Relaxing Watercolors: Paint Vintage Style Flowers on Colored Backgrounds | Garima Srivastava | Skillshare
Drawer
Search

Playback Speed


  • 0.5x
  • 1x (Normal)
  • 1.25x
  • 1.5x
  • 2x

Relaxing Watercolors: Paint Vintage Style Flowers on Colored Backgrounds

teacher avatar Garima Srivastava, Artist and Illustrator

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      2:07

    • 2.

      Your Project

      0:53

    • 3.

      Art Supplies

      4:09

    • 4.

      Watercolor Techniques

      9:52

    • 5.

      Brush Stroke Practice

      6:31

    • 6.

      Painting the Background

      9:53

    • 7.

      Coneflower I

      6:57

    • 8.

      Coneflower II

      9:56

    • 9.

      Coneflower III

      7:20

    • 10.

      Coneflower IV

      3:45

    • 11.

      Mimosa I

      7:30

    • 12.

      Mimosa II

      4:55

    • 13.

      Salvia I

      8:19

    • 14.

      Salvia II

      4:59

    • 15.

      Closing

      0:39

  • --
  • Beginner level
  • Intermediate level
  • Advanced level
  • All levels

Community Generated

The level is determined by a majority opinion of students who have reviewed this class. The teacher's recommendation is shown until at least 5 student responses are collected.

415

Students

41

Projects

About This Class

Are you finding painting with watercolors too overwhelming at times? Join Garima Srivastava, an artist and top teacher on Skillshare, for a relaxing watercolor class and paint vintage style flowers on colored backgrounds. This class is the first in a series of watercolor classes, where the focus lies on learning new watercolor techniques without the pressure of chasing perfection.

Garima’s gentle voice will help you learn the important concept of color layering as you paint beautiful flowers like Coneflower (Echinacea), Mimosa (Silver Wattle), and Salvia (Ornamental Sage) on colored backgrounds giving them a vintage touch in a stress-free learning experience.

Key lessons: 

  • Art supplies: an overview of the art supplies used in the class
  • Color layering: an introduction to optical color mixing with transparent watercolor layers
  • Watercolor concepts and techniques to help beginners
  • Brushstroke practice: a closer look at the brushes Garima uses in the class
  • Painting coloured backgrounds in three different styles
  • Step by step 5-10 minute long lessons for 3 beautiful flowers with gold accents
  • Coneflower (Echinacea)
  • Mimosa (Silver Wattle)
  • Salvia (Ornamental Sage)

This class is meant for all skill levels. Beginners  and experienced artists are both welcome.

The goal of this class is to get you to try a different painting technique for flowers, while giving you enough space and encouragement to experiment further on your own with different flowers and background colors. With this class you will learn important watercolor techniques that you can use beyond this class:

  • Wet on dry 
  • Color layering/glazing
  • Adding eye-catching gold accents

By the end of this class you’ll not only have beautiful vintage style floral paintings, but also the confidence to further explore this technique with different flowers and colored background combinations.

Resources for this class include line drawings of the projects and inspiration photographs for the three projects.

As the project students are invited to paint along for one or more of the three flowers being shown in the class.

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Garima Srivastava

Artist and Illustrator

Top Teacher

Hello, I'm Garima.

I'm an artist and illustrator based in The Netherlands. I reconnected with my creative self a decade ago to escape the loneliness of being new in a foreign land. My artworks speak the language of joyful brush strokes and vibrant colors.

On a usual day you will find me in my home studio painting flowers, teapots, houses and cute, curly little people. I live with my husband and our sweet little daughter in a quiet village close to Amsterdam. I paint every day and share my art journey on my Instagram account (Garimasrivastava_art) through my daily posts and videos. I am often told that I make art look achievable,simple and yet beautiful.

I find inspiration from the world around me and love letting ... See full profile

Level: All Levels

Class Ratings

Expectations Met?
    Exceeded!
  • 0%
  • Yes
  • 0%
  • Somewhat
  • 0%
  • Not really
  • 0%

Why Join Skillshare?

Take award-winning Skillshare Original Classes

Each class has short lessons, hands-on projects

Your membership supports Skillshare teachers

Learn From Anywhere

Take classes on the go with the Skillshare app. Stream or download to watch on the plane, the subway, or wherever you learn best.

