, so I'm going to divide that into two sections. One of them is going to be the cool and one's going to be the warm. So we'll do the cool first. I'm just going to put a little blue in there with it. Okay. See how that just gives it a little tinge of coolness. You're not wanting it to look like baby blue or bright blue or anything, just a hint. Okay. And then in this one, I'm going to put a little bit of yellow. And then just the tiniest bit of red. And the reason why I'm doing the red is because since that gray is already kind of cool, it's got a blue quality to it, when I mix in just the yellow by itself, it will turn green, blue and yellow make green. But red is the opposite of green, so that will help to kill the green, and then we'll get a nice warm gray. There we go. Beautiful. I didn't use all my white at first because I wanted to be able to lighten these if I felt like they needed it. So I'm going to do the test where I put a little bit of the color on the palette knife and then hold it over top of the painting. It still has a little bit more green in it than that background, so I'm going to put a little more red in mine. Okay. Value wise, I think we are pretty good. I might put just a little bit of white. Get a little more red and yellow. Okay. Color is something you can get so obsessive about if you want, but since we have a time limit, I am not going to spend 2 hours mixing the background color. Alright. So now, this is a good job for a big brush. So I'm just using this guy right here. And I'm going to use some water with my paint because that makes it spread better, and it will also make it dry faster, and we don't want to be painting on wet background the whole time. So I'm starting up here in the warm part and just kind of doing crisscrossi strokes, just getting the canvas covered. This is a nice, relaxing way to start a painting, and it gets rid of the white canvas, which makes me happy. I do not like painting on a white canvas. I'd like to have something going on, even if it's just real subtle color. One of these times, we're going to do a painting, though, where we use just kind of like a really crazy color on the canvas to start with, something that actually contrasts the image instead of just going right for the true colors of it, because that can be fun, too, but not today. We have too many leaves and flowers to paint. So I'm going to go down. It looks like maybe about two thirds of the way down is when it sort of transitions to that cooler tone. One thing that's sort of interesting about color is how different it looks, depending what is next to it. So right now, when you look at my canvas and you see just the white and then this color that I'm adding, it sort of feels like this color that I'm painting might be too dark because, you know, it's so much darker than the white. But just remember that. And when we get a little farther in the painting and we get some of those darker colors of the leaves on there, you'll see that this will look almost white again. It's just so interesting how its color is so relative and it changes. Our perception of it changes depending on what's around it. So now, when you're read to mix in the next color, grab it on the same brush and just kind of work the brush strokes right into the first ones. And if you like I said, I like to do these crisscrossi strokes. Different artists make different kinds of marks, though, so you make whatever kind of mark you want. And then you just kind of go up into the warm tone until you can't tell where the edge is between the two colors. They'll just kind of start to mix together. If you're first color dries before you get to the second color, then it's not going to work as well. You'll you'll see the edge no matter how high up you paint. So you might just have to go back and add a little bit more of the warm tone and paint that back down into the wet cool tone. So the thing with acrylic, it does dry fast. So whenever you want to blend, both sides need to be wet still. Okay, almost got it. Thanks. Awesome job, everyone. Okay. In our next lesson, we are going to start mixing the colors for the leaves. I'll see you then. 5. Mixing Colors for the Leaves: Hi, and welcome back to Learn to paint flowers and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we're going to start mixing the colors for the leaves. Let's do it. Looking at those leaves, there are obviously some different shades of green going on there. There's some cooler parts where the green mixture has more blue in it, and then there are areas where it is warmer. So that means it has more yellow, like we said earlier, mixing green is combination of blue and yellow. So let's just start by mixing a kind of a good middle of the road green. So I'm going to do pretty equal parts of blue and yellow. The blue is probably going to be a little more powerful, so it'll probably look a little bit cooler, but we'll see. Actually, no, that's very kind of right in the middle. That's just like a nice Nice, true green. Okay. Gonna put out a little more blue and yellow, 'cause there's nothing worse than getting halfway through painting something and then running out of the color that you need for it. So I tend to mix big piles of paint while I am working so that that doesn't happen. Can be a little wasteful sometimes, but, you know, I'd rather that than run out. Okay. There. Bigger pio. All right. So there's a couple different things going on. There are value shifts. So we have dark areas, light areas, and then temperature shifts, cool areas in warm areas. And if you notice, the cooler colors tend to be in the darker parts, and the warmer colors tend to be in the lighter parts. That's not true all the time, though, like, look at that little leaf right there. That's a very light leaf, but it's on the cooler side. It has more blue in it. So we're going to have to mix some of everything. And I like to premix colors when I'm painting something like this so that I'm not just trying to mix as I go, but other artists like to just kind of have one color and then a bunch of other options on the palette and just kind of grab things with their brush and mix while they're painting. So again, that's just, like, a personal preference thing. You can do it however you want to. So what I want to do is to get the different values of green first. So from dark to light. And then I can pull those into separate piles and warm them and cool them. So I've got my basic green. I'm going to take a little bit of it over here and add some white to it to lighten it. I can already see I'm going to need more. So I'm just gonna do that now. Put more blue and yellow and then even more white. There we go. And I think we need to do one more step lighter, so I'm going to take a little bit of that and add even more white. Okay. And then last thing, I'm going to go ahead and mix up a little bit more still. A little more blue and a little more yellow. And to that one, I'm going to add some black so that I can get that nice dark color shadow tone. Okay. So I've got a nice range of greens there, pretty much all the different shades that I see from the really light to the really dark. And let's go ahead. I'm trying to decide, do I want to mix the different temperatures? You know what I actually think we'll do? Keep it a little simpler. Let's paint it just with these, and then we'll use glazes to adjust the temperature to warm it up in some parts, cool it down and other parts. Keep it simple. I'm a fan of that. Plus, if we mix a ton of colors right now, then they might dry it before we need them, and that would not be fun. Great job. Okay, and our next lesson is time to start sketching the leaves. I'll see you then. 6. Sketching the Leaves: Hello, and welcome back to Learn to paint flowers and acrylic. In this lesson, we are going to start sketching in the leaves. So let's get started. I'm