Transcripts
1. Yellow Rose Skillshare Intro: Hi, my name is Eileen. Thank you for showing some
interest in my class. This class really focuses on showing you how much you can
do with very few materials. So we're going to reconstruct this image using only five
colors and five brushes. So we're really
going to focus on using this limited
palette to our advantage, keeping a lot of
freshness in the image, using economical brush work. And painting wet into wet. That's the challenge in
and of itself sometimes. So you can try to
practice how to keep your colors pure even when they're on top
of other colors. Learning how to load your brush, learning how to recharge
your brush when needed. All of those things
are really important. I've been a professional
painter for about 20 years. My current work, maybe for the last five years has mostly focused on landscape painting, but I teach all subject matter, still life, portrait,
landscape, whatever. I was the lead faculty
in drawing, painting, and printmaking in a low residency MFA
program for several years. And, you know, I had to talk about a lot of
different kind of disciplines, photography, video
work, performance. Which sort of
confirmed to me that painting is by far what
I care the most about. So I really love these
opportunities to get the basics covered so more people have an opportunity to try to express themselves
through painting. So here is my finished
painting from this class. I used a canvas textured paper. I use that a lot in
my video lessons, but you can use whatever
surface you have on hand. You know,
Canvas is fine. Just pay attention
to the aspect ratio. You know, the um relationship of the width to the height of your image because if that's
very different than mine, that can lead to
different results, which is not necessarily
a bad thing. I do talk about that
in the lesson itself. So I hope you enjoy this. It was a lot of fun to
do this lesson, and, you can find me on
social media at Eileen Murphy either
on Instagram, I'm Eileen Murphy
Studio, TikTok, I think I'm Eileen Murphy art but I'm trying to change that. They let you change your
username periodically. Yeah, thank you so much
for giving this a try.
2. Yellow Roses (Skillshare): Hello there. Today,
we're going to paint this relatively simple image,
perhaps deceptively simple. We'll see how we do. I'm using
a really limited palette. As you can see, the colors in this image are pretty
closely related, so I don't want to confuse the issue by
putting too many colors out. So today I'll be
using titanium white, cadmium yellow light,
ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, and ivory black. We're going to be
working Alaprima meaning that we're going to
do everything in one sitting, and I'll show you some
techniques to keep looseness and brevity in your flowers and
in the image as a whole. One thing to notice
about this image is it is maybe it's
slightly off square. It's square ish. I haven't
actually measure anything. But I only bring
that up to point out that your aspect ratio, that is the relationship your height of the height of your image to the
width of your image. That's really important,
and it's something that people sometimes forget if they have a reference image
they like and they're trying to translate
it into a painting. If your aspect ratio of your canvas or your panel or whatever surface
you're using, if that's different than the aspect ratio of
your original image, you're going to have to
make some concessions. You might have some
more space to fill. You might have less space
around your subject matter. It, things can vary
in all kinds of ways, and you can end up having to find different
solutions, which is great. You know, you want to be able to make those kinds
of adjustments. One more thing I
want to point out, which is really key
to this image is the variation in the
saturation level of the different flowers. So our two flowers kind of on the middle left as
we're looking at the image have very
yellow centers. The ones that are more in the background are actually
a little bit grayer. They're a little
bit less saturated. So all of that variation, really adds to the
specificity of this image and that's
something that we're going to out to be
focused on while keeping our marks as
economical as possible. So I like to do my color
mixing with a palette knife. I always feel like
that saves paint, if you imagine, like, mixing everything up with your brush, then you just by definition,
as you're mixing a color, you're starting with
a color that is not the color that you want
to be or end result. So you end up with this
brush that's loaded with color that isn't going to get you where
