Realistic Botanical Watercolor: Pink Peony Flower Painting, Step by Step

1. Intro : Hello, fellow art enthusiasts. My name is Kolev, a botanical watercolor artist on a mission to share the joy of creating lifelike botanical watercolor paintings. Despite holding a degree in public administration, my heart have always earned for art. But I could never place myself in any specific area or medium. Therefore, I quit art entirely. But the discovery of botanical watercolor art have marked a beginning of this profound artistic journey. So after graduating from Society of botanical artists, distance learning diploma course, I realized the need for more immersive learning experience. Do not contain any tutorials, demonstrations, or techniques, and made this journey as a beginner, watercolor artist very challenging. What's hard to find is to find an artist's work that you really love and enjoy and you just wish that you knew how he did it, all the techniques and tips, the process you took to paint something this complicated, realistic looking, or just simply beautiful to see fully what it takes to create piece of art that you like. And especially it comes to watercolors because watercolors are quite difficult and challenging medium, but it's absolutely fascinating with its fluidity, transparency, and to create something really realistic and detailed, it can be challenging. So it took me quite a lot of trial and error and quite a few years to learn to control it. And so that's why I'm here to try and tell you some tips and tricks and techniques I wish I had. Thousands have found already inspiration from my teachings, whether it's here or on patron, and now it's your turn to bring your botanical visions to life. I hope you will stick around. 2. Before We Start: Before we start, I would like to mention a few things. If you are an absolute beginner and you are not familiar with basic watercolor techniques, I would like you to check my class specifically dedicated to those main botanical watercolor techniques called master main Basic botanical watercolor techniques, and I explained there in great detail how the technique works, how to do it correctly, and how to practice it with simple shapes. If you do that, you will feel much more comfortable painting a subject. Also, if you would like to know how to stretch a watercolor paper onto the board, for example, if you're using 300 GSM or lighter watercolor paper, I do that to prevent paper from buckling. And settling unevenly. Or if you would like to know how to transfer your drawing onto the watercolor paper from either your sketch or from the line drawing that I'm going to provide you with, or if you would like to know more about the materials that I use in greater detail like what type of paint and brushes and palettes I use, then I would like you to check my very first Scotia class called botanical Oracle painting, learn to paint Iris bud step by step, and choose a lesson accordingly. You don't have to watch an entire class, just the topics that you're interested in. Then without further ado, let's get started. 3. Material List : Hi, again. So let's go quickly through the materials you're going to need for this project. So to start with, you will need watercolor paper. I recommend to be 100% cotton so it can handle the layers and water. If it is 300 SM or Lira, I would recommend stretching it onto a board to prevent from buckling. For that, you will need gum tape and a sponge that you can watch a paper with. If you would like to know how to do it, I have a class on my first Skalsia course watercolor Iris bot where I show you how to stretch a watercolor paper onto a board. Next to transfer your drawing onto Watercolo paper from your sketch or the line drawing I provided you, you will need tracing paper. If you would like to know how to transfer your drawing onto watercolor paper, I have a class on my first Skillshare course, as well, Watercolor iris bud, choose the class accordingly. For that, you will also need pencil and an eraser. You will also need a container to clean your brushes. I use two, one to clean my brushes, and the other one for clean water glazes. You will also need a towel where you can wipe your brush. And a palette, I recommend ceramic palette because the colors flow much nicer on the surface, and you can see the correct color of your mix. In my paintings, I use my own range of Kolinsky sable round brushes available as a set in size six, four, two, one, zero, and my specially designed smoother brush for dry brush technique with a flatter tip that provides extra stability and control for those very fine dry brush details. And also use a little bit of blue tech to remove the excess graphite of my drawings. So that's it. Those are materials, and let's go straight to the painting. 4. Mixing Colours: Hello, everyone, and welcome to new class. So this week we are painting penny bud. Well, it's kind of semi open penny bud. I took the photograph of this peony myself, and I want to visit my mum in Lithuania. So I really liked it because it just not really a tiny bud. You know, like, usually pennies, like have very round little bud, but it's not fully open either just this sort of emerging flower and it just looks really beautiful. A little bit hard to see the leaves. It's quite dark. I try to brighten one on one picture just to make them a bit more lighter, so it's easier to paint in some places it's just completely black. So I'm not sure if we'll see how we get on with it. Today we're going to be painting the flower itself, and then the next part, we're going to paint the leaves, the stem, and sepals because it's quite a bit of work. Right, so let's see what colors do we have? We have beautiful pink, magenta, some red, some purple, all kinds of colors. So we don't want to keep it limited. So I see a couple of major colors. So we have this beautiful magenta, and then it turns a bit into more bluish magenta, so a bit more violety, so it has blue in it. And in a few places, it's a bit more red, so it's more like sanelia red. There are a few white petals that are a little bit peeking through yellowish neutral tones. So we're not going to talk about greens just yet. We'll talk about them later. So now let's focus on a petal. So they have very saturated nice color, and maybe the hardest part is those very subtly interconnecting hues of color. So from pink to slightly more bluish color, and they merge very seamlessly. So we're going to have to have quite a few, maybe I don't know how many, but definitely at least one or two wet-on-wet techniques to apply those colors, to merge them, and then all those lighter patches where the petal curves has, you know, some little bumps that creates little shadows and highlights in certain places. And the petals itself, they are a little bit textured. More specifically, you can notice on that petal has this linear texture. So we might build color in a little bit of a dry-brush manner to create that textured feeling. We do see a little bit of sort of neutral gray color. Usually we paint from lighter to darker colors, but I'm thinking that if we leave lighter area in here, we can apply that gray at the end. It doesn't have to be necessarily from the beginning. So yeah, I think we can maybe try and establish those main colors first and then start applying our base layers and go from there. So let's see. I'll pick up a piece of paper for testing colors. Oh, and by the way, I've I have received my brushes. I don't know if you can see on the camera, but they are this, um, beautiful, dark brown, reddish brown, burgundy color. They're not black. I don't know if the camera can pick this up and has nice gold lettering, gold letters and numbers. So these are Kolinsky sable brushes. It is what I prefer painting with. So that's what I made. I just made the brushes that I like to paint with that I myself would be painting with. So. And so the thing is that what's a bit different about this set that I'm going to have this smoother brush, which is small brush. Which will be easier for dry-brush because if you compare to the smallest brush on a set, so it's a little bit bigger in size than this one. But look at how to show the difference of the tip. One is very sharp and small for the finest detail. And the other one is a little bit dula. So the Dalla one is made to be easier to dry-brush and do the smoothing technique and so on. So it has been made dula on purpose and intentionally to help with the dry-brush to make the dry-brush easier. That's how I prefer to do the technique, the dry-brush technique that I do. Did a very decent job at cleaning the power, but it will be okay. Right, so I'm just going to use magentas town for the main color as I think that's going to be better. And then to make it a bit more bluish, we are going to add. So I'll mix a bit magenta on the other side, and we're going to add a little bit of perhaps blue. Let's see how it would look if we add a little bit of palo blue. That was too much, but I sprayed my pigments, so they're wet so easy to pick it up. Right, let's see. That just looks a bit more bluish. And in certain places, it's even more blue where we can lift, perhaps, make it a bit lighter because here you can see, it's almost like it would want to be white, but then it has this blue hue, and then we can just glaze with very light blue. Color. So but where the side is bluish, we're going to use that magenta with blue and we pink. You know, the fresher color, we just going to use magenta on its own. And once we have a couple of those layers, we can slightly adjust when we build a color, glaze with a different color to kind of intensify. If you want it a bit more bluish, we can glaze with very thin wash of blue, and we can make that side a bit more blue. You don't have to premix every little color, you know, for each little spot. So you have to kind of think ahead, see what makes things a bit less stressful. So we're going to paint those two colors and then we're going to adjust little corners here and there when we need to. So we do have this very dark burg in the dark red color as well here. We need to mix something up, so I'll start with magenta as our base. Then I'm going to add canalia red and palo blue. Can I get this maybe heavier on red than magenta, perhaps. And we get this dark very dark burgundy colour. Let's save that. Something like this, even maybe a bit more red just to make it less purple and more very dark red. Et's see. Similar, a bit more red. Okay, that would be fine. Now I'm going to pick up the tiniest amount of Mayan yellow. I have a little bit pigment left on my brush. So a a tiny bit of that color here from that burgundy and mix it in and get a slightly brownish creamy color, which should be fine right here for these white petals. Here you go. It's perfect. Okay. Now, the most important part is to start painting it. 5. First Layer Part I: So I think I'm going to paint with. Small maybe my number two. Let's see. If you notice I already kind of like to paint with smaller brushes rather than too big. Let's see. Either number two or four. Well, I think I'm going to take number two here. It's pretty it's pretty small. Okay, so we're going to be painting white on wet all our main or we're going to lay our base layers with white on wet. So usually when you paint water on wet, if you already know if you already painted before, you kind of jump from petal to petal. So if you paint right here, you can't paint next to it because you don't want to interfere with the settling lay. So you're going to paint with something that doesn't touch the one that you just painted. So we're gonna jump around like this. We might need to wait a little bit because it doesn't dry as quickly white on wet. But we can start with, let's say, let's start with this bigger one. So this one is one petal, but because it's quite big, it might we might run out of time to paint it because we want to do a little bit lifting and so on, and so on. We can glaze it a bigger area than we need to and paint only half of it because there's a little bit of texture over there that we're going to have to do. So if there's a little bit of watermark from applying two different glazes, we can kind of cover it up with a bunch of here textured little things there. So we're gonna apply water glaze, sort of even a whole petal if you want to, but we're going to paint this one. Pick up clean water from my second ja. You don't use the water that you clean your brushion. I always used to. So you don't want to go over the pencil ine. Better not go far, but then then going over. So kind of drop my water in the middle usually, and then I push around that water up to the pencilin one thing you hear me say all the time. What we want is an evenly glistening glaze, so no drying patches and no puddles. So the more even you can get it, the better the glaze will settle. I'm painting on Fabrinr tiestico, so the water somehow usually dries quite quick, especially in summer. So you want to saturate your paper a little bit, let it soak it in and then re glaze as it starts to dry out. So you see I'm applying water kind of about halfway through the other part, other side of the patel, and I might leave. So now I'm dropping in some water, which is too much, but I'm going to let it soak in just to hopefully have more time. Right. Alright, so it's glistening quite easily. It's a little bit too bad. So I want to let it soak in a little bit. While it's doing that, we can discuss a little bit of our reference. So we have this magenta here and on that side, we have more bluish magenta, the violety color. And then