Let's Paint Houseplants!

1. Houseplants Intro and Project: Hello, I'm back with another mini class. This one is house plants. If you followed me at all, you know that I love plants, leaves, and flowers. But there's just something meditative about doing lots of meandering leaves. I think that the two paintings we do lend themselves to that meditative experience, mindful and relaxing, and also beautiful. I chose two compositions that I did in the sketch book, but you could of course, do them on paper. This is watercolor paper, I use quash. The emphasis was on the meandering, especially with this one graceful leaves, and how to capture that movement. How to use color and texture and just grow the house plant in the directions that you want it to go to make it an interesting composition. This is going to be a relaxing class and an inspiring one. I hope we're going to use as inspiration some paintings that I had done previously with that wonderful pigmented opaque watercolor. You, of course, can do these in watercolor, you can do them in acrylic. You can really do them in anything. You have that thick, opaque chalky texture that I get with the gas is regular Gah, but Aproah will work again. You can just use water color and make it a little bit more pigmented or you could your acrylics. But if you wanted to get a little bit more of a chalky look to it, you could buy white to lighten your acrylics with. This is a trick, you could try that, but I help you grab whatever you have. Come with me on this journey of expanding these house plants and grab a cup of tea or coffee. Maybe put on some music And join me in this fun class. Hi, I'm Suzanne Allard. I started learning to paint when I was about 51 or two years old. I learned really almost everything that I've learned. Online classes, all kinds of online classes, classes like these many, many others. In that process, I decided to become the teacher that I really needed, which is a really encouraging teacher because I had a very harsh critic and she still shows up sometimes. But anyway, I started painting and then I started licensing my work and selling prints. And in fact, I have very excited. I have a new deal with Robinsburger for a puzzle, which is just a thrill because I love puzzles and I think they're the best puzzle company. Anyway, the point is that you can start at your kitchen table like I did with no formal art school training. You don't know what you're capable of until you get in there and defeat the fear. And be brave and keep at it and keep creating. That's what I try to do in these classes, is help you along that journey. Encourage you to primarily not give up and keep experimenting, keep investigating, exploring, and creating. Welcome to my class. I have many others here on skill share. I think I'm up to 21 or two. I hope to continue to have them frequently. We'll see in class. 2. Supplies: Inspiration, Paper and Tools: All right. Well, if you've taken my close before, you know that I'd love to just show you all a variety of things. But that I always want you to know that. I am not saying you need to buy all this. That you need to get. Just I don't want it to be overwhelming because you could do these florals with just one of the types of paint I'm showing you, of course. And just one of one or two of the brushes. And just keep things really simple and one sketchbook. But I would just like to show you all these things so that you can say, oh, I like that, I want that, or I like this, that's why there's a lot of variety in the class. But I never wanted to overwhelm anyone or have them think, oh my gosh, I have to get three Sketchbooks and three types of pain. Okay. So that's my big disclaimer. Don't let anything keep you from creating. All right, let's start with some of the references that I use. I have a few floral books that are my absolute favorite. I will put links to those and notes about all of this in the class supplies and download. Make sure you look at that as well. One of my favorite references is this flower color guide book. It's small, it's handy. And what's fantastic is that the flowers are all with a white background. You can and they're just photographed beautifully. You can very easily see flowers. And just like look at that, that right there is inspiring me because I like meandering buds and flowers. It's organized by color. We may not use it by color. If I say I'm in the mood to paint something pink, then I can go into the pinks. But of course, when you're painting, you can make anything any color you want more. Use it as a reference for if I really want to paint a aculos like there and there's a bunch of different colored Rnaculus in here. Look at those poppies. Okay, I could spend this whole video looking at this book. You Get the Idea. Flower Color Guide. Flower Recipe Book is another one that I like for similar reasons. It's a book that shows how to put together bouquets like a recipe and like in cooking, there's pretty bouquet pictures that are inspiring and we can lift from. But also it has these spreads like this where it'll toss the flowers out like a table here, there. This just helps you really closely see and say, I might pick the way that that is curved and the way those buds are coming off that thing. That's that one. All right. Yeah, I love my books. I also use my own photos as reference in this class, which I will share with you, of course. For pallet paper, really, I have not found a palette paper that didn't work, so you do not need to spend a lot of money on it. I've gotten