Transcripts
1. Welcome to Watercolor Wreaths: Hi, there. My name is Audrey and I'm the creator of Things Unseen Designs. I believe in the inspirational and healing power of art. On SkillShare, I have classes on watercolors, calligraphy, and journaling. I've been painting loose florals in watercolors since 2016, and then I fell in love with painting wreaths because they brought a sense of wholeness and completion in my life. In the past few years, this practice has helped me overcome a lot of personal trauma and bring me to a place of peace and inspiration. In this class, I want to place you on a journey where painting a wreath will feel as natural as breathing air. I'll share a little bit of why this class is personal and important to me. I'll show you my favorite tools, demonstrate how to paint a dozen different floral elements, and walk you through how I design and paint three different wreaths from beginning to end. This class is geared towards beginners, but even advanced artists who want to learn how to paint loose florals and wreaths are most welcome. No matter your skill level, I think you'll agree that wreaths are an endless source of inspiration and we can all use more of that in our lives. By the end of the class, you'll feel comfortable and confident enough to paint your own unique wreath. If you also get the sense of freedom and spontaneity that often comes with watercolors and the loose floral style, then that's an added bonus. I hope you'll join me in this class. I'll see you there.
2. About Wreaths and Importance: A wreath is a circular arrangement of floral elements like flowers, stands, branches, fruits, etc. Throughout history and a lot of western cultures, they were used as Christmas decorations. They can also be used as crowns in ceremonial events like the Olympics. Wreaths may also be laid at a grave or memorial site as a symbol of honor and remembrance. For me, a wreath is also of personal significance. It represents eternity, wholeness, and timelessness. When I started my watercolor journey, I started by painting flowers. My grandmother had passed away in May of 2016, and she was a watercolor artist. I wanted to honor her memory by doing something that she enjoyed doing. Little did I know that this would heal me from the inside out. Within a year of dabbling in watercolors, I started a personal 100 day project where I painted a unique wreath everyday. I started simple with just leaves, but soon I experimented with non-floral elements like animals. This incredible 100 day journey cemented my love of watercolors, loose florals, and wreaths, and helped me overcome a lot of personal trauma and hardships. This class is so special to me because it's a culmination of everything I love. Wreaths are also forgiving in their composition. Even if you accidentally paint something out of place, you can easily cover it up or make adjustments to fill out the Wreath. This is going to sound super cliché, but I feel like that's how we should also approach life. You're going to make mistakes and sometimes things will feel out of place, and there will be some wreath paintings that you're just not feeling and you might have to scrap it and start all over and that's okay. There's a new day tomorrow and new opportunities to grow and become a better person. So in this class I want to emphasize that it's not just about painting pretty things, although that's always a nice outcome. But I want to encourage you to be more introspective and mindful of how your emotional and mental health is being affected by the act of painting. So as you're learning how to paint floral elements and arrange them on a wreath, resist the urge to try and make it look perfect or exactly like mine. It's not going to be perfect the first time around, and that's okay. But the next one will be better, and then the next, and then the next. Your outlook will also improve as you see yourself growing. I hope you'll have as much fun and gain as much inspiration from this class as I did in creating it.
3. Audrey's Loose Floral Style: When I talk about painting loosely, it's half interpreting the subjects through my eyes and half the brushwork skills I've obtained over the years. In most of my florals, I pay somewhat close attention to the obvious details but in general, I have an impressionistic approach to the subject. I want to include just enough details that you as the viewer can figure out what I painted. My style has definitely evolved and improved over time. In the beginning, my paintings were as simple as they could be, but because of the personal connection I had with the subject, and my love for water colors, I didn't give up. I kept painting. I learned from other teachers. Mostly I experimented with my own style and allowed myself to make mistakes and learn from them. I want to encourage you to do the same. Right now, if watercolors is completely new to you, that's okay. I'm glad you're here. Don't expect yourself to be able to create the leaves exactly as I do. Just the fact that you have a brush in your hand and are ready to learn is a great place to be. By now I painted tens of thousands of leaves to the point that I could probably do it with my eyes closed. I'm not saying you need to get on that level, but I'm telling you that it will take time for your work to go from simple to something that's your own unique style. Even with my 100 day project, you can see how I started off really simple. The leaves don't look all that realistic. The colors are kind of flat, but I pressed on knowing that with each painting I'm learning something new and that I will improve. For comparison, here's a lemon wreath I painted back in May 2017, which was day 40 of my 100 day project. Now let's look at another lemon wreath that I painted earlier this month in April of 2020. See what a difference time and dedication makes. Don't get me wrong. I do appreciate the lemon wreath from three years ago. It was at the early stages of my art journey but I can appreciate my growth because in this latest wreath, I can see depth in my lemons, confidence in my brush strokes, and a better eye for composition. Whether you're at the beginning, middle, or more advanced in your watercolor journey, you are so welcome here. I hope my style and approach to loose florals will help you to loosen up as well and enjoy the ride.
4. 5 Step Overview: It's hard to give you a formula for how to construct a reef but I can walk you through the five steps I take to prepare myself in order to put brush to paper. Step one, gather inspiration. I'll share more in the next video about how to gather inspiration, but in general, I like to use Pinterest and my nature walks. Step two, select a shape. The most common reef shape is a circle. If you're a beginner and don't want to have to be concerned with the variety of shapes, don't worry, a circle is the best place to start. No need to get fancy and complicate things if you don't want to. We'll talk more about other types of shapes if you're curious. Step three, consider color. Some people just have that natural eye for color balance. If you're not one of those people, I recommend grabbing a manual color wheel or create one yourself or find one online to reference. Step four, pick floral elements, this is probably my favorite step besides actually painting. However, this could also be the step where you linger and procrastinate because you're having a hard time choosing. In a more in-depth video, I'll explain how I categorize floral elements to help you make better decisions. The final step is just to then put your brush to paper and paint it out. Now that you know my five steps, let's go a little bit deeper.
5. Gather Inspiration: One of my favorite sources of online inspiration is Pinterest. Now I've created a board for you so you can feel free to check that out. As you're painting, I want to encourage you to try to paint real life wreaths so that you can practice interpreting them in your own way. Besides Pinterest, you can also snap photos while you're out and about and shopping. Perhaps you're in a furniture store and they have a wreath in a display, in a mock room. A lot of craft stores often have handmade wreaths that are already ready for purchase. You can observe how they were put together, the color schemes, and take photos of them that you can put on your Pinterest board. I personally enjoy visiting gardens, nature preserves, forest preserve, things like that. You might not find man-made wreaths in these places, but you might see a floral element that you want to include. Maybe there's an interesting branch structure that you want to capture. You might even be surprised with what you find during your neighborhood walk. Keep your eyes open for whatever might catch your eye. Lastly, you may also be inspired by the seasons. I love the fall season here in the US. We have a lot of warm colors like burnt orange, cinnamon, mahogany, mustard. Spring flowers are always a source of inspiration too. Large pennies and hydrangea can make a bold statement in a wreath. This first step of gathering inspiration is always ongoing. When I'm getting ready to paint, I will visit this Pinterest board from time to time and then move on to Step 2.
6. Select a Shape: As I mentioned, the most common wreath shape is a circle. But you can also do a laurel wreath, a half wreath, or a geometric shape like a triangle, diamond, hexagon, et cetera. The possibilities really are endless. I usually stick to a circle or a half wreath, because of that personal significance but you can do whatever your heart desires. As you can see in my 100-day project, I also did something unique, where I painted a series of flowers from A to Z. Instead of painting them with straight stems, I decided to bend them into a circular shape.I felt like this pushed my creative boundaries to see the flowers in a different way. Just because a wreath is a circle, it doesn't mean that you need to cram dozens of different floral elements into it. You can do whatever sparks your imagination. Maybe you want to bend nature and do something like I did. Maybe you want to create a gold geometric shape and arrange florals around the border. Allow yourself to dream of new possibilities and that shape will just naturally come to you.
7. Consider Color: I do go over a little bit of color theory in my very first Loose Florals class. If you need a refresher, feel free to check that out and then come back here. What I do want to mention is that choosing a color scheme will affect your overall balance and composition. Sometimes my color choices are affected by my mood or by the seasons. In the fall, you might see me painting with warmer colors and elements like gourds and chrysanthemums. In the summer, you might see a bright multitude of colors. In this class, we're going to look at three different color schemes. Monochrome, complimentary, and triadic. For a monochrome wreath, we're going to focus on just one color. We might use shades of the particular color. The first wreath that will paint is a monochrome one with olive leaves. The next one we'll paint with complimentary colors. This means that we will use two colors that are directly opposite each other on the color wheel. To find out what complimentary colors are, you can reference a color wheel or even Google, "Hey, what's the complementary color of red or purple?" The rose wreath that we're going paint together uses red and green because they are opposite on the color wheel. The third and final wreath that will paint uses triadic colors. This means that we'll use three colors that are equidistant on the color wheel. In this case, we're going to use yellow, orange, purple, and green. Now, there are lots of different colors schemes that you can choose from. Feel free to choose whatever you'd like and whatever inspires you. On a related note, I want you to become familiar with your watercolor set. If you haven't already, create a detailed swatch of your watercolor palette, or stick to a few colors that are your favorites and familiar to you. In general, when you have less colors, you might find yourself focusing more on the textures of floral elements, which I'll discuss more later. As a beginner, I recommend starting with just a few colors so that you don't have to consider as many variables.
