Loose Watercolor Florals: Atmospheric Doorway & Vase Painting

1. Welcome to Class: Hello, everyone, and welcome to class. Today we'll be painting the soft atmospheric floral arrangement with a loose watercolor vase and a simple doorway background. This class is designed to feel relaxed, expressive, and approachable while still helping you create something that feels beautiful enough to frame and display in your own home. One of the things I love most about this style of painting is that we're not trying to control every detail. Instead, we're allowing watercolor to stay soft, airy, and full of movement. Some edges will disappear, some color will blend unexpectedly, those little imperfections are often what creates the most beautiful atmosphere in a final piece. In today's class, we'll focus on building the composition in layers. We'll start by simplifying the doorway and the vase shape so that the drawing phase doesn't feel too overwhelming. It'll be very manageable. And then we'll slowly build the flowers, greenery, shadows and background using loose watercolor techniques and a soft transparent layer. Even though this painting may look a little bit more advanced at first glance, it's still designed to be very approachable. If you're newer to watercolor, I encourage you to focus more on enjoying the process than trying to perfectly copy every brushstroke. Atmospheric watercolor works best when you allow yourself the little bit of freedom and flexibility along the way. And don't forget to sprinkle in a whole lot of grace. If you've already taken my Companion atmospheric vase glass, you'll notice that many of these same techniques carry over onto this project just with a slightly different composition and a little bit more structure from the doorway background. Go ahead and gather your supplies, relax, and let's begin painting together. 2. Composition, Placement & Soft Doorway Sketching: Today we're going to be painting a companion piece to something that we painted a couple days ago. Possibly you've already done this other piece. And today, what we're going to be doing is something a little bit more airy, a little bit lighter. We're going to make a taller vase instead of a round vase and we're going to be putting in a few less flowers, leaving a little bit more room for some background. I'm going to be adding in an architectural piece in the background, like a door or a shutter over here on the one side. Just because we're not going to be having as many flowers as we did in this companion piece, and there's going to be a little bit more background showing. I do want to have some interest in that background, and so I'll be adding in an architectural piece. The reason I am going to supply this for you and you can find this in the class project area. You can download this and if you want to, you can use this in some carbon paper and you can copy it right onto your paper. But you don't really need to. I'm offering this to you as something to help you. But really, the reason that I'm showing this to you is to let you know how I do my composition. Now, there are lots of different ways of doing composition and planning out your composition. This is certainly not the only way and there might be better ways, but this is the way I do it. So when I am planning something out and I'm thinking about it ahead of time, I'm like, This is what I want to paint. Maybe I've seen somebody else's artwork. Maybe I was at a store somewhere and something caught my eye. Maybe I was looking through a magazine and I saw a beautiful vase sitting on a counter with cabinet in the background, and that just caught my attention. So wherever you get your inspiration from is fine. And then when I see that, I go, I want to be able to reproduce that. Sometimes I can just sit down and put it together. For example, this one, all I knew is that I wanted to have a round bubble glass vase with a whole huge mass of flowers, a simple table and a little bit of background going on. It's easy and you don't need to really map that out or plan it. But if you're going to be doing something that you feel is just maybe outside of your comfort zone or you want to map it out a little bit more for your composition, this is the way I do it. So what I might do is use a little scrap piece of paper and sketch it first, you know, carbon just copy paper from your printer. And I just used a ruler and made some straight lines. I like to make an oval at the bottom for my base. I like to indicate where my tabletop might be. And then I plan out where about flowers are going to be. I'm not drawing a rose. I'm not drawing a peony. I'm not making a daisy. I'm making circles, big wide circles and some smaller circles to indicate where some other flowers might go. Then I just put some little lines in to indicate where some of my greenery is go. You can see here I didn't make leaves and say, this is the way this is going to look or that this one's going to be one great big leaf. I'm not getting that detailed on this. This is just my sketch. You can go ahead and make your own sketch or you can use this one. Or you can just create it right onto your paper. However, whatever makes you feel most comfortable. I'm just going to show you how I would do this. Now that I have my sketch on a piece of paper, how I would transfer that is I could use a carbon paper and lay carbon paper down and then lay this down and then trace it all out. This is not that fancy. This is not that technical. I don't think that's really necessary, so I'm not going to do it that way. What I'm going to do is draw out I've already mapped down, so I taped my paper. This is a cotton paper. I've taped it down to my desk. I wasn't using it inside of a pad this time, and so I want to put it and I want to make sure that it stays flat because in today's class, we're going to use a lot of water. If it's not in a pad that's glued down on all four sides, then make sure you are taping your paper down to a surface. Whether that's a clipboard that you have or some other board or right onto your desktop, whatever works for you, I decided to put it right onto my desktop for this time. Then I also knew that I wanted it to be the same size as this one, which was an eight by ten, so I mapped it out on here and made it because this is going to be a companion piece, like I said, I'm going to be able to frame this one and then I'm going to be able to frame this new one that I'm making and hang them up on my wall next to each other. And so I have it mapped and I have put tape down to keep me contained so that when I paint, I make sure that I I'm going edge to edge, but that I have not gone too far. So now what I will do is draw out where I think my tabletop is going to be, and I just looking at this, I can go, well, I want it to be about that far up, so about there. And then I'm just going to put some loose lines just not straight, straight it doesn't matter. Just loose lines, very sketchy. And I'm not even going to use a ruler. I just know that I want it to be about this tall, you know, about that tall. So I might put a dot up here at the top and then another dot over here just to indicate how wide I want it. And then I know I want it to come down here below the line. I don't like my vases to sit on top of the I wouldn't want