Loose Watercolor Hydrangea

1. Intro: Looking at our Supplies: Hello, hello, Welcome back. I am so glad you are here because we have a super fun class cooked up today. We are going to be painting hydrangea, as you can see here. We're going to be painting the classic hydrangea that you've probably seen oftentimes in gardens and in bouquets, working with these beautiful blues and purples. And just noting the structure, the shape, how it all works together. So we'll take some time and we'll study some reference images. And also while researching, I came across another shape of hydrangea with which I was not familiar. I call it the Gum Drop hydrangea. And as you can see here, it has a really unique shape, something similar to what you would find in a hyacinth. We'll talk more about that as well. Jumping into the supplies. We'll be working with our Canson paper or a £140 cold press. As I've mentioned before, paper has two different sides to it. So you can see here lots of really pretty green though, if you were to flip it over, it's a much smoother surface, so we'll talk about that as well. And just choosing the right paper side for what it is that we are wanting to create something with a little bit more texture or something just a little bit more smooth and more along the lines of what you would find on a hot press paper. We will also be working with our Princeton brushes. As always, I would love for you to have a variety of sizes, specifically size six through ten. I'll be using two sixes. So it's important that you have at least two brushes in the same size and then also a bigger 110 or 12 would be great. Round brushes preferred. If you have a brand that you love, obviously you can stick with those. We're also going to be using a variety of watercolors here. I am happy if you use any of the brands that are listed in the outline. My married blue, Winsor and Newton Daniel Smith. The Cotman series, like I said, in Winton, Windsor and Newton is just fine. So as long as you have just like an artist grade paint, you should be great. You can refer to the outline for the full supply list of the paints. But even if you don't have the exact color, not to worry as long as you have something similar in the same family, it's gonna be great. Also, a palette maybe too, because we're gonna be using a lot of a lot of different colors and mixtures of these colors. So I want you to have room on your palate to mix things around and not just feel crunched into a corner. Ideally, I would love for you to have an iPad as well or just something for you to be able to look at just because we're going to take, we're gonna be taking some time to look at a few reference pictures like I mentioned, and I'd love for you to be able to kinda zoom in and just note the structure and just the beauty of these petals as we learn about them and then also translate them to paper. So that just about covers it. Obviously you'll need a paper towel to blot off and then a water cup. Hopefully yours isn't green like mine. Obviously, I need to rinse off before we start. So all that said, let's move into the next segment. 2. Swatching the Palette: Much better, apologies for the portrait mode. We are now in landscape and filling up the entire screen. I have my camera and my tripod here. And sometimes if it's not tilted forward right before I begin filming, it just automatically reverts back to portrait. So anyway, from here on out, we will be in landscape and we are now going to be swatching out the colors we will be using for this first hydrangea. So let's go ahead and do that now. Neuron and grab a piece of paper. And then you're also going to want to make sure you have your palette filled up with the ultra ultraviolet. Believe it is. Let me get that. That's a small little tube, ultramarine violet and finance blue and then a touch of sepia here. We're also going to be using the sap green and the rich green gold. And so we're gonna be using these colors together basically to create an entire pedal, but we're going to want to have different consistencies, different water ratios essentially. If you haven't heard me talk about water ratios, you'll want to go back and take a beginning class just to freshen up or to learn all of that information before we head into this one because we won't be covering that in great depth. So we're gonna be using both cough syrup and broth consistency. And I'd like you to mix up piles for each one. So here I have a mixture of the ultramarine violet, the finance blue, and a broth consistency. And then here I have it in a cough syrup consistency. I'd also like you to be able to pull out just the ultramarine violet. I have a little bit of the finance blue on my brush already. And pull that out over here. Because we're really going to want to have options. I don't want you to stress about having all of these colors working together on the same palette and running together because they're already going to do that on the page. We want there to be a little bit of separation. And as petals dry and as they move wet into wet, we're going to see and just study how the colors work together. And we just don't need to be concerned about the colors blending together. So I'd like you to have at least a cough syrup and a broth version of those two colors together. And then pull out another version could be broth or cough syrup of the ultramarine violet. I mostly just want you to have different colors and different mixtures. It doesn't matter which ones they are. I'm going to show you how when we assemble the full hydrangea head, we're going to have areas where it's gonna be darker, areas where it's going to be lighter. And it's really just a matter of being able to distinguish the overall shape. And not necessarily so important is to have the correct color if that makes sense. Okay. I also want you to go ahead and mix up your rich green gold and your sap, green and sap yet to broth consistency. So go ahead and do that with a different brush. Can see here I have rich green gold. And then we're pulling in the sap green to it as well. And then we're also pulling off a little step yet from this palette to get a really nice earthy olive green. That's about right. And then what will you end up doing is using our brush with water on it to create a version of it that has less paint. But you can also mix up the broth consistency version of this color off to the side too. So we'll make sure this one's darker. Take the time to really work it to the right consistency so that you have enough paint and the right color because you want to have a difference in these two colors. And then can set that off to the side. Right? So all that work just to get to putting some color on the page. It takes awhile. Alright, so let's go ahead and I'm going to use a six brush and we're going to dip into our ultramarine violet and our finance blue in broth consistency. Let's just see what that looks like on the page. Really pretty sort of periwinkle. And really I'm just trying to make sure with the swatching out that there is enough difference in these two colors so as to provide a little bit of separation. Can already tell that this color. I've used some of it while we were, while I was preparing the class, is already getting a little bit faint, so I'm gonna go ahead and just darken that up. Here's a side note. This finance blue is very domineering and it can quickly take over the color, which is not necessarily a problem. If you love blue hydrangea is more towards. You're leaning more towards creating blue hydrangea than purple. I really, really loved periwinkle. It's one of my favorite colors to use. And so I take the extra time and go the extra mile to make sure that purple is really prominent in my color. You can see here it's changing from blue to purple, but it takes some time. And especially with this color now there are other more stronger versions of purple that you won't have such quite an issue. So depending on what color you are using, you may not be having this problem at all. But if you're using the exact colors, you may notice, now I have a nice cough syrup consistency of the same color. There we go. We can see that there's enough difference between these two colors so as to provide some separation and distinguishability within the petals. You'll notice too, that these colors will dry two to three times lighter than how they're laid down. So keep that in mind to really make sure you have a nice dark color. Sometimes I like to just kinda poke it in because that's how we're going to use it within the pedal. And just kinda get to see where the darker areas are gonna be reacting with the lighter areas. Can even do it over here too, just to kinda see how that's all going to play out together. And then if we wanted to see even a lighter version of that, sometimes we will simply be using the paint and the paint water that is on our brush to actually act as a color. It's one of my favorite things to do is just whatever's leftover on the brush. And then we have an even lighter version of this color. Which in my book, if you have already pre-ordered that you will see is called lightest consistency. It's basically like I said, whatever's leftover on the brush plus water. Okay, So those are our three colors that we're gonna be using for in the blue and the purple family. And now we're going to go head into our other mixture. Mixture you're using a different brush are really rinse off. You may even want to use to water cups since we are going to be using blues and purples and also greens and yellows. Okay, so let's go into the cough syrup consistency version of the sap, green, rich green, gold and Cynthia. Alright. We really don't need it to be very dark. This is just gonna be an ancillary color. It's going to be supportive. It's not going to be the main color. If you look within the periwinkle hydrangea, you'll see that it's just towards the middle of the flower that we really see this color at the center and then also spreading out within the petals. And then same colors at broth consistency. I say these are the colors that we're using, but what's going to end up happening inherently? We're going to create way more colors. We're going to get these two colors when mixed together, which you're gonna be sort of a, a brown, a moody gray. And that's going to create a new color in and itself. Because as you'll see in some of the warm-up practice, we have, these two colors are blending together and creating something different, same here as we use them at different consistencies, you can see same colors but completely different look within the pedal. We're also going to study the approach, the way with which we approach those petals. And it's going to be such a thrilling way to go about this flower. Okay, So those are our colors. We can go ahead and continue on this practice piece of paper. And I'll see you in the next segment. 