Modern Gouache Florals

1. Welcome: Hi everyone, Welcome to modern Gouache techniques. This funder class has so much to offer. It came up as sort of an inspiration to me and then I started coming up with more ideas. I really wanted to bring a fresh perspective to goulash, something that you haven't seen, something that is gonna be really, really you in this class, we'll, we'd start off with is the materials I go over how to use gouache and the basic techniques in using this very interesting medium. Then we go onto some practice exercises. These practice exercises formed the basis of all of the projects. They are very simple, they're really fun. And then we move on to the projects. The projects are broken down in 15 to 20 minutes so they can fit into your busy schedule. As we move through the six different projects, you're going to learn a ton of different techniques and varieties of using the different tools are the different aspects of gouache. I am model and I am an artist. I absolutely love a medium that flows with water. It inspires me and I absolutely just enjoy experimenting with it. I've been painting for a very long time, but I started my Instagram just about 34 years back. And then within a very dove into art as a full-time career. Since then it's been amazing. I've gone on to do multiple collaborations, gone on to sell my art, sell my paintings. And now I also have a stationary line dedicated to my eye. I am so excited about this session going forward, there's also multiple workshops that I have on Skillshare. So do go ahead and follow me so that you get updates every time I launch a class, Let's start with our materials. 2. Materials Needed: Let's talk material. The first thing is we would need watercolor cold press paper, about 200 GSM or 110 LBS, depending on where you are. So a really nice thick paper that can hold water. As we get into our painting. Next, we would need a detailed brush. This is specifically for guage, its attack lawn brush. And it's a size 0. And you can see the Bristol, It's very thin and pointed and that's what we're looking for. The next thing we need is our gouache paints. I am mainly using about four colors, sorry, phi colors. The first one being vermilion or scarlet red. So it's this beautiful, bright red. Then we have white gouache. And as I go into the mixing, I'll also add in ultramarine blue, Prussian blue, sap green. With the red, I want to show you the different mixes or variations of the color that we'll be using. As you can see, the red is a very bright, bold, beautiful color. Now to get a slight shade of pink, I'm going to take a little bit of the white gouache and mix it. As you can see, the color turns out to be slightly lighter. More like a peach pink. That's the color we'll be using for some of our details, some of our flowers. Now moving forward at a little bit more white for a lighter shade to give you a light baby bank. Now to also show you how this opaque layer can be made more translucent, transparent. Just add more water in your brush and paint for a more watercolor painting, a watercolor look or watercolor view. Now that we've got these colors, Let's go ahead and darker blues. So we have two blues that we'll be using, as I mentioned, ultramarine and Prussian blue. This is the ultramarine blue. Now that we've got this beautiful opaque blue, Let's add a little bit more water to the brush so we can get a watercolor, ultramarine blue. The reason I'm doing this is for you to see the variation of how the color tones for opaque to transparent or translucent. Sorry. Now, let's add a little bit of white to this blue. To get a beautiful lighter blue. Then we can go ahead and add more white photo, even more lighter blue. This is the color that we'll be mainly using. And the reason I liked this is because once I've added white acrylic, gouache effect is much more opaque and it's much more thick. So I like adding that white. Now for our Prussian blue. Let's paint out as queer. And then we can add a little bit off white for all lighter shade. It's not too different. But when we are doing some of our leaves and details like that, that slight difference in the two blues is going to create a beautiful effect as well. Also, what I end up doing is if my leaf is going to be a light blue when I'm adding textures are used. Ultramarine blue, IVD between the two. Now using a damp brush to show you the translucency. Now we're going to take sap green. We're going to mix the sap green with the existing blue. This is going to give us a blue-green color. It's more like a very deep blue, sorry, green if you're looking at it in other terms. But sometimes it may be hard to find. So I just wanted to take a little bit of green that you'll have and mix it with blue for this blue-green color. To lighten up the she'd use a little bit white. You can see how I'm just adding little portions of everything. Mixing and seeing if I'm happy with the color and not just trying to dump in the color. Paint it out. You've got this beautiful blue-green mixture. Then we're going to use some water and just get a very translucent layer of the same color. Additionally, we'll also be using gold. Now. You can use different mediums for gold. You can use Acrobat gold. There is post-doc color goal, there is gouache goal like the one that we're using, or even watercolor gold. That doesn't really matter. And even if you don't have gold, it's not really going to affect your painting. I'm just adding it because I liked that metallic look. But it's completely your choice. These are the main colors that we'll be using for today. Along with this, you will need a palette. As you can see, I'm using a glass palette because I find it a lot more easier to wash and rinse than a ceramic palette that has spools, you know, that has those little sections. This one is a lot more easier. I can scrape it if I need it, I can just wash it with water and it's just a lot more easier. The next thing you would need is a glass of water, some tissues or towel to wipe auto **** brush. As well as TPP. You'll need masking tape for making sure that the edges are very crisp and a pencil eraser. And I think that's about it. Now let's get started with some practice exercises. 3. Practice Sheets: Before we dive into the practice exercises, I just wanted to go over gouache and the various qualities of it. We did a little bit of mixing and things like that. So let's just talk a little bit more because I spoke about diluting it with water. But what does that actually mean? In cheese, you take any gouache, paint and add a little bit of water. And this takes a little bit of practice to know how much water put what you want to have is a beautiful lake was caused thick layer. It shouldn't be too thick that the paint doesn't move around, but it should be liquid enough that when you want to paint, you're able to kind of have the brush applied very smooth. So it is a mix. I wouldn't say it is as thick as acral lick, nor does it as thin as watercolors. So it's a mix of board. Now, this layer, if you added a little bit more water, you will see it becoming slightly lighter. As we go ahead and add more and more water, cut off, mix it along. What happens is you will start seeing this effect of watercolors coming through and it starts becoming more translucent. As you can see, this is such a translucent layer and it's just very, very light. Let's try another color. I'm gonna be using, blue. I've taken the ultramarine blue. I'm adding a little bit off white. So it's the light color or the light blue that we had seen in the materials chapter. Now taking that, adding that white, making sure I add a little bit of water as well, and making sure that I get this very smoothly. I'm painting out a rectangle. You can see how the color just lays flat. A really nice effect and it's gonna try matte. Now as I keep adding water to this layer, you're gonna see it becoming lighter and lighter. In case you have ever used paste of watercolors. It has very similar feel. It's very chalky. It doesn't, you know, it has this kind of solidarity to it. But it's very similar to, I would