a cheaper brand at a store called Michael's here in the US, and it worked just fine. This is a brand new one, sorry. But what's nice about the Strathmore that you care, and not that it's really expensive, is that it's attached to the pad. You can just use this pad piece of paper and then throw it away. I tend to just have a piece of paper next to me when I'm working. You can use other things for a palette though. You can use a glass cutting table use that I used to. I started out using paper plates as long as they were waxed. That worked basically any non porous surface. Because otherwise if you say the paper plates that are not don't have like a wax covering on them, then it just paint just soaks right in. The other thing, palette wise I want to show you, because I use it in a couple of the paintings, is this quash, airtight palette, which people get very interested in. And I did a Youtube video on how I fill it and how it works. But briefly it has these vessels. I have kept these colors in here now for probably two months. A couple of them I see here are starting to dry a little bit. I just use a pet like this or a slitle spray bottle. I get all that. All of these supplies, by the way, if you do want any of them are I have links to them on my Amazon, on my website, and my Amazon links. I also use these little make up spritzers and do it that way, but the point is that it's air tight. If I seal it and I don't do anything with it for a week, it does really well. I will say that the paints stay better longer if I use distilled water. This is actually distilled water in here. Yeah, I've learned that one the hard way. Otherwise, they can go get your paints out and there's mold in the O. We don't need moldy paints. All right? Let's talk precious. So again, use what you have. I'll say what I say in every supply video, which is when it comes to supplies, you don't need to get the most expensive. But please don't get the cheapest, the bottom of the barrel. Because whether it's paper brushes or paint, you're going to be disappointed. I would rather you get less of a decent quality. And I just mean like student grade, you don't have to go out and get the most expensive arches. Watercolor paper, real sable brushes, not just stay away from the cheapest brush wise. Let's talk about that first. This is my Suzanne all designed, It's a set of ten brushes that we release twice a year. If you want to get on the waiting list for those, just go to my website under supplies and you'll see it there, a link to it and you can get on the waiting list. They're synthetic brush. I just picked all the shapes and sizes that I use a lot in my classes. Don't feel like you need to get those. The other two brands that I really like are the **** Black brand and the Princeton Velvet Touch. But I will say there's also, silver is a great brand. They're all synthetic. I don't use really much real animal hair in my brushes. Just a solid, at least student grade synthetic brushes. All you need sizes. I use a variety in my class. It's amazing how handy and versatile a filbert brush is. That's the one with the shape like this. This is a size seven, you could use a 468 around. Obviously those are the go to thicker is often better for florals as long as you have something for the details when you want to do the smaller stuff and that's what this little guy is, this is a number four, then flats are really nice to have to sometimes, depending on what your I use this number four flat a lot. So those are brushes, pencils, sometimes I use them for details. I don't think I used any of these pens, intallic gold pens, in this class, but I do, sometimes I often just sketch with watered down paint. But sometimes I'll sketch with a light colored colored pencil, either a prisma color or a water soluble pencil that's not water soluble. But the nice thing about the super color and you can use the crans too. The brand is Card, it's Swiss. Whether it's the pencil or the crayons, they make ones that dissolve is your painting marks dissolve in the paint and go away. All right, let's talk sketchbooks. I used and tested some that are a good price and a good quality. I wanted watercolor paper for this class because we were doing those style of florals. I did, I do have a mole skin watercolor sketch book, but I don't like the shape of it for this. I like square and I like this portrait shape for this class. I, I love this little sketch book. This is the handbook. It's made by speed ball, but what I like about it is the nice lemon cover. I also like that you can choose to get it in either 90 pounds or 140 pound paper. That just refers to the thickness of the paper. I always talk about using at least 140 pound paper when you're doing your artwork that you're going to put on the wall or sell, but in a sketch book it can get really thick. I love the option that this handbook gives you of ordering it with 95 pound paper, I think it is. It's just a little bit lighter but plenty thick for a sketch book. Love that one. Comes with a little, they'll come with a little string and then this is really nice. Before you know you've painted it, it's dry. But you can see this sketchbook is half full and there are some flattening that needs to take place. What I'll do is take this out and then bind it like that, and then put heavy books on it overnight. These little clips, by the way, are great. I got those on Amazon. I think I have a link to them and my list. This is one of the florals we'll paint. I like this now. These next two are the Artisa brand. I