we have some dark red in that. So I'm not sure if you're going to be able to put that yet. Maybe we want a second glaze, but right now, we're going to focus at least on those two main colors. So it's a little bit lighter around the edges, so we're going to have to do a little bit of lifting. And there's a few sort of lighter patches. Even here where it's a violety colour, kind of in the middle with a little bit of light. Right. Making sure that no drank patches. Alright, I think we can start dropping in some color. So I load my brush with magenta first. Don't go with a thick colour. It needs to be quite milky color. Okay. I'll drop it in sort of where it's darker, so it's sort of in the middle here and slowly move it up where gets lighter. Go up to the pencil ine where I need to. I will go up to the center path here and I will stop. That will be up to where we're going to paint. Okay. Now we can move as I have less pigment on my brush, I can move up a little bit gently up to the penciline but not fully. That's take the water out. Okay, no, don't take water out. Add a bit more. I'm picking up a little bit of that violet colour with a little bit more dilution. I added a bit more water, just not have too dark of a color. And with that violety colour, I go on the other side of the petal. Painting with a very tip of my brush. I don't apply any pressure. Just letting that color fall on. You can see it's quite light. Maybe you can pick up a little bit darker. It's not looking like it's dark enough. Okay, like so. Over these lines that we drew in. I'll dilute a bit more, take the excess off, and with that bluish color, go around the edge because the edge looks like it has this kind of bluish color. Okay. Clean take the water out. I'll scoop it up a bit here where it will be slightly more pinky color. And pick up a little bit ma gun. I see that edge kind of can go slightly higher, like so. And now we quickly need to lift where we need because it's drying very quickly. I'll lift a little bit right here a little bit in between those kind of ridges that left out. And a little bit right here. God so now I can pick up a little bit of that dark color on the very tip of my brush. Carefully go a little bit on that. Maybe it's too dark. I'm going to have to add more red and magenta day just looking a bit too brown. So with the very tip of my brush, let me just quickly add more red just looking very brown. Take the excess. Yeah, I'm going to have to add more magenta day just not looking right. I'll do for now. Just adding a bit in that shadowy part. Just to give us a good start to the shadow. We'll hopefully lay a little bit more magenta on it and it's going to soften that brown color. We'll look more what we need to. English, take the water out, I pick up a bit magenta now. Just go over a bit. That shadowy color. Okay. As for the first layer, I think we're gonna be okay. Oh. It's actually dry here, so I'll soften. The very tip, I'm just adding a bit. Okay, no. At the top, I don't go 'cause it's quite dry. Maybe we can add a little bit of bluish. C and add a bit of a very thin layer. Anyways. So I'll leave it as it is now because I can see I'm messing it up already. So we need to leave it to dry, and then we can paint this one next. So next we're going to paint this bake one. 6. First Layer Part II: Right, let's paint that one. Nice water glaze again. It's a bigger one. So while I'm applying water glaze, that needs to be even evenly glistening, no pedals and no drag patches. So again, I know I said it quite a few times, but I just, again, noticed now and because last few times, I painted on Moloduroy last few tutorials. And well, maybe asparagus wasn't on Molondoy, but generally, I started painting on Moon duro and a bit morgan. And how different it is from Fabriano or from Saunders Watford. So Molonduroy is much smoother and all the white and wet layers, they appear much more smooth and messy. They dry out somehow tidier, especially when you start lifting. They live very nice layers and much more patchy on this paper. But on Mlondero, you need more layers to get a saturated vibrant colors, way more than, for example, Fabri Artistico, the dark colosmo stays dark, quick requires less layers. So you need to know all these pluses and minuses of each paper so that you can accommodate particular projects. But what I wanted to say is because for example, if I painted on Moon Doi, those were on what layers would look way more smoother and the edges would be nice, and it just looks more tidy and precise than when I paint on this paper. So but then you need to accommodate the techniques, the dry brush to kind of end up with pretty much the same result at the end, right? But the process might vary. And so that's how important it is to know your materials, know your papers, and know the characteristics, basically. And so I choose now to paint on Fabriano artist to co more darker objects. Because it requires less layers to achieve the darkness. But if the smoothness and tightness is kind of very important for the project, especially when you paint, let's say, like single petals with water drops and so on, I choose molnduroi or wider projects like lighter, like white flowers, so so on. So don't get scared if it looks a bit messy now, all these wet and wet layers, we'll try to fix it up with drabsh. Alright, so my layer looks pretty even. I can see the text of the paper which you want to. And it's pretty damp, I think, and we can start laying the colour. So we'll start with magenta. Again, it's pretty much the whole petal is fully painted, but around the edges, it's a little bit lighter. So kind of starting from mid section of the petal, where it's more saturated in color and leave the edges just for now. I will bring that color later. So I'll go a little bit with magenta, sort of a bit down there, and then we need to start picking up the magenta color. Okay, clean my brush, and I load my brush with magenta violet color. So this petal has lots of sort of bumps and curves and curls of the petal. And we can lift. And even if you don't manage to kind of create them with this no wet layer, we easily can do that after. So don't stress about it too much. We will need quite a few layers to achieve the saturation, the color. All those petals, we will apply more layers. We're going to do glazing little sections at a time, so we can focus on creating the details. So if you won't be able to do it now, that is absolutely fine. So it's quite dark in there, but it's a bit too wet, so I can't really apply more color, so d more and leave it, and then before it dries out, I'll add some of that dark burgundy color. So where we have the lines, I'll add a bit slightly dry a pigment and go over those lines. Creating that shadowy part of that, each sort of curl curve of the petal. It's not going to be very visible, but I can try. Okay. Cleaning bridge take the rot of my magenta and go sort of a bit in a heart here in the center. I wanted those colors to merge because I can see them both sort of in them. Pull my brush, take the water out, pick up a little bit of very light, watery violet magenta. Just very light so that I can go around the edges lighter, but also has a bit of color. Well, mix it with that magenta. Just basically a very light color. Go around applying a bit of color. If it's too dark, then we can go and do some lifting. So with the very tip of my brush, go and create nice edges. Okay, that's looking pretty good. Pick up a bit more color and bring it more up if the edge is a bit too wide. Lighter, you can add some color. Okay, now, I'll clean my brush, take the water out, and then we can go and lift a bit where we want it to be lighter. After each sweep, you want to clean your brush. Clean and take the water out. Do not bring water into settling glaze. So I want to kind of wallet stamp remove from all these areas that's supposed to be a bit lighter. Now go around the edge here a little bit. Take off a bit more and now in those areas where those folds fold, but what to say, little curves of the petal and one very obvious one right here here and here at the bottom. Okay. We can do a little flick through for the texture sake. Not really happening because the glass is a bit too wet, but we can try. Alright, so now I'm picking up a little bit of that dark burgundy colour, a little bit more magenta in there. Okay. So adding in that corner. While it's damp, if it's dry, don't do anything anymore and you can reglde. But it's still a bit damp, so I'm adding. Still a bit too brown, I think, still need to add more more gent and red. To create that shadow. The very tip of my brush. Okay, clean my brush, take the water out, and picking up just the magenta. A slightly kind of dry pigment because it's dried on my palate. I'm not adding too much water. And I want to add with the vertib my brush and those little strokes because now the glaze is dryer. In the direction of the petals form, you can see how the lines are curving. I'm adding a bit more magent the center part, a bit where those folds are just to try to start creating a little bit of that now tonal variation. And it's quite dark in here. So I want to intensify now light and shadow. So going over that shadow, we part with magenta because the color is just a bit off, so we're going to try to adjust even more after we finish with this patel. Just go over with magenta, so it's not looking too ground. And I'll soften a bit here there just because it's dry with dam brush. If something uneven with clean dam brush, you can run your brush across just to Okay. Right, so it's settling nicely. I don't want to do anything too much. Maybe the edge kind of could be lighter, but the glaze is already dry, so I'll leave it as is. And then we can move. This is already dry, can move up. So it's smaller petals that I might need to take slightly smaller brush. So I'll go to my number one. Again, it has a very nice Right. So I think we can paint the one on top or those side ones. Let's see. Um, Okay, before we do, let's adjust our color that we keep meaning to adjust to brown color. So I'll add quite a bit more magenta in here and red, canalia red. Let's make it less looking brown. Me magenta, 'cause it's a bit too much blue there. Let's hope that's gonna be better. Right. Let's paint that big petal. I'm adding water with my number one. It's a very nice tip so I can get into all these little nooks and crannies. Even glaze, even glistening up to the pencil lion, no drying patches, make sure you don't dip your hand in here. Right. It's more it's not much violet magenta, but mostly just magenta. So kind of go from the right hand side where the color is more saturated. There's a little bit light patch in there. Pretty much covering it all. And then we're just going to lift and add more color to intensify and create the curve and light and shadow areas. Again, keeping a little bit of the pencil mark of the edge. Nicely going into that nook there. So that's the area where we're going to want to apply a little bit of pink. It's quite reddish pinkish color there. Okay, my brush, take the water out. I want to lift from that edge because there's no color there. Pick up a little bit violet colour. Kind of add but here, the top. There's not much difference, and around the edge. There you go. Pick up a little bit of I think I'm going to pick up a little bit of rose made lake. Just right here in that corner. I know it's drying, so I'm just gonna try to be quick and soften a little bit. So now I can pick up this white actually color. Mix a tiny midgon of magenta and go over. Busting the water lift from the bottom miter. Now let's see where we want to lift. We lift a little bit here, a little bit here. A little bit in the middle and now pick up a bit more color and add in between where we want it to lift to create now the tonal variation. To intensify intensify the shadowy parts of the highlights intensified too. Here you go. So take the water. I'll pick up a little bit of that Rose Maddo lake. Rose madder lake and go here and cocre that slightly rather Here it there. There you go. Okay. Now clean my brush, take the wall out and see if the edges of the extra color that we applied. If they're a bit too fuzzy, you can go with down brush, smooth them and feather them into the petal. They kind of separate it a bit too much. Can add a bit more strying the very tip of your brush only. Actually can pick up a little bit of violet imagent here it's almost in that shabby part. It's almost with a blue hue. Anyway, we can add later. But that's the basis basically. It's just a basic layer, so that's going to do. Right, so now we need to let the area dry. We can go in there. We can paint, for example, that little look there with some dark violet colour on dry paper because it's just a tiny little corner. Go. Right. Almost dry. It's dry at the top, so we can paint that edge. 7. First Layer Part III: Color. So again, we're going apply some water. Clean water. A little bit. Use the brush up accordingly because it's small petals behind. Because if the brush is too big, then you won't be able to go into those little corners. Again, let's try to have as even of a glaze as we can. Now, I'm collecting the excess because it's too damp. Okay, I'll start with violet color this time because it's the colour that dominates that petal. And the edges aren't really lighter, so I can just kind of drop it in and go all the way to the pencil line. Not worry at the very beginning of any light and shadows, we can lift off and add more colour to greatnal variations. So now I just want to drop that in because it's