SLOW ART CHALLENGE: Stylised botanicals with colour choice and composition made easy.

1. 1 Introduction and Project Overview: Hello, everyone, and welcome to my slow art challenge. I'm Dawn Cawthra, an artist, designer, teacher, and holistic health educator. And I just love it when we can combine our creativity into some kind of practice that really, really makes us feel well. I love going out in nature. I love looking at all its color, its form, the flowers, the seed heads, the berries when they come through later on in the year, and seeing those beautiful umbelifas when they show they like little stars that pop out of the plants. These are the things that have inspired me to create this class, and I really hope that you will love it as much as I've loved creating it. It's absolutely packed with little treasures, is this class. And the first thing that we're going to be looking at is creating colour discs. And I'm going to take you through the whole process of what colour discs are, why we would use and how we create them because they are such a tool, one of my what I call golden tools to help me when I'm making color choices in a composition. And I think once you start to use these colour discs, they'll actually really become your best friend like they have done mine. Using color recipes really takes the guesswork out of, you know, what colors to put together that will make a harmonious palette. And you'll gain confidence as you start to mix these colors and begin to apply them for your own botanical compositions. I'll be taking you through a few techniques of how to draw your own botanicals. You can either draw them freehand, or you can trace them, but I'll take you through it step by step in a really simple way so that you feel confident enough to be able to do your own. These are what you'll use to inspire you in creating your own botanical squares that we'll then use for creating different kinds of brids. I'm also going to share with you a technique which looks quite chaotic when you're doing it, but the result of the beautiful, colorful leaves when they're revealed at the end of the process is really well worth giving it a go. Do two different kind of grids. This one's a patchwork grid, as opposed to a more symmetrical one, and it's using softer colors. And the technique for getting the botanicals on top of it is actually tracing in this instance. It uses a different painting technique as well to the one that you did in the more symmetrical color block grid. We'll be having a look at how to draw flowers, just using a circle, which will then give you your own ideas as to what you want to include in your composition. And then finally, I'm going to share a technique with you called masking, where we paint a background using leftover paint in the same color palette that we will have chosen to do our patchwork gridding. And we're going to be using masks to create a really simple and beautiful little still life composition. So I do hope you'll join me. This is kind of like a little mini course, anyway. I'm thinking of it as being a mini creative break for you. You know, be able to take your foot off the accelerator pedal for a bit and break free from overdrive and just try and schedule a little bit of UT. UT for yourself on a daily basis or a weekly basis or whenever you can make it. So I'll see you in the first session where we have a look at what materials we need. 2. Materials: Okay. Let's take a look at the materials that you're going to need, then. First of all, you can either do it on paper. You can do any of the projects either on paper, board, a wood panel or even fabric. I'm choosing to do it on paper, and I like to basically work just through my sketchpad. I've got a couple of sizes of sketchpad here. I've got an A three size, and the paper quality is about 250 grams, and that's absolutely fine for the amount of paint that you're going to be putting on it. And then I've got a smaller one. A smaller pad. Again, paper quality is still the same. I do favor these pads because I like the spiral, you know, the spiral spine because they're so easy then to be able to fold over and work on both sides. But you don't have to have them like this. Whatever paper you've got, whatever size you've got, work with that. If you can do something on an A four size, that would be great. Its you just need to make sure that it's about 250 grams or above. So that's your paper done. You're gonna need acrylic paints. Now, I am using blue, red and yellow. I happen to be using the liquitex basics, but you can use any brand at all, and then I'm using white, and I'm using black. Now, I'm actually adding a couple more to these. I'm using a different red as well, a cadmium red and a cadmium yellow, and I'm also bringing paints gray into it. But you don't have to do that either. If you've got just those three basic colors, plus black and white, you can do every technique that I'm showing you in the book. Now, if you don't have those colors, then use whatever color acrylic paint you've got. So long as you've got some black and some white, and you'll still be able to do all of the techniques in each lesson. I'm also using two posca pens. I'm using a white one, which is a one size, and I'm using a gold one, which is also a one size. And I'm using those just for extra decoration. You're going to need a pencil. I'm using an HB pencil, an eraser, a ruler, and a pair of scissors. And if you have them, a cutting mat and a craft knife would be really useful. But if you don't have those, don't go out and buy them. You can manage without. Next thing you're going to need is a sponge of some sort. Now, you can just use an ordinary kitchen sponge if you want. I've got a little art sponge here. Makeup sponges are of a very similar quality, or you can use a roller. Or you could use one of these little craft sponges, or, as I say, a kitchen sponge that you perhaps cut down into a slightly smaller size. Two or three brushes. I've got a very thin one here. I've got, what size is that one? That's a ten. And then I've got a flat brush. But again, use the brushes that you feel comfortable with. You will need a thin one for one of the exercises. But don't go out buying anything until you've actually seen the lesson, and then you'll get a much better idea of what brush you would prefer to use in it. You're going to need water and a paper towel. Well, you don't have to use paper towel if you don't want to, but I like to have one handy. You're going to need something to mix your paints on, either a palette or a mixing pad or a glass board or whatever you normally mix on a plate, anything like that. And then if you can download, the PDFs that are under your resources section, that would be great. You've got two leaves and two flowers. They're there for a reference for you and also for you to be able to trace from if you want to. And that's basically it. And I would suggest that you just have a look at a couple of the lessons first before you decide that you need any extra materials because sometimes you can easily do a workaround with what you've already got. 3. How Colour Discs Work: Whenever I get a new set of paints or pencils, what I like to do is to do my own little swatch color of what those paints actually look like. So for example, this is the ink tens paint pan studio set from Derwent. And that's the color palette or the color chart that comes with it. But as you can see, if I compare that, to mine. There's a huge difference there. So it's always good to actually do your own color palette. Now, I've also recently from the same company, Derwin Ink tens, got these lovely watercolor pencils. And as the name suggests, they are really intense in the color, unlike other watercolor pencils. And what I've done there is I've done exactly the same as I've done with my little watercolor palette. I've drawn out the different colors. So here's charcoal gray. I've drawn out the different colors with each pencil, and then I've done it again and added water to it so that I can see what they actually come out like. Now, in addition to doing this, and this is the tip that I want to share with you all. This is the golden tip. This is where it gets really easy to decide on what colors work well together and what color palette you want to go with. So as well as doing that for myself on there, I've also done an extra sheet where I've just put the pencil on the paper and added the water. So I haven't got just the pencil bits because I've already got that on that color chart there. But what I've done here is I've made so let's have a look. So that's bark, tangerine. Sherbet lemon. You get the picture here, fern. I've also done extra ones that I can then look at like this that I've got there that I can hold in my hand. And the reason for doing that doing this extra one is because if I wanted to decide what other colors that I wanted to put into this painting here, which I've done with the ink tense pencils. That's what I've used for this particular composition. If I decided like, Okay, what color do I want to do these two flowers in, it's going to be a bit hard to kind of go with the chart and decide which colors I want. Whereas by having them like this, I can instantly see what colors are going to work or not work, for example, do I want to bring a red into it? No, I don't. Do I want to bring a pink into it? Well, actually, I might. So these are so, so useful. I rather like those two colors together. This is a really, really useful way to be able to use these little color chips, as I call them, little color discs and put them onto your work and just decide, is that the color that I want to go there? Now, obviously, I wouldn't put that there because it's too much like the background color. Would I bring a yellow in? Maybe. Would I bring something completely different in and darken it entirely? Probably not. Would I go with this kind of color? Possibly. So it's a lot easier working with the color chips or the little color discs in helping you to decide on what colors you want to put in your composition. Now, I've done this painting here or started it, as you can see, about two thirds of the way through, and there's something about it that I'm not quite happy with, and I've realized that actually I'm loving the colors I've chosen and I'm liking the elements of it, but I don't like the dimensions of it. So this is where composition can get really interesting because although I've set it out like that initially, the minute I bring a frame into it, I realize for myself that that's a much more pleasing composition for me. And so from that basis there, then I'll probably start to decide what colors I want what other colors I want to bring in to finish this composition off. So you can see that just by using these little discs, that gives me a much clearer picture now of what kind of colors I want to bring to this painting to finish this painting off. Now, that looks nice. And as I've said in lots of my other classes on color, color is quite an instinctive thing. And sometimes, you know, you don't even have to know why you like a color in a certain way. But it was interesting then, you know, to have that there like that, it's kind of like, okay. The minute I put that there, instinctively, it's like, Okay, those are the colors that I want to put there. They work together really well with what's going on, you know, what's going on in this corner here. I might decide just to stay with the greens in this corner or once I've done those, because I'm clear about those colors, those will be the things that I paint next. What I might end up doing then is in these little spokes that are coming out of this flower, for want of a better description, it might be that I bring that red down there into the spokes, and the background of it is just a paler version of this. But what I'll do first is I will paint paint those two colors in there first. No. 4. Invitation To Make Your Own: Depending on how keen you are to get color chips made, obviously, you could just do a color chip for every tube of paint that you've got in whatever colors you've got. Here you can see that I've been playing with the yellows to see what colour yellows and golds I've got. But you can imagine, you know, I've got endless greens. I've got loads and loads of blues, different blues. I got loads and loads of different reds and pinks and yellows, of course. But rather than do color chips from paints that are already mixed, I'm going to invite you to mix your own colors. It is to actually take the three primary colors plus black and white, and actually make up a color chart with just those three colors. Although I'm actually going to use two different yellows and two different reds, plus a blue and black and white. Now, you may remember if you took my Bclor confident class. You may remember that we made a color wheel from those colors that I've just suggested there, but we're not going to do that in today's class. We're not going to make a color wheel today, although you can see here very quickly how many different colors you can get. And if you this is we reminder for those of you that took the class and for those of you that didn't take the class, it's worth popping over and having a look in that one. It's the B color confident class. I'll put the link to it because that just shows how many different colors you can get from a very, very limited range of paints. So what I'm going to suggest today is that we use those yellows, reds and blue. Here we go. And then a primary blue. And we have a go at mixing these and doing our own color charts and then cutting those into chips and using that as the basis then for the composition that we're going to be doing. 