Let's Paint a Tropical Botanical! | Suzanne Allard | Skillshare
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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Welcome!

      2:28

    • 2.

      Garden Inspiration

      5:32

    • 3.

      Supplies in This Class

      11:53

    • 4.

      Beginning the Painting

      12:02

    • 5.

      Adding Elements

      12:07

    • 6.

      Adding Layers

      10:08

    • 7.

      Background and Details

      16:18

    • 8.

      Finer Details

      5:00

    • 9.

      Final Touches

      4:19

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About This Class

This will be with a limited, soothing color palette painting

  • Let’s get inspired by tropical Florida foliage in my garden and at a local nursery.
  • We’ll create a layered tropical botanical with a painted background and delicious details.

What you’ll get in the class:

  • Seven tropical foliage reference photos
  • A short video tour of my garden and our local nursery.
  • Two inspiration paintings for reference (not for sale of course).
  • How to study a painting and make sure it’s unified and has good composition.
  • A soothing, tropical color palette designed for this class.
  • You’ll complete a beautiful tropical, botanical painting to hang in your home!

Who this class is for:

Maybe you’ve been painting and would like to learn how to approach different styles of florals or maybe you’ve never painted.  Either way, come along and be inspired and supported while you learn to create with an encouraging teacher guiding you.

Additional Resources:

Download the Class Resources

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Shop products on Redbubble

Favorite supplies here

 

