Vintage Wildflowers in Watercolor: 14 Days of Painting Prompts

1. Welcome to Vintage Wildflowers in Watercolor Challenge: Are you ready to challenge yourself? This class will take you through 14 prompts for painting vintage wild flowers from loosening up and letting your brush go wild, to creating beautifully curated color palettes that celebrate an antique aesthetic, also to experimenting with composition and structure. Now I'm going to jump in and prompt the question, why a challenge? There are three major benefits that you will experience when you participate in these exercises. You will be able to create without the pressure of coming up with ideas, and also without the annoying voice in your head telling you that anything needs to be perfect. Secondly, as you create each prompt, you will be exploring many different styles. That means you might open a new door for yourself to explore that you might not have otherwise considered, and then thirdly, you will be holding yourself accountable to create every day which just might kickstart more regularity in your creative practice. That is my hope for you to release that pressure to experiment with style and to develop a creative practice. I'm Peggy Dean, I am an artist, author, and educator. It is my biggest fashion to share not only skills and techniques that I've learned over the years, but also to inspire and motivate you to allow yourself to turn in and let your inner creative shine. Because there's nothing quite like that special moment where it's just you and your works in progress. Are you ready to paint some Windsor cool vintage wildflower? Let's jump in. 2. Materials Needed: [MUSIC] Welcome to your 14-day challenge. This is going to be a very fun adventure and painting vintage wildflowers with watercolor. Let's go over what you need. The first is paintbrushes, and this can be round rushes, it can be filbert, wash, any other style that you have. I will be using primarily different sizes of round brushes and also a filbert brush. Now, I'm not going to necessarily call out sizes. The reason why is because this class is meant to stay loose. The next thing that you're going to need is watercolor. No particular colors. I'm going to be diving into random colors on my palette and mixing them up to make even muddier-looking colors, so using a lot of contrasting colors to dirty them up so that I can get that nice antique look out of my pieces. We'll be walking through that as well. Next, you'll need a jar of water. Some of my classes I like to tell you to get two jars of water for cool colors and warm colors. In this case, I say stick to one because the dirtier color that you can make your color, the better when it comes to these muted tones, I just think it's really beautiful the way that, that will present results. Just trust me on that. [LAUGHTER] Then your next is a mixing palette. This is so that we can mix up those unusual colors, if you will. This could be any non-porous surface. It could be a lid of a Tupperware. Then the next, you'll just need water media paper or a sketchbook works too, as long as it will support water media. You want it to be a 140-pound paper, 300 GSM, and that is it. That is all that you're going to need. Let's jump right in, I'm so excited. [MUSIC] 3. Create a Vintage Color Palette: While there are a lot of beautiful colors out of the tube, which I do have in my palette. I actually would rather show you how to mix those colors with ease, assuming that you don't have all the colors in the world. [LAUGHTER] You know one of those supply herders like real can be. [LAUGHTER] The first thing I'm going do is just grab a nice bright red color and I'm going put that on my palette. Then from there, I'm going to deepen that color quite a bit, and make sure I have plenty on here first, and then I can grab a brown like a dark brown or even a light brown. If it's lighter, it's going to create more of a middle tone and darker obviously will create a richer tone, so I'm going to snag, let's see. This is a reddish-brown, but you can see that if I mix this and I'll grab a lot more. I'm starting to mute this red a little bit with the brown and we're getting deeper, this is still pretty bright though. In order to mute that further, I can grab like a beige or white or even a black or just a darker brown, any neutral color that you can dive into and bring in will help so much. I put a lot of red on my palette at first, which is why this is not going as quickly as far [LAUGHTER] as getting it neutralized. But see how this is now creating a mauve tone, and that's because I'm using a cream, which is a lot lighter. Essentially you can get this with white and red, it'll just be more pink, but then if I add that brown. That's where I get this more muted mauve, which is really lovely. Then let's grab just a darker brown and see how we can get that to be like a nice deep, this is a purple-brown. I don't have a flat brown, but basically, I just want to give you guys permission to really explore your color palette and see the different ways that you can mix that up and get these muted tones because that's what we're after. I created this from that red color, and so I'm just going to come over to this side and just swatch that color down. Then from there, I can make it even lighter by pulling in some beige or you could do white if that's what you have and then mix that together, and then I'm going to create a lighterish, more mauvy version of it, and then it can get lighter and lighter and so on. I can do that again with a purple tone. Let's say you only have red and blue, so I've already made the red with that muted tones, so I can add some blue in here and see where we go. I'm just grabbing a blue, and then I'm going to set that over on this side and then I'll just slowly start to integrate it and see what we can come up with here. It's going to be really muted and really neutral because I've already put all those deeper, darker colors in. I might need to add a little extra red. There we go. We are mixing really lovely mauvish, but it's a little more purple this time. I continue going into my palette to really get the color that I want, so don't think, oh, this isn't working out because you can always go back and add more. Now this is too dark, I could go into that beige, I prefer to not use direct whites and blacks, so I use the beige color, it does neutralize it more, but I prefer it that way. This might look pretty drab on your palette, but when I grab it and I swatch it. It might come across on camera a little differently, but it's a really light, like a light tone of lilac, but with that nice muted gray, and then you can see next to that, we've got that purpley back, just darker. Mixing your colors, adding light tones like white, adding dark tones like black or even browns and beiges, which will neutralize it more, just know that. We'll create this nice vintage palette, which I think is just so lovely. Let's look at a couple more colors. Let's say you wanted more of an ocher. If you have yellow, my water's getting pretty dirty over here, so this is a good time because I'm doing so much, so you're going see my yellow come through a little bit dirty, but that's okay. [NOISE] You'll get the idea of what I'm going for, but I will be rinsing my water very shortly. I've got my yellow down, that's super bright, so let's say I want something more ocher. That's where I can go into my brown and I have a little bit of red still [LAUGHTER] in my palette, so you're going to see a reddish-brown, but I'm going to mix that together. Notice I didn't add nearly as much brown as I did yellow, and that's because I want to keep that brightness and that yellow rich honey tone in there. Then if I want to neutralize that more then opposite the color real from yellow would be violet, so I could put a little purple in there, but I already have browns and creams and whatnot on my palette. I'm just going to throw those in and you can see that it starts to make it a little more added cream, so it's a little lighter but still yellow, vibrant, but muted vibrant but [LAUGHTER] less vibrant and a little more brown. This is more of a lighter honey tone, but hot so pretty. Then if I wanted to go more vibrant then I would add yellow and brown, or like a yellowish or what am I saying? Reddish tone, and then I have a deeper version of that. Don't underestimate what's on your palette, because it might look like nothing is changing but then when you lay it next to each other, you're really creating something awesome, so you're going do the same thing with greens, any color that you want to do, I really love adding muted elements because it just makes your pieces look so sophisticated. If I just go with this palette alone, it would be so lovely. Once you're done experimenting with your colors, I would say select two or three that you definitely want and then keep the side or the rest of them as a idea of something you could go into as an accent color. But definitely decide and let's go with three main colors that you're going to be integrating, next, when we start doing our first floral piece. 4. Day 1: Unstructured & Messy Blooms: Now that you have your color palette picked out, it's time to start and just jump right in. [MUSIC] When we're doing this, I want you to remember that we are not striving for perfection, we're not striving for anything that is going to be overly difficult. These are very loose strokes, they are very simple strokes. I'm using a number 6 round brush for this exercise, and I'm going to be pulling some muted tones. I'm really a fan of this brownish more of color, so I'm going to go that direction. But even so, I'm not going to be too picky with what ends up on my brush. Because the variations are going to create even more interest in my piece, so that I have darker hues or excuse me, shades, different hues of that similar color, which is really going to elevate the piece as a whole. Now that I have that, what I'm going to do is and follow along with me. I'm just going to be midway down on my brush and I'm just going to create some strokes that go downward. See how easy that part is. Usually, when I do flowers, I start, I guess not usually, but many times [LAUGHTER] in the past, I have started with letting it grow. I start with the stem and I just paint the way that it would in a growth cycle of a flower. But in this case, I like to add the stems last and you'll see why. For now, what I want you to do is you're applying pressure and then you're just flicking off in several directions I went 1, 2, 3 and you can see this looks a little bit like a hot mess and that's okay. I'm pretty far down on my brush, and I'm just going to create some really natural strokes, and I'll have some that are a little bit smaller, some over here that are just mark-making. I'm just basically shaking my brush a few different directions and letting some marks come down on my page. There's not like a master way to do this. [LAUGHTER] I know a lot of times it's like, oh, but how do you do those little strokes, and there's really not a particular instruction to allow you to do like perfect strokes for this little guys. Rinse my brush very quickly in the water, and then I'm going to come in and do more of these strokes. But they're going to be more transparent like so. This is, again, what I was mentioning about color. It's just so that I can have the transparency in there because I think it adds a lot of character. I'll do that a few times before I grab additional pigment. I'm going to bring these all over my page down below a little bit, but the ones on the bottom are going to be smaller because they are not in their full growth here. I'm not trying to avoid hotspots, so a lot of times you try to avoid those when you use too much water and whatnot. But I actually [LAUGHTER] aiming for that a little bit because I love the look of it, especially when things are so flowy and fun, so just building this up. Easy strokes, and I can even just with the tip of my brush, make a couple little marks that don't have many petals there, just really slight and you will again, [LAUGHTER] you'll see why once we get more into this, when we start adding more. Just a couple more, it's more water. You can see this is not a masterpiece, but it's going to look really pretty in a very short amount of time. What we're going to do now is I'm going to rinse my brush off and I'm going to grab a different color. It could be the same color with just more water added. It could be a lot deeper. It could be a different color altogether, so I'm actually going to go into this yellow that I created already, I might deepen it a little bit. I'll grab, reactivating some of this brownish color on my palette so I can drag some of that into this yellow. Now I'm going to use this to create a little bit of background. I'm going even further down on my brush like I'm basically at the tip of it and I'm just going to drag it up like this. This is going to be the way that we do the stems also, but I'm just creating background foliage if you will, and it doesn't really have structure, as you can see. Once I have that main