8. Pick and Plan Floral Elements: With this step, if you are a beginner, I highly recommend you working from a reference photo. Not so that you can paint exactly what you see, but so that you can get a sense of the color scheme and the composition. Working off of a photo is also helpful because it eliminates some of the planning steps, like selecting a shape, color scheme, and floral elements. There's nothing wrong with working off of photos. With a loose floral style you can easily make it look unique and to your liking. As you put in more practice, you'll get the hang of creating your own arrangements and it will come more naturally to you. You can even do a little sketching to help you plan and arrange the elements. In your sketch, you can plan about how large you want the certain elements to be, you can work out the composition, and even color scheme. So if you're more of a careful planner, consider doing a sketch first. However, remember not to just sketch on your actual watercolor paper and sketch on a separate piece of paper. Next, I want to categorize the floral elements into feature and filler elements. Feature elements are usually physically larger and take a more prominent place within the wreath. These could include roses, peonies, sunflowers, a bird, eggs, a ribbon or a bow, fruits, succulents, antlers. It can really be anything just as long as it's a lot larger. A feature element is usually planned and painted first because you want them to really shine and take the attention from the viewer. Filler elements include leaves, smaller daintier flowers, berries, branches, feathers, or grass like pieces. As the name suggests, they're meant to help fill out the wreath and make it look fuller. You want to use these thoughtfully and strategically so that they don't take away attention from the feature elements. Now I do want to mention that if you choose just one filler element for your wreath then that could become the feature element. For example, you could have a wreath of just berries. Since there are no other larger elements competing, maybe besides leaves, the berries now are a feature element. Sometimes you might include a surprise, I love it, like a metallic touch, calligraphy details, or something non floral. For me, I have my default flowers that I always like to choose, like peonies, roses, and lavender. When I have a bit more time to dedicate to studying the flower and wanting to include it in a wreath, then that's when I'll choose something new. Otherwise, I tend to have my go to flowers and that's okay with me. Again as a beginner try to work with two or three elements at a time. Ignore the pressure to create these large scale wreaths right away. Start with what feels natural and comfortable to you. Then incorporate a new element that you might want to explore. Try and see how that might fit in. Or make that the feature element and just take it step-by-step. Maybe you'll start with just one feature element and a few filler ones, or you might concentrate on just one filler element and then add new ones as you go.
9. Wreath Painting Tips: Here are some of my best tips on painting a wreath. First, work from light to dark. Water colors work best when you layer more saturated colors on top of lighter colors. You can always fill in with lighter elements at the end too, but having many layers gives the impression that the wreath is very full. You can also easily cover up a mistake, if you place an element somewhere you didn't want it to be. As long as it's not too dark, you can cover it up in the next layer. Next, vary the angles of your floral elements. Don't be afraid to experiment with the directions that the filler elements are facing. Real wreaths have elements pointing in all sorts of direction. Observe how wreaths are put together in real life, and that will help you in painting yours. Finally, start with the feature elements, and then add the filler elements. Just like painting in layers, you want to paint in stages, in terms of the element. You don't just go from left to right or clockwise or counterclockwise. I actually go around, and around, until it's all filled in. I do a little bit here, a little bit there, and then just keep going around. Other artists might have different approach, and you might too, and that's okay. Find out what works for you. Well, are you ready to start painting and putting wreaths together? Let's get started.
10. Supplies You'll Need: Let's talk about the supplies that you're going to need in this class. First, let's talk brushes. I'm going to be using round brushes in the sizes two and six. The reason why I'm going to be using these two primarily, is because my wreaths are going to be about six to eight inches in diameter. I'm not going to paint really big wreaths. If you plan on painting much larger wreaths, then you might want to grab a larger size brush. A size six will actually do really well in terms of painting broad flowers, so don't feel like you have to get a bigger brush. If a six is all you have, that's good enough, then maybe you'll just paint a little bit smaller. I prefer the round shape brushes because it has a nice wide body here in the middle. If you have a smaller brush than a two, then you might want to use that as well if you want to paint really fine details. But in general, the six and the two should be enough for this class. The brand that I'm using is the Creative Mark, and you can find this at Jerry's Artarama. These are synthetic brushes. Because the brush body is so wide, it holds a lot of water, a lot of paint, and it's so smooth to work with. If you're looking for new brushes, this might be a good option. Next, let's look at paints. Now the brand that I'm using is called the Lukas brand, and this can also be found at Jerry's Artarama. You can buy the paint in tubes and then you can pour them into these pans, or you can buy the pans as they are and then arrange them on your palette like I did here. Now before I start painting later, I'm probably going to wipe all this down just so I have a clean palette to work with. But I love these paints too, they're just very vibrant and very pigmented in its colors, and it only takes a little bit of water to really activate these colors. When it comes to watercolors and the variety of colors, you really don't need all of the colors of the rainbow. If you have just the basic colors or even eight to 10 colors, that's probably more than enough. The most important thing is that you actually know how to use those colors. Don't feel intimidated that you need to buy all these colors, don't worry, just have your basics and start from there. Now besides a regular palette, I also have this metallic set, and I love this set because again, the colors are just so vibrant and shiny. This you can find on Amazon and most online retailers, and there are other metallic colors too. When it comes to wreaths, having a metallic touch might really make your wreath standout. This is an optional supply, you don't have to have this but if you wanted to add a really unique touch, then having a metallic detail might really make your wreath stand out. Let's talk paper. Now in general, I like to use cold press paper, and if you're not familiar with that, basically it just means that it has a little bit of texture to the paper. If you like to use hot pressed, that means that the paper is a lot smoother, there's hardly any surface texture to it, and this size is a nine by 12. Now there are lots of different paper brands out there and everyone has their own preferences. You can try out whatever you like, but I like the Canson brand, Strathmore, Arches, Fabriano, and those range from affordable to expensive. If there's a way for you to grab sample papers, some art stores will have sample papers for you to buy, that would be a great place to start. But once you find a paper that you love, stick with it because I think having the right paper is one of the most important supplies that you can have when it comes to watercolors. Besides that, you're going to need a pencil and an eraser because we will be doing a little bit of sketching, and also when you go to design your wreath, you're going to need to lightly sketch a circle. Grab a good pencil that isn't too dark, and then an eraser. If you have a kneaded eraser like those rubbery ones, that's even better. But if you just have a regular one, that's okay too. Then finally, you'll obviously need water, and a paper towel, or a rag so that you can blot out your brush. I like to use two different jars, I use one for just washing out my dirty brush and then the other one I try to keep clean and pick up clean water. These are all of the supplies that you'll need for this class, go ahead and grab them, and let's go on to the next video. I'll see you there.