Meet Your Teacher

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Suzanne Allard

Floral, Abstract & Creativity Teacher

Top Teacher
Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Welcome!: Hello, lovely. Are you ready for another class? You know that about four months ago we moved to Florida. I thought it would be fitting to do the enter this class here in my yard surrounded by tropical plants because the class is creating a tropical Botanical. My goal is to do two classes. This is the one with the quieter color palette, which if you know my work and it's a challenge. What we're gonna do is use these tools, inspiration, this kind of the idea of this. Along with this leaf composition, we're going to create a limited color palette. Tropical Botanical. This is gonna be a lot of fun. There's details. I don't know if you can see the metallic gold in the sun. But we're going to draw inspiration from tropical plants. And we're going to visit some of the plants here in my yard. And then also we're going to go to a nursery schools by and share some of that. And then pictures that I've taken at nurseries, one in Austin, Texas where there was a greenhouse with beautiful tropical foliage. And then the nursery here, getting our inspiration for the patterns and textures and actual leaves, which in the tropical world are pretty much endless. It's incredible. What's out there in terms of pattern and texture and the marks that you can borrow from nature. And I don't teach the class outside here because it can be kind of noisy. But I at least wanted to do the intro here and tell you I can't wait to get to in the studio in creating this. And then I'll do another class with a very colorful Tropical Botanical. Alright, so join me in the class, I'll go over supplies. There are not many since we're doing a limited color palette and we're just using mostly paint. And I also wanted to point out that I put on my new dress, but for my design on by bubble, which just kind of a fun, really fun feeling to be wearing your art. But I like how to address her note. Anyway. I will see you in class. I can't wait to see what you create. Please put your project and the resources tab because I comment on every single project and I love seeing what you create. All right, see you in class. 2. Garden Inspiration: I thought we would start inspiration with a tour of some of the leaves in my yard here in Palm Harbor, Florida. My favorite tree in the world is this. Mark POM. You can't get a sense of how big it is, but leaves are probably six feet by six feet. Oh, I see a wasp nest. That's good to know how to solve a happy about that. Then I don't know the names of these. And I loved these shape, color course. Really. I'm fascinated by all the plants here. The palms. These are a week of palms. That's what I take my pictures in front of. For Instagram. Let's go over here. There's some beautiful I'm still learning the name. Remember the name of this one? This is the bird of paradise leaf. So those get really big. Let's go out front. I wanted to show you these. I just planted these. You'd think I'd remember the name of them. It's a type of tie plant like Thailand. Looking at this color. I didn't say I have my pots here. Of course, my favorite. I did three different colors. This flowering real well. I'm just felt it, this one is doing really well. Now let's go friend framingham, some of these out friends. Look. See, I wanted to do a painting of just those. I don't know. But it's pretty. This is an interesting plant. The leaf isn't exciting, but still you just get an idea of like look at that yellow. It goes green and then switches to yellow just during the plant. That's an idea that I could definitely put an accompany painting. And then this bright pink tide plant, my goodness, with that color. Let's handle the nurse her, Hey, we're here at the landmark nursery harbor. Look at all the tea Thai, Thai plants. Look at back of a truck, tropical leaves, I'm going to try to stay focused. Sandrine, an amazing shape. It's a lot of those here. This shape and pattern was really beautiful. These are tan, something like that. Huge jungle. Big, that is enormous. This is fuzzy. Can you see velvet? See the name of both China brand of Flora three is something else. It's how curly everything is pretty. Here's another one. Interesting. Then. The pots here they have amazing. Stay focused, Suzanne. Alright, let's go inside the greenhouse. You were in the greenhouse. Wow. I'm the only one here. Cos, and look at those, those leaves. I'm gonna take some pictures of some of these textures to use as inspiration. Look up those patterns. Really almost anything you could imagine. Leaf patterns. Those are pretty beautiful. Sarah. I'll take some pictures. This will be good inspiration. 