Watercolor: Autumn florals with a wedge brush

1. Intro: Hi, I'm Jen of DJ Sweeney designs. Welcome to my home and welcome to my studio. Painting these autumn florals on this craft paper. Really probably something I love to paint them most they just pop right off the page. Let me take you behind the scenes and show you what you're going to learn in class. I show you all the supplies that you will need. There's really not that many, but do make sure you have some white gouache on hand. And our color palette is limited to just a few beautiful fall time colors. Of course, I have some handouts for you as well. The Stonehenge paper is my favorite and that's what we'll be using in class. We'll start off by learning my basic flowers with that smile stroke. And then we up our game and learn some larger flowers with new brushstrokes and new techniques. And I do show you how to correct those mistakes that we sometimes making or paintings make this large floral composition from start to finish all videos or in real time, so you can see everything that I'm doing. We also make this really cute mini composition. And at the end of class, I will give you some ideas for your class project. Okay, so grab your supplies and I hope to see you in class. 2. Class supplies: Alright, for class, grab your brushes. I'm going to be using the best D fountain wedge brush, the size ten and the 16. If you have a Princeton petals brush or a Ruby sat and triangle brush, those are totally fine to just grab the larger size. And I have my Daniel Smith paint here. For the most part, we're gonna be dipping into the Quinn burnt orange, Indian red, yellow ocher, this Permanent Alizarin crimson. Maybe this guy here. What is the name of this? Go with ICT. Maybe brown ocher will go with brown ocher. That's easier. White gouache, whatever brand you have totally fine. Payne's gray or in this I've got James Grey. I'm not sure how much will be really using that. So don't feel like you need to run out and buy that. Two of my favorite greens straight out of the tube, Holbein green, gray, and then Winsor and Newton perylene green. Your palate. Some tissues or paper towels or Tp a rag. The paper I usually use arches but Canson, I'm going to just use that a little bit today is we're practicing. But the main star of the show is this Legion Stonehenge craft paper. I just love this paper now it's not watercolor paper. So we have to adjust our pigment and our water to this. But obviously you'll see that throughout class. But I just love using this craft paper. I have bought some other craft paper at Hobby Lobby. It's fine too. If you have that, again, it's just gonna be a matter of adjusting your pigment to water ratio. I have my water jars off to the side if you can print your handouts. Great. If not, we're obviously going to go through this step-by-step in class, but I do recommend at some point, print those handouts. I think you'll really enjoy those. Scrap paper if I didn't say that already. And whatever else you need to paint. So, alright, I'll see you over in the next lesson. 3. Set up: A little bit about how I do my setup before I actually start painting. Even before that, let me do a quick review on this brush. This is the one I just love, I use all the time. Notice this yellow stripe here. If you've taken my classes before, you know exactly what that's all about. So this is the wedge portion of the brush. You can see this nice long tip here. You turn it this way in here is that wedge portion, alright? When you see this stripe like that, I tend to call that belly up position. Meaning if I'm painting and you see this stripe and I don't say my brushes belly up, you'll know that the wedge portion is facing up towards my face, up towards the camera. Typically, I'm painting like this and I don't always say belly down, okay, this is just the normal, natural way to hold this brush, almost like a pencil. But there's plenty of times that when I'm painting, I'm flipping this guy back and forth all around and I don't always say what position I'm in. And that gets a little confusing sometimes. So anyway, this stripe when you see it facing towards the camera, the brushes in the belly up position if you don't see it. And I'm just painting like this. Obviously its belly down. This is the most natural position to hold your brush. This is an unnatural position, but you can still get some really beautiful strokes this way. Okay, So that's the size 16, there's the ten. Let's do this 1 first here. So I typically work straight out of tubes, put them in my palette, but I grabbed this palette. It's a whole lot easier to use this. When I'm loading just the tip of my brush. We're going to do double loading all throughout this class. So what I mean by that is I'm loading the brush first with pigment. And then I'm just using this tip to drag through the edge of the paint here. I'll show you that in a moment. But it's really sometimes a lot easier to use it this way as opposed to getting all your paint out into the palette. And then you've got that big chunk of paint off to the side and your dip in the tip in there. Sometimes I just want super concentrated pigment and I just go straight in into the pans here. So I take my spray bottle, give him a good spray. You can see the white that I've used and how much I've dipped and drag my brush through this Quinn, burnt orange here. Really a great color. I love this. I've switched it out, but it also comes with this color chart as well too. And it tells you, which is really helpful, the pigment color family that tells you on if you can see that, sorry. The light fast rating, if it's granulating are not transparent or not so super helpful to have. Alright, let's put that off for the side for a second. Prep this with some green. That's the green gray by Holbein. Here's our perylene green, really dark rich color. I'll put a little bit of Payne's gray and I'm gonna put you over here. And our white gouache, I'm putting that in the middle. Xian want you to see how I'm really loading my brush. All right. And then I've got my water jars off to the side. But what I typically do is just I had a little bit. We're not going to use these greens right away. Alright, let's start. Oh, this to a fun little tip I heard in class one time. Just to use a sponge. This is just a soap dish got off Amazon for like $2. When I'm rinsing my brush. Sometimes a lot of times I'll tap it onto my towel or I'll tap it on to this wet sponge here, which is really helpful too. That's off to the side. But I want you to be able to see, especially as I'm tapping my brush, because this brush holds so much, a lot of times I have to tap this wedge portion just a little bit onto my towel and then dip it into the second concentrated pigment. Alright, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. Here is the legion craft paper. I've got a couple pieces of scrap paper I usually tucked underneath my towel. Let's move this nice new sheet out of the way. I want to talk you through quickly some of the basic strokes. 