gonna still use my big brush because right now we're just kind of sketching. And I want to start by figuring out where some of the main shapes go. Now, the beauty of painting something like this, if you get a leaf and it's in a different spot on your canvas than in the photo, it does not matter. And you could actually really do that intentionally, too, if you want to add leaves or take some out or move them in different directions, you know, that is the fun of painting. You get to kind of personalize it. But for now, I'm just going to start with this kind of lighter green, and I've got some water on my brush, and I just want to be able to lightly kind of sketch, and I'm going to just do some lines for where I see some of the main leaves. First, though, I'm actually going to do a little mark on the center of each side of the canvas. So here, here, here, and here. And the reason that I do that is because it lets me create this kind of, like, imaginary grid. It divides the canvas into four quadrants, and then I can do the same thing to my reference photo. And that helps me to just place things in roughly the right spot. You could be really, you know, technical and actually draw grids, and as long as your canvas is proportional to the picture, you can make it, you know, have as many squares as you want and really get things precise. But that's not necessary for this, and it just kind of would make it less fun, so I'm not going to do that. But anyhow, so I see, I'm going to start with this leaf right here, and it starts a little bit to the right of that uh center marking on the top, and it comes down to about the halfway point a little bit to the left, so roughly here. I'll just go ahead and sketch in the shape that I want it to be roughly. Something like that. We have a leaf. We're off and running. Let's do some more. I kind of like looking at where things hit the edge. That gives me a nice way into it. So I'm going to come over here. This one is little bit to the left of a quarter in. So if this is about a quarter, that means this one starts about here, and it comes down about as far as this one does. Something like that. And that one has a nice little twist in it. Do you see that? The center line stays the same. So that's what I've drawn. But then the outer edge starts over here, comes up, and then twists around to this side and goes up like that. That's how you get that twist. And then the right side just starts coming out of that little lip of that one. Again, doesn't have to be precise. Don't stress about that, but it is nice to have some variety like that to be able to draw them so that they feel like they're twisting and turning. I think that's one of the beautiful things about this reference is there's a lot of movement to it. And if you make all the leaves the same, then it won't have that same feeling. So it's good to kind of study it and pick up on things like that. Okay, what next? I'm going to come over here now about quarter of the way up, we have one that goes from here to about let's see. About here. By the way, if you draw a line that's a mistake, it really doesn't matter because you're going to be covering over stuff anyway, but I'll just show you one thing you can do, let's say I made that, and then I realized, Oh, that's a mistake. I don't like that. You can just get a clean brush and put some water on it and scrub over top of it. And as long as it's still, you know, pretty fresh, it'll come up, and then you can just pad it with the paper towel. And it shouldn't lift up the background as long as it's had enough time to start drawing. So don't be afraid of mistakes. You can always fix them. Or you might like them. You might be like, Hey, maybe I do want to leave there. Okay. So this one, it kind of has a little lip that comes up and overlaps, and then we see the other side like that. A little smaller. Something like that. I use my little eraser technique to get rid of that one line I didn't want. Okay. And then let's keep going. You don't have to draw this in the same order the same way I am either. Feel free to do it however it feels right to you. Alright. Okay. So next, I'm going to do this one. Comes up overlaps. Then goes down right beside that one. Okay, so this has we see a big section on that side, a little bit on this side. Then it twists. We get and the sides basically swap. So this line crosses over and becomes the bottom. This line crosses over. And it was too far. Becomes the top. You can see how in the photo, it kind of comes really close to being right along the same edge as that other leaf behind it. So when you're drawing things like this, it's good to pay attention to the relationships between the parts. When you are, you know, these things are not there in isolation. There's a connection that is happening between all of them. And you can look at the shapes of the negative spaces or the openings. Between the leaves and actually look at those as shapes, and that can be a way to really help you kind of place stuff too. Now, one thing I'm going to do to prevent this from getting too confusing with all the lines is wherever there is a leaf, I'm just going to do a really thin, very watered down fill of paint, so I know what is a leaf and what is the background. Almost kind of like it's a watercolor. Gets something on there, makes them feel a little more solid. Once you're pretty happy with, you know, the ones that you've drawn, you can do that, too, if you want. Just get some green on there. Okay. Clean up this a little better. Most likely, we'll have to go back and do some painting in the background again at the very end, anyway, so don't worry if you get if you mess up your background, right. Great work. Okay, and our next lesson, we have some more sketching to do, including some more leaves and the flowers. I'll see you then. 7. Sketching Leaves and Flowers: Hi. Hello. Hello, and welcome back to Learn to paint flowers and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to continue sketching our image, including some more leaves and the flowers. Let's do it. So the ones that I've drawn so far are the ones that I think are the most kind of clear because they are separated from the group. Over here, it becomes sort of a cluster of leaves. So, you know, we can study that and we can draw it to the best of our ability, but it's also okay to just kind of paint it very painterly and let some of that, you know, who knows what's really happening in there. So we'll look at the shapes of it, but we're not going to obsess over it, if that makes any sense. So let's see here. How do we want to do this? We've gotten this. Actually, what I'd like to do next is kind of figure out where the flowers are going. So I might even I'm going to switch and just use a little red on my brush. You can use whatever color it doesn't matter. All right, so this is that. This is that. So right below where that twist is where we get this corner comes up like that comes down. Comes up again. Then it comes down into here. And all of this just will become dark inside. So this is all flour, basically. So I'll just go ahead and do the same thing with that. I'll just kind of block it in. And it's okay that we see that leaf through there right now. We'll paint it more solidly. Part of the reason why I am drawing the flowers now is because why bother painting the leaves behind them beautifully if they're going to be covered up anyway. So it just kind of gives us an idea of what parts of the canvas we really don't need to care about. This one starts right about the bottom of this leaf comes up a little bit. And how far over would you say it goes? It goes past the halfway point for sure, not all the way to three quarters, so it's a little bit in from there. When I'm drawing, I try not to get too hung up on all the little details at first. I just look for the big shapes and