say, Paste in watercolors. As you can see, as I add water and bringing more water, it's becoming more transparent like watercolors. But what is really cool is that if you have this transparent layer, you can then go in with the thick viscous liquid beans and add textures. What happens as you can see with the Dodds is when I add that second layer of that Carla, it stays flat, it's, it blooms, but the color is still there. Let me show you another example. So I've taken a translucent layer with diluted layer, and now I'm adding pink dots. Notice how some of the colors are blooming while some are fine because the paint was still wet. This gives beautiful textures and this is the thing that we're going to call forward and really bring into our practice exercises. Now let's dive into some practice exercises. Still fun thing that I wonder get into the different shapes of leaves that we are going to be tackling in all of our projects. This is something that I take for granted. But I know as a beginner, it can get confusing, wondering how to just plan out your leaves. Here is a demonstration. What you start off with is the stem. Start with the big leaf at the top. And then as you go lower and lower, we can do smaller leaves. This is how we plan it out. If you want to do a small to big Option. Another option that we can use is rounded leaf. You can see it's like a teardrop that we're trying out. With the rounded leaf again, we can follow something similar where on the top we have a lot of leaves, much bigger in size. And as we go lower the stem or along the stem, it becomes smaller. You can see how that comes through. And it's just as simple as that. Now to this, we can add a stem of smaller leaves. Another stem, as you can see with teardrop leaves. In this case, what I'm doing with a teardrop leaf is the right and left side meet at the same point along the stem, forming a V-shape. All through the stamp. This gives it an interesting effect. Balances out the big leaves within the painting. Now another option for drawing leaves, I'm painting leaves is kind of playing around with much more smaller. Notice the shape of the leaf that I'm doing. And I want you guys to practice this a couple of times. In this case, I'm branching off my stem. Notice how I'm doing different branches. And also starting with a smaller set of leaves on top and making it bigger at the bottom. This is slightly different from what we did before where we started with the big and went to smaller. Now, either case works fairly well, but I really just wanted to show you how you can kind of put this together. Now when we go into painting the leaf, in some cases along the projects, I've actually gone into drawing the leaf. In some cases, I've dad at least started painting, depending on what the final project is supposed to look like. In this case, let's just start painting. I already started with a couple of the leaves that I already had. And I'm doing it with blue. I'm using a chance patently up translucent Leo. Basically a layer that is much more diluted with water for this effect. Because it is lighter when I go in with a deeper color or like when I go in with the pink gouache, you can see how the colors are blooming through the color. Surely Julie shows. And that is something that's so cool about gouache, is that when you layer the colors, they become part of it because they bloom, they merge with it. At the same time, the colors tilde remains opaque. In watercolors, if you had tried the same technique, all the colors merge together. But in gouache, you can really see the flat color coming through as you paint. You're going to see this and you'll be really appreciative of this aspect of gouache that we're gonna be exploring. Now since we added in the blue, we can go ahead and add that red for the remaining leaves. Again, in the red leaves, I like to add some textures that are in the blue. So this way I bring everything together by mixing and matching the colors. We can always go ahead and add some Depot textures to the existing blue leaf. Blue stem. There you go. Here. The leaf is balanced. It's got multiple colors. It has a beautiful texture. Through it. Edit, all works. Well. I've done some leaves. Let's go into flowers. For Florida, I like to do five petaled flowers the best. I think it looks really pretty. For that purpose. I like to draw a circle and draw out a white shape or white line. Once I have the wireline, I can plan out the remaining two petals. How simple was that? Draw the petals and done. Let's do another one again. The why. Then you have space for the petal. You can do any better if you want to do a rounded petals. You can do that all you wanted to, that kind of inverted W. That's fine. Either ways it's gonna work fairly well. Now let's paint these. I'm starting off with the socket. Then we're gonna take our brush loaded up with some paint and paint out a Y shape. Petals. Petals along the Y shape. So see how I'm doing this. I'm just following, just filling up the space. So there's nothing really like technical in this is just more of understanding the shape of the flower itself. Once you've painted the petals along the y, change the color in the brush to a slightly different shade of the red. So you can do a darker red or you can add a little bit white and make it a lighter red. Just that change is going to bring radiation to the flower. You can add the remaining two petals to that simple. Let's practice this again, but you're going to do it a little bit different. I'm going to keep more spaces between the flowers. Again, drawing out the sulcus and then painting petals along the way. That action. This case, you can see how I've added the why, but there's a lot of gap between the top two. I have the bonus optionality to add another petal. So this becomes a sixth petal flower. Once that's done, you can take in your brush loaded with blue and paint your Poland. Now I've got two lovely flowers. I want to dive into drawing or painting half-life. The half-life and draw out your circle. And just paint off. You're just doing full petals. That's it. We can go ahead and paint these as well. To paint them, just go ahead and use whichever color you want to. Use. Paint out each petal at a time. The only difference is here we are trying to make it half imagining that the flower is seen at that angle. This always adds very interesting effects to the painting because you're not just doing the full flower, which can look a little bit flat. So this brings things together. There you go. These are our practice exercises and you are armed and ready to get started with your projects. 4. Potted Plants: Now let's start with a fresh, clean people. I am taking a square shape because it's gonna be a lot more easier to plan out my potted plants in it. The first thing we want to do is draw out up pots. Now, to keep it very simple, I've just drawn rectangle pots, nothing fancy. I think it just quickens the process. We're looking for quick exercises. And so instead of taking too much of fluid into the pots, I truly want to concentrate on the floss then cells and give them more off a highlight. Keeping it very simple, I'm just going to draw rectangle pots. There's a couple of things that I like to keep in mind when I'm doing this. The first thing is to make sure that the parts are of different heights. That way it doesn't look like it's very planned or they're too similar. The H symmetricity offered always comes together and just makes everything look really nice. The next thing to keep in mind is to space them out unevenly. It doesn't look like there's just an equal space between them. Again, going for the asymmetrical look. Thirdly, we are going to just do basic rectangles. What we can also do is VD, the width of the rectangles. Again, playing around with the, a symmetricity of the painting. Once we have completed that, I like to just draw out my flaws to have an idea of where I want to please them. On one stem or one port, I'm going to have the flaws shorter in height, whereas in the other one it might go longer in height, and so on. Now let's take a beautiful light pink