Loose but Precise: Expressive and Simple Floral Paintings in Watercolor

1. Introduction: Sketching florals with precise line work and loose, expressive watercolor is an incredibly quick and relaxing technique. Hi, I'm Julia. I'm a sketch book artist and illustrator of nature. I love botanical sketching with this intuitive approach. This class is all about sketching flowers with the combination of detailed line work and textures. And flowing watercolor washes. This loose bag, precise approach I'll show at death and freshness to any floral sketch. While staying enjoyable and playful. Your flowers sketches will turn out more vibrant and expressive rather than overworked. This class, I will show you techniques and best practices for creating effortless botanicals catches, including basic approaches for drawing and new ideas for combining line work with watercolor. The core principles of the sketching approach, like shape, volume, value, and color, can be applied to any subject matter with the same expressive results, you'll go through warm-up exercises that will help you to capture the essence of your flower and still get an accurate drawing that shows detail and texture. The loose watercolor on top, we'll introduce a layer of looseness and flow. As an artist who loves precision just as much as spontaneous, vivid brush work. For me, this is the perfect balance between these two poles. The class has several full length demos that will take you through my process step-by-step. Flowers are a great subject to draw for beginners, as they are very patient and come in all shapes and colors. And I never get tired of drawing flowers. Whether you've just started painting with watercolors or an intermediate artists, I will show you a really inspiring way to sketch florals. I'd love to see you in this class to sketch some beautiful flowers together. So let's dive in 2. Your project: Thank you so much for joining me. I structured the lessons in this class so that they build on each other and are easy to manage even for beginners. I really hope you'll enjoy the practice exercises. Please spend a bit of time with the drawing and painting basics in the warm ups because this will ensure you have a good base to build on in the painting stage. Painting, loose and flowing watercolors is a lot of fun. But for this technique, it works best when you hold it together with a few really well-observed lines and textural details. I'd really like you to enjoy the entire process to the fullest. We'll go through a few warm-ups to make you comfortable with the drawing process. And this will be the basis of your sketches. Will also take a closer look at painting related terms like value and color to make the water coloring process a bit easier. This class will give you a very quick overview on drawing and painting basics, but it will not go into details on either. The focus will rather be to create the loose but precise sketching style and to let go of the need to render a perfectly finished drawing. I'll explain lots of things while I show my sketching process and the demonstrations like paint to water ratio, variations in color, how to add shadows and highlights and differences and paper and brushes. Your project will be to use the techniques presented in this course to create your own botanical sketch where the flower of your choice, ideally one you have studied from life. You can use the projects and resources tab to upload your project. If you'd like to receive feedback about your work from me, then please share your sketches in the classroom as a project. I'd love to see your entire process warm-ups and studies your flower drawing and the finished painted version. Please add your thoughts about the process and what you learned. This will make it easier for me to help. It's okay to share struggles. These are most helpful for making progress. And I'm here to guide you along the way. On the right side, in the resource section, you will find a downloadable PDF with the materials and paints that I use. And you'll also find a few links to a few other of my Skillshare classes that will help you to learn more about sketching the natural world and flowers and particular 3. Materials: Let's take a look at the tools that you will need for this class. And it's really not that much because I like to keep my toolkit very simple and very accessible. And this means I can get started very quickly. And it also means it removes this decision fatigue that you sometimes have when you have too many amazing materials at your disposal and don't know what to choose. So I will keep it very simple for this class. Let's start with the brushes. I have three different brushes here you will, basically, if you have a great brush, you will only need one or two. I have a large round synthetic brush. This is a size eight brush, and I use it for all of my loose watercolor painting. I also have smaller brush. This is a size two for the detailed work, and this size five, I have to say, I don't really use it that often. So you could use a middle-size brush for mixing or for areas where you need a slightly smaller brush but not detailed brush. Anyway, one thing to pay attention to when choosing brushes is that they form a really nice tip and you will want those for adding in a small little textures and details. So this is really important. These are not fancy brushes, these are just inexpensive. No name brushes from my local arts supply store and they worked just fine. Then I have my basic watercolor palette and I'll be using my standard sketching palette here. I will leave a link to this particular palette set up if you're interested in the individual pigments. But basically, what you will need is a well-rounded palette with two yellows, two reds, two blues, few greens, and a few earth tones. So this is basically what all good pre-made palettes come with this setup. As for paper, I will use cotton watercolor paper with 300 GSM or 140 pounds. I use paper that I cut to size from sheets. This is just the way I prefer it. It's also a bit more inexpensive this way. And this is hot press paper, it's Saunders Waterford hot press, 300 GSM. I prefer hot press paper. It's very smooth because this works better for drawing and for adding small details, but you decide what you like. So cold press paper also works fine if you prefer that. I cut my own paper from larger sheets, you can of course, also use your sketchbook or paper that comes in pair. So Arches hot press is another really nice paper that would work for this course to. And then I have my pencil. This is a Pentel mechanical pencil with an 0.7 millimeter HB lead. This is just what I like to use, but every HB pencil will work and it has also an eraser here on the end. Also have this small thin eraser. If I want to remove tiny edges are details, but you can bring any eraser that you might have lying around. Then of course you will need small things like a Painting REG and your water container. And I will put a PDF with all of the materials I mentioned here into the resources section. So you can navigate there and download the PDF with the materials list if you like. 4. Examples from my sketchbook: I want to show you, if you examples of how I approach this loose but precise technique. My sketchbook work and even in my detailed illustrations, I aim to keep a certain amount of loose brushwork and spontaneity. I think you could put it like this. I want realism, but with just a touch of impressionism. Drawings that are based on an observed refined outline with Loose and associative paint layers. I felt this goes very well together in the sketchbook. The idea behind this technique is to use your linework as a solid foundation for loose and expressive application of paint. You can go really wild with your painting technique. If you are defining linework is precise enough to show all the elements of your flower clearly. Over the years, I've found a way to keep my sketchbook practice playful and also not so focused on perfectionism. I've kept a nature journal or field journal, and that time I've also considerably improved my drawing skills. I share my journaling adventures and many classes and blog posts. This loose but precise method is a great way to run their detail botanical sketches without having to spend hours on layering washes and still get a recognizable and fresh result. I think there's combination is really attractive and the technique actually reflects me very well too. I love a bit of precision and control, but another part of me just wants spontaneous free expression. I always work from a basic flowing and this is just the way I roll and the way I enjoy the process the most. Observing something while drawing it helps me to understand it and I can already think about where I want to preserve