Vintage Botanical-Inspired Floral

1. Vintage Botanical Intro : Do you ever struggle with needing just a fresh source of inspiration for florals. We love painting florals, and flowers themselves are great inspiration, but sometimes it's just fun to find something a little different. And if you've never discovered vintage botanical illustration or really used it as an inspiration source, it's wonderful. These are images that were painted 100 or more years ago. And we've got this source book to use that I'm going to pull an image from. But you can find these images online on Pinterest and other places. And what's great is they're copyright free. So we have freedom in choosing elements and growing heavily upon them for inspiration since they're copyright free. And this is an example of one that I did based on a vintage botanical, and then we'll do another one in the class, which is this one. And what's fun is they you know, I just used the vintage drawing as a jump off point because, you know, they can be a little dark or they're just not, you know, they're not my style, you know, but there are elements I really love about some of them. And so what I'll do is pull that element or that texture or that pattern and then just take that artistic license. So I'll show you how to do that, how to make those decisions. You also have to simplify these quite a bit because we're not trying to create a botanical illustration. So I don't need this level of detail. And fine detail and meticulousness in this type of work. I just want it as a source of inspiration. I'm going to show you how to do that. This painting can be done in any paint you want as long as it's a good quality paint, I'm going to use acrylic for it, and we're going to have fun creating this basically I can end up being a print that you hang up in your home, practice it in the sketchbook or you can paint it on paper in the class, either way is fine. But you're going to learn how to take these images and just pull out what you want, simplify, and create something beautiful. Hi. I'm Suzanne Allard, and if you haven't taken my online classes before, welcome, and if you have welcome back. I didn't start painting till I was about 52 years old. I'd always done creative things, but I was just too scared of painting. I thought, you know, that's for real artists. I hadn't gone to art school, and I just got tired of feeling that sense of regret. And I got tired of making excuses. So here I am and now I have an art business and I'm well acquainted with dealing with the fears and the doubts and the impostor syndrome and all those things that we artists learn to have a relationship with. And so now I sell prints and originals on my website. I sell products, I license my work on various products around the world, and I teach classes. I love teaching as much as I love painting. I think it's because I want I want everyone to realize that they have this creative source inside them, and to not let the fear win, basically, like I did for so many years. I think of myself as an encourager, My style is I hope very much what I needed at the time, which is a very encouraging gentle style of teaching. We learn a lot, we have fun, and most importantly, I want to keep you going because if you keep going, you will get better if too many people are shut down too early in the process or shut themselves down, that being said, welcome to the class and let's get started. 2. Vintage Project and Supply: For this vintage botanical illustration project, we are going to pull inspiration from let's see, this image. I flip through here with you and choose it while in the class, but I end up choosing this one, and it is need the glasses. Something funny happens in the class where I think I'm choosing one and I'm actually choosing another, but this is the Pride of India Queen flower, it's beautiful. Then in the class, I end up saying, well, why Look at that. That fake plant is gorgeous. Maybe that's another caning. Anyway, we'll take that painting and any paint that you have that's good quality, and we'll use a sketchbook or a piece of paper, whatever you like to create our own take on that vintage illustration. We're just going to pull a few things, leave some things behind and make something that speaks to you. Let's look at the supplies that we're going to use in this class. We're going to start with a cup of coffee. Let's see here. Let me talk about this book. Again, you can get this book, or you can get these images by searching Pinterest or Google, put in copyright free vintage botanical illustration. There are websites too that are dedicated to it. And in fact, I'll put one of those in the supply list. But they're just endless. The reason I went ahead and purchased this book is because it wasn't that expensive. It comes with a digital download, although I don't think I've done that yet, but that's nice if you want to modify it. And I just like it as a starting point. I just pick an image or two or three that are just call out to me, or even when I'm doing larger pieces that have more elements, just to get a reminder of a texture of a leaf because these artists did such detailed work. And what I like about the book is a lot of times you can't When you get these images online. You can't read this script down here that says what it is. But this one tells you what it says, topical orchid. Anyway, I think I'm going to have to do a class on just all the