Let's Paint 3 Favorite Flowers!

1. 3 Favorite Flowers Intro: Hello, friends, I am excited about. Well, I'm always excited about flowers. But I picked out three of my favorites, which is hard. I have lots of favorites. I mean, let's face it, they're flowers. If you look at them closely enough or long enough, there's something amazing about every one of them. But I picked three. Maybe I'll do a series of these, you know, maybe three favorites, number two, because I have so many that I love. But in this class we're going to do Hellebore, which is looking at it actually in my yard. I'm going to take some footage so you can see they come in different colors. I think I love the flower itself, but I also love that they bloom when other flowers don't bloom here in Virginia. They bloom basically in the winter. I very late winter or really, really early spring, like February, even in January. I just love them for that. When we want some color in the yard, in the garden, there they are. But also I'm just learning about the varieties of them. We're going to paint hellab, We're going to use gash apple, gah, watercolor, acrylic, whatever you've got. I'm doing these in a sketchbook, but you can feel free to do them on paper. I've got two sketchbooks I'm using in this class. One is I'll put links to both of them in the class supplies. One is this large, it's got a linen cover and it's like nine by, maybe nine by 12, Not quite. And we're going to paint the hell bore in that. The RT square one is where we'll do another one of my favorite flowers, the Mandavilla or as it's said in the states, the Mandavill. Then the third one is lavender because I can paint lavender and smell it. It's funny because I didn't used to like the smell of lavender. And we went to a lavender farm up in Michigan and got some of the essential oil fresh from that farm. And I've been in love with it ever since. I think I was just smelling the wrong oils. But we're going to be loose with these. We're going to do a couple of layers, the layering process and then finish with details. This should be very relaxing as much as you can, not thinking about what looks like that flower. Remember, these flowers and plants are just a starting point. You can really think of painting imagination flowers. If you decide that you want, you start and you think, oh, I want these petals to do this, then do it. Or I want these stems to do this, or I want this to be this color, then do it. I'm all about creative liberation. I, re, I use it different ways, but sometimes I use it to really just study the flower and find what I maybe haven't noticed in it before. But I also use it to just jump off and get me started and then who knows where it'll go. Just at least be conscious of how you're using your reference. And I would say shy away from directly copying and trying to make it look like the photo. What's the point of that? You have a photo that looks like the photo. That's my opinion. Anyway, I hope you join me and here are tidbits of my creative philosophy along with my creating. I create these three from scratch. I do it in a relaxed and fun way if you haven't taken my classes before. My name is Suzanne Allard, and I started painting at about 51, 52, 50, somewhere in there. And then started my business. Not long after that, I sell Prince and I teach classes. Obviously, I think there's about 40,000 students worldwide at this point. I do have a student Facebook group you can e mail me to get an invite to that. I also license my work. In fact, I'm very excited that one of my paintings just got picked up by Robinsberger puzzle for a puzzle coming out in 2025. Just love that because I love puzzles and I love that brand of puzzles. Let's see, what else can I tell you about myself? I really philosophy, my philosophy is that I don't believe in the concept of talent, I believe in determination in tenacity. We can get more into that, but I just don't think there are some people who are creative and some people who aren't. I think what it is is there are people who really want to create in a certain way. There are many ways to create. There are people. It's not compelling. I think that's what ends up leading to skill more than anything. I guess I'm in a philosophical mood, but I hope you join me in this class and along with me, make sure you watch the last video where I go more into depth on resources and some wrap up. Okay, see in class. 2. 3 Favorite Flowers Project: Just to review the project for this class, it's three paintings, three florals, done in the water covered sketchbook, but again, you can use paper. And we're going to do Mandavia, then we're going to do Hellbo. I did it in the same sketchbook which became a little confusing. And some lavender. Can you smell it? I can smell it, yeah. We're going to do these three. We're going to do them quickly, but also thoughtfully and in layers. You might find that you start with one of them and let that dry. And if you want to keep painting, then go to the, the beginning of the next flower. You could do that, or you can just let them dry. Watercolor, None of these take very long to dry. You could use a hair dryer too, if you're really impatient. Anyway, that's the project. Using paint of your choice. I'll show you in supplies, a whole variety of things. I'd like to just throw the net wide just to show you and then I try to keep it simple when I'm actually creating All right, in class. 3. Supplies: Inspiration, Sketchbooks, Tools: All right. Well, if you've taken my close before, you know that I'd love to just show you all a variety of things. But that I always want you to know that. I am not saying you need to buy all this. That you need to get. Just I don't want it to be overwhelming because you could do these florals with just one of the types of paint I'm showing you, of course. And just one of one or two of the brushes. And just keep things really simple and one sketchbook. But I would just like to show you all these things so that you can say, oh, I like that, I want that, or I like this, that's why there's a lot of variety in the class. But I never wanted to overwhelm anyone or have them think, oh my gosh, I have to get three Sketchbooks and three types of pain. Okay. So that's my big disclaimer. Don't let anything keep you from creating. All right, let's start with some of the references that I use. I have a few floral books that are my absolute favorite. I will put links to those and notes about all of this in the class supplies and download. Make sure you look at that as well. One of my favorite references is this flower color guide book. It's small, it's handy. And what's fantastic is that the flowers are all with a white background. You can and they're just photographed beautifully. You can very easily see flowers. And just like look at that, that right there is inspiring me because I like meandering buds and flowers. It's organized by color. We may not use it by color. If I say I'm in the mood to paint something pink, then I can go into the pinks. But of course, when you're painting, you can make anything any color you want more. Use it as a reference for if I really want to paint a aculos like there and there's a bunch of different colored Rnaculus in here. Look at those poppies. Okay, I could spend this whole video looking at this book. You Get the Idea. Flower Color Guide. Flower Recipe Book is another one that I like for similar reasons. It's a book that shows how to put together bouquets like a recipe and like in cooking, there's pretty bouquet pictures that are inspiring and we can lift from. But also it has these spreads like this where it'll toss the flowers out like a table here, there. This just helps you really closely see and say, I might pick the way that that is curved and the way those buds are coming off that thing. That's that one. All right. Yeah, I love my books. I also use my own photos as reference in this