Live Encore: Autumnal Watercolor Bouquets

1. Introduction: Leaves florals are such a fun way to be able to really grasp and hone in that playful side of us. It's a really great exercise for anybody that maybe you're short on time or you want to create something beautiful in a limited time. Then the results always render really fun and playful and whimsical vibes. Hi, I'm Peggy Dean. I am an author, an educator, illustrator, artist, many creative hats that I wear. Today we're going to be doing the painting side of who I am. You would probably recognize my work from one of my many Skillshare classes on a plethora of topics or on thepigeonletters.com, which is a creative resource platform. I am really excited about today's live class, because we are going to be diving into autumnal bouquets. It's a joke because I didn't know how to say that word before. They're really lovely. We're going to be exploring beautiful fall, festive colors, flowers and how they compare with the changing of seasons in their leaves. If you want to paint alongside of me, all you need is just whatever watercolor materials are on hand, watercolor paper or mixed media paper, a paintbrush, a jar of water, and paint. After this class, you will most likely be feeling inspired to paint one or 100 more of these styles of paintings. They are so much fun, they are inspiring, you get to play. That's the space that we want to be in right now, the space of play. That is how you're going to feel ignited and inspired and motivated to play. A quick note, this class was filmed live, so you'll see me interacting with the audience as we paint. By the way, this is one of two fall-inspired watercolor sessions. Be sure to check out the other one where we dive in to painting leaves. All right, let's start painting. 2. Class Materials: Hi, I'm Kaye Toal. I'm a senior content producer here at SkillShare, and I'm your host for today's live session with Peggy Dean. I think you all know Peggy. But, Peggy, do you want to introduce yourself just in case? Absolutely. Hey everyone. I'm Peggy Dean. Today, I'm a watercolor artist, and sometimes I'm an illustrator, and sometimes I'm a calligrapher, and sometimes I'm an educator, and sometimes I'm a scientist. One of those was a lie. Today, we're going to be dabbling into watercolor though today. We're going to be doing some really loose, fall-inspired autumnal floral leafy bouquets. All those together. Just that was the title. I'm so ready. Somebody asking what size page is the ideal for us to use? I guess we can use that to move into what people need to take this class today. I'm using what I have on hand. If I'm going to be totally candid, this is how I approach any project. I grab what's closest to me, and I go for it. I'm using Legion Stonehenge, cold-pressed paper just as an FYI, any watercolor paper is just fine. Just make sure that it's 140 pound paper so it can uphold the water media basically. This that I'm using is a 7 by 10. I don't have a reason for that. It was what was close to me, and that's generally how I roll. That's how that worked. Then, any watercolors are great. I have my pens that I put out a long time ago and this is my palette that I work with. As you see, I have plenty of empties. These are Daniel Smith, and they're tube watercolors that I then created into my palette. Any watercolor is fine. I'm so silly and haven't decided which one yet, but I'm either going to be using a number six or a number eight round brush. Anything between number four and number 10 round brush is perfect. If you don't have a round brush though, hey, work with what you have, and that's perfect too. These are the pigeon letters. They're cruelty free. They are my own brand. Also, you will want to have a jar of water. I recommend having two jars of water. The reason for that is so that you have a jar for your warm colors and a jar for your cool colors. Here's what I do. Here's a trick. Ready? Two jars of water. You've got red on your brush. You put your red, it's in there, you're rinsing it off, and then you want to go grab green. Just dip into the cool color real quick, cool turns and then grab your green and you're good to go, and that's it. Then you don't ever need a paper towel ever. That's all that I'm using though. Watercolor paper, paints, brush, water, call it a day. We're just playing, so we're good. You're ready? Yeah, let's do it. 3. Painting Your Stems: First we're going to paint our stems to get the general structure of our bouquet started. The first thing that I want to do is you're going to go into the side of your water jar and rub your bristles of your brush on the side. That's going to make sure that it's thoroughly submerged in water. Then I usually just do one drag off the side, and then I'm going to do the same thing to paint, and you can choose at this point, we're going to do either like a green, or like a brown, or an autumnal color of sorts, and this is going to be creating stems. That's the only thing we're going to do at first is just put some stems, and then it's just going to be just as simple as it sounds. What I wanted to mention was after I dip into water, drag it off, I'm going to go into my paint and do the same thing. You can't even see what I'm doing. I'm going to go into the paint into the exact same thing, where I go in and I roll it on its side. Now my paints not wet yet, so I might need to do that a couple times