Watercolor Basics: How to Paint Floral Greenery

1. Introduction: Hey, everyone. I'm Caitlin Schaeffer from Embolden IV Studios. Today I'll be sharing with you my brand new class, how to paint floral greenery. We're going to cover all the basics. So this class is perfect for beginners, but we also go over some skills that are great for intermediate painters as well. We will cover what supplies you need, how to use your paint brush to get the perfect strokes. We're going to cover how to paint specific types of leaves and we'll end the class with two really fun projects. Let's get started. 2. Supplies: An In Depth Discussion, part 1: Let's get started. We're going to talk about the materials that you're going to need for this class, as well as just watercolor painting in general. First, let's just talk about the water. Pretty easy. I like to use a mason jar, but any sort of container will do. I prefer to use the wide mouth mason jars. I just feel like they look pretty well while they're on my desk and they're easy to tell when I need to clean my water because it's see-through. Let me show you really quickly how I load my brush with water. When I taught a watercolor course about a year ago, one of the things that my students who were totally new to watercolor painting did frequently, was they would dip their brush in water just barely, and then they would paint. They would really struggle because there wasn't enough water in their brush. If you're totally new to watercolor painting, I'm going to show you. You really want to get in there, you want there to be bubbles. You can tap it on the sides of the jar, whatever container you're using. This is how you should be loading your brush with water. You don't have to do it quite that vigorously, but this isn't going to cut it. There's a little tip for you. Then along with the water, you're going to want a paper towel absorbent or some absorbent cloth. I just use a paper towel roll. I particularly like using the Viva brand because they're more absorbent, but any brand will do. I think this is Bounty. I just like to place it underneath my water container so that when I'm painting, I can just wipe it right here and go straight back into the water when I'm changing colors, things like that. That's water and the paper towel. Let's talk about brushes. Probably one of the most important things we can talk about today. When we watercolor paints, I almost exclusively use round brushes. This is an example of a round brush in a variety of sizes. We start from size zero, which is very fine. I use this mostly for detailed painting or very fine stems. This is a size six, so you can see it gets larger as the numbers get larger. Here's a two, zero and two, six and a 10. This one is an eight, so that would go right there and a 16. You can even get up to an 18. They even have larger than this. This is about the biggest that I need in my type of painting. Now, a lot of times when you buy these brushes, they come with a little tube of plastic covering them. This, I usually throw them away. I honestly don't use them very often but if you're worried about your brush shape changing or getting smushed, you can keep the tube and just carefully, once it's dry or just a little bit damp, you can insert it back in and it'll help retain its shape better. This is a new brush for me, so I still have the tube. Honestly, a lot of times I just throw them away, but you're welcome to use them to keep the shape if you want. Now, these brushes are Princeton brushes, the Heritage line, this is their Elite line. I prefer these brushes over anything that I've used so far. For the first several years of painting, I would just go to my local craft store and buy what they had available. This line, the Simply Simmons I could find at my local Hobby Lobby and it did totally fine, it got the job done. Then I also had some of these Winsor Newton, the Cotman line that would come with some of my paint purchases that I've made. They will do great, I would say if you can afford to splurge a little bit on a brush, I really do like the Princeton brushes. They run anywhere from, I think the smaller ones were around $5 to $9 a piece, all the way up to maybe 15 for the larger sizes. It just depends on where you're shopping. But if you do some hunting, you can get them for more reasonable prices. Whereas these ones, you know, the Hobby Lobby brands, they would be more like in the $2 range for a brush. That's a little bit about our brushes that we're going to be using today. All right, now that we have covered our brushes, water, and towels, I want to talk about probably the most important thing today, which is the type of paper that we're going to be using. There are several different types of watercolor paper, but pretty much to that I go between. I go between the hot pressed and the cold pressed and the difference between the two is just how they are processed, how they're finished. The hot pressed is very, very smooth. There's no real green. There's not a lot of texture. The water doesn't absorb as well with the hot pressed its because there's not a lot of texture they can sit on the top of the paper. Now, there are certain types of work that I do that this is really great for. Today, we will not be using hot pressed paper. If you want to go ahead and use hot pressed paper, that's fine. You just want to watch how much water you have on your brush. Cold pressed paper on the other hand, is more texture. There's a little bit of a ripple, a little bit of a grain, kind of bumpy, smooth texture. I started using arches because I knew it was a really reputable brand in the watercolor community and I still love arches. It's a great brand. It's a little bit higher end. So if you're new to painting, you might not be ready to splurge on paper that's maybe $20 a pad and that's totally fine. There are brands at craft stores that are just fine to learn on whatever you can find. I recommend getting something with a heavy weight, a 140 pound, or higher. A lot of the craft store brands are around 90, so if you can find something closer to this, that just means how thick it is, how heavy of a paper it is. The thicker the better because it will warp less. This particular pad that I bought is loose sheets, so they come loose like this. They're not bound on the edges. You would just tear off of your pad and because it's loose, if you were to just go ahead and start painting right now, just like this, you would probably find that as you added more water, the paper ripples a little bit. You get something that might ripple. For example, I was not very smart when I did this demo piece. I was a little bit lazy and what I should have done is use painter's tape. You can get artist's tape or even just painter's tape is fine, the blue stuff, and you would just tape it to a board or your table directly. Now, the downside is if you tape it directly to your table, you can't maneuver at while your paintings. I would recommend getting a solid piece of thin plywood or mason board or even like a foam core poster board would work. Really anything you have laying around that's bigger than your paper enough to put a tape around the edge and that will help you not get this ripple effect. That's what happens when you use sheets. Now, what I will be using today while we paint is what is called a lock. That means that there is kind of a gum around all four edges of the paper that keeps it glued together at all times. It's kind of like having your own built-in board with the tape already done. It will keep everything locked in place while you paint. For example, I would just leave this as it is, paint, whatever it is that I wanted to paint. When I'm done and let it dry a little bit, how do I get it off? Well, this particular brand has a nice little user palette knife inserted here for so I'm not going to do it right now, so I don't want to take my paper off. If you were about to, and I'll demonstrate this when we actually paint today is, I just use a sharp knife, you can use an X-ACTO knife. It would probably be a little safer to have around your studio or you can use an actual palette knife and you would just find where your paper starts. I think, that's it right there. Sometimes it's easier once it's been wet to find it. You would just insert it like this and start sliding your knife or your X-ACTO knife all the way around and it will come off easily. That is my preferred method of painting because I don't have to go through the hassle of taping it down and it keeps it nice and flat while I am painting. This size, this is another brand that I really like, the Winsor Newton cold press. As you can see, it's also a really heavy