Transcripts
1. Welcome to Botanical Folk Art: Welcome to a unique
class where we merge modern botanical themes with traditional folk art techniques, using supplies that you
already have at home. Throughout this class,
we will delve into concept design,
symmetrical sketching, and the vibrant world
of guash and or watercolor to create eye
catching modern folk art. Together, we will
explore concepts like exaggerated proportions using negative space within
imaginary puzzles, and the art of selecting minimal color palettes
for maximum impact. By the end of this course,
you will master skills to craft stunning modern
folk art illustrations, featuring flowers, leaves,
and whimsical patterns. A class projects are
going to guide you through painting a
standout statement flower, constructing a
detailed taxonomy, showcasing flowers of
various shapes and features, and creating a full page
pattern spread that ties everything together in
a cohesive folk art style. Whether you're drawn to
enchanting folk art, eager to experiment with
limited color palettes, or striving for greater
design cohesiveness, this class is perfect for you. So join me as we jump in.
2. Supplies: The supplies in this class are pretty straightforward.
You need your paper. If you plan on doing
watercolor and gouache, which is what this
class focuses on, you will want paper that
will support water media. I'm using a cold press, 140 pound paper by legion, and this is just an
easy go to paper. I love the size of the
seven by ten block. Any watercolor
paper will do just ensure that it is thick
enough 140 pound or higher that will support that water media so it
doesn't start warping. I'm also going to
be using a number six and a number
two round brush. If you don't have round brushes or you don't have these
sizes, that's okay. The whole point here is just
to get your paint on paper. There's not any
special techniques that you're going to need to know with round
brushes for this class. Watercolor, I'm using
Daniel Smith Watercolor, and I'm using Windsor
and Newton Gach. Don't worry too much
about the brand. We're just again
getting paint on paper. I do recommend Gach over watercolor unless your
watercolor is super pigmented, and that's going to get you
that nice vibrant pigment. You'll also need a pencil. For when you create your guides, you will need an eraser to erase the guides when you're finished, and then a ruler to make sure that your guide
is nice and straight. If you have something
cylinder laying around, once we get to that point, you will probably
pull something out. This is the size that
I'm using for my guide on a eight by ten
ish piece of paper. And this is just a candle. That is all that
you're going to need. Let's jump in and start
creating all the fun.
3. Sourcing Inspiration: Color, Subject, Elements: I always recommend sourcing inspiration. You can do this all around you, but one of the easiest ways to do this is through Pinterest. Disclaimer, don't get lost on Pinterest for hours, and hours, and hours pinning, it is eye candy, it is like the ultimate squirrel effect because you think you're on to something and then all of a sudden, you see something else and then it's just this tunnel of pinning and pinning. Don't do that. But what I do recommend doing is like, if you do have free time and you're not ready to just jump into a project and you just want to find some inspiration, you can go on to Pinterest and create Boards for yourself. The most obvious to create as you're looking for folk art is to create one for folk art. I have a Board for folk art here. You can see that it's got a lot of different color palettes throughout each of these illustrations. You have your red, your bright vibrant colors, you've got these yellow tones, more orange tones, bright pinks, and teals, but then you have some more concentrated pallets like, here you have red, white, and black. Here, you've got reds and neutrals. Then you've got reds and blues in a few of these looks like I really liked this one pinning it targets. But then you have these types of pieces that are super, super vibrant and then even some isolations with only a single color like this red one or this blue or just plain black. These are things to think about and this might seem overwhelming, but you can also see so, not only are we looking at color, but we're also looking at subject. Subject, we've got animals, we've got flowers, we've got buildings. There are different types of subjects. You have insects, motifs, patterns. There are many different things that you can focus on. This doesn't have to be a pattern, it doesn't have to be perfectly balanced on both sides like this one. It can be something that's more of an illustration and then you fill in that empty space with different elements like leaves and flowers. For example, down here, you've got elements that are just basically puzzled piecing together. Which brings me to the next part I want to show you. This is something that I also recommend creating a Board for, especially, when you're going into folk art, is looking at embroidery and lace. I'm going to open up a board that I have. I don't have a bunch of pins on here, but I do have several that have inspired some of my folk art creations. It's a good study because especially in this vintage lace, you can see, some elements in here where it's flowing in one direction and then branching off of that, you've got intricate leaves, you've got these tiny flowers that are complementing these other tiny flowers and then you've got some detail in the larger flowers. Then you can see that it's all cohesive and goes together really beautifully. Then the thing I love about Pinterest is that it's pulling up all of these other suggestions and things that I can now use as reference and then pin if I like those, but laces definitely a great subject to study and to use as reference. Then moving over into color once more, I have Boards that are dedicated to specific colors. For instance, I have a red Board. This red Board is focusing on primarily just the red color, but then also shows the balance and what can be complimentary to the red. We've got red and blue, those are great complimentary colors, red and green, we've got black, red, and white again, that's a really popular color combination, especially in folk art. You see that throughout. Neutrals with red, white, and black. This one's really interesting and I am a big fan of this color palette. We've got red, and then a light pink and a very vivid seafoam green. That's a really pretty color combination. Then this one is interesting, it's got some purple, and, orange, and green, and red. But primarily, you'll see my focus here was to just peruse red and see what really goes along with that and what complements it, and then stem some idea from there. I've also got a Board that focuses on black and white, which is