Paint a bouquet of flowers with Acrylics

1. Intro and project: Hi everyone. I'm Laura and I'm a Phoenix based professional artist and a Skillshare teacher. Today I'm going to show you my complete painting process for this beautiful, okay. In a glass jar. I'm going to show you that it doesn't take many paints. We're brushes to get this completed. So welcome to my Skillshare class. And when we're finished, I would love to see your projects. So post those at the end. And if you have any questions or comments, please post those as well. Thanks for joining me. 2. Supplies : Hi everyone. I wanted to start out with I'm going over the supplies that you will need for this painting. So as you can see here, I have a, an acrylic paper pad. It's by Strathmore. I think I ordered this on Amazon. It is 246 pound is what the paper is, which this is a really nice weight, works great with acrylic. Hit some heavier than the mixed media paper, which you can also use. But I just wanted to show you this. You can also buy these Michael's. But today I'm actually going to use an aqua cold press heavy. And this is a block. And I will show you at the end how to get the paper over here. But this helps from any folding, curling or anything when you get the heavy or acrylic. Acrylic, so on here. So this is Legion Stonehenge, Aqua press heavy. It's a nine by 12. And I actually got this one at Michaels. And there are 10 sheets of paper on here. And then I'm gonna talk about the paint. We have the primary yellow. This is a heavy body. This came from Michael's, the titanium white, Winsor and Newton. This one also came from my goals. You can order these online from Amazon as well too. So here I have a primary magenta, this is a heavy body. And the primary cyan, which is the balloon. These are all heavy bodies. And I have the ultramarine violet just wanted to throw in a little more color. And this is a fluid acrylic, but you can also get these in my goals, but they just have a different consistency. And then I have a permanent magenta. Again, Winsor and Newton, to something else to throw in here. I always like to have my primary colors because I know I can mix everything from those. But then it's always fun to have a few different bright colors to add in. I also have some greens, some different greens here. Hello green, which this is a fluid paint. I have a permanent green deep. Again, Winsor Newton, all my paints are mixed in which that is perfectly fine. Another Winsor Newton, this is a permanent green, light, heavy body, cobalt green Liquitex. And then I have my Prussian blue hue, which is a fluid. And this I find when we are blocking things in, it just goes on more smoothly for what we wanna do. And then just a bunch of brushes. I have brushes. They don't have to be expensive brushes. Just different ones. Angled brushes, flat brushes, pointed brushes, filbert brushes, and even the foam brushes which I love to do the washes with. So we're going to get started. And I will see you in the next video to start doing our floral in a vase. 3. Inspiration : I thought I'd show you a few of my own paintings just to get the juices flowing a little bit. To show you pretty much anything is acceptable. You are painting. We have this one, this one I blocked him with the blue. This one might still need a few details on it though. I have this one, this one I did, I did with green. This is kind of an abstract that you can see. It has the vase. Here's one, here's one that has more detail in it. Again, I blocked him with the blues, added some maybe kind of suggestive of a table down here. And this one's fun too, because I love how these stems are showing through what is a suggestive of a glass face down here. And again, very abstract yet still you know what it is. It has the puppy florals right in the center. Then we have this one. This one's a lot more abstract. Appear, even it's looser. We've got the vase here. Lots of paint drips, which is always fun to do because you never know how it's going to end up in that is the beauty of it. So this is actually one of my favorite ones that I've done with the oranges, the corals, the pinks and purples. And I do love the drips down here that kinda give it a checkerboard pattern. So anyway, these are just some that I've done. Just to get you thinking on colors, extra colors that you want to add in. 4. Let’s start painting : So for the wash that we're going to put on here first, I'm going to put down some fallow green, blue shade, which is a fluid. Some white. My Prussian blue hue. Let's do some green light. And we're going to go ahead and just put this down. I'm going to get some water. Wars like to spritz the water just to make things glow a little better. Put a little water on my brush as well. We're just going to start picking up some paint. And I liked the way it mixes on the actual paper. Let's see what the water it makes it flow. You can really cover a lot of surface with not a lot of paint. Let's see. So just enjoy the process of putting this paint down. It's all going to get covered up as well. Just gives us a nice ground to work on. It's nice to add the white any kind of gives you a different color. So everything is not the same, adds a little bit of depth to the background. A little darker over here just to make it look different. And that depth. Yeah, just a little bit of Prussian blue