just to get the paint wet, and see how I roll it on its side and I really get my brush nice and full of paint. This is just green, actually here I am changing my mind that I don't want to use green. I could have but I didn't want to, so I'm going to grab like a reddish chunk, because I want to stick to autumnal colors. Is it autumnal, does it roll off the tongue like that? You don't know. It's one of those word you feel like you read a lot, but don't have opportunity to say. Yeah. That's always been a autumnal, but I think you might be right. Is it autumnal? Chris is nodding and saying autumnal. How embarrassing that this whole time I've been saying autumnal. You know what, I think you're going to start a trend like Shakespeare. It's like the time I was like, "what's almondine sauce?". That happened. Basically what I want you to do with the tip of your brush, which you have bold capabilities of doing with round brushes is with very, very light pressure, and just using the tip of the brush, and I'm just pulling upward. That's it, and I'm going to do this from the general bundle essentially. What's going to happen is, this is going to be where everything branches together and then it goes into a bouquet. I'm just doing that with the very tip of my brush, I'm not going to put too many in. But then the other part that I want to do is, see where this one's coming up and out. I'm going to have little branches coming off of that one, but they're going to be going the same growth direction. Rather than coming like straight off like this, it's like almost following with it up and off. Does that make sense? Make five or six of those. What does loose mean in the context you've been using it. Also, sorry, I just cut you off. No, that's actually what I was going to say. When you create something with a lot of structure, usually it has a lot of definition and it has a lot of detail. When I do something loosely, so I'm just going to create a leaf real fast. Don't do this, you can but wait, just wait. But I want to show you. Basically we were just exercising the tip of our brush, and now when I sat my brush down on its side, see how a lot more real estate is getting counted. Then if I just us slowly pick up, I'm heading into the tip of that, that's creating one side of a leaf, and then I can do the other side next to it. I did leave a little white space for the vein, if you will. That is a lot more loose than had I sat there and done a bunch of detail in a leaf. It's basically just like a real playful style, is what I mean by loose. [inaudible] , you could totally add little leaves like this, but we're going to get to that, we're going to work backwards. Usually I like to do an exercise with leaves, but I want to do an exercise with flowers first, since we are building up what's going to be a bouquet. 4. Painting Loose Flowers: Now, I'm going to show you my technique for painting a particular fun, loose flower so we can start building this bouquet out. I'm going to grab another color that would be a pretty autumnal. She's like, "No." We'll get there. Let's try to say it differently every time we say it. I like the challenge for the night. Autumnal. I love that challenge. I knew we were going to be best friends. [inaudible] This was a meant to be moment. I'm grabbing bordeaux, it's the color. It's basically a really rich magenta. To create loose flowers, you guys, you need to do so little. It's mostly about thinking about the form itself. I'm going to do one that is essentially just a ton of petals that's stacked on top of one another, and there's a little bit of white space involved. The first thing I want to do is use the side of my brush, so you can see I'm going to set it down pretty significantly, and then just curve around and come up. Really, you could form this just by doing this, that's fine. I just wanted to get you familiar with using your round rush to its full potential because it does have the ability to make it a full body stroke or thinner stroke. That said, I'm going to put those two in, and then what I like to do is just do two very small, and by small, I mean small and flat petals for the bottom. Now, these are loose. See what I'm saying here. There's not structure here. This is just going to be an illusion essentially with loose watercolor for, it was more of an illusion. Now, I'm going to come up and do something in the center here, and then see I'm keeping white space as I'm adding just a few more little peekaboos. Did I have a rhyme or reason to what I just did? Uh-uh. It was like two or three really small shapes just sitting on top. Some are connected to that bottom part, some aren't. That's the part that you don't have to think too hard about. Now, I want to do it on the outsides. The same shape that we started with, but I'm just putting it on the outer part and making it a little bit wider, maybe not wider, maybe thinner, and then just doing the same thing at the top, but more, what's the word I'm looking for? Shorter, basically, wider and shorter. What I've done, and we're going to do this again, don't worry. I'm going to walk you through it again. I did it a little faster because I wanted to show you the end results, so you aren't like, what the heck am I building up here, maybe I have nothing to go off. This is what we're going to go off of, and see how beautiful this looks from a distance. It's loose. It's playful. It's