Paint A Rainbow Cactus In Watercolor

1. Introduction To Painting A Rainbow Cactus: Hi, Welcome. Welcome to my studio. I'm Eva Nicholas. I'm a Danish watercolors. I live in California and I'm coming to you from my home studio up here in Turkey, California, close to the Nevada border. And we know I had been painting in watercolor for about 20 years now. I think I entered my first show in 2003 or 2401 of my first price and never looked back since I show my work at various galleries here in California and Nevada and contain mark. So I started teaching watercolors about ten years ago. I love teaching and I'm looking forward to today's class where we're going to be painting a rainbow cactus. Yeah, there's no such thing as a rainbow cactus. I know, but it doesn't matter. There is. Now we're going to explore some fun and easy techniques, some that I am using a lot of times in my artwork and we're going to mix and mingle colors directly on the paper. Trying to avoid mat. We're going to use a thirsty brush to lift out some highlights and also to control the water and the pigment in our paintings. I have included tracings, a drawing, and you can do sadness and tracing. And I also make just a more simple tracing for you if you don't want to draw your own cactus. So those are available for you there down in the materials. You can find them, they're PDFs and you can just print them out. I also have a materialist for your so you can see what I'm using. That does not mean that that is what you have to use. You use whatever you have. And if you're a beginner watercolor waste and you don't have some of the colors and some of the brushes that I use, don't worry about it. It's not a problem. Just use what you have. It's about learning the techniques best, really the key. In order to take this class, you don't need any experience. All you need is a positive attitude, an open-mind. The rest will come. Let's gather our materials. I'll go over what we need in the next video and then we'll jump into the actual painting. I hope you will enjoy and follow along once we have completed our class, I hope that you will share your painting with us on the project gallery page, I have included in the wrap-up video exactly how you post on Skillshare in case you don't really know how to do that, so that'll be there for you. So nerd skills, Let's get started. 2. Rainbow Cactus Materials And Set Up: So today we're going to pick this cactus in this lesson, and it's a very, very easy beginner friendly painting. I have a drawing that I did and that's going to be available to you as a handout. I have already gone ahead and traced my drawing onto my watercolor paper. I just did it in pencil. So try to be light handed with it. I did it a little more dark than what I would normally do, but that so that you guys can see the drawings. I use a pencil like this, any kind of addition number two, pencil. And if you need to erase it a little bit, when you're tracing, use a kneaded eraser. Don't do, don't ever use this eraser on your watercolor paper. It's going to damage the paper. The paper that I am painting on today is Arches, 300 pound cold pressed watercolor paper or a 100% cotton. Now, 300 pounds is very stiff, and so it's a little harder to see through the paper. But for demonstration purposes I like to have the 300 pounds because it's easier for me to lift it up. And if you paint on a 140 pounds, which is perfectly fine, then it just gets a little shaft of the course. It's thinner paper, but it works just as well, so don't worry about that. And then of course you have my palette, and I happen to use this palette today had some yellows. I have some reds including pink and I have a ton of blues, as you can see, I love blue. And then I have a bunch, Anna, whatever palette, whatever colors will have, will work absolutely perfect. Do not have to have the same colors as me. That's one of the biggest things that students think is that they need to have the exception column you do not, yours might end up looking a little bit different, but that's the whole point. So no problem there. I wanted to show you that if you're just beginning and maybe you just invested in the three primary colors, red, yellow, and a blue. That's gonna get to just as fine. You do not need to have a gazillion colors. And when you're beginning, it's better to start out with just the three primary colors and then add on a couple more. And then as you go along, trust me, you will end up with a big collection of colors if you're anything like me and a lot of the painter said I know, but it's not necessary. So there's no need to break the bank. Much better to have fewer colors and fewer brushes and all that stuff to start out with. But get inequality instead of getting a whole bunch, but it's all student grade. He's not gonna show your work very well. If you have three colors or if you have 12 college like I have here, it'll all work beautifully. And so the way I trace my drawing onto my paper and you put also free him at this folks is for most people not a very complicated design and you don't have to have it exactly like me. We all know what a cactus look like. And here you can see it's a very simple example here. So on much smaller five by seven, my piece of paper here is eight by ten. Now, I always try to paint on standard sizes, meaning that the sizes I paint on, I can go to any framing store or actually apply a store and buy the mat and the frame off the shelf. I don't have to go up to the desk and have them drag out all their Matt samples and measuring and all this stuff that's going to cost you a fortune. It's very wise, especially to begin with, to just hate on standard sizes. Eight by ten is a good standard size to paint on. It's big enough, but it's not huge and it's not tiny. So I find that this is a very, very good size to a 2D class project on, you will find a lot of the classes that I teach, I demo on eight by ten watercolor paper. You can also buy a block of watercolor paper that eight by ten. Now again, back to the transferring. The way you transfer, there's many ways you can do it. You could do it with some graphite paper and let you have to make sure to graphite people. That's this black paper, you know, kinda like carbon paper, but don't get cotton paper because it has some oils and waxes in it. You don't want that on your watercolor paper. And then you put, if you do that method and then you slide in-between here you will use a little piece of tape, attach your drawing to your watercolor paper just so it doesn't slide around and it's best to just do it again. I usually do it at the top. And that way you can kind of lift up and see if you got all the lines, if that's some method you want to use, if