Paint a Tropical Gardenscape!

1. Gardenscape Intro: Hello, lovelies. Welcome to another class. I'm Suzanne Allard, your guide, and my goal is to, in all my classes, you know, show you a variety of techniques, paint a painting or two or three, but really encourage you to pick out and look at what you like so that you can develop your style and what really makes your heart sing. And that way, your art comes from an authentic place. So today, we're going to work on a tropical gardenscape. I love creating these garden scapes. We're actually going to do one that I'm going to do with you from start to finish. And then I've got a time lapse of the recorded one I did that I'm going to talk you through. So you can see that there's multiple options, many options, endless options for creating these garden scapes. You can choos different colors. You can choose different elements, and you'll see it's so much fun. You're so creative. You can use whatever art supplies you have, keep it minimalist, or, you know, go maximalist, whatever you're in the mood for. So welcome. I'm Suzanne Allard, and I have been teaching now for about five years. I started painting about six or seven years ago. I think that's right. I started later in life because I was too scared. I did creative things like felting and needlepoint and spinning and really cool fun stuff. It's just that painting was this thing that felt like I had missed the boat on. If you can believe, I believe that. And so now I love showing people that it's never too late, and that creating is good for the soul, which is good for the world. And by the way, we're all creative. Every single person is creative. There's so much creativity that lives and kind of runs as a river underneath us that we never need to worry about if we're creative enough. It's more about listening and giving some space to that creative energy. So I hope you'll join me in creating this tropical landscape or gardenscape, where we're going to play, talk about supplies, have fun, and inspire ourselves. Okay. See you in class. 2. Gardenscape Project Video: So as I mentioned, for this class, the project is a gardenscape. Now, I've got a couple of examples that I'm going to give you in the class resources as examples. This was one of the first ones that I did that I loved. I did many I didn't love. But I loved how this one came out and all of the different bits and pieces. And then for this class, I started making more with some of the similar elements, but also much different ones. And then the one that we're going to do in class, of course, we're going to create and it's going to look different than these. But I'll include these. S examples of how you can vary so many elements from the background colors to the elements that you put in them, and then the little details that we had on top. And so your project is to create a garden scape. And to please put it in the project part of the class, so we can all take a look at what direction you went in, how you created your garden scape. You can use any colors you want, any elements from your own part of the world. I'm always envious of the people living in Australia who have these really exotic looking flowers and bits, but of course, we can take any inspiration from anywhere we want for these. So please do post your projects. I look at every single one of them. I love seeing what you create, and let's get into the supplies needed for this class. 3. Supplies Overview: Okay. So for supplies, I feel like I say this in all my classes, but it bears repeating. I'm going to show you a bunch of stuff that by no means, means that you I'm going to move a little closer, that you need to get all of these things. Please, no, don't feel that way. I just like to show them to you because over the years, I've added them to my toolkit, and you might want to add some. So that's why I show them to you. You could do this project with just pain. You know, and an ink pen, and a pencil, maybe for details to keep it really minimalist. So that's my supply disclaimer. Now, let me show you all this yummy stuff. For paper, you can just use a watercolor paper and I've put together a supply list in the class downloads that has detailed descriptions of all this, and This time, I made the supply links clickable to either my Amazon list or my **** Blick list. That way, it's easier for you to find. But you can just use watercolor paper. This is Strathmore watercolor paper. I like that brand. It's a good brand at a good price. You don't really need to go crazy. If you are going if you have something really nice like arches, this is a good project to use arches, because you're going to see that texture of the paper. This is not a project you want to use cheap watercolor paper for. I mean, you can for practice, of course. But I'm just saying that you won't like you might not get, like the lovely texture. You know, a lot of my classes, we just so over the watercolor paper or something like that for acrylic, and you don't need to the paper almost doesn't matter. In this class, it does, because you're getting that lovely texture. Another paper I like to use sometimes is this decled edge handmade paper. And I did put a link to that also on the supply list. It's just fun. It almost feels like fabric in a way, and it's just a little different. It's just a fun tactile experience. All right, so that's paper. For a palette, there's so many options. This is, you know, what you're mixing your colors on. I've really gravitated to the palette paper. There are different brands, but this again is a good one for really good price on Amazon. But you can also use just some glass. Make sure it's ideally tempered glass. This is left over from a photo frame, but it's got sharp edges, so I don't recommend that unless you put masking tape around it. You can also use a paper plate that's got wax on it. You don't want to use anything porous or your pate we'll just soak into the plate. Of course, there are plastic palettes that you can buy. All right. For paint. In this class, I'm using mostly acro gloch, which is a combination of acrylic paint and Gach. Gach is a lovely paint that has a very opaque pigment. That's what gets you things like this just pop of color that looks really opaque. So I love gh. Acro goch is just a relatively new invention, and what they've done is they've added acrylic properties to it. That means that once it dries, it cannot be reconstitute with water. That just helps us when we're layering. You can do this bottom layer that's underneath all this. Then as soon as it's dry, you're ready to go and