details later. Bring out highlights and shadows while I placed the lines. Precise linework doesn't mean you have to spend hours on it highly drawing, just try to observe closely what you see and place your lines. I'd really like to encourage you to practice those basics. And from there, find your own sketching style. Explore way. You can find interesting ways to show lines and marks and how you can indicate different textures with pen or pencil. These cherries sketches, I knew I wanted to show the folded structures on the leaves and the loose leaf stack petals of the blossoms. I also left the highlights here, simply white, which is very easy with watercolor. When the drawing is in place, I can immediately jumped to color and paint with this loose approach. I tried to be mindful of the values from the start, so I might leave white areas unpainted to preserve the highlights. And I also push the pigment into these darker areas. And in the second layer I restate and tighten these colors statements a little bit to make them read more clearly in these leaves here. And when you have this framework of lines and place, you can decide how far you want to take it either to full color or you can also decide to leave parts unfinished, like in these two sketches here. So this shows the study character of your piece, and it also saves a little bit of time. Highlights and a watercolor sketch can be achieved through not filling the area with color and simply leaving at what? This is my preferred method because it gives you a really crisp and write results. Depending on your approach, you could also lift out painted areas with a clean brush for a softer effect or apply a thick white paint layer for more painterly look. And both of this means fiddling more with a sketch. So I typically try to avoid it in our work, but it can also give arenas results. So here you can see the highlights on those berries. I simply painted around them. Again here on the leaf and on the awesome, I just left out the white parts. And you can see here in the leaf down here, I forgot about this and I added back in some highlights with white paint and I think it shows that this is not really, this doesn't pop out as the other highlights do, but it creates a more subtle effect. And again, in this sketch of a Rose, I tried to preserve the highlights by simply loosely laying in the color and painting around these areas. In floral or botanical sketches, I often like to show shadows on the flower itself in a darker local color, dark red on a light red flower, or dark green on a light green leaf. And this will make the shadows seem less heavy than if you were to go in with a purple or blue all the time. And this is also called a botanical shadow. For blossoms with a lot of small elements like these kind of clustered flowers. It's very effective to only indicate a few of the details and let the brain work out the rest. There's also saves you a lot of time and probably a bit of overwhelmed. So if you only show one or two of the detailed flowers in the front, like I did here. I didn't even bother to try it out here. Then you can leave the rest undefined it. Everything is still very readable. You can use Watercolor beautifully to let the elements in the back fade out slightly to add this bit of a spatial effect to the final step for all my loose but Precise sketches as always, to adjust the sketch one last time and add in details. So places with crisp accents and textures. This is a lot of PFK-1, and I have to stop myself from overworking the sketch each time. They are always more details to observe in nature and to add in, but we have to keep the sketch readable to communicate what it is about essentially, this sketch of irises, I could have added more and more small dots and veins, but I decided to keep the details to few selected areas, my focal points, so to speak. This way I can gently guide the viewer's eye to the interesting areas of the sketch. As you can see, I did a study of the, all of the details of this very interesting leaf. So I tried to record everything that's going on and then I decided to leave it out in my detailed sketch here. So texture is important, but only in low doses, you can choose to use your pencil or small brush for the detail as I did here. All an all water takes the most time is actually not immediately visible in this sketches. And that is the observation and the decisions that happen before pencil or brush are placed on paper. Taking the time to explore a plan thoroughly will result in a better drawing. And this will make it easier to get a loose but Precise floral sketch. Men, you make the decisions what to leave out and what to bring into your sketch. So this is my approach to this sketching style. It has proven to be very flexible and enjoyable for me and I hope you'll feel the same when you try out this way of sketching 5. Warm up: I'd like to do a few warm-ups before we jump into bigger flower sketches. And I think it really pays off to do these exercises. They will help you to loosen up and build a bit of muscle memory. And this will let you draw faster and with more confidence over time. And you can keep these warm-ups quick. I've used fairly simple flower here, it's a puppy and I've actually drawn it over several consecutive days. But for the purpose of this, I have sort of compress this into one big lesson. So what I want to do is take a close look at the flower at my subject and see how I can simplify it. And basically this puppy bud is sort of this elliptical shape. And I tried to break it down into basic geometrical shapes and try to find the largest shape that fits it, this ellipse. And from there a bracket further down into manageable bits. And I've purposefully started with a very, very easy shaped like this puppy. But what I will often do at this stage as squint a bit because this helps me to figure out the different shapes, the different angles. Another thing you can do is use your pencil to measure the different angles and also the distances. I've tried to keep the first few lines very loose. And when I've found the definite shape, I can place broader lines with more confidence. And as I'm doing this, as I'm placing those lines, I tried to think about how this bird, how this flower is a three-dimensional object, and how the petals curl inside. And also especially with this unfolding flower, how the different areas and petals curl and crinkle. And if I turn it, I actually had it in my hand as I was drawing it, I can see how the volume changes, how the shapes and, and planes changed. So I tried to bring that into my sketch tube. Drawing is very much based on good observation and try to put away your thought about how things should look when you draw something and really try to observe and put down on the page just what you see. Over time. You will build muscle memory by drawing a lot. So drawing something from similar angles as I do here also helps. And I always notice, although I draw almost each day, I always need a few warm ups in the morning and my first few drawings usually don't look that great. So another tip would be if you notice that you make a mistake, then just move on. Just continue. You draw with pencil. You can erase it later as you like. In this way, drawing and also painting is always the process of making an educated guess and then refining it throughout the process as it's never perfection with first stroke. The sketching style that I show here is based on the drawing. So having this framework is really important. So observe it the basic shapes. Place your line work, and then add a few details, add a few textures to make it more interesting. And this is basically all there is to it. So I can switch to my paints. Now, when I do this, I usually squint again a little to get an overview on the values. Values are the different tones between black and white. So the highlights and shadows and everything in between. And interestingly, they are far more important for a readable painting than color. So you can go pretty wild with your colors if you keep your value structure intact. So one way to learn C values can be actually a film camera. If you turn it to black and white mode, then you'll see where the light and dark areas are for these puppy. But I am starting with a simple sap green and I'm applying it in a very diluted wash. So when adding watercolor to a sketch, it's important to know how intense your paint is and how much you've watered it down. Because this will directly affect the value. So the light or darkness of your paint and the more water you add to your paint and pigment than the lighter your washes. Of course, the amount of water will also influence how the paint reacts. So try not to lose too much water onto the brush when you add a second layer, you can