Transcripts

1. Introduction: When learning a new skill like watercolor, it's very easy to fall into the trap of chasing perfection. But what if there's a gentle voice reminding you to focus on relaxation, the freedom of making your own choices without being over critical about the end results. Then this new skill becomes more than a creative outlet and starts to benefit our mental well being. With this series of Relaxing Watercolors classes, I'll be that gentle voice for you. Hi, my name is Garima Srivastava. I'm an artist and illustrator and a top teacher here on Skillshare. I've been painting since 2011 and with Skillshare, I've taught thousands of students my relaxed way of making beautiful art minus the overwhelm. With this class as the first of the Relaxing Watercolors series, I'll be teaching you how to paint three beautiful floral illustrations on watercolor backgrounds with a vintage look. I welcome both beginners and experienced artists to this class. Apart from the relaxation that comes with repeated brush strokes, you will also learn important concept of color layering, glazing, painting wet on dry, and adding some metallic gold accents to turn these vintage style illustrations a little more festive. We will start by looking at the art supplies I've used in this class, followed by a small introduction on how optical color mixing works with layers of watercolors to help those of you who are new to watercolors, we'll also look at the basic brush strokes and important watercolor concepts that we have used in this class. We will then paint a few watercolor backgrounds to later use for our floral illustrations. For the main project of this class, I will show you how to paint an offset illustration of a few cone flowers on a watercolor background with detailed step by step instructions. You will have two more choices of mimosa and salvia flowers to paint as a project for this class with detailed instructions for them as well. The goal of this class is to encourage you to try a different way of painting flowers while giving you enough space to find your own comfort level with this technique, if you like the sound of this class, come and join me in the next lesson. Let's paint together. 2. Your Project: Your project for this class is to paint one of the three floral illustrations I've shown in this class. Feel free to choose your own background colors or you can also decide to paint some other flowers for this class project. If you would like to paint one of the projects from this class, I do recommend watching the lesson once to get an idea of the basic brush stroke and also to know where you would like to make some changes to suit your own taste. The finished project photographs, line drawings, and inspiration photographs for all the three flowers can be found under the resources of this class. To show your project here on Skillshare, click a photograph of your art under the Projects and Resources tab of this class. Click Submit Project under your Project section. To add that photograph, I would love to see what you create and give my feedback on your projects. Please do submit them. 3. Art Supplies: Let's have a look at the art supplies I've used in this class. But please remember, I want you to start painting without any stress. So feel free to start with what you already have and use your favorite brand of paper, brushes and colors close to what I have used. Let's talk about paper. You can start with your favorite cold press, 300 GSM watercolor paper, which usually has a slight texture on it. But if you're like me and would like to try painting on a smooth paper, you can give hot press paper a try. I've used two or three different brands of hot press watercolor paper. Some of them are this Fabriano Studio Watercolor or Clairefontaine. These papers usually vary in what they are made out of. Student grade watercolor paper has 25% cotton, while the Clairefontaine one has 100% cotton. But feel free to use the watercolor paper you already use. It can be cold press or hot press. Just make sure that the weight of the paper is close to 300 GSM in weight. Since we'll be adding a bit of background for all of these projects, I further chop down my pages into smaller sized pieces that I attach to a cardboard piece using some scotch tape or a masking tape. You can easily paint these projects on sketchbook or your watercolor blocks, which usually have one or more sides that are glued together to prevent excess buckling or warping. You can fix all the four edges using some masking tape, washi tape, or a scotch tape. Let's have a look at the brushes I'm using to mix my colors. And sometimes to lay the background, I use one of my older natural hair brush. It holds lots of paint. It's a round number six to lay some background washes. I also use a flat splatter brush, it's almost 1 " in size. Since I'm painting small to medium size floral elements, I use a synthetic pointed round number two brush. Also a triple zero or three by zero synthetic detail brush to paint some smaller elements or add finer details. For colors, you can use your favorite pan colors or tube colors. I've squeezed out my favorite tube colors into this smaller ceramic color palette. Once the colors have dried, you can spray some water on them using a spritz bottle to activate them. I personally prefer to use professional grade water colors for their vibrancy and color strength, But there are also really good quality student grade watercolors available now that you can try. To mix my colors, I use this porcelain color mixing plate, but you can also use the plastic color mixing plate or a white dinner plate. Along with my usual watercolors. I'm also using a