color that we mixed in material section and start painting out our petals. This was done in the practice exercises. So if you're a little bit confused, you can go ahead and just refer to it. But as you can see, it's fairly simple to paint these out. We're just doing these kind of loop shape. Inverted w's to bring in a little bit of texture. While the paint is still wet. I went ahead and added some white dots. This brings a beautiful texture to the flower. Changing around the color a little bit. You can see just slightly making it a little bit more lighter. I'm going ahead and adding the second set of half flour. It's a semi flower. Again, adding the white dots for some texture. Couple of things to remember when it comes to that is I like to add the dots in a cluster. That way they look like they're in one area. Next thing is to have them in just one petal. If you have them all over, it might look like it's overdone, giving it a polka dot effect. And that's not the look that we're going for. Thirdly, weeding the shapes of the circles. As you had seen. Some of them are bigger and some of them are just spots. Following this. Let's continue drawing, painting out the remaining flowers. As you can see from the flower that I'm painting, I'm changing around the colors as I go ahead and bring them out. Petal. By petal. It's really important to kind of play around with the shades of pink as we go from petal, petal. Because it gives it a much more realistic effect and makes the painting less flat. I'm using the Surely fun effect of goulash wet. When you add water, it becomes more translucent and gives you the watercolor effect. This I'm using for the petals. To give it that translucency. Again, adding in those white dots for texture. Now notice how for the first potted plant I had only half flowers. For the second one I have a base of two big full flowers and then a half-life. Then for the thawed potted plant. On the left, we have a full flower only. Again, playing around with the proportions and placements. Now, let's paint our final flour using the different shades of pink. Now, as we let us try, let's go ahead and paint out our potted plant. I'm using are blue color that we mixed in our materials, exercise material section. Sorry. We're gonna be using that to paint out a potted plant. One tip that I want to give you is to make sure that your toner on your paper so that your tip of the brush is towards the edge that you're painting. This way, you're guaranteed a very crisp edge, which looks a lot better. So notice every time I paint out the edge, I make sure that my brush is perpendicular to the line. Also as we're painting, I'm using this beautiful effect of guage and adding clear water and just blending it altogether so that I get this cloud look blooming through. As it's drying, I can go ahead and add spots. The deep blue for textural effects. Now for the next potted plant, similar effect using clear water and just blending two through that opaque color. Now one thing to remember is that you can use a thicker brush. You can use a round brush. But I feel like gouache, it's actually nice to use a thin brush, the smaller one, because you can really go into like the details and the edge, making sure that the edge of the poet is truly accurate. If you're using a round brush, you may not get this as much. And you need to switch round brushes a lot and it gets really, gets a bit tedious. And I don't want like making things tedious. I like having fun with it. And when you're trying to just sketch in 20 minutes or 30 minutes of painting, it's hard to get all of your supplies and everything ready and all your multiple brushes and just get everything prepared. So I like to do all of it, which is one brush, and that just makes the process a lot more easier. Now going into the final potted plant, again, notice how I added those dots like textures that are blooming and giving this beautiful effect. If the painting had dried a little bit more, the potted plant and dried a little bit more, it wouldn't bloom. And so I'm being very cautious about it that I added, add the dots are when it's still wet so that it really blooms and becomes part of the painting. Now let's go ahead and add the leaves and the stem NP-complete are painting. The reason I did not taped down this specific project is because I drill you wanted to move it around in the previous step if you found it a little bit dizzying to see my paper moving around so much. I'm sorry about it, but I really wanted to show you guys to have that effect with your paper, you know, to not hold it steady. Sometimes when I teach my students, I noticed that they just hold onto their paper and they don't want to move it at all because they're very scared of doing that. But get over that. And I want you to really move around your paper and make it easier as you paint. That you get those beautiful edges and you can reach those corners that you are not able to reach that have done that information. Let's just go back to the painting of what I've been doing, which is adding the leaves. As you can see, I'm using two shades of blue and green for the leaves. Both the colors were covered in our material exercise. Material section. I'm adding in my dots. I like doing them with a mix, so I could do blue. Instead. I want to use the pink from the flowers. That way the bank actually looks like it's part of the leaf and brings it together. It looks sometimes, or if your leaf is just a random color and has nothing to do with your flower. When you can add these dots are textural effects with the bank of the flower. It brings the project together. Going a kid and adding the leaves for the second. Now what I want you to notice is I am making sure to truly keep a different height level for each of these potted plants. The first one from the right, it was shot. The second one is going to be maybe slightly taller, whereas the third might be even more total. It really depends. The whole point is to vary the height, you know, cause the overall effect is you want the viewer to kind of dance. Viewers eyes to dance as they look at it. At this point, I'm going to go ahead and add some sort of texture for the final potted plant. As you can see, I'm just doing a stem of dots. This in a way is to reflect into like a flower that's more like a lavender effect. So you know, those kind of long stem bunches just to give that added maybe technique or added flour to the cluster. Because as you can see right now, everything looks repetitive. Reviews the same flower across all of the three in pots. Just this addition of something. So a simple immediately looks like, okay, there are three different potted plants. It's not the same one. Just to hint offered makes a difference. I liked the overall effect. I think it turns out a lot more better because of that added stem. Now, let's complete some of the key details of the painting. We are at the finishing point right now. So we can go ahead and paint out the stamen are the filaments, the center part of the flower. I keep mistaking what the name should be. So sometimes I say it's the filaments and steam in and then sometimes I'm not really sure. But you guys know what I'm talking about. Hopefully. Since the part of the plan are dry, I can go ahead and add more color. For this step. I'm using golden gouache. You can also use gold acrylic if you're not able to find it. But right now it's pretty popular to find metallic gouache as well in the market. But there are a lot of different out, alternatives out there. You can use metallic accurate lakes, you can use metallic watercolors. You can use metallic. I think there's even metallic poster colors. You can really play around with it. I found gouache metallics and so that's the one that I'm using because I wanted to give that touch of gold to the painting. There you go. This is our completed projects. 