to start it up here because then it feels like it's floating out in the room. In fact, I kind of even like when this tabletop comes up the vase even further, more like that. I think that's what I'm going to do here is I will start my base down in this area and I will start it with an oval. Let's see how it's an oval here. Then I know that my line here and my line here needs to match up with these lines up here. I'm just going to drag my pencil down I'll just drag my pencil line down. Something like that. When we get into the actual painting, I can line it up, I can square it up. But this is just to give me a little concept of what we're working on. And then I know that I want to have my two main flowers. Just like on this one, I had one big flower up here and then one smaller red one down below. And if you notice, I don't like to have them right next to each other. I like to have them offset a little bit. This one comes up a little bit higher and this one comes down a little bit lower. So same thing with here. This one is up a little higher, this one is down a little lower. When you put them equal, it doesn't feel quite as balanced and as a nice composition as if when you have them off balanced, they don't have to be drastically off balanced, but just slightly off balanced, similar to this. So what I will do, I also like to leave the top of my vase open. I don't usually create a vase top because I like to have my flowers and my leaves break the edge of that vase. I'm just going to leave this open here, and then I'm going to add in a circle that indicates where this flower is going to be. And then I want this flower to be slightly higher. And so I will put in another circle up higher. And they're just circles. We're not trying to make a flower. We're just making some circles. And then I might want to have another flower here, maybe another flower there, and then maybe I'll put a flower in here. You know, we're going to add some extra little flowers. Maybe we have one drooping down over the top and maybe another one coming up over there. Those are kind of like the details that we don't have to get real particular about at this point because it's just not time yet to worry about that. We'll get into that when, um, when we get painting because I'm actually going to be erasing most of these lines. So then when I'm putting in my leaves and these lines, this is just to help me create some flow. You see how some of the lines come down. So I'm going to have some leaves coming down, some coming out, some coming up. But I don't like my leaves to just come straight up. I like them to have some kind of a bend into them. When you create a bend, you're going to be creating flow and your eyes are going to be having an opportunity to move with the painting, so I'll be adding in a little bit of flow. Maybe I'll put one here and maybe another one comes up, maybe another one comes over here. I definitely will want to have a couple coming down and then maybe a couple to come out like this. I have a feeling that this side might be taller and so maybe I have a couple coming over. And then another couple that come down. So this is just giving me a rough suggestion of what my final piece is going to be. And then I also want to have in that doorway. I also need to plan that. But I'm going to put this away at this point. It was just to give me a rough sketch, a rough line so that I have some kind of an idea as to where I'm going. Now what I want to have is a door. I'm going to just use a straight edge here. I want it to come in. I'll probably just do something similar to this, make a line. But you can use a roller. You can use another piece of paper. I'm going to come all the way over against the outside. Actually, I think I want it to come all the way up to the top. I like it to come all the way up to where my top of my paper is going to be, and it's going to come all the way over to the edge of my paper as well. So that's the start of my door, and then I think I want to have it have a raised panel to move this out of my way. A ruler would definitely be better, but I need to locate mine. So I'm just going to be very, very sketchy. I'm going to leave a little line there. I'm going to come down here and then maybe leave a little space. Definitely would be better with a ruler. Come down to about there. And then this is going to be my one panel right there. And then this is the top of the next panel. This will make more sense when you see it. Like that. Like that. This is the bottom panel. It's a three panel door, one, two, three. It's going to be behind these flowers. It's sitting on my desk, my tabletop. The vase is going to be on my tabletop, and then the flowers and the vines that are going to come over the edge. So go ahead and draw yours out first so that you have some composition going. Go as detailed as you feel like you need to. I would like for you to be that the door is probably the most detailed by having the different panels, and this can be as sketchy as you want it to be. Then go ahead and erase, use your eraser. This is just a little eraser bag that I have. It has a little eraser bits inside. It's very messy, but I really like using it. It works really well for watercolor paper. It doesn't scuff up or mar the watercolor paper at all. It's very gentle, but it actually works really well, but it does leave crumbs all over. So I'm going to go ahead and erase this with my eraser bag. Just to get it so that it's lighter. I'll be able to still see it. You might not be able to see it in the camera, but you just erase it as much as you can so that it doesn't shine through on your final painting because once you put paint on top of your pencil marks, it's very hard to get pencil marks up. So, see how many crumbs it leaves all over the place? That's not paper. That's just the crumbs from inside the bag. But that's why it works so well. So come on back to the next lesson, and we're going to get started right away in painting. 3. Class Project Part A - Building Loose Doorway and Vase: We're going to work on first is I have my different paintbrushes, all different sizes. I'll probably use quite a few of these. Right now, I'm going to start with my eight inch round. This is a Princeton heritage, one of my favorite brushes. I've already wet down my palette. This is all Daniel Smith Watercolor from tubes that I have put into my palette, and then I spray it down with my water bottle and then it's all activated and ready to go. At the end of the day, I just let it dry. I have a lid I can put on top of this to keep any dust or cat hair out of it. And then it's ready and it just sits here. I just buy these little tubes and I squeeze it in. When it gets empty, I just know which colors and I can refill them. So that's the that's my paint and my supplies. I, of course, have my water bottles here, my jars, and I usually have two. I sometimes have three because I like to have some clean water options. And when I paint, I use a lot of paint and my glasses get very dirty very quickly and I like to have my fresh water. I usually have at least two, if not three. I'm going to start with my door panel first. Maybe this is a door or a shutter or an antique cabinet. What we're going to do is down, we're going to work on the inside this panel, whether