Learn to Paint Leaves in Acrylic

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to Learn to paint leaves in acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and I am so excited to invite you to join me for this painting where we will go step by step from a buoyant canvas to a completed acrylic painting. Along the way, I'll be sharing some of my tips and tricks for getting the image sketched, mixing the colors, layering them, creating different textures. We're going to have a lot of fun together. Ever since art school, I have always loved the opportunity to get to be around other artists and see how they approach their work. I think you can learn a lot from seeing someone else's approach. And that's how I like to think of this class. Nothing that I share with you is a rule that you have to follow. Every artist is different. Everybody sees the world differently. But I will be sharing how I approach this subject matter, and I hope that you'll pick up on some things that you'll be able to take with you and use in your future work as well, in your own unique way. This course, I'll be using just simple inexpensive brushes and a basic set of acrylic paint with just the primary colors, red, blue and yellow and white and black. And that's so that I can show you how to mix everything else just from that set. If you're new to painting, this is a great chorus for you because we'll be going step by step. From the beginning of the painting all the way through to the end and covering a lot of foundational painting skills. But also, if you're a more advanced artist and you're just looking to refresh some of your techniques or learn some new ideas and approaches, this is also a great course for you. I've been painting my whole life. It's always been my primary way of expressing myself. And sharing how I see the world. I've had some incredible opportunities to display my art all around the world. I do a lot of large scale murals. I've done the cover illustrations for over 400 published novels, and I've even done some commissions for celebrities like Troy Saban and Dolly Parton. But there is absolutely nothing that I love more than getting to hang out with you and paint together and share my love of art with people all over because I really do, truly believe that everyone is an artist. So you ready to get started? I know I am. Let's do it. 2. Project: A. Let's take a look at the project we'll be creating together. It's this detailed acrylic painting of leaves. I'm going to start you out with a blank canvas and we'll go over all of the steps, including sketching out the image, mixing the colors, building layers of light, shadow and texture to create dimension, and using brushwork to suggest veins, edges, and the organic energy of natural foliage. You'll be amazed at how much your confidence with acrylic painting will grow from the start to finish of this course. So let's do this. 3. Materials: Okay, let's go over the materials that we'll need for this project. I'm going to list out everything that I'll be using. You don't have to use all of the same things as me, feel free to put your own spin on it. I'll be using a nine inch by 12 inch canvas, a basic set of acrylic paint with white, black, primary red, primary blue, and primary yellow, a set of inexpensive paintbrushes with various sizes, a palette knife for mixing the paint, palette paper for putting the paint out on. You can also use wax paper, paper plate, whatever you have handy, a cup of water. Paper towels or rags and the reference photo, which I provided. So go gather everything up, then I'll meet you back here so we can get started on this painting. 4. Mixing Colors and Base Coat: Hello, and welcome to earn to paint leaves in acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we're going to start mixing the colors and putting a base coat on the canvas. So let's do it. Instead of covering the canvas with blue, I'm actually going to do it with a warmer color first. And the reason is because the blue would be harder to cover with the yellow, but it will be really easy to go back in and paint the blue over top of that. So it's kind of thinking about, like, the layering of the paint and knowing that we only have a limited time to work on this. So being a little strategic about it. But, you know, like I said, you don't have to do what I'm doing. You can do anything you want. But for my base coat, I'm going to put out some yellow and little white. Maybe just a little bit of red, too. This way, it'll go ahead and just give an overall warmth to the whole canvas and it'll be easier to bring out some of those warm tones that we want later. Okay. That works for me. I'm just going to paint my whole canvas with that and I'm going to thin it down a little bit with water. I've got just a cup of water here, I have a few different brushes. This is my biggest one. I think it's an inch, three quarters of an inch. But use whatever you've got and get your canvas covered. Uh, All right. I'm painting it kind of thin, so I'm dipping my brush in the water each time. And that is just because I want it to dry quickly. Somehow, that doesn't sound right. You add water to make it dryer. I know. That does seem counterintuitive, doesn't it? But it works. It thins the paint, and otherwise, the thicker the paint is usually the longer it takes. Okay. So there's our base very bright. It would be really easy to bring out all those warm tones of the leaves with that. Oh, I'm just realizing. So actually, I think I have the photo upside down compared to what I sent you guys. Well, I guess you could turn it either way, huh? Turn it whatever way you want, but I'm going to turn it so it matches the way it originally was. Okay. So now, here we go. When I am working on a painting like this, I just sketch it with the paint. Some people prefer drawing with a pencil and being a little more precise, and that's completely fine, too. You can do whatever you need to do. But also, because of the subject matter, it doesn't have to be super precise. It doesn't really matter. So what I'm going to do is just put out a little bit of black and mix myself up a color that I can use for sketching. I want to make kind of a brownish color because that'll blend in nicely. So I'm putting out some black and some red. If you have a tube of brown, you could just use that or whatever color you want to draw with, but I'm going to use red, a little bit of black, and then I'll mix some of that yellow in with it, and that should give me a pretty good brownish color. There we go. A little bit green. Do you know why that is? Why? Because your black must have a lot of blue in it, and that's mixing with the yellow and turning green. To. So in order to fix that, you just need more red, 'cause the red is the opposite of green, and that'll kill the green. Okay, yeah, that's it. Thank goodness I got something out of all those color theory classes I took. I took them so you didn't have to. They were kind of torture, but