also really fine if you want to just maintain neutrals. Black and white is always great with a purple color like this here at the very bottom as a suggestion with that red. These are things to keep in mind. Let's just say that one of your favorite color is the color pink, so I can type in pink art and then I stop they comes up here. Already I see that I really like this pattern because you've got some reds in there, you've got some peaches in there. I can create a Board that says pink and then I'm going to just call it pink and that's it. I'm creating that and then I'm going to scan down. This might be a good example because you see that it's pink and it's also one of those entangle types of illustrations, but you can use that as reference and inspiration. This is a really interesting image. I really love it. Yeah, this is a really good example of a way that you can use pink. But then, let's also look at balance. This one right here, you got black, and white, and pink whereas before I was talking red and same thing right here, black, white, and pink. Those are good things to save. That's what I'm looking for, as far as imagery. Here in this one, although this is a real image and not art and more so looking for color palette and what is complimentary to the main color I'm looking for. I've got pink and I've got blue in this one. That's a really good reference to use because think about how these images make you feel when you look at them. Over here, it makes me think of a clean, playful stationary, whereas over here, I feel vibrant and tropical, but still soft and playful. I'm going to scroll down, and then I've got some additional colors to look at. If you add orange into your pinks and then you add blues versus if you are going to keep some soft white and pink, or here's this great teal with pink, so you should save that. Even though this is primarily teal, it goes great on a pink Board because then I can see those colors. I think that I could keep talking about this all day long, but if nothing else, it'll plant some ideas and get your mind going in the direction of trying to really figure out exactly what color palette you want to use. You can also create Boards that study animals. This is a little bit of a stretch like, here you can see it's primarily a folk art inspiration of the animal, but you can also look at folk art and then an animal of your choice. Fork art llama, let's say. You can see that there are different types here. You might run into some physical objects that you want to save as inspiration. You might come into illustration and inspiration. It may even be an actual llama. Those would probably be a little bit better for keeping your mind really open as you look through your inspiration. What I want you guys to do is take 10 minutes, head over to Pinterest, and create a Board primarily focusing on a color scheme. This can be red, it can be maybe, if you want to do two, so it can be pink and teal, or it could just be pink or it could be blue. Pick a color that you love and go through and pin about 10-15 different color balances to that Board. If you want to peruse my Board, I have connected the link under the Project tab for your reference and then you can look at this lace board that I put up here or my folk art board, which might be a good starting point. But what I want you to do right now is really focused on color because that is going to be a primary focus in this class. Take about 10 minutes to do that, and I will see you in the next lesson.
4. Create a Flower Guide: When you go to create your first illustration, let's just jump into a flower, you're going to want a guide. It's probably the only time if you've watched any of my videos, you know that I am so not into guides, but when you're doing folk art, especially floral folk art, you're going to want a guide. This will maintain the symmetry of that balance that we see in folk art. So what I want to use to do this is I can freehand a circle, but if you want to make sure that your circle is nice and clean, I just grab something cylinder. So I have a candle that I'm going to use and I am going to place this. I use the guide primarily for the petals of a flower. So I want it slightly higher than the center of the page and then I can draw additional guides around my stem if I want to add them for leaves or something like that. So I'm just going to set my candle down and then draw a quick circle around that, trace it with that. If anyone's going to mess up a guide with tracing it, it would be me. But you get the idea, you can probably trace a circle better than that. What I wan to do is put a line down the center of that and then a line horizontally as well. So vertically, I'm using a ruler. If I mess up a straight line with a ruler, then I've got other problems. I'm just going to mark the center so I know where to set my ruler and then I draw a line that it comes outside of the circle toward the top and then all the way down, it's going to come out down longer than the top because that's where our stem is going to be, and then I'm going to do the same thing in the center. It's going to come off a little bit because I don't know what I'm going to put there yet. So I might want to use that as a guide for length. So now I can start adding my elements now that I have this main guide. You can also go in if you want, let's say you're going to do some leaves, you can put in additional guides. Let's say you want it perfectly vertical, I can go to this area right here and then line that up with the edge here and do a line and then do the same thing on the other side, do a circle on that, circle on that. That will make sure those leaves are lined up. Actually, let's just do it. I'm just eyeballing this. So line these up and I can do a guide here, and then a guide right here, and then I can go on and do circles, maybe in the center of that if that's where I want the widest part of my leaf or I can do it down below or up higher depending on where I want to put that. This will require another cylinder objects. So what do I have lying around? Luckily a lot because this was an arm's reach. So this is actually just some ink. I am going to set that in the center, maybe a little further in the center and then do my horrible tracing job. This is probably a little larger than I would have liked. A quarter would have probably been more ideal, but this will do the trick. These circles are looking better. Practice makes progress. Okay. You're going to want your eraser because as you work on your guide, you may be creating some shapes and what not, and you want to get rid of some of your guide at that point. You do want to get rid of your guide before you start applying color later. So we'll get into that then. But yeah, definitely have an eraser on hand. But now we can just start drawing so we can pick up in the next lesson.