class, which I will share with you, of course. For pallet paper, really, I have not found a palette paper that didn't work, so you do not need to spend a lot of money on it. I've gotten a cheaper brand at a store called Michael's here in the US, and it worked just fine. This is a brand new one, sorry. But what's nice about the Strathmore that you care, and not that it's really expensive, is that it's attached to the pad. You can just use this pad piece of paper and then throw it away. I tend to just have a piece of paper next to me when I'm working. You can use other things for a palette though. You can use a glass cutting table use that I used to. I started out using paper plates as long as they were waxed. That worked basically any non porous surface. Because otherwise if you say the paper plates that are not don't have like a wax covering on them, then it just paint just soaks right in. The other thing, palette wise I want to show you, because I use it in a couple of the paintings, is this quash, airtight palette, which people get very interested in. And I did a Youtube video on how I fill it and how it works. But briefly it has these vessels. I have kept these colors in here now for probably two months. A couple of them I see here are starting to dry a little bit. I just use a pet like this or a slitle spray bottle. I get all that. All of these supplies, by the way, if you do want any of them are I have links to them on my Amazon, on my website, and my Amazon links. I also use these little make up spritzers and do it that way, but the point is that it's air tight. If I seal it and I don't do anything with it for a week, it does really well. I will say that the paints stay better longer if I use distilled water. This is actually distilled water in here. Yeah, I've learned that one the hard way. Otherwise, they can go get your paints out and there's mold in the O. We don't need moldy paints. All right? Let's talk precious. So again, use what you have. I'll say what I say in every supply video, which is when it comes to supplies, you don't need to get the most expensive. But please don't get the cheapest, the bottom of the barrel. Because whether it's paper brushes or paint, you're going to be disappointed. I would rather you get less of a decent quality. And I just mean like student grade, you don't have to go out and get the most expensive arches. Watercolor paper, real sable brushes, not just stay away from the cheapest brush wise. Let's talk about that first. This is my Suzanne all designed, It's a set of ten brushes that we release twice a year. If you want to get on the waiting list for those, just go to my website under supplies and you'll see it there, a link to it and you can get on the waiting list. They're synthetic brush. I just picked all the shapes and sizes that I use a lot in my classes. Don't feel like you need to get those. The other two brands that I really like are the **** Black brand and the Princeton Velvet Touch. But I will say there's also, silver is a great brand. They're all synthetic. I don't use really much real animal hair in my brushes. Just a solid, at least student grade synthetic brushes. All you need sizes. I use a variety in my class. It's amazing how handy and versatile a filbert brush is. That's the one with the shape like this. This is a size seven, you could use a 468 around. Obviously those are the go to thicker is often better for florals as long as you have something for the details when you want to do the smaller stuff and that's what this little guy is, this is a number four, then flats are really nice to have to sometimes, depending on what your I use this number four flat a lot. So those are brushes, pencils, sometimes I use them for details. I don't think I used any of these pens, intallic gold pens, in this class, but I do, sometimes I often just sketch with watered down paint. But sometimes I'll sketch with a light colored colored pencil, either a prisma color or a water soluble pencil that's not water soluble. But the nice thing about the super color and you can use the crans too. The brand is Card, it's Swiss. Whether it's the pencil or the crayons, they make ones that dissolve is your painting marks dissolve in the paint and go away. All right, let's talk sketchbooks. I used and tested some that are a good price and a good quality. I wanted watercolor paper for this class because we were doing those style of florals. I did, I do have a mole skin watercolor sketch book, but I don't like the shape of it for this. I like square and I like this portrait shape for this class. I, I love this little sketch book. This is the handbook. It's made by speed ball, but what I like about it is the nice lemon cover. I also like that you can choose to get it in either 90 pounds or 140 pound paper. That just refers to the thickness of the paper. I always talk about using at least 140 pound paper when you're doing your artwork that you're going to put on the wall or sell, but in a sketch book it can get really thick. I love the option that this handbook gives you of ordering it with 95 pound paper, I think it is. It's just a little bit lighter but plenty thick for a sketch book. Love that one. Comes with a little, they'll come with a little string and then this is really nice. Before you know you've painted it, it's dry. But you can see this sketchbook is half full and there are some flattening that needs to take place. What I'll do is take this out and then bind it like that, and then put heavy books on it overnight. These little clips, by the way, are great. I got those on Amazon. I think I have a link to them and my list. This is one of the florals we'll paint. I like this now. These next two are the Artisa brand. I have not loved or been impressed with their paints, but these sketchbooks I think are really good quality for the money. This is a nice size, the paper is good quality. Nice linen cover. It looks honestly, doesn't it, like they imitated handbook? Actually, I think they did. Now I see the little pocket in the back. Yeah, very similar. Very similar strap. Similar linen cover. Anyway, it nicely bound, it lays flat. I do use the clips when because I've got paint on these and it helps train the spread to open it. This is the eight and a quarter by eight and a quarter, and I use this quite a bit in class, mostly that then this is the larger one that is new to me and I've been experimenting with different things with it, but I use it class as well. And it's like eight something by 11 and something, same brand arts. All right, that's sketch books. 4. Supplies: Paint Options: All right, let's talk, Pat, I've got some paints out here to try not to confuse you because it can be confusing. I have acrylic, which I did use was surprising success in the toss florals module. It's all acrylic. It's amazing. And it's in the Artis sketchbook. I think if you use good paper and a paint that flow, which the nova color acrylics flow, we almost indistinguishable from watercolor. When you work with them, you can see some small differences. But anyway, the nova color paint is a paint that you have to buy via mail order. And I have a, a bundle with them, a Suzanne Allard artist bundle. They're in California. They're a really nice artist grade paint at a student grade price if you live in the US, because the shipping overseas makes it too expensive for US people. If you don't already have acrylic, you might like that. But you might also like these probably. I encourage you to use what you have now before you start adding. Listen to me. I have so many types of paint, I don't even want you to see what's on the rest of this table. Okay, so acrylic here, I just want to help because this gets confusing for people who aren't familiar with these and it was confusing to me. Then there's Acyl, which is acrylic paint and G combined. This is regular. The original type of G was used in France. Think at least 