thick paper and this size is a new size for me. It's seven by ten and the reason I got this as opposed to the larger pad, is because a lot of my artwork I digitize and my scanner, flatbed scanner is not this large and so a lot of times I have to cut down my paper anyways. This is a little easier for me when I go to scan my artwork, I don't have to do any trimming. If you are painting for the sake of painting alone, maybe framing or selling your original prints or just for fun, any size paper will do. This is another block, I actually prefer this brand because I like that there's no color on the gum. If you have the arches brand block or this brand, it's black and it will kind of leave a little bit of a color on the edge of your paper and I don't love that. The other thing that I really like about this Fabriano brand is that it's extra white, which means it's a very bright white paper, which I prefer. This Arches brand is an off-white. I'm not sure if you can really pick it up on the camera right now, but it's just slightly a beige color and I prefer for what I do an extra white. This is probably my favorite paper to use. It runs about $22 a pad if you get it at a really good deal on sale, so it's pricey. Again what I do, a lot of my work is I paint and then digitize, so for me it's worth it to have a really good quality paper, that's extra white. It makes the digitizing process a little bit easier for me. If you are doing this for fun or it's a hang artwork up in your home or to give as a gift, it really doesn't matter what color you're using, it's just personal preference. That's a little bit about our papers we're going to be using today. 3. Supplies: An In Depth Discussion, part 2: All right, so our last and most important topic, probably besides the paper is our paints. We can't watercolor without our paints. So I want to go from the most basic type of paint all the way up to the kind I'll be using today, which is a little bit of a higher quality paint. When I first started painting, and some of my favorite pieces were done with a $6 palate that's usually used for children's arts and crafts from my local craft store. This thing, I think I even got like 40 percent off. So it was a couple of dollars and it has 36. It has tons of colors, and I would just mix my colors in these little wells right here, and so my point is with this, no, I don't really use these anymore unless I'm doing something fun with my son or if I'm teaching an in-person class because they're so affordable, you can still get really great results with these. My first skill share class, I taught how to paint watercolor wreaths. This is what I pretty much use for the whole class, and as an example, this is a print that I did when I first started painting and guess what? I used this palette to get this painting, so don't necessarily feel like you need to run out and spend $100 on fancy paints because you can really get good effect, get good results with cheap paints if you are careful. So if you're a beginner and you don't have a huge budget, this is just fine. You will do just fine with this. I would say the next step up, this is a Winsor & Newton palette that I bought on Amazon. I think it's maybe around 40 bucks, and it's similar to this concept. It's a palette that you can buy. You don't have to mix your colors, and it is a great, I feel medium paint. There is a line, which is intended for student painters or intermediate painters, and it's a great option if you are getting started and want something a little bit nicer. It has these little trays that pull out and I love these. There's even a third level. This is a great option if you are just getting started in, you're not super confident with mixing your own paints, but want something a little bit nicer than the $6 tray for Michaels. You can actually buy additional sets, these pop out when they run out like this, green is getting a little bit low when it runs out, I can just pop out the tray and put in a new one. So this is a great option and something that I still use frequently. Next thing I want to talk about briefly is you can also, if you want to support local sellers on online marketplaces like Etsy, or if you find someone on Instagram using hashtags searches, you can find local artists who make their own paints by hand, mixing the powders and all of the fun things that you need to make paint and so I like to use these because I like to support small businesses, but I also have been able to get some really nice colors that I don't already have in my library of paints. So this is just an example of some that I bought in the past, and I can link up to the sellers who did these. I really love them, they're really rich pigments and a great option for supporting small businesses. The next line I'm going to talk about is tubes of paint. So instead of it being already in a tray, look see, they pop out just like that. Here you go. Instead of having them already in the tray, you can buy tubes of paint. Now, I would say this, I have a little container that all of these draws fit into. So this is just the easiest way for me to show you. These tubes, I would say, are more of a middle ground paint, they're not professional, more of the student line, but they're still really great. I love them and I think they get the job done just fine, and there's a lot of colors and they're less expensive. So for example, these tubes of paint have 21 milliliters in them and they cost $7 a pop. Seems a little bit steep, but keep in mind that watercolor paints go a long way. I will probably use these paint tubes for years. What you do, is you can purchase an empty pallet like this, and you would just open the tube and squeeze it into this little well and let it dry before you use it. The reason you want to let it dry first is if you use your paint while it's wet and start painting with it right away, you can totally do that, that's fine there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is you will go through the paint a lot faster. You'll just pull too much into your brush and it'll all end up in your water jar. If you let it dry first and then wet it, you'll get a better amount of pigment in your brush. So I recommend if you want to be mixing your own paints or using tubes of paint as opposed to the trays that are already made, I recommend letting them dry first and look, I'm getting a little among hands right now. So these are the middle grade, middle of the road paints, and this is again, a Windsor and Newton Kaufman line, and they are awesome. They're just great. I would say there are more and more like $4 - $7 range, and these this particular line is from Hobby Lobby and they are great. So last step, I will share with you is what I use when I paint is this line of Winsor Newton professional watercolor. They are an investment. They can be up to you to generally depending on where you purchase them, they can range from $5 a tube to $15 a tube. It just depends on the color, and this is only five milliliters. So, a $10 tube, five milliliters versus 21 milliliters for $7. You can see there is a value change. These are so super pigmented, they're such strong, beautiful colors that for, because this is what I do for a living, it's worth it to me and they last a very long time if you let them dry before you use them. So just a little explanation on the types of paints you can use. This as what I will be using in our class today. But any of the options that I've gone over will work just fine. 4. Mixing Greens: The first thing we're going to do is we're going to talk about mixing greens. Because a lot of times when you use a green that's straight out of the tube or straight out of the pan, they can look a little bit fake. It depends on the look that you're going for. It might work out just perfectly for you, but generally I find that I like my greens better when I mix in other colors. Let me give you an example. Let's use this green right here. Let me show you. It's a nice green but if I was painting some leaves depending on what project I'm working on, that doesn't look very realistic. What I'm going to do to show you what I mean is I will take some, I'll load my brush up with water and then come over to my paint, load it up and I will start coming over here this corner and just add some more water. Okay, so that's the same color. Now, one of the easiest ways to get in more natural-looking green without doing a lot of work is to add a bit of red. Just a little bit not too much. Let's add a little bit of red. Red and green are complimentary colors which means they are across from each other on the color wheel. That will help mute the intensity of this color just a