it's a raised panel or flat panel, doesn't really matter. We're going to make this one and this one and this one. Once that dries, we will come back through and paint these outside edges, but we don't want to paint the outside edges until the inside has completely dried. I'm going to go ahead and wet this down with my paint brush. I would say, this is an eight by ten and a size eight is the smallest you would want to be using at this point, possibly even a larger paint brush, just because this is a lot of space and you want to make sure that that is nice and wet. I am working on cotton paper, so it is absorbing the water nicely. So I'm going to wet down all three of these and let the speaking of cat here, there's a piece. I'm wet down all three before I come back in and put in any color. Just going edge to edge, I'm actually covering up the pencil marks as well with some water so that I get a chance to really get that covered so that my final piece does not show those pencil marks because I have them covered. Don't forget that watercolor will go wherever your paper is wet, so you do not want to wet anything outside of the area because that will cause you problems that'll start bleeding. This paint up here is my buff titanium. It's one of my favorites. It creates such a nice, neutral color. See I can just put it right on there and it just creates a beautiful natural. You can use this for wood tones, you can use it for skin tones. But what I really like it for is mixing with my other colors. So anytime I'm doing something and maybe I'm working in a vintage style, I like to use my buff titanium to mix with my other colors so that it dilutes it. It makes it more muted. The colors are not so strong because I have mixed it with my buff titanium. If you're looking for one tube paint, that's probably one that I would recommend. I really like it. Here I am adding it, first of all, to all my four panels, and then I'm going to be coming back in. That one just got a little dry, so I'm just rewetting that. Add a little bit more water if you feel like your paper is getting dry. There's nothing wrong with coming back in and adding more. Add more water as needed. You don't want to be working with dry watercolor paint. Um that doesn't create a very nice look. I'm going to be also adding in some of this brown. Now this brown is a sepia color, and I like that. I'm going to be putting it in on these edges right on top of my buff titanium and we're going to let those just blend here on the paper itself. I'm only putting it on this left hand side and the bottom because it's going to be where my shadow is and that's going to be creating a nice edge. And we're going to come back up and smooth it out a little bit. You can see that it's getting spider webby. Don't worry about that. It's still wet. I can come up there and fix that with my paint brush in just a second. I just like to get all three of these done. I paint fairly quickly. I am not somebody who has, like, a lot of concern about making a mistake or making it wrong. And so I don't mind working quickly if you would rather just do one at a time, then you go right ahead and do that. I'm going to start back up here. It's still wet and now I've rinsed off my paintbrush, completely rinsed it off, used my cloth that I have here and just dried it off a little bit, and I can come back in here and just kind of smooth off some of those spider webs. I can draw that paint up into the panel itself. I'm going to bring that down, smooth them out, and draw it up into the panel. Remember that your watercolor is going to dry lighter, Watercolor always looks darkest when it's wet. All right. That has nice shadow edge and it's starting to bring in some color up into the panel itself gives it a little wood appearance. If you need more, just dip back into that brown and bring some more color up into it. Not too much, but, you know, a little extra really gives that appearance of wood. If you feel like you've got too much, you can always just rinse your brush off, dry it off on a rag, and then come back through and lift up some of that. But I think that's looking pretty good. You can always come back in and do a second layer. So if you feel like after you've done this and after it's dried, it's not dark enough, you'll just come back in and put another layer on top. I feel like this needs to have just a little darker edge. I'm just going to add a little darker edge down here to the bottom. I might have to put in another layer once that is dry. Like I said earlier, I cannot come in and do this panel, the things are in between, because if I go and wet down this, this is going to bleed out because this is still wet. So now I have to wait for this to completely dry. I can just let it dry naturally. I could use a hair dryer, I could use this heat gun. Personally, I'm just going to let that dry for a minute and I'm going to come over and work on this vase. For the vase, I'm going to grab a little bit of blue. And I'm going to wet that, make it nice and wet. Make sure that you can see that, pull it in lots of water. I want it very diluted. I do not want this to be a strong paint. I want it to be very diluted with a lot of water. See how liquidy it is. I don't even mind I can mix it in with this buff titanium just to change it up a little bit and make it even softer. Now I have two puddles. I have my buff titanium blue, and then I have my straight out of the well blue. So I'm going to come in and just use maybe the darker blue and I'm going to create an edge. I'm going to come down and make this oval shape. Then I'm just going to draw this down. Now, leaving this is a glass vase. You want to leave white space. Do not fill this whole thing in with blue paint because this is a glass vase and we need to give the illusion of it having um reflection. Sorry, sometimes can't talk and paint at the same time. What you see here is I added the blue, and then I just used water to pull it across, which makes this area much lighter, which is what I was going for. Then I can add in some lighter over on this side. I'm just going to create my edge again because I do want to have a defined edge to this jar. See why it didn't matter if my jar that I drew was straight or clear or perfect. Because once you start putting in the watercolor, you're just going to recreate that edge. That was just to help you make sure that you got it started. I do want to create this oval at the bottom. I'm just going to help the illusion that this is a round phase. And then I also want to add in just a hint of green. I'd like to just add in just a little bit of green into my vases, which also helps with the understanding that this is glass. You could add in teal or little touches of yellow or purple or pink. I would also be really pretty. In fact, I think I might just put in just a hint of pink up in here too, because it really is beautiful. Let's see, put a little bit over here. Because it's almost like the glass is clear and what you're putting in here is a reflection. Maybe it's the reflection of the flowers or something else that's in the room. But I'm leaving lots of white space. Okay. I think that's the way I want it for now. Once that dries, I'll be adding another layer, but it's a good way to get started. All right. I'm going to