Oil Painting Exercises Part 2: Master Brushwork, Texture, and Observation

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to this course. I'm truly happy to have you here. In this class, we will continue developing your painting skills with a new collection of practical exercises that are slightly more challenging. Each one focuses on a different technique that will help you paint with greater confidence and accuracy. We'll explore exercises such as painting an upside down cup to train your observation, painting an apple using different brushstrokes, learning how to paint soft edges and creating realistic folds in fabric, painting a vibrant orange ribbon, and finally bringing everything together in a complete painting. As in the previous class, I will be using oil painting paper, my five color palette, and synthetic brushes, although you can work on canvas if you prefer. If you need more information about the materials, you will find a complete explanation in my fundamentals of oil painting class here on Skillshare. Let's get started right now. 2. Paint an apple in 5, 10 and 20 brushtrokes: In this video, we are going to focus on a very stimulating exercise, painting an apple with only five, ten or 20 brushstrokes. So we'll create three different artworks using each time an painting paper and the format will be 15 by 15 centimeter. This is a really nice exercise to make some progress because it forces you to paint only what is important, to make some choices, and also to have some very accurate and precise gestures and to see how just a simple limited number of brushstrokes can be enough to create some volume and how you can improve paintings with just a little more brushstrokes. That is to say, from ten brushstrokes to only 20 brushstrokes. With just ten more brushstrokes, you can create something even more elaborate. So that's pretty fun to do. And if you want to go even further after this exercise, you can really paint this apple without any limitation with the number of brushstrokes that you want. And for that, you have the tutorial in the still life course in the still life module where I show you and guide you through the painting of this apple precisely with something realistic. So grab your brushes, and well, you just need one brush. Grab your brush, and let's paint these apples together. As usual, before we start painting this apple, we are going to observe the different colors and analyze them. So first of all, what we notice is that clearly there is a part in shadow, a dark area, which is already dark on one hand, because of the color of the apple, you can see it is a reddish side and even more so because it is in shadow. So this means we'll have dark reds, but not only that, there is a very pronounced core shadow, and we can see that these shadows have a slightly dark purplish tone. And we notice this, especially because in the slightly lighter area, the color shift a bit towards purple hue, which means we know that in this very dark zone, it's going to be a very dark purple. Then as we move closer to the left side of the image, it gradually becomes lighter, but this lightning doesn't happen abruptly. It is progressive. We will start with some intermediate oranges and gradually on the far left side, we have very light colors with lighter oranges, for instance, but also some pale yellows that are really light and sometimes almost close to white in the area near the highlight. And then as we go up progressively towards the upper part of the image to create the dip that is visible where the stem is a brown stem with a really intense brown. Well, in that area around the stem, on that upper part where the dip is, we have some yellow greens, but really not intense at all that we will need to mix properly. So we realize that for an object as ordinary as an apple, there is a whole range of colors that we need to blend carefully and create several values. We'll create a lot of colors on the palette, but then nothing stops us from mixing more along the way during our painting. To create intermediate colors that we can blend together as we go. And so that's it for the analysis. And now let's move on to mixing all these colors together. So here we go, and I'm starting by mixing my darker colors, and I will begin by creating the dark area, that area that was slightly purplish, as we had seen. So I mixed some purple with some burnt timber, but I think I ended up with something that was a bit too dark, so I added a little bit of white to my color. Now my color is really nice and dark, which is exactly what I wanted. You can't quite see the dark effect yet, the purple effect I mean. And in fact, on the apple itself, you only see it moderctly. It's especially when it lighten up that you realize it has this purplish tone. So that's what I will be doing next. So here I am creating a slightly purplish red that is a bit lighter than what I had mix next to it. And now I would say it is still a bit too dark. So I'm adding a touch of white, and it is also a bit too intense, in terms of purple for my taste. So for some areas of the apple, so I have added the complimentary color to purple, which is yellow. Now I have a color that's not too bad, but it wasn't shifting enough towards red. Remember, the right side of the apple is rather reddish, a little bit purplish, but mostly reddish. So here, I've got a red that's not too intense, and I am pretty happy with it. I'm thinking of that for the side area where we have that slightly purplish tone with something a bit lighter, this color I'm creating now could work well. Because on the side of the apple, where you have this whole arc of light, this bound slight, I thought this color could be a good fit, and now I'm going to create a slightly intense orangy brown. Actually, it's more of an intense orange that leans slightly towards brown, which I am mixing now. So for that, I mix red and yellow, and I have added a small touch of burnt umber to make it a bit darker. To get something even a bit darker still, I'm adding more red and more burnt umber. And I am also going to add a little bit of ultramarine blue to tone down this orange since blue is the complimentary color of orange. This also reinforces its slightly brownish tone at the same time. Now I am going to mix the oranges that we see in several areas of the apple. So I will start with an orange that is moderately dark. What I am doing is giving it a generous amount of red and yellow, a bit of white too so that it doesn't end up too dark. You saw that I also added a touch of blue to make sure the orange isn't too intense. Right now, I figured I wanted to make it just a little bit darker but not necessarily adding too much into brown. So I increase my amount of yellow and red again, which, as a result, lowers the proportion of white, and I ended up with the right orange. Now it's not too bad, but I'm going to make another variation for the other orange areas. So I took a small portion of the orange I had make and decided to lighten it with some yellow and white. But I noticed that by doing so, my color wasn't red enough, so I added a bit more red. Now, I was aiming to create a very pale yellow we can see in some places, which is really bright. But my brush was a little dirty and not clean enough. So I decided to change my strategy and go for the pale yellow green that we can see at the top of the apple. So I am steering towards something more yellow and much less light than I originally plan. But that's part of the process. I feel like I'm getting closer right now to my target color. Adding some burnt umber can also really help to give it that slightly more neutral, slightly brownish look. But burnt umber also a bit a bit brings in a greenish tone that is a bit too strong. I want something slightly green but not that much. And so that's why you saw me add a small touch of red as well. And now with a clean brush this time, I can create the pale yellow color that is extremely light and that we can see in the highlight area. I'm just adding a tiny hint of red to give it a very subtle orangy tone. For the apple itself, I would say that we have a good base of colors, which is great. We are also going to mix the colors for the background and for the shadow. It is true that they were part of the initial analysis, but that's not a big deal. We are going to mix them anyway, and you will see that it's going to be quite straightforward. For the background, I am starting by mixing a base of gray or more or less or more or less light gray. There is a good amount of white in it, but I don't want it to be too light either because the apple is already quite bright and the surface it's rating on is too. So this medium dark background will help the apple stand out properly. This gray and make some burnt timber with ultramarine blue with a good portion of burnt umber. Then for the cast shadow of the apple, meaning the apple's shadow stretch across the surface, you can notice that it leans quite a lot towards purple. So that's what I'm starting to mix. The fairly dark purple with a good amount of burnt timber and ultramarine blue. I also added some yellow to tone it down, but I think I may have added a bit too much. We'll see how it turns out, and if needed, I will adjust it slightly with a bit more ultramarin blue, for example. And for this shadow, there won't be just a single flat color. There will be several. That's what I am doing. I am creating several colors for the shadow, getting progressively lighter. This way, I will be able to accurately recreate the shadow of my apple. And now I think we are in a pretty good place. We have a well prepared palate, and so we can get started. So let's get started, and we'll begin with the first step in just five brushstrokes. And with only five brushstrokes, we are very limited, so we need to ask ourselves the right questions. What are the elements that are really essential? What do I absolutely need to highlight to make sure it is clear that this is my apple? For me, I would say what's important is first the shadow on the right side. Then there is also the central area, which is orange and seems really crucial. And finally, the left side area. So with just that, we are already at three brushstrokes. Then we also have the top area with the stem. So if we count them so if we count the top part plus the stem, that makes of five brushstrokes. So we are there and we are not allowed to do anymore. It also makes us wonder, is there anything else I could skip and still have something that resembles my apple? For now, I don't have the answer. We'll see once it's all done. So I start with this very dark shadow area, and I go in with a really dark color to clearly mark the zone and make it obvious that it is the shadow element. Also, just to clarify, one brushstroke counts from the moment the brush touches the paper to the moment it is lift off. So here I have started with the shadow area. It is important to make sure your brush is properly loaded so you can cover a large area. Since the next color is really different from this area that we have done, I am switching to anova brush, and I am using a flat brush, which is quite wide to work on larger section. So here, I have chosen this orange, which I feel is a color that really represents the overall tone pretty well. To paint this area. And again, I apply it with my flat brush. Now it's true that I have a rather awkward transition between the shadow area and this central area. You can see that it is lacking some intermediate brushstrokes and intermediate colors. But unfortunately, given that I have such a limited number of strokes, I couldn't really do it any other way. Now I am going to paint the area on the side. It is quite a light area, and I'm thinking that maybe this color on my palette would work well. However, it is a little too light, so I adjust it a bit, as you can see. And if I had to choose a color to define this area, I would say this one is pretty good. So once again, I apply broad brushstrokes to cover the entire area properly. Next, I try to create a blend with the adjacent color. Although it is true that without an intermediate color between the two, the transition is really abrupt and the blending isn't great at all. So as I mentioned before, I'm going to now paint the upper part, and I'm going to give it a try with this color on my palette. This kind of yellow, slightly reddish green color. And I'm going to use it to give it a bit more volume and show that there is a clearly difference between these two areas. And then for my last brushstrokes, my fifth one, I will use it to paint the stem because here, while you can already tell it's a round object, we have managed to give it some sense of volume with these first four brushstrokes. The stem is still a pretty distinctive feature of the apple, which can help define it a bit more. So there we go, with five brushstrokes, we have managed to create something that looks somewhat volumetric, but it is true that it's almost mission impossible with so few brushstrokes available. Still, it has the advantage of making us think carefully and ask ourselves, What is the dominant color in each area if I want to paint it? Now we are allowed to use twice as many brushstrokes. Let's try to represent this apple in ten brushstrokes. So now I am asking myself, what could I had to make it a little bit more realistic? So what I can do is use the same five brushstrokes, but also work a little bit more on the transition. For instance, between this core shadow and the central zone, at the bottom, I have something a little bit different as well. Work on the transition between the central area and the light one on the left. Also work on this left side with something a little bit darker and work on the dip of the apple. And then I think that will be pretty good because I still have a limited number of strokes. Ten is not very huge amount of brushstrokes. So here, I'm modifying a bit my purple color and adding some red to it. And so I can get started with this core shadow of my apple. And this time, this area will be smaller since I am going to use some intermediate color. So now I'm switching to something lighter that will help me create a transition from this core shadow area to the central zone that is much lighter. And I think that this one could be a great deal to create that transition. So I am applying some right here, but I will also apply some of this color to the right where there is this bound slide, sorry, and this lighter element. Even though it's not the right color for this area, it's still pretty close, and this helped me to have a better sense of volume by adding something lighter in this area. Now with this orange that is pretty intense, I can use it at the bottom of my apple, and I can progress a little bit towards the middle of my apple. But I won't touch this area I painted before. I think that right now I could use another color to create a transition between these two zones. So we are now at four brushstrokes. And what I am going to do is move on to the next area. And here I will use something orange, a little lighter, I would say, as the dominant color for this zone. And there we go. We've already reached half of our allowed brushstrokes, and we are doing pretty well so far. Now I'm going to move on to something even lighter, closer to a pale yellow to paint the area right here. And then I would need to create something a bit new for the left side of the apple. You can see that in the upper left side, there is a bit more of a reddish orange tone. Okay. So I'm going to take some of my red and mix it with a bit of yellow and also some white because I don't want it to be too dark. Then I can paint this edge of the apple right here, even though I think that my color is a bit too reddish here, but it's not a big deal. It's just an exercise. So now I only have three brushstrokes left, and I will use one for this upper part around the dip. And I will also grab some burn timber to reinforce the shading and the dip painting like this. Okay, and then my final brushstrokes will be used for the stem of my apple. Now we can clearly compare our two results and see that with five additional brushstrokes, we have achieved a result that is definitely much better. This exercise really has a valuable purpose. It helps us develop our painting strategy, making us think carefully about where to place each brushstrokes and which areas should take priority. It also really helps to understand the hierarchy of values and colors because with so few brushstrokes, every color matters enormously. This exercise allows us to select the most relevant colors to express light, shadow, and volume. And I would also say that it teaches us to work on our brushstrokes and the precision of our movements. Since every brushstrokes counts, there's no room for hesitation in this exercise. So we'll continue, and this time, we are allowed 20 brushstrokes to paint the apple. Let's continue and start shaping this form, but this time with 20 brushstrokes, which gives us a lot more flexibility to work on smoother transition. In other words, we'll have shifts between colors that are less abrupt, and as a result, our blends will likely look a bit more natural. Now, my brush was a bit dirty. It had some darker paint on it, so it slightly died my color, so I will need to fix that. So here I can start by painting this lighter area. Until now, we have been starting with the dark area, but we can absolutely start the other way around. So my first brushstroke, I work on this area. And since I have a bit more freedom, given that I am allowed 20 brushstrokes, I can now place this highlight in a very bright area. I am also not hesitating to create some intermediate colors, as you can see here by mixing different colors together. This way, my transitions will be smoother when I move from one area to another. Once again, with an intermediate color, I can work on this hedge here, the one on the left. And this time, I have a tone that's a bit less red than when I painted with ten stroke, and it's closer to the desired color. So we are now at four strokes, and already this side is starting to take shape nicely. So I can continue with this color in this area. That makes five strokes, and already, we can notice that with more brushstrokes, we are able to apply more different values in different colors. This way, the transitions between our colors look much more natural. It feels like we are creating a blend, even though we haven't actually done any blending or specifically worked on soft transition, but simply by using colors that are very close to one another, we managed to create smooth transitions. Unlike what we had, for example, in the first exercise, in the first part, where the colors were extremely different, and no matter how much we try to mix them, there were no smooth transition because these colors in the first part, when we were allowed to only five brushstrokes, these colors were way too different from one another. I am taking a bit of burntor to work on the dip of my apple, just like I did earlier when we only had ten brushstrokes, which brings my total to nine brushstrokes. And the tenth brushstroke will allow me to paint the stem. So we are Alfred through, and that's great because we have painted about half the apple, focusing on the lighter areas. And there we go. The apple is really starting to take shape, especially thanks to all these transitions. You can clearly see the difference compared to what we were able to do earlier. Now I think this color might work well to start addressing the shadow area, but I will need another color to work here on this band, which will allow for a smoother transition to the adjacent zone. If I had been a bit more attentive, I probably wouldn't have needed to apply these 14th brushstrokes and could have painted this area at the bottom using the same color as before, but that's the game. Now, to begin softening the transition in the shadow area, I would say that these colors seem quite good. So with this one, I apply my 14th brushstroke to start defining the heart of our co shadow. For my 15 brushstroke, I can paint along the edge with this purplish tone. The problem is that I'm not really happy with this purple. I find it doesn't stand out enough. It needs to be lighter like it is in the reference photo. Well, I've wasted a brushstroke, but it's not a big deal. So here the 16th stroke. Now I like it a bit more and it stands out better. I can apply a brushstroke right here to close off this area, and then I will be able to paint my core shadow, the heart of the shadow with a very dark color so that it stands out well. So here it is. Now I will only have two brushstrokes left, but I'm still trying to create a bit of a blend with the surrounding colors still using the same brushstroke. And there's definitely a softer transition here compared to the earlier exercise when we only had five or ten brushstrokes. So I think it's already better. For this 19th brushstroke, I am going to work a bit more on my stem. And finally, for my last brushstroke, I'm going to work a little more on the central area, which isn't dark enough for my taste. I want to make it a bit more of a dark orange. This way, I will get a slightly better transition between the shadow area and the light area. In the end, what we should take away from this exercise is that it was incredibly valuable for many reasons, as I mentioned earlier, but above all, it proves that taking your time truly makes a difference. It allows you to create a result that feels more realistic and lifelike. If you look closely, between the second and third apple, the number of burst strokes almost double, yet well, it doubled, actually. Yet the extra time it took was minimal. And still the improvement is striking. And this shows that for our final painting, dedicating a little more extra time to add extra brushstrokes, bring in more depth of color, and so add more colors and different values. Refine a few more details doesn't actually require much more effort, but it significantly elevates the end result. And in the end, that's what really matters. No how quickly you finish or how many minutes you save, but the quality of the artwork that you create. 