3. Supplies in This Class: All right, Let's talk supplies, shall we? I ended up using a variety of these, so I just wanted to show you what I've got. For paper. You can use just any watercolor paper. This is the Studio Watercolor Fabriano. So it's not the highest end, but it's perfectly adequate. It's 140 pounds. That's nice, nice texture to it. I also like Canson and Strathmore watercolor paper. So it's not as long as you get any of the good ones. And I'm using a line by 12. Let's look at palettes next. I use, sometimes I use this, I think for most of this class I used the pallet paper sheets of this. Let me get the PAG for you. I just pulled them in half because it's a better size for me. Usually, they come in gray and white. Matter. Which color you use. Those really shiny and other great for travel too. Because what I do when I'm traveling is I take my sketchbook. I put 30 ones like this, but I put several Cleveland's in there and then I can use them when I'm painting and traveling. And they are also actually great for if you paint in your sketch book. And there's something not quite dry or needs more time to dry. I stick a clean one of these in there and it's since it's shiny, it doesn't stick, helps it drag. That's the pallet paper. Then for the end of the class, I showed you this, which I've shown in my jaw, full bouquet class and some other classes. It's an air-tight palette, the silicone top and these locks, and it works great for gouache or watercolor. I tried it with acrylic and aqua brush and it's it's okay but it will dry eventually and then you use harder to clean out because those have acrylic and when they dry, and once they dry, they're in there, they're never being reconstituted. So I recommend it more for watercolor or gouache. But it allows you to get the consistency right by adding your paint and then adding some water. And to do that, I use these little pipettes. I think I might have a link to these as well. And then you can add, like I can see this one needs liquid water and you can mix them up and get them ready to use. And they're just kind of always ready, which I love. Of course it only works if you close them. I've done that before because I'm too much good if you leave the top off. But since it's gouache, you just add water and mix and you're good to go. This is great also for travel through. The only thing is you don't want to tip it upside down and it makes a mess. Let's go on to paints. I stayed with the palette, this color palette. And I'll scan this and crazy others too. Even though it's half of what I did is I made something and then I used was messing around with colors and a fan brush. So many used part of it for collage, but I just love the way these colors interacted here. And see if you save something. And now it became a guide for the colors that I wanted to use in this piece. So I did a mix of actually three types of paints. Technically because I have regular gouache here. Then I have agro gouache here, here, and here. This one is regular gouache and then two watercolors. I mix paints all the time. As long as you know that you're mixing between the water-soluble and then if you definitely mixed acro gouache with regular wash on paper. But there's no real reason to do that. Let me just use one or the other. It's just these. These are the colors that I wanted. I brought out all the Legos to just show them to you because I use a lot of indigo on the regular gouache, which means that it regular gouache means that you can let it dry, but then it can be reconstituted with water if it can't be. And then it was acrylic gouache. So honestly can't remember what I did this end. If it was accurate gouache. Yep. It was it was this olive color. See, I cannot get that. I mean, I could probably eventually scrub it. But you use if I've used the regular gouache, then it would be able to get it, get it dissolved again in the water. So alright, so that's gouache, meaning it can be reconstitute with water. Hydro collage, meaning it cannot be, of course, watercolor Kim always be reconstituted with water. The reason I ended up getting out of these Indigo is because I grabbed the Winsor and Newton, which this is my favorite. Well, I was gonna say it's my favorite brand of gouache, but I really loved the whole vein. It's agro gouache. So my favorite brand of regular gouache is the Winsor Newton. Then I like Turner. The, my favorite brand of acro wash is the whole vein. They all come with indigo. Indigo is just my favorite dark to use. So that's why I've become like an indigo collector. But this indigo, you'll see when I get out is the Winsor Newton one is a little bit more like a royal blue. It's not very indigo. And so as the Turner, it's, they call them indigo, but they're just more blue than I wanted. Then turn our acro makes this blue black. But all you have to do it. It's not hard is to take whatever blue you have, even if it's a primary blue, not even a dark blue, darker the blue the better. And then add some black and keep going until you get the darkness that you want. Then I used this olive, which I had remembered being really green, but you'll see when it paints out that comes out yellow. And I'll show you how I fix that. Then I do use this a lot for different things. Ivory. Then I used a couple of watercolors, the dual Chrome oceanic. This is the Daniel Smith luminescent watercolors, which means they have a pearly luminescent consistency and lots of fun. And then this is the Winsor Newton permanent Sap Green. Now I'm just showing you all this in case you're curious, you may hate blues and greens and want to go a completely different direction. I just wanted to show you what I did in case you wanted to know. And I do, I think mentioned this later, but the, this is when I favorite paints and colors of all time. This cobalt turquoise light by Winsor Newton gouache, very intense and beautiful. Then I also use, Let's talk brushes high, stuck with, for this painting, the highlighted like these Princeton velvet touch rounds. So I went back and forth between a 26 and depending on what you need, if you want to do something narrower, like a line, you can use, get something like this, which is called a liner or a rigger brush and it'll give you long fluid lines than I did use the bright shape, that's