dry this so that I can come back and finish this door. 4. Class Project Part B - Flower Transparent Layers: Okay, now that this is dry or mostly dry, I can come back in with my clean water and my paintbrush, and I'm going to just add in the water right along this edge. It doesn't have to be perfect. You're just making sure that there's a little bit of water on your papers. It's just going to help your watercolor flow a little bit more. So it doesn't have to be edge to edge. We're just looking to have a little bit of water on your paper. That'll be really helpful. So we also have to remember that we're going to be putting some of our flour on top of this and some of the vines and the grasses are going to go on top of this. So don't make your door too dark, or you might have a hard time laying on your flowers and your bouquet on top of it. Okay, that's pretty good. Now I'm going to be mixing up because I want this to be lighter. I'm going to be actually using some of my white. Now, this white is a guash. I'm just going to be putting in some white and just using some of that brown that's already on my palette here, and then I'm just going to be putting that right in here. I don't want it to be the exact same color as the inside of my panels, or I might have a hard time seeing a difference between the two, but I don't want it to just be pure white or it won't show up enough. We'll come back in here and add in some other colors, some depth, some brown, just like we did the centers for the panels. But I do want that base color just to be White with a hint of brown in it. Now, you can make yours whatever color you want to. If you want your panels to be green, you go right ahead. Just remember that you're going to be putting flowers on top of it and so it can't be too dark. I love adding architectural pieces like this into my artwork, into my flowers. I feel like it really anchors things and gives a lot of really great emotion and feeling and almost like a story. So I do like doing that. Now I'm going to come in with that same brown. I'm just using my same paintbrush that had the white on it and just making it just a little bit darker. And just like we did here where we added in the outside edge, I'm going to do the same thing, adding in an edge. Kind of like right over my pencil line. Again, it's bleeding. It's creating the little spider veins. It's okay. We're going to come back through and fix all that. But this gives me some definition, as a little shadow. Straightening out that line a little bit. Can even add a little bit up in here, here. Okay. So cleaned off my paintbrush. This is now dry, well, dry because I, you know, dabbed it off there. And I'm going to come back in and just kind of smooth out some of those little webby things. And see how it just takes this from being too white to having just enough definition. Even add a little bit of I'm going to just dip into my buff titanium and just add in some of that warmth just to bridge the colors between the two. Not much, just a little bit here and there. You may not have these exact colors and you can find something similar. You can make it. A lot of ways you can make this is just by adding in some white wash to any of your browns, any of your light colored, even peach, if you have a peach color, you could create something similar to this. If what you have is something like this, inside of here, you're going to be able to find you have a white, you're going to have some yellow, you're going to have some peach. Dilute this with a lot of water on a little plate. Get a kitchen plate out and dilute it down, and you're going to be able to create colors that are similar to this. I'm just telling you what color I'm using because a lot of people often ask me, what is that color that you just used? And so I just want you to know about that buff titanium. It looks like this. Buff Titanium by Daniel Smith. Okay. Now I'm going to let that dry 100%. I'm going to probably get out my hair dryer and dry that because I cannot go and put any flowers on top of that while this is still wet. So your base layer must be 100% dry before you go and put on your flowers on top of it. I can't even come down here and do the tabletop because this area is dry. And so I'm just a little bit on the stuck side at this point, so I want to make sure that I go ahead and dry this off. I'll be right back. Alright. I am ready to get started again, and this is now dry or dry enough. I can still feel there's a little dampness, but it's mostly dry. So I'm going to go ahead and get started. I think what I'm going to do is work on my flowers next. So with these flowers, we're going to be doing something similar to what we did in the last class here. Where these flowers are it's really, really loose. We're not necessarily, somebody asked, well, what kind of flowers were they? Well, they're whatever color kind of flowers you want them to be. Are they roses? They could be hydrangea, they could be peonies, you know, whatever, some of them could be a different flower down here. Here's some little cute little blue ones with little yellow centers. But there's a big white one here and a big pink one here. And so we're going to do that same kind of a concept where we're going to get some little groupings, I don't know. Maybe that's a tulip up there at that top. Maybe this was a rose and this was a hydrangea. It doesn't really matter because what we're doing is just putting down random little brush strokes, brush stroke, brush stroke, brush stroke, all different directions. Sometimes I make them in Cs or parentheses shapes like here, here you can see I made a parenthese that way and a parentheses that direction so that I have the center. It's not a perfect circle, but it's a C and then a backward C. Then that allows me to have a center of a head where I can put in a little bit of yellow to indicate the inside of a flower. So that's what the style is that we're working on here. The way that we achieved this is I'm going to use a great big brush. This is a quill brush, synthetic squirrel hair, and I'm going to get this nice and wet with my water. It's clean brush. And while it is just it's soaking. Look, it's dripping already. So it's really wet, and I am going to sprinkle water down on this area where I know I want to have all my flowers. The reason I'm going to sprinkle water not spraying it with a spray bottle. I'm not brushing it with a brush to make it all wet. I'm sprinkling it so that I get big blobs of water and that is going to allow that technique to happen where all the flowers just start to blend together and all the colors just merge together, where it doesn't matter what kind of flower it is. It's just beautiful. A very loose style of painting. Here we go. I'm just using my hand as a way to tap I'm just letting this splash down onto here. It's okay if it goes in areas that you're not going to be painting because those areas are just going to dry. It's okay. I'm going to come over on top of the door and add some splashes over there. I know that some of my stems are going to come down, so I'm going to put some splashes there. I'm just going to add a bunch of little splashes. I want to make sure that you can see that in, um, in this camera view. Do you see how much water? That's what I'm talking