hue to just to give it depth with it some interest. So it's not flat. The add a little more water. Spread that around. Papers got good, too thin. It is well, splits a little bit of a rougher texture, which is nice. And it can withstand a lot of water. Here we go. And now I'm going to take just let that dry for just a little bit. It's pretty much it's pretty dry. I'm gonna get a pointed brush, just something a little wet and dislike and a lot of flow. And I'm just going to block in not much thought to it at all. Just where I'm going to put my florals, just making a nice composition. And again, this can always change later. Some little lines marks. I'm also going to just mark in where I'm going to put the face. It's not a lot of thought to this. And this will add all the details later. Baby, remember there. And as you notice, I'm putting this a little bit off to the center. It's called the rule of thirds. When you sit or something, it's just not as eye-catching or interesting as it is when you use the rule of thirds. So I've got this right between, I don't have a completely over here in this part. In this 1 third, I kind of got it. Two in the middle of the two-thirds of the paper. Just adds interest. No, I'm done even think at the time, no idea what I'm putting on here. Just some shapes. Keeping it balanced. We're interest. And now we're going to go onto the next phase. After we let this dry a little bit, it needs to dry. And then we're going to come back and we're going to block in our colors. And that's when we're going to be mixing the primaries and taking some of these other nice colors and adding to make a cohesive painting. 5. Continue painting layers : All right. I think I'm we are dry enough now I wanted to show you the pallet paper that I'm using is just a slick paper and it's specifically for paints. So it's called pallet paper. It's by Strathmore. And you again, you can get this in my goals or order online. And I think it's only about $7. It's not very much in last a long time, there's 40 sheets. And I paint probably 3323 paintings out of just one sheet. Once the paint is dry, you can always just put some more paint on. So I still have the colors that we put on earlier, the phthalo green, the Prussian blue hue, the titanium white, and there's still some of that light permanent green. But now I'm going to put down the primary. So we've got the primary magenta. And the primary magenta is just a brighter color then if you had cadmium red or the pyrrole red is just gives off a brighter look. Then I have, this one is the primary yellow. I wanted to try it out of the jar. You know, it's kinda it's little more difficult in the jar because then you have to have something to spread it on with. But it may last longer. I don't know why though. Well, it's a little bit bigger. It's four ounces compared to 20 ounces, so it is double the size. And now we're going to put down some primary blue, which is also, this is a heavy opaque color. And I'm actually running out of that and the heavy body, but I have other blues that I think would work really well. All right, and this is what we're going to put down for now, is grab a brush. And I'm grabbing just this flat angled brush. I always like adding in some white, just gives it some textural feel. And look. The medulla. I wanted to coral, which is always really nice. And I just mix it until I see what I like. And I'm one and I don't mix with palette knives. I know you should, but I'm just too anxious and I like to see my colors right away. So my brushes and w in a mass, but I've found that linseed oil cleans them very well. And all you need is just a little bit of that. So let's just go ahead and we're going to skip some color down. Some water on that to help it flow a little more. Here's you notice i'm, I'm going in a circle because I've mentioned I'm going to just do that. I'm gonna do lines and organic circles to create that flower. Let's go with a little more red or yellow here. Always looking for things that are going to contrast really well and add that depth. Let's do this. Since I've got this on my brush. Got one more full thread. You want to thin out your paint is per little bit of water on it. And it's always good to even out the colors across the page just to make the composition more equal. And then it sends your eye around. Peace. I think I'm going to mix up a green right now. So let's see. Let's take some yellow, some primary and let's see how that's going to look. And I always like to add a little bit of white. Well, I have some of this. Tail will boil in green. Here we go. Pee a little blue on that. Kinda getting ahead of myself now, I like to mix the colors on the actual piece of paper because it leaves the brushstrokes and I'm really not, I'm getting two colors in. It. Always just looks so nice. I really like to paint that way. It's kind of layering the paints a little bit darker. I like how that picked up the red. Just the base. The base. We're going to probably add least two more layers. I would say two things. What things to contrast out? So I had a purple and I'm going to make purple. Kinda take the blue and the red, and I'm going to mix it over here. That's why I don't want it to be that dark color. That looks nice. That's a nice color. And a little more. Here we go. And that's a nice purple. Let's sound. Darken it up just a little bit. You know, all these colors are going to go together because we've made them from the same colors. Let's see. Let's do another green. I'm gonna take this little bit of green that I have still the light green to it. It's always nice to add a lot of interests to your leaves. Them just being all Coby. Because with the different light leaves to show colors other than green. Why is always a nice contrast as well? All right, we have laid down our first colors that we have to be blocked in. So now we will be adding some more details in the next video. See you there. 