a small petal, not too much going on. Go all the way down, a bit more magenta now in there without even cleaning my brush just so that it can mix on a paper and in a brush and have a bit more magenta color. And as we go down, we can pick up a bit of that really, really dark color. Let it mix in with the rest we finish. We're off. You go Okay. Clear my brush, can add more magenta here just to have a better transition. Okay, a bit more magenta as well, maybe on that side. There's a little line of dark color. It's like almost two petals. Okay. Clean my brush, take the water out, and now we want to lift here where it's ldn. We can apply this dark color right next to it when the lays dry to have this very sharp, nice line there. So I want to lift a bit here as well. Holding my brush a bit more horizontally because I don't like a sharp line or anything, just a little patch of light. I'll pick up a bit more color and intensify the contrast by adding where we need. So we need darker right here. Create that line there. I bring the color down just to not leave any hard edges. Okay. With a little bit of color, take the excess word out. And I want to add direction of a form a little bit darker here. Tiny bit. Okay, so now we have a little bit of that variation. So we will need more bluish color here, even you can see. We can do that later. Adding a bit more on the left side. And I will leave it to try. Not to mess with it too much. Yeah, this kind of requires more blue, I think. Here you go. Okay. I'll leave it. Right. So what's left now is this big one here and those few and the white ones, and then we can start building with, I don't know, I think might be glazing dry-brush. We will see how we go. So I want to I don't think I have to, actually. Pretty it's pretty dry. So we can go and paint that in. I'll go back to my number two. Picking up clean water. Okay. Dropping it in the middle first and then moving it up to the pansy line. Go over the line. Now here, you again want to apply water kind of into the petal further, but no scrubbing because you will start lifting the color. It's just so we don't end up with a hardag. Okay. Okay. So we have a lighter edge now way more. So I load my brush with my gentinel and go a bit lower like where we see the colour sort of down here and the edges are quite light. So I'll start with that main colour right there. Okay. It's going to be some dark in there as well. Okay It's a bit too wet, so I want to let it kind of dry apply dark color. So what we're going to do is clean the brush, take the water out, and we're going to push that color that we applied from the edge of it, pushing it up a little so that it becomes lighter. So clean my brush again and continue pushing from that edge up. Just drag some pick up from that puddle and drag a bit up, controlling it. If it's too much, you clean your brush. So that way, we created that nice transition. And if I want to push a bit more, I'll pick up from the edge of that color and kind of smudge that in between dark and light to push a bit more color up. And if you need it to be lighter, like more bluer, we can glaze the whole thing with a nice clay. So I'm picking up a little bit of the violetic colour to create that here, little fold. A bit of color we can on the right hand side with some violet color. I see amgon of violet color there. Okay. Can apply that gray layer doesn't have to be now. So now I'm going to pick up that dark burgundy color and go into that bottom. Shadowy color now. Shadowy part, right under the patel. Oh, that's too much. Take the excess. Now, I have a bit of a tubico a bub. Now I'll clean my brush, take the water out, pick up magenta, so that I can create a nicer transition. So it's quite like not sticky, but it's not very watery, very, very buttery. And I'll go next to it so I can create nicer transition with the very top of my brush just kind of brushing like this little brush strokes. Trying to merge those colors, so it has my transition in just a blab of dark color. Moving the brush according to the petals. Texture. Go. All right. Okay. I'll go actually all the way to the bottom. It's a different petal, but they merge nicely. I want to add a bit more dark. Okay. Can my garage, take the water out. Left from here a little. Just kind of weird area that has different color. We're going apply some nunel. Maybe we can do it later. So otherwise it's going to merge. We're going apply some rose materk in there. Okay Okay. Right, so I think we can leave it to dry because this edge needs a bit more colour, but it's dry already, so I don't want to mess with it, so I'm going to leave it. And yeah, so that's what's going to be left. So I don't want to put my hand in here, so I'll leave it a minute to dry and then I'll go and paint in the remaining right here. And we will get closer to finishing with our first layers. I'll probably paint with number one. You know what? I think, I will apply a little bit more, but we don't need much. In here, there are small sections. On these maybe I want to apply water first. They're very small, they're pretty plain and don't have much going on. I apply a bit, clean my brush, take the water out, and soften at the top, so it helps softer tipta and continue adding the rest. Okay, so we have all the layers, base layers painted in. I'm going to leave the light bits for later, actually. Gonna focus on magenta pretzels, and we're going to do that later. So let's just go in and quickly paint in those two remaining parts, and then we can start glazing. So I'll just pick up small brush and go straight on the paper without wetting it first and just go and paint therein. Start here with a bit of a magenta and then can add a bit dark as well. Right. I'll just leave there and we'll fix it up with the driver. 8. Explaining Layering : A, I'll just leave there, and we'll fix it up with a dry So how do we go about now building the tonal values? So after this initial layer, it looks pretty okay. We have tonal values. We have some lights, some darks. But what do we need to do now is to build the color, the saturation, the vibrancy, and at the same time now intensify the balance between, like highlights and shadow so that we have this three dimensional object. So there might be a few ways of doing it. You can you know, every artist has their own preferred techniques. So can dry brush all the way, and little by little takes many hours. So prefer lots of wet on wet techniques. So I kind of I like to do my base foundation layers with where on wet and then start building in slightly dryer way. So start with glazing and finish off with dry brushing because then you can be a little bit more accurate, you know, and we on what is great technique. But for me, it serves best when I do the basic layers, the foundational ones. So I think what we need to do is now have two brushes. One you paint with and one you keep softening the edges. So it's quicker that way when you work with two brushes, when you build your layer. So when you paint with watercolors, you do want to always keep your colors transparent. So to avoid them getting muddy and in order to get the color luminous and vibrant, you need lots of layers stacked on top of each other with very transparent colors. That's the beauty of watercolors. So lots of lots of layers. So how do you do that? Now, so I have two brushes. One, I'll paint with and slightly bigger to soften with. Both wet. Right, so I'll paint with number two, soften with number four. I think that should be. If it seems too small, I might swap paint with number four and soften, maybe with number six. We'll see how we get on. So now we're going to paint with transparent colors with dilute them, have them quite watery, and we'll be glazing little sections at a time. So when you glaze one area, you can't paint right next to it right away. You need to kind of give it at least a few seconds for the area to dry so you work on the other area. So that's how we're going to be jumping from area to area, building up the color. So you constantly refer to your reference and just say, Oh, this little area needs a bit dark, you paint there and then you look around, Oh, this needs to be here, darker. You build with the color that you think it's appropriate for the area. And that's how you like jump like a puzzle from area to area, building up, building up to about 80 or 90%, and then remaining ten, 20%, you finish off with the drivers where you smooth it all out, you add the extra remaining saturation of color and then tidy up the edges, put in a little bit of detail detection, so on. So now we're going to do that tonal valley buildup with nice glazes. So just to start with. So for example, you don't now focus on a petal as a whole. When you paint with no matter what, you focus on the whole thing and you try to kind of apply this base layer on a whole petal, keeping all the corners all at once, and you focus on a petal as a whole. Now I'm going to focus on a smaller area at a time, not the whole petal. So, for example, I start from this petal, let's say, and I immediately see that everything needs to be darkened. So start from one area. So I'll pick up some color. Diluted. I have very transparent, watery color, nothing thick, nothing yeah, just like that. We want to build it gradually. Unfortunately, watercolors is in the fastest medium, but that's the right way to do it. You don't ever want to use very thick pigment. And I just go and start building. So I can see there's a bit blue colour there and magenta here. So I glaze like so, right to start with, soften the edges with my second brush quickly, and leave it and move on to the next, right? And when it's somewhere a little bit dryer, we can come back, apply more, and how you do it, you constantly after layer or two or three, you refer to the reference and you see, Okay, so now it's enough saturation. Now I need to make sure that the scent is a bit lighter and it's a bit darker on the side. So then I start applying coladen just on a side like this right and soften. You start shifting. After a few layers, you see that now you need to darken the darkest parts in slightly different areas. So you constantly, constantly refer ds like a one rule that I can say, Oh, you do this, and next step is this, and we're done. No, you kind of have to constantly refer, and you apply many layers. So it's important to understand the process and the technique to use rather than following every step blindsst thinking why and how you're doing it. So that's the most important thing is to just kind of know the approach, but you still have to make your judgment where to apply that color. I can't tell you because everybody's first foundation layer will look slightly different, right? So I applied more color, some applied less. So therefore, you will need more or less layers, right? So depending on what you have achieved so far. So but that's what we're going to do. So we're going to jump from area to area, start building color. So now we see we left out this area. We can apply some pink ta. And so it's not going to be the tidiest. You want to always paint as tidy as you can. But, you know, all the little lines and edges, everything, we're going to be doing and tidying up to this tiny level is when we dry brush or at the end. So now we want to build a tonal values to somewhat like 80% or 90% saturation, like, to get it as dark as we almost want to, but that tedious little detail will kind of go at the end where we dry brush and really, like, go into everything. So right, I think some of the pencil is a little bit maybe too dark for me. I want to see if I want to remove a little bit of pencil line somewhere. Careful don't remove the because it's where you're still gonna paint, but somewhere some lines can be removed a little bit. Make sure that's right. Yeah, that's right. Some pencil mark can be removed. Okay. Right, so keep your second brush kind of clean, constantly cleaning. Right, so we just want to assess and see what we need to do so pick up a little bit of rosemdak we can immediately go first place right here. And see that detail, that little kind of texture, we can do it when we dry brush. Now we want to build the colors. I clean my brush, take the water out, and I pick up magenta, and water it down. We have to have transparent colors. And I'll start building. You apply a bit of color if you think it's a bit too big of area and might dry out because you want to soften right away to not leave any hard edges. So you paint just a tiny area at the time, soften and continue covering if it's like a large area that you need to apply color too. Soften here. You go. So now we leave it. Next time we can go up and paint here. Now, I'll just focus on slightly darker areas. And every time now we paint, we kind of want to pay a little bit of attention. What the shadows, we can start introducing those folds. And even though it doesn't look tidy now, but when you apply multiple layers, they're gonna look tidy and nicer. So here you go, kind of, now shaping this in a way that leaves the scena here slightly lighter. And never in perfections, I think I would tidy up with a dry brush. So now I'll pick up some violety and here it's even more violet than I have. So I'll pick up a bit more blue and add more blue here in a corner to have this very violety color. Dilute it and go over with a small. It's even like there's, like, gray in it, even, to be honest. We might need to give a single glaze at some point if we feel like we need to. And so this, for example, area is quite imperfect. But for me, to best build up the darkest darks and to have this nice shape as it's supposed to be with the fading edges is when I dry brush. So I don't get too hung up on neatness at this point. I get that with a dry brush. I fix it up with a dry brush. So now we focus on building the tonal values and saturation. 