little bit. Now this'll be a little bit of a darker. Earthier tones. Let's see how it looks compared to the original. It's a subtle change, but it's darker and richer and more muted. Let's see what happens when we add even more. There we go. That's definitely on the earthier side. You can compare the two. That's so different. Now let's go ahead and take this green. This is a permanent sap green, Winsor & Newton professional watercolors. This is my favorite green. Probably my most commonly used one. With the work that I do. Get a lot of paint over in this corner, and I am going to add in a little bit of this turquoise blue. Looks so nice. Added in a little bit, just a bit of red. I'm going to work backwards this time, I'll show you. Here we go. A little bit more. This is what we've got, let me show you the original. Like I said before, depending on what you're painting, this isn't a terrible color to start with, but just by adding a little bit of the turquoise and a little bit of red, you get such a difference in the color. Lets go ahead and try taking this sap green. Come over here, put some water. Let's try adding some yellow ocher. Maybe a little bit of this cadmium orange. See how that looks. Again, this is starting with the same base right here, adding in some yellow ocher and a little bit of orange. See what we get? Very different, a lot lighter, a little bit more looks like the tip of a leaf. If you go out in nature and you look at your bushes, this is maybe something that's on the tip as something's dying or more something that is definitely more natural than say this color right here. I like how this one's almost grayish, that's really cool how that turned out. Let's go ahead and try this one more time. We'll use this green right here. This is an olive green. Show you olive straight out of the tree. Some brown undertones to this olive. Let's take some of this olive over here and mix in our original one that we did. See how it looks with a little bit of this green mixed in. Totally different. I think this might be my favorite green that we've mixed up so far. That looks gorgeous. But I mean, can you believe the difference in these colors right here, just by adding a different green and a little bit of the red, it's drastically different. This is just a fun little exercise I want you to do. You can just use a small piece of paper and just start mixing your greens. See what happens when you mix your green with purple or yellow, and see what different colors you can come up with. I'm going to go ahead and start with this blue-green right here. Will be the last one I experiment with you. This is very blue-looking but it's actually out of the tube, it's called blue-green. Just adding some water and I'm going to add some yellow and add a little bit of this opera rose right here. See what we come up with. Ooh, that's very natural. Again, I love that. That's what we mix, working backwards a little bit and let me show you what we started with. We started with this. Adding a little bit of yellow in opera rose, which is a pinkish red. A really strong, vibrant color, I love opera rose. But look how drastically different that is. I want you to go ahead, practice, play around with your colors and see what you can come up with. Now that I have played around with my green mixing, I'm so happy with the results. I just think it's so relaxing and fun to do. I think my personal favorite choices from this is probably this deep hunter green. Maybe this one looks really realistic to me and probably this one, which I think is just the sap green if I remember correctly. I want to show you now because I painted on a block, how I get my paper off. Now some blocks have a little opening in the center, this particular brand has it in the corner. If you can see the corner is already lifted up and it's worked just a little bit because I painted over here and it's not glued down. I'm just going to insert my knife. You can use your palette knife or an exact a knife, and just slide down the end, I'm on the corner. Same thing. Just be very careful, watch where your fingers are, you don't slice your hand. Down right here and it pops right off. It's a little bit curved because it's going to do that a little bit. But a lot better than if I hadn't had it taped or on a block at all, you would have lots of waves in the center of the paper as opposed to just some minor curling on the edges. If that bugs you and you want to display it or sells in original, you can always flatten it by laying some books or putting it in to a book page and having it laid flat for a day or two, and that should help. There you go. That's how we practice mixing our colors and get our paper off of our block. 5. Exercise: Straight Lines: Now that we have practiced mixing our greens, I want to move on to some drills. Now, I feel like drills are a really good way to practice brushstrokes, especially learning to get different effects with the same brush just by changing the pressure. I have a little rectangle template. It's not necessary that you do this step, but I like being able to follow a template, and so you can just cut a piece of cardboard or just use a ruler to draw a little square or rectangle. This is where we're going to be doing our drills. Let me just lightly use my pencil. You can use a regular pencil or a drawing pencil. Either is fine because this is just a practice exercise. Let me go ahead and draw a couple of these boxes. This will help you gain confidence. It'll help you learn which your favorite brush size is. I tend to like to do these exercises because you can zone out a little bit and just relax as you practice brushstrokes. Last one. I have my little rectangles all sketched out. Now, I'm going to take my smallest brush size, which for me is around brush size zero. I'm going to go ahead and get it nice and wet and my paints have all dried since I've mixed them. Let me just add some water, that's all you need to do. It's a great thing about having a palette like this, as you never have to wash your palette, you just add water and the paint that has dried is good to go again. You'll find that a lot of watercolor artists do not wash their palates out very often. I did recently because I just I wanted a palette with some more wells and so I just redid mine. I'm going to go ahead and use my smallest brush, load it up with whichever green you want to use. I think I'm going to use this all of the green, like this one. I'm going to start in this box and it's okay if you need to turn your page a little bit to get a better angle. The point of this exercise is to get used to the amount of pressure you want to put on your brush. I want this box, the first box that you do, to be just fine thin lines with your smallest brush. If you only have one brush, that's fine. Just practice what you can. I want you to just go ahead and lightly draw as thin of a line as you can just using the tip. It's okay if you need to stop and add some water to your brush. Now, I like to do this more up and down. That can help you guide your hand to get an even thinner line. Just go ahead and practice nice thin lines. You want to use the tip of her brush, putting barely any pressure on it. You can change up your colors, and go slow or as fast as you want. If anyone does calligraphy or hand lettering, this is the same concept as doing drills with your pen. More you practice, the better you get at controlling your brush. See that I did not have enough water on it, so I'm going to go back. You see, you get this little dry brush. Look. If you don't have enough water loaded in, which is hard to do with such a small brush because there's really not a lot of bristles to soak up the water. That is a common problem with these tiny little brushes. Now that I have about half of the box full, I'm going to go up to my next size, which for me is a 2. You can just go up to whatever the next sizes that you have. Let's see, I'll use some of this green right over here. Same thing, just a bigger brush so that you can see the size change. Now, because I only went from a zero to a two, it's not drastic. But you can tell that it is a little bit thicker. I'll also be able to tell you it definitely holds more water than the size zero, which is nice. You don't have to go back quite as much. Now I'm going to go back and do the one from the top, see if I can get an even thinner line. Here we go. Barely putting any pressure. Look how fine that is. Let's just using the tip, and draw, pulling my whole arm back. Tip, whole arm pulling back. Now I'll switch colors. Go back to doing it with a little bit of a thicker. Change the color just a little bit just for fun. There you