4. Basic florals: When I talk about the basic flower, I'm talking about a three petal flower with a smile stroke. Okay, what the heck does that mean? Well, let's talk about that. First. You saw me put some water into my white gouache and I am just rolling my brush. That looks pretty liquidy, so I'm going to pull in a little bit more pigment here. This is where you really have to give yourself time to play around and figure out which consistency you like if you want a brighter white or a light or white. Alright, but we're just practicing right now. The way I'm going to load my brush, I am just gently rolling this around, getting my bristles all loaded. So that is just sopping wet right now I can even see that there's a lot that came off my brush and drag it off the edge, Tap it a little bit on my rag. And then I go straight in here, dipping that tip into the concentrated quinacridone, burnt orange. Now I'm not always great about testing it. Sometimes I go right into my, into my piece that I'm trying to do, That's probably not the best advice. You do want to see what your brush looks like, how it feels in your hand with all this pigment and water on it. Okay. So you can see right now the tip is pointed down towards my belly. That yellow stripe is down towards the paper, so his belly down. Okay. I'm holding the brush way back here, not down on the feral. I want a little bit more movement, looseness. So the farther back you hold it, the more loose it's gonna be. Very basic flower. I'm going to land my brush, keep it there, and just wiggle it around. Okay, There's the first petal. Now I know just by how my brush feels that I have enough white and enough orange in my brush. I'm gonna come over on this side, land my brush, wiggle it around. I can already see I'm losing some orange. They're not a big deal. You can always go back in, get a little bit more. Okay? You can tell my point is always right here. That's where I'm heading with my brush. Land the brush. It's fixed onto the paper, gently wiggling it around. Now I still feel like I've plenty of water and pigment in my brush might be different with like an Arches watercolor paper by now, I probably would have run out of that, had to dip in my water or fill it back up with the bleed proof sorry, the white gouache or the bleed proof white and dipping it into the pigment. But I feel like there's enough in there. How I do that smile stroke. Tip of my brush is pointing out towards nine o'clock. My hand is resting on the table. Sometimes sometimes I leave it off the table to depends on where your comfort level is. Basically, I'm using this side of the brush onto the paper. I'm pushing it into the page. Okay, so I just land my brush. Usually start where this petal is, maybe in the middle, maybe a little off about, I don't know, a force of the way in from the outside doesn't have to be particular. And I just land my brush and sweep it. Okay. So right here you can see, you'll get to notice these wedge brush strokes. There's my tip right there. This part right here is the wedge portion. And I've pushed it in and basically come right off the page that you can leave it alone, walk away, say, Yeah, I got a great flour, it's awesome. And move on. You can get a little creative and a little daring. I just dipped my tip back into the orange and do another stroke. Gives it a little bit more dimension. Obviously that stroke is smaller. This is where you want to be careful and not overdo it. But I tend to just go in sometimes and do a few more whimsical light strokes. Okay, Let's do that again. Rinse my brush completely. Get back in my white, my white gouache. Rolling my brush, can drag it off the edge here. Tap it on here. Let's try some Alizarin crimson. Can you see that dividend there? You can see how much I've just really use that by just dragging that tip. Right along the edge. You can see the pigment on my brush hopefully. Okay. Did you see I choked backup on my brush going to land my end. This is just muscle memory for me. If you want to start with this petal fine or this one, I tend to start with the middle pedal. Land my brush, keeping it fixed on the page and move it around. Now right here you can see I had a little bit too much of watery white on my brush. Not a big deal, but that I'm just pointing that out to you. Okay. I may have needed to dab my brush a little bit more. Not a big deal. We're not gonna get so particular about this right now. Okay? My point is coming back towards the center. Land my brush. Brush stays on the page. And I'm basically wiggling, going up and down a little bit. As I make these petals, I can dip back into my red. Do a quick smile stroke. I do like how that's bleeding right there, a little bubble right there. Let's pop you. And then we can do another stroke. Okay, should have left that little bubble alone. Not a big deal. Alright, let's do another one. Rolling my brush, dragging it off the edge. Let's do this. Let me show you if I just rolled my brush, lifted it, did not dab it, get into my Alizarin crimson. And then try this again. Look how much that just bleeds way back. That red on my tip just flooded the back of my brush. Okay. That's not a bad look. If you're going for that look totally fine. My brushes definitely saturated enough to get all these strokes. Okay. I could probably do, I just dipped into the red again and again because this is not watercolor paper, home-free with getting a lot of strokes down. Okay? Not bad. Again, if that's the look you're going for, just be aware. If you really saturate your brush and you don't dab it off, you're going to have all kinds of explosion here. Okay? Again, really knocked out at all, kinda like that. Okay, let's just do it on the white paper just for comparison here. Still getting in my white. And as you add water to this, don't forget to pull some more pigment out. Flopping around loading the brush. I'm not really sticking it into this palette. I mean, I'm just real light with this. Drag it off the edge, Tap it a little bit. Let's head into this Indian red. Just drag and right across. Other than what I've sprayed in this palette, there's no more water in there. Sometimes I start here to move it around. Sometimes it meaning here five o'clock or maybe six o'clock. Okay. That's just how I normally do it. Whatever position of comfort for you is going to work, do that. Land the brush, wiggle it around. Always pointing back to the center. Couple light whimsical strokes might be hard to see, but there's obviously the white behind there. Something you could do for fun is outlined just a little bit. So you can see the definition there. Okay? If not, you don't want to do that. You can always get back in and do a little bit of a center while your tip still has some pigment on it. But these really soft edges on the back, I think are so beautiful. Let's do that again on this white paper. Dragging, tapping, dipping. That's the name of the game here. Let's get into this brown ocher. I don't use it too much, but it's it's a nice fall color. Let's see what we get. Probably really hard to see this on the white paper. Alright, comparing it to this, where they just pop right off the page. Dragging, tapping, dipping. Didn't think I dipped enough in here. Sometimes you need to add more water or dip a little bit further. I'm going to go right over this petal. Kinda matches the craft paper. Really pretty and soft. Okay, So if you can just take a look at this for a minute and think about if you were doing a big composition, you had these nice soft autumn florals. And then he had bam, this big one here that's really bright pink because your brush was too wet then it's like a little bit too much drawing the eye into this one where you want to keep it nice and soft. Okay? Alright, so that is the basic floral. Let's go ahead and move on to some of the larger florals. 