Paint Loose Florals using Brushmarkers; Step by Step

1. Welcome to Floral Bookmarks: Hi everyone. Welcome to another absolutely stunning class that has been much requested by all of you who have seen my work. Hi, I model. I am an artist, a professional artist, and a published author who absolutely loves florals by page is filled with them and I can't get enough. I started experimenting with brush pens to create easy and simple florals. And today I am sharing all of my tips and tricks so that you can easily paint stunning florals with your brush pens. The project involves six absolutely amazing, unique bookmarks. If you're someone like me who enjoys florals and have wished to create stunning artwork, whether they are bookmarks, are creating cards or just individual pieces of art. Then this is the class for you. I'm so excited to get started. Let's dive right in to the materials, followed by some very fun practice exercises and then tackling R6 stunning projects. 2. Materials Needed: Now let's dive into the materials for this class. We have quite a small list of materials, starting with our Catherine markers. Now, there are different varieties of brush pen markers that are available in the market. I personally prefer the Karen markers. I loved the quality. I liked that they have a watercolor effect to it. And the pens don't dry out very quickly, which is so great. You can get the whole box or you can get individual colors, or a small set of colors are also available. In this class, I'll be using certain fixed colors, but feel free to use colors that you have with you. So for example, I'd be using an olive black green. Basically it's an olive green color, but you can use a different green that you already own. So have fun with that and love yourself to explore different sheets. You don't have to follow the exact ones that I have provided. Now the next thing is, Let's talk about people. So we're gonna be using a watercolor paper, which is very important because that's when the water can actually absorb. And you would be able to create this beautiful watercolor effect. I always use a 300 GSM paper that is a 100% cotton. By a lot of tests and trial, I realized that this combination of 300 GSM paper that is a 100% cotton has worked really well for me, especially when it comes to light floral paintings. Now for the brands I generally use ProctorU, it is easily available in the South Asian continent, but you can also use Fabriano as an alternative. Both the papers are easily available and really friendly to use. Now for this, you will need separate cheese for practice exercises that depends on you. However, for the bookmarks will need six pieces, are six cutup sheets of 14.5 centimeter into six centimeter, which is 14.5 centimeter length and six centimeter width. So you can go bigger, smaller, that's up to you. But if you want to follow exactly what I've done, the measurements that I have taken for my bookmarks. Now, we go into the brushes. We just gonna be using one brush. It's fairly easily available. It's a round brush, size six. Now, this size might vary based on brands. So some brands a size six might look a little bit more bigger words and some brands that might look smaller. So what we're trying to do is just get like a medium-size brush, so it's not too big. It's not too small. Because accordingly, we can paint our flowers in that size. In terms of brand, I am using just a very regular student grade. Student grade. It was just available in the local market. They're just very quick use brushes, so I use them and then I can use them probably for a month and then I'll have to throw them because they don't really last long. But I really like the shape of it, which is why I decided to get it and I was super happy with it. So this is Phoenix. It is a student grade brands, so don't expect too much. If you're looking for a little bit more professional, I would say black velvet. Size six or even size four is beautiful. I love my brush that I've got from there. As well as you can try the Winsor and Newton Cotman series. Now with brushes, I have tried a lot of different brands and I've noticed that they don't sometimes tend to last. And I get very heartbroken when I have to throw away with brush. So I have now dedicated to using student grade brushes. Has far as the quality remains. I think the main thing to remember with your brush is that you have a perfect shaped brush that is useful to you. And that is what I'm going to focus on in this section, which is the shape of the brush. So in this brush, if you notice the tip is very thin. So it starts from a small dip, then it becomes wider. And that is this shape that we're looking for. If you're going to buy a brush that does not have this kind of thin tip. It'll be very hard for you to do your florals, your stems. Lot of different elements would be much more harder for you to tackle. So pay attention to that tip of the brush. It's very, very important and you'd be surprised how many brands don't have that or many brands do have that. So when it comes to brush purchase, I always suggest going to the store. You can personally look at the brush rather than buying it online. I'm Julie makes a huge difference. If you can see the brush, feel the brush, feel the softness and see how thin the tip is and then accordingly purchase. So this is just a round brush. And yep, that's what we'll need for this class. Now that we've covered our brush pens are Brush and people. The next thing we need is masking tape. This is to make sure that the borders of our bookmark is taped down so we get a very crisp looking edge. I generally use just a white masking tape. You can also look at washi tapes. What I suggest is to test, try it first. So try a little piece, see that, see if it's ripping your paper, see if it is holding steady or if it's coming out, test it before trying it on your main projects. So that way you haven't created a beautiful, stunning project and then had it ruined just because of the tape. So we try to avoid that. So just trust dried. I have personally been using just simple white tape, easily available everywhere and it's worked perfectly well for me. The final thing that we would need is a cup of water. I generally like to keep two cups with me so I don't have to keep getting up. So one cup is also create and we'll be using that during our process. Finally, specifically for our bookmark, you will need some ribbon for the edge of it. Again, you don't have to actually use, I would say ribbon. You can use maybe beads or if you want to use anything or you don't want to use anything and just keep your bookmark as it is. That's fine. Just wanted to add that in the material list. Now that we have our materials and hand, let's dive right into our practice exercises. 