200 now. It's more than that, years ago. It used to be used to do those beautiful wallpaper and interior design patterns. And it's just opaque and scans really well. It's just beautiful. It's the first paint that I started with. I don't know why most people don't start with wash, but somehow I did and fell in love with it. Then I discovered Acroh, which has all those properties, that nice chalky matt finish high intensity pigment, but it has acrylic in it. When it dries, you can't disturb the layers. There's nothing good or bad about that. It's just knowing depending on what you want to achieve with a particular surface and what your goal is for that painting. But you'll see in the class, I use these three interchangeably. I will say that. Remember that this is the only one of these three that can be reconstituted with water. The regular guash, these two, once they dry, they are stuck. I've got a palette now that I got into the moment and I'm mixing and throw some guash in there and some macro and acrylic. And now I've got to clean this palette that it can't just be rinsed out. That's why I like the palette paper. Anyway, I use all three of these. They are interchangeable. Don't worry about mixing them. You'll learn what does, what you experiment with them. Now, color wise, I, for the most part, you can make your colors or use the colors you've got. I will point out some colors that are my go to colors that are harder to make or more challenging. I always have a turquoise on hand. Then Opera pink is what it's called in the gas world and watercolor world, but it's basically a fluorescent. It's, I think it's richer than a fluorescent acrylic, but it's a very bright pink and I use it rarely straight, but it mixes and makes everything pop in the pink and red and yellow family. All right, let's talk about brand. We talked about the acrylics. My two favorite acrylic brands are a whole in that's these two Turner I guess goes that way. Then my favorite gash brands are, well, I've got to get some Turner because I like that one too. Well, it looks like well, let me get you in. It's called Turner Design Wash, and I think it's the first paint I started out with. I think it is. These are my favorite brands of regular guash Turner, which also the Acyl, then hole bin which also makes an acrylic quash. Even though these don't look like the packaging and then Linds or Newton designers guash is lovely, these are a little more expensive. The turner is really a great paint at a good price point. If you're starting, you've never tried Guash or Aqua. Don't feel like you have to do anything more than to have some success. All right. We did the sketchbooks. And by the way, if you want to paint these paintings on paper nine by 12 paper or eight by ten, paper, 11 by 14, feel free. I just love what sketch books do for you mentally and creatively. I feel like when I open up a sketchbook, it feels like it's inviting the pressure to produce a painting is gone. I also like the whole spread part of it. You'll see in this class, we'll do some paintings that are across both sheets in the spread. Then we'll do another painting where we turn to the book and paint it this way. And then we'll do some where we just do one side of the spread. But it's almost like when I do one side, the other side is beckoning to me to do something that, that compliments the one I already did. Some people just use one side and leave the other side blank, which is fine too. I just have found that sketch books for me have really help my heart blossom. And that's because I think the fear is lessened, the approachability is increased. It's just so much more, I don't know. They're like my friends miss sketch books call to me and say, hey, hey. That's why I don't even want to count how many, because then I try the little ones and the big ones in this paper and that paper. But anyway, you paint on whatever you want. I'm just glad you're here. So let's get started. 5. Hellebore Happiness Getting Started: Hellbre is another one of my favorite flowers. I think I like that in this part of the United States, on the eastern side, they bloom almost in the winter. They're those treats that you get when the rest of the flowers are gone. Just a variety of colors, they come in. Let's paint some hellbore. We can take the colors any way we want. We're just going to do this similar to the other paintings, floral painting, some blues greens. If you don't have greens, then some yellows to make your greens. This is interesting color of the stem here. We may or may not make it that way, but we'll look at the variety of the sizes. Here's a really big bloom. This one's about half that size, Some are facing away. I'm not going to try to paint this exactly, I just like to observe details like that. I may or may not put a detail in. For example, you see the leaves have these little ridges, but I probably won't do that. What I do like is how the stems are meandering, the variety of the size of the blooms, even the centers, how they vary is really pretty. I'm going to start with stems. This is a mob color. It might be a pretty color to have a stem, which would be some rows. I've got a mix of paints here. This is acrylic. There's some regular Gua here. I've got some water colors. I don't think I could use acrylic, but really use what you have for colors. If you want to make it similar or in the pink purple family, then pick some pinks or magenta with the amount of water we're using. We can vary the color a lot by just adding more or less water. I've got a little ultramarine blue out here. I've got some greens. It might be fun to add a yellow. So that may I like to take my flowers and have a bit of variety in the color of them. I just love how it makes them really come alive. I've got the opera rose here or opera pink, that's really bright, basically, almost a fluorescent. This is just a regular rose, they're pretty similar. We'll see if we add anything else as we go. But I think for the stem maybe make it, I think I want to make the stem more green or even blue because the stem is too similar to the color of the flowers. So I want to make the flower stand out. I think I might make the stem like a bluish green, a test strip so that we can see, these are just strips of paper mixed media paper or watercolor paper that I've cut up to be able to do this with. See if I've got the color I'm interested in, maybe something like that we could do. Let's see if we think it would be fun to add a just a bit of turquoise. Let me see what that does. It's going to make it a cool blue that's kind of pretty to contrast with the. That didn't really me out a little more. I don't want to go that far, somewhere in here. Look at all those colors. I think that's the winner. A bluish, slightly turquoise, greenish. All right. I'm going to bring this. I'm not going to take it off the page the way it is here. You can do that. I'm just going to bring these stems up as if maybe we were going to put them into an arrangement or something. I see that. I guess I did bring it down after saying that. I think I forgot what I was doing. I'm going to bring on a lot of the stem will get covered up. This divides here. I want to leave room, Learn that the hard way. Just practice, leave room for the bloom. If you take the stem too high up, like if I had kept going, then my blooms are going to be crowded. Something coming off of here, maybe. Well, let's see here. Well, let me put some flowers. Because I want to allow, I want another stem going either this way or that way, but I don't know where yet. Let's just get some flowers in now. For the flowers, for this kind of shape, I think it's best to use a Filbert. I've got this number seven, but number 86 would work. I'm going to, for the first color, just to get something down, I'm going to make a shade of pink that I'm letting some of that green go into. But just toning it down, we'll use water and