Loose Watercolor Poppies

1. Introduction and Supplies: Hello to you. Welcome back to class. We have something super fun today. Poppies, poppies are one of my most favorite flowers. There is so much variety and there are so many ways to interpret them. And I am just, I'm just brimming with excitement to show you some different ways to approach them and how to keep them loose yet super expressive and playful. And I think we're just going to have so much fun today. We're gonna be doing a couple of different Varieties of puppies. We're going to start with a California poppy, kinda warm ourselves up. It's a little bit more simple in shape, but don't let its simplicity mislead you. They can be at somewhat of a tricky flower to navigate because they are so simple and we can't rely necessarily on so much color to be the thing that adds interests and brings depth. So we're going to figure out how to move around that flower, create those cute little stem ease, and just really bring it to life. Then after we've gotten familiar with that, that shape and form, then we'll move on to an Icelandic poppy, possibly a Shirley poppy. And we're just going to look at different ways to shape them, approach them. I think that's really what a class should be about is not just saying, Hey, this is the way to paint these, but saying, Hey, there are so many ways to paint these. Which one do you like best? Which one resonates with you and myself as your teacher, I get to show you those different varieties and let you decide what you like. So just quickly going over our supplies. Nothing new here, nothing out of the ordinary that we haven't used with the exception that we will be using our filbert brush. I'd like you to have two of them, three at the most, but probably to in somewhere between a size four to an eight. So I'm not going to be specific because it really doesn't matter. This is a four and then this is an eight. I know they look like there's a huge difference between them, but in fact they do pretty much the same thing and can make the same pedal stroke. But if you're more comfortable with one over the other, then I advise you to use that one. So 468 and the filbert doesn't have to be this brand. However, I am using the Princeton, Umbria, love, love, love this brand. And then we will also be using our tried and true Princeton brushes. Brushes. I have both the Aqua Elite here and the heritage. These are round in a variety of sizes, from six to ten. I like you to have multiples if you know that from taking my previous classes, a couple of sixes, couple of, a couple of tens, or just a mixture of all of those because we'd like to use multiple brushes at the same time. Just breakout what you have and keep it off to the side. We may not use everything I like to kind of keep while I plan these classes, I like to sort of keep things open for just the spontaneity aspect. It makes it more of a joy for me to teach you that way. And I think it brings in just like fresh creativity. So I'm also going to have my iPad out. If you would like to follow along. You may want to download a few reference pictures and keep them on some sort of device next to you so that you can reference this is from Pinterest board and I have this board marked as private and you can go to my page on Pinterest, I'm Rosalie going papery and follow me. And then you can follow this board and I'm just attaching flowers to it that I perhaps will be teaching. Not everything in there will be what we've learned or what we're learning. But you'll find the images that I'm using for this class in there. Or you're welcome to use your own images as well, so completely up to you. But it is nice to have a reference. I'll be working from a reference and several of them, and guiding you along as we explore with shape and form. We will also be using our Canson paper. As always, I'm gonna be using the 12 by 18 inch pad gives us lots of room. And just a really nice green to this paper. But I've also, you'll see in the class syllabus that there are acceptable substitutes. So go ahead and take a look at that. There are plenty of different brands in both brushes, paints, and paper that are going to work just as fabulous for you. You don't need to have the exact same thing that I'm using. So this is the paper will be using. You'll also need a pallet or two. I like to have a tiny one for my classes so that I can keep it in the frame and you can see what I'm doing. But I also have this one off to the side that I'll be pulling from a couple of different solid plates, pallets or giant palette that has lots of mixing room. Other than that, you'll need a paper towel to blot off on. And you will also need a cup of water, perhaps a pencil. If you want to write down what your color combinations are, you can see, I've already started to do that a little bit. We have a new gamboge plus pyrrole orange. We'll get into that more in the next slide. But it's nice to just make notes as we go along. So you remember and don't have to hold all of that in your brain. So anyway, that is our supply list. We are going to jump into how to create the shape of a California poppy in the next video. So gather your supplies, get yourself something good to drink, and let's get started. 2. Swatching The Palette: A little note before we begin, it is an incredibly windy day where I'm at, where I'm filming in my studio. You can even hear it and probably will hear it howling in the background. I have shades and light set up. However, when I use the iPad, there is a huge reflection ring from my life that I liked to avoid. So beginning starting off, I'm not going to use the additional overhead light just because we have plenty of natural light. It's a gorgeous sunny day, but the wind is blowing and so clouds are shifting over the sun. Yada, yada, you'll see it kind of getting a little darker and then getting a little wider. But overall, the light is really great. As we move through the class and the Sun passes, I will be turning on the light to make sure that everything is seen in visible. But I didn't want to just kind of let you know what was going on. So in case you hear strange wolves in the background, I do not keep them as pets. So let's go ahead and start by mixing up the colors that we're going to be using for our California poppies. You can kind of see I have some colors right here. The first mixture we're going to use is the new gamboge from Daniel Smith and the pyrrole orange from my merry blew. Now, like I already said, please do not feel as though you have to use these exact colors. This is a yellow and an orange. If you have a yellow and an orange, it will suffice. Obviously, the level of integrity will change depending on what sort of brand you're using. If you're using student grade is not gonna be as fine quality. You're not gonna get as rich colors and your results will be different. But so long as you are using artists grade, there won't be a huge difference. So I don't, you don't have to get these exact colors to enjoy the benefits of the class. You can use an orange and a yellow or you can mix up a red and a yellow and to make orange and then use a different yellow Indian yellow, yellow, deep green, gold, Naples yellow or yellow ocher. There's so many different yellows and as long as it's just different enough, That's fantastic. With my classes, I'm not looking to perfect the exact same color of the flower. And in fact, with watercolor, you have to take certain liberties because should you use the same colors in pigment, you're gonna get a very one-dimensional results. So I like to kind of take liberties and play with my colors. And although it will be very close, we will not aim for exactness because there's just no fun or room for play in that. So let's go ahead and put a little bit of the pyrrole orange on our palate. The new gamboge. I'm gonna take my number ten round brush just because I like it for mixing color and I'm just going to wet a pile right here off to the side. Then add a little bit of orange to it and I'm gonna mix it to cough syrup consistency. If you've taken my other classes, we talk all about water ratios and consistency. So if this is sounding unfamiliar to you, go ahead and start with those earlier classes, they're going to be a lot, lot, There's gonna be lots of information guiding you and preparing you for what is probably considered more of an intermediate class. So if you look here, we have something extremely close to our California poppy. And I've mixed it up in cough syrup consistency so we can kind of see how deep we can get that color. Although if we were to add more of the pyrrole orange, It's going to get orange year. And we can even increase that and make it deeper. I'm kind of going for a mid-range orangey yellow. But let's go ahead and just kinda see what that looks like on paper. Dip into the water and see what that's gonna look like as the color moves off of my brush. So there we have it at its darkest moving through how it's going to look when it's light. We can even carry that through just to see what it's gonna look like with just a little bit of water on the brush. And we can dip back in, add a little orange, come here at the top and see what is possible. Should we decide to just increase that? So you have kind of three levels of color here. I like to call the first one cough syrup consistency. And then the next one is brought consistency. And then the last one is your lightest consistency. It's mostly water with a little bit of pigment left on your brush. You can go ahead and jot down that color mix if you like, the pyrrole orange plus new gamboge. I'm going to rinse off my brush and we'll mix up our next color. Also just going to put a little bit over here so we can see what it looks like at the lightest. So you can see there's a lot of color potential within this single mix. We do that a lot in my classes. These don't even look like the same color, so we'll be using that to our advantage as we work with watercolor and creating the shape. Next color mix we're going to use is going to be quinacridone, burnt scarlet, and green gold. The quinacridone is Daniel Smith and the green gold is my merry blew. Rinsing off my brush. My water is already quite orange. That will kind of aid me as I stay in the color family here. In the quinacridone, birds scarlet, and adding in the green gold to make it a little bit more orangey. We have something that's just a little bit darker. Lighten it up just a bit. We'll mix it at cough syrup consistency to start. Do we have something that looks about like that? Swatch that out? Basically just another version of orange. But these colors will interact with each other as we play with wet into wet. And you'll be able to see those small distinctions. That's that. And then we will a little bit, It's just the water on the brush just to get an idea of what it's gonna look like. Then we're also going to swatch out new gamboge on its own because it's a really nice yellow that will also use as well. There you have our working palette for the outside of the poppy. When we get into the inside of the poppy, we're gonna be going back into the quinacridone burnt scarlet. Adding the more of the dramatic center and really working with beautiful wet into wet consistency. So it will swatch that out as well. Go ahead and write all of these colors down if you need to. Out of the frame a bit. There we have it. Working family of colors. The next video we'll be working on form and how to approach everything and just really get a good handle on what is all going to look like as it comes together. 