11. Leaves as Filler Element, Part 1: Now filler elements in a wreath are exactly just that. So after you've got the general shape of the reef down, these filler elements are going to help fill in all of the in-between spaces and to make your wreath really come together. I'm going to separate the filler elements into two categories, basically just flowers and then leaves. In this page we'll look at lots of different types of leaves that we could potentially paint, different types of textures that we can get, and then we'll also look at some popular filler flowers. Now because these are filler elements, I really don't paint a lot of details for them. I make them as minimal as possible. Sometimes they can be mistaken for berries or different elements and that's totally okay. Again, these filler elements are just to help the viewer complete the look of the wreath. It's not meant to really draw you in or look more closely. That's what the feature element is for. For the filler elements, we're going to focus mostly on our brushstrokes, really keeping it very simple and light and then using different colors to bring all that together. The filler elements are really important because this is where you can add a complimentary color or a third color to bring overall balance to your wreath too. So keep that in mind as we're painting these. Again, these are meant to be really simple, loose floral style. Let's first look at leaves, leaves are one of my most favorite things to paint. I'm just going to use a generic blue, greenish color over here, but you can really use any color that you want. Maybe there's a color that you haven't used a lot in your palate and you want to use that now so that you can just use it. Feel free. I'm going to start with a size six brush again to show you in larger strokes, but feel free to use a smaller brush if you want. These leaves are ones that you'll find in my first loose florals class but if you need a refresher, I'll quickly go through it here. The first leaf dot we're going to paint is just a really simple, long shape, is going to start skinny and then widen and then end skinny again. For that we're really going to work on our wrist using our wrist and bending the brush in a way so that we can get that nice wreath in the middle of the leaf. So first start with the brush tip just on the paper and as thin as you can, that will be our stem. Then push down on the brush so that it widens out. Do you see how the bristles are fanned out and then drag it a little bit and as you drag, start lifting and then come up to a point again. Let's try that a couple more times and start with just a tip and then bend down. Let the bristles fan out, drag and as you keep dragging, eventually come back up to a point. Now as you're doing this, observe how your wrist is bending, observe how the brush is reacting. This is going to fill in some of these spaces up here. Now as you get a little bit more comfortable, try to go a little faster, just a little. Again, just observing how your wrist is bending and how the brush is bending as well. We can still go slow if you'd like. You also don't have to drag as far as I am. You can keep the drag just very short and then you'll just get a short leaf. Again, I love this round brush because you can really get that width here. Now let's put two of these together. I'm going to do one side of the leaf like this. Notice how I curved it a little bit more than earlier. Then for the other side of the leaf, I'm going to start right about there. Not at the same point where I started the other one, but right about there and then come downward and then meet back up at the point. Notice how I left a very thin sliver of white space that was on purpose. That was to kind of let the viewer think that that is the vein of the leaf. Now if you didn't leave this much white space, that's okay, but as long as there's just a hint of it. So if you did just this, that's okay but there's just a hint right there. It's just enough to let the viewer think that that's a leaf. Lets try a couple more times. Now these are pretty large leaves and that's okay. Maybe these will be some of the larger filler elements that you start out with. For example, when I make roses, my feature element, sometimes I'll add maybe two or three of these leaves around the rows to fill it out already and give me a basis of how the rest of the wreath should look. Again, if you need more practice on this, feel free to go to my first loose florals class but for now I'm going to keep going. Another really easy way to add leaves as your filler element is to add two leaves together. I know it seems very basic, but it really doesn't take a lot to fill out your wreath. I'm going to make two short stuns like so, and then just have my leaves coming out like this. Now look how I made one side of the leaf really wide and then the other side really skinny. This tricks the viewer into thinking that you're looking at the side of a leaf. So just try different techniques like that. Maybe these two leaves are a little bit closer together this time. Maybe this one's a lot larger. Sometimes you don't have to add the other side of the leaf if you don't want to. So if you want to keep it just simple like that, that's okay too. I think again, the more you practice these leaves, the more comfortable you get with how it looks. You can experiment with smaller leaf and then a much larger leaf. Now let's try adding multiple leaves so you might have a longer stem. Again, try to vary how your stems are facing. They don't all have to be facing up. Some of them might be facing downward or sideways. Again, play around with the size and the direction of your leaves. The more you can vary the direction of your leaves, actually, the more natural and organic your wreath will look. Something else that I like to do when I do multiple leaves is have one leave kind of obscuring the center of the stem here because again, not all leaves are just perfectly fanning out like this. So I might have again an another long stem and it might have this one coming up like that. So notice how this one looks like, it's standing in front of the stem. Do you see how this one looks a lot more natural than this one? They both look realistic, they both look like they're plausible but just because of the way that this leaf wraps around this main stem, it just gives it that little bit of hint of realism, just a little bit. So try that one more time. So again a long stem. These are some basic leaves that you can easily add to your wreath. Now let's look at some slightly different shapes. Now, really popular type of shape is a eucalyptus. That when you have a little bit of a blue tinge to it. Let me quickly mix a little of that. Eucalyptus also comes in different sizes and shapes of leaves too. We're going to do the ones with the more rounded leaves and they're smaller. Usually they come in like a long branch, kind of like so. Again at the end they're a little bit more of a rounded shape. Sometimes there are leaves that they look like they've been flattened. When you're looking at them from the side, they look like just a line, just like that. This is another great example where you can have a leaf that's obscuring the middle, just like that. Again, I'm just going just for the impression of a leaf. I'm not going for realism but anyone who looks at this and might be able to tell that looks like a eucalyptus leaf. Again, as I'm going, I'm leaving some of that white space right there. Always important to leave that white space. Let's try another one of the eucalyptus. Now if you were to add these elements to a wreath, you might want to bend this a little bit more. These are a little bit too straight for an actual wreath. This is just practice.
12. Leaves as Filler Element, Part 2: Next, let's look at some olive leaves. They're going to resemble these leaves up here where it's just like one stroke. But again, we're going to mix how, which direction they're facing, etc. I'm just warming up this cool green here with a little bit of the brown, get this nice all of color. Now, olive leaves were mostly used for the laurel wreaths. If you wanted to paint a laurel wreath, then maybe practicing these olive leaves might be fun. Again, we're going to do something similar to these leaves up here. But instead of pointing them, we're going to round them out just a little bit. Let's start with just like a two-leaf olive branch, just to get us started easy. There is just my one stem. Maybe I'll have one coming up this way like that. Again, using that drag method, but then bringing my brush around to round it out. Again, having that just sliver of white space, again just helps the viewer think that it's a 3-D leave. Now afterward, if you want to go back in here and add some black olives, that will definitely make it obvious that you paint it an olive branch. But even if you didn't, I think just that color alone and the shape of the leave really helps to show that this is an olive branch. Now the way that olive leaves look, they're a little bit sporadic. You might have leaves like this and you might have the branch continuing on. Again, this is a great place to add some of those olives to complete the look. This is also a great way to practice layering. If you wanted to start out with some lighter colored leaves, then you can go back in there and then add darker ones. Let me try that. Let me do some of the lighter ones first. Now if I wanted to add a darker one, I'm going to add it right here and then intersect this leaf right here. When you layer, you want to be careful. I should have waited just a little bit longer because I can barely see the original leaf that I had painted. If I just weighed it just a little bit longer, I probably would have gotten a much better layered look. You can also have another leaf in the middle just to make it look a little bit more realistic. So far we've painted a lot of different types of leaves, and again, these are all great for different types of filling elements. When I start a wreath, like I said, I start with my feature elements and then use these large single leaves to just start out with and then I will usually use these types of leaves to complete the circle or whatever the shape is, if that's what I'm going for. Then sometimes I'll use these smaller versions of eucalyptus to poke out at different angles. Then I'll usually use a smaller version of this or even single leaves or double leaves like this to fill out the rest of the wreath so that it just looks more like it stands like this. You totally can at any point in the design of your wreath. Just be mindful that these are going to take up a lot more space. These are somewhere between filler and feature elements. Just be mindful that if you want to, you want to incorporate these as early as you can in the painting process. The last leaf filler element we'll look at is pine needles. I really like adding pine needles as well because they can add a type of texture that you might not get anywhere else. I'm switching to my size 2 brush. You want to try to use the drybrush technique. You want to blot as much of the water out as you can from your brush and then pick up the paints.
13. Florals as Filler Element, Part 1: Okay, let's continue on with painting these filler elements. We're going to focus mostly on flowers, but I also want to touch on branches and berries. Now the types of flowers that we're going to look at are flowers that are usually used as filler elements in actual reefs or bouquets. When you look at these flowers, they're really meant to be a lot smaller and usually they're poking out behind the feature elements, or they're just meant to add a compliment to a color, something like that. But really, their purpose is to fill the reef, hence the name, filler elements. Now for these filler elements I leave out even more details. Some of these brushstrokes are actually going to look very similar. It's all about just adding the tiniest of details to make it look like an actual flower or distinguish it from a berry, etc. But really, we're going to be using a smaller brush, so most likely the two. We're going keep our details to a minimum and really just let the colors and some of the finer details trick the viewer into thinking that it's an actual flower instead of just blobs of color. Of course, again, white space is really important. Let's look at some of these filler elements. The first one that we'll look at are the green ball Dianthus flowers. They're literally just like a ball of grass. Let's take some of our greens. Usually this green is like a yellow, greenish color. Like I said, I'm going use my size two brush. I'm going to try to zoom in on my work as much as I can so you can see all the little details. Again, I don't want to just paint a circle I don't want to do that. I'm going to start from the middle of the flower and then work my way out, and I'm going to make the middle darker and then lighter as I go out. While that paint is still wet though, I'm going to go in there and add some of that darker color too. The whole thing doesn't look like just a flat sphere or like one sphere, but it actually looks like lots of different petals sticking out. Like I said, I'm going to stick to maybe one inch, maybe 1.5 inch flower. Again, I'm not going go too big because these are supposed to be filler elements that don't take up that much room, but just help bring overall balance to your reef. I'm going to start in the middle, and just start with a couple of dots. Then I might make