you want it to go. Like maybe you have
a little bit of the correct color on
the top of the brush, but then the brush is full of all these other
colors that were, you know, part of the process of you mixing the
color that you want to mix. That was a really long way of saying that I like to
use a palette knife. This is a diamond
shaped palette knife. You can use any shape or size. Your preference
for palette knife is a very personal issue, so experiment and
see what you like. I'm going to start thinking
about the background of this image. I'm going to what I
don't want to do is like paint the background
in a way that's, like, very fussy
around the flowers and leave the area
of the flower open. That is not going to
serve my purposes here. If you look at the shadow color in the center of the flowers, it is very closely related
to the background color. So why not have the background
color be everywhere, and then I can build the flowers around
the background color. The idea being
that the shadow in the center will essentially preexist the petals
as I'm working. And, yeah, I guess I'm oh, let me
just say one more thing. I knew I was going to
say something, and then I forgot it and now I
have just remembered. I don't personally
really believe in making a drawing that's
separate from your painting. Like, I'll do maybe
a little bit of drawing here once I
get the background in, but I'm not going
to do a whole lot. And that is because
I don't think it's useful to think about painting as being separate from drawing. I am drawing and
painting with my paint, and I don't want to, like, make a fussy little
drawing that makes me make fussy little painting marks as I like color in what I've drawn. Me, that is just not a useful
way to use this material. So let's begin. Instead of just talking
about painting, I'm going to start
doing some painting. So here, in our background,
we have some variation, there's the shadow
over on the left, and perhaps things get a little bit cooler temperature
wise on the bottom. I'm noticing all these things. But I'm just going to
initially start by grabbing some burnt sienna and mixing in a little
bit of ultramarine. If you mix these two colors
together in a 50 50 ratio, you get a very, very
beautiful neutral gray. That is a very classic kind
of painting mixture for gray. And a lot of times when I'm teaching classes
and things like that, and this is not just me, pretty
much everyone does this. I'm adding a little
more burnt sienna now. You start your students
working in black and white, and then the first
two colors you introduce are burnt
sienna and ultramarine, because they can be the gateway
to people learning about color temperature and also how to mix a nice gray,
which is really important. So here is this mixture. I'm going to dip my brush
in a little bit of solvent, just to loosen it
up a little bit. You could use a medium here. I'm not really going to be
dealing with mediums today, but that is an option. You could do this
all in acrylic. You know, that's not such a
big deal for working aprima. As you start to deal with mediums and layers
and things like that, that can really that's
something that can be kind of different
between oil and acrylic. So that's just worth
keeping in mind, Tsar. I just had to move my image over a little
bit. So here I am. This is a little bit rich. And I'm looking at
this and, you know, I'm like, Oh, this isn't
exactly what I wanted. Like it's a little bit too rich, it's a little bit too brown. G to move some of the
pile off to the side, and I'm going to
introduce a little bit of black a little bit of white and a little bit of black
into this background color, just to make it a little bit less kind of rich and golden. Not that there's anything
wrong with rich and golden. It's just not
necessarily what I'm seeing in this background. Now, of course, I may have perhaps overdone this grayness, so I'm going to bring a little
bit of burnt sana back in. So, like, we have a lot
of kind of push and pull happening here in mixing. But, you know, just
to point out, like, I initially started,
and right away, I was like, Oh, that's
not the color I wanted. So then just, like,
just change it. You don't have to be married
to that color that you mix, even if you and
that's, you know, it's a reason not to, like, really go to town and mix
a ton right away, right? Like, it's better to
try it on your canvas. Now, speaking of trying
it on your canvas, your first marks are
always going to be, like, a little bit deceptive
because having the white of the canvas surrounding your first
marks, which is unavoidable. You know, I'm going
into a blank canvas. So there's going to be
white of the canvas as I'm starting.