line, I'm going to use the tip of my brush again to come off of the stem and just make a couple of little marks, so off the stem and then scribble back down. That is how this is going to be forming, and the obviously the lighter that you are on your brush, the thinner your line with round brushes. But I'm going to do a few of those in the background just to have some depth. Then if you go even lighter, meaning I'm just going to rinse my brush, it's going to be super transparent. Then it almost looks like it's fading into the background or that we have like a misty effect going on, and the more that you do that, the more that will appear that way. You can get it pretty light, where you really don't have a lot of pigment on your brush. I'm going to bring this up, and I'm just like it's pretty all over. Then from here, actually, I want to bring some of this down further. From here, I can start adding my actual stems, which are going to be darker. I can pull this black or a dark brown and mix it with the main color I started with. Or you can mix it with green. I want to stay on this more analogous muted palette, so I'm going do this and you can pull toward yourself or you can pull upward. Note that usually when you set your brush down on your paper, that's oftentimes just naturally the way that our muscles work, where the thickest stroke is going to be because that's where you start releasing pressure. Just know that if that's the way that you work, otherwise, you might even go lighter and then pull more pressure. It's just basically being in control the way your brush works. I like to hover and then pull down as I go, and that way I know it's going to be really stringy, but the problem with that is that it won't be connected. If you don't like that, then that's something to note. I'm going to start at the bottom and then get lighter, as you can see. Then I might get rid of a little bit of that pigment by getting some more water. Just work the way that you know that you work best, some of these stems, I'll connect a line going the same growth direction, so rather than coming straight off, I'm almost dragging along that line and then branching off of it. The other thing that I like is that some of my flowers haven't fully dried and so I have this really lovely bleeding effect. I'm always all about that about on what? I think it's so pretty. I'm going to add some more black in here, and then I'm going to now go to these smaller sections. This is a medium-size brush for this, if you had a smaller brush, I would go with a smaller brush. But for the sake of this, I'm already using this, I'm just going to come a lot closer, and that is so that I can get a really fine line for these guys. Because I want to use just the tip of my brush, and then it's okay if it has any breaks I think it just adds to the overall aesthetic which is really lovely. Then this one, even though it's far away, I'm going to bring it actually off of this stem, so that it connects. It keeps things connected, it's not broken up. From there you can add even more little branches coming off, maybe they're not connected to anything, they could be if you want them to be. Then I'm going to take that same color and I'm going to start adding just really light centers to all these flowers. I think about how they're opening up, so this one looks like it's opening up in the center is facing upward, which means it's just going to be like a sliver. Then so will these ones just slivers of centers, this one has that bleed on the bottom, so this might be a little confusing but to see. But again, these are very organic shapes, they're not meant to be realistic at all. I think about that and then I add those in and they are very lovely. Another thing that you can do if this is too stringy, is go and with that background color and get a lot of water on your brush and larger stroke, [NOISE] my dog will not stop barking. What that's going to do is give the idea that there are larger leaves in the background, and I like to do that at the very end so that it's more transparent. But what it does is it just evens everything in balances everything and ties it in and you can wait for everything to be dry. But I think it's fun when it bleeds out like that. If you did drag it through, it just makes for this really pretty effect. That is our first very loose piece and we'll get a little bit more structured in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 5. Day 2: Sweet Buttercups: Now that we've experimented with more organic strokes with the round brush and having things look nice and messy and embracing that, now we're going to go into our Filbert brush and we're going to get a little more structured, but still keep things loose enough to where we have the desired results to make floral shapes. [MUSIC] This is pretty straight forward once you get used to it, [NOISE] what we're going to do, you want to have the color ready to go that you want to use, and I think that for this line, I'm going to grab a muted blue tone. I'll mix that. [NOISE] I'll just grab this awkward tone, and then I'm going to get some white which I've [NOISE] got plenty of, blue already on the top of it. Okay. This is a really lovely color. It helps you to test it out first, [NOISE] I always like to do that. I'm going to bring some of this color over to the top here. I like it. It's muted. It is almost a Robin's egg blue, but in a vintage style. That's what I'm going to go with. This is where we create petals that are basically the shape of this brush. I'm going to dip my brush into this paint and then I'm going to set it down just like so, and you can set down and drag a little bit. That's going to create petals that look like they're coming from the top. Then I can use the side of my brush to pull inward like that. That creates a flower that looks like it is slightly tilted toward us, but you can still see upward. I'll create a few of these by using again full brush and then coming in with the side of it just to have that movement and shape. [NOISE] I have to mix more paint here. Then I can do that where it's just on the sides to get smaller and then bring this on the side. It's just a quick pull, almost at a curve like so. The top obviously can be pulled further in and then the sides. Using the sides of the brush, you could do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you could do 1, 2, 3,4. I'm going to come on this one again just to add a little more saturation. This is a beautiful bundle, and I'm going to recommend getting smaller and making sure that you add those smaller blooms in, and you can even go 1, 2 and just have that be it like it's about to bloom. Which is also really pretty. I'll do a couple of those. I can do some above. I'll go a little bit smaller just so that it looks like when it opens up, like that's the size of the petal. Maybe one that's halfway opening over here. Now that that part is done, I can take the same brush and use just the edge of it to do my stems. The color I think I want to go with is this yellowish color. It's a mystery brown color at this point [LAUGHTER] after mixing. But I'm going to do this color. Just loosely, I'm going to come loose again and you don't have to go loose. You can keep it more structured if you want to. Remember the loose does look very messy. Sometimes I'll hold, you could hold your pinky down for balance. You [NOISE] can hold your wrist down for balance. It does help if you want to come towards the end, but still have some form of structure. Or you can always draw in as if you're using a pen like so. It can be a little bit tricky to get those fine lines, but they gets pretty fine because the whole point is to have those two elements to it. I can bring that in. I just still like them to look [NOISE] organic. Test out different ways to hold it so that you can really get your desired results. [NOISE] I bring them in toward the center, [NOISE] If you want it to look more like a bouquet or a bundle of flowers. But if you want it to look more like it's in a meadow, you would spread those out. It looks like that is good. Now again, I just want to highlight, [NOISE] or I guess opposite of highlight, add some shadows and depth into just some of these areas to really make it pop more. But then that underlying tone that I already laid down is still really pretty and nice to have show up. Then from here I can add the centers just like we did in the previous lesson, but this time I'm just using the tip of the brush and it curves it up and out, [NOISE] like the center of the flower almost reaches up [NOISE] and now, it's really pretty. It just creates a cool effect. Then these ones are still budding. One of the things that you could do is [NOISE] make it so that they have some depth while they're still wet. If I wanted to add a deeper color in here, [NOISE] this one looks like it's still wet just a little bit, it's like a bleeding what on what effects if I just set that down, it will bleed through just to the area that is still wet. This is a good example right here. You'll see that start to spread. Let me make it a little darker so you can see it better [NOISE]. If I put it here, it'll just start to organically move. The way that I'm seeing this, I'm actually looking at it from the side. If you tilt your paper, you can see those shiny areas and that's where your paper is still wet and that's where that effect will come into play, which we're actually going to play with more in the next floral series that we do. That being said, [NOISE] play along with this and I'll see you in the next segment. [NOISE] [MUSIC] 6. Day 3: Wet-on-Wet Thistles: Welcome back. [MUSIC] Now we're going to create some almost thistly types of flowers and while some of them might look like thistles, some of them also might not and that's okay too. You can use any brush for this. We're going to create a form. I'm going to start with my filbert brush. I want to start because I want to show you wet on wet. I want to start with something that is a little or yes, a lot lighter. Remember with limited color palettes, you can work with any colors that you want to. For this one, I think I'm just going to stick for the base to just a cream color and that's going to help me build on it with other color, the lighter that you go initially and that can mean paint. It could mean just mostly water to paint ratio with a lot of water on your brush, that could be exactly what you need in order to get the bleed to work the way we want it to. I'm going to make this a little bit larger so you can see the effects that we're doing and I'm basically creating a very round cone shape. I'm going to do one stroke down and then another stroke down and just have it meet like so. In fact, that would be even better upside down to have the pointer part at the top rather. That's good. I think I want even less pigment, so I just rinsed to my brush real quickly and I'm going to make this one a little bit higher. Then they don't have to be perfect circles by any means and then I want to work quickly because I want to be able to do this wet on wet. I'll add maybe four in here and then I'll start to add the effects. Again, any color that you want, I'm going to start with just a very small amount of a blue. I'm making sure to tilt my paper to see exactly where the wettest point is. You don't want to put this down anywhere that's not wet or it's not going to do what you want it to do. It's just going to be pigment that is stuck on the page. What I'm doing is I'm setting this color down and then I'm just letting it do its thing. It's going to be very tempting to push the color where you want, but you want to save that until it's necessary. For now, I'm just setting it down in the general area that I want it to be and then you can see that with a little bit of time, it starts to spread and that is what we want. Now I'm going to grab some of this beige color and do the same thing toward the top. But I can see this is getting pretty dry, so maybe I'll stick to just the side because I don't want to have that issue where the pigment doesn't end up moving where I want it to. Then from there because that's bleeding and it's doing a good job, it's doing what I wanted. But it's fading while it does that, so I can come in and set some more pigment down just at the base, same place that I did before and it's going to do the same thing again. But keep even more pigment in because it is more dry at this point, so it won't bleed as much as it did the first time. From here, this is where I can add, I'm going to use very non flower terms, those little spikes [LAUGHTER] that come off. I want to do it now again because I have some moisture still on the bottoms and so I think the bleed would be really lovely. Just for the sake of it, I'm going to switch to a round brush so I can have it be a little bit finer and I can use the brush to my advantage, starting with a thin tip and going into something that is a little broader. I'm taking the tip of my brush and I'm just going to go about here and drag that in and release and I'm going to do it again here. Notice that I like to keep my lines. I like to have