3. Painting a blurry scene: In this video, we are going to learn how to paint the blur in our artwork. It is something that is very powerful for creating some very nice backgrounds with a landscape, for example, or with a portrait. And so we are going to learn how to do that. And for the artwork that we are going to paint, it will be a very small landscape that will be completely blurred without any sharp edges. And so we are going to see how to do that. And to paint this little artwork, I'm going to work on a paper that is 21 by 13 centi Mero. But you can definitely adapt it and create something a little bigger or something a little smaller, if you want. And for the drawing, I really did something very quickly, a small sketch because it's not something very accurate that you need to have for this drawing. So, grab your brush and let's get started. Before we start painting this subject and working on the blur effect, let's first ask ourselves what defines the blur? What makes elements appear blurry when we want to paint them. What we can notice is that because it is blurry, all the sharp edges tend to disappear. For example, with my trees, it is hard to tell exactly where the outlines are where they really begin for the trees on the right, for instance. And it's the same with the foliage or even the outline of the mountains. All the crisp outlines fade away. Then we also observe that there are no visible details within the blurred areas. Those details also completely disappears. So that covers the theory. Now, let's see in practice how to actually paint blur. So before we start mixing, let's first take a look at the different colors we are going to need to mix. If we look closely, we can see that we'll have a multitude of greens, especially in the field. So in the field, when we start at the upper part of our field, we can see that we'll have a fairly intense yellow green. Then gradually, we'll move towards more regular greens at the bottom. For example, in the lower part, these are fairly neutral greens, not too yellow, not too blue that we will need to mix. And if we look closely, we can also notice that our fields won't be uniform. That is, we'll have a multitude of greens even within small areas. For instance, in the lower area, we will indeed have fairly regular fairly neutral greens, but it won't be just one grill. There will be many different ones. Then we also notice that in the central area, there is this bush with a fairly dark green. So you have pull out just one green color for this bush, but there are still several. We'll also need to use multiple greens to bring realism to this bush. And then as we move toward the upper part of our image, we have those eels in the distance, where there is indeed an intense green like the one in the upper part of the film. But with these els, there is also a fairly intense blue green that we will be able to create. As for the trees for the tree on the left, we will have something more like a black brown. But for the ones on the right, we will need to mix different grays, and we'll also have gray for our sky, which will be a very light gray sky. And also all around these trees and hills to enhance that slightly blurred effect, we'll need some gray. Well, I meant for the sky, we need some light gray, not light green. So these are the colors we will need to mix. And so let's get started right away and begin mixing them. So let's get started with mixing the colors for this landscape. As you can see in some areas, the green are fairly intense yellow green. So I am starting by mixing that color, and as you can see, I am using a large amount of yellow in my mix. For the next shade, we are going to move towards something a bit more blue, but I still want to keep a fairly balanced green. To get a balanced green, you need to use a lot of yellow, since ultramarrin blue is a pretty dark color, a pretty strong color, meaning that if you put the same amount of blue and yellow, your color will turn much more blue than green. Now, the blue will be more dominant than in what I had mixed so far. So we are going to get a slightly bluer version of the color, and I have taken a bit more to enrich my mixture. I also added some burn timber to darken the tone. Now for this new version, I am adding a little more blue to get a different version, something more green, blue than what I had. And so I keep mixing my colors right here. I'm getting something blue green that is pretty light. And well, even though in this exercise about blur, the goal isn't to get the most perfect lens, but it's always good to practice and to train yourself to mix colors properly as this is something that is very important in painting. Now I am creating a new one that has more burnt umber because burnt amber, besides darkening my color also helps to prevent the green from becoming too blue, as it had been up to this point. When I darken my color with only ultramarine blue, my green tends to be too blue, whereas right here, it's not as blue as the other green I created. And then in some areas we have some very light green. So that's what I'm creating now with a lot of the white color. And finally, to get a very light sky, I took a large amount of white, added some blue, and also some orange to make the blue less intense and more muted with a slightly grayish tone. Alright, let's get started with this acise on painting blur. So I'll begin by applying a slightly yellow green color in this area here. I'm going to adjust it a bit to make it more yellow and a little lighter by adding some white. Blur, in fact, isn't very difficult to paint, but you do need to pay close attention to what you are seeing. Like we said before, when elements appear blurry, the details simply disappear, and you focus on applying the colors, blending them together. Most of the elements tend to merge into one another. For now, I am focusing on laying down my color properly because I will come back later to work on my blending. So I'm creating a kind of gradient between the two shades to paint in this area. And now I'm going to take slightly darker green applying here on the upper part and on the right. The Over here as well, I can apply some of these slightly darker greens, and I try to blend them gently as I apply them next to my other colors. Even though I am not fully focusing on blending right now, I can always come back to refine it later. As I apply my structure of color, I can try to blend them like this. And over here, I am applying the colors side by side. I just realized that I had forgotten to mix the browns for painting the tree, especially for the area where it overlaps as well. So I have mixed some now, and I am going to apply little touches of brown like this over my green area. And I also gently blend this brown with the green so that it all becomes one, making sure that all the elements are truly connected. So I have applied these small touches like this and at least they blend nicely with the rest. Later on, I will be able to paint the tree properly and entirely. Now, looking at the upper the entire part of the upper sorry, now, looking at the entire upper part of my film, I also notice that there are some slightly darker colors. So I am adding some, applying them lightly, and then making sure they blend well with the other elements. Since we had already built a pretty good base for this film, I can now refine it and add some more elements and blend them together. And even though this area appears blurry, that doesn't mean it's completely lacking in details. What I mean is, of course, we won't see the little blades of gray, tiny flowers and their precise outlines. However, we can still see that our field is made up of several different shades. Even if I start with an area that's a light green, I'm not going to keep it as a flat uniform light green. There will be multiple variations. So parts a little darker, some a little lighter, and that's what will help keep the painting realistic even if it's blurry. And even though I am working on a blurry painting, I still want my blur to feel real. To achieve a blur that looks natural and convincing, I need to work on all these subtle variations. So this exercise on blur is great because not only does it teach us how to handle blurring, but it also helps us create something realistic without focusing on tiny details, without trying to paint every single little thing. Instead, we concentrate purely on the colors and the small variations we can add here and there to make our painting for realistic, even though it is blurry. I can continue with the area below. And in this section, we can see that it is generally darker than the rest. So I'm going to darken my greens and go for something less vibrant than the area above. What I also start with is marking the darkest elements first. They stand out nicely and give me reference points for painting the other elements around them later. In this area, I noticed there are some elements that are a bit whitish. So I'm adding them now with a pencil to avoid having to paint over them later. It's true that I didn't draw them during the initial sketch. Sometimes I am so eager to start painting that I tell myself it is fine to skip those elements at first when drawing. I only draw what's essential, the main parts. Then I had other details progressively as I paint or I figure out how to paint without having the outlines drawn beforehand. That's what happened here, but I thought that to make sure I stay precise and avoid accidentally painting over them, it would be better to sketch them in with a pencil first. So now I can go ahead and paint between these darker elements that I had already applied using a slightly lighter green less intense than the previous one. With bush strokes scattered here and there, I can make sure that these different greens blend nicely with one another, as you can see here. What I am also doing is adding some darker, bluish green elements in the darker area near that sort of bush, you can see, because I felt it wasn't standing out enough. Just like I did a bit earlier, I'm improving this area, emphasizing certain elements to make them pop and to ensure we have enough dark accents and variations in our grass to make it look truly believable. Now that I am applying this, I make sure my elements blend well with the others. And to really create that well defined blur effect, I'm also aiming for a certain softness. Blur introduces a kind of visual uncertainty, and that's exactly what I am trying to achieve here in my blending. In other words, I am aiming for controlled imprecision. I place brushstrokes here and there to the left and right deliberately so that I end up with something that doesn't look too sharp or precise once all my elements are blended together. I had already started blending and now I'm going back over it over these dark elements. Adding random looking brushstrokes to the left to the right, up, down almost at random, and this gives me a result that ends up looking completely natural. So now I can start painting this buche. You will notice that we don't have exactly the same colors everywhere. There are several shades that help give it volume and make it look realistic. Here I'm making my color a little lighter. I lighten it with white, but unfortunately, the white made it a bit too desaturated and not green enough anymore. So I adjusted it with a little blue, yellow, and now I am creating something even darker with burnt amber and more green. Because I want something to get slightly darker for some area. And so little by little, I'm finishing this area, trying to apply my colors in the right place. Then the little challenge will be when I start blending all these colors together to make sure that each color stays in its place while still keeping a smooth and harmonious blend overall. To achieve a smooth, harmonious blend with the surrounding colors, I am using this brush, which isn't too big, and I lightly tap here and there along the edges to help my bush blend nicely with the rest of the areas. Up here, it is a little bit trickier because there is a real difference between these two colors. But the small brushstrokes I am adding here and there help create a transition that feels natural between these two elements, even though they are quite far apart in terms of value. I really have something dark and something very light. Within the bush itself, I can also gently tap with small strokes. And when I notice as it is the case here, that it needs adjusting and that I need to add some darker elements back in, I don't hesitate to do it. When blending, it is common for some color to fade away or for certain areas to become a bit lighter. That happens quite often. Here, as well, I am adding some um some dark green because you can see that at the base, the bush spreads out a bit and creates a transition with the ground. So to do that properly, I needed to add a bit more of that dark green. And I keep going adding little brushstrokes here and there until I am fully satisfied. On side on the right side, I also noticed that there were lines that were too visible. The blur wasn't chaotic enough. So I'm going back over those areas to improve the effect. Now I can start painting this little whitish spot that we can see in the grass. What you notice with them with these whitish spots or rather slightly grayish, is that they blend in with the rest, just like the other elements, and that's what I'm trying to achieve. Then once I have finished this base with this color, I will add some lighter touches to them because they are not completely uniform. They are small there are some small lighter areas that stand out on top, and that's also what I'm going to try to create. Now, let's move on to painting the upper part of our subject. Between the field and the mountain, you can see there is this slightly lighter band. So I will start by applying a base layer with this light gray, and then I will have some greenish touches over it, which we can see here and there. And that will help me create a bit more atmosphere. Just like with the field, we won't settle for just a single color. There will be a whole range of shades that will make this area look more realistic. And I make sure to run my brush along the edge so that it blends well with the field below. When you are painting blur, there really isn't any element that stands out completely apart. In other words, all the elements are more or less connected to each other. There are no harsh breaks or sharp boundaries between different elements. They all connect with one another at some point. Now that I have done this, I will be able to move on to painting the els in the background. So what I am starting with is this slightly intense blue green that we'll see in several places. So I observe in my photo where I can spot these different colors, and then I go ahead and apply them myself. Once that is done, I will apply the light greens that will find in the other areas. So I would say that now we are pretty much good at this point with this color. And now in the central area and near the tree trunk, I notice that there are these light green. So I'll go ahead and apply them as well. A On the left side, we have the slightly darker green element, so I have changed colors. Now I am blending all these colors together, applying a ladle fade like this. I don't hesitate to wipe off the paint that builds up on my brush. And then this blending will also need to be applied to the grayish area below. As I mentioned before, all the elements when painting this blurred landscape are more or less connected to one another. So I am also trying to create that connection, as you can see here. And I do it by going over the edge and between these two elements. Now, what I am also going to do is take some of that slightly grayish color again, not necessarily very dark, but just to paint a little strip above these heels, which will create the transition with the sky. So I am applying this color as well to make sure these elements blend nicely together once again. Now I have applied a good base on these grayish elements, and I'm going to add small touches of paint. Once again, sometimes a little lighter, sometimes a little darker because if we look closely at our photo, we can clearly see that this grayish strip is not completely uniform. So I am now going to create the tree. And if we look closely at this tree, once again, it is not going to be made up of just a single color. We can see that there is a light gray, and on top of that, inside, there are darker elements. So what I have chosen to do as my approach here is to start with my light base, and on top of that, I will go ahead and paint my darker elements. I think working this way will be the simplest. So that's what I have decided to do. In the same way for the foliage, we can see there are grays and there are also greens, of course. So what I have chosen to do here as well, is to start with the gray first and then to apply my little touches of green on top like this. And for the green, I am applying for the foliage. I try to observe in which direction my little strokes are going and especially where the darker areas are located, and I try to reproduce. Once again, if I am not 100% exact, it's not the end of the