I look for where the farthest edges seem to be. Alright, now this comes down. That flower ends, I would say, about one quarter of the way up. So pretty much like, right over from this. It's right in here. So, kind of like that. We went over a little too for a while. That's thanks. Okay, so there's that one. That's definitely the focal point of the image because it's the biggest sheep, and it's kind of right in the middle. We have an area out here that's called Cow Lily Valley. You kind of hike through this, you know, wildernessy area, and then you get to you climb down these stairs, and you're down in this little valley area, and it's just all cowlies. They were all white. My friend and I went there recently, but it was really cool. They were gigantic, and there were so many of them. Alright, so that's about where that one goes. I might lower it a bit, though, 'cause look how close it is to this. And on mine, there's a lot more space. Let's make that a little bit bigger. So that's another example of just looking for relationships between things. Where how much space is there? Should there be between, you know, what I'm drawing now and what I've already drawn. You can't really compare against stuff you haven't drawn yet, but if you have a few things established like those leaves, then you can kind of use those as a basis for everything else and just make this, work with that, and then make the next thing work with that, and it should all work together in theory. Okay. I'm gonna go back to green now. Okay. I think. Alright, so a few main ones that I see, there's this big curved line right here that kind of comes up a little bit above there. So about to here. So I'm going to draw that. That feels like an important one. And there's another one right beside it. That only goes to about there. Okay. So I've just drawn a few lines where I see kind of some of the bigger leaves. And I'm just mostly going to kind of fill in that whole section now with green, but leaving some of the negative spaces that I see. So starting over here, we've got this one that comes all the way up to that. So I'm just going to fill that all in, and it goes all the way over. This is all green in here. So is that. Okay, then we do have a little opening here. So I'll make this stem. Gonna fill all that in. Sort it out later with details. Don't stress about it now. Okay. Then we've got this one. That's a big leaf. This is sort of the time when you get to just study it a bit while you're laying the foundation for some of these leaves and you kind of just figure out the parts that are important and what's really going on, what leaf is where, where what's in front of what? You might not see it all yet on your canvas. That's right. But you're just kind of exploring, studying it. Don't get don't become afraid of complexity. You know, it's just like a little puzzle we have to sort out as we go. And it doesn't need to all be captured right away, Oever. You know, you get to decide how detailed you want it to be. But I just say that because I see a lot of people when they're starting out painting really doing okay with something that's pretty clear and obvious, but then when something gets a little more complex, it's like your head just wants to explode, and so you just kind of either avoid it or just do it very quickly and sloppily to kind of move on. And you don't need to be afraid of it. Just look at the shapes, look at the basic shapes, look at the positive and negative spaces, and just try to capture what you're seeing in a very loose way at first. No need for a lot of detail. Beautiful. Okay. In our next lesson, we are going to be finishing up with the sketching. See you then? 8. Finishing the Rough Sketch: Hello, and welcome back to earn to paint flowers and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to be finishing up the rough sketch for our painting. So let's get to it. To me, this is what's really fun about painting is it lets you have an excuse to slow down and really look at something and study it and see what it's all about. Not just like, Oh, there's a flower, but, you know, what are the shapes? What are the colors? What all is really going on? It's pretty amazing. I had a student in my class last night who was doing a painting of a a bumblebee, like, a really large painting of a bumblebee. And so she had the photo reference blown up really big. And it was unbelievable all the details on that bee. Like, it looked like like like this magnificent, like, alien creature. But normally, to our eyes, it would just be this little annoying speck buzzing through the air. But it was like looking at it up close. I was like a creature from a sci fi movie or something. It was unbelievable. And I just thought, Wow, I would never have really seen this if someone wasn't painting it. It was nice to appreciate things that you never really think about. Alright, so that's starting to feel pretty okay. And pretty okay is the goal for a base coat. We're not going for beautiful. We're just going for reasonably close. Alright. This comes up and over here. Do you all see there's a little one hiding in the negative space right in there. There's a little flower in this spot. So I'm leaving some room. I'll put that in 'cause I like that. I think that's kind of fun. I did not notice that when I first looked at the photo. That usually happens when I'm painting anything. Once I get into it, I see things that I didn't know were there. Alright, I'm going to go ahead and put that little flower in now so I don't forget. So it's basically here, a little bit. And here. Oh, and there's a little opening right here where it shows up too. I'll just paint it right on top of the green. Okay, just a few more. I'm gonna do I'm gonna adjust the shape of this leaf because mine just kind of curves in a very generic way, but I'm looking at the reference, and I like the way that it actually kind of comes out to a little bit of a point and then goes back. Noticing some of those kinds of things are great just gives character to what you're painting. And we'll do these last few leaves, and then I'll do that last flower to you. So there's one coming up right here, just a little triangle. I'm looking at where it intersects the flower that tells me where to start and stop it. And then the top of it is kind of right by this point. Okay. There's a little one, but I'm gonna wait I want to get the big one in first, and then I'll go back. That's another tip for drawing. Anything. Focus on the bigger shapes first because they have more they're more important. And then they also give you more kind of anchors for all the little fussy things. If you get too caught up in all the little fussy things too soon, then you can lose sight of the big picture and just kind of get lost in it. Okay. That's an interesting shape. Try not to just default to drawing what you think a leaf looks like. It's hard to do we all have a mental image of a leaf, and we just kind of probably want to make that kindergarten shaped leaf that we've drawn 1 million times. But pretty much none of these leaves maybe with the exception of that one, actually look like that. So I think that's another really fun thing about painting is you just kind of it gives you an excuse to get rid of those mental labels. We love as a species. We love labeling and categorizing things. But the problem with that is pretty soon, all you see when you look at something is the label. You see a tree and your brain just says, That's a tree, and you don't really notice how interesting it is or how beautiful it is because you've already just put it into this box that says, I'm a tree. But imagine if you were looking at the tree and you didn't know what a tree was called, and you were just taking it in and seeing how beautiful it was, that's what I think art lets you do. That's why I like it. The more you can