5. Beginning The Process : So basically, you're going to need two sheets of paper. I'm going to keep mine in my pad so that I've got it there as a color chart in my pad, although I'll probably end up cutting it out later and stick it on the wall with the rest of them. And then I've got a spare piece here as well, because obviously we want to have some that we've got as a reference. Well, actually, it's up to you. If you're not bothered about keeping it as a reference as a whole color chart, then you can just do it on one sheet of paper. It's entirely up to you. This is the one that I'm going to be cutting out from. But I am going to do it twice for my own benefit, but if you can't be bothered to do it twice, that's absolutely fine. So basically, I've got some cadmium red on my palette just now. Now, it doesn't matter if you don't have cadmium. You use whatever you want. If you've got a primary red, that would be good. The purpose here is to just used a yellow and a blue, and let's get some color mixing done. I've also got a titanium white, a mars black, and a pains gray. Doesn't matter if you haven't got the pains gray, but if you've got a white and a black, well, you will need a white and a black frize to get some really good mixing done. And the reason that I've got these in a separate jar is because I found these little lids that come off the top of a pringle pack, and they just fit nicely on top of those, which means that I can keep the paint moist and use it, you know, another day without it drying out. So let's get started with mixing these paints. I happen to be using a number ten brush, but you just use whatever brush you've got that picks up enough paint for you to do a reasonable size circle. Now, why are we painting in circles? Well, again, if going to put those little chips onto your composition. Then doing it in a circle rather than a square just gives you a lot more flexibility, really. I mean, if I let's take some of these chips, you know, straightaway, if I'm doing because we're doing a botanical painting here, then you don't really get squares in botanicals, do you? You get circles and curves. So it's much easier to use that. I mean, that's almost a flower in itself there. Oh, well, not quite, but you know what I'm trying to say. Um, so it's a lot, it's just a lot more organic looking. Circles are a lot more organic looking and natural looking than a square is. Right, so those are the first two down. Now I'm going to take some of this white. Well, actually, what I'm going to do first, just move this over so that you can see is I'm going to just use a palette knife and take a little bit of that cadmium red and put it into two sections because I'm going to be adding white to one and black to the other. So what I've ended up there with is little three little dabs of cadmium red paint. So I'm going to do this to try and keep my brushes, you know, as clean as possible. I'm going to add the white into that one there. And let's get another brush. And take some of that black and add that black there. And I'm just gonna fill these water jugs up a minute and keep those brushes in the separate jugs so that they stay reasonably clean. Now, then, take some of that red and add a little bit of white to it. You start to get that lovely coral color look. Int that gorgeous. So here we go again. Now, already, that's going to work in a color scheme. How can it not work in a color scheme? Because it's the same color with just a little bit of white added. So it already has relationship to itself or to each other, I should say. Was that brush out a bit. And then add a bit more white to that coral color. Maybe even a bit more white. Isn't that just gorgeous? Such lovely colours. Now, I'm not going to add any more white to that at the moment. Only because well, it's quite addictive doing this and you could probably do a whole page just of colors from cadmium red. So I think we just need to limit it a little bit. Now, what I'm going to do here is I'm actually going to pick up, Let's move that over so you can see. I'm actually going to pick up the tiniest bit of that black, and I'm going to put that into that coral. And see what a lovely neutral tone you get there. A bit more water. I think I'm gonna have to add a bit more white to that. Kind of getting a top color. That's better. Do that one on this page as well. You can see as I'm mixing here that it's very easy to get lots and lots and lots of different shades. In fact trying to get exactly the same as that one. Well, we're near enough, look. We're really near enough. We're not far off. Put a bit more of that into there, so they're a bit more matching as it were. So we've put four different colors of paint on there, all starting with that cadmium red and adding a bit of white and then a little bit of black to that coral color. And you can see already that you've got a harmonious color palette going on there. If you didn't do any other colors in your composition other than those, it would work simply because they all have relationship to each other. So let's take the red now and add a little bit of black to it instead. I haven't added much there. It doesn't take a lot of black when you're adding that to colors to change the color itself. Now, look at that. Rich, really rich, beautiful, beautiful, brown. Isn't that just gorgeous? Color magic. I've said this before in my other classes, but honestly, I could do this all day. Just play with the colors. Put a little bit more black into that now, and that takes it into another tone entirely. You don't have to be too precise with these circles because you're going to be cutting them out anyway, right, I'm just going to bring a bit more red into that only because I've used quite a lot of that paint up. Bring a bit more black into that or a bit too much black there. So bring some more red into it. Yeah, I overdid the black there. Bring some more red. And then see this lovely tone that's coming out here now. So you don't need to go and spend a lot of money on paint at all. You know, make color mixing part of the joy of your painting. And by doing this, you really get to know your colors. You really get to understand and develop your own intuition and awareness of how they work together. And, you know, it's not like I've got it all off to Pat. I'm still discovering things years and years and years later. So there's always some gorgeous, magical moments happening with color mixing. It never fails to be a surprise. Now, in the same way. So we did red, white, white, and then added a bit of black. Now we've done red, sorry, we've done we've started with red, go black, black, more black, and now I'm going to put some white black into this color here and see what we end up with there. Like a mocker color. Wow. Fantastic. Who would have thought red, white, black can give you all these amazing colors. And let's add the last of that white to that to take it down even further. And so on and so forth. I mean, you could carry on going in just getting it paler and paler and paler. Okay. So before we forget what these colors are, now's the time to be writing what you've just done. So cadmium red, plus white, plus more white. Then we're going to put a little plus there because that's what we've started there plus black. Let's make that into a little arrow that plus black. Then we've gone cadmium red. Plus black plus more black plus more black. Then from that, we've gone plus white. Well, we could put in brackets plus black, of course, that plus more white. Now, what you'll do, the benefit of having it on here is that you've got something to refer to when you cut all these little circles out because you can then write on the back of your little circles exactly what colors you've got. You get the idea there of the process of going from your original color down using the black and the white. So I'm going to show you one more. We're going to go with the other red now, and I'll do that process with you as well. And then I'll do all the others, because it's going to be a bit boring for you watching me doing it all. So I'll do all the others off camera and then bring you back in so that I can show you what the color chart looks like. 6. Lively Red Tones: So we'll just do the primary red just now. So a little bit, perhaps, give it a shake. That's quite different red. It's a lot pinker is this red. And take that palette knife and split that red into three like we did with the cadmium red. Slightly different consistency this as well. Go. Take some of that black out, bring it to here. Take some of the white out. Let me go. So let's start off with the red on its own. And really, it's just to remind you what we've just done on that one. Not that I'm sure you need reminding, but so here we go. You can see that's quite a different shade altogether, isn't it? And yet that's considered to be the primary red. Yes. Now we're going to take some of that white, put the white in with it a little bit. I love adding white to red. You get these beautiful pinks. I probably added a wee bit too much white there. Well, not that I've added too much, but if I'd have added less white, we would have got a slightly darker pink. But let's just keep adding white to it and see where it takes us. Bit more white, I think, into that. Better. That is just delightful. Whoops. Then I'm going to take the tiniest bit of black, tiny, tiny bit and add that to that. It's lovely, lovely, pearly gray. So you can see depending on what color you start off with. So for example, I've got two different reds here, and they're producing very different colours. And that's really worth knowing when you go in buying paints. So we'll add a bit more black. No, in fact, we'll leave that one there, actually. And what I'll do is I'll add some black now to this cadmium down here. And then you start getting these gorgeous purples Mulberry colours. I mean, look at that. Honestly, it is. It's pure magic. Bit more black again. Let's do one with a wee bit more black, and then I'll add some white to that one. Now, this is where you can bring contrast between the light and the dark into your compositions. Because, again, you know that this is going to work because look, it all relates to each other. Don't worry about getting these perfect. Now, let's add some white to that. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. More water. Don't forget if you push is dragging a bit more water needed on it. And then more white again. Yeah. Lovely. So let's get that written down, what we've got on there. Oops. So we've started off with primary red. Plus white. Plus more white. And we've gone from that to that with plus black. Plus more black. Oh, no, sorry. That was the red, wasn't it? We started off with the primary red there. Primary red. But let's just rub that out a minute. Plus black. Useful to use a pencil, plus more black. Plus more black again. Then we've gone from that to that by adding plus white plus more white. So hopefully, that's giving you the process there, and this is where the slow challenge comes in because I suggest that you try and do one color per day. So start off like I've done here with the color red and just see where that process takes you. There's no rush at all. It's a really lovely process, and I would just say enjoy it, have some fun with it, do as many colors from it as you want to do, but just do one per day. Obviously, if you want to really get ahead of the game and do more than that, that's absolutely fine. But I'll see you for the next color yellow. 7. Delightful Yellows: Here are my yellows. This is on the sheet that's going to get cut out with all the discs cut out. And here they are in my sketchbook, as well. I had to go over the page there. I also, as well as doing the primary yellow with the black, I also did it with the pains gray because I wanted to see what a difference it made, and it gives quite a different effect, actually. But I do like the effect that it's given, and that's the same here with the cad yellow. So you can see there the cadmium yellow and black and the cadmium yellow and pains gray have given quite a different effect there, and I rather like this effect here. What I decided to do as well was rather than write every single bit of information on the back of each disc, I decided it would be easier just to number each disc and then write the corresponding number on the back like this. Just ignore these two here. So for example, if I turn that over, obviously it's one, two, three, through to nine. When I turn that over like that way, then I have to write the numbers from right hand side to left hand side so that they correspond on the back. So that's basically what I've done. Right through to number 51, that's how many colors I've created so far with just the red and the yellows. So I can see that these color discs are going to be in the hundreds. Way, how did you get on with your red? I hope you've managed to do that, and I hope you have just as much fun doing the yellow. I mean, look at all the gorgeous greens that are coming out here and these lovely gray colors. It's really quite endless. Yeah, just absolutely delightful. So I will see you in the next session where I show you how my blues turned out. 8. Moody Blues: So how did you get on with your yellows, nice sunny colors. This is the book that we used in the other class that I did, the B Color confident. And you can see here how I just collaged some of the yellows together just for the fun of it. And you can see here how I collaged some of the blues together, as well. And these are the blues now that have come up today. Now, the top, just ignore that part for the moment. This is the primary blue that is considered to be primary blue. And apart from these ones here, these are the kind of colors that you're