Mixed Media Florals | Watercolour, Gouache, Ink & Pastels

1. Welcome!: Hi there, and welcome to this mixed media study class. I'm Holly, and I've been preparing classes for you since 2020. My background is in surface pattern design. And my favorite ongoing collaboration is with creative journey. And I also love creating ditzy and wildflower designs. So today we're doing something a wee bit different. Do you fancy joining me in this singy mixed media study? It's going to be brimming with bright sunflower yellows, mosrose pink, and spring greens. I'll be showing you how to create texture and layers whilst developing small bud, leaf, and stem details. We're going to be trying out a new rolling method with our pastels, and I just happened on this technique as I was playing around. So there's always something to learn from these studies. Techniques we'll be covering in class include choosing a very bold color palette, dropping bleach into the initial layers to create softly granulating texture, adding loose floral shapes with a mock brush, double loading color, and creating striking centers with our soft pastels. Before we launch into the class, let me just remind you that it's possible to share your project with the Skillshare community. It's a really lovely way of showcasing your work and also sharing tips and feedback. You can find it underneath the class in projects and resources, and then on the right, you'll see submit project. I look forward so much to seeing you work. So let's get started with our class. Oh 2. Materials: Let me start out by saying you don't need to have the same materials as me. So just choose your favorite sketchbook, and that can be hot pressed or cold pressed. And if you don't have ink or guash, you could use all watercolor. First of all, I have a sketchbook by my stationery, and it's hot pressed. And I know some of you use a Paul Rubin sketchbook, and I'd be perfect for this, too. Then I have a gorgeous ink made by Tom Studio. It's actually calligraphy ink, and it's called sunflower. Then I have one of my favorites seven A Moss Rose. And this is doctor PH Martins. I have a gouache in ultramarine blue, but you could choose your favorite blue in watercolor. My favorite pink, which is rose madder, that's a watercolor and green gold, which is my favorite green, and that's also a watercolor. I used washy tape just to create some nice neat edges. This is my favorite dark green. It's brush a pigment powder in olive green. Very easy to use. You just water it down into an ink. We're going to be splashing in just a little bit of bleach, and this is 40 bleach, 60% water. I'm using zero Raven by Jackson's mop brush. We use this in my rose watercolor class. You could also use a Filbert for this class or a round brush, whichever you feel most comfortable with. We have a pencil. This is 07, and it's a mechanical pencil by Faber Castell. And these are Jackson's soft pastels. I'm beginning to really love these. So have a white, a mid green, and a bright green. I'll leave a list of all of the materials in our A section. I 3. Practise | Background, Bleach, Floral & Foliage Shapes: So I've got the ultramarine blue, which is the gouache and green gold in watercolor. So let's mix up a lovely teal blue. This is such an easy mix, and it's gorgeous. Just adding a bit of water there. And this is going to be the beginning of our abstract. We're just going to drop in water. And when we add the green gold, we know that it's going to travel. Now for our water down bleach, I never, never tire of this. It's so enjoyable. And that will granulate even more. Gorgeous texture. Then we could also bring in a little bit of blotting. That in itself brings texture. This brings a little bit more complexity to the background rather than just doing one wash. Now we're going to do our trick that we did in joyful florals, where we do a line of green gold, just neat green gold, and I have the moss rose there in the well. Now, I'm taking just a little bit of the water off, but not a lot and then going to jump up and down on the base of the brush. And the tip goes into the moss rows. And then what we're doing is keeping the heel of the brush in one place, pretty much, and moving the tip of the brush around. Just practice making the shapes and practicing the brushstroke rather than feeling you have to complete the whole flower. So this is the sunflower yellow. I'm going to bring this in as well, using nice bold colors for this mixed media. Let me show you more slowly. So this is the bouncing and moving around. And this is the rolling method. I do like the rolling of the brush because you can get broken lines along the top of the petal. And I think it'll be really effective to use both of these strokes. There's the broken lines. So back to our background wash. Some of the areas are still wet, and that's what we want, really. W a little bit of merging in of the flowers, but not so it takes over the whole wash. So we've got the blotted areas which are dryer, and we've still got the areas where it's collected a little bit of water, and it's very shiny. And this kind of gives us a slightly uneven effect, which I think is lovely where it merges really well with the watery areas and more defined in the drier areas. Running out of green gold. I That's