you use that method, you will probably want to take your little kneaded eraser and then kind of roll it across and pick up some of that loose graphite that has rubbed off from the graphite paper. That's method number one, method number 23, they're basically the same, just depends on if you have the equipment, you can use a light table. If you have that are light tablet nowadays, you can buy them very cheaply for about 30 bucks on Amazon and other websites. If you want to go ahead and invest in that, you can do that, but you don't need to because we all have matrix-like table available towards what do I mean by that? I mean that we have a window you want to do during the day time and preferably as sunlit window. And what you do is you take off your drawing in the window with a little piece of tape, and then you take your watercolor paper and put it on top and line it up through the way you want it. And then you put a little piece of tape on that and then you can see through the watercolor paper. And you can just follow the lines. That's why I saved 300 pounds inches thick or too little harder to see, but I try the best. I can't make my drawings very dark. I were April I was able to do that drawing here through the 300 pounds. But anyway, either way, if you have a light, light tablet or lightbox or whatever, you can put your drawing down and then you put your paper on top, put a little piece of tape up here, and then you just have the light shine through and the same applies for the window. So that's how you get your watercolor paper prepared with a drawing. Alright, so that was enough about the materials, really. Spray bottle. You always want to have a spray bottle at hand and I already went ahead and spray it all my colors. I usually spray all my clothes even though I don't know him all probably I'm not I had already a puddle of magenta from a previous painting and it's computed completely cleaned. So I didn't want to wipe it out. Of course, our college, they are expensive so we don't want to do that. And if you spray, you can see I got a little bit of it over spray here. So try to be careful with your spray bottle. You can also use an eyedropper. Some people do that and you can also just use your brush, make your brush wet, and then kind of driven like that. That's another way of doing it. So that was set spray bottle. And finally, we need to have, of course, some brushes. And again, you don't need a whole bunch of brushes. I also have an old piece of terry cloth and then I have some paper towel, Viva paper towel that I put on top. If you put a two or three layers on foliage on and then you might, if you have it, you might want to have a white gel pen. This one is uni-ball signal gel pen with gel pen up jelly gel pen. We might use that, I'm not sure. And then an old classic card credit card, whatever. And I like to cut mine like this on a slant. So that way you get a real nice pointy end here. And then the two other corners, social rounded edge. I'll show you how I'm going to use it later as far as brushes go, I think probably my number 12, number 1012 or 14, right around there is a good size brush here, a number a, and then I have a number four and I have a little number two. And I could potentially think about using an even smaller one, but it's not necessary. I had it peaked with these little brushes, but I did find this one reasonably and those little hairs could come in handy. And then my good old dagger brush nowadays you can't get them with this handle. They become either white or green handled sore or, you know, it all depends on what grant but this is a half inch dagger brush, my favorite brush and I will have that linked for you. But anyway, I think we're all set. Now comes the fun part painting. Here you can see I've zoomed out a little bit so that you can see my whole setup. And this is actually for this class. I'm going to put that away, like to have little plants here in my studio. And I have my water control station here. That's what I call it. That's my funneled up or terry cloth with some Viva paper towel on top of whatever paper towel you you said it's fine. And then my palette, I have two containers of water and I usually have a third one, actually a standby precaution or I'm filming and I don't want to have to run to the sink to get fresh water in the middle of taping. And then of course, you know, spray bottle and you can also use a half also big spray bottles sometimes that comes in handy. Anyway, I'm gonna assume in a little bit so you can see better what I am doing. 3. Rainbow Cactus 1: All right, I think we're ready. Gonna take my number eight brush here. I like that one for mixing my colors. And I'm going to first make myself some puddles of color. We hardly ever paint for this one. That's a cobalt teal from M. Graham. So let's put a puddle of that out and if you don't have that, remember what I said. Just grab another color. Maybe you want to grab cobalt or maybe you have a civilian blue, or maybe you have peacock blue, which is this one here. So I'm gonna take a little bit of that one out too. That's a little bit of a brighter blue. Love that one. I loved them all. I love color period, and I already have my magenta out. And let's see, let's get some French ultramarine blue out. If some of that out here. And you can see I'm moving around, I wish my colors around, meaning that I store them around here on my palette. And what is that for? Well, first of all, it's to dissolve all the particles of pigment in the watershed. We don't have little pieces of gunk because that can really mess us up. And it also tells me the ratio of water to pigment. We already have the magenta out if schizo some yellow, Let's skip this. My favorite yellow is this one here. This one I have on this particular palette is a nickel, a little yellow from M. Graham. It's pigment PY, That means pigment yellow 150. That's my absolute complete and utter favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite yellow. And I'm actually going to put another year over here already because yellow gets polluted so easily because it's a light color. And I have my water containers right outside of the picture up because I wanted to zoom in, but I always have to one that I went up my brush and she'll dirty water and then the other one, I tried to keep it clean so that I have clean water to work at my college ready. And you notice TO we had just so far we only start blues and yellow until we have a beautiful green here. Alright, so one more color. Let's go with the year. Quinacridone call here, that's a red that's read from Daniel Smith that I really liked. I use that more as my true red on my palette nowadays, I used to do quinacridone red, but that is