5. Sketch Your Symmetrical Flower: I always tell you guys not to focus on perfection, but this is where I'm going to contradict that. We do want these to be symmetric. If I'm doing a shape that comes out like this and then inward, I'm going to want that area where it starts to come inward to be at the same height, to be the same width outward, and then anything that comes up here, the same. Let's say I'm going to do something that comes up and then straight across, I'm going to want that to be the same width. I don't have to go on my circle, I can come down here and I can lengthen it to right here, and then maybe to here. I'm going to do the exact same thing on the other side. If you know that, adding these little guides might be helpful, otherwise, you can freehand it. But that's the idea to create that symmetry. Don't get too specific, don't take out a ruler and start measuring centimeters. That's unnecessary and it will take away the hand-drawn aspect to your illustration. Because we're not going digital, we are just doing this enough to where we really get the feel of that really fun modern folk art. I want to first show you some examples of what I'm talking about with shape. This is a taxonomy of them that I have done little flowers. This was that first shape I was referring to. You can also do something that comes up and out. This is that second version I was referencing. There's lots of different shapes that you can play with, and these were all penciled in first before I added color. Then, I've also got stuff like this, where it's more leaf focus, you don't really have that bowl in the middle where my petals looks at and things like that. These are just some options for a shape, that you can reference and then go from there. But mostly, the best way that I have found that I can explore my illustrations is to just create this guide and then see where it takes me, and then it blossoms from there. Get creative with this, you guys. You don't have to follow along with me, you can if you want to, if that helps you. But mostly I want to see you guys using this as more of a base and coming off of it, coming inward, coming into it, and then branching outside of it, and then mimicking the same on the other side. I think you get the point, I will just jump right in. I'm going to create a shape that is rounded, primarily through the whole thing, but then depths inward and comes back out for a little lip. It's like a cartoony character flower. This is going to be weird, because as you draw, your left or your right hand may not work the same as the other, so that's something to keep in mind. Don't think that these have to be perfect right off, you're just sketching it out right now. I'm going to come in, see how I'm just a little bit under, and then right about here, I'm going to do a curve, outward and up. I'm going to do the same thing on the other side, that's going to be trickier for me, because my hand motion doesn't do the same thing on that side. I'm going to draw a couple of guides, just so I know that I am about that far off. Then I'm following this up, coming in, and then right about here is when I do that little dip, inward and then back outwards. See how that's not lining up, so I'm going to come in and make some adjustments, until I feel like it looks smoother. That looks good to me. Now I'm going to get rid of. I don't have to do this every single step, but I am choosing to do it right here, so it doesn't confuse me with my base shape, because it is so similar to the circle. I've got that in. Now I'm going to round this out, and then I want to create a little bit of a dip at the top, inward like this. I don't have any petals coming off of this. It's not one of those ones that reaches really, really high. But what I can do, is from the sides of it, I can branch out and have petals coming outward. I can focus on more of some playful stamen coming from the top. You'll also probably notice that my line is not dead center. I'm not worried about that, because overall, the image to me looks symmetric, for the most part. I'm going to do that. I'm going to add some stamens, [inaudible] both are correct. It's true. Look it up. These are not going to be perfectly even. This is where I'm getting a little bit more playful and then I can create shapes coming off of this. I like to do circles. I'm a big fan of doing these little circles in my flora illustrations. The more circles, the better, I say. You can do something that is more asymmetric like this or you can make them all perfectly even. But this is one of those things that will break up the perfection overall. I might throw one more right about there. Then, from here, I can start to add shapes or even small leaves, and we're not on the inside of this bulb. The thing to keep in mind is, if we were to make this 3D, it would be a ball. It would be curved toward us, so you would know that the curve is like slight and then it gets more curved and more curved as you go outward. I'm getting rid of that, because I'm not incorporating that, but it is good to know depending on why you're adding. If you're adding stripes and lines and things like that, that might be something you want to incorporate. You might want those natural curves. Or you can do a flat image, and have it be straight up and down. It's just going to change the vibe of the overall piece that you create. That's up to you. I just wanted to point that out, so it's something that you think about. For me, I'm going to use this guide here as a base for like a half moon. I'm going to come from bottom, and very slight, I've created a line to separate the bottom from the center. Then, I can come in here and add additional lines. I just want to add these little dashes toward the bottom. You can add dots, you can add a little teardrops. That is all creative choices that you can make. I went too far down there. Then you can add another half moon, you can add some teardrops. This is where I want to add some teardrops. I'm using this guide right here, so I can come around on each side, see how I've made that symmetric, according to that middle line. Don't judge me if it's not symmetric and it's actually symmetrical. No, it's symmetric. I can spell real well, but I can't [inaudible] words. I'm going