3. Sketching The Poppies With Our Brush : Something that really helps me when I am just getting familiar with a flower is to not necessarily like sketch out the shape with a pencil, but do so with my brush so I get my colors ready, and then I take a good look at the shape. I sort of recognize common shapes like we've done in the past. Ovals, circles, squares, triangles, things that my brain can easily latch onto and then apply while painting. That allows me to kind of relax and lean into the painting rather than trying to get every ruffle correct, every shape, every direction and position. I tend to get overworked paintings when I approach things that way. So what I like to do is I take my brush and I get a little bit of paint on it. And I'll look at this and I'll say, okay, this sort of has a bowl-like shape to it. Maybe cup like saucer. I get that idea in my head and then I'll take my brush and off to the side. I'll just do something like this. Just noting the general shape of things. Then we have a center right about here that I just note down. Then what I'll do is I'll take my brush and kind of doing some of those back petals as well. Then fill in where I see the Petals either overlapping or separating. This is just one way to approach the observation, the sketching part of the process. We're gonna do more of this. I just wanted to walk you through as I was talking about it. And it's not an exact likeness at all, but it just gives my brain like okay, so this is the shape that we're playing with. And then when I'm in the moment and I'm working through it, I have much more knowledge, confidence, approaching what it looks like as I look back and forth between what is real and what is imagined when I'm creating. The first thing I just want you to do if you're gonna do it off screen is to just gather some reference pictures. I have a whole bunch and that's my second recommendation is don't just look at one image. I have these ones saved. I have these which I don't even think these are real flowers is probably these are probably fake flowers. Then I have this ones where it's more head on. So we're coming again and seeing that bowl-shaped fan shape. I see a lot of fan shape with puppies as well. Just sort of storing that knowledge off to the side so that I can use it later on. When we're doing more complicated things like layering or increasing the color value wet into wet, those kind of things. Go back to this original image and let's go ahead and just kind of walk through that process of looking and sketching out together. Any color is going to be fine. I had the little bit of the gamboge and orange pyrrole, orange on my brush. This paper is so great because you can do these little sketches and then fill it in and it's still wet. You can see here if I wanted to do wet into wet, you still have plenty of time to do that. But we don't really need to concern ourselves with that yet. We're just looking at shape. All right, so let's pull that off to the side again. Let's have a look at this one that's more on its side, then the one above. I'm gonna take my brush and I'm just going to look and just notice some ruffles here, some ruffles, their petal that comes out here, a little bit here. Coming up here, up here, and curving down here. Again, this is just kind of giving me an idea of what I'm working with. I'm going to fill it in where I see separation. When we're in the moment, we may choose to lead all of these petals run together and later on create some details and whatnot. But this is just a great way to kind of capture shape petal coming out here. I try not to get too detailed because then I start painting. And this is not supposed to be painting. This is supposed to be understanding, sketching, exploration, not editing myself, not saying like, Oh, that should definitely look different. So. Give yourself room and permission to do that without being like, oh, that's terrible. That looks horrible. I am no idea what I'm doing. That is what this stage is all about. It should be about you not knowing what you're doing and just kind of letting your brush gives you an idea. We have that one. Let's go ahead and do this front flower here, very bold, kind of odd shaped here. And that's going to look a little bit funky. When we're first painting with puppies, they can be tricky in that way because they don't have a lot of petals to offer distinction and separation. They don't necessarily have a really dark center the way that roses due to provide that that depth, that look of like okay, this is, these are petals are close and inside and then these puddles or outside. It takes a little bit of work to get the puppy there. And although we'll use color value to our benefit, just grasping the shape is important for this flower specifically. I'm just going to take my brush just like I want you to just hold it like this just loosely and I'm not saying you have to hold it with this position because I learned how to hold my brush. What is quote unquote improperly. Lot of people hold their brush like this. Then still more people hold it with the two fingers. I've seen people do really weird things that we won't even go into. But this is my preferred stance and I'm just going to kind of let it rest between my fingers here. That wind howling, just kinda ruffling things. Do some of that back pedal. Move on to the side a little bit. Coming out over here. Where the petal kind of sneaks in a little bit. Then just kinda call it color in what I have here. Now, a lot of times I really liked my sketches. They're kind of fun and pretty in their own unique way. There's gonna be a lot of details that we're not going to capture. Where I'll just show you here where the petal would kind of do one of these things. You can kind of see like okay, that's the outside petal, this is the inside puddle. And that's more of a detailed approach. And then we would have this petal and then we would take color. And we run it along here to create something that looks a lot darker for these loose puppies. I really don't enjoy that. I like to just pick up the details where I can without making things way too structured. Mostly just using water here, a little bit of pigment on my brush. And pulling down. Just getting the outline of these pretty little ruffles is sometimes enough. You can go in and put the ruffles back in if you lost it a little bit. So spooky, I don't know if you guys can hear all of that howling, but it sounds like we're in the middle of a bitter storm here, but it's like 52 degrees California winter. I know a lot of the other lot of other countries and states are hurting right now with snow and rain. I don't like to brag about our cold days that involve us putting on a card again. We pay for it though. Like I said, I don't try and add to much more in there, but just to get an idea. Then later on we would add some much deeper colors in here to fill in and color value and all that. But we'll stop there because we're just exploring. All right, let's go ahead and do a different image. And let's go ahead. We're a bit smaller. Or at least they look smaller to me, different variety of California poppy. They're not quite as triangular as some of the other ones, like these ones are very, very triangular. We'll cover those as well. But I wanted to move from similar shapes. These are similar to this one. These ones are still roughly and fan like. Let's go with this little one right here. Make sure the cameras focused on it. And I'm gonna start with that outside petal. And then I'm gonna take my brush and do the petal that's furthest away. You can see this shape is just kind of blah. There isn't a whole lot of light movement of petals here. And that's why I always say, don't let this flower deceive you into thinking it's a simple flower. Because honestly, in reality, the more simple the flower, the harder it can be to connect with it and help your audience to connect with where certain things are happening. So don't, don't be complacent and think, oh, well this is so easy because it takes a little mindfulness to just continue watching and observing. So we have a separation here. Obviously we have a pedal here, petal here, then we have two petals, and then this one, and there's dark things happening over here that we won't quite capture yet. But that is the gist of that shape. Can add in a little bit more depth here. Just to kind of get an idea of how it's gonna work. Little bit more detailed here. You can already begin to see how we're gonna pull in different colors to begin to make something that's really beautiful. Let's go ahead and do another one. I feel like I know it's repeat, copy paste, repeat, but there are different flowers and they're just, this is all just bolstering your brain to think of form and shape. And it all comes in extreme handy because your muscles are growing even if you don't always feel it. I'm gonna go with this one right here. It's a little teeny tiny one. And you can see that bring you a little bit closer. It's got just a hint of a petal here and then to larger petals and then a bit of the other petal. Let's go ahead and do that over here. It starts with just a little line. And then we have pretty wide pedal, some ruffles in there. Then one more. Then we have a bit of the other petal kinda showing here. Then through here we have the darkness that will be happening. Make sure we're focused on that. Looking at a couple more positions. Let's do one. Let's see, We've done one facing that way. Let's do another one facing this way, really on its side here. So coming down with that back pedal, this is my problem trying to get the iPad in the frame as well as the actual painting. I'm gonna move this off to the side just for a little bit here so I can make sure that you're getting the actual painting happening. Pull you out a little bit. There we go. Pulling it down. Just a little bit of a petal here. Just kind of shaping it really loosely. Just using the tip of my brush, get some of that back pedal. Then filling it in. Here. You can see there's really no like defined shape or structure here is just sort of a loose groundwork to get us familiar. I don't want you feeling like, oh, that doesn't look like anything because we'll get there. Alright, let's go ahead and we're gonna do one facing this way. This time. We start with that back petal and then we have a petal that kind of ruffles down this way. Nice long one comes out here. Then we have another long one that just kind of curves a little bit here. There you go. We'll, we'll play with brushstrokes and using the belly and the tip of the brush to create more finer aspects and more broad aspects too. Then the last thing I want to show you is just a look at these ones that are a little bit more triangular. So let's approach one of those just real briefly. I think I liked the roughly fan ones. I think those give us a little bit more room to play, but I want to be comprehensive and everything that I showed you. So we have a petal that just sweeps up and then down. And then we have a very dramatic sort of V-shape here, saucer cup. Then we have petals that shoot up. And another one comes out here. And obviously these are filled in as well. Then you have little details down here that kind of help give the flower shape and structure. Then one more of those. We have one that kind of starts here and then shoots up, then comes down. Those sides smaller. This side is much larger. Petals that sort of ruffle and overlap. More ruffles down here. Then obviously you would have the stem and everything connecting it can kind of get an idea of just the way to approach these. So if you haven't already take your brush, use your reference pictures and just start doing some very loose tip of the toe shapes to get an idea of what it's all going to look like together. And they can even be as simple as that. They don't even need to be filled in. I do that for like a light in depth reference, but just something to give your brain, something to latch onto. This I said, like I said, is going to come in great handy. And now we will approach the puppies with a little bit more confidence and work on some of the finer aspects. 4. Painting The California Poppies: I've went ahead and fresh and up my palette, meaning I have my pirate orange and new gamboge right here in a broth consistency. If we want it to be cough syrup consistency, all we have to do is just thicken it up here towards the top. And then I also have it in broth consistency here, little bit more heavier on the yellow. I like to play with that as well. Meaning I'd like to have more orange in this one, more yellow in this one just to give them enough difference so that when they interact with each other in the water and the paper, it's not all like I said, so one-dimensional. And then we also have just straight new gamboge off to the side. So we'll be using all of these. And then we're also going to be using that Quinacridone, Burnt scarlet to fill in the middle, even though it's not necessarily prominent in the actual poppies that we're gonna be looking at. It's one of those liberties that I like to take just to kind of give a little bit more drama. If you look at some of the puppies, there is definitely a significant darker aspect to the middle of them. A lot of them simply just have the the yellow center. You'll see I've gone ahead and turn on my light because it's getting a little bit dark and I just want to make sure you can see everything clearly. But go ahead and get your war reference image up. If you are just sort of looking for color, obviously, I'll be following along with a different image unless you do want to have the same image up. This is the one that I'll be using. We're gonna do the same thing we did last time where we're just taking a look at the shape, but we're also going to begin to fill in more of the details of the flower. We're also going to be introducing our filbert, filbert brush here. This is a number four. I have taught a class with the filbert brush. If you're not familiar with how to wield this around, you may want to freshen up or take a look at that class where I talked about how to move it around is obviously looks much different than the pointed round. It has a flat tip and it's more oval in shape, so we'll get a different effect here. But in actuality it's not all that different from this brush except for the fact that we can make some really fine lines with fun. But for overall shape, it works very similarly to a round brush. I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna put a little bit of the mixture on the brush here, the