you're not going to disturb it. You can do the same thing with regular guash. You just have to let it dry thoroughly and then not fuss too much with the brush and disturb the layer below. You can also do this class with water color. Your layers are going to be a little more watery, and you wouldn't get these pops of color. You can also do it with just acrylic. And I use Nova color paint. I have a I guess it's called a bundle with them. But a golden is a good brand. Liquitex is a good brand. Especially you can do the lower layers with acrylic, and then if you have a few tubes of goch to get that opacity, you could do that at the upper layers. Okay. I also like whole bin acro goch. I just wanted to show you a couple of tubes of that. So these are my two favorite brands of aca. And then I do it is fun to have a gold. This is the turner. But you don't need this because I'm going to show you some gold pens, but if you like metallic gold, I happen to like it. Then in terms of brushes, I have here, I use one of my brushes from Suzanne R design set that I release about twice a year. You can go on my website at Suzanne and go into supplies and get on the wait list for the next release. They're just, you know, I need them the color I want, but the gold fare, of course. But none of that's important. It's just nice and soft. So as long as you have, these are a couple of others that would work, I like these Princeton aspirin brushes. They're not quite as soft, but they definitely give you some play there. And then this is relatively inexpensive, but I like it from a store called Michael's we have here in the US, the Ferens, and that's a nice brush, too. And then for your we'll see me work the smaller details in something like this. These are two good ones. Blick also Blick rt makes, and I have a supply list there. They make their brand of brush is very nice. This is a three, this is a four. This is the Windsor Newton Cottan. And actually, I found a link to a nice Windsor Newton Cotman set that I put in the supply list that's got this, I've got a flat one, so it's kind of all you would really need for this project. Use what you have, just make sure or unless you don't have anything and then you can get what I just suggested, but just make sure you have something for details like this, and then I like flat brushes. You could use a round brush. If you have you already have a brush like this, that's fine. I don't know what it is. You just find what you like, and I really like painting with the side of a flat brush and then being able to turn it this way and then this way to get different marks. All right. Then when we get to the higher layers, the upper layers, we've added paint, we're ready for details. I like to pull out some of my paint pens. These are acrylic ink and really just acrylic paint markers. Posca is a really nice brand. I put a link to them. You only need a few colors or you know how these things are, the set ends up being the same price as a few colors. Then the other brand I like is this Tule brand. What I like about them is they have a much larger color range than Posca. But I do find Poscas a little bit more reliable. Like they all can get clogged. But I will tell you, and by the way, I have a YouTube Canel with all kinds of supply reviews, and I think I have a specific one on Tule Markers and Poscas, and I show you how you can clean out the little thing Majii if it gets clogged. What's that called? The end of the thing. So it happens to all of them, but these brands, I find it happens to less. And then I do use for highlights and details, the neo coolor two crans. These are water soluble crans. They're just very, let's see. You'll see me use them. I believe I will use them, but I usually do. You can just add some nice bits of texture. You know, I haven't added a lot of details to this one. So let's just play, and I'll show you. I tend to really like this metallic gold one, but you can just do things like this. And it doesn't ever look metallic gold. It just kind of has a color, that green color. And then might take gold pen through that. So speaking of gold pen. I am a gold pen nerd because I love gold, and so I did a YouTube. I don't know how many gold pens and showed you them all, but this is what I've landed with for the best performing. Again, they're not perfect. They will occasionally clog, but they're much better than the rest, in my opinion. So I've got the Pentel, and then these are both pilot a extra fine point and medium. Again, I have everything in the supply list. Occasionally, I will use oil pastels for putting some like yummy gooey texture on top, just of something, like, say, let's say I wanted to put just a little bit of olive color. You just get that yummy pigment there, and then you can rub it too. I like this brand. This is from Amazon, and I think it's on Blick two. And what I like about it is they're pretty hard and they're not super greasy like some oil pastels that I've played with. And then you can also scratch away at them. You know, if you say, I didn't want that much or whatever. But they are more permanent than the neo coolor toes because these are water soluble. So if you don't like a mark you make, you can just get some water and get rid of it. The oils, it's not quite that easy, so it's more of a commitment. But they give you that really rich pigment. Okay. Well, let's see. I think I've covered supplies. Of course, you need a jar of water. My favorite is this peanut old peanut butter jar because it's plastic, and that just makes less noise than the glass. All right. Let's get painting. 4. Gardenscape First Layers: All right, everybody. Well, let's get started. What we're going to paint is one of these garden scapes. I love painting basically an imaginary garden. You know, I do have a real garden that I'm trying to keep alive right now with this heat. But in these gardens, once they're done, they look beautiful all the time and I don't have to keep watering them and weeding them or anything. So there are a lot of different styles and ways that these can look. What we're going to do today is you can use different color palettes is work on one like this. You'll notice that I have also this decled edge paper, and by the way, all supplies that I'm using are available links to them rather on my website, sz.com and then on the Supplies tab. But this is handmade decled edge paper, it's lovely to work with. But today I'm going to use this fluid block. Block is basically a pad of watercolor paper that has adhesive several edges and it just keeps it nice and flat when you're