5. Fluid Leaves: Let's dive into our fun project. What I've done is taped down the ends. I really didn't need to in this case because we really don't have much purpose of it. But I wanted to tape it down just so I don't really have a clear idea of the edge of the paper as well as so that the paper doesn't move around too much. In this case, especially it would be useful for the paper to not move about. Now, once that's done, as we've done in our practice exercise, we are going to be drawing out some rounded leaves. They're starting form bigger size leaves. And as they go below, lower to the stem, down the stem, they become smaller. Now I'm planning this out because it's really important just so I don't have areas that are empty around our painting. I want to make sure I plan this in such a way that all the rounded leaves end much before the edge of the deep. I don't want any of the rounded leaves to go beyond it. We are trying to contain all of it within that space. When you can draw it out, it's just gonna be easier for you to plan. Now once that's done, let's start with our first color. We're gonna be taking up beautiful blue. You can use either actually you can use the ultramarine or the crushing. But I'm gonna be just taking one of them, making sure that it's a lighter shade. As you can see, it is watered down and then adding in some dots to the edge. Now taking a deeper shade of the color, I'm adding in a secondary leaf. The leaf is done in such a way that it's so close to the previous one that you can see that the colors are merging through. Here we are using gouache more like watercolors than opaque. But we're going to keep playing around with this as we move along. Notice how I'm using a very light water down Leah. As I proceed with our stem. I'm also making sure to do one step at a time, one section at a time. Playing around with transparent and opaque, with a different blue, with two different blues sheets. And you can see that coming through where the slight difference in the blue really shows in the painting. Continue. As we move down. What I'm trying to do is just make it much more clear water and just very, very translucent as I go ahead so I can start building up the red. As you can see. With the red, I am just going directly in again using a mix of transparent layers. Electrons do simply, so it's not too opaque. Then using the spots to really get the colors to bloom through. Keep in mind at this point, you can also use some blue dots as well as blue lines to just bring the entire painting together. As this process is drying. We're going to add more. In this case, let's use light pink and add some textures to the blue. Go ahead and use some dots. If the paint is drying, then you will see that it blooms more in case it's completely dry, you will see the spots just laying flat on the paper. You can really see the effects come through. At this point. Let's use just clear water and add some leaves overlapping our existing ones. Now let's start with our next leaf. There is a specific reason why I'm using multiple water down. If you notice in this entire thing, It's more watercolor. There is a reason for it. So just keep that in mind as we proceed because as we go to the end, you understand why this was so important for us to keep in mind. Because I really want to bring through the colors with another new technique. Following the same thing that we did before starting off with this light blue color that is transparent, translucent, and then just mixing up differentiates of blue as we paint one leaf at a time. Once you've got a couple of blues going, we can switch color to the red and then start bringing the red all the way down. For the dread, you can use a mix of reds. So it doesn't have to just be the pride read familiar. You can just mix it with a little bit of white to get shades of pink and play around with that. Also at this point, use water to dilute the color a little bit more and use that. As we go step-by-step. You can have some of the ideas. Just touch each ADL and you will see how the color just glides through. Or adding spots with a secondary color. As you can see, I just did now take King vermilion statically as spots on the light pink, creating a beautiful effect. All of these textures that just gonna come together and make everything look so pretty. Notice along the edge, as I was saying, I hit gland it in such a way that all of the circles are four from the rounded leaves. The rounded curve is complete. At no point of time are they going into the tape ADL that all pleased in such way that you can literally see each of the curve. This is done for a specific reason. And you will see this in the final odd walk. Once you're happy with that. And we've completed the entire stem, we can move on to the next. For this one, I wanted to start off with the pinks itself, Liping the red. And I wanted to use that for this layer. Notice, as soon as they overlap, the colors spread through and looks so astonishing. Love and color like paints do that. This is something that watercolors and gouache does. And its sole pretty to just see blend through and the colors just coming together. Now I skipped ahead a little bit, completed the entire stem. You guys know what to do. You guys are an expert at this. Now in this case, all I'm doing is continuing with the stem off to allow for that layer to dry so that light stem has dried before I do this so that there is no margin of colors. And then I'm going and completing all the leaves for the stem. Don't forget to add in the textures. The opposing color, which is the blue along the leaf. This is great if it's still drying because you can see the color blue. If not, it's fine. It still gives you a spotlight effect, giving you a more polka dot loc either way. So just walks through all the while. Now. You can use some clear water, like a damp brush and just add some transparent or translucent leaves. You can see how these are just like Julie, Julie light. There's actually no specific color in mind is just that my brush already had painting it. That's why it's come through. Now, I want to take ultramarine just as it is, a very opaque layer mixed with little bit of water, add in some rounded leaves, is why I mentioned that the bottom layers we were going for a much more lighter and much more diluted with water because in this layer we're using a thick, thick opaque color. You can see how this is just surely brightening up the painting. Now, I'm using smaller rounded leaves, just in contrast to the big leaves that we've been using. I'm adding it to our stem. It's attached to the stem along the side. Notice how I do that in a very, very simple way. This has, you can see it's just really making the art looks so pretty like it's just really making everything bright. And it's really bringing through that beautiful blue. This is a trick that I wanted to show you guys something new that you can actually add into your painting by layering on top. While added, Let's take some vermilion paint and add in some rounded leaves along the red areas of the stem. These again continue with smaller rounded leaves compared to what we all didn't painting. Link them up to the stem so it comes together. Notice how this is really coming together. We do have that in-between stem that I still haven't tackled yet. But that's okay. We can just go ahead and just complete the remaining parts. So we just have this one piece that's left. That's okay. Sometimes working with gouache, you can really plan out how you want to do things. So either you do the Bs and then you overlay layer, or you can do one element at a time, just so you have a clear idea of how you want it to look. It really depends. And I think as you keep painting, you'll get a better idea of what you want to do. I generally like to work element by element. But sometimes especially in a case like this where layers have dried up, I switched through different elements. Now as big continuing, I'm going to just paint out my final element of the final stem using a very light layer. Blue. Notice how I add in the Leo's along the ends. How AI brings together the leaves by making sure that I intermingle the spot textures along the stem. The way that I do it is just making sure that the thread is over the blue parts and the blue is over the red. Needs to get it all comes through. Once you have completed this, let's step back from our painting and then just complete areas that we feel look empty. Like this area, for example, that I felt empty. I've just taken some clear, Like my brush That's still had a little bit of pink, just painted translucently. Again. I'm just looking through and seeing if anything looks empty or I feel like it needs something there. I'm just adding those leaves. I'll make sure that you add in those opaque blue leaves. The stem. This is around the leaf. Smaller in size. Coming together. Notice also the direction of these leaves that I'm adding in there along the stem. Not from the stem or they're not just randomly pleased. I tried to make sure that it's along the stem, so it looks like it's still part of the same thing, not something randomly added. So in this case you can see that it's half in through or it's like the stem would just different things like that. Now once you're happy with everything, you're finishing touches, you can remove the tip for your completed painting. 