number four, silver Bristol and bright. And to get some kind of square-shaped flowers for details. And once in awhile, I'll use these Tombow pen so you don't need this in this class. I just thought I'd show them to you. If you've never seen them. They're kind of fun because you can take, let's say, I use my stem and let us say do something like this. And in fact, I've done this before. It's super fun and you can check the different color, and so it's essentially a marker. You can get an interesting effect by them getting your brush with water on it. It turns in basically into watercolor and gives you a more painterly look. You'll get that bleeding. But with a little bit of an outline, I did a whole page one time of these little leaves and just playing with how the markers dissolve and move, the ink moves. Anyway. They'll change and move as it tries. Those are Tombow. I do love the Pentel sunburst, metallic medium gel pen. I buy them a lot on Amazon they give like about them. They go over almost everything except maybe oil pastel thing. They always just reliable and use them to sign my paintings a lot and he's protocol metallic details. I also use a variety of brushes. Brushes, pencils. The brands are probably more important than the colors because you can pick up the colors that you like. But the super color, this is the Qur'an dash that Swiss make her, I don't even know if I'm pronouncing it right. And then stay below. And Faber, Castile and what I like about holidays, and here's a Prismacolor. I don't know if this one is soluble or not. Let's see. Because I tend to want to get the water-soluble ones. Yeah, It's not I mean, eventually it is, but not the way these are. These are like the Tombow. They can be free constituted. They make their great to sketch things out or even go on top for different things, but you can do a lot of them. And I ended up, I ended up collecting many. But these are the colors that I used in this class. We time I go to an art store, I get a few more colors and they usually are the, either those two below or the Qur'an dash. All right. Let's see. I left anything out for water jar. I just use messenger. Nothing fancy there. We didn't use some posca. I have a passcode collection just because I'm obsessed with these. This is how I think about my posca pens there about the cost of a Starbucks coffee. Depending on where you are on the world and expensive cup of coffee. So sometimes I'll say, we're out and about my husband and I are like, No, I'll skip the Starbucks and I will stick it in my posca budget. But I use these a lot, especially the ivory. You'll find your colors that you like. And I go over, I do different effects with them and all kinds of things about supplies that I used in the class. And you again, do not need, please hear me on this. You do not need call the supplies. You can go with what you have and maybe watch the whole most of the class and get an idea of what you have and what you'd like to create, and then get yours. Alright, let's get started. 4. Beginning the Painting: This tropical leaf composition is going to be inspired by this, these leaves. But also these leaves. I'll have both of these kind of in front of me. And then I'm going for a little bit quieter color palette with this one, we'll do quiet our color palette and then the lively one. So this one will be more assuming. I've got my hollow of gouache, this is a Cobain color. But if you don't have the color, you can get it by mixing green and a warm yellow. Just keep playing until you get the shade that you want. And then I've got some watercolors because mixing gouache and watercolor is just because there's some colors here. I really like. The turquoise here is the, you can see I'm almost out of this one, but I have another one because it's one of my favorite paints ever. It's the Winsor Newton designers, gouache, cobalt, turquoise light. It's not cheap but lasts a long time. Then I have a Dan Smith do a Chrome oceanic watercolor to get some of these. Turquoise has been greens. And then I think I have another favorite watercolor. It's kind of ugly. I'm picking out my favorite blues and greens and of course we're gonna mix them. Permanent sap green. This is something bold I picked up a long time ago. Greenish yellow. Play with those blues and greens you have are fine. I mean, if you want to go with this color palette. So the idea is that I'm going to paint some leaf elements on plain white paper like this. And then we'll go in afterwards. Thanks to the background. So what that does is it allows you didn't get that bright pop of color from going write on the white paper versus this one, for example. This is just a different style. I painted the whole background, this red color, and then paint it this over it. Now use gouache, which that's what I love about gouache is very matte and it's opaque as you want it to be. If you wanted to be really opaque, you put it on fixed here. If you want it to be a little more translucent, you have more water here. But it will subdue the whole thing. If you do the whole background color. So we'll do it to different styles. For the quieter when we're gonna start with a white background. You can look at various leaf pictures that are in the class. Pictures of your own of leaves. We're just going to keep it loose and playful and do sort of some larger ones and smaller ones. And let's see where we go. I'll start with a mixed of this color. There's also a really pretty mustard color. The whole vein has some beautiful colors. I'm just