Painting Flowers with Gouache

1. Introduction: My name is Amaya and I'm an artist and video creator. In this class, we will paint a guash flower scene. You'll learn how to take your painting from a basic and messy first layer to a finished piece using a layering technique. If you've never painted with guash, this class is perfect for you. It's suitable for beginners, but also a fun painting for those already experienced with gas. And by the end of this class, you will learn how to layer Guash to create this flower scene. 2. Supplies: Let's first go over these supplies that you'll need. Of course, you will need to guash paint. I am using the Miya gash watercolor paper. This is biicansonn, you'll need a surface to tape your painting down to. And masking brushes, I'm using a size ten round, then some smaller round brushes like a size four and a size one and have a towel and some water, and we can start painting. 3. Base Painting: So to start, I'm taking a sheet of watercolor paper and tearing the edges down to the side that I want. Now tape down the piece to prevent the paper from warping. Wind painting, you can start with a simple sketch, but for this flower scene, there isn't much to it that I need to plan out. I just start with painting the background. I'm taking black and mixing some green into it. Having a dark background is going to make the flowers really pop. Fill the page with your background color. I'm laying the paint on pretty thick so we have a nice opaque surface to paint on. I'm leaving the edges pretty rough and textured. I also left space near the top, around the edges because I want to paint some of the leaves and flowers growing over the edge. To make it a little more interesting, I'm letting this first layer dry. And then I'm just going to go back over some of the areas where a bit of white is peeking through. And I'm going to go paint another layer over that. We will let this dry before moving on to the first layer. 4. First Layer: So for the first layer, we will begin painting some leaves. I'm adding more green into the background color that we used to lighten it up. And basically, we will be painting the leaves going dark to light. Gradually, we will lighten the paint as we add more layers so that the foreground is the focus. Using a smaller detailed brush, I'm painting some leaves starting in the bottom corner and peeking over the side. Just keep in mind that this first layer is going to blend in with the background and that's okay. Don't worry about it being too detailed. I'm adding some long pieces of grass going all the way to the top of the painting, going in all different directions. These are also going to act as the stems for some of the flowers. You can also vary the colors a little bit. I'm mixing some yellow brown into the green and adding more streaks of paint. Then I mix a brighter green by adding some yellow and painting in the leaves. And at this point I'm peeling off the tape so that I can start painting the leaves. Going over the edges, make sure the background is filled in how you like it. You won't really be able to change or add anything once you start on the foreground. Just keep this in mind before we begin on the second layer. 5. Second Layer: For the second layer, we will be working with lighter greens and adding some details to the leaves. On the second layer, just focus on filling up more of the area with the leaves and adding a bit of detail. I'm using a darker shade of green to line the leaves and a lighter shade for the darkest leaves. The details don't have to be intricate. Even just painting simple lines over the leaf shapes will add some contrast to the overall painting. 6. Painting the Flowers: Now we can start painting the flowers. I'm using white for the petals and then yellow ocher for the center of the flowers. I'm mixing in just a little bit of that yellow into the white paint, each petal going in a slightly curved direction. I paint a few at the bottom and a couple to the side and top to mark out a circular shape. And then I fill in the rest of the petals You can add to some emptier areas by painting some small flowers. You can also paint the flowers facing different directions. For this one, I'm painting it from the side and painting just a few petals since the other side will not be visible. Painting as many flowers as you want. The last step for the flowers will be filling in the center with that yellow. And now just the final details are left. 7. Final Details: For the final details, we will be adding some shadows and highlights. I'm mixing some burnt umber with a yellow ochre and shading the center of each flower. Next, we will add a high light by mixing white in a bit of that yellow. And just do that near the top here. I'm filling up the empty white space by painting in some more leaves. S. I'm mixing it off white to shade the flower petals. To finish the painting, I'm adding some stems to connect to the flowers that are just floating. And painting in more leaves where I did not paint any flowers. Again, to fill in empty areas of the painting. Once those final leaves have been detailed, the painting is complete. And here is our completed gas flower scene. 8. Class Project: For your project. Follow along with the class to paint your own guache flower scene. Create a project in the projects and resources page and add photos of your finished painting. I'd love to see your finished pieces. If you have any questions at all, be sure to ask me in the discussions page. And lastly, follow my page to stay updated on future classes. Thank you so much for joining.