them have a little bit of movement so they're not perfectly straight. If you like them to be perfectly straight, you can totally do that because that's going to look really pretty too. I just like it when they have more movement. Then, I'm going to make this a little sharper, you can see how it starts to bleed into that blue. I love that. I love it. I think it is so pretty. I also want to create some of these points closer to us and that's going to be more, just creates more of a fullness. But I want to wait until I know that the points will actually remain. Because right now if I do that, you'll see it'll start to bleed out. While that's lovely and I do want that, I also want to be able to have this element in the front. Now we'll let it dry. I might put a few more little peekaboos coming from the backs here. I'm varying my pressure at some of these so that I can have like some thicker areas and thinner areas and that just gives the illusion of almost like it tilts a little bit, so like bends and moves. Then from there, I can drag it down and create stems. So see how it's bleeding into the blue. If you don't want that, you just want to make sure that it dries more before you put it down. But I am all about this wet on wet, I think it looks so pretty. Grabbing more of this color and make sure that I have enough on my brush. I'll pull that down or I can pull it up. If you pull it up, make sure that you don't drag your hand through the wet paint. But I want to vary the pressure and it's easier to do that when you don't have a strong grip. Just because it is more effortless. But at the same time, you might cause more gaps than you actually want. I'm going middle of my brush and I have a pretty good grip that I'm guiding it with. But that way I can make sure that I have these elements where I press down more. Then I'm a lot lighter to get more of that movement through here. Same thing here. Do you see how I have this darker area and then it gets a lot lighter over here. That's a pigment thing like I'm getting a lot more transparent on this side than I am this side. I really like that. I think that it creates a lot of depth and I want to keep that going. So I'm just adding some darker areas to part of it, but then I'm leaving a lot of it very transparent. Then I will add some more pigment now that that has bled just to the base of some of these while they're still wet, like we did with the blue, so that it still bleeds, but just at the base it has more depth. From there, at this point, I can create some leaves. This isn't dry yet, so let's create some leaves. I'm going to make these a lot more transparent at first, just because I want them to be in the background and I want these to be real playful. When I make leaves, I'm going to do a very light stem coming off and then I'm going to use full pressure and then dip downward and to the very tip of my brush. I'm really using my brush to create the effect that I want. I've got this stem. I'm going to press down and then release. I have that fine point on the tip and I'll just do that a few times, got a lot of water on my brush to make sure that it's nice and transparent. That see how they don't really go a certain direction. They're just imperfect little elements in the background and I don't want to even them out perfectly. Never really a fan of that. So I've got two and two right here. I'm just going to make a little peekaboo at the very top, but I want it to be pretty light. There we go. Now while I'm waiting for the bottoms here to dry so I can create those spiky, [LAUGHTER] official term. I'm going to create some texture in the tops here and you don't have to, but it just is going to add just a little bit more to it. I don't want to get too much in here because I don't want this to be super defined. For that reason, I'm getting more water, less paint, and I'm just going to use the tip of my brush and I'm going to come in and I'm just going to create tiny little horseshoes. I'm not going to make them perfect. I'm going to keep them to one side so that they are more like just accents. You can clearly see just from this effect that we're doing, you can envision what that would look like as a whole. But because this is such a wet on wet natural organic piece, we don't want to go too crazy with details unless we end up doing details the whole way through. But now that creates that texture so that you can start to see form and an abstract way. Now I think I can go in and add those pokey bits. [LAUGHTER] I'm going to use my brush first at the bottom, pressure and then lighten and these ones are not going to be as long because they're technically in the foreground. That's what I want to make sure of that I just make them long enough to where I can see. That's what's going on here. They don't have to be perfectly spaced or even on all of them just enough to where you can see what's going on and then I want to pick up some of this. I'm going to get my brush wet. I'm going to clear the water off of it and I'm just going to dab my brush right here just to pick up some of that pigment so it's not super dark and then that is it. It creates this really lovely, very elegant looking piece that has a lot of movement to it and has that expressive feature to it. So hope that one was enjoyable. This is one of my favorite ones that I [LAUGHTER] had in the lineup. [MUSIC] 7. Day 4: Floral Stalk Mark Making: Now that we have gone through three different kinds of flowers, we're going to move into more of a wildflower that's in a stock form. What that means is basically, we have a stem, and the flowers are being built up along the stem. You can create the stem first if you want a nice even stem or you can follow along with me and build backwards where we do the flowers, and then they build and build and build, and then we're going to create a really organic stem that skips through the pieces that we're doing. Basically, I'm thinking about an invisible stem in the center. I'm going to grab my paint and create little buds throughout that. I'm going to use a yellow color that is mixed in with some brown to create a nice dandelion color that's a little more muted. All that I'm gonna do here is use the side of my brush. This is a round brush, and just set it down, and go up and down. You can see that I have some white space in here. That's intentional. My buds are going to be pretty small, and at the top keep them pretty compact. They only have a little bit of space. Then as we go down, they're going to get larger. One of the things to note as you continue further down the page is if you make this perfectly even and symmetrical, it's not going to look as organic. One of the things that I think about as I'm building this is movement. Do I want it to come to the side? Do I want it to come out this side, and then maybe not on the other side. That's where we play with balance. Another part of this that I really like to do is make it so that there are gaps. I just think it looks more organic like a wildflower width, so I'm going to create a gap here and create just a smaller little bud, and then continue. So I'm setting my brush on its side with the tip out, and just moving it up and down, and varying the pressure while I do it. See some of these are going to be full pressure. Some of them are going to be just the very tip of my brush. I see that I'm starting to move outwards here, and I really like how this is looking, so I'm going to continue that out. Maybe have a little bit of white space here before I continue, so all the gaps don't look the same. Still, I have flowers coming in, and then maybe I can skip again a little bit and have some blooms just underneath this part, and they could connect right here. If you have a saturated section like this and you don't want to, as you work, you're going to obviously need to dip in to get more paint, so I can just return to that when I need to do that, and that will allow me to grab some paint from that one part, and bring it into the next area. So you can see I'm getting pretty light. I want to keep that because I liked the way that it looks to have the contrast, but now, I can pick up some of this paint and bring it over. It's not super crazy pooling right there if you will. Then I can skip this area here. Same thing now, the whole way through, I'm just setting my brush down on the side, and going up and down. They don't look like flowers, but when we're done, they're going to look like a beautiful stalk of wildflowers. I'm going to start to bring this in a little. Then I'll bring this in a little. That is going to be creating where it reconnects together at the bottom. You can put little spots in here too, just like I did at the top. What that does is looks like the buds aren't quite ready to open yet. Having those smaller elements in there adds to the overall composition. It really makes it have more dimension. Now, I'm softly bringing this inward and then stopping. I'm not going to bring it taper, taper, taper like I did at the top. Instead, I'm rounding it out, and just filling this part in. At this point, you can absolutely keep it to where it's pretty spaced out within or you can get your brush wet. You still have a little bit of pigment on your brush. Actually, I want even less than that. You can just lightly dab in the background. That will make it look fuller without having to have a lot of peasiness throughout. But I don't want a lot of color. I just want enough to where you get the idea of there being some more flowers back there without having to go too crazy with structure because this is just something that continues to add dimension like so. Now, that we're done with this part, I think I actually do want to add more of that here, too. That's better. It looks fuller. Now that we're done with this part, I can put my stem in. I'm going to use the same brush. I'm going to go with this dark green again to create this stem. I'm just going to use the tip of it, and I'm just going to have it come up through the center here like so. But this is pretty big, so I think I want to make this stem a lot thicker. If you do smaller ones like this, then it'll be good to have them be nice and thin, but since this is thicker, I do want it to be, actually, thicker. If it bleeds, that's okay. If you don't want it to bleed, then I would recommend making sure that you have everything is dry when you first go in with your stem or with your other color. I'm just adding some depth to the sides here because I felt it looked a little bit too undone if you will. That is your stock. You can make a lot more of these flowers, a lot less. One of the things that I do like to do once it starts to dry like this, is add more definition. By that I mean, just going in with more paint, less water, you could even make it a little smidge darker. Then, basically, do the same thing but with just the top of your brush instead of using full pressure. That will just deepen it and not to where it has even more dimension than you had before. You could do this in an isolated area to create the illusion of shadows or you could do it all throughout. Sometimes I like to fill a little bit where the stem is so that it doesn't look so much like a stem. I'm just adding depth in there, so that it looks fuller, basically. That's your general idea. In our next segment, we are actually, going to do a lot more of these stocky types of flowers. I don't know what I would call it. But on a smaller scale, to create more of a metal look. 8. Day 5: Expressive Meadow: Now, we are going to create a meadow, if you will. It's going to essentially be a line of wild flowers, but they're going to be a bit layered. You can start either with the background or the foreground. Starting with the background, I typically create pieces that are a lot more transparent, just to have that feel similar to what we've done before. But I'm going to start with the foreground just to keep things really simple. I'm going to start actually with a Filbert brush. The colors that I'm going to go with are pretty vintagy. Go with any color palette that you want. I'm going to stick to an amber, ocher, burgundy type of feel. The first thing I'm going to do is create just basically with my brush, angles, but not pulling down too far. Just a quick angle like this. I'm going to do this a few times, where they stack on top of each other, and then do it on the other side. Then I'm going to just fill the interior space, more toward the top than toward the bottom, like so. Listen just a bit. Notice, how on each side, I'm switching the brush direction so that it goes along with the side that it's on. It just creates a billowy soft look. I'm going to do another one of those just behind it. All I'm doing is rinsing my brush off and coming a little bit higher. Then pulling into the previous one a little so that paint can bleed. I'm just setting this along like so, and then calling it good. As that dries a little bit, I can add some more pigment to the one in the foreground. I'm going to do that while it's still wet. I'm actually choosing a color that's a little smidge more vibrant. That is to create the depth, but also