Let's Paint Floral Greeting Cards!

1. Intro: Let's paint floral greeting cards. Step into a world of vibrant blossoms and artistic inspiration. In this creative journey that combines the art of painting with the heartfelt gesture of sending greeting cards. This is perfect for beginners and seasoned artists alike. This class encourages you to connect with your inner creativity while spreading joy and love through your own hand painted cards. We're going to paint about a dozen different greeting cards, including some holiday cards. And these are all watercolory florals, but you can use acrylic watercolor or wash. I'm going to keep the supplies very simple so that you can do these in a few minutes. That's the idea. It's a card. I'll show you my favorite Strathmore watercolor cards to use and give you the link to buy them. Or you could make your own out of watercolor paper. Either way, your loved ones and friends are going to love getting cards that you with your artwork on them in the mail. These sweet little florals are so special because this becomes your original artwork, you're going to sign it, it's so fun. Hi, I'm Suzanne Allard and my passion is creating art that exhibits joy and encouraging others to express their creative spirit, which I believe lives in all of us. I didn't start paint till I was about 52 and I've learned just about everything I know online in classes like this. I now license my art for products, sell originals and prints and various products on my website as well as teaching online. In fact, I now have about 40,000 online students across the world. I love reading your notes about how you're discovering your creative self. In this floral greeting class, we're going to use flower images that I've taken. For the most part, I include all the inspiration images as well as the photos of these finished cards. In the downloads, I will show you how I use these photos and simplify what I'm seeing to make a card that is pretty fresh and not overworked. Your creations will serve as the canvas for personalized greeting cards. Basically, you'll write sentiments, whether it's for birthday anniversary or special occasion. And through heartfelt messages that encompany your artwork. Let's paint floral greeting cards. It's more than just a painting class. It's an opportunity to create meaningful handcrafted gifts that convey your emotions and brighten someone's day. Join me on this artistic voyage and let your creativity bloom and be shared. 2. Our project: Okay, let's talk about this class project. Although it really is like 12 or 13 class projects because we do so many cards. We're, I'm going to show you the watercolor cards that I buy or you could use watercolor paper and make your own. I like these though because they come with envelopes. We are going to paint many florals. About ten florals and about three or four holiday cards. And I'm going to show you, start to finish what paints I use, how I keep it really simple. The whole idea of these is that you could have five or 10 minutes, just grab a few tubes of something. One, brush your card and maybe a photo reference or maybe just your imagination and make a quick card for somebody. At this point, I have so many cards that I use for all occasions. I don't even buy cards anymore. That's what our project is going to be, making beautiful greeting cards that you can share with your loved ones. 3. Supplies: All right, let's talk about the supplies for this reading card class. I wanted to keep this simple. The whole idea is it's a card, you just have a couple brushes. Maybe two or three colors. Or just really quick so that you could maybe paint one when you just have a few minutes, five or 10 minutes. Or maybe in the evenings. I like to sit in front when I watch TV with my husband, get out my paints and do them, then we're just going to focus on these being relatively quick, all right? The most important thing, obviously, is the card. I buy, these Strathmore watercolor cards. The Strathomore is a good brand and I've tried different ones. I like these. I bought 100 pack, which you can see, I mean, I've had these probably two or three years. I still have a lot of them left. I think I bought like a 30 pack. And then anyway, it's grown. They do come in a ten pack though. You don't need to spend this much or get this many. There also is I just found on Amazon and I'll put links to both of these in the supply list. Strathmore watercolor postcards. They're a little smaller, they're four by six, but they come with envelopes and they're a little bit cheaper at this filming. There are 15 of them for $7 Here is the ten pack was eight something. But what's nice about these is a card you paint on the front and then you can write inside. But a postcard, if you just want to do a painting and write something on the back, that's great too. The postcards do come with envelopes, which is nice. Those are a couple options for you. The envelopes are nice quality, I didn't want ads don't know cheap. This is actual 140 pound cold press watercolor paper. It makes a difference when you're painting. Now, you can also cut your own watercolor paper and make cards. That's a fantastic idea. You don't need to buy the cards. The problem with that is the envelopes, these are the right size, but you can get creative. All right. Let's see. I do think there I was looking for the size. It's almost five by seven. Yeah, they do five by 6.78, I guess, so that it fits in this envelope. But what I like about that size is whoever you send these to, can frame them in a five by seven frame. It's like a frameable card, which is a nice little treat. Maybe it's their Christmas peasant. We're going to paint cards like this, a variety of florals on the front of these. I'm going to throw in some holiday cards as well, because, you know, that's always a fun time to paint cards. That's the paper part of it. For brushes, I used a variety of smallish brushes just because the cards are small. But you could get by with, I've got a flat here, this is a size 12. But you could do really a six past to 12 if you've got one, then around I've got a six. You don't really need all these. I've got four. A couple of four. Is there two? I would say for the details. If you have a good four or two, then you'll get that point. What am I trying to say? The bristles come to a point so you can get some really good quality details. I would just say that's important if you're doing the finer work really you could get by just say these two if they're in good shape with the point there, then let's see, Pat, I used mostly water color in this class, but you can use acrylic. You just water it down if that's what you've got. Use it. You can use gas. You can use a gas. For this style, you're going to be using more water. I would say. Whatever paint you use, don't get the cheapest. You don't have to get the most expensive. But get a good student grade paint so that you are pleased with the colors, with the pigment and what's happening to it. Same with brushes. You don't have to get the most expensive. I like I think actually all three of these brands are a really nice mid cost brand. You've got Princeton here, this is the Princeton velvet touch, These burgundy ones. This black one is the **** Blick brand. I've got links to all this on my website at Suzanne, El.com I have Amazon links and then black supply list links. Then the other brand that I like that's mid range, price wise, and perfectly adequate is this Windsor and Newton Cotton. If you have bought the line of brushes that I designed, they look like this. You can certainly use these because I use them in the class as well. Okay. Now, same thing. Just don't get the cheapest. You don't have to get the most expensive. But I, I would say on the more expensive side are the Daniel Smith and the Windsor Newton watercolors. Then there's the Seneli, which is maybe a little bit cheaper but fantastic. Then a great options, a student price is this Windsor Newton cotton and brand, they come in these little tubes. Really cute. I like that you could literally take four or five cards, a couple of brushes, three or four colors of this and a little piece of palette paper or a little dish, since it's water color and go paint somewhere, that's all you need. I love that they're little and it's just very portable. Now I tell you in the supply list, don't worry about when people say, well, what color was that? Don't get hung up on color names. Just grab a nice yellow, a mid yellow, meaning not too lemon and not too gold. Although you could try those and see what happens. This is an olive green, but I often make green really vibrant one. This is a turquoise, is an orange, pal, orange. And this is a quinacrodonedjust, some magentas, a yellow blue. I've got the indigo too, that's important. A dark blue. You could use ultramarine blue too, which is not as dark. But it'll do the trick. I just like the tones that indigo gets, I guess I would say there are a couple colors that I use regularly. One is Opera Pink. You can see this one's a guache. It's almost empty, but it comes in water color as well. Or if you've got your acrylic, then you can use fluorescent. That's essentially what it is. Indigo is another nice one to have. It's also called paints Gray, sometimes turquoise, some turquoise. All right, that's paint we've talked about paper, make sure you have something for water. I did in a couple of these, some gold pens, I think mostly the holiday ones, but my favorite gold pens are the Pilot gold marker, again links to this on my website, and this Pentel, sunburst, metallic, medium gel, they just perform consistently. And I've tried so many gold pens, I think that's all that I use in the class and I encourage you to experiment with your own supplies. You can try ink, you could, using some other supplies that you have to create texture. You could use colored pencil to create texture. I might use this indigo colored pencil on some of them. But just the idea is to do quick little sketches, be playful and lose. These are all loose. All of these. I'm looking over here because I've got these two here that we're going to do. What's fun about working with watercolor, whether you're using watercolor or you're watering your gas or your acrylic, is that you get those bleed, those fun things that happen. That's where the paper comes in. If you don't have decent quality paper, the paint just doesn't move as well. I want you to have that experience. All right, let's get started. I forgot to talk to you about palettes in the class, I use mostly a ceramic flower palette that sadly broke because I was in Michigan and it broke and I didn't pack it properly. Anyway, that's on my list to replace, But the plastic ones work great. I use this as well. I've put some acrylic in here which is a no, I can get it out, but it's much harder to. I tend to use the water color because you just rinse it out and you're done. And I tend to use the palette paper for acrylic, but you can see I used it for the water color here. And when I say water color, I'm including gash in that, as long as it's the regular gas, not the acyl, which is a combination really of acrylic. G is an opaque watercolor. Think of water color and gash in one category, I know it's confusing. And then acrylic and acyl gash in another category, meaning those cannot be reconstituted with water. Once they're dry, they're dry. This right here, I'm going to have to peel it out. These that are watercolor, I will rinse and you can use them again. That's what's fun about. I'll keep, if I use something like this to paint cards, there's not much paint on here, but you'd be surprised there's quite a bit. And I can reconstitute this and use it. This one looks like it was water color to possibly, it's easier to use this palette with a water soluble paint that you can reconstitute after it's dry. All right. I also use kitchen plates. If I'm not using acrylic paint, then it's going to be easy to wash something out. I've used a glass cutting board. Gosh, the things that I've used as a palette, I've settled on the palette paper because it's just so nice to either if you're going to re use these colors or just toss it. All right, let's go play and make some cards. 