3. Studying Petal Position: As mentioned in our previous video, we are going to be studying positioning of petals, as you can see, once we begin to put the hydrangea together and we're creating the whole flower head. It starts to fill out. And rather than having just a bunch of generic shapes comprise the hydrangea, we look to peddle positioning. So we're gonna go over that just single, single position by position so that we can really understand how they're all going to work together. And then we'll begin to cluster them to create that full head in later videos. So let's just look at the most basic positions that we can paint. And we're also just going to be using a single color. I really want you to not be focusing on color mixes and blends and bleeds right now, and rather just focus on position itself. So I'll be drawing from this picture a little bit. But I like with most of my classes, there's a lot of interpretation and I take a lot of liberties. And because my style does lean more towards gestural, it's not an exact representation of the flower itself, but merely, just capturing its spirit and its essence. So take that as you will. Those of you who prefer more structure in botanical styles, it might be a little bit more challenging. You're going to want to just really hone in on all those details which I know after studying that art form myself for a year, I had to detox. Alright, so let's look at just the very basic position we're going to create all so I'm using my size six brush here, be using the broth consistency of the ultramarine violet and the finance blue. We're going to create just your regular run-of-the-mill open face pedal. We're going to create two petals that are opposite of each other, leaving a touch of white in between. Don't worry if the pedals aren't just perfect. Any imperfections that you might see are really going to lend themselves towards the flower itself. And then we're gonna do the same thing coming from the middle. Leaving a touch of white in the middle and finishing off the flower. So a nice shaped pedal. But as you can imagine, if you were to just replicate this over and over and over again, you're hydrangea would look very boring. It would look very one-dimensional. So the way that we create that dimension and the fullness is by petal positioning. Go ahead and create one that's facing up into the right. So let's start with a line and then come to a point. And then we're going to use a sliver of a petal over here off to the side. Another way that we really contribute to the overall organic NUS of the petal is to play with the size of the puddles. You can see here all of them are the same size as they are over here on my reference. But all petals cannot be created like that. Or it's just going to, like I said, end up looking very boring. We're gonna do the same thing over here, creating another petal. And then create one more over here. Let's try that again. Creating a line. And this time was created a little bit thinner. And you can kinda see how now it looks as though it's really on an angle. This one was a little bit to this petal was a little bit too long to create that position that I was looking for. So this one's a little bit more represent story of how it would look, where it on its side. Let's go ahead and do the same thing, but let's face down. So let's start with a line here and then just come up a little bit. And again, we're gonna be working gestural here. So this is all actually very formatted and we're not even going to really work too much with this sort of approach. But it's good to just know how the petals we're are going to enfold and cluster together. If it's easier, you can turn your paper around to, rather than painting upside down. Now you can see that this pedal, the fourth petal, which is what the hydrangea is made out of four petals, is mostly just a gestural line, rather than acting as a full petal. Let's go ahead and do a few more. Let's do one that is facing up. Let's just do a line here. And a pedal. And another line. We could always put another line here if we wanted this to act as a pedal, or we could just leave it as a three petal, petal. Let's go ahead and paint one on its side using just a line and a thicker marking. And then we're going to do a long petal facing out this way. You can kinda see as we begin to stitch all of these different positions together and layer them and allow them to kinda come up against each other. There's gonna be a lot of room for versatility. Okay, so we're going to paint this one similarly to how we painted our first one, but we're gonna give it a little bit more character. We're going to start here with this side petal. And then we're going to come directly the right and create a thinner version. And then we're gonna come up here and just paint a bit on its side. So it's laying flat, but it's curving here. And because we're not going to create that depth and detail with color, we're going to use that by just using a gestural mark. Then let's come down here for that fourth petal. And really this is like a practice I like to do before beginning any flower is to just study the positioning of things and then also playing with size. So in some of, in some of the bouquets that we'll be creating, we're going to use really big focal flower petals, the way that they are. In this picture, you can see the eyes sort of gravitates to here and here, these, these open face big petals. And then as we move down into this area, you can see the petals look to be a lot smaller because they are clustered together. Let's go ahead and create a downward facing pedal using a marking. Another marketing. Then connecting this petal here will also obviously be playing with different colors, so it won't look so generic and so one-dimensional. But it's good to be able to just see what it's gonna look like using the sketch brushing method that we used when we were painting our poppies in our last class. Okay, So let's do another one to this side. One petal here, one petal here. And you can see by playing with the different size differences, it's really going to start to look amazing when we put it all together. Let's do a few more. Let's go ahead and paint this one that's kinda coming up like this. Nice generous puddle there. And then obviously we would have a little bit of green touching in here are blue, whatever it is, whatever color we're going to be blending together. Then let's go ahead and do a nice big one on its side. And we'll do a smaller petal here. Just a little marking here to represent that it's on its side here. You can see we have a lot of different varieties to play with. And all of this is going to lend itself to when we put it all together, as you'll see in the next, the next video. But the one after that, how it all comes together to start putting it all together. Can I say together one more time? It's going to just really look so beautiful. I'm already, I'm just so excited to get there because it's one thing to see it paint it out like this. But then once you really start to put all the moving pieces together, it's amazing. So anyway, I'm excited over here. I hope you are too. Let's move on to the next video. 4. Studying Approach: Okay, so now things are going to get a little bit more challenging as we work with multiple brushes and multiple colors, we're gonna be using the knowledge that we gained in our previous video positioning to create the flower petals. And we're going to study different approaches. So as I always say in my classes, there is no one right way to approach a flower. There's so many different, different styles and forms. And my goal always is your teacher is to give you the knowledge for you to utilize your voice and your art work. And so I don't want you to feel as though you're tied to any of these approaches, but really feel liberated and being able to use them interchangeably and gravitate towards one or create something that's modified that's completely your own. Obviously, these classes are just about giving you the education. And then from there you're moving forward to create something that feels like you and feels like your artwork. That is so important for new artists to define and to put time and effort into upfront to really find your voice and to not feel pressured to just know everything right away about what it is you want to paint, but give yourself the freedom to explore lots of different styles. So let's go ahead. I'm going to show you one of the easiest ways to create a wet into wet petal using two colors. Let's go ahead and dip into our cough syrup consistency of the blue and the purple. And we're gonna go ahead and do an open face flower. And you'll use the bottom to do the same thing coming in at a diagonal. And then you're going to take a fresh brush. And you're simply going to use the paint from these petals to create the next two petals. And let's go ahead and bring you in just a little bit closer here so you can see hopefully you're working on your laptop, but those of you who might be on an iPad want to make sure you see a little bit too much moisture now you wanna make sure you don't have too much moisture on your brush. You just want it to be wet because what will happen is if it's too wet, the water will pull back into these petals, which we don't necessarily want to happen to the other side. So this is simply just using the paint from these two petals. A very easy way. Then you can sharpen up your edges or you can change the pedal of the shape afterwards. If you feel like it's looking to one-dimensional, you can create some edges. And then once things are flowing and drying, use your other brush