silky pearlescent gold called Orient Gold to add some metallic gold touches in the end. Apart from this, you'll need a few more supplies to get started. If you're painting on loose sheets of paper, you will need a cardboard and some masking tape or scotch tape, or washi tape to fix that paper. You will need a spray bottle to activate your color. If you'd like to draw some guidelines before you get started, you will need a pencil. I use number 2B pencil, and a kneading gum eraser to remove the excess graphite. If you need your background shapes to be precise geometric shapes, you might need some geometrical tools like rulers or maybe a compass to draw a circle. You will also need some kitchen paper towel to remove excess moisture from your brush and two jars of clear water. One to wash your dirty brush and another one to mix fresh colors. The whole list of color names, swatches, and other add supplies is available under the resources of this class. 4. Watercolor Techniques: Let's have a look at some of the watercolor techniques that we have used in this class. To help those of you who are new to voricolors get started easily. I had squeezed out my tube colors into this smaller ceramic color palette and I've just spread some water on top of them to activate the colors. You can do the same to the pan colors. To pick the color, I will rinse my brush. Pick some color and depending on how dark I want or how light I want. I will add water to my color mix. In a little bit I'll explain a bit more about water to color ratio. For now, we have picked some color. Let's discuss water color application. There are quite a few different ways to apply water colors. The first one we are going to see is wet on wet. What that means, you're applying wet color on an already wet surface. Here, I have a small area that I'm adding clear water to. This will make the paper wet. Here, I'm applying some wet color directly on the paper. In both of these cases, the paper is still wet. Now, if I will pick another color, I'm picking this indigo we had mixed earlier. It's quite wet. I'm going to apply this wet indigo color to this small wet area. With the help of water in the moisture present on the paper and also in my brush, this color flows. You can see how fuzzy it looks. You can do the same to this area which is wet, with the underlying layer being still wet. If I'll add wet color to a wet area, it's also called wet on wet. Whatever you'll do on wet on wet will become quite soft-looking. Now we'll talk about wet on dry, what that means, you're simply applying wet color on a dry surface. The paper is dry, I'm applying some wet pink color on top of it. This is wet on dry. It can also mean I'm applying some wet color on top of a dried layer. This layer I had painted earlier, it's dried and I'm adding color on top of it. This is also wet on dry application. You can see how wet on wet looks, a bit fuzzy and soft while you get sharp edges with wet on dry. Now let's talk about color to water ratio. With my clean, rinsed brush, I'm going to pick equal amount of color in three different puddles. To the very first puddle I'm not going to add too much water, just the moisture in my brush. And with that, I'm painting here. You can see how dark the color is. To the next one, I'm adding just a brush full of water. You can see that the color is a bit lighter here, I had a bit more water in my brush. Now to the third puddle, I'm going to add quite a bit of water. Now, I'll paint with that. As you can see, as we increase the amount of water, the color became lighter based on how much water you are adding to your color mix. You can go from dark value of the color to medium and all the way to very light value. There is barely any color in here. Lot of water. If you would like your color to be really light, you can add a lot of water to your mix and if you would like to go dark and you don't want your color to bleed too much, You can use a thick consistency by directly picking the color or just add very little water to your mix. To control how much water you have in your brush, simply pick the color and then touch the bottom of your brush to a kitchen paper towel. It removes excess moisture and then you can paint with it. So I had picked water consistency, but I had removed excess moisture. You can see my brush did not have too much moisture. It wasn't completely out of control in terms of moisture. Still able to paint very lightly, but without too much water coming out from my brush. This is how you control the moisture in your brush. Now let's talk about glazing. Glazing means applying a transparent layer of color on top of an already existing color layer. Here I have a small shape made out of yellow, and this one is indigo. Both of these shapes have dried, so we can easily paint another layer on top of them. I'm going to pick some ultramarine blue. For this yellow, I have enough water in my mixture so that it's nice and transparent. With that, I'm going to paint a small line here. I'll continue that line outside so that you can see the color. You can see where the color is directly on the paper. It's blue where it is sitting on top of the yellow, it looks a bit like a green. Yellow plus blue gives you an impression of green. A transparent layer of blue sitting on top of a yellow will give an impression of green. With the help of glazing, you can shift your color. You can change it from yellow to green, or yellow to orange. If you use a stripe of red here on top of it, it will become orange in color. For glazing to work, it's important that the bottom layer is completely dried and you're applying the color without disturbing the layer underneath it. You don't want