they come in handy, occasionally. Great job. Okay, in our next lesson, we are going to start sketching out these leaves. I'll see you then. 5. Sketching the Leaves: Hi, and welcome back to earn to paint leaves and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to start sketching out the leaves. So let's do it. So what I like to do is on my reference photo, I'll just make a little dot on the side where it's about the halfway point each on each side. And that way, I can look at it and imagine a grid there. You could actually, you know, draw a grid. You could make as many lines as you want. And sometimes I do that if I'm painting something that has to be more precise. But doing it this way is enough for me for this one, because I can just kind of imagine where those lines are, and then I'll do the same thing on my canvas, and it helps me to just make sure things are landing about where they're supposed to. Just a nice kind of quick visual check. You know, I this leaf to the left or the right of that dot or where does this one start? Anything to give you a few little anchor points so it's easier to map your way through it. And then I'm just going to get a brush for sketching. I'm going to use this one. And oh, for some of the main shapes first. I think I'll start with the little branch. That makes sense to me. And that starts right above the halfway point on this side. So I'll just kind of make a little mark to let myself know about where I want that one to start. And then it comes up. And it's almost like it's pointing right toward that dot up here, but it stops maybe about halfway. So about like that. You can also just totally free form it, too, if you don't want to even, you know, think about any kind of a grid and let it fill the canvas, however, however it does. You can change the shapes of the leaves and the branches if you want to make the composition a little more your own. Nothing wrong with that. All right. Now since I went ahead and did that one, I'm going to draw that leaf now, and then that will help me to know where the next one goes. So I know this starts here, and the top of that part of the leaf comes just a little to the right of there, so maybe there. We just kind of do. I'm not drawing all the little zig zaggies. I'm just gonna make the basic shape of it. Swings to the right first. Then up. Like that. Down. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and continue this wine now. It goes over just past the halfway point. It like that. Okay. And then let me go I kind of like to know where I'm headed. So this last point is to the left of the vertical halfway, a little above the one or the horizontal. So about right. Here. It's also just past this one. So looking at the relationships between what you've already drawn helps too. So if I draw a straight line up from that tip, it's just a little bit further to the left. So about there is good. Like I said, at the beginning, it really doesn't matter too much with this one, but, you know, trying to get it close will help when you're painting because there are a lot of things happening here that have to do with the relationships of one leaf to the other like that shadow that we see here and the shadow that's cast across this one and just the way sort of this shadow, the way they're interacting with each other is because of the position. So looking at those things now will make it a little easier for you later. Okay. Okay. That's enough for that leaf. All right. So this next little stem is still above that halfway point. And it's about halfway between here and here. So about right. Here is where we're headed. So now I'm going to start on this next leaf, and this first part's easy. It just comes right up there. And we've got I'm actually going to jump ahead and do the go all the way to the end here. So I'm going to continue this line over. And it dips down below my halfway point. And it's I would say, I'm not great at math. So it's less than one fourth. Go dips down a little and then has a little more of a diagonal end here at the end. Now, using this method of doing the little dots is it works, but only if your canvas is the same or similar proportions to the photo. And actually, this photo is a little bit taller and skinnier than my canvas. So my image is going to be squished just a little bit, but I don't think it'll matter. But if you're doing a portrait or something, it would be important that you have the exact same proportions if you're using a grid kind of a method. People don't tend to like their faces to be squished. Awesome job. Okay, in our next lesson, we're just gonna keep on going, sketching out more leaves. I'll see you then. 6. Continue Sketching Leaves: Hi. Hello, and welcome back to Learn to paint leaves and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are still sketching out more leaves. So let's do it. Alright. That comes to about the quarter, Mark. And then comes back in, and it's really close to the point. This one. Okay, let me come out this way. All right. Now, this one. Let's say about right here. It's a little bit to the left of the halfway dots and not too far below there. Maybe down just to smidge. That looks wet. And you're never stuck with what you draw. If you make a line and you don't like it, you think it's not in the right place. You just take a brush with just water on it. I'll just show you here this line's not that important. As long as the paint's still wet, you can just lift it up and then just dry it with a paper towel. So or if it has already dried. Just draw another one next to it, a little darker or something, 'cause nobody draws everything perfectly the first time, except for Melissa, but, you know, she's not here at the moment, so we can talk about her. She sends her love, though, I talked to her yesterday. Okay. Now just connecting this one. Okay. And I'm going to go ahead and do this stem next. It comes down to about fourth of the way up and a little to the left of fourth of the way in here. So about here and here. Right there. It kind of curves a little bit. L. Okay. Then this leaf, the end point of it is about a fourth of the way in just a little ways up. Plan. Okay. And this one is just a little to the right of the halfway, and just a little bit above where this ends. So B right here. And then this point is just a little bit to the right of this one. So just a little bit over and looks like it's a little below the quarter mark. So if that's quarter, maybe here. Okay. Finish finish it off with this sign. I'm not going to draw all of the, you know, complicated interior stuff yet because we need to paint that first. Otherwise, we'll just be drawing it and then covering it up and redrawing it. So it wait on that. All right, we're almost there. So now, using all of the lines that we've already drawn makes it a lot easier to kind of place this other stuff. So I'm actually going to start this leaf from the tip since I can see where it intersects here, kind of work