That's just a fact. But it's going to make
your color look darker, and it's going to
make your color look richer because it is, you know, again,
your first marks are these little islands
on the sea of white. And color only, you know, pure color in painting is like, you can't even really
talk about it because everything relates to
what surrounds it. So, you know, if things
don't look right away, it's tough because you have to, like, fill in enough space or context to really
see the color. So, you know, it's
just a challenge. You kind of have to learn
how much of what you're seeing is just because you have so much white
around your color. And then, like,
okay, there is that, but also could this color also actually be not what I wanted? Like, all of these
things can be true. So it's just like there's
just so many factors to keep in your head when
you're learning to do this. But you don't always
have to, like, run down a mental checklist, you know, like, it will
become second nature. I find as a teacher,
it actually is really, really useful to talk about
these things all the time because it makes it easier
for them to be on my radar, not that I still
don't make, like, constant constant mistakes. A day doesn't go by
that I'm not like, Are we sure that this is the right calling as I'm
just messing everything up. So now you can see that I have this dark background color. This is just a dry
brush. This is a big puppy dry
brush. No big deal. And I'm just knocking down some of the
marks that I've made. Now, I don't want to give
the impression that I am anti brushstroke because
this whole painting is about, like, very particular
kinds of brushwork. But in this background, I don't necessarily need a lot of activity
from my brush work. I want to kind of leave that for the center
of the painting. And also, in this
particular situation, given the lighting and everything that I'm
dealing with here, it is sometimes I just
do that just to kind of down knock down a little bit of the glare so that
it's easier to see. But it is a useful little
thing to think about. Like, when can you just kind of knock back your
marks a little bit, if you think about
that in service to letting other marks really be pronounced
and stand out? So I added a little
bit of white to the leftover pile of this background gray
brown that I was using. And I'm going to just introduce that little bit of a
denser color, right? This is not going to
look very different, and I don't want it to look very different because it's
not very different. So, you know, that's
just where these kind of Subtleties and nuances happen. So here I am. Again, just this
little bit of light. I'll introduce a
little bit of shadow, too, up in the corner. I'm trying to just let this
dissolve away a little bit. I don't want a big theme in the middle here. That's
not what I want. So I'm just letting it 'cause you can't see a
horizon line in this image. So there's not a point where, like, a table meets a wall. That's not what we're that's
not what we're seeing. So I don't want to
overexplain this situation. It's too much glare. Let me just knock that
down a little bit. Um, yeah, so I don't want to overexplain the color variations
that are happening here. I might take a little
bit more of that light, bring this down a little. And I know this is all a
little bit I don't know. I mean, it's background.
It's very important. It's the stage set
for your image. But I don't want to make it
too light or bright just because it simply isn't
in the reference either. So I am quietly, just again, dusting my dry brush over the image to knock
down some of the marks. And now I'm going to mix a
little bit of a shadow color. I don't want to get
too too crazy with the shadows because
I don't know where the shadows are going to
be yet because I haven't painted the flowers or the base, but I can I have a general
idea that there is a shadowy area to the
right of this image. So I'm going to take
some ultramarine. I'm going to take
some Burnsiena. This is more of a 50 50 ratio. This is also going
to look darker and cooler and it's gonna look like extra cool because
this background is pretty warm temperature wise. So I am acknowledging that, as I mix this color together. This is the same
brush, and by the way, this is just like what I refer to as like
a big dumb brush. It's just a dumb Filbert. It doesn't It's very basic. It's very, like,
workman like brush. It's not gonna give me, like, any particularly fancy effects or anything like that, but
it also doesn't need to. Needs to help me
get the coloring, lay in what I need to lay in
and move on with my life. So I'm also just increasing
some shadow over on the side. This is just making a
little bit of variation here back to my dry
brush to just kind of, like, merge that into some
of the marks I already have. And here we are still in
this land of darkness. We will soon emerge and get
some cool stuff happening. So I want to deal with the
bowl before I start to address the flowers because the flowers are spilling over the bowl. They are closer to
me than the bowl, and I don't want to have to, like, so say I paint these
flowers really beautifully, and then I have to paint the
bowl in and then I'm, like, fussing around at the edges of the flowers and trying not to disrupt them
while I paint the bowl. I don't want to do that.
I just want to, like, get the bowl in, and then I can paint the flowers
on top of it. So this is kind of a variation on the shadow color I just made because that was burned
Sienna and ultramarine. I added some white, and it looks a
little cool to me. Like, I want it to be a little bit cooler than my
background color, but not like a ton cooler. So I just merged it with my
leftover background color. And actually, I think