3. Brush pens and Practice Drills: I am so ready to get started with this class. The first thing we are going to start practicing are some exercises to really understand how brush pens work. Now, one of the things that we do need to keep in mind is that there are varying colors. Some of the colors tend to be much more lighter than the others. Here you can see an example of a dark purple. And then you can see a light purple. Now when I take my clean brush and I swipe Through my darker purple, you can see the color shade that comes through. It's a beautiful blend. Now, let's try the same thing with a light purple. You can notice a couple of things going wrong where the light purple has dried up fairly quickly, as well as left line because of that. Additionally, the blend isn't, as I would say, isn't as nice as the previous one. So this is why for our projects, we're going to be using the darker colors for most of what we'll be doing. Because those are the ones that are going to really showcase and really highlight our bookmark. Now the next thing to understand about brush pens is transparency. So here I'm going to take a brush that is quite damp, and I am going to add the brush pen pigment to it. You can see how I'm getting a very light soft color of purple. Now this is a very translucent layer. However, I can go in with more and you can see how I'm really trying to get the pigment all through my brush. Last time I just likely pressed it. Now I'm just making sure I go all around and notice the difference. Immediately there is much more pigment and so the color is much more brighter. This is gonna be very useful for us to bring in those watercolor effects that all of us absolutely love. Practice this a couple of times with different colors that you have to understand and become very comfortable with the usage. The next thing to pay attention to is the drying time. This is a little bit tricky and so it depends on where you're based and the humidity of where you are located. So here you can see I've taken my brush pen and I'm just adding four dashes. Now wait for a couple of seconds, and then we're gonna take our brush. Notice when I'm taking my brush, I really wanted to show you guys how a damp brush is, where I've made sure that I've tapped out excess of water. My brush is not stemming with water. It's not completely full. It's just damp with it. Using that damp brush, I'm going to paint each of those rectangles. You will notice that some of them have already dried. So you can see the line of that brush pen, sketch. Some of them because there was less a drying time, it blend a lot more better. So this is where you have to understand when we're doing our florals, how much drying time is required for your location? So if your paintings dry fairly quickly, then you would need to work faster when you're painting your florals or tried to do just one or two at a time. However, if it's not too humid and it's pretty normal, like I think where I'm located is pretty decent. I don't really have that many issues in terms of paintings drying up very quickly. I can really go around and play with it. But this is a process it takes time to understand, so just test it out and have a quick look at the drying time in your location, at your location. Now we move into blending. For blending, I've taken into colors. I've got a pauper and then an orange. And now with my damp brush, I am going and blending my piece. Whenever I blend, it always start from out side. So I always start with my clear damp brush outside and then move towards the colors. You can then dry out your brush and then just gently move around the colors so you get a little bit more of an even blend. This is so pretty, It's so simple and it's worked really well. This is because I also have understood the drying time. Now, in case I had let this day for much longer, I would have just ended up with lines and not a very simple blend. So just make sure this is why the drying time also becomes really important so that you have surely nice colors coming through. Here is a great example where I use the rectangle from much before and you can see how that line is still there because it completely dried. Even though the orange blended, it doesn't give you a beautiful blend has seen in the previous example. Now we move into some simple leaves. For simple leaves, Notice how I do a stem and then basically paint out or draw out a rectangle shape. Now using a clean, damp brush, I pull the color to form the leaf. This leads to a dual color for the leaf, where you have a darker color at the bottom. And as it moves away from the stem, it is much more translucent, which I think looks absolutely stunning and gives you that beautiful watercolor effect. At this point, you can add in some blue or a contrasting color while your leaf is too wet. If it is dry, you won't have these blends coming through. But if it's wet, you can see how this happens. It's so pretty. It looks really nice and you've got this beautiful blended leaf. Now let's try another leaf. This time I'm using a different color. Also want you to pay attention to how I do the stems. So they just start straight lines. I've called them around as well. Then using a round brush, I'm going to just pull the color that I can paint out the leap. Now while it's still wet, where I can still see the glistening of the water. I'm going to add the blue so that it blends through. Now in keys, as you can see, it's not dried. Sorry, it's already dried up. You will just have a line instead of a bleed of color that comes through. So it's interesting you can mix and match, but I think it's so important. That's why the drying time has such an important role to play when it comes to florals. Now that we've covered the basics, let's also go into some florals and understand how to easily paint florals. This is a very important practice drill. So keep added practice multiple times before moving on to the project. Now there are a couple of ways of going about the center of a flower. I love doing dots. As you can see, what I like to do is make sure just the tip of the brush. Pen is touching the paper so you get these beautiful dots. And I like giving that as the center for the flower. You can also do a so-called as it is, and I'll show you the difference between the two. So then you can decide which you prefer. Now, once that's done, taking a damp brush, make sure that it's damp and it's not too wet nor is it to dry. So it needs to have water and it should be damp enough to pick up the color. Before we start, what I like to do is just plan out how my petals are going to actually be. In this case, I'm going to be focusing more on five petaled flowers and so forth, that the placement of the petal is very important. We don't want to have four petals taking up a lot of space and not enough for a fifth or two small petals and three bigger ones, just very disproportionate. So the easiest way to handle it is to draw out a white. Once you have that Y shape done, the middle areas can be allocated for the fourth, fifth petal. It's that simple. Now, as you keep practicing, it's gonna be a lot more easier. You don't have to do a pencil mark. But in the initial stages, I would highly recommend following the pencil mark and then using that as your guideline. Now that we know that that's where a petal is going to go with a round brush. Let's pick up the color from the center and then paint out a beautiful petal, just a very simple, rounded petals, as you can see. Now, let's do the other side, always starting from the center and then moving outwards in a curved shape to form the petal. Now the petal at the bottom, again, starting from the center and then pulling the paint outwards. You can also see for the edge of the petal instructions making itself club, you can go for a bump. As I have just done. This is such a simple flower that we have baked and it's so easy, but it looks so pretty. Now let's try another one. But in this one, we are going to be doing those circle as I mentioned, as it is, without the dotted effect. Now following the same pencil planning of a Y shape. And then the middle to allocate the fourth, fifth petal. We can take a damp brush and follow the same steps. Again, pulling in from the center all the way outward. Another cool trick while you're doing this is to add some thin lines, sometimes starting from the center or at least along the sides of the flower. Always looks very interesting. You can see it all come together. Now notice the difference