have not loved or been impressed with their paints, but these sketchbooks I think are really good quality for the money. This is a nice size, the paper is good quality. Nice linen cover. It looks honestly, doesn't it, like they imitated handbook? Actually, I think they did. Now I see the little pocket in the back. Yeah, very similar. Very similar strap. Similar linen cover. Anyway, it nicely bound, it lays flat. I do use the clips when because I've got paint on these and it helps train the spread to open it. This is the eight and a quarter by eight and a quarter, and I use this quite a bit in class, mostly that then this is the larger one that is new to me and I've been experimenting with different things with it, but I use it class as well. And it's like eight something by 11 and something, same brand arts. All right, that's sketch books. 3. Supplies: Paint Options: All right, let's talk, Pat, I've got some paints out here to try not to confuse you because it can be confusing. I have acrylic, which I did use was surprising success in the toss florals module. It's all acrylic. It's amazing. And it's in the Artis sketchbook. I think if you use good paper and a paint that flow, which the nova color acrylics flow, we almost indistinguishable from watercolor. When you work with them, you can see some small differences. But anyway, the nova color paint is a paint that you have to buy via mail order. And I have a, a bundle with them, a Suzanne Allard artist bundle. They're in California. They're a really nice artist grade paint at a student grade price if you live in the US, because the shipping overseas makes it too expensive for US people. If you don't already have acrylic, you might like that. But you might also like these probably. I encourage you to use what you have now before you start adding. Listen to me. I have so many types of paint, I don't even want you to see what's on the rest of this table. Okay, so acrylic here, I just want to help because this gets confusing for people who aren't familiar with these and it was confusing to me. Then there's Acyl, which is acrylic paint and G combined. This is regular. The original type of G was used in France. Think at least 200 now. It's more than that, years ago. It used to be used to do those beautiful wallpaper and interior design patterns. And it's just opaque and scans really well. It's just beautiful. It's the first paint that I started with. I don't know why most people don't start with wash, but somehow I did and fell in love with it. Then I discovered Acroh, which has all those properties, that nice chalky matt finish high intensity pigment, but it has acrylic in it. When it dries, you can't disturb the layers. There's nothing good or bad about that. It's just knowing depending on what you want to achieve with a particular surface and what your goal is for that painting. But you'll see in the class, I use these three interchangeably. I will say that. Remember that this is the only one of these three that can be reconstituted with water. The regular guash, these two, once they dry, they are stuck. I've got a palette now that I got into the moment and I'm mixing and throw some guash in there and some macro and acrylic. And now I've got to clean this palette that it can't just be rinsed out. That's why I like the palette paper. Anyway, I use all three of these. They are interchangeable. Don't worry about mixing them. You'll learn what does, what you experiment with them. Now, color wise, I, for the most part, you can make your colors or use the colors you've got. I will point out some colors that are my go to colors that are harder to make or more challenging. I always have a turquoise on hand. Then Opera pink is what it's called in the gas world and watercolor world, but it's basically a fluorescent. It's, I think it's richer than a fluorescent acrylic, but it's a very bright pink and I use it rarely straight, but it mixes and makes everything pop in the pink and red and yellow family. All right, let's talk about brand. We talked about the acrylics. My two favorite acrylic brands are a whole in that's these two Turner I guess goes that way. Then my favorite gash brands are, well, I've got to get some Turner because I like that one too. Well, it looks like well, let me get you in. It's called Turner Design Wash, and I think it's the first paint I started out with. I think it is. These are my favorite brands of regular guash Turner, which also the Acyl, then hole bin which also makes an acrylic quash. Even though these don't look like the packaging and then Linds or Newton designers guash is lovely, these are a little more expensive. The turner is really a great paint at a good price point. If you're starting, you've never tried Guash or Aqua. Don't feel like you have to do anything more than to have some success. All right. We did the sketchbooks. And by the way, if you want to paint these paintings on paper nine by 12 paper or eight by ten, paper, 11 by 14, feel free. I just love what sketch books do for you mentally and creatively. I feel like when I open up a sketchbook, it feels like it's inviting the pressure to produce a painting is gone. I also like the whole spread part of it. You'll see in this class, we'll do some paintings that are across both sheets in the spread. Then we'll do another painting where we turn to the book and paint it this way. And then we'll do some where we just do one side of the spread. But it's almost like when I do one side, the other side is beckoning to me to do something that, that compliments the one I already did. Some people just use one side and leave the other side blank, which is fine too. I just have found that sketch books for me have really help my heart blossom. And that's because I think the fear is lessened, the approachability is increased. It's just so much more, I don't know. They're like my friends miss sketch books call to me and say, hey, hey. That's why I don't even want to count how many, because then I try the little ones and the big ones in this paper and that paper. But anyway, you paint on whatever you want. I'm just glad you're here. So let's get started. 