Transcripts
1. Welcome and Introduction: - Hi guys. Welcome back to another class, and today's lessons will be covering a hydrangea painting. I've painted it not so long ago, and I had a lot of very positive feedback on her, which is why I wanted to create a course based on it. It's an A four sized, uh, watercolor painting, so it's not too large and it's quite impactful, I think, because it just uses a couple of colors and it very much, um, creates this nice, bulbous looking shape, which, you know, was a future of the flower in real life. And I'm particularly happy how the colors turned out on the amount of detail I was able to achieve on a relatively small painting for my, you know, regular skill. So I do hope that you enjoy the class. The project of the class will be to paint alongside with me and to upload a picture down below of your own attempt at the hydrangea. I've changed the format a little bit, so I know, um, filmed everything the entire painting process from start to finish, and I don't skip anything and lay I hardly ever speed anything up. So this will be a longer class, and I will really take you through a step by step and I'll show you the perspective, um, from above, but also from different angles on you get to see my palate, how I pick up my pain, how I load my brush with my paint, how much water I'm using, how I washed my brush and then dry my brush. Everything, um, is included in the course down below. You'll find a couple of things that you can download first, being the reference picture, which is a stock image that is free to use, um, the line drawing that I provide that you're able to then transfer with my help onto your watercolor paper and a full list of the supplies for the class. I don't provide any progress pictures down below because I now take you through the entire painting process without speeding anything up. So you get to see the painting many times over, and I think you know, at some point during the painting process and watching the videos, you'll be able to, for example, pause the video and simply have a look. If you're painting is looking, um, similar to what I'm at so I didn't find that they would be really necessary for this class . But if you do miss them, you can let me down. Let me know. Down below in a review, I'd really love to see what you guys think of the class. I hope you have a lot of fun painting alongside with me, and I'm really eager to get started, so let's move on to the first class.
2. Materials, Challenges and Techniques: alright guys. So in terms of materials will need quite a few things. But the list is very similar to most of my other classes. Um, I have a full downloadable list down below that you can have a look at, and I'll walk you through the most important things now as well. So obviously the first thing that you'll need is watercolor paper. You'll need an a four size piece of that water colored paper, and ideally, it's at least 300 GSM and thickness. Um, I'm not going to be stretching the paper, but if you use anything thinner than 300 gs, um, I would advise for you to stretch it. The pedals are fairly small, and we won't be wetting a large portion of the paper and one go, meaning that if you use 300 GSM or thicker, you might get a little bit of a wave in your paper. Boy, it won't buckle, and in this way we can avoid having to stretch the paper. You'll also need a board that you can mount the paper onto. So for me, I just use a chopping board here. Can't you see the painting? I just use a chopping board because it fits the A four, Um, a piece of paper Really well, but you can use any board that you have to be able to secure it in place. You'll also need, um, some masking tape. And I mentioned a little bit during the class about the different levels of quality of masking tapes that are out there. So pay attention to that when I discuss it. Um, aside from that, you also need access to a printer so that you're able to print out the line drawing that I've already provided that you can also download down below. Now, if you prefer to make your own line joy, you can actually use my other guide here on school share, have a course on it about how to create on transfer line joins onto paper to be able to transfer the line. During that, I provide you will need several paper, which is that graphite layered great paper that you can layer between, you know, sheet of paper with your drawing and you want a colored paper and then push your drawing through. And you'll also need an HB pencil to be able to do that Additionally, I advise for you to use, um rather than a regular research on artist aeration there these Squidgy flexible little things that you combine art supply stores because they're very good at removing excess pencil off of paper. And in this particular painting, because it's quite light and pale and fresh and color, any excess graphite on the paper will release much on it can detract from the quality of the final piece of the final artwork. Um, something that I also quite enjoy using for this particular project is one of these erasing pens. So it's just like a then no like this, and you can, you know, achieve a lot of control when you were raised. Um, but it's not mandatory. I just like using it. I find it very convenient. Um, in addition to that, you obviously need your paints and a palate. So for the majority of the painting, we just use a very minimal number pains, and I would strongly advise for you to use a ceramic palette, so something that's, um, ceramic or porcelain. They come in different shapes and sizes. So I've got one of these here, which are kind of rectangular with wells, but you can also use one of these round ones. This is what I used to demonstrate the painting process on. The benefit is that the pain relief pools nicely at the bottom of these wells, and that means that you're able to choose whether you want to, for example, pickup watery pain from the inside of the well or thick, concentrated paint from the top here. And that is something that I used to my advantage a lot in the painting process and something that I also show you up close while we're going through the painting process. The colors that you'll be needing for those process for further painting, I should say, mostly are ultra marine violent, which is like a lavender purple color. So that's this one. Down here, we'll be needing a blue, so I use ultra marine finest Bihsh Mental, which is a non granulated, um, non granulated ultra marine blue, which obviously goes very well with ultra Marine violent. Then I also use a color called Shrinking Violet, which is a deep, dark purple. That's this guy down here, and I used Ruby Red bush. Minka has the pink, which is very similar or actually the same pigment as many brands using a color called Permanent Rose. And it's a very vibrant, bright pink. So we're using this those purple, the blue and violet for the main portion of the petals of the flower towards the end of the class. I also make use of love black and a little touch of lemon yellow, and we will end up using a little bit of this. Um, this is Drawing Inc. It's by Winsor and Newton. That's white, and I find that this is a great way to add pops of highlight. And it's a lot easier to use, I find than something like what? Wash or white water color. So I do prefer this, but something like white brush. Our white water color would also work. So in this class, the main skills that will be covering are wet and wet, wet on dry and working in layers, meaning that we blend. A lot of the paint went on what by first wetting the paper, then going in with paint. We then add some details working wet on dry after we've let our initial wash of color dry and in the end. We also add details and shadows and other things like that working dry, and in doing so, we build up these subsequent layers that build up the depth, the shape and the shadow of the flower. One of the big challenges with hydrangeas is that they grow in round bulbs, meaning that we have to try to achieve that round looking shape in our painting on day. One of the easiest way of doing so is using very few colors and making sure that the shadows are in the right place and the right level of depth, so that they are not too dark and not too pale, and that they match the left, the the level of darkness, the depths of the shadow that you see in the picture and that that's consistent across all the points and the painting in which you have these shadows and I'll be taking you through the process of achieving this, and I'll walk you through it so that you're also able to do that on your own, and you can then use this skill. You know, for any floral paintings, anything that has a round shape like this, and the peddles that kind of intermingle Onda wave and create highlights and shadows
3. Preparing our Paper for Paint: Okay, so here I've got the printed line during that you can download with the course. I've just printed it on a four. And this is the exact size that will be painting and as well. And we're going to transfer that onto our watercolor paper. Now, to be able to do that, I first have to cut my paper to size so you can either use, you know, a sheet that already comes size a four. Or you can do what I'm doing, which is to cut it to size. So here I've just traced over my a four piece of paper, which is about 21 by 30 centimeters. And I've made sure to leave a couple of centimetres of extra room there so you can see me showing that there. Um, just that there's enough space to tape the paper down onto aboard. I'm gonna be using ah, paper cutter year to cut it to size. Um, but you don't have to do this if you don't have one. Obviously, you can just cut it with scissors. I just use it because I've got it, and it makes very nice clean cuts for you. And what will essentially be doing is taping it down onto aboard. Um, I'm not going to be stretching those paper because it's fairly thick. It's 300 um, 300 GSM paper. Andi. The petals of the flower are very small, which means that we're not wetting a very large portion of the paper. Once, if this was a different kind of flower, um, such as, for example, of Rose or a PNE or something with large petals, I would stretch it or at least tape it more securely. But for the purpose of this class, you don't have to stretch the paper. Um, and that's also why I'm not doing it here, because I am not a very big fan of stretching paper. If you're using thinner paper than I am, let's say 140 Chisholm. Then I would stretch it simply because, um, at such thin with such thin paper, you can run the risk of it buckling, even though the pedals off the flowers are fairly small. So generally my advice is always to go for a thicker paper rather than thin paper. Um, because that lets you avoid stretching, usually depending on what you're doing and worst case scenario. If it is a little buckled, you can always iron over it Later. Here, I'm just indicating that you should make sure that the rough texture of your papers facing up, that that's facing you because that's what you should be painting on. I've grabbed my board. I quite like using these small, clean, chopping ports. Um, because they're small in size, they're not so bulky and was going to be lining it up here and just to check, we can see that we have a border all the way around so that there's enough space to tape down our paper and to hold it in place, which is what I'm doing here. So I'm just using masking tape. We're going to go all the way around taping it down to the board and wrapping the tape all the way around the board on the backside. I would really take your time with us on, push out all the air bubbles, and, um, I would not buy, you know, the cheapest masking tape that you can find. I find really large quality differences between the different, um, kinds that you can buy, and I do recommend getting one from in our trap and actually not choosing the cheapest one because I've had masking tapes actual peel back or not be removable at all, or not stick enough for beach so sticky that it rips your paper. Um, so I just recommend having a look around your local art shop and if in doubt, ask for advice on Don't buy the cheapest one. So I'm just lying it up again here, making sure that we've got enough space. So this is essentially what the composition of the painting will look like. And I'm going to be placing down another round of tape to make a white border. So within that, a four sized painting I want to have a white border on the right side on the bottom side, where the flower essentially is corrupt off, um, so that we have a nice, clean white border and it just looks more polished. And I quite like the way it looks once it's in a frame. Yes, I'm going to be placing about half a with of masking tape along the bottom again, so that's slightly overlapping with the tape that holds the paper in place. And I'm just making sure that it's straight. Push out any air bubbles and flatten it out, and then I'll just do that on the right side there as well. And you can see I'm being careful with us and taking my time and making sure everything's secure in place and I wrapped the tape around the board. So at this point, we're ready to transfer are drawing onto our watercolor paper if you're interested in this method. In general, I have a whole skill share class about different ways in which you can create line drawings and different ways in which you can transfer them onto your paper. It's a short class, so just check that out. If you were interested in learning about different ways of doing that in this class will be using this printed out line drawing that you can just download yourself and we'll be using swell paper. So that's the Graphite Co. To transfer paper that lets us pass a layer of graphite through and on to the watercolor paper. So I'm just lining up my line drawing here, and I'm going to be taping it down on one side so that it's kind of attached like a flap and I can keep checking if my line drawing is being transferred well and the tape will just hold it in place until we're done transferring and in this way you know it won't move around, and we can make sure that we transferred neatly without too much munching. I'm just taping that dump. Alternatively, you can also use these binder clips, but my board is a bit too white, so I can use them right now. That's why I'm using tape, but you can also clip it into place if you want to, so there you can see we can lift it. We can place it down, and all I'm going to be doing now is slipping a sheet of Cyril paper in between the line during and our watercolor paper and do make sure that the graph I'd sites on the side with E um, gray layer of graphite is facing down and onto your watercolor paper. You can see I've used this one quite a lot, but as long as it works, just keep using it. I think I've used mine at least 50 times so far, and it's still going strong. I just laid that down make sure it's the line, and then you can use any kind of pen or pencil to push to clarify through, so you're going to be tracing over every line that's on the line during and in the beginning. Just flip over the paper and check to see that it's really transferring your graphite onto your paper so you'll see me do that in a minute. Here. I'm just tracing over the first petal, and I'm switching over to a ballpoint pen because a little easier to apply pressure with a ballpoint pen, then with a pencil. It's a little bit of practice to see how much pressure you need, And that might depend on the thickness of your paper, the pain you're using, etcetera. But there you concede that I've pushed the pigment through, and I'm just going to be going all around the during tracing over every line. Um, if you struggle to keep up with which lines you have traced or have not yet you can use a colored pen, something like green or red or even blue will show up on the paper, and then that's easier to see what you've covered already and because we've secured the A four piece of paper with the line drawing in place with masking tape. You don't really run the you know there's no risk in lifting edge, having a look and laying it back down. So it's a fairly easy and, um, foolproof way of transferring the drawing so you can see just in the time lapse here that I've gone all the way around and I make sure that I cover every line that there is, and you can see that we've missed a couple. So my line during has a couple of mistakes in it and will correct for that in just a minute , Jim, just flipping back and forth, jacking if I missed anything and making sure that whatever I see that I've missed, I actually transfer. And at this point, I'm happy with that and I can remove that a four piece of paper. What I'm going to be doing now is just taking the picture, having a really close look and making any corrections that I see I still need to make so that we're ready to paint. So I'm gonna be doing that with just pencil and an eraser. I'm using one of those gummed are just a research because I find that they just work a little better and where the terrified is very dark. I'm lightning it by just rolling the eraser over those lines. Um, because excise excess, uh, graphite will smart quite a lot with the watercolor. And because it's a fairly pale and soft painting, I'd want to minimize the amount of pencil that's on there, and I want to make sure that it's not very visible at the end of the painting process. I'm just kind of rolling it over any area that I see where the line is darker than needs to be. It just needs to be visible enough so that we can paint within the lines and within the petals. I was taking my HB pencil to make sure it's HB so that it doesn't smudge, and I'm going to just be checking some of these flowers and fixing anything that's missing or, um, that maybe I didn't transfer quite right. So here, for example, that but of the flower on the right there, I missed it out. So I'm destroying that in, and I'm making sure that I join up all off the petals. So here I've missed this line and there I've missed that little petal that's peeking out from behind. And there I'm also joining up the upper petrol. And then I'm adding in that large metal, that tux behind the one that's coming out in front. I also know does. I've missed a petal here, so I'm just going to be drawing that and as well. And I'm really taking my time, looking at the picture and drawing in every line that I'll need to be able to paint. So that's now this triangular looking pedal that's sticking up towards us and that large metal, that tux behind it Now, obviously, if you don't want to have to make some of these corrections, you can just adjust them on the line. During that, I provide yourself. I think it's good practice to do this, but, um, obviously everyone makes mistakes, so I missed some of these when I was creating the line during. You can also actually just print out the picture yourself and create your own line drawing if you prefer, Um, and again, I have a course all about how to do that. So if you're interested you can go check it out. It's really brief. And Angel's go through three methods that I used on a regular basis. Something that's very important with this particular painting is to take your lines all the way up until the edge there to make contact with the masking tape. Because in this way we will get a nice, crisp, clean white border when we lift the tape. Once we finished painting because the tape will block any paint and pencil that lays on top of it. So once we remove it, it'll just render a nice, clean curse blind, um, To get that affection, though, you do have to paint and draw all the way up until the edge so it's the one would be painting. You'll see that I go over the masking tape and I make sure that there's no white making contact with the masking tape. And that way we'll have a nice, crisp contrast between the color and the white of the paper later when we lift the tape, so just make sure all of your lines make contact at the right side and the bottom of the drawing, so we're almost finished. I'm just adding a couple of injuries at the top here. So I know up until where to paint, and I'm taking a little bit of artistic license here, just looking at the picture and making sure that those pedals kind of have a beginning and an end and the picture. It's not totally clear. So whenever I'm unsure, I just make a rounded line that's kind of in line with the shape off the bulb. Um, some of those petals and the picture, if you look closely, are but blurred out so you can kind of see, hear what I mean. And I'm just trying to focus on the pedal so that I do see sharply that are in kind of line with E round bulb's shape when we're ready preparing our paper or so it's ready for painting. And if I take you up close, you can really see you know what it's looking like, how dark it is and how much detail there is. So I'm still just taking my eraser and kind of rolling over these spots and cleaning anything up that's a little smudged. You can also do this with one of thes um, little eraser pens there quite good for getting into small little nooks and crannies. Just removing any smudge marks, any graphite and you were on the paper that is unnecessary just going around and cleaning everything up those little extra lines, those little scuff marks, any residue left from the transfer paper. We really just one thin, clean light lines that show us where the pain needs to go with as little graphite. It's possible I'm just going around in cleaning it up and any dark areas I'm just rubbing or rolling over with this artist Eraser these air really good for lifting this kind of excess graphite. So that's our line drawing, and now we're ready to paint. So in the next lesson, I'll start on the first washers towards the left of our composition.