gonna start at one side with large. This is going to be in a larger piece. Coming out really yellow, green 20, because I remember this being a lot more green. But it's kind of no color. Probably add some turquoise to it. Found a layer was quashed using a fat brush. This is number 12. Time would work fine to quash works a lot like watercolor in the sense that you can control how intense the color is by how much more are you at. I try to vary the shape of the leaf, the size of the leaf, the direction of the leaf. I'm working quickly though, because I want to get some turquoise into this before it's completely dry. I'm going to do that now. Getting every last bit of this out of this one is so intense that a little goes a long way. You can do this kind of detail or not and whatever, whatever your preferences, that's how you learn your style is by literally checking in with yourself. Do I like that? Do I not like that? Does that excite me? You can see that the turquoise just turned green because it blended, which is fine. When it dries. We can go over and get true turquoise if we want. Made a really pretty color actually. You can be as loose as you want with your leaves are kind of more defined edges. Every, well that's drying. I do like this sort of. Locke's saying that I did here. I am going to do that one and use the turquoise for the stems. I'll just start with. It doesn't really matter what colors because I'll end up covering it up. You'll probably be a variety of colors. You can even take. Sometimes I like to use these Tombow watercolor markers because you paint over on, Let's see here. I'm going to the focal point, the composition wise. If you think of the rule of thirds, imagine grid on this two lines down into lines over and making nine blocks. The rule of thirds is that you want your focal point in the intersection. Those blacks somewhere off center, in other words, not stuck right there. I don't want to put this next one right in the middle. So I'm gonna go kind of habit full, the focal point, focal point here, which is if I were drawing a grid, would be right there. Bring it branches out like this. I actually really like this color. The Tombow. Watercolor markers are great because you can use them this way or you can add water to them and basically turn them into watercolor. They're good for traveling. Now, these I made, let us split up the square brush or bright. You don't have to have all you have is around and just, just gonna take a little more to fescue that. Let me get some turquoise paint interacts with the paper. You may not want to do this square-shaped. You need to make a more rounded you do you. Paying attention to what you like and don't like and what you're drawn to and what you're not drawn to. Just varying the size or shape, direction. And I kind of like how they got little hairy at the top. Can you see that? The brush is dry? Just a little happy accident, but I think I'm gonna go with it. I think I want something dark in those winter wet. My go-to darks are generally like an indigo. If you don't have an indigo, you are a dark gray. You can make one with some black and some blue. I do have indigo here. I have every time I buy cars with lies and any brand they looked for the indigo. So I have the Winsor Newton and I have the Turner. This is to me a pretty light indigo. It's more like a royal blue, I would say. The Turner that I have is called blue black. And that's nice and dark. I have it on my brush. I'll come over this stem since generally don't like my stems to be the same color as the leaves. Gonna go over my Tombow marker to make it more painterly and takes away the mockery look to it. Nothing wrong with the mercury look because just not what I'm going for here. I like that better. I can even while it's wet. Some more Tombow and it'll move around a little bit. Gives me some variation. Let's let that dry. 5. Adding Elements: Alright, that is dry. Let's see what we want to do next. I'm gonna go with this same kind of composition with something down here. I am going to force myself, at least for now. I'll see if I can hold on to staying with these kinds of colors and I want to go darker. Going to dig out my cover, indigo, my navy, you've got a navy blue. You'll see my whole collection here. This is the Turner and ago, I should do a video on various indigo. And then the one I was talking to, That's quite dark as the hope the Turner black blue. But again, you can just take any blue and add black. Let's try this one. See this one's a little bit, I remember it being a little darker. Then this one is nice and dark. Any dark that you like, or you just need a dark if you don't like indigo and you want to use green or o. Another dark I really like is blossom a really dark? You can take red, blue, and then just a touch of yellow to get a deep, beautiful plum. Dark. Payne's gray is a good dark. I just don't use black. I mean, accepting mixed with other things to get dark. All right, so let's make something short and leafy down here with maybe a bit smaller brush. Let's see here. Let's try this. Number eight. I'm going to try doing the leaves and the indigo. Then maybe do bloom. We'll see where that goes. Some other leaves in another color. I always like to vary. So we'll make these sort of tall are long skinny leaves. Which means you put down the brush and drag and lift off gently. This is, these are so relaxing to do. You can do them anytime. You feel like you don't have a lot of time to paint and you just want to do something meditative. Leaves, again, varying