pyrrole orange and the new gamboge. I'm also going to load up my round brush with the same thing. I'm going to start off the same way, just starting out with some ruffles. Just to get the basic shape of things. Then I'm going to use my filbert brush this time to fill in. I'm going to leave room in the center because we want to make sure that we have the capability of adding in some darker aspects here, I'm using the filbert brush to add some jagged edges to the side here, maintaining the integrity of the ruffled edges. And I'm turning it, rotating it to get some finer aspects like you see here, creating a little bit more of a triangle shape and then rotating it so it's flat to create more of those oval and round shapes. Same thing that you can do with a pointed brush. Just a little bit of a different effect. Now I'm going to take my round brush head into the cough syrup consistency. I'm just going to begin to add in some little markings. Nothing to structured. Just enough. I'm using the toe of the brush to gently swoop in the bottom of the poppy. You'll see that it's going to very quickly run into the color and almost blend. And we're gonna do this several times. I've left a little gap here where there's some back pedal action and I'm going to swoop in here and add in a little bit more. This will be one of the darker areas I'm really going to lay in here, heading back into the pyrrole, orange and new gamboge to pick up more. Want to make sure to get this while everything is still pretty wet and head back in. To fill in that center, we're still going to leave some center because that's where we're gonna put. The yellow. But I want to make sure we have some significant bleeds happening here. Really lean into that orange now, cough syrup consistency. Just kind of rubbing your brush through it to pick up as much of that orange as possible. And once more, run back in the bottom of those petals. It's okay if they're touching as long as there's some separation between the petals. That's fantastic. And I'm just poking, I'm just gently kind of looking to create something that resembles a center that has whitespace, that has differentation. Nothing that, I don't want, anything too stagnant. The outer petals I'm going to leave faint so that the inside carries the most drama and it guides your eye from the inside out. We could very easily, and if you look at puppies, there are some shadows and shading that happens along the outside. But like I said, your risks losing the eye here if there's too much going on. So if you have your burnt scarlet, I'm going to invite you to roll your brush through there as well. Cough syrup consistency. Using my round. We're going to add yet another layer here. Kinda starting with a center here in the middle. And then just gradually pulling it out. What we can do is take another brush using a six round. Just sort of messy things up a bit. Making sure not to lose everything in the process. Just carrying a little bit further out, adding some details. There you have it. Our very first poppy. We're gonna do that again. We're basically just going to hit Repeat and we're going to be doing different shapes and positions and really just get familiar with how to approach it. So we'll start the same way. I'm going to rinse off that brush that has the spurred scarlet on it. Or if you have to number ten brushes, you can have one devoted strictly to the scarlet because we're working in the same color family. Normally I would say have two different brushes, but because it's the same color family, I can just rinse off in between and then reload my brush with the pyrrole orange and new gamboge really didn't need to pick up any of that straight new gamboge. However, it's plugged into my palette here. So I am going to put a little more off to the side. And maybe with this flower, we will add a little bit more of that color just on its own. Just to give it a little bit different look. Of course, I'm dribbling here as I always do. That actually kinda looks like a pretty little beginning of a flower. I always try and see possibility in my mistake. I was painting yesterday. It was kind of drab day and made an accidental stroke. And my husband was there and he laughed. I said, and that's why being a professional is helpful. And he laughed at me and I don't usually toot my own horn like that, but I remember that feeling when I was just beginning when something like that would happen, I'd make this gargantuan stroke across the page and just be like mortified, like it's ruined, my paintings ruined. And now I can move through it and say, Oh, well, we're gonna turn that into something and it's definitely a milestone to take home to that point. So had to share that little story with you. Okay, refreshing my brush. And I'm going to lean into the new gamboge a little bit more, some more of like a miracle old color, but more on the yellow side. Let's go ahead and start the same way. Start with the bottom ruffle of this petal. Comes up just roughly things out here. And then this petal comes down, sort of curves towards the middle. Then we have our outward petals here. Outer petals, excuse me, not outward. Little bit of space there. And then we're going to do the same thing we did with our filbert brush. Putting it in my new gamboge with a hint of orange in there and just begin filling things in. Towards the middle here is where we're gonna have our center. So I'm gonna steer away from there and just re-engage the petals that I've started. Leaving whitespace. Pulling the brush down, coming up on its side, rotating that brush to get more of the edge that I want, the more edge like and then filling it in using the front side of the brush, turning it flat. Again, this paper is very forgiving. So as long as you're using enough water, we don't have to worry so much about drawing up on us. Come back in here. We have the shape. This kind of connects behind here. Just making sure all those little pockets are nice and filled in a little bit of color through here. And then I'm gonna go ahead and step into the pyrrole orange to add in some of the details. That's all right. I had a little bit more loaded on my brush than I wanted, but that's okay. I kind of love when that happens, there's still separation, but the two petals sort of Mingle and mix. Using my number ten round, just coming in to add little bit of detail here. Do the same thing through here. Through here. Give this petal a little bit more structured by providing a barrier, but still leaving areas where the petal itself is faint. And if we're feeling like it's too dark, what we can do is take our filbert brush, wipe off most of the paint by putting it in water and then brushing it off on a paper towel. And then we can always lift a little bit of the color out. That's an easy trick. If you're feeling like you went too dark with things. I don't think we did, but I just wanted to show you that while we're working, you have to remember too, that watercolors dry two to three times lighter, so that's going to be even fainter. And you can already see here, we used quite a bit of paint here and it's still just drawing very light. Heading back in with that pyrrole orange in cough syrup consistency for a second time. Adding some finer aspects here. Bringing the shape together will have things merge here. Take our filbert brush and just guided along. While everything's nice and wet tap into that burden scarlet. Begin to approach the center. You get to decide as how much of that burden scarlet you want in there. It can be just a little bit, you can make it much dominate much of the middle or just make it sort of an accessory. I mean, the potential here to play with the wet into wet. It's very tempting. I just want to kind of keep running my brush through seeing what happens. But at some point we got to stop and let it rest and be. All right. I'm gonna go through one a little bit quicker this time just so you can kind of see how I would do it if I were painting. The more we slow down for me, the more I overthink it. I like to paint quick. I wanted to just show you what things look like as I'm moving along. Alright, I'm going to pick up a little bit of Indian yellow, which we had on our original palette. That's the color I'm going to use for this next puppy. I have this bowl-shaped here. Then these ruffles that come out. We have one that's just a little bit more closed. Then I'm gonna go ahead and pull in the pyrrole orange. I'm going to use my filbert brush now. Same thing, using the Indian yellow to just kind of fill in a little bit more. The flower pedal action here. Straightening that out a bit. Little bit. If the pyrrole orange here into the ruffles, there we have something that's quite loose. And adding a little bit more of that pyrrole orange in here will be the center. So I'm going to leave that open. We're going to wrap up this video so that we can just kinda keep things concise little bites. And then we'll move on to buds and then adding beautiful little stems and leaves. 5. Painting California Poppy Buds and Stems: Okay, So we're gonna focus on doing a couple more smaller puppies as we would work our way up in a cluster. If we were to be like putting these in a bouquet, will do some smaller ones. And then we'll also do some buds which are really fun. They're very alien shape, which I think is kind of interesting and unique. So same mix here, pyrrole, orange and new gamboge, kinda all rolling together here and using different consistencies. This will be a broth consistency. I'm just going to use my filbert brush to shape it out this time, starting with a petal up here, coming down, going to fill that in. And then picking up just a little bit of water side here and then do the same thing over here. Just to kind of get the general shape. And then some back pedal action here. Then I'll use my number ten brush to fill in with a little bit more color here in the pyrrole orange and cough syrup. Since we don't really have a middle in this flower, we can take a few more liberties with where we add the color. I'm going to add a little bit here on the top and merging and then bring it down. Same thing over here. Then I'm gonna do the same thing right over here. I'm going to start with the outer petals this time. Just shaping it like we did before. Filling it in. You can add a little bit more ruffle. Do it that way as well. Picking up just a little bit of water, come in here and shape the front part of the flower. There we go. I'm going to add a little bit up there as well, but mostly happening down here to show where the middle of that flower is. Let it emerge a little bit. Then we'll dip into the burnt Scarlet. If you need to let your paint rest for a little bit, That's always an option too. Sometimes if things are too wet, You're not going to quite get that reaction and response it you're hoping to get from watercolor. Those are a little bit of a smaller bloom. Next we're going to move on to creating the buds, which are really fun. Like I said, they're very alien in shape. They kinda go a little something like this. You take your brush, I'm gonna be using number eight here. And it starts here at the top. And you just drag it down to here. And this is a little bit, it's a little bit more square in nature. I'm using sap, green and indigo here. This is our green mixture. You'll see that in the class syllabus. I put it in the video instructions and it just has this very like conical shape to it. And then it has this little sort of round disc around the edge that I'm just going to sort of like intimate towards not really flush it out anyway. And then another little counterpart down here. Then a really cute little swoopy stem. You'll probably need to practice your stem action if you tend to be heavy-handed and make really, really thick strokes. That's why I'm using my round brush really coming up on the tip here and inviting movement into the shape of it. Kind of curving outward and then inward and then back outward. So let's go ahead and do another one. Bend this one a little bit, start over here, then bring it back. Neither very interesting looking. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's my favorite bud ever, but it definitely, you definitely know what it is when you see it. There's just some little ruffling that happens along the edge here that we can kind of, like I said, intimate towards and just moving some stuff out of the way. Let's go ahead and do the same thing over here. Bringing that stem all the way down. Go ahead and connect this one as well. What we can do here is dip into that indigo and sap green to create a cough syrup consistency. And add a little bit of color. And create some detail here. Put a shadow, a little bit of detail, nothing to structured. Then the last one we're gonna do, it's gonna have a little bit of orange poking through, so we're going to bend it this way. Then I'm gonna take my brush with the pyrrole orange and just nudge it into there. Do the same thing on the other side. Coming down here. We will continue the stem all the way through. Back down here. I like to bring all of the stems into like a gathered position just to kind of make it feel like it's all rooted together, but that's not absolutely necessary. Then I'm gonna do one kinda crossing over to just kinda give some movement to the bud. I'm gonna dip into the sap green and just kinda do a swirly little stem here. Start here. I'm going to start at the base and swoop out. I'll do it a little bit more orange and this one to put a little bit of the blue, indigo and sap green together and cough syrup consistency and come back down here. Little bit of roughly. This is just our practice piece, so I'm not really too concerned about that. When we do our class project, we'll put it all together in a really pretty little bouquet. But this just gives you an idea how the puppies are formed and shaped and how they might flow together. You are welcome here to add as much detail as you like, keeping things really light and loose or you can make things darker. Sky's the limit. I always say that I just don't want you to feel like you have to stop when I stop or keep going when I keep going. So if you feel like you've reached a point where you like how everything's looking. By all means. Take those liberties. We're going to cap it off here and then we'll come back to do stems. More of like the the shooting stems, not necessarily like the main focal stem, but the stems I sort of shoot out from the ground and then also the beautiful leaves that accompany the puppy. 6. Stems And Leaves: The leaves accompanying the puppy, or really feminine and delicate. And there is so much fun to add to this flower just because I feel like it ties it all together. And just a really expressive way with larger leaves. While there's room for detail with these little sprouts, shooting leaves, they're just so playful on their own. They really don't need much to just jump off the page. So I'm gonna be using two brushes. I'll be using number eight round and a number ten round. And I have indigo and sap green loaded on my eight, and I have just sap green loaded on my ten. And they're both at about broth consistency. And that way I can add a certain color and then immediately be able to blend it with another color so that there's just beautiful things happening on the page as we move along. If you want to just use one color, of course you're more than welcome to. But I find that having multiple colors, especially when working with leaves, really helps to just aid in adding interest. So let's go ahead and start. I had fresh piece of paper just so we can kind of see what they look like on their own and then we will add them to our puppy Practice page. So go ahead. If you haven't already to dip into that sap green and then the sap green and indigo mixture. I'm gonna start with just a really thin line here. It's not as thin as we're going to get, but it's just something to sort of serve as the base of the stem. And then we're going to just start making these little offshoots. They should be slightly thinner. Then the original stem. I like for my branches to have a lot of movement in them. So you really want to encourage movement by shaping the branch accordingly. Now you have a really good place to start and we can begin adding the leaves. They just happen like that in really small little gestural strokes. Don't worry about overlapping here. Going to face different directions as well. Some coming down, some coming up, some that are just very thin. I really like to be super loose with my leaves. I'm gonna go ahead and dip into that indigo and just start adding a little bit of color variation. Just using the toe of my brush. To create these sort of spiky feminine. Leaves here. Interchanging. Some heavier strokes where I add more pressure to the toe of the brush and then also heading back in for using just the toe of the brush. Basically you're just kinda doing this throughout the entire thing, making some longer, some point here. Really just having a lot of fun. Playing. These leaves should be fun. They shouldn't feel like you have to work too hard to achieve them. We could, even if we wanted to pull that down and connect it for some really fun little movement here and just continued to get wider and wider. We know what the poppies when you see them, they're all kind of just clenched and bunched together and there's no real understanding of where exactly they are even coming from. You just see them in union with the flowers. We could do it a bud here if we wanted to. Bringing that down, then adding some leaves to it. We don't have to be so heavy-handed on all of the parts of the leaves, we can leave some more minimal to create some breadth and some rest. Then I'll use the indigo just to kind of pop some other colors in here. There you have it, those are our leaves. It's hard to even call them leaves. They're really just more like stems. And they're really fun. And I think that as you add them or as we add them to the actual poppy, you'll find that it just adds so much interests. So let's go ahead and do that. I'm just gonna do a little bit here because we're going to do a lot when we do our main project and we create a piece using the kinds of puppies. So I'm just going to kind of bare minimum here, just to show you how it's going to all start to come together. Just using the toe of my brush to create some sort of focal moments. Sort of dragging the brush around, using the toe can create some stems coming from the bud as well. Just to give it a little bit more movement. Then we'll start adding in beliefs. My indigo here. Like I said, I like to paint fast because if I slow it down so much, then I start to overthink it and focus on every little part rather than seeing the painting for what it is. Do a little leaf branch here, down here for our low. But Poppy. And then I'm gonna go ahead and attach the base using the sap green and the Indigo. And bringing it down to connect. Just thickening up the stems a little bit, moving through the bouquet. I don't really ever like to formally attach things too tightly, but just kinda give the illusion that things are emanating from a certain direction. There you have our cute little dainty leaves. And then the next step is going to be adding a little bit of the yellow into the center to kind of help bring it altogether. 7. California Poppy Centers: Like I said, at the very center of these puppies, is a yellow sort of sprouting stamen that kind of ties it all together because it's lighter in color. Unless we were using something more opaque like gouache, it's really not going to show up for our purposes, but what we can do, and what we have done is we've left whitespace and we've kept things intentionally open to create a just a little bit more fine inner workings too, to just give it one more level and layer. So I've mixed up some Naples yellow and I'm just really getting it saturated on my brush here. I want it at its thickest consistency, which I always call horseradish consistency. And it's basically as much of the colors you can get on your brush at its darkest form. Highest color value. Then we're gonna go and just very loosely add in some yellow. It's going to be quite subtle. I'll bring you in to see because we have so many other bolder aspects happening. The flower. I'm just going to take my brush and just sort of loosely play around with adding a little bit more detail. You can see where I'm going over the darker areas. The yellow is really standing out. And then also where things are lighter, the yellow is standing out because it's very thickest form. You can kind of see how everything ties together. I'll do a little bit up here just to kind of indicate that there is a center somewhere, somewhere deep, deep, deep down in there. Again, this is just using the tip of the brush to very loosely indicate that there is something happening. It's not taking the brush and doing really slow methodical structured strokes. Just not the approach that we're using here. So I'm going to bring you in a little bit closer to see you can see the subtlety of those marks. Just see how really lovely they are. Not everything has to be super bold and dramatic to have an effect. So I think what we've done here is really pretty. And it serves, it serves the flower overall. And we're gonna play a lot more with drama and tones as we create the Icelandic poppies. But this is just a great starter place. And I feel like we've learned so much covered so much in just this amount of time. And I'm excited to move forward and show you the next part. 8. Creating The Icelandic Poppy Palette: We are now ready to move into the second portion of our class, which is a study of Icelandic poppies. These are one of my favorite flowers. They are so beautiful in the way that they just sort of ruffle and lay out. And although their structure can be a little bit tricky to capture and do so in a way that feels like natural and organic without overworking the flower, we're going to look at how to approach these flowers so that they feel loose and expressive and gestural without having the need to keep touching it to make it look exactly like what we see in nature. So we're just going to draw from inspiration. Before we get to the painting part though, let's go ahead and build up our palette. We're going to have a few working colors here. So you're going to want to clear off some space on your palette. I have to. The two working palettes that I'm using, this one and this one about this much space and that's about how much you'll need will have probably like four colors that we're working with. And want to keep them somewhat separate so that we can have the blending action happening on the paper. So I'm gonna put this off to the side for now as we begin to begin our palette. If you need to rinse out your water cup, if it's, if it's orange from our previous lesson, then you may want to do that now. Brings off those brushes as well. Okay, So the first color we're going to put on our palette is a bit of the casino violet. And then we're also going to put a little bit of the primary blue burnt sienna. Go ahead and grab your brush. I'm gonna be using a number ten round. Bring out some of that color. We're going to mix this to cough syrup consistency. Dip into that burnt sienna to create this really vibrant pink. A little bit more. Want to have enough of it so that we can do some really beautiful bleeds. And also these flowers are quite large, so we want to make sure we have enough to cover this space right about there. And then adding in a little bit more water. We're ready to swatch out and see what that's gonna look like on paper. There we have combination if you need to write that down, the Xeno violet plus the burnt sienna. And then we're also going to do off to the side just the Virginia violet. It's such a pretty color on its own. Very vivid magenta. It's going to work great with this other color as we blend. Your swatches still wet, you can blend it into that next one to kind of get a feel for what's going to happen when these two colors begin to merge. This is sort of a tip and trick that I like to do when I'm painting professionally to make sure that the colors that I've chosen are going to interact quarterly lovingly and not create colors that I'm not hoping to achieve while painting. I typically tend to know if the colors are going to work or not, but it is nice to see them on paper. We're also, I'm going to switch to my other palette just to make sure I have enough room here. Going to take that Virgina violet from the initial pallet. Put it over here. We're gonna make sort of a peachy coral as well. As you can see. We have lots of working colors here. And we want to have the same range of possibility. Although we may not get to all of them or use them all with the same frequency. I like to be able to pull from different colors. Also going to dip in here to the new gamboge. Just start adding it into my color. We can see it turning more of a coral with hints of few. New gamboge was quite dry, so it's taking a little bit of re-wetting to get it to where I want it. Pick up a little bit more of that. Violet. Now we're about there. Make sure it's fully saturated on my brush. Let's go ahead and plug in a new color. Can see these colors are working quite harmoniously together. Really beautiful effect. Our fourth color, we're going to use Naples yellow. If you don't have that on your palette, go ahead and put that somewhere so you can access it. I'm using the Daniel Smith version, but I've seen it be pretty consistent among most brands. Really going to go heavy here on the Naples yellow because I just want a very faint pink. This will be the initial pink that we launch into and then we'll use these richer colors for our bleeds. Remember that we can use them at different consistencies to create a whole different look. I'm going to pick up a little bit of violet. Now we have a peachy, peachy coral. That's going to work great. This swatching out process is not always necessary, but I like to do it for students so that they can see just how it's all going to lay on the page. Then we can add a