6. Textured Wreath: I shouldn't be biased, but this is my favorite project in this entire class. I loved this project so much and I have daunted with literally any combination that you can think of, because I love it so much. And I think it's just such a good exercise when you really don't know what to paint. And you just want something that's going to turn out good, no matter what this is it, This is the project that whatever you do is gonna look amazing. So let's get on it. The first thing I've done is taken as queer people. And I've drawn out a circle for my wreath. This is gonna be with leaves, soap. You can draw out the leaves if you find it easier, or you can just directly start painting. It's not that complicated, so it's pretty okay to keep just adding on the leaves. As you can see, I've started with a light pink color. I'm viewing the amount of water that I use. It's the first set of leaves will pick and gouache and very thick. Whereas the second, I added more water to give a more watercolor look. As this is drying, you can go ahead and add some blue spots so that those can bloom and become part of the painting. Let's go ahead and add those spots around more off the leaves. As we go through this. Let's change the color on our brush from light pink to blue. Remember to wash your brush every time that you change colors. Just so you don't have a mix of colors. Very muddy looking colors. Here you can see going into the blue, I'm adding a very big bold leaf. Now this can be a little bit tricky, knowing what size of leaf to use. What I like to do is has a start with the stem. I start smaller, and then I move bigger and bigger and bigger. That's what I do as I go along the circle. Once I've completed using the blue leaves, or at least painting three or four blue leaves. Go ahead, wash the brush, add some pink, and then add spots to the leaves to bring index Joe. Now, let's use this with some clear water to paint out some more leaves and continue the process. One tip to keep in mind is to make sure that the leaf is pointed. In this case, because you can see it's going to give you a beautiful effect. Even with the blue, I have gone ahead and added a greenish color to the mixed now. And that's what I'm gonna go ahead and use for painting the next set of leaves. As we complete our third leaf, you can go ahead and add the blue to bring in texture. As I mentioned, try to do 23 leaves and then wash your brush and add in or change the color. This process is just going to make it a little bit more easier. So you're not confused wondering, when do you wash your brush or what color are you using or just washing your brush too often. Just make it a kind of a thought process in your head. Pain, three leaves, It's wash your brush. Pin three leaves, add texture. Wash your brush. Make sure at this point to add in the light pink wherever I'm using the blue so that the color comes through. What I'm using the green as well when I use light pink, it works well. This kind of contrast is what matters. And with guage it works really well because as you add the layers, It's not going to fade away or blend. It's still going to give you an opaque look. Use the lovely light thing to continue adding in leaves. As you can see, some of the leaves are smaller and bigger and I'm really not focusing too much on it. If I feel like the leaf that I can add is going to be smaller in size. That's okay. I do try to keep in mind that I want to start small and then go back. But if it doesn't happen, I'm not holding onto it. This is such a great exercise to let go of any perfectionism that you're holding onto. As you can see, the technique is all above fluidity and just really enjoying that. Has you do that process. Makes sure to add in the textures with the blue. If there's too much of water, it's going to bloom a bit too much and maybe you don't want that effect. Let it dry before adding those spots. I like to work layer by layer, like part by part. That way, if I do the whole thing and then I have to go back to it. It's a bit confusing. When I do the greens, I immediately changed the brush and add the things. I do it section by section by section. At this point, I'm not worrying too much about how the actual wreath looks. If it is actually proportionate. I'm not worrying about it. I'm just trying to get my leaves gently rotate your paper as you move along for the ease of movement. As you can see, changing the colors brings in a lot of contrast and variation into the painting. Continue step-by-step. Adding leaves. This is the final set of continue. This is basically the final point of the wreath as well. So let's just completed with a bank, and then we can go ahead and do any edits or any protections that needs to be done. Make sure to use some clear water and some of the sections and blender and a very light layer of paint for the leaves. That way you have this beautiful contrast going from opaque to transparent. Now that we've completed our close-up, Let's step out for a bit. So move away from your painting and look at it as a whole and just see if it actually looks like a circle. If you notice that some areas took more empty, this is your chance to add more leaves in that area. If you feel like an area has too much going on or too much pink, for example, or too much blue. Go ahead and add a secondary color. This is your chance to really look away from the painting, step back and assess for yourself if you are happy with the way it is going. I really think this step is how crucial, because this is where you can fix any mistake that's dead or anything that needs to be tweaked. This is where your perfectionism, perfectionism can come in because this is where you can step back and see. Does that look right? It does it need more, does it need added textures or more color? As you can see, you keeping that in mind. I'm adding more leaves in some areas to balance out the painting. One tip I'd like to share at this point that I think is important. I've been painting with that, but I didn't tell you guys. I really wanted to tell you guys as well. Is that for these layers, because I've already done so many opaque layers, these ones are much more translucent, so I've added more water so I get that watery effect. And then later on, because I've already done the opaque pot, you can go ahead and just make them very light. I'm now very happy with my overall look. I'm going to go ahead and add some cold details. As mentioned in the materials section, you can get cold paint in various mediums. Gold watercolors called acro legs, cold oil, gold poster colors. There's so many varieties and there's gold gouache. What I'm using is called gouache. I'm just adding an int because I liked that literary effect for this set of projects because it's kind of become an continuous theme throughout. Just to bring that, I don't want to bring too much of the goal because it's just going to look really odd. I'm just adding onto the textures that we had already done. Adding those spots to the leaves or adding some lines to the leaves. It doesn't have to be accurate. The whole point is to just add in that gold. Finally, if you're still having issues where your wreath is not looking proportional, go ahead and add some gold circles to some areas to balance it out. So areas which are empty and you weren't able to add leaves, but they still look empty and it's still not making the circle come through. You can go ahead and add that gold. That's about it. This is our completed starting project. 