4. Washing in the first layer of paint wet in wet (left): all right, so in the beginning stages of the painting process, all that I will be doing is laying down paint and establishing the broad shape of the petals working wet and wet, meaning that I usually let the petal and then go in with a watery paint. I'm using the base purple or what I consider our meeting purple, the ultra marine violent for the more majority of the petals. And then I'm dropping in either some of the blue or the pink toe accent the petals, depending on what colors I see prominently in the picture. I'm going to pick painting this from the left side to the right side simply because I'm right handed. And in this way I don't drag my hand through any of the wedge paint, and it's easier for me to let it dry. I'm going to be working petal by petal, but I make sure that I don't wet two adjacent pedals. So and that way I avoid unnecessary bleeds where the water connects and the paint can travel between petals. Because that's not something that we want. We want soft, blended color within a petal and a nice, distinct edge or a sharp line at the edge of the petal on. The easiest way to achieve that is to wet all the way up until the pencil line with clean um, water, and then to go in with pigment all the way up until the edge on one of the things that makes this painting pop on gives it. Um, you know, an expressive quality is by making sure that your Andrews of your pedals air really well defined and clean and crisp and high, in contrast, meaning that there's a lot of pigment. They're two separate, one pedal from another, and you'll see me building that up as I go along. All right, so you can see that I've kind of set up my station here as I've laid down my towel. My paper that's been mounted. I have a little bit of this transfer paper just protecting the side of my paper from my palate. Many splatters and I've got some paint on the go. So here we've got the ultra Marine violet and note how I've always courted it at the top of the well there, and I've just wedded with a little bit of water. So in this way, the water will pool at the bottom of the well, but I've also got dry paint that I can dip into. So here I'll just demonstrate I've scored it. Some of that ultra marine blue, well trained, financed, and I'm just waiting it with some water so that some of the pigment pools in my palette in my ceramic palette. On this way I have the choice between taking watery color from the bottom of the well or dipping my brush into the dark pigment. And I've also just got the red there and the shrinking violet. So I'm just getting myself situated here so that you can both see my palate and the painting and I've got water there and I've got to tell to wipe my brush on as well, and I've got my picture that I just set up in front of me and we're going to be starting on the left bottom side of the canvas, and that's just because I'm right handed. So it's easiest for me to work from left to right. Some was taking a brush, and I'm going to be watching this first petal here on the left on this first wash of paint will be wet on wet, meaning that we either with the petal with water and then apply paint. Or if it's a very small area, I'll work wet on dry so that I can cover the entire area without any part of a drying. So these larger pedals I usually first lay down water before I go on with paint and I'll show you up close in a second. What that looks like. I'm really taking my time with the water and making sure that I go all the way up until my pencil line. So there you can see after dried off my brush, your bitch, and I'm going to be grabbing something a bit smaller. So this is the larger of the two maestro brushes that has a very a thin point to it, which I find makes it easy for this particular kind of painting. And I'm loading it up with the water from the well and a little bit of pigment at the top there, and I'm going in with the ultramarine violet, and you can see how the paint spreads quite easily and how I'm focusing on that edge there and I'm just coaxing the pigment over the petal on making sure that I keep that edge crisp and clean. And I'm going in straight for that dry, concentrated pigment and taking that all along the edge of the pedal. There, I'm going in for more pigment again, and I'm pushing it over that petal, and I'm starting where the petal is going to be darkest because it has this cast shadow from the petal that's just on top of it. Here, you can see I'm just spreading out the pigment up it. And because we're working wet and wet and we've let the petal, we will not get any harsh lines or marks anywhere because the pedal will take a while a while to dry. And our goal is to finish painting the entire pedal before any area of it dries. So essentially you're going to always be wetting the area. You wish to apply pain, too, and then you're going to be painting it completely wet. If any part of it starts to dry, it's better to um, either re wet the area or to let it dry completely and then go in with more water. So we've got our first layer of the ultra Marine violent, and I'm going to be adding an accent color here, which is that ultra marine finest That's our blue color. And for each of the petals will be painting. We will be starting off with E purple color, ultra marine violet and adding in either a touch of theblaze you or a touch of the pink. Depending on which petal we're working on, the darkest color will work with. And the initial washes is this sh minka violet, which is a deep, dark purple. And I'm going to be placing that wherever I see dark shadows on the on the flower. So I've pushed that wet color over that area with the shadow, and I'm just letting it spread itself basically. And the entire petrol is still wet. So we're so working wet and wet. Now, you see, I've just given my brush a little clean and a little pat dry, and I'm just cleaning up the tape there. So I'll show you up close on another petal. I'm not going to be painting any of the petals that make contact to the first pedal we started, so I'm moving up a little bit. If I were to paint immediately, next to the petal we started on, it would bleed and we don't want any bleeds. We want clean edges where we've got our pencil marks. So I'm going to be skipping those pedals that are surrounding the 1st 1 And I'm going to move up here onto this large one to demonstrate so you can see I'm taking my time with the water. I'm just wetting the area and going all the way up until the edge. And I'm really making sure that the water goes everywhere that I want to paint to go. I'm working with e smaller of the two mop pressures. So this is the, um, petty fee. This is the smaller of the two, Ma Precious. And you can see that I really take the tip all the way until the edge there. And if I moved the camera little but you can see but its glistening with water. But it's not pooling. It's not stopping went And that's what we want. We don't want, um, a puddle of water. We just want damp paper. And here you can see how so I've taken my maestro brush again. I've waited with some of the water from the well, and I'm just picking up a bit more big men from the top there with the tip of the brush. So that's the ultramarine violet, our baseline purple. I'm going to be pushing that over the pittle and because of the water, our pigment spreads already quite easily for us, and we get a lot of interesting swirls and effects that come from the water moving around on the paper. And that's something that you wouldn't get if you were to just go in with wet paint on dry paper. This is one of the rial benefits to working what and what because the pigment. Because the pedals are quite wet, we have a lot of time to play with them and added more layers of color. And to add the's accent colors on this particular painting, we're going to be using that pink color and the blue toe add accents. And if you look at the picture, you'll see that some areas of the bulb or more pink toned and some are more blue toned, and that's how we'll get that effect here. I'm just going in for more pigment because it's just a bit too weak. So I'm really working my brush tip and that dry pigment at the top, and I'm going back. And with the tip of the brush, I'm going to be dabbing and placing that pigment where I want it, and you can see that I really take care with the edge of the petal because this is what'll let us gets a certain amount of realism, um, on interest in the painting, because where we have that dark line that you see there forming now, that's actually just the pedal getting covered up by another petal. That's on top of it. And that's simply a straight line. So we need to maintain that sharp edge for that effect to be, um, effective at the end of the painting process. So if we draw crooked line there, it won't look like a sharp line calls by a shadow. So do keep the edges of clean as you can. And the easiest way to do that is to be careful with where you place your water because wherever your water goes is where your paint will go. And here I'm focusing on the address so the edges are always the first priority, and you can basically let the water and the paint do more or less what it wants in the middle of the petal. I'm hinting a little line there in the middle of the petrol where the vein runs, and I just do that by dragging the tip of the brush lightly over the middle, and that will just help us create some of those veins later on. But we'll be adding those mostly at a later stage ones. The first wash of paint is dry here, have picked up the ultra marine blue, and I'm going to be placing that acts on color down here in the corner wherever I see it in the picture. So if you look at the reference picture, there's a little bit of a blue tone there, and I just want to capture that and make sure that it comes through on each petal. Will paint will either have a little bit of that pink or a little bit of that blue accent, and then that way we create interest in variety in the color and, because they're so closely related, toothy ultramarine violet, that is our base color are based purple. It'll look fairly naturally in well blended on. The witness of the pedal will do most of the blending for us. I'm just coaxing that blew a little and making sure that the blue is not overpowering the purple. Now I'm going to be going in with that purple. So the EU shrinking violet to darken up the shadow. So I've picked him up on the tip of the brush, and I'm running it along the edge. And again, it's very closely related to our baseline purple, and so it's easy to blend, and it looks very natural, and it just creates a very vibrant shadow. You could also create shadow by using, for example, a grey or brown. But I didn't want to do this here because those colors tend to look more dull and they tend to de saturate the painting. And I want lots of color, even though we have a lot of shadow, and the easiest way to achieve that is to use a color that mattress the color of your flower. But then, in a darker tone, a darker, a darker version. Basically, that's a rather than mixing and gray I chose for the dark purple here, which will create lots of dimension and value value being depths of color. How dark the color is without removing any of the brightness without removing the colorful nous. Let's say of the painting, and in that way it looked bright and vibrant. Um, but we can still create that shadow and form and still create the illusion off that bulb of the flower, which is really key for making this painting work. Okay, so that's it for the first wash off that pedal. And by this time, my first petal on the left there has dried, so I'm just going to be wetting the one next to it. And this is how I will be moving around the entire flower, always making sure that an area drives before I paint the area next to it. So there you can see it's has a sheen to it. It's wet, but it's not a puddle of water. It's not something what, and now I can go on with paint again. So with that same brush, I've picked up more of that ultra Marine violet again, and I'm just pushing that all over the pitch. And again, I'm using the tip of the brush just to make sure that the edge is clean and crisp and that I'm keeping the pain where it belongs. Here have picked up more pigment again from the top of the pallet, where the paint is very dry just because I needed more color, more pigment, and I'm carefully taking the point of the brush into that nook there and just pushing it up until the edge for the pencil Linus and you'll notice that I always focus on the edges first before a deal with the middle of the pedal, because the water will do most of the blending for us and, um, and before the petal dries, I always want to make sure that theaters er well defined. And as long as you keep the inside of the pedal what you won't get any harsh edges, you won't get any marks. Um, you won't get any unwanted marks anywhere, so essentially focus on the edge first, while the petals wet and go from there. So here you can see after it's kind of person with that pigment across, and I'm pretty happy without further first layer of paint. Now I've picked up some of that blue because again we're adding accents of blue or pink, and here it's more blue in the picture. So I'm just going in with the blue wherever I see a little bit more of a blue tone in the picture. As I said earlier, to get the full effect of that white, crisp edge at the bottom of the painting, I take the paint all the way up until the masking tape, so I'm really pushing it up against it, and I'm also just focusing on that edge up there. This was now some of that dark violet color, so I'm deepening up the inner corner here because if you look on the picture, it's quite dark. And, as I said, the darkest color were using for now is this violet, which will add a lot of depth and shadow to the painting. Some just dabbing my brush here to deposit more off that pigment, and I'm letting the water plan that over the petal on into the other color. And again, I've picked up more of the violet and I'm really stamping it into place there, and you can see that as time goes on, the water is really doing a lot of my blending for me
5. Blending colors wet in wet (left): Now I've washed my brush and I'm picking up some blue and I'm going to be painting in that pedal that's on the very edge there. It's just a little tiny one, and I'm starting with blue because I see it doesn't want blue, then purple. And because it's so small, we don't have toe wet the area first. Like I said, are these larger pedals with lots of detail. I went from first to work, went on What? But with these tiny background pedals and little shapes, it's fine to work wet on dry, and I've picked up a little more off the blue. I'm darkening up the edge of that petal there, so I'm just making sure that I capture a bit of that shadow that's visible there in the photograph. To do that, I used the smallest of the maestro brushes, but any small brush will get the drop done, and I'm just cleaning up my masking tape again by wiping over it with the tissue here in the photograph on the right. You can also really see how there's much more blue in the bottom half of the both and much more pink up in the top half off the bulb, and we're going to be replicating that by using more of the blue towards the bottom area and more of the pink as an accent color towards the top. So I switched over onto my larger brush again because now I can. Which another petal. So I'm going to be working on this one up here now. It's kind of medium and size, um, wedding at first and the pedal adjourning that has already had a chance to dry. So there's no risk of too much bleeding happening and just wetting at first. Before we go on with paint closer, jump to my small brush again. It was dry, and I'm wetting it with the pigmented color from the bottom of the well of the palate. And then I'm going to be pushing the pigment over the petal. Now it's always a smart idea to wash your brush dried on the towel and then go into the color. Otherwise, you keep diluting the water that's at the bottom of your well of color. So if it's wet the way it is in my palette right now, I would not add more water to it because you would just keep making a weaker and weaker concentration of color. So what I tend to do is that I wash my brush. I dried on the towel that you see next to me, and then I go into the color. So here, to keep that nice dark edge where the shadow is cast, I make sure to push very pigmented color along the inch, and then I'm kind of helping it blend out by rubbing my brush over the area. So here you see, I'm washing the brush. I'm drying the brush and then I'll go into color. My paper was a little bit too wet there, so if that happens, you can always just patted with a paper towel tried to minimize my use of paper towels. But this is one of the few things that I do need them for, and I tend to have about one and total per painting, so I just keep it and it keeps drying and I can keep were using it, and then that way you don't waste too much tissue paper. I was going in with my smaller of my two maestro brushes again. And while that area up there dries a little bit. I could work on the pedal down here that, um has, like, a very dark shadow where its rolled up, which I'm painting and first with a purple. So I'm using fairly strong ultramarine violet to make sure that I get that round shape And now with watery all train violet while that little crescent shaped dries, I can focus on this other petal in the back here and because it's so small again, I'm working wet on dry. Um, and it has less detail, so I don't need as long to blend colors. I'm just painting in the shape, just using one consistent wash of the ultra Marine violet all over. Now I'm picking up more pigment from Latin altering Violet, and I'm gonna be taking it along the edge where the shadow his strongest. So in the picture there you see just a little bit of a hint of our shadow being cast since it's obviously in the background. And I just wanted to help accentuate the pedal out in front the paler petal that will paint in later. I'm just kind of coaxing that pigment across the edge there, picking up more of that concentrated pigment from the top, and I'm taking it along the edge again. You can see I'm really taking my time here and since the papers less wet than if we were to work, what on what It does take a little longer for the blending, but you do have more control over it this way. So I've just washed the brush trying to doff so that I don't believe Don't dilute the blue anymore. And I picked up some blue, and I drop in a little bit of accent color there just to turn up the blue hue a little a little higher and to make sure that it's nice and harmonious with the other petals in that area. And I wash my brush again, trying my brush again. And then I can just use my dry your brush to blend without adding any more water to the pedal. In that way, you don't overload the water the paper with water, and in that way you also avoid creating blooms. So sometimes I add blooms because I want them, and sometimes I purposefully tried to avoid them. And if you drop too much water onto a pedal that you've already painted. Most likely it will create a bloom, and it kind of pushes pigment in a funny cauliflower circle shape. So if you want to avoid that, try to dry off your brush before you go back in for more blending. Now we're working on this pedal appear again. It's had a chance to dry a bit more. It was just a bit too wet earlier, and I'm trying off my brush, and then I'm going to be lifting some of the pigment by just rubbing my brush on it and then wiping the brush. And then that way we create a bit more of a highlight on the right side of that pedal. And I'm going to be doing the same down here on that edge, where it has this little fold back turn that will be accentuating again later with the shadow that you see being cast their. But for now, we're just focusing on the highlights and making sure that those air present Now I've picked up more of that concentrated ultra marine violet, and I'm going to be focusing on adding a little more pigment and intensifying that edge there where the cast shadows visible and also taking some across the top there where the petal is turned upwards and making sure that I spare any areas that need to remain pale for the highlights. This is one of the difficult things with watercolor that you have to preserve your whites. You can't go back in a remove paint later without it looking messy or splotchy. So in these first washers, the focus is just too. Get color on there, the colors that we want, um, add in some of the dark shadows already as much as possible and preserved the highlights and the actual details. The texture is the sharper shadows will all add in the next layer once this one has dried. So in a way, we're taking at least two passes over every area of the painting. So while that pedal up their drives, I'm happy with it for now, going to be working on this little boat down here, and I've actually gone on with the blew because the boat was much bluer than it is purple, and I've just dropped in some paint, and now I'm just lifting a little bit of that paint from the center of the bulb word house highlight while I'm down here on most of filling out that very dark shape on the right of the pedal There, it's just a cast shadow, but I'm using a lot of contrary to pigment rather than what paint. Um, I find Maestro breast rose to basically color in that shape. Not that I'm not making contact with the bulb, the little blue ball player we just painted in because it's wet and I don't want the colors to bleed together. So there's a very fine little gap between those two shapes right now. Now I've picked up what watery all terrain violet I'm going to be painting in that shape up there. So that's one of those slightly blurry pedals with less detail that we don't have to work what and went for and picking up more pigment just by rubbing my brush over that dry blob of paint. And then I can deepen up that shadow from the fullback. So that's just that little part of the pedal that's folded over and in the very background . So wait for that to dry before I paint the main portion of that little blurry petal in the back. So here I've washed my brush again and I've tried it a bit and now picking up blue and I'll just paint in that pittle in the back there. Um, and I chose blue because the shadow is more blue to me than purple. But I'll be going in with quite a lot of the ultramarine violet to create that shadow. So it looks a little blue now in comparison to the picture, but it will get addressed it with the ultramarine violet. In a minute, I was washing my brush again, drying it and using a little bit of paper towel to dry the area because I've just made it a little bit too wet again. And while that dries a little bit, I've moved over his life, You to the right here and all paint in that large pedal that's kind of tucked in and peeking out. Um, and it had a lot of shadow on it, So I will be working quite dark here and again. I've skipped over any area that is still damp, So everything that this is kind of, uh, touching is dry by this point in time
6. Building shape and shadow (left): So I've loaded up my small maestro brush with the ultra Marine violet, and I'm starting on that edge where the shadows darkest. I'm making sure that that's nice and Chris been clean. And up until that, I really pushes up against that pencilling, picking up more pigment again and building it up and again. You can see that because we have with the petal. Most of the blend ing's happening automatically with the water that's there, and I'm really just focusing on building a pigment along the edge. I'm taking that brush right on the tip and looking at the picture. So every time I hesitate when I'm painting, I'm looking at the picture, and I'm just spreading the pigment where I think it needs to go. I'm also building this up quite slowly. So with paintings like these with these petals and flowers, I think it's smart to work slower rather than fast. Because with watercolor, when the papers wet, the pain spreads quickly and it's easy to over power. The paper was pigment, and you might then run out of white. You know you might lose some of your highlights that you are trying to maintain so especially when you're a beginner. I think it's always good to start slow. Um, it doesn't mean that it can take a while, but has your practice. And as you keep going with that, you learn to become faster. You learn which shortcuts, um, work in your favor and which don't. Because with watercolor, sometimes it can just happen that you mess something up and that's OK. Then you just start over again. That's part of the process. Have just dropped on a little bit of blue there. And I'm going back in with more ultra Marine Violet, and I'm just stamping it along that edge there. So if you were ever in a position where you're not depositing enough pigment, you can stamp it a bitch to get more, um, pigment in one little spot, and again the water will blend it for you anyway. And I'm just using the tip of her brush to really sharpen up the edge. If you're short on brushes, I would argue that you could do this entire painting just with two brushes, something medium in size to wet the pedals with, and something like the brush that I'm using right now, which is the maestro of the smaller of the two maestro brushes for all of the petal work, basically, with the paint, Um, occasionally you'll be seeing me use other precious. But that's just out of convenience, because I've got, um and they're clean and I've got them laying, ready to go. But honestly, I could happily paint this with two brushes. So then I would choose for either my small mop brush or the larger of the two maestro brushes that I own and the small maestro. Um, what's particularly nice about these? My sure wants by DaVinci is that they have such a fine point. So if you really apply, But if pressure to the brush obviously it'll found out and create a larger, it'll cover a larger surface area. But if you use it on its tip, it really has a lot of control. And it holds a relatively large amount of water and paint for its size anyway, So I've picked up some of that make a violet, our darkest purple, and I'm running that across the itch, and I'm also taking it down into that nook at the bottom there, and now I'm tracing the bottom line that turns D That kind of meets up with the pedal at the bottom there. And I'm picking up more pigment and just making sure that I have enough control by not having my brush be to it. So I dread off my brush and I'm picking up some blue, and I'm going to be using that blue to finish up filling in that shape at the bottom there . And this is where the fine point if this brush was really very handy. And I'm waiting this center Pittle here now just with my smaller mop brush and I'm again making sure that I keep the water only where I want the pain to go. So I'm making sure that I take it up all the way until the edge and a repeat again. Everything has had a chance to dry, so there's no chance of bleeding anymore. I'm searching onto my smaller brush and I'm picking up more of that ultra Marine violet and then I'm going to be walk working inwards and that word. So I'm starting in the center there, and I'm going to be working my way out. I just dabbed on some with up pigment, and I'm spreading it outward, kind of dragging it here, where the pigment is more concentrated, where the pedal has a bit of our shadow. There, the animals are taking it along the inch, making sure to keep it very pale because the pedal of so much paler than the others in the vicinity. And as I said, one of the biggest success factors for this kind of a painting is to make sure that the values are correct so that pale areas are equally pale as they are in the photograph. On that, dark areas are equally pale and you're painting as they are in the photograph, and that that's consistent so that one shadow that is equally dark in the picture toe another shadow is also equally dark, and you're painting in both areas, so this pedal must stay paler than their remaining petals in the vicinity while the arch petal dries up it. I'm just dropping in some paint onto that little pedal up there that we didn't quite finish earlier. Mm, I'm just using come off the otra mean violet to coverage in pigment and to build up some of that depth so it's wet right now, and I'm just dropping in some more pigment that I'm coming back down here, making sure it's all damp where needed to be dump. So this is the larger of my two Maestro pressures again. It has the lovely find up, but it just holds more water than the little one. And I'm going in with some of the blue now as an accent color for the large metal. There, you can see it just a little better. So I'm looking at the picture, and then I'm dropping in paint where I see fit. I'm going over that crescent shadow there. It also increase the blue tone of that. And I'm going to be dragging the pigment wherever I see it in the photograph, including that edge of the petal. There, you can see that I'm using the brush on the very tip to make use of that. Your point. And I'm taking it along that edge there as well. Even though it's not a very dark shadow, it's still there, and I just want to be able to represent that, And I'm just spreading that blue so that, um, the playlist area of the pedal is that and just towards the left. And the pigment is kind of fading out from the center, where that dark shadow is picking up more blue and depositing just a little more color on the outer edge. There, using the ultra violet, I'm just adding a hint of that. Vain the veins that you see on the pedal. I want them to kind of fade out and be quite blurry. I just want a little bit of background for when we draw them and, more clearly with our details, just so that the pigment kind of blurs outwards from each line, so that it won't be so stark when we at them in later. And I'm using the smaller of the two maestro brushes for this, I'm just using some of the ultra mean violet, and it's fairly watery and the petal is still damp. It's not very wet anymore, but its stamp enough so that whatever detail I adhere right now will be quite blended and soft and blurred, and in this way we build up that detail in those veins because if you look in the picture, they're not, you know they fade outwards. They kind of emanate a little bit of color, and it's not so stark. So the best way to achieve that is to work wet and wet. Well, that dries all work on this battle here. So this is kind of wrapped Pittle that's bending around another one, and I'm just starting out by covering it and one even layer of the ultramarine violet. I'll be lifting some of the highlights later, but for now we're just focusing on adding pigment. So here you can see I've taken the smaller brush and I'm wiping for that highlight. Wipe it on my towel, and then I can pick up more pigment to add more shadow and depth of color. I'll focus about the bottom here were the pedals darkest, and I'm picking up more of that ultra Marine violent. Something to note about this pigment is that it doesn't ever quite get very dark, so it's quite forgiving. Um, even if you really loaded up and use very almost straight out off the to paint from it, it will never get very dark. And that's great for beginners. And it was a great for projects like these where we have a color that's very similar in color, but different in tone. So we have that Schmick a violent right that will service are dark, deep, purple. And in this way we're less prone to making mistakes when we use our basic color, which was that ultra lean, violent So you can see after sounded a bit of shape there color, and I was switching over onto our shrinking violet or dark, deep purple. And I'm going to be focusing that at the bottom where that pedal is really dark and deep. And I'm dragging that vein again so that it blends. And I'm also going over that dark shadow again while I'm down there, Just deepen it up. Now I've cleaned off my brush and I'm switching to the blue, and I'm going to be using a bit more blue at the top here. So again, I'm working wet on dry because it's such a small area and it doesn't really have any pure white, and it's all just lift off the highlight in a bit. But we don't have to be too careful about preserving too much white, and I'm actually also tracing around that fold back that you see in the picture, and I'm just making sure that that sliver of white does not come in contact with paint. So I'm literally just leaving a little sliver white. And I'm making sure that it joins up with the highlight that we preserved on the bottom portion of that, um petal, and I'm joining it up here I'm using and my small brush just to lift it off again to make sure its one smooth line. I'm not having so much success with my natural bristle brush here, so I'm switching over to a synthetic little detail brush. This is a really tiny five star Ciro, and it's synthetic, which means it's a little better the lifting pigment and it's just dampened. I'm wiping it over the area that I want to lift, and I wipe it on my toe and I left again and I wipe it again. And then I can just pick up some more pigment and darken up whatever area I want to darken up with the ultra Marine violent, and I've switched back to my natural bristle brush the meister brush. Now I can just go along that enter that I made myself and at some depth to that federal I've now picked up some water and I'm just dropping in water at the tip of the pedal. All that will do is drop some water and create a little bit of a bloom there for highlight . And it looked quite organic because the water is just moving the pigment on its own accord . In the meantime, I'm still deepening up that area there just by dropping and more of that purple color. Then again, I'm focusing in on that edge where the shadows darkest because once more it will keep everything looking clean and crisp and the little so preserve some of the realism and the shape, which was really quite important for this particular painting or any flowers that you know , grown bulbs or in Bunches, because this is what creates the dimension and the shape. And it has a certain you know, three dimensional Look, I've such back to that son Synthetic little detail brush just to lift a bit more off the pigment up there, and I'm dropping in a bit more water and just pushing some of the pigment away from the tip just to create a bit more of a highlight. And there you can see what I meant with that. Full back in the highlight. I'm just taking up close. You can see that that little sliver of white helps to preserve that. Effective the fold back there.