things you can do with these images because the possibilities are endless, patterns, prints. Anyway, we won't get too carried away. We're going to have fun using it as inspiration. You don't need this book. I'm going to provide you the image that we're using. Or you could find your own image online, but I just want to show it to you. Then I like to use palette paper. That's my go to. There's all kinds of things you can use for a palette. Anything that's nonporous will do and that you don't mind getting paint on, so you can use a ceramic plate. I just like the palette paper because you use it like this and then once I'll probably use this again for another project and it dry then you just take the page and throw it away. There's all different kinds of brands. I think I gave you a brand on the supply sheet that I like. But this one is also good. This is an inexpensive brand from Michael's here in the United States. And then for the let's see here. Sketchbook for the vintage. I'm using this Stillman and burn Zeta series, and you can use any sketchbook you want. I'm not saying you have to use this one. I just wanted to show it to you. It's mixed media paper. So it's smooth, it's not watercolor paper. Watercolor paper has that texture what's called tooth if you can see that, but this is watercolor paper and has a bit of texture and I love that. But sometimes it's really fun to just work on smooth paper. It's really thick. I like it because it lays flat and I like the size of it. We're going to use this sketchbook for the vintage botanical. Then for the paint on this one, where you can use acrylic. Now, I'm using Nova color acrylics for this. Just because I worked with Nova color to develop my own bundle. I mean, not my own colors. They're not custom color, they're just collected in a bundle that is called the Suzanne Alar design bundle, but you do not need to get these paints. I would say though just make sure you have at least a student grade quality acrylic paint, or you could use for this project. You could absolutely use acyl gash you could use guash. You could do it in watercolor. You can do it in any paint you want, actually, but just make sure please that it's at least a good student grade. It doesn't have to be all the way up into the artist grade, but you will just not you know, when people buy the cheapest paints and then they try to paint it, it's just so disappointing because the pigment load and cheap paints is just not going to get you there. So In terms of colors, that'll depend on what colors you choose for the piece, but I'll show you what I use. When I sketch this design, a lot of times I'll use either a water soluble pencil or also called a watercolor pencil sometimes. This is a brand by super Color by Cara. It's a Swiss brand. These are called super coolor twos. But I also just will use sometimes a plain prismacolor color pencil. You can also use to use a regular old pencil pencil. Just consider for your sketch what paint you're going to use because if you're going to use high coverage paint, high opacity paint like uh or acrylic, then you don't have to worry about your pencil marks as much. If you're going with water color, then you either want to go very lightly with a regular pencil or go ahead and get one of these water soluble pencil so that it disappears. Then in terms of color, I just choose a color that's going to be the color of most of my painting. I don't mind though if let's say I've used a pink pencil and I'm going to paint green over that if it's water soluble, I'll just around the edges, pick up a little bit of that pink maybe and it has a nice it's a fun thing to play with. I've also done this where I just took a bright colored pencil and I wanted some of it to show through or peek out into the edges. These are all ways you can experiment It really is about you deciding what you enjoy. Do you enjoy a little bit of color like that, is that something that you like, or would you rather have just a really clean flat coverage and no edges. These are all things that we discover about ourselves as we're painting, and that's really how you end up creating your voice. Your artistic voice and style is honing in on, I like that. No I don't like that, like this. I don't like this and it's just a process. That's why we always say the more you paint, the better you get the closer you get to what you like to do in your style? So that's for sketching. Brush wise on this project, I used. Where did you go? I had you out here. I have a round. Oh, here it is. Around, Okay. Well, two brushes I used on this project. So this is a brush from the set of Suzanne Allard design brushes. I'll just show you a few of them. What I did is I put together ten brushes, different sizes, different shapes, the ones I use the most and, you know, put branded them and had them made. And we sell them about twice a year. There's a waiting list on my website where you can sign up for the next release, but you do not need these brushes. Basically, I just look for a good quality synthetic brush. Synthetic is softer and we'll just give you more give than, some of the stiffer brushes or you don't need a natural fiber brush. I used to filbert. I like this Filbert. This is a number four Filbert for this kind of work because If I'm doing leaves and flowers, it gives me that rounded edge, you know, to be able to like this is the sample painting kind of that I've done based on another