between this one and the previous. So it's subtle, but somehow I prefer the previous one. If you like the second one, that's fine. They both are the same flower idea, but it's just the execution of the center has changed the look for board. Now another type of flower that I'd like you guys to practice multiple times is a little bit more of a long, elongated flower. Kind of like daisies would be a good reference for this. So start with the center and then move the brush outward. For a very thin petal. We can do multiple of these petals because there's no limit, which is trying to make sure that they are thin and long. I also like to keep an equally distant, not an equidistant, but some space between each petal. The reason for this is if I was putting all of them together, Onward, Matt meshed together, match together and just blend since the water would just blend through all of it. So it's very important because we're using the watercolor effect to make sure that the space. Now, if you additionally want two of the petals to be closed after the first layer dries, you can go ahead and add a second layer. That's the best way of going about it. So it's very important you would have noticed in my previous flower as well that I've kept spaces between each of the petals. In this example as a practice, all I'm doing is using those central areas just for outline of petals. So that way it's not disrupting form our existing petals. So there's not a lot of water swishing around. It's just simply an outline which also adds to the illustrative effect of the flower. Finally, a fourth type of flower I would suggest that you practice a couple of times is a dual column. So in this, I'm just showing you a simple exercise of using lipstick red for the center. And then we're going to add the lilac for a couple of areas, are a couple of dots, and then add the petals. What's going to happen because of this two will color. Our petals are also going to be D will color. The trick here is to pick colors that work well together. If you're gonna be taking, let's say, orange and a blue, the color that might come out might be like a brown. So if you're okay with that, that's great. But if you're not happy with it, then that's probably not the color choice that would work for you. So something like a red, orange works really well. Purple and red, purple and blue works amazingly well. You can have blue and green. So any of those combinations that are complimentary will work well. Anything that is very opposing each other is not going to look that great. Now following exactly what we've done before with the five petals strategy, I'm gonna go ahead and paint out my petals. As you can see, when I'm pulling out the paint from the center, I tried to also make sure that sometimes I'm pulling from the orange specific section or the purple specific section just to have that mix of color coming through in the petal or flower. Specifically. These are very simple and fun practice exercises. I would suggest that you work on a multiple time. And then we can dive right into the projects. Are you guys excited? Because I can't wait to get started. 4. Project 1 - Floral Blooms: Are you ready for the first project in this class? For this project, we're gonna be using three colors. You can use similar colors as well. If you don't have the same, we're going in for a sky blue or violet blue, which is basically a violet color and then a lush green of viridian as well would work. But basically this bright green that ties up these two colors together. Using these three colors, we're going to create something beautiful. Now, take your bookmark paper. Let's keep it flat. And what I like to do in this tot is to tape down the edges of the paper. This way, we are guaranteed a beautiful, crisp edge all around our bookmark. Makes the bookmark look a lot more professional and just looks so pretty. So I always like to tape down the edge. As mentioned in the materials, you can use different types that are available. Always test out your tape to ensure that it's the perfect one for you. Now, I am taping it down by about half a centimeter. All true on all four sides. Now let us imagine that there is a circle in the middle. And what we're gonna do, as you can see, with the blue, we're going to paint lines around it. Now I've grouped these lines into five sets. So that way we have five petals for our florals. Using the YA lit, add small lines in the center of these and you can see how it's already blending through. This is just the first step. Now using a damp brush, like we went over in our practice exercises. Let's paint out our petal. Now. For the petal, I'm just going in with a very simple curve shape. You can also try a little bit more of a bumpy edge. So more of a m instead of a curve like I just did right? Now, that looks really pretty as well. While we're painting, what generally tends to happen is you're picking up color from the middle. So that ends up being a mixed of the purple and blue that comes through and gives you this very vibrant and stunning double color flower. Always make sure that your brush is damp through this process. And if you're having a little bit of doubt or uncertainty or not sure how it's going to turn out. Go through the practice exercises again to just get a little bit more comfortable with this process. Now right above, I'm going to try another flower. The similar technique of the blue and then the violet, and then using a damp brush painting out the petals. Now, as we discussed in the practice exercises, it is important that you do this tip quickly before your brush pens dry up. So just make sure you quickly go into painting out your petals. This is also why I like to do one at a time. In some cases, just so I can take just so I can make sure that I get these colors. If you are in a hotter climate, what you might have to do is maybe two petals at a time rather than the entire flower. Continuing on. Now I'm going to do a half flower. So instead of doing the five petals, I'm just going to do four. You can see how I'm linking it with the violet to a common central point, which will then be the base of the flower. Now following the same steps that we did with our damp brush, I'm going to paint out the petals. For this process. What I like to ensure is that the petal right on top is bigger and actually a full-size better compared to the two on the sides. The side ones generally B, are going to be smaller because of the angle of the flower right on top. Let's do another one. Same exact process of adding the blue, just three or four petals and then adding wireless. Then using a damp brush to build out our petals. Always make sure that the petals right on top are bigger. They're full size compared to the ones that are on the side that are going to be smaller. This also is following a semicircle shape if you haven't noticed. And we're trying to stick to that. Keep adding flowers based on your sheet. I'm going to add a final 1.51 right on top. This one is going to be much smaller as well compared to what we've done before. Which is why I've chosen to do only three petals. And this is why it is also right on top. So it's important to keep in mind the placement of flowers. So you have the big flowers, you have some that are half. And generally you place them in that manner of big to small. Also with the flowers, you would have noticed how some of, most of them are in-between. They touched the edge of the sheet. This is going to give us a very interesting effect once we finish our bookmarks and remove water tape. So try to have these flowers coming from the edge towards the sheet. Always looks so