9. Building Tonal Values : See, so this is a bit too violety. It looks a bit more gray. I might need to pick up a little bit of neutral stinta and give it a glaze to kind of gray it out a little bit. So now I'm picking up more violety with slightly less blue, and I'll go a bit at the top there. And soften. This is already dry. So if I want to, I want to dilute quite a bit my violet color. Oh, that's a bit too dark, actually. And I quickly want to soften very quickly because it dries when you paint with dry pigment, it dries very quickly. But if you don't get it neat, don't worry, we can kind of fix it all up with the dry-brush. But you do want to soften quite quickly. There's a shadow there. I'll play a bit more while it's damp. And I'll soften. Here we go. Now I need to leave it to dry. So this whole petal is a bit too wet, so I can go work on some other areas. For example, let's go. What do I like so. I kind of focus first on the darker areas. And then after a couple of glazes of building that shadow, I then see that I need to glaze over the light apart. For example, I apply a bit here, and then I see that, this area is definitely not too light, so I glaze over. Then again, I work a couple layers on dark, and then again, I assess whether I need the lighter area to be darkened. I still a bit damp. I soften. And then I clean. That softening brush as well. And I go focus now on the other petals. So a little bit of little area here. Soften. Move on to the next. Soften. I continue glazing and building. Now, in this area here, it starts turning movilety, so now I'll go and pick up some of my mobility color and use my brush strokes in the direction of a form. At some point, we might want to use a little bit, maybe dry pigment where there's those lots of folds to try and get the shape. Like at the very tip of my brush here try to create I continue covering. Yeah, but I noticed that I dose folds and I did can I get better with that dry-brush. Soften. Lift, if you think you got too much colostomer we still want to keep our highlights. So you need to get this at the bottom here quite dark. Again, I find it better to do it with dry-brush. Go. Okay. And we're going to have to come back and add more color there. So I'll go now, pick up this yellow color and go here. So you kind of jump around and assess whether that particular area needs to be darkened or not and do it if you do. Here you can see it needs more magenta. And so you focus on one particular area of the petal and you decide whether it needs to be darkened or it's not. And after initial layer, usually everything needs to be darkened. So you kind of mostly focus first on the darker parts, on the darker areas, build the shape of the shadow, and then you later go and glaze over the highlight around it. So kind of you see now shaping a bit those little darker folds. And then after a couple layers of that, I'll come back and glaze over the the highlights if I need in between those folds. And you will get a bit more patchy that way, but you remove those patches with that dry-brush. Now go to my violet color and go work with a violet in the areas that I see. And the magic happens when you start dry-brushing and you make all those layers of tied together and everything neat and nice. And dry-brushing is my favorite part. Oh, yeah, I got over. Alright, so that process, it might take a while, but it's how we do it. So let's before you kind of put it to music and start building more colour. Let's apply this Let's make that shadow the salt pickup, a little bit of neutral tint. Mix it here a little bit with this yellowy color. Do we have and I'll go apply around this edge where it seems to be that shadow, and I'll quickly soften. And we'll let it dry. I'll see how it looks. And if it looks like it's a bit too gray, we can give a nice very thin layer of magenta to kind of make it less look gray. But I can see gray a little bit of everywhere. So I'll pick up a bit more water, dilute it a bit more and see if I want to glaze anything to gray it out with that gray. Even kind of around here, I see some gray. I'll go and give that very subtle, very thin layer that doesn't do much difference, but maybe it gives that grayness. And then I'll go over with some more bluish magenta and hopefully get the right Hue. Add a bit gray as well, but very, very thin, like, very I can even think I can add a tiny bit of blue that gray. Ooh, Oh, that was too much. Mix up slightly more bluish gray. Mix it with some purple even and see if that's the color that I need in some areas. Like a bit here, which looks quite gray purple. And then I'll go and soften away that etch. There you go. It's like violet, but still a bit gray. There you go. I'll add that go a bit more in here. There you go. Maybe a bit too dark. Right. Let's, right. So let's go around building, building, building. And when I think it looks sort of in saturation way similar, then we'll go and smoothly roll out with a try press. So let's apply a bit more just before we do it. In those very, very dark areas. After you applied maybe a few layers and it looks sort of dark, but you want to kind of intensify, we can pick up a little bit less watery. Still not thick, still very thin. You can see it's like thin pigment here, but slightly drier, so it's going to appear a little darker. And we can go and, um sort of painted a little bit like this sort of semi dry-brush glaze, but you can see it's less wet. And when you do it with the very tip of your brush, kind of leaves darker, but it gives a bit of texture, and not often you might not even need to soften because it's leaving quite nice. But usually sort of when you go towards a little bit the end of your glazing, when you already have a certain amount of darkness in that color, for example, it's quite dark in here, and I can try to build a bit that way. And soften if needed to be. Oh, here maybe it's a bit too light, actually, but here, it's better because it's quite dark already there, and we just need just a tiny bit of that darkness. Like, for example, especially when you kind of want that texture there. So you need to kind of be the judge of where you are in saturation wise with your colors. But you don't have to do it, because we can create a little bit of that texture when we dry-brush and smooth it out and tie the layers together. Okay, let's go on. So now that we kind of saturation wise, it's getting there. I want to still not yet a dry-brush technique smoothing, but now I want to kind of paint in a little bit dryer way where I when I was telling you earlier to kind of now introduce a little bit more texture. So I want to continue building now because we already made it quite dark and this a little bit, like a dryer, so I pick up this thin, transparent, milky consistency, don't have too much water and go like this building. Now, you see, I don't leave like a very wet glaze, but rather pick up on the tip of my brush, dry and I go build like this because then now you can be a little bit more detail and you might leave a little bit of that linear texture because specifically, especially on this petal, it's quite obvious. So I want to now continue building so that I can create some of those. Now you see lines a little bit and continue building that way. Where it's appropriate. Maybe it's everywhere. So petals are quite smooth. For example, this one, right? But where it feels right, I want to go like this build a bit more color, but with a bit more, for example, here as well, you can see quite linear here as well. And I want to build with this a bit more textured way a bit dryer way to start now introducing that shape and where the curves are a bit more detail. When you have dry pigment, you can be a bit more precise and continue building a bit more, and then we'll go on dry-brush to kind of smooth it all out. Also, you might try with pinks. It's quite hot, but you might want to see if you made it a bit too dark, see if you can lift a little bit of color. It might not work, but let's say here maybe, well, it's quite light, but if you want, you can damp brush, wiggle your brush like this a bit with water and damp it and see if you can retrieve some of the light if you lost it somewhere. But it's best if you don't need to do that because pinks, they don't really lift well. Here, for example is quite uneven, so I'll try and see if I can scrub it out a little bit of that uneven edge and then fix it with that dry-brush. Okay. Okay, so let's continue building a little bit more, and then we'll grab our smallest brush and start dry-brushing, Frank to finish it off by tying it all together and smoothing out the layers. Okay, so I think I am done now with tunnel values. It's gonna be easier for us to build the remaining color with a dry-brush, but now we want to make sure everything kind of ties together. 10. SMOOTHER Brush vs Regular Brush: Okay, so I think I am done now with tunnel values. It's going to be easier for us to build the remaining color with a dry brush, but now we want to make sure and Everything kind of ties together. After I've done with a dry brush, then I'll go and painting this lighter part. So now I'm taking my smoother brush. So the brush with slightly slightly dell point, so that it's easier to dry brush. Why do I need to delve on? For example, I was just testing it out a bit. For example, the new dry brush, right? So I saturate the bristles first of all with water. Pick up some color. Don't have much water in there. So when you dry brush, you want to dry brush in various ways. Sometimes you want to do little glazes like this, right, little brush strokes. So you create this very nice, even little glazes. And when you do it over the already existing layers, creates a very nice thin layer. Atis you want to dry brush in the direction of a form, but there's like little tiny ra gaps that you want to fill in and you go like this. But you want to have the slightly thicker stroke so you can actually fill it in, right? Sometimes you want to go do big like this. And you want it to be sort of even because you want to even and smooth things out. If you have a brush, so this is even bigger brush slightly, but it has a very sharp point. So this is for all the smallest detail. But it has very sharp points. So when you have something like this, you can't really create this very nice because it's just too thin and it creates those. Let's pick up some more colour even. It just it's too thin, right? So it creates lines. You try to get them as close as possible to get this nice, but it's still kind of it's too sharp. This is for all the smallest of the detail and all the hairs and veins, right? But you can't create this very nice little glaze, right? And it's more for detail. And when you want to fill in those little gaps, it's harder when you make such a small little thin lines. You want it to be still very small, but to have this slightly thicker line but a small brush so they have all the control and no water. And that's where you have this slightly, slightly dull point so that you can go small like this and still create very nice even glaze. Alright, so that's why for dry brush, it's much easier when the point is slightly dull, so you can actually fill in the gaps and dry brush over creating this very nice layer that's even. So now I'm having that brush, that's going to be part of the set. This is the whole set that's going to be in my set, six brushes. So now I'm grabbing that smoother brush, and we'll start dry brushing. So I'm going to and if you don't have that, you just grab one of the smallest brushes you have. And was that dry brushing? 