to dip into your green gold and your sap green to just plug in a little bit of color right here into the middle. You can allow it to touch multiple petals, or you can just stick to one side. You can pull the color into the petal so that it becomes more dominated with that green. And you can see there's some really pretty things happening here just with using one color and then using water to pull, and then your third color, which is that green, to create that fourth petal. So that's a big, bold, open face flower. I'm using that approach. We're going to cover, like I said, multiple versions of creating the petal. This is just one of them. Let's go ahead and do another. A common approach which is the wet into wet style. And so with a clean brush. So hopefully you have multiple brushes here. I'm gonna be using another six. Let's go ahead and do another open face. So just a bit of water. You don't want it pooling, you want to just wet enough. You can see I have a little bit of blue here and purple on my brush. I come right out here. You want enough water so that it's staying wet while you're getting all your petals laid down. Then what you can do is just drop in a little bit of color into the middle and watch it spread. You can cover the whole petal by moving the darker color into the wet media and allow it to spread. Or you can keep some petals separate site for this one, I haven't touched it in there. I think it's nice just having that pedal blank. It's a very light version of what we just did. And we'll look so pretty when we have more of these flowers nestled and clustered together. So we can leave it like this, just as is. Little bit of like I said, water and what was on the brush. And then just a little bit of this, you can continue to dip into the cough syrup version, darkening up this middle. Because as I said, paint is going to try two to three times lighter. So you can just keep plugging in a little bit more and then leave it like that. Or let's do another version of that. So I'm just going to pick up a tiny little bit of paint, but mostly just water on my brush. Let's go ahead and recreate that again. Making sure it's wet enough so that I have time. And this has really forgiving paper. I don't worry too much about timing things. You want to make sure when you dip the color into the media and it's just not pulling everywhere. Okay? So now you can do the same thing. You can see it sort of blended in here. And then what you can do is give it a minute and then use another brush, third brush to dip into the cough syrup consistency of our color. You can begin to fill in the petals. And now you can do just some of the petals. Just Crispin's up those edges if you like. Now, remember, these are not just gonna be single pedals that are gonna be clustered together. And we're going to use this to create new petals. We can go around the edges and really allow that color to sink back in. And we can even just pull it through the flower using the toe of our brush. And now you can see we have a really unique flower and we wouldn't, or excuse me, pedal, we wouldn't want to do this to all of them. But you can see how this nestled up against this would really, you can tell that they're in the same color family, but the way that the light shifted on the petals is gonna be different. And as we play with positioning too, it's just really going to have, it's going to bring some interesting facets to the whole flower. Again, this is going to continue to dry. And you can, like I said, take the tip of your brush and continue to just sort of go around the edges here, you can decide to go into a third petal, leaving a little bit of space here. Taking your original brush with the green gold and darken things up if you like. This is sort of creating a third color here, this brown, gold blue. And then you can leave that puddle on its own. There's so many different ways. Again, you can continue to approach the hydrangea petals. So those are the first two, I think most common methods. Let's go ahead and cover a few more. I'm going to load one of my six brushes with the cough syrup consistency. Let's do a different position as well since we've covered the open face. Let's just go ahead and do some wet into dry. We're going to do a line coming up here. And then we're gonna take our brush with the broth version of the purple. And we're going to touch just the side, leaving a little bit of whitespace in here and come up on the other side. And then we can take our other six brush loaded with the green gold mixture and pop it right here into the middle. And you can again touch one side of the petal, touch both sides touch all three. It's completely up to you. How you want to, to play with it. What you can do next is create a petal that is broth consistency in the purple. Let's go ahead and create one. But on its side. And then we'll do a little marking here, just a little sort of line to indicate that there's a fourth petal, but we're not really pronouncing it. And then what we can do is let that dry for just a little bit, or we can even take a brush, pull out some of the moisture. I always like to have a filbert brush on hand to just I'm in a hurry and I want to just get things move and I can pull out a little bit of the moisture. And then we go into cough syrup. The blue and the purple. We just touch the edges. Now we need things to be a little bit drier before we attempt this, because what will happen if the whole petal is still very wet? It's simply going to just push back into whatever area of the paper is wet. I like to just give it a minute, get down on eye level with the paper and see how wet in fact it is. But what will happen is you'll have some really pretty crisp edges. Then a really pale Center, which is really pretty effect. Then you can use an additional brush to pull the color through if you want or you can just sort of sit and let it settle, it's going to dry. And then what you could do again is once it's dry, go cough syrup over those edges one more time, it's gonna be even darker and you'll have this really beautiful gradient. These are all still a little bit too wet to do that too, but this one might be dry enough. So let's go ahead and try that. So we'll just use coughs or consistency again here to go along the edges. It's kinda, it's a little too dry. But we'll fix that and we'll just darken it up a little and then use a clean brush to blend. This is still quite wet over there, so I wouldn't do it on that pedal yet. You could even just leave it as is and keep the petal with just this highlighted gestural mark along the edge, which would be really pretty too. Or you can take your brush and smooth it out so that it has more of a blended effect. Let's go ahead and do a, another petal. Let's start with our green, gold and sap. Green and sap, yeah. Create our petal. And then let's go into our sepia and cough syrup consistency. Plug-in a little bit of green gold to that, so that it's not too brown. And then come back into the middle. And just using the toe of the brush, We're going to agitate the center so that the color floods back into the pedal. Can do it again and just one or two of the petals, or you can do it in all four. That's a really pretty way to do it. Or what we could do is just use a really light version of that color. And we can use a little bit more of the sap green color. So pulling out sap green in broth consistency, come into here a little bit more color. Give that a minute. And then we can plug in our center here, allowing it to touch the petals. This is definitely, we're getting looser and looser. You can see this as a little bit more structured. But as we play, especially with wet into wet, there's just more unpredictability that's going to happen. It's a matter of controlling how much water is on your brush and on the paper, but also just letting the pigment do is it chooses a really pretty effect here, which will do a lot more of as we're clustering, just letting those colors run together. If you wanted to. You could then take the blue and the purple mixture and you could touch up the edges. But again, you're gonna get more of a crisp effect doing that. Pedal that is a lot more structured, which is fine. It just all depends on what it is you're trying to achieve. And then we're just going to blend those together and let all those colors just she can see a lot of different things happening on the page. But it's all going to come together to create something really beautiful and special. So hopefully with this you have, you feel as though you're prepared to head into the next segment? If not, please continue on your own to just play with different color possibilities. There's so much possibility here. I've shown you four or five, but there's way more to study and explore so you can do another page before you move on or jump into our next segment. 