world. We are creating painting, own artwork. So it's not the end of the world if there are a few elements that are in place with perfect precision every time. And for the tree, though, on the lower part, we can see that the darker elements are the most prominent. There are very few light elements, like in the upper part where I started with the gray. So here I have chosen to go directly with this dark color at the bottom. And as you can see in the upper part, I try to add a few darker elements as well. In these dark parts of the tree, I will try to connect them and make sure they blend nicely with the elements below. So I am adjusting my brown a little to get one that's well suited for painting this tree because this tree, unlike the ones on the right, has more of a brownish tone. On the right side, the trees had that blurry, slightly bluish look, whereas here, it is less noticeable. That's why this work with the brown seems like the best approach to me. And at the same time, as I am working on the tree, we can see that on the lower part, near the tree. We also have what is probably the tree's shadow, which will blend a little with the rest. So I have added some small touches of brown, and I try to soften them a bit, blending them with my grass. And that's what and that's how I am gradually making progress, making it a bit darker, a bit more brownish. In this brown, I am going to try to blend it on both side, both with the light gray we have on the right and with the green at the bottom, or the green of the hills, so that each element is well connected to the others once again. I am going to mix myself a green that is a bit more bluish, a bit darker, which is why I added a good amount of blue. I might have put in a little too much there, so I adjusted it. And now I'm going to start painting this foliage. What I find really interesting with this exercise is that we are painting the entire landscape in a blurred effect. So it's really great to practice. We really get to see how to approach lots of different things like the bush, the grass, the trees, or even the foliage. That's why I find it so interesting because it allows us to explore lots of different elements, whereas when we paint a complete subject, we rarely have the entire painting in a blurred stye. So here, the fact that we are working on all these elements really prepares us for painting where we would only have a few blurred areas to do. At least this way, we have covered a lot, and it really gives us a solid practice to be able to paint blur. So I have painted the little branches that we could see with this dark green, but all around the trees, overall, we will have quite a few much lighter areas. It's going to be a very light green. So that's what I am doing here now. I am painting between these lines I had made to finish off this part of the tree. Just a few more brushstrokes to had like this between the branches, and then I will be able to paint the sky, a sky that is very light, very close to white. For the sky, what I'm going to start by doing is really making sure to connect it well with the different surrounding elements. This way, there will be less risk of going over the edges with my color. And like this, in the central part, I will be really able to make sure I have something nice and bright. So with my brush, I try to connect it properly, and that will wrap up this video and this work on creating blur. And so that will conclude this tutorial. I hope it was really helpful for you. Don't hesitate to share with me and let me know your thought, and I will see you very soon for a new video, feel free to share with me your final artwork. I'm really excited to see what you have done. He 4. Paint a drapery : part I: This video, we are going to see how to create a drapery. This is a very classical and traditional exercise, both in painting and in drawing. It is a very useful exercise because it helps you to concentrate on the different values, the values of the grays, if you are drawing, the values of the green, if you are painting the drapery. And to see where are the highlights, where are the dark zones, the medium tone, the medium zones. And all of these will help you to have a better understanding of how to create some volume because basically the drapery is just some clothing, some kind of clothing, but that creates some volume through all its folds. And that's the aim of this exercise, to be able to create some volume on a two dimensional piece of paper. And so it will be very interesting to look for all these different zones of value, to look for all the transitions. Where is it going from something really light to something a little bit darker and to work on this blending between these different values. So this is a really, really great exercise for training your skills, painting skills or drawing skills. So for painting this drapery, I will be using 20 centimeters by 30 centimeters all painting paper. And, of course, I will use the grid before to make sure that I have a nice drawing, one that is very accurate. So grab your brushes, and let's get started. Let's take a closer look at the colors in this drapery because it is the colors, all these greens and their variations that will truly make the difference and help us create volume. If we observe this drapery, there are five main greens that stand out. We have some medium greens, intermediate tones like the two I selected in the per section. Then there are quite dark greens really deep, which will help define the shadows in the fold. Below those, there is the fourth green from the top, which will serve for the highlight areas. And finally, some areas are deeply shadow. There we will use greens that are very close to and that's about it. Of course, we'll be able to mix these colors together to create different variations as we progress. But with these five main green tones, we will be able to build volume in the drapery, give it texture, and make it look realistic. And as for the background, we are working with three main grays. There is a light gray which we see across most of the background, a slightly darker gray for the softer shadow, and finally, a darker gray that I selected for the stronger shadow areas. And we can even find an even deeper gray in the small central shadow just beneath the drapery. And so that's it for this analysis. Now let's move on to mixing these greens before we begin working on the drapery and bringing out the volume. Let's begin mixing our greens with these slightly bluish greens. That's why here in my mix, I'm using roughly the same amount of yellow and ultramarine blue to get something that leans just a bit toward blue. Although, at this point, my green is way too blue. So I remove some of the green because otherwise I would have to add way too much yellow to balance it out. And even then I still found it a little bit too bluish. So I rebalance it with a big amount of yellow. And then, well, now I think it's getting even better. So I'm getting something to disagree a little bit more neutral. And now step by step, I'm just adding a little bit of blue to get it slightly bluish. And now I have a color that's looking pretty good, and I'm going to create a lighter variation. So I am lightening it by adding white, but also a touch of yellow because I don't want the result to end up looking too chalky. Unfortunately, because of the white, my color turned a little too pale and chalky, so I rebalanced it again by adding a bit more blue and yellow just a bit. And so I keep adjusting until I get green that looks more balanced, and now I think it's looking pretty good. I really like this version of all the lighter areas we will paint on the drapery. Now I want to make something darker, and to get a darker green, am I need to add some burn timber along with the green because if I just keep adding more blue to darken it, I will end up with a green that is way too blue. Sure, it will be dark, but it will also be very blue, and that's not quite what I want. And in this case, the burn timber really helped to get a dark but well balanced green. Now I'm making something dark but not as dark as what I just did. I want something in between, a green that is slightly lighter so that the variations between my different elements, my different greens aren't too extreme. I don't want there to be too big of a value difference between the first colors I mix. This green here looks pretty good, and I will be able to use it in various areas. Now I can start creating the grays that we will use for the background. I begin by mixing a very light gray using ultramarin blue and burn timber and a large amount of white to paint everything around the drapery. At first, I realized I had made it far too little. The quantity of grad was really insufficient, so I mixed a much larger batch. But by doing that, unfortunately, the color turns out to be too dark. That's why I add a generous amount of white again. Then I can move on to create a slightly darker mix for the shadowed areas by adding more burn timber and tramline blue for the parts that will be in deeper shadow. And with all of this, we'll be able to start painting and remember along the way we can always readjust the colors if needed. So here is the drawing I made using the grid method. The lower part is missing because I zoomed in as much as possible so you could get a closer look at the brush strokes. We are going to work on this fold on the right side of the drapery, and we will process fold by fold from there. From this fold, I am starting by applying this medium green color that we see in the area. It seems like a good dominant color. We will be able to other color elements on top of it later. And I am starting with this one because I feel like it is the most visible color in that zone. But on top of it, we will add lighter touches and more refined details to complete and enhance the texture of the drapery. I am also leaving a small space on the left side, as you can see. On the left part, there are some very dark areas, and I will be able to add them during the color application in a few minutes. Similarly, on the right side of this fold, we can see that there are quite a few dark areas like here, so I can start marking them. On the very bottom right of the drapery, we have an even darker section that stands out clearly, so I will go ahead and paint that little part on the right. And at this stage, our color application is still quite basic. Right now, I am just trying to lay down the main tones and the dominant colors in the one. I am making sure to spread the paint evenly to get a great blending afterwards. And later on, we will refine everything, adding lighter and darker touches that will bring really bring it all to life with a realistic effect. In this area, especially the lower part, we can see that overall, it is slightly lighter than the upper section we worked on earlier. So I feel like this color I am using right now could be a good dominant tone for this first layer of paint. On the lower part of the drapery, you can see that it is slightly darker. It's not a huge difference, but it is a bit darker, just like on the right side, which I will work on later. And actually, that's also the whole point of this exercise. We are working on an entire green object with a lot of volume created and a great deal of subtlety in the value shift. This exercise is a great way to train your eye to notice all these subtle variations and then apply them correctly to create convincing volume in your subject. To finish applying the color in this part of the drapery, I can work all along with this dark green. It's not the darkest green I have mixed, but in the end, we can see that in terms of tone, it's not an extremely dark shadow either. So I am going with this green. It seems like the right color to work this area. And then, well, in here, I think it's not as deep as dark as what I did. And then we can start blending all these colors together. You can see it here, I'm showing it on purple. I wiped off the paint of my brush, and then with small strokes and gentle back and forth movements, I can make each area blend smoothly with the rest, creating a good transition between the different tones and a soft gradient where the changes between the various greens become almost invisible. That's what I am doing small back and forth strokes. And once it looks good, we will be able to refine the zones and start working on the texture. Now, we can start working with more precision. That's why I have switched to a finer brush. With this brush, I will define the areas more precisely. What I notice is that in the lower part, there is a fairly dark shadow, and I can also redefine the one on the left side a bit because during the blending stage, it lost some of its darkness, so I am reworking that. And while I apply these strokes, I make sure they blend well with the surrounding area so I don't have to go over the blending again later. At this point, I'm working on very small area, so I apply the color and I blend it into the rest right away. This allows me to refine the transition between the shadowed part and the rest of the drapery, because even though this left section is in shadow, it is still an integral part of this fold, and the shadow needs to stay visually connected to the rest. Through these small brushstrokes, I have made sure that both elements are properly connected. And on the right side as well, I can rework this area a bit. I have added some darker paint to make it stand out. And just next to this darker area, you can see it's very subtle. There is a small lighter section that helps emphasize the contrast and creates a sense of volume, a difference in depth between the central area of the fold and that small section on the right. These two aren't on the same level, and that is exactly what these light and dark contrast help express within this part of the painting. Oh so I am really trying to bring out all the small elements that make up this drapery, all the little zones with different shades. For example, in this part of the drapery from top to bottom, in the area where I had applied some of the mitton greens, you can see that there are a few lighter touches. They are very small but still noticeable. So I applied those just small dabs of colors, and I made sure they blended nicely with the green I had laid down underneath. This way, these elements look natural, and the drapery as a whole feels more realistic with sub touches that help convey the idea of texture throughout the fabric. So fold is part of the drapery, the first fold. I would say that we are good, and we can now move on to the one right next to it. Now, now this is going to require real precision because we are dealing with a very small fold, and I am using a finer brush to apply the colors here. What I am aiming for now is to lay down the dominant color. It is a bit tricky because in this small area, the space is quite narrow, but the green values vary a lot. For example, right in the center, we have some pretty light greens. On the left side, there are much darker greens and on the right, more medium dark tones. So it's a bit delicate. What I have decided is to start by applying a me ton green like this one. That seems like a good idea. This way, it will be fairly easy to a slightly lighter touches on top afterward, as well as some slightly darker ones. So it's kind of a compromise. This me ton green gives me a base where some of it will remain visible, and it will also make it easier to build up the lighter and darker accents over it later. So I am now going to try working with precision. But the issue I am noticing is that on the right side, the shadow area is a bit too large. I think it extends too far to the right. So I am correcting that slightly, and then we can begin working with more precision on the central fold. We can see that on the left side, there is a shadow that is quite strong. So I am going in with a very dark tone. I know it's going to be tricky to maintain that very dark band. The sharp shadow line, we can see because all the colors around it will end up blending together and therefore would lighten this very sharp and dark line. So that very dark line we see right in the middle, which is really intense, I will probably come back and add it later once I have painted the fold on the overside as well, and once above fold are finished, the one on the left that isn't painted at the moment, and the one I am working on. Because this line sits across both sections, so it is better to have both areas painted before placing it. Now, in the central part of this fold, I am adding some lighter green touches because we can clearly see a highlight in this area. It is lighter. So I am adding it even though that value difference isn't extreme. It's not a dramatic contrast, but you can tell it's lighter, so I don't want it to be too light either. And the color I am applying here seems just right. And, of course, once I have placed it, I make sure it blends nicely with the rest using small brush strokes. Now, what I am going to do is start working on the overside of this fold. You can notice that on the right side, there it is just a bit darker than what I have painted so far. It's almost as if the shadow from the fold we worked on to the right extends slightly into this one, this central area, and as if those two parts are somewhat connected. So that's what I kept in mind when I apply these small touches, but it didn't take very long, and now we can move on to the overside. On that side, I have decided to start directly with more precise work. Earlier, I could have taken the same approach on the fold with just finished and both methods are valid. But here, I thought it might be a good idea to begin with a more detailed approach. That's something I sometimes do when I am working in tighter areas like this one, which is quite narrow. Sometimes it's worth going straight in with this brush and working precisely from the start. So that's the approach I'm using for this fold, and this way, you can see different techniques each suited to different situation, and you can choose the one that feels right when working on a specific area later on. So now along the entire edge here, it is a bit darker. So I am going in with this green to make that transition stand out. 5. Paint a drapery : part II: And in the middle of this fall, I can go in with this slightly lighter green like so. I am placing it carefully, trying to be a bit precise. You will notice that as we move upward, it becomes slightly less light. There is a subtle difference. So here, the idea is to make sure it blends nicely with the slightly darker greens we have already placed. That can be the approach for this area. And now that my colors are in place, I can use small dabs, little brush strokes to work on the transition. But even within this lighter area, there are also a few slightly darker touches. That's what blending with the small brush allows me to do. And with this little back and forth strokes, I can create a result where within the light zone, some darker elements are gently worked in. And s in the darker areas, a few lighter touches are added as well. And that kind of soil blending helps achieve a result that looks a bit more realistic. A So this little drapery section, the small fold is almost finished. All that is left is to add a very dark line that runs between the two elements. Now I'm moving on to apply color to this other wide fold, and here I am using a flat brush to do it more efficiently. You will notice that the video is slightly sped up because this color application is essentially the same process as what we've been doing so far. It will return to normal speed when it's time to work more on the texture and