getting from it. I mean, you know, they're quite something, really, and let me put something over the top of this. So you can't Oh, never mind. You know, the sort of going into turquoise almost. So I decided as well that I wanted to try a different blue. So I actually brought in cobalt blue. And just to see because that's how I think as a blue color, if you were to ask me what primary blue looked like, then I would probably have chosen something more like that rather than like that one. And the cobalt blue, again, takes you into a very different color tonal range, and, you know, they're both fantastic. So it just goes to show really that depending on which blue or which initial color you choose for doing your color discs, then you will obviously get very different results. So apart from those four there, because I had a little bit of a space that I wanted to fill in, this is the color chart, if you like, for the primary blue, starting off there. And again, you know, we're going into these lovely duck egg colors, which are absolutely gorgeous and these kind of moody grays. And then you've got these really dramatic blue grays up at this end here once you're adding pains gray or black. But then going back to the cobalt blue, you know, it's a much softer blue. And that takes you into these kind of tones, which, again, you know, are absolutely gorgeous in their own right. So, have fun with the blue. Now, what I'm actually going to do because that's the reds, the blues and the yellows done, but I'm actually going to now do some more mixing. I'm going to mix the blue with the yellow. So I'm going to mix the primary blue with the primary yellow and see what greens I can get. Because, again, when I look through this book here and go up to the greens, I want to be able to do some discs with these because it's so much easier than looking at it from the book. As we said earlier, and being able to use the discs on your actual piece of work. So I'm going to have a play and do the greens next, so I will see you in the next session and share with you how they also turned out. Have fun with your blues. 9. Calming Greens: Well, as you can see, I really did have a lot of fun with these greens because not only did I do one green, I ended up doing three greens. So I started off with the mid green, if we just look at the color wheel. So that's basically equal amounts of the primary blue and the primary yellow. And that's how I got with the mixed green, the mid green there. Then I decided to see what it was like with the more blue green. So again, taking the primary blue and the primary yellow, but having more blue in it and less yellow brought me into this color hue here. And then I decided to have a go with the spring green, which, again, the blue and the yellow, but more yellow for this one and less blue. And basically, these are the results that I've got from it, and I'm really, really pleased with them. So I would say, you know, have a lot of fun yourself with the green. It is a really good color to have, as I said earlier, as a balance. You know, it does help to balance the composition out. So I would say have a go as well, doing yourself a green color chart. And before you end up cutting them all out, of course, don't forget to either number them like I've done or to write on the back of each disc exactly what you've got written, either in your sketchbook or maybe if you're not having a reference in your sketchbook like I have, maybe well, hopefully, you've already been writing on the back of it as you've gone along before you cut the discs out. A 10. Cutting Out The Discs: Now's the time to get your favorite music on or listen to your favorite podcast, get the kettle on, make itself a brew, and just have fun. Cutting these circles out is quite meditative in its own right. 11. Choosing Colours: Over the next few lessons, we're going to be taking a look at different ways as to how to use color and botanical shapes together. It's just going to be quite playful. It's not going to be the finished product or anything. We're just going to have a look at how we can have a little plate and experiment with them using different elements of color, different elements of linework to suggest botanicals, this kind of thing, just a lovely little gentle play with it. I'm going to suggest that we actually start off with doing some color grids, given that you've just now got your color discs. So let's start off with this lesson where we actually take a look at creating some color palettes that you're happy with and then doing some simple line work on top of them. What I've done here is just create a 15 centimeter by 15 centimeter square, which I've then broken up into nine smaller squares of 5 centimeters each. And basically, I could either use it for drawing in the middle of it, or I could use it for drawing around the edge of it. And what I'm going to do is draw around the edge of it and get as many squares as I can on this page. This is about an A four page here. So depending on the size of the sketchpad or the piece of paper that you're using, will depend on how many squares you can get. So here are my 12 squares drawn, and I've already chosen the discs that I want to be working with. Now, just to show you here, you know, I've spent a little bit of time looking at these color discs, and this is the choice that I finally made, but I just want to show you here, what a great little tool this is, if you like, for being able to see what works and what doesn't work. You know, the minute I swap that color over, it changes things completely, and it's not as harmonious as I want it to be. I could swap out that green for that green, and again, it kind of suddenly dulls it all down, whereas bringing that one back in gives it a little bit of a pop. What happens if I take that yellow and put that in there instead? Can you see what I'm trying to show you here that, you know, it's a really good way to see what harmoniously works together? Now, what I could have done if I'd wanted is I could have just used all of the discs on here. Because then I would have known that those would have worked together, or I could have used all this line of the discs that I knew would work together. But I wanted to just bringing some green. I did start off with one. Let's just take those out a minute. You can see there that I've got a color harmony going on there, and that was from the primary red color palette that I did on the chart. But then I wanted to bring some greens in to balance that out. I've already written the numbers there. You can see so that I don't forget which is where. And that's what I mean about the greens, how they bring balance to a palette. Now, if I'd have gone with the other kind of greens, if I'd have gone with the more blue greens, let's take those out so that I can show you. That would have created a very different palette again. And not that there's anything wrong in that at all. In fact, it's quite nice, actually. But it's not where I wanted this color palette to go. Let me just show you if I brought some blues in with this. I'm just randomly picking blues here. Um You know, that doesn't work for me at all, in fact, might work for you, but it doesn't work for me. And I can't emphasize this enough in a way that like I said, color is quite an instinctive thing. You don't necessarily consciously know why something's working and something isn't there'll be a kind of instinct that says, I don't know why, but that's not what you know, that's not where I want to go with this. So this is where these color discs are so, so useful in being able to kind of help us make the choices. And take the guesswork out of what colors work together. What colors, you know, work either harmoniously or in contrast. I mean, I've got some pale ones going on here. I've got a pale, more neutral green going on there. And then I've got some darker contrasting colors to go in, as well to make it so that it doesn't all become too, well, too boring, actually. You know, there's a nice interplay there of colors that are balancing each other out. So that's the color scheme that I'm going to go with there. Now, the reason that I like to use a five centimeter square is that it's small enough for you to be able to get some color on pretty quickly without feeling overwhelming. And basically, I'm going to be cutting these out anyway and even then rearranging them. So once you've done your squares, do what I've done and leave a bit of gap in between because you can paint over the edges because we'll be cutting them out anyway. It just means you've got a bit more of a free, you know, you're not trying to get it all in the corner perfectly. So you can paint over the edges in a nice kind of even brushstroke. What do I mean by that? You know, you can kind of go across like this and go over the edges without then bashing into the next one or go down the way. And it just makes for a nice grain of paint. So I'll get these colors painted into here and then bring you back in and let's take it from there and see how you know, I might rearrange them all again once I've got them into the colored squares, and we'll have a look then a little bit about what kind of composition works. So this is my last color to mix, which is number 25, and that started off with a primary red base with a bit of pains gray. A little bit more. If I look at my little recipe book as it were. This is the color here. I'm wanting to get to that color there, which is about that one. A bit more red in there maybe. This is the color that I'm looking for. Here and thereabouts and then some white. Let's see if that's enough. Now, as you can see, that's not quite the color there. So that's because I know that I need some more red in it. So let's just pop a bit of red. And this is where the color mixing it is like using a recipe. There, now you can see that we're getting much clearer and much nearer to that color there now. And the more you do it, the more you will become more accomplished at it. And this is the lovely thing about learning in this slow manner and actually taking the time to absorb what you're actually learning rather than just be a quick fix. So that's pretty good, actually. I'm going to paint that on there. Nice broad strokes going down. We can track over the edges. Pull it down one more time across the whole surface, and that gives it quite a nice finish then. So those are the color blocks finished there. And what I did was I just, you know, went straight back into what I'm now going to call the color recipe book and looked at the different combinations of color. And let's see, we're not far off here from getting these just how they are in the recipe book. And, you know, if you're a little bit off, it doesn't matter because the flavors there, you know, you're almost at the right point with it. So it doesn't have to be absolutely bang on. There we go. But that's pretty good, isn't it? That is pretty good actually at being able to match those colors on the colour chips. I'm really, really pleased with those. So I'm going to let those dry before I cut them out, and then start looking at a few botanical shapes that we could draw into these. Really pleased with those. 12. Colour Block Botanical Grid part one: These are my color blocks cut out. And I can already tell that I'm really pleased with the combination of colors that I've got together there. I'm just going to put them to one side for the moment because now I'd like to focus on the botanical shapes themselves. And you've got some PDFs as resources, downloadable PDFs. That you can print off and use as inspiration or use for ideas for shapes. Now, if I just take a look at these here, what I've done is I've given you PDFs that are this size here, so you've got a really big version of it. And then on my printer, I've just printed it off at ten by 15 centimeter. So obviously, if you've got access to a printer, then you can reduce it to whatever size you want. But let's just take a moment, actually, before I start drawing them in my sketchpad, to have a look at the shapes themselves. Now, if I look at this one here, really, we're looking at an oval shape. That one's also an oval shape, but slightly wider. Again, an oval shape. I mean, really, that's a smaller version of that one. You could put that into a circle. This is definitely an oval shape but much more elongated. Here again, this maple leaf, we could put that into a circle. If we made it touching round the edges, that makes it even easier. Let's rub that bit out so you can see that a bit better. You can see that's an easy way then to copy that. Again, this one down here, we can put that into a circle. We've got another oval going on here, again, a wide oval. In fact, that's almost a teardrop shape, actually. Then we've got another elongated oval. And this one here, we've kind of got an upside down egg shape. So it's narrowing at the bottom, getting wider at the top, and coming round like this. So that one there. That's a similar shape again, as well. Wider at the top, coming round like that. This leaf here, again, we can put that into a circle. So if that helps to be able to start your drawing, if you're not particularly confident at drawing these, I mean, I've purposely kept the whole projects as a stylized botanical. So it's not about being able to draw, you know, really, really well. It's about looking at the shape of a leaf and then bringing it to its simplest form. And straight away, you can see that that's a maple leaf, that's an oak leaf. That can be various leaves of different plants. So let's have a go at reproducing this in sketchbook or on a piece of paper, however you want it. Now, if I just draw out, first of all, if I start off with a few ovals, let's put some