separate yourself from thinking about what it is, the more you'll actually be able to capture how it looks. Can I note about this last little flower in the air? I love all the elegant lines in this image. There's just like, there's a lot of long, fluid flowing kinds of lines. It's it has very different characteristics than, like, the tree that we painted or other things that have more geometric straight lines. This is all very curvy and flowy, right? And look at how that goes almost to the edge, but not all the way. And I like that. That creates a little bit of tension, so I'm going to make mine do that, too. That little bump. Okay. There is one little leaf that I see in this top left corner, but I don't like that. I'm not gonna put it. You can put that if you want. I'm making the executive decision to leave that out. That's mine. Great job. Okay, and our next lesson, it's time to do some painting, and we're gonna start with the dark values on the leaves. I'll see you then. 9. Dark Values on the Leaves: He. Hello, and welcome back to Learn to paint flowers and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, it's time to start painting. We are going to begin with the dark values on the leaves. So let's get painting. Alright, so now what I'm gonna do? I'm still using a big brush, and that's something I want to remind you of is that the size of your brush is really going to determine the level of detail that you are painting. And I don't like to get too detailed too soon. A lot of beginning painters want to jump right to a really tiny detail brush because that feels like you'll be able to control it better and actually I find that the opposite happens, people get so, like, just fussy with it and you kind of just lose control. So I'm going to I tend to start with bigger brushes and then work my way to smaller ones throughout the course of the painting. By the time I'm at the very end and I might want to do a few little tiny details or accents, then that's when I would use that. But for now, I'm sticking with the same brush. And I want to start going through and just finding where I see some of the darkest values first, because we already have a nice middle value, middle to light value on the leaves. So jumping to the darkest is going to give me that more immediate sense of where the contrast is where the deep shadows. A. So I'm going to use my almost black and then this green and just kind of block in some of those. And you'll notice what happens when you start doing that is that it actually lets you start defining some of those leaves, the overlap between them a little bit better. So right now I'm just looking at this little section and I see that it gets really dark back in here. So I'm going to go ahead and put that on there. When I'm working in acrylic, I like to get I like to kind of build up from dark to light. When I'm doing watercolor, I do the opposite because you are relying on the white of the paper in a watercolor painting to provide the light. So if you cover it all up and lose it, it's, you know, gone. But with acrylic, you can paint white right on top and bring it back. So now I'm kind of wanting it to transition here from the really dark to the sort of dark. I should should put numbers on these. No, that's to paint by number. So I'm doing the same thing like we did with the background. I put the darkest one first, and then I just blend it into the next color while they're both still wet, and you can get some really nice, beautiful, you know, transitions happening. And I'll even jump down to this one so that I can blend it into a highlight while I go. Like that. This comes all the way down. Just really study that photo. I would say more than, you know, copying, like every stroke I'm doing here, kind of take in what I'm showing if you if you want, and then really, like, study the photo for yourself and kind of use this as a chance to start navigating your way through it. Alright. Then I'm going to jump up here because the other side of that leaf gets pretty dark. Come back. It's a little later. Then we have Dark again. I don't even try to understand why necessarily, you know, like, I'm not sure why this weird little round dark shape is here. Actually, I think I do kind of know. You see that little dark splotch? I'm doing the opposite of what I just told you to do. But you see that little dark splotch? I think that is the shadow of the flower that's behind it because that leaf is being back lit. So that little blob is actually the flower we're seeing through the leaf. So that's kind of interesting. Never noticed that. Either. And, you know, you can also just even kind of look at this for inspiration, but create shapes and create patterns and do things in a little bit more of an imaginative way, if that's how you prefer to paint or more stylized way. I think that, you know, some artists would like to be really detailed and really study and try and paint as accurately as they can what they're seeing. But I also think it's just as valid and great to look at this and just go for more of the essence of it and paint more loose and put your own spin on it. So do what feels right to you. Okay. I'm going to do this shadow now on this leaf. Just kind of working my way through, not getting overwhelmed by the abundance of leaves that are there. I'm just taking it one leaf at a time, studying what I'm seeing happening with that one and then working my way on to the next one. If you do it like that, you'll get through all of them eventually. Um I think it's really cool to notice the way that the shadows fall on the leaves. It's not always in a really predictable way. There are shapes of shadow and light that I wouldn't have necessarily imagined if I was just making this up. But you end up getting so many areas where one leaf is overlapping another and it's overlapping another, and a flower petal is, you know, coming in and blocking the light. So you get these weird little, you know, sections where you might expect it to be dark or light, and then it ends up being the opposite. And so I think that's kind of a fun thing about this, too. Like this leaf here, the way it's super light right there, and then the whole top half of it is dark. It's because there's something blocking that light. It's probably one of the other leaves, maybe the flower. It looks to me like the light is kind of wrapping around. So you don't really have to overthink it. Just look at what paint what you see. If you like painting more expressively, it's fun to do leaves and things like that with a palette knife, too, or just with really thick paint on your brush, make it have some texture. That's one way that I like to paint sometimes. Okay. Continuing on with the darks. I'll come back and do more variation in the light areas, but I want to get all the darks blocked in first. So this one it's pretty dark all the way through. When you're painting, experiment with how much water you add to your brush. I dip my brush in the water a lot because I like for the paint to be a little fluid, but you just need to find the right combination. If you have too much water, then it just becomes too thin and too transparent. It doesn't really work, you know, the way I want it to either. But if I don't use enough water, then the paint feels kind of stiff, plasticky, doesn't really like to blend. So just kind of dip it in there a little bit. You can always dip it in the water, and then sometimes I'll just, like, wipe it on a paper towel a little bit and then paint so that I don't have big amounts of water just a little. Okay. We're getting somewhere. See how just putting those darks in it makes the overlap start to happen. Great work. Okay, in our next lesson, we're going to continue adding some dark shadows to the leaves. I'll see you then. 10. Shadows on the Leaves: Hi, and welcome back to earn to paint flowers