7. Finishing the first layer on the left of the painting: and here I noticed I was missing a little pencil line. So I'm just drawing that in just to make sure that each of my petals here are well defined . And I was missing that one as well. So if you look at the picture, there's a little flower peeking out from the back and it's quite dark, and I just forgot about that earlier. And I'm just working up here now, painting this petal and blue. Um, it's all going to be quite dark, which is why I don't have to work, what and what I can just go on with paint. Um, it doesn't have any white highlights at all, and it's fairly far in the background. So I'm making my life a little easier by skipping one step on just going in straight with paint. And this makes it quite easy just to trace around all the lines and they'll be dropping in more pigment in a minute as well. You can see I'm taking my time, and I'm using the tip of the brush trip really carefully placed the paint in the water because again, wherever I take water is where my painful spread to just joining it up there, and I'm dropping in a little bit of water for a little bit of a highlight on the edge there . So it's just kind of creating a bit of a bloom that pushes the pigment away. Kind of disturbs the pigment and cauliflowers it up. I'm just pushing it a bit more. Sometimes you have to help it along with a little bit of manual force. And there you can also see how what my paper usually is. So it's not stopping. There's no puddle. It's just gleaming with a little bit of water. I'm adding more highlight again, pushing more of that pigment down again as it spreads upwards. I'm going in with the purple, no of us if the ultra Marine violet to finding that edge and really making sure at that age is nice and dark. I'm going in with more purple again or liberally now because the petals so dark. So I'm just building up the color there and really making sure that this pedal is darker than the rest around it. While I let that 1st 1 dry, I'm just going to fill in this area over here. It's really quite dark. So under starting out with the purple and then I'll be adding more pigment to build up the depths there. Well, that gets transferred Dry can also work on this 3rd 1 and I'll just leave that gap there. But dark, almost black gap. I'll leave dry for now again so that there's no chance of any bleeding and was feeling in this entire petal with one wash of that ultra Marine violet and again because it's dark and we're just going to be adding more pigment. I don't have to bother working. Went on what Here and pick up some blue. And I go on with quite a lot of the blue, because if you look at the picture, it is very blue toned, dark and blue toned. I'm just running better along the edges and letting it spread on its own towards the center there. So this other Pittle hasn't dried yet. Um, just, you know, the water is soaked into the paper of it, but I'm still able to place in pigment and darken up that area, um, without leaving any mark. So that's just what I did and up here, I've just filled up that entire area with a thin wash off the pink, just like we did with a purple. But because I put a little very pink toned and the overall color scheme of the upper portion of this whole ball was much more pink. Um, that's why I'm starting with the pink up here. I'm just making sure that the edges are need and then I'll go in with some of the purple in a bit. There, I've got the purple, and I'm just running that all along the edge where that shadow is on letting at sprint. So this is again the all terrain violent, also running it along the bottom there where the shadows cast and then later all, uh, add and more of that fold off the petal. That's just what I'm doing here with that little synthetic detail brush again. I'm just taking it, rubbing it over the area. I want to lift, wiping it on my toe. Just make sure the brush isn't too wet when you do this so that you don't accidentally cause any kind of bloom. It should be damp, but not what, And then you can just lift off pigment depending on the brand and color of water color there you're using might be more or less difficult. So with ease, Shrinker paints. I find that they're fairly easy to lift so long as they're still dump. Um, but I've also experienced some brands or specific colors that don't lift this easily. I'm just taking the shrinking violet all along that edge to make sure that that's nice and dark and that the shadow is really present. I'm just having a look at how that spreading, and I'm always looking at my picture. That's why I hesitate credit bit when I hold the brush. I was just checking, looking at the picture, never going to go in with a little bit of blue down here for that boat. And again, I'm just going in straight with the pain because there's not really any strong highlights that we need to preserve with a clean brush. I'm just lifting a little bit of pigment on the upper area off the boat there, just so that that's a tad pay there than the rest of it, dropping in a bit of water to create a little bloom there just so that it pushes the pigment away from the highlights a little bit. And with my smaller of the two maestro bushes, I'm taking the ultra Marine violet all into that space. With this one, we need to be a little careful because it has quite a pronounced highlight. That kind of shows how it's bulging and curving and kind of poking out a little under that petal. That's above it. So we really want to have a strong contrast between the very dark, shadowy edges towards the top in the bottom and that round highlight that we see in the middle of the pedal there. So I'm working here around that pale area drones, making sure that I get the edges nice and dark and crisp and slowly building up the pain so that I don't accidentally add too much at once. So I am just taking my time with my thin little maestro brush on its very tip, taking all along the edges and making sure that those air nice and dark and I'm starting out pale rather than very dark drones because I can add more off the purple later. But I want the structure of the petal in first, so I want the dark areas darker and the pale highlight preserved before I add too much pigment at once. It's a fairly small area. If you look in comparison to, for example, the size of my thumb there, and it can happen quite quickly that the painful spread too far. Andi, you'll struggle to maintain the highlight that you need. And I saw I've just missed a little line there. So I'm just stenciling Medin for myself, cleaning up my brush and going in with a bit more pigment on the edge there. And this time I've gone in with eash Mika Violet, more pigment along the edge, just dabbing a little too stump more color on there and also darkening the shadow up there at the top of the pedal, I noticed that there was a bit of a curve and that upper right corner, so I'm just making sure that that's there. And I also take the pigment down around the side here because that highland is quite high and the rest of the bottom portion of the pedals fairly dark. So as you can see, I'm just putting in the shape step by step. I'm always looking at the picture and I'm also watching the pain to see how it spreads. And the benefit of working wet on wet in this case as well, is that you have caught a lot of time, time to sink in, time to react to the paint. So here have dropped on some water, and I'm using that bloom. But you can see spreading now just to push the pigment away from the highlight a bit more, and also to create a bit more of an organic looking swirl of the pain. It gives it more interest, and it's one of these features of water cover that. I think you don't have to use them, but I do find that it just makes it look more organic, more interesting, a little looser, a little less controlled. And with a flower like this, with all of these strong lines and these specific petals, I think it's good to have a little bit of an element of something free and natural in there . So it doesn't look too stiff or too calculated, and I'm just taking the Schmick of violet along both edges, darkening them up and making sure that curve up there in that corner is also present, and I'm just watching the paint a little bit to see how it's spreading. Right now, my brushes pretty much clean and I'm just spreading a little more pigment into that area again is to make the make the highlighter little more, um, higher up to move it up of it and so that it's not so stark align. And while I give that a chance to dry will fill in this very dark little triangular shape down here, you can see that my painful stressed a bit too dry. So I went in and I dipped into the purple liquid pooling at the bottom of the paint. This is shrinking violet, and I'm just feeling that in, as I said, for now, the darkest color that we're going to be using as the shrinking violet. So anything that looks almost black and the photograph or just looks black to you, fill it in with this violet color and use a quite concentrated pigment, so don't water it down too much and in this way will keep consistence consistency amongst the shadows amongst the dark areas so that we don't accidentally paint one of those darker than the other because that would throw off our dimension and the three dimensional aspect of the bulb. So whatever you see, darkest should be the same color in your painting, so all of it should ideally be covered in a nice, thick layer of this. Make a violet or whatever purple you're using so that we maintain, you know, the shape of the flower, the shape of the bulb, hundreds during that with this other little shape as well. So I've picked up some of my watery, ultramarine violet, and I'm just going to be covering most of the pedal with that. For now, you can see it's really pale because I'm again just mapping out the shape of it. And I want to make sure that I preserve the highlight also, considering that the bulb is pay there towards the top side on darker, torched bottom. And I want to make sure that we maintain that throughout the painting, just taking along the edges and picking up more pigment so that I can darken up the color, and I'm still using that smaller of the two maestro brushes. The tip really lets me go around the edges and be very precise in my application. Off the pain, which I really like, have picked up a bit of the pink here, and I'm just patching edge along the center part of that pedal. Um, the pink is a very vibrant color, and it's good to start with just a little at first because it could get very strong. But I'm just tapping and here so that I can spread outwards. Um, as you see in the picture, it's mostly concentrated towards the bud off the flower on an easy way to achieve that locus by just dabbing it in the center and letting it spread out whilst the paper still would. In the meantime, I'm also taking more of the Victorian violet along the edge cause I need to build up that depth of color there and also at the top edge here, where it's curved downwards again. I just refilled my brush with more of the color, and I'm going around the entire edge of the petal, making sure those edges are nice and crisp and clean. I just picked up a little bit of the blue, just watery blue, and I'll fill in this little triangular shape at the top there. I'm keeping it fairly pale so that we can still maintain that highlight. But because it's so small again, there's no sense in wetting the area first. I just picked up a bit of water, too. Drop into the shape to create the highlight.
8. Working on the center wet in wet and wet on dry: all right. That's the next day. I've given it a chance to dry overnight, and I noticed I was running out of the ultra Marine violets. I'm just squeezing out a little more into my palette here, and I've also has re wet my palate so that each of the wells is a bit damp again. And we'll continue off here at the top where we were just leaving off last time. So if what? That little pedal up there? And I'm just picking up some of that ultra marine violet from the top of the palate, making sure it's worked into my brush just like that. And I'll go in here with the purple color filling in this petal. I thought I'd show you from another angle, because this way, you see a little better about how which the paper is. Um, yeah, I'm just working it around. If you look at the photo, you can see where you know the dark areas are, and I'm making sure to maintain a little bit of that direction and the veins there, because when I add more detail to them later and a later layer again, it will be softer and more well blended because we have a bit of a diffused layer of paint underneath in that shape, and I'm picking up some pink. So again I cleaned off my brush. I dip it in the pink water and then some more of that pink pigment so that I don't, you know, dilute the pain too much in the bottom of the well. And then it just dropped that in towards the center here. And this is where the pink is the strongest. So I make sure that I let it spread from the center there, and I just coax it with my brush. And I'm always looking at the picture to make sure I don't take the pink too far, or that the pink doesn't get too overpowering because it's a very strong bright color at the edge. There, you'll notice that I'm leaving a little bit of a white edge. It has the petal has a bit of a like turn back to it that catches the light, and I just want to maintain that on. The easiest way to do that is to make sure that I don't take the paint all the way right up till the edge, so I leave a little bit of a gap there. Now. I'm going in with some of the shrinking violet, the dark purple just darkening up that center area and also spreading a bit more off the proper pigment over into that corner there. And I'm spreading the pink down further, adding a bit more if that shrinking violet and I've switched to my smaller brush. So I was using the larger of the two maestro brushes earlier, and now I'm using the little one, really making sure that some of those vein shapes you know the rough direction on the rough shape is painted in. Don't let the water move that pigment. In the meantime, I'll work on this pedal. And as I said, since I let everything dry overnight, there's no risk of any kind of bleeding on our switch back to my slightly larger brush. I'm just taking the water all over that pedal at the top there. I'm sparing that foot back because I'll work on that later, and I'm going to make sure that I don't make any contact with the pedal that I just painted because I don't want the pigment to bleed. You're just pushing the all terrain violet all over the pedal. And I take it all the way up to the edge where we moved the water, too. Now moving on to some of that pink and again, I'm keeping the pink strongest towards the center of the petal so that it fades out towards the outside. I dried off my brush here, and I'm just lifting a little bit of this pigment and then wiping my brush on my tell and lifting again. So to create that highlight here and thinking and hesitating and looking at the picture. But I didn't notice. There is a bit of, ah, but more of a highlight There, some just dabbling in some water. And you can see now how the water is moving the pigment away. By means of that bloom, she just dislodges the pigment and creates quite a natural, soft looking highlight. So I'm going to be painting that petal up there. Um, but because my other pedal isn't quite dry, it I'm making sure to leave an edge. So you can really see that here at this angle, that I'm just avoiding making contact with the remainder of the painter. And in this way we won't risk bleeding either. And weaken, tidy up that edge that will leave later when the other pedal has dried. I'm going in with the ultra Marine violet again and a nice, strong load of it as well, because that petals very dark in relation to the rest. I'm just making sure to spread it up until the edge there and the edge at the top all the way up until that pencil mark. I'm really making use of the tip of the brush and the site of the brush, and I'm just coaxing it all the way to the end of that shape there. And I'm just making sure that I don't contact any of the which paint from that other shape there. I'm just leaving the tiniest slivers of the tiniest little sliver of dry paper with my smaller brush. I'm just dropping in some blue. Is this a smaller of the two maestro pressures and I'm creating more of those vein shapes, and I'm dropping in a bit of pink again towards the center so that that pink can spread out and kind of fade out, also dropping more into the other Pittle that is still wet so the pigment will still move. And I'm kind of keeping it consistent, adding more pink to the other petals as well. If you look at the picture, you'll notice that the pink is really very strong in this particular cluster of petals, and I'm going in with a bit of blue and spreading that as well. There's pedal down here. It's not drying it, but it is drier than it was before. So you'll notice that the pigment will spread a little bit less. And I'm just dragging some of that pink outwards for those vein marks. I'm just letting those blend. You can see that really up close and the most just working on that little folded back second portion off that pedal. The rest of the petal has almost dried, so my risk of bleeding is fairly low. There's contacting it there. I'm just leaving a very tiny slither sliver of, ah, dry paper. I'll do the same for the full back down here and have probably done this a little too wet. So I would have been better off putting a dry and I I recommend for you to do this drier than I did because it's a little too much water on the paper right now. I'm just tidying that I put it again. I'm just wiping my brush on the tell, wiping it over the area that I want to lift and wiping on the towel again. Lastly, will just fill in this little bump in the center, and I'm using blue for this because of Bub appears pretty blue to me, and I like the contrast that it gives with the pink towards the center of the petals. Describes a bit more contract, and you can see that it's bleeding there, but not in a bad way. It's just mixing some of the colors, and I quite liked the effect, and I thought it was quite appropriate considering the reference picture. So this was one of the very few occasions in which I worked which next to it because I thought the mixing of the colors was appropriate and a good way to represent all the different colors and nuances that you see in the picture. Well, I give that a chance to dry. I'll work down here, so in this way there's no chance of bleeding. And I'm just waiting this really large pedal here, making sure to push the water all the way up until the edge of the pencil Mark, I'm just dropping in that ultramarine violet and moving it up until the edge up until the edge of that pittle. Now, again, I you noticed that I was just to wet their had too much water on the paper. So I'm just putting a dry. I'm just soaking up some without excess and then making sure that when I go back in that my brush is not toe wet. Eat there because if you now drop in a wet brush, she would just be depositing more water again. And the paper will keep soaking it up and taking it. So it's a good idea to, um, dry off your brush down again, especially if you notice that your papers getting a bit wet and you're just losing a little too much control over the paint serum. Just taking it up till the very edge there, and I'm switching over into the blue and you can see here again when I want concentrated color. I really just take the brush straight over the dry blob of paint at the top of my palette. And in this way you're not adding excess water to any of the petals that you're working on . And in this way you have a lot more control about, um, how much pigment goes where and something that I find really important with water coloring is that you distinguish between your control over your paint and your control over your water. So adding more pigment does not necessarily mean adding more water. And adding more water doesn't necessarily mean adding more color. Those are two different things anyway. I'm adding more of that blue, and you can see how nice and strong. And it's because I've just taken my brush over that dry, concentrated blob of paint again, and I'm taking it all the way along the edges. Wherever I see blue in the reference picture and switching to my small brush, I can create those vein pain like marks just a hint at the direction of them and to create interest in texture and the petals you can see. I'm adding them both ways because the petals so large and from the picture it does look as though the veins continue from the very beginning to the very tip of the pedal, and they're hardly visible here because they're kind of started to blend. I'm dropping in a bit of water here for a highlight. I'm just letting that blue amount of it and another one there agitating the paint a bit to encourage it to move the ultra marine violet that were using as a granulated color so you can see quite a lot of texture on the paper there. How's kind of fizzy and not entirely smooth, And I really like that for this