have it. We have our first box complete. In the next box, since we've already practiced with our two smallest brushes, I'm going to go ahead and use my next size up, which is a six. Now, I know you might not have all the same sizes that I do and that's fine. The point is you just want to practice with each brush size that you own. If you don't have a six, but you have a 10, go ahead and practice with that. Whatever works for you is totally fine. You do not have to have every brush size known to man. I'm going to take my six, go ahead and get this nice all of green. Same thing, I'm going to start with just doing nice, pull down. This one holds a lot more water and you can see that at the end when I lift up, the excess water pools, and so I like to just drag it to spread it out a little bit. You can leave it at the end. That's fine too. I like that when I'm painting greenery because a lot of times the tip of a leaf will have extra pigmentation where it's falling off or dying. Let's do one more. Perfect. I love that. Now I'm going to practice doing just barely tippy top of my brush. Just point. Will ever so lightly, I might get my hands squished up really close. Then, I pull my whole arm back, I brace it against the paper and just pull back all at once. I get a nice steady line. What's so awesome about this method is that I'm using a size six and I'm getting the same thickness of a line as when I paint with a zero. Even if you don't have a zero, you can get this thin of a line if you're very careful, just use the tip of your brush. Let's practice that again. Perfect. Then I'm going to go ahead and do my next size brush, which for me is an eight. Go ahead and get that. Let's change colors. I've just [inaudible] drag a little bit. This is great practice for when we do stems later. One more, and then I'm going to go ahead and do the fine line. As you can see, it's a little bit thicker, but I can still get a nice fine line even with a size eight. Let me go ahead and go up to my size 10. I would say that for the majority of my painting, I am usually using something in 6-8-10 range. Just for my personal work. I will use the number 2 brush quite frequently when I'm adding in details. Now because I haven't been using this brush. It's really dry so I'm just getting it nice and saturated. Let's see how thick we get with a 10. Nice fat stems.Then, nice big thick. Let's get a yellow, a green this time. Just to see how fine we can keep our line with a 10. I don't get a paper cut. There you go. As you can see, I'm a little less steady because I'm on the edge of my paper but, you can get a nice fine line even with big brushes. That's what's so awesome about round brushes. 6. Exercise: Pressure: Now that we have practiced doing straight lines, we are going to go ahead and practice putting different amounts of pressure with our brush on the same line. Let me show you what I mean, I'm going to start doing my little trick where I go down really fine, really thin, just the very, very tip of my brush, then I'm going to add pressure as I go down. I'm going to push the belly of my brush down and then come back up so I make a little oval shape that makes sense. I needed a little bit more water on my brush; there it got a little dry so let's try it again. We're going to go down with a thin line, place pressure, and come back up. You might need to load your brush up again, depending on what size you're using. Keep going down and then back up and down again. What you want, you want to be getting about two of these oval shapes per line. Let's try that one more time so we've got our nice thin line. Pressure up, down, pressure up, down so just go ahead and practice that a few more times. This is a very important skill in terms of painting our leaves later; it does not have to look perfect that is why we have drills. Now this time maybe see if you can fit four of little ovals in the box. You just do smaller ones so you come up quicker like little beads on a necklace. 2-3-4-5 I got five on that, 1-2-3, we have about three on that one. Let's do one more here we go. Now I want to show you this really quickly, this last one, I made a better effort up pressing evenly so that I get a nice symmetrical oval shape. It's a little bit tricky for me right now because I'm trying to let you see what my brush is doing and that's why these ones are as symmetrical. But if you're having this problem where one side is definitely lopsided, it means that you're probably placing the pressure in an unequal way. Just keep practicing putting the pressure equally and you'll get a nice symmetrical shape. We are now going to do the same thing, I just want you to switch which brush size you're using. This time I need to mix up a little bit more green. Let's get a little bit more of a hunter green going on. This one I'm going to use my ten, which will get me a real nice oval. We're going to go, fine line, pressure, up, fine line, pressure up, then I've got some pooling, so, I might just spread that out a little bit just for fun. It's fun to play with the water like that. Just use your tip very lightly and you can even out the shape. Since mine were very symmetrical that time. But it's really cool. I want you this time to try and do it all in one stroke, all in one line down your paper. Don't lift your hand up at all, here we go, let's see what I mean. Let's try to get how that looks reminds me of a 1960s wallpaper pattern. Now I've done some of my bigger brushes, so let me try it with a smaller brush. Let's see if we can get a nice bluish-green. These ones, remember, they don't hold as much water as they might need to reload, but let's see what we can do, I love that color. Got some dry spots on that one more time, see faking it. That was the two, now let's go big [inaudible] if I can get a probably only be able to fit one row with my big number 16. Now watch this one is going to be huge, it couldn't even fit. Only got 1.5 ovals that time, I couldn't even fill another one. That shows you the difference in your brush sizes and when you put pressure on it with a 16, you get this nice big fat oval. With a two, you get this kind of medium ones, a 10, and then a six shows you the different capabilities you have with different sized brushes. 7. Exercise: Curves: All right, so these last two boxes are going to be kind of fun. I'm going to use my size eight since I haven't really used that much this time. See if I can get a fine new green to use. Now, I want to practice with using the tip versus the belly of the brush. This is the tip, this is the belly. Let's see if we can make some curved lines, which will help us with some of our leaf shapes. Same concept is up here is you're going to pull back with your hand, this time you're just going to add a little bit of a curve. Okay. Just practice with different pressure. This will be very familiar to those of you who practice calligraphy. Okay, let's try it again. Let's see if I'll put a full amount of pressure. This was no pressure. This was about half pressure. Let's see how much I get, if I put full pressure on my brush when I go down. Back up, pressure and back up. It's similar concept to this row. We're just adding a little bit of a curve. Let's try it again. Okay, I'm going to come more to the middle. This time, I'm just going to have equal pressure on my line as I curve down. This is how I'm going to do about half pressure. When I get to the curve is when I'm going to push down on my brush. The curve to the right, if that makes sense. Let's start right here, down, pressure, and up, down, pressure, and up. That's awesome. I probably put a little bit more than half pressure on that one, but that's okay. Let's go for full pressure. Here we go. This are fun drills to do, when you are feeling a little bit stressed out. You can just kind of zone out and relax, as you do these nice soothing lines. I'm going to put equal pressure the whole time, not just on the curves. One last little row, if I can fit it. Here we go. Perfect. Not quite as pretty as my other rows, but it's good practice. I want you guys to try having equal pressure, then putting half pressure down on the curves, and then full pressure down on the curves. Then your last little set, equal pressure the whole time, but pushing down more on your brush. This last box. Let's mix a new green. Give a little variety, when we look at it. This time, we are going to combine everything that we've done. Let's see, I've got my number eight. We're going to go down with a really fine line. We're going to go down the thicker line, then I want you to go down with as thick as your brush will let you, by pushing all the way. Just to show you the range that you can get from the same brush. Okay, so we've got that. All right. Now we're going to move onto this row. We are going to go down, oval, up, oval up. Again, down, oval up, oval and up. It's okay if they touch because a little bit of a tight box. Down, oval, and up, oval and up. Then last but not least, let's do our little curved, well snake lines. Equal pressure, hold it down, half pressure on the curves, and then full pressure on the curves. There you have it. We have now practiced our drills and we are ready to get started with basic leaf shapes. 