pretty in the final. Okay, now that we have done this, now that we've done the flowers using our green, Let's add the stems so you can see how I do it for the style or the half flowers, generally linking them at a central point and then adding the stem. For the rest. I'm just adding in the stem all the way to the bottom of our bookmark. Take your time with the process. We want to make sure that the stems of very thin. So just pay attention to that D2. This way. In our final painting, the stems look really nice and the whole painting comes together. Very well. For the leaves, um, has practiced in our practice exercises. Let's do the same, reshape. So multiple lines that are forming a V-shape and then linking up to the stem. Now, this process, you can do it fast or slow based on where you're based. In case you are in a hot climate where you're painting seems to dry quicker. I would suggest doing one or two leaves at a time maximum. However, if you have multiple of them, you can kind of go through with that. If the weather is a little bit more cooler and you're painting doesn't seem to dry faster because you will notice your design or your leaf doesn't spread as much. And we went through this in the beginning. So just keep that in mind. Now using a damp brush, I'm pulling the color from the bottom of the leaf all the way up to form the shape. And then you can see how this very easily and beautifully blends through to give us a blended leaf that moves from this deep green, too transparent. During this process, what I like to do is add multiple leaves. So we're trying to fill up the spaces. So I do multiple at a time. Just to make sure that our entire bookmark looks full. There's not too many white empty spaces. So you can keep adding and leaves. Keep in mind that your flowers still need to be the focus. But the areas that have a lot of whitespace, you can go ahead and add leaves. Now that we've done this using green, I'm going to add some circular abstract as detailed that are just again, going to make this bookmark a lot more playful and a lot more fun. I love adding dots, scribbles, small markings because they really uplift the painting. Now, look at your painting again and just check. 5. Project 2 - Florals and Berries: So in this project we are going to be using four different colors. We're gonna be using lilac, which is basically like a magenta color. Then we have lipstick red, so it's a bright red and orange. The orange and red are gonna be used for the flowers and specific. So we wanna get two different shades. You can try to pick even orange and yellow. That works really well. But if you know about the color wheel, we're picking colors right next to each other. Finally, we have an olive green for the leaves as well as the BCE. Now, we are going to be using this olive color to highlight and bring through our bookmark. As always, what I like to do is taped down the edges of the bookmark. You can see I've left about half a centimeter edge all around on all four sides. Now you can take your pens, keep them in hand. So it's easy once we start with our painting. Now starting with our olive color. What I'd like you to do is take your brush and make sure it is a damp brush so it has little bit of water, It's not too extensive. And you can gently swipe it around the brush to pick up a little bit of that olive green color. Now, let's paint the edges with that color. Here in the middle. I'm just using clear water to gently blend through that olive. So as you see, I start with the olive color. Then I wash out my brush, then use clean water to blend it. You might need to take a little bit more of the olive because not too much color might come in the first time around. So you might have to just wipe your swipe your brush multiple times on that tip to get more of that olive color. We don't need too much. We just want a gentle color. So once we remove the edges of the tape, we're left with a very interesting BCE. Now, I always try to wash out my brush and then use clear water to blend any sharp edges that are showing up. Now, I love the painting, the base to dry out completely. And now we can start with our lilac. And let's start with the center of our flowers. Here we're doing something different where we've drawn out the circle structure. Now you can see how I've tried to make the edges a little bit more jagged by adding some spots. Were planning the flowers out in a very random manner. But what I'm doing is trying to make sure that I have enough of space between them so that the petals don't overlap on along each of those flowers. I'm keeping enough of a gap. I would say a distance of 1.5 inch should work really well for our bookmark today. Now the reason I'm doing this is because I want it to dry completely before we move on to the next step, which is also why I'm doing multiple of them. So by the time I finished the last circle, the first one has already dried. And that way I can go into painting out our petals very quickly. So this is why I'm just trying to do all of them. All the centers, all at once. I've planted out in such a way that I can then go on to the next step, which is using orange. Now you will see me use orange in a very haphazard manner. So I've done it in four different sections. Now using red, I'm going to connect it. So what is happening? Like the previous bookmark where we did different sections of the blue, phi, different sections of the blue. I'm doing the same concept here. But instead of just using one color, I've used two colors. So you still have Fei sections. Of five, we shapes. But they're a mix of colors. Which is why when you go into painting, the better with a damp brush, you get a mix of colors. So there's a little bit of orange that's going on and there's a little bit of red. This is why it looks very, very interesting. Unlike the blue where we picked up color from the center. Here the center has remained steady and we're just using dual colors for the petals. Only. Notice how the petal on that edge is very small because there was not too much of a V-shape that was created and that's fine enough. So as far as you get enough of the petals are obvious, you're good with even the size of the petals. Sometimes that mix of different sizes looks interesting as well. Once we've done this, let's go ahead and tackle the rest of the flowers in our bookmark. Always make sure your brushes damp and not completely wet. That way you pull color but not too much to leave blobs. So just pulling the color from the center all the way to the edge. You will see me pulling color from the center. A way to form our petal shapes. Continue following the same steps that we've been doing for the rest of the flowers. Now, you can also vary the size of the petals. Instead of doing them the same size, you can alternate between sizes. But here I just wanted to keep it fixed and follow the same shape and same size and just maintain that stability throughout. You can see as I keep building the flowers, it just looks so pretty and our bookmark looks vibrant. You will notice me doing these thin lines. Sometimes. They are just basically like small thin lines that help to create a little bit more of a relaxed effect for our paintings. So they just small details that can make the painting look a little bit interesting. And you will see me just doing them along the edges of the petal in a way to, I would say to shape the petal. Attempt this see how it goes. And just keep practicing for those small little details that bring together the painting. Now, let's add in some berries. What I like to do for berries is add in some lilac circles. And I vary the shape of it