see the paint here as glistening as I'm adding more paint to it, more pigment to it. And I try to be mindful not to add too much water into it because it will push the rest of the pigment away. Anyway, with watercolor, you work from light to dark. And this means you can build up dark areas by adding more layers later. For this quick technique, I am not to paint more than two or three layers and total. As I'm working on the green parts of the puppy here, I'm actually dropping in pigment into the areas that have a darker value that are supposed to be darker later. And so I can use watercolor like this by modifying how much water I add to the different areas. So I try to be mindful about how much water I'm adding to my paint and to my brush. So you can paint with a wet or with a dry brush. And typically the first layer can be very loose and flowing with a lot of watercolor like the greens that I laid down here. And at this stage, I tried to let the paint flow and really don't fiddle too much with it. And you will see this again later in the unfolding flower where I really paint large areas with a lot of water for these smaller puppy. But I want to be a little bit more careful. I want to place enough pigment in the first layer so that I don't have to work a lot on the second layer. And so I load my brush with rather a lot of pigment and then sort of fade it out in those areas that are a bit lighter and then have a lighter value. And I also leave the areas that are black. I leave them entirely wide. This is entirely up to you. You can also just fill the entire area and then paint over it with black later, since you can work from light to dark, That's always an option. Here I'm dropping in a lot of red pigment, a lot of concentrated paint. And you can see I'm still leaving a few tiny highlights. I still want to preserve these highlights where I can. And as the red parts are drying, I'm going back to the paler green that I can observe in the inner part of the puppy. Before I really find and deepen the red, I want to add the black parts of the puppy. And this will give me really great contrast. All of this time with the small flowers. I use a smaller brush and add these few concentrated details in just a few places. I try to remind myself not to fiddle too much to keep it quick, to load my brush, go in their place, the brush stroke, and then go out again. And also to be mindful about the line work that I placed down earlier so I can adapt it if I see that it needs to be different a little bit, but usually I my line work is already in place at that stage and I simply need to follow it. So it's almost a little bit like paint by numbers if you wish. But it's really, it's more of an creative process. And you'll decide on the value structure and on the quality of the brush strokes a bit more. Now my red paint layer has dried entirely and I go back in with more concentrated red paint and a small brush. And I want to really push in those darker values, those creases on the poppy, those interesting shadows and those structures. So this is a mixture between adding a second layer and already thinking about textures, about details. Where do I want the viewer to look at? What is interesting about this subject? This stage is usually a lot of fun and I have to hold myself back more to lose myself in details. So I, from time to time, I step back and take a good look and I maybe squint a little and think about what are the essentials of this poppy flower? What are the important bits that I need to stress to communicate visually what this is about. So again, the philosophy here is use as few brush strokes as possible and make it clear what your intentions are with the brush. I think these turned out quite nicely. So I'd say, let's get back to the drawing board and do a few more studies. So the puppy has opened up and we are presented with more interesting shapes of this flower. And this time, I actually take a bit more time to figure out the entire outer shape of the flowers. So I'm drawing these loose lines just to remind myself where the petals are ending and how they are folding and where I need to spend a bit more time to observe them closely. And this is just what I'm doing at this stage. So I'm adding a bit more detail in the middle where these small dots are. And from there, I try to keep it very simple with the petals. And these shapes are rather challenging. So I try to keep to the edge and follow that edge with my pencil. And I go back and forth a lot between the puppy and my piece of paper and try to make sense of this interesting shape. I don't even erase or correct any mistakes that I might see because I can figure it out, I can fix this later in the coloring stage. So, yeah, really, really complex and interesting flower shape. Let's go for something a bit easier. So this puppy blossom has essentially the same round shape, but it's structured a bit easier. It has less irregularities and this should be really fun to draw. I have these sort of these three ellipsis, these three circles. The part in the middle than the darker parts are rounded and the red petals. And I can immediately start by placing those three and adding a bit more information. Like those little dots in the middle where the flower will be pollinated. And I'm basically jumping ahead here a bit and I'm adding some textures, but I figure for this really very simple shape I can afford it. So all I have to do at a later stage is just add in those petals. So this has really interesting effects by placing these small lines around the center, I can indicate the volume and how the petals are curving upwards. I'm sort of working my way from the center to the outer areas. And now that the middle is really in place, I see that at the bottom, I can sort of look into these creases between the petrol so I have to be mindful to make them really compress. And at the, the upper edges there, they are larger. And phase two, what the viewer where instead at the bottom, they really have changed perspective, so to speak. And this is another interesting exercise you could do. You could take the flower that you want to draw and draw it from several perspectives. That's a really, really good warm up that will make you really more comfortable with whatever you want to draw. I can really recommend this. Yeah, in this case, I think my basic sketch is done here. I'm just reinforcing some of the lines a bit more, adding a bit more contrast to this darker middle and a few of the dots that I believe will add a bit more visual interests for the flower sketch. So I'm switching to watercolor, and again, I'm starting with a green parts. Those are in the minority this time, so just the stalks and those middle areas. And I'm using the same slightly diluted and slightly bluish green mixed in a bit of cobalt blue to my sap green here. And I'm letting this dry. And then I load up a nice vermilion to my brush. And I should have taken a really large brush here. I don't know why I stayed with a small brush. So if you have a large area of one color, then absolutely use the largest brush you have. You will see this in the other demonstrations. Basically, what I tried to do from the start is again, I'm looking for values. I'm looking for lighter and darker areas. And I try to dilute those areas with water where I can see light areas and I add more pigment to the areas where I can see darker values. So I try to be mindful from the start about my value structure. Here. Again, I leave a few highlights and those creases and those overlapping petals. I don't want to just painted like a paint by numbers. I try to think, what does this flower need? Where does it move? Where areas that are maybe have highlights? And so I want to include this into the sketch. As I'm progressing. The right side of the paint layer has already dried a bit and I can go in with more concentrated paint and add those darker. Excellent. So sometimes you don't have to go away or take a break. You can just continue in another area of the sketch as I'm doing here, I'm actually working on the second flower. You can see this is quite the watery mix. Again, I wish I would have just gotten out my bigger paintbrush. Again, you can see I'm leaving a few white highlights here. I look at each petal, try to observe a, try to make sense of the different creases. And again, I use more concentrated paint for those areas that are in shadow or that aren't in direct light. And by this, I get an immediate three-dimensional effect. I get the value structure. It wouldn't matter if this were violet or green or any other color. It matters what you place the values and not what the color is. I'm going back-and-forth between the two blossoms and reinforcing the darker areas, the dark side of the poppy, so to speak. And I'm