I'll grab some of this yellow over here. So I get some variety. I've got lots of different colors right there, enough to play and just start maybe this one I'm holding the brush on its side. This one is more like that facing, so then I can come up here with this. I'm going to leave some space at the center to put in my yellowy green. I'm going to dab a little more color into the center of this just for some interest. But I am leaving that it there. It'll just make my yellow pop more. It's no big deal if you end up not doing that. I'm going to try not to mess with my edges because the edges start drying and they're really pretty that way. Again, I've learned that if you do it quickly before they dry, then you can change the edges. But if you start mucking with them, then you get the second edge and it starts looking overworked. Been there, done that many times. I just added a bit of the ultramarine blue. Let's see. All I'm deciding is which way do I want a flower here to go? I'm not saying, well, this is over here, it has to be. I'm looking at all the flowers saying which one can inspire this flower that goes there. I think this on the way it's facing, is pretty. I'm working with watercolor and so it may or may not turn out quite that way, but it's actually already not turning up that way. It's turning up more like that one. Just go with it. I'm trying not to dab too much or overwork. Go ahead and put some color in the center, remembering that these fade quite a bit. And I want that pigment, especially because this squash, yeah, this one is guash. But if it's water color, I don't want that much water though. The pigment is not as intense. My brush is a little too wet. I can go back through this too. It's not dry. And dab want to get rid of some of the water though that dabbing with a paper towel is a great way to create a light effect if you want to lighten an area. I've got a little bit of purple here. I'm just going to dab it on the edge of the petals just for some interest when that got really orange. All right. There's a darkish, I just want to be careful that's not too brown, I think it is. Yeah. So let's get more rose. I want a darker one, but I don't want it too brown. So I added blue. And a little bit of orange. There we go. Maybe a little more blue. Okay, we're getting a nice plum color. 6. Hellebore Happiness First Layer: There we go. So what I did is I took the rose and the ulta marine. And that gave me this purple. But it's too purpo, so a bit of orange calms it down to more of a plum. You just dabbing and you're not really, if you look at these, they're all kinds of shapes. We're not trying to, in this one, create those symmetrical. I want to put more pink there. I wanted that one a little. I'm just going to my ultramarine blue mixed with discolor. Let's make one that's quite a bit more orange because why not? Maybe the light's hitting it, going to add some pink to it so that it does relate to the other flowers. When you do that and change of color, you just want to make sure that you have a bit of the colors blended in. Like there's some orange in this one. Just so that it's not a complete outlier in terms of color besides I really like that orange one, so I'm going to make another one. We need one just right here on top of things that's working too fast or just not looking at my palette. But that's okay. It'll be a happy accident, as Bob Ross used to say. Sometimes that ends up being my favorite flower, the one where something unexpected happens a bit of orange into here. I'm starting to really like the orange direction. Okay, let's go back and keep holding my, my sample paper. I don't need to hold you anymore. Another one that's facing that way. I didn't leave the center blank. That's okay. Well, we can do this, we can go back in and do that. And then it'll be a little bit, maybe perhaps more ready for the center we're going to put in. And I didn't leave that on that one, but they don't all show the center. So that can be one that's not showing a center. I'm just looking all over. I have six blooms. I can't do that because that's an even number. It doesn't work for me. I think I want to make a, another large one down here. Maybe it'll be one of the biggest and I'll go in and put out some center. So let's, what I don't like right now is it's a little too compact and round. I can do something with leaves, but I also want the blooms to be less compact, so I'm going to grab another stem and put a flower down here. It's going to be. The yellowy, pinky one. You know, some people like to start with the leaves. I've done it both ways. Yeah, That helps if not feels so compact. All right. Leaves have some fun mixtures with these greens. To me, I think of leaves as I just love leaves color. The colors balance out the flowers. I want them bleeding and I'm going to make these leaves really loose. I'm just the brush down and moving. Maybe there's a bit of leaf there, some of these leaves are darker. If I want to make a leaf go behind, I can just do something like that. A little too much water. As long as I don't touch the flower, it'll be fine. It won't bleed. But you can make it bleed if you want to bleed. That I like a variety. Yeah. I like that one touched and it's pretty the purples going into the green. Let's see, varying my shape, size, color, something coming out of here and over here a little bit orange got in that green. That's good. Again, we don't have to make these leaves touch. We are making a suggestion that the leaves are there. Going over some of these stems a bit more, just to give them a little more where they're visible. Does the whole thing work for me? One of my favorite leaves is this one, just the way it ended there, with the points there. I'm wondering if I want something else here, but then it might feel too compact again because I like that I have this going off here. In fact, maybe I'll just do that to take it further. Same thing here. Make sure we're not to compact. You can also take, this is just I'm going to show you personal preference. I've done this. I think one of my favorite paintings and paintings that sold lots of prints. I did this, I took really watered down. Okay, Not that much water background leaves, but just really faded throughout and it added a nice bit of interest. You could just barely see them, so they almost feel like they're in the background and they can help with the really white. If it feels too stark, just try not to overcontrol your leaves. You really let the brush do what it wants, and sometimes really lovely things happen. And at this point, I haven't really looked at the reference much. At certain point, you get in a painting, the painting takes over from that, which I like. Okay, I think that's good. Now, we need to let this layer dry, we can look at where we want to add a little more pigment. I really like some of the bleed patterns that are happening and we can add the centers. 7. Hellebore Happiness Layer Two: All right. Alibors have dried. And just looking at it and thinking about what I want to do with it. I could leave the flowers as they are and just do the centers, but I thought I'd play with a bit more pigment in a few places. Personal preference, I just thought it's me taking the risk of going too far. Then at least I can show you something. What I thought I'd do is add a I really love some of the bits in here, so I'm not going to mess around with all of them. But I just thought I'd see if I add another layer of some of these pigments. Is this where you're saying? No, don't Suzanne, you have to experiment. Let's see, I want someone rose color. I'm picking up the filber brush again. Some of these leaves in the reference photo have like a darker side sort of pointing out the petal. I thought it'd be fun to just softly do that. In some of these I don't want to hard line so I'm just softening that inner edge. It's trying a little bit too, a hard line. Let me make it a little more purpo then on some of the leaves petals, well actually all of them, there's a line going down the middle. Just might do that. On some of them it's almost a fold. Just ever so faint. That's too much is so when you when you do the second layer like this, you dab lightly so that you're not altering the layer below too much. Here's where I think I'll bring in a bit of this purple movie color and do a little bit of veining. I like it helps the composition to bring a bit of bloom color into the leaves and vice versa. The leaf color into the blooms. Not all of them. A just adding a bit more pink to this one because it was pretty cool uniform. No, I have to let this dry before I can do centers to see if I can get this one to where I like it better. It's looking a bit locked up, which means I probably should have just left it alone. But we'll see if we can salvage it. Okay, let's let things dry. Really interesting colors forming. 