easy. I did this in five seconds, so we're going to do it again. I'm going to pick another spot on my paper, and I like to do a rule of thirds like gardening, so a rule of odds if you will. It's like, you have either plants. Three of something, your plant, five or something, never two or four. I'm going to do three of these types of flowers because I think that it just adds more interests in the overall picture, and it makes it so that there's not going to be some weird symmetrical balance that doesn't make sense for the eye to flow through. If you are like me, and you're right-handed, and you always start on the right side of your page, if in this moment we together as a crew are going to drag our hand through the wet paint that we just created, we're in this together, and it's okay. That's also [inaudible] That's fine. Hey, Judy would like to know how often do you load your brush? This is up to you. You might wa nt everything to look nice and dark the whole time, but I actually like to do this center part, and then I like to go into my water. When I go into my water, I just do a quick flick and then drag off again. That's going to keep it so that I still have the color on my brush, but it's not as rich, and so it makes the background look like it's fading more into the background. I know our workshop is short, so I don't have a ton of like, let's play with paint to water ratio. Let's do this stuff as much as I wish I could, but for that watch my loose watercolor florals class, and we go over all of that. It's going to be super, super helpful when it comes to really honing in on exactly what you want to do there. I'm going to pick my next flower placement, and I'll talk about when I'm loading my brush as I'm doing this, so you guys know when that point is, but I'm going to bring this down a little bit, so if you guys, if it helps you to do just like a real small dot and then a small dot, so you don't forget, do that, otherwise, eyeball it. I'm going to do the exact same thing I just did. I create basically a cradle. Some people have said that they look like coffee beans. You can do this in a way that is two little strokes that come together or just one, but see how basically they're just like oblong. They're imperfect. They don't have a ton of rhyme or reason. They're just there. They're angled. They meet in the middle. That's it. Don't overthink it. I'm not loading up any paint or water again. All I'm doing is adding just like a center of interests in the center. This time I didn't do three shapes. This time I just moved my brush around so that I created some texture at the top, and then a little bit of white space. That was it. I did it differently so that you could see that both will render the same effects. Now, I'm going to do the two at the bottom that we talked about. They we're just really small, and that's just showing that it's opening up toward us too. Now, I'm going to do what I just showed you where I put my brush in my water quickly, and then I drag off. It might still be pretty opaque, but we'll see. I'm going to go off to the side here, so see I have some transparency now. That's where things can get really fun. I'm going to do the same thing off the side here. If you ever find that it's too transparent, all you have to do is just connect it to the previous stroke because that color is still wet too, or excuse me, the previous stroke. Since it's still wet, it'll pull color into that new white space, which is called a wet-on-wet transfer watercolor, and then you don't have to put anything. You don't have to fill it, but I just want to put a small amount at the top so that it looks like it's coming together, but I feel like that looks good, and this is just one of those things where you end up like, okay, do I want to build more on this? Do I want to leave it? There is such a thing as overdoing it, so don't overdo it. Try really hard not to. I understand it's really easy to do that, and then you end up with like a bigger blob, and a bigger blob, and a bigger blob, but if you just stick to, I got my coffee beans. I got my center texture. I've got my two little base, whatever you want to call them, flat knobs. These are technical terms. You guys know I'm a scientist. Flat knobs. Go it. Taking notes. Then I just very lightly, my accents that are final are along the side, and then just skinny at the top. Another flat knob with texture of the top. That's how I do that. Let's do it one more time. You can change your color if you want to. You don't have to. We got some water problems. Deborah says, "My first run through was too dry, so I tried to go back over it, and now it doesn't look smooth because I have double lines." Me, anytime I tried to paint anything, Deborah, I really feel your pain there. Any suggestions for when you do something like this? In her case, it pertains specifically to the stems, and then Natasha says she keeps getting too much water, which is somehow also a thing I always do when I paint. We'd love your advice. This is something that comes with a lot, like, it's going to come with practice. It's just something you have to get used to with paint to water ratio. That depends on your pigments and just really getting to know them because while I'm using bordeaux right now, I know that this particular color is very strongly pigmented, so it takes a very little amount before it gets really, really opaque. Now, if