4. Getting Started!: For these leaf love les, I'm using a couple of pieces I had done as inspiration. And I'll include them in the class downloads. This is a flatter style with the gash and opaque. And then I used some gold pen to detail them. I'm going to use regular guash from my air tight palette. I always like to have a couple other colors out in case I want to use those. I'll put a link to the Youtube video I did on how to create the air tight palette that you see me opening up. Now I will leave these paints in here. Now, these are regular guash. You can also use it for water color, but I'll leave them in there for sometimes a month or more. I've definitely left them for more. I just make sure I use distilled water like you see me doing here, spraying them, even if they dry out completely. If you use distilled water, you won't get mold in there and has this nice air tight cover you seal it. They last really well. I've made the colors that I like in there for more detail. Again, I'll put the link to that Youtube video on the supplies. I'm going to start with a composition on the right side, just getting all of my necessaries. You always want to have a paper towel handy and your paints and something to use as a palette. I'm using a piece of palette paper here, which I will also put a link to in supplies. Then just choosing, often the colored pencil to sketch with sometimes a water soluble pencil, sometimes not. When I'm teaching like this, I do use a darker pencil so that you can see it. I like that light blue pencil but I was afraid that you couldn't see it. I'm not going to follow my reference exactly. In fact, you can see at this point that already I decided that I wanted to change the shape of the vase. It's a good thing I did go with a water soluble pencil and then I always have one of these magic eraser sponges around, but you can also use a paper towel and then if you're using a water soluble pencil, you can just wet and erase. Thinking I want another vase on this side. Because these are two paintings, I don't end up working on them at the same time because I get carried away with the one on the right and then the one on the left next. Sometimes that happens, especially if there are more precise paintings like this and the flow faster style. I can go back and forth and do two paintings at once. But this one I wanted them to have different looks. Anyway, I just stayed with the one on the right. I really do like that yellow gold that that was in my reference piece of art. I just didn't like some of the other colors I chose. That's why we paint A and A. To learn what we like to improve our skills. Brush strokes, colors. I'm getting out some white acyl gah. Now you see that I've just mixed regular gash with acrylic guash. That's fine. Just be careful that you don't put acrylic wash or acrylic into your, if you use an air type palette like this. Because it will dry, since it can't be reconstitute with water, it just ends up drying on the sides of the palette. I did that once. I thought it might work if I just kept everything spent on the sides of the beach vessel. It dried, spreading this beautiful, it's like a merry gold yellow around. And dipping into my vessels in my palette, which I try to keep those colors clean. But this time I just went for it. Now my white has some yellow in it. But what I usually do is take another brush. Not a very nice brush, just cheap brush or maybe a stick. When I go to Starbucks or coffee shops, I pick up stir sticks. They're great for getting a bit of paint out and spreading it on your palette paper. Since I'm going for that really opaque look on this one, then I'm just putting in a bit more paint. You get to a point with quash though, where you have to stop and let it dry because you just start removing the part that you just did. You can always add a second coat if you want more opacity. I'm grabbing my number four flat, one of my favorite brushes. I haven't given a whole lot of thought before this to the color palette. I ultimately decide to do a variety of greens, and obviously the yellow and some blues. But at this point, I'm still thinking I might be able to go and do both painting. I go ahead and I do the vase, which I want it to be different, mix up. It's interesting blue, isn't it? It's got a bit of tiny bit of turquoise in it and getting a nice thick coverage on this vase. I love the pairing blue and yellow like this. Especially this particular blue and yellow reminds me of like a French country fabric pattern. Really pretty. I'm not trying to get the vase too perfect. I want, I don't want it to look strangely imperfect, but I'm not going for exact symmetry either. That way that vase on the left can dry anyway. Now I'm grabbing the big round. It's a number eight. These are those brushes that come in my Suzanne Allard design set that I designed. We release them a couple times a year and I think we're in the middle of