to do another teardrop right here. Then I'm going to reach it to the top here, and then just make sure that each side is balanced. This one's smaller than the middle, but notice I'm still using that guide. Same thing over here. Then making that pretty even. Now, once those are done, I can do another version of that on the inside, just for some added detail. I could leave it blank. Then, I can also add additional circles on the insides of those. These are just options, the way you can continue to enhance and enhance. You might want to extend some additional detail from inside here. You can do that by doing little line work like this, and then balance that on each side. So this is dipping below. You want to make sure that those are even, to the best that you can make them even. Then I can go in and add, let's say I might want to do a more of a definition here, kind of like a lip if you will, and then I can go in and add those little lines the same as I did below, and then you might want to add dots or circles toward the outside. You might want to add something in here. For example, you can do. These are pretty light, so you might not be able to see them, but they're just like little half circles. The whole way along the edge of the bottom, and then I'll do a little dots, or little circles in between the gaps of each of those. You can see that I am just playing with shapes and patterns, making sure that they're balanced on each side, and I'm just building as I go. From here, I am going to move on to my leaves, and this is where the same thing, you're using the center as your guide for each side. If my leaf is coming off right here, I want to make sure that it matches the other way, so I have the same distance on each side. It's going to loop around and then I'm going to have this stretch out quite a bit, and then I'm going to try to do the same thing on the other side. So, you can piece this out. I have my base into my circle, so I can pay attention. That actually worked out pretty well for me, and then this one. Yes, that works, and then I'll loop around here and come into a point. It's a little bit longer, so I want to decrease that and then maybe dip in a little bit sooner. Know these aren't perfect, but this is going to work for me and I'm happy with this overall shape. Now I'm going to get rid of that interior circle because I don't need that guide anymore, but I do want to keep the center because I want to use that. The first thing I want to do with it is actually come off of it. So I'm going to start at the bottom and then curve off and then back in again. So you see where I'm curving off and back in, but what that's doing is creating a little bit of movement in my leaves, so it's not completely flat, not the right or the wrong answer just based off of my own personal preference. I see that I am starting to come off at the base of that circle that I totally erased and probably I could have used, but if you erase lightly you're still going to see that stuff. So, you probably want to come a little bit in more because I'm not in the center but overall that looks okay. So now I can erase the middle part and you can see that there's a little bit of movement in my leaf, and now I can create some shapes inside of there if I want to or i can leave them alone. I actually want to add more circles. I'm going to make some pretty large ones in the center towards the bottom, and then shape wise, I'm going to have to bring this up a bit, so that it matches on each side, maybe bring this down slightly, so it makes sense, and then I'm going to do a smaller one on the top, smaller one on the bottom, and then same thing over here. Now I'm going to do very small circles, the entire width or the entire length of my center line dividing the leaf. You somehow have to be perfect because remember that we are going over with color and this is just a guide for us to know where we're putting things, and you could even go in, let's say you like the half-moon, you could go in with your half-moon right here, and then get rid of the center line just underneath that. It just creates a little more interest. So get creative. Basically, what I'm saying to you is to get creative, and then with your stem, I like to curve my stems. I think it's a really fun element. So you can come straight down, and then just curve off to one side. This can be as thick or as thin as you want it to be, and you can have little branches coming off that if you want to or leave it alone. One of the things that I think is really fun to do, is to come at the base of leaves on the stem, and then have some of these little imperfect ball shooting off. I think if you have seen any of my other classes, you probably know how much I love these random balls, in botanical anything. In botanical anything, I love them, and then I'll do one more, and these are not going to be perfect. These are not going to be centered, and that is by choice. So I'm going to have one right here. It just adds a little bit of interest. Actually, I'm not going to put it there, I'm going to put it here and longer. Probably right here. Yeah. Something to get rid of out of that other line. So once that's done, this might seem a little bit strange. What I'm going to tell you to do now, but you want to make sure you can still see everything, but you want to lighten up these lines significantly because when we go into add color, I'm going to be using watercolor and quash, but some of these colors are really light, and so you're not going to want that pencil to be showing through. As far as the guides go, I want to completely get rid of those. If it can't get everything, it's not the end of the world, but, what I also want to do is lighten up everything else. What I usually do is take the side of my eraser and just lightly drag and see what it's doing as I can still see everything that I drew is just lightening it up a lot, so that it's going to make it easier for me to not have to worry about pencil lines after I add color. So just light until you feel like you can still see it, but it's not going to be obtrusive. Then once that is done we can start with color. So I'll meet you in the next video. We're going to talk color palette because this is huge to folk art, and then we will dive in.