5. Clustering the Petals Part 1: Okay, this is your quick reminder too, if you have not already refreshing your palette. So I used quite a bit of the paint that I had already previously laid out in our positioning and approach videos. So I just went ahead and created a couple of more consistencies. You can see this is darker over here, cough syrup consistency of our blue and purple and sepia. And then I have a frothy version right here. And then I will also use a little bit of the purple for a third version. Again, it's okay if your colors are running together, you just want there to be some separation between the different consistencies so that you know what it is that you're working with. Same thing with your sap green and your green gold and your step. Yeah, go ahead and refresh in your palettes so that you're not having to create more paint as you're working. It's just, it's just an added stress that you don't mean you want to be able to focus just purely on the flower itself and not have to worry about needing more paint. Alright, so like I said with this video, we're really going to be honing in on the clustering effect of the hydrangea. The hydrangeas are super full and they can look a little bit circling if that's a word, just sort of clumpy. And so there's going to be a way we can layer the petals so that we have a little bit of structure. So it doesn't just look like this because when I see the hydrangeas, they really are depending on which angle that you're looking at them. They can just be very circular, which works beautifully in nature, but not so well. In painting unless you're doing botanical where you can clearly see how all the petals are laying and interacting with each other. So using our gestural form will be able to create that using pedal position and size. And so we're going to have small, medium and large, and then also using the colors themselves as a, I'm a aspect of composition to bring out a little bit of the depth. Okay, so we've covered that. Let's go ahead and just start using the different tools that we practiced and we'll begin building the hydrangea itself. Go ahead and make sure you have three brushes available. You want to have one for your blues and purples, and then you want to have one for a broth consistency. So a cough syrup abroad consistency. Then a third brush for just the water or the sap green and wrinkled. I don t think you need to have four brushes. A little bit of rinsing off in-between is fine, and we'll get you there too. Alright, so why don't we go ahead and start with an open face flower just to kinda get us anchored into the page. That would be what I would typically do when I approach a floral composition or Jeevan, just a single flower. I like to have an anchor flower that just sort of grounds me to the painting and then I can build from there. Alright, so I'm going to take a little bit of the broth consistency. I'm going to start right here and create two petals using that first method I showed you. Not really worrying too much about the petals being perfect. And then I'm going to use a brush that mostly just has water on it, a little bit of the green to create the next peddle and the last petal. And then I'll go ahead and plug in our green gold to the center here. I'm going to use cough syrup consistency to darken up a little bit of these edges, which is also going to lead me in to the next petal. So using this dark to play off onto, I'm going to take the cough syrup consistency and dry it out so that it leads in to a new petal. I'm just going to use the water that's on my brush to do this. I'm gonna pull up pedal. Then I'm going to use gestural form to create a second petal. Just a tiny little pedal off to the side. We're going to imagine that the other two petals are hidden behind. Now we could add a third petal, but what's going to end up happening is we will lose the shape right here. So in order to avoid that, we're just going to leave that area open. We may go in and create some low lights and create some depth. But for now, while things are still wet, we want to make sure that we're touching areas that give the impression of a new petal but do not corrupt the petals that were already created. Then if we would like, we can pop in a little bit of our gold mixture and it's fine if that pushes back into the new petal. Again, this is all very loose. Let's go ahead and do a little of the ultramarine purple in broth consistency. We're gonna keep these petals on the darker side. What I noticed when studying the hydrangea is that there's areas and pockets where the flower seems to be a little bit more saturated with color. And then there's little pockets where it gets lighter. And we'll see that as we explore a new color palette in further videos. This is just going to be one of the color combinations that we tackle. So we'll use all of the education, but we're going to apply it using different color palettes. Let's go ahead and take the ultramarine purple. Let's go ahead and pull up a petal right here. Coming up here. Let's close it off. And now we can leave that as is. I wouldn't really plug any green back in there just because we already have it here. I would wait until we did our next petal. So we have a pedal that's popping out this way, and we have a pedal that's popping out this way. We have a large petal, a medium pedal, and a smaller petal. By playing, like I said, with those components of composition, you really help overall to just give the flower lots of intrigue and interest. Let's go ahead and just keep moving about. I'm going to use a little bit of again, the purple in broth to come down here to create a new petal. Let's start with a line. Pull out pedal here, and use a gestural mark right here, just to show that this petal is sort of coming out from this big one. Now what we can do is we can switch to wet into wet for a whole different feel. So using my brush that mostly has water on it, a little bit of the green gold. I'm going to come in over here. And then taking my brush with cough syrup consistency. Come back in here along the edges. 6. Clustering the Petals Part 2: And then about now I would probably move into another open face petal. So again, I'm going to do wet into wet. Can hardly see this well this time. And we're just going to continue to build the hydrangea. And now let's get into our set with a little bit of the green gold, like we did in our last video. Mixing it up a little bit dry over here, so plug that in. So like I said in my earlier video, the way that I've observed that hydrangeas is that there's darker areas and then there's some lighter area. So I'm going to continue with this lighter area. Pulling up a pedal here. This one's a little bit more green. And just a little side petal here off to the side. And then I can, if I want to plug-in that sepia, we have something really loose and beautiful happening. If you like that, look on its own, you could do a full hydrangea head just with those three colors are essentially two colors. And it would be really beautiful. All right, let's go ahead again. Come up here this time. We're going to pull out. We have a little side petal, a nice big open face, and then a little side petal over here. And then we can add a little touch of the purple and blue to this one. And let's go ahead and add some darker petals under here. To show that this is where we're sort of looking into the hydrangea. Just filling in the space here with a couple of petals, allowing the colors to run together organically, not trying to control too much of it. We want to make sure we leave whitespace because eventually what we would do is we'd either add a stem or if we're looking at it from overhead, we add some leaves off to the side. We don't want to create just a circle. We will really want to create something that has a little bit of movement to it. So let's continue to build upon what we've already established. I'm going to come up here for what I think will be the highest point of the hydrangea. Take a little bit of the green gold and plug it in. I'm gonna do that again. The pedal that's kinda coming off to the side here. And then I'm going to take just mostly water to come up for what will be that highest point. Okay. So we can see that we have a high point here. I'm not going to fill in this area so as to give some movement to the hydrangea. If we were to really fill it in and we would give this big circle area. But in order to avoid, like I said, just creating that clumpy feeling, we're gonna, we're gonna add some different structure to it. So continuing to grow. Let's add some more petals. I'm going to use mostly purple here for a third petal. Just to kinda play off, we have some blue and gold happening here. So I'm going to really lean into the purple right here for a darker petal. This is what I'm allowing to be my darker side. This one will be popping out from here. Imagining that these two petals are on its side and then the other two petals are kind of getting hidden behind this flower. We can rent a little bit of paint off the brush and now just add a few lighter versions of that. Using more of a gestural form. We can also, another strategy is just put some lines back here to indicate that there's something happening, but we don't really know what fills in the area without making it look to format it. So it's kind of a strategy that I use when I'm painting is to just kinda tuck in some little lines. Just filling in the area. You don't really know what that's attached to. Could be a petal, could be part of the stemming. Let's go ahead and build a flower out of here. And then I'm going to use mostly water here. And then I'm going to plug in a little bit of green because we're missing it over here. Always looking for variety. And then we can even plug in green after the fact here. This is still wet and add a little bit more there. That's why I do like this paper. It's quite forgiving. Let's continue around. Just filling in those areas now being mindful of the whitespace, but making sure that it's dense. Hydrangea is a very dense flower. Go ahead and do some of the purple and broth. Maybe one more over here. I like to just sort of move around. I don't stay in one spot because I feel like that's how the flower grows most organically. And then we can go ahead and plug in a little bit of green here. And we can see it's really starting to fill out nicely. I'm going to do cough syrup consistency for a few darker aspects. Same thing over here. I'm gonna pull out a little bit darker to show that over here is maybe where the light isn't hitting it quite as obviously. And again, I'm going to create, when I imagined to be the side of this flower. I'm really trying to avoid having a full circle here. So I'm going to create a couple more petals here to help close in the area. And then I'll add that Sophia, letting things touch and blend organically. So now it's really starting to take shape. We can see that there's areas where it's very dense and other areas where it's quite a bit more open. So we can just observe where we're at and then decide, okay, I like there to be a little bit more happening in that area. So I'm going to do a pedal that's facing down, darker, coming up underneath there. And I'm gonna do the same thing over here. Just because it's a little bit too much whitespace for this hydrangea. As I look at them in nature, again, it's just quite dense. They overlap. There's a lot happening. And I'm going to add just a little bit of stemming like I did before. Just to fill in areas. You can even use a little bit more of the sepia and the blue and the purple. So it's a little bit darker now, more of a gray purple. And touch those areas where it's darkest. And fill in some more gestural aspects using the dotting and marking structure. And then you can darken the area of some of your hydrangeas by using just the toe of the brush in the middle, it kind of acts as a center. It can ground the flower. I don't do it in all of the petals, but it's a great way and we'll do more of that when we're doing our final project. Mostly just wanted you to focus on the clustering aspect. But we'll definitely go in and we can add some more details as we work through the different lessons. Again, we can put it over here, adding a little bit of the dark area. And again, this is looking at what you have and deciding, okay, where can the flower benefit from a little bit more density? Where would we like to leave it open? This would leave us quite a few options. We could take a stem and run it through the middle here, or even off to the side, something like this. In fact, why don't I go ahead and just do that just to see what it looks like even though we're on clustering. Just connect that there. Then what we could do is come out here with some big generous leaves. The leaves also spill out from the sides, which we will do in our projects when we approached the leaves. But you can see we can use it just as a head on, emitting the stem and using some really big generous hydrangea leaves. Or we can use this in a bouquet with multiple flowers. If you wanted to do peonies roses, this would be a great little addition to that bouquet. Let's go ahead and move on to the next segment. 