detail in this area. So don't worry. But for you, make sure to take your time and carefully apply the colors. There's no need to rush this step. We are now back to normal speed to work a bit more on the texture and details of these elements. As you can see in the lower part and on the right side, there are some very dark shadows, so I am going to make sure to mark them clearly. What is also visible is a small fold within this larger drapery fold. So how do we paint that? Well, there is a slightly dark shadow on the right side, and then just next to it, there is a small highlight, just a slightly lighter touch, and that's it. That's what allows this inner fold to stand out. So I am carefully working on that area, adding the slightly lighter tone, but be careful not to make it too light. For example, I felt right here, it was a bit too bright, so I gently blend it back in with the surrounding colors to soften it and make it a little darker again. Now I can move on to working on the central line right here. I didn't paint it earlier, but now I think it might be a good time to do it. Before I paint the line itself, I am adjusting the shadow that is right next to it. And to paint this line requires that really requires some precision, I'm going to use my swathe brush. It allows me to paint fine lines very accurately. And I am starting from the top. Personally, I find that easier. But if you prefer to start from the bottom, that's perfectly fine, too. Just do whatever feels most natural to you. And now painting a long line like this is a bit tricky. It is hard to get it right in one go. So don't hesitate to go back over it, to build it up gradually. That's what I do, and also to reload your brush with paint. That is important because when you paint over this lighter green area, the paint naturally appears lighter two, even if it is a very dark color to begin with on your brush. So you need to reload it to keep it strong, to keep a strong and dark value. And there that is looking pretty good. It stands out nicely. I'm going to rework that a little bit more. But what I also notice is that just next to this line, especially on the right side, there are areas that should be a bit darker. So once I am done going over the line to make sure it is clearly visible, I will rework that right hand area because right now it's not dark enough. The contrast is too strong, and that is because this right side is too light. This drapery study isn't just a technical exercise. It's a real training ground for your eye, a way to learn how to observe more carefully to interpret volume, light, and slow transitions in color. At first glance, a drapery might seem simple, just some folds in fabric. But in truth, it is an ideal subject to practice and develop nearly every skill in painting. Why? Because it includes everything, light, shadow, gradient, subtle contrast, and most importantly, shifts in value. It is these value changes, whether soft or strong that allows us to create depth and give a sense of three dimensional form. And in drapery, the values shift constantly, sometimes gently, sometimes sharply. It's perfect for training your eye to detect those changes and learning how to translate them in paint. And working on a drapery also teaches patients. You can't just brush it in a few brushstrokes. You have to build it step by step, laying in broad shapes first, then refining forms, adjusting color, correcting transitions. And with each you improve, you become more precise, more focused, more sensitive to what you see. But most importantly, this exercise will help you in everything else. Whether you are painting clothes on a figure, a curtain in the background or even a soft landscape shape, you will face the same questions. Where is the light coming from? Where are the shadows? How do I work on the transition? How do I show depth, texture? And drapery teaches you how to answer these questions with confidence. So really take this exercise as a valuable moment of training, a chance to focus on the quality of your strokes, the accuracy of your observation, and the quiet satisfaction of bringing a believable volume to life from a single patch of colors, a simple patch of color. And I think that is the magic of painting. For this fold on the left, I would say that most of the work is done. You probably notice that along the left edge of this large fold, there was a slightly darker section. I hope you saw that clearly because I added that darker edge intentionally, as we see it on the reference. Now we can move on to the other fold. This one here is a very small fold. You can see that on the left side, it's extremely dark, and as we move toward the right, it gradually gets a little lighter. So I also adjust my values accordingly, and I try to define a small tip at the end. And right next to this fold, especially near the darkest part, there is a small and lighter touch that helps create a sense of volume. This small fold stands out in contrast to the larger one we worked on earlier. It's really thanks to this value contrast, these very light areas, these highlights placed right beside the shadows that we can effectively convey volume. And this part of the drapery is another perfect example of that. Uh Here I am just adding this tiny light touch to suggest that smoot fold, and that's all it takes to create a sense of volume once again. And finally, I have this last fold to paint in the central area. This one is very similar to all the others we have done so far. And since the area is quite small, I am working directly with this fine brush, and I am applying small touches here and there to build a bit of volume in the area. We are almost there. The drapery is nearly finished. Just a few final adjustments here and there, and then we'll move on to the last step, working on the background and the cast shadow. These final touches will really anchor the subject in space and make all the volume we have created stand out. So hanging there, you have already done you've already done the hardest part, and the result for this little exercise will definitely be worth it. Here, I feel like I was a bit too generous with the darker colors because the lighter areas aren't standing out enough. So I am reapplying a good touch of light green and making sure it blends nicely with the rest. And there we go and placing it carefully and making sure there is a smooth and soft transition with the surrounding areas. Three. Before moving on to the background, I am taking a moment to go back and refine a few elements. For example, some of the lines that define the folds aren't standing out enough, in my opinion. So working those a bit. The same thing on the right side. Once that's done, we will be ready to focus on the background area. Something I have also noticed about the background is that my shadows aren't dark enough on my palette. Right now, I basically have two shades for the background. One of them is okay for slightly lighter shadows, but in some places the shadows are much darker and what I have just isn't enough. So I am mixing a darker gray using burn timber and ultramarin blue. That also allows me to create an intermediate tone, which I will use to work on those smaller shadow areas. For example, on the right side, you can see a small shadow that is quite pronounced. Then as you go down, it gets a bit lighter before darkening again. Right next to the drapery, there is also a slightly darker touch, which I have added in. And as I mentioned, some shadows are more intense, but be careful because right where the shadow touches the fabric, it actually becomes a little lighter. We get a softer gray there, and we need to paint that carefully all along the drapery. When we were working on the painting of the drapery itself, we applied a lot of precision, and we'll need the same level of precision here with the shadows. These background shadows play a crucial role. They are what will metal drapery truly appear three dimensional. Right now, the fabric does look like it has volume, but we can't quite see what it is resting on yet. To show that it is hanging against the wall and casting real depth, we need to paint these shadows carefully and precisely. For now, I am applying the shadows with my brush, making sure to spread the color well and focusing on the main shadows, the one that are most visible and darkest. Later on, I will need to make sure that there is a smooth transition between the shadows and the light gray background. With these shadows, we don't want any hard edges. You can see how the edges blend softly into the surrounding grays, and that is exactly the effect we are aiming for. The goal is to create a smooth gradient between the dark shadow tones and the lighter areas. And now that the main shadows are in place, I can work on the small white gaps I left earlier. As I mentioned before, right next to the drapery, there is a slightly lighter touch, and it is important to include it to give a shadow a more realistic effect. That's why I left a small blank space there, and I will now go in precisely with this fine brush to define that part of the shadow. And along the edge, I am also using this brush to create a smooth transition between the shadow and the light gray area. Just like we did on the drapery itself, it is through these small and careful strokes that we will achieve good blending and soft transitions in our different shadows. As I continue working on these shadows, adding that slightly lighter touch, this slow and repetitive process gives me a chance to talk to you about another important aspect of this exercise, our relationship with time and attention. Painting drapery isn't just a study of flight and volume. It's also a lesson in slowness. It forces us to slow down to truly observe, to absorb the shapes. In a world where everything moves fast and we are always looking for quick results, painting asks us to do the exact opposite. It asks us to take your time to really look to understand what we are seeing and to have the patience and courage not to rush through the work. These little shadows, these solo blends, all the work we have done on the drapery, every brush strokes matters. None of it can be automated. It is you, your eye, your end, your focus. And over time, you will see that a certain kind of pleasure emerges from that slowness. I'm seeing a form take shape gradually through small, simple and almost meditative gestures. You might find yourself enjoying these quiet moments, these quiet moments of focus where nothing else exists but the surface on the painting. That is also when you begin to develop a more personal connection with what you are painting. A simple piece of fabric starts to feel alive, and thanks to all that time you have spent with your painting, you form a kind of attachment to it. For example, I always feel a little pang when I sell a painting. Of course, I am happy. It's part of my job, and it brings in income. But I spend so much time with each painting. That they become a part of me, there is a real bond that forms. So don't be in a rush. Let this moment be like a breath, a pose. What you are learning here will, of course, help you with other subjects. But more importantly, it will help you find a different way of painting, one that is calmer, more focused, and more peaceful. Now that the shadow work is done, I'm going to move on to painting the background. But before I start on the background, I am going to work along the edge of the drapery. This will help me create a sort of protective barrier to keep the gray paint. Which I will be applying with a slightly right brush to keep it from spilling over onto the drapery area. It will be a bit messy otherwise. So I am working along the edge now, and I am trying to brush just slightly, belly touching to make sure the two areas met but only very soy. I am not trying to create a full blend. I just want them to touch ever so slightly. I I really like the subtle effects that gives. So, there we go. I have done the same thing on the other side, and now I can start painting the background using a flat brush like this. I am making broad strokes and really trying to spread the paint evenly like that. And with that, we will be wrapping up this tutorial. One important thing to keep in mind, especially when painting the lower area is to make sure the light background color blends smoothly with the colors of the shadow. So we will need to work carefully on that part. But with all the blending practice we've done throughout this piece, I think that shouldn't give you too much trouble. So now I have applied the background color at this point, I can go back and rework the shadow on the right side a little because I feel like it got a little lost. Especially over here on the right, there was a small sort of shadow that I didn't add earlier because it is so faint that it wouldn't it would just have been covered up by all the paint. So I am adding it now. And in the lower area, my shadows are no longer strong enough. They have faded a bit. So I'm going to repaint over them, and we wear the edges to avoid having sharp lines. I want softer irregular edges that blend nicely into the rest. And with that, we are done that wraps up this tutorial, and I hope you enjoyed it. And more importantly, that you gave it a try yourself and painted this drapery along with me. I also hope that you learn a few things and that the help you make progress in your painting. So thank you very much for watching this video. I will take another minute or so to find you in the shading, and then I will see you very soon for more videos. 6. Paint a ribbon : part I: This video, I'm going to show you how to paint an orange ribbon. This is an exercise that this is an object that may seem pretty simple at first glance. But actually, there are some folds, some loops, some twist that make it a little bit more difficult and that creates some volume. And to create some volume, we will have to create some different orange colors. And so that's a great training for mixing these colors on our palette and also to create some volume. That's a great training for. Also this exercise will be very good to see how to add some details, some small details, not many ones, but that will make some difference. That will make our painting go for something pretty good to something really good. So we'll see how to do that. And for the creation of this painting, I will be using 20 centimeters by 20 centimeters paper, and to have a correct drawing, I use my projector. But if you don't have a projector, feel free to use the grid technique that will help you to have a drawing that is very accurate and so you have the right foundation for the creation of your artwork. So grab your brushes and let's get started and paint together. So here are the colors for ribbon. The colors we need to mix to paint it. If we look closely, we can see that we have a whole range of oranges with different values from very dark oranges that lean towards red to much lighter oranges that are closer to yellow. And, of course, in between, we'll have more intermediate oranges, not leaning too much toward red or yellow, but really right in between. And then for our background, we'll need different grays, especially for the grays that will be used to paint the shadows of this ribbon, shadows that will be absolutely essential to give it volume and three dimensionality. So let's get started and begin with our mixes. Let's start mixing our oranges. You can see on my palette that there is much more yellow and red than blue since I barely need any blue for this. So we'll start with the first mix. We are going to mix a slightly neutral orange, something in the middle. And you may have noticed that I am still using a larger amount of yellow than red because red is stronger than yellow. Meaning if I put the same amount of both colors, I will end up with a color that leans much more towards red than yellow. For this first slightly intermediate orange, which we will be able to use in various places, I'll create another shade starting from this one, a lighter and more yellow orange, a slightly more vibrant, brighter orange. Adding yellow like this seems pretty good to me. Now I'm going to make an even lighter variation by adding some white, but especially by adding more yellow because if I had too much white to my color, it will indeed become lighter, but it will lose its brightness and intensity since white slightly desaturates the color. Now I will make a darker one. So this time, I'm going to start with a slightly stronger base of red, but still, I will add a good amount of yellow. Otherwise, I would end up with something far too red. And since I want something a bit darker, I'm also adding a small touch of burnt umber. Burnt umber is a very good color for darkening on mixes. The only downside is that it sometimes tends to give them a slightly greenish tint, especially when mixing it with yellow. So to counteract that, I added a bit of red to my color since red is the complimentary color to green, and as a result, I end up with a darker red that's also fairly intense. Now I'm going to create a slightly lighter variation. To lighten it, I'm adding a bit more red and yellow to my mix. This way, I reduce the proportion of burtenbr in my color, and I'm choosing not to add white because as I mentioned before, white tends to reduce the intensity of the color. Sure, it would make it lighter, but it will also make it less vibrant than this one. For example, look, if I take a bit of white and add it to my color, the color is indeed lighter, but its vibrancy is still reduced. Whereas here I have a color that is slightly lighter than the previous one, but still a really vibrant orange. Now finally, I would like to create a color that's a bit between these two. So I will take some of my orange and mix it, and we'll see how it turns out. If needed, I will adjust it with either more red or more yellow to get something really halfway between. Here, I'm going to add a little bit of red because I think it's a little too yellow, a little too orangy. It was too light. And we can see that in the end, we have a lot of different orange values, which is really great for creating something realistic. And we can see that even for a simple object like a ribbon, we still need a lot of different oranges to create a three dimensional object. So I've taken a bit more of this orange in the middle because I like to have an orange that's a bit more reddish, like the ones we can see along the edges of a ribbon. And then I would say that we are good to go and we can get started. So let's start working on the ribbon. You might notice that I trim my paper a little to work on a square sheet, whereas, originally, the subject was more rectangular. But that's not a big deal. It won't prevent us from getting a credible and realistic result. We'll start with this upper part where we can see that the oranges are a bit darker at the top. I have chosen this one, this orange, which seems like the right choice to me. And let's see how we can manage to make such an ordinary object like a ribbon look fairly realistic. So I make sure to apply my colors carefully, and I am using a medium size brush to maintain some precision and not go over the lines of my outline. Here I am slightly adjusting the color of my brush because I felt it was just a bit lighter in this upper area. Now I am going to move down to the lower section. And since we are changing color, it is much lighter. I wipe my brush with a paper towel. There's no need to use any solvents like turpentine or gamsol to clean the brush from now. Since we are working with values and colors that are very similar and close to each other, it's still the same color family. So there's no real need to