backwards. And I'm also looking at the shape of the negative space here. So it comes up and then about here's where that happens. That little point. Down here, it comes right out from the very end of the stem and goes far back, I'd say about to here. Hmm. Now, I'm going to draw the stem. It's not like that. So it's really tight close to the stem up here, and then it just kind of broadens out a little bit as it moves away. There's that. Okay. Now, this one. So this one, the tip of it overlaps this leaf just a little bit, right about here. And I'm looking at this triangle shape of negative space, so I'm going to draw that. That's another good drawing tip is to just draw the shapes of the negative spaces. The negative space is the background. So I'm going to do that here too. I'm looking at that blue shape and just kind of drawing that. One of the benefits of drawing the negative spaces is that it makes you stop thinking about what it is you're drawing and really just looking at the shapes because as long as you're thinking I'm drawing a leaf, your brain is really trying hard to draw whatever it thinks a leaf looks like, which may not have anything to do with what's actually here in this particular reference. So trying to think about it more abstractly and really just look at the shapes and looking at those negative spaces helps me to do that a lot. I use that with drawing all kinds of stuff. And the breakup of the negative spaces, the way that the negative spaces have a variety of sizes here, you have, you know, big open areas and then some really tight areas, and they're all different shapes. That's a good design. If we were composing this ourselves, that would be something to aim for. It makes it feel very natural. If everything is the same, then it feels very static and kind of posed. But this feels like, you know, something that you would see in nature, which obviously it is. Okay. Just connecting you back up there. And then there's a little stem. Right there. Go ahead and draw the center. A little vein there. Great work. Okay, and the next lesson, we're going to finish our sketch and mix some more colors. I'll see you the 7. Finish Sketching Leaves and Mix Colors: Hello, and welcome back to earn to paint leaves in acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to finish sketching out the leaves and mix some more colors. So let's get to work. Okay, and there's one more that's just hiding right off to the side here. And I do like that. I think it's good. That's another good compositional thing having something go off the edge gives the feeling that the scene continues beyond the edge of the canvas. And it's not always something that we think about doing when we're making up a composition ourselves. So this is just a good reminder of that, that you want to make the viewer feel like they're just seeing a small part of something, usually. I mean, unless you're doing something that's more um symmetrical and kind of controlled. All right. And the bottom of that is just a little bit above where the tip of this is. So I'll come over from there and then go up a bit, and that's how I know where to stop. Okay. And that is plenty of drawing for that one. All right. I go to clear some space on my palette here. Might need that brown later, so I'm just going to move it out of the way. Okay. So what we're going to do now or what I'm going to do now anyway, is start with the blurry leaf colors in the background, and then we'll go right into the sky, and then we'll finish up by doing the leaves in front. So normally when I paint a landscape, I always like to, you know, I guess you would call this a landscape. I don't know. There's landscape elements because there's a background. I like to start with what's far away and work forward. So normally, for me, that is the sky. But again, I don't want to cover all those orange areas with blue, then we'll just be fighting against that blue to get the orange to pop again. So that's why I'm doing it a little bit in reverse. So I'm actually going to paint those blurry orange brown hint of green colors and then blend it right into the blue sky. I'm going to mix all of those colors up ahead of time so that I can do it all at once while it's wet. When you're painting with acrylic, everything kind of needs to be wet at the same time if you want it to blend. So I'm going to put out some blue Actually, I'm just gonna put out everything 'cause we're gonna need it all. So white. Gonna go ahead and give myself a little more yellow, even though we might be okay there for now. And red. Okay. I'm going to start by mixing up the sky color, so I'll have it. And it's mostly white with a little bit of blue. And I'm going to mix a little bit of red into it also to tone it down a bit that blue my blue is very bright, brighter than brighter than the blue here. I'm toning mine down a little bit closer to the picture because one of the things I actually like about this is how having a little bit more neutral sky, it does make the colors the warm colors pop a little bit more. So thinking about how you balance things in balance color in a painting, if everything is the same degree of intensity, then it all just kind of becomes the same. Feel nothing really stands out. So I like the balance here. I'm going to I'm even putting a little of the brown into the sky color just to tone it down a little bit further. It's getting closer. I even put just a touch black. When you're trying to match a color or at least get close, I like to just put it on my knife and then hold it right over top of what I'm trying to match. So you can see how there's still more pink in this than in mine. So that means I'm going to just go ahead and do a little more red. There we go. This is why five people can say they're thinking about the color blue, and all five people can be picturing something totally different because there are 1 million different versions of every color. And when you're doing any kind of commercial art for someone, you have to get really specific with them when they tell you they want something in a certain color. If they say I want that painted blue. I'm gonna be showing them options. Which blue do you mean? What blue do you want? All right, so then we've got some darker warm tones. We probably will actually use that brown a little bit in the background. So I'm going to mix an orange for back there, too. So orange is just red and yellow. The yellow the yellow is not as powerful as the red, so you will probably need more yellow, less red. Here we go. Okay. Now, it's very bright, which will use that intensity in some places, maybe more in the foreground. So I'll save a little of that. But for the background, I'm actually going to take a little of the sky blue that I mixed and add that into it. Blue is the opposite of orange, so that will tone it down a little. Whenever you add the opposite or the complimentary color, it takes it a little bit more toward neutral, takes the edge off of the color. See