6. Choose a Unique Color Palette: One of the things that I love about folk art so much is that you can go as loud and vibrant with colors you want or you can go straight to black and white. As you can see here, I was experimenting with some color options and groupings, and then opted to do this color palette for both of these pieces. I tried the red and I was like, okay, this looks pretty good, but then I added green last minute. It was this, but then I was like, wait, what does the green look like? I got rid of the red and then it became this totally different palette. Here's another experiment that I had and I wanted to see how some of these colors look together. I started off here and then I really wanted to play with some red. So I added in the red and ended up getting rid of the first two that I laid down completely. Playing with swatches of color and putting them together and see what their color harmonies look like, will create a really cool finish to your work, especially in this type of work. We are going to experiment with some colors here and color combinations, and see what those look like together. I'm going to mix here watercolor in glass. I'm going to be just dabbling and all of it. It's Daniel Smith watercolors, so very pigmented. They complement each other, the glautian watercolor very well. Then I have my jar of water, I've got a paint brush. This is a number six, these are my paint brushes by the pigeon letters. I'm going to grab a spare piece of paper, and I'm going to play with some color options. Yes, the rainbow is really fun and you can add every color under the sun if you want to. But let's say you wanted to focus on something that was a little bit more of a primary color grouping. You can choose to accent with greens or like dark moody greens, you could do something with like reds and blacks, you could do something that's complimentary like oranges and blues. Let me show you, let's do a couple of these real quick together because I want to show you what this is going to look like. Also, if you have a spray bottle lying around, it can look like anything, splitsing your paints before you use them, just little pro tip. It really makes a world of difference because then you don't have to sit there working at them to get them finally ready to use. I'm grabbing this orange, and then I'm going to lay that down and then rinse my brush off and then grab a blue to see what these look like together. Orange and blue are awesome as complimentary colors. But let's say, you like the idea, you don't love that blue. Grab a different shade of blue. This is where we start setting them next to each other and see how we like it. You might like that option better, you might like this option better. All you have to do is cover up the other one and see how that complements. From there, you can add an additional color, you can add something like a black or a brown. I have a brown that might look really cool, but that balance. Then rather than being super bright summer colors, it then grounds that a little bit. That might be a fine of pallet to play with and add some additional colors. Another example would be something that has pink and then coming in with a pinky cream color, and then offsetting that with a really warm plum brown. It's like the same ideal grounding effect, but it's doing it in the same color family. When you think about what might be more complimentary to this color families, since these are all very cool, pinky tones, it might be really fun to add something in that doesn't make any sense with this at all. Like if you have a sap green, see how that just totally brightens it up and it makes it more floral, a little more friendly, a little less moody. Whereas if you could get the opposite effect by going in and adding a real dark olive color. If covering that up, you see how that completely changes that whole vibe. Another thing to experiment with. I'd like to set a few primary colors down and then add like a random and see how that balances. Let's do one more. Let's do something real bright. Like let's do a yellow, and then we can add that slash of green because I really like that color. Then you can offset that by something that doesn't necessarily make sense or actually, you can even neutralize it with more of just a beige or more of a retro mustard color. But then once you have these color groups sitting here, you might notice, hey, I really like this mustard color with this hot pink color. That doesn't really make sense. That balance is really unique, so that might be a nice, harmonious color balance in your world. Basically play around, figure out the color palette that you want to go with, run with it. There doesn't have to be a rhyme or reason, but if there is, it just adds a little more interest.