8. Hellebore Happiness Final Details: All right, This is nice and dry. Make sure when you do the layer that it's dry, your page will wrinkle. That's one of the things I like about working in a sketchbook. I'll close this. When it's dry, the weight put the heavier side of the book on top, so I will put it this way and then even put some other books on it for a night overnight. It will flatten out. A trick if you decide to do one of these on a sheet of paper to use as a print and artwork in your home is you can take the sheet and then take your artwork. Let's say it was this. Let's say this was your artwork. You would put it something on both of this, all right? Well, pretend there's nothing here. You would put the artwork side down on on a surface, a clean surface. And then you would take paper towels, three of them. Usually it takes to fit or two wet them but then ring them out to they're just damp. Put them on the back of the artwork where there's no image like this sheet, and then put books on top of that. What will happen is very damp, wet at all. Paper towel will moisten the back of the paper enough and then the weight of the books will flatten it. Sometimes I'll take a big cutting board and put it on the back with the paper towel underneath and then books anyway, that's just a little tip. All right, back to the centers. I want to mix up some yellows and whites. I've got some now. Here's where gash or acrylic is helpful. Trying to do this with water color. You can do yellow actually, you can whitewash or off whitewash with your water color if you're using water color. But you won't get, if it's just yellow water color, with no white in it, no gash in it, then you won't get the opacity that we want in this bit. You could also use like a paint marker or a bit of oil pastel if you want it. This has a, centers are some of the prettiest parts, both for me, both color and texture. We're going to vary those a little bit. I have some really bright leaf green, it's called from holding. This is acrylic wash. But again, you could use acrylic or even water color as long as you're adding an opaque light colored paint. I like how some of these from the side look like little square bits. In fact, that's making me want to use my flat brush instead of my round brush so that I can make some of those. This may end up needing layers as well. But we're, again, not doing an exact, I'm not trying to copy exactly what's there more, the suggestion of these centers and embracing the colors that we like. I'm going around looking at how they vary. Some are darker green. Getting inspiration from the photo for color shape, but not really copying a particular center or flower. And some are quite a bit more white. This one I think I want to save and just do the little lines that are built off of these little, but it's a line shape. Yeah. And then do you see in the center, they have, I don't know if it's another stamen, but it's a bit of plum. I could actually put that in some of them, but probably would have to let those dry a little bit. Let's go with the really small brush. This is a number three, round two would work. Even a one would work for something small. See if we can make some of these sweet little lines. I want those to show up more, so want to make them more white. Just really lightly. Something you could practice on another sheet of paper if you wanted. Some of them have lots of them probably, depending on where they are in their process and just a few and some have none. Like that flower has none. I guess they've fallen out. I'll leave that with none. Because like that one is the thing is when you really observe nature, you see that it's really imperfect. That's such a good thing to remember when we're painting because I know I have to fight the impulse to make every, I don't know, just things be uniform or shaped. What I think is the right shape. Then you look at nature and you see leaves are all kinds of shapes. They're lopsided, they could be torn. All right? I think I'll see if I can get some of those plum colored centers going. But you know, that's going to be, need to be, again, a more opaque paint. I want to be on the darker side, which will give us some nice contrast. I'm thinking of like a dark blue, actually, actually a plum. That plum color we made before. That's what I'm thinking of. Let me try the indigo just to get things a little darker. Can need a little bit of orange to warm that up. Let's see if we've got a nice plum getting there may be a little more pink. I want a little more orange in it. There we go. That's kind of what was what I had in mind and that's going to bleed with those things, which is fine in some places. It just looks like a dad like that. It gives a little definition, doesn't it? To the center. Pretty. It's funny how a little dark something will make everything else pop. We just making me want to take the same dark color and just do a little bit of again but a little bit darker us. So when I was looking at it as it was drying, the only thing that I remember thinking that I went this way and, you know, to make it lopsided, but it's also going this way here a lot. And then here to me, there's just too much going that way. For something very faint but light I was going to faint and light do something over here of foes bristle to balance it out. All right. Time to stop. I say that and then I take another. Then you can also, I think it's got enough going on, but you can do the flower. I'll just show you the leaves that are just outlined. So something like this can be another nice effect to add. That is, I feel like I want to do one to show you, but there's really no space for it. Well, let's just throw one in. Something like that. Can be pretty. Now we're at the almost point of overcrowding it, so we might as well just put a couple more ends to show you. If we make the color really subtle, they just add such a pretty soft touch I think. Okay. I don't think that's too overdone. All right, signing And the signatures should look hand done and imperfect like everything else. Well, good. I like how these turned out. Make sure you let them dry completely. Of course, close the book and I hope you enjoy painting them. 9. Lake Michigan Mandevilla Beginning: For this module, we're going to do more realistic watercolory. Although this is, it can be water color, can be acrylic, but something that's a little more representational, but not too representational. Still, a little bit in your style or however you like to do it. For inspiration, I thought I'd use this photo that I took at my friend Sarah's beach house on Lake Michigan. And she has these beautiful three of these Mandavia plants in these big pots going down the stairs. I want to make sure the glare is not ruining the photo for you. Anyway, I will put this in the class resources, but this will be your inspiration photo. You can print it off and follow along. And I'll put it here next to the sketchbook. And