11. Explaining Dry-Brushing Technique: So going to go from top to bottom. And I dry-brush everything, the whole petals. And then, so now, as I said before, when we painted white on wet, you focus on a petal as a whole. When you glaze, you focus certain areas at a time. And when you dry-brush, you focus on the tiniest little area at a time and try to match the smoothness of the area, the darkness of the color. And so you build up the colour remaining color that's still missing. That's why I said you kind of glaze up to like 90%. But the point is more here to put almost like a filter over to smooth it out. You fill in the little gaps. If you look very, very closely, you can see little lighter gaps. So those you want to fill in so that the whole layer becomes sort of smooth. You tidy up the example those nice lines, right? So you create nice transitions between the dark lighter color. So for example, you pick up some color that you think is appropriate for that area. You can mix in between each other all these colors just to get the right tone, shade. I will go from top to bottom or from the darkest area and you try for this, you might need going into the dark color. And you fill in the little gaps in the dark area and start dry-brushing around where the dark color meets nice magenta color, and you dry-brush in between to create a smooth transition. So you dry-brush with quite light colors. And we start putting the detail like the nice lines. Then you dry-brush that dark area so that it is sort of not just looking like a dark line, but rather than a shadow that's not sticking out, but belongs to it and it smoothly transitions as the petals curve in various shades. I'm now filling in the little gaps in the dark glaze first. And then start dry-brushing right next to it as it's getting lighter so that I can create a transition. So now we want to lose that sharp line and we want it to transition from dark to ra, like smoothly sit nice graduation of the color. So we start with the dark. And when you start losing the pigment in your brush, you go into ira area and dry-brush. And then as you go here, you start picking up magenta color and you continue and you create that nice transition between two different colors. And dry-brush is quite intuitive thing. I can explain as best as I can, but you still need to sort of feel how much water you have. So generally, I leave the pigments dry on my palate. I pick up water on my brush, and that's how I loosen up the pigment. I don't add more water in all of my mixes. I just loosen it up by picking up a little bit of water on my small brush, making this very silky little like, glaze color. It's not thick. It's translucent, transparent. And I pick up a bit and I take the excess, especially from that part where the drops are. It's always useful to have little paper where you test to see if you don't have too much water, and I go and dry-brush. Ally from top to bottom, and as I go down, constantly referring to the reference. You see now where it needs to be dark, where lines start appearing. Start filling in a lira area those gaps. So you see those little just water marks and gaps. So I'm filling them in by dry-brushing in them around them. And just when you dry-brush, the whole glaze starts looking better and smoother. You want to have that texture, you can emphasize those lines, spread them out a bit, dry-brush lines to make them a bit more visible. But if you make them smaller and filling in just the gaps, then the glaze will be a bit smoother. So now I like smooth effect. I don't like too much texture, so kind of prefer it to be smooth over anything. But sometimes, here, you want to emphasize some of that texture. And you maybe want to leave some of those lines quite visible. So that's why you move your brush in the direction of a form. If it's curve that way, you dry-brush that way, right? So now with a dry-brush, I notice, it's missing sort of this gray edge. So I can still pick up with my small brush, same one and do a little glaze instead of dry-brush because I just realized that I missed it and I can just go like this. Quickly clean my brush, take the water out, and soften, and then when it dries, I'll go back dry-brush a little around, and then it's to create again, smooth the transition from that gray into the magenta color. Right to be honest, that's all that it is. So depending on which area I'm dry-brushing, I pick up the colour accordingly. If I need purple or magenta. And I dry-brush and emphasize now all these folds of each petal. But generally, I kind of dry-brush everything of entire petal and just a little bit more in certain areas if I want. Like, for example, this kind of fold got lost, so I can emphasize it. And then continue again filling in little dots in a glaze. So it's more about smoothing the transition between shadows and light, filling gaps, and adding sort of the remain of the saturation, and pretty much that's all there is. With a dry-brush. So for me, it's like a dry-brush is like you would put a filter on the skin, you know, with a phone, you smooth it all out. So that's what it is. It's just the last bit of the detail. You go over everything, small brush strokes, filling in all the gaps. So this transition between that shadow of that curve is getting smoother and smoother. You can go get some darker color perhaps and go really even apply little dots just to make it even smaller. It's really getting in there. And so trirush is kind of a very tedious job. And I don't know, maybe not everybody prefers. And you don't have to, you know, I often say when I kind of get to the drivers point, you don't have to do it. If you feel like this now is good enough for you, you can just do that. But for me, it's not enough. For me, dry-brush is essential. And even if I dry-brush here very literally, not long at all, for me, it already looks better. I'm not even finished with that petal, and it already feels like now inx level. Completely different. So it just from average painting turns into this where people wonder, like, how did you get it so vibrant and so smooth layers, you know, and sometimes even questioning if it's with watercolors painted because it looks sometimes like with pencils with pencils can get hyper detailed and realistic. So dry-brush the technique for me. I think it gets my paintings to that point. So I think it's important. And I urge everyone to try. So now I'm kind of working with some of those on some of those lines, emphasizing those lines. And just draper so that glaze looks a bit more yummy and a bit more smooth. I just like how it looks more satin and velvety already. It's not identical. I struggle. I can get quite realistic, but still it's not with pens. Like with pencils, you can get where you can't tell the difference, right? With watercolors, you sort of can. I'm okay with that, but I can get pretty close. And so now that area, for me, looks already better. It's missing more magenta color, more saturation with magenta folk, especially here in the shadow. So now I want to work with a little bit more dry-brush working on that, building that magenta right here. Especially that little fold when the petal folds back a little bit. So I want to dry-brush a little bit here, build up that color in that area specifically until I feel that's where I needed to be. And when you dry-brush, it dries pretty quickly. So I can keep on working in the same petal, the same area, don't really need to jump much from side to side because you don't really need to wait to dry because it dries instantly almost. And so I'm building now that shadow here. And when you start dry-brushing and focusing on smaller details and on smaller area than before, you kind of start noticing more where you perhaps missed it when you were glazing, you weren't focusing on that small of a detail, right? So for example, right here is the shadow. I didn't notice before. And I noticed now when I started dry-brushing because now I focus on smaller areas and the snow is more than you did before. And so I can work on that with a dry-brush, build that shadow with a dry-brush. And when you want to build a color, on certain, you can use a little bit of crosshatch technique as well. It works well when you want to build up some color. When you smooth it out and you want to fill in the gaps, make the glass look a bit more smooth, you kind of go within direction of the form. Natural form. Okay, so he kind of created a little bit more shadow in there. And that petal already looks better for me. Still, a little bit more dry-brush in the area, and I think we can now will be able to move soon into the other side. 12. Dry- Brush Layer: Sometimes when you have that brush, you know, if you want a slightly thicker brush stroke, kind of let it spread a little. It's going to be a bit thicker line. But if you want it slightly thinner, I then roll my brush as I took up the color. It's going to be slightly smaller. Just adjusting it the way I need it. Cool. Sometimes you end up needing a very sharp point when you make detail, but generally when I dry-brush, the low point for me is better. There you go. Here. And that's the process. Here, now we want to perhaps apply some kind of a messy texture. You just want to almost with rosemary like kind of wiggle your brush, whatever, just to create that kind of messy veiny looking texture. Just wiggling my brush various directions to create that look. Sort of and move on to D side. So for me, that looks already better. Still kind of not happy with this area, though. So picking up a little bit of mobility color and see if I can emphasize some of that linear texture. So that side, that petal is sort of done. And now I would move on and do the same on the rest. So it might take a little bit. It might take longer than what you've done so far. Up to you if you want to do it. But if you will go compare the results at the very end and this stage before dry-brush, I think you would see the difference. Okay? So that's the technique, and that's the process we're going to take to cover all the petals, create a little texture, smooth transitions, fill in the gaps, and the final detail. So best of luck, and let's get to work. Okay, so now I think I'm finished with dry-brushing. What we need to do is paint in ta 13. Last Detail For The Bud: Let's water down that little yellowy brown color that we have. I'll add a little bit more yellow. I just got a bit too brown. Water down, have it very light, and just color that in. There's not much of variation going on, but we can create it on a second layer a little bit. Now I'll just go in block in that color. And then when it dries, we're going to go back and just add a little bit darker spots here and there just to give a little bit of difference. In tone. So it's not looking that flat. Also, can pick up a little bit of that dark gray and paint what you see there kind of behind a few petals. Maybe it's too dark, so pick up a bit more slightly darker, mix in here with a brown with a darker gray. And separate some of the petals. Okay, go back with some brown and add a bit more where I think it should. It's really simple there, so we don't stress ourselves about too much. I think that's it. There's not much to advise up. I can even make up some detail just to not make it this flat. Looking. What do you go? That will do. Alright. So I think that's kind of it. So I don't know, you can beat the judge of it and see whether dry-brush changes anything for you. I think it definitely changes for me. And when I look before the dry-brush and after this is when you dry-brush, you do darken your painting quite a bit because you keep adding more color and in order to smooth out, you have to add more. And it becomes slightly darker than the reference. But if that's the expense of it having this kind of more smooth and slightly well, even textured where it needs to be and smooth in other areas, then I'm fine with it. So I would take that over anything. 14. Mixing Colours For The Leaves: Paint the leaves and the stem. So without food, I'll start mixing the colors. So if you look, I mentioned the previous video for that. It's a little bit hard to see the detail. It's quite dark and I have an image that I just a bit to try and see the detail in the stem. So there's, like, a stem that has some green and this burgundy brown, reddish color mixed together. And this one it just looks like it's a plain black. So we don't want to paint it like that because it's just going to look quite flat, so we need to try incorporate some green and some burgundy and try to get some sort of a detail in there. Right, so let's just mix up now this main basic dark green color. And then we can adjust that mix on one side, adding a bit more yellow to make it lighter and on one side a bit more blue to make it slightly bluish, because if you look right here closer, it has this even on the lighter image, it has some more bluer tone where the light hits on this dark. Um dark color. When you're going to look at the reference on your phone or tablet or computer, those colors will be more apparent. So when you print it out, the colors a bit, at least for me, gets stuck and loses a little bit of detail when something is dark. So I do have an image on my computer as well to try and see a little bit more detail. Right, so let's start mixing the colors. I'll bring in a little bit of water. Oh, My brush is dirt apparently. With a bit of water. And so I'll start with Mam yellow. Usually, when you mix your green colors, you want to start with your yellows and then start adding your reds and blues because you don't want to kind of mess up that yellow color, but you might end up anyway doing it because you're going to have to go back and add more probably. So just to make it a bit more fresher, I'll add some lemon yellow as well just to brighten it up tiny bit. And now I'm starting to add palo blue little by little. Okay, we can add more. So we do want to add more because we do want to get quite a dark color. Those pony leaves, they they're quite dark. So now into that green, I'm adding sanelia red. So to bring that color a little bit to look more earthy and less artificial. So it's kind of dark in it, but it also dulles it down a bit and makes a bit more natural. Even even more. Let me grab a piece of paper where we can test our colors. Okay. So we have the reference. Clean my brush. I do want to add more a bit more yellow. Okay, let's see maybe already what we have. Okay. So that's pretty close, but I think I've got a bit too much blue. So I have that's the color sort of what you would want in the middle, but I do want a bit more green. So I'm just adding a bit more of the yellows to just freshen it up a bit and make it more green, less blue. Right. Because when it dries, it will look a bit more blue, I think. So you do want to perhaps go a little bit heavier on yellow than you think you'll need. Okay. So now I'll pull some of that colour to the side and add more yellow. Yeah, even more yellow. And we want to get this kind of light green, slightly lov color, something like this. So you get this olvi color when you add red, but we already added red there. So I think it might be just enough. See. So it's for right here. There's a bit it's even more liv to be honest, I want to kind of pick up even more here at the bottom, perhaps. Green and add more yellow