how it just made that orange a little less intense if you compare it to the original. Okay. So that's really I see that color back there a lot. I also see one that's a little bit more red. So we'll make another version. In fact what I might do is just take some of that and add a little more red to it. Make my life easier. And then, lastly, there's kind of a brownish green color. So that is going to be blue and yellow to make green. And then to neutralize it, you add the opposite red. So I'm going for this kind of a color, so I still need some more red in there. Maybe a little black to darken it. There we go. Alright. So, I think we're good here. I've got my sky color. I've got a couple different oranges. I have a dark olive kind of green, and I'm going to use my brown that I made before for the lines and start on that background. Great job. Okay, and our next lesson, it's time to start blocking in some warm colors for the background. I'll see you then. 8. Blocking in Background: Hello, and welcome back to earn to paint leaves and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to start blocking in some warm colors for the background. So let's do it. Alright, I'm using kind of a big brush because I don't want to get too fussy with the background. We've got plenty to get fussy with on the leaves. And I'll just start, where do I want to start? I'm going to do I'm gonna do everything leaf related first, at least the background part, and then the sky last because I don't want to paint blue somewhere and then decide I want to put a leaf there. So let's go ahead. I'm going to grab this bright orange and I see some of that up here, so I'm going to start with that. The main thing is use big brush strokes, and if you want it to be blurry, you're going to just grab one color after the next and just work them into each other while both colors are wet. And it doesn't matter. You can jump from one color to the next. How do you know if you have enough pigment on there to cover To cover the Well, you can tell when you paint it if it looks too thin, if it feels, you know, transparent, you might have to go back in and do another coat, and it doesn't mean that you've done something wrong. Oranges and yellows are just very transparent colors. So sometimes they just need, you know, another layer. I'm still. But it does help that we put that yellow down first because even if the paint is a little thin, it doesn't feel unpainted because there's already something else there showing through. And just paint right into your leaves that won't hurt anything. It's better than being real cautious and trying to paint, you know, carefully around everything that can sometimes end up you end up with brushstrokes that look like they're sort of making a halo around stuff. There are some parts over here where a little bit of blue shows up, but I'm going to do that last to you. This can look very brushy. I wouldn't try to necessarily hide your brush strokes too carefully. You know, it's a painting. It's okay for it to look like a painting. Anywhere where it maybe feels too thin, you can just go back and add some more. If you want to make the color pop a little more in some parts, you can even while it's still a little wet, you can go ahead and put a little more color in there. You've been grabbing some of that yellow that I used for my base coat and just using that to make a few little highlights here and there, too. When you're painting and everything's wet and it's all just kind of working, you know, one color working into the next, you can just do a lot of mixing right on your canvas. You don't have to mix every different value and color on the palette. If you want to lighten a spot, just grab something lighter and brush it right in. Don't judge your painting too much yet, because right now it feels very strange with the absence of that blue. Everything looks very yellow and it feels, you know, way too warm and just kind of tricky to judge. So I always tell people, you have to get the whole thing covered with a base coat before you get too critical of it. Then you can start really looking for where it needs some work. Okay. That's looking pretty good. And then this is mostly all blue, then I'm going to get home all the way down here now. I do kind of crisscrossi brush strokes. That's just my way. You don't need to do that, but I like it because it kind of camouflages them a little bit. So if all your brush strokes are going the same direction, sometimes they really start to be noticeable, which also is not a bad thing. That could be a style thing, like Van Gogh, that was kind of his trick. But if you want to camouflage them, going different directions does help. Okay. Really bright little spot back here. I like that. Okay. Beautiful job. Okay. And the next lesson, it's time for us to start ainting the sky. I'll see you then. 9. Painting the Sky: Hello, and welcome back to Learn to paint leaves and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to be painting the sky. Let's go. So, I may come back and do a little bit more in some of those areas, but first, I want to go ahead and get the blue on there now. So I have kind of all the warm tones pretty much at least blocked in in the background, so let me get I'm gonna use another brush so that it doesn't mix any of those orange colors in with the blue. I want that blue to really stay kind of purer. Well, maybe that was gonna get a different brush. The good. Okay. Yeah, I'll look at that. Now, this is where it's really going to start to start to come together, getting rid of some of that bright yellow back there. See how easy it is to cover that up with the blue? If we were doing the reverse and putting yellow on top of the blue, it would probably take us three coats or more to really cover it. So this is good in a pinch if you're trying to work fast, and it's the kind of trick that plain air painters would use. Plain air painters are the ones who are painting out in nature and, you know, working directly from life, and they don't have time to sit and wait and let things dry or, you know, come back and do another layer later. They have to make it all work right there. So those are some of the kinds of things they do, thinking about the way the paints, different colors interact with each other, being a little more strategic. And they're also more likely to use a very limited palette like this, too, just because you don't want to have to be walking hiking out in, you know, field somewhere carrying 1 million tubes of paint. Now, if your warm colors are still a little wet, you should be able to just brush it right in. If not, you can maybe even just kind of add some water to your brush, and that might be enough to get it to kind of make that blend for you. If not, though, just add some more of the oranges and browns and reactivate it and blend it in. See how I'm getting a nice soft blurred look there. That's kind of what you want if you're going for the same feeling as the