8. Greenery: Simple Leaf Shapes: We are now going to get started with some basic leaf shapes. Now this portion, this module of the class, we're going to go over specific types of leaves. Silver dollar eucalyptus, hyndrengia leaves, we'll go over some just basic spray types of foliage. But this first set, I want to just be really simple leaf shapes that are pretty generic. Just leaves in general, not a specific type of leaf. If someone said, "Hey, paint me a leaf." this is your basic go to leaf. It doesn't always have to be a specific kind. Just mixing up my green, here's a little permanent sap green, a little olive green, and a little bit of red to get a nice natural looking, brownish green. This is very similar to when we did our practice, the second row where we pressed down very lightly and then put pressure down. Imagine that this part right here, the where we pushed lightly is this stem and then this is our leaf. Let's go ahead and practice that a few times. I'm going to start in the corner and work my way down because I'm right-handed. If I started over here and worked my way up or over here, then I would have to have my arm in wet paint and that just doesn't work as well. I'm going to start up here, if you're left-handed, you'll start up here. Let's just paint some basic leave shapes. I'm going to start with the stem, draw a very lightly, very delicate little stem and I'm going to put pressure, pressure, pressure and then come up. That's the tip of the leaf and then that's half of the leaf. Let's go do the other half. We're going to go back to where it got broad and we're going to put some more pressure. Slowly come up, meet at the tip. That's a nice little leaf shape, but obviously there is a lot of white space in there, so let's go in and fill that in. One thing I'd like to say there'll be a good tip for this class, is that white space or negative space is not always a bad thing, especially when you're doing the modern floral technique or gestural florals. Sometimes there's a lot said in the negative space, and in this case it looks like it creates the illusion of it being the middle of the leaf. This is our generic go to leaf. I'm not painting a specific type of flower, a type of greenery. I'm just painting what I, in my mind picture a leaf to look like. Let's try it one more time, get a little bit of a new color. Similar, same practice. We're just going to do it with a little bit of a different angles so I'm going to still come down, put pressure, come up, pressure and come up. I love when you get these different shapes because that is what really happens in nature. Now one thing you can do is you can just come back to help the shape a little bit and just leave these little whitespaces, it creates an illusion of where there might actually be a hole in the leaf or where there's a vein. I tend to be more paint just one layer but this one is starting to dry, if you wanted to go in and add more layers, that's totally fine. Or if you wanted to drop in, say, some yellows to give it that look like if it had a little bit of some imperfections in the color, then you could come in and drop a little bit of yellow. It changes, just gets a little bit splotchy because there is really no such thing as a pure one color leaf. You're welcome to do this as we paint. But if you want to just do one solid color leaf, that is totally fine especially if you're a beginner and you're just getting used to this. We have two really nice basic leaf shapes and we're just going to keep doing this. We're going to fill the whole page with variations on this. I'm going to switch sizes now so you can see the difference between an eight and a 16, double the size. I'm sure you can imagine we are going to get a nice fat leaf from this. Let's do a little bit of a thicker stem and this time I'm going to have it come up like this and have little three. Come to this middle one and really push down, come back up. I'm just coming back on the sides, shape it up a little bit. You can pull the excess water and pigment around, play with it a little bit. I'm going to take this little one over here, and you can turn your paper. It's the perk of having it on a block instead of having it taped to my table, which is what I used to do actually and I found I just didn't have the flexibility. I'm going to take this little sprig over here and just make a little baby leaf Now because I'm using a size 16 brush, it is really loaded with water, and I am not happy with how much water is sitting on that page. I'm going to take a little piece I tore off a little bit of my paper towel, and I'm just going to dab in and it is going to suck up that paint. Suck up that extra water and there's a little bit excess rate here, let's pull some of that up too. Now, what happens if you have little puddles of water on your page, it can make the paper really warp, really badly, but it can also leave funny little marks in your paint. You can get streaky and just look like not real pretty. Let's go ahead and add a little third leaf over here, not quite as big as the first one, but a little bigger than this guy over here. Let's come, and I think with this one we can probably just do it in one go. Perfect. It's going to pull this around, maybe edge that a little bit, awesome. I love how that looks. Beautiful. We're using the same premise with every leaf where we go lightly for this stem, put pressure down to make the leaf shape. Let's go ahead and practice this with a really small, delicate leaf. I have my size two brush, let's go ahead and get a real nice bluish-green. Perfect. This is going to be a really delicate little vine, and this time [inaudible] don't I switch it up, and we'll go this way instead of having our leaf down this way. Have a tiny little wispy stem, I'm put pressure down, and then come back up, and I'm going to come over here and fill in the rest of this, and I am going to leave this white gap because I like the little illusion that it creates. That is where the center of the leaf is. I'm going to come in, and just like this one, I'm going to add in another little leaf over here, just a little [inaudible] one, perfect. Let's try and get a nice yellowy-green this time, and keep in mind that we're practicing leaves now, but this is still a great time to practice mixing greens. I had been painting for several years now and I still experiment every time I paint with mixing new colors. I just loved to see where it takes me. Let's keep our number two, we'll do another little dainty one, and this time let's start from the bottom over here. We'll go up, pressure, I don't have enough on my brush. Pressure, then a curve, and there is our tip because we don't always have an aerial view like this, this might be the side of a leaf so I'm going to come back up and make little points like we're looking at the side of a leaf. Same concept as before, little pressure for the stem, and then add more pressure to the belly of your brush to get the body of leaf. Let's do a few more and fill up this paper with some gorgeous leaves. [MUSIC] 9. Greenery: Tulip: Now that we've practiced with our basic leaf shapes. I'm going to show you the next easiest flower leaf to paint, which is the tulip. The tulip is a great place to start because they have long, slender, curvy leaves that are really easy to paint with our paintbrush. It's really just about putting pressure on the belly of your brush and dragging it upwards. It's very similar to our drills exercise we did, where we practiced changing the pressure on our brush. I'm just going to mix up a nice yellowy-green. I'm using my size 10 brush. I'm just going to create this stem by making a nice fat thick line and dragging the water upwards to create the curved stem. Now I'm not going to be painting the flower portion in this class. We're just focusing on the greenery. I'm going to bring it all the way to the top. Just a little bit more of the blue-green. I'm going to go ahead and work on the first leaf. I just put a little bit of pressure and then drag up. As I get to the tip, I lift up my brush so that the line gets thinner. The size 10 brush holds a lot of water, so it's really easy to move around the excess water when I'm done. Onto the second leave same concept. Just putting pressure as I drag up and slowly lift up to create a fine tip. I'm using the white space as negative space to create the illusion that that's the center of the leaf where it's folded over. Now I'm going to take some brown to make green and add it to the tips of the leaves. Because as you can see on the actual tulip, that's where there's some pigmentation of the brown. I just like adding this at the end. It makes it look more realistic. Adding a little bit at the bottom where it's darker. I think that looks pretty good. Now I'm just going to go in and smooth out some of the patches that have dried and left funny marks. That happens when you don't have an even amount of water when you paint. I'm just smoothing those out, making it look a little more realistic. This next part. I'm just going to go ahead and paint some more tulip leaves. You're welcome to watch. I'm not going to narrate this part. It's just going to be some more practice that you can do during this time. Enjoy yourself and relax. Let's get started. 