7. Blending Colors: This is a fun little project that we are going to have some fun with. I think I said fun twice. Forgive me. I don't know why I can't come up with more words to describe things. But here are fine as the word that keeps coming up probably cause also right now, what did I relax? Do things that are fun. So that's the word that keeps coming up. So I am sorry about that. But yeah. If you can think of other ways to describe it, do let me know. Anyways, what I've started doing is drawing out by socle for project. And now I'm drawing out the leaves. I'm bringing very specific, generally if you noticed in the past, I do an idea of the leaves. But in this case I'm actually drawing them out because I do want to make sure that they are in line with my painting. It is important to take time with this step. So notice what I've done is making short that there are leaves that are not it really enclosed within the circuit, but basically odd in that area. So I don't want to have any leaf that just looks like it's not supposed to be there, if that makes sense. But basically filling up the entire space within the painting. As well as making sure that the edge of the leaves touch the circle. And overall, all the leaves together combined for a beautiful, nice, symmetrical circle. Once you've done that, we can go ahead and start painting. I'm starting off with the lightest color that we have, which is the light pink. Now that I have painted the opaque layer. While it's still wet, I'm going to go ahead and add blue dots to the leaf for texture. I'm going to go ahead and paint out the remaining leaves off the stem using Watertown layer of blue and a mix of the opaque layer, but basically the same blue. Once I've done couple of leaves with the blue, I can go ahead and change the color to another shade and use that. So that way the stem just doesn't have one color leaf. There's a combination of leaves that's happening. That always looks interesting. Now that I've noticed so many of the cobalt blue leaves, I'm going to add some ultramarine blue leaves just to balance it out just so it doesn't look like everything is esteem. Lu. Go ahead and once this is done, add some spots with this ultramarine blue over the existing cobalt blue. If you notice in this case, literally, the light pink is not used anywhere else on the leaf on the stem. I'm going to use this light pink to add dots to our existing leaves. This prints the colors together and it looks like it's not just a mistake that you had one leaf that is a pink color. Now go ahead and rotate your paper so you can get to the next leaf. For the next set of leaves, I'm going to start off with the pink. Notice the pink colors seem to be a little bit muddy, like it's not a bright pink. That's because there was a little bit blue in my brush. I'm taking advantage of it, so it's not an error. Because when I dip in the color, as you can see with the bright fresh pink, it looks stunning, so it gives that variation. It is tiny trick of using unclean brush to kind of create its own mixes. It's not very great suggestion, I'll be honest, but I think it looks nice and you don't have to go ahead. Incident struggled with mixing just using the blue that was already in the brush, just dipping it in the bank and you get this mix of colors. As you can see as I move along the leaf to the bottom, I'm taking clear water and using some clearer, just very transparent leaves. Now using blue, Let's add some texture, as you can see with dots and just the tip of the leaf. Now in this case, we're doing something really cool. Where the top of the leaf is pink. You have a middle portion where the leaf was a mix of pink and blue. And as we go lower and lower, It's getting more blue. This slight variation of the column moving from pink to blue is going to give a beautiful effect. Or watch and see, because you're going to be amazed at how stunning this looks. Once you are done with the blue as it is gently drying up, use the pink dots to create texture on the leaf. This also brings together the entire leaf set. One. At this point I can see some areas where it doesn't have a gentle curve between the leaves. Hence, I'm gonna take my brush with damp water, basically a damp brush. And I'm gonna paint out some transparent leaves. As you can see, using the water. Just keep adding it. And look at how pretty that is. The pink from the leaf is flooding through. All of this is done as the leaves are still drying. So I'm working very quickly in a way that I'm not letting anything dry. Even if it's drying, it's still okay. You're gonna end up with a beautiful effect. So don't worry too much. Now rotate your paper and let's tackle another set. In this case, what I like to do is the other way round, as you can see, starting with the pink at the bottom, then moving upward to the blues. And it's the same technique. So you have lot of pink, very crisp, opaque leaves at the bottom. Then a transduce and layer off the pink with the blue. And then as we go up and up, it becomes more of the blue which is opaque. The optionality to add in some translucent leaves to bring in more depth to the painting. This is why I thought it was very important to draw out the leaves because as you can see, if there are areas in between, you can really fill them out if it's already planned. If it wasn't planned, there is a possible that you might end up with areas of spaces that are incomplete. So I really like to draw it out. And now you can see why this is so important. Now, using clear water, I'm starting off with the blue. I first started with a translucent layer and then went ahead with opaque blue filled into my brush and added in some spots. I'm going to continue doing this as we move down. The don't worry if you're overlapping with another leaf set. That's fine because it's not gonna be too noticeable towards the end, because it's going to all complete and look really pretty together. As we go lower and lower on the leaf or the stem, I'm moving onto the pink again, opaque, paint clearer. As we move downward. Make sure to add in the pink spots to the upper leaves as well as blue spots to the lower. This way we are balancing the pink with the blue and the blue with a bank. Both are going to work well together and combine everything. And there you go. This is our completed painting, but as we've done before or we will be doing, I want you to step away from your painting for a bit and just check if everything looks symmetrical within a circle. If at this point you feel like something looks over or an area around the circle looks empty. Go ahead and fill in some transparent leaves. As you can see that what I'm doing, which is basically just rotating the paper and just checking if I need to fix anything. If you're not really too sure how to do it. What you can also do is take a circular object and place it over the painting. And just check again if it's proper, such as making sure that these Conwell and everything is sorted. Now to add in to our painting, I'm going to add some silver. This silver, I'm going to use a silver pen. You can use silver acrylics, you can use goulash silver watercolors. There are lots of different silver pins that are available. Or you can leave it as it is. Like, I liked the way how it is anyways. But I went ahead and added the silver just to follow the theme that we were going for. But again, not a must. Truthfully, I do wish I hadn't added the Civil. Not like it makes too much of a difference, but what happened with the silver is light enough things a lot more. While the colors were very bright and vibrant, the minute I added the silver, it didn't make it slightly dull. I think if I had wanted, I could have actually tried to gold, which could have brightened up the colors more. This comes with a little bit of trial and error. I'm not gonna say it's just an exact science. Yes, color theory helps a lot with it. That which is very in depth, normally required. But a lot of it comes from testing and trying. As you keep painting, you will notice some color combinations just work well together. Similarly adding some silver dots. Again, just some doodles on designs. If you feel like, if at this point you're happy with your painting, go ahead and you can let go. Sometimes I do find it hard to let go. And I add stuff and I'm happy about it towards the end. But it's a point of knowing when to stop. This is our completed project. 