photo. Having the background be really blurry and nondescript will make the leaves in front feel very sharp and in focus. Okay. Come up here. Right here, my background colors did dry. I'll show you I'm just picking up a little more orange and I'm using a different brush so I don't mess up my blue brush, but just working it backwards now, adding some more orange and then blending it in to the blue. I still get that soft effect. You have to really think about that kind of stuff when you're working in acrylic because it dries so fast. I usually paint in oils myself, and I don't have to worry about it. I'll stay wet for a while longer. But if you know how to make it work, you can get the same look with acrylic. Wait. In kind of has the feeling of, like, an impressionist painting at this point, where it's just about the colors and the movement of light and not about any details. A Okay. Come up here, do these little spots. Sometimes you can even just do the finger blending approach. There's nothing wrong with that. A little finger painting. It's always good. I was watching this show today while I was having lunch. I always like to watch videos of artists on YouTube while I'm eating just to see different, you know, ways different artists paint different things. And there's so much on there. If you ever just want some inspiration, go on YouTube and just search for artist painting, whatever it is you want to see. There's somebody out there who made a video doing it. But I stumbled across this reality show but it's filmed in Greece. And it's a reality show for artists, and they're all in this room. And it's just like any reality show, you know, there's a host, it's like, Okay, today's challenges, you have to do this. And then all the artists, and they're all painters. So then they all, like, scramble to, you know, paint whatever whatever the challenges for that. And they had some really It's called um, outstanding artist is the name of the show. And if you just search for that on YouTube, you can find it. And you know, the paintings were really interesting and they had some cool ideas. So I was impressed, but also it just really stressed me out because they were all, you know, worried if they were going to get, you know, voted off and, like, they're scoping out what each other was painting and trying to, you know, compare. And I was just like, This is kind of not what art is about for me. But I did like seeing, you know, them all working and how talented they were and stuff. But it made me think maybe I need to try harder to stress you guys out more. It did seem to work. They got some really good results. Great job. Okay, and our next lesson it's time to finish painting the background. I'll see you then? 10. Finishing the Background: Hello, and welcome back to Learn to Paint eaves and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to be finishing up the background. So let's get to work. Anywhere you end up with a kind of a hard edge, if you want it to look more blended, you can just go right back into it and layer a little bit more color and just work it in, soften the edge, see if you can get it to really go back in space by blurring it out. A a Okay. A little more sky coming in up here. I like those little areas where you can just kind of pop in little touches of sky peeking through. I think there's something really I kind of gives it a little sparkle, and you just get the sense of light coming through the leaves. So like I like adding those in. And I think it's cool that you can have an area that's all painted in already as leaves, and then you can paint sky on top of that, but it feels like the sky is behind it. Finish. Uh, Just kind of touching up my sky in a few spots. Sometimes when the paint dries, it will contract a little bit and leave little gaps. So a lot of that's why having a base coat helps too, because then at least there's something there, so it might not matter, but where I want the sky to look really blue, I'm just making sure that it's covered really well. Okay. I think that's good enough for now. Once we get everything painted, we can look again and see if it works or if it needs anything. But we're still in the cover of the canvas phase, so let's keep moving. Great job. Okay, and our next lesson, it's time to start mixing colors for the leaves. I'll see you then. 11. Mixing the Leaf Colors: Hello and welcome back to Learn to paint leaves and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to be mixing the colors for the leaves. So let's do it. So the next thing we're going to do is block in the colors of the leaves. And I call it blocking in because in this first pass, we're not going to necessarily be painting every little detail, but kind of more so looking at the big picture, squinting my eyes and looking to see where do I see big areas of dark? Where do I see big sections of light? So we'll kind of get the leaves blocked in first, and then we'll go back and hit them with all the details that we can. I'm going to mix. There's a lot of this kind of dark brownish red color that I see on a lot of the leaves, especially in the shadows. So I've got my red. Gonna put a little brown in it and just a touch of black. Let's see what that gives us. Okay. Well, that looks pretty good. I do like that. I see that in there. But we also need a version of that that's darker. So I'll do it again. Take some more red. So just take all the red that I have for now. A little more brown. Maybe a little more black this time. There's a good dark dark color. So kind of like Jackie. My black is on the blue side. So that's why mixing it with red and brown kind of balances that out because they're both warm colors, so it ends up on the warmish side still. That'll be good for the stems, just some of those darker details. Okay. And I've still got my yellow that I used for my base coat. If it's started to dry, sometimes it might just be an outer shell that's dry and you can kind of poke through it with the knife and still get to wet paint. But if not, you can just mix more. And then I need to put out some more red because I need to mix some lighter oranges, you know. Might as well go ahead and get some more yellow too. Okay. So remember, the red's more powerful than the yellow, so I'm using a little bit of red and a lot of yellow to start with and look at how it's already still turning pretty orange just from then. In fact, that's really nice. It's a nice color. I see that in there a lot, so we'll use that. Then I do want to mix one that is a little more toward red. So we'll go a little stronger with the red here. We get a nice bright orange. So when you want things to come forward in a painting, going a little bit more saturated with the color is one way to do that, especially if you have a little bit more toned down colors in the background. The really bright colors will feel like they are closer to us. Okay. And let's see what else do we need? Oh, I need to mix more green, too, because I'm just