and a bit more red to get this more dirty liv green. Men. Almost sort of this brownish green. So we can use that brownish for these sort of going bad bits on the leaves. Okay. And right here, I'll push some of that if I'll have any green left now and add a bit more blue on the side. Okay, maybe a bit more yellow, not to have to maybe blue. Something like this. Okay. So we do have this burgundy color all over the place. Very dark. So I'll start by picking up quite a bit of sennelia red. Start adding blue, yellow blue. More sennelia red. And we want a bit of yellow. Adding Mam yellow. A bit mobu. I'll add more more yellow. Mob. So now we have this dirty brownish red color. Let's see how it looks on the paper. It's a bit it's good for the stem, but I wanted to have slightly more red undertone, because that's what I see the reference looks more reddish rather than just black. Something like this, perhaps. Let's leave it as it is, and we can just adjust slightly if we need to once we start painting. So what we're going to do as we usually do with majority of our paintings, the way we start is we start with our foundation layers using oma, so we kind of want to block the whole, um space and shape, let's say, like every single leaf at a time with main colors so that we have this very good basis and foundation to work with. So we do have a lot of take a brush, like, where the leaf is going bad already and fading away and has those little already brown bits. So we need to be aware of those, and we need to put some color appropriately because it's supposed to be a bit lighter, so we probably don't want to put green there. So I'm going to try and block those colors with double white on wt. So there are veins as well. Those are very, very thin veins that if you've seen some of my other tutorials, you will know that I don't really like lifting, you know, while the glaze is done because then you lift and the vein looks a bit too thick. So I like to kind of ignore them, paint them as if they don't exist, sort of. And then at some point, I like to scrub off a little bit of paint. With clean brush. Once the glease is dry, dp with the kitchen towel and you can hopefully retrieve this nice thin line and then paint around it and then shape it a bit more and start adding shadows and so on. So now this first layer on what we will paint as if there are no vein. So ignore them. We just want to put put down the main colors, the main green colors and we'll have the foundation, and then we can start building the tunnel values and the detail all around. You can see all these red colors and so on and so on, and the veining and then shadows around them. So now let's just do that foundation layer. 15. Leaves- First Layer Wet-On-Wet Part I: I'm going to paint with my number two. So we're going to start by applying a little bit of water on the area that you want. So we're going to start maybe with the top. Then we're gonna go to the leaf and maybe then on the stem. I think I need even smaller brushdes a little bit, so I'm going to take my number one, those two. I think a bit too small to paint with big a brush, hit smaller one. All right. So we cover that little leaf. So those are sepals, perhaps, that leaves with a little bit of water. So you want to cover evenly and don't have any drank patches, obviously, and no puddles. It's a small area, so it's not really difficult to cover with water, but you still want it to be very evenly. So you want to be mindful and tilt your head. Make sure you see the light reflecting of it so you can see how well you covered it. Even if it's small, you still want it even. And so we see the texture of the paper. I don't see any puddles. It's just an even layer of glistening. Right. I'm picking up my first mix right here in the center. Ling my brush, twist it right before I move away. I like to have even though I have a towel, I like to have paper towel so I can remove a droplet sometimes you have a drop right here at the neck of the brush and just like to roll it like this so it doesn't drip on my paper. I go in straight where I need at more where it's darkest with a little like tabs like this, with the tip of my brush, I'm letting the color just fall off my brush. I'm not applying any pressure. Start bringing that colour further. I think it's near enough for you to already dry that part. That was very quick. And now I'll clean my brush quickly. I'll pick up my light green. Join that layer. And I even go here to my olivi at the very here tip of that leaf. It's completely dry here, that dried so quickly. Right? And so, you see, I'm not really paying attention to the detail and veining that's there. We'll try to figure out that later. Okay. We do want to though. Make sure we have an even glaze. And if you need to lift somewhere like highlights, we do need to do that. Let's see. So clean my brush, take the water out. And I might want to lift a little bit here, the neck, sort of highlight veining, not really, no. I think I'll just leave it. As is. I think I lift it on the wrong place. I think it needed to be right. Let me put back the color. I might even want to add a bit more color at the really, really base of it, where it's really dark. Can my brush take the water out and lift where was it? It was here, wasn't it little highlight. Okay. I now, leave it to dry. It's a little bit granulating for some reason. It's not really laying down very nicely that green color. Why is that? Right. This one just looks completely black almost. So, well, we just kind of paint as we see, right? So do apply a little bit of water again. Load my brush. Drop in the color. Simple one. We can add a bit more detail later on to try and make it to look less flat. I want to collect that drop here. It's a bit too wet. Pickup a bit more. I'm adding more colour. I'll just leave it. As is. This one has some dark green and some burgundy color. So I'll add a little bit of water. It's hard to see 'cause it's very, very dark in there. So if you can barely see, it doesn't matter that much, that kind of detail you'll put in, but you still want to try put in some detail even in the darkest areas. So apply that green, and I'll pick up my burgundy and add it to the kind of center of it. And let those colors blend in mix and whatever because it just looks completely black in a reference anyway. Clean my brush, take the water out, and it's a little bit lighter perhaps somewhere like this. Okay. Okay, let's move on to this one. So this one has slightly different colors on the underneath of the leaf and the top, so we're going to have to paint them separately. So I'll paint in first underneath of the leaves, so I'll apply a bit of color on that, but I'll leave the other half to paint once that layers gonna dry. It's going to dry very quick because it's a very small area, so it won't stay wet for very long. It will be just a minute and you can paint it. Right? So now I'm going in with this olivi green. Drop it in here at the tip where you see the lov colour, a little bit of lighter green as I go closer to the dark color. Then we can pick up that dark and fill in the rest and let it mix with the colors we just applied. Bit more oliv. That green is just not dark enough. You're gonna need much daka to get some of those areas just nearly black green. Right, so now I'm going to leave it to sort of dry and we'll come back. So let's just paint the one jump the area and paint in the one at the back again a little bit of water. Okay. And I'll start with the green at the base. It's a bit too wet. Let me collect the excess. So I'll start with the green. And then it finishes off in the tips with some burgundy colour. Again, with a little taps just with the very tip of my brush.Pling no pressure. Now I can pick up some burgundy, finish it off. Bring it a bit down. That reddish color. Let it mix with that green. Clean my brush, take the water out, and with clean de brush, I'll just sort of wiggle my brush leg so just to let those colors mix in. Can even pick up a bit more olivi and drop that in the base. It looks green there. Okay. So that area needs to dry before we come back and paint that one. So now we will move into the green Leaves, but before I do that, I would like to mix in a bit more perhaps darker green. So I just want to add more yellow here into that base green, more blue, more red, just the same colors, perhaps a bit daka. I know I'm destroying that yellow, but I'll clean it up, I promise. Okay. Make sure that's right. I think so. Go ahead and wake up my bluish green. If it's two, we'll just add a bit yellow. I think it's a bit too we know this dark colour can't get it right. IT more yellow. Okay. Should be fine. Right. So the same principle. What on what? What the page? What the leaf, even glaze, even leak glistening. And you drop in the colors. Mainly two colors, the bluish one and the main green one. Choose a leaf. So we do want to paint them sort of without touching each other. So if you paint that one, you can't paint the one that's touching. You're gonna jump paint the one that's not touching, the one that's drying. So so that every time you come back to paint next to already painted area, you need to make sure that the area is dry because you don't want to disturb the the settling lay. So you're going to jump around that way. So let's go and paint that main top one. Well, it's not main, but it's the one that catches your eye right away. So I'm not painting the underneath of the leaf. I'm painting the top part of the leaf. So we want to make sure we bring in a bit more water, perhaps, let it soak into the paper so that we have more time to work with it. So I'm bringing in a bit more water more than I think I need. So I have a puddle at the moment. And I push that puddle around until I cover everything. And I let that puddle to soak in a bit. So we want to saturate the paper a bit more because these ones write very quick. And so we want a little bit more time to work with our area. So you want to saturate a bit more. But the glaze end result, the way you have your glaze it still needs to be evenly glistening. You can see, for example, now I have a big puddle, so I don't see a texture, you see, like, a bulge of water. So that's too much water. You can't paint when it's like that, but I left that bulge to soak into the paper so that it saturates it. And then I'll keep an eye on that glaze. And when it starts drying, for example, around the edges, I reglazeO I can just collect the excess of that water and start painting, but I want it to be more wet the paper. So I'll let that water soak into the paper, and then I'll re glaze to make sure that glaze is even in glistening, no dry patches and no puddles. So now I can see that bulge disappearing, it's soaking in. So I'll give another minute for it to get in there, and then I'll start to paint. 16. Leaves- First Layer Wet-On-Wet Part II: Okay, so you see the wetness is disappearing. And I want to re glaze, make sure the tip because it started drying first is wet. And I run my brush like so to co the excess and reglaze at the same time more drying areas. So now, I'll pick up some of that liv green at the tip of the leaf where you see that fading away already pots, clean my brush and I'm loading my brush with now that main green colour. I'll go all around, start up from the edges because that's where that color is. Push it down. Take the war out and I'll load with that bluish color and add it right by the mid rib sort of where it meets the underneath of the leaf. Trying to understand where the leaf is. Right. So now clean my brush, take the water out, and I want to So where that line is where that one green meltiaa I want to go and, like, wiggle my brush through so that that line disappears, and they just merge seamlessly. So I let those colors merge and just mix them up a bit. You can add a bit more around the edges where it's darker. But that very subtle transition, it's there. There is this color difference, you can see, but we don't want it to be very obvious because it's not very obvious on our reference, either. Okay, and so now I don't want to overdo it. So I'll probably just leave it. Okay. Remember take the water out. Pick up a bit of that burgundy. Just add a bit at the tip there. I see a little bit of that red. I think I will need to add a bit more red. You know what? I think I even add a bit more. I'll pick up some rose mata lake and add that just to give that pink maybe flavor. I don't know if I need it, and a bit more red mixed therein. So it doesn't look as black and brown. It needs to have that red kind of color. So like this. Maybe. We'll just again if you need to. Alright, so I don't want to disturb that leaf anymore, so I'll leave it as this, and I'll move on to the one next door. The ones underneath, same thing. I just a different color. So you use probably lira here green and then the olivi green here as well, olivi green and some light green. All right, so now I'm picking up some water. Drop that in right here in the middle, and I'll move that puddle again up to the pencil line. So I'm painting it still with my number one. Cover it evenly, just the same way we did on the first leaf. Pick up some of the olive color again. Drop that at the tip. A bit later, I'll add some brown, but it's a bit too wed, so I don't want to disturb. So now I'll just go and pick up regular green color. I realized that I probably could have painted both sides separately because that one is lighter, but it's not a big deal. We can glaze on a second glaze that side to make it dark and gray that line that midrib separate. So we can just carry on