ovals in, and I'll do different shapes of ovals. Upside down ovals. I mean, I'm drawing this free hand. You can, if you like, in fact, let me show you. I'll just get it. If you've got access to these little templates, these are quite useful because you can obviously just go straight in and draw around them like that. There you've got circles. So that makes it really easy. Or, of course, you can draw circles around a coin or, you know, a glass jar, whatever you've got. But just for the moment, let's just stick with me drawing this free hand. So I'm going to do a long oval. Kind of wide oval, there we go, simmer all the way around. Let's do another circle. Let's do two circles. And then we'll finish off with an oval like that. Now, I'm going to go straight in with my trusty lac fine liner, but you carry on in pencil if you feel more confident being able to just do it in pencil. And basically, I'm going to use these outer shapes as a guide for doing the leaf itself. So let's see what we can do in this one. So I'm just going to follow that round. Put a little stem on the bottom, carry that stem through to the top and give it some veins. Now, because you're doing this freehand and not digitally, you don't want it to look like it's a digitally printed leaf. You want it to look like you've drawn it. In fact, I'm going to take that little middle stem and take it through the top as well, because this is where we use our imagination a little bit and add things to it that you wouldn't necessarily find in the leaf itself. So on the edge of this, I'm actually going to put some little dots there because I can And this is really about making your leaves if you like, a little bit sort of illustrative. Imaginatively illustrative. Let's call it that. Let's put it that way. So let's see what we can do with this one here. I'm going to go from that top point there, and I'm going to come round, and I'm going to give it a little bit like that, almost like an upside down heart. Bring that stem down. And now what to do with it now? I could just do crosses like this. So I'm taking some basic leaf shapes here and I'm making them my leaves, and making them do what I want them to do rather than trying to reproduce something exactly as I would find it in nature. So let's have a look at this one here. I'm going to put the stem in there first, and then I'm going to go from the top, bring it down. Same on that side. And I quite like, Well, I like that just as it is, actually. In fact, I'm going to make that an upside down stem by then bringing that out. And that looks like an upside down stem. So I could turn that around, of course, and use it that way if I wanted to. So this is where it's good to have some outer lines just to help you yeah, get a feel for the shape of it. Let's have a look at this one here. Now, if I put a little dot there, and, you know, I could take this little maple leaf as a bit of inspiration for it. So if I draw up there, then I'm going to draw another one to there, another one to there, and the same on this side here. And I'm just going to create some leaves around like this. Now, that's not exactly a maple leaf by any stretch of the imagination, but it still looks like a leaf. That's rather lovely. If I wanted to, I could bring that all the way down there, that to there and that today. And now we've got a really nice leaf shape, and yet, you know, using that as a bit of inspiration, the rest came from my imagination. Let's see what we can do with this one here. As it's already that shape, let's keep it that shape. I mean, I did that with the template, so let's give that a stem, and maybe I just do something like this. So, you know, I'm bringing in my own style into this. Using these as, like I said, kind of the guide, the outer guide for want of a better description. Oh, you know, I could just make them a bit more realistic. And have something that, you know, is very obviously recognizable. It doesn't matter what you choose. It really doesn't matter. You know, it's up to you what you decide to do and how you decide to style your leaf. And that's the whole thing about having stylized botanicals that they are, in fact, your style. Now, that said, if you're completely new to this and feel a bit daunted by it, by all means, use the leaves or as near as you can get to them from the printout, that's, you know, absolutely fine. That's why I've given it to you. So again, let's just Now, what I might do on this one is put some little dots along there, just because I can. I like that phrase just because I can. For me, in this kind of imaginative art, there are no rules, and the only limitations really come from, you know, how we think, whether we think something's okay to do or not okay to do. And as far as I'm concerned, anything like this works. It's absolutely fine. Let's go with this circle here. M I'm going to do something a little bit similar to that one there, but keep the lines straight. From there, it has its stem there as well. So you can see how easy it is. I think it's easy. I hope that you're not you don't feel overwhelmed by this. You know, it is quite once you allow yourself to just play with it, I and, you know, allow any shapes to come out that are really part of your imagination, then that's absolutely fine. You'll have fun with it. So that's what I'm going to encourage you to do to spend some time doing a couple of pages of these leaves, and then we'll have a look at how we then put those onto the squares, how we draw them onto the squares, and then creating a composition with these lovely color block squares that we've done. So I'll carry on doing a few on here and bring you back in when I've created another page with them as well. 13. Colour Block Botanical Grid part two: That's a few more drawn on that bottom page there. I've rubbed out the outline on the top one so that you can see them without the outline. And I've managed to smudge quite a bit of the ink, as well, but that's okay. I've managed to smudge the ink on this one anyway, even without rubbing them out. But you get a sense of different shapes that you can then draw. Not too keen on that one. It looks a bit rude, but we'll just leave that one as it is. I won't be including that one in any of my squares, I don't think. So now let's put that to one side and bring the squares back. And here, I'm going to decide obvious well, I was going to say I'm going to decide, am I going to use a black pen or a white pen? Now, my white pens, I've got a pen touch here, which is an extra fine point, and that's really good actually for doing on these because it shows up really well. You could also use a white posca. That one's a bit thick, is that one? You need a slightly finer one. A one M, PC one M, that's got a finer nib. Or in terms of the black, you could use a fine liner. Now, the only thing with a fine liner is that they do smudge if you get your hand well, they all smudge if you get your hand on them, but these take a bit more drying time. And also, if you were to end up putting water on by accident, it would bring this ink off, whereas these kind of pens, because they're actually acrylic paint, then once they're dry, they're dry. So let me get a little bit of scrap paper. And with these posca pens, you do need to just give them a good shake and then pump them ever so slightly to make sure that the inks coming out. That's coming out nicely. So let's take one of these darker ones, and I'm going to look at the leaves that I've just drawn, and I'm going to draw something similar to that one there. So I'm going to start off with the stem. To bring that round like that. Now, it's gone on quite faint at the moment, but that's okay. Because I'll go over it again. And I'll leave that leaf just like that. Now one thing you do have to watch is that you don't end up blobbing. So let's just go over that real careful. That's better. That's coming out much nicer now. Much, much nicer. Now, it's better to do your little drawings first on each square before you then collage them into your final composition because A, if I was to have got a big blob on that one there, then obviously, if that was in a composition already stuck down, it would ruin the whole thing. At least if I only ruin one, I can replace that one quite easily. So let's take another one here and decide what I'm going to do on this one. And I think here, I'm going to start with that little point. I'm going to go right up there. Give this 15 leaves. Let's bring that one behind that one just as a little bit different. That one behind there so that it's not quite so uniform. And another little stem. Very effective, aren't they? Now, I'm going to try white on this lighter one here. And if it's too light, then what I'll do is I'll go over it with a darker pen. So because I'm not sure whether the white's going to work on here or not, we're not going to do too much of a complicated one here, so I'm just going to bring a stem down. Oh, that's working well. That's okay, actually. Yeah, that's quite nice. Well, in that case, let's go with that. I do like these sort of multiple leaved stems. I think they're rather sweet, actually. And it's interesting sometimes just to not do it so symmetrical, which creates a wee bit more visual interest than if it was completely the same on all sides. So I'll carry on doing some filling in all of my blocks here. I do have a lovely copper pen, actually, which I will probably use on the pink because I think the white will be too light on that. And by using this copper pen, which is also quite a fine nib, then it will echo a little bit of the two colors of the brown there as well. So I think that will tie in quite nicely. So I'll do those and then show you how they've turned out. Here are my finished squares. And in actual fact, on these paler ones, even the pink ones, the white pen worked out okay. So I haven't used any other color other than the white posca pen. The one, wrong one. The one Posca pen, which is filled with white acrylic paint. I did call it ink earlier on, but it's not ink. It's paint. So now what I need to decide is what grid composition am I going to put these in. So let's first of all, put them all on, and then I'll obviously end up having a little play to decide what colors I want where. Oh, that's so exciting. Sorry. That really is quite exciting for me, I must say. When you start seeing it come together like this, you know, it's like bringing the individual pieces together to create the overall effect. Now, of course, what I've done there is I've left those two colors till the end, and they're very similar. But doesn't that just look lovely? I mean, that just looks really, really sweet. I am so pleased with that. I really am. So the things to consider, for example, is not only the color that goes next to each other, but also the leaf shapes. So for me, those two leaf shapes are a wee bit similar. So I'm going to swap that one out for this one for the moment and put that down there. And these two leaf shapes are a way bit similar, and those two leaf shapes are a wee bit similar as well. So I think let's swap that one out for there. Although because that's a kind of really nice reddish brown, that actually looks better in the middle for me. So we'll put that one back. And we'll leave that one there. And maybe I just let's have a look. How about swapping that one? No, they've got too many greens together there. So you can see how you can play with this to decide, you know, just exactly how you want it to be. Now, that looks nice. That looks very nice. Very pleased with that, actually. That's worked straight away there once I've done that little bit of swapping. So the question now is, do I keep it all like that as you know, this shape, this landscape composition and use all of the squares, or do I take three squares out and make it a square composition? Now, for me, actually, something's been lost there by taking these colors out. So let's put those colors back in. And let's try taking those three out. Now, that's slightly better. But I think it's still missing something. I think I actually preferred it as a longer composition. Yeah, I like the balance of colours overall there. Now, if I turn it that way around and turn the pieces that way up, do I like it just as much? Let's see. And yes, I do like it just as much that way. I think that's rather nice, actually. Now, if I bring the bigger sketchbook in here, you can see, I actually painted these directly into the sketchbook by using washy tape around it all to obviously give me the grid pattern. So once they were painted, that was it. They were in and, you know, everything was painted directly onto the page. But doing it this way and then gluing them down, I've actually got a bit more flexibility as to what I put where. So I think what I'll probably end up doing is putting these into this sketchbook and gluing them in place, and I'm really, really happy with that. Or I might, I just might end up taking this page out of here and gluing them down and putting them in a little frame, because I think they look really, really pretty. So that's the first project completed in a way. You know, this was really a practice piece, so you don't have to be doing anything with them if you don't want to. It was really just to get you, you know, coloring some blocks in and getting you used to actually starting to do some of the botanical leaf shapes on them. So, you know, if you don't want to do anything with them at all, that's absolutely fine. You can just pop them to one side, and we'll look at the next lesson to see how we're going to use color in a different way and how we're going to bring the botanical shapes into that, as well. So I will see you in the next session. Hope you have a lot of fun