and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to be painting some more dark shadows on the leaves. Let's do it. Continuing on this side, there's another dark little dark one peeking out right here. You know, it comes down like that. It's a little bit lighter color blended in. And last swim over here. Some of those bigger, simpler shapes that we started with the whole part was just kind of the same shade of green. Now you go into it and you start breaking it up and looking for a little bit smaller shapes and sections. And it's kind of like you just keep working your way in to the amount of detail that you want. There's no right or wrong amount, you can keep it as loose as you want or as tight as you want, but it's good to kind of be consistent. Okay. Moving on. Next big section of dark is right over in here. Just blocking in the shape that I see. I'm looking at this shape right here. It's not even the whole leaf. It's just that right side of it. And then it starts to get a little bit lighter towards the bottom. I like all these little gradations that happen. An artist who was really good at capturing that the sense of that was Georgia O'Keefe. Do you ever see some of her paintings of leaves? And she really even kind of exaggerates those transitions and gradients of color. But they really capture that movement and dimensionality. Okay. Then let's see. Where else does it get dark? It gets really dark on this side of the that up to here. Then it flips. I'm very glad that we did not mix up a bunch of warm and cool shades because I think it's enough to think about just getting the lights and darks where they need to be. Then we'll come back and deal with color later. It's a very classical kind of approach to painting. A lot of the great masters would do the whole painting just in one color first, different shades of light and dark, but one color. So maybe brown and just have, you know, just like we did with the green from white to the darkest brown, and they'd paint the whole thing and then go back and start layering in the color because it is so much to think about all at once. But if you get the values working, you can really have fun with color. I'll hold together, even if the color isn't exactly what you're seeing, or if you want to be really expressive and imaginative with color, as long as the values are working, it'll still make sense. Okay. I love these big fluid shapes like that where you can just take your brush and let it swoosh. These slant brushes are really good for that because they can just kind of get down in there, and then you can turn and twist them almost like you're writing in calligraphy or something. I'm a big fan of letting the brush do most of the work. It dark shadow here in between. This is fun, very relaxing. Just spending some time looking at some plants. Sad thing is, I enjoyed this more than going and looking at the real ones when we went to alily Valley. I'd rather be sitting here inside painting. I don't know what that says about me. It was nice to go, though. I did enjoy it, but I guess I'm just an indoor boy. Okay. Well, let's see. I'm still just sticking kind of towards the upper part. I haven't gotten into the really light yet. Well, I'll kind of come back and hit it with those next. Want to get through all the dark and middle tones first. Okay. We t now. Let's see. We've got that. Okay, this one gets kind of dark. Oh, let's see. There's a little stem hiding back there, put you in. And this gets dark. A little twist. It can get overwhelming when you start looking at a complex area and seeing a lot of different shades kind of all in one spot. So one thing that helps is to just look for what's the main value that's there. You know, this is overall kind of a darker section, but it's not as dark as the one next to it. So I like to just kind of go in and get that first, and then you can come back and add in more of the complexity if you want to. Always just try and work your way from big picture to small. Awesome. Okay, and our next lesson, we're going to finish with the dark values on the leaves. I'll see you then. 11. Darkest Values on the Leaves: Hi, and welcome back to Learn to Paint flowers and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to finish painting the dark values on the leaves. So let's get to work. It really makes you feel like you're kind of carving it out sometimes. You just work your brush in and you're thinking about the direction that that piece is moving, and you move your brush the same way. It's like you're a sculptor, just carving that little piece. And thinking about it like that really does help because then you're not just thinking about a flat shape. You're really thinking about the volume of it, and that will come across in the painting. Okay. This area, it's all leaf. There we go. Just pull that stem out a little bit. Okay. We are getting somewhere. Somewhere. Somewhere good, I think. Alright. Next up, another dark section. Okay. Look in there. And the right side of that just has a few little dark shadows. Kind of soften the edges as I go too so that I am not left with any really sharp lines where I don't want them. Okay. Now, let's get the edge of this guy. So it's almost like you get to define the light edges of the leaves by the shadows next to them on the leaf, you know, behind them or beside them. You kind of using one leaf to define the edge of the other. Okay. And this comes over here, flips on us. Like that. So then the left side on this part is lighter and the right side is, Doctor. Okay. Got a little bit on this guy. I like to squint my eyes a lot while I'm painting, too, because it helps get rid of some of the unnecessary details and helps me prioritize what is kind of essential to the value structure of the image. So if you're painting an area and you feel overwhelmed, squint and whatever you still see when you're squinting is important enough to paint, then everything else is optional. It's not going to make or break it, in other words, but the areas with the most contrast, you'll still see them when you're squinting, and that just helps to prioritize. Okay. There's not a lot of dark on these up here, but there's a few little spots. So at the very top of this one where it flips around, it gets a little darker. And where it goes back behind the flower, there's a shadow. Okay, this one has some darkness along this edge. Then it gets pretty dark right here where it goes behind the flower. See how the nice big brush just lets me kind of glide glide along and make a whole leaf with one stroke or a whole part of a leaf with one stroke. You don't have to be real fussy, like you would with a tiny brush. Okay, let me have a little bit of darkness here. Let's see. This one has a few little touches of dark too. Okay. Yay, great job. Okay, and our next lesson, it's time to start adding some highlights to the leaves. I'll see you then. 12. Highlights on the Leaves: Hello. Hi and welcome back to Learn to paint flowers and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we're going to start painting highlights on the leaves. So let's get to work. So we have all the shadows kind of established now on the leaves. So now I'm gonna jump down to my lighter colors and just go back through and pull out any little highlights that I want to make sure and emphasize. So I'm gonna come all the way back over here to where I started and get some of those in. Everything is probably pretty dry by this point, but that's okay because it's not the light is not that much lighter than what was already there, so you can kind of just work it in, make it feel like it's blending. And if you need to add more of the middle shades back to blend it into, you can do that too. In fact, I am going to do that right here because I see an area where I want to get a little darker. Then I can just work it right into what I just