some of the dots a little bit bigger. To make them a little bit bigger, just press down a little bit more on your brush. To make this spots a little bit bigger. I wash up my brush just a little bit, and then keep going around. Again, leaving that white space all around. Now while my paint is still wet, I want to go in there and drop in some of that saturated color. Now these usually are long stalks, so you might want to add some long stalk as well. Now this stalk might be a little bit too long to incorporate in your reef, but you want to incorporate some stem, maybe about this long, so that it looks like an actual green ball flower instead of just a random green ball. Besides this, you've also got flowers like Alliums. Alliums can be purple, they can be pink or white. Let's do a purple one. Now the Allium is going to look very similar to this, but in an Allium flower you can actually see the individual stems, I'm going to try to replicate that as well. Now again, when you're actually painting your reef, you're not going to be really thinking about these fine details. Don't worry if you aren't really getting it, it's more about just giving that impression of the flower. In an Allium, again, it's mostly like a ball and I'm going to start in the middle again, but this time I'm going to spread out my petal. I'm going to do a couple right here in the middle. Then I'm going to think about the outer circle and do some more out there. I'm varying the saturation of my strokes. I'm going to add a couple of random petals just here in the middle too. Then what you want to do, you can blot out your brush that's almost dry and then pick up a little bit of paint. Then I'm going to paint some of the stems to connect these petals. Even these stems don't have to be perfectly combining them. Remember to go outwards from the center point. Alliums also grow on really long stalks as well, so you can add that stem. But again, realistically in a wreath, your stem is not going to be this long, but for the purposes of right now and just practicing, you can leave it as that. All right. We've got two varieties of filler flowers that look like a ball. Let's look at one more, and I really like the Chrysanthemums, the yellow ones especially when they are very tight cluster of petals. I'm going to do one more, and I love adding this yellow mum to any reef, because sometimes you need a little bit of yellow to bring overall balance to your wreath. This is a great option. I'm going to keep my flowers a lot smaller. These are about an inch and a-half. I'm going to make them even smaller, about half an inch at most. I'm going to use this same technique, similar to the green ball here, and just keep my brush strokes really close together, and make some of them larger. Going in a circle pattern, but then really that's it. Do it one more time. Usually I like to keep these clusters close together too. Sometimes I might have two or three of these clusters all together. Let me do another set over here. Now if you wanted to add a little bit of dimension to your yellow mums, if they're looking a little bit one-dimensional, just add in a little bit more yellow ocher, and do that, or you can add a little bit of the brown to give it a little bit more dimension and shape. Again, I'm not so concerned with trying to make these filler flowers look so realistic.That's my personal preference. Some people might still want to, and that's okay. I think the purpose of the filler elements is really to fill the space. It's really to make your wreath look more full. Unless, you did blobs of color then I feel like you don't have to add in all those details. For these mums, I like to either do a greenish stock or stem. I'm keep it simple like that, or sometimes I like to use a brown. Hopefully this gave you some idea of how to add filler elements that are shaped like a circle or a ball, and I'll do one more. It's not a flower, but they're berries and berries are also one of the easiest things you can add to your wreath. For berries, I typically go with a red color, but if you want to use blue, purple, it really doesn't matter, orange. Again, when you think of color think about what's going to bring overall balance to your wreath, not what's real or not real. For berries again, I'm going to use a size 2 brush. I'm going to keep them very small. Try to work in clusters of two or three. If you want to do a single berry that's okay, but I try to put them in clusters. I like to leave some white space. I paint like a small circle like this, but then when I come back to where I first started, I typically leave like a little bit of white space, like that. Berries is where I liked to use different saturation points. That one was a little bit light, so this one I'm making a little bit darker. If I imagine them on a branch, I might have some more further up the branch or something. I'm keeping my brush strokes really simple. I'm just trying to create the shapes and let the white space fill in your mind, and letting the white space fill in the rest of the picture. I'm going to use the brown color again. Try to use a almost dry brush so that you don't risk interacting with these elements already. Now you can make your berries a lot simpler too, where you don't have these many berries as I do. You can keep them a lot simpler. Maybe just doing clusters of two berries at a time. Typically, when you're doing these berries, you might be using these more than you will be using these, just because these will be easier to make, a little bit smaller and fill in really tiny spaces. Practice those berries a little bit. You can go reddish orange, series of berries too. You can do even more clusters too. Don't be afraid that you only can use, certain number of berries. You really can't go wrong. It's more about just hoping to fill in that space. If you vary the saturation, see if you look at this, this one is really dark, and then some of these are little bit lighter. That helps bring overall harmony to your berries, and they don't all just look like small blobs of colors. If you put some of these berries closer together, some of them look like they're peeking behind, those are all like smaller details that you can add. This one I created two big clusters, and then something I like to do when I have big clusters like this, I like to add the branch details in-between the berries. To do that, you want to make sure again that when you go in there with your brown color, make sure that your brushes not too wet, and then you also want to make sure that the paint already on the paper is also not too wet. Because, if either are too wet the brown color will bleed into the paint that's already on here, and if you want to avoid that, just be patient, just wait a little bit longer or maybe don't paint a branch near that one. Not every single berry has to have a branch is just more about letting the I, fill in that space. If you don't have enough good brush control, and the size 2 is too big, then go down a size or even a couple in order to get these thin lines. If you really want to make your berry stand out even more, you could go in there and add the little black area of the berries if you wanted to. That's a little bit too much details for my taste, but if that helps you make this look even a little bit more realistic, then that's really up to you. Those tiny little black dots help the viewer realize, these are berries, and you don't have to do it for every single one. Just randomly do it.
14. Florals as Filler Element, Part 2: Let's continue on with our filler elements. This time we're going to look at flowers that usually seem to come out of the wreaths. Sometimes they'll bend, they'll have different colors. We're going to look at the Veronica flower, Goldenrod, and Stock flowers. Again, these are flowers that are used quite often in actual bouquets and possibly wreaths but definitely bouquets because they help to fill the rest of the bouquet, and that pop of color, and then also bring about a different shape. We're going to look at these three, and again, they come in lots of different colors. I'm going to choose one color to go with, but you can choose whatever color you want to do. Let's first look at Goldenrod, because Goldenrod really just comes in one color. Now the Goldenrod, just like the other filler flowers that we're about to paint, the overall shape looks like a pyramid. The base is going to be a little bit wider and then it's going to come to a point. Not a sharp point obviously but it's going to come to a point. At that point, you can decide whether it's going to drooped down a little bit or just be straight. That's really up to you. Now the Goldenrod, the yellow flower part is primarily focused on the top part of the flower. Let's start with that. I'm going to be using mostly yellow ocher and then mixing a little bit of lemon yellow into it. But I want the yellow ocher later as well to add some shadow details. I'm going to start at the widest part of where the yellow might be. Again, I'm going to think of a triangle shape and then go from there. Just like the other flowers that we've been painting, I'm going to be using mostly dabbing technique and just a little bit of dragging in order to paint these flowers. I'm going to imagine that my main stem is about here and I'm going to come outward like this. As I come up further, I'm going to try to come to a point. Again, it looks like a triangle shape and I'd do the same on the other side, and they come to the point. Now sometimes there are additional petals that come out like this. The Goldenrod really depending on how you're looking at it, can look very different. It's not about trying to be super realistic, is just about giving that impression again. Overall, my paint is like semi wet. It's not very watery. It is a little bit wet as it if I were to touch it right now. It's going to get on my hand, but it's not very watery. That's a good thing because when you're painting a wreath, you might need to paint in layers and you don't have a lot of time sometimes and so you don't want to be sitting around waiting for the previous layer to dry. The Goldenrod has a yellow green stem, we grab some of that. Again, there's that main stem that comes up like this, but then the stems also branch off as well. Now if your Goldenrod, the yellow layer is somewhat dry, you can go in there with a little bit of a darker yellow ocher or even just a little bit of brown in order to add some of the darker shadow areas. But again, this is too much detail for me personally, I usually just let the yellow do its own thing. When you're painting an actual wreath, this Goldenrod might look a lot smaller. This is fairly large for a wreath, but you can do smaller stocks of this. Let's do a couple really small ones. That was a lot of water right there so that was a case. I'm just going to blot my brush and then pick that up. I'm just being mindful of how small my Goldenrods need to be. This time I went with just a much smaller triangle area and I'll do another one just right next to it, just so you can see again. Again, I'm just dabbing my brush on the paper and coming in there with the green again. These two are little bit more realistic to what you might be adding into your wreath. The next flower that we'll look at is the Veronica. Again, these come in lots of different colors, but primarily a purple, white, pink, and sometimes like a bluish purplish color. I'll do a bluish purple color right now. The Veronica flower is a lot skinnier, so it doesn't really have a triangle shape. It still has a slightly wider base, but not really. It's almost like a cylinder that comes to a point. The bottom, like three-fourths of the flower is like the petals, and then the top quarter is like a greenish color because those are the petals that just haven't bloomed yet. That's the effect that we're going to go for. Imagine the shape of a pointed cylinder right here. You start at the base and I'm going to keep my clusters really close together. I might even wash out my brush as I move up to give the effect of the petals disappearing and then the green appearing here up at the top. If you wanted to add leaves, you could. It just has a stalk and they're really skinny leaves like this. I don't usually add leaves for filler flowers because again, it's mostly just for the actual flower that I want. Looks like a rocket ship. Let's try that again. Again, try to start with a saturated brush and then work your way up. Wash out the brush and keeping your clusters really close together. Then moving up and then switching to the green eventually, and then finishing it off and then add your stalk. Another version of this flower, if it was all purple, you could make it look like lavender. Lavender is again, something really easy that you could add. Just play around with the different colors, the arrangements, how you can play around with saturation because you can really achieve almost any kind of flower that you wanted to, just by switching out a couple of different things like the saturation here or the shape of the flower. Let me just do one more right next to it. This time, if you wanted the flower to bend a little bit you can do that. Next I want to look at the stock flower, and a stock flower is going to have something in between. It's going to be more of a rounded shape, but like the Veronica, it's going to have a little bit of green up at the top. It's going to be a lot of flowers this time they're a little bit bigger and actually look like real petals. The stock flower