I were to do that with another color, it might not be the case even if it's by the same brand because no pigment is created equally. It doesn't act the same as much as we wish that can happen, so it's a matter of getting used to that, doing paint to water ratio exercises. If you have a scratch paper next to you where you loaded up, how I showed you. Then you do a stroke on the page and then rinse really quickly like I showed you, drag on the side and then do another stroke and then go back into water, rinse really quickly, drag off the side, do another stroke. You're going to start seeing your paper and the transparency from that paint get lighter and lighter and lighter. Doing that type of exercise helps you get to know your pigment. However, when it comes to diving in on the page, it's more like you're diving in, like what you did is what you're going to get. You don't have all those steps that you took. So it really is just a matter of like muscle memory and getting to a point where you feel comfortable with your own supplies. It's something that takes a lot, it takes a long time. But to answer your question about what you can do for double lines, if you look at mine, I got plenty of double lines and I don't have any problem with it. That's just part of that loose Look. It's really not that big of a deal, but if you're getting double lines and you heat them so so much because it was too dry or too wet or whatever, you can salvage it, especially with stems just by going over it with less water, more paint. That's going to make it more opaque and darken it so that it's not as obvious. But you can see clearly, I've got plenty of double lines. If I look at any of my pieces, I probably have that too. I hope that that's a little helpful. I know it doesn't really give an exact answer, but to help with water not becoming too much on your brush though, is I know we go into our water and then we dip in our paint and then we have this situation where it's like really dripping so that if you forget, let's say you're in your water and you forget to slide off like this or let's say you needed your paint to have even more water in it, you can slide off like on the edge like that in your paint palette as well. It doesn't have to be on the watered thing and that way you won't, like now you see my brush doesn't, I don't know if you can see that very well, but now my brush doesn't have that muffy wetness coming off of it. That's going to help with that. But really it's just a balance. It's just a balance of figuring that out. If you have a scrap piece of paper next to you, your very first stroke could go on that scrap piece of paper, so you can make sure that what you're about to do is what you want to do. A lot of it it's just like intuitive as you work. That kind of stuff. Two little dyes. Sorry, you made it for starting this and we're not immediately good at it. That doesn't mean we're failures. That means that you should [inaudible]. Now exactly though. That's really what it comes down to this practice. Loose watercolors it's funny because when I first started doing this, it was because on Skillshare, I was teaching lettering and I was teaching drawing. But in no way was I teaching watercolor. I kept getting emails and questions from people along the lines of, "When are you're going to teach watercolor florals?" I've been over here thinking like, "What makes you think I even know how to paint those?" I knew that this was the style that was being asked of me. I had to bootcamp myself and learn how to do loose watercolor florals. I can do it. Everybody could do it and it turned out to be really, really fun. I think a lot of the practice here is being able to let go and release the need for perfection. I think that's more than the technique is being able to say with like, "Wow, that looks like a beetle mark. Well, guess what? It is and it's going to look real good next to the mop of leaves that we're about to add. That is how that would work. Folks are having trouble making their flower blobs look like flowers and not like blobs. Thoughts? Okay. Advice? Yeah. Let's talk flowers, but I'm going to do this larger so you can see it better, but don't think that you need to go larger, Process. Dipping in water and making sure it's thoroughly dipped, rolling in my paint to make sure I have plenty of paint on my brush and we'll do that one more time. Then larger. Coffee beans, ready? We're going to coffee bean like that. It's basically, format however you need to and then opposite direction, same thing. I'm just using the belly of my brush basically. I'll do it a little more of perfect-ish looking at first, but I also really like to, once you get used to this style, going in and like adding intentional texture to the top like that. See how it's just a little more movement. Then now I'm going to do basically just some filler in the center of these two coffee beans to create some field with whitespace. It doesn't matter where that whitespace lives as long as there is some and it doesn't really matter what you put in the center as long as there's something there, it's not coming up high, it's basically just filling in. Then you can do the two flat. They're not like flat flat. They are just a lot skinnier. There are essentially the same two coffee beans just at the bottom and flatter. That's just like a flower opening up. Then on the side, it's just more of, it