always taking A good look at my reference that's right in front of me. To really figure out where I need to place those brushstrokes. You can see I'm starting to reinforce some of the lines of the edges of the puppies petals. And I'm also sort of dragging out these brushstrokes and adding these small little textural details here. And this is sort of the third stage of the sketch where I'm thinking about where I want to have these graphical effects. Where I want to lead the viewer's eye with those high contrast brushstrokes. And in the poppy, It's an interesting combination. It's sort of this. Some areas, the colors just fading and feathering out. And in other areas where the petals are more crinkled, you have those interesting hard shadows and those hard edges and lines. I'm playing with this by fading out and softening some of the gradients that I have here. And by placing these really hard lines and hard edges in other areas. And I think this makes the sketch really interesting. And as the last stage, I still need to add those black accents in the middle. And I'm actually testing my brush if I can, can get fine enough lines to pull this off. So I really want those lines to be really thin, delicate, because I think this will give really great graphical effect. And I start by adding the small dots and the small lines around the middle of the flower. When I decide what details I want to add, I pick out those that immediately catch my eye and also those that are areas where I want to have definition and texture in the middle of this poppy is definitely one where there's a high contrast and I want these really a lot of inflammation. There are lots of small elements. Usually the layers below already have a pretty good amount of information. This communicates what the sketches about. And all you want to do at this stage is add a bit of additional clarity, a bit more contrast. You don't need detail and texture everywhere. Maybe you want a tiny thin brush stroke to redefine an outline or to add these high contrast areas, lines or dots where there's texture. And I have to be honest at this stage, it usually is that if I don't stop at a point, it will end up looking like a pattern. So you will have to find that moment where you can make yourself stop adding more detail. And generally you will want to add detail and reinforce lines where there is a visible edge or a sudden change in contrast are a lot of small textural elements like here in the middle of this poppy. And this will let the, I know that there's something interesting in your sketch there that's worth looking at. One very powerful effect can be showing an individual element when there are lots of them actually. So for things like clustered flowers, you only need to show one or two individual flowers. And the rest can be defined through the shape of your brush stroke. And we'll take a look at this in one of the demonstrations. This really combines the looseness of watercolor and the graphic elements of line work, whether it's your pencil line or a thin brush line. I think I've made good progress here. I'm basically in the stage where I'm only fiddling with smallest details. And it's usually at this stage that I have to tell myself, okay, let's get this done. We can stop painting now. It's so hard to do really. But I think the puppies have turned out lovely and they're really fun flowers to sketch for your warm up. If you don't have a flower like me that is in different stages of growth, then just use the same flower and draw it from several different angles. This will also be a great exercise and you will really practice those drawing muscles and really learn more about the subject like this. Really can recommend these kind of warm-up exercises that are about linework, about value and color 6. Demo: Pincushion Flower: The first flower that I'm going to paint in these demonstrations is a Pincushion Flower or scabies. And these have a really simple round shape. This is why it's great to start with, great for warming up. And what I want to show, and this is of course this round button shape. And then those interesting long petals that stick out off the longer shape. I'm taking my time to observe all of those interesting shapes, those angles that the petals make. And I tried to keep them irregular because this is more interesting for the I. And then they are in the middle, we have these different elements. There are a few blossoms that point directly towards the viewer, and I want to pick those out later and show them. Now also a lot of small elements in the top half of the flower that I want to paint in later. I'm pretty mixing two colors. I'm using an accurate own pink here. And then also Perlin violet, which is going to be the darker value, the darker. This really beautiful dark red color. For the first layer, I'm keeping everything really diluted and loose. I take my big brush and then sort of paint around a few highlights that I want to preserve. This is where I want to add in these little dots on top later where there are these small elements that you can see you in the flower that is lighter. And as I'm working my way through, I'm changing the color. So I have this lighter color on top and the lower half is going to have this darker purple and violet. And I'm holding my paper at an angle here so that it's more horizontal and the pigment distribution is a bit more even. So usually what you can see here is that I have my paper at an angle. And just for this first layer, I want the pigment to be evenly distributed. So I have this lighter valued top half, and then down in the bottom half there is a darker value that shows that this half of the flowers actually in shadow. And as long as the pigment is still wet, I can just drop in more pigment, make everything a bit more intense. Those pinks and violet are always a bit almost disappointing on paper because the pigments you paint with our never as firebrand and vivid as the actual flowers. But I think those pigments do a beautiful job here. As the red paint layers are drying, I'm going in with a smaller brush to add a bit of sap green for those elements are the small elements below the flower and then the stock. So there aren't any leaves on this part of the flower that actually the stock is quite long and then they are small leaves attached to it. But yeah, this is, I think, a good starting point for our sketching. Now the red has dried and I can pick out a few of the blossoms that are showing directly to water. So those small elements. And when you do this, you don't have to add in all of the blossoms that you think you can see. Just add two or three and the brain will actually come up with the rest. So it will fill in those gaps automatically. While I'm added, I'm also adding in a bit more darkness, a bit more contrast to those areas. I'm trying to think about the volume of this entire flower. So it's shaped like a half dome. And that means the light hits on the top and those lower parts will be more in shadow, there will be slightly darker. And I'm showing this year with the darker red with a Perlin violet. At the same time, I still don't want to overwork this. I'm now adding in some of those small elements on the top. You can see I took some of them away again because I don't want to have texture. And every place we talked about this already, that you don't need to have texture everywhere. That's one important detail. I want to add those green dots that shine through the red parts of the flower that are actually from the base of the flower, you can see those green areas shining through and I'm adding these in with a small brush. So this adds another layer, a bit more of interests. And I'm also adding a bit of a shadow to those green areas to make them appear more rounded. And just reinforcing a few of those small elements at the top. And I think this sketch is really finished at this point. So this was found to work on and sort of challenging and its simplicity. And I'm really pleased with how it turned out 7. Demo: Lily: My next sketch is going to be this spectacular orange Tiger Lily. And I'm again starting by getting a fuel for the overall shape. So this flower can again be put into a round shape. And then I'm figuring out the basic shapes. And I think the petals of this flower almost like ribbons that come from the middle of the flower and then sort of grow out of those middle and then filled at the end, fold around and sort of curl. And well, I'm sketching those shapes. I'm trying to be mindful about the different angles, about the sizes of the petals. They are quite different. There are three smaller petals and three larger petals. And as you can see, I'm taking away a few of the pencil lines. I've started with very loose pencil lines. And now for the refined version, I