10. Greenery: Olive Leaf: Now that we have practice our basic leaf shapes, we are going to put our new knowledge into action. We're going to go ahead and start with what I categorize as the spray foliage or vines, things that have a long thin stem with lots of leaves shooting off of it. I've already done an example right here. It's super simple. We're using the same leaf shapes as we practiced before. This time we're just going to have a nice long stem with several leaves shooting off of it. Let's go ahead and get started. I've mixed a nice greenish brown, because the stem is a little bit on the darker side. Perfect. I'm just going to use just the tip of my brush and curve up a little bit. Make sure you get enough water. If you are like me and it wasn't loaded quite enough, you can go in and fill in those gaps. Now I'm going to mix up a nice dark green because this has a little bit of a more forest green look to it. I've used my sap green and I've just mixed in a little bit of red and a little bit of fair turquoise, to get a nice rich, natural looking green. I'm going to start with this little leaf right here, crosses over, here we go. We'll just keep moving on up. Same leaf shapes as before where we just put gentle pressure. I am using my two round brush, which you're welcome to use whichever one you want. Just keep in mind that the larger the brush, the larger your strokes will be when you put pressure on it. In this type of greenery, usually the leaves are across from each other. We're going to keep that in mind as we do this. We're going to go ahead and put this right here. Nice, long one, living a little bit of negative space to create the illusion of the shape of the leaf. Come up here and do a nice tone. Perfect. Then this one has a little bit of, its behind, so I'm going to just create the illusion that it's already coming from behind, instead of attaching to the front. This one is going to a be a little thinner. I'm going to paint it like it's on its side as opposed to looking at it head on. I have this one come across like we did at the beginning. Then we'll have some of these little ones, get all curly. Maybe add in a attractive brown, since they get a little bit crunchy on the ends. Perfect. Now what you can do is you can go in with a little bit of a brownish dark green, and where the leaves attach, you can add a little bit of this darker pigment because where the leaves attach there's usually a little bit of a bump or a knob. I like to go in and do this and make it look a little bit more natural. There we go. There are two examples of this vine or spray type of greenery. 11. Greenery: Large Spray: I have a larger example of what we just did with a little bit of a different shape of leaf, but similar concept, long thin stem with lots of leaves shooting off of it, usually around the same point. Each point has a few leaves with one at the top. Let's go ahead, and come to this side of our paper, and see if we can create a larger version of what we just did. I'm going to go ahead and change brush sizes. I'm going go to my six, is my go-to size. But you can also easily do this with an eight or a 10. This has a little bit more of a vibrant green. Lets mix up a nice earthy tone. I like to add in a little of the filler torquoise to most of my mixing, a little bit of the red, surrounded out a little bit, maybe a little Persian blue. The stem on this one is actually really similar to the leaf color. I'm not going to make something drastically different, I just add a little bit of brown. I'll brush nice and loaded. This one's a little more straight. We're going to go ahead and just put some light pressure. It's a little bit of a thicker stem. Now what you can do when you get to the end, because the tip of the stem actually turns into the top leaf, we're going to go ahead and paint that top leave right now. Imagine that I haven't even let my paint brush off of the paper, which is going to come up and put a good amount of pressure and a little bit of a swirl. This is where we are practicing those curves comes in handy. You can get a nice curve. The bigger the brush that you use, the less likely it is that you have to go back in and fill in the gaps. Because if you have a larger brush, when you push down, it'll fill in more of the space. We've started with our top leaf. Now, let's go back to the bottom and work our way up. That's generally how it goes for me. We have this nice curved bottom one with a nice little point on the end. Come to about right here, see if we can get a nice curve going on; good little point. We're going to come back down, follow it back down like this. Perfect. We'll go up. We see we've got one of these points, it has three leafs going off of this. I'll just open. I generally start from the inside and work my way out, but you can also start from the outside and work in. It just depends on how you prefer to work; so I'll do examples of both. I've got two nice leaves right here. Do it from the side, so it goes up, and I put some pressure on, and create the point. Instead of creating, going like this to make a full leaf because I'm looking at it from the side, I'm just going to go ahead and keep it more straight to give it the illusion that I'm looking at it from the side. That's how you paint different perspectives of the leaf. I'm going to come under and add in another one. We add in a little bit of a darker pigment to show where the little knob is. Perfect. Let's just keep going up like this, painting them from the side, adding in a little bit of a curve. There we go. Lets add a little more water. I like to change my greens slightly as I go because that's more realistic. No plant has the exact same values throughout the entire plant, so you can change it up just a little bit as you paint. Because I don't have enough room, I'm just going to go ahead and add one more in right here. I have a little bit too much water on my brush. I'm taking a little piece of my paper towel, and I'm just going to dump it up. There we go, perfect. That is the genius of watercolor, is it's so easy to correct your mistakes. If you have trouble painting from this direction if you're right-handed like me, and it's awkward to paint like this, you can always turn your paper. So I'm going off of this leaf right here, and I'm creating a nice flat line for the bottom, and then I'm going to come in with a curve for the top. There's my nice flat line. I'm just going to curve by pushing down on my brush, lift up, and bring it back in. There we have a nice side view of our leaf. If you add a little bit of the darker shade to the bottom, it gives the illusion that is folded over. Perfect. Even though this actually doesn't have a leaf down here, and as I'm looking at this painting, I think it would look more balanced if I added one more down here. I'm just going to go ahead and add in one nice round. Really nice point. That looks a little more even. Feel free. If you're looking at a picture online or if you're looking at an actual plant, feel free to just change things up a little bit. It doesn't have to be exactly what you're looking at. If it looks better when you're painting it, to add a leaf here, or take one out, that is totally fine. I'm just going in and adding a little bit of some more layers, pushing ever so slightly. It just gives it a little bit of variation as it dries. There we go, pretty happy with how that turned out. So those are great examples of how to do greenery that's sprays out or looks like a vine, is you just do a nice stem, and have the leaves come off at the same points. 