Paint a White Flower in Gouache - Loose, Painterly Style

1. Class Trailer: Hello and welcome to my latest bite sized class where I your instructor Jennifer will be teaching you how to paint a white flower. In gouache painting white flowers is already challenging enough, and even more so when painting with Guash, which is why we are going to keep it very simple in this class. This class is suitable for all levels. And I have broken down each step in labels labeled accordingly to make it even easier. If you are a beginner, some painting experience would be ideal. But anyone can join, getting the ideal consistency of this particular art medium is quite tricky, which is why I have included a video explaining how to mix a good water paint ratio, depending on the layer we are working on. The steps that we will cover here will be the first layer, then a defining layer, and then the center of the flower with the final details, and lastly, the leaves. Once you have mastered painting this simple flower, you will be able to use this new skill set in all your future gouache paintings of bouquets and floral compositions. If you are ready to paint this flower, please stay and watch my next video, where I will explain the materials needed. 2. Materials: Okay, I want to quickly go over the materials with you. First up, is the palette that I was using. It's very dirty, very messy. I know, but I do a lot of color mixing anyway. So this serves me well. If a palette like this bothers you and you want to start fresh, you can always use a disposable palette. As you can see, that's another option. Next. The paper that I was using for this class is inside my mixed media sketchbook. And pretty honestly, it's cardboard card stock paper quality, so it's nothing like fancy. It's very, very affordable. And if you don't have that, this is dollars to craft paper. It's got card stock paper of the same quality available. Next are the wash paints that I was using. The designers here are all the colors because white runs out a lot. I actually purchased a big pouch of these from Amazon because I use white a lot for mixing and whatnot. The quality of this was very decent. I wouldn't compare it to this, but it's decent enough and you see me use it in the video, it's pretty good. I keep it in a little jar like this. Last but not least, we have our paint brushes. I use filberts a lot. I get these from Amazon. They're not like top notch quality, but I'm not very good taking care of my paint brushes, which is why I'm not investing in better ones. I did use a round one at one point in the video. These are also really good for detail work. Like these round brushes, you have the brushes that I typically use for my gouache paintings of jar of water when you not need it. 3. Gouache Consistency : Okay, so I did want to provide you a little bit of a demonstration. I've got my Gh paint here out of the jar. And I'm just going to put on there. Right now it is very dehydrate, it's very thick, and I'm going to activate it with a bit of water. Okay. So this very light consistency that you see you right now, that is what you want to use for your first layer. Okay, On the first layer, we want to map things out typically and okay, there we go. This is the consistency of the first layer, okay? Okay. This is a little too watery. No problem, easy fix. Just add no paint. Okay. First layer after this dries, we're going to just add to a little puddle right there. A little more paint like this. Now we've got a thicker consistency. Okay. And you can actually start off the first layer with this consistency. It's fine. It's just it's very watery. It has to dry. You have to give it its drying time. All right. It's still very fluid. Okay. Still very fluid. Then once this has dried and you want to add on another layer, we're going to thicken our little batter rate here. Okay? And just add a bit more paint. With time this becomes second nature. Okay. There look, got a nice thick consistency going. You can paint over it. It will, because it doesn't have water, it might still activate or mix with the previous layer. I also did not let this dry. It's like, I don't know if you can tell but mixing a bit. Okay. And if you want to just go in straight with a thick layer, you can. It's just going to be a little bit more tough to paint on top of it, but here I've got a nice consistency look at that even though it hasn't dried yet. Because it's so it has been diluted properly with water. I can paint over it. Okay. So I'm going to show you what it looks like when you paint with a like very, very like the paint. The ratio is more paint than water. It looks like this. It's almost like like acrylics right there, you see. And by the way, I'm painting on very cheap dollar store quality card stock, which is okay because I typically scan my artworks. I'm not planning on creating artworks on this cheap paper and then selling it to people. This is really good for practice for any artwork you wish to digitize or post on social media. Yeah, there we have it. 4. First Layer : Okay guys. So here we are. We're going to do the first layer of the flower. I've generously wet my brush and as you can see, I am using the Filbert paint brush. I already had some white paint squeeze onto my very messy palette. I know it looks horrible, but as you can see, I can pick up any color on my already pre mixed messy palette to create a grayish tone. If you guys don't know how to create the gray, it's just a really dark color. Like I wouldn't even go with black because it'll just make it really dark. Try to find like a really muddy color on your palette. If you're using a fresh palette, then yes, a tiny dash of black, just a tiny dash, and maybe a little bit of green or bluish, just to give it a little bit more of a organic color just in case you missed it. I have slowed down the video, the clip where I paint the petals. I am doing them one by one by using one or two strokes. Because I'm using the Filbert paint brush, it creates the petal shape for me. Don't beat yourself up. If the petals don't look perfect, we're not going for perfection here we do want a little bit of realism, but it is a loose approach to painting a flower. Now I'm going over again with a bit more paint because as you know, gas is a bit like watercolor and does dry transparent, especially in the first layer when it's a bit more diluted and we're using a bit more water. The first layer is completed while we are waiting for you to dry. We're going to move on to the next step. See you in the next video. 