dealing with anything that has moisture. It's not necessary. It's just nice to have. I also have here some palette paper. There's different brands of this. This is Strathmore. It's just handy because once you're done with it, you toss it. Or sometimes they make really interesting collage pieces. What we're going to do first is paint the background. I'm going to use a combination of nova color acrylics, and a couple brands of acyl gouache that I use. We'll talk about those differences later. I have here a turner brand and Holbein brand. Those are my two favorite acche brands. Then I have a collection of brushes and some mark making tools, pencils, and crans, and we'll play with those a little bit later. For now, what we're going to do is we're going to get this background done. Then while it dries, which just take a few minutes, then we're going to look at the reference photos and I'll talk to you about how I use reference photos. All right. What I want to do is if you look at the background of these, it's really a mixture of primary colors that I'm blending right on the paper and right on the palette. I've got some white out here. I grab some pines gray, which is a lovely, really like an indigo blackish blue color. I've got a little bit of thalo blue. Ultramarine is fine, really any blue you have, maybe a little bit of yellow. I'm going to get this Indian yellow out that's so yummy and also stuck. Which happens. I've got also a little bit of quinacridone red ready. It doesn't matter what brand you're using. I do advocate a good quality brand, whatever you're using because you'll just like the pigment results and much more if you're working with a quality paint. But just pull out a yellow or orange and some magenta, and a blue and your white and we're going to use those primaries to blend and get a background that is just loose and intuitive. I'm getting out some This is quinacridone red or you could use magenta, and maybe put a little pop but this is very intense. This is the fluorescent magenta, which I love. Okay. My paint table is always too crowded. All right. I think I'm going to start with some of the paints and I like how I've mixed it with white. On this first layer of the background, I don't mind using a little bit of water and making it a little more translucent. And then I just dipped my brush in the quinacridone red. I'm really just trying to cover this white piece of paper with these colors and letting them blend right on the paper. I'm going to go ahead and do this border like I did here where I don't go all the way to the edge. There's something I like about that. I do tend to want the more intense and saturated colors toward the center. Because I don't want someone the viewer who's looking at this to be drawn off the page by a really bright color, say over here. But other than that, I'm just kind of putting down color and playfully blending. Letting bits show that I like maybe a yellow with the I haven't I haven't rinsed my bruh. I have gotten water, but I haven't rinsed it every color I've used so far as in here, and I like that. It allows for the colors to play. And did then you get some nice neutral tones like that or is it a little bit of lending? Then you get these colors that just come out like this because there's every color of us so far as in this brush. Sometimes I find myself in these thinking, well, this is the sky, it needs to be a sky color. Not necessarily. I just grab a little more yellow just to get some variation there and maybe a bit more here. This will be the first layer. Okay. That shouldn't take too long to dry. I did not use a lot of water, and that helps. So while that's drying, let's look at these reference photos. 5. Gardenscape Inspiration: That you can download or hopefully did download with the supplies, and you can take a look at them. You don't need to. The way I work with references, it's not necessary to print them out. And you'll see why when I talk about them. Let me make sure I want to make sure that you can see these. Okay. Good. Turn the sideways. What I do is I take pictures of really anything that I think is beautiful or inspiring or just captures my interest when I'm out and about, whether it's botanical garden visits, but even more simply somebody's yard or a plant nursery, I've stopped in parking lots and taken pictures of just anything that catches my eye. And here you can see how the light I'm really fascinated with light and how it's hitting these plants. This was the Naples, botanical garden, both of these. I loved how the light hit these and the yellow in here. Then you have this pond here with some blue. What I do is I just look through this kind of thing. I might have it out to give me an idea for a shape of an element in one of these like here. Those yellow ones have this shape. I might pick out something. This is from my mom's garden. She is a big gardener and uses pots. These are just a few pots. Pots usually show up in my paintings that just happened and I just love creating pots with plants or even if just by themselves, this is also from her garden. And so you know this is a hosta. Maybe we'll do something like that, or even the way this hosta is, the edge of those plants, shapes. This is a tie plant in Florida that I took incredible color. Another plant in Florida. This was in Michigan, Northern Michigan. So I just encourage you to capture photos like this. They'll be special to you where you see a texture, a shape, a color, a grouping, anything that calls to you. This was from a recent trip my husband took to hike the south of Portugal and I just loved the different fuzzy and textures. These leaves go up. Sometimes you'll see I might do something like that here. It just gives me ideas. But I don't take all these out and say to myself, I have to create from these photos. I don't work that way. I more get inspired by them and then start creating and just let the inspiration show up if that's why I'm saying you don't need to print them out. You can flip through them. But if you rather print them out, then of course, you're welcome to. This is almost dry. I can dab it here because it's the background and maybe that'll be interesting. Then the next layer, which I'm going to I'll probably use some of these acrylics since I already have them out and probably mix in some of the acro gash, which is an acrylic. It's just really opaque and highly pigmented. I like it for these upper layers because it'll show through in that way and be really just chalky and juicy and chunky, but not thick. I don't know. I'm into it. I also love using It's often