4. Butterfly Bush: One of my favorite flowers is the butterfly bush. And we're going to do one of those. I've got a picture for you also that I took, but we'll have this guy right here. And then this is the one I painted. This is the idea came up here with a stem just to about there, a little more than halfway up the mys, and I also put a bit of stem there. Then I had these too in the the buds here, and then these leaves bled into that, which was really pretty. I did come back in with a second layer and did some highlights in here to brighten things up. Let's get to it. I'm just going to grab a darkish green blend over here. Something with blues and greens. All right, let's take our card. Turn it this way to make sure I've got the right side. Yeah, I'm not going to go far at all because this is a long flower. I went more than halfway. I told you that is easy to do. I'm just going to dab that up. Not a big deal. It'll get covered dabbing. I've got a round brush here, but I'll show you how you could use a flat one as well, just by using the corner of it. I'm I have in my paper here a variety of leftovers, just bits of paint. So I'm just going to grab a little bit of all of that and start. I think I'll make this one curve this way. I'm just going to do that to give me a path. Maybe I'll even throw some yellow in this one orange. Get a little opera. Because why not look at this bug? These are really random at this point. You could try to cluster them the way they're clustered here, but I'm just doing random. You could mix up dark and light, and we'll come in after a while and put a few greens in there, but we'll let dry. You don't have to make it perfectly symmetrical. You probably want to try not to do that. All right, I'm going to grab a little green and some hints of stems, stems don't usually show all the way through. Just touching down a little bit. While I've got the green, I can do these small leaves here and I can do these buds that come out, then I can do little dabs on those. Those are going to tend to be, again, you don't need to be realistic, but those are more green. But sometimes I make them greenish and sometimes I put color in them. You never know. Maybe one starting to bloom, grab my flat. Or I could use the large round and start the leaves, the larger leaves pressing down, you can leave Show you this gap in there that suggests the mid line of the leaf is a fun way to do it. That would you just leave that in there or you can put it in on the second layer with a line. It's just fun to play with different ways to do that. I'll put a little more yellow in this leaf. I think I'm just going to do three leaves on this one. Maybe hit that with some green down here at the base. Feeling like I want a little bit of lime green in the flower itself, which can be leaves bleeding. Bits of a bits of stems bleeding into the buds just adds some fun interest. I probably let that dry so that the next layer you can see I did a whole lot of them here. I can put a few more actually toward the outside, that's too red water that down I probably here mower is going by because we're in Michigan renting a house that is close to a golf course. It's been noisy. I'm just going to put that in there. So I took it in a red direction here. Anyway, that's treaty. Maybe I'll put some of that over here. These little guys can bleed like as much or as little as you want if you're touching them to each other. Obviously they're going to bleed more. If you're not, then they won't. All right. Let's let that dry. 5. Five Minute Bouquet: Okay, let's do a five minute bouquet. I'm going to call it that, even though with me talking, it'll probably take longer. Have your watercolor success kit handy, which is a favorite towel. Clean water, just a few colors and palette paper. I have some colors going on this, even though it's getting quite mucky, it'll do most importantly, loose and playful spirit. Okay, I'm going to start. This is the painting we're looking at doing. Just took a few minutes. I might not talk a lot in this one, but I'll explain it after just because I'm going to show you that we're working quickly to start with the vase. Don't have to put it in the center. That's personal preference. I like off center things. Probably because I'm off center, I'm just going to sketch it loosely. I intentionally don't want it overdone and we're perfectly shaped. Then I'm going to come in with some pinks, oranges, different varieties of water and lose, I don't even want to say round because it might not be marks florally tight marks. I'm grab blank in between the orange, yellow and pinks. Come down here a little bit and play. Let's see s grab some more of this pink up here. I'm very loosely, got too much water there. I'm going top some up with my paper towel. Remember that your brush is like a sponge. I actually like the shape of that. I'm not going to add or flower there. I think I'm going to switch now to first I'm going to just suggest again, too much water where the centers of these you can see where they are in that shape. Now I'm going to switch to some greens, again, being very loose, not even thinking about traditional leaf shapes. Because if you put color like this in a vase, the eye will know that it's floral and leaves. You don't need to spell it out, it'll register as flowers and leaves. You don't have to be, just capture the color now. Depending on how much bleeding you want into your flowers, you can touch more or less of them here. I'm just going to make some stuff going up like this and just adding a bit, touching down, really, you could do this with a round brush too. I've just been playing more with water color and a flat brush just to see what happens. I'm going to come back in to the centers of these with a little bit more intense pigment. Just to suggest the center some yellow over here. Remembering that as intense as it seems now, when they definitely fade, this one, I decided to make this flower the focal point. And then a little bit of bright here. Again, it's a five minute thing. It's not a. Master painting, it's supposed to be like a quick sketch for a greeting card. We don't want to get too hung up, but I'm coming back in and making sure it's as intense as I want because knowing that it's going to fade D, this is either the Quinacrodone red or I have a Windsor and Rose matter, darker pinks. Then I can use my pencil again for flattening out the card. It's funny, as you do this, you'll go, oh, that's my favorite flower. And then something shifts. That one is now or doesn't even have to be the flower. It can be just a bit like I really like this, so I'm not touching it. I think I want the tiniest bit of darker in the center of that. So I'm just going to get a tiny bit of indigo. Put it in there, may be in here too. I can put some in there, but I'm being careful not to do too much just using the corner because it just playing with how much I want that center to bleed. I can also come in, I like to come in and just sketch in a little bit personal preference, darkness in the face just to make it show up a little better. Oh, that's really cute. I did a little table on this one. Just sketched it in. I'm not sure if I want to do that on this one because it came out lower. But if I wanted to, what I'd probably do is maybe wait till it dried. I wouldn't have to. I could also just not touch the wet parts and I could come in and do it across like that, but I just like the way it is. That's the thing about staying open, especially with water color. Every single painting you do will be different. You really want to stay open and flexible. One more petal there, maybe now I'm reminding myself that this will all fade when it's dry and I like things bright. So I'm going to come in one more time with some of my pigments. Hit some yellow there. Wash off my brush. Got a little more, my opera. Hit the center here. Maybe there a focal point on this one. You, you could pick this flower and add a little bit of yellow. We could do that. Or you could say, this is a greeting card. I don't need to worry about a focal point. Right thing. You'll do what I do, which is you paint one and like, oh, I'm not going to send that one to anyone. I like it too much. You'll start or it'll be like, well, this is for a really special person. I want a center that flower, that one there. I want something in that one. Maybe a bit more of a center in this one. Yeah, I'm done playing without the talking and instruction. It literally set a timer for 5 minutes, maybe 7 minutes. That's what I did with this one. Now what I did, I want to show you on this one. I came back in after it was dry. And do you see those little dabs there of water color? You can tell that it's like a layer over it. I came in afterwards. You can do that. Actually, this is dry enough to show you. Let's say that I wanted to be just maybe a little more lime green there. I could come in with some lime green. Just do some dabs in there. That's what that is, like a layered effect. And it's really pretty, I think. Especially if it does dry, more faded than you wanted, then you can come in and hit some spots like that. I love what lime green does to composition. I tend to do that. But I also like what indigo does when I have down here. Maybe I want this leaf a little darker. Maybe I want this one a little darker. Just a, so you can get some more contrast in some spots. Okay, That is the five minute, okay? 6. Oak Leaf Hydrangea: Okay, in this module we're going to do an oak leaf hydranga, which I think is one of the prettiest, more complex flowers because of the little seed, the little buds, the leaves. I've taken a picture of this one for you. This was the sample that I painted with capturing those little bits. Now we're going to paint a card. I've got my same water color colors with my ceramic palette. I've also included for you the same sample. You can print it out and have it next to you or have the photo out next to you. Or just find I think I love painting from the actual flower. I just realized that some of this at the bottom is cut off, but most of the flower that I paint is at the top. Anyway, back to the real flowers. You can use your imagination. You'll see the specimen. You can see the specimen of the hydrangaI have it's later in the fall. It's not super fresh as it was to begin with, but you use your imagination and make it look like just bloomed hydrang here. I'm basically putting in a bit of background that's going to be for those little clusters of buds. And I did that first so that it could start drying. This is of course after making just one single stem. I'm using a flat brush here, a larger one, and just I made some leaves and then dabbing in some of that indigo mixed with green for some other small leaves there. I like the way they bleed into each other. I'm making these background almost like blocking in, but making them lighter and then just touching the brush down to get that sense of leaves or the background, those clusters of buds. Remember when you're doing these, when you're done with it, it doesn't matter if someone can tell what kind of flower that was. If someone asked you that, just say it's an imagination flower. Don't worry about trying to make it look exactly like that. What I'm doing, I'm trying to capture the colors, the feel, the texture, really the happiness that florals make me feel. I'm starting to dab in some flowers here in different shades of pink, a little darker, some a little lighter. And then I'm looking at my