use a solvent here. So I am applying my color in small touches like this to start blending these areas together nicely as I apply my color. When working with paintings of small elements like this, you can, as you apply the color, also create some blending by using small brush strokes. And as you saw, I change my color again to get something lighter in this area. Now I am going to add some yellow to my color to get a more pronounced yellow orange that comes closer to what we see in the reference photo. So it really pops and we get this highlight area, so to speak, that really stands out. And so we can see that the blending between these different colors happen, sorry, quite naturally because on the one hand, we apply a whole range of oranges gradually making smooth transitions from one color to another. And most importantly, each time I made sure not to overload my brush. I took care to spread the color well, and as a result, just by dabbing, the blending came together quite naturally. Along the edge of my ribbon, I noticed that there are, again, some slightly darker elements, so I go ahead and add those as well. At this point, I would say that we have built a good base for this area of the ribbon, and I'm going to start working a bit more on the texture and getting into the details. So I am using a rather fine brown brush, and I'm going to try to spot which details stand out. In this case, I noticed that along the entire edge of the ribbon, there is this slightly dark line, so I will go ahead and add that. Then I can also add some slightly lighter touches. And on this ribbon, we can see that the texture is created by small touches placed here and there, sometimes lighter, sometimes darker. So I have started by adding some lighter ones, and I could also add some darker ones later if I feel that it's not standing out enough. In my light area as well, I'm going to add some details. I can add some lighter details, but also some slightly darker ones. And it's really the combination of all these little details, all these small dots and touches that we place here and there that will help to create a very realistic texture that stands out well. But overall, I won't need to add much more. Here on the side, I am emphasizing this dark line a bit more, so it stand out better. But in the previous areas, I would say it's good, and there's no need to work on those as aspects any further. So now we can move on to the lower part of the ribbon, and I'll stick with this fine brush anyway, because in this area, the zone is really narrow and I need to be precise. So we'll keep working with this fine brush and had those dark marks that we can see here on the ribbon. Here, too, I am adjusting the outline I had done with the pencil because the area was too narrow. I worked it a bit with the brush. Sometimes when we draw, we do it quickly and we don't notice these little mistakes, and it's only once we are painting and working on the area that we become aware of them. So then I am switching back to a medium size brush since this part has become fairly large again, and to paint it efficiently, this brush seems like the right choice. By the way, the brushes you see me using here are basic entry level synthetic brushes that I bought at a store named cultura in France. So when you are painting, you don't really need to buy excessively expensive brushes. Entry level brushes like these are actually ideal to work with, and they have to be synthetic, remember. The only brushes where it is worth spending a bit more are the brush called the sworn brushes for details. But for the rest, I wouldn't recommend buying brushes that are extremely expensive because even if you take good care of them with the products available, they still end up wearing out fairly quickly. I have experienced this myself, and it can get pretty costly. So that's not really where I would recommend spending your money. If anything, it's better to invest in extra fine quality paint like extra fine oil paint. That's more worthwhile, sorry, than buying ultra expensive brushes. And even then, extra fine paint is something I would only recommend you once you really feel comfortable with painting, once you have already created a good number of paintings. In the same way, I think that buying good linen canvases, once you feel at ease is a better investment than spending money on very expensive brushes. Another important point, in my opinion, for this painting so that the tutorial will be easy to follow. I kept the outlines of my drawing and graphite pencil, and they are still quite visible. But normally, if this were a finished piece, I would make sure to erase them or make them barely visible because yellow and orange are not very opaque colors, and if you don't erase the pencil lines, they can show through. So make sure to erase them properly when you're working on your painting. So we continue, and here you can see that gradually as we move into this middle area, the orange became lighter and then it chipped back again to darker oranges. So I make sure to follow these changes to achieve the right effect. The colors I am applying blend well and naturally with one another because I am not using too much paint. And if I ever notice that there is too much paint on my brush, as you have seen, I clean it off and wipe off the excess on the tissue. This way, my colors can blend nicely together. Blending is very important because it allows us to create balance between the colors without the transitions being visible, so they stay as natural as possible. In the middle area, I think that my yellow, orange color doesn't stand out enough. It is too subtle. It doesn't look bright enough, so I will need to come back and work on that. 7. Paint a ribbon : part II: So I'm going to rework this area in the middle because, like I said, it is not light enough. So I'm going to use this brush and try to load it up with lighter paint with a more yellow paint. And then I will make sure to make sure to clean my brush properly beforehand and try to repaint over it with a bit with this lighter tone. I I I see that is enough, I will leave it like that, but I think I would still need to work on it a bit more with the detail brush by adding little touches here and there afterwards. And, of course, when I apply paint over an area, I make sure it blends well with the color underneath. Now I have darkened my color a bit more to work on the side of my ribbon. We can see that along the entire right edge, there are areas that are a little darker, so I try to bring those out, and it's the same on the left side, which will be even darker than this. So I will need to darken my color even further. So here I am gently dabbing with this small brush. Adding the mark still fairly settles, but they help giving my element a bit more volume. Creating volumes comes from fairly strong contrast, often between light and dark areas, and you shouldn't be afraid to use dark elements because if you hesitate to really add those dark parts, it won't stand out enough. You can also notice that I have extended the slightly dark line along the edge a bit. And as I add these few more, it also helps to work on the texture a little, even though I will refine that more precisely later on. Now I'm darkening my color even more. And to do that, I am adding more red and also more burnt umber, and now I can work on this upper corner of my ribbon. It's really this dark element that I am adding that will help create volume in this area. The same thing go on the edge. I felt it wasn't standing out enough, so I added a little more. Here too, I am adding some, but I then realized that this color is too dark, so I wipe the paint off my brush with a tissue and to soften it, I simply blend it with the surrounding colors that are lighter. This way, I would say I have the right value and just what I need for this area. So I keep working on my texture with small touches. And what I am also doing is adding more dark color to this upper part because I still feel it doesn't stand out enough. Often, you need to go over it once, twice or even three times until you are fully satisfied because as we blend the elements together like this, when we work on the texture, it tends to soften the dark areas a bit and make them too light. So sometimes you need to go back over them several times like I did here. So now just a few more touches, and then I would say that for this part of the ribbon, it will be done. You're So let's keep going with this area and very interesting area because the ribbon is in the overway and there is this band that creates a lot of volume. So right here, I keep going with this line that is just the extension of what we did earlier. So I keep using this color right here, a color, a red brown color that is pretty dark. And this color, I think I can also use it at the very bottom at this area with another line. Then in between, for the area in the middle, I think that this color will be a little bit too dark, so I won't be able to use it. What we also notice is that right here in this corner, we will have something different, something a little bit lighter as well, lighter than what we will have in the middle. So now I'm going to readjust my color to have something better for this area in the middle because I think the color is pretty good. It's a little bit not orange enough. I want some orange that is a little bit more intense. So that's why I added some more yellow to it and some more red. So I'll give it a try with this new color, and I keep adjusting my color until I am fully satisfied with what I have. What I want for this color is something that is a little bit darker than the orange that is at the top, but a little bit lighter than these lines that I initially created. And now I think that this color looks pretty good. As I was saying, now I'm going to take something a bit lighter for this upper part. We have a lighter orange element that will help create volume at the curve of the ribbon. And where I am going to have lighter elements is also in the lower part. I feel like in this lower part, I went a little too far with my dark color, so I don't hesitate to paint over the dark element I had done and to apply a good amount of paint to make sure that when it blends, it leans more towards this new color than the old one. Finally, for the very bottom part, we are going to have a fairly strong contrast with a fairly intense orangey yellow. So I will make sure to clean my brush well before using it and moving on to lighter tones like I am doing here. Even though I think that I will need to make this even more intense so it stands out more and is even lighter. And I will do it when I will add details with the fin brush. I will paint on top of that to have something that pop a little bit more than this. So here I am reworking my line a little bit because it wasn't dark enough, and I'm going to start working a bit on the texture that we are going to have in this area. So I'm going to take some slightly darker elements again and gently dab with the tip of my brush. Here and there, I am adding small almost random touches that help me achieve a pretty realistic result. So I'm going to do that across the whole area. Then we will gradually move towards the lower area where the elements are going to get lighter and lighter. So I adjust the colors on my brush to add some lighter touches that will really help the whole thing stand out. Here, I realize that these little touches I am applying won't be enough to really make the area bright. So what I am doing is I have taken the tissue and removed a bit of the paint from the area, and now I am readjusting my colors with the right values using nice and bright elements. Sometimes when it feels like it's not enough, like you could keep adding more and more paint, and it still doesn't get bright enough, the only solution is to remove a bit of the paint you have applied and then work back over it. So now I am moving back towards orange stones that are much better and more in line with what I should have in this area. Next, I'm going to paint right next to this element on the other part of the ribbon, where we again, have something nice and dark that will make everything stand out. And for the ribbon, the video will stop here since the rest of the ribbon follows exactly the same process. So you are definitely able to do that after what we have been through. So that's why I'm going to cut the video and we'll meet again for the background painting and to see how to work on all those cast shadows that will give our ribbon its volume. Here is what my ribbon looks like. Take your time to finish it, work on it on your side, and then move on to painting the background with me. Or you can paint the background first and then come back to the ribbon. It's really up to you to decide how you want to proceed. So let's make the colors for background, which are made up of grays, and gray is really nothing more than blue that has been desaturated. Basically, a blue that we make much less intense. So here I have taken my blue, and I'm going to add its complimentary color, which is orange. This way, my blue will become less and less intense and turn into gray. Now it's going a bit too green because there wasn't enough red. But then my complimentary colors took over too much because I didn't have enough blue left. So what I have now is too dark, that's for sure. So I'm going to add some white to make it a bit clearer. And now we are getting quite close to the gray we want. I'm going to add just a little bit more blue to make it slightly more bluish. And this color here looks pretty good to me for the areas where the shadow will be among the darkest. Then for the areas that will be lighter, what I'm doing is to take a bit of this gray and mix it with some white to get a much lighter tone. Oh. Well, now it's maybe a little too light. So what I'm going to do is go back and add a bit of my first gray, and I think this should give me a gray of the right value to paint the background. So before painting the entire background, what I'm going to do is paint all along the ribbon in some areas where you can see these strips that are very light. So I am painting it with some very, very light gray color using this flat brush and the edge of the flat brush, even though it's not the more suitable brush for that, so I will switch to a new one, a rounded one. And you can see that there is this very thin light element in all the areas where you don't see the cast shadow. So it's basically on a very large part that you can see that. And so I'm going to do this on this entire ribbon. Then I will paint a little bit of the background in some areas that aren't tricky at all, and we will paint the cast shadow together then once this is done. So basically, I'm going to paint all around the ribbon except this area right here on the bend. Also in this area where is the curve and inside the ribbon. So you can see it right now all these areas that I have painted where you have these very light elements. Now that we have this area as defined, we are going to work on the shadows. But to work on the shadows, our current colors won't be enough, and we need to create grays that are darker than this. So we have seen one way to get gray, but there is another, which is to think of gray as simply black that's been lightened. And with this five color palette, we create black by mixing ultramarine blue and burn tum. Of course, you could also think of just taking white and ivory black as you would buy it in stores and adding white. Sure, that could work. But the goal is still to stick with this five color palette. And personally, I like to create my own black because you can decide if you want to have warmer gray afterwards, leaning more towards burnt umber or cooler ones leaning more towards blue. So here I am managing to get a gray, but it felt a little bit too bluish to me, so I balance it out by adding a bit more burnt umber, as you can see. But I only add a little each time because I still want to keep something balanced. And otherwise, it takes a bit too long to get the right shade. Now I would say that this is looking pretty good. And I have created a somewhat dark gray, and with this gray, I can make a lighter one by adding white like this. Now that we've got that, we can start painting and working on our shadows. The cast shadow is actually a bit white, and you can see that the farther it gets from the ribbon, the lighter it becomes and blends in with the surrounding elements. So here I am starting roughly defining the size of this cast shadow. I can see that it's going to take on the slightly curved shape all around my ribbon, so I apply it, and at the same time as I apply it, I use little brush strokes to help it blend nicely with the surrounding colors. Now, along the edge, the whole hedge, I still have something fairly dark, so I'm going to use this gray here, as you can see, but that won't be enough. I will also need to add an even darker touch on top so that it really stand out. And so here we go. I had small touches and my brush isn't too heavily loaded with paint. Or if it is, I wipe off a bit of paint to make sure that when I work and apply my color, I can blend better with the neighboring color. And as you can see with my brush strokes, I'm keeping it soft and I'm making small touches here and there to create that slightly irregular texture you can see in our shadow on this fabric or at least what looks like gray fabric. And as I was saying, I need something a bit darker to work on the edge. So that's what I'm doing. And then I soften it very gently with the surrounding colors so that it blends naturally together. So that's it for the shadow. You can see I have done others in the same way. Now we are going to look at one last shadow that is quite interesting to work on. It's the one on the side right where the ribbon curves. This one is really important because it's going to give the ribbon more volume. So I start by working along the entire edge with my dark color. It's true that I am not following exactly the same order as I did when shading the other area, but that's not a problem. You can do it either way. Also, the further we move away from the edge, the darker it's going to get. So No, sorry. The farther you move from the edge, and the less and less dark the shadow gets sorry. Oh, also, there's one little thing to watch out for here is on the lower part where I haven't painted yet. There's going to be a thin light strip between the ribbon and the shadow that we need to live because it's like a bit of a reflected light that makes the shadow fade a little in that spot. So we need to leave this small gap. Otherwise, the method and the process will be exactly the same as what we did earlier with overshadow area. You will also notice that here I am using a fairly fine brush to keep things precise while I paint and to avoid messing up or going over this orange area I painted before. And now that the elements are painted in this area and my shadow is finished, I can move on to finalizing the background on this left side. To paint it, I am using a flat brush because it allows me to spread the paint more effectively and most importantly, to avoid having my brush strokes throw too much. In this part of the background, there isn't really any texture to create. So we want to make sure the brush strokes are as invisible as possible. You might think the piece is finished, but not quite yet, because there are certain areas that, in my opinion, don't stand out enough. This is the case with some of the darker area, darker areas on the ribbon, often in the spots where there are falls or where the ribbon overlaps another part of itself or where it bends into. In these places, we