called opera pink or opera red, and it's another paints is probably a fluorescent, but it just seems to have more going for it than a typical fluorescent, which they can be watery. So this is really pigmented. All right. The next decision is this next layer would be the shapes behind here. I'm just thinking about shape, color and I'm getting probably a little bit smaller brush than I had. The big one that I did. The background with was, I think it's painted over, but I think it's a ten, and then this is a six. But it doesn't matter. If you have filberts are nice two, this is what a filbert looks like. Round. We might play with that. It can make the very natural looking bush type shapes. But I'm really not thinking about things yet. I'm thinking about The feel of what say that photo from Portugal was like, but I'm not thinking, Oh, I need to make a shrub. Not at this point. All right. So let me mix up some of this hookers green with some other stuff. I really never use anything out of the tube. It's just much more interesting when you play with adding colors, toning it down, brightening it up, It's much more fun. I love the part, the color piece. And even if you buy all kinds of beautiful colors in the tube, you want to play with them. You want to modify them because that's how you make it your own. The minute that you make a color yourself, it's now yours. Let's see here. I'm just putting in some bits of things. Maybe I'll do some ultramarine. J. It seems like that's getting a bit dry. I still haven't washed my brush this go around. I'm not a big brush washer, apparently. I do like you have to pay attention to what you're mixing when you do that. You have to stay away from going across the color wheel. Because then, you know, if I were to take this and then go over to orange and go and if I wanted to just tone this down, that would be good. But if I went and got too much, then then I turned into brown. But I like keeping seeing what's on my brush. If it starts to get too muted or not what I'm looking for, then I'll clean out my brush, but often I'll wipe it. I'll just wipe it and see if I can squeeze most of the paint out of it. I'm thinking about what else. I don't have any thing really, any light shapes. This might be a time when I have to wash the brush just because if I'm going to try to put some a light color down and I've got paint in my brush that's not going to work. I think I will put that down, get some white and a bit of yellow. But I really want a very light. I love working with off white, which I often buy just because you can mix it by mixing all the primaries together in white, but it takes a while. I usually start with a ivory or something like that, and then I customize it. A little bit more white. I'm mixing there's no problem, as you can see, with mixing the acrylic and the acro gah. They are both technically acrylic. So but I've also mixed them with regular, water color. No oil. Oil is just different. I just wanted a bit of lightness. Maybe here two. So I call this layer two. It has a little bit more color definition. Can you see that what that fluorescent magenta does? It's beautiful and then you go a little bit of yellow and you just can't stand it. I think that's probably all I want to add for this and I can always come back and put like here, on this one. It was after I added some of these more detailed elements that I came back in and did these things to the background that I felt that it needed. So you know, the background is just a starting place. And so is this layer. So now I'm thinking about what elements since I have this pink made, why not just put a pot somewhere. I never want to put composition wise a main element in the center. I'm always thinking of you may know the rule of thirds, if you divide your painting this way and then this way. Let's see how see if I can I feel like I'm playing Lincoln logs. All right. If you divide it this way and this way, technically, your focal point should be around where these are meeting. One, two, three, four ish. Now, then you'll find someone who says, just forget all that. But I just when I take pictures in general, I like to put something the focal point somewhere in this area. I just doesn't look right sitting right in the middle. I'm going to stick a pot there and I encourage you to let go of any ideas about where something should be in terms of the element that it is in your painting. If you want to put a pot in what looks like the middle of a hill, we don't know what it is yet, so don't worry about it. Try to free yourself from all that. It's a lot more fun and you end up with really wonderful unexpected things. 6. Gardenscape Building Layers: I good. Dark in that. I might come back and make that pop a little more. Let's see. I'm thinking about something that's got longer. Do I want to put this in here? I I like doing this palm leaf in an indigo color. I think I'm going to use the acro guage for that because it is more pigmented. What I'm doing is you can take any dark blue you have. This is a prussian blue, but you can take a halo or even an ultimate marine, you can maybe get it a little darker, you can use a little bit of black if you need to to make an indigo. Then I don't like a really blue indigo. I'm getting water dripping. That's something to watch, by the way. Because too much water will just water down what you're trying to do, and when we rinse our brush, they'll be water here on the feral and handle. And having something handy to catch those drops, there's been many times where I'm doing this and the textures just right, the consistency of the paint and then a big drop of water lands on it. And it's not a big deal with this kind of painting because you smish it around and move on. But it's nice if it doesn't happen. See how this is just too blue. You can take a little bit of orange or or an orange or yellow like this Indian yellow. And just warm it up a tad, tone it down. That's using a complimentary color to just take away some of that blue intensity. That's just my something I like. I like the blue to be a little less. A little more interesting than just a straight blue. Okay. It's like a blue black. All right. Now I'm getting the right consistency because this element that I'm doing, I need a little bit more watery paint. I need a round brush where I can do details, and I need a light hand. And this is these are really fun to practice just one evening in front of the TV. You're not trying to make this perfect because we know that nature is not perfect. It does help if you haven't had a lot of coffee, which I'm too