because that's what makes it look very interesting. I'm using the places that are quite empty and have a lot of whitespaces. Now that I've got that, I'm going to wash out my brush. Make sure it is a clean brush. And just with water, add an additional circuits. What I'd like to do is when I'm adding these additional circles to gently, make sure that they touch the existing so-called of lilac. This way the color bleeds through. And you have this bunch of berries in our painting that looks very interesting and stunning and pretty and unique. Also keep in mind that you're going to vary those shapes of those circles, the sizes of the circles, so that you have a mix-and-match and they're not all the same sites. Like to cluster them. That way you have a mix of them going around in that specific section. Now that we have done that, we can allow our painting to dry. And meanwhile, we can use our olive green to add in the leaves. Now using olive, let's add the leaves. Instead of just blending it with water, I decided to go through with the actual full drawn out leaf so that you get the full color coming through. So we have this beautiful green color, it's not too bright, so I think it won't take away from our painting. You can also add some green berries to our existing berries. So that way it looks like some of them haven't ripened. Add in some small leaves as well. When you're using the brush pens as they are, they are a lot more easier to control. And so this process gets a lot more simplified. Plus it looks so pretty. So. Go ahead and add more leaves in between. Our pieces are elements to bring it all together. Once you've done the basic step back and see if there's any section that looks quite empty. Here. I notice that bottom part looked really empty. So I'm going ahead and adding a stem of these leaves. You can see how I've also made sure that some of the leaves are going towards the taped edge, passive, they have gone underneath deep. And that we are popping in through our bookmark. If you remember or if you have already done our previous projects, you would have noticed that because of these mid of these cutaway elements are elements that have been half within the tape area. When you remove your tape, they look absolutely stunning and it looks very, very interesting. And it just really brings together the bookmark. So we're following the same thing, making sure we have some of the leaves just peeking through. Now. All we have completely dried about painting. And now we can go in and just add those Poland to the flowers using our lilac. I'm just going to add dots. And then use our brush tip to add connecting lines from the dots to the center of the flower. You can see how I'm doing this again. Little bit more clearly. She's doing these random dots with a pen and then using the tip of the brush to just add thin lines connecting them. Once you're happy with the overall painting, I love it to dry. Just make sure that thing is completely dry. The paper is dry. And then can do more to tape on all four sides. Without completed bookmark. Go ahead and add the ribbon on top to finish it all up. And this is our completed project. You're ready to tackle another one. I'm super excited because this is a really fun one. 6. Project 3 - Easy Motifs: So let's move on to another stunning bookmark. For this one, we're using three different colors. We're going to be using a soft peach color, the lilac, and olive green. Now you can use variations or shades of these colors for the projects. I have selected these because I think they work really well together. As you can see. Now, like the previous two projects, make sure to tape down your people. I kept about a 1.5 centimeter border around the bookmark. Now for this one, we are going to do a slightly different technique. We're gonna use a damp brush and then use it to build color for our bookmark. I'm taking this olive green and using it just around the edges to get a very light wash of color. Now, you can also use your brush pen and paint a little bit or draw a little bit and then spread it around. Personally, I like the idea of just using my paintbrush directly to develop the color. One thing to keep in mind in this process is to make sure that you get this green color along the edges of the bookmark page. So what would happen is, as you saw in the previous project, the minute to remove your tape, you're left with this really very interesting green backdrop, which looks stunning. So just make sure you just run through your brush along the edges. Off the tape down bookmark. Now, here's where we're going to add some splatters and textures to this base that we've painted. What I'll be doing is first just completing the entire beats. Once. I'm happy with that piece using the same damp brush and green, I'm just going to tap my brush on the Ben. So notice how I'm doing this. I've just taken the tip of the nib of the pen. I'm tapping my damp brush over it. Immediately you will get splatters that come through your painting. Now you can go as dark or as light as you want based on the amount of water that you take in. Also, you can pick a darker color. So in this case I stuck to olive green. If you'd like, you can pick up black and then do this plateau techniques. So it again builds up color, which is truly, really fun. I think it looks so pretty. And overall gives you this very interesting look. Now, let the entire thing dry completely before moving on to adding our florals. Now start with the soft peach and draw out a circle for the center of our flower. Now, I'm going to do couple of more of these circles, just three because I want to cluster them. I've kept about an inch gap between the circles so that I can add the petals and there's not too much of clash that happens. Once you've done this. Let's take our lilac and add some small dots along and around. These circles, these are basically the Poland and they are going to contribute to the final luck. Trials rarely fill these spots with a lot of the pain of the pigment. So make sure it's still wet. It's not just a dry dot so that we can pull the color when we go into our patterns. So you will notice as I go from circle to circle, the lilac doesn't blend that much when I touch it on the soft peach. This is because the soft peach has dried up. And so it's not really bringing in those blends, which is fine. That's why we had a lot of variation going on. Where you have the first circle that had a little bit of blending, the second one, not that much. And then the final, hardly anything. It all contributes to an uneven look, which is what we're going for because naturally in nature flowers aren't perfect. Now that we've done this quickly before it dries, so you need to make sure that your lilac is still wet. You will be able to see it. Listen, and that's a very good indication that it's still wet. Use a damp brush and pull through the color in circular shapes for the petals. So I'm basically just pulling the color from the center all the way around For the petal. If you aren't sure how to do a five petaled flower. In the practice exercise, I talk about a simple technique of drawing out a y letter and then adding in the remaining petals. So you end up with equi, distant battles. So if you have a little bit of a struggle, just make sure you go to the practice exercises and check that out can be a lot more easier for you to follow. And here you can see, I've just made sure I've used those tips and created by petal flowers. It is always so fun to look at cluster of flowers because it gives a very interesting look. In the previous two projects, we followed a full lineup of flowers scattered