12. Greenery: Silver Dollar Eucalyptus: So I'm going to go ahead and use my six round brush again. Just have my eucalyptus over here on this side. I use a similar brown to the one I used with our spray greenery. Be out a smidge of violet, has a little bit of our reddish-brownish. Tint, I think that'll help. We've got nice and loaded. This one instead of it just being stray or angle it has an S curve to it. I'm going to go ahead and paint. We lost the leaf. I'm going to go ahead and paint them main stem, and then while I still have this color loaded in my brush, I'm going to go ahead and add these little shoots, so I don't have to go back in later and add them in. Let's go ahead and do that. I'm using just the tip of my brush. Gets really thin up at the top and go in and add some little branches. We have a little nub right there. Very finiteness form in a term a paper. Get a better angle. Spread this out a little bit. Perfect. So now I'm ready to get started with my green. Like I said, this looks a little more pale green than a true Silver Dollar eucalyptus looks just because it's been dried out. I'm going to do a mix of the two. Try to make it look a little more authentic, maybe a little more pale, then it would be in real life. You can make the value of a colorless lighter by simply adding water, that will dilute the pigment and make it lighter. So let's go ahead and start with this leaf. I'm going to go ahead and turn my paper. If you have it taped to the table, this is going to be difficult. This is why I recommend either using a block or taping it to a board, so that you can maneuver better. I'm going to go this way first and swing out. Push my brush to the point where it curves like this. I lost a little bit of water there. Now that I have that nice little round part, I'm going to come up here, do the same thing again to create the other side. I don't have enough water, there we go. Perfect. Back in. Fill in a little bit. So let's go ahead and do this. Hand turn the page. We're going to start with the tip, push and swing out. Come to the center. Push and swing. Perfect. So we're getting these nice heart-shaped or Silver Dollar shape. That's why it has the name that it does. We'll go ahead and do this one. This one looks nice and round. I'm having a problem. I am not being a good example of loading you rush of water. I'm going to get it really loaded this time. Come up and swirl. There you go. If it takes you a while to get the hang of doing this curve, this swirl shape, that's totally fine. It's hard to get used to. This one has a little bit more of an oval shaped because it's bent. We're going to just come up. This one is going to even though in real life it doesn't, I'm going to have it go behind this other leaf. Just work around. Create the illusion that it's behind. There you go. Same thing, skirt. Here we go. Last one actually looks a little bit reddish to me. I'm going it add a little bit more of that. Turn my page. Perfect It's okay. There we go. We have our Silver Dollar, eucalyptus. 13. Greenery: Chrysanthemum: We're now going to do a more detailed leaf. It has several points to it, and lots of little edges. This is a little bit different than anything we've done up to this point, but don't get scared. It's really easy. You can maneuver your brush really simply to make this leaf happen, so don't get intimidated by the shape. I'll just set this right here as my guide. I think I will switch to my size eight brush. Now this leaf is definitely a dark green. Let's mix up a really nice brownish green. Okay, so we're going to start at the bottom, as we do with most of our leaves. We are going to kind of simplify the leave a little bit. We're not going to do it exactly. I'm definitely more of a gestural artists. I'm not real detail oriented with watercolors. I keep it pretty modern and loose. I will probably just have it come up with the stem. Looks like we've got a little bit of a more yellowish. There we go, the stem. I am just going to come out, turn my paper a little bit, and just make little flicks till I come to a point, right about here. Then I am going to go ahead and do the same thing over here, okay? Perfect. We're going to come up with the body. Same thing right here. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and fill in a little bit. I'm going to come in to do the other side. Turn my page. Same thing up here. I'm going to come up, same concept and do the top. You just drag your brush up. Make little points. Just fill in a little bit, and there we go. You can go in and add some layers. Get a little bit darker. Ever it is that you feel like you want to do go for it. This is the perfect time to practice what we've learned. There we go. 14. Greenery: Hydrangea: Last step is the amazing hydrangea leaf. Hydrangea one of my favorite flowers, but I also love their beautiful leathery leaf. It's just so nice and round with these little tiny little edges similar to our mum leaf, but it's just the most beautiful shade of green and has these gorgeous veins and very leathery to the touch. Really very straight forward with how to paint, it's very similar to our basic leaf shape, in that we have a little stem. We're going to swoop out with pressure, swoop out with pressure, and then fill in. It's just a really large leaf. We're going to use largest brush that you have, I'm going to go ahead and use my 10 instead of the 16, just because of the amount of space I have left here. I'll go ahead and put this here for reference so you can see it. I need a mix of a nice dark green. A little easier to mix colors with a bigger brush because you can load more pigment onto it. Right now I've got a little bit of a yellowish green going on, and I'm going to go ahead and start with this just because the stem is definitely a more yellowish color. I'm going to go ahead and just do that. Jumping-off point, it's got a pretty thick stem. Now I'm going to go back in and make this a darker green now that I have that done. Beautiful. Perfect, dilute it a little bit. The brush will load up so much since it's a large brush. We're just going to start and we are going to put pressure, and bring it all the way up, to a nice point. Come over here, the same thing. I'm just going to go in and fill in little bits of white space where there might be a vein, and I like to go up as if I'm going up the center of the leaf, it just gives a little bit more of a natural look. Beautiful. Now that I have the main shape of the leaf, I'm smoothing out some of the colors. I want to go ahead and add in some of the edges. To do that, I'm just going to follow the edge that I've created and just make some little points. Some people do this as they are painting, but I have found for me personally, instead of doing this right from the start, I have a little bit of a harder time getting the general shape to be circular enough, so I like to go in after and do these little points and I just follow the curve. It's good practice for dragging the paint pigment. Just add in these little points by just dragging your brush a little bit, making little triangles as you go. Perfect, and then you can help land in some of those if it got a little bit streaky. Then I will probably just demonstrate really quickly how I go back and add layers if I decide to do that. You want your first layer to be pretty dry before you go in and add any other layers just because if you don't weigh, it'll get a little bit muddy. So it's pretty dry, I'm just going to go in and add a little bit here, and there, that are richer color. Again, I'm going up as if I was following the center vein of the leaf to give the strokes are a little bit more of a natural look. Perfect, and then last thing I've noticed is my stem looks a little bit off center right here, so I'm just going to go back in and fix that a little bit. It's never too late to go back in and fix something with water colors. There we go, we have our nice hydrangea leaf. 15. Project One: Minimalist Framed Artwork: Let's go ahead and get started with our first project that puts together all of the skills that we've learned so far. We are going to be making a framed minimalist art piece by painting the greenery of your choice. I've chosen to do a silver dollar eucalyptus because it's my favorite one to paint. I love how the leaves are so circular. I'm just going ahead and getting started with the stem doing my S curve like we practiced before. I'm adding in my stems, just going down until I add in all the correct number. Now, remember if it's easier for you to turn your paper while you're adding in the other side of the stems, that's