then I'll also put a picture of this just so you have it. Now. For brushes, paints, I'm going to do, we're doing a variety of paints in this class. I'm going to do some something just there, well, it's going to be part of the painting. This is regular blah. I just thought I'd use it to change things up a little bit. I've got a selection of basically, I usually grab some pinks. You don't need a red because you can use yellow to get these, any tones like in here. Then you don't need a green because you can make that with blues. I've got a couple blues here at an Alt Marine and an indigo. I've got a yellow and then I've got a white. Although I doubt we'll use it. I just wanted to have it on hand brush wise. I've got some rounds here. I also have the big Filbert that I like to use with florals. We'll see probably start with big and then use the number four round to do some of the smaller leaves and details and things like that. I'm going to prop this up little bit because the glare is hitting me. Move my light a little bit, Get us all situated. Okay. I don't sketch these out, I just make them a bit free flowing. I'm going to, the Manda Villa is a very tender type of plant. I don't think you can see that here a little bit in there, we'll do some tendrils, but you can see also, I love all of these buds that come up here. See these sharp buds? Let me see. I've got to close up in here too. Yeah, okay, here you can see the tendrils. I'll include this one too because that gives you such a beautiful plant. Maybe that's a better close up. All right, so we're just get at the spirit of that and come up with a stem and some blooms and see what happens for my stems. I'm going to get just a bit of this indigo a tiniest bit because it's dark and some yellow. I also grab this whole in yellow to play with. It's a green, limey green. I was going to say mustardy, but it's cooler than that. It's really interesting color, which you can make of course, by a lemon, lemon yellow. See, it's because it's a cooler color. But since I have it, I thought I'd throw it in the mix. You need so little paint for this painting. We see how dark. Alright, he went too dark. Throw a little of that in there. I like variety in my greens. I'll be keeping that in mind. I'm envisioning something coming up and the mona is unusual like this. And then go in that direction, we'll do some of that can appear and maybe maybe a little silk of this way. I just realized that this piece of pallet paper upside down. And that's what happens when it's when you don't use the glossy side. I think it's because I was using it to take pictures and I didn't want the glossy. So now the paint is soaking right in. That's no problem. We'll just move it to another piece. See how that sits on top. So there is a right and a wrong direction to pallet paper. Who knew find these things out? Right? Okay. Just adding little bit of texture. Let's make this one just go off like that. This one come around here and maybe something else down there. It just gives us a place to start. We'll put in some blooms and see where we go from there. Now this is a color that I recommend buying Opera Pink. It's very intense. You don't want to use a lot. This is the Quinacridone magento, but any magento will work. Or red, I just like the pinks more than the reds. They're both intense. You want to have your paper towel and be able to add a bit of yellow. I'm thinking about making a variety of blooms that will face some that won't, but they almost have a windmill. Look these flowers. So I'm turning this on its side and I do love to vary the color in the petals. Maybe over here there's a little more yellow, yellow boss to my other sheet gas is basically an opaque watercolor, meaning that it behaves a lot like water color. Because it is a water color. It's just opaque and much more highly pigmented. That's how you can get the intense coverage. You want to put one here facing us as a center. Thinking about how they're kind of win milly and I try not to put, my center is right in the middle of the flower, although that one kind of did come out that way. And I like to tab a little bit of color in the center, the way you can make sure you're not getting too fussy and is by doing what I just did vary the shape of it. Here's one on its side and then it added more water to that. Too much yellow there. Maybe we'll have one going off this way. Remember, nobody is going to say, oh that doesn't look like I'm on via. You're just using that as inspiration point. You can take these in any direction you want them to go. I don't know if you saw that a little bit of splatter there, but I love that when that happens and probably will do that intentionally to this one. Let's see, we can make a few more and then I usually transition to leaves and then go back to flowers and play that way. I'm just letting that brush dance on the paper. It's just, you're almost dabbing, this one's getting bigger, which is fine. Let's transition to some leaves. You saw, I left a little bit of pink in my brush. These leaves are pretty standard leaf shape, but of course they're going to go every direction. And we can change how they look by just being really light with our brush. Some have more water, some have less. A little more color shift in them. They're going every direction. Sometimes they're thin, sometimes too much water thick gets more into go out, you can use any blue, you've got to make your greens. You can make so many greens that just a bit of yellow depending on the yellow, some orange. To tone things down, I'm going to put, you'll see these have multiple leaves in one place. Let's give a sense of that. Be really light about it. Remember, we don't mind if things are bleeding. We want that flowers bleeding into each other. Try to work quickly so you don't over work things. We can bring something down here if we want to have something in that part of the page. Dabbing in a little bit of color. If I take that indigo with the green yellow and then put a little bit of orange, I can really tone it down nicely just to get some value contrast. And I can dab it into places before it dries completely. Pretty things are happening. Sometimes the really faintest leaves can be the prettiest too, like taking just a tiny bit of color like this. Now I'm going to do, remember those beautiful buds. I'm just going to put those in here and let them bleed and appear, Let's see in various places. 10. Lake Michigan Mandevilla Layers and Details: I was going to do a bud there, but then it started looking like it was part of the flower, so I just decided to make it. But I love how, see, there's tiny bits there that came through. I just love the things that can happen. I take, I could go up here and do a couple more buds. It doesn't really need it, but I'll show you because why not? So we could take something like out of here and maybe gets a little bit more orange to the butt here. That's pretty, I might take some of the orange and put it in the center here. I think we're done. I'm going to clamp this down. Sometimes I'll take my brush like this on the parts that don't have paint, just to get it nice and flat and then clamp it and they let it dry. That's a pretty monde villa. When it, if I think it needs more layering, then I'll film some more and touch it up. Guh is better at this in watercolor, but sometimes it much less pigmented. And we loved how it looked wet and then it dries and we're like, oh, what happened? What's great is that you save this just like it is, because these can all be reconstituted with water. If they're quashed or water color, then we can come back in and just add a little more color. We'll see how it looks when it's dry. Okay. Our Mandavia is dry. I'm happy with the amount of pigment that came through. That's like I said, when you're using a good, you won't have as much of the fade as you'll have with water color. Now if you really good water