7. Clustering the Petals Pink: Okay, so you can see I have four working piles here. I have cough syrup consistency of the two colors combined. And then I have cough syrup consistency of just the rose matter or excuse me, broth consistency, Roth consistency of the Bordeaux and then even lighter consistency here of the two. Which again, it's bleeding a little bit into it, but we'll make sure that there's enough water on the brush to create that lightest, palest version of the petal. So I'm gonna put this off to the side. There really isn't any green in this particular hydrangea. However, I think it would be a great addition if you're a purist and you need to paint it exactly as it's pictured, then by all means you can just stick with all the pinks, but I think the green will end up lending itself so beautifully to the overall flower. And I am going to end up plugging a little in there just to give it a little bit more versatility and injury. Okay. So let's go ahead and start. I have three working brushes. All sites will actually, this is a size five. Anywhere like I said, from the five to eight families. Great. And then you want to make sure your water is cleaned. So if you haven't changed out your water yet, if it's still very blue and purple, go ahead and do that, and I think we're ready. So I'm going to dip in here to the rose matter in broth consistency. And I'm just gonna begin to build our cluster starting with a simple open phase, but a little bit on its side here. I'm going to do this a couple times. As you'll notice, as you work a little bit faster, naturally, your flowers are going to take on more of a loose gestural form when I'm talking and explaining each little step, things just tend to look a little bit more structured. And so you'll see here as I began to put it together and just work, it'll start to take on a little bit more of a natural feel. I'm not going to have any of these touch quite yet because they're still quite wet. Again, I'm just working with broth consistency and rose matter right now. Just building flower head using positioning. So this one's coming out from beneath. This one's going to be on its side. Alright, now at this point, but I take another brush and I'm gonna go into the cough syrup consistency. And I'm going to darken up a few of the petals. Let's start here on the edge and just dip in to the very outside. Very tip. I'm gonna do the same thing on this side. I'm also going to do it on this flower. And I'm going to pull it into the entire flower so that it's a dark flower. Let me do the same thing here so that there's a little separation between these two. And then I'll take my brush that mostly has water on it and I'm going to now touch against the side here, allow these two petals to interact. Like I said with this paper that is forgiving and it just gives you time to sort of catch up. You can do that. I can approach it that way. Do a couple of flowers and then add your darker aspects and the paper will still be wet enough to accept the media once again. Okay, so let's go ahead and continue to do that. I'm gonna do a few dark ones over here. Let's do them on the right side since we did dark on the left side last time. Nice big puddle there. Again, we're just going to take everything we learned about positioning and run with it. And now we can take our rose matter in broth and start to fill in the whitespace. Mostly just using the color that's already there. Either to separate or to bring out a new petal. So like here I'm going to use the side of this petal to bring out a nice big new petal. I'm going to go to the top now. And I'm going to create what I believe will be the highest pedal. And began to build upon that below, leaving some separation. So it doesn't become a big blob. And then also now I'm going to use my third brush to plug in a little bit of that green gold to some of the middle's. Not all of them, but some. And I'm kinda doing dark petals first before I start to add the lighter versions. I usually do a little bit of everything, but I think it makes it a little bit more easy to understand when you just focus in on one color and then you can use that color to either add darker aspects are lighter aspects. Go ahead and creating some under petals. And now I'm going to use lightest consistency to begin plugging in those really, really pale, pale petals. Again, using a mixture of the rose matter and light is consistency on its own and then also the board DO on its own and mostly water on the brush. This time, instead of using the darker gestural form, I'm going to use the lighter form to show a little pockets of light happening throughout the flower. Continuing to build, adding different positionings, different sizes. I want this side to be mostly comprised of a lighter petals. We can plug a little bit of the green into some of them. We can fill the whole flower. And we can add some darker parts of the flower as well. And just sort of create a lot of variety within what we're doing. Continuing to close off the areas that have a lot of white in them. Not getting too bogged down by structure here. Really just trying to fill in the space without overwhelming the flower with details. I liked the shape that this one is taking on. It leaves a lot of room for stem or four leaves to come tucking out. When you have something that's very circular, you end up getting leaves that look most sun, sun beam like. If you leave these little pockets of whitespace, it gives you room to come in with leaves and just make it look as though the leaves are sort of pressing back against the pedals or as though the petals are hiding the leaves. Really beautiful effect. And then we can do at the very end, is plug in one step above cough syrup, which is basically a thick paste of the two. And just plug in a few areas that are much darker. On the red side. Even. This really just leads your eye to different areas of the flower. We like, we can add a little bit of color into here. But I also love how pale it looks. And you can use the pink to act as a center, which you can also do if you like something that is a little bit more runny together. You can use wet into wet. I'll show you just a little quick version of how you could approach this again, I'm just trying to give you all of the education and the knowledge. And then you can kind of run and take it however you want to go. So we could start off with a lot of petals that are just kinda wet and waiting for media. Again, this paper is gonna give you time. So I'm just laying down a lot of different positionings. This is a very, very loose way to approach this flower that a lot of people love and just feel a lot of freedom and creating need to move on the quicker side. But it's fun. And it'll be a little bit less structured than this with my beginning classes, I always try and bridge the gap between structured and loose. Um, because that tends to be where most people are comfortable. As I move into more intermediate, I get looser and looser, which you would think would be easier and easier, but it's actually more challenging. Alright, so we have quite a few petals laid down, a couple of more over here. Then on the very edges, just kinda take your brush to add some very small flower elements. Nothing to structure. Just flicking the brush around. You see the quicker you move, the looser you get, because you're stopping years. You're now taking the focus off of each step and you're looking at the whole. And so what you could do is take now cough syrup and just began touching those wet areas in a very loose way. Can use the rose matter in cough syrup, darkening up some of those areas, leaving some of them very pale. And again, some of the areas have dried on me. But there's still a lot of room for playing with color, which you can even do, which people love this too. So third option, I know I'm throwing a lot at you today. I hope, I hope it's not overwhelming, but more enjoying. You can lay down this layer of very light petals and then you can go over them with the darker petals. So it's a little bit of that happening here where there's blending, but you're also layering on top of those really pretty light, pale petals. The more time you give it, you can go in with cough syrup consistency Again, darken things up or you can choose to just leave them light. Again. You can use the sepia to really provide some dark aspects. So you could mix that sepia with the Bordeaux or the rose matter and get something that's a lot darker. And start plugging that in to either the center or the edges. Again, we're just doing super loose here. It doesn't look like much yet, but once you start adding the leaves, two things that really starts to open up. You can do the same thing up here, adding a brown center, a little bit more structure here. Adding some areas where things are just sort of filled in lightly. Can add a few petals. Even with this color. It's darker than what we saw in our picture. But again, you're the artist and you get to take the liberty so you can kind of decide what it is that you gravitate towards what style is more, feels more like you, and you can explore that in more depth. So that was a super fun palette to work with. I hope you'd like all of those beautiful shades of pink. You can even add more pink center there. You don't have to use just two. You could add some red into there and really just sort of pull out all of the different working tones within the flower. Alright, let's go ahead and move into our last clustering segment. 