a little, it more pink. So wanted to discard this one. I thought, well I should switch. Now we have the red on the brush and we have green in here. So this is just a little opportunity for some color theory and a colorless and red and green are complimentary colors on the color wheel, meaning that they are across from each other, as far away from each other as you can get. Greenish also register primary color and green is a secondary color consisting of the two other primary colors, yellow and blue. That's where we went down. And the story is that if you mix complimentary colors together, they neutralize each other. And we saw that here right in front of our own eyes. If you see how that green is now kind of gray-green from that bright, bright green. And that is how that works, not only in theory but in practice. Alrighty. So the plan with this cactus is it's going to be not a realistic characters. Unless you wanted to do that, then you can just paint the green if that's what you want. But in this particular lesson, I wanted to just be a little bit more abstracted about it, so to speak. It's not a realistic cactus. And here you can see I always like to just take my kneaded eraser and make sure that if I have some extra little graphite from the pencil lines floating about, I just pick them up. There's just my own little obsession. Those are the painted with in real life they know all about this. I just can't stop myself. So I'm gonna go with my little bit bigger brush and I'm going to put clean water on it. This is my brush size and this one happens to be a number 12. And the brushes, except for the dagger brush, the brushes I'm painting with are all from the mimics, squirrel series or collection from Creative Market. They are excellent brushes at fantastic prices. Can't be that combination being water. I do like this. And then I go and just do a little tap on my towel. They have just so that it won't run all over the place. And I'm gonna put clean water on almost out to the edge. I'll leave a little tiny bit of space. And actually, I didn't think I wanted to use this, but I think I do it also have my number 30 brush from them created market mimics, squirrel series, just here for, and you don't have to do this. It's just, I personally hate fiddling around with little brushes in big areas. The bigger brush you can use, the less brushstrokes can eat, the less opportunity you have to miss out. That's my theory. So I wanted to wet this whole area inside that big bottom part of the cactus. And I'm gonna put even more water on because the more water I have on, the water will sink into the paper and it'll already begin to go. Matt, and I want the colors to mix and mingle. That's what I wanted to really colorful abstract cactus. Now probably, you will probably also have to put on maybe two layers of and just give it a little interest sink into the paper. And now also because I'm painting on the 300 pounds, so it's even thicker, so there's more absorption then if you're painting on a 140 pounds. Alright, so now let's just go in and eeny meeny, miny Moe, let's put some yellow on. I'm just gonna put some yellow on here just like that. And then just be very fancy here and have a true, true brush approach. And then let's put some of our peacock blue in. And I'm just going to turn my paper around so I can get to this area. And C Now I'm going all the way out to the edges and look at that and put a little bit more blue on there. I'm going to put a little bit in here while it's still wet. There we have it. And now I'm just going to let it mix and mingle. I live up in the mountains in California, in a little town called Trotsky is only about 30 miles from Reno. Nevada is. So the climate up here is, of course, mountain, so that already says dry and then it's almost high desert show today for instance, we have moisture, the level, the percentage is only 20. So that's why my paint dries out almost immediately. And so here, I just want to have a little bit more fun. I think I can, I'm going to dip my tip of my brush in that red and I don't have my brush to wet. And I thought it could be really fun to just play with it and see if I could get a little bit of orange in there. How fun is that? But I didn't want the Red Running with the green because then I'm gonna get a muddy color and I didn't want that. I want these characters, these characters to be very bright. Alright, that was fun. And the colors are gonna be moving a little bit more. And the more water you have on the faster and white are, the colors spread and move. So just keep that in mind. So you can see minus staying a little bit kind of they don't want very fast and it's because I should have put even more water on if I want it to them to run more. But if you have like this, then you can control it easier. So it's all depends on what you're after. In this lesson here is very much about how much water, because that is the major number one question I always get from students is how much water on the paper for underbrush? And the answer to that is it depends. It depends on what you want the college to do. If you want them to really run spread and go far, lots of water if you don't want that to happen, if you want to have full control, then you don't want to wet it first. This was wet into wet and wet the paper first and then we put somewhat wet paint in and it moves. If I had put the paint on dry paper wouldn't have moved or stayed where I put it. So while that dries, Let's paint another one. Now the only ones we cannot paint are these three here that are touching because if we did that, then they would bleed in and we would create a cauliflower and they would want to gather, we don't want that not in this painting. I'm going to flip it around and maybe I'll just grab this one here. That's a much smaller one. So I'm totally fine with my number eight brush maybe to just put water inside. And now I've already learned my lesson that the colors, they move kind of slow but don't put enough water into. I'm really I'm really putting water in this one here. I'm just going to give it a moment to sink in. Then what color do I want here? I think I'm going to go with some of my french ultramarine blue. Such a beautiful blue, it's kind of a warm blue, meaning that it's leaning in a little bit to the purple side. So I'm dabbing some of that in here and I'll rinse it out. Then I'll go into my magenta, which I have here, and that is a reddish purple. So let's put that on and I'm gonna rinse it out from moving my paper around so that I can get to this area where I'm putting my hand in wet paint there and did here just there and see because it's much much wetter than this one was. Can you see how it runs and mixes and