when you switch up hues like that, it can make things a little bit more dimensional as well. I'll do it on the back, but just a little bit less, just for interest. Then from here, I'm going to go in with my round brush. I'm going to pull in those, actually, I want this color, those peasy aster type shapes that we did at first. I'm put those styles together now. All I'm going to do is create those loose strokes. Remember, I'm just pressing my brush down and pulling it out. Then some of these are just a little bit smaller at the top, just like a cluster. That's really lovely. Then you can go back in with a little more pigment toward the middle or toward the bottom, just to create some more depth in the paint so that it has a stronger finish. Then from here, I can bring some of those over to the other side. I make the part in the middle a little bit shorter, and the part on the outside, a little longer. I'm connecting it to that what piece next to it because I like the bleed. I think it's really pretty. I might even bring one just down here as well, just so I can have that continue on. I'll have one of them just come forward so that this remains in the background. Then maybe just a couple small ones come out on the side here, just for balance. Then I can move on to another style. Now, I'm going to grab more of the yellow. This one has a little bit of this light green going into it. Like a greenish brown, so it's going to be a little duller than yellow, but still yellow. I'm holding my brush up very vertical, 90 degree from the paper. I'm just going to scribble, and only have these go downward like so. They curve at the edges, and then they scribble downward. This is going to allow me to do very loose strokes version of black-eyed Susans, but way looser, way less structure, and way more playful. I'm not going to do too many of them, but mostly the thing to keep in mind is that I'm layering them. Some of them are going to be more prominent and more pigmented than the others. I'm doing the same thing with that wet on wet, where I go back in. Add more pigment to the center of just some of them, just so that I can pull that depth through. If it's not looking finished yet, that's because it's not. Don't worry about that because we're going to go back. Add just a little bit of depth as it starts to dry, but I'm going to go on and continue. I'm going to make versions of these that are even smaller, what we just did. I think I want to pull in a purply color this time. I'm going to grab a lot of white because I want it to be really light. I put that on my palette. Actually, I'm going to put it over with the blue just because I don't want it too purple and green. They aren't going to get along very well. I know that's pulling in a lot of blue, but it's okay because I'm going to be pulling in purple, which is similar. What purple? I think this guy. Just a little bit because I want it to be pretty light. I already have a lot of neutral base in here, from the light cream and from the brown. That's going to be affected, and I'm totally going with that. That's what I want. Now, that this color is in here, same way that we set our brush down, I'm going to create these stalks. I set it down on its side, and just do some flicking or I guess scribbling, if you will. All the way down, I'm going to create some spacing in here, just so that it has that organic drop or spacing rather. I want do another one just right next to it and it's going to start to blend together. You're not going to really know which one's which. That's okay. I'm actually going for that because it just has that pretty layered effect. Then I'll do the same thing again. This color, I'm going to make a little bit pinky and I'm going to do it just right next to it. It's very similar, but those little tiny subtle differences sometimes will come through and make a huge difference in the final piece, which is really fun. You'll notice here I'm not really doing it as specifically with the sat down and move it just because it's smaller and I don't need to. Now I'm going to come in and push some of this pink color just along some of the edges while this is still wet. Some of it is not too wet. So if that's the case for you as well, you can always, remember, you can tilt your paper and see the sheen so that you know exactly what will bleed, and then you're not setting it down on anything that's already dry. See how that just brings it to life a little bit more and then I can add stems in a minute and then over here I'm going to come back and it looks like those actually are pretty dry. So I'm not sure that adding the center and will bleed, but that's fine if it doesn't. But I use the tip of my brush and I just create little cones with dots, and that just gives it structure without giving it structure, it's just enough to make these come to life, like so. Then I can add the stems to those, but I'm going to wait because I want to put something down here as well. Now I'm rinsing my brush and I can grab a darker version of this color and just do tiny horseshoes like we did before, or I can grab the filbert and come in and tap that down just for a little added detailing, and I know that I have the wrong color here, so I'm going to make that a lot more orangey and come back in and just set that down on the areas that I didn't want that color. The background one is just fine. I'm going to keep the as is and then I'm just going to splotch this up so it's not too perfect. I might add a little bit just to make sure it's really wet just for color purposes for balance. Okay, now, over in this area I can do some more condensed flowers that have more of those petals that we played with before with our filbert brush and I'm going to balance it out and use like a pinky tone but make sure that it's really light and blushy and has that blush vintage element. I'm going to grab some brownish and throw it in here to make sure that it's not too vibrant. I'm going to grab that and create some main petals. Remember I pull down, pull down, and then as I get toward the edges, I just use the side of the brush. I'm just going to create a cluster of these. Then I can go lighter or darker, or even change up the hue a little bit to add some interest. But basically I am just moving my brush back and forth on the sides here when I get smaller. Now it looks good. This palette, I'm really loving because it has so many muted tones that are along the same family of colors. We've got the yellows, we've got the pinky's, but they also pull into this burgundy color and I just love it for having that vintage vibe. I'm really a fan. Now I'm going to use my round brush. I think I'm actually going to just because I can, this is a four, yeah. I'm going to move to a number 4 round because I want my stems to be very thin. Even using a two would be good if you have a two. I'm going to pull in like a purpley brown this time. I'm going to use this color for the ones in the background, and I could make this more transparent, I can make it pretty opaque. It really doesn't matter, but my idea here is to use the tip of my brush and just drag this along. I want it to be imperfect and have that movement, so if it helps you to be at the edge of the brush and you know you can still make thin lines if you have a smaller brush, then that's what I would recommend doing. Then as you get toward the back, if you lose a little pigment, it looks like it's in the background. Now that I have those in, I can add stems elsewhere, so I will pull some green in with more of a beige color. There we go, now we have a little bit more of a dirty sage. I'm going to hold my brush really loosely and then just bring up the stem through the center. I like that movement, so I'm intentionally moving my brush around. There we go. That's all I need to do. But I want to add the leaves in that we did before, and this is pretty sagey but pretty neutral. I like the color for the leaves. I'm going to do what we did where we pull it out, press down and then have it just lightly come off. It just looks really playful and organic and nice and loose and expressive. Again, to do that, all you need to do is press down on your brush and then lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift into that fine tip, and once you get to the fine tip, keep dragging because that's where you're going to be able to have that definition at the ends. That looks good to me. I think it's so pretty. I'm going to carry these leaves throughout, so since I have this color already on my brush I can bring it in the background of a few places so maybe here would be pretty. Notice I have it pretty transparent and that's because I don't want the background to overshadow what's in the front here. It can be just accented. Some of them could be darker and some of them can be lighter but I'm just putting them randomly throughout so that it brings it all together. Now I can add stems here and I actually like this color for the stems maybe a little bit darker, so I added some black in there. I'm going to pull up and make these stems a little bit thicker and thinner. So have it be a varied stem because I think that adds character and having your stems along the whole thing look a little bit different and helps to differentiate them. Then I can add some deeper leads to these as well and maybe they'll come up and down. That's really pretty. I'll put another one just behind this one for some balance. Now I'm going to go in with a really dark version of this same color, so just by adding black and I'm going to make the center. Just remember thinking about how the flower is opening. That determines where these centers are going to be and you don't have to do them on the really small ones because those are technically still budding. But just because I already started I'm going to. The larger you make it, the more prominent those flowers will look. Moving on to this patch, you don't even have to add stems to this patch if you don't want to just because I feel like it looks pretty balanced so what I could do is just add the centers and it's fun to create a green center sometimes and leaving the white space that's there because I just think it's pretty. Then I'll just add on some of these, but not all of them, just this pretty green center. Then you can also always go in and add leaves. You can even go in and add grasses. Similar to how we did these guys, you would just hold your brush at the end and just go and scribble upwards or just quickly pull upward to create grasses. You can see it just fills it a little bit so that there's not nothing, there's something there just for added interests. Then we can throw a stem on these guys. I might just because there are some hot spots here, which I'm totally cool with, but I do want to have it be a little bit more structured. So instead of doing like horse shoes or something like that, I can mix just a darker version of that color and come in and just create little specs here and there and that just adds enough at dimension to where it's going to do it. It's going to do what we want as far as creating assumed shape. Just like that, you have a vintage little metal piece. It is so fine. 9. Day 6: Loose Black-Eyed Susan: [MUSIC] Now we're going to play with more of a Black Eyed Susan style, so what I'm going to do is grab a lot of yellow, but I also want to mute it down quite a bit because I want this to really embrace that vintage vibe that we are going for, so I'm going to grab some of this beige color that I have. You can also use white and then with a hinted brown. That will make this color. [NOISE] I'm happy with that. All we're going to do here is we're going to use our filbert brush to do both the main stroke and the side stroke because I'll do an example here. I'm going to have this main stroke and then move into the side stroke. What that does is it creates this movement in the petal, but also that fine edge. I'm going to do two of those that mirror each other. Then do one in the center that's a little bit skinnier. Then one next to that that's a little bit skinnier. I'm going to come back in and I'm going to go to the side, and do the same thing and just build it out until I feel like I like the flower and you don't want it to be super, super wavy, you just want it to have a little bit of movement. Then I'm going to rinse my brush, and come into the center and just create some strokes that come in-between them. Don't worry about making them perfectly even because if you do that, then [LAUGHTER] what ends up happening is it looks just too perfected and we don't want that. One of the things I like to do with these types of flowers is have like a weird bend like that. That's basically all we do. Then I'm going to go in, make that just a little bit darker, then [NOISE] set it down just to create more pigmented areas along the main front stems. If they're not wide enough, it looks like I lost a little wetness. I have to pull up to make that bleed again the way that I want it to. Just keep that in mind, just be sure it worked fast. If it did not work fast enough, I'm going to rinse my brush and go back in with water and just drag