comes up. It is a brushstroke. That's what it is. It's a pedal, it's brush stroke. It's like you come up lightly, press down, and then release lightly again. I know this is looking like a hot mess. It might make sense to you because it's not you doing it. But it also looks like a hot mess to me. Then I'm just going to fill in the top part with another brushstroke. This is a mess. But if you look at it next to what we know to be a floral decay, it's the same thing. It's just building it up in sections. Let me show you an easier one too, in case you want to try this other one. The only reason I didn't show you this initially was because, let me show you what not to do. Susan Ethan, as though she took a workshop with me in person and I was floral and I told everybody not to do this. This one is like very geared. It's simple. What am I saying? You need to let it dry before you see the final result, kind of thing. But if you do the same thing where you have full pressure on your brush and then lift up toward the edge. That's just like a curved shape like this. It doesn't have to be perfect, mine is not or it could be. It could be real thin on each edge and then have a full nice body in the middle. But just keep in mind, you guys petals, like it's innate in nature. Like nothing in nature is perfect. It's not supposed to be and that's okay. Now when you create petals, I am going to start with assuming there's a ball in the center and coming up and out. Same thing. There's my coffee bean. I'm going to do another one coming out. This is the center. Here are my petals coming out. They're not going up. That is what not to do. Do not do it to where, here's your base and then your petals are coming up like this. Yeah. There it is. What we are essentially creating right now, is here's our base and our petals are doing this. This looks really weird. I know that. But that is essentially the shape that we are going for as we are forming this guy. If I was to add another petal in here, it could just be like a peekaboo, one from the side like so and then maybe one right here. Now, that doesn't look right. I know. It's not. But wait till it dries. Then when it dries, you just go in and then you add it from the center right here, you would add little stamens with those little dots in the center. Then it looks like a bunch of loose florals that are really pretty. I promise they look pretty. I just don't want you guys to get too hung up on detail because it really does come into its own. Give yourself permission to mess up right now because this is your first sit down and trying to create this and it's not going to be perfect first time or a second time or third time. It's just a matter of doing them. 5. Adding Leaves: Now we can add some leaves to create extra interest and some more balance. Let's say you have your three main flowers. You can totally add to them. But now I want to talk about leaves for a sec. This is the best exercise, in my opinion, for painting or getting used to your brushes. If you apply full pressure right away, maybe not full pressure. It depends on how big your brush is. Then immediately start curve, I'm going to curve to the right, but as I'm curving, I'm already lifting up, up, up. I'm just like slowly bringing a tip to the top and then I'm going to do the same thing on the other side. That's how I'm creating leaves. See how this one's super opaque? It's like real dark. I think you should also challenge yourself to play with opacity. All I have to do here is just rinse quickly, drag my brush off this side, and then I can come in and do the same exact thing I just did, but see how now my paint is a lot lighter. This is really pretty when you do it as a series all over. If I had another one coming up here, I haven't dipped in the water or paint, it's just a little bit lighter. If you have that layering, then it looks really cool. Basically, all I'm doing is coming off of the stems that I've already created, or peekabooing behind there and just adding. This is where I'm trying not to put my hand in what I just did. Then you can see where it starts to get dry. I just got dry a little bit there. I'm leaving it because I like how it looks that time. Sometimes I don't like how it looks. Then I just immediately, right away, go back in. I guess I'm not leaving it. I'm going to show you, but I immediately go back in and then it fixes it, it self-corrects, because I went in right away. That's a way to fix it. Sorry, Peggy, I'm trying not to interrupt you, but you're also such a good teacher that you're just going. Feel free. Stephanie says, "In all serious though, I did not position my flowers correctly. How do you know how to arrange them as you're doing this?" That's a great question. Composition is huge and composition is definitely learned. First of all, it's like super rule of thirds or fives. Basically, I just want to make sure that I have, and honestly too, it's common to start in the top and the center of your paper as you're drawing stems. Then you end up way up here. That's a thing. Or you might draw a paint of flower here and then one right here and one right here, and they're way too far over. That's also a thing. This is stuff that will happen no matter what. It doesn't even matter if I've been doing it a long time or not. Ways to fix that though is I can just bring it down and bring it over and just add more and make a more abundant