8. Layered Florals: This project is going to start off a little bit different where we have taped down the middle of the paper just randomly as you can pick wherever. We're just going to tape it down and we're going to plan off laws based on that. Now for the flaws have gone through them in the practice exercises, but I'm making it slightly different. So we're taking it a step full ago. What I'm doing first is a transparently or of truly, really big sized flowers or big size petals. So just try to enlarge them as much as possible because we're going to overlay an overly an overlap and it's going to become smaller. So we just want really like a nice big petal. You can really make it occupy enough of space within the painting. Once you've added a big flower, Let's do a half-life. Again, exactly like what we practiced. But just making sure that we add larger sized and making sure that we're using a very diluted Leo. Let's add another flower on top. Again, this is going to be a half-life. Now that that's done on the other side, I'm going to do a full flower that is kind of peeking through. It's okay if this layer is really, really light because that's fine. It's just wanted to kind of be a chance. Apparently are like, you know, it doesn't need to be very loud and obvious. Now, once that's dried, we're gonna go in with a second layer of a light pink and use that around the petals. Now you can see how these are much more smaller in size. And again, there's still a bigger because we have another layer that's going to be even more smaller. But couple of things is first, I have made sure that the transparent layer has dried up before I went on to do this. Secondly, I'm using a slightly a more opaque Leo for this color, as well as I've made sure to mix it with white so I get a light pink. I'm not just using Boolean as it is. Is it will move it on over a million. I'm just going to call it red. One gets upset with the way I pronounce it. Yeah. Just a light pink. Go ahead and do this through all of the flaws, the half-life, the full star. At this point you can also see I did. I added some dots with the pink on the previous layer, again just for the colors to come through. Now continue with our final flour, following the same pattern. Now we're going to let the layer dry. We're going to go in with the red paint out a very opaque layer. This is going to be a deep that's going to come in as the final step in the flour. This is just the full floor. We're going to follow the same thing for the half floors as well. As I mentioned, we can use some of that red texture along the edge of the last layer. This is just step one. Now we're gonna go into add the leaves. The leaves we're going to use the combination of blues and the green blue. But before that, let's complete the center of the pole and the flower, not the polling filaments of the flower. All I'm doing is taking blue, which is ultramarine blue, and I'm just adding some dots along the center. I'm going to do this to all of the flowers. Keep in mind that all of this is dry before I go ahead and do this so that there's no blending of colors. Now that we have done this, let's go ahead and add our leaves. I'm starting off with the very lightly, very lightly leaf along the stem, Just making sure it's a diluted layer. Now I can switch colors with the green, blue that we had created in the material section. Again, a likelier. And this may not be as opaque, but as we go higher and higher, we can go more opaque with it. And finally, at the top of the stem, we can go ahead and use ultramarine, which is very opaque and beautiful. As we continue with this, make sure to add in your textures for your leaves with simple dots or simple lines. Whenever I'm doing the textures, I made sure to use a contrast color. Whatever color that is opposite. If it's ultramarine blue leaf are used very dn, green spots. The spots is the leaf is fer de and green. I use ultramarine spots. That's how we change things. Now let's add more leaves. Another trick that you're going to see me do is going to come up in a couple of steps. Make sure to balance out the colors by switching the paint from one color to another. As you move along. The same thing, Let's continue adding more leaves. Our painting. You can easily tell over your paper just for easy access through it all. It's gonna be so much more easier. Instead of trying to attempt to get your hand to work in odd angles. This way you're guaranteed to come up with really nice proper details. At this point, just done it on your paper and you can then go ahead and paint out your leaves. Now all of this is still wet and it's still not tried, which is great because I want to go ahead and add a very light color to the mixture. The light color, which I might do in a couple of steps. But if you're seeing that your painting is drying, you can go ahead and do that right now. Use white dots or white acrylic paint and add the dots. What's going to happen is because of the light color on the paper, it's going to give a beautiful effect. What we've done before is just add on similar colors to it. But when you take something that's a white, it looks like it's the white of the paper coming through. That always looks by Interesting. Move step-by-step from one flower to another, adding in the leaves and bringing it all together. Now let's use white or light pink to add textures for the blue part of the leaves. Can go ahead and add lines, can add dots. You can add even diamond shapes and different types of shapes as well. Which might look interesting. That's also really fun to do. Now in our painting we're almost done. But I wanted to add in some more, some more details. And it's actually a very simple detail of a stem of leaves that are in pink color. You can see how this just like gives perspective to the painting. All the elements in the painting right now are very big. They're very bold. Leaves are big, the flower is big, everything is big. When you add an element that is smaller, like this leaf set where the leaves are smaller in size, it gives a different symmetricity to the painting and balances everything. If everything is just big, it looks too big and there's no balance. But when you add in a small element, then there's contrast between the two. I like adding that element to it. Also, the element is generally attached to the stem, so it's not just a completely different element that's away from it, but it's more like it's linked with it. Once that's done, clearer, let it dry and then remove our tape to complete the painting. 