7. Paint Your Flower: Playing around, I opted for that cool pink tone color group and then I added that mu-sturdy color in there as well. I'm really excited about this. This is not a color combination I've done before. It was one of the reasons I love sloshing because it gives you opens your eyes a little bit more. Now I'm just going to think about where I want to place these colors. Because we're working inside of these shapes, you might find that you like to work small to large. You might want to fill this area first and go back in with details. I typically like to do the smaller areas and then if I come outside the lines or something, I'm able to really form the shape well with my outer line. I want to do is take my colors and then see where it is that I'm going to want to put each color. I know that I don't want this to be primarily pink. Pink is more of an accent color to me, I don't love pink and it's just personal preference again, in my work it's not my favorite. That's going to be more of a pop color. Whereas I think one of these might be really pretty as my main color. I'll probably choose [inaudible]. I'm going to go with this cool cream color as the main part. Then I can go in and emphasize the rest with other pops-up colors. Then for my leaves, there's a large area there, so I can figure that out now. I'll probably do the mustard color for my leaves. That way I have those two taken care of and then the rest can balance so I can put some of the mustard into the top part, some of the cream into the lower part, and then the pink and then the dark plum color can be elsewhere. Then you might find that you have some areas that may need a fifth color, which is totally fine to, fifth or a sixth. If you have that primary family that you're working with and that's all you need. Number 6 paintbrush is good for what we're doing. If you find that you have super tiny details and you don't want to mess them up, you can always grab a smaller size like a number 2. I'm going to use both of these and then I'm going to start with my number two because I want to get nice and small here. I know this is going to be a light cream. Then in here, I might do that pink and the plum, or I could do the mustard to tie in the leaves with the pink or the plum. Figuring that out ahead of time, if I have cream and then I have, I want to make a balance. I think that it would be nice to do the mustard on the inside here to tie in the leaves, the plum, and then the main color. I'm only walking you through this process so you can see how that experimentation with color and planning and what not works. Because I'm doing that, I'm using a lighter color on the inside and then these dots, so I'm going to lift the dots even more. I know where they go and I'm just going to apply them right away. I'm going to grab mustard color and come in here and start painting it. You'll probably find that painting inside of these shapes is very calming and therapeutic. Surprisingly, which also is kind of the opposite of what I always say, is I always like to say that letting the imperfection, or letting go of perfection and embracing imperfections is one of the funnest parts and it is okay. But some of that about folk art, it's like you're playing with shapes. You're not really forming. You're just playing. I think that is so fun. Then I'm going to go in and I've got my dots in here, I'm going to grab the color on there. What you don't want to do is layer color too early. I want to let this completely dry before I add my other color are also just bleed right into it. I can work on something else while that dries. I know that my leaves are the mustard color, so I don't want this main area to be that mustard color, but what I could do is carry it into the small detail here. I will do that. We'll start to see it more and more as you start playing with adding your color and is that it really brings this to life. You start seeing so much vibrancy in what you created and it's just really fun. This is also one of those things that you can use your own creative judgment. But I like to use a lot less water and a lot more paint so that I can have a really vibrant pigment. As I work on these types of things, I just think that the flat color looks really nice. It's a different style. Playing with that, really enhancing that different style is fun to experiment with. That's also just one of those things that I've landed on as I've been doing this a little bit more. But you might find that you like to use more of a watercolor effect or it is nice and transparent and pretty, but experiment with that and see what you like, with more pigment or less pigment. Because you might find that, well you end up liking them most was unexpected. Then you can see that there's some pencil lines that do show. What I usually do is I wait until I'm done with everything. Then I will take an eraser to all of those extra pencil lines in the very end to clean those up. With these lines right here, this would be something if I was doing a dark color as my main color in this area, then I would grab the other color and do these lines now, but I'm using a light color and my detail lines are going to be darker than the base. I'm just going to wait and do those then. While that's ding, I'm going to do the details and the leaves here. I know that my leaves are going to be primarily this mustard color. I know this is going to be primarily cream. I don't want to get too to balance with only those two colors. This is where I can change this up and make the circles inside and then these little dots a totally different color. I'm going to go with pink because it's unexpected. I'm all about the unexpected with color. I'm using a little more pigment because I like the vibrant hot pink instead of more of a light color. Then you just start balancing. I decided to make these pink up here. Then I'm going to make the lip that I created at the top here. Probably matched that plan that I put on the inside for detail. But then that's something you can also decide once you start to build and see how the color is balancing as you add it. Now that this part is dry, I'm going to go in with that plum color and come around it. But you also want to be careful you don't drag your hand through a part that is a wet. I don't know if you can see that, but as it turns out, that spot was not dry. definitely make sure that you are completely dry or else this is going to happen and then that color will end up bleeding into the other one. But real easy trick is just to take a paper towel and dab. Don't rub just dab it on to there. Let that completely dry and then you're going to apply that base color again, let it dry and then go back end. I'm going to stay clear of that for a minute while I work on a different area. As you can see, I have made as I went along a couple of changes to my original plan. Just because as it was organically coming together, I saw some opportunity to change the color balance or change a couple of details or just add a couple of details along the way. But overall, I'm really happy with this color palette. It's one of my favorite elements to this. I hope that you guys have an awesome color palette as well. Once it's dry is I'm going to erase the pencil lines. Then I will be finished with this.