vintage botanical, but it'll allow me to get those nice petals because it's rounded at the end. Not to say you have to have this, not to say you can't use a flat regular flat brush like this. No, that's a round brush. Let me show. These are my three go to probably this is what's called a flat. So I'll just flat across the top. Let me get closer. Okay. So you've got flat and then this is a filbert. Probably might be hard to tell, but this is rounded at the end. Anyway, That really helps with that kind of thing gives a nice softness. But I've seen people that becomes part of their style. They like the edgier way that the flat works. Play with it off. Then I use a smaller brush. This is a number four Blick golden Taclon brush, and I like these little brushes. In fact, I've got a art supply page where you put the link in the supplies and you can get these or how they're really inexpensive, but I like these for smaller details, I even have. I have some really bitty ones. This is a two. So those help with the smaller details. But really, I only used two brushes for this for the painting that we end up doing. And let's see. I wanted to I talked about brushes, I talked about sketch pencils and palette and inspiration, and that's going to cover it for the vintage botanical painting. It's so much fun. 3. Gathering Inspiration & Sketching: All right. Let's do a updated vintage botanical or our own interpretation of one. So one of my favorite resources and sources of inspiration is vintage botanical illustrations, and they they have always I just thought they were always so beautiful and detailed but not the kind of painting that I wanted to do. I know I love it, but it's just not my thing. I don't have the patience and other people do it really, really well and love it. So I love getting inspired by these, and the thing is that I don't know if you know this, but these vintage ones that are old like this, there's no copyright on them, so you can use them anyway you want. They're copyright free because they're so old. So you can actually I don't recommend this because it's not it is creative, but you could literally copy one of these exactly and sell it. I like to use it as a jumping off point for creating forgetting ideas, for textures, shapes, all kind of things. I'll put this book. There are lots of them out there, references like this, but I really like this one. I've referred to at the most and I've returned some of the others. Just the image quality wasn't great. Then it says here, that there's a download page for these images as well. So I just like using the book. This is one that I created that was inspired by this. And since I love really curvy stems, I went further with that and, you know, did my own color scheme and my own interpretation of it. So I thought we would do that. And when I was looking through P went out for us to do today, I like this fig. The other thing I like about this book is if you see these images online, you really can't read. Sometimes it's in another language, what it is. You can see, it says the breadfruit tree, but you can't really see what it is, and they tell you below. This is a fig plant. You can see the little figs. But I like it because I like these shapes, and then the stems are curvy. I think the leaves are beautiful. So I'm going to use that as an inspiration and I will put it both a link to the book if you'd like to get it, and then I will also put a picture of this image in class resources. So for now, I'm going to put that over here. You can print it out and have it to refer to. And then This sketchbook is not watercolor paper. It's mixed media. It's Stillman and burn is the brand right here, and I'll put that in the class applies list. Is smooth paper. It's just something different. It's not necessarily actually this is from my last class, my one brush three colors class. It's not better or worse, it's just different and I thought we would use this one. Let's go to a new page and at there. My upside down paintings and start with a brand new clean page. Get this little reference in my mind and start sketching something. I think I'll use that light pencil again. I could use a light pink as well. Maybe I will since I probably will end up using pink here. I want to make sure you can see it though. Let's see. I will include my sketch. We'll take a picture of it. Yeah. I'll just draw hard so that you can see that. And the picture goes kind of to, you know, this way. I might curl it even more. This one curls up. I just like they never like to start these in the middle. So let's see. Let's just take kind of a line up like this. This just gives me kind of a place to start. This is going to be thicker now. Okay. You don't have to sketch it. You could just paint it in or pain or sketch a paintbrush, too. But I'm going to try to do this one without too much fussing. A big leaf. Okay. Another big leaf over here. You'll notice a lot of these botanical illustrations they'll end at the end of the paper. So I just change it. Oh, look at that. That is so fun. It just caught my eye. That is figure eight. That's the fig plant. I was going to say this didn't seem big enough to be the figs. That's the fig plant. I was reading it wrong. This is Croton Pride of India, Queen flower, Queen flower, Pride of India. Okay. That's what we're painting. But now, I'm going to have to paint those figs another time because those are beautiful. Maybe it gives me an