mangoes? And I'm getting some beautiful purples. And this is super fun to do this. I like this. This is my way of painting, just written the pigments moved back and forth. Okay, so we can let that sit there. It's plenty wet. And then I'm gonna go with this one here. And again, I'll put some clean water in. And I do leave myself a little bit of a distance to my pencil lines, if you can see that because the water does creep out a little bit. So let's go with the yellow here. See how that just ran into there. Because yellow is a mover and shaker, meaning that it moves a lot. And then here I'm gonna go to my Quinacridone call and put that in down here. That, and I'm going to wind up in the brush. Maybe I'll put it a bit more yellow on the tip of my brush and then be careful, can you see how I have a droplet here? Try to get those off because they're going to form and then they're going to mess you up. Here we go and mix and mingle. And we should get a nice, lovely orange and some red and a little bit of yellow hold depending. And I just stepped a clean my brush and I dabbed off all the moisture show it's almost dry and I'm going to just put the tip of my brush. Did you see what happened? See it's showing up that excess pigment that I had there. A brush that can do that is called a thirsty brush and it comes in very handy. All right, sure. Like what do we got there? And this one is still see her with that one was so it's still running a lot, but that's okay. So I think let's take this one here and I have another color. I want to get out. And that is opera rose. Want to have my opera rose, that's just a super bright pink. And this one happens to be from whole bunch. I want to put a little water in here. And again, I want to have enough water that things will run for me. And let's put a little bit of that teal color, that a lot there. And then let's put a little bit of our ultramarine blue in Sunnah, mixing two blues. Or there could be really fun to mix and mingle a little bit. Right? Switch over here and we'll do another one to this one. There we go. And I'll put a little bit of yellow in. We'll see how yellow just, just goes everywhere. So let's try and put some opera rose in the yellow and see what happens. It's going to give us a different combination then with with the Quinacridone call. Right here. There are use this combination sometimes for sunsets, the opera rose and the needle, a little yellow. Sometimes it's also called transparent yellow depending on what brand you're looking pretty good. I feel I have a thirsty brush here. I feel like picking up a little bit. It's still damp. I'm feel like picking up a little bit there to maybe get a highlight down. And I could do the same over here, just like that. It'll highlight. Hopefully we can do it here. Might be too wet yet like that. All right. 4. Rainbow Cactus 2: We'll carry on. And the next one I wanted to do with this one in here too little bit bigger. I'm using my number eight brush. I could've used my number 12, that would've been fine. And again, I want to make sure that I have enough Warner that things will move and mingled here. Let's go with my pickup. We do. It's another color really. And what are we going to run into that one? How about some of our opera rose and see what happens? So here also Rate Experiment to see how the different colors mix and wrinkled. So this is going to create a beautiful purple, also lavender. And you can see how I'm turning my paper around all the time. And it is show that I do not put my hand in wet paint and also show that I can hold my hand in a more comfortable position. And as you can see, I'm a left-handed painter. So if you're right-handed, you know, obviously you would want to have your Who would want to have your palate and your water over on the right side. I'm just dabbing in a little bit in more of the opera rose to try and kick it up a little bit. Go with that mix and mingle. And can you see here that has almost dried now, we got some beautiful shade of purple here. In this one here we'll get some different shades of purple, more lavender, because we're using a different blue and we're using a different red. So that might be another incidence of where it might be a good idea. Can you see how I hold it up and it's like it's pulling right there outward hits the drive. So I think I wanted to just pick up some of that extra extra pigment just doesn't take forever to dry. So again, that was a use of the thirsty brush. You can see here on this one here, got a little bit, a cauliflower. I don't mind at all whatever happens here. I mean, you really can't do it wrong but just roll with the punches, so to speak. But that was the cosh, the yellow I think one of the either the yellow or the other side had to drive a little bit faster. So that's how you get hot cauliflower here. If we get colored flowers, you know what, It's just part of the chunk. We're not going to worry about it. So the next one I want to paint is this one here, which not touching anything. And it's good to paint these two because they both touch this one. And then afterwards maybe I should take that little one and then they all dry at the same, more or less same time. Show water in again, just dab in a little bit extra water. And what are we going to do here? Let's do some of our French ultramarine blue, so pretty which shouldn't run out. And then I think I want to give it some yellow, niggly little yellow and French ultramarine blues now gonna give white as bright green as we saw down there with the peacock blue there we have it. And I like that. I think I might go in and just do a little bit more blue here. On this side. Looks good. French ultramarine blue is a granulating color and you might already be able to see that. Can you see how it kind of granulate a little bit. And that is from the French ultramarine blue or CEL, middle ear. So yellow is not a granulating color. And then we said we were gonna do this little guy. Let's do it. Just a little bit of water inside is a small little one. Let's see what about just putting some upper rows in here. And we can put a little bit of the quinacridone colon. So we have two reds, more orangey red and a pink. That could be fun. There you go. I might go in here while it's still wet, it's still shiny. Can issue that I think I might with a thirsty brush just gently try and lift a little bit of a highlight here. Did you see that? You don't have to do that if you don't want to. But I thought it would be a good one and actually maybe I'll go in and do it here to there. So we're going to go in and just try and lift out there just to get a little highlight. And then we're gonna move on to this. We want to do some red and a little bit of yellow. A