little bit more water here just to kind of see what it's gonna look like. Super pale. If you feel like it's a little bit more on the pH side and you wanted a bit more pink. All you have to do is go into that Virgina violet mixed that mixture so that it's a little bit pinker. Really, it's up to you. I don't want you to feel completely married to these colors. If you like something different. There you have just a little bit more pink. Changes the field. A lot of this is going to happen. The painting itself, because we'll be using these colors and they'll, they'll show up because they'll blend together. But you can see we've used, Let's see, reviews for colors. And we already have five different colors. And then there's the potential for another at least five colors using water ratio. Let's put that off to the side. Then the very last color that we'll use. I see this beautiful red poppy poking out from the back. So I'm going to draw from that. I'm going to use a little bit of Daniel Smith organic vermilion. This is nice because it's just one color on its own. I love it straight out of the two. Got some orangey qualities to it that we can tone down with a bit of sepia. Or you can even use the quinacridone, burnt scarlet. I'm going to use a little bit of the burnt sienna. I like it as is and you can leave it as is, but I'm going to turn it just a bit more brown. Just because I think that Brown is gonna go better with the pinks. The red when it's mixing with the yellows is going to turn things quite orange. And I would like to avoid that sense. These puppies are more on the pink side. Let's see what it will look like at broth consistency. There we have our working palette. Obviously there are more color capability. So if you want to continue on your own to explore color and come up with different mixes, please, by all means, these colors all worked beautifully together and you can find something that you love. Next step is we're going to be painting the puppies. However, if you would like to pause the video and do the lesson that we did prior to the California poppies where we just played with the paint, the paint brush, and sort of sketched out everything to get a feel for just the shape and structure of them. Please feel free to do that now and just sort of warm up before we head into the page. I'm not gonna do that just because I already showed you that process and how to do it. But if you would like to, you can take this and just use your paintbrush to just start loosely outlining what that might look like and just fill up a page with the general shape and structure of the puppies. If not, you can follow me into the next video and we'll get started. 9. Practicing Painting Shape and Structure Part 1: Go ahead and clear off a little room on your palette. We are going to be mixing the center of the poppy, which we're going to begin with. So we're gonna need those colors immediately. So what you are seeing on my palette is a little bit of the sap green. I'm going to bring that down here. We're gonna use this in cough syrup consistency so you can mix it pretty thick. My sap green is a little on the drier side. Probably time for me to get a new one. But it still works. Just make sure you take the time. I always, I've stressed this in previous classes, so I don't tend to do so now because most people are carrying on from those initial classes. But please, as a reminder, take the time to create your working piles, the correct consistency. It will save you time on the backend, I promise you, the mistakes are not necessarily something that I really let enter my brain as I'm painting. But I feel like this is a huge time-saver and expedient as far as just getting a the colors where I want them and not having to feel rushed and anxious while I'm in the painting process. I'm also using a little bit of the indigo here just to darken it a bit this turquoise, although not necessarily an actuality. The actual poppy is so pretty, I think it's gonna go fantastically with these pinks, pink and turquoise. A beautiful color combination which I invite you to explore on your own. When the time is right. Now I have that about where I want it. I'm going to leave that right about here. Again, cough syrup consistency. I'm going to load that up on my number six round brush and put that off to the side. I picked up a little glob along the way that off if you ever see that, take the time to get that off there, they tend to get very, I don't know what the right word just chunky, sticky. Alright. The next thing we will do is the same thing with the Naples yellow. So pick up your Naples yellow and put a little bit of that on your palette. Again, I'm going to use a number six brush. This is the Aqua Elite, which I find has a bit more of a significant point to it. Just able to do a lot more flicking motions with it. The heritage is great and especially when it's kind of like a little tip, the heritage brand is one of my absolute favorites. And as they come out of their little plastic casing, they are so fine and you can get really thin strokes with it. But over time it tends to, the bristle tend to just get a little bit more lax and they're not quite as glued together as they were initially, the aqua Alito found hold up a little bit more and does stay pointy. So that's just my experience. We want the Naples yellow to be quite thick because it is such a fair color. So take the time to really get it there. We're going to start with a really loose, expressive Center. Nothing to exactly what we're doing, what we're aiming for here is just to flesh out the center of the flower. Because poppies are really all about openness and just this free flowing petals structure. And so the way that we need to respect the integrity of that flowers to make sure that we leave enough room for that center to habits moment if we, if we, if we start with the petals, the tendency is to bring them in real close because we're trying to grasp the structure of that flower. And then we don't have quite as much space to do what we want in the middle. So I go back and forth between whether I start with petals or center first, it depends on the flower. I'm not saying one way or the other is the correct way. I'm just saying that I find that in this case for this flower, it works out for me to do it this way. You're gonna take your brush and we're going to use the toe of the brush to just sort of flick around and create something that is kind of circular, oval, nothing to exact. Just a basic understanding of what the middle this flower might look like. Then you are going to take your brush that's already loaded with the sap, green and indigo. And we're just going to sort of add in a middle here. You can let it run in to your yellow a bit if you like. You can keep it separate. That is going to dry up for a little bit, which is fine. And then we're going to pull out our palette. We're going to load up another brush. Go ahead and grab your filbert. We're going to load it with the Xeno violet. And actually I need to put a little bit more on my palate. So if you feel like your pile is low, you may want to do the same. And also a bit more of the Naples yellow, like I said, with these flowers, they're on the larger side. So we want to make sure we have enough enough of the paint to keep moving through the lesson. Also, if you have any leftover paint on your filbert brush and have not rinse it out yet. This is your reminder. I had a little bit of green sitting on mine, so I'm quickly just removing it. Going to take my Naples yellow and just add a hint of the pink back in there. Then I'm gonna take my number ten round brush with just water. I'm going to start creating an outline of the petal. Something very loose, but just to give me an idea of where things are gonna happen. So this is just a little bit of water and whatever paints kind of sitting in my cup. And I'm just going to kind of start flipping it around. Just using the toe of my brush to create the shape. Then with my filbert brush, I'm gonna go along the edge of my petal here. I'm going to drop in some color. 10. Practicing and Painting Shape And Structure Part 2: I'm going to continue to work around the poppy, just adding a little bit of water. I'm really just using the toe of the brush to just get the shape of the flower down, kind of like we did with our California poppies. You can bring it to touch. Then we're going to take a round brush loaded with the Virginia violet and the burnt sienna. We're going to begin dropping it in to create some bleeds. Guide that down. It's a little bit drier. I had to pause the video for a moment because my little one needed me. Always a mom first. I'm going to re-wet that area and begin to drop in that color. And do the same over here. We're really going to focus on not overworking this flower and making it. Trying to achieve what it looks like in real life. Unless you're focusing on botanical style. I feel like this tends to just be creativity killer. Take the toe of your brush and just begin to add some details. Darkening the areas that are wet. Dipping into the casino violet just on its own. Now. I'm gonna pour a little bit of that color into our center, giving it a moment to just sort of work its magic and not rush the process. Then I'm gonna wait to see what's happening. But eventually what I want to do is as these petals are drying, I want to start working up some of this darker color into the petal to create sort of the, the look of the stripes that you see in the Icelandic poppies and the wrinkles that you see. We won't do anything that's too wild, but I'm gonna take the toe of my brush and just began to work up some of that paint. If it's too wet, really nothing's gonna happen. So we want to make sure it's in-between that place of wet and dry. I'm gonna come down here again and just add a little bit more detail using the toe of the brush and blend that in a bit with the center. Really now just playing with these two colors, The Virgina violet on its own and the Rozanna violet with the burnt sienna. Gonna take the toe of the brush width for Xeno violet and just begin to work up some detail markings. If you notice anything is too heavy, too intense, you can always take your brush and just soften things off again. Sort of starting from scratch. I'm going to blend my color into the center here. You can see that it's all working beautifully together as we figured out it would on our palette. I'm going to leave a little bit of whitespace. Whitespace is power in watercolor. You don't want to leave too much white-space because then you destroy the illusion and it becomes negative space that otherwise best used with pigment. But enough whitespace so that people are understanding that there's an idea of light shifting where things are separated can see this area is not fully complete. It's just the idea that there are some petals happening over here without really drawing them out. Then I'm going to take my Naples yellow and plug a little bit more color back into the center here. Can see that some really pretty bleeds are already happening. We're going to let that happen. I'm also going to begin to plug in some of that dotting effect. I'm gonna take my number six brush and just begin to plug in some loose dots. If you would like more of those detailed lines, you can continue to do what we've been doing, which is to put in paint, darker paint down here, and then begin to work it up to the middle of the petal. I kinda like words out right now I'll see you as things dry. The only thing I'd like to do is to intensify this pedal. I like to have a pedal that's darker than the rest. That's this one. So I'm going to plug in a little bit more color here. Then use my other brush to work it in. We have to remember that watercolor is going to dry two or three times lighter. Then I'm going to pull up the color using the toe of the brush. I can soften that off by using my brush that has just a little bit of water to smooth things out. You can see that there's a lot happening in this poppy. We have the sap green and the indigo, the Naples yellow. And then we used initially our Naples yellow with a bit of the Rozanna violet for our petals. And then we began loading in The Virgina violet and burnt sepia, and then the Virgina violet on its own. And really just working this flower in stages as the media is wet. So it's a lot of just kind of moving the paper, excuse me, moving the water around, moving the pigment around, and being mindful of what's happening, taking your time and adding those little details along the way. And not sort of pigeon holing yourself into this really dark flower initially, although it is a striking and dramatic flower needed for watercolor anyway, it needs to happen slowly and be worked up to that point. Going to take the toe of my brush again and just kind of flush out some details over here. Almost as though there's some back pedal action happening, some ruffles. Then I can pull that color down into the flower. Really the potential here to keep going and to keep exploring is limitless. You could rewet this media