idea. Maybe we'll do this striped thing on these because I was going to make these bigger anyway because I thought they were figs. Let's go back to the leaves. This one cuts off in the illustration, but I'm going to put the whole leaf there. Then I want a third leaf, which I'm going to put somewhere else because there's no room down here for one, but I'm going to wait to add it until I get some of these buds and flowers in here. So You have a lot of these bud shapes just coming off randomly in multiple directions. And then these flowers, which have very pronounced petals with the space in between them. So if I imagine, say, the center of one here, and I would do something like this. I'm trying not to make it too uniform. That came out pretty uniform. So the next ones I will make a little bit less. And let's put one here and make the center going this way, which will force me to think of it differently. Okay. And going to make this branch a little thicker, which I can do with paint. But just to remind me I do it with the pencil too. Let's see. I'm thinking about where things might run into each other. This do some things here because this has the buds. I put a flower here that's going sideways. Maybe it looks like that. We'll see how it comes out with the paint. So see tighter your sketches, the tighter you're painting. That's what I'm thinking about as I'll put this one flower up here. Sing don't get with this drawing. Okay. And I'm varying shorter petals on one side, create the illusion that it's facing in a different direction. So I'm just creating some variety with that. Okay. I want to make sure I have room for that third big leaf. So I think I'm going to bring it up here behind here. Something like that, maybe more like that. Okay. And do some buds down here. And a flower looking this way. It's probably enough. You know, something maybe some bods here. All right. Let's get the paint and see if you want to make any changes. Actually, I'm going to pause here and take a picture of this so that you have it. Then we'll start painting. 4. Beginning First Layer: All right. I've got some paints out. I'm sorry, that's my chair rolling on the floor. But I got them out. I'm going to use acrylic. Let's use the va color. I've got the cadmium yellow, cadmium red light, alt Marine blue, and my coveted fluorescent magenta. I didn't get the blue green out. Let's see that's the other color I use a lot. Let's just see what happens. You can make an amazing amount of colors with these four, even just three of them. That's the other way that I make these my own and the course personal preference Use any colors you want to do any part of it you want. I'm not going to make it crazy bright, but I am going to make it more interesting to me than that one. For brushes, I have the number four round and then a smaller number four rounds funny, even though it's a four, it's tiny, a three, and then this filbert can be really handy for things like this. You can use round or if you've got, let's see, yeah filbert that comes in my set is actually the perfect probably better, a little bit larger. Color wise. Let's think what we want to do. Color inspiration can come from so many places. I generally start by either find a picture that I like or literally just start making one color and go from there. Let's do it that way. I've been loving lately a periwinkle blue. Which this ultramarine blue and white make really easily. And what might be fun is to do something different than we normally do and do the leaves in a blue or maybe had a touch of who that's pretty. I like that. Let's see. That's a really soft blue green I'm not going to fuss because I like that you can see the brush strokes. Yeah. This number four Filbert is perfect for these. It's my favorite brush. I like the flat too, but it's so versatile. I can go this way or I can go on the edge to make a line. But you can make this a very water colory type painting just playing with texture. But I'm going for those thick brush strokes. Just because I'm in that mood. Sometimes I want it flat and water colory and sometimes I don't make a little more. I don't mind that next batch I make might be a little different. I'm not worried about matching colors and something like this. In fact, I'd rather be just a little bit different. I will say this smooth paper because it doesn't have texture. Paint goes on really easily. Let me do that last one. Take it back in the blue direction. Okay. Really pretty. Now I'm debating if I want to paint the stem. Next, I think I do because then I can put the flowers on top and push out any of the stem that I get that passes over. So I'm going to do I was going to say a darker green, but I like that right there. A little more limey green because that will make the eye follow along on this stem. For the stem, though, I am going to go with a smaller brush. Except the main stem here, I can do that with this one. I just go on on its side. Long as I don't have too much pain on there and it'll make it too fat. Nice. Okay, now I'm gonna switch. Okay. I am trying to stay in the lines that I made. But again, if I go over anywhere, I can go over it with whatever we put on the flowers. And I'm trying to do just one stroke. See how I've got my right pinky, like a kick stand on the paper that helps me stay and then just don't drink coffee before you paint like this. It makes my hand shake. Maybe it doesn't do yours. A, don't worry