about, big splashes of water. Okay, now that I have my water splashed down on there, you might want to try this. If you've never done this before, you might want to try it on a scrap piece of paper, use the backside of something that you weren't happy with and put some splashes down and see how it works so that you are understanding of what you're getting yourself into and what's going to happen here. So now I'm going to create because this is a companion, I'm going to use very, very similar colors to what I used in the other one because I want them to be able to sit next to each other on the wall and look appropriate. I am going to use similar colors. And I have my circle, my circle is here and my circle is here. I think I'm going to make this one red and this one white just so that it's the opposite of the other one. So I'm going to watch how I'm doing this. I'm just making little tiny little circles, using putting my pencil, my paintbrush on the edge and just coming in, I touches into one of those little blobs of water, and then I come over here and I make another one. I'm just creating these little spots, almost like little individual flower heads. Sometimes just a half see look at how that water is just pouring out. That's okay. I'm just going to create this other one over there. I'm going to start coming over here. Because it's going to go on top of this staying in that general circle shape. Coming down over the edge of the jar. Remember how I like to break the edge of the jar. It's not a perfect circle. I'm not trying to make it perfect. Flowers are not perfect. They're different shapes and so it's not a perfect circle. It's just an about circle. Then I'm going to come in with maybe a slightly different color of blue I've added blue, now it's just a slightly different red. I just adding in a little bit more here and there. Maybe I want to add in a little bit more of that buff titanium to make it softer, lighter and adding some of that in over here on the one edge. So that I have my highlights and my low lights. Yes, I can see the door through here. I'm going to trust the process that as I add and build layers, you're going to start to not see that door. But right now you absolutely can see that door and that's okay. We're going to be working on that as we build layers, that door is going to slowly disappear. So very similar in look where it's just a little blobbiness of a flower. 5. Class Project Part C - Expressive Greens & Floral Movement: And now I want to add in a white. You know what? I'm not going to do white yet. I have my blue right here, so I'm just going to go ahead and add in a little blit of blue in different spots. Maybe this thing up here was a blue flower. See how I touched the red and it bled right into it. Totally fine. Love that. Maybe I want to have a flower dancing up here along the top. Maybe there's another one. So I am looking for where those wet spots are, and I'm going, Oh, yeah, maybe there's a flower that's dripping all the way down here and that's a blue flower all the way down into this area. Because I can always add a stem that comes down here to merge in with that one. I don't want to add too much blue, but I do like to have it in more than just one spot. So I think I'll add just a little bit here. Just even little touches. I can see that there's little drops of water, and so that's why I chose to put them over here. I'm kind of allowing those drops of water that I made earlier to help me decide where to put them. I'm feeling this is just maybe a little bit too much, so I'm using my dry paint brush and picking up some of that. And we might do another layer of that later. So now I kind of have my three blue spots kind of made a triangle out of that. And now I do want to add in a little bit of yellow as well. Maybe even mix it in with that pink to warm it up a little bit. Add a little buff titanium, maybe just a little pink, a little yellow. I'll be adding in more yellow later, but sometimes it's just nice to have maybe this flower here that we said was in the middle and see how they're all shaped the same way. But once it's all said and done, they're going to be different flowers. But I'm making them the same way. Maybe some yellow up here. They're just a little C, a little curve. Something along that line. So a little dancing up there. Maybe you're going to add a little yellow over here. Maybe add a little yellow over here. Okay. This is where it's just fun. You just get to play around with it, let it do its thing. I want to get out some of my white. I'm going to be making that white flour. I'm just going to clean up my palate a little bit so that you can still see that. Um, so I'm going to start with a little buff titanium. Lots of water, maybe a little white. Now, see how light that is. White flowers aren't really white. They have just a little bit of color because remember a white wall in your house, it's a variable. Some whites are whiter, maybe your white trim is whiter than your white wall because maybe your white wall has a little yellow in it or it has a little blue in it. When we are doing white, remember it's not pure white. It's just whiter than the paper itself. Now, I am touching into the other colors so you can see here I touched into the blue, I touched into the pink, and I'm even bringing some of that up into. Because that's what's going to really give this flower its dimension and its shape because it's allowed to have some of those other colors mingled in with it. I'm going to add that. And they're offset just the way I want it. I'm going to grab just a little bit of that brown and add that in because we're going to be adding in a little bit of depth into these white flowers. It's amazing what a little bit of depth does to these flowers. It doesn't have to be a lot, just a little bit. You can kind of move this around. This is very wet. There's lots of water on here because of where I had splashed it. I can always be just drying off my paint brush. I'm using my rag. I don't know if you can see that, but I'm using my rag to if I pick up too much paint or too much water, I just brush it off. Moving that around. This is where you're going to have to do your painting because yours might be wetter than mine, might be drier than mine. Maybe you didn't paint as quickly as I did. Maybe you painted quicker and it was wetter. So you have to listen to your painting and do what you think is right for yours. I'm even going to grab a little bit of green. And just add in a little too much, little bits of green here and there, because sometimes with white flowers, it has a little green hint to it as well. Just move it around. Don't be afraid to experiment. If you're not sure, get out your scrap paper and try it on a scrap paper and see what happens. You are going to learn so much more just by experimenting. Am I going to add in just a little This is very diluted green. I have it and it's just almost completely white water, but just a little bit of green. I'm just going to add in just a little bit here and there into even the pink side. Okay. Going to pull this back over here and show you this is the one that we did the other day. So here's my white flower, and you see how it has the blues and the pinks and the browns and the yellows and green colors in here. That's