bouquet, and add balance where there isn't any. But to plan it out with threes, for this one, I wanted it to be very [inaudible]. The joke is to say autumnal differently, if you guys missed that. I wanted it to be piecey and leafy, and more leaf heavy than flower heavy. When I'm said and done, my flowers are just accents to my leaves. In this case, it was easy for me to pinpoint just three in a triangular sense, but I didn't know that when I was building them, I put one off. I just went off of where my stem was, and then the second one, I wanted it next to it and then I just lifted it. So I just went higher, and then I don't know if you caught the part where I actually also suggested the option of marking your page where the top and bottom go with the paint, and then you can paint over that, just a little lightly. It helps sometimes. Then the other one was more of a, okay, now what needs balance? Where can I add balance? Then I added balance right there. It was just as I go organic intuitive process. Also, Emily can't get a point on their leaves. It's all pieces. Do they have a bad brush or is that technique? If it's a round brush, it should be good. I'm going to go into my next leaf now and I'm going to do it a lot longer and larger so you can see the process a lot slower. I'm going to grab a French ogre color, is what it's called. Just an FYI because people always ask me about color, so you know. It's just going to be like a tannish, beige-ish color. Then from here, what I do is, this is here, that's great. I can use these existing stems to come off of and paint outwards or outwards. Because I know that these leaves are going to be dominating, I don't want to do too many of them or make them crazy. They're literally the same thing that we just did. Just long. Here's how to approach leaves in this way, and the act is the same. Points can be difficult. They can. But if you just hover, I'm going to bring that coming off and then bring it off. Then I guess we're right here, and overlapping is fine. But this pigment, by the way, is a lot less generous. I just loaded my brush again. I'm just going to act like this is behind it, and I'm going to press down full pressure on my brush and then note right here and go, I'm lifting up, up, up, and I'm dragging on the tip for a while. See that nice point that it created. I could leave it as is or I could add an extra part to the other side, but I like how that looks because even though it doesn't have whitespace, it does look like it's on its side, so I'm going to leave that one and let's do this again. I will bring this one coming out. See, my brush is a little wet, I can tell, so I'm just going to drag it on the side so it doesn't just blob on the paper. Okay. Now I'm going to do the same thing here. Set it down full pressure, drag up, lift, lift, lift for a while. Then connect the other part. When you do the other side, try not to connect it once you get to the top, try connecting it way before that, because if you can make that connection, then you can lift off and then keep the integrity on your initial points. But yeah, Barbara said manufacturers don't always use the same numbers. Like 10 quill is different from 10 round. Also, brushes aren't all created equally. It depends on the material. I have pure synthetics. They're round brushes that are made to have a very quick snapback. Sorry, my cat, she is trying really hard to get in the door and the glass is shaky. Do you guys hear that? I just assumed someone was doing dishes, but I love that it's the cat. Well, I think that's happening too. But here we are in our dream life. Basically, you can see these brushes, this is a size 6. This is pretty long for a round brush and I did that so that it had that ability to have a very quick snapback. If you're using something that's more moppy, it's not going to do that as easily. That's something to keep in mind also. I just want to stop right here to show this is where I'm at composition-wise. How is my thought process going from here to what I'm going to do next? I'll tell you what I don't like. I don't like that I have these two floaters. I feel like it doesn't make sense. I feel like they're too even. So how can I remedy that? Well, I think that it might be nice to add a balance in the center of them, maybe curving the opposite direction and just a little bit higher. That's just my thought process. Leaves, it's all about placement. I'm going to bring this up, just about here, and then I don't have to start at the end. I can start down here. Full pressure coming this direction, up, up, up, and then lift off. If it doesn't get to a point that you want or length, as long as you want, you can also go back and just edit that. There. Now I have more of a balance that I wanted to balance that out down here because these are clearly only sticking out behind. I'm going to go in and just maybe peekaboo some from within here. You don't want to paint over your flowers. That can be tricky. Some people like to paint these aspects first. I like to paint them after and only because I feel like they're filler balance. They're not a primary balance. They're stuff I like to add in later. See how that totally made it look like it has better balance, like it's got more of that wheat stuff. That's a technical term too. Definitely. Yeah, taking notes. Got it. I'm going to add one more leaf here. That would be like a