and then add in adult or darker color if you wanted to pull down some of those stripes from the top of the flower, I like it as is. I think it's turning out really beautifully and as it dries, it's going to fade a bit. So I'm gonna be content to stop here, but obviously on your own, I encourage you to just explore, take it, take it too far. I know a lot of artists struggle with that. I don't want to take it too far, but you really don't know what to far is until you've gotten there. So give yourself permission to take one of these puppies too far. This is just practice. We're not working on our class project yet. And see what it's gonna look like and then be like, okay, I need to rein it in, pull it back here and you'll be able to figure out what your tendencies are that way. Like I tend to be heavy handed when I do this or I don't leave enough whitespace initially when I'm, when I'm fleshing out the flower. So those things are really important for you to know as, as an artist, we're going to move into another puppy. We're gonna do a really light mixture here to begin with, kind of like what we see in this flower, a very pale, very pale poverty. And like I already said, these flowers are saved on my Pinterest page. You can go to the Skillshare class and see all of the reference images that I'm using. I probably should have done that a long time ago, but I'm gonna start doing it now for all of our classes. That way, you'll have the images that I'm using. People take screenshots and whatnot and networks, but this is hopefully going to be really handy as well. Let's go ahead and dig into our Naples yellow. We're going to begin once more to be flipping this around and we're going to aim for a poppy that's coming out in this direction. So although these are our practice puppies, we want to sort of get familiar with the way that they're going to lay on the page together. So let's try and group them together in a way that feels bouquet ish, if that makes sense. We're going to let some of these pop this action happen together. This blending of colors. Once more began to just sort of flip your brush around to ground out a center. Don't be afraid to go big with the center. It's always going to shrink up when you pull the color. That's another really big tip. People get afraid to create sort of dramatic starts. Go ahead and plug in. Your center. Can take your brush and do a little mixing action here as well, if you'd like. Then we're going to take our filbert brush with the Naples yellow and violet and just a really, really pale, pale broth version of it. So if that color is highly pigmented, want you to go ahead and pull it out a little bit further to create something that's a little lighter. We're going to blend it in to this poppy. Using the side of the brush and flat. We're going to begin to just sort of curve and carve our way around. We can use the other brush if you're a little more comfortable with that. So make sure your other brushes clean and then you can use this brush if you'd rather, because you get more finer response. We're just going to begin to pull out the shape here. And then you can use the brush to fill in the leaves some negative space here to indicate light. Then once I have a shape that I'm happy with, I'm going to dip back into that color and intensify it to cough syrup consistency. And then I can begin to drop it in at the edges. You can pull that color down through the petal and then soften it off. Or you can leave it as is. If you like that look of just the water flowing into the petal, which I do. You can just leave it as is. You may need to re-wet certain areas if you didn't quite get them wet enough on the first try. Just taking the tip of my brush, moving it around, adding in some of those detailed marks. But again, like I said, I don't want to overwhelm the flower so much so that I can't go back. I'm going to take it the cough syrup consistency just began to work in some of the color. The middle. I'm not going to use any of the pink because I want there to be some difference between these two flowers. I will darken up this edge that they appear to be sort of rolling into each other. And then we can take the tip of our brush once more and add some of those details along the edges. Darkening up areas where we want it to be a little bit more of the dramatic side. I'm not going to pull into the center so much as I did with this one. The key with watercolor and flowers is making your flowers a little bit different, not just copy and paste. It takes some different, take some liberties to do some different things. I am going to come into the flower, the center with the Naples yellow. And just begin to add those loose dots like we have on our other flower. You can pull that into the petal. Pull that through. Again, like I said, you can keep going with this flower if you feel like there needs to be more happening. Not necessary, but you can. Then I'm going to stop the video here because we're running up to about 20 minutes and I think that's a good chunk of time. And then it'll be we'll come back in with our third puppy. 11. Red Icelandic Poppy: As I've already shown you before, I really love this dramatic red poppy poking out from the cluster here. So we're gonna go for it. We're going to be we're gonna go big or go home. That's what I'm calling this pop. You go big or go home. And so we're going to use that beautiful organic vermilion mixture with the burnt sienna. And we're going to just take a moment to look at the structure and shape of it, because obviously it's not quite as open as the other flowers is more of kind of peeking out. And since we are going to eventually move into a project where we're grouping all of the flowers that we're learning together. I think it's good that we're using that knowledge now to sort of pull it all together. So go ahead and grab your filbert brush and your number round or your number ten round brush. If you're organic, 4 million pile needs to be refreshed. Go ahead and do that now, dipping into the water, into the paint. We're really going to go dramatic here. We're going to start with the paint and then we're going to add water. If your water cup is looking like it's kind of murky and not super clean. I want you to take a moment to rinse it out because we're going to want that water to be somewhat clear so that we can do what we want to do. I'm going to angle the page here just a little bit. The way I see it happening is there's a pedal here that's just sort of folding over. So I'm going to mimic that. Dragging my brush along, creating that first petal. Then it comes down here, but I'm not going to connect it because then I will lose the shape and I'm just going to sort of gesture. Then I'm gonna take my filbert brush and I'm just going to add a little bit of water into these two areas and carefully nudge the edge of that petal using the ten brush. Pulling it into. Thanks, don't have to completely lineup in touch here either. I think a lot of artists feel like, oh, well it needs to look like it's completely overlapping or under lapping and so you can leave room here. We can always fill this area in with stems and leaves. And it's important that we give our flowers room. We're gonna do the same thing using our number ten brush to create the next petal, which I see is mimicking this one but just a little bit bigger. So we're gonna start with the side here, pull it down. We're going to work our way up and then come down again. Not going to be exact. I'm going to take the filbert running along the edge and pull it into that top flower. I'm gonna take a little liberty here and just add a little embellishment on the side, just to kind of give it a little bit of a playful nature. Then lastly, dip into that burnt sienna and really loaded up on your brush along with the organic vermilion we want to pedal that's a little bit darker. Take the time to make sure that the right consistency. Now we're going to pull up a flower above our initial puppy. Just taking the brush and agitating that edge. I know it has a very disconnected feel to it, but the way that we alleviate that is by adding stems and leaves that pull it altogether. Also going to add a little bit. We're here just to kind of give the illusion that there's something happening down here as well. There's no center to this flower. We're not going to give it one, but am just going to pull in a little bit more color here to show that this is the darkest area where things are folding. There we have it. Obviously there are so many different possibilities with colors and the way to shape them. But I wanted to give you a solid look at an open face flower, one that's sort of on its side and then another one that's really just sort of peeking out to give you an idea of wait, wait all comes together in a bouquet. We're gonna do something similar when we're doing our class project. Grouping both California poppies and the Icelandic poppies together in a way that we would do, the way that we would do it in a bouquet. Let's go ahead and rinse off our brushes, rinse out our water cup, and we're going to come back in and we're going to practice our stems and our buds together. 12. Iclandic Poppy Stems and Buds: It already makes sure those brushes are clean. That cup of water is cleaned because we're gonna be leaping into our greens now on you're also going to want to clear a little room on your palette. So I'm gonna take mine paper towel and just sort of create a little space here. Don't want your pinks and greens running it together. If you would rather mix them up on a completely different palette, you can do that as well. Just make sure that there is some dry space between colors if you're working on one giant palette. All right, so another reference picture for you that I wanted to show as we work with the buds. You'll see that the stems and the buds really have such, such a lovely little personality and character I loved the way that they just come over and droop down almost as though they're feeling melancholy. Little pity for themselves. But they're so sweet and I think they add so much interest to those full expressive bloom. So we're really going to draw that out and have a lot of fun with that shape. Let's begin to mix up the sap green and the Indigo. Gonna need quite a bit of it. So feel free to just take time. I always like to show at least one segment where I really take my time to just get everything where I want it to be so that you can see what it's supposed to look like. One of the comments that I received initially from students was that a lot of other teachers just skip what they would deem as basic or already learned. And although I would like I said, would consider this an intermediate class where we know strokes and water ratios and all of that. I do still like to walk people through as thoroughly as possible so you can always fast forward through these parts if they seem a little redundant to you. Alright, so here we have a really beautiful green cough syrup consistency. We can also bring out another pile here, add a little water to it for broth consistency. We're going to start with the stems. We're going to take the Tobler brush. We're just going to kind of pull through in an area where we feel like the stem would be gathered. And I wanted to stress here that this is not about exactness, this is not about getting it perfect. This is just about eluding into what might be there. So I'm gonna take my stem and I'm just going to kind of pull it down into the right and then angle it back towards the left. Sometimes I need to do it a couple of times and I actually really liked the looseness of an imperfect stem. I'm gonna do the same thing here. And looking at this flower on its side here, it tells me that the stem is coming this way, it's happening. It's connected back here behind the petal and then coming down. So I'm going to respect the integrity of that shape. And I'm just going to pull stem down right about here. And then I'm gonna do the same thing up here, looking at where this flower is positioned and where it might come out. I'm gonna pull it down right about there. You can see I have three working stems. None of them are exact. It's just the impression of where they might be laying in real life. Let's go ahead and we're going to use filbert brush to create the poppy bud head. But head. Did you agree with that? But head is definitely not the most eloquent term I've come up with while teaching a floral class. We're just going to bypass that. And also at some point, my phone to starting to shut down. We had that happen in the last class when there was an emergency alert and the phone just sort of shut off. I don't know. Technical difficulties seemed to just follow me around. So we actually have a little bit more work here than we made. Fortunately, it was just after we created these stems. I'm gonna do this several more times so you can see it. But we have a little bit of progress here that was not captured on film. No big deal. We're gonna do it again and again because it is such a fun process and I'll walk you through