totally fine. It's a lot easier that way especially if you're right-handed reaching over to the left or left handed reaching over to the right. I'm going to go ahead and switch the brush size that I'm using, so I went from a two to a six and I'm just going to mix up some green. Now, this will depend on what type of leaf you're painting since I'm doing the silver dollar eucalyptus. I'm going to go ahead and mix up a nice bluish brownish green. Now, I'm going to go ahead and start with the top and it looks like I have just a little bit too much water loaded onto my brush for this small leaf, so I'm just going to dab to have it up with the paper towel, quick fix. I'm going to switch to my size 2 brush. The six seems just a little bit too large for these leaves. Loads up with a little bit too much water for this size, so I'm going to go ahead and try it out with the size 2. Just adding in a little bit more blue to help it get that nice silver dollar eucalyptus look. Let's do a nice curve on both sides and fill in leaving a little bit of white space to create the illusion of where the veins go moving down. Same thing, just a nice slight curve to show the side of a leaf. Change perspective, it makes it look a little more authentic. This time I'm going to get a nice swirl. I'll just fill in ever so slightly. Now that I finished my painting and let it dry, I'm going to go ahead and write down the name of the plant that I've painted. I think this gives it a nice vintage look. It reminds me of the old botanical prints that you could find in journals or magazines. I'm just shortening the name of mine to just eucalyptus since silver dollar eucalyptus is a little bit long for this piece. I'm using a drawing pencil but you can also use a fine tip pen if you want. Now that I've done that, I'm going to go ahead and remove my paper from my block using my knife. You can use your palette knife or an x-acto knife. Be careful as you go around the edges that you don't get your fingers cut. I've cut it off there, perfect. You can see how this one doesn't have color on the edge which I really like. Now I'm going to go ahead and place my artwork in my floating frame. You can find these frames at most home good stores, I found this one at Target actually. I'm just removing the paper that came with the frame. There's a little bit of glue so I'm just getting that off with the knife. I'm just going to pop my little art work into the frame and it was already trimmed with perfect size which is a five by seven. I'm just going to close it, lock it up and it is ready to be displayed in my office. 16. Project Two: Pattern Artwork: We are now ready for our final class project. For this project its going to be very similar to our first, just a little bit larger and less minimalistic. So I have a similar frame to the one I used before. It is a glass frame that opens on the edge. When I am done, I have a piece of paper that is slightly smaller, than the frame itself, so it will have a nice raw edge. Now this paper that I'm going to be using is actually a hand-torn paper that's textures similar to watercolor paper. I found it at my local craft store and I purchased it by the sheet as opposed to an unblock. Normally I would be a little bit hesitant to do that. But I've tested it out and it actually responds really well and holds the water very well. So I'm going to use this paper, but you are welcome to use regular water color paper. I just like how this has a nice torn edge. When it's hanging in the frame, it looks very vintage and old world and I like that a lot. So what we're going to do is get started by making a nice watercolor pattern. So I want you to remember back to when we practice with mixing our greens, we got a lot of different shades. By now you should be pretty comfortable with mixing any other colors to your green to achieve different results. I want you to also remember our first project where we practiced doing basic leaf shapes. For this final project, I would like for us to create picture. Imagine wallpaper or a digital scrapbook paper or something with small illustrations that we're just going to put all over this paper to make it resemble a nice pattern. It doesn't actually have to be repeating pattern by any means, we're just going to fill this space with leaves. I'd like for you to leave about 1-2 inch border on all the edges. That will help it look a little neater when we're finished and when you frame it, it will create a matted effect without actually having to be matted professionally. Let's get started. The main thing you need to remember with this activity is picking 3-5 different types of leaves. You can do some of our just basic leaves, if you want to keep it simple or you can practice some of the leaves that we learned earlier in this course. But you want to pick a couple of different kinds and start with one. So I'm going to start with just a really simple leaf. Basic shape. Nothing too fancy or difficult. Just get a nice natural looking green. This paper will respond just a little bit differently to the previous videos that we've done. But it's similar enough that I think it'll be okay. I'm going to start in the center of my paper. That will help me balance out as I keep going. So I have this basic shape and this color. I've started in the center, and now what I'm going to do is do the same thing in a couple of different spots before I move onto my next greenery. I'm just envisioning where I want my border to be. If it helps you to sketch it with a pencil, that's totally fine. If you need to have a border drawn, go for that. So I've got another one and then come over here. This time I'm going to go ahead and turn my paper so that they're a little bit of a different angle. So we've got our basic leave shapes to a couple more. I'm using my size 6 brush, which is my go-to brush. I'm going to add in a couple more down here. I think I will do one more in this corner. Take that back. I'm going to do a couple more. I'm just putting light pressure. All right, perfect, so I'm happy with that. Now I'm going to pick a new leaf shape to do. I'm going to mix in a new color. So this time I'm going to go with something more blue. I've mixed my sap green with my yellow turquoise which is one of my favorite commas. I'm going to do the same thing just sprinkle them around the paper. I think this time I will do a little bit of a longer spray like a tulip leaf. I'll probably do, let's see. Here do the same thing. All right. Now I'm going to go ahead and add in a third. I'm going to make this one a little more yellow. Maybe add in a little bit of the cadmium orange. This time I'm going to go ahead and do very small little vines. Rinse the tip of my brush. Perfect. Go ahead and add those in all over just like we've been doing. You can just look around and see where you think that there needs to be one. I'm going to go ahead and start with a fourth type of greenery. All right. Now I'm going to go ahead and add one last type of greenery. There we have it. We have our nice little floral greenery pattern. I'm just going to let this dry and then I'm going to put it in the frame. Now that my paint is dry, I'm going to do the last step that every artist needs to do before they frame something, and I sign it really quick with the date. Then I easy as pie, I'm going to open up my glass frame. First actually I was going to mention, if you're using the type of frame that I'm using where it's a floating glass frame, sometimes they're tight enough that when you close it the paper won't budge, but I've had a problem with them sliding once they're hanging on the wall, so I just use a little bit of scotch tape and place it on the back just to keep it in place. You can also use double-sided tape. Just going to open this all the way, get a general sense of where I want it to go. That's awesome. That is it. It's easy as that. It looks so cool and unique advantage and it's going to work great on my wall. I love how it looks. 17. You Did It!! A Few Last Words: Well guys, you did it. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Kate Shaffer from Emerald and IV studios and I've had so much fun learning how to paint floral greenery with you today. If you decide to complete a project, I would love to see how it turns out. You can post photos in the class project section and I will be sure to leave feedback. I also love featuring my students photos on my Instagram account at Emerald and IV studios. If you've enjoyed this class, please take a moment to leave feedback. You can also follow my page so that you'll be updated when I post future projects. Again, thank you so much for joining me. I love having you here.