about out. So just a little bit of blue, at of yellow. Then touch of red to tone it down, neutralize it 'cause red's the opposite of green. Okay. That's good for some of the lighter parts. And then I'm just going to take a little bit of that and add some black to it to darken it. Make a darker greenish color because I see that in some of the veins. I'm going to put out some more yellow now, so I'll have it on my palette because I might even just want to grab a little bit of that by itself for some accents here and there. But I think that's pretty good range to start with. So I have my reddish, my kind of brownish red color. It's kind of like a rusty color, then a really dark red brown. I have a few different oranges yellows, and a couple greens. Awesome work. Okay, and our next lesson. It's time to start walking in the leaves. I'll see you bin. 12. Blocking in the Leaves: Hello, and welcome back to earn to paint leaves and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond. In this lesson, we are going to be blocking in the leaves. I can't wait. Let's go. Now we're gonna paint. So I'm not going too small with my brush yet. I'm going to go with the size. That'll be good for I can fit it into those shapes and still get some, you know, distinction where shadows and things are. So I'm going to start up here on the top one work my way down, and that one has a lot of the dark and when you're blocking in, you're just kind of getting the big chunks of color. So we're not trying to be too detailed or perfect with it. This red is also very thin, so don't be it's gonna probably take another coat to really look finished. Okay, I'm just gonna grab. Still have some of that red, but I'm also mixing it with a little bit of the darker one, so I can do this shadow here now, see how this whole kind of middle section is a bit darker. You can even grab some of this brown, too. Look at the reference, you know, paint what you see. You don't have to match me brushstroke for brushstroke or anything. I'm just kind of looking at it and trying to get the main the main kind of sections of color blocked in. You don't need to blend it perfectly. I think sometimes if we try to overly blend it too soon, then it loses a little bit of the sense of the structure. So it's okay to see edges and to not have it be perfectly blended. Okay. And then this very top part of that leaf is catching the light, so we'll switch and do that. Well, there's some greens and other colors in there, but I'm not getting too fussy just yet, just getting the main stuff. So now I gonna come up here, grab some of this brighter color. So orange. Do that part. There's some brighter yellow too on the tips, but we'll come back, do that in a bit. Okay. Over here, there's a really interesting shadow coming through. I'm not sure from where. I don't know if it's I might be from this leaf behind it, and maybe it's kind of being back lit, so we're getting a shadow. It's kind of almost like we're seeing through the leaf to the shadow. I'm not sure. Don't need to know, really. Just paint what you see and then it doesn't really matter. That's interesting. It's not something I would necessarily think of putting if I was just making this up. So I like that about it. Okay. And I'll go ahead and do the stem too with that dark. I'm not going to do all the stuff inside the leaf yet because I still want to do a little bit more detail work first. But I will get the stem. Okay. Okay. Many people when they are first learning to paint, get really frustrated if it doesn't look perfect right away. And so I always just try and emphasize that it really is a process, and we're just, you know, getting some paint on there, and then we'll just keep refining it until we get it how we want. Not going to judge it too early. You know, this leaf. Is it's starting to look leafy, but it still needs some love. That's okay. We will come back. But for now, we're going to move on. So this next one this top portion is pretty light. In fact, lighter than the backgrounds. That's a good thing to think about actually, when you're painting is what's the relationship of the color that you're painting to what's around it? Is it lighter than, you know, the area that's right next to it, or is it darker? That can really help. Just like when we were drawing and we were comparing the placement of things. This is just, like, another variation of that idea using what's around something to help make that thing more accurate. Thinking about the relationships. Okay. Yay. Great job. It's coming along. And in our next lesson, we're going to continue walking in the leaves. See then? 13. Continue Blocking in the Leaves: Hi, and welcome back to earn to paint leaves in acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we are going to keep walking in the colors for the leaves. So let's get started. So right around the center here, it starts to get a little darker, a little redder. I'll go ahead and put all the yellow tones on first and then I'll come back do the greens because there's a big section in here where there's sort of a greenish shadow. With each thing you paint, just look is it darker than the background? Is it lighter than the background? Sometimes it shifts. It might be lighter in one area and darker in another. I can really help. Sometimes we think something is supposed to be light. But then when you start actually looking at how it relates to what's around us, it might surprise you and be darker than you expect or lighter. Color can really play tricks on you that way. Alright. Now, I'm going to put some of this green in there. And it goes all the way up to about here. It's also pretty thin because it's got a lot of yellow in it, so I need another coat to really look gray, but got to start somewhere. Mm hmm. Okay. There we go. Okay. I still needs, of course, some love, but that's a good start. Just do a little bit more of the reddish color in the middle here so that can get another pass. Grab the wrong thing. Not want you yet. That's right. We'll just roll with it. Okay. Getting our leaves in there. I go to do this one next, and that one's pretty light overall, except for that little dark shadow on the end, and then the shadows around the veiny parts. So let me go ahead and do the white color first. And I'm using my brush to just start to create a little bit more of that kind of textured edge where it's got this little lots of little spiky sheeps. I love this color combination. I love these yellows and reds with those blues and then that touch of the green here and there. It's really a great combo. A lot of color schemes that we see in fashion and in art are inspired by color combos in nature. Yeah. Am. I'm gonna go ahead and do a little bit more reddish color here toward the middle. Blend it in a little bit to the yellow. Majority of it is red, and then just a little bit of, a little bit of brown, a little bit of tiniest little bit of black. Uh, a, h. Great work. Okay. And the next lesson, we're going to finish locking in the leaves. 