8. Project 2: Pattern Play: One of the things that I really like to do when I'm playing with folk art designs is to fill up a notebook spread on each page with a pattern, play if you will. You can choose a different color palette or you can go with what you found that you liked earlier. That way you create more of a collection, where you have your motifs and your finished pieces complimentary, so that's what I'm going to do, but you can of course explore color however you want to. But now I want to talk about more elements in folk art, like just loose leaves, loose flowers and things like that. As far as if you were to look at a guide, it would basically look like a line coming out, another line coming out, and then another line coming out, something like this, where it's a very much a free flow. I'm going to paint that, like the stems basically with my paintbrush, and then I'm going to go back in and add leaves and flowers and things like that. But, and just to give you an idea, jumping into this, I'm going to just select one of my colors, and then come up and out. Curved lines, I'm going to start at the same base, go higher up, and then another one branching off of this first one. Something like this. When I am creating a full page, and sometimes what I like to do before I get into details is to actually also go in and create some more of these, that are just dancing throughout, and maybe turn it. You're going to have more than this element, this is just a part of it. You don't need to get too carried away, and you can do some that are singles or doubles, that have three stems, until that feels balanced to you. Then you can always add more later. If you decide later once you put in more elements, that you want more then feel free. Now's a good time to actually go in and add the leaves, so that way it's filling up more of the space so you know exactly how much space you'll have in between to add additional elements. If you're doing something like leaves, they can be the same color or they can be a different color, or if you want to add florals onto each of these and they can be different color to highlight that. I'm going to actually go in to pick up that deeper plum color. Then what I'm going to do is actually just add flowers like this, so they are in an oblong shape. Then I'm going to do a few of those to create basically really small petals, that will make up a small flower tip. I'm going to that on all of these, so once you have all of that done, this can be where these are just accented wild flowers, or they can actually be built into much larger flowers. You can fill in the space or add onto it. Just for fun, I'm going to add onto it to show you what that can look like. I'm going to elongate the center stem, on some of these, or create one coming off of the side. Then once I have those placed I can create a larger flower, I'm going to go into that pop pink that I had. You can always draw this out first if you don't feel comfortable just jumping in. But, remember that we're just playing with shapes here, shapes and curves and lines. I'm going to just do a half circle, and fill that in. Then from there I am going to add onto it once that part dries, so I will create some half circles. I want to vary the tops of these, so I'll show you what I mean and we're going to experiment there a little bit more. They can all be the same design, or you can choose to put some variety in there. You can also choose to have all of these tops be the same, or you can vary that part too and put something else toward the tops, or just leave it alone and not put anything at the tops of some of them. Just giving you some options. I'm going to leave that as is here, and while that's drying, I am going to continue to work around these spaces. I'm going to create some leaves in the color that I haven't used yet from my previous palette, which was this kind of a pinky cream. To create leaves I'm just doing a curved line, and then I'm going to add shapes on either side. I like to offset it by having some larger shapes with some smaller. I'm going to make my leaves pretty large and I'm actually going to switch paint brushes to do that. To create my leaves I'm actually getting a little less formed because I am using the belly of my brush to get a nice broad stroke. If you're not familiar with how to do that, you just supply pressure and then lift up, and it'll give you a nice broad stroke. I am forming this afterwards because I do want there to be a little more form then, if I were to just spend doing like a loose watercolor type of deal so this is a bit different from that. When I'm creating leaves I like to pull it away from myself. That's not always the case with everyone, but for me it just makes it easier. I will turn my paper all the way around, so I'm able to continue to pull away. It just helps me form my shapes a little easier, especially when they're lines. They just tend to be a little smoother than if I were to pull them in, pulling away is easier for me. I want to address right here. I dragged my hand through some wet paints. What you can do is, if you notice it while it's still wet, you can apply just water and then use a paper towel at that app or you can use one of these sand erasers. What sand erasers do is, they actually work into the paper. It's going to be removing the paper, just like that first layer. You want to be really careful not to get it too far in there. You can see that's lifting up now. I'm just pushing against it lightly until I start to see it erasing. You don't want to go over the same area a bunch of times if you've already picked that up. That takes care of that primarily enough for me to be happy. I'm going to just go over that one spot again to make sure that it does not look like my hand dragged through the whole thing. While that dries, I can go over and finish off these other ones, and I'm going to grab this mustard color again, then I can bring this up. I'm going to do some varieties here. The first thing that I'm going to do is, just come straight up with real thin lines, and they're all going to be equal here, then once that dries, I'm going to go over just this in-between area with the plum color. Then I'm