sensitive to coffee anyway, so I can't really enjoy it, but it will make your hand shake less if that's an issue for you. I'm putting down the tip of the brush at the stem and I'm just pulling away. Again, don't get f even where you start the leaf. If you look at a palm leaf, you will see they go every which way and Don't get into that trap we can all get into of trying to make something look too symmetrical. Make a leaf go up like that or make one thinner because it's facing away, things like that that you can make a couple of them overlap like that. In this brush, the ends are all I'll show you a different brush. These are feathered at the end and then this came to a point. Part of that is the brush, but part of it's also that I'm just pulling away and letting go. If I wanted more of a point, I would just pull away and then more slowly pull up. But I thought it would be fun to try this today. Okay. That represents one of the dark color is probably the main dark color that I'm going to be using. You always want contrast in your paintings? You want them to be have value differences. If you find that a painting of yours is boring or is just feeling flat, it's probably a value issue. There's probably not enough lights and darks. There's ranges. You don't have to go this dark, but you just want to look at, do I have enough differences in value to make this interesting? Let's see. Let's make some of those little grassy things coming up here since I have the color all made and ready to go. Can throw in a little bit of white or just sometimes I'll des grab whatever else is on the palette that hasn't dried. You can also sprit your palette paper with a little spray bottle to keep things from drying. Here you're getting a dry brush technique. You know, we can play with that. These little gardens are a way for you to experiment, learn, have fun, and try not to get too hung up on, is it going to be a masterpiece that you will love and hang on the wall forever because that's a creativity killer. Just move to the next thing and think about what might be fun to look at. The next color. I don't think I want any more of that magenta. It's so pretty, but you have to balance that. Not everything can be No every color can be a star. We need in acting. I've heard people say, you need some supporting actors. Those would be your more tone down colors. Sometimes I'll look at the shapes I've made and say, well, that's interesting. This right here almost looks like a tree trunk and this could be the tree. It might be fun to embrace that a little bit. Sometimes things show up in the painting that you say, I'm going to run with that. We need a little more weight. Come down here. Yeah, that's kind of fun. And I'm just sing the white out of the top. The only reason these paints look good is they're relatively new. I'm a big double dipper. All right, I'm going to switch to the acro gloch because the acrylic is soaking into the paper. I didn't go this, but it's fine. It gives me the more subdued and look, but it is soaking in and I want things now to start sitting on top. And so since I did in your paper helps a little bit, quite a lot, actually, but you can also just use layers. And so I'm going to I'm going to let this dry and then we'll come back and we'll get some macro gross out and we'll do some more elements on top. It's a good time to pause, let it dry, walk away, think about what you might want to add to it. 7. Gardenscape Adding Elements: All right. I'm going to get some of these acroch colors out. I'm just picking. I've got the pink. I've got this pastel marine. It's just one of my favorites ultramarine blue. We'll see what happens. I'm trying not to use every color under the rainbow, which is a bit of a challenge for me. So I'm going to t not to pick up any hone, and I will be blending these. We'll see what happens. This is a red brown. It's an interesting color. On the duller side, but I'm just going to get some primaries out so I can do some mixing. This is just a red poppy red, and let's grab a Naples yellow. I've got some white. Let me get a little more. All right, Let's see what element? We've got this little tree here. Maybe we'll do kind of Well, I'm not even going to try to name what the plant would be. With some of this This pink, this fluorescent, this opera red, whatever it's called, and it brightens up any color. I like to use it as to highlight something. I'm just going to do a shape here. Don't be afraid to use a good quantity of paint when you're using the to get that n opacity. It's going tone it down a bit. I'm just thinking of Remember that tie plant that I showed you in Florida. I'm liking how the edges of this are being the dry brush at the edge. Sometimes I like things the opposite, really clean edges and sometimes not. I'm going to vary each of these a bit. I'm just throwing in a bit of yellow, maybe ale bit of green. Okay. And boy, that was almost in the middle. Got to be careful. Don't want to do that. Let's see what else? You know, I think it'd be fun to pull something coming down. But I don't want to imitate that. Maybe I'll just bring something coming out of here. So I'll need a little bit smaller brush. This is a four cotan. I like these Windsor Newton Cottan for the details. There is so many beautiful greens you can make without ever buying a green. Let's see here. Just have fun with this going different ways. Now I can take probably, Let's see a little bit brighter yellow. Or sometimes I love to get into the metallic gold. Let's do that. This is, and it's beautiful. So I did wash my brush for that. And I try to put this on when I use it pretty thickly so that, you know, it has more oomph. When I'm making these gardens and plants and botanical elements. I'm really not thinking of or at least I'm trying not to think, well, that doesn't look like, you know, maybe that's not what a plant looks like because if you looked at plants and trees, there's really anything you could imagine and I'm always amazed. I don't think you're going to put something that couldn't somewhere and probably doesn't exist. I wouldn't worry about that. I was going to darken this stem a little bit. I love what that gold did. Gold is fun. It, it doesn't photograph super well. Scanning it's a bit of a challenge. There's a few things you can do. I'm just going to come down the side of this. It's almost like maybe a shadow. And maybe a bit here too. Just some shapes. When I introduce gold like that, I usually will put it somewhere else as well. One way to do gold dots is to take the back air brush and the gold paint. You can