14. Finish Blocking in the Leaves: Hello and welcome back to Learn to paint leaves in acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we're going to finish blocking in the leaves. So let's get to work. Yeah, I'm just doing this leaf here now that's kind of mostly in shadow. It's just, like, so interesting to me how these leaves are so different. Each one has just got, like, such a different combination and arrangement of colors on it. It makes it fun to paint because it's not repetitive. A after we get through this blocking in phase, then I'm going to go back, just take it one leaf at a time with a little bit smaller brush, just trying to bring out any little details that I think are interesting and want to bring into focus a little more. Then the final step will be doing all the lines, the little veiny things. Which always makes me think of Deb because I love her line work and her artwork. That's one of especially her pencil drawings, but in her paintings, too, she just has such a beautiful way with line. And I love when she does leaves and trees and things because she just, like, really gets into all the line the lineer aspects of them. Okay. This last one down here is pretty dark all over except for that very top part. Go and get that in first. Mm hmm. There's a Georgia O'Keefe painting of leaves that was in the Columbus Museum of Art that I always saw when I went there when I was growing up, and it had very similar colour scheme to this painting, but much more in her, you know, Georgia O'Keefe style as far as the brushstrokes and everything, but it makes me think of that when I'm painting this. I love that painting. It definitely had that deep red and yellow and blue combo. O. Believe the mess I'm making over here. That's, that's all. Goes with the territory of being an artist, I think. Must be a great artist. I think so. The bigger the mess, the greater the artist. Okay, let's see here. That's why I had to move my studio out of the house. I was too messy. I joined I mean, I have my studio here. That's where I'm at now, but I have I joined a co op studio where I go and paint my big messy things 'cause it's really nice to be able to just throw paint around. I need that for my process. I like it. I'll make a big mess and then have chaos all over the place and then try to bring out some kind of imagery from the chaos. I need that chaotic step though first. It really helps me with my work. If I'm just looking at a white canvas, I have no idea what to do with it. But if it's a messy, crazy canvas, then we can go somewhere. Okay. This last one over here is pretty dark green. It gets a little lighter towards the bottom, which is what makes it stand out against the darker background there. So this leaf that I'm painting right now is a really good example of one that shifts. See how at the top, it's darker than the background. At the bottom, it's lighter. Okay. Before I go in and do the rest of the stems with dark, there's a few spots where there's some real bright orange hitting the stem. So I want to get that in first. It'd be harder to paint that on top of the brown. Beautiful job. Okay, in our next lesson. It's time to start painting the stems and adding some details. See 15. Refining the Leaves: Hello, and welcome back to Learn to paint leaves and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lesson, we're going to continue refining the leaves. So let's get to work. Also, I just really like the detail stage of the painting like this part where you just get to go back and choose which of the little, you know, accents you want to bring out. Obviously, you can't paint everything, not in this time frame, but you kind of choose what speaks to you and I enjoy that. I like seeing those little finishing touches come together. Are you satisfying? Okay. So little rainy shapes. Kind of branch out from the main one getting thinner and thinner, just like branches on a tree, same kind of thing. They are a nice little touch. You really see them the most in these yellowish areas. Just going back in with a little more orange around them, too, because I see that just kind of has this build up of that orange and reddish color as it gets toward the vein. There's even a few that are really light. A. And I have a really hard time drawing thin lines, even with the smallest paint brush I can find. It still comes out, you know, about a quarter inch thick, but thick. Do you So I'm using, like, these little, like, kind of slant brushes or the or flat brushes, and I think there's a few tricks for thin lines. One is not having much paint on your brush at all. I kind of just have enough. You can sort of see I'm doing some right now. It's just, like, on the very tip of the brush. And then I dip my brush in water each time I get paint because without the water, it's not going to the paint won't glide along and make a nice line for you. I just builds up and it's too, like, chunky and plasticy. So having very little paint lots of water, and then just a very, very light touch. You most of the brush is not even touching the canvas here as I'm doing it. It's just like the very tip of it that is. Okay. Okay. Then just going to work some orange in. Just kind of adds a nice little shadow effect. And I've thinned it down with some water just to make it almost like a glaze or a wash. I just helps pull everything together a little bit. Beautiful job. It's coming along. We're getting close. In our next lesson, we're going to be adding some highlights. I'll see you. 16. Adding Highlights: Hello, and welcome back to earn to paint leaves and acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond. And in this lesson, we are going to be adding highlights. So let's go. See a few little spots on the tips, some of these parts of the leaf where it just gets a little darker. I kind of like that. That's a little unexpected detail. Um, Then I want to pop out some of the highlights on that one. Really make the edge. Contrast the background. There we go. I love those spots where you just get that really nice bright yellow that shows up. Feel that warm white hitting. A little bit of a rim lighting effect happening here where there's just, like, a sliver of light along the edge. I go even brighter up here now. Just getting really into these highlights. Just kind of work it in with your orange or red or whatever color. Bring out a little more of the vein in this one. I jump around, you see. Be working on one leaf and then I'll see something somewhere else. I move over there and do that. Otherwise, I might forget. So that's mainly why. And actually, while I'm up there, I also remember there's little touch of green on the edge here that I wanted to bring out. I love that green going into the red like that. A little bit of it up here too. Those are the kind of things that make it really worth going back and just taking a closer look. It's not to paint every detail. It's to just look and see which