little bit here, which very whipped in there. I think I might just dab in a little bit more of the yellow that's going to push away the red yellows are very pushing. The next one I want to paint is this one here. I'm going to paint this one. And I'm gonna go with my trip course there. Then I'm gonna put a bit, a bit of yellow in and see that lovely color. Lime green, almost really like that. That's a good combination. Didn't want to use that somewhere else. Let's clean up the edge a little bit. And then we have this one here. Let's grab that one. And again, be careful with those little droplets. I'm going to go for that same color combination, which I liked it so much. It just stopped my brush on my water control station, Portia was going a little too fast. Too much pigment on my brush for that little tiny area. Now, let's get some of the other yellow in there and be quoted it the mix and mingle on their own. Even though I'm using the same colors, they're not going to do exactly the same thing. There's no, we're going to be true that are exactly the same. That's why I never worried about people copying me or anything like that because you know what, I can't even recreate a painting myself that I paint it because of how I use a lot of the wet into wet technique and let the colors mix and mingle and paper here, just use a thirsty brush. Did you see that? Just like magic, right? Yes. So I don't worry about that. See how different they are. We had more of the yellow and here some of the tripwire state through here barely any. And I'm good with that. And see, I think this one here, and we'll put a little bit of yellow in. And then let's put a little bit off the p.band copying. That's another really pretty combination. Stroke hold took or she that gets really rich to approach. It makes them angle. Shot my brush and I think I need a little bit more yellow course at peacock blue is also a very strong color. Remember that ideal and let it push a little bit. And then I'm going to let it run down to one side. And then with a thirsty brush, just barely dipping the tip of my brush and brush has to be clean and dry but not like bone dry but wet. And then you're squeezed all the water out of the hairs that's kind of dry. I like that. Yeah. And we're gonna do another one over here. A little bit of water in. I'm gonna go with the yellow again and you need a minimum animal. I want to go with the red. That's the year when I couldn't call or if you don't have that one connect on rich same pigment number of structurally different quinacridone red looks, there's more red, more pink. Quinacridone red is more pink is what I wanted to say. Right. So we have a couple more of these and I'm not touching anything. So this one here and here, we haven't even used all magenta BOD public places, but time for the magenta. And then we want to do our French ultramarine blue. What I want you to be a lovely purple. Clean up the edge a little bit. Mixed and mingle a little bit. Okay, I gave it a little break and now we can paint those little leaves or arms draw. I don't know what they're called on a cactus that are touching other hearts. And so we'll start with this one here. Now comes a little bit of a puzzle, but I mean, you can do whatever you like, but I'm thinking case, I have kind of a blue-green here, I have orange here, so I think I want to go with a purple. So why don't I start with my quinacridone magenta is this one here. It's a very bright color, a little bit more on tint and dark then the opera rose, but approach is super bright of course. And then let's go with the peacock blue. I don't think we've tried that combination, so we have to pick up blue together with the quinacridone, magenta. They're both very, very strong colors. See them a little bit of that at all. And then let it run together. See what happens. I just want to fine tune my edges here, just touching there, and let them run. There we go. And I feel like I probably need a little bit more magenta. Pick up bluish, put it down strong. There, there we go. I'm happy with that. It is. Let it run a little bit. And you can see two very weird Can I just cleaning up some edges. And I'm gonna make my brush thirsty. And then I'm tipping the paper and I'm just putting the tip of the brush in here just to soak up some of that extra pigment, you can probably see new now that everything is dry. How watercolor they dry quite a bit lighter than they look right when you have them on like here looks really dark. Well, wait and see. Once it's dry, it's going to lighten up quite a bit, just showing up a little bit more. They're good with that, I think. And then let's go over here and see what we can come up with. And here, I think the color that speaks to me right now is the turquoise. Really want to get some true question here? Let me put that again. I'm turning my paper so that I don't put my hand in wet paint. It wouldn't be very good. Show here. Then the other color I think I would want to run into this one this time is actually the peacock blue. So they're not that different, but still different enough that I think that would give a fun combination. And actually here, I might just go in and just give it a dab of yellow right there. Why not? Here? I actually have for the first time, actually mixed three colors together, but I have the two of them are blue, so they're not that different years running in a little bit more than a peacock blue. Let them mix and mingle. And I want them to run through that yellow show that it turns green and it should be quite the bright green. I would've said, Look those two blues being so bright and show already leaning towards the green side. Look how fun that is. I don't like to write that one down there. Looking good. I'm going to make my brush thirsty for dry eyes on me. And then I'm just going to pick up a little bit of a highlight on that side. Go see here there's a little bit of a white edge here. And then I wanted to take care of Go. Then we have, Let's go for this one in the meantime. There, I think I want to go with the red, this red. Then I'm gonna run a bloom when the blue I'm going to run in, it's going to be the French Ultramarine Blue. Going to give me a purply color up there and then red at the bottom there. Coining, don't do a bit right here. Today's gonna be a little bit more of a dark, muted purply color at the truck because I didn't use a pink red. I used the quinacridone coral red. I'm just going to soak up some of that extra pigment here. There. I can see a little white spot there. What do you think so far? So good, It's definitely colorful. 