5. Second Layer & Center: For this next step, we are going to be using yellow ochre. I'm using a very thin Filbert brush. You don't have to, you can use a brown paint brush. But I really love working with Filbert paint brushes. They make the circular motion just so much easier once that down. And as you can see, I just had a very simple layer. I move back to working on the petals of the flower. Once again, I'm adding white to my little muddy area over there this time around because it is a second layer and I want to make sure it really comes through. I have to add more paint, the paint water ratio changes, whereas before we did quite a bit of water and we had a very wet brush this time around, I want to make sure my brush is loaded with paint. I'm working on the outer parts of the petal to give them highlights, As this is the type of painting that I would use for developing a pattern or a design, I'm not really worried about where the highlights are coming from or where the light is coming from. I'm also using the edge of my brush to create the streaks that you can sometimes see on real life flowers. I continue to fuss around with my brush until I'm satisfied with the way it looks. Once again, we're back to the center of the flower. We're waiting for the petals to dry. I, I mixed the original mixture of the yellow ochre and whatever else was on my palette with some white to lighten it. This is the highlight. Note that I am not completely painting it in. It's more like a moon, where you have the dark side of the moon and the light side of the moon. Essentially two thirds of the sphere or the circle has been painted in with the highlight. While I'm already added, I decided to also create the shade for the center by darkening the yellow ochre with a bit of brown and a little bit of black. Whatever muddy color I found on my palette, I had added some more white onto my palette. As you can see, it's a much thicker paste consistency. I need this layer to really show through. Now with the highlights, what you really want to do is load your brush with a very large amount of paint and your brush should contain very little water. All right? Don't try to dilute it. We don't want this layer to be wet and activating layer underneath it unless that's something you're going for. But in this case, we want the last layer to be as opaque as possible. Once again, I'm fussing around with my brush and adding where I feel it could use a bit more highlights. I'm trying to mimic what a real flower looks like. That is it. For now. Let's move on to the third step. 6. Centre details : In this very short clip, I wanted to show you how I add the details to the center of the flower. I'm using a small, very thin. I think it's a size two or size for round brush. I'm adding little dabs. I'm adding dots to the center of it. This hue of yellow ocher is pure. I did not mix any colors with it. I just felt like the center started to look a bit dull, which is why I went over it again. Now I am going in with a lighter version of the yellow ochre. By simply adding white to it. I take a bit of time with deciding where I add the little depths of paint just because it is a center, and I find that it is what completes the flower. 7. The Leaves: We've made it to the final part, which is adding leaves as a garnish to our flower. You can think of it as adding the garnish to a cake. The first part of this would be mixing the first layer of the green. The green paint on its own tends to be a bit transparent and especially because we're painting on black paper, it's important we get the right mix over here, a tiny bit of white, the pure green, and then a bit of yellow ochre as you can see Underneath it, we had some dried gach paint which must have activated a little bit while I was doing the mixing. Now for shaping the leaf, I am using a lot of small strokes with my fine brush, it's a round brush, I believe, around size four. Once you're happy with the shape, it's time for the other leaf. And remember we're going to be layering on top. Don't stress out too much about the different tones of greens you would like to have on there. It's important right now that we just get the shape. Once that has dried, I like to go in with my lighter sheet of green or lighter tone of green, I basically mixed in a lot more white to it. And then sometimes just for a little bit of variation in the color or the tone, I like to mix in yellow ochre. I don't have a particular strategy to adding the highlights, but I do like to put it around the tip, then also draw in the veins with the very tip of my paint brush. With that part, you have to be a little careful because getting the straight lines where the paint brush can be a little challenging. Do make sure that it is a really good brush and not one that's very soft. Because you are painting with gach. It's not like water color though. I earlier mentioned that it is a size four. As you can see on the brush I just showed there for a moment, it says ten, but it looks and feels like a size four. I think they got the sizing wrong. I purchased these paint brushes from Amazon. They're a bit of the cheaper variety. Now, back to the leaf. So with the shadow, I'd like to add a bit of just a tiny bit of black. Not too much because again, the paper is black. You wanted to show through, right? And the other thing that I do is I like to mix a bit of blue in there. The blue that I typically go for is the one that has a bit more of a cooler tone, a greenish tone in it. The one I used here is called primary blue. Now I've slowed the video down again a bit just to show you where I'm adding a bit of the darker parts. I'd like for the green parts, the leaves, to have a bit of a gradient if you will. Essentially, I want there to be a transition from dark to medium green to light green. While it's nice to infuse a bit of realism in our loose painting, I recommend allowing your intuition to guide you. I'll leave you with that for now. 8. Conclusion: We have just covered the layers that go into painting a white flower in Gage on a colored background. If you are to use these steps whilst painting on white paper, I recommend you either paint a background color in first in order for this flower to show up. Well, an example of that would be here in an illustration where I painted the background first and then painted the white roses on top. Alternatively, you can also just paint in light gray tones using the very same steps that I demonstrated in this class. For your final project, please post your painting of this flower so that I can leave a comment. If you have a painting where you have incorporated this flower in a bouquet or floral design, I would love to see it. If there are any questions you have, I'm more than happy to respond. I hope you were able to walk away with some new skills from this class and please do leave me a review until next time.