painted. Okay. And while that's still wet, I'm going to just grab even some pure white because it will mix with the light green that's on there and it won't look pure white. It will become just a really nice light light light green. That's really only for just where you see those brightest highlight parts. A little piece right here. I love going in and popping in highlights on things because I think it just makes that's when you really start to see the depth. You've gotten all the shadows in, so those kind of lay back. And then you start in with the highlights and it makes those areas jump forward. You get that just really fun push and pull of light and shadow. Okay. This one gets pretty light up towards the top. That way continues down along the edge, so I can kind of sharpen up that edge with the highlights. And then blend it down. As you're going back through, do you see any parts that just feel like the paint dried and it didn't cover as well as you wanted or you want to smooth it out or refine anything, it's a good time to just kind of do that while you still have these colors. Sometimes paint will look one way while it's wet and then it dries and maybe it expands or it contracts a little, and there might be some little gaps where the canvas shows, you just go back and fill those in. I think when you're painting something that is very fluid like this has a lot of organic movement and lines and shapes. It really does help to capture that spirit of it to move your brush in that way to make longer kind of flowing movements with the brush. You kind of just want your brush to feel the way you're moving the brush, you want it to feel like what you're painting. If it was something with a lot of rough choppy texture, then you'd be doing a lot more your little choppy marks. But this just kind of helps you to connect with it in a different way. So look at those lines and shapes and try and match the feeling of it with your brush movement. Okay, a few more little highlights down here. It's a fun painting. I'm enjoying this. Could definitely spend a long time on it if you wanted to. But we'll, too, we'll get the essence of it down. Nice little pop of light down here. Great job. Okay, and our next lesson, we have some more highlights to paint. I'll see you then. 13. More Highlights on the Leaves: Hello. Hello, and welcome back to earn to paint flowers and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to pick up where we left off and continue painting highlights on the leaves. So let's do it. I think that, you know, the flowers in this photo are beautiful, but I think that the leaves really are the star of the show. At least for me, I love all the different shapes and tones in them. I think the flowers are gonna go pretty fast after we've done all of this. Okay get this little bit of light on the edge of this leaf. I like doing just like a little flick of the wrist and there, but instant highlight doesn't have to be any harder than that. When you want things to feel dimensional and have lots of shifts and lots of edges and lights hitting it in different ways, you don't want to necessarily overly blend it. It's okay to have some edges that are left, you know, a little bit more obvious. Everything doesn't have to be a perfect blend. It's nice to see some of the structure. Okay. A little bit more back here. And you? Okay, now I'm gonna move up here. It the highlights on this leaf in. You can always kind of reshape things as you go, like I just did with the little end of that one, if it's if you have one leaf that's going into an area where you don't want it, Okay. And what's got you? Nice and light up here. And then just like I did down below, I'm going to go back with some white, a little bit of water, too, so it doesn't end up too chalky, but just push the highlights a little farther in a few spots where it looks really light. Okay. And then look how it gets really light right here where that leaf is kind of twisting around. That's a really great, a really great spot showing the waviness of it because it's just really light in that one little area where it's kind of twisting around. And then it blends up into the darker that leaf has a few little white, splotchy things on it, so I'm gonna put those in there too. That just gives it a little character. Really light sided Okay. Let's. And Okay. Last little highlight right there. Beautiful. Awesome job. Okay, in our next lesson, it's time to start mixing some colours for the flowers and painting them. I'll see you then. 14. Color Mixing and Starting Flowers: So Hello, and welcome back to earn to paint flowers and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to start mixing some colors and painting the flowers. So let's get to it. So now we're gonna let the leaves dry. We'll come back at the very end and do some glazing on them to get some warm and cool tones in there, but I want to paint the flowers now. If you're still working on the leaves, don't rush yourself. Go as long as you need to on those, and you can always come back and watch the flower part later. So I'm going to put a little more red out. And my white is kind of starting to dry, plus it's got some other colors mixed into it, so I'm going to put out some more white too. Okay. And so I'm going to mix the range of colors that I see on those flowers all the way from the really dark to the really light. So let's start with my red. Do it over here, so we have a little more room to work. Okay. And I'm going to put the tiniest little bit of blue in with the red because it does go that direction. It's not at all an orangy red. It's almost like more magenta or has even a little bit of a purple cast to it. So putting a little bit of blue will head it in that direction. I always start by just putting tiny little bits because it's a lot easier to add more than if you put too much and regret it. Okay. That's feeling pretty good. We might go even cooler in the shadow, but that seems like a good base. So then I'm just going to take some of that, pull it over here, and add some white to it so we can start to get the lighter tone. I'm going to do that one more time because there are some areas that get really light. Okay. And then, let's see. I'm actually going to just I don't want to use up all of that, so I'm gonna mix a little bit more and then add a little black to it for the dark part. And the black, like we said, it has some blue in it. So see how that's making it even more purple, which is really what we want. That's how it looks in there. I might even add a little bit more blue to it, too, just to really emphasize that. Okay, so that, to me, looks like a nice range of values to capture those flowers. So let's clean off my brush. If you have any green left on there, you want to make sure and swish it around in the water and get all that off or else it will turn your red to mud. Nobody wants muddy flour. Okay. And just like with the leaves, I'm going to start by laying in the darks. So there's one petal here. And we have that little highlight. Then we have another line that comes up like that. And then it gets dark underneath here, too. So I'm gonna start with that. I'm going to work on this section first, so we'll go really nice and dark in here. Have some little dried crusty thing on my canvas. Get off of it. Okay. And then we're going to do this dark. That kind of pulls all the way up. I'm adding a little more water, 'cause I want that really nice fluid movement of the strokes, there we go. It starts to blend with the next shade. There's a lot of kind of linear texture happening on the petal. A lot of lines that are following the movement of it. So I'm not overly blending. I want my I'm using my brush to very intentionally make those same kind of directional lines because that really helps the flower to feel like it is more dimensional. Okay, this comes up this way. So