the rolling, Love that. And then we can drop in ink or watercolor or guash to the petals. I had planned for a warm and a cool pink. So we've got the moss rose, which is tending towards the cool. And then rose madder, which is a very warm pink. I'll love mixing those two pinks together. So your choice of dark green now, and I'm using brusho olive green. Just because I just don't feel I can find this color anywhere else. I just love it. But your favorite green for this could be watercolor, gouache, or ink. And then we're using the same brushstroke as with the petals. And let's move over to the other page now. So here we are just rolling the brush round, and it creates these gorgeous leaf shapes, keeping the heel pretty much in the same position. You get these lovely dry brushing effects, as well. So how about just pressing into the page and printing with our brush? That's such an easy leaf shape to make. No movement necessary just using the shape of the brush. 4. Practise | Pencil, Teal Leaves & Pastel Stems: Let's pick up our pencil now, and I'm using my mechanical faber Castel pencil. And then what we're doing is moving the paint. So actually, the pencil on its own merit, isn't really showing up. And that's what we want. I'm looking for a device to move the paint around and create these lovely, pleasing lines. But we can also incorporate the pencil itself. So here you can see the pencil and here it's just made a furrow into the paint. Just mixing up some more ultramarine with the green gold. I put too much green in there, so I'm going back for some more blue. I just wanted it on the bluey side of teal. Then let's just practice merging these colors together. And again, just practicing our brush strokes. And we might as well just keep going. We've got lots of blank page here. And that's a kind of a print and slight twist to the brush, which brings up this lovely textural surface. And this is a very simple brush stroke. You probably use this many times. It's kind of a more conventional use of brush where you would put the tip of the brush down and then bring it towards you. This is my favorite, however, and this is the side stroke. We're actually using the broad side of the brush and then coming up to a tip. So the whole brush is in contact with the page, moving it to the left and slowly bringing it up to the tip. And there it is to the right. I'll have a practice with this because you might find it easier to create those marks moving away or toward you. We'll be creating a second layer in our project. So we're going for a deeper color, less water. I'm going back to our twisty petal shapes. And you can get some beautiful edges on your petals with this technique. I've just got a bit of scrap paper, and this is actually Fabriano students hot press paper. Just doing a wash there, but I think it needs to be a deeper color. So I'm going to bring in my brusho pigment powder in olive green. So I'm just soaking up that paint, and let's do a quick wash. So any dark green. Whilst it's still wet, what we're going to do is roll our pastel into the paint. This works also when it's dry. And isn't this a lovely way to do branches? I just did it by accident and then discovered how much I loved it. And towards the end of our class, we might bring in some of these white flowers or buds. So I'm pressing quite firmly into the page and just rolling it in a circular or oval movement to create these gorgeous white blooms. And the other thing, of course, you can do is do some little outlines of leaves. You could also use these stems to run up to your main flower motifs. So when you're ready and you've had a good practice, let's move on to our project. 5. Class Project: Part 1 | Creating Our Loose Watercolour/Gouache Background: You certainly don't have to, but I'm going to tape off my sketchbook. This is low tech washy tape. I mean, it doesn't advertise as that, but I just know it is because the paper that I'm using in this my stationary sketchbook is quite soft and it often peels away when I go to remove the tape. I have details of this washy tape, so I'll leave those. Just taking off the extra little bits. So I'm starting off with green gold, and you could choose any bright green or you could add yellow to a darker green or a blue. That's French ultramarine. And then I'm using a kind of a sunflower ink here, and it's actually Tom's studio. And as I will have mentioned, that's a calligraphy ink, but I just love it so vibrant. And some of the sevena moss rose. I wanted to bring in a different pink, as well. So I have some rose madder here. And that's wood colour. So let's start off by splashing in some water and just creating some shapes. Just moving that water around. That washy tape is not going to lie, so I'm just going to get a different one. It won't match, but it'll do the job, hopefully. I got these in a huge set of different sizes as well. So sorted. Very handy. So, whilst that's still very wet, I just want to mix a lovely teal, and this is the French ultramarine and green gold. And it's a gorgeous color. I just want it a little bit more bluey. Can you see what I mean there? So pretty. And we're just going to drop that in, watering it down just a little bit. And again, not thinking of any shapes here, just dropping in the paint, and