one now. But by the time you see this, it may be over. You can just go, if you're interested in them, you can go to my website, Suzanne Aller.com and go to supplies. And you'll see a picture of them. And you can click on there and get on the wait list for the next release. There are ten brushes in the set, all the sizes and shapes that I like. I love mixing greens. I really think it's a wonderful exercise you can use bought greens. I have some. I usually have a lime green or yellow green on hand. But learning to make your greens, there are so many beautiful greens that you can make. I love meandering, curvy lines. That's what I'm doing here, thinking of these, like a ballerina's arms just graceful and I try to never make a straight stem. It's just my thing, you may want to do the opposite. I didn't start out even knowing that. That's why you just paint, you paint a lot and you start having these awarenesses like, isn't that interesting? I never seem to want to do a straight stem, or I like some veins on my leaves, or I don't like this or that, I like having stems and leaves cross over each other. That thing, I'm making sure that there's a good amount of pigment on this brush so that I can get that nice juicy opaque line that I'm going for here. I thought I would put a couple of thicker leaves going out that side just for some variation, whereas the others in my mind were stems. These are going to be leaves, then I end up slightly altering that later on. Now I'm adding a bit of lime green and changing this color and starting to add some leaves by just being very one brush and in some cases leaving a bit of gap between the two strokes. I like the stroke itself leaves a vein. Whether you leave some space or not, the paint accumulates on the edge of the brush. If you do this this way, you'll have the suggestion of a vein just from the way you done the brush stroke. In some cases, I don't know why I close that one leaf up. I like to open like that. Funny. You'll see me continually getting more paint or water. Just as always managing the consistency of the paint to yield the effect that you want. If you want a dry brush effect, you want more texture showing, then you obviously let the brush dry out, or let the paint dry out a little bit more. But I wanted that really opaque, juicy, full feeling I like when you can see the actual paint on the thing that you've painted. The ridges of the paint, now I added a bit of white just to vary this green a little bit. And now I'm adding a little bit of blue. Just changing shades. Just a little bit of color change in water volume can give you those changes. Now, I don't know if you saw that I just put orange in the green. You might think what orange has become one of my go to for making greens because it's opposite on the color wheel, it just gives depth to the green. It only takes a tiny bit though, because it's opposite. If you put too much and you'll get mud, but there's nothing like orange that I've found. To deepen your greens, just give them that rich color. Technically, I would say you need to make greens, a blue, a yellow. And of course, different blues and different yellows make different greens, and then a bit of orange, or you can use a raw sienna or a burnt umber or a yellow oxide, something warm in that orange family. This really just becomes, in a way, a study in shades of green. Different shades of green on a plant and different shaped leaves will be arriving. I wasn't getting the thickness. I wanted getting some more white in there and getting it nice and juicy. I'm taking it even warmer and brighter. I'm going through some of those more pale leaves and just putting a bit of a little yellow ish on each one for some variety going back to dark. So adding some blue, I mix until I like what I see. Basically, over time, I just learned what colors make what. Actually, I'm still learning. I learn every single time I paint. Yeah, here's where I decided to take another big leaf down like that. I always like something. We multiple things on top of the bouquet. In my composition, my floral compositions, I don't want everything to look super tidy. I want to, interesting and maybe a bit surprising. I've made a really pretty blue and I'm coming in with some smaller blue leaves. I'm looking for little places where there's nothing yet but also overlapping. That's the beauty of gas and acrylic, is that layering that you can do? All right, I think it's a good time to stop and go to the next video. 5. Painting the Verdant Houseplant: Just adding more variation. You see how just a tiny bit of a color alters it. I'm thinking about, okay, do I want those little blue leaves spread all over the bouquet or where they are? Those are all the little decisions you make. Do I want them to be? I think I just decide that I like how they're clustered, where they are, how plants, the greenery will be a little bit darker. The fresh leaves, the baby leaves. But I do want some of that color in other places. One of the ways that I move color around a lot in florals is with the details. Well, that color is made. I go around and add some veins in the leaves. Some of these leaves are dry and some are not. And it doesn't matter. The ones that are less dry, the vein bleed in a little bit more. And the ones that that's part of the variation, that's fun. You don't want it all to be the same. I had to get plenty of paint on my brush to do this longer vein. You want to just really fill it up and not run out of paint in the middle of a vein. You can pick it back up and