reference and the ones on the side are blooms that are to the side. Only see their profile, if you will, to differing degrees. And then the ones in front might be facing us more. I do think of them as faces. They're facing, you were there to the side, or sometimes they're facing away. We're working with watery, Whether you're using watercolor or guash or acrylic, we're making that watery look. We want that bleeding into each other here. I'm just adding to those bottom leaves. I like to go into leaves and add a bit of dark, maybe a little bit different tone. I just the variety. I'm just now I'm back on the cluster of flowers and thinking about where do I want getting it to dry a little bit. I'm fanning. A hair dryer works great too. The whole process of drying and when to add what is pretty is a great thing to experiment with. The longer you let this dry, the less whatever you add will bleed. That's just the best way to think about it. If you want it all really blended and watery and not much definition, then add colors when everything is wet. If you want a little bit, if you want, say, those centers, I wanted that to dry a little bit, so they didn't just disappear into the flower. Another thing I like, do you see me doing here, is taking a really watered down bit of color and putting in what will seem like flowers behind, if they're real watery. It just gives the illusion that behind the bouquet, or maybe they're the flowers that are at the back of it that we don't see as well. We just have a hint of the color or a shape. It fills it out to have those bits of faded or very light elements there. I'm liking the shape of this and thinking about adding those bits. And I want to add, I think they're seeds. I was going to say, I don't think each of those becomes a flower. Maybe they do. I think they're too small. Yeah, I think there must be a little seed buds. I've some of initial background areas that we put in, let those dry now, I can come in to get a greenish brown. You're going to mix a little green, a little red, little yellow. Just vary, you want to be loose, some are more yellow. As I'm looking at the actual hydranga, I'm seeing that where the light is hitting them, they're brighter. The ones that are in the back are more dull in color. I just think it adds a great texture and maybe without competing with the flowers themselves visually. Now, I'm just looking for, are there any opportunities to put some stems in? I do try to do the stems quickly. One stroke if I can, just so that they are nice and clean. And then I love like, you see how that lower one is bleeding right into the into that flower. They just give your floral dimension. It's funny, isn't it? You had a few stems and it's almost organizes it how I would put it, it's almost like the Brangos. Oh, I know what we're looking at. I fanned a little more just to get, again, a little bit more control over some of the bleed. Now I'm coming in with the opera pink and a bit of red. Just doing some dabbing. You can see how on that first flower that's really that was more wet. That pink is pretty much gone all the way into that flower. But the flower on the right, the dabs stayed there, they didn't bleed. That's because that flower is more dry. That's what's fun. I think you get the variation just by how much water did you use in the first place? How much time has each element needed to dry based on how much water you used? Sometimes I just come in like this and look for where does something need something. I'm not even thinking at this point necessarily about this is a flower, it should have leaves, it should have petals. I'm just thinking about balance, overall balance of it and color. Where does it need something? I might think I want a leafy element here or there, but I'm working to make the pigment a little bit more intense so that when it dries, it's not completely faded. I love that bleed. I love how that one flower, the bits, did not blend. It's just such a nice contrast. I think I was feeling like there's just not much going on in there. But it needs to dry. We're going to let this dry and then come back and add a few more. Okay, We're dry now. I want to fill in that her do something there. I'm just seeing if it's going to bleed too much because I want to make some dots in there, but I don't want them just fading into nothingness. I love pattern. Any chance I can to just do texture or pattern. I like to do that really. At any point this is done, this is just fun to play. I've decided to just go ahead and add some definition there. Some nice green for a leaf. It turned out really pretty, All right. Hope you enjoyed the oak leaf hydranga and that you send it to someone you love. 7. Peony: All right, this flower, it's an imagination flower, but it could be a pony, I guess. It could be a carnation. It could be a lot of things. I just like playing with the shape and the color. This is something that you can do. You can just take from your memory the spirit of a flower and a particular type of flower and not get hung up on does it look like this or that? Just going to start with some pinks. Well actually I'm going to start with a stem and this dude, like this one is come up here maybe a little darker. Well, I did it again. I told you it's so hard to remember not to come up too far, no big deal come off here. Then really loose. I think the knees brushes is the number 12 flat shader. The bottom layers are going to make a little more watery and then as it dries. This is really just touching down, being playful. You can put a center like that or you can have the center buried. Just try not to make it perfectly symmetrical. You can come down like this. I'm stabbing into the pink. We will be doing another layer on this. That one's good enough for that. This one I can have touching or I can direct it away. You can have really faded, like the out and some water. You can do things like have the faded petals in the background if you like. And that's going to be our first pass at it. And we'll throw in some leaves, maybe some bleed there with the green. Make these leaves bright green and also with a bit of dark there. Let me show you something. Did you see how I started that leaf from above? That makes it darker up here because that's the pigment. There's just a choice to think about that. It's going to be darker now. You can always take your pigment and pop in there to darken at the base. But I just wanted to show you that where you start will be the most pigment in ten with water color because as you move out it will be less user fun to play with. I like the way that's bleeding there, so I'm going to throw a little more in there and we'll let it dry. Okay. I wanted to show you. I just use the hair dryer a little bit to get it somewhat dry and just how you can take this in between dry stage and drop in some more pigment in the center. And it'll run but not completely bleed. You can still get a suggestion of a petal. I thought we'd experiment with this one and do that rather than letting it completely dry and adding another few jobs like we did like I did there. I'm going to take the red, pretty intense red. And I'm getting some bleed but not a lot. That's how you can play with control water colors. This one I think I'm going to close up and not put yellow in there over worked there. And this one I'm going to play with putting some yellow in the center. It just opened up that way. I think it'd be pretty. Yeah, I like that. Then maybe I'll come through here with a bit of orange. That's good. A big drop of water Just went there. I was washing my brush too vigorously. So it's done. I'm going to just sign it and we have another card Chrysanthemum Imagination flower. I'll show you how the bleed is coming out, but you can see that those petals are still moving outward. 8. Meditative Leaf Card: This sweet. Sometimes it's just really nice to do a meditative leaf painting. This is something, well, I was going to say, best done without overthinking, But that's probably true of all painting, but this one, particularly because it's easy, it's just practice to get the paint to do what you want. It does help to have good paint, good brush and good paper. We're going to do this card. My favorite brush for this kind of finer work is a very thin brush, thin round, this is a Windsor Newton cotton. Number two does not have to be Windsor Newton. But I would get a decent grade brush. Number two works really well because when you press down, you can get these leaves. I chose to do this in indigo blue, then I added just a touch of green at some points for variation. The great thing about this is you can do this all in one color, monochrome like this. Or you can do it in a variety of colors. And you can choose any color you want. Because leaves can be anything you want. You can just go with your mood. Indigo is one of my favorite colors, but maybe we'll take this one more in this sap green direction. You could also do reds and pinks. Maybe we'll change it out. Who knows? We'll see what happens. First thing we're going to do is our. I like to work with the card open, just makes it lay flatter. I just usually sweep up this way, probably because I'm right handed. But do whatever feels natural to you. Well, I was talking to you and I had the green in my brush. It's all good. I'm just going to bring some branches off. I am trying to keep these branches thin. You can see that one got a little bit fat. What I might do is actually turn that into a leaf, because if I push down too much, they get fat. Let's just go ahead and do that. Let's see, go on another branch here. I like to make them meander. I don't like things going on in the same direction. I might just go back and forth from the green to the blue to the indigo. Then I just start making my leaves. I got some water in my, not enough. It looks like you see those dry edges there that happen. Sometimes I like that I leave that. Because if you look at real leaves, not every leaf is perfect. Not every leaf has a perfect edge. I don't want them all doing that. If that happens too much, I can go in and fix it like that. I can also put water on my brush. Just fill it more. The thing with a thin brush like this, just to know is that it can't hold as much water. Right? It makes sense because it doesn't have as much as many bristles. It will need to be filled with water more often, you can more water and less pigment. You can take more pigment variety then as far as the actual leaf. I'm touching down at the branch, lightly pushing down so that the brush flattens out and makes that bigger part and then I'm lifting back up. You may want to practice if you've never done this on just a regular sheet of watercolor paper, before you do it, make your card, just, it's a great exercise. And brush control. You can bring your leaves over one another, they can touch, they can bleed into each other. That's part of the beauty of water color and gah, you'll notice that I usually start the leaf at the branch, but. May want to experiment with doing it differently, starting at the outside. Especially like here, I'd have to turn my paper around so I can do it the other way. Just mixing more to go with water, always going back and getting more here. I'll start at the other end to, if you don't like the look where the brush lifts off there like that. Then you can, like I said, fix it. Or you just move your brush more slowly. Like I'll show you here. Just give time for the paper to absorb the water. If it's an effect you like, then go a little faster. Now, I've just added some more green and a little bit of yellow just to take this in a different direction back to my indigo. Put some in the center there and make it bleed more. Just play when I'm making these leaves meander like this. For some reason I think of a ballet, just a graceful, like a ballerinas arms. I'm going to turn this, I'm