8. Clustering the Petals Ombre: For our final flower, I could not resist sharing this one last version of the hydrangea that I found while researching. It looked to me at first upon first glance to be a hyacinth, but as I looked further, it is indeed in a hydrangea and I thought it was so beautiful the way it has this ombre gradient. And we're really going to play with this and have a lot of fun. We're going to use color as our friend here. Building this flower up. You can see it's shaped like a gum drop, which wouldn't be my first shape that I would be attracted to, especially because it just looks clumpy, open-loop alike and doesn't have a lot of room for leaves to help balance it out and give it a little bit of structure. Most of its leaves are happening down here below. But it's such a pretty version and I thought it would be beautiful, mixed into a mixed floral. Maybe not necessarily on its own, but added to a composition. I think it would look really beautiful. So we're going to just really lean into the ombre here. I'm using the same palette that we've already had. Rose matter are Bordeaux and our sepia. I'm going to pop on the light here, put this off to the side. Go ahead and grab yourself a fresh piece of paper if you need it. If not, just make sure that you have mixed up plenty of paint to really complete the project. What else? Probably don't need to rinse out your cup, but did want to just say it just in case plea out just a little bit here. You're going to have three brushes. Again, you're going to use one with the darker sepia Bordeaux mixture in cough syrup. And then you'll use your rose madder Bordeaux in broth for that medium shade. And then we'll be leaning into the green, gold and sap, green and sepia as we work our way to the top of the flower. So we'll just be mindful as we're building to grow up. And to make sure that we're being mindful of this kind of cute. I say at grudgingly, cute gum drop, shape flower. Okay. Alright, I'm going to begin with the suburbia and Bordeaux, and we'll start down here. And I'm just going to really play with the shape and position. Bring you in a little bit closer here so you can see we go pulling out the bottom here. Now I'm going to plug into my rose madder and Bordeaux and breath and pull out some flowers here again, this is still the darkest area of our flower. I'm using my number five and my number six. But even if you have something up to an eight and a should work great. Letting those petals touch a little bit. As we build out. You can see in that picture there was a lot of pale pink and then just dark pink along the edges. So we can do a little bit of that as well. And just pop in a few of those as we work our way towards the middle, we'd have to wait till it dries a little bit. So I'm going to leave those alone. Create a few more here. And then also just continued to fill out the darker area down below, making sure that I have one side that's a little bit longer. I'm imagining a stems running from here and some leaves. Again, we want to make sure we leave little pockets of whitespace to tuck in those leaves that really helped to balance out the flower. You'll see later when we do our segment on leaves. Okay, so now we can head into the edges here and plug in a little bit of the pink. I'll do a little bit more of that as we work our way up. And using broth consistency, using our cluster for pedal method. Always playing with shape and position. I'm open face some on their side, making sure that it's still nice and full down here below. My tendency is to make sure things are really well balanced. So it's taking a little bit of extra thought to be too. It makes sure that it's nice and full down here. Continuing to just build, flicking the brush and also laying the brush on its side. Always moving around so that the petals are not facing the same way. Running them up against the edges of other petals. I move quick because it helps to just embrace that loose form. Not getting too tied up in all the details. Can go ahead and plug a little bit of the darker back into the edges. So that's our cough syrup consistency. And going even fainter as we work our way to the top here. I petals are also going to get a little bit smaller. Filling in the gaps here with gestural marks. Care gum drop shape is coming out nicely. And now we're gonna move into the green gold and the sap green mixture. So go ahead and rinse your brush and load it with the cough syrup consistency. We'll work our way towards breath. Allowing some of the petals to run up against the pink. Putting one in here and adding just a touch of sepia to give it a little bit more of a brown flavor. Let's go ahead and add a few more. Using some dots to play with this structure here. Adding some of that stemming that we did earlier, just flicking the brush around, letting things stay nice and loose. And working towards the very tip. You can see by using color, we've achieved a really pretty ombre effect. Again, not a shape. I'm going to pull out a little bit here that I would run tours. But I think it's cute. I think it could be, it could work really well in a, in a floral composition. Let's go ahead and plug a little bit of sepia into the center of some of these. Just to add a little bit more detail. You can continue up and get even thinner if you want towards the top and create more of that gum drop shape. But I think what we've done here is pretty good. I'm still trying to create a little bit of movement here within the petals by putting some more gestural markings here. And then, as you'll see later on, we're going to add some leaves. Let's go ahead and use again a little bit of sepia. And the board DO down here at the bottom, just to create some really dark areas. There, I can at least provide a little bit of area where the stem is going to come through and where we can tuck in some leaves. Few more darker aspects along the side. Can plug in some here in the middle as well. Really just lean into that ombre. Okay? Alright, so there you have it. There's our gum drop shape using the same palette, just in a different form. We're going to come back and we're going to add some leaves and some stems to our hydrangea. And then we'll send you off with a final project. 9. Adding Details to the Leaves: So I grabbed a little scrap piece of paper and we are going to now study the hydrangea leaf in greater detail so that we can begin to apply it to our practice hydrangea, and then eventually put it into our final lesson. So just speaking on the leaf itself, It's one of my favorites to paint. And you'll see in a few moments here as we began to do it on its own and then also plug it into the existing flowers we painted. It has. For one, it's so expressive, it has so much detail in it that you can really play and draw out. And for two, it's the perfect counterpart to that big bulbous hydrangea. It's the thing that gives it the balance that just makes it feel really whole and complete. And I think you're going to enjoy adding this aspect to the flower, the hydrangea itself, like I said, can just feel a little one-dimensional. And so when you begin to add the leaves, it really pulls it all together. So we're going to mix up our pile here, which is a mixture of sap, green and Cepheids. And you're going to mix that to cough syrup consistency. I'm going to use my ten brush. I can get some really big wide strokes doing this. And so my go-to brush, you can use something even bigger at 12 or 16 if you like. It's really up to you and depending on what size paper you're working with, a ten is pretty versatile. So the easiest way I've found to teach these and to paint these, both for beginner and professional, is to begin with these simple stroke, compound stroke method, which is basically two strokes that you start from base to tip, base to tip. And then from there you have your main structure and you can begin to add the finer areas and aspects. So I'll show you what I mean. Let's go ahead and pull out a really big generous leaf here using simple stroke. Let's go ahead and fill that in. And now we're going to pick up a little bit of a darker hue. So we're going to pick up the steps or excuse me, undersea green and sepia at a little bit of a darker version. We're going to start adding the richest. And I want you to notice where my hand is. It's really sitting back on the brush. You can see I'm not up-close trying to control every little movement here. I really want you to just embrace the play of creating leaves and to just sit back and relax. So coming back off the leaf, we're going to begin to create the ridges. Now the only important thing to keep in mind is you want to continue moving them towards the direction of the leaf. If you have them poking out where it's going to start to create sort of like a pokey leaf. You want the ridges to be facing in the same direction as your overall leaf. You can do as many ridges as you like, make it very simple, or you can make it complex and add a bunch. You can skip areas and then pick up, down below. And there you have a really simple but beautiful leaf. And now all things are still wet. You can head back in and play a little bit with some darker aspects. I drink, at least have these beautiful veins running through them. So you can do that while things are wet, or you can choose to let the media dry and then come back in and add some shadowing. You can see over here on the left, the paint was dry a little bit. And so you can really see these ridges sticking