actually know where everything goes and I can put down very smooth and confident pencil lines. So I still try to be mindful about the angles and the volumes and how these petals sit and space. And what actually shows the three-dimensionality is those lending stripes that you can see on three of the bigger petals. So these will help to give a more three-dimensional look to the entire thing. I'm also thinking about how this is something that grows in an organic way. So from the middle to the outside and actually try to draw like this too. So I'm working my way from the middle to the outer edges. And the last small elements that I will add, those stamens, again growing out from the middle. And those are a bit hard to see in the reference. But I will have to preserve the lighter color for those. The Paintings stage. So now I'm mixing my colors and I'm adding in a yellow and an orange. So I want to have a brighter yellow and then sort of a middle orange and a tiny bit of a darker orange. I'm trying to keep my palette light, so I want to create a very vivid, vibrant flower. I don't want to make it too dark or too muddy. I'm testing out the paints and I start in the center with the lightest color. So this vivid yellow here, I've actually forgotten and refining pencil line here, but I try to work from the center out to two into the petals. What I want to do is drag a bit of this yellow into those learning stripes, into those yellow areas on the petals. And then I want to fade this into an orange. So I'm adding a bit of water around those edges so that I will have a soft gradient. Then I'm picking up this middle orange and I'm adding it very carefully, but also quite loosely with my big brush. So I'm using the biggest brush that I have here. I'm just dropping in the orange pigment and it mingles with a yellow and spreads that. Again, you can see how the pigment is pooling here because my surface is at an angle. I'm working around those light areas. I want to preserve this lending stripes in the middle. I'm actually quite sure these are lending stripes for insects. And so I'm working my way around the flower, around the different petals here. I have to be a bit careful because they are actually those light elements that I want to keep light. I don't want to paint over them. And now I'm actually picking up a bit of pigment from those areas where the pigment has pooled slightly. There are some areas where I want to have more intense orange, so I'm dropping in more pigment. It's all still wet so I can do this and it will just flow into the rest of the painting. So as the orange parts of the flower or drying, I can use my small brush to the stock and also the bud here. So this green and orange or yellow, which parts of the, but again, sort of mingling. So I can do this wet and wet. And it might be hard to see this yellow and there's also a bit of orange on the left side that I've introduced here. And for my second orange layer, I use a darker but still really vibrant orange. So I don't want to double this down or make it muddy in any way. And I drop in the paint as intense as I can. And just at the base, I'm dropping in a tiny amount of Perlin violet for these dark areas that are near the yellow center. I'm doing this for each petal. Again, being mindful about the shapes that I see in my reference. I'm working around the lighter areas and the flower. And on each petal I'm dropping in just a little bit of this darker pigment here. This can be a bit tricky with a large brush that I'm taking my time. So the consistency of the paint is a bit less diluted than in the first layer. So I don't want to activate or get weird blossoming. One, this flowing but controlled stayed for the paint. Again, adding those vibrant orange areas to really let those petals shine. And it gets a bit tricky where things are overlapping. So I'm adding a bit of water first and then I think I might have to pick out those areas again. So I've actually painted over the statement and I need to remove this later. But the important element that I want to introduce here again are these darker drops of paint that I can only put in there as long as the paint layers are still wet. I'm dropping in a bit more paint each petal. And I think this is beautiful. So this flower, my flower painting looks a bit lighter than what you can see in the reference, but I think this will actually look more vibrant and more interesting. So as the rest is drying, I'm starting to add in shadow areas, so like the folded petal there. And as everything has dried here you can see how I'm removing the darker paint from those little elements in the middle there. I'm working a bit more on the bad, and I've switched to my smaller brush. And I'm actually starting to add in details like these thrilled edges here. I'm not terribly concerned with absolute realistic depiction of these edges. I want to keep the lines in a certain flow. I'm actually quite pleased with how these turned out. I'm using my same dark mix to pick out a few areas that need more contrast and where I can darken the color to show where there are overlapping elements or actual edges. So I really find a few lines here and a few areas that I have laid in before. I'm doing this all around every petal also on the button a little bit. So now this is a stage where I'm adding an interesting details. Also here there's small elements, those small stocks in the middle. This is actually what holds the sketch together in a way. So these small details and these textural areas will attract the viewer's eye and will be what is interesting to the viewer, but it's important that they're not everywhere. So you have a few of those areas, but you don't want to have texture everywhere. Few of those defining lines or dots will be fine. And I'm seeing already, I should have stopped here. It's so hard to stop. But again, very pleased with how this turned out. And it was a lot of PFK-1 to paint this tiger Lily 8. Demo: Rose: In this lesson, we're going to sketch a Rose, and this must be one of the most classic flowers, but it's also a bit challenging to paint. So let's see where we can start with somewhere Simple. So again, I'm trying to simplify the outer shape. I'm starting with a big circle for the flower, for the round blossom at the top. And then for my more detailed sketch, I'm actually starting with drawing the leaves because they are oval shapes seem somehow more manageable for starting this sketch. So I'm starting with a stock and leaves and adding the thorns in as well, the flower itself. I'm closely observing what IPAT each petal is doing. So I'm trying to make sense of one petal at a time and then draw that in. So I'm trying to be mindful of the overall shape as I do this. And usually I work from the center to the outer areas, but this time I worked from the bottom to the top, sort of. So I've added in those little yellow details in the middle of the blossom and now I'm adding in those big swooping petals that form these interesting curves. And as you can see, I'm erasing a lot all of these overlapping petals and these curves and different shapes, challenging to draw in, right? And this is why I'm sort of keeping a light touch. But I think I've got the basic shape right now and I can add those outer petals. If you feel a bit overwhelmed by a complex subject like this, then don't worry, this all comes down to practice. I didn't start like this either. And I find that at some point in your drawing journey, it will just sort of click when you observe and then draw your lines and then observe again. And at some point it will just make sense and you will be able to place those lines exactly. I'm actually adding a second tweak with leaves here because I think it will enhance the composition. Again, I try to be very mindful of the position of each leaf and how they overlap, how they sit in space. I'm pretty mixing my paints here and again, we have a nice pink with us again, quinacridone pink. And I'm adding a bit of million red to the darker, more red parts of the rows. So both very vibrant, very interesting pigments and still not really as vibrant as the real flower. I'm also adding in a warm yellow for the center and a bit of sap green for the stock. For the first layer, I'm just painting a pale, very diluted wash of pink here. And I try to be mindful of the shapes, of the outer shapes. And I want to leave the center of the flower white because I want to add yellow there later. And I can see you in my reference that the bottom half of the flower is slightly darker, slightly more on shadow. So I'm adding more pigment there. Again, my paper is at an angle, so I have to hold it horizontally to avoid a lot of pooling paint. And in one place this always produces these creases on hot press papers and I don't want