also use a paint marker, but this works. As long as it's thick, you can use the brush part too. I like these things to be irregular. This forces that. I'm very obsessed with little bits of metallic gold. I did a YouTube video on just gold pens. We'll get to one of those. We'll be using a gold pen here at some point. All right. I want this to a more, I'm going to take a bit of this pink. Maybe mix it with some agenta. Or let me see if I had some whitish yellow to it. There's still a little bit of green in my brush, which is toning it down nicely. Okay. That brought it up a little bit more. We can think about what might be coming out of it. Maybe something. Maybe something in this pale green. Let's see. I like that. And I'm going to take this green somewhere else. Maybe some little flowers down here. I do think in terms of odd numbers. I try not to make things too symmetrical or too matchy. I think about just making sure there's a little bit of randomness to things. I do like how that pot turned out. Feeling like I want. Let's take Let's grab some cra. So if we can add some texture. This is the neo color two metallic gold, and even though it doesn't show up as gold, it's one of my favorites, which is why it's smaller because it's just a nice greenish is the way it will look on camera and in a scan, but it's just know, something I like about it. Let's see. I'm going to let those dry and I can put centers in those. I feel like I need something here. The thing I like about neo colors is, you know, if I decide I like that, but I'd rather paint over it. Again, just paint right over them. Feeling like I want a little bit of Let me see. The other thing you go do sometimes is step back and look at what it is and think about what you might like to add. I think I'd like to add some of this pen. This is the pilot. No, Let's say these two are the pilot cold. This one is the Gn ball. These are my three favorite cold pens I like them for line shape, I use them in all kinds of ways. So making some flower outlines up here. And while you have it out, it's a good time to sign. Maybe a little bit of pattern on this. Let's see. I do love pattern when I do still lives. I have pattern on the pots and then a pattern on the wall behind it for wallpaper. And then some places without that. Otherwise, it's just too much. You could even come down here and look how beautiful that gold pen looks on top of that. Gold and indigo. Yummy. You can see I'm not being fussy about these lines. I'm not trying to make them perfectly straight or in the middle. Exactly. I do want to keep them on the leaf, but other than that, I put this on pretty thick so it's not, but I want to come back through. And then I feel like I need something here. I'm going to get this brush off. Maybe a little. And bring a bit of this down here. See what I mean by how the pigment of the acro glass will just pop. 8. Gardenscape Details and Finishing: Okay, I like that. Maybe a little bit of it here. Maybe more watered down. If you ever put something down, you think, Oh, that was too much or I don't like it. I Gach does dry darker. But you can just dab it like that. The whole acrylic family is very forgiving. Fingers work, too. Okay, this is getting to dry. You go to put some bits with the pink in there. And maybe some pink centers here. Just some to have a bit of color over there. I do think I want to paint this. See if I've got a really, really pale pink. See what that looks like. Maybe just tone it down with a lively yellow, that's a little bit more peachy. The idea is that this is you're having a playfulness to this, a looseness. You're experimenting. There are going to be things that you do in them that you don't like. And then they'll be things that happen by accident that you really like. Those are the things that you can notice and play with more next time. I'm liking that pink there, so I'm trying to figure out where else I can put it. Maybe down here. I didn't mind this side being dark, but I felt like I don't know. I wanted to experiment with something over there. My turn out to be a good idea, I may not. I just wanted these leaves to have a little more shape. And sometimes I find things are really helped by a second coat, especially if it's just feeling like it helps to bring things out. At this point, the process is really about deciding what needs to be brought forward or added and what needs to be pushed back. Sometimes you need to walk away often, actually. You shouldn't expect to do something that you love that's complete and one sitting. That's just too much pressure. I often walk away, I walk away sometimes for especially my sketch books. I might not look at that spread for months. And a good time to walk away is if you start feeling frustrated. I'm not saying that I'm feeling that right now. I'm just saying that that's what I've learned. Because if you start getting frustrated, then first of all, then you're not having fun anymore. And you probably won't have the best ideas. I just turned that around and used the end of my brush for a to kind of get cut through that paint because it was too I wanted more texture there. So now I'm going to hold it up. This is getting close to being done. And decide if there's anything else that I want to do. I think see if sometimes I just pull out of my stop, like these oil pastels and see if there's anything that wants to happen. I can go over something gives a little bit different texture to it. By the way, if you do oil pastel, like that was too yellow. You can just do this. People have asked me, how do you get rid of oil pastel? Once you put it on, you just scrape it off. For the most part, it'll come on. Someone else so T you know, oil likes oil, so you can take. And I've done that. Let's see here. I feel like I want some bit of This is Coral. Then I think it'd be nice to have some Let's see what we think of it. We put some of these centers here in these flowers and see if we like that. A trick is to do something like this where it's not as pigmented and that way you can decide, that's enough, leave it or add more pigment to a second coat. Sometimes I just like to outline things a little bit with a bright color. And we're getting to the point where I'm definitely going to, you know, wrap up walk away. It feels moly done. There might, you know, that gives us time to come back and say, Okay. Is there anything I did that I want to change? Is there anything missing? How are the values looking? Do I have enough lights and darks? Do I have enough variety? Do I have some small elements and some larger elements? When I look