particular painting it as a lot of texture to the petal that you would not have if you were to use non granulated paints. However, it's the only granulated paint that were using here. The remainder is non granulated, and so we have a decent amount of control about how much granny relation we have and where we show the granule ation. So I'm just dragging some of that blue with my little brush because I just wasn't quite happy with the veins yet. I just want them to remain a bit more pronounced even when it blends into the but petal and was taking that around the edge up it. I try not to fussed with it too much. But as you can see, even I get carried away. So I thought it would be time to move on from that pedal and work on something else. So I'm moving on to this petal here in the back. That's kind of touch behind the other two. You can see it here in the picture. And I'm just making sure I take the water all the way up that little nook in the back there with my smaller of the two maestro brushes. I'm going in with the ultra Marine Violet and have chosen the little one here because there's a lot of little details I need to paint around and we have that sliver of the back there that requires a decent amount of control. And I'm just carefully coaxing it around where those little seedpods are and also around the edge of their. And here I can be a little can apply a little more pressure to move the pigment around, and I push it all the way up in the back There. I'll go in with more pigment now, once you know, the water is basically down and the first initial bit of pigment is there. Now I can just be more liberal and let it spread across the page and push it up into that dark, shadowy area. Well, I'm here. I can add some more of those vein marks. They're quite pronounced in the picture, so I want to make sure that they're also visible here, and I'm also going on with more pigment again. Now, here I've picked up some of the blue and I'm just pushing that around wherever I see a hint of the blue tone and the picture. I also take it up here because it will add to the depth and help me create that dark, shadowy area up there again. I'm dragging it to mimic those veins in the petal. And I let them kind of diffuse again, considering that the pedal is really still quite damp. And I'll give it a chance to dry while I work down here. So considering that the other large mental of there is still drawing, I'll move on to this one down here, and I'm just waiting it for no making sure that the water is all up against the edge of the pencil mark, and then I'll be able to go in with pain. So I added the first layer of the old train Violet, and now you can just see me go win with some of that Schrenker violet, the dark purple. I'm just dragging it down to create some of those really pronounced veiny marks. Um, it's a very dark piddle, so you can go on with more pigment immediately and just try to preserve that little bit of a highlight there. So I'm again just lifting some of the pigment that I kind of added a little too enthusiastically there, just lifting it, wiping the brush on my towel and lifting again just a light in that area while I create some more of those marks down there. And then I'm just blending a little. And while that dries, I can work on this pedal appear so the one to the left of it is now dried, which means that I can take water all the way up until the edge to meet it. But I have to be careful. Appear because that one up there isn't dry it, so I just left little sliver of dry paper and, oh, join them up later. Once the other one has dried, I'll just spread the paint all the way up until the edge there, and I'm making sure that those ends there are really nice and pale because and the picture you can see how they're catching the light and how they're very pales in comparison to the rest of the petals surrounding this one. So just make sure it doesn't get too dark. And I'll just drop in a little bit of blue because I see a little bit of a blue tone towards the center of that petal and also going with pink in a bit, was grating some of those veins again and letting those diffuse out, considering how wet the petal is trenches creating that little triangular shape at the end . There we had a little bit of shadow, and I'm just making sure that that blue is blended enough because I don't see directly, you know, stark blue lines. I just see blue diffusing out from the center there and while it's still down by multiples going to be lifting those highlights again. So I'm just taking my brush along the edge, wiping in on a towel, lifting again and again. If you struggle doing this, maybe use a synthetic purse instead. Synthetic brushes air better at lifting than natural. Bristle brushes are, um which is why you sometimes also see me use one of those ah, little tiny nova brushes that are made out of synthetic care. But here I seemed to be having enough luck with my natural per suppression. I'm just dragging over the paint and wiping the bush. And then I'm going in with some of that shrink of violet too dark in the center of that pedal. Just coax it out a little bit to get it to spread where I wanted to spread. Well, that dries. I can work on this little tiny pedal up here just starting it out in blue. So I see a lot of blue in it. We're spreading the paint with my little brush, and by this point in time, everything that's kind of in the vicinity of it has dried. So I don't run a risk of bleeding petals. Make sure to take the blue all the way up until the edge. There I am basically fill out the shape here. I'm just dropping in some water for a bloom. Just a highlight, That little tip of the area. And I'm switching over to my little nova brush to create again. I I like there. So I'm just dragging my damn clean brush over the area where I want the highlight. I wipe off the pigment. I wiped the paper again and I wipe until I'm happy with the highlight. I'm also just going over that area there where I wanted but more of a pronounced highlight . And I keep going until I'm happy. While that has a chance to dry, it can work down here on this large metal. It's hidden behind. So with these others down here, and I've actually missed a line there when I was tracing my line drawing. So I'm just going to be painting that in freehand. But you can also just whip out your pencil and give yourself a quick guideline. If you prefer to do that, I'm just going to be mapping it out with a little bit of the pale, um, ultra Marine violet, and that's good enough for me. But if you're unsure, you can always just take your pencil and add whatever marks you need to help guide you with your painting. So there you can see that shape taking form, and I'm again concentrating on the very edge of the petal rather than the center, because the center will more or less sort itself out with the witness of the water just spreading the paint. It's a fairly dark pedal, so we could be a little more liberal with our pigment here, and I'm just going to dab it a little to maintain that highlight up there in the corner. The edge. There you're going in with more ultra Marine violet just to increase the depth of the color . Increase the value. And I make sure that the values greatest at the bottom here, where it's really quite dark, and that I preserve that highlight at the top, the top edge there and with some shrink of violet just adding more shadow more depth, and I've picked up even more shrinking Violet. I really loaded up my brush with pigment, so I've really scripted back and forth over my little dry blob of paint on my palette, and I'm just stamping it all around, building up that color, and I'm doing the same with a bit of the blue
9. Washing in center petals and adding shadows: it's a resume at little. This is where what we're looking at and all next paint the pedal appear, considering that everything in the vicinity has dried. I'm going in straight with some ultra marine violet. It's fairly dark there, so I feel like I can still get away with doing that. And I'm using my a smaller of the two Maestro pressures because again we have a couple of nooks and crannies to get into with this one, and I just find that I have a lot more control with this brush and still picks up a decently. You know, large amount of water so I can get quite far with it. You have just grab a bit more water from the palate. So the watery paint at the bottom of the well and now I've just dip my brush in plain water to spread out whatever pigment is already on the petal so that it doesn't get too dark too quickly. I'm just spreading it all the way around up the edge there and joining it up there. As long as you work quickly enough and nothing dries within the period of painting the single petal, you'll be fine doing this. If you work slower than I do, I would have I would recommend toe wet this petal before applying paint because it is fairly large. Um, for me, I knew that I could paint the whole petal without anything drying. But the trick to watercolor is too. Avoid having areas dry before you done what? Working with, um, just because else you will get these harsh lines and splotchy edges that we don't want in this painting. And there's not really any way of removing them once they're there. So if in doubt, always with the area with water first, same story as the other petal. Next What? I'm just going around those little buds, making sure to leave the point. And I'm using the very top of that brush to get into all those little details. And I'm just going in with eash minka violet to darken up the shadowy areas. I'm just taking it along, which there were words darkest and knowledge will be taking it down the site of that little blue pedal again for the shadows there and just making sure that it doesn't travel to far onto the petal. Now that I maintain those pay their areas as well. There's quite a bit of darkness down here. I'll just pick up a bit more paint with my brush, and I'll drag some of that in here as well. Then I have picked up more fat, shrinking violet again. Just darken up the edge down here and to get into those little nooks and crannies around those little pods in the middle. And that dark edge appears well, to get this amount of pigment, I really scrub my brush over the dry little blob of paint, Um, to really build it up. So depending on your paint and how what your brushes, you might have to be a little vigorous with it. To get this amount of payoff from such little brush. I'm just carefully spreading that also down the side here and along the edge again. And in this way we're just slowly building up the depth of the shadows. Air switched onto some blue and again, I've really taken concentrated pigment with very little water. So I cleaned off depression that I rubbed it across the dry blob of blue. Um, so is not to pick up more water. Now I'm going to be adding in some of those veins. It was a clean brush, and I'm just dragging whatever pigment is on the paper across. So it will pick up some of that darker purple pigment, and you could just drag it just to keep it soft and gentle. And while that drives, we can have a look at the pedal down here and I'm going in with the ultra Marine violet again, very watery under spreading it all over the shape of the pedal. I'm just dropping my brush into the watery pain that's pooling at the bottom of the well of my palette that this is one of those big benefits of using, um, porcelain or ceramic pallets ring really careful with the edge here, making sure to go around that little edge with a little point because we want to maintain that and then just picking up more watery color again and spreading it all over the pedal and and picking up a little more to finish off the shape of that petal. I've cleaned off the brush, and I'm just dropping in some blue here and there, letting that move around a bit on this time I'm taking watery blue. You can see that just off the side there, taking it along the edge. That's nice and dark cleaning off my brush and dropping on a blue with a bit of water, Um, to kind of get that highlight. And there you can see. I'm just lifting with my synthetic little detail brush to create that highlight that I kind of accidentally covered up there. But it's OK. We can just lift the pigment so long as it's still wet. So I'm just lifting it a couple of times and making sure that I clean off my brush each time. So just lift the pigment, wipe it on a towel, come back lifted again, clean off the brush on a tell, and I keep going until I reach my desired level of highlight. And then I can just go on with some of that dark purple, the shrinking violet, to deepen up the center of that pedal and to create some of those some of those veins in the shape. And here I'm just highlighting again because I just I wasn't quite happy with it yet. I'm just wiping away more if the pigment and dropping in a bit of water for that water to bloom and to push away some of her pigment. And there you can see that the highlight is becoming more apparent and stronger. I was taking my little tiny detail brush to take that, um, dark purple also along the edge here. So the smika violet could have that strong shadow that you see. And I'm kind of stamping and here to deposit more color. And to make sure that the shadow is nice and defined, I was dragging it further veins. You might find that it's easier to do this kind of thing with the synthetic brush rather than the natural person pressure. Um, especially when you're new to watercolor here. I'm just finishing off that little corner and also finishing off and crisping up that line there at the end. So next I will work on this pedal over here. So we've left. Let's say the left side of ah, the painting ever very much working towards Thea other side. Now I'm just waiting it, making sure again that the water reaches all the way up until the pencil mark, and then I'll pick up more of that ultra Marine violet here you can see I'm working a bit more into the water because I was running out of my well of paint at the bottom there. And then I could just drop more paint over the petal and work it around with the water on the pedal, spreading the pigment and making sure it goes all the way up until the very edge there that I'm going in with some more pink. And this is kind of the portion of the canvas where we start to see more pink emerge right at the top towards the right side of the painting. Under spreading that pink over the petal, you'll notice if you look at the picture that it's rather rosy and less purple than the rest. You're spreading that and then going in with the, um, dark purple so shrinking violet for the center of that petal and kind of just coaxing it outwards, creating a few of those vein marks just by dragging the purple further out and then letting that dry next week and have a go at that little blurry pedal appear. It's another one of those that is not completely and focus on the picture somewhere to keep it simple and give it a wash of pink and make sure that it has a little bit of shadow. But I won't spend too much time adding much detail here, dropping and more pink and letting that spread upwards, and that will let that dry while I work on this large metal down here. So just with that on, I'm pushing my ultra marine violet over it now just taking it all over the petrol. So I'm just pressing pigment all up against the edges. There and again, I'm working fairly pale because the pedal itself is not very dark. Aside from that cast shadows that it has. So I'm leaving the majority of a fairly pale to begin with to kind of carve out the shape and form before I get too dark, just spreading the paint there and making sure to go around that pittle that's overlapping on. I'm focusing on that edge there again, making sure that the edges nice and crisp in dark, you have picked up to some water on my brush. Tell me, spread the pigment that's already on the pedal right now. Want to push it away from the highlight there, and I just keep doing that until I'm happy with the overall form. So I've dried off my brush there and I'm going into blue and I'll be spreading some of the blue along the edge here where I see that there's just a hint of that blue tone in the reference picture, really making sure to spread it up against the edge there and down the side. And then I'll drop in a little bit of pink where I see it in the picture. That's a little up there and then also around here along the bud, making sure to keep that nice and clean and crisp and also making sure to blend that pink, give my pressure, washing a dry and pick up a little more blue for that edge down here and at the edge up there to help blend in that pink can see that I'm just stamping in a bit of blue there to create more depth. And then I'm doing the same with more of the purple color. So this is still with the violent tone, and I was switching over to the deep purple so shrinking violet to darken up the edge here , and as time passes, you can see that those colors are getting more and more blended together as they move in the water. So I switched brush onto my little detail brush, and I'm just pushing mawr of that shrink of violet along the edge of the pedal. Animals are just taking it around the but there and slowly working around the edges and building up that depth of color. Here. I've given it a wash, and I'm switching over to a larger brush again for the blending, just giving it a wash, a little pet try and then I can blend that darker purple out a little more.
10. Finishing the first layer (center): So while that tries, we can move on to another pedal. So I'm down here again and I'm just gonna be wetting this guy down here who's kind of tucked him behind other petals. So I'm just waiting it again and you can see once more than I'm not looking to have, you know, a great big puddle on the paper. I just wanted to be damp. And so this is the pedal will be painting. It's quite dark and kind of tucked and behind. So there's a lot of shadow and I'm just gonna be grabbing more of my paint again from the well here and going in with that really have heavy handedly to spread a lot of pigment over the pedal that ones. And like I said, because it's really dark and we want to definitely have it be darker than the pedal in front. I'm not too worried about, um, reserving highlights here just because we don't need them. And so then you can be a little quicker about it, and you can spread more pigment faster because you don't have to worry so much here. I'm just spreading it all around their shapes there and I'm making sure that I don't over love any of the other pedals, considering that there in front of this one. So we're painting in background red. Now I'm just pushing it up against the edge off the pencil mark there with the tip of the brush. And again, this is where one of thes fine tipped brushes really comes in handy. And the maestro from DaVinci is really my favorite. Just taking it all the way up into that corner. If you're uncomfortable in these small spaces, I would recommend using one of those little detail brushes the Nova that I showed earlier. They make it quite easy. And here you can see, I switched over to my smaller maestro for the nooks and crannies and for tidying up the edge There. Here, I'm just swiping a little away, brushing it on my towel dress for that little highlight at the bottom of her pedal There. I'm just lifting some of that pigment again. Once I'm happy, I can leave it there and I'll go in with more of their shrinking violet this time round. So the dark purple for their shadow there and to define the edge a little more. And here you can see I switch back over to that little Nova detail brush because a little smaller picks up less water and it's just a little easier to get their sharp, crisp line and such a small space. We're spreading it and moving and colder to that. But there it's a little hard to see, but I'm just dragging in a couple of veins at this point while the pedal is still went. There you go and they're not. Drop in a little bit of pink towards the bud here and then just spreading that around a bit . Sale at some blue because there's a little public blue in the bottom there. I also just around the blood where it's a little darker. While that drives, we can move on to the other petrol. I'm just going in straight with pain from the well. This is again the ultra marine violet color, just spreading it all the way up until the pencil mark with a smaller meister brush. I'm considering that again. It's a fairly dark pedal. We don't have to worry too much about leaving big highlights free, taking it all up against that edge there and then I'm going to deepen up the edge with blue . This is again pain taken from the well, but it's fairly sick. And then, with my little nova detail brush, taking some with matchmaker violent the darkest purple up against the edge to create the shadows and the veins. And to add more interest in detail to the pedal while it's still wet, the light to shifting a little bit here because the sun was coming in and out. So it's looking a little yellow right now, but that's just from the sunlight. It will pass in a couple of minutes. It was spreading the paint again with the little maestro brush.