also comes in a variety of colors, like burgundy, reddish, purple, pink, white. You really can't go wrong again, this is a great way to add just that pop of color, bring overall color harmony to your wreath and really help you just fill it out. I'm going do like clusters of petals again, I'm not going for realism, I just want to give the impression of these flowers, I'm going to do small petals like this. Again, I'm going to play around with the saturation, it looks a little bit more realistic. Now this cluster that I just painted, If I wanted to, it could turn into a hydrangea. But because this is a stock flower it's going to have those green little parts sticking out. It's literally just these like buds, they can go back in there and fill in some of that space up there too and that's really it. Again, sometimes you might want to add at the stock or those stem if you wanted to. But again, just something really easy that you can add to your wreath just to fill out the space. Now, later after this paint is dried a little bit more. Just like the berries, I can go into the center of these clusters and petals and add in a small brown or black dot just to make it look like actual petals. Again, instead of just blobs of colors. The last thing I'm going to do to fill out this page is to paint branches. Again, I'm going to use my size two brush, but you can use a smaller brush size if you want to get really thin lines. Now to paint branches, you're going to paint in a wreath, so you might want to do slightly curved, but let's look at some straight, short branches first and then concentrate on the longer ones. But what I want you to practice is the pressure and the angle at which you are bending your brush. So instead of just doing a straight line like this, where it's all about the same width, I want you to try to vary the pressure, I'm going to put a sad face by this. We don't want just a straight line, try to add a little bit of pressure and then drag it a little bit, you get these like jagged, uneven, widths and that looks a lot more realistic for an actual branch, no branch is just straight. There's always a little bit of variances in the width, in the direction, in angle. That's what we're going for. Let's do a couple of short ones where you might have a Y shape, like this and like that. Again, these branches might be one of the last details that you add, you don't want to really wet brush, you don't want any blobs of water getting on your wreath and ruining it. Try to use as much of a dry brush as possible. These are some of the smaller branches that you might be adding to your wreath. Now, if a branch or branches were the main part of your wreath, you might want to make it a little bit thicker. Maybe you want to use your size six brush. But even if you just added more pressure with your brush here with a size 2, you can still achieve that. Let's pretend that I'm going to do it in a circle and again, it's a little bit erratic, but that's okay. Let's have smaller branches coming out of that. This can be your main part of the wreath and you can have lots of things coming out of here. You could do a cherry blossom wreath if you wanted to, you can add berries, you could add leaves to this or just leave this as it is, and then add another layer of branches that intersect or start right about here and intersect this existing branch. Why don't I do that actually, I like that idea. I'm going to add some of that yellow ocher and I'll warm this up a little bit, just so I get a different color of brown. I'm going to start about in the middle of this branch right here and intersect go behind it, come out around it. Now this isn't a perfect circle. The way that you add some of the other filler elements can help because this looks more like an oval shape so this problem area, I could add a lot of filler elements to help bring balance to the overall circle shape, or maybe I was going for an oval shape after all. Anyway, that's just one way that you can use the branch to be more like a feature element, maybe on this side or this half of the wreath I have other feature elements like pennies or roses and things like that. The way that it is right now, I'm not so worried about it. I think half of wreath painting is just really just going with the flow and accepting mistakes along the way. Well, great job in painting all of these filler elements with me, again, remember that these are great options for just adding that pop of color. The leaves also really helped fill in a lot of the empty spaces and the flowers and the branches are really meant to complete the rest of the look. If you are going for an overall shape of your wreath, these filler flowers can help, fill in those spaces. Remember the brush strokes that we practice? Remember it's not about trying to make these flowers look real even from far away, I can tell that these are meant to be like circular ball type flowers. This definitely looks like golden rod. A stock flower people might not be able to recognize right away, but I can tell that this is supposed to be a flower and even these berries, just like clusters and adding that little bit of black died just helps it to really stand out and I know that there's supposed to be berries. Now that we've painted these two, we're going to keep going, I'll see you there.
15. Roses & Peonies as Feature Element: In this video, I'm going to show you how to paint certain feature element. Now I do have a few loose florals class already available. Make sure to check those out if you want to learn how to paint lilacs or cherry blossoms, things like that. But I will go over certain flowers here as well. Feature elements like large pieces, like roses, peonies, fruit, pine cones. It could be a ribbon or a bow. It could even be a succulent, ornaments, eggs, you name it. Something that's going to take up a large amount, or be feature just heavily. That's what I mean by feature elements. Now, I do have other classes on how to paint loose florals. I'm only going to touch on a couple ones here that might be the most popular, like roses and peonies. Then I'll show you how to paint a couple of other things. Let's start off with one of my favorites, we're going to paint a rose. I'm going to use my round six brush, so I can paint a little bit larger and that you can see. What I like to do I like to start with the center of the rows and then work my weight outward. When we start with the center, we're going to start with a very saturated brush, lots of paint, not a lot of water. Then we're going to slowly wash out our brush and then keep painting the outer petals so that it gets lighter and lighter as you move outward. Hopefully, that makes sense. Let's get started. First I'm going to wash out any old water, blot it and now pick up the clean water, blot it a little bit more. Now, I already have a reddish color mixed over here in this corner, but I'm going to pick up fresh paint just from the pan itself just so I can get a clean color. I'm going to just remove some of it here and in the well. I'd like to start in the middle of the flower and I'm going to use just a tip of my brush to paint small strokes like that. Let me bring it up to the camera so you can see. They're really small strokes and they're very dark. You shouldn't be watery at all. Then I'm going to do a couple more. This slowly move outward. I'm going to start with the tip of the brush, and then press down on the brush to make a wider area and then come back around what the tip again. Now, I'm going to do this one more time. I want these pedals to overlap each other. It's okay if they touch. I like this really dark centers now I'm going to wash out my brush just a little bit. Just dip it in there, bring it back out. So basically what you've done is remove some of the pigment from your brush. I'm going to blot it on the paper towel to get rid of some of that excess water and I do it again. Start with just a tip. Bring the brush down. Bring it back up again. Do you see how my thin lines are overlapping each other? Do it one more time. I'm going to wash out my brush is a little bit again. I'm just dipping it in their swirling it a little bit, blotting. Now you can also create larger pedals if you'd like. Just keep going around until you feel you're done or maybe you've run out of paint. As you get to the real edges of the rows, you can try to make the petals again skinnier. It's just like a faint line that goes around. There you go. Let me do another one. Again, starting right in the middle which is diffuse strokes. Just to get you started. Now if you want, if it's hard for you to maneuver your hand around the rows, you can definitely turn your paper around. Don't be afraid to do that. I'm just not doing that so that you can see exactly what I'm doing. But it's totally okay if you need to do that, because I know it's uncomfortable to twist your hand in an awkward way. Sometimes I like to wiggle my brush as I'm dragging it. That way you get the uneven layers of the paddles. That's one way that you can do a rose. Let me just label it. Another popular flower is the peony. The way that I like to paint my peonies is as if I'm looking on this side. There is a lot of variety of peonies, so I can't possibly show you how to paint all of them. But when it comes to a loose interpretation of peonies, you still want them to look different. Whereas my roses, I'm looking into the center of the rows, for peonies I like to paint it from a side profile view. They use a pinkish color and maybe mix that in with a little bit of orange. I also like to show the yellow center of the peony. What I'm going to do, I'm going to paint first the pedals that are standing up and then facing you. Then I'm going to paint the pedals that are behind it, but still facing up and then paint the pedals that come down and around it if that makes sense. So again, these are petals that are standing up, and I'm going to think like I'm going around in a circle. I'm going to make this the meeting point where the petals stand up, and then these petals that downward, have another petal, comes down like this. Now for peonies, I don't really pay too much attention to whether it's dark or light, I care more about the overall shape of it. Remember to leave a lot of whitespace, so these are some of the petals that are facing up and facing you, and this is where the center of the peony would be. So I'm going to leave this area a little bit blank. Now I'm going to paint the petals that would go behind it, or behind the center I mean. Now for the petals that are coming out towards you, peonies have a lot of layers. So if you wanted to, maybe with a slightly darker color, you can have another layer of petals right here. But I'm going to just keep going. Again, I'm just letting the brush really do the work for me, as I'm pressing down, I'm letting the width of the brush determine how large these petals are going to be. At this point, I'm going to switch to my size two brush, and work in some yellow Ochre in the middle. If your yellow Ochre isn't opaque enough, then you can always mix in just a little bit of brown, like a burnt umber or burnt sienna in their bit just to stand down a little bit more, but for now this is pretty good. I might add in just a touch of the brown. Just to represent the stamen. But not too much, because I don't want to overwhelm the colors in the peony. So this is a pretty large peony, so you can go as small, or as large as you want. Let's do one more peony that's a little bit more close, because this open peony is going to take a lot of room and your wreath, especially if you're going to use a size 6 brush. So let's do one that's a little bit more closed. Now for the one that's closed, it's going to look something similar like this. We'll start out with the same concepts. But instead of these many petals, I'm only going to do maybe like two large petals, and then skinnier ones in the back, and then even these petals instead of falling downwards, they are going to be more horizontal in nature. So keeping that in mind, I'm going to use the same color that I did earlier. So again, instead of having these many petals, I'm going to have fewer petals. So it's still going to have this central round shape. So this is one large petal. I've one skinnier petal going around, same thing on the other side. Then again, when it comes to the petals that are going to be coming out towards you, instead of having them really open downward like this, it's going to be more as if they were curling up towards you, so you're going to have a dark center here. But they have the lighter petal I'll show you like that. So it's a little bit more horizontal. Always point back to the center of the peony that you've predetermined. That'll help keep your peony shape together. Now if you want to touch up a little bit here in the center, and make it a little bit darker. We can always go in there. I'm going to go back in there with the yellow Ochre, mixing just a little bit of the browns that'll stand out a little bit using my size 2 brush. So how do your peonies look? Now remember this is your first time really painting roses and peonies. Don't be discouraged, if it doesn't look like this, I'm not saying minor perfect either. But the more you observe these flowers, and paint them, the easier it'll get. So feel free to watch this part of the video again if you need to, and just fill an entire page of just roses and peonies, just so you can get that practice in. But for now, I'm going to keep moving on to other feature elements.