at the painting with a fresh eye, where does my eye go? Don't forget you're a viewer. So you can test that out. And but I recommend walking away and even an hour later looking and then asking yourself that and become aware of where is your eye going on the painting? And if it's stuck in one place, what do you need to do to get it to move around more? So I can get stuck in one place because it really likes looking at something or I can get stuck in place because it doesn't like what it's seeing. Both of those are great information that you can then work with and it's a process of just continuing to play with that. Until people ask me, when's the painting done? That's hard to answer. That's a personal thing. But generally, I for me, if I walk away and come back another day and nothing is talking to me. Nothing saying, this right here. No, or something's missing here. Basically if it's quiet, it's hard to It's like the painting is quiet and happy and it's not talking to me anymore, then then I feel like I'm done. And that can take more than one pass, more than one sitting. All right. I'm going to put down the brush after what I just said. Right after I fix this. And walk away. But this is certainly mostly done. I might not do anything else to it because you can do a little too much. Even I can decide that there's too much of something. I might not seem like it, but All right. Well, I think that we are going to walk away and sit with this one. I'm really glad you join me and I hope that you play a lot with these, that you try different color palettes, that you try more watery backgrounds, and then maybe more opaque backgrounds. You could try one with no background color or a very, very transparent, loose one, almost water color. Then you can play with using different reference photos, different materials, different supplies, different ways of conveying texture. You can I help you do a whole series of gardens capes. Thank you so much for joining me. And I can't wait to see what you create. 9. Bonus Time Lapse Gardenscape : So in this time lapse, this was a recording and via Zoom. And so the recording quality is a little you can see a little bit kind of comes in and out. But I wanted to at least show it to you and talk you through it so you can see just how flexible this kind of gardenscape idea is. You can see that I started with, you know, different color background. You know, somewhat different, again, very letting the colors blend into each other. And then now I've let that dry, that background layer. Now I'm coming in with some greens and thinking about these are still the backgrounds, but they're starting to come more forward and I'm really just intuitively thinking about if I were looking at a garden and using my other piece, the ones I'm including for inspiration or at least a couple of them. That way, you can see just the variety, and you can grab any inspiration photos you have. Of course, I've given you plenty, but, you know, your own garden or your own plants. Maybe there are plant shapes that you like, that you just like seed pods, for example, I think are just amazing, like a poppy seed pod. And then you can see that I threw in some squiggles really kind of on top of that pod. And, you know, not really thinking about oh, is that going to be coming out of the pot? I mean, maybe it will. Maybe it'll be something else. And trying to keep playful, but each layer that we go up higher, we're adding more and more detail. Here I'm looking at how to keep that brush flat, depending on what you're about to paint. Sometimes it gets so loaded down with paint, it gets fat, and you just feel like you have a big glob at the end of your brush, and so I'll scrape it against the end of the palette or take a paper towel and squeeze it out. I don't really rinse my brush a whole lot. I'm looking for ideas, your sketch books are good ideas because I'm trying not to make this look. You can't make them exactly like another one anyway, but I'm trying to vary this one and sometimes colors inspire me, just getting out a different color and mixing a color and will give me an idea of something I want to create. So shape nature. Here I'm putting in that indigo. Leaf, which here I use the smaller brush for, and it's just so fun to create that. That's something you just practice, take a sheet of paper and just make these long fronds, you know, several of them, and you'll get that that control in terms of pressing down and lifting up. I love making indigo. I take usually either a prussian blue or sometimes you can buy an indigo, but even the digos you buy, I tend to need to add a little bit of orange to just to soften them a little bit. They're more of a rich indigo. For you, it's about figuring out what are your colors that make your heart go pitter patter. What are the shapes and color combinations that just kind of take your breath away. And you can find that by experimenting with lots of color shapes. You can also find it by looking at other people's work. And notice what really gets you excited. You saw I put seven leaves on that. I always do odd numbers. Using the same materials here. I may use a few more posca pens at the end. Got my gold pens, of course. And just thinking about, where do I want to put more things? And what color will they be? Can I mix a color that gets me excited? And it shows up. I decided there, I needed to darken that a little bit to get it to show up. And I think about that too. Do I want it to show up in a very bright way or just more subdued way? These pedals are showing up a little more subdued. That's contrast. The navy frond is high contrast, right? So trying to balance how much high contrast, low contrast areas you want. I'm just playing with the opera pink here and figuring out, do I want it anywhere else? But I decide to get out this pale marine blue, I think it's called that I love so much. You can see how you could do one of these in any color scheme you wanted to match any room you wanted. The worst that happens is you don't like something. Let's say I had painted that pale blue bit and I decided I didn't like it. Just let it dry completely and either make some marks over it with a neo colored cran or a paint in some other color or cover it completely with paint. I've learned over the years that I can change how much something comes forward or backward by A putting marks on it. And there's more ways than one to cover to bring some something forward or take it back. You don't just have to put paint over it. You could take, for example, using that again, that blue. I could take the thin