with this. No. 14. Multi Coloured Background : For this next little exercise, we're going to be, again, using the color discs to choose a color palette. I'd like you to limit it to five colors. You can do less if you want to. Um, and I would encourage you to just go a little bit out of your comfort zone. So I've chosen these colors here, which are really not colors that I would normally put together at all, but I'm going to just experiment with it. And so you'll see with me in real time what these colors end up looking like put together. But I quite like them as they are. They're quite poppy, as it were, quite, you know, quite vibrant colors, apart from this one. But in a way, if I take those out, they're of a similar kind of vibrancy. And then I brought that one in, which is much more dull. Because I want to see if that balances that out or not. I think it will. So the way in which we're going to put the color onto these squares now means that I'm going to have to mix all these five colors all at the same time. So I'm going to put those up there just for the moment. I've already written down what recipes they were. So I know what it is that I need to mix. And you're not going to need too much color here because these are very small squares. Basically, it's a ten centimeter by ten centimeter square or a four inch by four inch, which I've then proportioned off into four, five centimeter squares. So similar size, well, the same size as these here. And I've just used washy tape basically because I want to try and keep a fairly clean edge around it. So that's easy enough to do. And I think we'll just start off with the two simplest colors here, as in the two reds that are, you know, already mixed up. So let's go in with the red. Now, I just want you to be flowing and free with this. Don't want you to overthink this at all. Really don't just get some color on. However, you want to put it on. I'm going to do it on both of them. But what I'm going to do with this bottom one is put it in slightly different proportions. Okay. Get some of that cadmium red on. If it runs into the other colors, that's absolutely fine. I'll create a different color again. So you can see here that I'm just literally very liberally applying this paint without really any kind of plan as to where it's going to go. I do love those two reds together. I mean, basically, they're like bright pink and orange, aren't they? Okay, I'm going to go with the green next. So that is the blue and the yellow mixed together. Okay. Now, I can already see that that is too blue. That's much too blue. So that needs more yellow in it. And this is what I was saying in one of the other lessons that the more you do this, the more you will get to really understand what the color needs to get it into the color that you wanted it, to get it into the mix that you wanted. So I'm even going to take that into there and put that So basically, I've taken that green out and put it into this yellow here. So it really is just a question of practice. Practice, practice, practice. But in a fun way, you know, not in a way that is a real chore. When I say practice, that makes it sound like practicing your scales on the piano or something. You know, this is fun. This is okay, I'm not going to call it practice. I'm going to call it playing. Play, play, play. So is that near enough to that color there? Yes, that will do nicely. So let's put a bit of that in there. Oh, now, look what happened there. Interesting. So without cleaning the brush, I'm going to see what else that produces if I go over there, look, and that's producing. It's pulling that red down that red hasn't dried yet, and it's bringing another shade in completely. I like it when that happens. So you can get different effects by not cleaning your brush. See what happens there. Now, that red underneath has actually dried, so it's not dragging that one off. This is such a freeing way to produce images because, at this point, you don't even know what we're going to be doing next, so you can't overthink this at all. And it's really best if you don't don't even know how it's going to turn out. All right. Let's bring in that blue there, and that is the primary blue with some black. Just a reminder that you never need much black for it to turn a colour into something else entirely. That's it, look. That's getting much nearer to that one there. Probably put a tiny bit more black into that. A little bit more black. Probably gone too much, but that's okay. But there we go. That's the color that I'm after. Wow, that's very strong, isn't it? Because it's such a dark color, it's actually covering up a lot of what's underneath it, which I don't really want. So I'm just going to be a bit more mindful about how I apply this color because I don't want it to be too overwhelming. I'm also going to leave a little bit of white in these squares as well as a contrast to everything else that's going on. I It's part a little bit, just coming through there like that. Maybe a bit more down there. Okay. Tiny bit there. Don't want too much on that one. And then the final color. Number 83, that's cobalt blue and black. Here I've got I've got the cobalt blue just here, put a tiny bit of black into that. And it needs more black. And then a little bit of white. So that's not bad there. I'll leave that color there. And again, this is a very strong color, so I'm going to be careful how I add this to it. We've got a little bit of abstract art going on here, aren't we? It's quite fascinating just allowing yourself to play in this way. I say, not getting too hung up about where colors are actually going, allowing the playfulness to come through. And as you know, right now, for me, you know, that's the important bit, really. Just allowing yourself to play. Because, actually, it's well, for a start off, it's more relaxing for you. And, you know, if you're not so attached to an outcome, then I just think it makes for a freer expression. I think you end up being more well, just more carefree with what you're putting on your plate, what you're putting on your paper. And it shows through then in the work itself. Now, I've got a bit more white than I want there, so I'm going to go back and add in some more colour here. So I'm going to put some. Oh, look at that. Look what's happened there now, 'cause I had something on my brush. Let's take advantage of that, shall we? Mm, very nice. Say, happy accidents. Bring that down there as well. And I think that just needs a bit of a pink something over there. All right, that needs to dry, actually. In these areas where there's a bit more white, I'm going to take a fin line. With this pink. Maybe if I've still got enough paint left because I'm not going to bother mixing anymore, pick up no that green's already dried, I think, I might just get a little bit there. Bring a bit over there. And maybe a little one through there. So that looks, you know, a bit of a kind of colorful mess at the moment, which is great. That's just what we need it to look like. So I'm going to let that dry, and then I'm going to peel off the um actually, no, I'm not going to peel it off. I'm not gonna peel that off yet. I'm gonna let that dry first, and then I'll show you what the next stage is. This paint is now dry. And what I'm going to do here to add even more complexity to it and more chaos, if you like, is I'm going to put a little bit of white onto some bubble wrap, and I'm just going to press that into certain parts. Now, if we were doing this on a much larger scale, you could use all sorts of pattern mark making tools. You know, you could use bubble wrap like I am. I see that's rather interesting, isn't it? You could use patterned rollers, anything that gives a texture, basically, and just makes more visual contrast. Mm. A bit more. I've got a little bit of red here, still wet so. I'm going to bring that in actually onto this bubble wrap, which has created a kind of coral color. And let's try that on there. There I go bit more around there. But I'll do just the cadmium red that's left on my mixing pad here. That's quite a bit quite a bit on the bubble wrap there. I'm just going to pop that in that bit there. And then let that dry again. Oh, I leave something on this one here. Let's do a bit more of that cadmium red. Put that over there again onto the corner of it. Oops, and press that down there. There we go. I'm going to let that dry one more time. And then take you to the next stage or take this to the next stage. Actually, that's looking a bit I could do with something else in that as well. So let's bring the bubble wrap back into that and see what other color I've got here. Got a little bit of the cobalt blue left. Tiny tiny bit. Let's see. What that might look like, might look rubbish, but let's just give it a go and see. Kind of looks like a bit of a smudge really rather than something else. So I'm going to go back into the white, I think. Is that dry? That one's dry. Let's bring a bit more white from my trusty little pot. Let's have the white in it now for quite a while. Take some out of there. Bring it back over that coral color that I had. I put that over there instead. That'll do. Wow. Wow. Oh, I'm really liking that. I'm gonna have to do more of that. I was a bit tentative, actually, with putting the bubble wrap on these other sections, but I really like the boldness of that, so let's give it some more bold over there. Just because we can. And a little bit here. And I think we'll call that a day and just leave that now as it is. Of course, part of the thing of pattern making is non to stop, and that's always a bit of a challenge for me, to be honest. But there you go. Right, we'll leave that to dry and then I'll show you what happens next. 15. Adding Botanical Shapes: Following on from the little sketches that I did to get the leaf shapes, to get some basic leaf shapes, I'm going to carry on in that little sketchbook now, and I'm going to use my little five centimeter buy five centimeter template, and I'm just going to draw some squares. Again, I'm not being too precious about this. Basically, what I'm doing this for is because I want to get a sense of, again, composition, simple composition onto the so that I can project that if you like, onto the squares that we've just painted. And when I say project, I don't mean project it like projector. I mean, have a close idea as to what kind of shape I want to create within those squares. So let's just look at those squares again. So here, we've got the colored squares. I've got the same size squares here now. And what I want to do is to just put in some really, really simple leaf shapes. Because these are really small, it doesn't need to be as complex as doing something like this. It just needs to be, you know, a fairly straightforward leaf shape for this particular exercise that we're doing here. So I'll have a look at that one there, and I'll put that in. So I'll start off with the circle. I'm going to take that almost up to the top line there. I'm going to take that one out of the frame and that one out of the frame as well. Or you can imagine it going beyond the frame. Let's make that one up there, bring that down here, and then another one that goes slightly out of the frame and comes in there. So it's not exactly the same as that one, but it's similar. And I'm going to take that stoke down to the edge of the frame like that. So that's one idea. Let's have a look at that leaf shape. Now, when I drew it originally, it was the other way around. But as I was sticking them down, I thought it looked quite interesting to actually have it coming as a hanging leaf. So let's do a hanging leaf on here as well. Now, already you can see that I've gone wider than the original one. To make it look as if it's hanging, I'm just going to bring that little curve to the edge of it there so that it looks as if it's coming down the way rather than going up the way. And there is the stoke that it's hanging from. The next one, I'm going to use this leaf shape here, but I'm going to set it at an angle, and I'm going to make it bigger. So I'm going to have it coming in from this corner here and I'm going to take it all the way through so that it actually goes right off the edge of the square there. Quite like this idea here of using two. Again, when I drew those, they were the other way around, but I think they look quite nice again as hanging leaves. So let's do something really similar here. Keep it very simple. So I'm using pretty solid shapes here, as you can see. I'm not going in for the smaller detailed ones in this particular exercise. And as soon as I start drawing into it, you'll understand why. Excuse me. Let's take one where that's going up there. But I'm bringing that round like that. Round like that. And again, that's going slightly out and back in again. So what I'm doing here is I'm making the leaves bigger than what they are in these squares here, and I'm expanding them so that they really go up to the edges of the square. Let's do one final one. Keep it nice and simple. I'm doing that slightly off center look. So it's not quite in the center. It's a bit further over. So what I'm going to do now is I've got eight squares, so I need two more designs, but I'm going to put these designs here into these squares here. And to do that, I'm actually going to use a white pencil so that I can see a little bit better. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm just going to carry on using my HB pencil. So if I take that over there and bring that here. Now, basically, what we're going to do is we're going to put these designs into here and then we're going to paint out the background. So we're going to paint out the background with white paint. So what I want to do here is look at each little square that I've created there and just see which I think of these designs would suit the bit of pattern that's going into there. Now, again, I'm not overthinking this. I already know that I want to put that one onto there. So let's just bring that down like that. In fact, quite like that to be a bit wider. There we go. Now, I'm going to rub that initial line out because I don't want that to be in the middle there. Keep your pencil line, you know, fairly light so that you can quite easily rub it out. So that's that one. So I'm going to draw all these in once I've decided which design is going where. I think that would be quite an interesting one into here. So let's draw that one out. There we go. That one, I think would be quite interesting in that one, actually. I'm going to take that one up to there like I did before, bring it around in the circle. Bring that to here. Now that's going slightly out of there. Bring that around there. And that one's going well out of the square. So I'll carry on doing this just for a few minutes and then let you see them all when they've all been drawn in. I'm not sure that you can actually see very carefully the outlines that I've done there, but I want to just show you the idea is that we are going to do something along these lines here, whereby we're painting out the background, but letting a little bit of the shadow of it still come through, but it's making the botanical shapes then really stand out. And then, of course, you can go in and add further detail. Now, obviously, you know, with this being a bigger square, I could do more things in it. Just wanted us to play with this shape to start with. Sorry with this size, just so that it wasn't too overwhelming for you, because what we can do then later is do a bigger project, a larger project with this technique, if that's what appeals to you. 16. Revealing The Leaves & Adding Decoration : So I've got my pot here of white acrylic paint. I'm just going to put a bit of water on my brush and pick up some of that paint from in there. Add a little bit of water to it. I want it to be not exactly runny, but not just quite as thick as it would if it was coming straight out of the pot. And I'm going to now draw around the outline, sorry, paint around the outline of the things that I've just done. I've just realized that I haven't done one there, but never mind, that's fine. We'll just leave that for the moment. So let's start with this one here. Now, even that's slightly thicker than I want the paint to be only because I want to try and get a little bit of the background, a very sort of faint idea of it shining through, not shining but showing through. So here, I'm going to paint around the outside of that leaf. I can even make that even more translucent that paint. The thing with white paint, of course, is that it's actually opaque, meaning it's very thick. Some paints are a lot more translucent. You, you can see through them, which is why sometimes when you're mixing paints, you can see this on the green. You can see through it more because it's not a full thickness of paint, whereas a white paint is so to make it be a bit more see through or translucent, you will either have to put a little bit of map medium in with it or water it down. Then now we can see that's about the right consistency there because I can see little bits coming through there. So I'm going to do that on all of them. It's exactly the same as what I've just done there. I'm just going to paint out the white background and then let you see the results, the final results of that. Well, here are the squares all painted out with white. You begin to see now the technique and how that's going to be working. So let's peel off this washy tape and see what's underneath. See how they've turned out. It's as much of a mystery to me as it is to you because I don't know until we get them off until we get the washy tape off as to how they're going to look. But already, I'm really pleased with what I'm seeing has happened here. So there we have the eight little squares. And this is where, you know, you can start adding a wee bit more detail if you want to. If you don't want to, that's absolutely fine, as well. But what I'm going to do here is I'm going to bring in the gold pen. I'm just going to add a little bit of detail to some of these. And I notice I particularly want to bring in a line here to join those up. So just doing something as simple as that on those. I think that needs a bit more paint coming through. Yeah, that's better. Bring that through there. That's better. That one through there. Let it join in that middle bit there. And already, doesn't that look lovely. Just go over that bit and that bit and give that an outline there. Now, if I wanted, I could fill in that completely with gold or I can just leave it as it is. I'll just leave it as it is for the moment. I don't have to add gold pen to all of the things at all, but it might be nice to just add a little bit of something. Okay. As you know, always my thing is about pattern. So just adding a little something and I love the patterns that have been revealed just from that simple mark making with the paint that we did to start off with. Now, if I look at this one up here, that does need a little bit more work on it for me. So I'm going to take that gold pen and put it up to there. Excuse me. I just get rid of that hair. And I'm going to be a bit more obvious with this one. And partly that's because there's that big block of blue there. So by doing this, it makes it much more obvious to me that actually it's about the leaf rather than the color itself. It kind of joins it and brings it together more. And I think as well, I'm going to sort of just do a bit of an outline around there. And let that linework kind of bring it in to the leaf itself. So it brings the eye into what's happening with the leaf. Isn't this fun? There we go. And so there you've got some more really fun, very, very colorful, botanical shapes again, some leaves again. So I hope you have fun with this technique. Do experiment with it. And again, do take your time with it. You know, you can play around I can play around for days with this technique, you know, seeing what comes out with it. And you can use it, of course, not just with botanical shapes, but you can use it with all sorts of shapes, birds, whole compositions, you name it. It's a lot of fun. I couldn't help myself. I went in and added even more pattern because I was having such a lot of fun with it. Anyway, I'll see you in the next session where we look at how we're going to use the colors again and adding even more botanicals. I'll see you there. 17. Drawing Flowers And Seedheads: In these next lessons, we're going to look at how to create a different kind of grid, more of a patchwork effect with much softer colors using a combination of both seed heads and leaf shapes. But just before we get into that, I want to have a little play with you with how to create different flower shapes and create different angles with your flower shapes as well. Now, here, I've given you this as a PDF download, and this is what I've used here to create this by cutting out to create the composition, cutting out the shapes, and also tracing. So I don't want you to get too anxious about not feeling that you can't draw like this because all of this was done by tracing. Let's just concentrate on this for the moment, and then we'll come into this and I'll show you how to merge the colors together, how again we choose a color palette from your color discs and how we can create something, you know, really pretty and simplified like this. Let's just have a little play, first of all, with circles. Although you've got a PDF downloadable resource with some flower heads on it, I just want to show you how easy it is to create your own flower head. If you start off by drawing yourself some circles, let's just take this one here and think that we're looking at a flower head straight on. So if we draw a circle in the middle or roughly in the middle and then give ourselves across like this, and then sections in between those so that it looks a little bit like a pie. Then what we can do there is use those as a guideline. So we're using the edge of the circle as a guideline, and we're using those lines as well that we've just drawn. So we can go up like this down up again, down. And that's so easy to then give yourself that kind of flower shape. Now, we could make those petals a lot narrower look by doing them like that instead. Or we could make some shorter ones and wider. We could even then extend that like that around there. I hope that hasn't confused you that I've done all of those in that one circle. But that's an idea how to get a daisy kind of flower going. Now, let's have a look in this one here. If I use the circle again, but I just put the middle up here instead and make that a bit more of an elongated oval or an elongated circle. So it looks a bit like an oval. And we start to put some petals in this way, like this. Then means that we start looking at the flower from a different angle. Then the petals up here would be a bit shorter. We're looking at that from a different angle entirely there. If I show you on this one here, if we just turn that circle into a semicircle or a half circle, imagine that the stork is coming from there and we draw some petals like this following that shape around. Just like this. Then you can see there, if I rub out that guideline, let's just rub it out a little bit so you see that what we're doing there is we're looking at the flower kind of from almost underneath. That's a little bit like a crocus flower. We could keep it like that, which makes it look as if we're really looking at it up the way or we could add some more petals around there so and that kind of makes it look as if we're just about to go and look over the top of it. Now, with this one here, again, it's a circle that I just almost cut in half there. We can look at this flower or any other flower that has a let's go with a cornflower, for example, that has a larger kind of head on it like this. That bit of line out there so you can see. And then we bring those flower petals down this way, like this. Following those lines around as a guide. Rub that bit out and you see there there you've got a lovely cone shaped flower going on there, and you would have your stork coming down the way like that. We can also create movement in a stylized flower head. So if I think of a seed head, for example, let's just put that there like that and start off by putting in some curves like this. And then adding little seed heads on the top of those. Let's rub those lines out again so you really see the full effect here. Remember, this is your style, your imagination. It doesn't have to be exactly how you're going to see it in nature. But then again, look, we've got this lovely little seed head going on, and we can get a bit playful, make that cross over there, do another one that goes over there, look, bring another one into here. And that creates something really lovely that you could then add onto your grid that you're going to be doing now that you're going to be doing next. Another way of doing a simple seed head. There I've got the circle again. I'm going to bring that down as if that's the stork. And I'm just going to make some little stamens, I guess they would be. Rub those lines out again. And you could get really playful here, put some little dots on the end of them. You could even create some more in there, more dots. You get the idea. So starting off with a circle and then just seeing where that takes you and you can use the PDFs as a bit of a guide, but I would encourage you to have a little go yourself and see if you can create some of your own flowers as well as the ones that I've given you there. As you can see from, you know, from the couple of pages in my sketchbook here, you can see how creative and inventive I've been here. So I really encourage you to have a play, do a couple of pages in your sketchbook and see what you come up with. Mm. 18. Soft ‘Patchwork’ Botanical Composition Part 1: From two of the sheets that I've given you as PDF downloads, what I did was I cut out some of the shapes for them. This is how I've created this particular composition here. So you can see that that's the leaf. That one was that bit there. Here we've got this. This one. That's what goes on like that. That one in the puppy in the middle. And basically, that's how I started off by cutting these out and then laying them on my sheet of paper. Well, in my sketchbook here, obviously, now, I'd already put a border around it with, you know, tape, and I had measured it out at 14 centimeters across or 5.5 " and 20 centimeters down or 8 " down. So 14 by 20 or 5.5 by eight. Then basically, I wanted to just try and create decide once I positioned the different elements to it, I wanted to try and decide then how much space each one needed. So basically what I did was, I just drew around with a pencil this particular shape. And with that one there, I drew it a little bit narrower. Here, I've drawn that size and shape. Again, you can see, I've done the same with this bit here. Which left me sorry, get that out. Which left me that little gap, which was great because it meant that I could then fit that little shape in afterwards. I've done the same thing there. You know, looked at the size that that particular poppy head needed. Similar again with that, although I think I use that one next, which gave me a more accurate size. And then the one that was left, that one there, I could then kind of do partially, draw it as it tipped over into the other squares as well, which is what happened