stopping point-ish, and then we'll get into the other stuff in just a sec. 6. Finishing Touches: Finally let's add some twigs, some berries, some other fun finishing touches. The other part about doing autumnal. I really appreciate your commitment to that. If I can play a game, I'm hooked. You've got me. I'm in, committed. The other part that I really like to do with this is I like to include my cat. Okay. Back up. Someone just said that their cat stepped in their wet leaf too. So we're just all in this together. Yeah. She hasn't left any paw prints or anything today, but the other day I had paw prints. I have pink paw prints on my desk and everything, and I don't want to reveal them because they're so cute. Sticks and twigs, oh my gosh. They can bring any bouquet to life. They can be autumnal. Stop it. It was a good effort. It was fantastic. Or they can be fresh, or springy, or whatever, but they always add so much interest into the final product. I'm going to show you how to do those. I'm going to use the very tip of my brush. Again, you can grab brown, or red, or any color that you want that your heart desires. I'm even going thinner now. Here's a tip. If you come closer, it's easier to get to the tip because you're straight up and down. However, it might make your arm more shaky, because you're using your grip instead of your arm swipe, if you will. So just keep those things in mind. I get a lot closer and then I use my arm to drag instead of using my hand to drag, and that makes it so that I can have straighter lines that are a lot thinner. Now, remember that cool thing, that really cute idea I told you about? How you shouldn't have stems coming straight off of its other stem because it's too choppy and it should go with the same growth direction? That doesn't have the same meaning when it comes to twigs and things, and that's where you can make it PC, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to address that to begin with, was so that you could have a differentiation with creating your twigs. I don't really have like a crazy awesome method to doing this. It's basically just like, I could stick one here. Stick. Stick and a stick. I can bring those and just have them come off where it makes sense to, and it might not make sense some places, it might make sense other places. You might want to make it thicker in some areas, thinner in some areas. Basically, we're just building up little areas that have similar interests. Then at the tops of these, all that I do is, wait for it. I usually do it in the same color because I like it to look twiggy, but for the sake of this lesson workshop, I think it might be fun to add a color so that it looks more like berries. You could grab like a purple or a blue. Do I have a good one? Not really. Why not? Okay. Red. Let's do red. Lovely autumnal color. Autumnal. Yeah. I can't. I'm trying too hard now. I think we've exhausted the ways we can pronounce it. No, we have not. I beg your pardon. Wrong. So sorry for this egregious oversight. This is our first fight. We're really going through it, Peggy. But then I just add little circles at the ends of all of these and I just fill them in. They're not perfect circles, they're just little pieces of interest. For those of you wondering, this color is Pyrrol Scarlet, Daniel Smith. It's a warmer red. You can put these in here and you know what? One of the cool things too is, let's say you don't want a bunch of sticks everywhere. There are a lot of times where I'll actually go in and add these types of berries. They could even be considered, if they were in clusters, as just tiny flowers. Who needs to know? If you put them real close together and bundle them up, let's say I put some right here without those branches, they look like they belong. So you don't need to have them all scattered on a bunch of branches. They can be in little clusters. I do that a lot because I just think it adds a lot of fun interest. From here, you can just do the same things that we just went over. Just make your leaves longer, skinnier. You could make them shorter. Just change a color, change transparencies. Change colors of flowers. You could add other flowers that are smaller behind, or around, or accent flowers. I'll show you an accent flower real quick. I'll grab another autumnal color. Did I already use that one? Let's say no. You know what? I'll go easy on you. Thank you. Autumnal. This is just a peachy color. I'm actually cheating. This is gouache. I'm just going to create really small strokes that go in. Let me do this wetter. So where they go in toward itself, in toward itself, and then one extra one, for safe measure. As you can see, you could do the same thing just by putting your brush down and then squiggling it all around. This is the new lyrics to one of my new best sellers that's going to come out, squiggling it. Squiggling it all around. All around. [inaudible] Yeah, let me show you what that looks like on a larger scale though. This is what my cat did, by the way. I just wanted you guys to see her masterpiece. It's basically I'm doing full pressure and just curving in, and then doing full pressure and curving in and then just adding a middle one, maybe not coming up that far. But see, if I was to draw this out because I left that white space in there, it would essentially look something like this, as a flower bud. So if you think about that, and then it's got