should have darker elements, and I feel that in my painting, they are not pronounced enough, so I go over them to reinforce them. With experience, I have learned to develop this critical eye toward my work and to spot the elements that are missing or not quite right, although, to be honest, sometimes I still miss them. But what you can do when you're starting out and you don't have yet this eye for noticing what could be improved is, first of all, to place your work in front of a mirror. Mirror is really something that will help you tremendously because you will almost instantly see where things are missing by comparing with your reference photo and which areas aren't working. It points out flows right away so much that at one point, I was almost afraid to look at my work in the mirror because I wondered what mistakes I was going to see. So the mirror is really helpful. Alternatively, you can ask someone close to you who has a bit of a critical eye to look at your work, but always with kindness, of course. Don't do it with someone who will just tear your work apart and discourage you that serves no purpose. But someone who doesn't know your artwork, who discovers your reference photo or your model for the first time can offer a threshold perspective and point out areas where there might be things to improve. Or another option is simply to set your painting aside for a few hours or a few days, even though, of course, this means that the painting will probably dry and then come back to it with fresh ice to see if there are any elements you could fix or improve. And that concludes this exercise to see how to work well in detail. In my opinion, it is a very useful exercise for also working on values and understanding how to create volume through them. So I hope you enjoy this exercise, and I'll see you very soon for another one. And feel free to share your artworks with me. See you soon. 9. Paint an upside-down coffee cup : part II: Now that I have applied my base for this bright area, what I can start doing is adding some even lighter marks on top of the red I had apply. Since in this area, we can make out a few highlights, even if they are not as visible as they are further to the left. Then in the central part, we can see that there are some slightly darker elements that stand out, like I said before. And right in the center, there are also much lighter areas that I will try to bring out as well. So now I am placing these lighter elements, placing them over the top, and I am trying to blend them gently with the color underneath while making sure they still stay fairly bright. So if needed, if they don't stand out enough, don't hesitate to go back over them with your brush, and you'll to color to get something bright enough. Meanwhile, on the side, I am applying a really strong highlight with something that is almost pure white. And for this part, I would say it's pretty much good. After these last few details, we'll be able to move on and try painting the handle. Before painting the handle, there's also this little corner on the right that I hadn't painted yet. And here, I would say this slightly purplish, slightly red light red works pretty well. Now it is time for the handle, and I am starting with a very dark red because what we can see is that there is an entire edge that is extremely dark. So I start by painting that edge above the inner edge on one side and the outer edge on the other. Then we can see that the handle overall is still quite dark but not uniformly, so. So I adjust my color, and as I am applying it, I try to gently blend it with the color I applied a little earlier so that we already start to have a bit of a gradient forming within our area. And here again, in this lower part, I can apply a nice dark red. Here, I find that my dark red is taking up quite a bit of space. So I blended it out a little, but I do want to have something a bit darker along the outer edge. So I am trying to work with the tip of the brush, but as I said, I want to stick with a medium size brush so that we don't end up working too much into the fine details. That's not the goal here. And it is also pretty nice to see that with a medium brush, you can still manage to get some fairly fine elements. So it also pushes you to adapt and to better control your brush, which is an advantage when working later on more realistic painting. Here as well, what we notice is on our handle is that there is a slightly lighter spot, a little highlight, but it shouldn't be too strong either. So as you can see, at first, I applied a red that wasn't very dark to begin with, and then I am adding a slightly lighter red, but only in certain areas. Not the entire endle is going to have highlights this bright. Now I would say that for the endle we are pretty much good. Just a few darker touches left to add on the lower part to better separate the handle from the cup. But now we can move on to working on the saucer underneath or rather on top, since the page is flipped. And what we notice here is that in the upper right area, there is a sort of purplish, slightly grayish tone. So for my color here, I'm going to had some bird and bur because it helps give this color a slightly more neutral look as I apply it now. So let's continue with the saucer, and now I'm taking a bit of my red and mixing it with this slightly purplish gray since we can see these two colors blend together around here, and that's what I am going to try to do as well. Now it's true that the saucer is a bit blurry with lots of spots and small elements blending into each other. So that's what I will try to recreate. Even though it's true this area isn't very easy. And since we are painting with a medium brush, it's going to be tricky to get it as precise as we would like. But we'll give it a try, and I think that just placing a few small touches of color in the right spots should be enough to create an area that still looks very realistic. What we also notice is that right next to the cup, there's these slightly lighter elements that is important to add in order to create depth and clearly mark the distinction between these two areas. Then I notice that in my central area, there are a few highlights that are a bit more pronounced. So I am adding some lighter colors on top. Depending on how light I want this color to be, I will try to blend it more or less with the underlying color. Here we were in the hollow of the saucer. But when we move to the next part on the right, we see an area that is a little higher up with a bit more volume, and there we have another lighter elements, which I have added. Now I'm back in the hollow area, and there was a dark element between our lighter ones that really stood out. So I tried to add that too. Just like on the edge of my grayish area, where I felt it needed to be it needs to be a little bit darker. And like that, by adding one element after another, we make progress. And this saucer that seemed a bit tricky at first, is gradually taking shape, and in any case, it's really only at the end, once we have painted all the areas that we will be able to step back and decide whether it looks good, if it pops and feels realistic, or if on the contrary, the area las death and we need to go back in and work with some lighter or darker elements, for example. Mm. I can continue then with this part of my plate. We can see that there is an area that is a bit reddish purple, a bit grayish. So we are going to have a little edge here that will define the slightly darker area. And then right next to it, there is slightly lighter element, but still with the color, it's just a lighter value. And it's really good to spot areas like this where there is a change in color and within this area to pay close attention to the shifts in value because we can notice here that this area doesn't have the same values throughout. There are some small variations that are important to give realism to this zone. And then all around the slightly grayish area, we have lighter elements, and it's the combination of these highlights of all these elements that helps to create the sense of volume. Here, I have wiped a little bit the paint of my brush to load it with something much lighter, so I can paint this up apart where we can see that there is a highlight that is even more prominent than the others. It really stands out a lot more. So I go over with my brush so that it is nice and pronounced. Now I'm going to move towards slightly more intense red because I'm going to paint what is underneath the cup. Here, my red was still a bit too dark, since there needs to be a clear difference between this cup and the plate. And now with a red like this, I think it will look better. But then I'm not just going to stick to just this red. I'm also going to add a few slightly lighter touches because it's these little differences in value, once again, that will help to create volume and make this plate appear three dimensional with a slightly spherical, slightly rounded edge. For the areas that are left to paint on the plate, I'm going to speed up the video because it is basically the same process as what we did with this part on the right, which I thought was a little more complex. But overall, everything that is left to do on the plate is very similar to what we have done so far. That's why I'm spinning up the video a little bit. I have fewer comments to share with you for these parts as it will look a lot like what we have already done, but I'm still keeping the visual support on screen because I think it can still be helpful for you to watch what I am doing. We'll meet up again for the next step to finish our work where we will paint the coffee inside the cup and also see how to paint this background. Lower part of the plate, I'm going to try not to go over the upper part, which is lighter. But at the same time, as I apply my brushstrokes, I am trying to very gently connect the areas together to create a very slight blend between these two colors. And that's also the advantage of painting wet on wet and not waiting for the areas to dry. We can connect the elements together easier. So let's get started now with the coffee part. Here on the lower section, we are going to have colors that are fairly orange. When I applied my color, I realized it wasn't orange enough, so I adjusted it. That's also what we have on the palette. So there's what we have on the palette. And then once it is placed on the paper compared to all the surrounding elements, you can realize that it might not quite work, so I adjusted it a little bit. I am trying to paint along my edge and not go too far other onto the red color. Making sure it stays nicely within the limit. And at the same time, as I am adding these little brushstrokes, I am also trying to very gently connect my cup and my coffee together. I really want the elements to blend just a little bit with one another. I like having these subtle blends like this, making sure that all the elements are more or less connected to each other, and we don't have any sharp edges or at least very few. At the same time, as I was applying this slightly darker base, you probably noticed that I added a few lighter strokes of paint on top to work this coffee area because there isn't just one single value. And here, as we move towards the left, we can see that it gets even more orange and a bit darker. That's why on the left side of my palette, I mixed before this new color. And now I picked up a bit more burnt umber because I also want my elements to be even darker than what I have so far and a little more neutral, a bit more brownish. So the burnt umber helps me achieve that. With this slightly darker, slightly brownish color, I can apply it here on my left side, but I'm not going to leave it like that. I'm going to make sure it blends well and mixes naturally with the surrounding areas. And elsewhere in my left zone, there are another slightly darker elements, so I have added some there as well. But we also notice that as we move toward the central area, there are also darker parts, but they are not as neutral. They are more orangish, orange. So that's what I am doing here. I am creating a brown that is a bit more orange, and I am adding little touches of it in the central area, which will help make it look more realistic because it's really this combination of several colors and different values that helps give the area realism. I am being very light when I apply them, as you can see, I am not loading my brush too much either, because if I do, it will leave big blobs of paint, and that really doesn't look good and doesn't blend very well. Now I take my white and mix it with this slightly orange color to get something really, really light and use it to paint this little milk foam that we have in our coffee. And I try to blend it very delicately with my orange color. But when I get close to the reddish area at the top, I try to barely touch it, really blending it very, very slightly because I don't want the red to bleed into my color and mess up my work. What I also notice is that on the left side, there is this little white line that really stands out. So I try to apply it using the tip of my brush to be a bit more precise. And I do the same thing on the overside as well. There are still a few elements to add to the coffee, a few more details, and then we'll be good and can move on to the painting of the background. Now it is time to paint the background, which is really going to make the cup stand out. Each time the background is an important step. It's like the cherry on top that really makes all our elements pop because the environment around the subject we are painting truly changes the way we see it. For my background, I am starting with this very dark area. You can notice that as we move towards the left, the tones get lighter and shift toward a lighter orangy brown. Now I am trying to apply these gradient myself and make sure these colors blend well. I do a bit of blending each time mixing my colors with brushstrokes here and there. To do this properly, my brush isn't loaded with too much paint, and if needed, I don't hesitate to wipe off the paint that has built up on my brush to make my blending cleaner. Then on this left side, we can see that it becomes even lighter. And as we get closer to the top of the plate, it becomes even lighter still. So I always try to adjust my color accordingly. What I can also do is mark the separation with the rest of the background, which has a different color. This way, I know that up to this point, I will need to work mostly with light and brownish tones. For the central part, I'm going to try to create that slightly blurry effect myself. I chose to go with some grayish colors like this thinking it will help the background and the cup stand out better than if I reuse brownish tones that are too close to the color of the coffee. So with this purplish gray, I actually quite like the result. So I am going to apply colors like this around here. Now, I've got a bit too much paint on my brush, and I realize that blending isn't going to be easy with that. So I whipped a little bit of I whipped off to try and blend these colors together, and I am going to do this across the whole background, and then we'll meet again once it is done, once the background is finished, so I can show you the final result. And here is the final result, the right way up this time. I really hope you enjoyed this exercise and that you painted this piece upside down. I thought it was a really great exercise, and feel free to let me know what you thought about it and to share your final result with me. So I'll see you very soon for a new exercise. Thank you. Oh. 10. Final Project : presentation: This is the final subject on this course on the basics of all your painting. So for this course, we will be painting this beautiful Amphora, white one with a very pretty flower on top of it. And so this subject, the final subjects will be very good to put into practice, again, everything that we've seen during this course, how to apply the colors, of course, how to mix our colors, to create some nice blending, to paint a background, how to create some volume with the amphora, and with the flowers, and how to create something very realistic with some very tiny details on the flowers. Many things to see for this subject. So that's why I felt it was an excellent subject to conclude this course. 11. Organization of the painting: Since this final piece is a bit longer than what we have done with the previous exercises, I think it is important to organize our painting and planify it. Planning your work before starting really help you to structure and to know what areas you can paint independently. Indeed, you may not have three or 4 hours or even more in a row to paint the entire painting all at once. So that's why you can divide your artwork, and we are going to see how to do that. When you are painting a big subject like this one, it is essential to find the different areas that you can paint independently. That is to say that there are some sharp edges between these areas. And we can see that there are several areas that can be painted independently on this subject. There is the Amphora that has some sharp edges. It is really clearly separated from the background and from the stem. Also, so there is also the background that can be painted independently, the stem that has some sharp edges, and finally, the flowers. So there are four different zones that can be painted independently. So you can organize your painting this way. For example, the first day, if you have one or 2 hours in a row, you can paint the entire amphora. Then the next day, maybe you will have only 30 minutes to dedicate to your painting. So why not go with the stem? Then in three or four days or in a week, you will have more time to dedicate to your painting. So maybe this time, you can paint the flower and if you have time, the background or leave the background for another day. This way, you can really take your time with your painting and make sure that you have a good result. It's better to take your time and to plan your painting on several days than do wanting to do everything in one in 2 hours, and obviously the result won't be as good if you don't take your time. When you start a section, it's best to finish it completely before you stop painting or finish it before the painting actually dries. Let's say an example. For instance, you start painting the background, and you stop in the middle because you don't have time to finish, and you say, Okay, I will go back to it next week. But the problem is, if you go back to it next week, the background will be probably dried. And that means that you have to remix the color and to get the exact same color because if you don't get the exact same color, you will see that there is no continuity between what we did before and what you did and what you're going to do this day when you go back to your painting. So that's why when you start the background, for example, it's best to finish it the same day or maybe the next day it won't be dry, so you can finish it the next day. And so that's why it is important to take into account the drying time of your painting. That's what I talked about in the part on the color mixing. For instance, if you start the infora, you can relax because it has a lot of white in it. So the drying time will be pretty slow. So you can start the infora and go back to it maybe four days later, it won't be dry because it has a lot of white, titanium white, which takes a long time to dry. However, if you start something that has a lot of burn timber in it, then you might think, it's best to finish it today or tomorrow because otherwise it will be dried very quickly. So that's the thing to take into account with your painting. And now I think that we are completely ready to start painting the still life together. 