what we are trying to achieve again over here. Then same with my pink one, it's very similar. I'll be adding in a little yellow center. I'll be adding in a little yellow center here, but I do need to have it dry a little bit more. I think actually this one might be ready. So I'm going to be adding in a little I think I'm going to put a little bit more yellow here. To maybe indicate that that's where the center of the flower is. I'll do the same thing over here. Maybe even pick up a little orange put it on the backside. Okay. That way, it looks like the one is facing this direction and this one's facing that way. All right. I'm going to grab a little bit more yellow. I'm going to come up in here and add a little yellow to some of these centers or these other flowers. Okay. Now that that's dried a little bit, so again, you're going to have to paint yours and listen to your painting because if your painting dried differently, you're needing to do yours. Don't feel like you have to mimic and put the paint brush down just like I did it because yours is going to be different from mine. We're just giving you the idea of what to paint, and then you are painting yours the way yours is turning out. I would never be able to paint this exactly the same way another time. I've tried that. I've been like, Oh, that was really fun. I'll try that again. Then when I go to paint it a second time, it doesn't it's never the same. I'm just creating little blue flowers here and there. All right. I do want to put a little bit more. This is starting to dry, but it's not completely dry. So I want to add a little bit more of the pink on top. And I'll decide if it's dry enough or if I have to wait. I'm going to just leave it like that. I'll come back and add another layer. It's really what this is all about. Just play. Have fun. Add layers. I decided I thought maybe some of these yellows could use a little bit of a pink up in there. My paint brush has it. I'll just add a little bit of that. Before this dries completely, I do want to start adding in some green because I do like it when my green merges with some of my flowers. I want to have a stem that comes out like this. Your stems don't always need to connect. You can have them you can have them just kind of free floating. You could even add little flowers or I mean, leaves off to the sides. Don't add too many stems or leaves that can get it really distracting. So just before you put it down, think, is this going to add or is it just more? Because if it's just going to be more, then you might want to reconsider and not add it. So I'm just gonna add in these little dancing above. See how these just kind of come up. And see why it wasn't important to have an exact plan of where you were going to be putting every single flower. Because we decided we just go with it and we let the we let it just flow. So I came in and touched my wet spots, which is fine. I'm just going to smooth them out a little bit. I do want to have it come all the way out here into the doorway. We'll be adding more. I always like to use different at least three different colours of green when I am painting. 6. Class Project Part D - Stems, Leaves and depth: When you add extra colors of green, it really gives a lot of depth and dimension to your painting. If everything was just this one color green, it would just get a little boring. Now that I've done that, I'm going to mix in a little bit of my blue in with my green so I get this beautiful blue green color and maybe I'll add in some leaves. I want to have something over the top of my vase here. I just create oval shape, maybe add another one there. I put something in there, add a little color, little definition in between. I'll put another one up here. This is where it's just fun to just add color. It doesn't even have to be an exact leaf. It can just be kind of like the shape the general shape or idea. In even just be a swoosh. See? And then I want to have something that's a little darker. So this will be my third color green, and I think I'm going to just be adding some little leaves off of some of these stems. It's really wet, so I'm just going to go ahead and create that into a bigger leaf. Oh, more depth down in here. A little separation. When you put little green darker green, it almost creates like that, um, um, makes it look like it's defined in between the two flower heads. Just gives a little extra definition. Yeah, they're not even, like, a particular leaf. Like, see how I just did that. It's not even a real leaf. Pushing it away. Okay, I'm gonna be done with leaves for a second while I um o I say that, and then I go and put a couple more in. It's hard. Hard to know when to be done. It's really important to practice being done. Okay, so I'm gonna leave the leaves alone for a little bit. I'm going to come down and work on this base, and then I want to work on the vase a little bit more. And I actually want to add a little bit more to the background around this. And then we also have to do the background behind the leaves, but not until that is dry. So I'm going to come down and do my my tabletop. I'm just going to be mixing this random color that's on my palette here, a little green, a little brown, a little gray. I go to hold my paint brush on its edge, and I'm just going to make it real sketchy here. That way we get a lot of white space showing, which is going to indicate the tabletop, getting close to the vase, come back in and get a little bit more paint. R underneath it. Right in there. Let's see how that's my tabletop. Maybe I want to add in another color. We'll grab a little um, more of a yellowy color. Again, mixed in with some of the other colors on my tablet, on my palette. Just to give it a little extra second color. Okay. Probably will want to add some more shadow in there, but again, I got to wait for it to dry. So just be careful with your layers. This is just adding in another layer of pink that has a lot of the buff titanium and even some brown in it. Just adding just a hint of brown into it, which gives a little bit of depth. I can do the same thing over here. I feel like this flower here is just a little on the weak side, so I'm going to add some more color, some orange just to give it a little more depth. The importance. How's yours looking? If you are not satisfied with yours, what that means is either it's not done, sometimes we don't love them in the middle. Sometimes they need to get finished and we have to just trust the process. Sometimes it means that we should practice it again. Nothing wrong with doing the same exact painting over and over and over again. So if yours, you're not feeling like you're loving it yet, then you might just not be finished and might just need a little bit more love, or you might need to just practice this a second time sometime. So I was just feeling like I could see the door through this a little bit more than I wanted. So I'm just coming back through with another layer of my paint and just adding. It can be a different color, even, you know, it doesn't have to be the same exact green. You can just add in another color. Okay. Okay, I need to put my stems in here. So I think what I'm going to do is grab a little green and I'd like to have them criss cross. I'm going to soften them because I like