here with the maple leaf. So that's roughly how I got that particular configuration there in this little composition here. And what I did was that was obviously the front of the maple leaf. I drew around it in pencil. Positioned that on the top, and then went around the same shape in pencil again, and it left me the impression underneath of that maple leaf. Now, this one here, I actually did it slightly differently. I used the top bit. You can see here what I copied out. And I altered it slightly because I didn't want it quite so rigid looking. I wanted it a little bit more flowing. Same with this here. What I did here was, I actually turned that flower head at a slight angle, and rather than have the stork going, obviously, at a funny angle there, I then just added the stork in free hand. So again, it didn't look quite as rigid as that. So I've used these as my, you know, inspiration and guide. I mean, the poppy head. Is, as it was from the printout. So if you want to do something similar to this, then please do. That's again, why I've given you these resources so that you can have a good play with it, cut them out, create yourself a little composition, how you want it to look, and then trace the elements of it onto the actual grid work itself. So basically, you know, it ended up looking before I put the colors on, it ended up looking, you know, something like this with a bit of pencil line on it, not too heavy so that I couldn't rub it out afterwards. But, you know, something along these lines, basically. As you can see what I'm doing here. Yeah, something like that, it ended up looking like. They're in thereabouts with a bit of a So that was the grid work there that was created with just very faint pencil lines, and then I put the color over the top, let it dry completely, and then added the elements to it through the technique of tracing. Once the pencil lines were in and again, very faintly, then I went over it then with a very fine if that extra fine. This was the extra fine pen touch, which is an opaque, permanent marker. So you can see it goes on really, really well and stays on, which is great. And I also used the one Posca pen, the paint pen with the white acrylic paint in it to do the white elements. As you can see, I've then added other little bits and pieces on top of as well and combined those two together. Now, I also have a very thick Posca pen of five M, you don't have to be buying this. It's just I happen to have it, so I decided to add some bigger dots rather than these little tiny ones that I've got here onto these elements here. But that's entirely up to you how you decide you want to decorate. Anyway, I'm going to do a demonstration now of how we're going to get the colors and make it that lovely soft look, and show you how I've achieved that. So here I brought back my 15 by 15 centimeter square, and I've taped them off, giving myself two options there of what I want to do in each square. I'm going to use this one here for doing this particular demonstration. And that just fit nicely in there, and I could draw around it and then tape it off, same with that in there as well. And here now I come back to the five centimeter square that I cut out of the center of it. And I'm going to use this to create myself a new grid. Now, because I'm going to draw all this completely free hand and not do any tracing, I'm doing this in a slightly different way to the one that I've just shown you from, you know, using the cutouts from the PDFs. So I'm going to start off here. And this is, you know, just a very rough guide. It's not set in stone. I might decide that I want to do it slightly differently once I've seen it. But I'm using this particular little template here to kind of give me an idea as to what I might want to try gridwise and see if that works or not. So I'm trying it in different positions to see whether I like it or not. I think I'm going to follow that line up there. And maybe take that one up even higher. I'm sort of imagining that there's a line going across here. So I'm sort of doing it, you know, 1.5 times the size of the square. So it still works proportionally in this composition. If I brought a line down there, that would be roughly middle. So you can see how I'm creating this. Again, it's just about playing around with it a little bit. If you don't like it, then change it. It's all in pencil, so it doesn't really matter at this stage. Just have a play with it and see whether you like it or not. Whoops. So far so good. We'll bring that one down there. And maybe go over that with half, perhaps. Actually, no, I don't like those two looking like that. So let's take that one out and bring that one all the way across instead. That's better. But let's have two there. That looks okay, I think. And then maybe go halfway up there. Well, actually, let's do another corner one up there. Like that. And I think that looks okay. It might be that I end up doing that as well. In fact, yes, I think that's probably better. So I'm going to stick with that. So now it's about getting some color on. And unlike the way we did it when we were creating the color block grids, where we painted them all separately and stuck them on. I'm not going to get really super specific with the colors here. I don't need them all to be exactly as they are, you know, from the color recipe book. Basically, I'm going to go cadmium red with some of the white, and I think in this instance, I'm going to choose the pains gray. And basically what I'm going to do then is just do a mix of these colors. So not trying to get them to match the recipes exactly, but just seeing what comes up in the palette. So I'll get these on the palate and start mixing and we'll see where these colors take us. 19. Soft 'Patchwork' Botanical Composition Part 2: I've got my three colors here, cadmium red, white, and pains gray. And I'm just going to go straight in and do a mix with this cadmium red. Now, I want it all to be quite soft. I don't really want very, you know, bright bold colors in this. So I'm going to keep this fair fairly soft and pastely but obviously bringing a bit of contrast into it where I can, as well. Now, because I want the colors to kind of merge into each other a little bit, I'm making it a little bit more watery than I normally would. So let's just have a look here. I'm using a flat wide brush, as you can tell, because it's very easy then to get the paint actually onto the, you know, the rectangular shapes. And I don't want any hard edges, so I'm coming over into the other squares a little bit, as well. Now, let's just put a wee bit more red into that one, a little bit more red. Let's see what happens here. Now, where one color needs another, I'm going to take another brush with a little bit of water on it, quite a thick brush. I'm just going to pull that up a little bit so there's no kind of you know, obvious edge to it. We'll even get rid of a bit of that there and pull this down a little bit. There we go. So we're getting a bit of fading going on even, which is quite nice, actually. When I say fading, this kind of effect here, I mean. Now, I think that needs something darker there, doesn't it? So let's take a bit of that pains great into one of these reds and poll that down there. We know this color is going to work because it's all in relationship to each other again. So we know that this color palette is going to work. Now, I'm going to smooth that over a little bit there and then pull it back down there. So I'm kind of softening the edges a bit here, as you can see. I can always go over a color if I need to. But kind of what I'm doing is I'm brushing out any strong lines. I just want that to come a bit darker down at the bottom there. I'm even going to go into that one there a little bit, as well. So a bit like you would kind of allow watercolor to run into each other. That's sort of the Well, yeah, a little bit like that effect is what we're trying to achieve here. So again, just bring some water into it, soften it out. There we go. Now, what happens if I bring a bit of white into that one that I've just created? Let's see. That's rather nice. We need a bit more white, though. It's too similar to that tone there. So let's go in with a bit more white and a bit more water. I mean, although I want to get this fairly, overall, fairly pale. I don't want it to look too boring, so I do need some contrast in this. I do need to bring some darker shades into it. So I'm going to add a bit more pains gray to that one again. And just see what colors come out of here. And this is where, you know, well, a bit more black, I think, a bit more paints gray. This is where the color mixing is, yeah, very magical in the sense that you just keep playing until you get the color you want, really. It is like adding different ingredients to your favorite recipe and seeing what a difference it makes. Until you just get that shade that you're after. There we go. So without it being too strong, it's still a nice contrast to the other colors in there so far. And again, I want to kind of just soften that out a little bit, round those edges there. It's got a bit more water there on the edge of that brush. Actually, that's okay. That's quite soft. Pull up if you need to. Now, I think something like that would work well there as well. So I'm even going to add a tiny bit more pains greater that and make it even a fraction darker and come up the way here. So that's that one completed right now, and I'm letting that dry. Whilst I'm letting that dry, I'm just taking colors from that palette and just very quickly getting them onto this square here in a kind of cross hatch motion. So I'm literally just taking off what there is here and bringing them in might need a little bit of water on some of them and basically just using up the paint. I don't really want there to be any white or obvious white bits showing through. I'd like to get most of that covered if I can. It's starting to dry on the palette a bit now, and I don't want to go in and mix anymore, particularly. I just want to use what's already on here. Now, the trick here, of course, is to not mix it so much that it just sent up a one color. I will just put a bit more white onto my palette because I've completely run out of white. And what we're going to do here is the same technique that we used when we were creating the very colorful botanicals. So when we did that one, we had a very specific color scheme, and we did, you know, slightly more intentional marks, but this is the same principle where basically, we're just putting some background color onto the page here, onto the square. Make sure it goes right up to the edges. Keep mixing while you've got some paint on your palette. Just use it all up. Get right up to those edges so that you've got a nice sharp edge when it's finished. So you can see that I'm getting rid of all the white, but trying to make it, you know, so it's as I say, so it's not all looking like it's one color. I'm trying to add bits and pieces to it so that there's contrast going on in this. Getting all that filled in, like this. So you can see that it's the same color palette as that one there. Last bit to finish off up here. Don't bother, you know, wiping your brush in between. Just pick up a different color because that's nice. It creates yet another color as well without having to think about what color you're mixing. And even when you pick up a color and mix it with some paint that's already on the paper, it creates yet another color again. Got all sorts of depth of color going on here. It's lovely. There we go. That'll do. That'll do nicely. So I'm going to let both of those completely dry. Oh, I do need to go over that slightly, don't I? So now that I've mixed all my paints, that's going to be interesting to try and get a similar color there, but I'm sure I'll be able to do it. So I'll refill that one there, let them both dry, and then show you what happens next in this lovely alchemical process of color mixing and botanicals. 