11. Working wet in wet on the right: So here I'm working on this Pittle appear the one to the left of it. I've just painted. It's just had a chance to dry. Um, but I'm waiting this one. Now, on day I'll be going in wet on wet with you ultramarine violet. And so here it looks a little yellow from the sunshine. But I'm just going in with the same color again on pushing that all the way up until the edge. And it's a fairly pail petal, which is why I'm not taking the paint all the way open foliage. I'm making sure that there's a lot of white paper left behind on DSO that it stays nice and pale and that Aiken, you know, preserve the highlights there on the very end. So I'm just moving the pigment around until I'm happy with it. Then I'm keeping that edge right there for the highlight. So if you look closely at the picture, there's a little bit of a a white line from where the pedal catches the sunlight and I want to preserve that. So I make sure that I still have ah, little bit of a white line there, and then it will just go in with some of that trinka violet to darken up the center of the pedal. And while that dries, I'll work on this fold back here, and I should show into my smaller brush just to be able to have a little more control there . And by now that peddles dried so I don't have to worry about any bleeding stir spreading that blue paint all over, and I'm dropping in a bit of water so the bloom will create a bit more of a highlight there . I'm also taking the synthetic Russian rubbing it here to lift a little bit of the pigment to increase the highlight that's there. While that foot back gets to dry, I'll move onto this pedal appear. I'm just going in with that ultra marine violet are based color on. I'm taking my smaller maestro brush to go around thes little pods again and make sure that to make sure that I'm reserving enough white there and then I'm getting the shape right. I'm just tracing around thumb before I'll paint on the entire petrol up there. You can see me hesitating looking at the picture, and I'm drawing in that line that I've missed. There's carefully filling in the little no and connecting everything before it dries. So you have just cleaned off my brush. And just with a wet brush, l spread that pigment upwards so that we have a little bit of a fade upwards up until I reached that pencil line because the petals little bit paler at the top. There, all those dry. I'll work on this dark area here, and I'll just fill it in with E Schmick of Iowa tone. Nice and dark. It's a very shadowy area. I'm just taking care that I don't accidentally paint over anything, and I've switched over to my synthetic detail. Brush here to make my life a little easier, filling in those little nooks and crannies and getting the lines nice in sharp and clean Now also do that up here. By this point, those petals have dried so I no longer have any risk of bleeding, and I just fill in the shape. I use enough water to spread the paint, but I tried to keep the pigment very thick and concentrated, so I mostly who robbed my brush over the dry paint There you can see me do that now and use that to cover the entire area. And they were going back again to darken up that little triangular pieces. Well, I'm now concentrate on that little bluish pedal down here because everything in the vicinity of stride so does fill it in was the blue paint. And I'll work carefully around the address there and all. Pres. You're some of the highlights in a minute, using some water. For now, I'm just covering it in paint. And then I'm dropping in some water just to shuffle some of that pigment away and to let the bloom push some of it out to create that highlight. Then I'll pick up some blue on my detail brush to work on that center line down the middle to paint that in as well and all dark enough the right side of it, just like you see in the picture. Here. I'm picking up more blue pigment and I'll work on this bud in the center here. It's really dark. Samples were going in dark because it's in the shadow and I'm just filling it in all the way, and I'll add some highlights in a minute. So here for plant the paint. I'm washing my brush, drying it and with my little detail brush, I'm just lifting some of the pigment away for those highlights while I'm down here, I also noticed that I was missing the line there. So I just go on, draw that in now. So I'm just tracing those fools, and I just missed the edge of that. So I'm just trying that in, and then I can paint again. So now I'm focusing on that fold back of the dark metal and they're going with paint. And I realize that it's a little dark for what I'm doing. So I just wash my brush and take a bit of water to spread the pigment that I have already applied out over the entire area. And in this way, it stays nice and pale and fresh looking, and his pick up a little more of that ultra marine violent for the shadow on the bottom. With full back, I wash my brush and I go on with a bit of blue, and then I just continue painting and I move on to the next pedal here, leaving a tiny thin gap so that I don't have any bleeding of color. So I just left a little sliver of dry paper between the section and the fullback that we just painted. And in that way I don't risk bleeding and colors moving around where they shouldn't go. So to me and the picture, it looks fairly blue. Which is why I started out blue as well. And I just drew a little line there to reserve the highlight. So you'll see in a sec when I paint in that area that I've just left a little sliver on the right there for that little highlight of the turn. And here again, I'm careful not to that those two sides meet each other here. I'm lifting a little bit of the pigment for that highlight, and I'm going back in with the ultra Marine Violet and I continue painting so next will work on this section, and I'm just looking at the picture hesitating. And then I find my place again and I continue and I'm picking up more of that watery ultra Marine violet and I take it all the way up and over the masking tape, and in this way we'll have a nice, crisp white border around our painting. When we're finished, I'm just hesitating looking at the picture, and then I keep going again. I'm reserving just a little sliver of white there for the highlight and on the right as well. And then I'll switch over on Tamar, my doctors purple, the shrinking violet and I'll keeping up an ad shadow wherever necessary. So in this case here, between those two folds, there's quite a dark shadow, and I was letting that blend over the paper and pushing it a little towards the right there . I'm picking up more of the purple, and I taken into that really dark and corner there. And then I will give my brush another wash, a dry, and then I'll go into more of the ultra Marine my lead color, and I'm just mixing up a little more again. Well, that bottom section there dries. I can move on to this piddle at the top there, so I'm just taking some pigment and placing it and then using water to spread it, because I'd realize that it's a lot paler than the amount of paint I had applied originally . So I'm just picking up some water to spread the pigment. The other pedal up there's dried by now. So then I won't get any bleeds. And I could just spread this pail wash of color all over the petal, and I make the same mistake again. So I just washout my brush and spread the pigment and take a bit of water, too. Help move it along. And then this way I can keep this pedal very nice and pale and light. I'll go into pink now and I'll drop in a little bit of pink and spread it around around the inner portion off that petal and the little on the fold back as well. Just that the bottom. There, I wash my brush, give it a pat try and then I just help Help that pink spread and move it around and coax it into place. You don't just keep going until I'm happy with it. So you wash my brush again and I go into this blue. You'll notice that I wash my brush a lot, and I find that this is really important so that what's were using colors that are really similar to each other. We do want definition and separation and clear variation in the color. And the only way to guarantee this is to not muddy a pure colors, which is why I never mix them in my palette. And I always wash my brush in between, you know, using the pink, the blue, the violet and the darker purple. And in this way they stay distinct and you don't muddy them all into each other. And I find that for this kind of a painting, it makes a very large difference. So I do encourage you to wash your brush frequently and to keep an eye on your color so that you don't muddy them up while I've got the blue on my pressure. I'll also painted this bud down here. I'm just taking my time looking at the picture on painting in blue wherever I see blue in the reference picture, and I'm just being very loose with it right now, in the most of filling in this gap that I left by accident earlier, just giving my brush another wash and then switching over into the purple
12. Washing in pale petals in the upper right: so used us now to fill up this little dark shadow, um, that I wasn't able to paint an earlier because both petals were obviously what I'm just feeling that and now is using the dark sneakers violet to basically fill in that little shape, as we've done with some of the other dark shadows, just using enough water for me to be able to spread the paint. But it's not very wet, and I'm trying to really concentrate the pigment there. Well, that drive I'm back up here and I have what the area so that I'm able to just work went and what was see, um, ultra Marine Violet and was taking it all the way up to the edge there and up against my pencil mark, closing that cup and spreading it until I reach my pencil mark up there. Then again, I'm just using the point of the brush there, and I'm just moving the pigment around where I wanted dropping in some pink and again I'm spreading that around. Like I said before, The pink is a pretty strong color, so it does need a little bit of spreading. Elsa compete but overpowering. While that dries up there. I can come back down here because this area now has had a good chance to dry and I'll take more of shrinking violet and I'll fill up these dark, shadowy areas. So if you look at the picture, you'll see that it's very dark and almost indiscernible, just filling it up with the violet color. And I'm using as little water as possible just enough to spread the paint. So I'm just pushing it up until it reaches those pencil lines. And again, I'm using that little maestro brush because it just gives me a lot of control, and it picks up a decent amount of paint. But if you're struggling with this, like I said, just use one of those little tiny detail brushes, the synthetic ones just taking my time and making sure that each of the address is nice and clean, and whenever it's a little more difficult to get it there, I just pick up a bit more water, and I couldn't spread the pigment better in that way. It's just that the more water you use, the more you dilute the pigment. So ideally, we minimize the water use here just enough to get a smooth, nice line and to spread the pigment so that we get a nice deep color and we don't have to go over it 100 times while I'm here. I can also work on this other little fold. I'm just looking at my picture, hesitating again and then filling in that dark area in the middle there and again, I'm using that Make a violet. So the dark purple. So just to show again, we were at a sissy, um, portion of the picture I'm looking at and I'm just filling in that dark area there. Now it is reserving that highlight from that pedal and taking the purple all the way up. Also, fill out this area up here and again. If you're uncomfortable free handing this, I would first use a pencil just to sit down some lines for yourself before going on with going in with the paint. I'm just being very careful here, and I just keep carving out that highlight until I'm happy with the shape. I'm also just filling out this little dark area here, so I'm just doing the same thing here as I was with the others. is filling it in with the dark purple and also fill this one in. But because I see just a little hint of blue there and two very intimate. Start out with Blue and Allah go in with some of the dark purple afterwards. So I've come back to the painting a couple of hours later and I'll be continuing on the right side here a top. So we've made good progress so far, almost completed. Um, you know, the initial wash, we just have his right side left to go, and I'm starting appear with this pink petal that I've just wet and I'm dropping in the pink color now and spreading it, Um, so again, in the picture, you can see that there's more pink rather than purple up there. Which is why I've now started with the pink rather than going in with E um, ultramarine violet first. But I'm paying some of that up now, As you can see, I'm really loading it on my brush there and then I'm just depositing it there on the edge where the petals darkest. And I'm taking that right up to the edge as well. Just to create a nice Grady. And but I'm keeping the pedal overall quite pale, also, just because it's near the edge where the white does. It's catching a lot of light in the picture, and you can see in the picture that it's just a little paler than the bottom portion of the painting. And I'm trying to respect that as I keep going throughout all of the petals and loading up more pigment again because it's just a little weak right now. And I'm just stamping some war into that nooks there where I just want to build up the color a bit more and then giving my brush a nice clean. And I'm going to be moving on to this large petal here now. So I'm waiting the area first because it's large, and there's a pretty broad highlight there that I want to be able to take my time carving out and shaping how I wanted. I'm just going to let the area grabbing a bit more water here, and then I'm going in with the, um, ultra Marine violet. So I've taken quite watery paint here. I've gone from the bottom of the well, and I'm moving that around and I'm just making sure that I go all the way up to those pencil lines. I'm going around the left side of the pedal on the right side, and I'm sparing most of that center portion where the main highlight is going to be here. I've picked up some of the blue and I'm taking that around the inside of the pedal into that shadow there and over that dark portion off the pedal here as well. I'm taking it more along the edges again and just kind of letting it spread inwards where the shadow is cast on its own and I try not to fuss with a two too much There. I've tabbed a little up there as well, and I'm just building up that darkness down there and I'm always looking at my picture while I'm doing this here. I've picked up a shrinking violet, our darkest purple, and I'm darkening up the shadow along the edge there of that battle while I give that a chance to drive just filling out the shape here on the edge. It's a very simple little shape, so I just well, I have the red color on my brush I just fill it in with E. Ultra Marine Violet and I lived a little bit of paint again for the highlight in the middle . There it was, wiping my brush on the towel. And I lived until I'm happy with the highlight and I go in with a little more purple on the edge. You can really see how I'm using the very tip of that brush to my dotage. Just going in with a very tip and stamping in a little more pigment where he needed while those other pedals air drying. I'll work on this one up here now, and I'm just carefully pushing the purple along it. So this is Thekla naked on Violet. And while that tries also finish up this full back here, which I'm just going into with a little bit of the pink color, making sure that that's a little a little more pronounced and here I'm taking the quinacrine violet and I'm going to be filling out this dark, shadowy area behind this pedal here, and I'm going in quite heavy in terms of the pigment because it's a dark area and my initial pass over it was a little bit too pale, and I need to darken it up so that it lifts the large petal in front of it forwards and upwards, some just darkening and up. And I'm taking concentrated Quran acrid on violet to do that with, and I'm just layering it over that initial paler wash of color we applied a little while ago. So this is bone dry. I haven't re wet anything. I'm just going on with the paint immediately. I was using a very steady hand, and I've done this now when that large pedal was dry. So there's been a little bit of time, and between me painting the large metal and then working on this portion of the background , armed is waiting in the area to blend the second layer of paint into it, washing my brush. And then I will watch a new petal to work on while that area up there has a chance to dry. I'm just watching the entire petrol again, making sure to take the water all the way up to the edge. And this is one of the more difficult petals to paint because it's curved inwards. So it has ah cast shadow from that one piddle that's hanging over it, and then it's also kind of curved in on itself. So we have a lot of shadow and highlight to think about here, and I'm just starting out with a little bit of the Krenek. Radom Not connected The coach Marine violet. So are based purple, and I'm spreading that just about everywhere where I see either shadow or a dark portion of the pedal, and I'm making sure to reserve a bit of that highlight up there. I'm just spreading the paint around, having a look in the picture where I need to go and spreading the paint, and at this point, all switch to a smaller brush for more control. So I'm grabbing some of my dark purple here now, the shrinking violet and my fine little mice repression. I'm dropping in more purple to increase the depth and also to increase the shadows there along the edges in creating that round shape that's cast by the shadow. And I'm switching over into the blue just to add a bit of an accent color up there where I see the bluer areas of metal and also to help increase the value off the shadows, so make make the shadows darker, which I'm doing there right now. And you can see that by layering these different colors on top of each other and overall stacking up the pigment we create, um, more depths and more, you know, a deeper color. And because we're doing this with color rather than obviously using something like a gray, it remains vibrant and interesting, and the colors are so similar that they blend very well together. Now to give that pittle transfer dry, I moved on to another one. I've what the area and I've now gone in with our base purple. But I made the pit a little too wet, so I'm just going to dab off some of the excess water here before I continue. So I'm just having it sucking up the water, and then I can go back in with paint, and I'm drawing a bit of a center line down the middle of the pedal to create that division where you see that the pedal is darker, and I'm also still doing that with our baseline purple. So the ultra Marine violet going along the edge there to create that shadow that will help push one pedal in front of the other. And I'm also dragging the shadow along here where received that the pedals quite dark. And then I use my brush to help that pigments to disperse and to encourage it to spread out . Well, dragon, some veins and then I'll give my brush it clean. So I've picked up some of the pink now, and I'm just going to be spreading that over the veins on the majority of the petal. Really percents. It is quite pink in the picture. Um, it's quite watery. What I've picked up here, too, so that the pink doesn't overpower because it's so vibrant. And I'm really making sure to keep that left side of the petal paler than the right side was a bit of the blue. I'm now just adding more detail there and again, also working on that shadow at the bottom where one petal overlaps the other. I'm building up the depth of color here with our purple, and I'm just blending that down, and I'm adding a little more purple again. This is watery pain from the bottom of the well of the palate, and I'm just adding it because it'll increase the depth where that petals darker. In the meantime, let's peddle had a little chance to dry. So I'm now goes going in with some of that dark purple because I've just noticed that the pedal was drawing paler than I needed it to. And since it's still wet, I can still manipulated, and I can still add more pigment. So I'm just going in along the edges again and on the inner corner there to deepen it up. Now I have what the section as well and are going on with blue. It's under spreading that pigment all over, and I'm going in with more pigment again, and I made a little bit of a mistake here. I kind of accidentally went over the pedal there, so I'm just going to be cleaning that up with a thin, clean, slightly damp brush and then with a piece of tissue and just dragging it over that line while that dries. Second also, and a blue layer here again, this is the small maestro brush, and you can really see how I make yourself the fine tip of it there. So this was the portion that goes actually behind the main pedals of the flower there. And while I'm here, I can also fill out this dark portion, and this looks almost black in the photograph. So I'm going in with the shrink of Violet, and right now it's fairly watery so that I'm able to spread it out. But later on will be adding more pigment to deepen it up and was making sure to avoid those little buds there tidying up the line and then taking care of this little folded back petal with C ultra Marine violets or standard purple. And I'm just spreading that in one even layer over that shape there. This is a turned back portion of the pedal, and it has a highlight, so I just drop in a bit of water. Little dislodge the pigment and darken, Uh, and we'll lighten that highlight. So I'm using the bloom to my advantage here, and we've done this before, so it's just a matter of waiting a little bit for a painter. Try just a tiny bit and then dropping and, you know, a little droplet of water. I noticed that that pedal wasn't quite. Try it when I went in to do that. So I've just blended out some of that purple that started to get very fuzzy and create a funny shape. Now, here in my line drawing. I had missed a line that was part of the fold back of this flower. So I'm just painting the folded back portion of it now and also filling out that law shape up there while I'm here with the ultra Marine Violet. So our standard purple and I'm dropping in some water for the highlight and a bit more again until I'm happy with it. While those things dry. I've what does Pittle down here and I'm dropping in the mid tone purple, and I'm just spreading it over most of the pedal. It does have a highlight, so we'll have to respect that. But for now, I'm just going in with purple, and it's one of those pedals that's rather complicated again because it has the highlight and also some very dark, shadowy portions. So it's quite a bit of work to manage to maintain the highlight, but at the same time also achieved that level of contrast, Um, with the shadow in such a small space because you have to do a lot of blending in a fairly small space. So I'm just making sure that that edge there remains almost weight because it's very much highlight. And I'm going in with the blue color now. And I'm, um it's It's very concentrated color on my fine little brush here, and I'm using it to build up the depth there and also to create some of those veins from just spreading it out, bitch and then running it along the bottom here, where there's a very noticeable, very strong shadow that's being cast from the pedal above it. I'm just making sure that I get to shape of that shadow, right? And I'm also darkening up that a little section there, and I'm going to be tidying up this edge here. You have just taken some more of the ultra Marine violet are medium purple, and I'm dragging in more veins. I was going over them a few times so that they do blend before I work on that shadow up here, which I'm also using the mid tone purple for making sure that that shadows nice and dark and clean now, such as tidy up those edges there again
13. Finishing the first wash of paint: well, that has a chance to dry a. But I go back up here to work on that last little full back up there just picking up some of theme Atone Purple, which I can then drop into the area that I have just went under, spreading the pigment. Now, as you'll notice the fullback that I've painted in here is a simplified version of what's going on in the picture. Um, because the pictures little bit blurry there, and I'm not exactly sure which folded back portion belongs to which pedal there. So I've simplified my life by removing a little bit of that detail and simply having one large pulled back to kind of complete that section a player of the bulb. So if it doesn't look exactly like the picture, that's why you can obviously do what you would like. Um, but I'm pretty happy with how things turned out. I'm just giving my brush in the worst there, and I pick up some more of that pink toe work on the next Pittle over here on the right, and I'm making sure that I take the pain right up to the masking tape so that we get a nice clean border effect at the end when we peel the tape away and was feeling in the entire shape with the pink, making sure it's one even layer before I clean up my brush and I drop a little bit of water and there to create a highlight before going into the purple for the next pedal. So this full back down here, it's already had a chance to dry, so I can now paint in the rest of it. I'm just outlining at first with paint, um, covering it and one even layer with the purple. And here have just grab some water to spread the pigment that's already there over the entire shape, because I didn't want it to get too dark too quickly, and I had a little too much pigment on the paper there. That's always a good tip. If you apply a couple of dabs of paint and you just realize it's too thick, just send it out with water on the paper and spread the pigment further, and that way you diluted. I'm just adding that shadow there at the bottom and also the shadow on the back there to give the petal shape and to reserve that highlight running down the center of the pedal, I'm dragging in a couple of those veins washing my brush. I'm picking up a little bit of blue, and I'll continue this flower down here, painting in the next Pittle. Once I know that the other one next to it has dried, just taking the blue all the way up until that dark shape and also overlapping it with the first layer there. I'm just covering the area and adding that little line there where I forgot to out of pencil line. We're one. Piddle ends, and the dark background starts going in with a little bit of our medium purple. And then I've moved on to this one on the edge here of what the entire petal already. And I'm just going in with the ultra marine. Violets are medium purple, making sure to spare that full back. That will work on a little later, and in that way I keep them separate shapes, and I can control the shadow of both of the shapes. So always paint the full two packs of each of the petals separately from thieves. Other portions of the pedal or, in other words, paint one shape at a time. So as soon as you have one area of a petal that is kind of, um, closed off with pencil lines, I would work on that and then let it dry before I work on anything touching that shape, if that makes sense, and in that way you get nice clean lines and you avoid having lines anywhere else where you don't want them. And then I'm doing the same down here, just waiting this petal, and I make sure to take the water all the way up until the masking tape. But I'm avoiding making contact with that pedal that I've just painted that still wet. That's why do you sometimes paint petals that are near each other? But I'm take precaution. Not true. Let the water connect, and then that way you have weight. Those bleeds. I'm just spreading the medium purple all over, and it's quite dark in the center there, so I could be liberal with the pigment, and I take it almost to the edge there and with a bit of blue, I add more color, more interest tonight, increase the depths of those vain marks before I go in with a dark purple. So this is the shrink of islet. I also fill out this little shape down here just with some of the 1,000,000 violet, the medium purple. And I just left off a little bit of pain for the highlight. There in the corner, I go in for more color and I add a bit more shadow towards the right side of that shape there. No, I'm working on this dark little shape down here in the corner again, just filling it in with our medium purple and then taking my small brush over the concentrated pigment and just loading up on color there and adding dips by stacking up the pigment. I'm just really adding a lot of value there and also here in this other shape by just using very concentrated paint while those dry I can work on this large puddle over here, so I'm just waiting it again. You can see that I really take my time and I treat my water as I treat my pain. Because ultimately whichever area you went is where your pain will travel to. And here I've picked up the medium purple and I could just go in and paint the pedal as I've painted all the other ones. So for now I'm just spreading the paint around all of the trees, and I'm keeping that middle portion fairly pale, and I take it all the way up to the edge. We'll take it around the bottom edge, and I drag out a couple of Marx designed to imitate the veins before I move on to but appear where I just add a little more with my small brush. This is still just the ultra Marine violet and I yield so just barking up the edge there and that shadow. So that's a shadow that's being cast by the petal on top of it. And I used Blue to kind of accentuate that inter portion off the pedal and to get a bit more of that blue tone across that you can see in the picture here. I've gone in with some of the dark purple, so that's the shrinking violet just to deepen up that very edge. And I'm just spreading that out because the pedal gets quite dark there at the end, and I just wasn't quite able to get enough color out of the ultra Marine violet. No, I'm painting this little guy up here. He's mostly pink, so that's what's a Y. I've just gone with a pink and I'll paint in a couple of veins with the medium purple, and I'll just let those blur out to pitch. Well, they dry. So this little guy down here has ready dried so we can work on the full back. Now it's under painting it in and slightly darker blue than the pittle itself, making sure that edge is nice and crisp. And again, I'm just using my small maestro brush for this. And while that dries, I can fill out this inner portion down here. If the blood, which is mostly blue, I'm just painting it in a pale wash off the blue color. I've preserved those two little highlights down there, and if we zoom out, you can see that I can also fill out this dark, shadowy area now because all of the pedals down there have dried and just load up on more pigment. And then I'll fill out the next trata we area here again. All of those puddles have dried by now, so I don't run the risk of anything bleeding. And this is an especially good way to deal with strong pigmented areas that you need to cover. Because if I were to do this near and you went area, if I were to accidentally connect the two areas, a lot of pigment would shoot across in one go. It would be difficult to clean up. I'm just taking care of this little portion down here in the corner. This is another foot back have painted it in and blue. And I'll just go on with a little bit of that purple color as well. Here, I'm lifting a bit of the pigment to lighten it up a bit. And there I'm going in with more of the purple again. Great that shatter with the edge there and again, I make sure to take it all the way up to the masking tape so that we get a nice, clean, crisp line. At the end. Everything appears already dried so I can go on with more pink and just fill out that remaining shape that's left up there. This is with watery pink. I mean, the color officially called Ruby red, but it comes across as pink and a reads very pink numbers filling a plot shape down here. While that dries up there, I'll fill out. It's very dark little shadow down here, and I'm just taking my time with my little maestro brush to make sure the edges are crisp and clear and clean. There's no jagged edges anywhere, so that that shape is nice and dark. Now I'm going back down here to fill out this dark, shadowy trunk down there. So I'm just covering it in Minka Violet, our darkest purple. And I'm using a very fine little brush just to fill that in. Next, I'll work on this little pedal appear. Everything is dry on, and I'm just covering it in, once in layer of the ultra marine violets or medium purple, just covering it up until that highlight and also cover the turn back that we see in the background there is making sure to reserve that pail section off the petal, going around the other and also the upper edge at the top there. So now I've tried my brush, and I'm just going to be kind of blending the existing pigment there so that the highlights stays pay their, but it blends seamlessly with the rest off the pedal. There, Well, that gets a chance to dry. I'll fill out this a very tiny little shape down here. Those dark little shape down there. You're just going in with the shrinking violet and just as much water as I need to be able to move to pigment around just to cover that area there. And also this little one down here and that went up there also go in to that pedal that still damp drew. Great, more shadow. And this is using this Minka violet creating a bit of that shape from the veins. I'm filling out that very dark little triangular shape at the end There, here, I've cleaned off and dried my brush, and I'm just kind of blending this little shape to smooth that out. And this is where we're at so far. So at this point in time, we just have a couple of little white spots left to fill up before we have completed the first initial wash of color of the painting. So here I've just bought this up a little bit. I'm going to be filling out this very large chunk of dark shadow just with E Make a violet . So our darkest purple and we're just doing what I've done, uhm filling it in using Justus much water, as I need to be able to smoothly push the pigment all over that little space. And I also do this down here and also paint in this little bulb. I'm just covering the dark areas first. I'm taking care to look at the picture. I feel out all of the dark area to the shadows, essentially, and then this way I kind of map out the highlights that I'm going to be leaving paler before cleaning up my brush, drying it a little bit and then coming back in like this now to blend it out. And in this way you maintain that the highlights are paler and the edges are darker. I'll also just cover this but here in blue, because the entire thing is very shades of the blue tone and another layer. Later, I will add more detail, but for now discovered and one thin layer off the blue pigment. So this is Theo, ultra Marine finest, and I also cover this entire shape down here, which is cast in shadow. So I'm just going to be covering this in our medium purple and then also with the darker purple to deepen it up, and I keep going until it's darker than the pedal that's in front of it.