to have them look like they are in water. You can do that while your vase is still wet, or you can do it like I just did it where now it's really, really solid. But now I'm just going to use a clean paint brush and just come back on top of it and smooth it out, and that's going to give it that illusion that this inside of water. See how it gets almost blurry. Then I also want to give it the look as if there's a water line there. I'm going to come in and use my blue, and I'm just going to create a little curve which is showing that there's a little bit of water in this vase. You can dilute that, you can draw it back down. Don't give up on yourself if you are not happy with yours. Just make another one. It's totally fine. Now I'm going to add in a little bit more of this base. I get a little bit more blue. I want to define this edge a little bit more, so I'm going to use that darker blue again. Just add another layer. Keep going. See what it looks like when you're done. Just kind of using a dry brush effect here. Always wet your paint brush back down and smooth it out, move it around. All right. Um, I think I want to define this edge a little bit more, so I'm going to use my brown. But you know what? I think I want a smaller paint brush. I'm going to use more of a detailed paintbrush. Just a little bit smaller where I can come in and I'm just going to create a little base to my door. Almost like it's a shadow or it's the edge. Jump over those flowers, jump over those flowers, on back up here. All the way up. Now I can use my clean paint brush, dry it off a little bit, come onto the inside, and just soften that edge. So it's not so stark. Let that just blend out. I do this technique quite a bit. If I'm trying to define something, I make a stark line, and then I blend it out with a clean paint brush. 7. Class Project Part E - Details for Flowers and Vase: I think I'm going to do the same thing with this vase. I think the base needs to have a little bit more definition here. I'm just gonna come in. And then using my clean paint brush, just smooth it out. Just on the inside, not on the outside. I don't want it blending outward. I want it blending inward. So I'm just using my wet paintbrush on the inside. Just like I did on the door. I did it on the inside, not the outside. If you do it on the outside, then you're going to have all your bleeding going outwards, which you don't want. Just a clean, wet paint brush and bleed it out. Clean wet paint brush, and I bleat it inwards in in in. Okay. I'm going to completely dry this so that we can work on the background and then maybe some shadowing. We do the background. I decided that I really wanted to have some more definition into the centers of these. So using a nice brown or a darker color, I'm just going to add in some little dots and some little lines into these centers just to create just a little bit more definition into the centers of these flowers. They don't all need it, but I thought that some of these just could use a little bit of depth that your eye had something to go to. Okay. Then I also wanted to what happens is when you walk away from it a little bit and you let something dry and then you come back to it, you start noticing some things that need it just a little bit more touch. So this flower that I had dried off before just needs a little bit more blue, another layer. To make it feel more important. Same with this one. The yellow had just bled just a little bit too much. So I'm just adding another layer of blue into some of these. Using the same technique of just like these little C shapes but just putting them kind of on top. And then I also want to put another layer of darker, even darker than that. I'm doing is using that pink, but then adding in just a little bit of brown and just adding in that other layer of petals, which just gives a little bit more definition. Kind of in concentric circles going out, um and then I'll do the same thing with my white where I just kind of create a color that I like. And then be a little too bold. Just because it is white, it doesn't really show up real well. Um, so now I put them on, I'm going to come back in with my clean brush and just kind of wet them down. Just like we did with the shadows on the door and the edge of the vase, just adding water and allowing that to just blend, putting it on the one side, letting the other side have a sharp edge, but blending out on the other edge. This kind of creates a little bit more definition for my white flour. Okay. If you like yours without this, then don't put it on. You know, you have to listen to your painting. If your painting is you're happy with it, don't do what I'm doing. Listen to your painting. Do it the way you want to. Because I'm adding something doesn't mean you should. It's kind of like a given for every painting that I do is if you're seeing me do something and you're like, Oh, what I kind of like mine the way it is, then please don't do it. Don't follow my instruction to add something or change something if you're content with yours. Because your brush strokes are different than my brush strokes. You've painted it differently. You've used more water or less water. You've put it in different spots. It's really important that you trust your instincts and not add things just because another teacher is doing it on theirs. I have ruined more paintings of mine because I fleed somebody else's plan, and I should have just stuck with what I had done. Okay. Now that I've done that, I am going to go ahead and stop fussing over it. And I'm going to start adding in some background. Using the palette. So this is my palette and look at all that color. That's what I'm going to use. On my background because my background, I don't want to now all of a sudden shift and use purple lavender or orange. I want to use the same colors that I've been using on here. I want to use exact same colors as my background. The only difference is I'm going to use a lot of water. So although this looks like it's really diluted, it is not diluted enough. I'm going to be diluting it even more with more water. I'm going to come in here and add more water right to that green. And you can see how loose that is and it's almost like light tea. I mean, it is so, so transparent, that it's almost not even there. 