basically what happened here is I'm using my filbert brush in the broth consistency and I created the bud shape. I'm going to leave that one alone because I just want it to appear as though it hasn't quite opened up yet. It's still tight-knit close this one on the other hand, I did the same thing all this time. I popped in a little bit of violet into the edges and let it blend in and then also pulled out a bit of the petals so that it would seem as though it is just starting to ripen. So let's go ahead and we're gonna do that several more times and pick up your filbert brush. In the broth consistency. Let's go over to this side and we're going to plug in another. Another bud and we're going to angle it sort of coming this way. The thing about these flowers is that they have so much movement in them and really think it's worth taking a moment to incorporate that into the painting. So we're gonna start with sort of a flat line here. And then we're going to shape the poppy head. Just pulling in two strokes at the center using the flat side of the brush. I'm going to let that dry up for a moment. Do another. I'm gonna pull it down. Actually, I think will come a little bit lower. Let us do the same thing. Only this time. Let's come up a little bit. Make it a little bit bigger. Now we're going to use our brush to pull out and drop in some of the colors using your Virgina violet and burnt sepia. Let's plug in here. Let's pull out a little bit of color using the brush to just sort of flick into the wet media. Same thing we did over here that wasn't captured. Just touching the edge of that bud and letting it run into it. We're gonna do it one more time. And this time we're going to leave a little slice in the middle so that the bud really appears to be coming from the middle as though the bud is exploding. Will create the first half, and then we're going to create the second half. Let's go ahead and use a different color since we have multiple copies here. Let's use that Naples yellow. And for Xeno violet mixture. I'm gonna plug a little bit of that onto my palette. This paper stays nice and wet so I really don't have to worry so much. If you have paper that dries up quicker, you want to have this done in advance. I'm going to plug in the color right here in the middle. Just using the tip of my brush to pull out that color in case you wanted to see it one more time just because we missed a couple, I'm gonna do a few more over here. 1.5. The other half. Again plugging in that Naples yellow and violet. You always can while things are wet, go back in and add another layer of color in a higher color value. So you could use it at cough syrup consistency and getting more dramatic effect. I'm gonna go for just something really light and airy here and leave it on its own. Now let's use our number ten brush. We're going to pull out some stems. We're gonna do the same thing we did while creating the stems to our flowers. And just be mindful of where the stems might be laying. Number ten, brush in cough syrup consistency. Remember these flowers have a really, these stems have a really beautiful arch to them. So we're going to kind of try and mimic that. Start here at the top. We're just going to pull it down, run it through, give it a nice little curve here. At the end. I am going to go through here and just darken up a little bit of this area. It's still wet. Just kind of make it a little more imperfect. Do the same thing over here. Just because we don't have anything happening there, just to give it a little bit more dramatic, drama and variety. Same thing with the stem, just kind of angling it so that it's coming up and then down. This one, it clearly looks as though it's coming from either this direction or this direction and coming back through here. So we're gonna come up here and pull it through the bottom. You may need to practice this separately on a different page to get a feel for. The rhythm and the way to come up and then come down while staying on the toe of the brush. There is the possibility that things are going to get really thick and chunky as you're coming through. And so I would advise just off to the side on another piece of paper just sort of running through that motion of up and down, up and then down. It's okay if there's little gaps, you can always run over them again. The idea is to come up and down. And it can be thick and areas, but you don't want it to be thinking all of the areas. That motion will really help get a feel for how the brush glides on the paper. Same thing coming here at the bottom. And then pulling it through. Here we have a nice angle going to come, pull that through and connect it here. This one, we're gonna give a nice little curly stem. Some of them really do have such a fun little curvy line to them. So feel free to use both that structure, the up and the down, and then also more of a curvy. Can always go back and connect things. You can always start with the stem as well. If that's easier to you, then I definitely recommend it. Darken up this area here. Figure out what's gonna be most comfortable for you. For me, I like to know where the buds are before I attach the stems, but you could always start with the stems and then use your filbert brush to come in, plugin little poppy heads. That sounds much better than bud heads by the way. You can go that route as well. And then head in with your brush and finish it off. Pick up your brush loaded with color, and then come in the back way and do it like that as well. If you want to experiment with that, That's a good way to do it to just depends on what look that you like best. We have a lot happening on our page here, which actually brings me to another point. You'll see a lot of this sort of loose splatter action happening in floral artists work. It's more abstract and it's such a beautiful little effect that I thought. Why not? Let's just add a little bit. It already happened here on my page. It goes so nicely with the nature and the mood of this painting. Let's go ahead and learn how to do that together. We're gonna do that in a different video and add a little bit, excuse me, a little bit more of those loose splatters and then also fill in with a couple of leaves. 13. Creating Loose Splatters and Leaves: This is a really fun and beautiful technique. It's something that I actually use quite a bit when I began my adventures as a watercolor is I was really into super, super loose abstract florals. And although there's not much of that work posted on my Instagram or anywhere else. That's where my Foundation began. That's what I've come back to. If you followed my career at all, I was really intrigued by botanical study for awhile and learned how to use that sort of print precise technique. But my heart really is with these loose, very gestural florals and I found myself pulled back here over the years. So this is a technique that I think you'll find if you have not already familiar with it or perhaps have learned it in a different way that I'm gonna show you that you might want to use in your artwork. So the first thing you're gonna need to do is take a paper towel and wherever you do not want your splatters to appear, you're going to cover that area. So if you don't want your splatters running into your main flowers here, you would simply lay the paper towel over this area. I would say that when splattering, there's a circumference area of splatter zone of about six inches. So that's about roughly the length of this paper towel. I've had it go past that if I'm getting really wild and in the moment, but typically I can keep the area is somewhat restricted. It doesn't, doesn't venture over. The next step is going to be loading up your brush with a really large amount of water and pigment in the cough syrup consistency. So I'm going to use that versus Reno violet. And depending on how large you want your splatters, that should be, the size that you should correlate that with the size of the brush. If I want splatters that are somewhat medium to small, I'm going to use my number six brush if I wanted some gargantuan spotters say I'm working with like an 18 by 24 canvas or 24 by 30. I'm gonna use this bigger brush so that they don't appear as though they're just random dots or mistakes. I want them to I want them to look as though they are implemented into the piece organically, but also intentionally, if that makes sense, go ahead and really run your brush through this mixture. You're going to want to dip into your water. That it is more saturated than usual. You want it to be almost dripping but not dripping. So it's really finding that ratio between wet but not dripping. Then you're going to take the brush and you're going to brace the brush with the side of your hand here and you're going to gently tap it against your hands. Sometimes I just use a finger. Sometimes I use the whole the whole fist. It just depends on how it's coming out. So let's go ahead and move up here so you can see. And I'm going to aim for an area of Louis splatters already. In the area that I've used so far. You can see I have some really pretty splattering work happening here, some larger ones and then some smaller ones and then a little bit of action happening up here. Nothing going to close into my painting. Let's do the same thing over here. We'll go a little higher up. I'm not really concerned if they go into my my buds, but I didn't want to keep them out of my big florals. One more time. Taking our finger, tapping it gently. And there you have a really pretty effect that looks as though it's meant to work into the painting. Super, super beautiful. I love the look of it. You may see more of this in the future for me as I continue to really explore and create florals that are expressive and gestural. But I found that sometimes I get a little carried away. And then the whole piece is just one giant splatter pieces, which is so fun but can hinder the mood. Alright, so I'm going to rinse off my brush here. If you wanted your splatters to be a little bit looser and wetter. You could use more water and you could also use clean water if you don't want them so dark. You see I really got a gorgeous range of splatters here with largest and then medium, and then some really tiny ones up here that you have to sort of zoom in to see. It adds a lot of interest to the painting and adjust sort of makes it feel just so wild. Alright, let's go into our leaves. I'm gonna show you one little inspiration picture of the leaves so that you can see what I'm drawing from. But it's basically a larger version of what we created when we were creating our California poppies. So it's sort of piggy in nature except the leaves are just a little bit bigger, so you still have that separation leaves that are so small. Let's zoom it out a little bit. Leaves that have a lot of movement and motion in them. And they sort of aim upwards and outwards, but they're not quite as STEMI, as the California poppy was. Alright, so let's head back into our sap green and indigo mixture. You can use either your ten brush or your number six or eight brush, whatever it is that you're working with, I'm going to use my ten brush. Most of the leaf action that happens with the Icelandic poppies is down towards the bottom. I didn't see a whole lot of leaf action sprouting up at the top of the flower. So I would say take a look at what you have and really just figure out what the area needs to be filled in. And this is where you, as the artist can take liberties and not have to do things exactly the way that it's seen and shown on or in real life. I'm going to pretend as though there is a stem and some leaves coming out this way crossing over the stems that I've already painted. So I'm gonna take my brush and just begin carving out some shapes. Rinsing off a little bit. Then we'll do the same thing over here. Just using the toe of the brush to create some leaves coming up under this flower will do the same thing here. I'm gonna sort of bend this branch here to give it some movement already. Then I can fill in with those shapes. Using both the toe and the belly of the brush. Changing my pressure. Let's do a couple of leaves down here. Don't have to be attached to anything. We have a really loose structure here that is very amenable to keeping things gestural. Obviously, you can decide to keep going with your leaves or to stop right there. It's really up to you. I love this painting as it is, and don't feel like it needs to be super burdened with a lot of leaves. But I'm gonna go in one more time with broth consistency. And just add one more. Right at the top. You could add some more over here, which you could also do is on your buds begin to add a little bit of leaf. And obviously this is going to be a little bit smaller. But you can add more of that twigs, sticky feel that we had when we were doing our California poppies. Using the toe of the brush to create some really pretty greenery. There you have it. This is our practice puppy page. That looks mighty fine if you ask me. So we're gonna be doing a lot more of this in our class project. We'll be doing a grouping of the puppies together along with the California poppies to really create such a fresh, cheerful, animated bouquet. So this concludes our practice portion of the class. And please either join me as we do our class project or you can take a break and come back and do it the next day. Either way, I will see you in the next video. 