the colors to mix with each other. They are sitting on top of each other and they have enough transparency in them. That's why you get an impression of a different color here. Another use of glazing is to build value. I've got here a small layer of indigo. I'm adding a thin bar here on top of it. You can see how it is already darker than its surrounding. It has already darkened the value. So by adding same color transparent layer on top of each other, you are also able to build the value. I'm able to go from light to dark value, as I keep adding layers of the same color on top. Again, it's important for your bottom layer to dry completely before you add another layer of color on top. I'm going to add another layer here. You can already see three different values, light, medium, and darker among the three. With the help of glazing, you're able to shift the color and also build value. Another technique that we might be using in this class is softening the edge. If you will paint your brush stroke just like this, leave it like this, it's going to dry with these very well defined edges. We are painting wet on dry, wet color on dry paper. It will dry with very defined edges. At the same time, if you would like to soften up one of the edges or a small area, as soon as you paint it, rinse your brush, remove excess moisture and quickly, move the color near the edge you want to soften. Rinse your brush and soften further. With the help of clear water, you're able to soften up the very harsh edge that was forming here. The top one is very well defined. The bottom one is now softened a bit. This is called softening the edge. Now let's look at some of the basic brush strokes we'll be using for this class. 5. Brush Stroke Practice: Let's get to know the brushes I've used in this class a bit better. But feel free to use the ones you already feel confident with. I'll be mixing my colors using an old natural hair brush. You can also use this brush to apply color. It has lost its point, but it is still very good to apply color to a large area. For bigger area, I like to use this flat splatter brush. It's a synthetic one. Simply rinse it in water nicely before picking the color. And holding its edge at an angle to the paper. And dragging the brush, I'm able to make a wide mark, as wide as the chisel of this brush. You can also drag it vertically, like this, to make a thin line or horizontally just the edge to make thin, horizontal line. Or press on the brush, change the width, give it a wave. So quite a few versatile marks you can paint with it. It comes handy when you want to paint a very geometrical shape, a box. You can even paint circular, round shapes with it. It's a little difficult, but you can still manage to paint a nice oval or a circular shape with it. Quite a versatile brush you can use to make fine lines, little dabs. The other two brushes I'll be using today mostly to paint the flowers will be number two, round pointed brush. This is a synthetic brush and triple zero detailing brush. I'll be painting mostly small flowers or small petals. I'm using a number two brush, but if you're painting a bit bigger, you can increase the size of your brush. Simply pick the color in your brush. With this, try practicing straight lines, some wavy lines, some vertical lines. Slightly curved ones are straight ones. Then practice varying the pressure on your brush. This is just painting with the tip of the brush. No pressure on the brush. Now, pressing my brush down, look how wide it becomes. Then lifting the pressure, pressing it down again, lifting it up again. Practice this variation of pressure lifted, pushed, lifted, pushed, lifted. The more you practice, the better your leaves and petals will become. Let's see how to paint a simple petal. Let's say this is the center of the flower. I've picked some magenta in my brush, starting from the center, touch and lift. If you want to make the petal wider, you can make similar brush stroke right next to it. Touch, push and lift. You can also go from outside towards the center, touch push and let go, touch push and let go. It just gives a slightly different look between the two directions. Decide whichever one is comfortable to you. You can use similar brush stroke to paint leaves. To make elongated leaves simply touch, push, drag it as long as you want, and then gently release the pressure. Let's see it one more time to push and gently release. You can give them a bit of wave to push, give a bit of wave and let go. To paint a leaf that is a bit wider touch push and let go. Similarly, another brush stroke right next to it: touch push and let go. You can see this leaf is a bit wider made out of two brush strokes. Or you can use a bigger number of brush to make this leaf in one brush stroke. You can also use this brush to add little details, curved marks, fine lines. I'll mostly be using this round number two brush to do my flowers and leaves. For any finer details like application of some gold, you can use a smaller detailing brush like this. It works similar way to the number two brush, it's just as very fine, smaller brush, and you can make quite fine details with it. These are some of the brush strokes that I've used in this class. I've kept them quite simple. With just a little bit of practice, you'll be able to achieve similar look. 6. Painting the Background: Now let's add the background color for our paintings. There are different ways in which you can add the background color. You can obviously paint the entire sheet of paper, Let it dry. If it has warped a bit, place it in between a heavy book so that it can get flattened. Once it's flat, then you can paint on it. What I like to do is add