5. Large single florals - Part 1: Alright, for the larger florals, we're going to start off doing pretty much the same thing, but I'm gonna get a lot looser with my brush. And in your handout you'll see where I talk about bouncing your brush. Let's move this out of the way for just a moment. So I've got my size 16. Going to load my brush exactly the same way. Need a little more water in here. Back-and-forth, flopping it in the white gouache and pull it out a little bit more pigment there. Okay. Dragging it off the edge. Tap on my sponge this time to see how that works. Alright, let's get into, Let's do this Indian red, dragging it through concentrated pigment, starting the same way. Now remember, this is where I kept my brush fixed to the paper. Okay. I did not take it off the paper as I was wiggling it around. Now we're gonna get a little crazy and wiggle that brush and bounce it. Okay, same position. Land my brush. I am just kinda jumping and bouncing off the page. You can already see the difference here, okay? Because that red is already moving back a little bit into my brush. Literally coming off the page. Just kind of bouncing. Okay, this is where you get these really fun, cool looking strokes. I'll even do that. Let me dip into this. Again here. This Indian red. Like that's a lot. And then I'll do the same with the smile stroke where I might just kinda wiggle it in there. Okay? Now that looks like a lot and sometimes it is so I can dab off my brush. And you have a little bit of wiggle room with this paper. So I'm just pretty much using what is on my brush and the paper and gently moving it around. The caution is, and I'm preaching to the choir on this. This is where it can get really too much and you start, oh wait, I want to add a little bit here, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And then before you know it, that pretty flower is all. One blob. Doesn't look terrible. You want to keep your florals open and airy. The fix for something like this. Getting back in that Indian red. It's really not even dry all the way yet. But if I have this area down here a little bit darker, I'm just using the tip of this brush, feathering it out a little bit more. I can give this flower some dimension and save the flower, basically. Okay? So even though you might have a blob there, there are some ways to make it work. And that's getting back in and darkening it up in one spot down here. Because the way this flower, what I'm, I have no idea what the name of this flower is, but it looks like a flower. Okay, So you've got all these little petals here. You've got some in the front and knees. It's really hard to tell, but like if I would do that smile stroke again, you can see some flowers or petals that are basically laying on top of each other. Or they've not fully opened yet like they have in the back here. I might totally be making that up, but that's what my eye sees. Okay. You can totally leave it like that. Or what I'll do sometimes for these larger, larger florals. Once this is dry, Let's see, I'll get back in. This is that Indian red? Just the Indian red. And I might force the eye to think, Oh, there's the center of the flower. Maybe even couple of little lines where I'm forcing the viewer to look there first and then to the petals on the outside. Now this one I really do like I would walk away and say stop overworking it. So that one, I can live with that one. But I have had plenty of blobs before. Okay. Let's try this again. The bouncing. Take some time. So I just rinse my brush off in the water, tapped it on the towel. I do that sometimes because I'm not always the best rents are and then it might be full of green or orange or pink or whatever. I have a safe guard there. Flopping my brush around, dragging it off the edge, tap a little bit out on my sponge or my towel. Let's try. Let's do some of this yellow ocher. See the white, you can see the yellow, okay, if you start to hold your brush like this, that pigment is gonna go down. So you want to work a little bit fast too, okay? So I'm going to choke backup on my brush. A little bit more. Light, loose bouncing strokes. I'm slowing down a little bit so you can see. Okay, I didn't get quite enough that yellow ocher need a little bit more there. A little bit more. Sometimes what I'll do once these three are done, I'm gonna go down this way and do it again, these three strokes. Sometimes I do that just to play and see what kind of flower I'll come up with. Sometimes I'm surprised and it looks great. Other times I'm like, Oh absolutely not. That's not terrible. I could live with that if it was in a big competition for totally live with that, and I would just leave it alone at that point. Like this one had a center there. This one I feel like is more closed up that it's not quite open enough to see the center. Okay, Let's practice another one. I will assume that you're going to have all kinds of practice pages full of blobs that you're trying to correct? I know I did. Like I said, sometimes it works. Other times it's like, okay, no one in the world is going to see this going in the trash. But that's what practice is all about. And it's really learning to manipulate this brush and hold it at an angle it in a way that's comfortable for you and loading it correctly. So there's a whole lot going on here. All right, let's try. Let's do this Alizarin crimson. Now, I'm dipping the tip like maybe about, well, this looks like it's about the whole tip here. That again, you'll need to play around with depending on how bright you want that center. All right, we're going to bounce and move again. Now this was pretty full because you can see that pink, that red going right back into the white. And I'm fine with that. Whatever. Look, you're going for. Now here, I'm going kind of fast, but I'm doing a couple of quick smile strokes, very whimsical. Sometimes I leave this center open. Sometimes I start to fill it up, but that's where you want to be careful because you can really overdo that. So I'm going to walk away when take my own advice and just walk away. I'm going to do one like that again, I know that was pretty fast. Rinse my brush and do that again. These are really just a lot of fun to make because you're just bouncing and color and trying to fill it in. And it's like, wow, really pretty cool. And they get big. I love these two. But then these have some really fun shapes and character to the petals. We haven't even added the greenery yet. 6. Large single florals - Part 2: Alright, the white, I'm fully loaded there. Let's do. Let's try. Let's get back into this burnt orange. Alright, point down at my belly. Land. Bounce. Okay. This is just muscle memory for me, this shape right here. I tend to do that all the time. That's good. And then that's not good because I'm stuck in something like this. Okay. So sometimes I'll play around and I think, well what happens if I do the same? Down here on the bottom, where you've got like a flower going up this way, the petals going up here, then you've got some lower down here. Like Wow, maybe I like that. Maybe I don't. Let's just quickly add some smiles, strokes, try to correct it. Then there's too much going on here. There's too much of this, these bottom petals. I might dip back in that orange and try to cover up that space. But leaving this the dark part where I want the eye to really go first. As opposed to leaving this open. I'm closing up that center. Feel like