thinking of that. I'm also thinking of a feeling like a Zen garden. Just very relaxed, soothing leaves that go in different directions. Now I'm really letting the pigment, I've been putting a lot less, I'm putting a lot more water and a lot less pigment. And just getting some really faded leaves, which can be really pretty when they dry. Now I'm going to switch, just to show you that you don't necessarily have to have a number two. Here is a number six round. I get wet. In some ways you have more control because you'll still have that tip and you press down and lift up. It's the same idea as I always say, experiment. Now you'll notice when I lift up, there's going to be a bit of pigment you can choose. Do you want that at the, you know, do you care? Do you want it only at the base end or do you want it at the tip? Here, it's at the tip and here it's at the base. You can go back and forth. All of this gives you that nice variety that actual leaves have. I'm going back over this because it was a little too faded for me. I can be done here, it is what it is, and I leave it as is. I could come back in and do a little bit of accentuating of the stem, maybe darkening it and thickening it a little bit at the base. Another fun thing to do is, let's say I'll do this one. When your leaves are wet, you can put a dab of pigment at the base and it'll start bleeding outward. If you ever do something that you say, well that's just too much, Take your paper towel and gently dab. You'll soak up some of that pigment and it can also create a nice textured effect. Let's see if any of my others are wet still. I'll just show you that bleeding. Put some here. Of course, this works with guash to regular actually. Ah, will do this, it will bleed watercolor paper, maybe not, as well as watercolor paper or watercolor paint or regular gash. Okay. Then we have a lovely card. 9. Stock Floral: Okay, this may be the easiest, quickest floral you've ever painted. We'll see this is in the spirit of stalks, those beautiful flowers that you see in wedding bouquets a lot. But it could also be, it could be a lose, even a snap dragon. The idea is loose. What we're going to do is start with the lines that go up there, then we're going to dab with a large brush, the green. And then come in with a flat brush on the floors. Card here colors what I've got here Only using a couple, I think three. The sap or olive green. I've got a little indigo dabbed in there to darken the opera pink. And then a little bit of the orange, we'll just see how this n comes out. One thing I'll say about stems is it always seems like you've got to see how high up this came out. Start your stems lower and finish like about two thirds up the card, because your tendency will be to take the stem up and then you're sticking your flowers up here. And that's something you just learned by trial and error. We're going to make our stems, since we want to try to get the flowers right about here, we're really only going to make our stems here and short. I'm just taking a round brush for that and a greenish whatever stems can be any color, it can be purple. But we're going to loosely take some lines up here, maybe four or five, something like that. We're not necessarily matching these stems to flowers. That's just a suggestion of a stem. Then I'm coming in with this big acrylic brush. But I would say big you could even if you have a big round that'll work. Trying to think what you could try if you don't have a brush. Maybe take a sponge and a and just come in here really loosely like this. I'm just taking some different shades of creamy. I want to make one stem a little taller just to come out of there. Can have something up here. And then I'm just going to grab a little. Linda go and pop that in a few places for some dark. Okay. I promise to be the quickest bouquet ever. So let me hold to that now. I'm taking some pink with the smaller bright brush and loosely I'm, I'm just grabbing different pinks. See maybe something here. I'll take this one more. That way this one came out really red. So I'm going to dab that. I just went too heavy on my pink. But it'll dry like we've talked about. It'll dry less intense. And then here might be a bud, a suggestion of a couple of buds. I could grab a little orange, toss it in here, always remembering that even though it's intense now it settles down. I just want to loosen those up because they look too linear. Well, maybe a little more down here. That's it. We stop. I do like the way this is flowing. But if you wanted to do that, you could do that too and bring some down. But what did that take? I don't know, 3 minutes. You have a pretty card. It's just loose. It's the stems dabbing in leaves. And remembering that the eye will see the stem, the green and the color and think flowers, it doesn't need to look. You don't need to have it be a representational looking flower. It will register a little handful of flowers. Of course, you could play with colors. I didn't use the turquoise, but I just haven't been wanting to on these. But I love the way look at the bleeding that's happening. You can just do these over and over and over as it's drying. You can watch like sometimes I take a bit of yellow and I dab it. Same thing with the opera pink to increase intensity. It's just a fun thing to do. You can also, like we've done on some of the others, make a little tendril. Let's see what if we made more of an indigo tendril on these. Just watering it down. But if we came here with some lose tendril, sometimes plants have those, this interesting, all kinds of things to play with. It's fun to watch how it dries, isn't it? Like the yellow went into that little tendril and then I feel like I'm going to put some green in that because that tendril got too big for me. Okay. My letter dry. 10. Cosmos: Cosmos is one of my favorite flowers. It's just so delicate and sweet and comes in different colors. We're going to paint a Cosmos card. I'm going to put these two photos that I took in the class documents. You don't show up great on the ipad, on the on the camera, but I'll put them in class reference and you'll have them to refer to. These are a couple of ones I was playing with. You know, I liked how this was kind of behind here, so I was playing with that idea. I think for this card I'll just do a single, maybe something like this with a little bit, a little bit larger. Okay. So I'm going to play with this larger brush that is Cota watercolor brush number ten that I recently got. And it's nice and fat, but any brush you have that has the thicker, it'll help you push the pain around. If it's thinner, you can still work with it. We're going to have to probably maybe put it on its side to try to get those fatter marks. But you could try a flat brush as well. All right, for the bloom, I'm going to grab my opera pink, maybe just a little bit of red to just change it up a little bit, even the touch of blue to get some purple in there on the brush. And plenty of water on my brush. Actually, what I want to start with, the stem, that brush all loaded. I was just thinking I got ahead of myself. I want to start with the stem and I'm going to get a little bit of green, a little bit of yellow like the other ones, maybe a little bit of indigo. I'm just thinking if it's coming up, I'm going to add these cosmos leaves are just really delicate in the photo. Just little bits going every which way. That makes them really fun to paint because you're just doing these little sprigs that don't have to be have any specific harm or reason term, or direction or anything. They go every which way. You want to use the tip of your brush to get those finer lines and you don't have to connect it to the stem. Let's see, I'm going to put my flower here. Probably put a bud over here, but we can come back to that. I want to get the flower in there before this end of the stem dries too much. I'm going to leave a little circle to put some yellow. And then I'm just going to really softly touch this brush around, looking maybe at this one. The petals are shorter on this side to see if I get into that green before it dries and I can push it away. I think it was this one. Yeah. Just see how that petal is curved. Just make them irregular. Not too fussy. Let's try this one. It's a bit darker in the center. Come in with a little bit of the indigo. But I'm going to let this dry a little while we finish up the other parts. Because if I put the indigo in there now, it's just going to bleed immediately out. And I want to try getting it really concentrated in like it is there. Can you see that? Okay, well that's drying. Let's move on to maybe a bud. Maybe I'll put the butt on this side. My butt. I'm going to put a little more red in it. Pink and red. I can put two in there. Why not? I like to let the stone bleed into it. I want a little more yellow in some of these leaves, so I can just drop it in wherever I want it. We do. We have room for a sideways flower over here, as long as I don't take it too far to the edge and make my flower look strangely. Right now it's in the center. I can play with it here. It doesn't have to be exactly in the center, but if we did everything over here, it would maybe be a little too. But if I just make it a little one like that, drop a little more pink into it. Yeah, that's pretty. Maybe I'll just bring my down just down a bit more. I'm just dabbing. You're being you're just really delicate with. I'm gonna go ahead and sign, win some green. How are we doing on this? I think I could probably get away with a little bit of purple color in the center there. Maybe it won't bleed too much because the card is buckling a little bit, which is normal. A lot of this pigments going to the outside, but that's okay. That's part of the fun of water color. I like the way that looks. I'm go ahead and often I'll let it dry at this point before I put in any center, I probably will let it dry and come back. But I'm watching how that's bleeding. I wonder if I can. Oh, that's cool. Look at that. Funny that really, I thought I could keep it. This is the fun of watercolor. I thought I could keep it from moving too much. And there it goes. Well, it's so interesting. But it is more than I wanted. I'm just going to, part of me really wants to leave it, but it is going to take over the flower. I'm going to come back in, so pretty All right. I'm going to pull more pink in there went our purple. Well, now you'll get to see Kata, something that will turn out to be a happy accident. I'm just pulling a little bit of that color from those edges. Now, I am going to let it dry. I'm going to let it dry and then we'll come back and do that darker center in the yellow. I should have left it with the purple that was really pretty and let it dry and then come in with the yellow. But it's fun to play. No harm done. I might just put something right here to get it not to buckle anymore while it dries. Okay, We'll be back soon. Okay. You can always use a hair dryer. By the way, just when you use your hair dryer, don't do it close because you'll blow the the water around and change the paint. Just keep it at a distance that's dry. We'll finish that up. In the meantime, I want to show you a couple of others that I had done for when clients buy an original, I like to send a hand painted cards. These are going out today, actually, with two paintings. I just love how everyone is going to be different. I love that whole process. I just wanted to show you those. Let's go ahead and Dab, let's go back to that purple. Maybe a bit of yellow on the inside of that. I don't I don't want to give up on trying that bit of purple, just a matter of letting those layers dry. But if I keep the purple out of the center, then I can, and I don't touch it with the yellow because I do not want to mix purple and yellow. I'll get brown, so I'm going to try not to touch. It's