I'm going to bring in a little bit
more burn sienna. Now I'm kind of just like
merging all of this together. I might even bring in some of this leftover dark color
because, you know, particularly on the one side, we have some darkness happening creeping
over in that shadow. I'm literally holding my knife up in relation to my reference, just to see if I'm
in the ballpark, and that makes me want to add a little more ultramarine in here. So I'm tossing that in, moving back and forth a little bit. And before I deal
with this color, because I'm going to use the same brush at
least for the moment, with these demos,
I'm always like, How far can I get
with one brush? Now, there's no reason to
let that be your mission, but I do like
reminding people that, you know, if you can use the same brush for a little while and
sometimes you can't. But, like, I'm not doing fine detail or anything
at this second, so I'm going to keep
using this brush. And if you could do that,
it's actually a good lesson in learning to load
your brush enough so that you can add color on top of color and still be able to discharge
only the color you want. That gets a little bit esoteric, but it's worth thinking about. So finally, here we are moving into our actual subject matter. So I'm thinking about the bowl. This is like a strangely
shaped bowl. It's very round. This is not exercise
is not an exercise in, like, making a
perfectly round bole. So, like, get as
close as you can. I'll get as close as I can. No big deal. I'm
not really going to I don't want to
fuss over it too much. You know, brevity if you get very close initially
and you could, like, really,
really, really labor over it and get it a
little bit better, I mean, there are times when you're
gonna want to do that, but times when it's
not actually worth it because you lose a little bit of the initial
freshness of your marks. So, like, that back and forth is always a
little bit challenging, but it's worth it to try. So, okay, here is my my the kind of crescent
implication of my bowl. And now I'm taking
the same brush into this lighter color
that I'd mixed, and I'm just going to, like, work over that darker color and soften a little bit
into that darker color. And now is the time
where I'm like, do I need a brush that's going to bring out some of the
lighter color of this? Look at me mixing with my brush, even though I told you not to. Here's a little bit of lighter paint as I move
over to this corner, which is lighter and maybe
a little bit cooler. Now, this looks very
dramatic, right? So I'm going to go into the original color I mixed as a little
bit of a transition. I'm using a very light
touch here as I move over into my shadow color, and I'm trying to keep this
easy and smooth and not, make too big a deal
out of any of it. I'm just trying to
build this shape without getting into
too much trouble. So I have to point out, I have a lot of brush
work happening here now. Brush work is not it's great. We wanted to have visible brushwork as
many places as we can. But if you're trying
to paint glass, visible brush work is a
little bit confusing. So again, back to my dry brush, I'm going to just soften
this down a little bit. Saves me some time. I would labor over this more. I think if this was just me. Because the kind of softening in the back and forth can
be really satisfying. But, you know, just to show you what I'm generally going for, it's like, this
kind of smoothness. And I want to make sure because I did make this pretty cool. And I'm planning a little
bit at the top here because this is all going
to be blocked by flowers, so I don't really need to
decide where this bowl ends. So I want to make sure that
it is clear that get it, that it's clear of the glass. I want to make sure that
it's clear that we're seeing the color that is coming through in this bowl is happening because it's
transparent, right? So I might add a little
bit more burnt sienna now right on top
of what I've done. So just to kind of bring
that in over on this side, just because I was
like, I don't know. The dark was a little bit a
little bit dark and cool, and I think this makes it like this transition
makes it more evident that we are
dealing with glass here, and I still have the
temperature change. This is my dry brush,
which is getting less and less dry with every
touch to the canvas, just to make sure that it is evident that I
am representing the translucency of the
translucency of this vessel. Vessel is such a great word. And I will say that in
sometimes in still if lessens, I'm like, How many times
can I say the word vessel? Like, Let's find something else. So with my blending, I've given this a little bit of a tumor here at the
bottom, you can see. So because all these
colors are so related, it shouldn't be too hard to correct from the
outside of this shape. I always think it's
really useful to remember that with Still Life or any
other kind of painting. If I kept trying to correct from the inside of this shape, I'd end up with this giant
giant vase, which is, like, not the biggest deal, but I don't need that. Like, that's not what
I'm trying to do. Also, there's going to be a
fallen flower right here, so I probably didn't even
really have to do that, but sometimes I find things like that a little bit
distracting as I'm working, so I want to just be able to set things right so that they don't keep catching
my eye and being like, Oh, you got to fix that tumor,
you got to fix that tumor or it can also kind of change your relationship to the rest of the space of the vase,
if that makes sense. You can sort of end up compensating for a mistake like that somewhere else
in the vase without, without realizing that
you're doing it very simply. So now I'm going to mix up the leaf color cause