5. Rainbow Cactus 3: I think it's time to paint this one. I'm going to give it with a little clean water. I think I want this one to be red and orange. So that means I'm using my Quinacridone call with the red. Then I'm going to put the transparent yellow in hand to load up my brush with that. Pretty intense. And we know the yellow just moves soon as the goods half a chance. They'll put that they make such a beautiful glowing orange and mix and mingle while it doesn't stain, I think I want to go here with a thirsty brush and just get a little bit of a highlight on there. Do you see that? I've got a winch that brush out. We want to check some of this extra pigment off. And then I do want to put a little bit more red down here, switch more like red, red down here, there. And then it goes up into the orange, like that edge that could be fixed there. Okay, I like that a lot. Just for a moment. And then we have this one here. I think I want to go in with the group in no rush. You put a little water inside and then I think I want to go with the peacock blue like that. And then I'll put some yellow and we have a go with that right away. Squish. It says, drop that on. And now I just want to get out to the edges. Let them mix and mingle and create this beautiful bright green. And I can tell, can you tell here, see this area dried? It's not completely dry but it's not nearly as where does that so you are getting a little bit of the same as what I had there, but now I'm just going to pick up this extra pigment and see if we can pick out a little bit in here just so it doesn't make too much of a bloom. I'm just barely having the tip of a thirsty brush in there. Don't it's not a brushstroke. See here what happened? So let's pick that up. Why we weren't looking for that's fine. Go and I want to put a tick up a little bit of a highlight right here. They're the same here. Little bit of a highlight there, just so it doesn't produce. And then I think, I think it's time for a little bit of that opera rose. What do you think? I think it's time for a little opera rose here. And I put it like here, up here first. Then I'm gonna put a little magenta and so we're staying in the pink family. Make sure my ankle and I'm just gonna fix the edge. And I might actually also lift out a little bit like that. I've also got a lot of pigment and water on there. There's not that big of a little pedal branch. It looks good. I like it. This one's done. Let me have one more year and some water in there. I think I'm gonna go with the red. They kind of go with the quinacridone, red. And then we're gonna give it a little yellow in the Indian mix and mingle. And another beautiful transition of red, orange, yellow. I'm going to just pick up here a little bit of that excess here, this guy, Let's make that a bright and beautiful purple. Let's do some French ultramarine blue. This, and then let's give it some magenta. There we go. I'm just going to lift out a little bit of a highlight why we can on that one. Then this one here, let me use a thirsty brush and just get some of that excess pigment out their motor goals. So let's do this 1 second to last. And I think here a good color would be the two courses that look really, really good. I'm gonna start with a truck wash up here. And then I'm gonna run in some yellow. We should get bright, beautiful green at the bottom there. Leave a little bit of it to coerce the chapter. Look at that. Go. We gotta run it down here and pick up that extra pigment with our thirsty brush. And then we have one little one FTR in that one. Let's do that one, red chalk here. Then we can do what about magenta? Don't think we've done that color combination. So it's bluish red and orange together. Fixed an edge that looks nice and then you fall, it gets too dry and wanted to just chief, I could lift out a little bit of a highlight there. Then on this one here, let's run it down and pick up just a little bit of that excess pigment and maybe a highlight here. I don't know if it'll stay with it so wet that oh, I'm back in time will tell. All right, we got all the leaves or the pebbles or whatever it is on the cactus palette here. And they're all nice bright colors. We didn't get any mud anywhere. And then we have our little flowers that we are going to paint. And then we're gonna go in and put some of those little prickly needles on a cactus. 6. Rainbow Cactus 4: Everything is dry now and I'm quite happy with it. So now all we have to do is paint those little flowers. You can see here in this photograph that I took in the desert doing a road trip in the springtime, probably years ago now, how bright pink those cactus flowers are? It's amazing. I mean, they are exactly opera rose. And so I'm gonna go with that. And you can see that I have them spread out here. And I also want to use a little bit, and I'm going to use my small brush, make sure we don't have those droplets on here. Everything we painted shell found was wet into wet. Now we're going to paint wet into dry, and that means we're not gonna put water on the paper first. I think I want to try and zoom in a little bit so that you can see it better. I picked a couple of these here, so I have loaded up my brush with some of the upper rows. Let me move this up so you can see there we are rows there and show my brush loaded and I roll my brush so that I have a nice tip. And then let's just see here, let's start with this little guy. And so we're going to start from the bottom and we're just going to pull it up and we're going to rinse out our brush, dab it. And then before this drives or not, we're just going to move that pigment up there. So can you see how you're getting a little bit darker at the bottom and then you're getting highlights there. And actually for extra bonus, we could go in and just dip just a tip of our brush in a little bit of that magenta. And before it's dry, we're going to go in and just dip that there at the bottom. And I think this is good. They're so tiny like that. I think that looks really good. And that's how we're going to paint all the flowers. So let me rinse out my brush and then here, load it up, loaded up with the upper rows. And then I start from the bottom on dry paper and I just kinda go up in terms of little strokes like this. They're going to up my brush, dab it on my paper so that it's just damp and then I'm dragging that pigment up. You might have to rinse your brush again. I had to rinse my brush again, pick that and then before it dries on us, we're just putting a little bit of that magenta just here at the bottom like that. Here's flour them too. And we'll just do that on all of these little flowers that right, right, right upper rows. So just a little bit at the bottom there, which I'll brush, dab it so that it's not dripping wet. And then we just pull up that color. Mine was a little too width