it the whole way. Now I'm going to let that do its thing. Then I'm going to use the side of my brush and grab a green. Then I'm going to then pull it down. Then I can come up and just create. Do the same thing that I did with the petals, but this time I'm pressing a little bit more at first and then releasing and going down, and that's just creating these leaves that are doing their own thing a little bit. [NOISE] Then my favorite part of this, what really brings it together is the center. I'm going to use this. This is like a burgundish lobby color instead of black. I'm making little dots and I'm doing this again while it's still wet, because I want it to bleed. Notice that I went from the top and did a curve. This curve is a little bit flatter than what I'm about to do which is to bring this up and you can do this with the outline first for where you want it, but then I want to encourage you to really get a little bit messier where some of your strokes are more watery, they're more transparent in some places. Overall, that's really all we have to do to make a really lovely Black Eyed Susan, and have it be like still abstract, still playful, and then that is that. [MUSIC] 10. Day 7: Budding Leafy Stalks: [MUSIC] All right, now we are going to play with leaves floral stalks. They're more wild flowers with lots and lots of leaves. That's what we're going to do. To start doing this, I'm just going to select my greens. This is where I'm going to start with the growth direction. I'm going to do a very, very thin stem. You can do this at the end of your brush like we've been doing. You can also guide it with the end of your brush. Just know that it's a little more difficult to have that super light pressure when we have our death grip. [LAUGHTER] But I am going to do that so I can guide it with my arm. My whole arm is moving rather than just my wrist. That's just going to make a smoother line. It's not important really, but I just want to have control over the way that that goes. Then at the top, I'm going to have this come up and out like so. Then I'm going to do a couple of those. It will come up toward that direction and then come up toward that direction, maybe thinner and then off of those to have some additional sprouts. They go the same growth direction. They come up off and then out. You can see that they are coming up. They basically are flowing whoops. I can turn that into something. [LAUGHTER] They're basically flowing with the stem in its natural growth pattern and then sprouting off. That's where I'm going to put my buds that are coming out. But I'm also going to do that coming off of the main area. Maybe just down further. Maybe right here, I'm going to have it come up and off and then reach out like so. Then do the same thing at the tip here. Bring that out more. Then just have a couple areas that come off of there and same thing on this side. I don't want it super balanced so I'm going to come way down here and I'm going to drag this up, and just have it curve inward, and then it will have its own little sprouts coming off of it as well. I can always add more when I see how this is building up. But for now, that's the first thing that I do with the stem. Now I can add some leaves. I like to do it at the base of where I know these florals are going to be. It's the same method as before we start thin. Then we use full pressure or just more pressure and then lift up into that fine tip. If you want to create a second part of that leaf, what I end up doing. I'll show you first as an example, where it looks like you have a little white space for where like the vein of the leaf would be. The way that I do that is I will come up and off. Let's see, where do I want to put this? I'll put it up here. I press down and I do one side of it. Then I'll either start at the base or I'll start further down. I don't apply full pressure at first, I basically watch where that white space is one side of my brush. That's what I'm watching as I apply some pressure and then release. It's basically just the same thing that we've already done, but way less pressure. You're watching the bottom of your brush or if you're doing it on the bottom side, you'd be watching the top to see the amount of white space that's left. That's how I create those. I'm going to do that to the other side. Usually I tilt my paper, but I'm not going to do that right now. I'm just moving my arm. Yeah, that looks good. I don't do the center for all of them just because I want to make sure that it looks like, some of them maybe on their side or they have some variety and they're not so perfect or so similar. I'll do that to this stalk too. I don't usually come back in, but I had a little break in there because my weird angle. There we go. Then I'll have one come up this way. Then I'll do the same thing here. It makes sense that they would be a little bit smaller. I'll just have a couple. But throughout this stalk, I want to have bundles of that. I'm going to do the same thing, just like halfway from where this stem is with this stem. I'm going to come out, actually, I'm going to tilt my page for this. It's going to help you to. [LAUGHTER] I'm going to come up and off just a little bit, so up and off and then that pressure release, light and through. I didn't even apply pressure for that one. I just watched where that white space was and that helped me make sure that I kept it nice and thin, to maybe smaller one on the side. There we go. I'll do another one at this connection. I'm pretty transparent I think on my paint because I haven't added more pigment, but I think it'll look really pretty, yeah. Then I can add a little bit more and just add maybe I pick a blue, a little more pigment. I've created that stalk. I'm happy with it. I think it's really pretty. You can add more leaves if you want. One thing I do like to do is come from the bottom or come from really low and just do like a full branch of leaves so that's an option as well. But for the sake of this one, I want to just show you a quick and easy and simple. But what I like about this style is it's pretty laggy. It's pretty strainy, which is ideally like that reminds us of wild flowers and what they look like. I love this, just as it is. I think it's so pretty. It's like that scientific illustration of flowers. The vibe it gives me. Then for the buds, the way that I do these is, I don't necessarily create little branches or little stems or petioles or whatever [LAUGHTER] you want to call them, for every single strand that I create. That's just because I'm doing something more expressive and more loose and I'll get the effect that I'm going for without that. I want to pick maybe like a mavi but like a purple undertone, which I know is like the color palette that I keep going toward, but I like it. I'll go a little more purplely for this one though. I'll add some blue and here we go. For this one, it's really simple, we're just basically doing little circles. This is the same thing where if you want to add berries or anything like that ever, you would just add a little circle. All I'm doing is one stroke and then another stroke. Sometimes that will fill it. Sometimes I just set it down to fill it if there's any white space inside, I think that's really lovely, so I'll keep that. But you can see they're just quick circles and I'm just building on itself, some of them are a little bit smaller as we get toward the end. But I'm basically just going to be filling in that area with plenty of white space in between so you can differentiate what all the individual buds are, because otherwise they're going to blend all together. Then you can have some overlap if you need to. If something turns out too big. Having a couple areas of overlap is no big deal. But you can see it's just totally coming together with very little effort because all you need to do are these tiny little imperfect circles. You can also do this the same way that we did buds before where we do like a stroke on one side and then on the other to meet, but I always get really excited when I can [LAUGHTER] add these little circles into just about everything. Even if I have like a full bouquet, like I'll have just a little bundle somewhere that has something like this. I think it just adds texture, a pop of color. You know if you have a palette that is pretty monochromatic, you might have just like a tiny little part that has the complimentary color that really brings it to life. All right, so that looks good to me. You might want to go in and just add a couple little dots of pigment to areas that look like they could use a little more definition. You can totally do that. It doesn't have to be wet still because we're just doing like little marks. Building that up because as we know, watercolor can, when it dries look a little flatter. I'll go ahead and do that to a couple of them. I guess more than a couple. But then I'm going to do the same thing to these areas down here that I have sprouted. Sometimes I also like to leave some of these little stems of stems. [LAUGHTER] I like to leave them bear because I think that also adds to that wildflower appearance. Then I'll go down here and do the same thing. That's basically all there is to it. Then you have this really lovely. I know I've used that word a lot in this class, but that's how I feel about these vintage style wild flowers and watercolor. I think they are just so pretty and allow you to be so loose. I think that that is so fun for our creativity. A lot of couple right here. You'll notice like I'm adding them where there is no stem and that's totally fine. I can build those up even more if I wanted to, which I don't because I like it as it is. But you know where you can go from here, then you have these really lovely leggy pieces , so very fun. I will see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 11. Day 8: Wild Mini Bouquet: Welcome back. Now we are going to jump into a very fun wildflower mini bouquet. This one is so easy and so fun to create and makes for a really cute like just an art piece or even as a card, a gift, whatever you will do. Very simple. we're going to use a few different hues of green. Grab your first green and we're just going to draw or paint rather stems that are coming up and out but we're going to keep them close together in the center because that's going to be the little bundle which you can choose to tie if you will, or keep loose because it gives the illusion of the bundle anyway. I'll walk you through this. I'm going to pull up and out like this, and I'm going to do that a few times and just vary the height because I want it to be pretty playful and loose like so. I don't do too many of these initial stems because I don't want it to look too clustered, but I'm going to grab a different color of green now. I'm going to make these stems just slightly thicker, not by much and then bring those up into this bouquet we're creating, then in some of these are going to come out a little more, and then I'm going to create one that's a little bit out and down so that it's not at the same height. That's going to give the bouquet itself a more fullness to it. Now, one last one. I had my first green, my second green, and now I'm going to pick a more neutral color like a brown and this is for like little sprouts and twigs in the background. I'm actually going to start them from above instead of below, I could put one below, but I don't want to make this area too busy. Then I'm going to use the very tip of my brush and I'm moving my hand position so it's a looser end and I'm just going to flick up like this and I'll have these straighter lines and you'll see what we do with those in a minute. Once we're done with this part, you only need two or three colors. I'm going to pick three and this is going to create our little buds, which are going to be so cute. What I'm going to do now is use the tip of my brush and I'm just going to find the top of a stalk. I'm going to go about an inch above and I'm just going to start setting it down to make these little dots. Notice that the very tip is a lot more narrow than outside. Then I'm going to create a little bit of spacing and do another cluster, a little bit of spacing and do another cluster that is thinner towards the bottom. That is making that curved shape on the outside, but it looks like a lavender stalk and I can make these bigger if I wanted to, so I could bring it up and then out a little more like this if I wanted more fullness or more length. That's totally up to you how you want to do that, but I'll create a few of these and they don't have to have to come from any particular stem. If I want to have another one that's right next to it and off-setting it, I can do that and just like we did before, we don't have to have it connect to anything specific or we can add it later. There's not really a rule here because we're making it up as we go, but we're also just going with the flow and seeing what it needs or what it doesn't need or what we can retract or add or whatever. I'll probably add one, but I'm not going to worry about it right now and then I can put another one for balance on