I'm just like before, I'm just kind of starting on the dark end of the scale. I've got my darkest and then my second darkest and getting those in first, then I'll backtrack and do the highlights. But already, look at how that flower is really starting to pop. There's a little bit of darkness over here. One thing I do when I'm painting into an area, and I know I'm going to be coming back later and adding more maybe highlights in that part, and the paint might dry before I come back to it. I like to make sure that the edge that's heading in towards the lighter value doesn't end on too sharp of a stroke. See how I just kind of brush that out a little bit, and it'll make it easier when I come back with the next layer. I'm not going to be trying to fight to camouflage a really sharp edge that I don't want there. Thinking about edges is it's very helpful. It's a lot to think about because you're already thinking about a lot of other stuff, but it does does make a difference. Okay. Great job. Okay, next lesson, we are just going to continue painting flowers. I'll see you then? 15. Painting the Flowers: Hello. Hello and welcome back to Learn to paint flowers and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we have some more flowers to paint. Let's do it. Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and finish this flower instead of doing the darks on all of them. So I'm gonna go down to my next lightest color now and start working that in. In that way, the flower is still wet, so it makes it even easier to blend those highlights in. You can always go back and get more darks, too, just like I'm doing right now if you need them. Let me go down a size and brush here so I can get some of those little little sections a bit easier. Plus, after you have been using a brush for a while, especially if it's a cheaper brush and you're working with acrylic, it will become less soft and a little bit harder to work with. So this is we've been going for a while now, so it's a good time to just grab a new one, and you'll kind of be surprised at how nice it is to work with after you've been fighting with the other one for a while. I get in that habit a lot when I'm painting, and I'll just pick up one brush and kind of use it all day because I don't want to stop long enough to get another one. But we're also at the stage of the painting where it is good to start going down in size a little bit, if you want to get a little more detailed and precise with some things. Okay. Now jumping over here, there's some more highlight hitting the sun. Got to make sure this focal point flower looks extra good. This is the one that's standing up right in front and saying, Look at me, which is what I would be doing if I was a flower. So I relate. And sometimes when you have a lot of paint on an area, you can just kind of get some water on your brush. If you want to maybe blend it a little more, just go back in with just water and kind of work the colors together a little bit. Okay. I'm gonna get a super small brush now, 'cause I want to get that nice little sliver of light right here. There's a little bit of light hitting this. And then I'm gonna jump down to my lightest color and throw that in there. You just go right on top of what's already there. Just kind of keep building it up until you get it the value you want. So Okay. Beautiful. Alright. Now, the other flowers, they're gonna go a little faster. This one has a lot of dark. It's pretty much all dark all up through here. Get a nice clean edge here separating the flower from that leaf. Sometimes you want a soft edge, sometimes you want a sharp edge. This is a good place for a sharp edge. Get down into this little spots. Okay. Put a little bit of it up here. Here. You see how the flowers that are farther back, you don't see nearly the amount of detail on them as you do the front one. So you still get some directional marks, so I'm still moving my brush the way that I see it. But I'm not trying to paint details that aren't there, you know, just having less detail on things in the background actually helps add depth to your piece as well. It's not a cop out. Actually. It's like when you're looking at something and you're focusing on something maybe that's, like, right in front of you, everything that is behind that or farther away gets a little bit more blurry because you're not focusing in on that as much. And if you do that in a painting, it will help the viewer know what they are focusing on. Beautiful work. Okay, in our next lesson, we're getting close. We're going to finish painting the flowers and do some glazing. I'll see you then. 16. Painting and Glazing the Flowers: Hello, and welcome back to earn to paint flowers in acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to finish painting the flowers and do some glazing. So let's do it. Can I make this edge nice and crisp. And come back in with a little touch of highlights sparingly. Okay. This little guy that's hiding over here will get you in. If I'm this flower, then this flower is my husband. Okay. One more little flower to go. Start with May dark. Get that blocked in. Sure. Like that nice, pointy tip. It's kind of like a nice little directional. It's like an arrow, really. That's telling the viewer, don't leave. Come back. Keep looking. It's a good compositional thing to kind of use lines and shapes to help lead your viewer's eye around the peas. You kind of create a visual roadmap for them showing them where to look next. It's not being bossy. It's actually a nice thing to do so they don't get lost in the? Okay. And that small brush. I'll do a few little highlights. Those can also just kind of help smooth it out a little bit. Okay. I am going to take another 5 minutes or so and do some glazing of some worms and cools into this because I think that's gonna be a really fun part. Okay. So when you glaze, it's glazing is basically like painting with watercolor. You're using mostly water. You're not covering up what's there. You're just kind of tinting it a little bit. You're just taking it in a slightly different direction color wise. So I've got yellow on my palette, and I've got blue. So we've got our warms and cools covered. I'm just going to take a little bit of this yellow, maybe put a little bit of my green in with it so it's not going to be too shockingly crazy, but it's so watered down that we're going to see the other colors through it. So now I'm just looking to see where do I feel like there is the strongest amount of warm tones. So I see it definitely here. And you see how because my paint is so thin down with water, you don't lose any of the details that you painted before. They're all still there. You're just kind of telling it, Hey, warm up a little bit. Alright. See some over here. Maybe I will just use some of the pure yellow. This is one of my favorite last steps. Especially for an acrylic painting. So I will admit I am more of an oil painter than an acrylic painter. But you can get the same effects with both mediums. The reason I like oil is just that it's a little easier to blend. But with acrylics, if you take advantage of glazing, that's where you can get these really nice subtle effects of blending that will feel just like an oil painting that's been really rendered. You build up a lot more subtle shifts with this glazing technique. And then we'll do the same thing with some blue also in the areas where we want maybe the shadows to feel extra cool. Let's see a little bit of light here. Whenever the paint starts to be too thick, or you feel like it's not really, you know, that glaze or that wash anymore, just add some more water. Oh, I forgot one little sum. Gonna just paint you in right now. And somewhere along the way, I smudge the edge of that flower, so I'm just going to fix that too while I'm up here. Just make you a little bigger. I'm going to tighten