throughout the bookmark. But here in this bookmark, we are focusing on creating motives. So you have one motif here and then we're going to have another one right on top. Now, having done that, let's add in a couple of more fun elements to add to our motive. Here, I'm using a budding stem detail. You will see what I mean in a bit. So I've just added these poeple reshapes. And then I'm pulling through the paint with a damp brush and creating these oval shapes. Next, using our olive marco. Let's paint out our stem. By connecting these oval shapes. You can also add in some additional leaves. Adding more leaves to complete the motive. Notice with the previous element, I have bigger leaves at the bottom. And as I moved upwards, I've gone into smaller leaves. This is really fun tip that I can give you, which is when you're painting leaves, alternate the size of the leaves. As you move a V or towards something. There's always gives a very interesting looks, look and brings together the painting. You will see me do this very often where I have maybe small to big leaves or big to small leaves. As I progress. One motive is almost done. What I'm gonna do is take a little bit more of lilac, basically form the brush pen and just dip it to those oval shapes that we had painted. Just to build a little bit more color. You can see how it beautifully expressed because it's still wet. And you have this tunneling effect that is created. Now on the empty side, Let's dive into another motive. I'm going to follow the same idea of having three main flowers. And then you have additional elements to tie them all together. I'm following the same steps of using peach and then using the lilac to add those dots around the pH. Now, if you notice, the reason I wanted to show you this angle is you can see the way I hold my pen. This is how I can ensure that I have just dots that touch the paper. Now, if I was holding my pen, brush pen, as a normal writing tool, what would happen is I would get more elongated dots. So this way by holding it just perpendicular to the sheet, I end up with dots instead of elongated oval shapes or anything like that. And it also makes the effect a lot more easier. It's quicker to handle. And you can cover up the distance, Fausto. Now that this is done while it's still wet, Let's use our round brush and paint out our petals. Now, let's add our oval element, or basically the line of flop. But for this, I wanted to choose an angle that would suit our existing bookmark element. So while the bottom one has come upwards, or basically let's say the right side has come up going to the left. We can make our left side motive move to the right. And so together. It gives a very interesting look. Now, in case I hit decided the left motive to have this budding line go towards the left. It's not going to look as interesting. You can try it out for yourself. But this is where policeman's makes a huge difference. And using these tools are small tricks. You can make sure that you bookmark always looks amazing. I am so happy to see that this bookmark is come together. Adding couple of oval elements are circular elements just in some of the spaces that look a little bit more empty. Filling it up and we're done. We have just to remove the tape, add in our ribbon to complete our bookmark. While removing a tape, instead of pulling it out like this street where there's more likelihood of your paper tearing. Try to remove it at a 45-degree angle like this. And you will see that you end up with a much more cleaner edge. And this is our completed bookmark. 7. Project 4 - Leaf Addict: Now let's dive into another fun bookmark. I absolutely love the blended leaves and this one, I had to add it. It is one of my signature elements that I add to a lot of my classes. So I had to share it. I love it so much. In this class. We are going to be, in this project specifically, we're gonna be using four colors. There is the lilac, read lilac, which is a little bit more of a pink shade. And then we have curry, which is more a yellow, and then olive black. If you don't have these colors, do not worry, you can always use colors that are similar. And that's okay. You will still get your final look. Now, as always, I have taped down my people. I'm taking out my olive green and I am adding some dots for the center of our flowers. We're going to have just two flowers because I really want them to be the focus of the bookmark. You have one flower that is in the middle, more towards the left. And you can see this enough of space for the full flower. The next one is more to the right, upwards. So basically a little bit of the petals are going to go outside of the bookmark, which is going to give it a beautiful effect. Now, once we have done that using our curry or basically the light yellow color, Let's add more dots around the previous layer. Now, we're gonna be using our red lilac. As you can see, it's got a pink tinge to the color. And all I'm doing is adding these small dashes all around the circle. Now before it dries immediately, I'm going to take my round brush and I am going to add in the petals. So go ahead and follow the same exact method. What I'm doing is pulling the paint from the center all the way outside. Now this is a very likely or as you can see, because the pink is a light color. As we discussed in the practice exercises, some colors tend to be much more lighter and will not give you too much of bleeding. So some colors are much more brighter, like the lilac, which will enhance and that have a lot of pigment that you can pull through. So this is just a very light translucent layer that is just going to create a very interesting base for our next step. I loved this to dry. Meanwhile, let's tackle the other flower following the exact same steps. Now it is very important to let this pot dry because we don't want a mix of colors coming through. So allow it to completely dry. And then let's move on to another layer of petals. This is why I also kept a little bit of spacing in my first layer between each of the petals. They were translucent, so that was fine. And that's exactly the look that we're going for. Here. I've taken in my lilac and I'm gonna be adding petals in the middle portion. Of our existing petals. Now you can see how I'm doing this. Just follow along. What I would suggest is to actually wait, watch me paint a full flower and then go ahead and try it on your own. Because otherwise it might get a little bit confusing and you might miss out some important information that can help you when you start with your own flower. Now as you can see, what I'm focusing on is just getting the outline of those petals. I'm not making them too perfect. They're almost just like outlines. Some of them are just simple lines. I'm just giving an overall look. This is giving it a more translucent effect than if I went ahead and wanted to just make it really, really accurate by really painting out each petal. So to avoid that, to give it more of a playful look, I've just added more of outlines for those petals. And you can see how that comes along and really completes the flower. Now, let's start painting our leaves. We've done something similar in our practice exercises by using a V-shape for the leaves. Now based on where you are, as I repeated during the practice exercises, you might have to just do two or three leaves at a time. But if you are in a much more I would say cooler, but I would say more of less humid place where you're painting doesn't dry very quickly. You can try to do a whole stem all together. Now using my damp brush, I'm painting out the leaves. And you can see how it's called