direction. Color, intensity, mixing together over here. Thinking about this yellow and it's just more yellow than I wanted. So I'm trying to think, what do I want to do about it? If I put indigo, Let's just, this is what we'll learn, how my process of getting what I want and just see what that toes to tone down some of these bright yellows. Because remember on this palette I wanted to stick to blues and greens. Just got very yellow. So let's just see. I can come in with the turquoise to as long as I use the blush, the watercolor won't have the opacity. That's pretty this brush. It's been misbehaving lately. With some stray little fibers, it's probably, it's really because it's not it's kind of a cheapy that's what you get. Misbehaving brushes generally. Now I'm going to take the turquoise, the fresh, fresh one and get some really intense turquoise and see what happens. When I bring it up against that indigo that's still a little bit wet. That's pretty. If you look at the pictures in the class, resources, the variety of tropical leaves, the patterns, textures. You really can't get too crazy because you said, do you think this just as crazy? When you'll see a leaf that's even crazier by nature. Going to those nurseries, taken those pictures has really helped me branch out. You tend to think of things will be even line marks like this won't maybe even know. Usually not really liking this turquoise over this. Can you tell I like turquoise smiling because this is my version of quiet or color palette. I know that for a lot of people it's pretty darn colorful. I try I really try to subdue things. Doesn't it seems like I'm fighting yet. My my own house. It's pretty neutral. It's kinda crazy. I really like this super soft green. What you could get by just going really light with Flash. I'm going to use this. Almost has a very slightly metallic, this duo Chrome oceanic by Daniel Smith. They're called a luminescent watercolors. Really beautiful. So maybe I'll make some things coming off of this that are roundish. Bigger brush, quite a bit of water to get those. Watercolor doing fun things. Being loose and playful with the shapes. Maybe their leaves, maybe there's some sort of Bloom. Who knows? Some plants, they're one and the same. Now because this is watercolor, it won't cover the gouache underneath. It'll just be kind of translucent. I decided I really wanted to cover then I would put use gouache. I'm liking what this iridescent thing is doing, so I'm gonna come back over here. This is helping me tone down the brighter yellow. I don't mind the yellowish part, but in this palette, I don't really want the bright, bright. At least that's how I feel now. When it's not dominating so much. We're going to let that dry. 6. Adding Layers: All right, this is dry. This took a long time. You can kind of see that luminescence. It's pretty better composition and talk. I don't, I don't focus too much on this, but it's helpful to think about the rule of thirds, which you can see. I mean, if it were, if I were strictly following, it'd be more like that. How did this leaf are lying there for maybe we'll try that on the next one and see if we like it better. But I am going to, the rule of thirds is essentially your focal points should be along here and then one of these intersections. So I'm gonna make this focal point. We'll see how it turned out. One thing I noticed when I was drawing is that I need to bring some of this yellow are warmer. A little bit of it over here. It's just too much on that side. And plus this stammers, It's not very interesting. So I wanted to take a little bit of that olive color. Just go over the stem. Stem. A little more interesting. Especially if I'm making this my focal point. I think needs to draw attention to it. Because right now this is very jumping out, just fine. They can also be focal point number two. Wanting to do something else here. Let's see. I'm debating, do I want to bring one of these colors in? What do I want to take? A little bit of turquoise. Next was in green, sap green, this is a watercolor. I'm gonna see if I do something on the edge. I want some more bleeding. Something soft around. Let's try taking the turquoise then grabbing some of them. Green clean brush. Working a little faster. Yeah, I like that. I have to go back and forth. I'm gonna get turquoise. See if I can get three done. You've already there. I think I can clean my brush. And get this sap green, which is fabulous color. I don't dry in some interesting ways. Kind of looks like an exotic tropical leaf or a flower. Definitely made that pop. Still wanting to. Painting composition is bringing things forward and pushing them back. So I just brought that forward. I want to push this back. Lots of ways I can do that. I could go over it with a light wash. Might do that first with a very light bit of ivory white mixed with water. I could pick a color and do a wash in that. I'm just thinking about my options. This is a very conservative way to go because we can go really light and see what we think. So let me take a tiny bit of that. I didn't want my brush to wet because I don't want to activate all the colors. I wanted to just go on top so I'm gonna be quick. I might not even do all of it a little bit. We'll do some more. This by the way, I use hot, it's the ivory white. Gouache by whole vein. You can make an ivory though my doing white, It's just, it's surprising how long it takes you. You have to do some weight and then some yellow and then some red. So you get the right