bleeding a little, but that's really cool. Okay, We are leaving that alone. This one you could decide if it's facing the other way, which I've decided it is, then I wouldn't put a center in it. But you could also say that it's this way. And you could have a center in it. But to me, the way it came out, it looks like it's facing the outside. We are done. You can see how this can take 5 minutes once you practice with them and make yourself doing really fast and have fun with it. 11. Loose Floral Card: Okay. Well, I, I thought it was recording the making of this card, but apparently I wasn't. So it's still wet, but we're going to make another one. This is a loose floral. The whole idea here is to be just super playful and lose, and move quickly, and not overthink. I might be quiet sometimes, but I'll explain it all if I am when it's done because I just don't want to overthink. The first part is going to be the green. I've got a couple greens going, the sap green. And actually a yellow. Got a piece of palette paper here, just a few colors. The opera rose. Another pinky rose. Or maybe this is Quinacrodone pink, I can't remember. An orange. And then the indigo. For the loose green parts, I'm going to use acrylic brush. You can use a big watercolor brush too, but just something big that doesn't let you get too precise. Okay. Being very loose and just pushing color around, not overthinking and adding water to keep it loose. I do try to be conscious to not put an exact square on my page. I want it to be a little more natural. So you could go this way or you could go this way and even spill into the back of your cart. That would be pretty, right? Let's try that. That's pretty. Okay. I've got some yellowy greens. Some darker greens. Let me just throw a little bit of indigo in there. I'm just touching it. That'll just darken up the greens. If your paper starts buckling like this, what I'll do is grab a brush like this allows me, sometimes it'll stay, but if not, I can just hold it there. I don't want it to be in your way though. I'll do it this way. The water moving to whatever shape is fine. It's just that if it's really buckled then it all goes to the outside. Sometimes I like to adjust that by doing this. That's a personal preference. All, I'm going to stop there with that. Then I could stay with my same big brush, but I think I'm going to go to a bit smaller flat shader or bright, which is the square shape. This is a 12, it's still big. And just grab some of this rose and pink and go back and forth and make loose floral shapes here and there. I'm just just being as loose as I can. This is supposed to be, if I weren't talking, this could be done in 5 minutes. And that's the idea to just get on where that Rose, you don't really have to hurry. It's interesting feeling, It's not like you're rushing, but moving quickly to keep it light. And I'm going to grab some orange. Throw it in there just for some variety maybe come up here. What you do want to watch, because you're green and your oranges and pinks can tend to mix, you might get some muddier colors. Let me just show you this is probably going to dry. Interesting. So I'm not going to do anything but let's just say I thought that was turning to mud. I can take my brush and just absorb it and erase it. Let's say that I didn't want all this green pooling here. I can pick it up. The brush acts like a sponge. I can even bring some over here. Now, I'm going to bring in some more of this really bright yellow with the green to make like that limey color. Just a nice highlight, different spots. Maybe do something here. So this isn't hanging out there like that. Just loose and playful. I'm watching, looking. Okay. Now I need the brush. Let's see, this brush. Which flower do I want to be My vocal point and I'm going to do this one. What I'll do is I'll take some of that opera and come back to the center. And just make that one pop more. Because the water color is moving outward, it will dissipate. But I can keep feeding the figment this way. I'm just giving that one a little more pink food. This one as I'm, I don't want that much darkness right there. I just absorb some. I like the way this is going. I think I'm going to do a little bit of dark in the centers. It's a process of watching and letting it dry to decide when it's where you want it to be. Keep in mind, they always dry. More faded looking. You want to go overly bright and like this one, that's almost dry. Now you can see that this is the one I chose as a focal point and I thought I was really brightening it. Now it doesn't look quite as bright. Just keep that in mind to exaggerate, I might bring a little bit of yellow up into this one. You just dab it in, see what it does. That's the fun of water color and, but it's more orange in there. This is buckling here a little bit. So I'm just going to press there, which makes this come down a little bit. I think it might like some yellowy green dots here. It's starting to dry there, so they're not blending in. That creates a layered effect and I just like how it looks. Personal preference, I'm letting it dry a little before I put the centers in, because if I put these indigo centers in now, it's really going to bleed into the whole flower. I just want a little more time to pass. Let's see, where else do I want some yellow up here? This yellow is so intense that I'm water it down a little bit, make more of a lime cream, just really I like it. So that's the whole idea of this particular type of thing, is soft, we get a little more indigo in my palette. The mystery of water color is such fun, you can't control it as much as maybe some others. But you can control it maybe more than you think like. Okay, let me show you here. This is getting brown. There's nothing wrong with some brown. If you look at, okay, there's some brown, but I just want a little more green there. I just soaked up that brown in green and it'll blend nicely as it dries. You can see what that yellow did there. All right, I'm going to try some of the end to go. Now, in the centers, that color can be really intense. I want to make sure I don't get it too intense again, if it goes too far, I can absorb some of it. It's harder with the end because it is so dark. But it usually ends up being really pretty the way it spreads out. Yeah, pretty. I love that water color bleed. You could do something like the suggestion of smaller leaves here, going off the page. You could even do a suggestion if you like of like some sort of stem. Or you can just leave it like it was just I love the play of the color. You can take, just do how you have like say a sweet pea and it has wandry things. Those can be fun to add. Just giving you some different ideas. Yeah. When you do this a few times and you just let yourself get loose and don't overthink, then you can knock one of these out in 5 minutes. When it's dry, it looks something like this. And you can even come back as it's drying or after it's dry and add more if you like, or you can just leave it as is. Just remember that the intensity will dial down like this one could have maybe another wash of some green. Here, let me just show you how you can do that. Even though it's dry, it's mostly dry. Who wouldn't like getting a card like this? Hand painted? You can just come in and especially because it's not completely dry, I'm going to throw a yellow in there to mix in. It's mostly dry, but that can be a nice effect to just come in fully like that. I could do the same thing with the flower. If I want to bring a little more upper pink in here, I could even come in and make some layered suggestions of petals. I can do that over here at the orange. Maybe I want a little bit of darker thinking about contrast, trying to keep it below. This is a card, not a, not a painting that's going to be, although that's why I like these five x seven cars to see your friends and family that receive them, can frame them and may very well do that. But you don't want to get attached to that when you're creating it. Strike fear in your heart and shut down your creativity. Just keep it loose and playful. Let's look how this one's drying. I just love the way that go. See how it bleeds into here and turns into lets see if I can point like a purple there and there. Now, if I had wanted these centers to be smaller and not bleed as much, I just would have waited a little bit longer. But look at that yumminess right there, the way that it fled in around that pink and orange, huh? All right. That's a loose floral card. 12. Yellow Zinnia: All right, let's do a open Zenia. There's different ways to do, obviously different flowers. This is what I did with it. I added a baby one next to it. Let's gather. Using the same colors you'd be using. The yellow, whipple, orange quite a bit, and then greens. I made a splash here. We'll see what happens. I've got my card. I've got the right side, the non linen texture side. We've got our flower brushes, water, paper towel. Okay. I love just sitting down even with these few supplies for a few minutes and you can paint four or five of the same flower, because you're sending them to different people, you can get a rhythm on just one particular flower. I think I'm going to grab a little bit more of a four just because that stem, the stem is narrow but it's not super narrow. Grab variation of greeny brownie something. I want to make this stem a little less straight. I don't really like how this was so straight. A more natural looking, something like that, maybe like that. Careful being mindful of not getting this is actually a bit high. It's okay because we can, I'll show you how you can, before it dries, erase the water color. We'll bring it down that way, our bigger bloom can be here. The shape of these tends to be like a half circle, loosely. If you look at it this way, it's like that. That's all I'm thinking about is I'm dabbing and I'm going to start with light. I've got on my paper here enough different things that I can grab some water, a bit of orange if I want. Just so that it's not I'm going to say out of the tube, Yellow. But yellow has been so messed with that, it's definitely past the out of the tube Yellow. But I'm getting more water on my brush and just starting some marks in that shape. I was talking about a dome shape with a bit more orange toward the center. These flowers are going to be in layers. We're not going to get at all the way we want it In this first pass, try to, even though zanias are, I was going to say try not to make it very symmetrical. Anis definitely tend to be quite comp and just to make it more natural, I dropped this off a little bit. You do see that there's a petal that is going off this wayward way. Then I'll come over here to this little one and do the same thing. You can have surprising little pigment on your brush and it'll show up when it's dry. I like to do that in the background. Sometimes these really pale bits that you'd say, I don't see anything, you probably don't see anything. I barely see anything. But when it dries, we'll see a little. Then the leaves, I'm just making these a little more leaf shapying quickly off so that, you know, get into too much thinking about them. This is going to be dry on the pale side and then we'll come in with some layers if we want. You might like it this way. Make a little more of my lime green that I like. I do like taking a bit of darker color at the base. I might come in with a little blue and darken this stem a little now. So. The dark goes right into the base of the leaf. While it's wet, maybe I've switched to the round now just for a little more precision, it could put a little a yellow in these leaves, maybe some more of this olive green. I need more water in my green can use a dropper or spray. I just happen to have this here just to dark knees here at the base of waiting for the flower to dry. Maybe I'll do