that's not too bad. I couldn't live with that. This is where I think. How much more do I wanna do? Because right here you can see the differentiation between these back petals and these front petals here. I'm rinsing my brush. And just like this one here, I can get just in the burnt orange and force the eye to look at this as if it's the center of the flower. That's pretty, I like that. Okay, so that was the burnt orange. You can also take the tip and go into maybe an Indian red combined some of these colors. Okay. It might be hard to see that, but to have some contrast is always good. Same with this one here. You could get back in your concentrated white and ever so slightly, and maybe couple of white dots in the center. Okay. Could do the same thing here. If you wanted to add this for your center, that would be super pretty too. Could also take a white pen. But sometimes it's just easier since I have the brush in my hand already. However much or little you wanted to do. Add a couple little dots down here. You could add the dots on the top randomly. Pretty fund at different centers. Still feel like this is not balanced well, but the paint is still wet. So let's do a few more here. Alright, let's try the white. Just for fun. Flopping my brush. Tapping the wedge part. Let's get into, Let's just do the Indian red. Okay? 0 is about five o'clock. Can see how far back I'm holding. We could even hold it back farther, way back here on the handle. Land. Bounce. That looks a little bit of starburst. Going to reload this, making this up as I go here. So hang with me. Okay, I feel like I want to close that up a little bit more. Couple smiles, strokes. Just gives a nice soft edge. I think this will look pretty and a big composition. Back in this Indian red. I haven't gone back and my wife just getting back in the tip here. The tip in that Indian red. Kind of a funky looking flower. But see, I'm trying to make it better and it's growing by the moment, which isn't terrible, but I feel like we're getting to the point. It's being overworked. But this is my safe spot to go back into this area and try to darken it up a little bit. Okay, Now picture that in a big competition with other florals. Or let's just play around, Let's get into our green gray. And then maybe we wanted to just add some whimsical leaves here. Okay, something like that. I still feel like this part is too big here. So if that would dry, no, it's not totally dry now, but once it is dry, might get back in that Indian red. Define some of these lower leaves, not leaves. I keep saying that lower petals that haven't quite opened up yet. So I tend to go back and forth with the pigment and I'm like, no, I don't like that. Let's see if we add some more white. Give that a little bit more dimension. Could do all kinds of things. Maybe get into this perylene green. I want to darken up this base a little bit, even if I love this bleeding here. So don't be afraid to play with. Okay. Let's do just a few more and then we're going to work on some compositions and add that greenery. 7. Large single florals & buds - Part 3: I think you're getting the hang of it, loading your brush, dabbing it, dipping it in to the concentrated pigment, just dragging that tip across the pan. Choking back on your brush, landing, bouncing and skipping. Smile strokes. And see I'm just being a whimsical there. Okay. What did we get in? I was there, yes. Back in that maybe darker down here. I don't know if you noticed. I automatically went down to the feral. I want a little bit more tighter control down here with some of these smile strokes. Rinsing my brush. Now I would let that dry. And then I would definitely do a center like this, perhaps, probably with the alizarin crimson, maybe some black. Okay, but just for fun, let's just add some greenery. For this. Right now I'm just using the tip, leaning that brush into the page. Very soft, very whimsical, just adding some contrast right now, okay. One other thing before we do some composition work, let me show you how I do some floral buds. I'm going to put my 16 down, grab my ten. Again. I do the floor buds two ways and you'll see that in your handout as well. Flopping my brush into the white. Sounding like an old record by now, tapping it, tipping into the concentrated pigment is the Indian red. So two ways I do that. I don't want to turn it over yet. So I can do just like one pedal stroke. That can be a button. Okay. The other way, if I'm holding might see where my thumb is supporting the finger on the feral. My hand is on the table. Point is about seven o'clock. I'm going to just push that into the page. Almost do like a C stroke. Okay. And then I just take the tip and fill in what I think needs to be filled in for button. Okay, super simple. You can pretty much make these whichever way you want, because once you add some greenery, little thick, that's going to look like a bud. I think. Hopefully you do too. Now here, I didn't say it but its belly up. Okay. So I'm using this maybe the first fourth of the tip of the brush upside down. And I'm just pushing that into the page. However much greenery you want to add around there. Sometimes I hate to cover up this spot here because it's got that nice color right there. But sometimes then it looks like it's just kinda sitting in that little green bud area. So it might try to get a little more green up in there. Now this is a perylene green. I like wavy little stems and greenery too. I just, I love that look. I'm just using this brush like a pencil almost. There's a yellow stripe. It's a little long for a bud, but just to show some contrast there. So do go up a little bit further. So you can really delineate that that is being held and it's not just plopped right into the greenery. So if you really look at a bud closely, the greenery does go way up, but I tend to just be a little more, a little more safe because I liked the look of that of that flower, the button. A little more like it's being held in cradled. Okay. So then a tip I give a lot to as if you're like, oh, that's just too dark. I went way too much too fast. You know, you want that contrast. So I would dip into my white. Maybe just lighten it up a little bit. You can go back and forth and play with it until you're happy, but try not to obsess about it. Preaching to the choir again. All right, so let's, let's play with this one for a minute and let's put a center in there so I can get back in to the alizarin crimson dragon. My tip across that pan. Don't want to put my hand right in there, but let's see. Same way. Start down here. My hand is fixed on the table to give me a little bit more control. It's not super wet right now, so I'm rinsing my brush. Going back in there. Little better. I'd rather go to light at first as opposed to some big blobs. Sometimes they go a really long with these. Other times pretty delicate. Just depends on the mood. Can maybe add a few little dots in there. Again, signifying the center. Make it a little bit more concentrated down there. Okay. Something like that. Alright, I think we're ready to move on to the next lesson. 