14. Details: Adding consistent depth and value to shadows: Alright, so we finish the first wash of paint. Now I'll be adding in more shadows on also details such as some of the veins that you see on the pedals. And I'll do that again working left to right, and I'll just keep building that up until I'm happy with the level of detail in the petals . So at this point, we've finished painting the first layer of the entire painting, and we're going to be moving on to making adjustments and adding more details in the coming lessons. So I'm starting off with the dark purple which make Violet, and I'm going to be going over certain areas that I have not dried dark enough yet so you can see me here filling in that dark shadow. And while I'm doing this will be making sure that each of these dark portions are about equally dark all around the painting. So I'm going to be addressing them now, and I'll be using the dark purple for this, and I'm making sure that it's water enough to spread evenly. But I'm using as little water as I can get away with so you can see that I use my little synthetic detail brush are going toothy wet paint. And I also pick up a bit more pigment from the side of the dish there just so that I really build up the depth. So I'm working on this little shape up here now, which is equally dark to the others I've just painted. I'm having a look. And I'm also addressing this one down here which should be darker than it is currently. And I'm really loading up my little brush with the dark concentrated pigment on the side of my well there when I was a sharpen up the edge there. And then I also work on this little shape down here and this very thin little one off to the side. There some here, just showing you again. Up close. I go into the wet paint. Really? Make sure I load up my little brush and then I'm back over onto the painting, filling out whatever little area I need to fill out. So nexus this little shadow here. How? Just fill that in again. So we're just layering on more of those purple color and I'm taking my time with it and making sure that the edges air really smooth because this isn't the background, and it's being covered up with, you know, pedals that are theoretically in front of thes shadows. So we need to make sure that we don't have any jagged edges here, and I've spent this up a bit so that it won't take you too long to watch. But I am taking my time with it, and I'm using a very small little synthetic detail brush to do it with how pent up here. And we'll keep working care as well. And from the picture there, you can see which areas I'm talking about, these little dark shadows. They should all be roughly equally dark. So that's what I'm doing here. And we'll go around the entire painting a trusting these until we're happy with, um, just layering up the purple again here and also here. And I'm always looking at the picture, making sure that the shadows have the right shape and that I don't miss anything. Yuri also defined this line a little more, and then I moved to the rich. I know it filled this guy out as well. While I'm here, I'll add a little more definition to the blood over there. Just fill out that little line with the purple and also appear next to the other bud in that shadow. And in general, like I said, watercolor can end up trying a little, um, paler, and then you expect it to, so it tends to be a good idea to reevaluate once it straight. Similarly, the pale colors have a tendency to try darker than you expect them to, um, meaning that you need to be a little careful with them in the beginning. And once you kind of get to know the color or the brand, you can judge it a little more easily when it's what, but especially when you were starting out. It's good to go slow and evaluate whether you're happy or know what the color once it's dry . So I'll just go over that one more and also appear just to help push that shadow back and under the little blue Pittle and in this corner, which is really very dark in the picture. And we'll just helped push that back further, moving over to the right. I can fill out this dark area here now, and I'll make sure to include a little bit of a line kind of delineated where that pittle in the background is versus the shadow. That's very much just empty space without a petal. So you can see that I've just kind of curved that out there. And also take that up a little further, loading up my brush with more paint and then also taking it in a little further. There you can see how those shadows already starting to give more shape to the bulb. Now I can work on the shape down here. She's also very dark and again I'm just filling it in with me little synthetic brush and this one again, and also this one over here. Moving over to the left, I felt this guy out as well, and then this way we just layer up the paint to build up the depth of color to increase the value so much, we have darker areas that are pushed back further and then turn. Those will help lift the other petals further up towards the front, and it'll add to the three dimensional feeling off the bulb. So here I'm just doing the same, loading up my brush, making sure it's nice and dark and moving on to the next area. Now I'm moving to the right of the painting and also fill up this little shape up here and this one up there and again. It's still with the same little brush with the same paint, and I just keep loading up the brush every couple of seconds to keep the paint nice and strong and pigmented on a mostly rub it over the dry paint, and I only going for water when I really need it here noticed that that division of the two pedals wasn't quite strong enough. So I'm just adding a bit of depth to that, and that's what that looks like.
15. Details: Adding details in layers to build shape: So it's a new day. I've let it dry overnight, and we've now got one layer of paint on the entire painting and and this estimate will continue working on it, but will be adding details and shadows at this point. So that means that we can correct any mistakes we've made, and we can adjust depth and shadow on color where needed. So I'll keep the full picture of the flower up on the left here so that you can see the shadow a little bit. And I'll just start adjusting petal by petal from left to right. So here on this little one, I've just wet the entire petrol, and I'm adding a little more of a blue shadow, toothy each there because I just wanted to be pushed back into the background of the painting a little more and will be going over petal by petal, and you know some of them we might not need to address it all, but some need more detail and will also still be adding more of those veins. So, depending on how much work there is to be done, perp, it'll you might have to either wet it or not. wet it. If I am adjusting shadows the way that I am here now, it means that I've wet the pedal. So I've covered the entire space of the petal with water, just like we did with the first wash. And then I pushed the paint along the edge like you see me do now to deepen up that shadow and to crisp up the line. And that's one way in which you can very easily improve any watercolor painting that you've got of florals or animals if you just pay attention to your edges and you make sure that most of the contrast and most of the color is concentrated along edges because it creates contrast and interest in your painting. So here you can see that I'm just taking some of that dark purple all along the edge. And if you look at the picture, you can see that the pedal was previously quite pale and actually in the picture, you see that the shadow there is very dark, so it's a good thing that I'm changing it here. Then I move on to the next piddle, and here you can just see that I've waited and then I pick up the purple with my little detail brush, you can see I'm just picking up the paint. And then I'm going to be adding more deaf to the shadow over here because if you have a look in the picture, it's quite dark on a dried paler than it needed to be. Just making sure that I take my time with the edges there and you notice now that are switched over to that synthetic little detail brush for more control on because it will give me a smoother edge. Soldiers drag that over the area, that of which, for a little bit of that texture the veins. And because we've what the area they won't look stark well, so blend. But they'll stand out more rather than had. We only added them in the first layer, and I'll pick up some blue boat up my brush here and also drop in a little bit of blue here and that shadow that I missed in the first layer of paint. Once I've done that, I can with this pedal, and I'm not taking the water all the way to the edge because the edge of the specialist pale and white anyway. So then I don't have to worry about any kind of bleeds. As long as the water never connect, it will take some more purple along. And I'm also making that shadow more parent. The shadow on the edge there and again, all painted some of those veins, and I'm just dragging the pigment that's already on the paper out. So I did that with a clean brush and then all with this one up here, make sure that I'm neat and tidy with my water, and that the water only goes where I want the pain to go and that I cover the entire petal so that I don't get any unwanted harsh lines or edges. Because if you were to only went a certain portion off the pedal, your risk that you get a line where the water will end a dry and by dampening the entire area, you have weight. That and here have just picked up more of the dark purple for that shrinking violet, and I'm just taking along the edge there and so emphasizing that line. There were the pedal kind of twists and turns backwards a little bit just to make sure that that shape is nice and a parent, and I'm taking it in the little further. Now I'm picking up some blue because the pedal is more blue on the left side there, and I'll start working on those veins and then with a little bit of that violent tone. So the more muted pay their violet. I'm also working on the shadow up here because it was just a bit too week in the first round and it dried fairly pale. And I'm just want that to be a little more clear, because the ultramarine violet is less dark and more forgiving. I'd rather use the ultra Marine violet for this also, because it's a fairly soft shadow, just blending that with a little brush. And while that dries, I can work on this little pedal on the left here, which again is just a little too pale right now, and we need to push it further back into the background, and the best way to do that is to increase the value of the pedal. So just darkening it up and again, I'm just using the ultra Marine violet to do that. I'm just going to add a little bit of blue appear and also dark in those pedal up here. Notice that it dried paler than some of the surrounding pedals that are supposed to be further out front, which is why we need to push it further backwards. So just like the one below it, I'm just going to darken it up and then I can move on to the next pedal. So I'm just going to be watching this one now, taking the water all the way up until the corners there before I pick up the purple of my little detail brush and I can run it all the way along the edge. Then I'm really working it all the way into that corner, making sure it's nice and sharp and then looking at my picture and making sure that the shadows are where they need to be. And here I noticed that I just want that shadow to be a little, come up a little higher and start a little earlier, and in this way we're just correcting for the shape and the highlight in the shadow of the pedal to create more really realism in the way in which the pedals are arranged to make it look more bulbous basically. And while that Dries Aiken work down here and just up a cast shadow and that you see in the picture that's being cast by the pedal on top of it, then I'll which just half of this piddle because it has such a strong center line that, um, no separates the shadowy area from the paler area. I've just what half of it, and I'll cover the starker half with more of that blue paint to deepen it up. And to make sure that the shadow is nice and clear and then appear on this large pedal, we can add more detail as well. So I'm just watching it again, and then I'll go on with the pink. So first I'm just dropping some in, and then I'm spreading it outwards. I'm taking it along those veins, washing my brush and then going into the purple again, just dropping that in and going along the edge and then dragging it out and again because we've what the area we don't have any risk of harsh marks or harsh lines, and it gives us a lot of time to play with the pigment that we're putting down. And while that has a chance to dry, it can move on again and work on the next pedal. So here again, I'm watching the area, and at the moment I'm often doing this with the larger of the two Maestro Precious because it has a nice, fine point. And we do want to start to become very careful here now so that we don't accidentally mess up any of our hard work. And I'm searching back to my detail brush and I'm going in with more of that blue because I noticed that the shadow of this pedal is fairly blue tone, and I'm just spreading that around and going along the edges again. And once more, defining these edges will really make the painting pop, and the contrast that were building up between light and dark will make it more eye catching on expressive. And again if we then also managed to get the placement of the shadow and the highlights right, we can achieve that realistic bulbs looking shape. So that's really what we're after here now and again. I let that dry and then move on to the next petal, whichever is most convenient. Just make sure that you don't touch petals that air wet all the way up until the edge. So in this case, when I had previously worked on the petal above it, I did not take the water all the way up until the very edge. Which is why I'm able to work on this one now. And I had noticed that I was still missing quite a bit of the pink here. So I'm going on quite heavy with a pink and also making more off those veins with the pink before I go on with the purple to darken it up, taking the purple around the edge of that bulb, making sure that that little dimple is visible. And then just wiggling my brush around to move the pigment to the shadowy area and to make sure that relatively speaking, the petal here is nice and dark and was pushed backwards in relation to the one on top of it. I can also drag that along the edge here to improve the shadow there, and I load up more pigment again, and I just make that a little crisper and cleaner again. You can see as I'm doing it, how this really kind of ties the rest of the shading of the petals together. So this was really something that you can do to just about any painting that will improve it, especially if you are attempting to paint something that has a naturally round or, um, yeah, naturally round shape with shadows there. I'm just adding that vein and again that I was losing a little bit and the 2nd 1 there as well. And then while I'm down here, I can also work on this pedal here. So again, I'm just taking the dark paint along that edge, spreading it down. And then I blended in with water. So this pedal I did not wet before I worked on it because it's really small. Um, you could also wedge it and then at the paint. I just already had the paint on my brush, and I knew that I could blends such a small space quite easily with the maestro brush. And while I'm here, I'll let this one down. There it was covered the entire pedal in water. Take it right up to the edge and then I'll go on with the pink. You'll notice in the picture that this flowers really quite pink before I switch over to the purple Too dark in the center of the pedal there. And then I dragged the purple out, and I also create those dark veins. You can see how those veins air kind of diffusing just because we've wet the petal before we started this and for this kind of thing is really quite important that you dampen the paper, but that it's not something. What? So remember how I accidentally, um, over wet a couple of the pedals in the first round of paint and I had to blocked them with a tissue? That's what I would do here. In case you see an actual puddle of water on your pedal, I would argue that the paper should be damp, but not at all sopping wet. So just be careful that you either don't over which the pedal or keep some tissue at hand. And if you know that you have a tendency to over what that you just brought over it a little bit before you go in with the paint because this dark purple were released, spread very quickly. And because it's such a strong and powerful color, it can easily get out of hand. So do be careful with it. And here, on the side of caution with the amount of water you're using. In the meantime, I also improved a shadow of that pill before moving on to this one. Over here, I'm just going along the edge again, the other edge as well. And here I'm just blending this with the maestro Bush. So that's the larger if the to fine point pressures. Now I'm working on the pedal next to it, and I'm working with Blue. And I'm just creating that triangular looking a shadow that will blend upwards and outwards to create that, um, kind of intensify that effective the folded back highlight there. So I'm making sure not to blend it down lift and instead only up and out, and that will create that folded effect. In the meantime, I can also work on this one back here because that initial petal is dried. I'm going in with blue, and I'm going to be working on that shadow and also making sure that that center line is nice, invisible. I lost that a little bit in the blending process of the first round of paint, and I'm working that into that shadow that's being cast by the pedal on top of it. And again, this will make the pill in front stand out and look more three dimensional. It is really taking my time, blending that with the temp detail brush. And the trick here is to blend it without, you know, over blending it, because we keep lending and blending yielders end up with one uniform layer of color, and that's not what we want.