about trying to be perfect either because your style part of your style is your brush stroke. It's like your handwriting. It's your signature. So if it goes a certain way, if you look at artists There's a definite distinction in their brush strokes, and that becomes part of your style. Okay. I like that. I also like that the pink pencil is showing through the line. Now, I'm going to make the flowers one color and the buds variation of another color. I think a soft pink would be pretty. Let's see if we can make one that I like the magenta with white is beautiful, but it's a little too cool for what I want here. I'm going to add a little bit of yellow. And what I'll do sometimes is not mix the colors all the way so that there's a little variation. I want some variation. So I'll put some little patches around that are a combination of these. That way I've got some different colors. I add some water, so I have plenty of paint on my brush. Okay. Watch that drop of water. That has gotten me more times. When you rinse your brush, you'll think you've got the water out of the bristles and you will, but they'll be a drop of water on the handle that'll drop down. So I've learned, you know, go like that, dry the handle. So I'm just moving around so that I get a slightly different color. Try not to overwork either because I like how the brush strokes can look like part of the veins. If you paint each petal going out in the direction that it would naturally go, then you'll get some nice brush stroke texture. And color variation. You can either go inward or outward, but definitely paint in the direction of the petal. I should say definitely. When it comes to art, there's no definitely. If you want it to look like veins, I would say. I want a little bit brighter one here. I'm really putting the paint on thick. Because that's the look I'm going for here. Okay. Now, maybe one that's really pale and a little more red. We can put the back petals of these light and something on the forward petals. Okay. 5. Completing First Layer: Back to that idea of your brush stroke is like your signature. Let's say that you do shake. Maybe you even have a condition that makes your hand shake. Well, that broken line in your stroke or that movement, that mark that you make is part of your signature then. There are artists who do that on purpose. These are really. I'm going to just add a touch of yellow and really warm up one of these. You know, we're not doing a precision botanical illustration. So we don't need precision and we don't actually want that because it'll kind of take the character out of it. This would be pretty on top here. Maybe a little darker. Just keep playing with the paint consistency till you get enough viscosity that you can get the coverage you want but also control it to some extent. One of the things we love about pain is how does in some ways does what it wants. The buds. What do we want to do with the buds? We could either go yellowy. I don't know. But while I'm thinking about that, and this color is still wet. These leaves keep telling me, put some marks on me with that color. So I'm going to do that. Okay. With veins, all you really do start at the beginning. I like them to move around, I like them to not be in the center of the leaf. And then you can take it as far as you want with, you know, lines going off of that. You can do them on one side, both sides. If you look at nature, it's the possibilities are endless. Can you even make them lighter on one side. Maybe that side of the leaf is in the light. Okay. Let's see. I'm going to make a really pale yellow and see what I think about that for the bud. Kind of leaves me flat. Well, we can try one. We can paint over it. It's not doing anything for me. Let's play with a type of green. Maybe a dark color for some contrast. Let's see what that looks like a little tester card out. That's okay. But I'm not excited about it. What if we do, like, a real dog see if I can get This is the t Marin blue with a little red and yellow. I like that. I think we found it. I'm going to let that yellow one dry. I do love indigo. It's pretty dark though compared to the rest of it. But I won't put that much white in. I've done that to Indigo so many times. Too much white. We'll start over. So what this indigo will be nice for is some details on the center of the flowers and maybe elsewhere. I can more yellow in that. Just a bit. I'm picky about my indigo. All right. Now, let's try just a bit of white. It's still changed it a lot. I think what I'd rather do is just water it down. Let's try the water down indigo. Yeah, that's pretty. It'll be some variation. That's a bit of a warmer indigo and a cooler one. So we can mix it up. This is how I use my sketchbook just experimenting. I don't plan it all out beforehand because that's what my sketchbook is for this creating and trying different things. I've never painted this painting before. I've never used this exact color palette before. Okay. Then you'll have all these paintings to refer to when you want to make a larger painting or try combining two or three of the things in different paintings in the sketchbook. I'm just going back and forth between the warmer and the cooler indigo for some variety. Okay. This is going to be funny because yeah, it's not dry yet. It's going to have that yellow underneath it. We'll have to do two coats on it. That is just going to end up looking like a little bit