8. Bouquet - Part 1: Alright, let's work on some composition now that we've learned some of the basic florals, that bouncy florals. Let's put this together. I do want to apologize to for that last video that was so blurry on some of the parts there. The camera was picking up on my tip here and I know better than that when I was filming. So my bad, I'm going to try something different. Hopefully, fingers crossed, it's going to work this time. Alright, let's start with the 16. I'm gonna get a little more water in here. We're going to make a big floral to start with using the burnt, what is that? The burnt orange, quinacridone. Burnt orange. Alright. And I need a practice page just to see how often I use that. Alright, dipping the tip in there. Let's start it over here. Choking back on the brush. See I got my practice page and I didn't even practice. Alright, Get back in here. Alright, we're going to start the big floral over in this area here. Sorry, this is about a not quite a ten by ten, maybe 9.59. I kinda down just mainly so you can see better. Okay. Whatever size you want to do is totally fine. Alright, choking back on the brush. We're going to bounce a little bit here. I'm gonna get back in that orange. See it coming off the tip a little bit faster than I wanted to. Okay, Another way to do a bigger floral. Remember how I went in inside of it? We can also go on the backside outer side of it. Okay. I can just play around with the stroke. Sometimes. I can see the flower growing right before my eyes. I want to actually close this up a little bit more. Want this dark down here. And I'm keeping my brush a little more fixed onto the page this time. Alright, walk away, walk away. Okay, I'm going to let that go for now. Now, I lied, I see this little spot right here. Okay, now I'm going to walk away. Alright, so rinsing my brush. Alright, Next, let's brighten that up a little bit. I'm going to get any Alizarin crimson. Let's have one. Let's see, we'll put one right here. Trying to use these bouncing strokes a little bit more often. Back in the crimson. Okay, let's leave that one alone now I have plenty in my brush, so I once worked on a couple of buds. I just dipped it back into the Alizarin crimson. And let's get a bud right here. Okay, there's a C stroke. We can add a little bit around the sides. Okay, I don't want to do too much. Okay. Let's do just do another smaller one right next to it. We need to let that dry. We're going to have greenery and some other things in our fall floral bouquet. So we're just building this as we go. Alright, next up, let's try. Let's do some yellow ocher. Let's see what we can get. Better tests. This one. The yellow ocher, can be a little unpredictable sometimes. That's not too bad. All right, I'm rinsing my brush again. Pulling some more pigment in as you need it, drag it, tap it, and let's get that yellow ocher. Go down here, angle him a little bit different. Now, I'm gonna go up here. I'll leave him a little more open. Get back in that yellow ocher pretty quickly. I'm just filling this one up. I made these smile strokes a little too big. Not a problem now. 9. Bouquet - Part 2: Alright, I'm gonna get back in that yellow ocher. Actually were being brave today. I said this guy is a little unpredictable, but these fall colors are super pretty. So we've got one facing this way, here's this way, that way, just a fun, fun bouquet. Be a little more cautious on this one. Okay, works for me. Let's rinse our brush. Let's get back in. Let's try some Indian red this time. That is such a pretty color, very, very rich color. So be careful with that one. I don't want it too close to this pink one here, so I'm gonna put it up here. Okay, Let's do, I've still got plenty of white on my brush. Let's get back in there and the tip. And then let's see, let's do a bud right here. What we'll do a bud this way. One here, two little sloppy on that one. So I just kinda got in there and stopped it up with my brush. I dabbed it on my towel and then soak some backup. I forget sometimes this is not watercolor paper. Alright, I'm gonna do a little bit more of the burnt orange look and fall time. I feel like that was a lot too bad there. Going for a little bit different look on this one, trying to get some petals down here. Using that smile stroke. Darkening it up a little bit. Tell you what, let's just go all in on this one here. Again, you have some time to fix some things if you want while it's still wet. Just try a little bit more white to light. Really want to get some white back here because my goal is to do some of these dots like this one. We could still do it, but I'm gonna get a little bit wider. Concentrated white on my brush. Dab it. Get in the burnt orange. Let's just see who that could work. Hoping some of that soaks in. Now, wipe that out of there. Trying to work a little fast because this is wet here of course. Tone this down a little bit. Alright, At the risk of like totally making a big blob there, I'm going to walk away from that one. I think it was salvaged. Hopefully. Maybe this one I wish would be a little bit darker, but that's okay. We've got brighter. In some areas you don't want everything to be the same. Let's see here. We're almost ready for some greenery. So we got 12345678910. So we're even tend to work in odd numbers sometimes I'm just trying to look where we might feel something in. You've almost got an S curve this way. We've got space here and here. We don't want to fill it all the way. Okay. How about we go for one more right here? I think this one's pretty bright. So I'm actually going to go back in for this color here. The quinacridone, burnt orange. I could change out my brushes too. I've just used the size 16. I get lazy with that sometimes and just stick with the same brush. We could go down to a six or an eight to do them smaller. But you can see by using one brush, the variety that we can get. Alright, tapping it. Orange. Keep that one little. Okay. All right, we need to let this dry all the way and then we'll get some centers in there and some, some greenery. But looking good so far. 10. Bouquet - Part 3: Alright, Is this was drawing, I looked at it. Any thought, you know, I'm a little worried about this space here. That's gonna be a lot of greenery, like this guy is pretty big, so I need a fair amount here. But then we've got this one here. So I think I want to add another floral here, and then even maybe a bud up here. And then we'll do greenery, I think. All right, Let's just give it a shot. So I will get into the alizarin crimson for this flower down here. Remember he wants some large, medium, small, different size florals. And your composition could soften this while it's still wet. Just a little more smiles strokes with the white. Essentially lifting that off there. Now as it dries, I could do another little white swipe of a stroke there. I do like this one a lot. Okay. Let me do a little button up here to the burnt orange. I'm just going to leave that as is for now. Before I forget, let's see. We can get back in there. It looks pretty dry. Okay. Easy enough. We'll just leave that right. Walk away, walk away. Okay, let's get some greenery in here. So I've got the green, Greg perylene green. I've got Payne's gray here, or Jane's gray in the palette. We're just going to see how this goes. Now you want to start lighter? I tend to do that with the green gray. And that helps me as I go lighter and I'm just throwing down the green. It helps me see it come alive sometimes. I honestly don't always have a composition in mind that gets me in a ton of trouble. Sometimes I do sketch it out, sometimes other times I'm like putting it down and the greenery and go on with it. You kinda need to paint intuitively sometimes and just learn to see things as