12. Colors and painting of the amphora: Before we start mixing our colors, let's begin by observing those that make up the subject. First, looking at the amphora, we can see that we will be working with grays and not just a single one. There will be a very light gray where the light hits our object directly. Then we'll have a slightly darker area in the center where the gray will need to be deeper and also some more intermediate gray. So we need to create several different grays to accurately represent the amphora. As for the stem, there's a predominant green, but once again, it won't be just one shade. We can see that it is made up of several small touches of varying greens. Regarding the flowers, the flower, this time, we have a very wide range of reds. We can see that on the part of the flower, on the petal to the right, the reds are rather intense, quite vivid, while on the left side, the reds are not only darker but also tend to shift towards a purplish red. And the lighter red area the lighter reds in this area in this purplish red zone will have the slightly desaturated, slightly gray, somewhat lighter effect. So we need to create that as well. And finally, for the background, we see a kind of orange brown. It is quite nice, but personally, I would go for something warmer and more intense as you will see later on. And for the ground, we'll go with neutral tone, neutral tones, slightly brownish gray that we'll create later. So that's it for our colors, and now let's start mixing them. So let's start mixing our colors with the colors of the amphora. As we saw, it consists of several shades of gray, and remember that gray can be achieved in different ways, notably by mixing blue with burn timber or blue with orange or even by combining both methods. So, for example, I'm mixing now with burn timber and ultramarine blue, and I notice that it is a bit too bluish, so I can tone it down, reduce its intensity with some orange. So there are several ways to do it, and it's really up to you to choose the one you prefer. So here I am getting this first gray, and as we saw in our analysis, there won't be just 1 gray. We'll need to create several. That's what I'm going to do. And for that, I will either decrease the amount of white in the mix or increase it depending on whether I want lighter or darker grays, since we saw that there are extremely light grays and slightly darker grays in the central shadow area. So each time I adjust by adding more white or more burnt timber and blue if I want to darken the mix. And for this, I constantly compare with my reference photo asking myself whether my color is too dark or too light. And in this case, whether it's leaning too much towards ultramarin blue or too much towards Burnt road to know which of the two colors I need to add. And here I can create one final gray a bit darker than the others for that central area I was talking about. So there we go, and that's looking pretty good. Now I can also start mixing the green for my stem, and I will begin with a fairly neutral green, meaning it doesn't lean too much towards blue or yellow. Here, as you can see, I thought my color was pretty good, but I wanted to darken it a little. I darken it with some burntmbrd because if I had added more blue, I was afraid of ending with a green that's too bluish. Whereas here with Burntmbrd, it allowed me to get something darker without it becoming too blue. And from this color, I can create a slightly lighter version by adding white, not yellow to avoid making it too yellow green. Right here, I am creating a darker one with Bn tuber, but I felt that my green was going too much towards the brown, so that's why I added a little bit more of the ultramarine blue. Now, for this kind of flour that we can see at the top, we have this part that is a little bit green, and we can see that there is a green that is pretty intense. So that's what I'm creating now with a lot of yellow in my color. And also some white to create something pretty light. And right now, I'm getting closer to what I want, which is pretty great. So I'm just adding a little bit more of green because I felt that the color was a little bit too light due to the white color. And then I'm going to create a darker green because in this area, too, there is some dark green, dark blue green. So that's why I'm adding a lot of blue to my mixture in comparison to the other ones, but also some burn timber to make it dark. Right now, I think that my color was too intense, so I give it some red, which is the opposite color of the green. And then we will have also some kind of green gray colors. So we'll be able to mix these colors together. Now I'm going to mix the colors of the flower. And as we have seen, the flour is really divided into two parts. So I will start with the colors for the intense part of the flower. And we can see that in some places. Well, a red that is just a little bit lighter than my permanent red like this wouldn't be too bad. It would be a good idea. Then there will be areas where the red is slightly darker than that. So here I am taking my permanent red, but this time, I am not adding any white to it. On the contrary, I am going to add some burn timber to darken it a little. However, we can also notice that there are areas that are much darker than that on our flowers. So this time, I will darken it even more and give it a slightly more purplish tone by adding just a tiny touch of ultramarin blue. So there we go. This darker color looks really good to me, and what we can do is create a slightly lighter variation by adding a little bit of white. Oh Okay, now we can move on to mixing the colors for the other side of the flower, where we can see that the colors are much more reddish and purplish than on the right side of the petal. So where than on the right side, where we have more intense and bright red tones. So here I will do the same as the color next to it. I will mix burntimber and ultramarine blue with my red, except that my portion of ultramarine blue would be greater to give it a stronger purplish look. And there we go. I've got a color that looks really good. And from this one, I can create other lighter ones, for example, by adding some white. So And finally, I'm going to create the background color for I'm going to create the background color, and for the ground, we'll see about it later. For the background color, I had said, I would like to have something a bit more orange and a bit more intense than what we can see in the photo. That's also the freedom that painting gives us. We can really adapt the model and make whatever changes we want on our canvas. So I start by adding a large amount of white because it's still a fairly light background. So orange made with my yellow and red and a bit of blue to make it slightly less intense than a bright orange. Now I notice that my color is leaning a bit too much towards red and not enough towards orange. So I had more yellow to bring it closer to orange. And little by little, I will get closer and closer to my target color. Here, I add a bit more yellow to get closer to my orange color again. And each time I will make adjustments based on what I see on my palette. For example, here I think it should be a bit darker and I need to reduce the amount of white a little. To do that, I had a bit of my three primary colors, trying to keep the same proportions as before. And here, I think that we are pretty close to what I would like to have for the background. A few more tweaks, maybe a bit of buntebr to make it slightly more brownish, and then we'll be good to go and ready to start our painting. So let's begin our work, and I will start with the painting of the amphora. I'm going to start with a slightly medium gray like this one, this intermediate gray. I'm starting with this because it's a gray that works well overall in the sense that it will cover a very large area. It's going to be the somewhat dominant gray of my amphora in many places. So I'm going to try to apply it in multiple areas on the right side, on the lower part, and it's also present on the upper part and a little bit on the left side of the amphora, as well. So for now, I am just focusing on applying my grays in the right places. I am starting with this one, and I call it the consensus gray in the sense that it is the dominant gray, and later on, it will be perfectly possible to come back and add textures had slightly darker details or slightly lighter ones without any difficulty. So if I had started with a darker gray, it would have been trickier to had lighter details on top, and it would have taken more time. And the same goes if I had started with a gray that was too light. Now I notice on the upper part that there is an area that is actually a bit large and quite a lot lighter. So I adjust the gray on my brush to pick the one that is a bit lighter. And with this lighter gray, I can also apply some in the lower area of my paper, and we'll also see it on the right side. On the right side, there is this whole band that is very that is really very light. So I even reloaded my palette with white to have And to be able to paint that area properly. So I am applying my colors and trying to place them in the right spots to make sure I have the right colors and the right values to create volume and make sure we don't have just a simple circle on the page, but a real three dimensional object. Now that I have a good base, I can start working on top of it. I'm picking up a slightly darker gray this time, and I observe on the base I have created where the slightly darker gray can be applied. You can see that there is a little bit of it at the bottom, but there will also be some on the right side. We will have this entire curve, which is important because this is what will allow us to create three dimensionality and really give volume to our object. So I observe in which direction it goes, what elements we can see where it's going to be darker than in other areas and so on. In this way, I am able to make progress and really give depth to my area. There's also on the upper part of the amphora a small and slightly darker touch. So I don't hesitate to reload my brush if needed as soon as I notice that it's not dark enough anymore, but make sure to not load your brush too much and to really stretch your painting so that your blending will be easier afterwards. Now I can remove the paint from my brush because I think that I have applied most of the painting that was needed to start my blending. And I am going to blend this darker grays I have added with the rest. I really want to achieve a result that looks as natural as possible. Like this, by blending, gently dabbing, I managed to make this dark band visible and also ensure that it looks completely natural, that it blends perfectly well with the rest. And so that is the goal. As soon as I see that my brush has too much paint on it, that it has built up from doing this building, blending I removed the paint from my brush to continue. Even though it's true that I didn't load my brush too much at first when I applied my color. So I didn't end up with areas of paint that were too thick, and so I don't need to remove paint every 5 seconds. My area is looking pretty good, but I still want to improve it a bit more to create more volume. So what I decide to do is to add a few darker elements again because we have done a good blending, or elements have merged well together. But unfortunately, they still didn't stand out enough in some places. I found that in my reference photo, some areas were darker than what I had. So I simply go back over. Sometimes you have to go over it several times until you get a result that is fully satisfying. That's the case here. I have applied these slightly darker grays, and of course, just like I did with the rest, I blend them with a few brushstrokes here and there, and in this way, I get a result that is quite satisfying. In the same way, what I'm also doing is picking up a lighter color and apply a few small touches here and there to reinforce the light areas of my infora to really manage to create even more volume in this area, and to have a contrast that is really well defined between this area where I added darker elements and the lighter touches that I am adding here and there. A few more small touches to finalize the work on this area, and then it will be done. And then we will be able to move on the overside. But before working on the overside, I really want to work on this upper part of the amphora, this little element that we can see. For the upper part of the amphora, which I'm going to work in a moment because right now, I'm just finishing up a few last small touches on my central area to make sure that my brushstrokes aren't visible and that I have a good texture, meaning a texture for this amphora where there aren't really brushstrokes going more in one direction than another. You see, I'm keeping my hand very flexible with the brush to make sure that my elements blend well together. And so now I'm thinking that this is okay, and we can move on to this area, this upper one I was talking about and to work on it. I'm going to go directly with this round brush, slightly fine brush because this area isn't very big, and I am afraid that if I work on it with the flat brush, I won't be precise enough. Fold this up apart, I start with something very light, as you can see, and then gradually as we move towards the right, it becomes a little bit darker. Of course, this is not something that will happen abruptly. There will be a smooth transition and we'll once again have to do some blending, but this time over a very small area, so we need to be very precise to achieve this. So as you can see, I start by applying this very light gray, and then I switch to something more medium gray in this area, and I will try to blend it well with the other elements afterwards. There's also an interesting little detail. It becomes a bit lighter again on the right side, even though that's the shadow side. We had already noticed this with the lower part of the enfora, but it is visible here too. And that is simply the bound slide, the reflected light. In this area, the light is heating from the left side, but well, I mean, on this subject, the light is heating from the left side, but because of the floor or the wall, the light reflects here. So we end up with a little element like this that is a bit lighter. I explained this in more detail in the drawing course because when you draw, you sometimes want to imagine the things you're drawing and not necessarily draw from reference photo. So it's important to master and understand how light and shadow works. So that's why I go into this in more depth in the drawing course, if you'd like to check it out. When it comes to painting, it's true that we need this a bit less. Since most often we work from a model, whether it's a photo or something in front of us. So we paint more from observation than from imagination. So with this grays, I make sure they blend well together. And here we have the central line that is a bit darker and stands out nicely, and I've been able to add a few darker elements on top of it. So you can see that on this bend, we started with a fairly dark gray base and then added a few more dark touches. And now I can move on to painting the opening that we see. We can see at the top of the amphora, it will be a little dark in some places, so I'll try to be precise with my brush to clearly define the different areas of shadow and light that we have here. So now we are going to paint this left side of the amphora and this is a very large and light area. So this time, I'm going back with my large flat brush, and I make sure to really stretch the color well so that I don't end up with big patches of paint that would be difficult to blend. So I still try to be precise, making sure that the light area stays well defined where it should be. And then I can paint right next to it the area that will be a little bit more in shadow. This way, my work on the details and the blending will be easier. So for now, I am really focusing on applying the colors in the right place, taking my time to make sure that it is the correct areas that are properly covered. For the next part of this amphora painting, I'm going to speed up the video a little bit because it's basically the same thing that we have already done. I would even say it's a bit easier. The right side seemed a little more complex to me. So let's continue with this amphora. And here I'm going to apply some slightly darker colors, and I'm going to remake some gray on my palette like we did before, but a bit darker because I want this dark band to really stand out. This dark curve, I mean. So I start by applying it, defining where it will be placed. And once that's done, I will be able to blend my elements to make sure that this dark band has a really natural look just like on the overside. So I blend it small with some brushstrokes here and there, just like we did on the overside. And each time I make sure to remove the paint that has built up on my brush so that my blending is as smooth as possible. On the lower part, I would say I hadn't quite defined the path of the curve perfectly, so I'm adjusting it a little bit by adding some darker elements to this lower section, as you can see, and the bottom of the amphora is also a bit darker, so I have adjusted that as well. But overall, the amphora is really starting to take shape nicely. So now just a few more little elements to add here and there, and then this part will be done. And then we will be able to move on to working on the flower that is above the amphora. And here is the finished and fa. So if you haven't finished yet, take your time to do it properly, and I'll see you afterwards for the painting of the flower. 