that too much. You can actually see me dabbing out some paint here. So when the paint is still wet, you can actually correct Watercolor pretty well. I just felt this needed to have nicer outline. So here you can see I'm adding in more pigment. Now I'm ready to add in the yellow in the center. Edit can spread out and an interesting way, but sadly, the top part of the pink has already dried, so I need to re-wet that part and I'm doing this with a damp brush, not too much water. I'm actually pushing the yellow pigment a bit into this area so that it can make an interesting effect. The pink part is drying and I'm adding in my leaves here. Again, this is a pale green wash. I don't want too much pigment in this first pass. This is a mix of sap green and just a little bit of this pure yellow that I also used in the center of the flower. I'm using my big brush here. To avoid that I fiddled around with too much detail at this stage. I'm also trying to decide if I should add this particular leaf on the left there, but I decided to edit in, and I thought this was a good decision, adds an interesting counterpoint to the blossom. Again, I tried to leave highlights where the leaves are more shiny. So Rose leaves have these interesting contrast, the highlights, these very shiny leaves I hope you can see this in the reference. The reference is a bit unclear here, but to me the leaves look like they have two halfs actually, so one is darker and usually in shadow. And one has these highlights and also has a slightly warmer green. And I try to stay true to that and add a slightly darker green with a bit of cobalt blue mixed in here. And again, where I can do this, I leave out these white areas to have an instantaneous highlight. I'm working my way around the leaves. I'm not terribly concerned with paint areas flowing into each other. I can always rework this in the second layer. I'm switching to my smaller brush now and to slightly more concentrated paint. And I want to add a few textural details with a smaller brush. I'm adding a few brush strokes here and they're always on this darker side of the leaf, on this darker half. Because I really want to preserve those lighter highlighted areas and in some leaves, I also redefined the contour a bit. Before I forget all about it, I also add in the stock, which is actually a mix of perylene violet and a bit of red. So this nice red brown That's very useful for actually a lot of botanical sketching. So this is a color that you can find very often in nature. I find, and now I'm adding in this little rose bud here with slightly darker concentrated paint because it's actually quite dark. So I'm dropping in a lot of pigment. Now I'm ready to attack this second layer. Still use my big brush and I'm taking a good look. So there are these dark creases between the petals and I want to show those. And also in the lower half, I need to show the darker petals themselves. So there are in shadow the entire lower half of the flower. And I need to pick out those areas. Again, I'm holding things at an angle here so that the pigment doesn't flow in one direction only. I'm trying to do these really fine lines. So a mix between fine lines and then these bigger areas that I can work out with a big brush. I have to say the value structure here of those overlapping petals. It is quite complex to paint and it is a bit confusing at times. So I'm not even trying to be hyper-realistic. I'm just trying to get the overall value structure right. Squinting again helps a lot here. You're going a bit by bit, working my way around the flower at this stage, I'm really finding some of the contours and I'm adding a bit of darker areas to the petals where I see that I need to be dark and dark and light petals overlapping. I think I sort of got lost here a few times. But again, with watercolor, you can almost always save your painting. I'm trying to preserve this nice yellow center while also darkening the area around it. Dropping in more pigment into these bottom areas to and at some point I want to switch to my smaller brush so that I can add a few more interesting lines with a bit more brush control. So again, I have this very concentrated mix of pink and just a bit of the million. And I'm reinforcing the areas where I can see more contrast and edges. What I think will be really helpful for the readability of this flower here is redefining some of the outlines. So having these contours really clearly against the light parts of the petals is going to be helpful. I'm adding a few textural marks here that I didn't really need, but I thought were nice. So you can know that at this stage, I'm already noodling a bit. Sketches essentially done, but I'm just adding more FUN stuff. I think the blossom is quite readable at this point, so I don't want to over-complicate it or add even more confusing details. Actually adding a bit of a darker yellow here to indicate the textures in the middle. And another thing that i2 need to fix is the stock. So I need to add a bit of a shadow color, but more concentrated dark red to make it appear a bit more three-dimensional and to make it less flat. So these are the finishing touches. I have one area where I have left, these leaves unfinished. I think this is fine. They are receding into the back so I don't have to paint them. They don't add anything new to the sketch. And I think more overlapping leaves would just confuse it. So I'm just leaving them and painting, but I think the pencil outline is nice. So these are the last steps. I am darkening a few more areas, adding a bit of shadow on the leaves. And this is the finished sketch. Was a bit confusing there for awhile, but I think it turned out quite well. So I'm very pleased with this result. 9. Demo: Iris: In this lesson, I'm sketching a blue and yellow iris. And this has to be one of my favorite flowers ever had, has quite a complex construction, but I love the graphic quality of those little veins and dots and the spectacular colors of it. I'm starting my drawing at the top. There is not really an overall shape, maybe a loose triangle. But I'm not really following that. So I'm trying to get the to place the top petals in the right place. And then where they come together, there are three more petals that are sort of shaped like small roofs. So I just need to get the curves of those into the right direction. And from there down to the bottom there are three large petals that are unfolding down below. I've practiced sketching irises a few times and my sketchbook. So by now, I'm quite comfortable with drawing them and with the particular shapes that they have. And as a small helper, I've placed a dot down there where I think the bottom petal will come down to. It's even slightly shorter than that. And let's not forget the stock. So even if it's hidden behind the rest of the flower, I think it's important to edit because this loss and doesn't float through space, it needs a bit of a grounding and the indication of the stock can give you this. So the petals are, have all kinds of creases and folds. And these really not very easy to draw shapes. And one way to see these is to understand the petals as these kind of flat bands are ribbons that are curled in space and that you can follow around the curve. I think the key here to these really complex shapes is drawing them at least once, or at least trying to draw them once from life. Because if you hold a flower, if you see a flower directly in front of you, then you can turn it. You can change your position, and then you will have a much better understanding of its different shapes of how it is built. You can even take it apart. This is something I can recommend to everyone who wants to sketch flowers. So I'm thinking about the colors that I want to mix. And we have two different violets. So I'm starting with a quite intense dioxazine violet here. It's really dark. And I'm turning it into more of a blue violet with a bit of ultramarine blue here. So I really like this color and then we have this warm violet or more of a purple. And I've added a bit of quinacridone, magenta. I'm just mixing a lot of color here because I know for these large petals I'm going to need a lot of paint. And then we also have this yellow. It's interesting complimentary contrasts here going on. And I have a warm yellow and a bit of raw sienna mixed in for these yellow areas. So quiet, the striking color combination. Starting my painting process and I want to keep the shapes very simple and flat in the first wash to give them this interesting graphic look. And I start with my blue violet and a big brush and just dropping this in into the shapes of the top petals. Although I paint them separately, I don't mind if the two shapes blend together and that's actually a third petal in the bag. So