out here, which is a beautiful effect. Then you can keep it a pale leaf and then come back in with your, your darker version, your SAP, your undersea green, and you're Sophia, and just pull out, like I said, those finer aspects. So let's do a sideways leaf. Lot of times in hydrangea you'll see the beautiful sideways. So let's go ahead and start at the base, pulling the brush all the way through, pull it down a little bit, and connect it back here. And we have our sideways leaf. And now picking up a little bit more paint. Let's go ahead and begin to plug it in to the side here. Do the same thing on the other side. Again, just staying mindful of the direction. You can fill in your leaf or you can leave it open. You can head back in with a little bit of sepia while things are still wet. And add a little bit more interest. Just creating some bleeds within the leaf. Really just playing with it. Now. I'm just going to let that settle for a little bit. This is one of those leaves that you have time with this paper to just kinda let it sit and breathe. And then you can go back in as things are drying and add a few more details. Let's go ahead and do a leaf that's just what we would imagine popping up from the hydrangea. So let's just say there was a hydrangea here and we would pop in this leaf up here, but I'm going to run out of space, so I'm going to bring it down. But we would imagine that maybe there's one leaf right around this area. Let's say our stems coming in this direction. I'll have a sideways leave, we have a hydrangea and then we have one leaf that's kinda, just kinda popping up over the corner here. So let's go ahead. Smaller leaf. Just kinda imagine at hiding. So we start there. Just sort of getting the basic structure down and then we take again sitting back on our brush or your paper a little bit to see if a better angle and begin to fixing those ridges. The other side. Just plugging in special little ridges. That on its own, honestly is such a beautiful effect and nothing else needs to happen when I'm painting leaves. Often there's this pressure to continue adding detail after detail to really make that leaf pop. But with this leaf itself adding these two approaches, just the simple structure of the compound leaf with some ridges on the side. You get so much interests. There's really nothing to be done here. It depends on how much you like to touch your paintings, so it's up to you how much detail you want to add. Again, you can wait until things are a little bit drier. Then you can head back in and just continue to darken up the areas. Adding those details running through. And really just play with the leaf here is completely up to you. I love the look of just leaving it as is right, like this. And then on a differently, if I may add something more along these lines. So again, you're the artist, you get to decide how you want it to work together to create the whole beautiful achievement of the flower. So, okay, so next we are going to attach leaves to our practice flowers. 10. Practicing Leaves: So taking our practice pieces, we're basically just gonna do the same thing that we did in our practice of the leaves. So go ahead and load up your brush with that undersea green and Sophia mixture. And now we're just going to begin looking at the flower itself and seeing where the flower would benefit from having a couple of leaves. I like to just kind of scope it out, see some potential areas. For starters, I definitely see potential down here, bringing the leaf here, and then possibly bringing a leaf out here. And then you can always add some along the stems to just kinda give it a little bit more interests. Let's go ahead and start here at the top. Just plugging that in there. And then I'm going to use the toe of the brush with that undersea green to just give some ridges. Do the same thing down here below. That's simple. Stroke. Starting at the base. Can be back. Filling it in, then will come up and touch the sides of it. And we have a really beautiful leaf here. Again, we can add some shadows and some veins, although I tend to do a lot of that once the media is dry. So we're just going to let this settle in to do a little bit of ridging on the side here. And there you have it. We have some leaves here. Let's go ahead and do the same thing to these two flowers. So I'm going to pull down a leaf right here again using that simple stroke. Just kinda pull it down. And then we'll use the side of the brush again to create some ridges. And you can, like I said, had back in with your brush, add some details or you can leave it as is and do that when things are dry. Go ahead and add another leaf right up here. And using the toe of the brush for some bridging. I'll do that one more time. Down here. Our side leaf. And you can see how just by adding leaves, the whole flower really starts to come alive as such. It's so amazing. Leaves are my favorite part, even sometimes more than the actual flower itself because they just, they start to make it all feel. Right. Then let's go ahead and add another one right here. A little bit thicker, kind of popping out from behind these flowers. Adding some ridging. You can go back in here when things are still wet with some color, add some veins, or you can leave it as is. This one is drying up pretty nicely. Can add a vein in there if you like. Can see in the hydrangeas There's a little bit more detail. The hydrangea leaves rather. You can take the toe of your brush and add some structure. Same thing here. Can use the toe of your brush. Once things are a little bit drier to add a little more structure. Or you can leave them just like that. They're beautiful. Either way, it's really up to you, the artists, what you feel like you're gravitating towards. Whilst we have our gum drop shape. So let's go ahead and add a stem here. This is really going to just help carry us into our final project. So let's go ahead and let's pull a stem right from, I'd say center-left. Keep it really loose. Don't need to have it connected all the way through. Just something to kind of show that, okay, this is where things are connected. Then we will start the leaf process again. Again using my ten brush. I'm going to pull some leaves down from the bottom. The same thing over here. Totally okay. If it runs into your flour, get a little bit of the red in there. And now I'm going to pop in some of that ridging can add a little bit more structure while things are wet. That's typically about it. For this shape of hydrangea, my tendency would be to plug-in some more leaves here off to the side and just really give everything some, some really pretty balanced. But I'm going to just let it be because that's the way I saw it and I'm going to just respect the structure. I'm just going to do one final long leaf here and just pull it down. And then I'm gonna get my green and my Sophia loaded up on my brush and had in with some really beautiful dark ridges. You can intensify things along the edge here too. And you can even add some embellishments here. Not really true to the hydrangea, but again, this is your composition. You get to play with it and make it feel like your own. So sky's the limit there. You can keep playing with it using the toe of your brush to darken up the edges here. Or you can just let it dry for a little bit and see how the colors feel once they are a little bit more muted and lighter. I usually like to play with it a little bit while to it and then head back in again for some finishing touches once things are dry. Alright, there you have it. I'm going to quit touching it for now. Hard to do when you're playing with watercolor. 11. Class Project Part 1: Okay. My friend, we have reached the final portion of our time together and I'm so excited to jump into painting this with you. We've learned so much. I hope you feel that you have. I hope you've had a lot of fun. I hope you feel as though you were given so many different options and so many different ways to approach this gorgeous flower that you don't feel stuck to do it one way, that's always my goal with these classes is to just enrich, in, enrich you and to allow you to just embrace your style, your voice, and be able to carry what I've taught you into your just existing style. Moving forward, we're going to be doing a floral composition. Haven't decided yet if I'm going to do two or three hydrangea, probably just two, but we'll see we might do a little ad lib and I might add some more. If you feel more comfortable watching me just the first time around, a lot of students prefer this route. And it just kinda gives them a chance to roadmap where we're headed. And then you can watch it again with me and paint along with me. This seems to just be helpful and provide more piece for people when they're painting. But again, totally up to you. And you're welcome to just jump right in with me. Go ahead and refresh your so you're going to want to have all of this colors that we've been using. I have three different working palettes here. Not all of them that you've seen throughout the class. My blues, yellows and greens and browns. And then I have my pinks. Just want to make sure you have different consistencies of each one. We're gonna be using, like I said, all of the colors and putting it all together. And then we'll mix up our undersea green. Once we get to the leaves portion, will just will approach the hydrangea heads themselves and then we'll move on to the leaves once we've finished. As you may know, if you've taken my classes, I tend to be very detailed while I'm teaching and the project portion or excuse me, in the last lesson portion. So that when we do our final project, I like to pull back and just allow you to just watch what I'm doing and paint along with me. And it's just more of a peaceful time rather than highly narrating everything. So I'll still do a little bit of that just to kind of carry you along with me. But just know that with this, there's gonna be just more painting. It's nothing new that we're doing here is all the same positioning. And the wet into wet, wet into dry, and just putting it all together, a combination of all of those techniques to create something new. Another fun thing you may have noticed, if you are working with cold press paper, that your