you go. Not an expert at that, but I'm learning. Alright, so the way I like to start these, I tend to do here. When I'm looking at this flower. It's going up this way. So I tend to look here and here is where my center is. And I tend to just go ahead and put in a v. That's just helping my brain see certain things like, I don't want to put the v here, that's totally off where it needs to be. So I start at the center and come straight down. Now, I may eventually just cover up that area, but as I go, That's what I need to see. I don't do it on everything sometimes what I'll do here on some of these big flowers is just go ahead and land. A couple strokes. Could do the same with this one. Down here. Greenery, you can get out of hand width two. So you want to be careful. Just because this guy is a big one here, I do want to get some of these in right away. Then be careful where you put your hand. All right. Once that's in, then I can kinda see where I need to fill in floral or leaves. I'm sorry. What I do sometimes too, is just do a little bit of a scribble right underneath there. We're going for whimsical look here. Does not need to be perfect. Of course you want your composition to breathe too. I'm not looking for this to be a bunch of flowers with stems coming down. It's just basically a composition with greenery around it. So I'm just filling in random spots right now, trying to look at it as I go and we still need to do some centers. There's a million and one ways to make leaves with this brush. And now I'm not doing a ton of explanation of the leaves. I've done that in some other classes. But what is the easiest? Get another paper here of just practice. When I'm doing random oldest use these flowers for an example. And see where the yellow stripe is. Where my point is. A lot of times I just lean into the brush and come off and then get back in there for a second stroke. Even just little taps of the brush. You're indicating greenery. What I like on some of these here is just where the wedge portion is, kinda snuggle it right up to the end or the bottom there and just squeeze it in there. Now, it doesn't even look like these are connected sometimes. And that is totally fine. Again, we're giving the impression of greenery around a bunch of beautiful florals. 11. Bouquet - Part 4: Just one little stroke like that can be a leaf or second stroke. And then I tend to do just some whimsical marks around the leaves, sometimes to around the larger leaves there. I don't know if I want to put one there yet. So again, this is all the green gray. I haven't even done any contrast with a perylene green or even the blue. Let's go ahead. Let's just do some of that blue. It gives a nice dusky color. So this one is the Payne's gray. Way too dark. That would totally overpower this. And I just want a hint and I could have started with this. But sometimes what I'll do is I'll actually do this color when I'm done with the green gray. So that's the Payne's gray and then out of here, the genes gray. Let me show you what that looks like. A ton on my brush. So not a whole lot of difference there. Okay. So let's see. It's almost like you don't even see it. But all of a sudden your eye goes, oh wait a minute, what is that light color there? And it's really pretty trying to watch my hand and then getting in that tight spot there. I'm going to just pull some of this James Grey out for some reason. I feel like I like that one a little bit better. I had some on my brush. I didn't want that much. I just dumped my brush into the water to take some of that pigment off. Okay. Let's see. Don't want to close up everything. We're getting pretty full here. See where else could we go with that little bit of blue? To feel like you don't like something. Get in there with some tissue, dab it out a little bit. It's not too bad there. Let's extend that one a little bit. This is looking a little too uniform down here for me, but we'll get some perylene green and add some contrast there. Again, this is super concentrated, super-rich color. So you definitely want to test this. Too dark. You do want some dark. Always have to have some dark. Sometimes I go back over the same leaves I've done. Other times, I'll do brand new ones, which is preferred. Now this, I want to get a little darkness under here. That darkness is going to counteract with that white. They're highlight that a bit. Still trying to watch where I'm putting my hand. Just let some of the stems show here. 12. Bouquet - Part 5: Maybe if we do a leaf because see a lot of these are pointing down this way. I'm feeling like I'm being pulled that way. So let's just try. That should work a little bit. Not super happy with that, but that's alright. I'm happy with a lot of the other, other stuff here. You can just build up one side of your leaf for some contrast. Alright, let's stop with that, let this dry and then we'll get back in and add some of these centers here. We want to build up these, you know what, Let's do that now. Sorry. Let's go ahead and do that because some of these are just not quite as dark as I want. I want to give it a little movement to, so I'm just using my brush and really just wiggling it. Just the very tip. Some squiggly lines. May or may not add some white to this than some of these are a little bit darker. I tried to over correct it and then they get too dark and then I go back and forth, back and forth. But alright, well, let's walk away for a moment, let this dry, and then we'll add the centers. Alright, let's go ahead. We'll get into this one here. Kinda just get some burnt orange on my tab now, switch to attend. Don't really have to, but whatever you feel you have better control over or control West. So I'm going to add just a few little dots, same color. Just to pull that IN. I do like how this flower ended up. So sometimes overworking it or when you feel like you're overworking it, there's a little bit of a benefit. Other times, hot mass. So take your chances. I say just trying to feather this out a little bit here. Alright, let's leave that looking, looking, looking. Let's go ahead and do that. Same one here with the lines dipping into my Alizarin crimson, just the tip. That's pretty blobby. Let's try that again. Alright, let's give it a shot. It feels pretty dry on my brush, but that's okay. I'm just going for a subtle look here. Then flipping it over. And again, it's just kinda dry, but I'm just tapping some of that into the base there. Okay, leave that one alone. We could actually do that same one down here. Let's see what's left on my brush a little bit more. You don't have to do a center on every flower. Totally your call. Sometimes these petals, a lot of times these petals just look really pretty by themselves. Okay? Another way that I will highlight these petals is by just doing a little bit of lines instead of the center. Do it down the pedals. Let's try that with the yellow ocher. You can grab a detail brush if you wanted. For this too. I don't have that right by me. But I'm just going to load the tip with the yellow ocher and we're just going to give it a shot. You want it a little drier. So I'm really trying to work it here because it's dry on my brush. I'm trying to avoid some glossiness. That a word labialis, just something like that. Leave it as is. You could add even a little more character or brushes still dry, but just a couple of dots on some of these petals. Okay, well, let's leave that one go. Let's get into this one here. That's still, you know what, that's the yellow ocher. Let's go ahead and use this brown ocher for a little bit of contrast here. That's super concentrated. Let's see what we got with that. Yeah, pretty thick. Get some of that off my brush. 