a swatch of the background color in the middle of the paper and let the white of the paper frame it already. I have taped all the edges of this paper to my cardboard piece. I've used scotch tape. You can also use masking tape. We won't be adding a lot of water. I'm not worried too much about the paper warping, but it is still important to fix the edges to keep the paper as straight as possible. I will show you three different ways to add this background color. For the first technique, we'll be using this flat splatter brush, it's a synthetic one. Before picking the color, rinse it nicely with water a couple of times so that it's no longer dry. Now let's mix the color for our project. I want to mix a very light color, a peach color. I'm picking some Opera Rose. You will need good amount of color mix. The consistency is going to be very watery. To this Opera Rose, I'm going to add just a touch of cadmium free yellow. Add some more pink. Look how much water I'm adding. Let's try this color. As you can see, there's a lot of water in my mix. We want enough to cover the area we are intending to paint this background layer on. Prepare enough mixes for your brush to go a couple of times. I think I have enough for this technique. I want to paint a rough, rectangular shape Here I have very lightly marked a rectangular shape, but if you would like to keep the edges sharp and crisp, you can measure the shape, add some washy tape to keep the edges sharp. I'll be using this flat splatter brush. Rinse it in water, remove excess moisture, and then load it with the color. I'm not going to worry too much about the shape being perfectly rectangular. I just want to lay a simple rectangular wash. I want to keep this process simple and relaxing. No need to worry about having this wash completely uniform. Don't worry if there are little blotches. Don't worry about all of that. Simply paint a shape of your choice. Load the brush and gently glide it over the paper. Don't worry if the color is pooling at some places or not drying evenly. Don't worry about all of that. Here we have a very rough, rectangular shape. Like I said, if you want to keep this shape sharp, add some washy tape around it. Now, we will let this one dry. For this second project, I have marked a slight oval shape here with my pencil. Remove the excess graphite line. Now I'm going to mix either a pink or a yellow. We can start with some permanent rose. Add enough water. Our aim is to keep this layer quite light and transparent. Add enough water to your mix. Check the saturation level. This is nice with my round number six brush, which holds good amount of water. It's an old natural hair brush, I'm going to paint this oval shape. It's a bit hard to paint an oval shape with a larger splatter brush so I'm using just this round number six old brush. Or you can also use a mop brush paint this bigger area. Again, don't worry about making this shape perfect or laying the perfect wash. It's all okay, because we'll be adding pretty little flowers on top of it. You can do this exercise and paint multiple shapes like this in one go and then use it every day to paint something. We have painted this oval shape with slight pinkish color here. Now we will let this one dry. For the very last one, I would like to paint a very rough swatch of color. Let's mix an olive green color. I'm picking some sap green. To that I will add a touch of permanent Alizarine crimson, a bit more green. So the trick is first to get the color right and then add enough water to get the consistency you want. This color is okay. I will add more water for these backgrounds. Always prepare enough mixture that you can use freely. I will again be using my flat splatter brush, rinse it with clear water, remove excess moisture, load the brush nicely. Now starting from left, putting the brush down, going left to right, just make up rough swatch of this color. You can see how I'm keeping the edges intentionally quite rough. Just back and forth, left to right, right to left. That's it for this one as well. It's quite rough, but you can see how the paper white is framing it already. Now let it dry completely. The backgrounds we painted earlier have dried. Since we had taped all the edges to a cardboard, they have dried completely flat. We are not going to worry about the uneven drying or some of these blotches for now. These backgrounds are ready to be painted on, I also painted a few without attaching the paper to a cardboard. Once the paint had dried, I had put these in between a heavy book. Within a few hours, they have also become almost completely flat. We can also use these as well. Now we can get started with painting the flowers. 7. Coneflower I: Let's paint a main project featuring some cone flowers. Now that our background has dried, we can get started with painting our cone flowers. You can create a few rough sketches, like I did to decide on how you want to place the flowers. You can paint the whole composition inside this box. But how I would like to do is paint some of the flowers inside and some of them slightly outside this shape. Sometimes I put just a small light pencil guideline in the shape of a circle just to remind me where I want to place the flowers. And sometimes I just directly paint them. Now let's see the colors we'll be using to paint these flowers. For the petals of these flowers, I will be picking three different colors. Opera Rose. I will add just a touch of cadmium free yellow. Sometimes pick some permanent rose. You can see I'm not mixing these colors because I will sometimes be double loading my brush. What that means is I'll pick one color and then just touch the tip of my brush into another