ivory. Usually use it this way. All right, So this is settling back. This is coming forward. I'm liking this more, so I'm gonna let it dry. 7. Background and Details: This is dry and now I'm going to start with the underpainting or background painting. And then we'll come back and take a look at what, what else do we want to do? I am trying to keep this one on the simple side, so I'm going to resist the temptation to take it too far, but we will as far as background. Okay, so what I'm gonna do on this one, since this is our quiet or one, is, I am going to use neutrals in the background, a variety of neutrals. I'll do some of those ivory. I'll do some. I don't know what else I'm gonna do, but I'm going to stay with them. It could be a darker neutral, but I'm gonna stay in the neutrals and I'm gonna stay in colors that are not going to compete with what we have going on here. Gathers some neutrals and start background painting. Now another tip on the background painting is I'm going to intentionally leave more than I did hear. Some white between things. I'm not going to paint right up to the piece or the element. And I'll leave a little bit of white for some energy and some path. This is gouache stones, backgrounds, so it looks, you know, chalky and everything. You could use either watercolor or gouache. I might do both. Okay. I'll speed that packet painting and speed that up and see you at the other side. I left this overnight. And I recommend doing that whenever you're not sure where to go next or just to give it some, some distance, some space. And then I looked at the tropical leaves. Just to get that inspiration. And remember that just about anything goes in these, these plants. Look at this. That's a fun one. I think that might be fun to do. On some of these leaves. I'm looking for something to do on these. Beautiful, isn't it? I went to an Austin visiting her daughter, went to this Hillary street plant and they had a greenhouse full of these. I'm going to do another time. I'm a class on these, doing a leaf more elaborately. For now we're just looking for inspiration. Look at those dots. Maybe we will incorporate that somewhere. I will include some of these photos in the class resources. But of course you can Google tropical plants. Tropical leaves. For now though, I think that first this pattern. It might be fun here. I've gathered my smaller tools now. We might go back to paint, but right now I'm in the pencil and pen stage where I like to add details. I've got here my favorite metallic gold pen. I talked about this a lot on Instagram. I've tried a lot of them and this one just lays on top of almost anything except thick oil pastel. And it's the Pentel sunburst, metallic medium gel pen. And I get them on Amazon. And then I've got a variety of pencils and the color palette that we, that I'm sticking to my indigo, which is gonna look like black, but I'll know it's indigo. These are various brands, the Faber, Castile, and the crown dash. Let's see what else below. They are all water-soluble, not that they need to be. You can use regular colored pencils. I've got a job, just a jelly roll and dark blue. My posca pens, I love my posca pens and this color in particular the ivory I use a lot of, I have lots of thicknesses of it because I use it so much. So I've got the there's another even smaller one. Likes to hide really fine work. Different sizes points. I use them a lot. Probably won't use the fat one on this. The fat one is good for covering up, pushing things back. I think that's, that's what we're gonna start with. Playing with this idea on some of these, maybe not on all of them. I'm thinking about what colors do I want those spots to be in. I think I want them to be in the ivory. So we'll try that and the beauty of paint as you can do it over if you don't like it. Let's see. Let me use this thickness. Paint pens are notorious for leaking jamming. So if yours does, don't despair, it's normal. This pattern has these bigger blobs. You can see with these smaller ones. I'm not being super precise here. I can make it my own, but just very, this is what I mean by the inspiration in nature because look at these things vary in size. I bet their purpose is to make them more attractive to more enticing to B's. I'll make some more enticing to me. That's for sure. For me. It's just personal preference. Painting like this doesn't really feel done to me or come together until I can get in there with some details. I'm just going to do some turquoise on this because the paint I'm quite show up with the oil pastel. I like that. Now the background I just painted in neutrals. There's something that I don't I'm not sure I like about the kind of patchwork feel of the background right now. I don't know. I've decided to put that off and see if I feel differently when I got the details in. I probably will do a couple of coats on that to make it show up. I think I'll do this leaf too. I don't have to do all the leaves, of course, don't have to do anything. That's part of part and creating is deciding what you liked, what you want to do. Like right there I just did something I didn't put the small next to the small eye. It because you'll see in nature that happens. Nature is perfect. For at least visually. Since I like to do threes, four odd numbers, I'm gonna do this one as well. You could of course do this with paint. You don't need paint marker. You could use acrylic on top of here. Gouache watercolor would not work, especially since there is no white watercolor. You could use JSR. Wait, let