paper has two sides to it. So up until now, we've been using the tooth here, Grenier side of our paper, which is so beautiful for watercolor, but I like to use hot press of my work a lot also provides just a rich Canvas for watercolor. So I'm going to be flipping my paper and using this neither site for our final project. You can do this too if you feel like you want some sort of new aspect as we cover things we've already done just, again, another way to just open up your toolbox and give you something additional to take away with this class. Or you can stick to using the same side we've been using. Just a little bit more texture. You probably won't even notice the difference unless I, like I said, unless I said something, but I just wanted to make note of it before we begin. So that's that we're going to start with our six brush using our purples and blues. I'm going to create that hydrangea and then I'll move over and use our pinks and our grains and our goals. And then I might add a little bit more to the mix as we move along. We'll just kinda take it petal by petal. I think that's a great way to approach painting and life, right? Petal bipedal. Eventually we'll get to the full flower. Alright, so go ahead and load up your brush. I have my finance blue and my ultraviolet right here off to the side. Just kinda rewetting it. Remember that that purple is very faint if you're using the same one and you really do have to kinda work, work at it to get it to draw out in that, that blue is quite domineering. So take all that to, to mind as you begin painting. Okay, let's do this. You might hear that I have some piano music on in the background. I hope you enjoy that. It's just to kinda help us get into the spirit and the mood of painting. Going to paint a few little anchor flowers just to kinda start us off. And then I'm going to use my brush, my other brush with just the purple alone. Looking more blue at the moment. So I'm gonna make sure that I'm getting that purple. Here we go. I'm going to use a little bit of just the purple on my brush and a little bit of water. A few wet into wet petals. Just going to touch the side here on some really playing with that color here. Again, sometimes a mark can be a pedal. We've learned that in previous classes when we do gestural, doesn't always have to be a fully-fledged pedal or flower to be represented. Just filling in some of the space here as we move along. Can I drop in a little bit of our green gold? Let it pull back through the flower. And then I'm going to also do a few up here. Let me use a little bit of the sepia so that it's more of a brown or tone. Again, you can see I'm sitting way back on the brush here. The closer you go to the brush, the more control you're going to have. But in something like this that's loose. I really do like to pull back on the brush. Plug a little bit of purple, blue into these. Feel like I'm losing the purple a little bit. So I'm going to head back in with some purple. Really want to represent all the different shades. My paper just to fit. 12. Class Project Part 2: Just continuing to move around until I find a shape that feels good to me. Leaving some pockets, some areas where I imagine there'll be some leaves. You guys here, the little scratch against the papers I'm painting. It's such a pleasant sound. I just love that. It's the little things right? To take them where we can get them. Just filling in a little bit of the space with some darker colors just to kinda give it a little bit more density. Can see where the petals are nestled up against each other. Leaving some areas where they'll be potential for leaves. Leave that alone for now, I may go in and add a little bit more detail, but I'm feeling good about that. And I'm gonna come up now and begin working on the pinks and the green gold. I'm just going to give my brush a little refresh here. But pink and purple, blue are all in the same family, so it's okay if they mix together a little bit. I'm going to load my brush with Bordeaux and rose madder and cough syrup consistency, add back in a touch of the sepia to it. And then I'm going to also make sure that I have broth consistency available in both colors. So a little bit of rows matter in broth and a little bit of the board don't broth. What I'm aiming to do here is make sure that I have, I'm a really nice composition here, making sure that one's a little bit lower at one's a little bit higher. We don't want them all at the same length or the same fullness either. Go in with rose matter. Turn my paper just a little bit. Can you use just the pink on my brush now with a little bit of water. Just sort of nestling, nuzzling the edges of these darker petals. A little touch of the green gold. I'm just kinda standing back looking at things, kinda judging size, shape, positioning, putting it at matching an altogether imagining putting leaves with it. And I'm just going to play around a little bit here and create sort of an offshoot hydrangea. So a little off the cuff painting. Same color family. Does it a little bit of that CPI in here. 13. Class Project Part 3: This sort of filling in the areas where imagine this little, little branch kinda went off on its own. Then I'm going to add a little bit more darker areas into here. Just wondering, imagine there's just a little bit of depth to the hydrangea. Okay. So I feel like what I have, there's a lot of things happening, a little bit of structure, a little bit of play. There's gonna be room for us to do some fun things with the stems and the leaves here. So I'm just going to pause and I'm going to let it rest. And I'm gonna begin working or creating my greens, which is done with the undersea green and the sepia. Try it up a little bit on me so I'm refreshing the palate a bit overdue. And I have an area where it's a little bit more brown and then I'm off to the side here. It's a little bit more green. Again, I don't get too caught up in the colors touching or blending because it's all going to happen anyway. It's just a matter of timing. Let's go ahead and start with some leaves. Come out here to the side. I'm going to do another one down here. And then remember we're going to take the edge of our brush and we're going to begin just running apps again, the edges. And again, same thing over here, running up against those edges. To create some ridging. Now we're going to create a little bit of a leaf here, excuse me, a stem. Just kinda imagining that some stemming is happening back there. I'm going to do the same thing. Let the edges run up against some of the petals. I'm going to straighten this one out a little bit and make it a little bit bigger. I'm just gonna kinda leave that alone while things are wet. We'll head back in and a little bit. Go ahead and bring out a leaf. See there I'm gonna plug in a stem first just to kinda see where we're headed. Sometimes this dam really helps me to just ground the piece and see how it's all working together. I'm going to do the same thing over here. My dog is sneezing and apologies. And just kinda add a little bit of embellishment just to kinda keep things loose. And now I think I'm ready. I feel like I know where the leaf needs to go. I'm going to pull it out here. Nice, big, generous hydrangea leaf connecting that stem all the way through this, that there's some sense of continuation as it moves along. You imagine that maybe that leaf is sort of connecting right through here. Can add some, some stemming just to kinda give it a little bit more balance. Then this little offshoot here, I noticed in some of the hydrangea is that there's a little bit of disconnection. I'm just kinda connect some loose stems running through here. Smaller leaf. I also feel like the composition may benefit from having just one more leaf right up here. It's going to do a thinner leaf. And then I see some areas where it's just a little bit empty and barren. So I'm going to head back in with my brush and just fill it up a little bit. Using my Sophia and my board dough. Just adding some areas where I imagine that she's a little bit darker. Things are drying up pretty nicely over here, so I'm going to just give it a few more minutes and then we'll head back in and do a little bit more shading and shadows. Let's go ahead and add a nice pretty leaf here. Again, just using that simple stroke, can go tip to base, base to tip. Just sitting back on that brush. And then I'm gonna head in with my Sophia and undersea green. Just add a little bit more detail. Alright, here along the edges. Just using the tip of the brush can leave some of the leaves alone. If you like them as they are. You can continue through adding more details as you move along. Okay, I'm going to pull back a little bit so you can see the whole thing, how it's all working together. Straighten you out a little bit. Okay, So you can kinda see this piece as a whole. Now. It's really beautiful the way it's working all together. I thought that it'd be fun to kinda deviate to the left here rather than going straight through the middle. But that's always something you can do as well. Doesn't need to be just one area of the page. It can be multiple areas. So as you are doing this project and as you are doing it, because it's definitely one that there's still so much room for play and exploration here. I would say do different things. Each time you do this project, you're going to find things that you love about it. And by being brave and doing something that puts you outside your comfort zone, you're going to end up learning so much about not only how to paint, but about yourself and what you love, and what makes you feel just set free and alive. So anyway, I know I've talked a lot at you today. I hope it's all been good stuff, nourishing stuff and educational. And I'm just getting so excited. We're getting really close over here to book launch day. If you haven't already stumbled onto my website where my book is on pre-order right now until July 12th, would love for you to visit. We're going to be basically taking you through 25 projects. Botanical, watercolor. It's going to be a lot of fun. And I look forward to seeing your uploaded projects and seeing what you share on Instagram. So thank you again for your time. I hope you had fun and we will see you next time.