painting. Oh, I actually need some blue in the middle so start with the edges. Bring it a bit to the middle now. Go my brush. Take the war up, cut my blue, drop that in the center. Com my brush, take the water out, and just mix them up. Wiggle your brush through those two colors so that they have seamless transition. And when we need to when we lift some color up, you're gonna glaze over to create a separation, clear fold of the leaf. Pick up a bit of that red colour or I think it's a bit too late dry haze in it. But I can just tap away some of that brown red colour, clean my brush, and I'll smudge it just a little bit. Okay. Clean my brush take the water out. I can maybe see where that mid drip is. See if I can collect a bit, retrieve some light. Add some dark. That one side. Okay. Right. And just like that. I think I'm going to leave it. To try. Right, so let's go ahead and let's paint in the remaining leaves and then we're going to start painting the stem. Right, so I can't paint now those too because I need them I need wait for the leaves that I just painted to dry before you can paint the underneath. So in the meantime, not to waste of time. We can paint in some layers already on the stem. What I want to do because there's some green and the dark brown red color. But if you look on your phone, if you look at the reference, it will be better visible. It's like the green is peaking through some of the the red. So what I would like to do first is apply that green olive color first and let it dry completely, and then on the second layer, apply red so that those two colors don't really mix, but rather, you know, you can see a little bit of both. That's why you need to do on a separate layer. So let's just supply a little bit of water, and we're gonna apply first color green. You wake up my olive green color. I want to make a bit darker. I will add a bit of that dark here. Have a little bit of a darker color. Now that in. Drop that straight in. Then no highlights, so we can just cover the whole stem. Be careful around the edges because we're gonna have to get it quite dark. Paint around where some pink will go and a bit of lighter olive right at the bottom. I know it's completely dry already, but it's a small area without any highalt so we can just paint that anyways. Here you go. You can add a bit more to have it darken more saturated, while it's still a bit damp. And then the red burgundy will go on top. Give my brash take the water out, and I want to soften a bit here where we're going to apply a little bit of that magenta color there you can see. Okay. Even maybe want to pick up a bit of that dark and apply a bit at the top because it's very dark in the shadowy. Okay. Right. I'll leave it as is the steel. So that's nearly dry, we can start painting the underneath. Here, for example, it's very small. I'm going to even I'm not gonna wet the paper. I'm just going to paint straight and so with that oliv green color. Go straight on. I want it to be a bit darker, especially on the lower side of it, adding some dark colour. In brush t the water out and sort of soften those two colors, the edges. Just like that. Let's do the other one. Bit more yellow. Dark right at the top there and continue with the remaining. Much more red. Again, I'm painting on a dry paper. I didn't wear it before it just want solid color. I want it to be a bit You know what? I want to add a bit Cacton gold just to make it a bit more brown like, more golden. I'm going to add a bit more. Straight on, I'm not too worried about some marks. We can dry-brush and smooth it all out. Plus it's quite small, so it's not really visible. If it is clean my brush, take the water out and soften at an even edge. Okay, let's do the same or, you know, this one is a bigger one. So I'll apply some water first because there are a couple of colors. There's this oliv at the bottom and then green at the top. So water glaze on first. I'll pick up a bit of light green first. Or maybe not, maybe. Slighter lov here. Okay. Drop that in at the beginning. Give my brush, take the water out, pick up some this slightly lighter green on that side. You're leaving some space at the bottom for that olive green again. And then all the way green. I think I need some a little bit of that darker green as well. Too light, I think. I want to clean my brush tick the wood out. And again, just want to wiggle through both of the colors so that they mix and create nice transition. Pick up a bit more olive and a bit more here. Here you go. Touch more yellow. Nokona. Just that little edge of the green here. There will be some red in there. Pick up some red. Sort of, I think I can see right there. There's sort of dead stem visible with dark red, I'll go over just eyeballt and throw there and, like, so. Right, so do we have anything else to cover? No, I think the stem is dry. And I would like to add some of that purply color. 17. Leaves- Adding Red To The Stem: So I'm again gonna my brush and pick up some water and add on the stem. Be careful not to scrub because you already have some color that you don't want to lift it. Just want to wet it for that red colour. Okay. Clear my brush. Touch more red in here. Wake that up my brush. And maybe even if you don't get exactly as the reference, just apply whatever just to get the same feeling of the stem here and there, 'cause it's, like, scattered all over the stem. It's not very clear. It just looks dark overall. So some lines here and there. You want some green to be showing through a little bit. It's a bit dark at the bottom, a bit more of that red. So I went over there. Fine. So I just want to get that same feeling of a peony stem that has lots of these red brown tones on a stem. Even though it's not exactly, but still what we want is just for it to look like a pianis stem. Even if we applying those colors, not exact spots. There you go. Can see I'm just sort of almost eyeballing where putting that color. Okay. I went over the line a few times, unfortunately. My hand isn't the steadiest. Fortunately, Okay. I think I'm gonna leave it before I dabble too much with it. And let's pick a tiny bit of quinacal magenta right from the alas straight to the pala. Oh, that's a bit too strong. Just the clean my brush, take the water out and soften around if it's too strong. Just a little d. Right. I think I'm going to leave it for everything to dry completely, and then we're going to start putting a bit more color like glazes and then we'll start probably lifting off some veins, then adjusting the shadows again and then applying the red around some edges and so on, so on. So we want to get the darkness, right, so we will need a few more layers. But I want you to give it a minute now to completely dry and then come back and build it on the values. 18. Leaves- Building Tonal Values: Okay, so now that we have all pieces painted in with one layer, we can start now, let's say, stage two, where we want to now work a little bit on tonal values and darkening the color like working on saturation. Because this is just one layer. So as you can see in a reference, it's quite dark. But I quite like the way it's turning out here, and I think I don't want to because usually I try to match as close to the reference as possible, but in this case, it looks a little bit flat, so I don't think I want to get that dark, so I want to keep a little bit of higher contrast and maybe lighter colors. So maybe I'll try not to overdo it if I can. It's hard for me, but I usually want to match as closely to the reference as possible, but in this case, it's maybe a little bit too dark in a reference. So I'll try to make it a bit lighter, perhaps. So I think we would have to apply maybe 23 layers to very transparent, very light colors to just give the depth to the leaves and also to just make the color bit more saturated. And in some areas, for example, like here you see needs some darker. But yeah, so just simple as that. So all the colors are dried on my palette, and I'm not going to maybe loosen them all up. I'll just bring some water in once I need to just pick up a particular color. So I'll paint maybe even my number two. Um, I think so. Or number one. Maybe number two, and I'll have another brush slightly bigger one to soften the glazes Okay, keep it clean. So I pick up some water, and I just look at each. So let's pick up, let's say, let's start from here. I'll, um, examine that and I'll just pick up a little bit of color, loosen that up, put some water. Bring a bit more water if you want a lyra color because we want to keep all the colors and mixes. Is very light. You see milky now consistency, no as stick as when you paint with what on what. You can have another piece of paper nearby just to test it out. And we want a very nice little glazes just to kind of darken and give depth to the objects because we want some layers. And I paint a little bit, where I think where it is the darkest and I soften the edge too. I soften the edge of that. Then clean my brush, see if I want to pick up some other color perhaps, loosen that up. Ooh, what's going on? I keep dropping that. The brushes. Pick up some olive and maybe apply a bit more here. Now we can work a little bit around the highlights and perhaps now shape the tonal values in a way where you want to keep some light. But as you can see, I still ignore the veins. So I'll apply maybe a layer or two of color and then we're going to lift off some veins and then paint a little bit more extra around the veins. But so a little bit of color before we start removing the veins. And so you need to let it dry before you come back and add more color. So I go and paint a different area while that one is drying. This one is pretty flat, so just paint simply like so and forget about it. I might also want to pick up some of that red now color and add at the base. I think I see some red in there. Oh, too much. So it away. Okay, I don't think I would want to go, to be honest. So now, water down the red brown color. Go like so. Soften. And maybe leave that to dry as well. Or maybe that one edge here. So move across all of the leaves, adding one layer, at least. One a bit more quanacton gold into my olive in some areas, it just needs more golden color. Like so. A little glaze, clean, pick up some other colour, pick up a little bit of that lighter green. All right and. A little bit at the bottom. Soften. Okay. I'll leave that now to dry. Well, this one's dry. I would like to add. You can see there's like an edge here that's behind the green that's supposed to be this brown color. So I'll paint that in and we'll leave the top part. I think it needs more red. Probably needed to pick up a smaller brush, but let's get it done now with this one. Has a nice point. There are, like, brown edges or pretty much on all over leaves, but we're going to do them later. I just wanted to paint that it's like a whole section missing. And then there's some dark green right, I need dark, I think. Okay, let's move on to the leaves. I think I don't want it to be any darker than this. So we're going to probably leave the top part of this. Apply at least maybe one layer, let's say, yeah. So not two. One layer on leaves as well, then remove the veins, a little bit where it's possible and then paint a little bit extra around them, probably with a dry-brush, and I'll leave it at that. So I don't think I want make it as dark as it is in a reference because it just looks a little bit too flat. So I would like to keep Lira and a bit with a higher contrast between light and shadow just to make it a bit more realistic. I know it sounds weird saying more realistic than the reference itself, but it just somehow looks too dark for me. So I'll try to keep it a little bit different from the reference. In terms of light and we absolutely allowed to do that. So let's move on to the leaves. Okay. So we'll do the same thing. Have my clean brush softened and I'm painting with number two. So first, let's say work on this one. So I want to create a clear line on one side and then on the other side, where the midrib is. So I'll paint them separately. I'll paint one side, let it dry, paint somewhere else and then come back painting the other one. So let's just paint now that side, and maybe we can draw in where that midrib would be so that we can have a nice line like so. And now let's paint that side in with, again, very transparent colors. Here you go. Then we'll come back and paint the other side. Maybe I'll add more water and I want it to be a bit more water. I don't want it to get this dark. Then choose another one, and I'll paint the mid rip this one I'm eyeballing. I can't really see anymore. So I'm just eyeballing, and I'll paint and like so. And I'll soften towards the mid rip, keep it a bit lighter than the reference. Okay. I'll leave that to dry and work on something else. So let's paint in that side. V transparent greens. And I'll I'll keep it light next to the mid rib. I'll soften it just to keep that contrast a little bit higher than stronger than the reference so that our paintings don't look too flat. This one's already dry. Dries very quickly when you paint on dry paper. And now I'll start from the darker area from the edges. You need to work quick because it dries very quick, so you don't want to have a hard edge. I apply like this. And then I soften that edge dragging a little bit of color on there, and that blue is shining through. And I'll go a bit strong at the bottom there, 'cause it's supposed to be quite dark there. Here you go. Yeah, I don't think I will apply a second layer. That's dark enough for me, I think. Okay. There