16. Details: Adding details in layers to build shape: So move on and I'll work on the pedal up here and I'm going in with purple after I went to the area, and I've actually only what, the first half of it, the upper half, so that I create that center line that runs down the middle, where it's folded and it'll just blend upwards into the direction of wherever applied the water. So this way we get a strong, harsh line on the bottom there and the soft defused blend upward, and I just keep going in with more of that purple until I'm happy with the result. There you can see him blending it upwards and also defining that edge and helping it blend . And while I'm there, I can also kind of to find the center portion of that flower of that puddle. So I'm just picking up more purple to Durkin up that area. To define this, folded back a little portion off the pedal check, then also blend just a little bit of water. So I applied one line of painter, and now I'm blending it down, and then I can go back into the purple to darken it up and again. You'll notice that. I'm really careful here on him, um, adding very little pigment at a time just because very cautious of the fact that this purple can get a little dark and overpowering very quickly. So while that area there still damp will improve the shape there and no kind of hint at those veins that are coming outwards and towards the viewer from that pedal, that's kind of curved. And then I'll let that dry while I work on the next one from just waiting it again, going into the purple and then adding more depth at the center of the Pittle. There, you can see that I am being careful with the purple again. So they have picked up more pigment, and I'm just kind of letting it spread out. And I'm also dragging some of it out for those veins. And I just keep doing that until I'm happy with the veins. So here, that was that last one. And now I could just smooth out that line there a little better where the pedal kind of folds back on itself and I'm giving my personal abortion apart dry before I come back to blend that and because the papers went. This blending process is fairly easy, and you can see how, from a little bit of a distance there it starts to look very smooth because it's a small area. So often whilst you're painting, things might look a little rough and sketchy and splotchy. And then when you take a step back, they'll look smoother and better. And that's just because, obviously, with a little bit of distance, your aisles of blends certain things more so than if you're looking up, really, you know, really up close. So it's good practice to keep stepping back and evaluating your painting from a little bit of a distance as you keep going. Another handy way of doing that is to take pictures with your phone, because obviously the picture will be fairly small on your phone screen. And so then it's also easy to see what the general painting is looking like to hear, if just what that pedal, Because I want to improve the shadow there and again, just sharpen up that edge there and taking the paint around, and I'm not using very much pigment here right now. It was creating some really soft pains and then I can also at a bit more shading up there and again I'm washing my bush and putting a dry. No, I'm watching this guy and I make sure I go all the way right up to the edge there. And I'll go on with more of the ultra Marine Violet to darken up that middle portion there because it wasn't quite dark enough, and it needs to be slightly darker than the pittle that's hanging out on top of it there. I'm just adjusting the value off the pedal by taking a little bit of that pigment all over the petal. And then I can go and fetch more paint, and I just stamp a little more pigment around the center portion there, also taking a little more around the edge there for the shadow and a little more again building up the depth of color There. You also take it all the way down the side there, and then I can move over to the next petal there. So here we really need to improve to shadow in the shape because it's fairly pale and it's not really clear about the fold. Pakistan yet kind of got a little too planted in the previous layer, which is fine. That's why we're coming back and improving it now. So with my little synthetic brush, I'm going to carve out that line again, and you can see that I've with the petal up until where I wanted to place that line so that I don't accidentally, what the highlight down at the bottom. So if you do this and you struggle with that, just draw yourself a little pencil length. I just took my water all the way up to the original highlight that I left blank or all that I left Pale with the first round of pain. And there you can see it's taking shape already. And I've done all of this now with the ultra Marine Violet. No down here waiting this petal, thinking it all the way up until the edge there before I go in with the purple, loading it up onto my little detail brush. And then I just drop in the dark purple and they had more pigment. And then I just drag that pigment out. Just with the very fine little pressure, I can pull it downwards and those veins will kind of blend themselves again, just going over some of what I've already previously painted. - No , I'm just improving the shadow here again. It just wasn't quit dark enough for my taste. So I'm just working in a little more. If that purple and I'm making sure to blend that town, it's improving the blending there by just taking a thin wash of paint over it so that there isn't as much contrast. And then I'm going to blend that downwards here. I'm just washing my brush, putting a dry and then coming into blend. Well, I'm done there. I'm also just working a little more purple over that dark spot before going back and appear to just add a little more shadow. It's still damp, so it'll still blend and was working in a little more of that purple. I think for this petal, I waited a tad too long to do this, so if you're at that stage, we're not quite sure yet. If it's still damp or not, I would actually advise you to let it dry completely and re wet the petal. So I think I was, uh, pushing the limits here a little bit with um, how damp the pedal was. I think it would have worked out better had I left it too dry and then re wetted it here. I'm just waiting another federal, this large one here and I'll go in with the purple again. And I also fill out this strange shape that I accidentally left last time I painted on this one just working over a bit of that medium purple. Then here, you can see I'm switching to the dark shrink, avail it with my little detail brush and was going to work that along the center there and then outwards to create those veins at the end here, um, also adding in the shadow. So I'm leaving a little bit of ah, highlight There on the edge where the pedal folds in on itself. I was creating that triangular shape. Just keep working at it and blending it until I'm happy. And I made sure when I was waiting the pedal that I don't watch the area all the way up to the edge because this allows you to work what, on dry up at the edge there and then went on wood for the remainder of the pedal. And then that way you can get a nice crisp lined at the edge and lots of nice blending in the center. Now moving on to this one over here, where I'm just improving their shadow again as well, this time with the blue paint. Before I move on to this patrol over there, which I'm watching again. And I also take care of this little bill appear where I've kind of left too much pigment on the edge, I think, and I'm just kind of blending it out. So I just went The what? The area. I've not added any more paint. I'm just coaxing some of that pigment to come off the edge there, just letting it blend out. I'm using the smaller of the two maestro brushes to do this with. You have just picked up a bit more paint the purple, the dark purple shrinking violet, and I'm just taking it along the edge for that shadow and then lending it out to making sure that the shadow roughly assumes the shape that you've seen. The picture, which is kind of like a rounded, rounded shape under the pedal there, also adding the little shadow up there again with a shrinking violet. I'm just kind of looking at the picture and mapping the shadow out of it, and then I also drag in some of those veins. I also work another layer over that dark, shadowy spot in the background. Moving on to this guy ups there. I'm not going to be wetting it all the way to the edge, which is why it's fine to work on it right after, you know, working on the one underneath. Um, because it has those highlights on the entry. I don't want to take the water all the way to the edge. Son was working in some of that blue paint to again create that triangular shadow of the point there off the pedal, where it kind of folds back on itself on dragging in a few more off those veins as well. And then you can see that the petal is starting to take much more shape and will appear, and I give that chance to dry. I'm taking more of the shrinking violet over earthy shape up here in the back, which needs to be darker. I left a two pale before I'm just taking my time, cleaning it up and pushing a thick layer of paint all over, and I just make sure that I don't make contact with the pedal that I've just went just avoid any bleeds.
17. Details: Shadows and veins along the upper petals wet on dry: then appear on this Pittle. I'm just watching the edge because I want to coax a bit of pigment out again where if left it too thick and unb lended. I'm just waiting the area and then going over with my brush until it loosens up, just wiggling my brush back and forth and then with more water, I can blend that even further. And then I've picked up a bit more purple that I'm just dropping in to improve the shadow under that pittle coming upwards and outwards just to add more shape here. And if you look at the picture, I left it a little pale over. Also, this world's were just improve the value of the petal and again that will help us in creating that bulbous shape there's which don't through a larger brush just to kind of blend that edge into nothing. Before I cause trade on this little shape up here, German just adding some purple to again and then blending that out. And yet again, I just find that this area's a little pale, so I'm just going in with more purple paint again before Ethan, also at a little more pink to this little sliver appear to add a bit more of an accent color in this area and to just dark image a little bit. Now, down here, I'll work on this pedal same approach as we always take. So I'm waiting the pittle. It's wet almost up until the itch. And then I couldn't just take my detail brush and some of that shrinking violet and push it along the edges for that shadow. And then I can also drag it to create those veins from there as well, letting it a little bit. And then I dragged that pigment out again, giving my brush a little wash. And then I can blend the points there. So I'm not left with any harsh marks with my large brush. I'm waiting the pittle appear Now. I remember that I said that this one was quite challenging because of all of the different shadows and highlights that air in it. So I'm improving the shadow here. No, you're starting it up and adjusting the value of the petal. They're a little bit so that's just a little bit darker, and you can also take that shadow up and then go along. This other edge after paint in that dark ground shadow from the petal that's above it. I'm just mapping it in and then coaxing some of that pain over the area. And this is with the, um, medium purple soap, the ultramarine violet. It's a large area, and this pigment is just a lot more forgiving than the deep dark purple were using. So when I have to paint these large shadows, I like to start without first. And if I feel that it needs to get darker, I can always still drop in just a little bit of that dark purple matting in some of those veins, just dragging the pigment over the damn paper down here. I'm starting dry because of that divide that you kind of see in that pedal just mapping it in first and I'll go on with more water in a minute. But because it's such a stark line, I wanted to first planet in and have a look. Um, if you make a mark like this and you don't like it, you can always just patterned away with a tissue. But I was okay with how it worked out here, so I'm just blending it out and up with my larger brush now watching the area. And in this way you're vain will not blend as much. So it stays more of Ah, a line, basically. But here you can see that I've come in with more pigment toe work. In a few more details like that, sentinels have run it down here along the edge. Further shadow. Just pushing that all up to the edge, blending it out. I'm letting it downwards as well have picked up the deep, dark purple and I'm improving that shape down there. And I'm kind of darkening up those veins a little bit. They just tried a little pale earlier, and because I was using the ultramarine violet, you know, doesn't add as much depth. So just layered up a dark purple here now and then I'm switching over to my other brush with some water to blend that. And I'm always dragging in the direction that I want the veins to go because that just ensures that you maintain that shape here. I'm softening up that edge, Joe's by blending over it with water and then going in with more of that ultra Marine Violet. I can also add a little more shape to this little guy down here. So I just went him again. And then I go win with the ultra Marine violet to create a shadow at the bottom off that pittle there to push him a little further into the background. Just stamping on a bit more pigment, just coaxing it along and again. Just a little more paint here switched on toothy Drink a violet because I just wasn't quite getting enough payout from the ultramarine violet you're in painting in those veins in the back, and this is wet on dry. No, it's such a small area, and I don't want the veins to get lost and to blend into nothing. That's basically so I'm just going in dry for now, and I'll blend wherever I need to with a little extra water, just like I'm doing there. So there I cleaned my brush. I gave it a little pet dry, and then I went back into blend. I'm adding more water to this pedal here, and I'm going to be trying to I'll try to clean up that edge there where I messed up a little bit. There, I'm kind of looking and thinking and coming and I ng about what I want to do about my mistake there. I'm just adding a little more shadow, picking up some of the dark purple and taking it along the edge there, too great. More contrast in to cover up a little of those. A little bit of those squiggles that I accidentally left last time just a smoothing it out , blending down the shadow. Then I'll work on this full back on the very edge here. So we're right up against the masking tape there. I'm just taking it along the edge, which will give the folded back portion here a little more shape and structure. No. Blend that with a little bit off water. And then that way the edges are darker and the middle portions of a little paler, which just gives it a little bit of a rounded shape. Like what we see in the picture
18. Details: Further work on shadows and depth: switching over to my larger brush because I'll be working on the shadow here It goes down over a couple of petals and I find that if I do that in one continuous swoop, it will just end up looking more realistic and more accurate because it will be a layer going over, you know, several pedals at once, so everything here is dry. Then I went the area off the shadow, and now I'm taking see Schmick of Violet over the area that I've went and have only what the area where I want their shadow to be. So just in case you're confused, this is the area I'm talking about, where you see that cast shadow going over several pedals, all of which are being caused by this one guy who's kind of sticking out and forwards. That's what we're painting in here. I'm just planning out that edge there that I lived making shorts, one smooth shadow and that I don't have any harsh edges anywhere. Once I've done that, I cannot at this one, which is another one of those shadows that kind of span several petals. So here was working in more of flattish Minka violet. I'm starting out fairly pale, just him up in the shadow space. And once I'm happy with that, I can always add more pigment as needed. There's improving that shape therapist and then also spreading down the paint for that chateau. And while I'm here, I'm just adding a little more depth to that little there. It just wasn't quite happy with it yet. Sighs, reason amount. Here, you can really see that we've made really good progress. I'm working up on that pittle at the top there now with shrinking Violet, and I'm just going to be adding more depth and shadow to it to give it a bit more interest and just to push it backwards a little bit. And while I'm apparel had in that center line again, it just faded a little too much earlier. And then I can just go on with a bit of water and blend that upwards again. You can see I'm just straightening out that line. I'm kind of connecting in a little bit too. That shadow there. And then I decided I want to do a little more work up here on this pedal. Just wasn't quite satisfied yet with the shape of the shadow there. So I'm going in onto dry paper, and I'm just drawing in that edge where that highlighters at the top, to preserve that highlight. And then after I've placed on the paint, are you what? My little brush? And then I blend that downwards, and there you can see. I have a nice, crisp line for that highlight, and it blends down into nothing. And then I can work on this. But over here, so I'm wanting the entire area, and there you can see my palette again. I'm using the ultra Marine violet just to talking it up a little bit, and I make sure to take that paint all the way up until the tapes there, keeping a darker at the bottom where the petals curled up and there's more shadow, almost making sure to blend. That was a little bit of water while I'm here only tried to blend this out a little better . I tried a bit patchy for my liking, and I wasn't getting anywhere with my natural personal brush, so I switched over to a synthetic little round brush just to blend that area and synthetic brushes air much better, blending just because the bristles are tougher and they offer more resistance. So if you are in a pickle and you have to blend something the way that I'm doing it now, try synthetic brush. A. You won't damage your brushes much, which can happen with a natural, personal one and b. You've got more resistance, so you're more likely to be successful. Well, I'm done here. I'm just adding a little more contrast to this edge here. Here's a little It was a little and too pale for my liking compared to the picture, just using my very tiny detail brush and then also darken up this little fold down here, and I'll use a bit of blue for that. So just what the area and then go in with my little detail brush and I kind of let that pain spread and I would go my brush around a bitch, too. Blend the pigment and I take it again all the way up until the masking tape. When I give it a clean and a pack, try and then I can blend that line a little bit. You can darken up the center, and I can draw in a few of those veins, dragging the pigment out. And then I just blend them a little bit, just going over them with a wet brush before I drop in a bit of the purple too dark in that point in the center there, which is also quite dark in the picture. Now, up here, I'm going to be filling in some of the area of the bud. If you look at the picture, the actual little stocks are a little paler than, um, you know, some of the background. So I'm just painting in some blue to kind of hint at the shape there. I'm making sure to leave gaps where the stocks are, and then also give the bud whose definition there just a bit more blue. I think for this it's really good to look up. Look at the picture up close to really zoom in on it because there's a lot of detail going on. Andi. It's quite easy to get the shape of the limb wrong here. I understand my best to look at the picture and to paint what I see, just adding but more and blue there to give that more shape and definition what such as going around some of those a little seed pods just to finding them a little bit. And all painted this. But down here I was waiting the entire area. And then we'll go in with the blue, and I'm first just concentrating it on all of those faults that are the darkest. And while that dries, I can work on the next one. I'm just mapping in the dark shadows first, because these air so small it's quite difficult to blend from such a dark to such a pale point with water color such a small area. So I find it a little easier to first going with a dark paint and to kind of let that dry just a little bit before I clean off my brush. And I really carefully tried to blend from dark to light. So you that's what you see me doing here. Now I'm just cleaning off my brush again, pretending that and then lifting a little bit of paint away from whatever area got too dark . Similarly, L b kind of mapping in some of those little shapes down here, so I've just mapped it up with the paint and the paint around it, just to make sure that I preserve some of that pail, highlight to hint at the shapes there just kind of drawing it in and then painting around it. And again here I'm working wet on dry, picking up more paint and then filling out that area. So the only real downside to working with such a small brush usually is that it runs out of pain quite quickly, meaning that you have to load up on more pigment, which ultimately makes you slower. So not only does it take longer, but you also run the risk of your paint drying in the meantime. So if you do take a long time with us, I had advised to drop a little bit of water into the center of the area so that it won't dry on use quickly. Else you'll be left with little splotchy marks and you know, unwanted lines where you don't want them. So just keep an eye on the fact that your pain shouldn't dry until you finish the entire shape, and if it does, then just re with the area and blend out any lines that you might have accidentally created . I'm just spreading out the paint and I'm picking up. But if water to also soften that highlight there because it was just a bit too stark to white, and here I'm picking up more pigment again. This time it's the shrinking violet, and I'm just darkening the very dark area of that shape. I was kind of wiggling my brush to blend that into the blue, and then while it dries, I could work on the next button down here I was painting in that dark line, shading in the shadow. I'm then going in with more paint, and this is the shrinking violet. You just carving out that highlight and then I'll stop when I think that I've reached enough shape and dimension blending that out to pitch. Then slowly, you can start to see that round shape become more and more apparent. And in between those passes, I washed and dried the brush. Day and night in work appear, and it's the same as those other buds. Just taking some of that blue and mapping out the different shapes that I see in the picture, loading up more pigment and by darkening that edge down there re create more shadow, and it makes it look more three dimensional again. And there I'm tracing around the highlight that I need to reserve filling out some of those shadows and mapping out some of those little circular shapes and the stocks just blending that up. And since I'm, you know, showing you this a real time, you can really see how I take time with us. And I don't rush these because they do. Um, you know what? Water color can be a bit forgiving, So it does pay to be careful. Um, and you know, if you make a mistake on one of the pedals, that's a little easier to hide and to blend out rather than, um, any mistakes in the centres off the pedals. So take your time with such and just work, step by step. And here again, I'm just working on one of these buds. I'm using that same approach where work went on dry. I kind of feel out the shadows. And then I carved the highlight from there and under the same down here, just tracing over those fault and then filling out the dark and just and I'm carving out the round highlights. That'll really make the shape pop out and appear more three dimensional is going around until I'm satisfied and I keep looking at the picture. So you have just cleaned up my brush and also tried it a bit. And that will just help me blend even smoother, just going along those edges. And because this one's at an angle and make sure that the highlight from the lower 2/4 is brighter than the corns in the back and they're just helped with the shape of the bud. I'm just blend that again, and there we go. Lastly, I'll work on this one appear and it started out way too pale. So make sure just going over the entire area with more of the, um, shrinking violet on a large brush was covering the entire area to push it further back into the background to darken it and just tone all of that down a bit near you can see him taking the point of that, brush it along the edge and then blending and violent all the way up until the edge and just making sure of the entire layer of paint as well blended