16. Ornaments & Eggs as Feature Element: Onto the other feature elements. Again, I'm not going to show you how to paint every single one of those but the idea is that you want some kind of feature element that'll really draw the eye to that part of the wreath. So if you use large flowers like a rose or a peony or even like hydrangeas, that's really going to draw the person into the wreath and really look at your feature elements. So some other feature elements might be like a succulent or cacti. I actually have classes on that too, so make sure to check those out. But something else that I'll fill out the rest of this page are ornaments and eggs. So ornaments are great, especially in the wintertime. So they're very simple to paint but I just want to show you how to get like dimension in your ornaments without you having to make it look too realistic. So the only trick is that you want to just leave a lot of white space and then just shade one part of the ornament a little bit darker so that it looks more 3D. So I'm just going to use this green color that I have here. I'm going to start with a 50/50 mix of paint and water. I'm going to start by just painting in a circular motion. But then within the circle, I want to leave some of that white-space. So let me label it real quick. I'm using my size six brush just so I can paint a little bit larger for you to be able to see. Because I'm right-handed, I go from right to left. That's just my default. Then I'm just going to round it out. At this point, I'm going to quickly wash out my brush and get rid of some of that pigment and then kind of color it in. But again, I'm going to leave some white space just randomly like so. You can fade that out a little bit more if you'd like. Then I'm going to quickly go back in there and use the wet-on-wet method to make one side of the ornaments little bit darker. Now if your ornament wasn't wet enough, that's okay. Then you can just add another layer just using the wet-on-dry method. It doesn't really matter. But if you wanted your shade to look a little bit more natural, then you probably want to use the wet-on-wet method. But you really can't go wrong. I think that the beauty of loose floral is that, the messier it looks, the cooler it actually ends up being. So don't worry so much. Now as this dries, you can still go in there with another layer two and add even more. That's really it. Again, I'm not worried too much about these hard lines. Again, in the loose floral style, I'm not so concerned with trying to look realistic, but I do want my ornaments to look more than just a flat circle. So that's why just having this darker area makes it look a little bit rounded. Obviously when we add the detail appear at the top to represent the top of the ornament, it'll become even more obvious. So let me just grab just a little bit of brown. This is the point where you can actually use that goldfish color if you wanted to. That might actually be nice or you can use black if you want. Now just in case you accidentally colored this whole thing in and you forgot to have that gradient of shade, it's okay. You always want to try to use the white of the paper that's the best white. But if you forgot or messed up, again, don't worry about it. You can always add some white wash or bleed proof white or even white acrylic or just white paint. Really, anything even white out if you wanted to go over it. So don't fret so much, okay? But that's an example of an ornament. Again, keep it really simple. If you wanted to add multiple colors, like those metallic, iridescent looking ornament that would be kind of cool and maybe dropping some purple or blue in here. Again, this is just a simple ornaments, so we're just going to keep it that way. But in the space that I have left, let's add in, or let's paint some eggs. Now bird eggs come in all sorts of colors and sizes. So we'll just do a couple of different ones. Again, I'm not going for realism here. What I'm really going for is just the impression of an egg. So actually I'll use this size six pen. Let's do one of those, like blue-green sort of a eggs that has a little bit of black speckled into it. So first I want to nab, make sure I got the color right. So it's kind of like that light teal with some kind of like green mixed into it. So let's do that. Add some water into that mix. Now even with these eggs, I want to leave some of that white space too. So I'm almost sketching the outline of the egg and then coloring it in. Again, I'm not so concerned with how this white space looks. I just wanted to have that shape of an egg. Maybe I'll add just a little bit of dark spots here and there, just to give it a little bit more interest. Let's do an egg that's a little bit more like brownish in nature. This might be a little bit harder for you to see on the screen, but I'll make it just a little darker just so you can see. Now if you are going to add eggs to your wreath, you might have like two or three eggs kind of nestled together. So it's a good practice to just get these under your belt. Just practice drawing with your brush and getting the shape right and then working quickly with wet-on-wet so that you can get the darker colors in there. So as my first egg is drying, I'm going go in there with my size two brush and with like a black brownish color. Now for these details, I want a really dry brush. As dry as I can make it because I don't want this layer to interact with any of the wetness here. So even if it's a little bit what the paint shouldn't travel so far as long as my brush isn't too wet. So I do some speckled work. You can keep it as small or as large as you want to. There might be some larger parts here and there. I'm just very lightly just touching on the egg. Same thing with this one as well. There might be some darker parts. I'm just kind of feeling where these spots are going. You can look at a reference photo but I'm not thinking so much about where these spots are going. I'm just trying to be a little bit more improvisational about it. All right, well, great job. Here are some of the feature elements that you could add to your wreath. Again, I do have a class on how to paint cacti and succulents and other flowers. So if you want to reference that, go ahead and then you can always come back to the next video of this class. But I think it's good to just have some of these under your belt. Because again, this feature element, especially if you're going to do a wreath that has lots of elements going on, you need something that will draw the viewer into your wreath. If your wreath as just one or two different elements, you probably don't need a feature element. But if you're going to have this plus three different types of flowers, plus three different types of greenery, that's a lot of details that's going on. So if you have something that will really center the viewer's attention, you need a feature element like this. I did say the word center. I don't meet you always have to put it in the center of your wreath. I'm just saying it needs to be very prominent so that the viewer knows where to look basically and it'll help you avoid making your wreath look too messy. Again, practice these feature elements if you need to, especially the roses and the peonies. They're such beautiful flowers and a great way to add to your wreath. If you want something a little bit less conventional and you want to add eggs, maybe you want a wreath of just branches and some leaves and then have your eggs be the feature element, that will be really cute too. Again, for the winter holidays, adding an ornament and berries and pine and pine cones that might be really fun too. Go ahead and practice these and in the next video, we'll look at filler elements. I'll see you there.
17. Demo 1: Olive Wreath, Part 1: The first wreath that we're going to paint is an olive wreath. If you recall the olive leaves that we painted in the filler elements video, this is going to be very familiar. Now when I say monochromatic, I don't mean that it's going to just be one flat color. I guess I'm a little bit cheating because I do want to show depth and dimension in my wreath. But I'm going to be using primarily one color which is going to be the olive wreath color. Then I'm going to use a little bit of black and brown in order to paint the actual olive fruit. Then I'm going to use a little bit of black and brown to paint the actual olives. The paper that I'm using is cold-pressed, and it's been cut to eight inches by eight inches, so it's a perfect square. To draw the circle, I literally use whatever I have on hand. So right now, I have these jars of water, so I'm just going to place that as close to center as I think it is. Now if you are a little bit more of a perfectionist, and you want to be super precise, you can grab a ruler and measure the cross-section, all that stuff. But for me, this circle is more like a guideline. I don't actually paint along the pencil line, I use it as a guideline, and then at the first moment that I can erase it, I actually do. Grab your pencil and you're just going to very lightly sketch your circle. Sometimes I don't even sketch the entire circle, I'll draw a little bit and then skip, and then draw a little bit more and then skip, and that's just so that I don't have to erase as much, and I just want a faint line because with watercolors, once you paint over that line, it's going to be really difficult to remove. So sketch it as light as you can. I also want a small circle because again, I want to paint around it, not on top of it. So hopefully that makes sense. Now for this olive wreath, I'm going to paint in stages. One of the first stages, is just to get my circle laid out. I'm going to do a series of light colored leaves just so I can get a sense of the circle, and then erase it as soon as I can. Then I'm going to go in there and going with really dark leaves to balance out the light and the dark. Then I'm going to fill it in with a lot more leaves, just filling in wherever I can, and then try to add in the actual olives. That's really it, because I'm only working with one main element, which is the olive leaf. I don't have to worry about the size or things like that. I can still vary the size of the leaf, I can make it small or longer, but in general, I'm more concerned about the shades of color that I'm going to be using, and the overall shape. Now when it comes to this type of wreath because I'm just using one type of leaf, it's going to probably go in one direction. You can choose to go clockwise or counterclockwise, that's really up to you. Whichever direction you go in, again, you want to do a couple of leaves that stray. So if you are going clockwise, maybe you have a couple of stray leaves that point in the other direction or downward, and you want to do that because again, a wreath is going to be not a hot mess, but it is a big mess of leaves,and so it's not always going to be perfectly facing the same direction. If you have a couple that just stray from the fold and point in a slightly different direction, it'll make your wreath look just a little bit more realistic. So just keep that in mind and all the other tips that I just discussed. Here we go. I'm going to mix my colors first. I want obviously the deep olive brown color, and when I turn this into my main olive leaf color. But I'll use this to paint my actual olives, and then this one, it's going to be very similar to this color, but I'm going to add just a hint of blue, just to make that differentiation. But again, I don't want to stray too far from the actual olive color because again, we're going for a monochromatic wreath. As much as you can, try to prepare most of the colors up front, just so you don't have to spend time later on preparing your color. Now I get. I'm going to do a similar color here, but then add just a hint of blue. I'm not going to make too much of it because I don't want that to be my main color. Then I'm going to mix some of the black and brown as well. I'm going to add just a hint of purple. I know it seems odd, but that purple will bring out a little bit of that cool shadowy color. Now that I have all my colors, I'm getting ready to paint. Now for these light-colored leaves, I'm going to start with a size 6 brush because I can start with the bigger details and then go smaller with the size 2 brush in a little bit. For me because I'm right-handed, I tend to move in a clockwise fashion. It's really up to you the direction that you want to go in. Don't feel like you have to do the same thing that I am. Now because I'm right-handed, I tend to go in a clockwise format, if you're left-handed, you might find it easier to go counterclockwise, it really doesn't matter, but if you want to do what I'm doing, that's what I'm doing, I'm going clockwise. If you recall the olive leaves that we painted earlier, we want just a simple stroke, and then bring it back around. For now, I'm going to try to stay as close to this circle as I can, and have a couple of branches and stems going around, and you want that like rounded leaf shape up at the end, keeping in mind trying to leave some of that white space. I'm not so concerned with making sure that every stem and leaf are connected right now, right now I just want to go around this circle, make sure that I have the main shapes completed. Remember that you want a couple of leaves that come into the middle of the wreath, and they're always facing in lots of different directions. Remember to turn your paper around every now and then. I noticed as I was painting that, my circle was slightly off-center, so what I'm doing is, I'm painting a little bit further away from the drawn circles so that I can try to make it a little bit more even. Now in this first go-around, if you feel like your circle is already off balance, don't worry. Remember that's why we have all those filler elements, this as not the best circle, but it's actually okay. Again, my purpose right now is to just get that first layer down, and then I'm going to give it another minute or two to dry, and then I'm going to erase that pencil circle. If your circle is looking a little bit wobbly, it's not perfect, it's okay. That's why the filler elements are there, and that's why we're going to go in there with more layers of these leaves to fill it out, so don't worry. Give it a minute or so to dry and then we'll come back to it.