fix it, but it's just much easier to get enough paint on your brush to begin with. Now I'm feeling like the bits of the stem that are showing need a little more definition. We covered up a lot. But what showing I want to just highlight just a bit. I'm looking at it now for overall balance. Just thinking about how it feels as my high goes around the paper. And I'm getting my liner brush. This is the only liner in that set, but any liner brush or even a number one or number two round will work. A liner is good because the bristles are really long and allows you to make long, thin marks like the ones I'm making. Now, I don't know what inspired this, but I think I was looking at a picture or remembering maybe a plant that has these little seed pods almost. They could be seed pods or they could be really thin leaves. I got really excited about it. Then I thought, well, let's make a really soft blue gray and add a little bit of excitement to this little house plant arrangement. When I do elements like this, I like them to really look like they're falling or wandering. I'm trying not to make them all go in the same direction like that first one I did. Yeah, I'm fixing it because I made all three of the little bits the same length. I'm saying no, that was bothering me. Yeah, meandering in different direction, putting things on top, layering like this gives an interesting sense of depth a little bit. I'm definitely feeling like I need something more in this lower left corner. I want it to be different, but I needed a little something. I'm mixing up some more of that color and taking the whole thing a bit longer here. I like to work on odd numbers, and when I counted, I had six of these little clusters. I added a seventh up here. Then I kept going. It became a fun way to fill in places that felt a little empty. Now I have eight. What will I do? Stay with eight or make it nine? This is where I decide to make a warm. I take the color that we used basically in the leaves, but I added a lot more white. So it's just a really, really faint, so gray because I want to tone well, I like pattern. Anyway, I wanted to tone down the yellow and bring the composition together. Have an element that was in the. An element rather that was in the bouquet and the plants into the. I love this liner brush for the. It makes really nice marks you can get. They're called script liners or just a liner. They come in all different size handles that they're really handy to have. Now you'll notice I'm making the bits around the bottom and the sides smaller. I'm not really worried about perspective on this, but I think I like doing this to create the illusion that those are a little bit further away. The ones in the center are the largest. It's just something I like to do. Sometimes I really challenge myself color wise to stay in this family, which I like to do. Sometimes I use a test paper to see if I've got the shade that I have in mind. I felt it needed a little bit more contrast. I just mixed a darker slate blue stems are just lines, right? Lines and stems can really give interest to something, dots. If you feel like you need something to spark things up, a bit of something lighter or a bit of something can do wonders. I knew I wanted to put some darker value in this, and I chose to do it with the vein and some of the leaves. And then these clusters of, I don't know, little seeds, berries could be anything, but they make it, I don't know, they give it like a light. And I was going to say playful, but it's more elegant than playful. I think the feel that they give it. I liked it. And so then I took the paint. Choose any car you want and do your signature, and we'll let that dry and paint the other bouquet. 6. Starting the Flowy Houseplant: For this side. I know I was thinking of this as inspiration, but I feel like I want to do something much more cascading all over. Maybe we'll do something similar but have it go in lots of directions. I do really like this pale tone down green. Maybe we'll use some of that to go through, do a couple of touches in here or maybe we'll use pencil. Let's see how it goes. Maybe start with some peaky for color on something like this. I just go with what feeling like I want to do and also what would be an interesting combination with this vase. I really like this color, but I want to make this side different. Let's see what happens if we add some of this red and go teach direction. Let's see what this looks like. That's pretty. Maybe with some more white. I'm almost out of that white. Good thing I have another one. Yeah, we can do different shades of the peach. I think I'll start with a darker shade though. If you'll notice in this, I've got different shades. I just added color to make the different leaves different colors. Sometimes I make the darker leaves more in the background, then sometimes I make the lighter ones and more in the background. But you definitely want a difference. You'll see here how that's light and this is dark. If they're going to cross each other, you do need a difference in color or they end up melding together. Let's start with some darker ones. And that's why it doesn't, you don't have to worry about exact colors because I want color variety in it. I think that was metallic cold getting dry. Let's give it a spray. I want this to be a little more yellowy and instead more white. If I want to tone it down, I can grab some of this blue from the other side, from over here and activate that. Just darken this. Then I have a variety of shades here. All