this side. I'll just go a little bit lower and do the same thing. Narrow toward the top, these are just little dots. Getting more narrow at the bottom but the fullest part is in the center and then I can concentrate the little dots or buds in certain areas and leave white space for added interest. That part is done and now I can grab another color and do another type of flower or bud and pull that in. I'm just going to do a similar mark to what we just did, but almost have them curved a little bit and they can curve in multiple directions, but I'm just creating a cone instead of doing what we just did and they're bigger strokes. They're not like dots, they're just a little cone and then I'll do that next to that one, maybe a little bit smaller. We have some variety and shape. Then over here I'll go a little higher. You can see it curves and then it slightly curves, creating like a dome. I'll bring this one out to curve it at the bottom just slightly so that it has that like a rounder shape and then the next color I grab, I will do more specific like actual petals. I'm going to pull a pop of blue in. This one's going to have more petal style. I'm just going to press down on my brush, pressing down at the tip here and then just pulling up right away. You could also just set it down on its side and it creates these more petally style and it just looks a little bit more like a blossoming flower. These marks like I did it pretty perfect right here to show you the technique, but I actually prefer them to be a little sloppier because it just looks more organic. I'm going to do that over here as well, and just to break this up, we'll just add some marks around it, and it just makes it look a little bit more wild. That would also be really pretty of like, you know, pop a red or something. Then within this part here, this is where I can start putting in some leaves. I'm going to go in with these greens and I'm just going to make these, they're going to be off of little stems and make them laggy, but I'm going to make them real small too, so that they're not detracting, they're just adding to this bundle. Now I can add those little spiky guys that I was talking about. Now, this could be actually spiky or it can be more along the lines of the edges of branches. I'm going to actually darken this up a little bit. Then I can flick off of it and then it's like little actual branches coming off and that could be it or I could add little dots to the ends of some of these, just so it looks a little more like a bouquet with added interest. What are those? Are they berries, are they juts sticks, who knows, but they're pretty. It just adds that little something extra. It's like that extra texture that we need to bring things to life. I'll do that over on this side and you'll see I have little lines coming off of the lines. Basically what I mean is I come up and then out, but then off of those I also have additional areas that stem off on their own too. It's like branches upon branches. That's it. That creates your little wildflower bundle. I don't need to put a stem right there after everything filled out. I could tie this bundle if you want to, I'll walk you through an easy way to do that. You can pick a totally different color ribbon type thing if you want, or you can choose something similar, but all I'm going to do is just loosely do a line like so, and then I can just, with my brush, a little bit of pressure, drag down less pressure, maybe a little more toward the bottom. That makes it look like a ribbon has some movement like that. That is it. Really cute little bouquet. 12. Day 9: Monochromatic: Welcome back. Now, we are going to explore one of my favorite things ever, which is a limited color palette and we're doing it actually with a monochromatic scheme. This'll be a little bit easier. Just to break that down, what it means is that we are going to be using the same color just with different hues of that color. [MUSIC] We are going to be doing more of a silhouette style. What I want to start out doing is putting in our main stems and leaves. This can be broad, it can be thin. I'm going to do a little bit of a mixture of both and I'm going to first put in stem, and then I'm going to do some leaves that accompany it. Just off to the side and they are going to be very loose. They're not necessarily a certain form you can do thick ones or thin ones or whatever, whatever is calling to you is perfect. [LAUGHTER] I'm choosing a peachy color as you see. It's like a brown hue. This is just a peach I have. It could be anything that you want. I'm actually going to stick to more of an orange when I start to change the shade, not necessarily orange it's more vibrant, analogous monochromatic, limited color palette is what we're after. I'm going to put another little stem in here and this is going to have more leaves. I'm going to vary the opacity. Some of it is going to be more pigmented, some of it will be a lot more transparent. My water's pretty dirty so you can see that green peaking through, but that's okay. I'm looking for a muted tones and throughout here anyway, so it's no big deal. Then I'll do another little grouping on the other side. I'm not putting a lot of thought into this structure, especially because I'm hovering my hand, which is not usually how I paint, but I'm doing it. I don't want to drag my hand through t [LAUGHTER] Now I want to add smaller versions of leaves, but I want to change the color up just slightly. I'm going to put my orange in here and I'm mixing it right on top of the cream color that I already have and I don't want that to be darker, so I might add a little bit of black. Then I can go in and start to add more embellishments. For the additional leaves, I'm going to just have little stalks coming off with some of these, but then also have some of it on its own. These are going to be a lot smaller. Almost what they look like now, but just flicks off of the main area. Some of it has a little pressure, some of it doesn't. But just something loose. Then I'm going to use that same color to create some buds off of the main spot to tie in some of that balance. These are going to be broader. Actually want to use a larger brush than what I'm using. I'm switching from a 4-6, just an FYI, you obviously can be using whatever you want. Taking that same color and I'm going to have a flower with petals that reached downward like this. Notice that and basically just playing with pressure a little bit. Not too much, and that's all I want to do there, and that's it. I can create another one that is not fully bloomed just above it. Just as like a complimentary thing. But I don't want like some big bouquet situation going on. Can I put one around here somewhere? Just a little closed bloom. Then from here, I'll switch to that smaller brush so I can do stems leading to those two also so I just want to get that main cream color I used before. Drag that up into this guy and this one. Then I can do like, I want to put in some like sprigs of berries or like a buds or whatever. But I also want to match it to the centers that I add to these flowers. I think it would be fun to do like a little more of a pop of orange. I'm just going to add it to the mixture I already have going so that I don't make it super vibrant, but it's more vibrant and as to where it's going to stand out. I'm adding a little bit of red because I want it to be a little deeper, orange, not so yellow, orange. There we go. Which because it makes it so it's more like that cream color, the pinky cream that way unless yellow. Now I can do these little dots to add this center of the flower in. I'm leaving some white space intentionally to add that depth so that you can see it's textured. Make this one a little bit bigger. Because that becomes like that really shapes the type of flower that it is. I'll do a small one over here. Now I can do these sprigs coming out this way. I can do either the stem and the bugs that way or I can do it with the same color, but. Just to keep it separate and more fun, I'm going to do the whole stem this way. Stem up and out. Then I'll have part of it coming off this way and maybe a little higher, a little bit coming off of that. Now I can just do these quick motion, quick movements to create some interests at the top. It's basically like a quick stroke, stroke down and then I fill it if it needs it. But overall, just quick motions, like I'm just creating mark-making. It doesn't really have that one's messed up, but that's okay because it's just texture that I want, I want to see that movement. I want to see that texture in here and so that's more of what I'm going for with these. After I add those in, then it's this really pretty composition. I make one come out this way. I don't want to get too crazy because I think that for something like this, like less is more for sure. I want to encourage you to really embrace that also, instead of thinking like, what does it need? What does it need? It's like, do I stop here? Do I have one more opportunity? Maybe just right here just to have a little bit unbalanced. But notice that I've put it a lot lower and that's so that it's not perfectly symmetrical. This if it was symmetrical, it would just take away some of that character. That's it. I'm going to do right here too. [LAUGHTER] That's all that I'm going to do. Then I have this really pretty piece, but had I done this in a bunch of different colors, it would look pretty, but this monochromatic, limited color palette just adds a level of sophistication and in something that's very loose and very simple otherwise which I just love, I'm such a big fan of this project in particular, I really demand that I see from you guys [LAUGHTER] because I'm really excited to see what you've done with that. All for this lesson, I can't wait for the next one. [MUSIC] 13. Day 10: Fancy Blobs: Welcome back. This is an exciting lesson well as they all are, but this one is going to be jumping into very basic shapes. It's still very playful. There's not a whole lot that we're going to add, but it's going to be just a lot of fun and the piece overall. [MUSIC] What I want you to do is select three or four colors and we're going to play with those, but it's going to be interesting because I'm challenging you to create actual blobs. When I say three colors I mean a main color for your flowers, a main color for your stem, and then a color for your supporting filler flower that you choose. Obviously you can do more. If you want to do so two different kinds of filler flowers that's fine but overall we're just making blob shapes on our page, so pick your three colors. Here's what we do. We're picking one main flower and I want to make that three times because the rule of third is just better when it comes to balance because then nothing's too symmetrical. One down, make another one. It can connect, it doesn't have to, but see how it's just a blob. I left some white space in one of them, and then the other one I'm going to have disconnected and I'm just pushing that. I don't have a plan just so you know. It's not like you have to plan something out ahead of time, I'm just going with the flow and seeing what ends up on the page. I've got three flowers, and now I'm going to add my leaves and then I'll go and add my filler flowers. You're like, "Wow, these are three blobs." Correct, but we're going to get to that soon. Don't you worry, we have to wait for that to dry first. If it's fun for you to do some wet-on-wet while it's still wet, totally do that. Black might be a fun one to add because it's unexpected. Let's see what that ends up looking like. I can add a little bit of black in here and see how that adds depth as it bleeds. Who knows? It might be bad, might be good. [LAUGHTER] I'm up for experimenting. Now I'm going to add the leaves and then I'll add filler flowers after the stems and the leaves. I can have these come up and through where they meet. I can have them be separated. You guys do this however you want to. I want to have a little bit of pressure on some of these just to keep it more organic. These leaves that are going to come off the stems and I'm just dragging these. I chose a darker color and I'm going to have that come off of the main stem area, and that just adds a little bit of depth and then a lighter color for my actual leaves. At this point you should have a pretty good grasp on creating that shape and how you want them, so obviously you can make them longer, shorter, wider, thinner. They totally create a different type of vibe depending on what you choose to do and connecting some of it because I think it looks pretty when it bleeds. I know that it's really wild and weird, but I'm into it. Yours might look a lot more elegant. I'm all about that [LAUGHTER] dirty composition. Now I want to add some other leaves that are smaller with a thinner line just to have some variety and have those poking it through the whole area. I'm not doing a bunch of form on these just because they are so small and it really isn't going to make a huge difference since they're just filler. Then after that I'm thinking about what color I want to add for my filler flower, my secondary flower if you will. I think I will go with a peachy. I was going to go with blue, but I feel like peachy would be fun. I'm just dragging these accent leaves, the smaller leaves. That's a little bit overlay. Now I'm on to my filler flower, and I'm just going to basically do blobs of this one too, just smaller. I'm just picking areas that I think would look fun to add those little pops and I'm going to do it in basically blobs as well. They're not necessarily circles, they're not ovals, but what I want to make sure of is that they're not perfectly distributed. I'm going to put some down here, maybe one right here so that they just have like a sporadic nature if you will. Then this part can be hard because you think you want to keep adding to it, but I want it as I'm adding to it [LAUGHTER]. But I want to encourage you to stop and allow this to just be a playful unfinished piece because it is so beautiful as is. I know it doesn't seem like it right appears, but give it a minute and come back to it with new eyes because it is so pretty [MUSIC]. 