golden pen and just make lines through it. Just that would push it back a little bit and give it some interesting texture. Here I'm taking a mustard color and it feels mom painting. I mean, I know this is sped up, so it looks even more like dancing. But it gives you an idea. It's interesting to watch it sped up because you can see how I do dance around the painting. I mix a color I like. Now I'm saying, Okay, I want to put that navy somewhere else. I want a bit of that high contrast color so that it's not too weighted toward the one day leaf. I'm finding things to do with it. Inspired by nature. Can you be surprised how much just a few little lines and dots of contrast I'm always surprised, can sort of unify something. There in my little reddish plant, I felt like it needed more leaves and like the more definition. So I went in with some darker red. And then as I was saying, I've mixed the color, so what else can I do with it? There's an example of, I did that and I didn't really like it. So I covered it back up with the pink and I'll move elsewhere while it dries and then come back and think of something else I might want to do. Now I'm pulling out The big guns, my favorite metallic pens, which I'll put in the supply list. I use two weights. Actually I have three gold pens, a thin, a medium, but the medium and the large are the same brand. Then the thin one is another brand. I've just tested so many over the years, and these are none of them are perfect. I'm not saying they don't occasionally clog, but they perform better than anything else I've played with. I just love the pop they give. Now I'm taking some colored pencil and I use either a prisma color or if you want to spring for something more expensive, the luminance by Caran dash. Here I'm taking my fluorescent posca and just doing some little bits. I was thinking about, do I want to do anything on that pot? I go back and forth on that. I love how it's just that color. And then some things should be left alone. Not every single thing should be covered. I like also what I'm doing now, which is very subtle with an ivory colored. Actually, it's a really, really pale green paint marker and that one's by Tule. T OLI. I will put, like I said, links to these things in the supply list. The Tulee markers have a much better color range than Posca, but I think the Posca is overall a better marker. I end up using both. Here I'm taking some neo color pencil. I mean, it's Karen dash. Super color, I think it's called. I just colored in a bit of turquoise, but I didn't want to use every color, so I kept turquoise out. Now there's an example where I did that with Posca marker, but then it was too bright, so I just dabbed some of it away. As long as it's still wet, you can pick some of that color up and I got the effect I was looking for. Then I pick up my gold marker again. And take the thin one and do some outlining. There's nothing like line dot outlining to just kind of I'm still thinking about, do I want to do something on that pot? So again, no harm done even now, I will say the metallic pen is a little harder to paint over, but you can still paint it. But I went ahead and did little bits of flower outlines on the pot, which I ended up really liking. You can paint over the metallic, it is that you might need a couple of coats because it's pretty intense. You saw me spray my paints there to keep them going and Isn't it fun to look at the palette and then the colors. Then it's good to also look at your palette and say, what can I mix that's already on there? That helps keeps things unified as well so that you're not you're not bringing another new color and another new color and another new color. You're forcing yourself to mix from what's already on the palette, and that can help with things being a little bit more unified. At this point, I could stop anytime. At this point, I'm tinkering and giving things time to dry, looking at it, looking at the composition, does it feel balanced? Is there anything that feels like it's missing? And I'm feeling like It's pretty much looking at, do I have any ideas in that one that I want to use in this one. And this is personal preference totally. At this point here you can say, Okay, I guess I decided, that I wasn't thrilled with all that purple over there, and so I held my hand over it. I do that sometimes. Then I can say, h. Yeah, I think that would be better with that. It was drawing my eye too to that side. This is that point where I'm thinking I can't remember the famous artist who said that most of your creating is done by just looking and feeling responding to what you've created and deciding if you want to keep going. I think I'm looking at my iPad to see if there are more reference photos ideas, but I ended up being really happy with it. I just wanted to show you this and hope it shows you that you can take this in a lot of directions. 10. Wrap Up & Resources: I hope you enjoyed that and saw the possibilities and how much fun it is to create these garden scapes. I'll probably be doing some more. This was the tropical one. Maybe I'll do we go to Michigan in the summer. Maybe I'll do that, or maybe We do we'll get some inspiration from Australia and do an Australian gardenscape. I love that idea. Anyway, I have a couple of links to two different varnishes that if you choose to do something to protect the painting, one is the crylon workable fixative, spray it per directions on the can. And then another one that I like is the spectra fix that is completely non toxic. I could sit here and do it right here in my studio. It takes longer to dry. And you may need a couple layers of it, and it's a little pricier. But it's nice to have, if you don't have a way to get outside or if you're really sensitive. And I want to make sure you know about resources. I mentioned the YouTube channel at the beginning. I also have a newsletter that I try to send out once a month with studio updates and just essays on the creative life, and maybe some of my travels. It seems like it's slipped to more like every two months, but anyway, I have different announcements on there and pictures and so forth, inspiration. So, I have many other classes here on Skillshare, so I hope you check them out. I'm thrilled to have been made a top teacher here on Skillshare, which I worked for really hard for over five years. So I want to thank you, my students for helping me get there and just can't wait to see what kind of gardenscape you create. Remember that creating is good for your soul, which is good for the world, so never feel guilty about it. Okay. Bye.