18. Demo 1: Olive Wreath, Part 2: I'm going to start erasing the pencil lines. Again, be careful that your paint is completely dry. The next step is then to go in there with another layer of these leaves, but this time I want to make it just a little bit darker than my first layer. I'm going to stick with my size six, I like the way that it's working. It uses slightly drier brush and then pick up the paint. This time I'm going to, these were slightly longer leaves, I'm going to do about the same, but maybe vary the size and try to fill into. There's a lot of leaves right here, so maybe I want to concentrate some of my leaves up here this time. I want my stems, don't be afraid to overlap some of your stems and especially your leaves, so this is the time especially when you have a darker leaf to do that. I really like how this branch right here or this is stem right here is overlapping this big leaf here. Now, this side is also looking a little bit flat, so I'm going to overlap here. Now may wreath is filling out a little bit more. I'm just going to take a couple more turns around it and try to fill it in just a little bit more. At this time, remember how I gave the tip about having a couple of leaves that stray from the overall direction of your wreath. I already did that a couple times like this leaf is pointing up away from the natural flow, so I'm going to do just a couple more of those and sprinkle them in. I think that looks pretty good for now. Again, as I'm looking at this, I know it's not a perfect circle, but the beauty of wreaths is that, that's okay. The next step I'm going go in there with an even darker set of leaves, and I'm going to use a size two brush now, and I'm going to use this color that I originally mixed. I'm going to do similar to this that I've been doing, but make them even smaller and try to concentrate them even along this main circle area and then have a couple coming out. I really like how this wreath is coming out so far. I'm going to pause for a moment and then add in the olives, and then I'm going to just round it out by adding single leaves, maybe they're lighter in color, maybe they are the dark ones, it's just like tweaking at that point. For the olives,I want to try to make a couple of them smaller and a couple of them larger and maybe have some of them poking out randomly as well because that'll help add to the overall shape as well. Some of them you might want to make a little bit smaller, some of them a little bit larger, it really depends. Again, as you're making these olives, try to keep in mind that white space. We're going to balance this out a little bit more and go in there with that lighter green color. I'm using still my size two brush because I don't want to make anything too big at this point because, like I said, now it's just about tweaking and making this look a little bit more realistic, so maybe I have a couple more leaves that go in odd directions, but yes, just go with your gut feeling.n Again, it's okay as some of the elements are sticking out, maybe it seems a little bit random, maybe I want to have a couple more branches out this way too, and that's okay. I think the more you do this, the more you'll get comfortable with trying something new, so just observe like what I'm doing. Yes, and then try to incorporate those same principles in your painting too. Then every once in a while, step back away from it, and then I'll give you a better idea of where you might need to fill in a little bit more. Again, we're not going for complete perfection, we just want it to have a general shape, and in this case I want a circle. I want to make sure that in terms of colors, they're pretty balanced. Because this is a monochromatic wreath, I want it to be mostly the same color of green, and it helps to have that overlapping of colors that make this wreath seem like really full and very busy. There is a point where you just have to stop as well, so if you feel like you're coming up to that point, that's okay. That's when you need to take the break and maybe even walk away from it for a couple of hours and then come back to it. I feel like this is a really good stopping point. I love just the frantic mess of all these leaves and how they're pointing all sorts of different directions. I love just a little olives, so that you know that it's supposed to be an olive wreath and just a different shades of green just really help make this wreath look or have that depth and dimension, so I feel this is a really great place to stop. I can't wait to see your wreaths. Again, try a monochromatic wreath where you are focusing on one type of color. Maybe you want to do leaves because it's pretty easy, or you can do branches, or you can do just a rose wreath, or something like that. But try that out, just so you don't have to think so much about the colors and you can focus more on the overall shape and using different saturations of that same color. Great job, and I'll see you in the next demonstration.
19. Demo 2: Rose Wreath: Welcome to the second demonstration, where we're going to paint a wreath using complimentary colors. Now, I'm going to be using mostly reds and greens and you do not have to use the same ones, but you can if you'd like. What I'm going to do, I'm going to keep this red, red-orangish color that I have. But I'm going to take some of this green move it into this well, and then mix some of this red into it. That'll give me a slightly different green hue that I want. You can try that, and if you wanted to do, other colors and you wanted to use a cooler type of green, that's great too. Just play around and see what works for you. Again, with more practice, your eyes will just get used to balancing the colors out and always use a color wheel if that'll help you. For my wreath, I'm going to be doing red roses and lots of green leaves. Then I might add some berries and do like an orangish berries to balance the wreath out. Let's get started. I'm going to use my jar again to draw my circle. Again, just sketch a very light circle. Try to get it as close to the center as you can. Just sketch very lightly. Now for this wreath, I want to try something different. It's hard to tell, but I didn't draw a complete circle. Instead, I left this side open, so I'm going to do a half wreath. Now the feature element that I'm going to use are the roses. I want to predominantly feature them in the lower half corner, right about here. Then use leaves to fill out this space, and maybe I'll add some berries up here, and then more greenery here. I'm not going to put the feature elements smack up in the middle of the paper. I want it slightly off center, but because the roses are going to be the focus of this wreath. It doesn't matter that it's slightly off-center. It actually might be a little bit pleasing to the eye, if that's the case. I'm going to use my size six brush and I'm going to erase some of the line. Because again, I don't want the pencil line to get in the way. Before I do that, I actually want to mix my colors first. I have a nice reddish color going on here, and I'll mix some of that orange into it later, when I'm going to do the berries. But I wanted to bring some of this green right into this wall over here. Then I'm going to add just a dab of this red and just see how they mix together. Yeah, I like that. Maybe just a little bit more of the green is looking a little too brown. That's actually what you get when you mix complementary colors. You do get a mix of brown. If you don't want that to happen, just balance it out with one of the complimentary colors. There we go. So now I have my colors here. Now I'm going to go in with the red and paint my roses. I'm going to draw some of the original paints here from the pen because I once really saturated colors in the beginning. I'm going to have a cluster of three roses. One big one here, and then two smaller ones on either side. Due to smaller roses right next to it. Notice how my roses, it looks like part of this smaller rose is actually behind this big one. That was done on purpose because again, I'm just giving the illusion that this rose is 3D. Maybe I want to make this rose just a little bit bigger. I've got my feature elements set. I can always go in there, and add some more details if I want. But for now, I'm going to pause there and then add in the leaves. Now for my first set of leaves, especially right around where the roses are, I'm going to make them quite large. I'm going to erase some more of this. We use this and just a hint of that brown. That's coming into the center of the wreath. Now I'm going to use some of the filler elements to complete the circle so that I don't lose my shape. Because I erase so much of the line, it's hard to see. I want to make sure I don't lose that. I'm going to switch to my size 2 brush, and pick up some of this green right here. Do some smaller leaves just to fill out that circle. I really like how this rose wreath is coming out. Again, look how just adding that little bit of red, you can see it here in these big leaves. It just helps tie in the two colors together. Now I want to add some of those berries, and I'll definitely be adding more leaves. Because there's a lot of potential here for wreath to be a lot thicker. Right now, I like the way that it looks, but as it evolves, I might change my mind. But for now I like it. I'm just going to add some berries. Let's add some of that orange color into my red. I'm going to have very small berries just peeking out, in clusters of two or three. Then I'm going to go in there with the brown, and add my branches there. To bring a little bit more balance to my wreath, I'm going to do just more of these leaves but use this brownish color instead. Again, as I'm going, you want to be mindful of the direction that the leaves are facing. You don't want all of them to be facing the same way. The majority of them will be. But remember you want a couple of them going against the flow. I really like how this leaf is coming out. I think I'm just going to add one more filler element, and that's going to be the pine needles. Again, for these pine needles, you want to try to use a dryer brush, so try to blot as much of your brush as possible. Yeah, the wreath already looks a little bit more balanced. You can continue taking a look at this. If you add just a little bit more detail, that's really up to you. I feel like I'm at a good stopping point right now, and I like the variety and textures. I like that the feature element is really prominent. Even the greeneries, even though they're a little bit dull. It helps to make the reds and the berries, the red oranges and the berries really stand out even more. Yes, I can't wait to see your wreath using complimentary colors. Make sure to use the color wheel, to get a sense of which colors you can use. Then in the next and final one, let's paint a wreath with three main colors. I'll see you there.