color to create a petal which has a slight variation of colors in it. I will show that to you later. Let's see the colors we'll be using for the center of the flower. For that, I will be picking some permanent alizerine crimson, some burnt umber, maybe just a touch of quinacridone gold. To paint the flowers, you can first paint the flower head with the darker colors. And then add the petal like shapes called brats coming out from it in the shape of umbrella. Or you can also paint these brats first and then add the center. Let's try to do that. For our very first flower, I'm going to pick some permanent rose. Just touch the tip of my brush in cadmium free yellow, starting away from the flower head. I will move in one more time. Again, rinse my brush. Picking it again. Opera Rose, followed by some cadmium free yellow touch, push and lift and go back in. This gives me a little variation of color in my petals. You can also paint the petals coming from the center outward. It just changes the look slightly, but paint whichever way is comfortable to you. As I come towards the edges, I make the petals slightly thinner and smaller as well. Some smaller ones at slight angle towards the two edges, touch, push the brush down and lift. Now that we have painted the petals, I'm going to pick some permanent Alizarin crimson in my brush without adding too much water. And then just a touch of burnt umber without mixing the two colors, starting from the center, pushing my brush down and letting go, Adding a few dots at the base, adding a few more dots, letting them slightly bleed into the petals we had painted, rinse my brush. Now I'm going to drag this reddish brown color on the petals a little bit to add a slightly muted vintage look. Not all over the petals, sometimes just towards their edges. I will pick some Quinacridone gold. Add a bit of it on this area where we left the background color visible. This gives a nice color variation on the flower head. You have the reddish brown on the center and the left side, and a little bit of this quinochrodone gold towards the right side of the flower. I will pick some burnt umber without adding too much water, and add a few dots all over this flower head, giving it a bit of texture. Once the paper has dried, it won't bleed too much at this point and these dots give a nice texture and feel to the flower head. If you would like to fix some petals, you can add another thin layer of color to them. You can do that at this point. This is how we painted our very first flower. I will be painting a few more around it in the next lesson. 8. Coneflower II: Now I'm going to continue adding a few more flowers, some of them within this painted background shape and some slightly outside it. If you would like to watch me paint all of these flowers petal by petal, let this lesson continue on the current playback speed. But if you would like to go a bit faster, then please change the playback speed accordingly. So my five flowers are ready. In the next lesson, let's add some stems and leaves to these. 9. Coneflower III: Now we can add a few guidelines to place the stems and the leaves. I want the stems to start from outside this background shape. Now let's paint the stem and the leaves. For that, let's mix some sap green with our burnt umber. You can also add some red to your green. Since I already had brown, I've just added some sap green to it to get a nice olive green color. With my same number two brush that I've been using till now. I'm going to pick this color with the steady pressure, paint the stems, keeping the stems a little darker where they are, starting near the flowers. Now to paint the leaves, we need almost the same color but slightly thicker consistency. I'm picking some green. You can simply use just sap green. But for a muted vintage look, you can add some permanent alizerine crimson or burnt umber to your green. I'm adding some permanent alizarin crimson to my sap Green. Here's a bit darker version of the same color. With that, let's add a few thin leaves starting near the stem touch push and let go touch push and let go. You can also move towards the center stem, dragging the leaf color down on the stem to make it all unified. As the stems have started to dry, I'm adding just a line of this darker leaf color on one side of the stem, giving some slight color variation along this stem. This part is optional, but if you want pick some of the same mixture with which you painted the leaves a bit thicker consistency with a small detail brush, you can add some central lines to some of these leaves. It's up to you how you prefer the look of the leaves here. For a project like this, you can spend hours adding little details and final touches. What I like to do is go around and see if some of the petals are looking a little fused. In that case, I pick some more color and add a gentle glaze on top, giving some definition. You can also add a few extra brown dots. I always add these dots without too much water in my brush, so that they come out nice and crisp With this, our project is ready in the next lesson, let's add some optional metallic accents to this. But if you do not like the idea of that, then you can stop at this. 10. Coneflower IV: Welcome back. Our painting is almost ready. At this point, you can add some extra finishing touches, but they are optional. If you prefer it at this stage, then you can stop. I would like to add some metallic accents to some of the petals. For this, I've got this Pearlescent gold. It's called Orient Gold. You'll find different kinds of gold based on your personal preference. Use the gold that you like. With a smaller detailing brush like my triple zero, I'm