14. Day 11: Collection Taxonomy: Welcome back. We're about to jump into one of my absolute favorite projects, which is creating a taxonomy of wild flowers or a taxonomy of anything really is my absolute favorite. [MUSIC] What this is going to look like. They're going to be very simple stocks of wild flowers, like in a bundle on a branch, what have you and they are going to make up for the entire page as solo pieces, so it's almost like a collection, if you will. This is also an ode to those scientific illustrations that are so pretty. The first thing that I want you guys to do is, start with your stems. This is probably going to be yay, hi. I can make them smaller if I want to, but I'll for now pick 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and if my spacing is off or something I can always fill in, but for now I'm just eyeballing that and I'm going to create my first stem. You can do these individually or you can do them altogether where I do all the stems first and then add on. I like to do these individually, just because I really love the wet on wet effect. I'm just going to create some leaves here and you can feel free to follow along with me, or you can create some of your very own. But, I want to walk through it with you so that you might see some inspiration that you wouldn't have thought of that might be fun as an addition. These leaves are pointy towards the tips. I'm also going to create some that are not, and I can create just a little cluster with mark-making that we did previously. I'm going to grab some of this orangey and mix it with this yellow for this [NOISE] pretty orangey color and I'm just going to set down some marks. They don't really have to make a whole lot of sense, they are just texture. See, that's all I have to do. If I wanted to add something in the center to make it look more like a blooming flower I could, but I like it where it looks more like a bundle like that. Now I'm grabbing a different green color because I just want to mix it up a little. My water's super dirty, I don't know if you see that, but I'm okay with it because I'm going for muted tones anyway, I feel like I'm a broken record about that, but it's the vintage style, so I want to really embrace it. For this one, bringing my stem up, I'm making it about the same height, doesn't have to be, and then I want to make these leaves a little more textured. Basically, all I'm doing is coming off and having some lines be thicker and some thinner and then some white space, but definitely some texture, as you can see, and I might make that one a little longer. I love making a balance with texture, I just think that when we have simplified illustrations or paintings, it makes it almost so that it has that dimension without actually having dimension. I've got that in and then I can add my floral element to the top. I think I'll just make this one really simple and see how it's bleeding, I love that. My solid shape is in there. Maybe a petal out here and then a couple of little marks toward the top. That's it, so that you can see how darling these are going to look as they form. Now I'm going to grab a bluish color and mix it with a green. [NOISE] It'll be like nice cool tone. Notice that I've curved this one inward, I've curved this one the opposite way and then this one comes in like that. I plan this based off of, sometimes I plan it, sometimes I don't, but I do like my primary focus to come into the page. It's just an aesthetic thing to where my composition doesn't come off or doesn't lead the eye off of the page, so that's something to think about. For this one, I want to have my stems moving up and off towards the top, so that I can have like a different type of style next to it. Then I'm just creating little tiny curves with my brush. Almost like these are their own little branches, and then I'll create my petals. But I do want clean my brush a little bit, so I can have some of these be like transparent in the background. You'll notice I made this one taller, and it will just be the background that's taller, but it still adds interest, which is pretty fun. I'm going to choose an orangey red for this. I think I might have this one be where it's budding, so I'll have my main flower here, and you'll notice I just did a scoop, scoop and then a couple of marks at the top and then I can have some smaller buds and these are just little marks, little scribbles. I don't need to add stems to them because it's assumed. I feel like that's good. I want to add to it, but I'm not going do. It's the whole knowing when to [NOISE] stop thing. Now I'm going to grab an ocher color for a stem, just to switch things up, and I might add some green to it when it's still wet, just to have some variation, but this is going to be pretty simple. I'll make this one pretty straight and then create some leaves, I'll have some that are gathered toward the bottom, and then I can go in and add a green tone so that it bleeds a little bit, but not too much, just to some parts of it. It'll bleed as it wants to, but then I can add the top part, which I think I'll make like a burnt red color. For this one I'm going to create an arch, and then some petals that move inward like this. Arch and then tip of my brush create [NOISE] a couple of petals, and it just looks like it's opening up there. Then the next one, I'm going to grab green again and do an arch in the opposite direction. For these leaves I'm going to pull them in toward me, so full pressure and then pull in lightly like this, and it just makes it so that they're a little more playful because they're rounded toward the outside. Then I think I want to do more of like a stock type. I have a theme going on, I see that I have an orangey color, so I can change that up and go with something that's cooler or I can [NOISE] keep that going, I'm actually mixing that with my orange to get more of a brownish. But think about that when you're choosing your color palettes. This one I want it to be more stocky so I'm just going to create little dots that come down like this, and then get narrower toward the bottom or toward the ends. Then I could do another one of those coming up, but I like how simple it looks. That's one of the things like don't think about finishing this, think about the whole picture because that's where you're going to pay attention to your overall composition even more and where it comes to life. Then I'm going to do maybe more of a straight one that's slightly curved this way. In this line, I'm going to make my leaves a lot more transparent, and I think that I'll make them almost shaped. I'm going to set my brush down just at the very tip of it, so it creates these textured leaves. Basically, I'm going the same direction few times and then I'm switching directions, so I can form the bottom of what those are. Those little branches look like. They obviously don't have to be perfect. Then I might have them come out a little bit. See how just bringing them out just slightly totally changes the vibe of them? I think that's so fun. Then I'll go in for yellow. I don't have yellow yet. For this line, I'll create a curve with some texture at the top, and then I have that little white space in the center that looks pretty. Then I'll go into the final row, and I want to make one that has more leaf elements. I'm going to grab a green, and then I'm going to bring this up, at a curve like an S curves. It goes in and then out the other way. I'm going to bring this up higher and then put in these very small little branch, type of this, off that main spot and then create little dots. Then I'm going to put a few of those throughout, not too many, but enough to where it just carries down. Then I'll make some really quick leaves. You can see that they were just pressure and then release pressure. That's when I had a little curve on accident. I just went with it because I like making sure that it looks fluid. I'm going back to an orangey color. I can make it a little deeper of a reddish-orange. Then I'm going to put some flowers down the stock. I can do this by creating those simple petals where they are just some pressure and then release. It's not very much effort when it's these really tiny ones. Because it's just the tip of your brush, but it's essentially just curve, curve. Then I'm going to create some stems that come off of that to connect them together. I'm fine with it bleeding if they're still wet a little bit. Maybe I'll throw one more leaf behind here. I like that, that's pretty fun. Then let's do two more. This one, I'm going to do another really simple one so I can have some balance in how simple they are. Something that's small like this toward the top, and I like this color for the stem, so I'm going to use that creamy color. Maybe dirty it up a little bit. I'm going to turn my stem into the left since this one's to the right, and that way it has that balance coming down, and then I will add some leaves. I think I want to make my leaves textured but also with a color weaving into it. I'm just going do some outward lines. You see what I did was I pressed down and then I just on the edges, just moved my brush back and forth a little bit and it creates that texture. Then I can go back in with a different tone and let that bleed. I might even go in with something as bold as orange. I'm not putting this throughout. I'm only putting it to make sure that the area's wet, I'm only putting it in a few places just so it highlights, but it's barely anything and then it does what I want it to do. Then I can choose, I'm going to go with that deep red again, so I have some balance here. Maybe I'll make a deep red fuchsia. That'll be good because it'll balance these two and bring it down. I think I'm going to do a curve, and then just assumed petals, there we go. Then last one make this green again, so I have that balance. That's how I think about it. I want to balance it the whole way through. I'll make this one a little bit curved, but it'll still come inward. Then my leaves, I'm going to make these lines longer and flowier, like so. Then I do while it's still wet, want to add another color, maybe yellow just to break up the coolness a little bit, and then I'm going to use that color, the green again, but make it more transparent this time with more water. Touch it to the one next to it so that it bleeds same thing down here. I'm actually not going to do any leaves on that side. Then I can carry, and I'm going to use this color again, this brownish color, rust if you will, and then I will add just a few little blooms. You can see I'm just going pretty quick with my brush. I'm going to get that a lot more water, less paint so it gets transparent. I have some in the background and call it, good. There is my really pretty little taxonomy of adorable wildflowers. This one might be your favorite, you might be addicted to it and you might want to create so many of these, you're welcome. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC] 15. Day 12: Wreath: [MUSIC] Welcome back. We are about to dive into a fan favorite [LAUGHTER]. We love drawing and painting wreaths, so that's what we're going to do. I have a trick for doing this if you don't have anything circular. What you're going to want to do is get something that's circular to give yourself a general guide, and that can be a plate. This was just randomly [LAUGHTER] sitting right in front of me, I swear I did not plan it. It's the top of a tealight to hold your mug to keep it warm. Anyway it will allow you to see exactly where the wreath is going to be placed, but most importantly the edge of your circle is not at the edge of your paper. You want an inward because this is the line that you're going to be drawing or painting rather your flowers off of and you want there to be enough room on both sides. This one actually works perfectly. There's a few ways you can do this. You can draw a line in pencil or what I like to do is if I have dirty water I'll use dirty water, or just take a teeny tiny amount of pigment and just come like this to where I'm just grazing the general areas. I'm going to paint over this anyway, so it's no big deal if I make a little bit of a mess or have imperfect lines or anything. Then once I feel like I have a good circle guide, I'm good to start. I typically like to do this by building as I go. I don't really put a lot of thought into the structure of what's going to happen because I like it to be organic. I just think about balance as I go. I'm going to create some forward-facing flowers. I'm using the same techniques that we did where we start, and we build our petals with light pressure into full pressure throughout the whole thing so that you have those points toward the center an then I do keep my edges pretty textured like so. Then I'm going to do that in two more places because I like doing the rule of thirds when it comes to these types of flowers. I don't want them perfectly separated though, so I might do another one just on this side here. I'm making this one have more of a curve on the side so that it looks like it's facing inward rather than just being flat toward us, but then the other one I can have be open like that. I could put it probably up here. That way I have it balanced without it being perfectly spaced out. Yeah, I like that. I'm using tip of my brush, pressing down. Have some whitespace in there, I'm forming these petals. Now once that's done, I can start adding filler flowers or I can add leaves. I don't know, it's just a habit for me to start with flowers on wreaths and then go into leaves, but again you can do either that are smaller than this but still have a budding effect. So maybe on the side but instead of petals opening up, it has that blooming effect. I'm going to put one just right here. I'm going to create a C curve that's pretty small and then use the tip of my brush to create the illusion of little petals, and then I'll do another one of those right next to it where it just is looking like it's budding. You can do these without doing that little whitespace too, so I can go in. I'm going to do this one upside down and just have it basically look like that. There's just whitespace, it doesn't really have rhymer wreaths and it's just something that I put in assumed shape. I'll do another one here somewhere. See it's really just filling in a base and then just a couple of spaces for whitespace. You don't want too much detail in the small stuff. There we go. Then I'll put some more up here and I might do this on a branch, so it comes in. We'll see what this looks like with a couple of them, and then they can be smaller buds as it gets closer. Don't be afraid to come into the wreath like that because your leaves will balance on the other side, and then I can do my third filler which could be really just dots mark making things like that. I think I'm going to go with a cream color and just create little dots here and there. That could be assumed that it's berries, it could be assumed that it's like floral clusters. You don't have to assign anything because this is a loose style, but I like to put these everywhere. I'll probably come back even after I put my leaves in so I know where I want those to be placed because I like to have them throughout. They are small enough and they don't really bring out too much attention other than having texture. Now I can put my leaves in and I want to go with more of a gold green, so I'm going to mix a lighter sap color with a darker ocher and create some leaves. These leaves I just want to be playful, so instead of dragging away from myself I'm going to drag toward myself. This would be a good spot so I can pull in and lift like so. That's how I'm going to create these leaves that will go along this section here. They can connect to a stem like that but they just are a lot more playful, and I'll do that. I'll spin this around and do it to this side too so it's coming in toward the other one. Full pressure and bring it down into that point. I don't like that this one's just sitting on that obviously, so I'm going to have to put something there. I'll extend another branch and just set the color off slightly so the overlap looks more intentional, and then I'll pull this as a leaf and then pull the main part off. There we go. I might want to add a little more depth to that one so that it separates from the one beneath it. I'm just going to let it bleed rather than fill that whole spot, and then I can pull that color or pull those leaves off. If you spin around you can see where that's going lay and how that will balance your wreath before you start putting it in because you can always make little changes, like, "This is where I'm going to pull in a leaf rather than the main stem even after you paint." You can take advantage of that to make sure you are doing exactly what you want to do, but see it's just organically building. Then I can fill this spot, so you might want them to go upward or downward. I think upward would be really pretty, so I'm going to pull that this way and then have nice leaves, pull into that stem. That's really all I need to do. I don't even need to add leaves to this side. One of the biggest things is knowing when to stop, so that's something to keep in mind. I'm going to add the center of these flowers, and I'm just doing that by creating tiny little lines coming from the middle. You can do this while it's still wet if you want some of that bleed, I usually do. That's all I need to do. I use the same color as those outside. There we go. Wreaths, easy and playful and so much fun [MUSIC]. 16. Day 13: Soft Bundle: [MUSIC] Welcome back. I say it every time, this one is going to be a [inaudible] one, but it is. We are going to be focusing on one part of our page as the primary source of actions so that we have a beautiful composition that is dance in one area and then continues on into where it floats off and creates an ethereal vibe. You don't need it, but I am using some washi tape. I also like to use my shirt and I set the tape down on it so that it collects a little bit of lint. That way, [LAUGHTER] it makes it so that when I set this down to create a divider, when I pull it back up, it's not going to be as sticky and it helps us so that the tape doesn't stick to the paper as much, which is nice. Just don't use anything that is too linty. I'm using something too linty right now, but [LAUGHTER] you're going to get the idea, it's fine. I just make a border and make sure that line is straight. You can use the edge of your paper as a guide unless you rip your paint or your tape [LAUGHTER] like this. But I can see that that's straight. Once I have that, you can take all four corners if you think you're going to run into the another one. You don't even have to take the corners. I just think it's nice to have a clean border from where it's coming from. Just think it looks pretty. I'm going to start laying in just three primary flowers. One of them is going to be the focus, the showstopper. I want this to be a yellow, brownish color for me, you can use any color. I'm going to put those petals in. Actually, I'm going to do, yeah, I like that shape. Just really close to the main part and then maybe a pedal like this. You can see, it's going to open up. I'll do that two more times just next to it. It's okay if it bleeds into it. It's part of that loose look. I'm just pulling this [LAUGHTER] down because I have a piece of lint and I don't want it to get in the way. I'll do another one right here. Kind of more transparent. Opening up. Now I can add my leaves and I love doing this when I still have wet paint so that it has a pretty bleed. Then I can pull my stem. I'm going to come from right here and then come all the way through and lay in a leaf. I can do that again. I'm using a really thin tip of my brush thin strokes to create the stem, and then creating nice full leaves with the full pressure on my brush. Probably not full pressure because this is a 10-bit closer to full pressure. Then I'm going to continue up doing that here. Then I'm going to start to make them a little bit shorter and put a little more cool tone into the green to separate that a little bit. As I start to add more of these, I'm going to be thinking about the placement of secondary flowers. I like to do a secondary flower and then filler flowers. My secondary flower curve, and then a little bit of mark making for those buds. I want to create sporadic area for them. I don't want them to be too concentrated. I'm not going to put any here because I don't want it to be too symmetric, or too symmetrical. Now I can put filler flowers in, and those are essentially even smaller mark making flowers. They're going to be balls. They could be little lines, they could be like those textured ones. But I'm going to bring them pretty far out because I think it's fine when they look like they're little sprigs. I can always add stems in a little bit. Just some mark-making. These actually could be like a form of grasses. They wouldn't even necessarily have to be a flower that is filler. But now I can go in and add stems there. This excites me because I knew that was still wet and then I could drag it into this which is still wet. I'm just using the tip of my brush. I can finish off any leaves that I need to or I can keep it as is because as we all know, it's easy to do too much and you don't want to do too much. I recommend letting this dry fully before you pull it off, just because your paper won't work as much but I'm going to pull this off just so I can show you. You want to make sure that when you pull tape, you don't pull up, you hold it and then pull it so where it's basically flat and you want to do it slow. That's going to prevent paper from lifting. But you can then see that I have this really pretty edge. I just think, I mean, you don't have to have it obviously, but it's just a little added oomph [LAUGHTER] for some fun. Then you have this really pretty wildflower tufte. I don't even know. [LAUGHTER] Something really pretty. [MUSIC] 17. Day 14: Surprise Challenge Inside!: Welcome back. We are going to play with floating clusters. Not in official term, but still quite fun. What I mean by this is we're just going to paint a very simple element and some leaves to go with it and it's going to float there, and it's essentially going to build up what could look like a pattern only with different elements. Quick jump in. I'm just painting a couple of leaves. Then I'm going to add a stem. Then some quick marks for the top. That could be a really simple element. I'm going to move down and continue to do that. [BACKGROUND] Then I can make that a different type of flower just by adding a couple more petals. Moving down from that, I can have leaves that are longer. Then maybe a cluster. Then I can do textured leaves. Defined petal flower. I can take that same type of flower and turn it upside down with the petals going downward. More pigment at the top. Leaves. They're more spiky so you can see I'm moving pretty fast. The reason why is because this prompt is timed. I'm going to continue to paint, and you can paint along with me but timer is set two minutes. Trust me that there is a method, there's a reason for this. Ready, go. [MUSIC] Stop. Here is why you just did that exercise. Some of these that you created might look terrible. But what it did was it challenged you with quickly grabbing color quickly putting shape down, quickly working, and then you look at your sheet and there might be something you've never created before which can inspire you, which leads me to your project in the next lesson, so I'll meet you there. 18. Your Project!: [MUSIC] Hey, are you guys ready for your project? I want you to select any element. It could be more than one, but definitely choose one from the previous prompt, which was to quickly put as much down on paper as you could within two minutes. Pick one element and I want you to elaborate on it. I want you to repaint it as easily as you can. Obviously, it won't be the exact same replication, but I want you to study it and see so this one would be it for me. I really like how it bled up through here. I like that the shapes are not formed, but I can still really see what it is. I liked that there was some dryness in the brush that I used. I like that the stem is more imperfect and I like the tones that I used together. That's what I would use to create something with and this could be anything you want. If you want to incorporate it into a meadow, if you want to make it your main object and you want to make something large, this is totally up to you, but that is your main project for this class after doing all of that work, which I want you to also share. I want you to share all of your prompts if they're in a spread, if they're in a sketchbook, some pictures, and upload them to the projects. Then indicate what your final piece is based off of your rough quick go challenge because when we allow ourselves to open our creativity like this, it is what really brings so much opportunity to unlocking new doors and windows inside of our creative minds. Thank you so very much. I hope that this was a fun challenge for you and I will see you so soon.