9. Textured Backdrop: Are you ready for a really, really fun project? Now the first thing I've done is taped down my paper. I've taped down in such a way that I have a really nice big border around the edges. So really pay attention to that because that is important for you to notice before we get into the painting. Now, once that is done, once you're happy with that truly nice border that you've left with tape. Take a clean brush and dip it with clear water and just paint all over the base of the paper. At this point, I like to go over it multiple times just so the water can seep in before I go onto adding my layers of paint. Now starting with our small drawn brush, Let's take a little bit of the light pink color and start painting out. The ends are edges of the painting. For this step, you can use a slightly bigger brush if you have one. Otherwise, continue going ahead with what you have already. As you can see, what I'm doing is really playing around with the combination of the pinks. I'm trying to make sure that some areas, especially the edge of the paintings have more of the pink. And I'm layering it up. There's a very haphazard manner in which I'm adding the paint, as you can see, just gently tapping it onto the paper. You can just keep doing that over and over again till you're happy with the overall look. At this point, I also like to mix in colors. So if you have a little bit of just a lighter shade of pink, you can go ahead and play around with that. Then just build it onto deeper shades of pink, as you can see, which means less white mixed with the vermillion. What I'm trying to do is making sure that I don't add this all over the painting. I'm trying to add it at the top left corner as well as the top as well as the bottom, suggest really, nor does that Chuck's up position. I don't think that's the right word, so let's just say asymmetrical. Look, hope that's better. Now I've added a little bit more what? White to this light pink mixture. And I am adding some nice dots to this existing layer. It's still wet. So when I add these light pink dots, you can see it bloomed into the painting. In areas where the painting has already dried. You can see it's just maintaining its shape. But in areas where obviously there's still water on the paper, it blooms through and becomes part of the painting. What I think is really fun about this is basically by using a lighter color. It gives a very unique lock. It looks very interesting as we complete. Once you are happy with the mix, let's allow it to completely dry. Now that it's dried, Let's move on to add some leaves. For the leaves, I'm using the green blue mixture that we had done in the materials section. And I'm using that exact color for our leaves, using also a very opaque layer. Notice how there's not much water. I'm not playing around with the translucency has I've done before? I'm literally keeping it very solid and opaque because it forms and surely good beat, not base. It forms a secondary layer which is really nice to the background that we had just created. That's very abstract and very asymmetrical and just has a lot of textures. This becomes the focal point, it becomes the solid element in the painting. Go ahead and drop, paint out the leaves. The leaves are done in such a way that they are half into the painting. You can see some of the leaves that are midway through. I'm making sure that the leaves are splitting into multiple branches. And I'm really playing around with the size of the leaves, some being bigger, some being smaller. All form what we had practiced in our practice exercises. The thing to keep in mind is we don't want to overload the painting with too many leaves. I'm making sure that there's enough of space between them. Some of the other projects, you would have noticed that there's so much going on. The leaves are overlapping. There's gonna be a different type of style where we're going to hold back on that. We're not going to add too much. We're going to let the background shine with its texture. Also, what I'm going to do in terms of placement of the leaves is I'm not going to have it all through all four corners of the painting. I'm going to have it just 3 fourth of the way. As I paint. You're going to understand this a little bit more. Make sure to load up your brush with paint if you feel like it's becoming very dry as your paint along, you want to have this beautiful glide of paint. And that's the gouache look or Garage field. It has beautiful, gentle vibe. And that's about it. I want to overdo the number of leaves that's on the page too, which is going to keep it at this point. Now while it's drying, I'm going to go ahead and mix some light pink on my palette. For the light pink, basically we're using the same mixture that we used for the background because I really wanted to bring that color into the leaf as well. Make sure that you start with the leaves that are dried if it's still wet, give it some time before painting this, this detail for the leaf. As you can see, go ahead and add the center line for the leaf with the same thing that we used in our background. To bring in a little bit of a variation. I use a slightly lighter pink as well, similar to the pink that we use for the spots in the background. And use that for some of the stems and leaf details. Now let's paint in some lab windows for the lavender. I'm first going to start with a light pink lavender stem. You can see how I'm doing that. Basically just having dots are just dabbing my brush in such way to form a lavender stem. You can see what I'm doing. I'm trying to explain it, but I'm not doing a great job. I think with the video it's a lot more clear. And don't worry if it's the same color as the background. We're going to go ahead and add a little bit of blue to the mix so it just brightens up and then it looks more like a lavender. We don't want to overdo it. We just want a couple of them. Just keeping it very, very simple and just adding them in some of the places. Once that's done, let's take white and add it to the right side of the window that we just painted. As you can see with the white. I'm not overdoing it or painting the entire thing because we just paint to the bank. What I'm doing is just making sure that it's there on the right side so it can be seen. Now we need this to dry before we move ahead and add in the pulp of the lavender. For the purple, either you can go ahead and use purple gouache. But in the materials I hadn't mentioned it, what I've actually done is used to view with a little bit of thanks to them, my brush, the blue and the pink on my brush I've combined to give you a pulpal. It's that simple. That's why I haven't really mentioned it even in the material. It's because it just happened very often unintentionally, but you can just take your ultramarine blue and mix it with the little bit of pink that you've already been using to get this book. For the purple, I'm making sure that it's on the left side of whatever I've painted. Making sure that it's on the left side of the flower. You can see how I'm also making sure that I do all the way the edge of the tip off the lab window. Once this is dry and you're super happy with the way it looks, you can go ahead and remove the tape on all four corners of all four edges. You're left with this beautiful painting that has a really nice crisp edge. And it's perfect for framing. 10. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on finishing this amazing class, and I really hope you had fun with it. Take your time with the projects, do it multiple times if you find that you're struggling with some of it. But the whole point is to just really enjoy and love Kourosh, the medium to guide you. As we go ahead. What I would love for you to do is leave a review or a testimonial on Skillshare. It is completely up to you. I don't really want to force you guys, but I loved reading your little quirky messages and it always makes my day. Additionally, if you've done the projects, I would love to see them. You can go ahead and share them on Instagram under the hashtag I've found visionary class. Or if you feel like you just wanted to tag me, go ahead and do that. I always share them on my stories. So other people can also be inspired and it just brings about a beautiful feel into the community. You can also go ahead and add your projects on Skillshare Projects tab. This is a great way for you to get feedback from your fellow students as well. If you have any questions that you would like for me to answer, there is a discussion tab where you can ask your question and I would be able to reply to it. You would get an email notification with the response, so you can also track it all in all. I am so excited that you guys went through this class and I really hope you also join me for upcoming classes or go ahead and watch any of my older classes that you are really drawn to. As always, enjoy happy painting and just have a wonderful weekend.