14. Class Project Part 1: I've turned my paper portrait way so that we can obviously get that length, that puppies, I'm having the stem and just being able to as expressively create those really fun and curvy long lines. So if you want to do the same, that'd be great. If not, you can always do it landscape as well. You'll just have to mine that there won't be as much room for the stems. We'll begin by picking up our number six brush and loading it with the Naples yellow to cough syrup consistency. Then also take your number eight brush and mix it into the Xeno violet at broth consistency. Begin with the center of the flower. As far as composition, I really do prefer to approach my largest flowers first and work from the center out. I've shared this in other classes and just when talking with the community as well, I feel like it's a little bit easier to start in the middle and then work your way out. Then you don't run the risk of coming up against the edges of the paper and losing the flow of the piece. One of the things people comment upon is my flow in my pieces. And that's something that really has to be paid attention to and remain vigilant throughout the painting process in order to get the right bend and sway of moving pieces. We'll start here. Same way we did in our previous lesson. Just flicking the toe of the brush around. Then we'll take our other brush, dip it into the water, and then mix it back into the verse. You know, violet will begin creating the petals. Using the toe of the brush to sweep up along the edges, to drop into the middle of the flower. Just working around the flower, getting the right positioning and shape. Then we can use another brush and mix the casino violet to cough syrup consistency to drop in near the bottom here. Again, just using the toe of the brush to run up along the edges. You can continue to shape your poppy. Using the toe of the brush. Loaded with the present violet and broth consistency. You may need to go into your flower a few times to really get those dark colors you're hoping for. I'm also going to take another brush, dip into the sap green, indigo and create the middle of the center. Now, everything's still pretty nice and wet. But if you want to have this done prior to beginning of the class, the class project, that might be helpful. To remember, you can always take the brush and guide the paint along. You want to make sure you're leaving some negative space, some white to indicate that there is light and separation between the petals. Can add some detailed marks. Now if you'd like to run the brush through the petals and add some fine lines like we did before. Remember you can always use your brush to soften off and to blend. I'm going to begin again with a new puppy. Rinse off my brush a little bit. And I'm going to mix together the verse, you know, violet and Naples, yellow. To get a really nice peach color, the same color we used in our previous lesson. We'll start again using our six brush with the Naples yellow and cough syrup consistency. Let's go ahead and tuck this flower right behind this one. Careful of where you're placing your hand. You don't want to dip into your wet paint here. You can use your eight brush with just water on it. It'll have a little bit of a pink tint to it, but not much. We're going to use the water to pull out the yellow. Now I have a nice watery base and we're gonna head in with the color now. The color will fill in the areas that we've wet. Then we can use our brush to do the rest of the work, using the toe of the brush to guide the paint around. Using the toe of the brush to pull up the wet part of the media. For a few little details. Now I'm gonna head in with a darker consistency. So mixing more of the violet with the Naples yellow to get a darker consistency. Now's a good time to probably pop in that green. So grab your sap, green and indigo. We're going to let that run into the wet media here. We can guide that alone here. Using the tip of our brush to just nudge the area. 15. Class Project Part 2: Well, as you can see, there's been a little bit more progress then was captured on film. I am connected to a power source of quarters are our decided to tap out. Right, as I was painting, it never fails. There's always something never to fear. I'm gonna do the exact same poppy just facing a different direction. But I'm going to use all the same methods that I used here. And we're going to create the exact same thing right up here and continue with our floral cluster. So sorry about that. We did finish with this one. That was the very final part of that second copy, but obviously all of that never made it into the video and we're connected. My phone is charged, so it's not going to be reliable on a power source. So let's begin again. We're going to use the organic vermilion and the quinacridone, burnt scarlet. We're going to mix that to cough syrup consistency. So that's a little bit more red than it is brown, like shown here. And I'll load my number ten brush right here. Cough syrup consistency, pulling from the quinacridone, burnt scarlet. I'm going to mix up a really generous pile of that color that I have a lot to work from. We'll start with the center, using a very full Center to get just a different sort of feel, as same as this one, but different fields from the first to go ahead and take your number six brush loaded with the Naples yellow and cough syrup consistency. We're gonna do the same thing we did. We're just going to move it up here this time. I'm going to start using the toe of the brush to really flip around and get a nice, generous center here. I'm not going to close it off here. I'm gonna keep it nice and open just like we did here. To create just a different feel for this poppy. I am going to go ahead and load my number six brush with the indigo and sap green. And I'm gonna plug in the center here. I'm gonna do the same thing we did down below, which is to create some dotting marks. Then it's an open circle. Just using the tip of my brush to move around the flower. Again, just keeping things really open to create a different field here. Now I'm going to use my number eight brush. And I'm going to take just a little bit of the red hue that's here in my water. You can see I'm just going to start carving out the general shape of the poppy. Just scribbling with my brush here. Coming in to the yellow a little bit. Just taking the water here, diving into the green just to mix things up a bit. Then I'm going to take my brush loaded with the organic vermilion and quinacridone, burnt scarlet. And I'm gonna start to plug in and we're gonna watch the magic happen together. This is probably one of my favorite favorite techniques and styles. Just letting the water do most of the work. Taking the toe of the brush and just guiding it along. Then what we can always do is use that other brush to sort of help the color flow. If things are drying a little bit. Just using the toe of the brush. Not going to close it off here, but keep things nice and open. Just using a little bit of the water here and plugging in a little bit more of the dark colors. So essentially this was the same technique used here. There's a little bit more red coming out here, which we can do if we wanted to add some sort of underlying petals. Just taken just using the toe of the brush and just sort of flicking along the outside of the petal. We can take that brush, cough syrup consistency, and head in one more time if we like to darken things up. Leaving some areas a lot softer. Just to give the overall feel of the poppy some balance. We can use a little water to wet in the middle and then plugging it just a little bit more color here. And there you have it. A beautiful, beautiful giant red poppy. I am going to pause here so that we can load up our palette to add a few California poppies. And then we'll do our buds as well with some stems and leaves. And then that will wrap up our projects. So clean off your palette or grabbed the palette you were using for your California poppies, all those beautiful oranges, and we will come back in just a few minutes. 16. Class Project Part 3: Okay, So I have my palette mixed off to the side. We're gonna be using pyrrole, orange, new gamboge, and Naples yellow. I'm gonna take my filbert brush loaded with Naples yellow. Pyrrole, orange. Really soft mixture, and add inches too, a few puppies right here on this side. Take my brush that's loaded with pyrrole, orange and new gamboge and add in just a bit of a center here. Do the same thing. Beside it. Mostly using water and a little bit of the paint got coughs or consistency. It just sort of shaping the petals out as I move along with the pyrrole orange. And the Indian yellow. Can even add a little bit more using the toe of your brush here. I'm gonna leave space up here for some of our buds. That way we have plenty of room to really do some beautiful stem and leaf. Actually down here. Taking my paper towel and then just make some space on the palate, rinse off my brushes. My water still looking pretty clean. So I think it'll do the job. Not pulling too much green. Excuse me, read it to my green, so I'm gonna go ahead and start mixing up. Get that to a nice cough syrup consistency. And we'll head in with our brush to do some buds. Pulling from both colors, you can see nice cough syrup consistency. I'm going to use my filbert brush to create the outside of the poppy. But keeping in mind that I want some movement within this piece, let that dry for just a little bit. It's pretty wet. I'm gonna do the same thing down here. Using my filbert brush to just sort of move things along. Create a nice shape. Do some smaller puppies that are mostly just circles that are a little bit more narrow at the base. We'll do one on this side as well, using the side of the filbert brush. Now I'm going to take my brush and pick up a little bit of violet and Naples yellow and start plugging it in. Touching the wet media with the toe of the brush. Use the Naples yellow. Now. Do the same thing. Just sort of flicking the brush around. I'm going to darken up the puppy base here. Using the indigo and sap green cough syrup consistency. Also, while I'm here, I'm going to pick up a little bit burnt scarlet and plug it into these puppies that are still quite wet. Finish off the center here. Using the toe of the brush. Again, continuing to mix up the sap green and the indigo, going to begin to pull the steps down. Now remember, we want to use the toe of the brush, even pressure for some nicest swirly stems. Okay, if they run into your poppies a little bit, we're going to start pulling down stems where we might think they might be setting up here on the puppies. This stem, I imagined it would be coming down right here. This one would probably be coming out this way. Then we'll gather it back over here. This middle one, we're going to pull right through the middle here, leaving a little bit of room at the bottom here, just so that the stems don't run into the bottom of the page. Again, using the toe of the brush to pull that curly stem through to the end. Now that we have everything connected, Let's go ahead and start adding some beautiful greenery. We're going to use the toe of the brush to create some leaves really loose in nature. Kind of getting things bending and flowing. Just using the brush. To move around the page. I'm using light pressure, alternating using the toe of the brush, coming at a 90 degree angle and then angle, and then bending it to the side to create a thicker stroke. Picking up a little bit more paint as I move along, darkening up some areas, creating some pretty leaves here. We can continue to create more if we like, creating a little bit more movement by pulling the brush stroke up and then bringing it back down. Continuing to work around the page, filling up this space, being mindful of the edges not wanting to run up against them. Coming back into the Indigo and sap green, darkening things up areas that we want to be a little bit more of that bleed. There we have it. I'm gonna pull you out so you can see the whole thing. I hope you have enjoyed this. It really do. I know we had some minor snack foods. Hopefully it didn't catch you up too much. I feel like we covered so much material. It really is my pleasure to continue sharing different styles, different approach, a different techniques. I really hope that I've expanded just your, your insight as far as how to approach watercolors and using the techniques that we've applied today. I had so much fun teaching you and please, please don't forget to post your class projects in the forum. And also taught me on Instagram, I love seeing your classwork, wishing you a wonderful day, and I will see you next time.