this beautiful translucent effect, which is blending outward. Now, just follow along the stem. Now another thing that I should add is that if you notice I have gaps between my stem because I'm going to add some more leaves of different colors. So just keep that in mind. We don't want to have a whole stem, just too many leaves and then we don't have enough to add on. Once we've done this, while our leaves are still wet, let's add a little bit of lilac along the edges. Now, I am adding it specifically in areas that are still wet. How do I know it's still wet? I can see the glistening off the water on that area. If there's no glistening of water, I automatically know that that is dried. And when I add my paint, it is not going to blend in such keys like I'm doing. You can take your damp brush and just go over that area that you are making it a little bit more water out, which means that it's going to again blend a little bit better. So the damp brush really helps activate that paint again. Now, let's leave that to dry before moving on to adding some lilac leaves. Here is where we're getting very creative and very unique with our leaf set. This is going to make the bookmark look absolutely unique. Using a damp brush. Just paint out the ease. Now since the previous layer has dried, you can actually overlap the leaves as well. Like you can see me do. If you feel like there are areas where there needs to be more leaves, just go ahead and paint them. Previous to what we did with the green and then adding the lilac. He'll be going the other way round where we have the lower leg and adding little bit of green along the edges. To balance out the big size leaves that we've got. Let's add some smaller leaves and I'm just going to beat them or draw them out directly with the brush band. Just you get that full effect of the color. Now that we have completed it. I love the painting to completely dry and then you can promote your tape from all four sides. Now, this same detailed artwork, you can kind of play around with it. You don't have to use the exact same colors may be changed around the placements of the leaves. Maybe change around the size of the petals. So here we had quite long sized petals. You can do the same thing with smaller or shorter length petals. There's so much that you can do with just these techniques and tools and make it your own. And that I think is the really fun part of this class. Don't forget to add the ribbon for the top of the bookmark for our completed stunning, vibrant ballpark. Now we have two more projects. Let's dive right in. So much of exciting information coming right up. 8. Project 5 - Floral Clusters: We now move on to another fun bookmark. In this bookmark we're gonna be using three main colors. There is the lipstick, read, the curry, which is more like a yellow, and then the olive Lack. Just with these three colors, we're going to create this stunning bookmark. The first thing I'd like you to do is to tape down your sheet, make sure that you leave just half centimeter edge for the work. Now, using the lipstick red, Let's now start painting our florals. What I'd like to do is taught with a circle. And you can see it's quite a small circle. And while this is still wet, I'm going to go ahead and take my brush. Damp brush works really well. And instead of following with our five petaled flower with just gonna do three petals. Which means we're just following a Y shape, similar to what we had discussed in our practice exercises. Now, once you're happy with that, Let's go ahead and add a little bit more of that red for it to blend our bleed through even more. Now we're going to do clusters of these. So it's the exact same flower in that area. So let's add more circles of red and then using a clean, damp brush, paint out our petals. Now for these new flyers, instead of adding shred for the center, Let's go ahead, ahead and add our query. So you have a little bit of that yellow shape that's coming through. This is then what we're going to add for the remaining flowers. So the cluster ends up becoming a mix of different colors. And that always looks very, very interesting. Here we're following the same steps as before, using our damp round brush to paint out three petal flowers. To live in up the flowers a little bit more, add red to the center of some of them. You can see how that color bleeds through immediately. Gently tapping the Ben is more than enough. Now that we've got this cluster, Let's see if we need to add any more flowers to just even the shape of it. Sometimes at this stage, I add in flowers that are just two petals just to show that they are half-life hours and there along the edges. So make sure you look at your painting and just check if you need to add any of those additional elements. Keep adding flowers until you're happy with the final result. You can see how I keep intermingling the colors. I start with a yellow and then add a little bit of red for the, for the center. I start with a dread and then add a little bit of yellow for the center. This mix and match brings together this cluster of flowers. So it doesn't look like there's just yellow flowers and just read Florida. It looks like there's a combination of both. That's a very fun trick to keep in mind when you're trying to add multicolored flowers or multiple different colors of flowers as a cluster. Try to have some of them as mixes of both to bring it every day to bring in the painting. Now that we've created this stunning cluster of flowers, Let's add another one slightly below. So that way we have two clusters that are going to surely highlight the bookmark and just make it look really pretty and truly interesting. I wanted to mention, now that you've done that first cluster, you're going to find it a lot more easier as you move forward. Here you can see how quickly I've just added in the colors, mix and match, and then I've just started painting them. It was much more fast to do that now that I've done that first. So it's a similar experience that I'm sure you guys are going to phase, where the first one is a little bit of a trial. The second one gets easier and it's actually much more faster. And you know exactly what to do. So give yourself that time to explore. Now when I look at the bookmark, I feel like there's enough space for third set, Florida clusters. I think it's really going to tie up the painting and just also make sure that there's not too many empty spaces. So let's do another small set. So it's not gonna be a whole circle, is just gonna be a little bit peeking through from the corner. Now that we have a base of very light colored flowers, Let's add cream to really brighten the entire piece. For the leaves, I'm going to use a mix of completely painted our flowers, as well as some that are blended. Here you can see I've started off with just simple leaves directly using my brush marker. Also going to add some blended or translucent leaves to, again, just highlight the bookmark. A really fun trick she can see I'm doing. If your base is very light and it's still wet, go ahead and use your olive along the tip for the color to blend through. You can then, if you want, use a brush to just blend the color for a more even shade. Another fun tip that I'd like to add is if you have a cluster of flowers that you're working with, add some leaves in-between the clusters. Now go ahead and complete the bookmark using the same leaf details as we've already done. Using the quick trick that we went into from the previous session of splatters. Let's add couple of splatters of green along the areas that are more white, where there's not much going on just to really complete the bookmark. Sometimes when there's too many whitespaces, the painting looks empty, like it needs some war. However, I would put this as a personal choice. If you like it the way it is, go ahead. Leave it as it as it is to move out to tip. But if you feel like you would like a little bit more of color along the edges, you can go ahead and add them. So as you can see of taking the curry or basically the yellow color and just gently adding it to the edge of the bookmark. I did want to mention in previous exercises will be hit done, is added a base and then added the elements. Here we did the elements first and then add the yellow. The reason I wanted to do that is if I have the yellow as a base existing, whenever I painted the green, we would end up with a different yellow green, which was a lighter shade. I wanted to avoid that. Hence, after I did the elements, I added in the yellow, just to make sure that the bookmark looks stunning, the elements have come together and overall look is achieved. 