right, this started out with one main stem, but I'm going to do see one coming this way and that way I feel like I want to fill up this page. You can do yours anyway you want, but for the stem, I am going to change. It's easier since I've got the brush on that color to get another brush for the stem. I just want it to be in the same family but darker, so makes a bit of a darker peach that's a little too intense. There we go, that'll be for the stem. It ended up looking like a heart. Oh, we'll have to fix that. That's so funny. The leaves will hopefully change how that goes. Let's put some leaves in these and then we'll see what happens from there to make these really long, elegant leaves. You're just touching down, making sure you have plenty of paint on the brush. I'd like them to be chalky and thick. I'm going to go to different places with this color and then come back through with another color. I'm thinking of just really graceful, almost dance moves, varying the length and the direction. Of course, crossing over with some. I just did that because sometimes the brush will give you an end like that at forked, which is fine on some leaves. When on some leaves I want it to be nice and pointed, so I go the other way and clean up the point your natural variation like how that leaf came out is because that's what we're going for. If you look at nature, you will not see perfectly shaped leaves, at least on most species they're sometimes torn or half a leaf and facing another direction and all kinds of things. I'm almost to do one more and then we'll change the color. These color changes will be subtle. I could just take more white for example. Usually I'll add more white. Or go, or cooler warmer would be adding some yellow. Cooler would be a maybe a touch of blue. I just added some white. Let me add this orange tone as well. Remember, white cools things off. If you want to lighten something but you want it to still be warm, then you want to use a bit of yellow. When you add white, what you'll have to watch is, are these drying before you cross over, like that one was really thick, it's not going to dry, be ready to cross over, but some of them will be. I just want to make sure that my color is quite a bit lighter, which it's not, so that we can see a difference. It's blending a little bit with the color from yesterday, which is perfectly fine because it's a light color. Interesting. Making sure I have enough paint on this brush and enough water so that it'll flow over these long leaves. You don't really want paint on the feral like that. You really want it on the brush. But it happens, the trick to going over, especially if it's not fully dry like this, is just making sure that you're not over working it. I still want it lighter. I'm going to add more white. I still want a little more of a contrast. Can use the warm light, the beige. Let's clean out this darker color that's at the base. I want some of that in there, but not so much that it's taking away my color contrast. It just practice to know liquidity, that's viscosity and art, you want your paint, how gooey and you can really have fun with these leaves crossing each other every which way. We have to really tread lightly on the darker service surface just so we don't pick up that blue and get it wet and reconstituted. And we can come through with another coat on that too. Let's see, I want to get more. Okay, here's a trick. Can you see how I'm rolling the paint down? The brush because it'll accumulate way up high and where you need it is at the tip. That's what was happening, and that's why I rolled it. This leaf I took in the other direction. I started it at the tip and then ended it at the stem. You can do either way. They give you different effects. Sometimes it's just simply where the leaf is, this is looking. So I love the movement in it. 7. Finishing Flowy and Adding Details: We're really trying to just do one stroke. Might have to touch it up like here, but we're not wanting to fuss because it's that one stroke that just makes it clean and pretty and you can have the natural brush stroke. Lines in the leaf go slow, very meditative. See the I'm trying to just place the paint on top, not drag the brush too much, but we'll go over those blue parts. We may or may not with a second coat, there's nothing wrong with seeing the vase through there. It just depends on the look that you want. I'm debating if I want to add a third color. I think what I want to do is take this color we've got, but add a bit of yellow, make a third color, really warm, peach. Let's see how that's looking. Yeah, that's enough of a difference. Remember that G is funny, Lighter colors, dry, darker colors, dry lighter. But if you're using water color, you can do this too. Of course, the leaves will bleed through each other and acrylic will work too. We're not trying to get that bloom effect that you can do with acrylic. Could be fine. Yeah, it's pretty pretty color thinking about which way I want this one to go because I want to cover some stuff in here. So I think I'll take one up here and bring it down and maybe I'll let some of that dry and go up with one that we won't read off the page. Why not getting more pain, especially when you're painting over another one. You want to have a lot of pain on your brush so that it saturates that spot enough. I'm kind of just looking at it. I mean, we could stop here, of course. But went kind of straight, didn't it? Just a little surprise. That's pretty, I don't think I want to do anymore because I like some