another leaf. Go back to my flat, I think I can come, some of this is pretty wet, but let's see if we can come in with a layers a little bit more yellow. I'm really just dabbing and maybe a little more orange in this one. That's too much orange. It's amazing, isn't it? A little bit of paint. It takes to pigment to create something in water color. Just kind of going back and forth between these two, staying loose and playful, maybe make this focal 0.1 a little larger then as it dries and we might have to wait for it to dry completely. We'll see if we can get. I made these little dots to suggest the center. It looks like there's some dry places where I can get some of those in. You can go with a brown color like there's on the flower or I did a greenish brown just for now. Just to show you. I'm going to where it's mostly dry just because if I dab in the wet, it's too wet. It'll be okay in a little while. But see, it just disappears. We'll let that dry and then come back and put those centers in and see what else we want to do to this one. But it's very sweet and since I have this color, I might as well sign and we'll let it dry. Let's see what we want to do, if there's anything we want to intensify. All right, since this is all dry, let's take a look and see where we want to add. This is, again, personal preference. Add a little bit of color, add some more dots. You can see I came back in on this one and just added some bits on the stem and leaves. I like that layered look, but you might sometimes the bleeds the way they are just lovely. You pick and choose where you want to add. I'm just going to add some pops of some yellow here to just a little variation on this side and maybe a bit more orgin here. This one really is quite faded, so I want to bring that one to life a little more. Just adds a little bit of interest. Then maybe I'll do a little more in the pick up some green here that's on my palette paper. Interesting greens forming from all the different colors I have on here. I'll just put a little bit of that in there. Maybe a make that lime green I like a little bit. I take my brush dark blue, I could put a little bit of blue in this stem just to darken and give a little more contrast. Again, personal preference, you do want some contrast. How you get there is up to you, but you want a sense of even just little bits like this. I'm going to bring in some of these darker blues greens. And put them in the center here. Just some of these dots. That's just a touch up, okay, that zia is done. 13. Amaryllis: For this card, I played with some Amaryllis ideas because I did some point sets, but I just think they're not as interesting as an amaryllis. And I also like the leaves of Amaryllis. This one I combined the amrellis or point set, and then they're more point set of leaves. Then this one I played with more of this look and then I threw a stem in that one. But I think I like them without the stem. Let's see how it turns out. In the I'm going to put, this is just a Amaryllis reference photo. I'll put it downloads For this one. Again, the larger brush is nice. The round brush. Get a card. I'll use the number ten. Again, I am using really only about, let's see, the pink, pink, red shades and then a little bit of the indigo to make that purple for the center is what I did here. Then I thought we could come in and do some little yellow white marks to indicate the St. I don't know that I would draw this. Just simplify it by making a few dots in the middle. But let's start with the flower. Get our card. I don't know that you can see that image because I think it comes through dark on the camera. But let me see if I can brighten it for you. All right. Well, you can look at it. You could print it out or look at it on the device of your own. I was just thinking, do I want to center it or not center it? I think it'd be more interesting to have it large. And going off the page, just in my mind and just to sketch it out, I think I'll have the center here go off and then maybe like Georgia Otf South. Just fill up the page I started with on the outside parts. See, there's these outside strokes that are a lighter pink is what I did. And then I came through with the darker. Let's do a mixture of pink and red. But watered down quite a bit. We'll see, Once we put it on, then what I did is I just went down and out I left a gap. And I'm not trying to make all these petal shapes the same because look, are larger, some are smaller. I'm going pretty quickly so that I don't get too, that's the solution to being too fussy. If it's not as fat as I want in one place I can go back. I try not to, just if you do too much of that, it impacts that fresh look of the painting. It starts looking a bit overworked. I do end out, because that gives me a nice point at the end of each petal, but you don't have to do that if you are more comfortable coming in, but try it going out. I came in then with some red, red, and more intense, less watery. I came in and finished in the center, so that I got that bit of I made that too straight. I like to make straight lines and natural things and just finish in the center. Some will bleed and some have the space. And I like that variation. Then I made a bit of purple. Depends on let me show you this one. The first bit of purple I made bled out to here. They all acted a little differently because they are all different levels of dryness. If we want it to not bleed too much, we would just wait a little bit, let some drying happen, you can experiment with it, but again, that took no time. I'm going to let it dry a little bit so that I have more time in the center, and I am feeling like I want some green. I may end up regretting it. But it's a card. You can always send it to your mom. She'll love it no matter what. We're another family member who would just be thrilled no matter what it is. If you have people who wouldn't be thrilled, don't send it. Because that anything you make, I think is wonderful. I'm looking for this great shade. Too much, too bright, too green to add a little more red to it. All right. Somewhere in there. I think I'm going to come this way. Amarilla stems are thick, I'm just going to come straight down. Their leaves are thick and straight to, they just come up like that. I could try to take a leaf going over this way. If I do that, I'm going to fold it carefully because I want to take the leaf off the end and it'll be easier for me. Stay. Let's see. Use my clips. Okay. A little extra help there is. I think this is, I'm keeping an eye on that center. I think it's the level of dry that I wanted, so let me watch out the green and go back in and do that purply pink in the center. And I just made like a little irregular center shape. I didn't us too much about it being perfectly round. And I'm going to come up, maybe I'll put some gold in that leaf. I had it out anyway. And thinking about where that leaf would go, I'm going to have it. This is tricky, right? This is where I use my extra, a brush like this to hold it down. It's better than my fingers, but I want it to come and curve. I'm just going to do a quit line and go right up to the flower. It's dry there, but if it's not, you can just stop right at the flower. The way I do this is just in my mind, I just take the brush and go to see if I've got the close enough line or the leaf. I like that going off there like that. It makes me want to do another one or maybe just make this one thicker. Don't you love how you can create? I was going to say anything you want, but sometimes we don't have the skill yet. That creative gap that artists talk about, where in other creatives where you know what you want to create, you just can't get it there. We all have that as we improve our skills. I put a little gold back in there and yeah, why not do another one? I was just thinking this will be a bit darker but also with some gold in it. Didn't have I could leave it like that. Didn't have enough paint to get one stroke. Okay. I feel like I'm performing surgery here. Very carefully handling the card so I don't lock it up while we're filming. Okay, that helps. I've really been enjoying these little gold clips. I found them on Amazon and I think they are in my Amazon supply list. If not, I'll add them. This is getting pretty. Yeah, I like that. While that dries, let's play with these and see what centers we like. This is where a white comes in handy if you're using water colors. They often don't come with a white. Because water color, you achieve white and water color by just using the white paper behind it. But you've got a little bit of white acrylic or white, or maybe you have some white water color. Sometimes it comes with it. Then I'm going to make just a really pale yellow. Let's throw on some gold. Since it's there, when that yellow is too bright, I want more white. Let's tone it down a bit with some purple. It's a too bright, put some orange in there. I know I don't need to fuss this much for a color, for a few little dots, but why not? It's fun. I don't want to brush that big for these, these are little things and they're shaped. I'm just going to make like a little Ab shape like those. You could put them in the center. We could put them off center. I think if we did that with that one, let's try drawing in some of the stems because I think if they're off center, it's going to look strange without the lines. Then this one, I'm just going to go around the center like this. Then we can see which one we like for drawing on this one. I look at these lines stems, they're coming up curvy. Let's see how that works. I always make sure my pen is actually writing before. Yeah. You know, these ink pens. So I'm just going to bring these out and attach them. We'll see, It might look good, might not. I like them, but I don't think I want them going in one direction. I think it'd be prettier if we did here, let's get another sample. If we did them going out like this, picking different lengths in different directions, maybe one really sticks out and now let's pick the dots on them. I think that's going to be the winner. You could just, actually, I'm going to leave some so we can see what it looks like. Just coloring in the gold. Do the whole thing with the gold pen. Could either do it that way or see these gold pens have different shades of gold. I did a Youtube but on all the gold pens that I've tried, well, at that time, and there are so many shades of gold, there's greenish golds, and coppery golds, and yellowy golds. Ooh, I like the gold. Okay, that is the winner. So back to this card. You're not dry. All right. I guess I have to pause and come back. That's so pretty though, isn't it? Yeah, I actually kind of think it's interesting to do the mixture of the gold and the paint, but when this is dry, I'll come back and finish that up. 14. Holiday Wreath: All right, let's do a few holiday, a couple of holiday cards. One of my favorite things to do that's easy. Remember these are greeting cards. I want to make them quick and approachable to you. So that you could have 5 minutes, 10 minutes and do one. We're going to do a wreath, a very simple wreath. I've got my same water colors here. I've also got some wash here. You could use acrylic. It could just be used interchangeably. We've got our card folded the correct way, which is with that watercolor texture on the outside and looks like a linen. It's not going to really matter too much, I just think this looks nicer. Got it open. First thing we're going to do, I'm going to get a rather large ish brush. You could use a four round or six round or a filbert which is shaped like this, makes nice leaves. We'll probably use that for leaves, but I'll use this just to trace around. Just grab a drinking glass and just helps you center it. I don't want a perfect circle, but for this one I do want, not like right there another one we could do