there, so I'm going to look that up. And then before it right on me, I'm gonna go in and just dab in a little bit of that magenta. Whoops, that was too much. No panic or when Window brush out and then just pick it up. Actually like it like this. Another little flower. And since they are so little, you know, there's no, there's no need to go into any more detail with them. Make sure you get those drops on the handle, off your brush. So here, starting out with some of the upper rows, I'm Deborah brush, clean and depth and then we just drag that pigment up. Should we get very light pink there at the top and before it dries, if we can get a little bit of that magenta in the bottom there, that would not too much. And that magenta is a very strong color. I wanted to take over if you let it. That gets snapped. The social model, there's a bunch of them, so we don't have to be too afraid of they don't have to be perfect. It's what I'm trying to say. Perfectly input imperfect because as you can see my picture, you know what they are, they are out in nature. There is all sorts of things happening through them. You'll insects nibbling on them and all sorts of things, the wind, all that stuff there. And I can go over here without getting my hand in opera rose. And if you don't have opera rose, you just pick another pink that you have already and just lots of water in it. And you could put a little bit of blue and red to make it more pink. That's how you make a pink. Pink is just red with some blue in it. That's why we call it a cool red because it's already moving over towards the blue. That was a good one. See how that just pushed in and moving right along. Clean damp brush which is kinda gently get that pigment to spread a little bit. And then for advice, we put a little bit of that magenta in there. It's good. And if the magenta ranch too far, we just pick it up here like that, winds up brush dab it. I don't want it to Dr. Watson, you can't move any paint but you don't want it too wet because then it runs too far. Just finding the right just like we were talking about. I think we will talk about earlier how much is too much water? Depends. It depends. It depends on what you want, what you're trying to accomplish. You really want to have the colors move well, then you're going to need water if you really want to have the colors stay exactly where you put them well then you don't want very much water. How much is quite wet? So just move it up. That and then a little tiny bit of the magenta in there, too little there, kind of like that. Basically we have these two left there. You can still see them, That's good. You can see this goes quite quickly. It's just some little tiny areas. And again, we start here bottom, kinda pull it up When shall brush, dab it so that it's just damp, damp enough to move that pigment and then a little tiny dab off magenta. And if it's too much, just kinda pick it up again. See what I had there. That was a drop that ran down the shaft of my brush but I wipe my brush on the towel and went in and picked it up right away save today. And I think this is the last little flower. And again, just pull it up like that. We ensure brush, dab it and catch the edge there and just kinda pull it up a little bit not there like that. Then a tiny bit of the magenta here on this side. Okay, Let's see what we have now that I really liked that I think that really kind of put the icing on the cake. Well, not quite because we are more icing to come, so we're still going to stay with a little brush. Now, I'm going to show you something new. We, in all those little puddles in our palette. And now we're going to make some of those little prickly things. I'm going to just take my colors here. So I'm going to take the magenta and mix it into the French ultramarine blue to purple. And then I'm gonna take some of my yellow and get it up and mix it into n. Can you see how I'm getting a very dark brownish color there. So you would get some really rich dark. So I don't want too much water because now I want to kind of thick paint and it doesn't matter so much. I just wanted to dark and dark that's mixed from all the colors that I already have in a painting. You can't go wrong with that. You can see I can create all sorts of different darks. That's good. A black down here. Okay, So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my little, itsy-bitsy little brush, this one here. And it has a good tip. So we would like to, you know, it's good if you can find a brush that has a good tip. And then we're just going to go in and we can load up our brush with some of these darks. It doesn't matter so much. Make sure you have a good tip on your brush. Then we're going to go and it's a little flick of the wrist and you see that little flick of the wrist. And I'm just going to go in and get some of those little guys on. It was low prickly things that we want to avoid when we're out there in the desert. And I do this around the edges. And I like having different colors of these little prickly things, like caches them and stuff. And this is again, we're not talking hyper realism here, so we're just gonna go in and do this and make sure they're random. Some of them maybe has three and some have two. Some maybe only one sticking out. And I'm just gonna do the edges for right now, show that flick of the wrist, just the key. So don't press down too hard. I think that one was a little if you have one that's a little iffy can kind of pick them up a little bit. I was too late, but it doesn't matter because, you know, you have so many of them don't be, don't be too perfectionistic with this. It's not that kind of a painting. And I'm not that kind of a painter besides, they often have a bunch of them up there on that. And they can also be a few MSc in front there. Anyway. Do a bunch of these little squiggly things around the edges. Can you see how it's already looking pretty good? And it's a good little exercise. That little flick of the wrist comes in handy many times. And again, try not to put my hand in the painting. It just random, random, random, random, random is a lot harder than one thing. And when you're painting anything that's like nature, it's usually not like super symmetrical is gonna be a little random. And even if it is symmetrical in real life, sometimes you get a bit of painting. If you don't paint it like that. Okay. I went ahead and put my little thorns on my cactus, spread out. 7. Rainbow Cactus Final Details: The next thing that we can do, and of course folks, this is optional, but I just want to show you is we can take our white gel pen and we can go in and we can give it some little dots random again so you can see little dots like that. And I'd like