20. Demo 3: Sunflower Wreath, Part 1: Welcome to the third and final demonstration. We're going to create a wreath using triadic colors. Now triadic colors just means that you're going to use three colors that are equidistant on the color wheel. The three colors that I'm going to use are purple, yellow, orange and green. Now, the green can have both slightly warmer and slightly cooler properties. You just need to balance it out. The way that I'm going to paint mine is have yellow sunflowers prominently placed on one side. Then I'm going to have lavender spikes. That'll be my purple, coming out all over the place. Then the other half is going to be like a vine, a tangle of vines and branches. I think the green that I'm going to be using, it's going to be a yellowish green, a lighter one, and then also a darker one that has a little bit of the cool dark green in there. Let's get started. I'm going to draw my circle again. Now I want the yellow sunflowers to really take a large portion, that's going to be my feature element. I'm going to use my yellows up here. I know it looks black, it's just because the metal pallet is stained. I promise it's still a pure yellow color. I'm using a yellow ocher color, but I'm also gonna mix some lemon-yellow into it because I want some parts of the flower to look brighter. I'm going to add some of that in there. I put a lot more of the yellow ocher in there and then mix it in because the sunflowers are going to be quite large. That'll be for the sunflowers. Then next I'll do lavender spikes. For that, I'm going to put in some of the purple in here and add just a touch of the blue. That's a little bit too much. Bring some of that purple back. There we go. Then for the green, I want a yellowy-green color. But I also want a cool green color too. I'm going to take some of that yellow-green here and then mix it with some blue. If it's turning out too close to teal, just add a little bit of brown to darken it up. There we go. I'm going to start with my sunflowers because I really want those to be really prominent. Now when I do the sunflowers, I'm going to do a couple. The three main ones will be front-facing and then the other smaller ones might be like profile view or even like facing down, something like that. I'm going to use primarily my size 6 brush. Again, I'm going to erase some of the lines. Especially where I know my petals might be overlapping. Another large one here. Going in there with the yellow ocher just to make some of the petals seem a little bit darker, on here. I'm going to wait until the yellow petals dry a little bit more before I go in there with the center. I'm going to switch to my size two brush and paint some more sunflowers, but here in between spaces. Again, these might be peeking out from behind here. You might have some overlap. You might have some that are facing upwards like this. Again, don't feel like you have to complete the entire circle. You can have some spaces in between. That's where you can add the leaves. I'm going to go in there with some of the yellow ocher just to add a little bit more dimension to these petals. At this point, I'm going to erase some of these other pencil lines, especially right around the sunflowers. Because I don't want them to get left behind. By now I have a pretty good sense of how the circle looks. I don't have to worry about that. Now the petals are like 95 percent dried. I'm going to go in there with a brownish and a blackish color. Now even when you do the center, you don't want to color it in completely. You always want to leave a little bit of white space. I'm going to concentrate the colors on the edges here. Wash out my brush and then bring it in a little bit. But then be mindful to leave some white space. Then while that is still wet, add in some more darker colors. You can always darken this up with a second layer, so don't feel bad if you didn't get it dark enough the first time. You can always come back to it later. I really like how these sunflowers are coming through. I'm going go in there. I just want to finish off this circle just so I don't have to worry about erasing the pencil lines later. I'm going to go ahead and do the vine and the branches now. I'm going to use that same brownish, blackish color. I'm going to start with a really light color first. I'm going to try to go just outside of where the circle is, so that I can erase it in just a little bit. I'm going to go in there with just a slightly darker color and weave around the line that I just painted. I'm going to give that a moment to dry and then I'm going to erase the pencil line in just a moment. While that's going, I'm going to paint some prominent leaves right around here. Again, just to help me set the shape. I switch back to my size 6 brush and use this darker green color. I'm just going to paint a series, maybe a set of three leaves or so to fill in this space here. I can definitely go in there with more greens in just a moment. But I'm going to give this a chance to dry before I go in there with my lavender.
21. Demo 3: Sunflower Wreath, Part 2: The brown branches are pretty much dry, so I'm going to go in there and erase the pencil lines ever so carefully. I'm going to go over this brown with a little bit of this green, because I want it to also have like a viney look. I'm going around the brown, but I'm also going within as well. All right. I think it's time that we added the lavender springs, so for the lavender, I'm going to have them coming out all over the place. Again, this is a filler element, so it's meant to fill out the reef, so don't think so much about which direction that they're facing, just go where you feel like they should go. Again, using that dabbing motion and coming out to a point like this. They don't all have to be the same length, they can be a little bit wider, they can be shorter, they can even overlap like I am right now with the sunflower, as long as that sunflower layer is dry, I can overlap it there. Think about the overall shape that you are trying to achieve. I think I'm at a good stopping point, especially with the lavender. I'm going to pause there, and then I'm going to go in there with this yellow green again, and then add some much smaller leaves, just again, poking out of everywhere. Another tip I wanted to offer is that especially when you have space between flowers like this, if you add just a hint to that green, right in the middle, it helps to differentiate between these two flowers, so try to add some color in between areas in flowers to help break it up like that. I'm going to use some of that yellow green again and just add a little bit more detail to this vine, and branch marks. Then I want to make this just a little bit thicker than to go in there with that brown, black color I have again. As much as I love this purple, some of them dried like one shade, and so I'm going to go in there with just a more saturated color and add in just a little bit more color just to help it to stand out just a little bit more, especially at the base where a lot of the colors are coming together. It helps to have a slightly more saturated colors to help differentiate. All right, so how does your reef look? I can't wait to see what your triadic colored reef is going to look like. You can choose any three colors to really help you paint this reef. You can do the same color scheme that I did here, you can choose your own, it really, the sky is the limit, so I hope you had fun drawing these reads with me. Again, go back to that earlier videos with the feature and the filler elements, if you need to practice how to paint these types of flowers, just keep it loose, and remember, start with the main feature element, in this case, we started with the sunflowers, and then we went a little bit further, and then we went a little bit closer and then filled in with these leaves, especially the larger ones, and then rounded out this reef with the vine in the branches and then filled it in with the smaller leaves. Well, I can't wait to see what you creates. I'll see you in the final videos.
22. Your Project: Your project is to paint, a wreath, plain and simple as that. You can challenge yourself by doing the three types of wreaths that I demonstrated in this class using different color schemes. Or maybe you want to focus on just one feature or filler element. Maybe you want to do a geometric wreath. It really doesn't matter as long as you are feeling more confident in painting wreaths. Remember that you can only upload your project through the desktop version of Skillshare. Be sure to log onto a computer, click on the projects and resources tab and submit your project. When you paint another wreath, feel free to update your projects. I'd love to see how your style and skills are improving after a month, six months, even a year. I'd also love to show off my students work through, my social media channels. If you post on Instagram or Facebook, please use #WatercolorWithTUD and tag me @ThingsUseenDesigns. I can't wait to see your work.
23. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on finishing this class on how to paint a watercolor reef. This class is so special to me and I want to thank you, for taking the time to watch this class. If you created a project, please share your work on social media and do not forget to use hashtag, watercolor with TUD and tag me @ThingsUnseenDesigns. As always, I want to leave you with some final tips. Number one, be okay with mistakes. As I mentioned earlier in why this class is a personal significance, painting with watercolors have allowed me to let go of my [inaudible] tendencies and be okay with messing up. I probably spend more time, messing up, than I do creating something instagramable, and that's okay with me. Number two, go at your own pace. You saw the first leaves that I've painted. I'm still proud of them because I can now see how much I've grown as an artist, but your pace might look different. You might improve much faster or slower than me. It does not matter what your pace is, what is important is that you are looking forward and moving in that direction. Number three, practice, you knew this was coming. Even if you can dedicate just one hour a week, that is one hour you get to spend doing something that is relaxing and good for your soul. To me, that is time well spent because it's not just practice. It's a way to reach hard yourself. Now there are weeks that I don't even pick up my paints, but I'm always happy to come back and I always end up painting loose plurals, so I hope you will find as much joy in this as I have. Remember that you are on a journey, and if you need more resources on how to live a more mindful life, I think my journalism class might be beneficial to you. In addition to art, I think the act of journalism is so good for the mind and soul. I hope the power of painting loose plurals and reads will bring you peace and joy into your life. Thanks again for taking my class. I will see you next time.
Audrey Moon, Watercolorist and Modern Calligrapher