ones are important to you. I think that's what if you're doing a painting that is any kind of degree of realism, the details that you choose to focus on and bring out are what make it your own. You can have different realist painters paint the same thing, and they would all feel realistic. But they would also all feel different. That's kind of where the style comes from. What do you see? Are you drawn to little tiny, you know, accent details? Do you like big bold the big bold shapes and shadows? Do you want to bring that out more? What speaks to you? Okay. I come back down. Do the leaf I was supposed to be working on. Do some little ans. Okay. And there's a few light ones in there too. I like that. I like little unexpected touches. I think it's just from where the light is hitting the edges of some of those. So it's a nice detail to bring out. Okay. Now, this one is pretty in shadow, so there's not a lot of sharp details, but we can still come back in and just pull out a few little things that we see to kind of polish it off too. I'm going to intensify the orange because it dried kind of thin, so hit that edge again. And then kind of working my way up to the yellows that I see in a few areas like right here, it's really bright again. If you even grab a little white. Sometimes if the yellow doesn't is too transparent, it's not popping as much. You can put a little bit of white with it. Don't want to do too much or it'll make it too. I'll lose the, you know, intensity, get too chalky, but a little bit of white can just help to make it stand out. Okay. Getting a little yellower up here. Not quite as bright as down here, though, but there's just a few few touches. I'm kind of working it into the redder tones. I like those I like just having a few little spots of that bright red. I can't even pull that out. I keep coming back up here. I'm going to bring out that red up here a little more, too. It's not a bad thing to jump around, though. It's not just because I'm very ADHD. It's also because when you do that, you get a little bit more movement of color throughout the piece. You don't end up just putting, you know, all of one color in one spot, but you kind of make it all work together. A little more harmonious would be a way to describe that when you have the colors kind of moving through your piece. Okay. I was looking good. It is softer. Like I said, doesn't have as many sharp details as the others. And that's a good thing. You don't want them all to look the same, and they shouldn't all be in focus. This leaf is farther back than this one. So that could be part of why the camera did not pick it up in quite the same degree of detail as the others. But it also mimics the way our eye perceives things, too. We can't focus on everything at once. So when you create that hierarchy in a painting, you're helping the viewer understand what they're focusing on. What is the focal point? Great job. We are so close. We only have one more lesson left where we'll be adding all of our finishing touches. I'll see you then. 17. Finishing Touches: Hello, and welcome back to Learn to peat leaves in acrylic. I'm Paul Richmond, and in this lawsuit, we're going to be adding the finishing touches and completing this peeving. So let's do it. No come up to machine. And more Dirk. Wine here. Get all those little green veins in. In the leaf itself, it has some dark green on the tip and also down under here. A Okay. I'm going to layer in some orange around those to blend them in a little. We shadow effects. And then let's do some high laming on this one. Okay. And also we have a little bit of that kind of edge lighting or rim lighting again happening here and a little bit up here too. Nice. That's such a nice little accent. A lot of red that's showing up here. Okay. And get this dark shape right here. That's actually the end of this leaf. It comes like that. I was reading that as somehow being a part of the stem. Interesting. No, it's not. See, that's exactly what I was saying. The more you look at things. The more you see. So that actually blends right up into that leaf. That's cool. And then on the other side of it, it's white. Okay. A lot of times with painting something like this where the object is really sharp and in focus, a good finishing touch is to just go back around and make sure that all the edges look the way that you want them to doesn't need any little touch ups or cleaned. The sleeves very and all kind of blurry and out of the way. So I'm not gonna do much to that one, but just bring out a few little color accents. It does pick up a little bit of red in places. So that'll help it to feel more part of things. Don't want you to totally miss out on the feel left out. Filling in filling in some gaps in the background where the paint drawn in. Okay. Sometimes I catch myself just fiddling with things because I don't want to be done because I'm having fun. That's okay, but at a certain point, you do have to pull the plug. You don't want to overwork it. Okay. We're about at that point. Co. I'm just going to work a little of that redder tone into a few spots in the background where I see it really helping to make things pop right there. Here. Just doing it with a glaze, so just mostly water. It's a nice way to just kind of, again, work those colors throughout. I didn't have that color when I did the background, so just kind of helps pull it all together to throw a little of it back in there now to you. Let some go off the canvas here. Alright, my friends, I think. You have a painting. Awesome job. I have had so much fun making this painting with you. I hope that you are proud of what you've created and that you've learned a lot along the way that will be helpful for you in your future work. Thank you, so much for painting with me. 18. Closing Thoughts: Well, you did it. Here we are at the very end of this course. I'm so proud of you for hanging in there, going through all of those steps. And I hope that you've made something that you feel really good about. Maybe it'll even hang on your wall or someone else's wall. And mostly, I hope that you've picked up a lot of tips and tricks that you'll be able to carry with you into your future work and add to your tool belt and use in your own unique, creative ways. I would love to see your paintings. Please share them with me. Leave me your feedback about the course, and I definitely hope that you'll come back and make some more art with me soon. I have bunch of other courses already available, and I'm filming more all the time. So if there's something in particular that you would like to learn about, let me know. I'm open to your ideas. I absolutely love the opportunity to connect with so many artists through this platform. I think it's really inspiring. It's wonderful to see people learning and growing and trying new things, and it's an honor to be a part of that creative process for you. Thank you so much. Happy art making, everyone. And I'll see you next time. What do I.