that. I think it'd be fun to do a wreath that's half off the page. But for this one right in the center, I'm just going to grab a tiny bit of green, greenish. I'm really just sketching and I'm not going to do a line because I don't want to show through if I have some pale areas, dabbing down a few areas to give myself a suggestion of a circle because I don't really want it to look perfectly circular. We will use two brushes to do two different kinds of styles. Well, more than two, but just to have a little fun with leaf shapes and grab a piece of pallet paper, you have to do that leaf shapes and flower shapes, that way we'll have a good writing. Okay, starting with the Filbert. This is a size seven filbert, but you could use a four or six. I think I want to add some indigo here just so I can get some of those darker values in the leaves. Okay, I'm just going to do, my first layer is really going to be watery. I'm trying to keep it playful. The leaves looks like this. Just playful, Going in one direction. You can have them go in different directions, but at least get your rhythm and flow of the wreath. I'm doing a mixture of these dabs and then these more outline leaves. I just try to be loose so that it doesn't come across too fussy. You can make a fussy wreath too, if you like. Get that green going Again, this is just our background softness. Maybe there's a little variety. I'm going to extend away from that, another layer going out. Still watery but with some variation. Some things that are just maybe out here a bit, things that are a little bit, we don't know what they are, they just add interest. It could be a leaf, some greenery. And I'm varying yellow, my darks and my lights. I just like a variety. Let's see how there's some blue in there. So I'm going to bring some of that in and just touch it in while this is still wet. Just gives me a little bit of some. Always remembering, especially water color it less pigmented then it is when it's wet. I'm just making sure some bits that are highlighted. Actually, I was thinking, what else do I want to do before it dries? But I like where it's going now. If your card starts buckling up, which it can, you can do this and just hold it there for a little while. Maybe not till it dries, but you may have something. Let's see if this fits. Just barely fits to hold it. While this, it doesn't really have to. If it's buckling too much, all of the water and pigment will go to the outside of the wreath. Maybe not the result that you wanted. I'm watching it dry and I have an opportunity to just do some little bits. Maybe I'll switch to a smaller brush here now and do some little bitty things that could be coming out of here. You might even be, we're going to do red berries on this, but we can still keep it really simple. And maybe do some leaves that are, well, they could be purplish. Let's see what we think of that. Reddish. I think a light purple would be pretty. Let's see, a little testing card. Yeah, I think that's pretty. I could just do some leaves that will blend a little bit here and there. I take that out because I wanted to sneak in here a little bit. It's, you know, optional. You can really, I mean, a wreath, you can really take anywhere you want. You can have little like ferni things coming off with. Let's, I love indigo. I'm obsessed with indigo. Let's make some indigo, little tiny ferns, maybe they're pine bits. We can also come on the inside. This is my number three round, really good for finer details. Maybe something up here too. Okay. I think that is a place where I want to stop and let it dry. That's all I would do. And then come back. Well, actually you could leave it as is. You could come back in and we will, we'll come back in and add some berries which we could do with paint. Or we could do it with a paint marker like I did on this wreath. Want to just show you a little painter. We could also write a word in the middle of it with a pen. I like sometimes write the word joy. We'll let that dry and then we'll decide what we want to do with it. Okay, it's dry like we thought, the colors have definitely not as bright as they were when they're wet. But we can either go in and layer or they're pretty. I'm not that concerned. A card, what we can do is add some brightness with little details. One of my favorite brights is Opera Pink, which is really basically a fluorescent in the water color wash types of paint. They seem to call it Opera pink instead of Opera red instead of fluorescent. But it really looks pretty darn close. It's dry. We can just come in here wherever we want. And I'm using the three round again, different sized little berries. I can make some of them just a touch of green to change the shade of some of them so they're not all uniform. If I want, as long as you're varying the water, they'll dry in different intensities, which is pretty too. Let's put a few more of those here and there. Different size, different shade if you have just a bit of green. Get a tone down version, you can get some variety, some that are really bright though maybe just a third spot over here. I do think in terms of odd numbers, when I add elements three to 57, that thing I'm trying to, these are getting a little too lined up, so I'm going to put some help there a little bit. My card is stiff actually. I'll just open it back up. But once it dries, of course we can put a book on it. Or when we stick it in the envelope, the envelope itself will take care of that. Now this is where it's fun. Like I said, you can stop now. But we're here to play. So we can take a gold pen. These are my two favorite gold detail pens. I have links to them on supply on my website with all matter links, but for finer work. The pentel, sunburst metallic medium, then for a little bit thicker, the pilot gold marker. I've tested so many pens over the years and these are my Go two for just performing in the shade of gold. Believe it or not, there are different shades of gold. But you know what? Before I do that, I'm thinking I want to add a little bit of indigo details on some of the stems and leaves. Just a little something. Another fun thing to do is just to come out here and do outlines of leaves like this. Maybe a branch, let's see, we could do a branch up here, but you can do the little cards, you know, in the evening in front of the TV. Because look, we just need a tiny bit of paint. It's a small surface. You can even get a large book to put it on your lap as your table. I have one of those lap desks that I like to use for painting in the evening. Of course, it has paint all over it, but that's okay. You can also make a little ferny thing, but I don't want to fill this so much that it's crammed. Same thing. You can do that with the cold. You can come. It's a holiday card, so a little bit of bling is fun. Come through and do some ing on leaves. You could even do berries with this. What I've done too is when the red, you can come back in and do a little bit of cold, that you can outline some of the shapes. You can draw a leaf right in shape that looks like a leaf. But wasn't you basically put it in there, that's fun thing to do too. You can also just come out like these. I'm just going to put lots of stuff in this so that you see all possibilities. But you can do, Sir, squash, really anything your imagination wants to do. Now in the center, you could play with all kinds of lettering or leave it as it is. But just to show you, here's some gold joy. This was indigo in then. This is just using some of the color with a paint brush. We'll do another wreath and I'll save the ink for that one. For this one, I'm just going to use the gold pen. Let me warm up my hand since it's going to be in the card, just I'm not making it fancy. It worked sometimes. If I write faster it's better. But all that you really matters is that it's in the middle. And then we have this sweet little card with a little bit of gold. And those dots will dry nice and bright. And if I want them even brighter than I'd do another layer. But how fun is that for somebody to get that card from you? So much fun that you had putting into it. And of course, you can sign it. They know that you didn't buy it. All right, have fun. 15. Holiday Tree 1: Let's paint a holiday tree. I know I said I was going to do another wreath, but then I got to thinking and playing with other designs. And I wanted to do a tree. And then maybe a pointa that I've been playing with a design. These trees are so fun and so easy. Then I started playing with different decorations. But then of course, different colors. Tree doesn't have to be green. I did the trees first and then when they dried, I came through and played with different ideas. This one is metallic pen, but we'll go through these and I'll show you how I did them all after we paint our first tree. Let's get our card. I've got the same colors I've been using in my cleaned out water color palette, my palette paper view. I've got a turquoise, an olive green and indigo. This is a Quinacdonedd is fine, that's the opera pink. And I have already mixed a couple of those two into here. This is an orange, may or may not use it in a yellow. Now for the tree, it does help to have a larger round brush. I made these trees with the number six, but it's easier if you have something larger. This is a ten. I just played with the design until I got it really simple. It's something we could do quickly. We're going to, as a guide, take a watered greenish color and just come down the middle where you want to start your tree and where you want to end it. This is handmade, we don't need it to be perfectly straight. Bring down here to the trunk and we'll just make the trunk a little fatter, but we'll add to that. Then I start with a variety of shades like you saw here. You can do turquoises, you can do anything you want. The thing to remember that I had to practice several times is you're starting small and then you want your branches to go out larger. Just go slow. I do use a lot of pigment because I want mine nice and bright. And I know that the color fades when it dries. I'm, it's going to look maybe too intense. Um, as I put it down. And then I'm going to just do some indigoes and go back and forth on these different greens. Okay, So I'm going to basically put the brush down and then go out Stop for the first one which is short, put it down the same spot and go out and let it be. The cool thing about this is you end up seeing the brush strokes, then I change color a little bit so that you see something different. I put it down and go out a little further down and out a little further. You can take these sweeping like a here that more or they have to come down obviously. Or they can just stack. Maybe I'll throw on a little bit of turquoise just to get some variety. I do try to do it in one stroke just because it keeps it from looking overworked. But sometimes I don't get the placement I want, or in that case the color, because I put too much turquoise. And I'm going to come over here. I know though that this will fade. Of course, I can always go in with a second coat. Now I'm going to go to the darker indigo. Put it down the middle, Bring it out, Put it down, bring it out. I know from experience that where I pushed, the pano is just going to be too faded, so I'm going to drop in a bit of color just by dabbing with my brush like that. Again, this will work if you're using this good watercolor paper or any good watercolor paper, it will work whether you use watercolor gas acrylic paint. Okay. Just making sure I want a little change. Maybe I'll add just a tad of orange, which is just the tiniest bit is going to subdue that green. Go down, it'll give me a little bit of a color change. And just remembering to go a little bit longer on each stroke about trees are not perfectly symmetrical. This may be my last one, but maybe I'll fit another one