to do it with a gel pen. If you wanted to make it more realistic, you could, of course, lifted out with a little bit of a stiffer brush or we could have masked it out, but I feel that that goes a little too far and, you know, the lifting outer takes a long time, which is not a problem, but it's just for demo. That would not be very fun. I'm just going to do random again, random dots on all of them. Then we are going to put some thoughts on the surface of these pieces of Cactus, cactus leaves. Okay, so now I have these little white dots spread out. And then the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to again do a little flick of the wrist and do some white little on from some of these that not everywhere, just a couple of places or some of them and they can go different directions. So we just want to get some they're the ones that are catching the light. You're getting a little highlight. And that's exactly how it is on these things. Those little prickly things will just catch the sunlight. And again, it's not like a hybrid wheel is by any stretch of the imagination, but still, you know, so character of a cactus and we don't have to do true many of them, just a few here and there. And you know, if you had gotten your little flowers too dark and you wanted to put a little highlight on. You can also use this white gel pen for that. They weren't really like a charm. So there we have it. I think I'm pretty good. And if you put them in the dark, that's a little show up more and putting them over yellow, they don't really show up much, just fine. Alright, I think we're good for now. Here comes the, one of the final touches. So we're gonna go back to our little brush here. Adopt Catullus, and we're going to rho naught brush in the dark puddles. Truly, we get a nice too. And again, I want to grab a little piece of Kleenex and make sure I don't have those drops. And then I'm gonna go in and do some little flicks of the wrist from these white dots would do one you can do too. You can do three, however many you feel you need. And just a little bit like that. And look how it really puts the finishing touch on these little cacti here in the darkish fairly shoe shop. But that's okay. And then he under light and really show up. And I put some in also where I have the white little flicks. Because then it can also be like this one. I don't like it too much source with a debit up. It's not as prominent and it's going to do you don't want to press down too much and you want to have enough pigment on that, it will flow off your brush easily, but not so much. That was droplet to false down. A little bit of trial and error to find out what suggests perfect pressure in having the brush loaded gesture right? Again, doesn't have to be perfect. Perfect is actually bad. Just want to make sure, I mean, picture. I'm just going to finish doing that. You've got the picture. I actually probably to point to look at me doing every single one. So they got them all and I'm quite happy with that. So the final little thing you can do, don't have to, but can do is if you want to give the little flowers and little bit more detail. You can see here in my palette. See how that almost like a dirty, dirty dark pink purplish color. And so I can use a little tiny bit of that just to kind of at the bottom here, right where they are attached to the hacktivist. You can put a little tiny bit and then a little bit up like this. Can you see that? Little bit up like that? Just a little bit. And see I'm doing it just on the left side was all along when I lift it out a little bit of a highlight and stuff, I had that on the right side. So kind of indicate that there's the light source is coming from here. Think that's good. I don't know. They got a little bit more character and I think that's going to call it a day. Let me zoom out so you can see, I'm quite happy with that. I have one little this is kind of like evaluation time, so I had here I forgot to put some of those little dark ones on. I just noticed that. So let's put those on. I don't think there's anything else. And then I like to just take my kneaded eraser once everything is bone dry. I mean, don't don't do this if you have any area that is still wet because that's going to mess up your beautiful painting. And then I like to go in and just if I have some pencil lines, it can kind of check those off. And this type of a painting, I think this one would also look very pretty. If you went in and used a pen and ink, you could totally do that for this one. We're there, we have it abstract to cactus. I think it'll look really beautiful. Piano, maybe a girl's room look really pretty well if you had more boy colors, if there was such a thing anymore, given an abortion. And of course you could put a background on. But since everything is so colorful, I find that this is one of those paintings where I like to leave the background white. And if I had to put a background on it would have to be like super dark. It would have to basically have to be black. And I would want it solid because I have all the color transitions in here. So if you went in and did a background that had different college, it would kind of take away from your painting. But I think this particular rendition of this cactus with all the colors we have on here, looks great just as it is on the white background. 8. Project Description And Wrap Up: Thanks again for joining me for this rainbow cactus class. I can't wait to see your paintings. So make sure you post them on the project gallery page. And I get a lot of questions about how to do that. So below the video here, you'll see there's a heading that says Projects and Resources. Click on that, that, and then when you click on that, first of all, you'll see my project description. It says exactly step-by-step how to do your project and you have just watched the class. So it's basically a painting, your own painting using the techniques that we just went over them and to upload your painting, you take a picture of it, just use your phone. And then over on the right-hand side on the Project and Resources page, there's a green button that says Create Project to click on that, and that's where you can upload your photos. And you can also write in your texts. And if you have any questions or anything like that, that's the place to write it. If you'd like to take a little deeper into color mixing. I do have another Skillshare class called mixing your own greens in watercolor. You might find that interesting. So pop over and take a look there. In the meantime, I will say goodbye for now. Thank you so much again for taking this class with me. I look forward to seeing you soon in another Skillshare class. Happy painting.