that's it in various places. Just rolling my brush. And now a little bit of green gold. Now, what we know from past classes is that green gold travels. It's quite bossy and it barges in to any neighboring color. But I'm using that as an advantage because I want the colors to mix quite well. It creates a very interesting effect. And then just some pure water pulling those shapes out a little bit more. Now we're going to drop in some water down bleach. And this has its own explosive effect, as well. And then blotting with the clean tissue. Just gets us started, really, so that we're not working on a completely blank canvas as it were. I 6. Class Project: Part 2 | Adding Floral & Foliage Layers: So what I'm doing now is I'm going to create a line of the green gold. And this is a technique that we used in joyful florals. We're going to bounce up and down on the neat green. And I really should have added some water to that rose madder before I did this, but it's created a nice kind of orange color, which I love. And then we're just rolling and scrunching our brush around. So let me just now pull that out properly. I love rose madder. And then jumping up and down, and it's just on the base of the brush and the tip into your colour. I just going over those bits a little bit. It creates a lovely effect, and it means that it's much more organic looking than if we were trying to paint in the centers. It's a beautiful technique, and I think it's one that you might continue to use. I certainly will. Not too much paint on that one. I wanted a little bit of texture. Where it's running too much, you can just mop up a little bit with your tissue. Adding neat paint on the tip of the brush. Bouncing up and down, back into the rose madder. And then that movement that we practiced. A good kind of roll around. Finally, I just want to drop in some bits of color into the top areas of our flowers. And we want all of those luscious colors to merge in with each other. I particularly love on the right page, the middle bottom where the French Automrene and almost like a blush color from the rose madder are merging. So now shall we put in some leaves? I am going to get out my favorite green, which is actually pigment powder. That's brusco. I'll leave details about brusco if you're not familiar with it, but it's just a pigment powder and you mix it down, and it tends to mix into an inky consistency. It's a very deep color. So I'm going to go in carefully. I don't want to, uh, take over the page or this color. So I've added enough water, I think, for it not to be too invasive. Now we're just dragging our brush, doing a side sweep. And you can see I'm not really thinking of a particular leaf shape. I'm just dropping in paint, rolling it a little bit and not overdoing it at this stage because we are building up layers. It's very easy to overpaint with watercolor and inks. So I've picked up my mechanical pencil, and I'm just pulling out some of that paint. What I like about pencil is you can use it to move the paint, but it also obviously acts as the pencil, so we get varied marks there. I love this technique we get uneven lines. And the results can be unpredictable, which is, I think, great. These are slightly of a lighter value than the left page, so I'm just going in dropping a bit more of the olive green. A little bit more of that teal blue that we mixed, allowing that to merge in in places. This is very much an abstract painting, so we're not too worried about the formation of the leaves or flowers. So I'm just going to dab in little areas here, lift some of the paint. 7. Class Project: Part 3 | Sunflower Yellow & Moss Rose Flowers: With this layer, we're using slightly less water in our mix. So we've gone from very watery and now a little bit more pigment to water. I'm creating another line of the green gold, bobbing up and down again on the green gold, just on the base of the brush. And then I'm going to go into that gorgeous sunflower yellow, which is the Tom's ink. Ah, gorgeous. Such a lovely and easy technique for gorgeous watercolor and ink flowers. So just to show you, you can almost see the imprint of it on the palette before you put it down. Lana, just rolling the brush around. I love this pink teal and sunflower yellow together. At the moment, they can look a little bit disparate, but once we carry on, everything will merge so well together. And just adding some they're coming into the page. You can see how the bleach has worked now. It's allowed the teal color to granulate in places. Adding some more green up and down on the base, and this time using that luscious moss rose. It is a really happy mix of colors. And remember when you're placing them just to push down right into the heel of the brush, and then we pick up the green. A bit more blotting. And you can see it all now coming together and all the colors kind of supporting each other. I 8. Class Project: Part 4 | Soft Pastel Details: Having that blue background also creates depth because blue recedes and warm colors move forward. Now, I haven't really used pastels a lot, so this is a learning curve for me. But I'm just going to put some centers into these flowers. Now, the paint is still wet, but I quite like the effect of the scribbles in the wet paint. Quite wet there, so it doesn't