if the pain flows together, it doesn't really matter because I can pick out the edges in my second layer. I tried to paint the petal in the back a bit lighter, just a bit lighter. And I drop a bit of additional pigment into those front areas. And I add the same color on the button petals. So it's not on the entirety of the petals. I'm finding the shape with my brush. Again, I'm using the biggest brush. I've got to really have this flow and these loose lines. I'm using a slightly lighter wash on the right for the petrol that does slightly receding there in the back. I want to show that it's turned a bit to the back and it's actually also lighter and my reference so I think this makes for good contrast. Already adding a bit of those interesting veins and dot structures there. While the violet is drying, I can also add in the yellow parts. They are not actually touching, so the colors don't flow into each other. With a complimentary contrast, this would mean the two colors together would end up gray. But since there are no overlapping areas, this means I can get away with this. I really loved these contrasting colors. And as the yellow and violet has dried, I can add in the warm purple in the middle. It's not entirely dry, so it's flowing a bit into each other. But I don't mind that. It's actually a nice, interesting effect. For my second blue violet layer, I use a stronger mix and add shadows and creases. And I use my smaller brush to be able to have a lot of brush control. And as I do this, I squint and observe, and I try to keep it very simple. I also tried to keep these very smooth and quick flowing brush strokes. So I don't want to noodle and endless details. I want few details. Few interesting strokes pad. I don't want those to look overworked. And again, at this stage, I can pick out some of the contours and redefine them so that they actually read as being in the front. I can do the same thing for those purple petals. So I add those turned up corners with slightly darker purple. And this makes the purple petals look three-dimensionally immediately. So there's not much to do. I don't want to overwork them. Pretty small. They have these interesting upturned corners. Now why all of this is drying? I can add in a bit of green, this is just sap green that I will add for the stock. I actually forgot a bit up to add a bit of yellow down there. And I will have to let this dry. And now I'm switching to my small brush again and start adding the veins with violet paint. So this is almost like drawing with a brush. This is the really FUN part. I still have to be mindful not to overdo it and to decide on a few central elements here. So I tried to follow the direction of growth, starting at the base and then fading out the line bit by bit. At this stage, it's really the most FUN stage for me of the painting. But it's also where I have to restrict myself the most. I think I have already talked about this. So I tried to be mindful about reinforcing contour lines, adding a few textures that are sort of representational for the entire flower. I also change the intensity of the paints for this petal that's slightly lighter and slightly receding, I use a bit more diluted Violet and I don't make the lines as contrasty and as prominent as the lines on the petal in the front. So as I said, this is a really FUN process for me and there are so many interesting graphic elements on the Iris. I've just reinforced the contour lines of the curl petal here in the front. There are so many dots and little veins. What I'm looking for here is a graphic representation of these elements, not a realistic depiction of everything that's on this flower because this would take hours. Again, I'm reinforcing some of the contours here just to make the sketch read a bit better. I think it's finished. Oh no, I have to add the, the green elements of the stock here. I know that irises look really complex on first sight, but once you get the hang of it, they're really amazing to sketch 10. Final Thoughts: I really hope you've enjoyed this approach of sketching loose but Precise florals. We all go through different phases without Art. And it's so interesting to explore new things and evolve your Art style. Sketching is really at the core of my creative work and the opportunity to show the fascinating diversity of nature through line value and color. That always brings me back to drawing the natural world and especially florals. I noticed that as I've gotten better and quicker with my drawing technique, I had less of an inclination to be as precise with the color aspect. Watercolor wants to flow free. And with this technique, it can really shine once the basic shapes in place the rest will just happen. Wonderful process if you allow yourself to observe closely and then place each line, each brushstroke, intention and care. Drawing quickly and painting loosely doesn't mean sloppy. I'd like to encourage you to really practice your basic drawing speed and ease will come all by itself over time. Allow Watercolor to do its thing and leave it alone after you've placed your brush stroke. Instead of trying to correct it, if you use ink for drawing, it's the same effect. You place your line wants. Small mistakes will not matter that much with this organic flowing process. And you're creating sketches after all. Sketches don't need perfection and are often interesting to look at because you can see the handwriting of the artist and the small imperfections. Trust this process and enjoy it. Just as a quick recap, here are the core concepts that we went through in this class. Start with the basic shapes and volumes. Observe closely and place your line. Simplify and concentrate on the essentials. Stay loose with your watercolor. Think of well, use highlights, midtones and shadows, and distribute the pigment accordingly. Squint. If you can't see the value structure, use a larger brush to keep you from fiddling with too many details. Keep your colors simple and clear. Take a step back from time-to-time and see what you're sketch needs. Don't overwork your paintings or drawings at texture and details sparingly and in select areas. This one is kind of lemme, stop when it's the most Fun. And lastly, enjoy the process that's just pigment and paper. I'd really like to encourage you to take what I've shown in these lessons and make it your own. You can use this class and adapted to fit your needs and your creative preferences. I hope this class has been an interesting insight into my process that you can use for your own sketching activities. You have your own artistic handwriting. So hone and explore this. I really hope you've enjoyed this class and I'll see you very soon. Bye 11. Extra Demo: Water Lily: I want to show you how you can apply the loose but precise technique and a slightly bigger sketch. And I've seen these striking Water Lilies and thought they would make a great sketching subject. And I'm starting with a flower itself and indicated very loosely with a big circle. And I'm only drawing the flower epitope, by the way, not the flower at the bottom, but I will be adding few leaves. For this flower. I'm working my way from the inside out, and this seems easiest for those overlapping petals. And this definitely takes a while as I'm observing how each petal is shaped and how it is placed and shape how it's overlapping another petal. I'm really taking my time here to observe and place my lines. And again, the way I do this is I observe really closely and then I'm placing one line. You will see that I will occasionally erase my lines and correct them. But that's all part of the process. So I tried to be as economic as I can with my lines and my drawing, but from time-to-time, I will correct a few mistakes. So Water Lilies have this really amazing symmetry. That is, needs a bit of concentration to draw, but it's really FUN to add more shapes. Between the shape you have just drawn. The petals are actually sort of curved in or curled at the end a little bit. So if you see it from the side, you will see this sort of edge that is a bit broader. So after I've drawn the flower, the placement of the leaves is quite easy. They're all more or less round. And I just have to be mindful about where they overlap. And this, again, has actually been the relaxing process. And this is also a great opportunity to practice drawing directly from the shoulder. So I actually, for these large circles, I don't use my fingers so much. I try to place the movement directly from the shoulder or at least from the elbow. Gift this technique to try, you will really get some nice round flowing shapes if you practice this for a bit, as opposed to the small Crockett round shapes you will get when primarily drawing with the movement of your fingers or your wrist. So