13. Bouquet - Part 6: You could do yellow ocher and the brown ocher. You could even do some Indian red. Be careful with that one though again, it's super, super rich. Couple of dots down at the base here. Let's leave that one go. I think what I wanna do is just add a couple of dots in here, not any of the lines, but I am going to use that brown ocher again. Just tiny little details. Really gives the viewer something fun to look at. Okay, let's let that go. I'm feeling like I want to add a little bit of white dots on some of these. My eyes just bounce all over the place and sometimes that's good. Other times it's not. I need to be patient. Sometimes do one thing at a time. If you do too much white here, easy fix, just wait for it to dry and get back in with the same color. Let's be brave and see what a few white strokes might do. It's okay if I ruin this one because it's just practice. All right, Let's do that down here. Just a few. Alright, let's do some up here. I think I might just leave that one as is this one I'm going to leave as is. Alright, in the Indian red brushes feeling a little dry. I'm just trying to avoid the lobby, the glossiness. I'd rather go slow. Get the look. I want having to do it several times as opposed to just a big glob going on the paper. It's pretty subtle. Let's add a couple little dots in there. Alright, let's try to lighten up some of these areas by the buds. A little bit of white. A lot of it's going to soak right into your pigment. And sometimes unless I was doing this right in front of you, you might not even notice that I was trying to clean it up a little bit. But just since these are so little, I don't want a big dark spot right underneath them. So it looks like he's just kinda sit in there. So I'll pull that up a little bit. Again. Don't wanna get overly obsessive about these, okay? Because those honestly are not really what the eye is. Can first, you're going to see this one and then dance across the page a little bit, hopefully. Okay. Alright, last few touches on this and then we'll move on. I am going to add a few little white dots to this one up here. Ever so lightly. And then I think I want to add a little bit more greenery here. This is just such a big floral. I'll go light, but right underneath here. Just want to fill that in just a bit. I really can't even see that. But I think to what I wanna do. Now, you know what I think I'm going to leave it alone. Leave alone. I keep telling you to walk away and don't obsess over the little details. So I'm gonna do that. I'm going to walk away looking at this things I would possibly change in the future. This floral I really like, but maybe angle it this way. You always want movement in your compositions. Again with these leaves down here, not the worst in the world, but maybe change the direction up a little bit more. I love the colors. Love this craft paper. Love how we've got some different sizes. They are going in different angles and we've got an odd number of the buds there. Let's see, 12345678910111213 altogether. And then your array of greenery. I think we're good. I think we're good with this. Hopefully, you've enjoyed this. We're going to move on to one more project. And then it's all up to you to do your class project and get that into the project gallery. If you have any questions, I meant to say this in the very beginning. Always e-mail me, DM me, I love to hear from you and I love to help you problem-solve too. Alright, I'll see you in the next lesson. 14. Mini composition - Part 1: Alright, we've been painting big. Now we're gonna go small. We're going to use the same florals. But I thought it would be fun to do a composition like this. I love to do these try pieces, whatever we call them, three equal pieces. These are roughly 3.5 by four inches. Did those on purpose because I have a frame that I was going to put those in to show you. But whatever size you want to do, three equal pieces, that's the goal right now. If you wanted to keep it one big piece and then cut it into thirds when you're done. Totally fine to do that too. Okay, So what I'm gonna do here, I need to get some more white gouache in here, running out of that. And then we're going to quickly do these florals. I want you to work on some speed with these two sometimes as I do these, I overthink them. But we want to get past that and paint intuitively, have fun. Okay. Probably need to re-wet my paint to know that's off-camera right now. Alright, I've got my size ten, flopping it in my white gouache as usual, dragging it off the edge, tapping it on my sponge or the towel. And let's just get in some Alizarin crimson here. Not even going to test it. We're just gonna go for it. I could tape this down, but I'm just going to hold them. Okay. In and out. That's it. Move on to the next one. I've got this white paper under here too, so the paint doesn't get on the mat that I'm working on, but you don't have to do that. Get a little more water in this white gouache, thin it out a bit. Flopping my brush. I'm sorry, you can't see that. Dragging it, tapping it. Let's stick with the alizarin crimson for a bit here. Bouncing and tapping. Quick, carefree smile strokes. Okay, now this being smaller, we don't have a ton of room to work really big. And that's okay, that's kinda the point. Just want to get these florals down, we'll do a little bit more of the alizarin crimson. See or just go in random places here. It's gonna be a fun little composition when we're done. And I think I still have some in my brush. And then do a couple of little buds. Get back in the alizarin crimson. I'm going to go right back in there. Right on the side. Wasn't quite dark enough. And then taking my tip does kinda drawing in little bit more detail. We'll leave it alone. Let's go for the burnt orange. I'm going to leave it just like that. Turn my paper. We're going to rinse my brush a little bit dry. You could work on these one-by-one, but I'm just trying to do some of these edges first. I feel like I make it more difficult for myself sometimes. Alright, still in the orange. Let's come down here. We could possibly try. Let's close this up a little bit more here. You know what, I'm going to leave that like that. I don't want to overwhelm that side. Let's do a couple of buds right down here. Okay. Back in the white. Let's go for some Indian red. Just testing that one because that one is the one that's pretty concentrated. Let's go right up here. A little bigger one here. Rinsing the brush. We'll stick with the Indian red. And try not to overthink these. Jumping and skipping, bouncing. All of the above. Try to stick one here. Feel like there's a fair amount on my brush. Let's see what happens. Kinda fizzled out on me. That's alright. Since that's fairly dry there, I'm gonna get back in the white, back in the Indian red and get right back in there. It's kind of a cool looking one. You need to flip your paper. Let's stick with let's get into this brown ocher. That one I'm just going to leave just as it is. I feel like I have enough white in my brush, but I'm going to dip back in, drag my brush across that brown ocher. Well, let that one go. Oh, there's another little bubble. That's all right. Not a big deal. How about I kinda wanna get back into this burnt orange again, Let's do that. Remember, we got to add our greenery. We're getting there, Let's rinse and do some more of that burnt orange up on this panel here. Let's see what happens if we go over this, but I wanted to brighten it up a little bit. We'll do that, that'll work. Let's try. We'll get back in the alizarin crimson. Couple of little buds. I think when it got a little bit here. Stick with the crimson on that one. Bigger one on that side. All right, we're about ready to add some greenery, just looking to see if we want. I think I want to extend this one a little bit. See how this goes. Number orange. Alright, now, I think we'd better start adding some greenery. 