9. Project 6 - Transparency: Are you ready for our final project? This is super interesting. I can't wait to dive right in. We're going to be using three colors. Very simple, or olive green color that we've been using through most of the projects. Then we have lipstick red and finally an orange. The lipstick red and orange are gonna be used for the flowers to give a little bit more of a shaded effect instead of just having a one tonal flower. So the first step is to tape down your sheet and make sure that you leave just half a centimeter along all the edges to ensure that you have a really nice stunning bottle. Once that is done, we can start with our painting. So let's open up our orange and red. So we're going to keep them open and then take our brush that is slightly damp. Now what has happened is our brush is going to have both the colors. We can accordingly paint our first set of petals. I'm actually following the same thing there'll be had done in our practice exercises. I just haven't drawn it out. Feel free to draw it out the silica, the Y shape, and then plan out the remaining patterns. What I wanted to go for is a much more bigger sized petal because we're going to have multiple layers of them. So try to keep it as big as possible so that we have more space. Now as you can see, I keep doing the same thing of dipping my brush into both the colors and then painting out my petals. Again from the practice exercise, we had gone over the water usage or the water control. So here you can notice that I've taken more water and hence the mix or the petals are much more translucent. And we really want to go for a very translucent layer, very light layer. So make sure that your brush has an Alpha of water before you fill it up with the orange and red. In terms of placements, we are going to be following the same thing that we had done in our first two projects. Basically having these big flowers all throughout the bookmark. There you go. You can see how we've got that layer down. Big flowers. It might look a little bit messy at this point, but that's okay. We are, I'm going to add and fix and just expand on this even further. I would say if you feel like adding more, go ahead. But I'm just going to gently add some thin lines to make your work look a little bit more illustrative. To the petals look a little bit more unplanned. And very interesting. I love adding these lines that always makes it look. It just brings together the flowers. I don't know how I don't know what exactly it does, But I know it makes it look very nice. Okay, So make sure that your layer has completely dried. And then we can go into a second set of petals. Now with the second set of petals, notice how I'm making them a lot more shorter. I'm also making sure that I didn't add too much of water to my brush. So that when I went into filling it up with the pigment, you tend to get a more darker tone. Exactly how I'd explained in the practice exercise. This is the effect that we're going for where the first layer of is very translucent. A lot of water was there, whereas the second layer has less water and more of the pigment concentrated. Additionally, you can see how I'm making sure that I add thin lines at the edge, at the bottom of the petals so that they can link to the center of the flower. Now you guys must be very comfortable with this. So continue doing this for all the flyers. So here you go. We've got our second layer and we're going to allow this to dry. Remember, drying time is also part of the painting process. So if you don't give something enough of drying time, you're going to end up with paintings that look very much mixed up. This way. We are making sure that all the colors that have been used still maintain their intensity. Now, once the painting is dry, Let's pick up our red and go ahead and add a final layer of petals. As you can see, these petals are going to be much more shorter in length. And instead of adding orange, because orange is a light color, I'm directly going in for the thread and adding these smaller petals. Now let's add in our green for the center of the flowers. I always like to add my green dot as dots instead of just drawing them, are painting them. I really like the look of a dotted look. You've seen it in the practice exercises. So it's up to you. I would allow I think it's your choice. I personally love the dotted effect that comes through. Now that we've done this, we are slowly going to move into just completing our painting by adding some simple leaves and just dying out the entire bookmark. It looks absolutely stunning. To maintain the intensity of the painting. Just gonna go ahead and draw out the leaves. Once you've done this, take a little bit of that green with a clean damp brush, and add in some smaller additional leaves. Just to bring out a little bit of a transparency to these elements. Now continue doing this throughout the book block. Once you're done with your leaves, I like to add an additional step because I feel like it's nice, but I feel like it'll be good with some dots. So hence, I'm adding some dots that are connected to our existing leaf stems. Once you're happy with the overall look, remote a tip, add in the ribbon for our completed bookmark. This is the final project. Out of the six that we walked through. I think this is the most simplest one compared to the remaining. But also the most interesting and bright. 10. Conclusion: Now that we're done with our completed bookmarks, just ensure that you promote your tape and get your ribbon out. To add that final touch. I just add an s simple loop. Just to complete the entire look. I've chosen ribbons that suit the paintings, so it works really well. What I would also suggest is after you've done this class to try a different color combinations, there's so much of possibility. Once you know the technique, you can try various combinations and various styles and mix and match all the elements that we've covered in the session. If you have any questions, please add them to the Discussions tab. There's also a Reviews tab for you to add any of your reviews or testimonials for this class. There is also a Projects tab. So once you've done your six bookmarks, you can add them to the Projects tab so other people can be inspired as well. If you're putting it up on Instagram, please feel free to tag me on femme visionary, as well as using the hashtag femme visionary inspired. I also have 18 other classes up on Skillshare for you to watch and learn. So many of my other techniques. I hope you enjoyed this and have a really, really good, I can't wait to see your reviews and projects.