there are more leaves in this reference than I want to draw. So I'm trying to decide what would be an interesting and compelling composition. So as I said, I left out the flower at the bottom, and I also left out a few of those leaves. I tried to give the overall composition and irregularity. And I think this makes it all the more compelling and interesting. I'm switching to my paint and I'm starting with the inside of the flower with an orange yellow and it's quite dark because I don't want to add too much to it. With my second layers. Also, start painting the pink petals around the center bit by bit. And to me it doesn't matter at this stage of the colors flow into each other. I think it makes the sketch look quite interesting, and it's also one of the unique qualities of watercolor. So for this sketch, I don't mind it. The colors compliment each other very well, and it's quite beautiful effect. What I'm also doing here, again is I try to leave highlights with my brush. So unpainted areas where I can see the sunlight is shining directly on the petals. So Water Lilies have quite the glossy look hard surface, and this makes them shiny when the sun is hitting the surface. Another thing that I observe is that the color, the pink is actually more concentrated in the inner parts of the Water Lily. I tried to be mindful of that and really try to concentrated on the inner circles and try to fade it out on the outer petals a bit more. So I add more water to my paint. I don't apply paint everywhere. I leave white areas, some of the petals on in the outer circle, I actually almost white. And so I use slightly lighter pink as my shadow. And as this pink part is drying, I can start work on the outer leaves that aren't touching the flower. And I find that different colors quite interesting. I use the green here with a lot of yellow and dropped in sort of more bluish green here. And this makes all kinds of interesting effects. So this is really a subject for this loose wet and wet Watercolor. There's another light yellow green leaf directly below the water lily, and this Also flows a bit into the pink, but it doesn't matter that much. For the next leaves in the back On the right there, I add in a bit of perylene violet, and this makes the leaves almost drown. And where the leaves are in touch or overlapping, the blossom, I'm a bit careful with my big brush. And from time to time I drop in slightly different green pigments. So this was a bit of sap green, and then I add more of the perylene green, also trying to be protective of the outline of the parts that are already painted. So I don't want to paint over them too much. And a lot more perylene violet here, which made it almost dark gray or dark brown. Really interesting color. And at this stage, I didn't know that I wanted to add the dark water around everything, so I made this leaf really dark. So after I've defined my outlines, I apply the paint with really large brush strokes and I use a lot of water in these washes too, because I won't add a second layer and I want the pigment to be vibrant enough from the sad. As I'm working my way around the leaves, I'm looking for the different greens that I can see. I'm mixing a bit of cerulean blue to get a cooler green like in this leaf here at the bottom. And this unruly and blue adds a bit of texture to the leaf due to its granulating properties. From time-to-time are also drop in a few dots of pure blue or yellow here and there, which also adds a lot of structure and a lot of visual interests. Here you can see similar, really vibrant, bluish green. The way I proceed here is I paint each leaf for itself and usually let the contours dry and let the leaves themselves dry before I paint the one next to it. And this gives me these really precise defined contours. And this is something that I really like. And overall, this is really a fan process. Playing with these different greens. He, I'd just dropped a bit of yellow into this one. And here we have an almost pale green with a lot of blue in it. And I tried to be mindful about these big brushstrokes, big movements, flowing paint, and adding different colors into it. Again, I'm dropping a little bit of paint into the different Green's theorem there. I think that makes them really attractive. As everything is dry, I can start adding a second layer of pink on the petals. And this is quinacridone, pink in its pure state. And I tried to squint and see that I need the most concentrated color around the center of the flower. I tried to leave these small light outlines for the petals so that the individual parts are still readable. Urine there, I really find a few of the core tools with a darker paint. Again, I'm taking my time for this, observing how each petal is shaped, how it is curved around and makes this small hood the top. And in the end it's all about readable sketch. With my small brush, I also add textural details to the leaves. Now, there is this slightly darker spot in the center of each leaf with very light veins coming out of it. I'll also add a bit of cast shadow here and there where the leaves overlap. These leaves definitely need a bit more contrast and some areas. And I think it was at this stage that I thought it would be interesting if I had some darker areas where the leaves are not overlapping and where these whitespaces are because actually there's dark water all around them. And this would be interesting to add. So as I added my cast shadow here, I thought it would be interesting to add the dark water in a similar tone. And so I mixed blue, ultramarine blue, and burnt sienna to get a really dark gray. And I started by painting these small areas, but when the leaves first way, I thought the contrast would be most striking. And this created really interesting contrast between the light leaves and the dark areas where the water's coming through. This really makes the leaves pop out and the redefines their shape. As I was painting this, I decided I wanted to add more water around the entire Group of leaves. And so I eventually got out my big brush again and add a dark gray all around the leaf. So I started with this little corner there. And then I thought, Wait a minute, why don't I add it all around this leaf group and this flower to unify the shape a bit more. Again, I first painted this sharp edged outline and then filled in the rest with larger brush strokes. You can see this here. As I'm doing this, I try to be mindful of the shapes that I've already established. And then I'll just go crazy with the big brush. I'm fading out the darkness of the water at the edges a bit to indicate that this is fading to the white of the paper. This was a really exciting process. I wasn't quite sure why. I wanted to fade out the water and how far I would bring it. Just sort of made it up as I went along. I try to be very loose with my brush strokes and really not to overwork it. I didn't want to go over any of this again with the same paint. Again. I started by defining the outlines again and then added a bit of surrounding darker water. It even works for this darkest leaf here at the top right. So this gray mix is even darker than this very dark green leaf. And then you can see that in the middle, there was a little bit of a blooming effect going on and I just added more concentrated paint in this area to make it disappear. As the rest is drying. I saw that I needed to redefine a bit of the contrast between the leaves to make them the same color as the darkest parts of the water to make them read a little bit better. And as the last step here comes the really FUN pad. Although everything about this sketch has been a lot of PFK-1, I added a little bit more textural details. There are these small imperfections on the leaf surface. And I added a few dots and these sort of blemishes and marks here and there. As I'm adding these, I tried to be really random and try to make these really irregular so that they don't look like a pattern or like something that is a recurring regular shape, but I really try to make them look organic and irregular. Just a few finishing touches here, a few dots, a few textural marks, and then the sketch is almost finished. One thing that I did want to add was a bit more definition and a bit more of this dark pink to the middle of the Water Lily Flower. And I really find a few of the outlines of the petals. But that's essentially all. And I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I really liked the look of it. I think this sketch shows what this technique can really achieve. So these loose flowing watercolor washes and at the same time, precise defined linework and contrasts and interesting textures and details. So I'm really hope you've gotten an idea of how you can use this technique in your own sketchbook work