I want to have this darkness in the
center of the flowers. Again, because I don't want to paint the flowers really nicely, assuming that I will do that, which, you know, time will tell. And then have to,
like, fuss in and get these jarks in between them. Like, doesn't that
doesn't interest me. I'm not gonna There are
places like there's a leaf between two flowers and I'm not gonna
do that right now. Like, I'm not gonna
put in every leaf, but I do just want to I'm
trying to think about, like, what's the way what's the order in which I can
do these things that will make me have to fuss around the leaf and
make the fewest mistakes. Like, those things
are really important. Oh, I'm going to take a little bit just a
little bit of ultramarine. I'm going to take more yellow, and then I'm going
to take black. Yellow and black together is actually one of my
favorite, like, yellow variations to use because it looks it
becomes like what I call, a very natural looking green. Like, it's not super bright, it's very earthy looking. I actually have that pile because I want
this to be darker. So this is now mostly black with some yellow and a
little bit of ultramarine. One thing that I like about
this image, you know, we have some many associations with leaves, and it's like, I've had I've worked with so many students making flower
still lives over the year, over the years, and a lot of times they just make
these bright, bright, bright green leaves that
have nothing to do with the image in front of
them because in our mind, like, yeah, leaves on
flowers are green. That's how it is. And there's nothing Like those
associations are fine. They're really they're useful. It's good to, um, have some idea of how the
world works in our heads. But that's kind of the key
to drawing and painting. It's like, well, let me let me see what's actually in front of me versus what I
think is happening. So this is that same brush
I've used this entire time. This may be its last gasp, because I think I'm going
to switch for the flowers. But I'm not thinking about too many specific shapes
or anything like that. I'm just kind of setting the stage for the
flowers to come. And if you look at, like, I know these are leaves,
but at the edges, there's actually not
that much, like, a leaf like implications here. Like, I know their leaves
because of where they are and their color and kind
of what they're doing. But I'm not seeing in
this center patch, I'm not seeing a ton of, like, individual
leaf signifiers. There are some in other
places, but not right here. So, there we go. Here's my little I
know that was very, very technical,
that little glob. But now I'm going to start
thinking about the yellow of the petals and I'm going to
wipe off my pallet knife which has a bunch
of my dark green. Actually, before I do that, I'm going to move my dark green. That's a more economical
use of my knife. And now I'm going to grab not a ton of yellow. I
don't need that much here. I'm actually going to use even less than that because when you look at these flowers, they're not screaming yellow. So I'm adding a bunch of
white to this yellow, and I'm working right on top of that the dark green
pile that I just made, and I had moved most of it, but it is still
tainting this pile. I want that. I want that to knock this color
down a little bit. And now I'm looking
to see if this is, this is kind of something
in the ballpark of what I want to start with the
flowers on the left. I'm also going to warm
this up with a speck of burnt sienna because the mixture I'm working on top of
is a little bit cool, but also I want to the bird
sand is going to it helps to neutralize this color even a little bit more
because it's fighting with that little bit of the
cooler green that's in here, which is not a ton,
but it's enough so that just having that
green kind of fighting against the red that's
going to help me out from keeping this from
being too bright yellow. I mean, look at this
versus my bright yellow. Like, this is the
department I want to be in. Before I start, though, I am
going to take a little bit of yellow and a little
bit of burned Siana, and I'm just going to make
myself this warm pocket. And I can use that maybe in the center of
some of these flowers. Maybe I want even a little
more yellow than that. Actually, I'm going to leave
this file as one option, and I'm also going to separate some of it and then add more
yellow as another option for things that colors that I can introduce to change
the level of saturation. In some of these
flowers because, as I talked about
in the beginning, there are variations in the
level of saturation here. So I am going to What
am I going to do? I'm going to start with
this far outside flower, and I'm going to take actually a little bit of
this richer color, which is a little bold. And then also a little bit of my kind of base flower color. And I'm just going to
give myself a ring. And this is in my mind, this
is like the outside edge. Some of this is going to be
blocked by the flower next to it. But here we go. And what I want to do here, is let my background
color do some work. This is a very feathery mark. I'm leaving some space between the marks to let
the background color, again, account for some of
the space between the things. I'm also paying
attention to where is the central divot here? It's not quite the exact center, I'm really seeing
that I'm going to get into a little bit of
this darker color, too, because I'm seeing, I might need actually just some prucana here because there is this little overhang
of shadow here, and this could be a
little bit cooler. But I'm just kind of introducing the idea of that to myself. Here's a little more
of my warmer yellow. And so there is that
little central area, but it's got little