19. Finishing touches: making petals pop: Alright, guys, we're almost done. I know this was a long painting. We've had many layers. We've had many steps already. Now it's just time to add a couple of finishing touches. And I'll be doing that mostly with lamp black, lemon yellow and a little bit of the white ink that I also mentioned in the supplies list. And we'll just be using those to add here. And there are a couple of duchess that will just help the painting really pop and finish it off. So this is where we're at. Just make sure that your roughly at the same kind of stages I am here before you continue with the next steps because, um, once we've done these, you can't really go back and add anything so you can see we've got all of our layers in place. We have our shadows. It's looking nice and round on three dimensional. And overall we're quite happy with the base layers of color. So and I'm just taking an eraser and erasing any remaining visible pencil lines, and I'm using one of these gummed ones again just because they're very good at removing excess, um, pencil marks and then I'll be taking a little bit of this lemon yellow just to layer up on some of the little buds of the flowers, because I don't have a tube of it. I'm just using a little pen, and I'm just going to be going in here and layering a little bit of yellow over those round little buds just to accentuate and capture tiny bit of that yellow color that we can see in the picture. And again, make sure you've removed all your pencil marks before we go in with these details, because you just won't be able to erase over these things as easily and to make sure that everything's really dry before you go in with an eraser. So down here in the corner, I'm also just layering up the yellow and next will be making some final finishing touches and adjustments wherever I see fit. So here's just another close up of what we're looking like at the moment, and I can see a couple of things that I want to fix and change. At this point, I really take a far step back from the painting, and I tried to compared to the photograph to see what still needs fixing what still needs doing. So here's my palette again and will be going in with a little bit of black this time on a small brush, and I'll be darkening up some of the shadowy areas. Now. Remember how I had said that they need to be roughly equally dark? That's what we'll be doing here now by going over the darkest shadows that you see in the picture so often It's these little shapes that kind of are tucked in behind the petals, and I'm only going to be layering a thin layer of black over the dark purple where I in the picture, see that it is really very dark. There's no detail visible. Essentially, it looks black to the eye. That's what I'll be covering with a layer of black now. So I'm starting off with my small maestro brush and at a later stage else, which, over toothy little tiny detail, brush the nova because you don't want the black to go outside of the lines and you just want to be covering small areas. So here I'm just taking it over the very inner a portion of that semi circle down here, I see a lot of darkness, so I'm going to be feeling the shape and with a thin layer of black. This is the lamp black Bihsh, Minka, and also be going into that shape there. And you can see how this just adds a lot of depth and again helps in creating that three dimensional shape. But you have to be spars and careful with it because if you overdo it with the black, it can start to look dull and dark, which is not what we want. We only want to use the black to help bring forward and accentuate the paler, detailed petals off the plant. So here you can see I've switched over to my little synthetic because thes little fine areas, really, they're easier to paint with the synthetic. And I'm just carefully pushing my watery black over that shape and also down here all the way up until the masking tape. And there you can see. I'm just fixing the edge with my little detail brush and I'm having another look at the picture and her realized I had missed something here, so that's a little bit of a division between two pedals there that I'm just painting in carefully and this area looks very dark to me. And I'm always making sure that these lines are smooth. Not at all jagged. Um, And again, this is just important because the pedals obviously have smooth edges. And these areas that were painting and now are very much the background. So, um, if we have any of this black overlapping with the pedals that are out in front, it would ruin this kind of effect of the layering of thes different petals that are layered on top of each other in the photograph. So just make sure that you're careful and taking your time with a nice small brush, and I've just spent this up a little bit, but you can see what I'm doing there. I'm really just taking my brush over these areas that look very dark that I'm just trying to push backwards and again. We're trying to keep them all at one even level of darkness, one even level of value, because in the picture they have that as well. So if one of thes ends up darker and another paler in your final painting that detract from this bulb is rounded looking shape that we're trying to create with all of the's shadows and, um, layers. So just keep taking steps backwards from your painting. And as soon as you have the idea that you're not sure you know where to add any more of this than you should stop because you can take this overboard and start to have it look comical and, um, overdone, which is obviously not what we're going for. So appear this little shape will fill in. And there again already from the distance, you can see how much depth ASUs adding, I'm just switching over to the little nova again. And I'm switching over to Theis Minka Violet So the drug purple because I'm going to be making a couple of fixes here and there with it on my little detail brush. Yeah, What I was saying is, you know, as you take the step backwards now and look at it from a distance, you can see how much, um, depth those dark areas have added already. What I'm doing here is I'm increasing the contrast off that edge because I had felt that it wasn't quite strong enough yet, and, um I just wanted that petal on the side. There took pop forwards more because you look at the picture. It's very bent towards the lens of the camera. So it's coming towards you. And I didn't feel like we had a chief that yet. So all I did is drag a little bit of the purple of around the edge and then blend that out with a wet brush. So I took one line off the purple around the edge, wetted my, um, smaller maestro brush and then use that to blend outwards. There you can see I'm just regaling the brush to blend again, and in doing so, we darken that pedal a little bit, which is fine, because again, that will help lift the petal that's out in front forwards and off the paper. And there I've gone back in with more water, again dressed to make this move blend. I also improve the contrast here. So again, I'm just taking a small amount of that purple all along that edge. Just drag it along the edge there and there. Then I washed the brush and then I blend it with the damp brush. So I go and dry on dry because it gives me a lot of control. And then I take a damp brush in to blend it out. You can see have blended that animals are blending this edge here, and from this distance, you can already see how much that's helping us in having the petals pop, and they're all do it again. There's taking it along the edge wherever I think there is insufficient contrast or insufficient definition off the pedals. I've just given it. A Washington switched over to a slightly larger synthetic brush here, and I'm just wiggling it along the edge to blend that. And there are mostly just blending, picking up water and blending just to keep it nice and smooth. Now I've laid down a little bit of paper towel just to rest my hand on, because I don't want to be accidentally smudging any of thes details I've been adding. And then this way you can rest your palm anywhere without really having to worry. And I'm just going around and adding definition where I feel like I still needed. I'm so looking at the picture. But at this point, it's also the time to kind of use a little bit of artistic license to have a look at where you're at and where perhaps some of your painting as a little bit two similar and depth and tone and in color. So you might have to make some calls based on, you know, previous layers you've painted. Even if you might not see as much contrast in the picture, you might need to add some. So I look at the picture and then I look at my painting and I tried to just, um, assess whether overall there's enough contrast and definition. And if at any point, like I said, you feel like you're running out of areas where you feel like you should be adding contrast and you should really stop because if you take this too far, it can really detract from the realism of the painting and start to make things look very comical. So down here I noticed that I'd actually missed a bit of a shadow in my original layering, So I'm adding that in there now I'm just going around and improving that contrast there, and you'll notice that later on, I actually dark in that entire area because I realized that relative toothy petals here in front this area next to it wasn't dark enough. And this is what I mean when I say that our shadows need to be sufficiently, um, dark. They need to have sufficient value value being the darkness of your painting to create the relationship between the different pedals. And it's the relationship between the different pedals that creates this three dimensional rounded shape. And so here I noticed that it was just too little of a dis difference in color. And so I'm adding a whole, you know, layer of the shrinking violet to darken that petal underneath, which will then help create the illusion that the pedal on top of it as further forwards facing the viewer. I'm just taking it all over that pedal, giving my wash, giving my brush wash, and then I'll let that dry while I continue somewhere else appear. I'm going to be kind of working on that definition off the edge there, so I'm just leaving a little sliver and then blending that shadow inwards towards the petal to create that little room of a highlight that you see in the picture again. I'm resting my hand on loop piece of kitchen towel, placing down some color and then blending it out. And here I just wanted to define that folded back, upturned little piece of the petal. So just going with a bit more off the blue and blended out here, you can see from another angle what it looks like when I add this definition. So again, I'm resting my hand on kitchen tell. I'm dragging my little detail brush to create a smooth edge around the pedal where I want more definition, and I make sure that my paint is wet enough for me to be able to paint one nice, thin, crisp line. There you can see again just going around it, carefully dragging the paint along and loading up my brush. And then I'm going to be darkening this area a little bit to create that shadowy area and to blend out that line that I drew to add that definition. So I'm never leaving it as you know, just a outline, because if you outline, that really doesn't look very realistic, and instead I build up the color and then I blended, and in this way you don't blend it out too far. You know, you don't completely changed the tone off the pedal underneath. You're just adding a little more pigment at the edge. That helps push one pedal forward and the other back. So here I'm to speeding that up, taking the brush along a pigment that already applied and here, adding that shadow in on the side that I apparently forgot to paint earlier. This is always why it's good to go through a petal by petal to make sure you've, you know, not missed something, because even I miss things still, and I'm just painting in that shadow, funding it out, cleaning off my brush and then I can continue. So here again, I'm working on that little folded back shape that makes that pail of room around the edge of the pedal and the number two just blend that. So I washed my little brush. I tap it a little dry on the towel, and then I go in England. They don't do the same down here, where I need to build up a bit of depth around the but there there's a little shadow. No, just shape that shadow. It's a little hard to see in the reference picture from so far away. But if you zoom in, you can see that there's thes kind of shadows where the pedals fold a little bit, you know, they're kind of crinkled. So that's what I'm painting in here now, just using fairly watery, um, blue and purple. So here for the pittle in the back room using blue and for the one in front I was using the , um, ultramarine pilot and up here I'm noticing that this area still just too pale in comparison to the pittle On top of it, so same story as before. We'll just dark in the area up. So I'll start by just creating that line there where we want most of the contrast. And then I can add more pigment. So if you look at the picture up there, you can see that that entire area should be darker, um, underneath the pink petal at the very top. So he have just gone over to my larger brush, and I'll just take one layer shrinking violet all over that area to push it further back to improve the total relationship between the two petals and again that will just help me create that round shape, washing my brush, putting out a little dry, picking up some blue, going in with the blue and blending that out with a clean brush. And then I can continue. So here along the edge, I want more definition, everything that a little bit too similar and tone and depth. I'm going to just arkin up that little area because as you've seen the picture, it's also darker in the picture. So it's these kinds of adjustments that can really improve a painting quite quickly. So even if you've ever worked on anything, flora yourself before following some of the steps could, you know, elevate any project quite a lot. And they're from a distance. You can see where we're at now and then I can continue down here. So I'm just improving this again. I still I'm not quite satisfied with a gets. I'm taking more of that purple along the edge, and then I'm also working up here on that bud. Just add a bit more darkness around the very center, which also, um, helps kind of pushed that, but backwards on give it more shape and dimension. I'm just going in to create some of those veins as well. And I'm using watery, shrinking violet for this here now. So I'm taking pain from the well, and I'm just dragging that over the dry paper here and again. I could just dragon those veins now because the painters watery, it's not too stark and not too dark. And then you can always add more pigment like I'm doing here now if you need to and appear . I'm also building up a bit of that shadow that we missed earlier. There's quite a pronounced shadow where there's one petal overhangs over at this other one . I'm just making sure to capture that. Now. I'm just working my way up first with E veins and then slowly building up that around and shadow that you see in the picture just was more of that, um, ultra marine violet and again, the ultra Marine violet is more forgiving them this minka prop the shrinking violet, the darker purple. So I find it easier to use that and then simply add in some of the dark purple where necessary. It's just not as dark and easier to blend out and lift off. Should you ever accidentally take it too far. I'm just blending around the edge there and again that will improve the relationship between those two petals. And while that dries, all try and blend out this edge a little bit. I'm just not quite happy with it yet, and I think the shape is a little bit off 12. Try and improve it a little bit while I'm here, which is making sure that, um a there's sufficient contrast, but be that the shape is better. So just taking that dip down little further and then pushing the shadow up all the way under that pit hole and down along the edge there on that, I'm just blending it out.
20. Finishing touches: final reveal: And then I'll work on that shadow up here, darkening up this pedal which was too pale, originally and again improving the relationship between the pedals on this area but just darkening into the point where it needs to be Over here, I can now add some of those pink veins. I'm just dragging in some of the pink with my detail brush, and I'm always making sure that I follow the picture. So I've just placed those in, and now I'm just blending them out by taking my damn brush all over those marks I made down here. Oh, go over that little shape again that I mistakenly left paler before And then also, dragon those veins again like we've been doing before. I'm just doing that with watery, shrinking violet just filling out that area. But to darken it and to kind of thick in the veins at the base there and then taper them out. And I'll do that as well on this other petal here. I've picked up slightly more concentrated pain since that pedals a bit darker at the base there, and I'm dragging and more of those veins again, kind of going over that area that we originally painted it in, You know, when we created those kinds of faded out marks. So I'm just laying there ing over that again. And then this way it looks more natural and slightly more blended. And it also creates that illusion that there's a bit of a fold or a crease in that area. There, you can see how I'm picking up this minka violet, the watery paint and how are switched on to my smallest detail brush. And there I am, dragging in more of those rains again, just like we've been doing on the other petals. And I'm just filling out that area, create a bit more shadow in depth and also back here, and then I'll let that dry. So I'm resting my hand on kitchen paper again, and I'm now improving this area here, where I'm just lacking a little bit of contrast again and also going around underneath here . So if you look on the in the picture, you can see how there's quite a distinct line there, and that's just what I'm kind of building up to. No, and you can also see quite visible veins on that pedal so I'm just making sure to track those. And and again, I'm just using water a shrinking violet for this, tracking them out there on improving their shadow here, just blending that with a clean brush to me that I've gone into water, patted it dry and come back to blend before I continue over here with more of those veins on the pedals. And they will do that on this one over here as well. First, I'm just increasing them contrast of that fault there, going in with more of those veins, making sure it's nice and dark around the blood there and also down here, taking those right up to that and then making sure that that it just kind of well defined. And we'll also be improving at a bit later on with white ink. But for now, I'm just filling in that little full back. So if you look at the picture, you'll see what I mean on working on that edge there, where the petal kind of folds towards the camera and has a little bit of highlight there and again, just working on the shadow Nuff left that area to come down here into the corner there, left corner and again, just improving the veins and going over the area that we've previously painted veins in that we blended more to create that creased, folded effect. And it might not look it from this close. But if you step back, you'll see what I mean, because the little fine veins kind of, you know, blend into what we've previously painted. And in that way it looks more natural and more folded, increased and three dimensional going along the beach there. And then I'll work on this pittle down here at the bottom, just dragging those veins on. They're quite visible in the picture, so I needed to go over them again here, just going over what I've already painted. Speaking of more paint, dragging them and on the Mac appear, I'm just adding more depth and also hinting at those folds increases and means pulling them upwards until I'm happy with it. So moving on to the right corner there, I'm going to improve the depths here around the bunt by adding more shadow, and the animals are going to be painting in the shadow underneath this petal, which for some reason I managed to forget in the previous layers. I'm not sure what happened there, but anyway, there's a really dark, um, Randa Chatto under this piddle. So I'm actually just switching over to my maestro brush to fill that area and and then I'll be blending it in a second. So I'm just blocking the color and making sure that I first place the pigment where wanted to go because I don't want to blend it down too far. And then I wash my brush powder a little dry. And then I go into blend, and I'm doing that with the smaller of the two meister brushes. Picked up a bit more water. I'm just blending that downwards. Can I'm just placing in that purple, no shrinking violet and then dragging out the paint to create those pains What my brush a little more. And then I'm dragging and blending with water. So they're just blending that down on having that dark shape that you see in the picture there, which is again a shadow that's being cast by some of the petals on top. I'm just adding in some blue because you can see a little bit of a blue tinge in the picture, making sure to take that all the way up to the edge there, drawing in that line from the shadow and also blending that down here. I'm just going in with that detail. Push again to make those veins a little more pronounced. Make them a little darker, more defined. And then I blend over that with just a little bit of water to tone down the harshness of that line that I made just blending it out a little bit. Letters. Keep blending that until I'm happy with it. I don't want any harsh edges, so I'm just going over it quite a bit with that maestro brush until I'm, you know, satisfied with it here. Picked up somewhere water just to blend that pigment down further. Kind of smooth it out. All right, well, that drives. I've just rested my hand on some get you tell again, and I'm dragging and more of those marks up here on that petal above the area. We just worked on just dragging them towards me. An engine will find that dragging, um, precious like thes towards me is a lot easier than pushing them away sometimes. Actually. Get up and I walk around the table and, you know, maneuver myself in whatever way to make it possible that I can drag the brush towards me. Um, so if you're struggling with this trip, have a look. If you can, you know, shuffle around your piece of paper or move around your desk so that you're in a more comfortable position. And that makes for much smoother lines. Was dragging in that sick little mark there as well. And again, I'm using shrinking violet for this from the well. So it's really watery, and I'm able to maneuvered quite easily. So we take a step back. That's what it's looking like right now. There you can see the detail without it so far. So if I go back down into the corner here, we can now also because this the shadows dried. We can also work on some of the details on this pedal down here. I'm just picking up more off that shrink of Eilat on my tiny little detail brush, and I'm just going to be dragging in those means again. Another. The areas tried. We don't risk anything bleeding anywhere. Drag that across the petal work in some shadow there, and I also do the same up here on the other petrol appear. I'll just at a little more shadow again. So this was just a little too pale on the inner portion of that pedal. And then I'll just dragon somewhere if those veins again down the center line and also down the side there, and I'll just keep going until I'm happy with the shape there. So in the pictures towards Thea, proportion off the flower there, and I'm just blending it out a little bit. Also, to reiterate that highlight on the edge there, over here at the top. I'll also add veins. So this is just more of what we've already been doing, just dragging the brush across with watery, shrinking violet load of my brush. Again. We're pigment to improve that shadow up there, just adding more depth and more value to that pedal where I've left it a little too pale so far. And this is what I mean when I say that you have to adjust the value of the pedals as you paint because it's all in relation. Write to each other, so each brittle only comes to life through the pedals that are surrounding it. And so if you get those relationships right between dark and light, you can create a lot of shape without, and it makes it look more realistic in this way. And that's just what I'm doing. So I noticed area was too pale, no wife darken it up down here in the corner. Um, we're going to get started with our whiting. So at this point, you to be finished painting and ready for the very final finishing touches. I'm just giving it her shake, and I'll be taking Inc out of the cap there with my smallest detail, Persian. And this will just that. US said. A couple of key highlights spread white highlights that will help finish off the painting. So at this point, wherever you take, think you're paper should be dry, some starting down here and there's in the picture a very vivid white highlight there. So I'm just dragging that in, and I'm also just adding a little bit of highlight to the edge off the petal next to it there. And one thing I will say about the White Pincus that you shouldn't overdo it because it can again look a little comical. So really, just concentrate on the areas where you really see a very bright, vivid pop, a reflection of the light. So I'm taking it on this edge here for that full back. Um, we kind of spared the area, but it got a little muddy there, so I'm taking it along the edge. Trust to help that highlight Pop. And I also take it along this edge to help that edge really catch the light. And here appear also take it along that folded back edge there. That's just catching the light on the picture. Now, at the very tip of that pedal over there. Here. I'm hesitating a little bit before Trudeau's diving a little bit at the top There. I'll use it also for the highlights on these buds here. So I'm just placing in that little triangular shape that you can see in the picture and adding a highlight to the left side of some of those though buds there and the other side of that shape over there, down here, I'll take it along that ended there, and a friend move you down a little bit. Also take it along the folded back sections here and again. By doing this, we just increase the contrast. And we again are kind of making sure that parts of the painting that should be equally pale are equally pale. Um, so the same concept as with the shadows. I'm just making sure that I look at the picture and I only take this places where I really see very bright white glimpses of light, Reflections of light. You know, those little highlights here and there. Next, I'll fix this area up here, so I'm just going around and making sure that that highlight is one nice move line. And also take it a little across the edge here, just a little touch. And on that little highlight there as well. Now, if you're using wash or you know other white mediums, you might have to layer them a bit. The nice thing with e ink is that it's fairly, um, opaque, and it covers well on top of water color. I'm just going around those trees there and again to the left side. I highlight some of those little seedpods and the stocks there. Then I'm going across the edge here and up top here and again. These are just areas that identify in the picture as being very highlighted, but you should add as much or as little of does as you like. I also find that it's quite a nice way to cover up some of the pencil lines that might not be easy to erase at the top there, where those pale petals are. So here's me doing that. So I wasn't really able to erase this anymore. So I'm just going to go over with the white ink to kind of covered up a little bit. It just tells down the darkness a little bit, so it just makes it a bit paler, um, so that it's less apparent from a distance. So this is what the finish painting looks like, and at this point, we're ready to peel off the tape once it's dry. And here you'll see what I meant with that masking tape trick and getting a nice, crisp, clean edge on the bottom there. And you also see that on the right side. And I repeat, I had this painting dry for a day before I went and peeled all of the tape off so don't peel it off if it's at all damp. Yet I just let it dry, and I came back to it the next day to remove the tape, some just removing it from the back of my board here and really carefully peeling it away. And there again, you see that satisfying moment where you can remove the tape and reveal a very nice, crisp, clean edge. And then I just go and remove the rest of the tape. And there you can see that crisp lined up close. And if you use a decent quality masking tape, you can get this kind of effect quite easily, so long as it's stuck down. Well, I haven't I'll just remove the rest of the tape, and you can see that the paper, um, got just a little curved. But it didn't buckle. It didn't, um, create huge waves. You know, it's easy enough to frame as it is. If your paper did buckle more than one, you could always iron over it on a gentle setting between two tells, However, if he used 300 GSM paper, you should not have that issue, Um, so you can see there's a slight bow in it, but nothing dramatic. And nothing that you know warps the paper or the painting. And if you, um, put it in a frame now, it'll flatten naturally anyway. So here's the final painting. Guys. I hope you like it. I hope you had fun painting along with me. There. You can see that edge. You can see the bulb off the hydrangea. And I really look forward to seeing your recreations off the project down below. I hope you've enjoyed the course. Please do. Leave me some feedback. Let me know what you would like to see next or any improvements you'd like. And let me know how you found the painting process for the hydrangea. I'm really looking forward to bringing out more classes soon, So stay tuned for the next ones. And I hope to see you back on my channel soon. Thanks, guys.