6. More layer painting : So now I'm going to put down some greens on my palette. This is a chromium oxide green. It is, it's pretty opaque and it's a fluid acrylic. And put down some of the permanent green light. Because I thought we'd start on our leaves. This one is a permanent green deep. This is one of my favorites. This is Titan Green Pale, which adds a lot of contrast within the leaves. And tell it's my favorite. So I'm running low on it. And we'll put some of this yellow, green, blue shade down as well. Little bit of the ultramarine violet and a teal. Myself, a yellow over here that I could make syn also into these greens to create a little bit of a different green some way down as well. Okay. So I'm just going to start creating leaves, just outlining. So I'm adding the purple. I'm going to add some teal as well. I'm just picking up whatever. I feel like. Just creating foliage all around. And again, it may cover up some things which that's okay because if I want, I can go back in over the top of that and put in some more marks. And I'm just placing least filling in gaps, adding interest by layering the leaves on top of the flowers. That needs a little more interest over here. Making things larger. Next to something smaller. We're sometimes just making things a little bigger. Adding interest, adding things to fill in. And you can also go over things when they're not completely wet. If you have a lot of paint on your brush. It is creating. Different paintings. Had more interest over here. Just different brushstrokes, just loose brush strokes. Let's go in with this. Tight and green. I'm going to change my brush out so I can have that as a pure color. See different interesting things, Marx. Marx. Twigs and branches. Spreading the green around to eye travels and everything is balanced. Heading twigs. So let's go in here to this vase now. And actually I think I'm going to put it a little bit of teal in there with a little bit of white. Just to create a little bit of interest. Like it's a blue black glass vase. Because we're going to go in there, we're going to put the stems in. Just a little bit of water just to make that more of a little wash. Come back in and outline some of that. There we go. Now I'm going to take this top of this brush, put the paint on the arrow. And then I'm going to just add some interests to this glass face that you can see through adding stems, different colors. The flowers you figure the flowers will be creating the illusion of color down here when it's off of the glass. We want to put some different colors in here, like the yellow. Green. Wanna do some Prussian blue hue in there as well. And I change my brush out and we're gonna get a smaller brush, as you can see here. And let's go ahead and do a little bit of pyro orange, just to take that orange down here as well. So I'm going to let this dry and then I'm going to come back and we're going to take a look at it and see where else we may meet a few more details. Just add interest and make the flowers pop out. 7. Let’s paint details : So now I have this very small pointed tip brush. And I'm going to add some details using white. And I'm actually going to use this titanium white that is a fluid white because that's going to help me put the small details on better with some water on this just so it flows better. So here we'll just add some veins in the leaves just for interest. To a little over here to just very lightly, very loosely. Lightly. You sum here over here. So to make things pop out, adding elements that are light and dark next to each other. He's like to do things in threes. Just little tiny details. Really make a big difference. There we go. And then don't forget to sign your work. I'm gonna go. And this is a Posca pen. I love these. These are also really fun for detail because it is actually acrylic paint. And you can get fine lines with sometimes easier than you can with the brush. 8. Finishing up: So now that we are complete and this is dry, I'm going to show you how to get this off of the paper block. So I actually just use an old steak knife. It's just smooth on the end here. An exact dough knife may cut the paper, the next paper down. So this I always find works better. So there is a little area right here that doesn't have any of the glue on it. So I'm going to stick this knife right down in there and you can kinda see, I'll take this paper is all right. There we go. Then I'm going to do that. So see, it's starting to come off. Let's go that way. And this keeps it really flat, doesn't fall off at all. And you don't have something taped down or glued down. Then it's got this last little bit on it. I'm going to go. And this is ready for the next one. And this is perfectly flat. It's very nice thickness. And it's ready for framing.