me think about what I might want to do. These guys. Maybe some stripes. Even though they're kind of round. These holes are kinda cool. I have an idea where you could use the indigo to give the effect of holes. Which would, let us see here. Something like that. Just kind of marking a center does look black, especially on top of the green. I could definitely do this with paint. I could also do it with this blue, but I have a feeling this gel is two. Really. I don't know, purply blue almost. Just not not what I'm looking for. But I don't really like how that's showing up either. Let's see what else I've got here. Looking to black. If I try this in a dark, works kind of over it. Softens a little bit. I'll start with that. I'm going to sharpen it. I'll start with the indigo and then I'll go over again. This could be done with paint. In fact, maybe better with paint. I'll show you why I like these water-soluble. Because let's say I've blended these two colors. Let's say that I really wish it was paint. I wanted more painterly look. I just take some water. Maybe campaign. Let that dry. I like those. I'm going to work on the rest of these with a similar kind of situation. I might I might do I might switch dependent because I think it'll be easier. Honestly. The look that I want, I'm gonna get the blue blackout. A small brush. Maybe this small, this is 312 or three would be fine. First, to give me a guide, I'm going to draw the line which would determine how the this is just an a white pencil. So I see it. How the leaf will be oriented. 8. Finer Details: I really like how those turned out. Now, I want to go through these with a pencil just like this leaf and put some detail in there because they're just a little for me there. The blue is showing up too much, so this will push it back a little bit and also add some interest. Then I'm thinking about these sort of things we created and how this is like this here. And I'm thinking I might play with either the pencil paint and create something like that along those where we put that turquoise with the green. I don't know. I'll end up doing paint her pencil, but that's kind of what I'm thinking of playing with next. Okay. So these would you saw me doing is trying to white and I didn't like it. I didn't adjust, just didn't think it made he went in the opposite direction. So this photo made me think of something like this with the gold pen. I'm kind of loosely doing something like this. That's what I'm gonna do. Okay, so now I'm feeling like, I mean, of course we could stop now. But since I'm drawing inspiration also from this one, thinking about putting in either a metallic gold things here. Maybe he then somebody's Navy dots up here. There's just, I think a little bit more than I wanted to do. Detail wise. Those are the things I'm gonna play with next. Okay, So where I am now is that I just remember that patchwork feeling I had. I just couldn't get past. I felt like these two were competing with the composition. So I went to push them back, which I did with my posca pen and seeing here. Now I'm going to let this dry and see if I think it needs anything else and walk away. 9. Final Touches: I've let this sit for awhile. Q days, actually. And what I like about doing that is you just step away and then you come back. Him decided if it's done or if there's anything else. I really love how the gold see that gold metallic, That's the Pinto. The texture that it added. When I'm looking at it. The only thing that's bothering me is the pie. I like these and I feel like I want a few here. Just to help. I got to go from here up and around. I'll also put together some colors. I use these pallets, sometimes these air-tight palette, I have a link on my website to it on Amazon, but they're great for gouache, not so much for the agro gouache. I've used it. You just have to be really careful not to let it dry out. If you let this dry out, it's no problem because this is a regular gouache, so it's just water-soluble. Although when I was making this dark plum, I did by mistake grab some acro gouache purple and put it in there. So that'll be interesting. Just have to make sure that one stays wet. I've got my navy here that I made with black and blue. So I'm just going to go in, grab some of that. Put some dots here. Again, this is all personal preference, but it just felt like I should have some here. You can see that I used different brush there because those are like little square ones. That pressure is too small. Let's try this one. Just get the effect that I was looking for. I think this will finish this one up. I kind of like the shape of leaves to be playful. Resisting the temptation to put some up there, just to let there be some quiet space up there. I did go over the remember when I painted the white. These leaves probably need another coat because I really wanted it to pop. I did do that. I think it's enough. I do anymore. You can see that I'm messing with it. All right. I think we're done. We did. Just to recap, we started lip the blank page. We put in. These painted the elements first. We did three elements. Then we went in afterwards with some neutrals. The goal was kind of a quieter, limited palette pace. So I stayed away from the pinks and the reds and oranges. We add a texture. We use tropical leaves for inspiration. I like how it turned out. This was fun. Thanks for joining me. I have a lot of other online classes and I'm gonna do one on a really colorful tropical leaf to kind of go in contrast to this one. Thanks for joining me.