petals in it, and I'm just keeping
this dusting mark feathery, light, loose. And then I'm going to build
up the density a little bit. This is just like
my starting place going to go into that
first yellow that I mixed. I'm going to bring
some more of that, a more substantial amount
of that down here. And, you know, it's a little lighter down here on this edge. Again, we'll have another flower here that's going to
block some things. The other thing that's
happening is, we have kind of like a flat edge up here where we're seeing a different angle on
some of these flowers. I'm sorry, some of these petals. And then, there's a little some stick out flowers,
if you will, up there. But it takes just a
little bit of white. I want to be careful
with this and just kind of pulling that in. I want to keep this firmly
in the land of yellow. I don't want this to
be to get super white. I'm going to go into my yellow, just straight into
the yellow and then bring that directly into my mixed yellow color to build
this side up a little bit. This side is a
little bit grayer. And actually, while I'm
talking about gray, I'm going to mix
some of it that I can kind of jump
into as I want to. So this is like, Oh, that had a lot of my knife had a lot of
yellow on the back, but that's actually
not terrible. So this is sort
of a medium gray, maybe a spec on
the lighter side. Which is fine. And I'm going to
take my petal brush right in here and I'm going to introduce that kind of cooling
shadow element over here. So you can see that
that's a little bit different a little bit of
a different emerature. These are these little
variations that I was talking about in the beginning. I'm introducing one, like, extra speck of black here, which is better than
the burnt sienna that I tried to use here. And I'm bringing that to
Oops, right to the edge. See, this brush has
had so much color on it that I just
discharged some yellow. Not the biggest deal. I just blended it away, but
that can happen. I was using a lot
of pressure there, which was why that didn't work as smoothly as
I would have wanted, and now we have a little
bit of star shape here, so I'm just softening that down. But that gives you some
of the idea of how to get some of the
depth of this shape. Now I don't need that
central area to be quite so quite so dramatic, so I'm softening that down. And I think that might be I might be able to
move on from there. I'm going to take a
little bit of yellow directly into this color again. This is all getting
a little mushy. I'm going to bring in a
little bit of warmth. So you can see how
I'm kind of, like, working into and out
of this main pile, you know, with these
different variations and trying to load my
brush up accordingly. And here we're going to
meet some of the green. So that's going to be interesting an
interesting element here. So I actually want that to
be a little bit richer. So here I am. And I'm going to bring
in a little more warmth to doing kind of the same thing protecting
that center area, keeping these kind of
light, loose, open marks. As I hit the green, I'm starting to pick up
some of that color. That's fine because I
can integrate that into the rest of the image and
let that be the variation, the variables of temperature and chroma and saturation
and all of that. But I also need to
use enough paint, especially if I go here into
this lighter area that it doesn't look like our
flowers turn green. Like, that's not
what's happening, so I don't want to
give that impression. So here some lighter
colors here at the edge. Got to integrate
this lightness with my interior which is richer. And then here is more perhaps
more lightness on the side, leaving some space
to show, like, different levels of flower
of petals happening. I keep losing the
word petals today, which is not ideal, considering the subject matter, and just, like, meeting
around this side, letting the green become some
of those shadowy layers, you know, the shadows
between the layers of Again, my petals. And then maybe I can bring, maybe a little more lightness in the middle for a
little variation. And I think I can get This can stick out a
little more and kind of, like, cross into the area of the other petal and maybe an
extra swirl or two, like, getting right
down to the center. And we have some
petals behind them. I'm sorry, some
flowers behind them. This is like kind
of a judgment call. I could have started with
those and then just, like, cut them off with the
flowers that I just painted. There's so little information
about these flowers back here that I was a little hesitant to
do that because I was like, I don't really
know what's going on. But I can see them
more easily in relation to the flowers that
I've already painted, right? So I can just, like,
pull up this kind of shape here, maybe
add a little top. That was a very There was a lot of
bravado in that mark that was possibly not necessary. I'm going to do the same
thing right next to it. I'm gonna get into my
gray a little bit, too. I think that's gonna
be key here, like, bring in some of that
gray in that flower. And that flower, like,
the shadows there, maybe it's time to
introduce another brush. Oh, there goes my palette knife. The shadows there, um, are really, like, emerging from the background,
if you can see that. And I think that is really
important to know that you don't always
have to delineate between your background
and your foreground. Like, things can merge. That's a normal thing to happen. So here, this is my
leftover background color, and I'm just using
that to, like, bring in some shadow color and maybe even a little
bit of a warmer color down here to help, like, finish off that shape. This could be higher,
or you know what? You know what it is?