going to add just a few thin outlines to some of the petals and not complete outlines. This part is completely optional. If you are not liking the look of this, don't try it with your painting. But I do feel that this takes your beautiful painting from pretty to wow. It might be a bit difficult for you to see the lines since it's a metallic color. But I'm not adding this metallic color to all the petals. Just a thin outline to some of the petals and a few golden dots to some of the flower heads. Especially on the lighter right side. It's literally quite difficult to stop using a gold like this, But I will stop at this and let me try to show you where I have added, so just on the outside of some of the petals, not all of them, and not entire outline, just a few gaps and a few lines and a few dots on the flower head. With this, our project is finally ready. I really hope you enjoyed painting this project right from the start where we painted the background, followed by these relaxing brush rokes for the petals and leaves, and then in the end, adding a touch of shimmer and shine. I can't wait to see how you create this project. 11. Mimosa I: Let's paint another project featuring mimosa or silver bottle flowers. For this one, I want to paint a branch of mimosa tree loaded with fluffy ping pong ball like yellow colored flowers. For this project, we'll be using this shape we had painted earlier using permanent rose. It has a bit of imperfection here because of some uneven drying, but we are not going to worry about that because most of it will get covered with some flowers and leaves. You can also use a light yellow base like this. I painted this with cadmium free yellow with a touch of burnt umber in it with a very watery mix. Before we get started, let me show you a reference sketch or two that you can use to paint a mimosa branch. I'm going to draw some rough guidelines for the mimosa branch. You can paint them without pencil lines as well. This is just to remind me the direction in which I want to add the flowers, where I want to add the leaves. It's okay for flowers and leaves to come out of the background that we had painted earlier. Just some rough guidelines. Now let's look at the colors we are going to be using for the flower. We are simply going to use cadmium free yellow in medium consistency and slightly thicker consistency. If you're painting on a white background. You can paint these flowers with a different kind of yellow, like winsor yellow or lemon yellow. But my choice of yellow is cadmium free yellow. For our greens, we have sap green here. I prefer not to use it directly. I will make two mixes. To the first mix, I'm going to add some cadmium free yellow to make it slightly lighter green. To the other mix, I'm going to add just a touch of permanent alizarin crimson. Let me show you the two colors. This is sap green plus permanent alizarin crimson. And this one is sap green plus cadmium free yellow. Having a few different kinds of green with you helps create some interest. Let's also mix some burnt umber with some sap green. Here, we'll use this for the woody part of the branch. Now with my number two round brush, let's start painting starting from outside of this shape. First, I'm painting the central branch, making it thinner as I'm going out. As you can see, I'm not painting the branches completely. Rather adding a few dashed lines for now. This much is okay for the branches. Let's start by placing the flowers first, some cadmium free yellow, just little dabs around the branch. You can paint it as dense as you would like. If you want the dots to be more saturated, pick the color directly or add very less water. If you would like them to be a bit more transparent, then use a little bit more water in your mix. Just simple dots placed around the branch. We'll later connect them with fine light green lines. But for now, just place as many dots you would like. For now, I have added enough flowers. Let's add some leaves. You can see I've left a few branches here. I'm going to add using the mixture of sap green with some permanent alizarin crimson. Let's add some fern like leaves. I'm using my triple zero brush to make these fine lines like little spikes. There is something so relaxing about repeated same brush strokes. Take your time. Use this moment to relax. No need to worry about making them perfect. So just like this, add a few leafy branches. 12. Mimosa II: Now that I have placed enough leaves, I'm just going to go around and add a bit more sap green to my sap green and Alizarin crimson mix. Just add a few more darker green spots on some of the leaves that look a little faded. Just giving a little bit more variation in the green. Still using my triple zero brush. Now with the lighter green, which is sap green, cadmium free yellow. Simply connect some of these mimosa flowers to these branches with fine lines. You don't need to connect all of them. Just show a few connecting lines. We're almost done. I would like to just add a few more round mimosa flowers. A few of them look a little faded. Make some of them nice and round. Since we are painting on a pink background, the yellow and pink make the flowers slightly orangish looking. The actual flowers are much more yellow. If you want to, you can try painting them on lighter yellow background to keep that brightness of the yellow intact. We're almost done just going around with some of the burnt umber and sap green mixes to reinforce some color on the stems joining the branches. I'm just making some of the flowers a little bit more rounder. I had painted them with just dabs of the brush, just giving them a bit better shape. You can stop at this point with the