up this edge as well. Okay, now back to glazing. So let me get some blue now and we're going to do the same thing in the shadows. Really thin it down. And then look to see where does the green feel the coolest? Where does it feel? Where do you really sense that blue? I see some right in there. See, isn't that awesome? It's like the subtle little shift that happens. But it makes a big difference. Great job. Okay, and our next and final lesson, we're going to finish the peming. I'll see you then. 17. Finishing the Painting: Hello, and welcome back to Learn to paint flowers and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we're going to be finishing the painting. So let's do it. Glazing is just also a really nice way to make the painting feel more cohesive, because if you have colors all over that are very different like red and green, you don't get more different than that. But if you go through and glaze some colors that move through everything, then it helps to unify it and make the image feel more harmonious instead of the colors feeling so isolated. So I'm even going to do a little glazing onto the flowers, but I'm saving them for last because I want to let them dry as much as I can first. And if you glaze an area and you get too much, and it starts to the color looks not like what you wanted, you can just pad it up with a paper towel. Okay. I go to do a little bit in the flowers now. I'm going to start with this seems pretty consistent throughout this image that the shadows are cooler, the highlights are warmer. So it's not always the case. It depends on the type of lighting. Sometimes natural light coming in through a window can actually be more blue, which is unexpected, Eh Paul? Yeah. So when I'm I've got my paint water down pretty well, but whenever I lift it up, it's like a little bead. Banner. Like a little bead hanging on your brush? Yeah. And it's like a drip on the painting, even though. Oh, I see. So it might be too wet. You might want to pad it a little bit on your paper towel before you go to the canvas if it's, like, dripping. That tells me there's too much water. You have to find the right balance there. You'd want a lot of water, but it shouldn't be it shouldn't be dripping. Well, it didn't drip, but when I lifted up the brush, it left a bead of water. Oh, okay. Yeah, still too much too much water. But you can also, like, pat that with a paper towel, too, if you need to. Okay. Or just take a dry brush and kind of spread it around. Is there a lot of color in that bead, or is it pretty watery? Uh it's pretty watery. Okay. Yeah. I soaked it up with the paper towel. I'm going a little heavier back in here because I want to let that shadow part get nice and dark. So this part I wouldn't even really call a glaze what I'm doing. I'm just doing a second coat, but I am mixing blue in with it because I want that shadow to get really cool when it goes deep down in towards the bottom there. One big part of taking any kind of a painting class is watching somebody do something and then trying to do it yourself and then wondering, why isn't mine doing what his is doing? Like, it usually just means there's some kind of difference in the, you know, ratio of whatever it is you're using. So in that case, it sounded too wet, but it's not that you're doing something wrong or you're not capable of doing it. You just have to find that missing piece. Okay, you know, I want to put a little I'm just going to clean brush because I don't want to brush that has any blue on it, and I want to put a little bit of the yellow into the highlights of the flour to you. Maybe put a mix a little pink with it. And then that should be it. It's very subtle. And when it dries, it'll probably be even a little more subtle than how it looks when you first put it on, but it does make a difference, and it does enhance the sense of light. And then I'm going to come back and just pull out a few more little highlights now that that yellow is wet. Sometimes I like doing a glaze and then painting into it a little more opaquely because that glaze color will mix with what I'm putting on. And if I just want to bring out, maybe make something a little stronger, it's a good time to do that. It's a touch that This is one of the magic parts, I think, because it's not something that people would necessarily think to do if you're painting a pink flower. Why would you paint yellow into it? But it really just gives it that little extra touch. And then the very last thing I'm going to have to do and maybe if you have more self control than me, you might have to do this step, but I have to do a few little touch ups on my background because I got some smudges. Plus, I also need to paint out where I did those little tick marks for the grid. So that's my true final step. Let's see if I still have enough of my gray color. So this is the bluer one. But if I mix a little pink with it, that would be good. The final steps of a painting are always when you are. You're kind of eager to finish it, but also it's kind of the most important part because it's those last. Those last things you do that seem to always just make the biggest difference. Now when you're doing background touch ups like what I'm doing, there's a good chance that the color if you have to remix the color, which I did, there's a good chance it will dry a little different than what's there. And the reason is because acrylic paint tends to dry a little bit darker than how it looks when it's wet. So if you're doing something like what I'm doing, it really doesn't matter because the background doesn't have to be perfectly solid. In fact, I kind of like it to look a little brushy, but just kind of go into it knowing that, and so you may want to as you're painting, kind of end the section on a very loose, kind of brushy edge and not create real sharp lines up there because they might show, even if it looks like you've matched the color perfectly when you're painting it. But I actually like a background that isn't real flat, so giving it a little brushy texture, to me, it's a nice touch. Makes it feel like there's something back there maybe besides just a wall, and it's so far away, it's really out of focus. Glaze a little more yellow up here to warm that up again. Yeah. Nice. Got one more little tick mark to cover. Alright, I think that does it for my painting. To. Great job. You did it. Now you have completed the course and finished a beautiful floral masterpiece. And I hope along the way you have picked up some tips and tricks that will help you out in your future paintings. Thank you, so much for spending this time with me, and I hope you'll come back and paint with me again soon. 18. Closing Thoughts: Congratulations. You made it all the way to the end of this course, and I hope that you love your painting. I'm sure it is beautiful, and I would love to see it. So share it with me. I love seeing your work and knowing that there are so many artists out there in the world painting along with me. It makes me really happy. And I hope that I've been able to share some insights and tips that have been helpful throughout this process. But always remember, there is no right or wrong in art. Your painting isn't supposed to look like mine and it's not supposed to look like any of the other artists out there because you see the world in your own way. And I think a big part of becoming an artist and learning to embrace our inner artists is also learning to embrace the way that we see, the way that we paint. Be proud of what you've created. And this is just the beginning. I have so many other courses, and I would love to have you come back and paint with me again. Also, please leave me a review and let me know what you thought, and also tell me what you would like to learn next because I am filming new classes all the time. Until then, happy painting, everyone.