15. Mini composition - Part 2: Alright, let's do the green gray. These, I think I'm gonna do one at a time. I'm not really crossing over the middle just yet. I have some leaves coming off the side down the top. I don't want to cover this too much. So I'm kind of going on the outside first. Squeeze a little one right in here. I'm just going around looking for some open space, but mindful that I don't want to cover everything. Knowing that I'm gonna get back in there with some dark green too. Sometimes these little buds can be super playful and you don't really need to do a whole lot with them. Just like this. Some random leaves in your pattern, totally fine too. All right, Let's see what we got here. Cute like in this one. All right, let's just do a couple of random or random leaves here. Alright, now we need to let these dry. Actually look really pretty dry. Let's get some perylene green. I need some contrast. Now these are awfully little. So we wanted to just start cautious. Definitely not a bold painter. But the florals are the key, the greenery. It's really just your accent. But remember just underneath some of the, the bottom portion where you want to just really highlight that area. Couple little squiggles. All you need. Luckily, this paper does soak it in. So don't feel like, Oh my gosh, big mistake. Probably not. Yeah, I can see on the side it looks like it's already soaking in a little bit, but there's contrast there. Again, it's pretty little. Don't need too much. Just making little marks over the leaves that are already there. All right, let's work on a few centers here. 16. Mini composition - Part 3: Let's get back in the alizarin crimson. Some of that off my brush. All right. These are pretty subtle. I'm just that's what I want. Let's do a couple little dots. Let that one go. Let's see, Let's do this right here. Looking for some other places for the alizarin crimson. I love doing the ones where it's split. Think that's pretty cool. Well that's way too much. Good thing I tested. Now it's too dry. Trying to find a happy medium here. Next one up, Let's do the burnt orange, a couple of those. And then let's do this one up here. I'm gonna leave these alone. I think. Don't need to get in there and mess with all of it. Okay, I do wanna get a little bit more white on this smile stroke down here. Let's see. That was the brown ocher, wasn't it? Alright, just going to leave that alone. Indian Ren. It's pretty dry on my brush. Now I can get some dots down here. My brush wet again in that Indian red. Let's try some more. That's pretty subtle, but that's okay. I'm going to leave it leave it alone. I really need to do is get some more water here. That's really gloppy. Try to make it a little easier on myself. I can't really see the lines on this one. That's okay. Really don't want to destroy the integrity of some of these petals. Okay, well, let's try to brighten this up with a little bit of white, few little dots there, same with this one too. Then we're about ready to call it. I think. Give a little hint of a center here. Trying to get some of the white off because I wanted to do a few white strokes. We're getting there. We're getting there. Now I feel like I lost the burnt orange dots on this one. So let's just get a little bit more in there. Pretty cute. I'm liking this. Alright, few more white, white strokes down here. Alright. Should we call it? I think we should call it. Alright, let's let this dry and then I'll show you how we're going to finish this project off. Alright, here's the fun part. Last thing I did was I cut. This is just Canson and then another piece of craft paper. I have some tape. Do it a whole lot better than that, but I would just mount these together. Forgive me, I can't really see Exactly. Okay. Then this little frame to be better if it had glass over it. But just to give you an idea for a project and some super fun, cool things to do with these florals and craft paper. How cute is that? I mean, lovely. I think that is so cool. Hanging in a bathroom and bedroom, a little girl's room, something like that. Very fun, very fun hangout in the next lesson because I want to show you a few more things that I've done with these florals and craft paper and give you some ideas and inspiration for your project. 17. Class Project & Inspiration ideas: All right. My friends, I can't say thank you enough, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here and choosing to come to class and learn these florals. I hope you had a blast and I hope you'll just take what you've learned and make all kinds of really cool stuff. Definitely tag me on Instagram. If you do any of these florals, if you're not on Instagram, totally fine. Send me an e-mail. I would love to see what you create. So whatever you wanna do for your class project of the bouquet that we did in class. The triple project here, I don't know what we call that triple, triple something or other. I did another one like that. It was a bigger a bigger one which I really like this one too. I just feel like that should be wallpaper. I feel like I really like that. Okay, three equal sizes there. Then of course we have our envelopes, lots of fun to do on envelopes. Walnut ink. This one here. We get all worried and flustered when we have little blobs in that. I actually I had one blob and I was like, Oh, are you kidding me? But I kinda made some extra blobs because I'm like, okay, that's kinda cute. That's kinda fun. Vintage looking, old-fashioned looking. I like it. Okay. So a couple of florals on craft paper envelopes. Depending on which envelope you get, some are easier than others to work with. They're all, in my opinion, pretty much the same. I didn't have a whole lot of trouble with the paint water ratio with these. But a lot of fun to do that. Little gift tags could make a ton of those that would be so much fun. Gift tags, name tags, things like that. Different standalone pieces with a border with some whatever kind of quote, anything like that that you want. But there's so much you can do with Kraft paper in these florals. I just think the color is amazing and outstanding and so much fun. I hope you enjoyed this class too. So please, like I said, let me know how I can make these classes better for you. I do want to serve you in this way. I just, I really enjoy it and I just have so much fun doing this. So have a great day, happy painting and I hope to see you in future classes. 18. Bloopers :): Hi, I'm Jen. Was that orals? Staring at the camera? Hi, I'm Jen. Just take my class C. I'm going to paint this and it's just awesome and fun. And strokes. Know what? Painting these craft floral. Hi, I'm Jen. Why so loud? Lord, have mercy.