13. Painting of the flower: Now it is time to work on the flour, and I'm going to start by painting the stem. It is a stem that is overall rabbit, and I'm going to begin by applying this light green that I had mixed. And on top of that, we'll have some slightly darker elements. So here I am creating a my base. I tried to be quite precise to avoid going over too much onto the background because otherwise, it would be a little bit tricky with my orangy color to cover up that green later. Or, I will have to remove it with a paper towel, a tissue or possibly wait for the stem to be fully dry before going back over it. But that's not really something I'd like to do because I really like all the elements to be more or less connected. I like my paint to stand generally fresh for the whole composition. So here I'm mixing up a bit of darker green because on the lower part of the stem, you can notice that there is this little touch of dark green. So I am adding that, and now with this fine brush, I am using a round brush and extremely fine. I'm going to make sure to add some small dark touches here and there that will improve the look of my stem and make it more realistic. It's not a huge amount of work on this stem, but still, it is important to make it look realistic. And for that, it comes down to adding a few well placed touches of different greens here and there. Now to stay with the greens, I'm going to paint this little element above my flower. What we notice is that it is really divided between a fairly light area on the top left and a much darker area on the right. So I'm going to make sure to apply that as well. Before getting into the details of this element where there will be very precise parts, I make sure to apply the right base color. For that, I am also using this burg because it's an element that is overall very fine and I really need to be precise. So that's why sometimes I apply my colors with a brush like this one. And as I apply my color, you will notice that I make little strokes so that it blends very delicately with the edges and color to create a sort of mini blending effect right from the start. Now I'm going to mix a slightly yellow color, but overall, extremely light, so with a large amount of white to paint these little spots that we can see here and there on this element. For that, I started more with a yellow base, which I slightly darkened with some burnt timber and red, and this made it a bit orangy. What we can notice about these small details is that we won't have the same value for all the little spots we are going to have. So here, I'm going to start with the ones on the left side, which are extremely light. But then for the pot on the right, it will need to be a little bit darker, so I will adjust my color. Even with details like this, it is important to carefully adjust the value because these are details that really stand out. And if we make them too light, unfortunately, they will stand out too much and that won't look natural. You can also notice that on the stem at the top part of the stem, I left a little space because you can see it is slightly reddish and to create a connection with the flower, I didn't want to paint it directly in green. Now I can go ahead and paint it. And for that, as you can see on my palette, I am creating a new color, a sort of slightly greenish red. And in this way, it will blend well with my stem, as you can see. Now, let's move on to painting the flower. We are going to start with this area where the red is quite intense. You can notice that I have made a fairly precise drawing to separate the different red areas that we are going to paint. I'm starting with this red at the top part, which is a little darker than the other areas we will be painting after. I am using a fairly fine brush because it is a zone that requires a good amount of precision. So I try to apply my color carefully, and especially in an area like this, I make sure not to overload my brush. Otherwise, it could be difficult to get all the elements to blend nicely with each other. I can also apply some paint to the top part right here. On this little detail of the flower, the small fold, you will notice that all along the edge, there is this slightly darker area, and I have added it as well, as you can see. This won't be the only value in this area. Just next to it, there is a slightly lighter area that I am applying right now. When working in areas like this, you really shouldn't hesitate to use some thin brush like this one, some very fine brush, even if it does take a bit longer. Otherwise, if you don't use a brush like this one, it becomes very difficult to be precise and to apply the colors properly while respecting the different areas dedicated to each shade. Next, we are going to be able to add a bit more detail to this part we have just painted. So what I am doing here is going over the entire edge that we have painted with something a bit darker, since you can see that that's how it is and it stands out more. So here with my detail brush, I have tried to mark all the darker elements in the area, and that shows up as little lines, small additions here and there. Sometimes little dots, which helps to include which helps to create a better flower texture. Now, next to these darker elements that I have painted, I am taking my lighter color, and I'm going to apply some lighter details. As you can see, we have these much lighter touches that will help our element to stand out. So I had them, and delicately, I try to place them carefully, making sure they don't blend too much with the color I had already applied underneath. So I really tried to work with the tip of my brush. Then we can move on to the area below. And what I'm going to do for this flower is try to progress zone by zone. I have worked on this first area at the top, and now we can distinguish another area down below. So I'm going to work on that one as well. And in this way, I will be able to achieve a really realistic painting. And the advantage of working like this zone by zone is that you really see the flower develop before your eyes. It truly comes to life, and it really becomes realistic step by step, one area at a time. So here, you can notice there is a slight color change with red becoming just a little bit more purplish. So I have taken this slightly purplish red that I had and lightened it with some white to apply it here in this area. And now, to really finish this area off, I'm going to add these darker elements that we can see. These details elements that I am adding are quite irregular. You can't really say they look like anything specific. They are just little spots here and there, so you don't overthink it too much when you are painting them. Try to observe the areas where you can see elements like this, and then you just add them place a few touches here and there. But it's not a problem if these small details in zones like this don't look exactly 100% like what you see in your restaurant's photo. Just the fact of adding a few darker touches like this will be more than enough to create a realistic area for your flour. A few more little elements to add here and there in this area, and then it will be done. And we will be able to move on to the next part. For the next one, since we are now quite familiar with painting this flower and since we've really got the hang of it, we can go a bit faster and paint this larger area all at once. So I will start by applying my color over the whole area, and then we had details and work on it just like we have done so far. Here I have clearly defined these areas with a slightly dark and bright red, and now I am going to paint in between them. So I notice that we have a slightly pinkish red, a bit lighter, so I am applying delicately, and I am using this fairly fine brush so that as I apply my color, I can also try to blend it very gently with the color all around it. This way, we get a realistic result with elements that are more or less connected to each other. Then I notice that as we move towards the edge, there's this slightly darker bend, even much darker in some places. So I will need to add these slightly darker details to really make everything stand out, and I will do that afterwards. Now it is time for the detailing phase. So as we did before, I'm going to observe where I can see a few little patterns here and there, more or less dark, but once again, try to carefully look at where these elements are located, and then lightly tab adding a few darker touches here and there. That should be enough to make my elements look more realistic. Here, I'm going to add a few slightly darker lines at the bottom of my petal and also in the central area to make it stand out more. I also need to really bring out the upper edge which is lighter, so I am going to reload my brush with this pink and work on the edge to make sure it stands out well. And then it will be done, and we'll be able to move on to the next area of this flower, this reddish purple area, which is noticeably darker and which will create a real contrast with this first part of a flower. For this new flower, we are going to work in pretty much the same way as we did for the first part. That is, we'll work zone by zone because I am afraid that if we decided, for example, to do the entire area all at once, it will be a bit complicated since there are a lot of small sections that require a lot of precision with values that are quite different from one another. So if I were to say, for example, Okay, I will paint everything with a dark base and then apply lighter touches on top, I am worried that the lighter touches wouldn't stand out enough. And on the other hand, if we had said, Let's paint everything with a light color and then add the darker touches on top, I'm afraid it would have it will take a lot of time to make those darker touches really pop because they will blend in too much with the lighter base, and we would have to go over them several times. So I think this method is the best approach, meaning we'll try to go one area at a time um, really being as precise as possible each time. That is, I started by applying and working on the darker elements, and then right next to them, I place the lighter area and so on. So I will try to continue like this because as I was saying, it seems to me like the best strategy. So each time I will try to be precise with my brush to apply the right color in each area. And as you can see on my palette, I am constantly adjusting my colors to adapt and make sure that the color is correct and matches what I want to have in my model because it is true that we have what we see on the palette, but then when we apply it and see how it looks in reality on the paper, there's sometimes a slight difference that make us think, my color isn't quite right, I need to adjust it. Uh, I know that this part requires a lot of precision and patience, but this is really where everything comes together. Take your time, observe the solo color variations carefully, and remember that it is exactly these little details that will bring your flower to life. Even if it feels like you are progressing slowly, every single brush strokes is a step forward toward the final result. Think of it this way. Every detail you are adding now is strengthening the overall quality of your painting. And even though it can be a bit tiring at times, it is also in moments like this that you are making the most progress in your technique and in your observation skills. So take a deep breath, relax your hand, and enjoy the process. This is exactly the kind of careful work that will help you improve your future paintings. The more time you invest here, the more confident you will become in your next artworks. Consider this step as a real artistic training. Today, you are not only building your flower, but also developing your painter's instincts. So stay focused, keep enjoying the painting process and move forward calmly and little by little. When we work zone by zone like this, it might feel a bit slow, but it's truly the best way to be precise and to achieve a realistic result. You have much better control over the color transition and you really start to understand how light interacts with your subject. Even if you are moving along slowly, what matters is consistency. Think of it like building a puzzle piece by piece. Each element fits into place, and little by little, the whole picture come together. It's also by working this way that you sharpen your artistic eye and learn to anticipate values and contrast even before placing the color on the canvas. So don't test this day to adjust your mixes as you go along. It's perfectly normal for the color on your palette and the one on your canvas to have slight difference. So adapt, test, and correct. And this is exactly the process that helps you improve. And above all, remember that the patience you are investing today will allow you to be faster and more confident in your future paintings. H Now I am going to mix a slightly intense red to apply all along the edge of my flower. You can notice that there are a few small elements that really stand out, and those are the ones I want to work on. So I will start by applying this red, and then afterwards, I will be able to add a slightly darker touch on top and a few lighter marks as well. As for the rest of the flower, I didn't film it because it's basically the same process as we have already done for this first upperpart. So hanging there, you've got this. It is the same approach as before, and then we'll meet again for painting the background, which will really change the look of our painting, or at least I hope it will. So I'll see you in a bit. 14. Painting of the background: Let's move on to painting the background. And for the background, what we notice is that we will have a slightly lighter touch on this side here. So for this light a part, I think this color will do the job. However, for the rest, I find my color a bit too light, so I'm going to darken it by reducing the amount of white. Concretely, I am adding I am adding back a bit of the colors I used to create my initial mix, except that this time, I am not adding any white. This way, I will get something darker while keeping approximately the same tone. So I have mainly added a good amount of yellow, as I found there wasn't enough of it. And I can also add a bit of blue to make it a little bit less intense. So burn timber, too, which helps to darken it nicely. Now I'm going to start, and the first thing I will do is paint all around the edge of the amphora, the edge of the flower, also. This approach allows me to secure the area, meaning that later, when I work on the background with my flat brush and apply broad strokes to paint large areas, I will have a kind of protective barrier that will greatly reduce the risk of spilling over onto the amphora. This way, I preserve it from any accident. So that's what I am going to do. I will paint around all my elements, and then we'll meet again once that is done to finish the background and paint the whole areas. I have painted all around the edges, and now I'm going to apply the rest of my background. So I'm going to paint large areas. I will start by applying the lighter color like the one we can see on the side, it is true that the difference in value is more noticeable in my painting, but then I will also had some slightly darker touches in this area, which will make the contrast a bit less harsh. On the side, I can also apply the lighter color. There is also a bit in this area in the middle of the amphora, right here. So I can start by doing that, and then we'll apply my other darker color. When I apply my color, to paint larger areas like this, I obviously try to spread it well so that the elements blend nicely with each other afterwards. I use broad brushstrokes, and above all, I don't overload my brush too much so that it spreads more easily, and I don't end up with thick blobs of paint. When I am at the junction of these two different colors area, I make multiple back and forth movements with my brush to make sure they blend together well. And I go from top to bottom, sometimes from bottom to top and also from left to right, sometimes. The main thing for me is to make sure that the background looks fairly smooth and that the brushstrokes are as invisible as possible. This way, I will get the most harmonious result. The goal is also to make sure that the transition between my light colour and my dark color is really subtle so that it is barely noticeable. You might have seen as well a moment ago that when I notice that there is too much paint accumulated on my brush, I wipe it off with a tissue and then continue the process. Now I am going to do the same thing on the other side. So there is nothing particular to mention to you. Take your time to work on your background the same way as it was done on the left side, and then we'll meet again to paint the floor in the bowl or the table. I don't know exactly what it is on which the cenfora is placed. So here is my background now completed, and now we are going to mix new colors for the surface on which the amphora is placed. So what I'm going to do is start from the grays I originally mix for the amphora. But this time, I will make them a little less intense and therefore a little less bluish. Since the complimentary color of blue is orange, I am loading them with much more red and yellow to get something that looks less blue and that contrast well with my amphora. So we see the difference between the amphora and the floor on which is laid down the amphora. I am going to start by applying my color on this left side. You can see that on the left side, we have elements that are a little darker compared to the central area where there will be a fairly strong light. What is also noticeable is that along the edge of the amphora, there are slightly darker elements, so I will try to bring those out a bit more as well. Then as we move further to the left, this effect fades slightly, and when we reach the central area, it will be particularly bright. For this section, I have sped up a little bit the video because overall, it's not very complex. It's the same approach as for the background area. So for this entire lower part, it is the same process, and I've sped it up a bit. Then we'll see how to handle the cast shadow of amphora, which is quite pronounced and which will give us some interesting details to work on. We'll get to that in just a moment once this lower section is finished. For this part of the shadow I mentioned earlier, the shadow of the amphora, what I am doing is adjusting my gray a little. In the same way I did for the lighter areas, except this time, it is a darker gray. This way, I will get a gray that is warmer leaning more towards something a bit brownish like what we can see in our reference photo. So I start by applying my color in the area, and then I notice what I notice is we won't have the same value of the gray throughout the entire shadow. There will be areas that are much lighter, so we need to make sure to emphasize those as well. Overall, what I will try to do is really create a blend between this fairly large shadow and the surface on which the amphora rest. I will create this blend in the same way I did for the transition within the amphora itself, or for the rows always by giving small and delicate brushstrokes here and there. So I apologize. I was a little careless here because for this area, I forgot to move my end away each time I was working, so sorry about that. But you can still see what was done. And these were elements we had already worked on thoroughly. So I have no doubt you will manage it just fine. Now we are really moving on to the final touches, and I'm going to add the last details. Among these details, we have the shadow right under the amphora, which is a fairly dark and pronounced line with a slight touch of this kind of orange and then some gray. And, of course, when I have applied it, I will make sure to blend it properly to create a smooth transition with the surface the amphora is resting on. I'm going to need to go back to the brown on my palette for the final details, and then the palette will have to be set aside because it is getting in the way for the last touches I need to add, and I need to be very accurate. This is really the finishing stage with the final details that will truly help bring out my piece even more. What you can notice is that all around the amphora, there are some slightly darker marks that make the amphora stand out even more. You can see this in several places, so I'm going to add those, keeping in mind that it will really help to enhance my amphora and give it an even stronger three dimensional look. And on the other side, it's the slightly gray effect that I am increasing. I have added a few darker gray touches, and that, too, will help to make my infora look even more three dimensional. So it is a very small detail, but it is an important one. And this will conclude this tutorial. And here we are at the end of this tutorial on painting the amphora with this beautiful flower. This was the final project of, of course, to learn the fundamentals of painting. I truly hope you enjoy every step and that it helps you improve and build your confidence. Keep practicing, explore other subjects because it's through repetition that real progress is made. So thank you so much for following this course with me, and I will see you very soon for new creative adventures.