color and use a lot of it, then you can get something similar. You don't need the G. I just wanted to point out some of the differences. I do want some subtle bits here to bring a little bit more life to it or interest. If we look back at this reference piece, I came back in and I did these little purple bits. I might have even added some smaller flowers. This you can tell I went back into the leaves and added a bit more. But let's just see what we feel like doing with this one. Not a lot. I think it's very sweet and balanced and pretty. I don't want to muck it up a lot, but maybe just a few little details. I'm going to grab some white and play with some pale yellow bits in the center of that one flower. I'm just going to take, this is our same palette. I'm just reconstituting these colors. But I thought maybe just a little bit like this, not making it uniform, Taking the indigo, mixing it a little bit with the green and getting something. I just want a little definition, but I don't think I want to put it on the flowers, something soft here and there. As I always say, it's about personal preference. You may like it the way it is and not want to do a thing to it. You can layer, you know, this way with water coloring glog as long as you really let it dry. I'm just playing. Seeing what adding that bit of darker value does. Usually when you put a little more contrast, it can bring things to life a little bit. Remembering to keep this one loose. When you go back and forth. Like I do between more controlled painting and loose painting, I have to literally remind myself, okay, this one's a loose one. And I don't want all of these little blue things to be the same size either. Now I think I want to maybe take a bit of a dark on the base of a couple of these. Doesn't need to be a big deal, even a bit of green. Because if you look at where I got muddy, because I had purple, purple, and green will make mud. Okay. Unbeknownst to me, my camera stopped recording this last little bit, so I wanted to tell you what I did after adding the little blue things I was talking about. I was talking to you, you just weren't there. How you can take a color and just add these little outline leaves for another just dimension that I liked where it was. I've added some little bits of dark at the base of the flowers and then I talked about how you can take a color. I really like taking a color to do your signature of the paint you're using. It is part of the painting. I do think about, okay, what color would be nice a bit of it down here, and I actually think of it as part of the painting and get it done. That's something that I've learned in the last couple years. Don't save it for later and have to redo it. Now I'm back on camera. I'm wondering if I want to take some of this just to make this even more of a focal point and put a little bit more of this hopper pink with gold yumminess in here. Not all the way around. Just a bit in the center. Maybe a bit of dark at the base of this flower. Yeah, I think that's nice. I think it's really balanced. You could keep going and you put in more of these little sketch branches here, but were wanted to leave some white space and leave it fresh and pretty and not overworked. Going to put the brush down and consider it done. This is actually a really nice motif that could lend itself to a pattern that's a whole other thing, repeat patterns. But what helps it is that there's the shape of it and that we're not going off the edge of the paint of the paper. I may use this one in a future class for a repeat pattern. All. 11. Lavender Dreams Beginning: One of my favorite books to use for just a single flower inspiration is this flower color guide. I will put it in the supplies list. One of my favorite flowers. The smell of it and painting them is lavender. I thought we would make a, this is the larger sketchbook. This one's 88 and something by 11 and something. I think this will be a good practice to see if we want to make, this could be a print for your home. Just get those sprigs, those lavender sprigs going up here in the beautiful delicate way with color variation. I've got a variety of colors and paints here. You can use any, you can use the acrylic. You can use the acrylic, can water color. You can use regular As long as you, if you're doing a watery style, which I'm going to do here, then you just add more water. If you are doing more of a, maybe that would be fun to try to do another module doing the same thing but in that more flat opaque style. Anyway, I've got a variety of, well I guess I've just got one blue out, but I can always grab more if I want one to go, might, might want that. I've got an ultramarine. I've got a lavender, but I'll probably end up making my own lavenders. Then I've got some pinks, the opera rose, and just a rose and some greens. You can make your own greens, of course, with blues and yellows. But I have some, we'll just start with the stems. And this will be relatively fast because we want the colors to bleed together and we want that magic happening. We're going to be fast and light with the brush. Have got the large round number eight, but anything I would go larger even though if it has a good tip for stems that'll allow you to stay more lose. You don't have to use an eight. If you have a six, that's okay. Use what you have. You could try this also with a filbert. You would just hold it a little differently if you have a filbert. All right, let's make a green. Just mixing. I never rarely use a color out of the two out of the tube because it's just 21 dimensional. I'm going to maybe put some, actually I'm going to get some of this ultramarine down. You know, I do need a bit of orange to tone those greens tiniest bit. This is a apple rush. Just orange, it's called. And I'll use my little test strip. If you just use this green out of the tube, it's just too intense. We had a little ultramarine. We can get a nice shade like that. I'm not necessarily trying to match the colors in the picture, but I'm just going for colors that I like that are semi realistic. If I were to put a tiny bit of orange, you get closer to brown. That's why it has to be a really tiny bit. But it can really do lovely things for greens. Let me show you. It's just with a tiny bit of orange. The green from the tube that was like that is now just a lot richer. They need a new strip. Yeah, see, it just really helps. It brings it to life, doesn't it? All right. I'm just continuing to add, make sure I've got, that's too dark, I'm going to have to be a little more blue. I'm going to make this is, I love the way that the stems go, so I'm just going to be really playful and loose and take some lines up here and see where they go. I like varying the color of the stems a little bit. Maybe we want a tad of this. It's a brill. It's a yellow green basically, Or lime. I've had this to forever. This is local sennelier, grand, you know, maybe a couple of darker stems. And you just to give some thought to, you can take this all the way off the page. You can frame it this way, maybe more in the center. It's completely up to you, try a lot of different ways. That one, I started out here and went down. You'll notice that they're darker where they start. So that can be another way to vary the stems. Maybe just one more. I'll do it that way as well. Okay, so now I'm going to start a make some purples and lavenders. And start dabbing them. And in these petal shapes, petals and leaves, and kind of go back and forth. Because I like the petals to Is this the one that's dried out? No. Okay. I like the petals to bleed with the leaves and create that yummy stuff we were talking about. I'm talking through this obviously because I'm teaching it. But these are great to do just quickly and lots of them and just see what happens. I've just got a rose there. I've got my Alta Marine here, and that's going to give me so many different shades of lavender. And then when I want some that are a bit toned down, I can grab some of this green. It'll give me lots of variety. I'm just going to dab, you can do them in clusters. Change colors when, you know, bits of more pigmented paint hit. I like that we're touching the brush down. We're not overly, we can even do the brush this way. Some make, some larger, some smaller. 