8. Class Project Part F - Atmospheric Backgrounds & Shadows: And then I can come in and I can add it here and I can bring it up and around some of these flowers. And then watch what I'm going to do. I'm going to not go dip under here. I'm going to dip back into my water. Now I have more water and no more paint, and I'm going to spread this out even further to make it even more diluted. I'm just going to draw this down and move this around. You're not going around every single flower or every single leaf, you're just jumping over it. But do you see how diluted that is? It is already diluted and then I'm making it even more diluted by dipping back into my water and moving it around some more. And then maybe by the time you get up here, there's just no more color. You're just painting with water. Then I can come over and I can choose a blue and I can dilute this blue the same way with lots and lots of water. And then I can add in some blue. But look how bold that is. And maybe I don't want it that bold. So now I can add more water right here on my paper and just move it around going around, trying to avoid the flower heads and the leaves. I'm just going around them. But I'm using lots and lots of water. If you have to go over them 'cause they're too tight, that's okay. It's not an end of the world if you touch some of the other flowers. I'm just saying you don't need to. It's probably better if you avoid them. So this is all nice and wet. I don't know come back over. I don't know, I'm gonna even add a little bit of brown to this. Just a little hint of brown. And then it's too much, so I'm gonna come get my water and mix it right here on my paper. Add more water. Move it around. I come up next to the vase, move that water around, come down to my tabletop. You can leave some white spots. Maybe even touch in a little extra brown. Why brown? I don't know. Maybe it's shadow. Just if you don't like the brown, don't put the brown. I want you to be relaxed and just have fun with this. I'm kind of thinking that maybe this is my shadowy side, but this is the darker side. But, um, I don't fun. Just play. Just go to touch in some of it in there, and then I still have to do this area. So I'm going to come back over and grab a little bit more that green blue. And just fill that in. So light, incredibly light. The lightest color paint you can imagine. I was putting a little bit of brown in there as well just because I feel like it's maybe between the vase and the door. Maybe that's a little darker in there, but it also has some blue and green in there. Once this dries, you can even add on a second layer, which is kind of fun. You can just be like, Well, this is the blue spot, so now I'm gonna add in just a touch of green, as well. This is the blue side, so I'm just going to add in just a little touch of Oops, a little too much on top of my door. Okay, and you know what? I think I'd also like to have a little yellow here and there. So I'm just a very light yellow. Mush that around, blend it in. Put it yellow up in here. Okay. Adds an awful lot when you've put in the background. So soft and gentle and, um, Alright. I'm gonna wait for that to dry a little bit, and then I'm going to come back in and add another color. I feel like this has maybe got a little too brown, so I'm going to add, like, a little blue or green down in here, but I have to wait for that to dry. So I'm going to add a little shadow. So I'm saying that the sun is kind of coming this direction. Although now that I'm looking at it, U I actually I actually think the sun is coming this way because of my highlights here with my yellow and the fact that my white peony or my white whatever this is, is over here, and that's a little bit brighter. So I'm going to make my shadow over on this side, which is fine. Just go to add in a little bit more yellow in here to really help relay that message. Paper towel. Just a little too wet. Okay. All right, so I want to create a little bit of a shadow down here underneath. Just using that same technique of laying my paintbrush down, just making that side a little bit darker as if the vase is making a shadow. And then I'm going to just put a little bit more darkness in here. This is still wet, so I have lots of freedom to come in there. And then I think let's see. I'll just add a little bit more. So I'm just using this really light wash that I have and just putting it on top of this door, not solid, just like kind of in some of the spots just to create a little bit more shadow. I don't need to do as much up here because the sun is still shining up in this area. Just go to add a little bit. Adding shadows really adds a lot to your painting. So don't to add in your shadows and to think it through, change your mind, like I just did. I was originally thinking the sun was coming this way, but then after revisiting it and looking at it, I'm like, Nope, it's all coming that way. So go ahead and feel free to make adjustments and plan differently. It's your painting, after all. You can do it. You're allowed. Nobody's telling you what to do. Okay. Right. Now, at this point, we are basically done. If your painting still needs a little bit more, if you feel like you needed to add something else to yours, go ahead and continue your painting on. I think I'm going to be done for now. I might come back through and do a little bit more later, but all in all, this is pretty much finished. Sometimes I like to add just a little bit of some lines to some of my leaves. I don't like to do it to all of them, but I do like to put in just a little definition into some of my leaves. I hope you had fun with this. Come on back to the last lesson, and we're going to review this and go over a couple of thoughts and some encouragement, and then we'll wrap this up. 9. Final Thoughts & Encouragement: Thank you so much for painting with me today. I hope this class helped you feel a little bit more confident creating a soft atmospheric watercolor painting without needing every detail to feel perfect or tightly controlled. One of the biggest lessons in this style is learning how to let watercolor breathe a little and allowing softness, fading edges, and layer transparency to become part of the beauty of the piece. What I especially love about this project is how the doorway structure adds just enough balance and framing around those loose florals while keeping the overall painting calm, light, and expressive. If your painting turned out a little bit different than mine, that's completely okay and honestly very expected with atmospheric watercolor. This style naturally creates variation from artist to artist and sometimes the painting we worry about the most ends up becoming our favorite once it fully dries and settles. I would absolutely love to see your finished project in the gallery. You can upload the completed painting process photos, or even multiple attempts if you decide to repaint the piece. Watching students develop their own version of these soft floral compositions is one of my favorite parts about teaching. If you enjoyed this class, I highly encourage you to explore some of my other watercolor florals and atmospheric painting classes here on Skillshare. This class was intentionally designed as a companion piece to my Atmospheric Vase Painting class. The two paintings work beautifully together as a coordinated watercolor collection. That companion class explores many of the same loose watercolor floral techniques, but in a softer, more open composition with a round glass vase. Have other additional classes that focus on loose watercolor florals, soft atmospheric backgrounds, expressive watercolor movement, and transparent glass vases. If you've been painting along for several of my classes, you're probably starting to notice how these techniques build on one another over time. That layering of experience is really where confidence begins to grow. Finally, if you enjoyed this class, I'd be so grateful if you would leave a review and click that follow button here on Skillshare. Following me is one of the best ways to stay up to date whenever I release a new watercolor class, a companion piece, or future atmospheric floral collections. Thank you again for spending your creative time with me and I'll see you in the next class.