white space. I love how this is moving this way. There are some spaces with white. But that's okay. We're doing white space in this class. Yeah, I really like it. We let that dry a little bit and see if we want to do a second coat on any of those that are over the vase. Think about if we want to do any marks on the vase. In the meantime, let's come over here and just maybe take the gold pen. It just needs a little bit of definition. Whenever I'm starting with a jewel, I've learned to use a scrap paper and make sure that it's working the way I want it to work. I think I'm going to start with this is sometimes just so subtle and it's personal preference. I just felt like it's a little and it needs some bits of it needs some definition. There's lots of ways to do that with lots of different tools, but one of my favorite ways is gold pen. So I'm just thought of circling some of these and then putting a little stems on them. And the stems would be kind of pointing all to a cluster like you see in a plant point almost like a star toward the middle of something. Let's see what happens if we put a line through some of these guys. I think that's pretty, they show up a little more. By the way, I such a gold user that I have my favorite gold pens that perform well like this. They are listed under supplies on my website at Suzanne All.com But the thin one is this Pentel, sunburst, metallic, medium gel. I've tried probably dozens at this point. This one performs the best for the longest. Again, this is personal preference. You didn't have to come through with anything. I just wanted to do a little something. You might like it, you know, just the way it was. I don't think that'll do. All right. Now that this is more dry, I had put my brush in the water so it still has the color on it. I'm just going to dry it out and it doesn't really bother me that you can see the race, but I'll just show you. I have some of the original color here. Whoops. I always have to watch the water that gets on the handle of the brush and then drips down, just like that. And I covered that pretty well. Then we have the yellowy color. I think I covered up. I mixed up my paler one. If you're using glo, save a bit of it for this purpose. Because you can reconstitute that color if it's regular guache, not acro guache that won't do it. But we can get some light and make a little bit of that lighter color over here. And maybe here, just because this color might be a little different, I'll do the whole leaf. Okay. I think that's pretty, it's the kind of okay that you could leave the way it is or you could come back through and do some gold, which I might do on the stem. Because I feel like the stem is a little too calling attention to itself with the color that it is. I'm going to get a tiny brush. I see. I want to maybe I'll do that with you because I was going to say different ways You could tune it down. You could take a gold line and that would push the red back. I could go through now with the small brush and actually take a bit of this yellowy water down and see and do bits of the stem because stems, like everything else, are not the same color throughout. That's probably too much. I don't want to cover it completely. I just want to tone it down and also give it some dimension from where you're sitting. It probably doesn't look like anything, but it is. I like it better. And I'm not trying to cover the whole stem, I'm just thinking of like how a stem would be different colors softening it. I'll let that dry, but it's less. I felt like the stones were taking up too much of the show and I want the leaves to be the show. So I think that helped. Okay. I'm going to stop picking and proclaim this one. Done. I think there's so much going on in here that I don't want to come in and do something to that vase, but you never know after it dries. I might look at this and change my mind. 8. Houseplants Wrap Up: Okay. I really hope you enjoyed that class and found it relaxing. And now maybe you think, gosh, I could fill a whole sketchbook with house plants. It's okay if a bloom or two shows up on your house plant. Don't be rigid, just create. I wanted to let you know a few resources. Sometimes people ask me what should I varnish or seal my pieces with. It really depends on the paint that you used. For something like this. In the sketchbook, I don't do anything for something that is that I'm going to sell. I use either Spectra Fix, which is a spray that is odorless or I use the Crylon workable fixative. You just make sure not to get too close for these paints that are water soluble. I think I have a Youtube video actually on how to use both of those. That just depends. I also wanted to let you know some other resources for following me. Youtube is one I have quite a bit on there and I do supply reviews or really just show and tells, showing what I use and why when I find something new, we do a fair amount of paint and chat on Youtube. I have an e mail newsletter where we some insights and send out. I don't know, It used to be weekly, now it's by weekly then it was my weekly. Monthly, you may only get like three in a year at some point. But they're my little insights in the creative practice and running a business, but mostly the head space around creating. I do have a student only Facebook group. What you do for that is just use the e mail that you signed up for to get into that. If you have trouble, just e mail me at Art, at Suzanne Aller.com I think that's about it that I wanted to share with you. See in the next class.