project, but if you would like to, you can also add a touch of gold. This is my triple zero brush. Just adding a layer of gold to some of the round flowers. It might not be very clearly visible where I'm placing the dots in the camera lights, But I will show you in just a little bit. I'm not painting all of them, just a few on each of the branches. With this, our project with a mimosa tree branch is ready. I really hope you enjoyed painting this beautiful project. And I can't wait to see how you paint this one. 13. Salvia I: For this project, let's paint a few strands of salvia flowers, ornamental sage. These tall and spiky clusters of flowers come in a variety of colors ranging from white, pink, vibrant blues and purples. Since we'll be painting the flowers on a slightly greenish background, the colors will come out a little muted. But with the saturation of our colors, we'll still be able to achieve a beautiful look. Before starting, I'm just creating a small guideline just to remind me how I want to place the three vertical strands. Now let's see the colors we'll be using for the colors of the flowers. We'll be moving between Quinacridone magenta, a purple made out of mixing quinacridone magenta with the blue, you can use ultramarine blue. This is Quinacrodone magenta plus ultramarine blue. You can also some ready to use purple dioxizene violet. We will also be adding a touch of quinacridone gold at a few places. For the greens, I will use a mixture of sap green mixed with some permanent alizarin crimson. A mixture of burnt umber mixed with a little bit of permanent allzarin crimson for the central stem. Now let's get started. I'm first picking a number two round brush. With that, I will pick some quinacridone magenta. First, starting where I want to start the flowers with just a little dash and a couple placed together. Very roughly, just like you would paint lavenders flowers. Rinse brush, pull some of the earlier placed color a little bit to its sides. With just the wet brush giving a bit of variation of pink in there. Make the top a little pointy, go back in, add some more pink. Now, just with the clean water, spread this pink around a bit. I'm moving between simply applied pink and at places just that pink spread with water. Now while this is still wet, I'm going to pick my triple zero brush with that, pick the purple mix, and add little dabs. We are painting these flowers quite loosely, so don't worry about painting individual flowers here, I'm just laying some of this purple in the form of long dashes while they're still wet. I like to add a touch of quinacridone gold along the central line just to add a bit of light in there. It pushes the color away a little bit, creating a bit of light. We will be adding more purple marks once this dries a little bit. For now, let's paint the remaining two strands just like this. Now that this first one has dried, I'm adding another layer of these dabs of purple, just small dashes or oval shapes to give an impression of small flowers. When you paint flowers wet on wet like we did earlier, they tend to become quite faded. Adding another layer of some brush strokes brings back some details in it. But even with that, we are not adding any difficult details, just an impression of some flowers and petals. Let's do the same for the second one, making the top of the whole cluster quite pointed. 14. Salvia II: Now that we're almost done with the flowers, I'm picking the mixture of burnt umber and permanent alizarin crimson. And with that I will add the central stalk also in between the flowers. At some places I'm using triple zero brush for this. Now let's paint some simple leaves, although the actual leaves have a bit of serration. But here we will just add some simple, slightly elongated leaves with my number two round brush starting close to the central stem. Press, release, touch, press and release. You can also come towards the central line. I'm just adding a bit more color to some of the leaves. We are almost ready with the project, just like our previous projects. Let's add some optional metallic touches. Just a few dabs on the flowers, little dots to the flowers. I will show you in a bit where I'm placing them, as it might not be very clearly visible with the lights. These flowers are looking a little muted compared to the other two projects. But that is also because it's been painted on a slightly greenish background. We're almost done with the project. I just want to add a few final touches, just some central lines for some of these leaves. With my triple zero brush and the same color with which we painted the leaves, sap green, permanent Alizarin crimson. I'll also add a few green bits up on top giving an impression of some flower buds. I can spend endless amount of time adding little details like this, but for now, I think we are done with this project. With this, our project is finished. I really hope you enjoyed this project, and I can't wait to see how you paint this one. 15. Closing: With this, we have reached the end of this class. I really hope you enjoyed this technique of painting flowers on colored backgrounds, giving them a vintage look. I would love to see what you create with this class. Please do share your projects here on Skillshare. If you have any queries, you can write them under the discussion tab of this class, and I'll try my best to answer them. If you enjoyed this class, please consider leaving a Skillshare review to help this class reach more students. You can connect with me on Instagram to share your project and progress with this class. Thank you so much for watching. I'll be back soon with another relaxing class. Until then, stay creative.