going to go to another one and create some additional shapes. This one's widened,and goes into a point that it's going outward. It's reminds me of a just a hat almost, then I'm going to do the same on the other side. Then move on to my other page and do some additional design so I can do on that balls up more. I'm going to do another separated one down here. That one I'm going to add little balls to the end, then this last one, I'm not going to mess with it just yet because it might still be a little bit wet. What I can start doing is building on top or around those flowers, or I can start filling in some blank spaces. You want to think about how you want to go about accomplishing these things, so that you don't drag your hand through a bunch of wet paint. Far as you can walk away and come back, but nobody wants to do that. I think that I will start working on inside of the pink since that is dry now, and I'm going to do that with my p-lam color so that it ties in all around, but all that I want to do here is come in and create those little half circles, then I want to create some dots just beneath that. It just adds a little more interest. When this one drives more, I'm going do the same thing, but I do want to add one of those half circles toward the bottom here. Fill that in, and then add some dots on the top of that. You can see how I'm changing the variety right here. I'm just going to do some curved lines that are going in that direction. What that 3-D bloom would look like, similar to what we were talking about in the previous lesson. How you would go with the growth direction or the shape of it to make it look like it has more movement versus being flat. While those last two dry the rest of the way I'm going to start putting some detail and my leaves. You can do this with paint or you can do with ink even. You don't have to use your same color palette, you can introduce a new color but I am just going to go end with pink and then also with mustard color, and inside of these leaves you can just draw a little veins, trying to find one that's more driving than the rest. You just never know. Just with the tip of my brush and I'm just going to draw a little veins for the center, and then I can work off of that to put veins down the sides. Now it's come to a part where you can complete the area by filling in any empty spaces, finishing off any loose ends, literally. I'm going to use a different shape since I have some pointed leaves, I want to do something that's more rounded. I'm just going to have those bold, stand alone objects that really draw attention. I'm going to do that with a mustard color to offset the pink tones. These are just going to be long and very round. Then I will want to add a design on the inside, probably I'll end up doing a teardrops. I'm just going to leave space for that because I'm not sure what color I want to do that with yet, then I can fill in the rest. Probably would have been better to grab a larger brush, but this will do the trick. I'm going to do a couple of these side by side, which helps fill in that blank space. Grabbing a larger brush would have been ideal. It's funny because I have one sitting right here and still it's like you jump into something, while it's so hard to just switch. I'm going to do another one right next to that, and I'm going to go over this stem here. Ideally, I wouldn't want to overlap because keeping that space is part of that balance and harmony, but did it, I'm going to switch brushes here, do that, you can continue putting those anywhere that makes sense to you. Here I am actually connecting the two pages by doing one, but then just imagining that floating area still has some paint on it. Which we'll connect to these to make them fill more. How many ways can I say connected? You get it. It's hard to concentrate on what you're doing and talk. Okay, now I'm doing right next to that. That's a lot more balance. Now I'm going to add that color on the inside and I'm going to do that with the plum color because I don't have that very dominant in any of these spaces. Bringing that color and a little bit more will create more balance with my color palette. I'm going let those to dry before I apply the insides there. If you look at this page, this is what I'm looking at now as a pattern, and I can leave this as is, or if I want to really spruce it up a bit, one of my favorite things to do is to go over around the entire space and make it like a silhouette, as an example. Basically, these are actually much more simple and I just have lines and then the outside is forming what the shape would be. What I'm referring to here though is same idea where you are going around everything with color, but then leaving a small white space just to kind of accent that area. That can be a really fun addition, and all you would need to do is just stay really close to the lines, but leave a little bit of white space and then fill that completely. I will leave that up to you if you decide to go that route. Otherwise, this is what your pattern will look like, pretend that there's color in here, then I'm just going to go ahead and speed this up, hyperlapse to watch till the end to see what the final product looks like if I were to apply a background. Otherwise, this segment is complete and I'll see you in the next lesson.
9. Project 3: Your Funwork: It is now time for
your fun work. This means your
project number three. It's one of my personal
favorite projects to create. So here's what
you're going to do. You'll take our initial lesson of creating a guide
for a flower. But this time you're
going to scale it down and place multiple
guides on one page. And then you'll create unique shapes for
each one of them. You'll combine how we
experimented with color to harmoniously link all of
those mini flowers together. And if it helps, I've included a guide to create the taxonomy. You'll notice that
I've spaced them out so they don't stack
directly on top of one another. This will help give your
flowers breathing space so that the composition in the
end will be so satisfying. Have so much fun
filling your page with these flowers and leaves,
and I'll see you soon.
Peggy Dean, Top Teacher | The Pigeon Letters