its little lines and there's its little bud. That's essentially what we're doing in this really hot mess of strokes. It translates that way in different colors or depending on how much white space that you have or don't have, especially when they get larger, but we don't need to go larger because they're just accents. I chose a lighter one because I didn't want mine to get too cluttered, but essentially, that is a fine autumnal bouquet that you can then use as a piece of art, or a card, or something fun for festive time. What color is the gouache you were using? Good question. Unfortunately, it's called flesh tint. I wish it wasn't because it is rude. Yeah. It's Windsor & Newton flesh tint. [inaudible] stuff to white people's skin. Yeah, no kidding. Not my favorite, but that is the color and I do love the color. Then lastly, you guys, I don't know if you're into this sort of thing, but if you want to make things really fun and exciting, you can always go in and just get your brush wet, and then keep it real wet. I'm not really even doing a slide off of it, and then just pick up paint, just make sure your paint is wet still. My brush is pretty wet. If I move it, you can see it's just going to pull up. I might not want it that wet, but I want it wet enough to where I can hold it over my piece and just tap it, and then create a little bit of fun noise and splatter. You don't want to go crazy, but it can add some fun interests to your piece or you could do different colors or something light in the background just to add a little extra fun. Don't do it over your white desk or your entire white desk will always and forever look like this. It won't, it will clean up, but it is annoying. But yeah, that's just another little added fun way to add some energy to your piece. 7. Q&A: Now let's open it up to some questions from students in the audience. We have a question about if someone was going to go for a metallic gold color, I can't talk to mine either, and a terminal cylindrical floral thing, what gold would you recommend? Oh, yeah, totally. I love Fine Tech. Fine Tech has metallic watercolors that are just beautiful and all of their golds, because there are so many of them, come out swimmingly. I don't know why. What are your go-to brushes? The pigeon letters brushes. It's a shameless self promo, I'm self promoting. But I wouldn't have made these brushes if I had what I wanted available on the market. They are a 100 percent pure synthetic, professional-grade, cruelty free that worked very well for lettering. For painting, you can find them at the pigeon letters.com. You can look on Etsy on all the reviews and everybody swears by them. I'm not just saying it, they're very good. The one that I saw that I wanted to answer was, I lost it. That's okay. I think it was, when you finish and realize that you're totally crooked, do you have a way to fix that? Digitally? No. I mean, you could just add balance to the other side. Let's say I drew the whole thing like this and my paper is actually like this, that's super crooked. My leaves are coming off here. Well, you can play into that. Then you can have some curl out like this, and then it creates a whole new type of balance. Let's say the crooked occurs like this, and it's not so intentional to have it come out like that. Just bring some more balance on this side, and just fill it more. That's what I would do, and I have done. That's what I have done. That's what I do and have done. How long have you been doing watercolor, floral for? I would say three years, and my style has not changed at all whatsoever. It has been the same the entire time. I love loose florals. I think that they are so very fun, and I love not having to perfect them. I think that's why I stuck with them for so long, is because like you see these master watercolors, and I just don't feel like beating myself up for my work. You know when it doesn't turn out the way that I want it to. I have found a lot of joy in the loose, playful watercolor exercises. It's also really meditative. You can get a lot done in a small amount of time. I think it's an exercise for a lot of people when you want to give yourself a creative practice, but maybe you don't have a ton of time to do it. It's like, it's leave time, or it's bouquet time or it's a cup of flower time, or you could do a taxonomy. [inaudible] if you had a page and you can just fill it with, like here's a flower, here's a flower, here's a flower. They don't have to combine. It's just a really fun go-to creative practice I think, that also renders really beautiful results that are very modern, I would say, in the loose style. That was a long answer to three years. 8. Final Thoughts: That's a wrap. You guys, thank you so much for joining me and these fun fall inspired projects, they are so much fun. This is one of those projects that you can really take and spin however you want to by changing color, changing your paint to water ratio, changing shapes and lines and just different types of structure and never will you sit down and paint the same thing twice. It's such a fun project. Stay in your play zone and have so much more fun with this exercise. I would love to see so much what you created, so be sure to share your projects in the gallery. Thank you again so much for tuning in. Be sure to check out, one or all of my other Skillshare classes on my channel. I'll see you guys next time.