always take up if it's very wet, but I'm really loving this pastel for centers. And this is a light green. And again, I'll leave details in the about section. But these are Jackson's soft pastels. Bringing in a slightly darker green now and just going round where I've placed that pale green. Still a scribbly movement. And I thought I might just add some pastel to a few of the leaves or create some new ones. So, I love that. This I've never done that movement before. I love it. So what I'm doing is just rolling the pastel and allowing it to kind of just move the way it wants to. So I'm not directing its movements. And that is so effective. I'm just going to add some little leaves off the stem. But that's a real breakthrough for me because I love it as stems. You're going to be seeing that a lot in my artwork, I think, in the future. I've got to do more. Just adding some leaves there. And then I'm to roll here. Adore adore this move. How neat is that, and how much like a stem, a branch does that look? Love, love, love. I just want to do this all over the place now. I'm having to be restrained. And I particularly like when it's over a color underneath, much more effective than just on the white. So now just going to scribble some leaves over that mid green. And maybe a few more marks in the centers of the flowers. Who knew pastels were so much fun? I didn't know. We're total convert now. I'm just creating some little marks on some of the leaves here, as well. Oh, this is just right. I'm so happy right now. I purposely started out on this class with not much planned in my head. And I really feel it's paying off because sometimes when we just launch into something in a more intuitive way, we do kind of break boundaries and discover things. And to me, that's the most exciting part of making art. So I have white. I bought this as a little set of my own. I don't think it was a three pastel set. I just chose those colors. And now putting in some little highlights of white in the center. It's so nice, just for little highlights, but also for sepals and dmons. I'm persevering there, 'cause it's still quite wet, but I love the white over that dark, kind of pinky magenta. So another flower center there. I still doing scribbly movements there. That suddenly just become something else with the pastels added. And oh, love it. Love it. And what I'm doing is just pressing into the page now, and it creates these delicate petal shapes. So more petal shapes. That's still a scribble, but I am placing more weight on the pastel really pushing down into the page. So I'm just going to add some to this little branch here. Try not to do too many. I do love it over the darker colors. That's so effective. And I'm doing a mixture of the two there rolling and pressing quite hard into the page. And I can imagine those making gorgeous daisies. It's definitely something I'll use again. So where I've got little white spaces or light spaces, I want to just go in and add a few more stems. And some more florals in the white. They each have a little character of their own, these two pages. A little bit more of that mid green and a couple more flowers. I can't wait to try this with some daisies. So now just slowing down, having a look, seeing where I want to add things. I think some smaller leaf shapes would be nice in areas. Very organic shapes. Not really sure how they're going to turn out. I just want to fill in that little white space there. Turn it upside down. Always a good technique for seeing things from a different perspective. I was going to add some more stems going over to tie those pages up a wee bit. I'm not keen on that white space in the center, so I'm just going to add a little bit more pink. Have a good old look at it. And if there's anything poking out that you'd like to change, now's the time? Last minute finishing touches. A little bit more white. And I think that's it. I'm just going to take a photograph of it now, as I've suggested with other classes, see it through your phones image, and that will give you a good idea of what else you'd like to do. 9. Class Project: Part 5 | Little Florets & Final Reveal: As the last detail, I thought I might add some of the sunflower yellow. I'm just using the tip of the mop brush and just dotting in some extra color. And going over the white pastel in places. Now, let's reveal our work by removing the washi tape. It's done quite well, actually, to maintain crisp edges, considering it's from an inexpensive set. And the final reveal. Lovely. And there we have our completed mixed media study. 10. Thank You!: Well, we've reached the end of the class, and we've gone through quite a few techniques today, including our bold color choice, using bleach to create a lovely texture in our background layer, creating loose florals with ink, gouache, and what colour. And we've also continued to practice the double load method where we have one paint at the base of the brush and a tip in a different color. We've also added lots of pastel details. We've created centers, leaves, and discovered a whole new technique together where we roll the pastel across the page, and it creates these gorgeous stems. So thanks again so much for joining me. I'll see you over in discussions or on Instagram. Take care. Bye bye for now.