20. Masking Technique: Here are both squares nice and dry. I'm going to work on this one to start with. So what I've done here is I've cut out another 15 by 15 centimeter square, one that fits that square underneath it, and I've drawn a really, really simple composition. A vase and an horizon line. Now, I did the horizon line a bit lower to start with, and it was too far forward. So I've rubbed it out and I've put it there instead, and I like the position of that. So that's again, part of deciding on your composition, you know, what looks right and what doesn't look right and then changing it. So what I'm going to do here now is I'm going to cut out that vase with a craft knife. Move that to one aside a minute. And I'm going to cut it out very carefully because I want to use it as a mask. Turning that board around as I need to. Now. If you don't like using a craft knife and you'd rather use scissors, then the way to do it would have been to have folded it in half, cut a little snip and then gone in from the inside and cut it out. The only thing with that, though, is that you really want to try and keep this bit intact, and I'll show you why in a moment. And this is why it's good to just keep the vast shape, you know, pretty simple. So here, I've got the stencil, and here I've got a mask. And what I want to do is decide where on this piece here, I would like the vase to sit. Now, I'd already decided by doing it on a separate sheet of paper, that's the position I wanted it to be in. Now, if I take that put that back on there like that, now take that off. That shows me where, in fact, it's going to sit. Now, is that where I'm happy with it? Or do I want to move it a bit further over that way? I think, actually, I'd like to move it a bit further that way now that I see it. So just slightly off center. And because I'm going to draw some simple botanical leaves just coming out of here, I want to make sure that I'm leaving enough room at the top for something to come out. So basically, that is where that's going to sit now. There's the vase, and now I want the horizon line. So put that back over there now that I've decided exactly where the vase is going. And basically, it's here. That's where I want the horizon line to come, so I'm going to mark that on the tape. Carefully take that off leaving the vase in place, and I'm going to get a piece of rough paper, old paper. And I'm going to lay that across that line there so that it matches that mark there and matches that mark there. Now, when we did the botanical leaves, basically what we did was we used paint to paint out the background. Well we're going to do exactly the same this time, only we're going to use a sponge instead. Now, I'm going to use this little sponge here. I think I actually bought it as an art sponge, but I think you can get makeup sponges, which are probably a lot cheaper and just the same. Or you can use an old kitchen sponge. It doesn't matter. You know, kitchen sponge will do the job just as well, or you can use a roller and roller eon. But just in this moment, I am going to dip this into a little bit of water and then dip it into the white paint that I've got here on my palette. And basically, I'm going to dab all around this mask so that I end up with a really nice sharp line that will then show me where the vase is. Now, the difference between using a paint brush and using a sponge is that you can really blend this together. Can really blend those marks in blend that painting in a way that it's a lot easier to do than when you're painting. So I actually really like this technique. But obviously, if you've got multiple forms or multiple masks, then you've got to be able to hang onto them all, obviously, while you're doing this. So for this particular technique that I'm showing you here, I wanted to keep it really simple. But you can see here now how, you know, some of that is shining still showing through, which is what I want to tapen with the leaves. But as I say, it's a lot, lot easier doing it with a little sponge to get this really nice, kind of muted background. And if you sort of twist your sponge a little bit, it sort of puts the paint on, but then takes it back off again a bit. So you're making the background disappear, but yet still allowing a little bit of it to show through. Now, what I don't want is I don't want these circles. So that's when you just sort of just daub, daub. What a great expression. You know, dab the sponge on and get them to merge a little bit. Get them to blend more. Now, of course, not only have we, you know, created a vase shape here, but we've also underneath, created the horizon line or in this case, like, let's call it a table that the vases sat on so let's have a look at that. So I'm careful going to take off this paper. Yeah, that's worked. And I'm going to leave the vase in place. Well, actually, let's just have a little peep. Oh, look at that. Isn't that good? That's so exciting. And then I'm going to turn this around, and I'm going to put it on top of that now so that it covers up the white that we've just done, but it meets again, it meets the horizon line. So it meets the edge of the table or the surface. And obviously, I'm using the same color palette. I'm just going to mix. I want a dark, I want it to be quite dark as it sits on it as it sits on the surface. But let's put a little bit of white into that because I don't want it that dark. There we go. And we're using the same sponge again. Actually, I'll get a clean. No, we'll use the same sponge again. That'll be fine. This time, we're taking out the bottom bit. Now that's not dark enough. I can see that already. So let's add more to that mix there. I really want it to be different to the vase, so it does need to be considerably darker. So a bit more pains gray. Mix that in with it. Let's see what that looks like. Better. I'll take some of that black and just put some more of that black in around the area there to maybe suggest a bit of shadow, perhaps. Back to that red. Let's see what that's looking like. Wow. Isn't that just gorgeous? So I'm going to take my brush and just clean up that edge there. In fact, I'll take a slightly thinner brush, I think. Rather than a flat one, I'm going to take one with more of a pointy edge. And just clean up that line. Before I add that leaf and stem to it, I'm just going to give this a little bit of shadow down this side here because it's looking a little bit sort of too deep and flat. And obviously, it's a rounded vase. So the way I'm going to do that is to just get a little bit of this red, a bit of the black that's almost dried. Even a little bit of that white that's yet, also almost dried. And I'm gonna make it really, really watery. I'm just going to bring a line down here and around that corner to just slightly darken it ever so slightly and bring it around the edge there. You can see straight away that that makes a difference to it. It just helps it to look a bit more three d instead of two D. Don't want much. We want to give the impression that the light is coming from this side here. That's fine. We'll leave that at that. I always say that, and then I go in and add a bit more, don't I? Let's just I don't want to overdo this, but let's just, add a little bit more around this corner. That's better. There we go. Corner. How can you have a corner around vase? You know what I mean? This curve, I should have said, around this curve and bring it around there. And that helps it to look a little bit more three D like. Okay, great. Now, what I could also do is exactly the same with the white. Again, making it really watery. I'm gonna have to turn my pad around to be able to do this I won't be able to do it from that angle. You're gonna see me doing this upside down a moment and just making sure that's watery enough. Just suggest that there's more light down this side. Now, that's a little bit obvious. So what I can do with that is just take a piece of kitchen towel and just absorb some of that and go back in with water and no paint and just soften all that again. Okay. So now I have to decide what kind of leaf and stem I'm going to do. Before I do that, I just want to share with you some compositions that I did quite a long time ago, actually, that helps you to decide on, you know, perspective of things and where you might want your horizon lines to be. So this is a really useful little exercise to do, actually, before you even start your composition, and, you know, look at where you might want to add little botanical shapes. Do you want lovely little sort of feathery seedling type things? Do you want bolder type of leaves, depending on the shape of the vase. Do you want something a bit more delicate? I think that's what I'm going to go with today. So doing this is really quite useful. And also, you know, without actually adding color to it as such, by adding a little bit of pattern, again, it gives you a kind of flavor of which composition you think you like. That one there is, you know, the horizon line is in the middle there, and I don't think that that works quite so well on that. Although the horizon line is here, it sort of works better on that one. So this is just a nice way to be able to play around with things like that. And obviously, if you wanted to add a bit of color as well to just help you decide what kind of color palettes you wanted to use, then that's also quite a useful little exercise. But I'm going to go with something like this. Again, keeping it really nice and simple. So I'm going to do it with my pencil. I'm going to do it really softly because then what I'll do is I'll go over it either with paint, probably with paint, in this case. So join me in the next session where I begin. A 21. Adding The Stems: In this case, I want the leaves to come off little each little stem rather than the leaves be attached to the main stem. See how effective this is. I have to make it too symmetrical. I could even do another one here just to balance that up. I got one going behind the other there. And let's have one coming down here. It goes behind that one as well. And I'm going to leave that at that. That's all I need to do with that. Now, if I'm going to do it with paint rather than a pen, I'm going to use a really, really thin brush. So I'm going to use, again, the same palette. Let's see if I've got any, um I knew that paints gray left just got enough left there. A little bit of white because I don't want it completely. Looking as if it's black, even though it's pains gray. That's quite a nice color. Make sure I've got enough water. And again, I'm going to sort of turn this around a bit as I go. Let's start off first of all. What I want to do here is just give a little line around there as well to suggest that it has got a top to it. There we go. That's better. Now, you need a bit of a steady hand for this. And you don't want your brush to be dragging, so do make sure that it's got enough water on it. I'm not sure at this stage whether I'm going to color these leaves in or just leave them as silhouette. I'll decide when I've done there. So as I was drawing that out, I managed to create quite a thick line on that one there. So that's determined really that I will, in fact, color all the leaves in. So I'll just do that for now. And then you can see what that looks like when it's complete. And what I'll do is I'll just use slightly different shading on the leaves. So, you know, I've got this dark gray here and I might add a little bit of white to some of them just to give it a little bit of contrast. I hope you'll join me in the next session where I add the flowers, leaves, and seed heads to the final composition. I'll see you then. 22. Adding The Final Touches: It's taken me a while to get this composition right. I've done a bit of rubbing out. I've changed a couple of things. So I've put it in in pencil already. Otherwise, you would have been sat here watching me for quite some time to get this right. So, you know, with that in mind, I really encourage you to just take your own time, you know, give it some thought, swap things around a little bit until you know that you've got it, how you want it to be. So I'm going to go straight in here now and begin to go over these pencil lines with the white marker. I'm not going to talk much in it. Now, I'm going to let all of those dry, and then I'm going to go into that middle section there with the gold pen and add a little bit of gold pen to some of these around as well. So I'll bring you back in when I've done that finally. And here is the finished result. I've added gold pen into it. So every section's got some gold and it's got some white. So the question is now, what does it look like without the tape around the edge of it? Let's give it a go and see. I do struggle with trying to find tape that doesn't pull paper off. I've gone from low tech masking tape to regular masking tape, washy tape, and this is decorators tape, known as frog tape. And it's probably the best so far, but it still does pull a little bit of paper off every now and again, which is why I'm taking this very, very gently. It does look good when you've got a really sharp line. I can see there it's beginning to pull the paper off, so I'll try it from the other end. See if I can minimize that. Now, I must say, these colors here are not colors again that I find myself normally working with. So it's been a bit of kind of coming out of my own comfort zone here. I do like them. I think they're rather lovely. I particularly like this. I like the contrast of the different elements in that. That one I wanted to keep soft, which I've done, and I have got a bit of contrast in it. Excuse me, but it's not quite as contrasting as this. And I think looking at it, I actually prefer the balance of colors that's going on in that composition there. But I do like this, and it's been really lovely to do. So I really, really hope that you have a lot of enjoyment playing with these and creating as many as you feel inclined to create. I see you in the very last session where we do a quick recap of everything that we've covered over these few hours. I realized that I hadn't added the little stitch marks around each section, and I do think that makes a difference. In fact, when you see it up close, it actually looks like a piece of Indian embroidery, which is rather sweet. 23. Well Done: That was a big class, and I hope that you will have found it very interesting. You know, the techniques that you've learned there, you can use and all sorts of other different projects as well. So I really hope that you found something that's made you want to explore a little bit further, be a little bit curious as to where you can take those techniques, see in what other projects that you could use them. I'd love to see what you managed to create. I don't know how long it's going to take you to do the class. So even if you, you know, uploaded some of your projects, just as you're going along, that would be absolutely great if you wanted to share, you know, some of your doodles around your creating your botanical shapes or your squares or your little composition or even your color chips, that would be so nice for me to be able to just see how you're getting on with it. It would be great also if you wouldn't mind leaving a review because that helps other people then also to decide whether or not they want to take the class. So as always, dear ones, I wish you all the best. And just please take care of yourself.