It's not that it should be high. It should be
further over to the side. So rather than try to move all this that I've just painted
in the wrong spot, I'm not going to do that, why would I make that
much work for myself? I'm just going to
my question is, like, should I make
another flower or should I just kind of
make this one bigger? And I think I'm
just going to make this one a little bit bigger. So that's the petal, and this is the area
underneath the petal. And I can bring in the
top kind of softly. In this way and then maybe
bring a little light over here and maybe a little I don't know,
something like that. And softening. This is
just a little round brush, kind of softening these
shadows in and also kind of softening this edge out into the background,
if that makes sense. Like not everything
needs to have some kind of, like,
screaming edge. This is sort of just
fading out a little bit, and this could be a
little bit smaller. So I just kind of worked
that away a little bit and here I have a
leaf in the mix here. And so this is
just a flat brush. It's a pretty crisp flat brush. It's synthetic. So it holds
its edge really well. So that's why I want to use that brush here
because I want this to be a crisp mark right on top of some
of these flowers. So there is a leaf, and it's like, in the
image, it's like, just hitting the top
of that other flower. Now, I want to but let
me correct myself. I don't want to
belabor that too much. Like, I want to
kind of get out of that area as quickly as I can, because the more I fuss around, the greater the chances
that I'll mess up. Here, I have a lot of
pain on this brush. So here and here
is another leaf, and I'm going to go into my gray a little bit and just drag that on top just to
create a little bit of dimensionality
there. In that mark. Now back to my petal brush, which is this little Filbert. And let's see. I have to even before I move on. I simply must just blend that
out a little bit better. Probably isn't even
visible on the camera, but sometimes you can't emotionally move on until you've made your own
little corrections. Now there's another
little rose back here, and it's like, kind of pronounced
the top and fades away. I'm going to bring in some gray. So I'm really just looking
at the shapes here, if that's not clear.
Like, I'm divorced. I know these are
roses, right? But I'm and it's not that I'm not
paying attention to that. That's really important
to what we're doing. But I'm trying to focus on the shapes I'm actually
seeing versus, like, what I think a
rose should look like, 'cause we're seeing all these different
angles and aspects. And I'm just trying to show allegiance to the
shapes in front of me. I'm going to blend This
is my background color, my little brush with
the background color. I'm like, blending
this out a little bit. So I'm extending that shape, but also letting it trail off, that kind of push and pull of here's where it is,
here's what it is. And then, oh, where to go? Because you don't need
to see all of this. I also can bring in I might have a
little extra space here. I don't know.
It's hard to sell. Bring in a little bit
of darkness here, this should all be a
little bit connected, and now I can bring
in this big leaf that is covering part of that. And closing that loop
softening around. And let's see. We get into some
of our other Oh, should I do this flower first? I should do
that flower first. It's funny because I kind of
like them as they are now, but they don't they seem to be hovering a little
bit over the vase, which is not really
helping me that much. So I'm going to be a
little aggressive. This brush is full
of my petal color. So I really kind of loaded
it up also with white because this is like kind
of a light area right here, and I'm just pulling that. Now I've made that mark, and look at all the darkness
I picked up on that brush. And now I got to
discharge that, right? Getting rid of that, going back into my kind of normal petal
color that I've been using. And, you know, this time, the leaf color is kind
of at the center of this flower because I
have the leaves there. So I am just knowing that I'm going to
pick up a lot of that color, which means I have
to keep going back to my palette and recharging the brush, knocking this color, the color that I'm
picking up from the painting, knocking that off, and then coming back
with my yellows. So that is what I'm doing, kind of getting right
into the mix there. And my yellow pile is
getting pretty tainted. I might remix it.
We'll see if I can get far enough
without doing that. This is my little warm
burnt sienna color. I'm introducing
some of that here. Like so that got a
little mudd, right? So now it's really important that I get into a good
amount of my yellow. Like, I got a lot of pain
happening on this brush and I'm pushing in that kind of funny leaf petal
over on the side, but I want to close that
shape and then bring in a little bit of burnt sienna
here to warm up this shadow. I think I have a little
too much dramatic darkness in between those layers,
but that's right. I mean, can you ever really have too much dramatic darkness? I don't know. And just dropping
that yellow in as well. Going into the warm mix of yellow and adding that
here, because, like, in all of this kind
of green grayness, I got a little one
note in this flower, and I don't want
that to be the case. I also I'm gonna get into a
little bit of burnsiana and, like, bring the center
shadow down a little bit. Like, this is we have a different angle on this flower than we do
on some of the others, and the shape is different.
Eileen Murphy