12. Lavender Dreams Final Layer: I'm doing the brush both ways, and I think I like the effect of holding it this way. But they're both interesting. They give a little different look there. You get some variety by just changing how you're holding your brush. I'm going to come through with some darker ones. And some of them I'm clustering the stems or you see there's little clumps and some of them I'm not. I'm going to quickly, I'm going to actually, I'm trying to work quickly and explain and talk. But the reason I want to work quickly is I want to get some of these greens at the base of some of these before the purples dry. There's just a little bit of almost like a little green cup at the base of these lavender. I don't need to do it at all of them. I don't need to do it at all. But I think it's pretty and I think the yellowy green is nice there. You could take the greens and blues in more of a turquoise direction if you wanted. I love a pop of lime here and there. Okay, so now I can pause because I'm getting that the petals didn't dry too much and I'm getting some of that nice green bleed Go, come down and start some of these leaves down here. Again, you can vary the color, the direction, the amount of water. It's amazing what you can create with just a couple of colors and some water and paper. I'm going to make sure I get some of that lime green down here too, not overlapping a lot yet on the leaves. Just because I can go back in with a layer, I'm just looking and making sure there's some balance and variety of color. I'm going to add a stem of just leaves. There's one here and I just think it's a nice touch that was a little bit too much blue. What you do there is dad get your paper towel perfect, remembering that the watery pigments can fade quite a bit when they dry. Probably have to come in and do some layering. Really try to just make that one mark. And don't worry about it if it's not perfect, especially in something like this where there's so many leaves then to come through. Now maybe add a little more intensity to some of these. What it does is it makes the leaves we already did almost look like they're in the background. Some of these petals I'm putting right on top of my other petals, and then I'm adding new petals. But we're just getting a few more dark values in there. I can almost smell the lavender. We could, oh, that gives me an idea. We could get some lavender oil and try a dab of it in the paint. That would be fun. You never know. This is personal preference. You can make as much color as you want, as little color as you want. I do want to make one of these, more of a focal point. Maybe I'll do this one that ends up being larger and the stem a bit longer. Let's see if I can add that in. Now at the tip, they are more green. But we don't have to do that s also don't feel like all the petals have to touch so we can do stuff like this. Where is giving again that suggestion. They can just be around, you can give a sense of movement and I don't know energy. Dad's gonna bleed pretty. Maybe had a little more brightness here, maybe not that much. Got over exuberant with the water. I think that's enough. Less is more with something like this, I don't want to work it and remember to come down with one of your colors, maybe this color, and do a signature. You could also do the spray with where you take the brush and let's do it. I'm just going to get some pink and watery pink in my brush. Pinky purple. Oh, that's nice. So pretty. It's a little scary, I admit, when you do it. But the result, if you just practice on another sheet of paper to get the idea of how much water should be in your brush. But I think our lavender spray turned out really pretty. Now, I did go back in a layer and I can see places it's drying. I don't think I'm going to feel like it's too faded. But if I did, I would just go back with the same colors, save this palette. And then dab some of the more pigmented colors in here and there. If I feel like it loses life as it dries, there's our lavender. 13. 3 Favorite Flowers Wrap Up & Resources: Okay. Wrap up and resources. The student Facebook group just e mail me just to get a link to it. Or if you find it on Facebook, it's going to ask you for the e mail that you use to sign up for class. And you can just use the skill, the e mail you use for skillshare and that doesn't work. You can email me at Suzanne at Heart. Wait Art at Suzanne Allard.com I'll write that here in the video Art at Suzanne Allard.com I made it really easy. We'll get you part of that group. It's a great group. I think it might be 20 something thousand at this point. But obviously not all those people are always participating. But my whole vibe in that group is to encourage us to create. It's not a critique group unless somebody asked for that. And even then, it's just about getting us to create because our biggest obstacle to creating is usually fear. I don't need to pile onto that. We all have plenty of that inside ourselves. My attitude is let's just keep you going. And if we keep you going, you're going to start getting better and liking what you're doing more. And keeping my approach is to keep you creating. Whatever I can do to do that. Be relaxed, have fun, play with color or anything to take the pressure off, which keeps you creating. That's basically how operated and how I've improved along with taking lots of online classes like this. Let's see, a couple of questions sometimes I get is, what do I do if the pages are buckling in my sketchbook? Honestly, I don't mind that. I think it adds to the character. But if it's really bothering you, you can take the book and put some books on top of it. I have noticed that this large or Tiza, can you see that? Has been doing that more. But then like some of my others that are more full, like this is the moleskine. They're still wrinkling a little bit, but they, there's a lot in here. All kinds of collage even. It just depends on the sketchbook. These pages of the watercolor paper is thicker, but if it really bothers you, you could put something heavy on it. I don't really varnish in the sketchbooks unless I'm using a lot of boil pastel. Then I'll use the workable fixed by Crylon or the Spectra fix. As far as let's see, people also asked me about paints and things and why I love, uh, and I think I have a Youtube on that, but check out my Youtube channel for a lot of resources. I do paint and chats on there. I also have an e mail newsletter that I try to get out. I just Sara philosophy in it used to be every other week and then it was every month. And now I think I just sent one in the last three months. But I do love connecting with you and just sharing what's going on in the studio. And insights that I think might help you keep creating like we were talking about. You can sign up for that at Susan Aller.com if you're interested. Yeah, I think that that covers it. Just remember that the creative process is a journey as much as you can try to enjoy the process of creating. If it's a tough day and the inner critics really loud, play with color, get three colors out, and see what happens when you mix them. And then you add water and just make splotches. And then another day you might pull out that and you might add some details. And who knows? I think the important thing is to create on a consistent basis even if it's color splotches. In fact, there are branded designers that their whole look is color splotches. Don't dismiss anything and just try to continue to have fun and keep at it. All right, happy creating.