in below it. I just like how the brush leaves, that scratchiness at the bottom of each clump of branches. This last one, I'll go dark, dark. I can leave it there. I can take it further out. Okay. And then I like to just make the trunk a little bit different colors. I'm just going to add a bit of red down here or you can add orange. It'll basically turn it brown. You can make it. I'm just going to bring it down a little bit and then what I like is you'll see when it dries, it goes up into there and bleeds that little tree turned out pretty well. It will fade, but we can always go through with the second coat. I'll show you one that I just did that way you can see that the a second set of branches on top because it was a little more faded. But look how look at that natural bleeding from the trunk into the tree. That's so pretty. That's drying because I just did that. This is the one we just did. So pretty. Pretty. All right. Let's make a pink and orange, pinks and reds one as are drying. That just took what, not even 5 minutes. And then you get to decorate them. How fun is that? Okay, cleaning my brush. Now I'm going to pick up the orange, red, yellow family. Not straight out of the tube though. I'm going to mix a little bit of my pink with some red because that opera pink is intense. I'm going to do the same thing with my guiding line. Just noting where my trunk is is a little thicker. Please. This is just one idea for a design. This guy is a limit. Do anything you want. Stopping here and going out a bit of fuzz there, maybe then going in an orange direction. I want to make these colors more intense. Because fading, that's really intense. I think that's going to be too intense. Whenever that happens to try not to waste the pain, I try to get as much of it back into the well as I can. I could even go over here and mix so that I have made a third color. All right. That's going to be less intense. I'm really not pressing down too hard on this brush. Let's see here, go back to the opera. Pink. I want more of it, looks like a finger. So I'm just going to join it up more, drop, a little more pink in there. If I know at the outset that it's going to fade, I can go ahead and drop some color. And before you know it drives too much, just depends on what you want. Let's grab some yellow. Make a pale orange. This will just be a sunshiny tree. Floral colors, how's that? So pretty colso thought you could do an ombre tree, right? You could start with one color and just shift to another color, where now maybe just back to a reddish. My colors are intense, but you could also do just a really soft one. Let's do an orange. I'm just keeping an eye on the edge of that card so that my tree doesn't have to be perfectly centered. So that I'm going to about the same distance back to the opera pink mixed in with the orange. Oh, I want more than that. If you notice that the colors are coming across too pale, it might be that you're pressing down too much on the brush. I'm seeing the trunk a little bit there while it's still wet. I'm just going to go through and put a little more color in. That just means that when I made the trunk, I didn't water down my pain as much as I did in the previous one. We also, these colors are lighter. It's going to be really intense, isn't it? Now, Mucked it up with going back in because I'm getting too much water here. All right. It's good that you see how how to fix things. I've just mopped up some of the water with a paper towel and now I'm putting the color back in the way I want it. Just a little bit more color here. There we go. So I'm going to pull up some of the pink down here in the trunk because I could leave it that way, but I just want to have a little green and have it be a little different color that absorbs up into the tree. Okay. That's a nice fat colorful tree. Oh, look at, you see the yellow bleeding into the pink. So yummy in there too. All right. So let's see how our first tree we did is 16. Holiday Tree 2: It's almost dry. I don't yeah, I like the fact that I put more color in to begin with and so it's plenty intense enough and that nice bleed from the trunk. These colors bleeding into each other naturally. Pretty and a combination of a natural look with the water color and then our addition of intense color. Now, decorating, there's so many options. This is where you can just doodle. You can get your gold pen and you can draw outline. I think I did that here first. I did some gold circles. Get my gold pen collection here. I've got fat ones, thin ones with the circles. I used the pilot gold marker and just made the circles and colored them in. And then I outlined the flowers with this gold sunburst. And I'll put both of these in the supply list. On this one I just drew branches, really leaf branches on top This one I used the opera pink to come in and make just different shapes. I just was playing to see This reminds me of like a folk art flower right there. You could do the mixed like this or you could do all folk art or you could do a little loose ones like this. Now they did them in pink and then I came back through with the yellow. You have to let the first layer dry. In this case, there were three layers. The tree, the flowers, and then the centers. Same here, I did the opposite. This time I did the same type of flower, just facing different ways. Then I came in with the opera pink as a center. This one I just really loved all the bleeding in it. And look at that trunk. I didn't, I didn't know anything to that. This one I came in with some gold at the top. And then the lining is pen here, right along here. And then also some turquoise flower and that is Opera pink plunked in the middle layer on that star. But you could see how you could do endless combinations with these. I just want to dry this off so we can start decorating you. The other thing I was playing with, this is fun. I had most of us have a whole punch hanging around. Right. I took an old, just watercolor painting. Actually squash maybe acrylic, but it's watercolory looking watercolor paper that I was using for collage and then I took my whole punch. Now this is a little too symmetrical for me. That makes a little bit too perfect circle. But I did like the variation in color. I just went around and let's see, what do I have to get another pink? I cut these out. You could glue these on as little ornaments. Be fun, right? Dodge, or medium, or medium of any kind. Artist, medium. You'd use a glue stick for that matter. While for me a little too round, they do have a natural, nice water color variation in their color. I think it could be pretty. That's one idea. Then if you've got some variety of supplies, you could use colored pencil, paint, marker, gold paint pen, or you could just stick with paint and come through with another color. The only part that's not dry is this little branch over here. But I'm thinking that it might be nice to do maybe a gold garland that comes down, then maybe just some, get a scrap. That's how I come up with ideas. I was thinking of a simple ornament shape that was not round, you know, those ornaments or shape like this maybe do some of those smaller and with an intense color. Actually, if I just touch my brush down those ones too big, let's switch to a smaller one. Sees basically it's a leaf shape. I think I'd rather draw with a brush like this, Get more. We could do gold ribbon garland and then the hanging off of it. Let's try it. So let's see here. I'm going to come just, it's buckling a little bit because, you know, it's wet and it hasn't dry. But like I said, you can just wait till it is dry to the touch and then put, put a paper towel on it and then a book. I think it works better if the paper towel is on the reverse side. If it's dry of the touch you want to flatten it, you would turn it this way on a surface that's really flat and clean, then actually you don't need the paper towel because it's already wet. We're not going to dampen it and just put a book on it. The envelope that it goes in will of course help flatten it too. All right. Now let's try these. I might try the opera pink straight out and just see, since we have the green in the background, it's going to reduce the intensity of it. So I might not need to, Usually I tone down opera pink, but we're painting on green anyway, which is naturally going to tone it down. I'm just randomly putting these turn out to be too symmetrical as I evenly space these. Oh my gosh, we need be when we're over here. Maybe something over here. Okay. That looks pretty balanced. I think I want to sign this one in the green so that it's not, if I did it in the opera, I would be a little too calling attention to itself when this dries. If you wanted, you could go back. Let's see if I did that on these. Did I do any others with you could go back in with a little bit of metallic gold. I think on top of these little ornaments. I think that'd be pretty. Let's see how our red one is doing. Look at those colors. Oh my gosh, you are so pretty. This was the first one I did where I really pushed the pigment as I did it, and I really am happy with it, honestly. It doesn't really need decoration, does it? Who might be fun? I was just thinking of a bit of gold that blended in, it's dry though. We could have dropped some gold ink or something in there before it dried, but we could play with some. Now this is liquid gold ink or you could use a pen. This gives you a little bit more of like painting as there's metallic gold paint you don't need. This is just acrylic ink. Let's see, let's see if I just dab some men in between some of these layers. I don't want to hide that pretty bleed, I just want to, This one's so showy already. I might as well embrace that and add some more bling. Oh, that's kind of interesting. Have to see when it dries. We could have also done, or we could still, do you know, a little gold circles and let's see why not do a gold flower up here. I might as well sign in gold. I do like this liquid gold in almost every paint brand has metallic gold. All right, those are holiday trees, a couple of these are dry. So I can show you. Before we stop this module, I'll show you. You could take and just do a little bit of if you wanted the dry, when they're all dry. A little metallic gold. That's pretty alright, have fun. 17. Outro: Yeah, I hope you enjoy the grieving card class. It's so fun and approachable to make these and then when your family, like my mom still loves getting these, Even if I just do some simple leaves, it's so sweet. I hope you enjoy the cards and send out your joy and love to the world. I just wanted to remind you that at my website, at Suzannel.com I have an e mail newsletter you can sign up for. I do essays on the creative life. Sometimes I do reviews of some Youtube videos that I've done. There's just a lot of resources on there. Anyway, that's at my website. Remember supply links are on my website as well. I do have a Youtube channel also I wanted you to know about if you wanted to just continue to learn I do paint and chats and I'll get a new type of sketchbook or supply and test it out and talk about it. Sometimes I'll just paint Anyway, I hope you join me there and I really want you to keep creating no matter what, because it's good for your soul. That's good for you, and that's good for the world. Let's just keep creating. Even though we may sometimes feel discouraged or not where we want to be, I promise if you just keep at it and just keep practicing. And even if some days all you can do is make shapes and colors. In fact, you can make a really pretty card with just taking some of the colors and make a watercolor splotches of different colors and then maybe doodle on them. You can do all kinds of things when you're feeling maybe less inspired, which happens to all of us. Anyway, thanks for joining me and I hope to see in the next class.