is also midrib in here. Let's draw that in. Visible. Pretty solid color as well. Here not much going on. So just paint that in. There you go. Pretty solid cover right as well. Not much going on in terms of detail. So I'll just give a nice glaze. Pick up a bit more, and I'll paint that dry? No, I think I do paint the side here. Soften that way. And at the bottom. So a bit dark around the edge, and I want to keep it lighter going towards the midrib. Here you go. So quite a little light glaze over here. And now we can pick on other colours and paint the underneath of the leaf, which is a bit more olive. So pick that up. Pay close attention where it's a little bit lighter, you want to keep just so that that contrast is there and doesn't look too flat. Kind of light around the edge and then the tip them. The soon as well. So it's a bit lighter right there. I'll soften jump the light and continue painting the rest of the leaf. It's almost I can see some light red there. I think I might want a glaze with light, very, very light red color over there. Yeah, I'll clean my brush, take the water out, the tiny bit of that brownish color. Go like this. Just to give a smidgeon of that smidgeen. Just to give a little bit of that colour. I think I see there like right. And I can see it here as well. So let's very, very light and very diluted. There you go. I think so. I'll soften that, but I want it to p r. Can't even probably apply them all in here. There you go. That it better. Right, so we want to pick up a bit of coacon gold and mix in with some of that red to get it a bit more brownish color and go into those bits here tips that are supposed to be. So I dab a little, and then we clean the brush, dab around, spit it out, but make it a bit spotty and, like, an even. Bit more conacto. That's all. Just wherever you see that color. And it's the stip one here as well. Soffen. Okay. So, right, so I think we can now Oh, we forgot the stem. So I want to apply a little bit of colour on the stem. I probably get a little bit of that olive color here. And I don't think I need any red. I just want to a bit more conacton Just a little bit green over. That's it. I have enough red, I think. Like so. Okay. 19. Leaves- Lifting Off The Veins: I would like to grab a small brush now. Maybe my smoother brush with slightly duller point. Have it clean and damp and see if we can retrieve some light somewhere. It might not lift off very well everywhere because we didn't make the leaves as dark, but the darker color the easier, you're going to lift some stuff, some color off. So I'll just try and go and rub very gently clean brush. Just a bit and dab with paper towel and you can see we have a nice even vein. And just go around, see where you want to lift off. You might not want to go and do every vein or maybe every vein that you can see. There you go. And then we'll go with a little bit of dry-brush, dry-brush around, smooth out the layers, and add some more shadows where we want. Let's see. So there's something like this here as well. Okay. I mean, some of them, you just need to paint in basically, rather than lift off in, you know, they're dark. Like on this leave, it's not much lift than needed. Let's go see on the other ones. So that may drip. But we left it quite light, so you won't be able to lift it because we left it quite light area there. See if I can get some of the veins next to it, yeah? There you go. And I'm eyeball, and I don't really have any more pencil marks visible, so just going straight on. And damp. You can see. Nice little vein, not too thick, not too bright, the right amount. Make sure your brush is not too wet, but just damp because you have a droplet on the end of your brush, you won't be able to retrieve this very thin line. You just need it damp wet. So that your brush just comes to a nice point. There you go. I don't need more than that. That's just enough. And then when you dry-brush around, you can intensify that vein just by painting around negatively. M And I know you're wondering why you're not doing a smaller brush that has very, very, very sharp tip. But I like doing to do it with smoother brush that has dolla point because it just it's just a bit more robust and sort of speak like a turdier that dula brush rather than when it has just needle point. At least for me. That was too wet brush. Didn't get a nice thin line. All right, let's see here. Check the cow, okay. Just in case you dropped somewhere. Let's just go and remove from the rest of the leaves. Okay. Okay. So we have some veins. So we are very close to the end. We are very close to the end. And so what I would like to do is go dry-brush a little bit more, and we're going to do a few things when we dry-brush when we normal 20. Leaves- Dry- Brushing And Last Detail: You've seen torals, you know very well how the dry-brush now how dry-brush usually works at the end at the end of the painting. But if you knew, we're just going to dry-brush every single leaf with quite dry wet pigments like I loosen up the color, pick up some milky color, take the excess. You have something like this. You see? So you're making a nice mark, but it leaves no droplets, so it's not like a wet. You know, it's not something like this, you know, where it's wet? You want to have this, like, a little mark mark rather than wet. So you want it like this. So every time you pick up some color, you either feel it intuitively that you don't pick up too much or you can take the excess on your paper towel. And here you go. This is the marks that you want to make when you dry-brush. Yeah, it dries quick and it makes nice even glazes. When you want to build up color, you can cross hatch you know, you need to let it dry, then you're going to come back. You cross hatch. Oh, we can just go like this. We go like this in various directions filling in the tiniest gaps in a glaze. But when you dry-brush already painted there, which gives nice smooth, velvety texture, like so when you can go on various directions, build up the color. And because you do with that small brush, not just you can fill in those little gaps, those tiny little lighter areas. But even if there are no light areas to fill in, but when you dry-brush as a last step, it just smooths out the layer and gives that color a little bit more um, saturation, but it lives with nice texture, and when you do it with small brush, you can go right around all the nooks and crannies and get very detailed. So when we will go dry-brush now, now examine only one little leaf and look where the vein is and you can be very detailed. So for example, you need that corner to be a bit darker so you can dry-brush so. Yeah, keeping close. Eye on your reference, and you can be very detailed and darken just that little area that you need, and then paint very closely around the vein, intensifying it. But being extra detailed fill in the gaps and create just this tiny subtle shadow around it. Then there's little shadow right here, for example, when you dry-brush, you can go that detail because you have the small brush, and it's hard to make a mistake with a tiny brush, right? So that's where you can be very, very detailed. And as a last step, this is what I always do. And you dry-brush the whole painting. Adjusting that detail, intensifying your veins. You can paint in a vein here and there. And just dry-brushing from top to bottom, keeping close eye on a reference and just trying to match what you see. And in that case, I'm keeping the contrast a little bit different than saturation of the leaves as I mentioned earlier, because I just want it looks more realistic to me than very, very dark. But dry-brush is something I just never skip. I do always because if you compare it a little bit patchy texture with already dry-brush area on a on a flower itself, you can see how we can have this very nice linear texture. You can have that or not have any dribr if you use a little bit darker pigment and spread out your dry-brush, you create a little bit of texture. But if you put them closer together and use slightly lighter color, you can just end up with smoothing the area without making the lines visible. So you just as I mentioned before, this dry-brush quite intuitively intuitive way of painting. But you do generally want to keep your pigments very, very light, transparent, not thick paint, you don't dry-brush with this goopy, gloopy, like pigment, you know, Neva. So you want I usually let my pigments dry by the end. I don't re wet them. I keep them dry and I just pick up a little bit of colour with my wet brush and loosen just tiny bit of that color so I can feel the control of what kind of pigment and water ratio have. And you want this very milky texture when you dry-brush. Unless you need to dry-brush really, really dark area, you might want to pick up more pigment, but still keep it watery, even though it's more saturated, right? Like so. So it still needs to be very transparent and light. And yeah, dry-brush all the areas that you painted, just to give that extra oomph. At least that's what I think it does when you dry-brush. And yeah, you pick up a dark, a pigment in a dark areas, lighter areas, obviously just like common sense. But dry-brush is something I do all over the painting always. It just leaves me with this more tidy Um, finish. Yeah, so we will go now and do that. Packing up and and rubbish all over. And if, for example, I need to darken this area, I can dry-brush a bit more cross hatch build up a bit more. If I want to just smooth it out, I just add a little bit lighter color, fill in the gaps if I wanted to smoother area. If I want it to look smooth, I just fill in the little gaps and just re brush the whole thing with very, very fine brush strokes. There you go. And again, I always say that the step isn't mandatory. You don't have to do it because it looks pretty good now as well already, but dry-brush always is something that in my eyes, makes the difference. So I do it. And the dry-brush always. So basically, when you paint, I get my paintings about 80%, 80%, 90% to, like, in terms of tonal values, and then I add extra depth and darkness and saturation with a dry-brush. At the end. The layers, you go look smooth to me, and then that's the time also when you perfect your edges, clean up the edges. And if there's a little ovspill I extend my shape and just create a nice edge if I need to. Yeah, so let's go and do that all over. Let's see how it's gonna live. The texture because it's a little bit more granulated than I like. I don't know which color is granulating exactly. But anyway, after dry-brush, it will smooth it out a little bit. So let's go ahead and do that. And in those brown bits, you can just pick up a little bit of your brown color and just go and add a little bit extra texture, just dabble around, like, so to make it look a bit more contrasty and textured. Okay. And that will be our last step. So loosing it up, the color, picking up some very watery light pigment. Take the excess, especially from the neck where it's usually like a little droplet hanging always. So you don't want it to fall on your painting. Just pick a leaf and uh yeah, just go around like this, perfecting edges, rubbishing the whole thing because for me, it looks better. For me, it looks just smoother. That's all it is when you dry it because you can just adjust that uneveness by filling in a little lighter gap, darker color and leaving it out the darker ones so that at the end result is just more even color. I hope I make sense. Mix of, and I'll just go and do that. Although when you start dry-brushing, I usually pick up some color and go into dark area first to just kind of see how dark I have my color. And then when I have after dry-brushing for a few seconds, I have less pigment left, right? Kind then can start moving into the lighter area of that leaf because I have less pigment and I can go into the lyra area so that I can create this nice transition from dark to light. See? Because at first I had just too dark pigment, too much of it, and now I have very little. I can go into the lyra area and smooth that out. Here, like so. You do end up adding some more color. The painting it will be a little bit darker, but that's okay. Let's go into that. And so now the last step, what we need to do is you can see there is this red color around the edges in a few places. And so we're just going to go and do that. Just give those edges where we see them. Pick up some of that, water it down. It's a bit more red. Okay, take the excess. We want it quite dry pigment because we want to create a thin line. See, that's too thick. Take the excess off. And twist your brush. Maybe I think I'll take not as smooth, but my smallest number zero to have a very, very thin line. There you go. Pick that up. There you go. Now we can really go into small detail and just give the edges where we kind of see that red edge to be. Not everywhere, here and there. For example here not fully all the way, jump the light, where you can see it. A few dots. Okay. I think that's pretty much it. I think I want to leave it and not overdo it. And you can see the contrast is a little bit different. I kept it a little bit higher contrast to make it, you know, the contrast between light and dark to make it less flat. So overall, I think, when you take the reference off, reference away, I think it looks pretty good. So I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Yeah, so I'll see you in the next tutorial and good luck painting it. Hope you're gonna share it, and I hope that you enjoyed it. I'll see you in the future, bye bye.