of texture and might discover something and say, Oh, that looks really cool. I want to do that on the future painting. I guess I don't need to hold onto that anymore. I'll show you something else you may know about this, but if you wanted to play with texture, you take a clean paper towel and blot and we'll leave those two like that just so we have an example of them. I can give you I'm going to put a couple somewhere else because that's. See that. I like that. I have to work in three. Okay. I smeared it. That's okay. Sketchbook. And if I did decide that I wanted to scan this in and make prints of it or something, I could just clean that up and photoshop. I can also just make it a bigger one right here. What? Okay. Now, the center of those flowers. In the reference photo, they're yellow, but that doesn't mean we have to do that. I do think an orange would be pretty. Let's see if we can make an orange that I like a yellowy orange. Yellows got mucked up in the green. Let's try that. No, like that. 6. Finishing and Adding Details: I'm looking for something else. I think what I want to do is take the end to go and do some little lines on the flowers. So just grabbing my scrap to make sure I'm getting the right size line. Making sure the flowers. There is a piece of fuzz there I guess it's a stray hair. That's okay. You just do a little test on your paper to make sure you're getting you don't have too much water or you have enough the kind of the look that you want. Still see some water on there that wants to drop off the handle. It there was Okay. I just really lightly barely touching the paper. I know that's the outside of that, but it doesn't matter. It adds a nice bit of contrast. I. I also think I need I want some variation in the stem. I'm going to grab a little bit of the indigo, really water my brush down and just add a bit of it on one side of the stem, just to give a little dimension. It's a little flat. I'm almost giving it a glaze. Okay. I'm wondering what some of the indigo would look like on a leave on this part. I'm going to try it. I like that. It just shows up better. But it's drying because I watered it down so much. So it's drying not showing someone to hit it again, and then I can always do a colored pencil when it dries. I I rut more definition. Just dropping the color in All right. The only other thing I'm thinking about is some smaller leaves up here. But we could even do those with an outline way like this, just kind of create some leaves like this with a really watered down indigo. It might be. Let's try it. It's a sketchbook. I'm thinking coming here like this. It's whatever your imagination wants to do. I'm just looking, do I want another one somewhere, stepping back. I do like what that did. Maybe one up here. Okay. But of course, I work in odd numbers, so I put a fourth in that means I want to find a fifth. I like how they move the eye around. I'm thinking about one down here. There we go. Take whatever color we want and sign it. And looking at over one last time. Now that the yellow centers of dried, I'm going to put in just a bit brighter orange on top. We yellowy. Yes. That was fun. So you might look at this reference photo and says there's no similarity, but it was enough that it gave me a place to jump off from. And I want to show you something cool that acrylic does when you do da over. So if you look at the stem and you may or may not like this, but See how when they took that watery indigo and dabbed it in, I made these cool bits with almost like a little outlined shapes that you would see in a branch. That's pretty fun. So just something you learn every time you play in your sketchbook. Every time. It's amazing. 7. Wrap up and Resources: Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I hope it gave you some ideas on using fresh inspiration sources and how if we just view an image or something we photograph or something that's a completely different genre like rugs or fabric or the texture on the wall. Really if we start to think like artists and really see like artists, everything becomes an inspiration source. It can be a little overwhelming. Just ask my family because anywhere I go, I'm taking pictures of just about everything, but I love having that sort of filter and looking at the world, and it didn't just happen. It developed over time, and it takes practice. So I hope this gave you some ideas on how to do that and how to think about everything you look at as potential inspiration. Remember that I have a Facebook student only group and you can either sign up through that through the e mail you got when you register for this course or if you're a skill share student, then you just use your e mail that you just say that you're a skill share student when you try to get into the group. And I have lots of resources on my website, San com. I have a blog where I really speak to a lot of the fear and just how to how to continue creating and deal with the different obstacles that come up emotionally. I also have an e mail newsletter, we're pretty much right to the same thing, and I have a YouTube channel trying to make sure, of course, my Instagram and Facebook. I do a lot of time lapses and just things to continue to hopefully inspire and give you ideas and encourage you. Thanks again for joining and I'll see you in the next class, keep creating. It's good for you. It's good for your soul and that means it's good for the world.