Watercolor Botanical Painting: Peony

1. INTRO: Hi there, my name is Audrey and welcome to my class on watercolor botanical painting, the Peony edition. I'm the creator and owner of these unseen designs. On top of being a watercolorist, I'm also a calligrapher and educator. I love to help people recognize and achieve their creative potential. In this class, I'm going to walk you through every step, from sketching, inking, tracing, and transferring, to painting three large peony and three smaller buds. It's going to be a big class, but I couldn't imagine breaking it up into smaller classes. With each peony we'll build our knowledge on and practice of techniques such as; wet on dry, wet on wet, layering, negative painting and glazing. By the end of the class, you will know how to sketch and paint any peony using photo references, and even be able to paint a peony without a photo reference. Because sometimes it's fun to just paint whatever your heart desires. Because this class is well over four hours long, I encourage you to take it in smaller chunks. For example, you could do all of the sketching videos in one session. Then you can dedicate one session for each of these paintings. Before you know it, you will have finished all of those sketching and painting and be a pro at it. To help you out, I provided a lot of downloadable files such as the sketches will be creating during the class, photo references and a list of all the supplies that I'll be using. You can find that in the Your Project section. Well, I'm excited to start painting with you. Let's grab our supplies and dive right in. I'll see you in class. 2. SKETCHING - Supplies: Hey everyone, welcome to this video and we're going to learn how to sketch the peony. We're going to do a couple of different sketches using reference photos. This is a process that we're going to take. First, we're going to sketch on paper. The supplies that I'm going to be using is an HB pencil, an eraser, a pencil sharpener, and some sketch paper. You can use any type of paper for this purpose. After we sketch on the paper, we're going to transfer it onto a tracing paper. This is the brand of paper that I have and I got this just from I think Michael's has them this is just their generic artist's loft brand. Just as long as it's tracing paper and it is semi-transparent. If you put your hand under it, you know, you can still see your hand under it. Just make sure you have some tracing paper and this is so that I can transfer from here onto my watercolor paper. I know there's a couple of different steps, but it will all make sense. Plus, when we transfer it onto tracing paper, we're going to use an archival ink pen like this and this will help really preserve your sketch. If you ever happen to lose your original pencil sketch, or it starts smudging or it got wet. It doesn't matter because you still have this one which will be more or less permanent. You can reuse this over and over again. Go ahead and gather your supplies and let's get started with sketching out our first peony. 3. SKETCHING - Peony #1 (pink peony): The sketch reference that we're going to work off of is this one right here and I'm just going to place that right there. This one is a more or less typical peony. It has your rounded shaped petals and is sort of just unfurls out in a circular pattern. What I like to do when I sketch the peony or most flowers for that matter, I first find out where the center is, and so for me the center is going to be where all the stamen is right here. I'm going to give myself some room and I'm going to start right about here. I'm just going to draw a small circle just to represent the center. Now this is just a rough sketch, so it does not have to be perfect or anything. Then, I'm going to start drawing larger and larger circles or ovals to get a general shape of this peony. If we just drew the circle here, there's going to be another circle that comes out right about there. On my sketch was going to draw another generic circle that comes out like that. Again, nothing to scientifically accurate. The next layer of petals is out here and this one is a little bit taller and it looks like we have almost an oval going on. So I'm going to start up a little bit higher, and then going out to the next layer of petals,it's kind of another long oval, almost like an egg shape. I'm going to come up here, and then from here, we're going to encompass these outer petals. So I'm just going to have just a generic shape there and then a generic shape there. Now that I have my generic shape will come back in with the leaves later. Let's go ahead and focus on this sketch now. When sketching out the peony, again, I'm going to start in the middle and in the middle there are several petals that close in towards the center. To give that illusion, we're only going to really sketch the part of the petal that folds over. If we start from above the center, we have this one petal that folds over like that, another petal that folds over, and you can see that I'm using these circles as a guide. Again, this sketch does not have to be perfect. This is really just practicing because I think, nature isn't perfect. So if your line is off, that's totally okay. Don't be so bogged down with the details. I'm just continuing to draw those petals that are closing in. Now I'm going to move out toward the next circle area and draw some of these larger petals. Then again, the next layer of petals touches this boundary over here. I can already tell that this sketch is not going to look exactly proportionate to the original sketch and again, that's okay. Right now we just want to just get comfortable drawing some of these shapes. Again, I'm using these circles as my boundaries. You can go beyond the line obviously, but they're just guidelines. I did this right, so I'm going to head over to the left a little bit. I'm done with this middle section, I still have a couple of petals down here that I need to draw and then we'll get started on these outer petals. Let's go ahead and do the ones that are in the center, but towards the middle. Now I've completed this middle section and I'm going to start sketching out these outer petals. I've got a pretty good rough sketch going. I'm just going to clean up some of these lines and erase as much as I can without messing up the sketch lines. [MUSIC] There's the finished sketch. I'm going to go ahead and add some of the leaves that were coming out of the bottom. We have peony leaves tend to be skinny. They don't want it to be too thick or anything. These are my stems [MUSIC] and the final details to draw in our this stamen in the center. For this, I'm going to actually sharpen my pencil so I can draw the finest into details and this thing just come out, [MUSIC] and again these don't have to be perfect because, yeah, you're just going to be painting over them later. That is generally what it looks like. Here is the original sketch and this is the sketch that we just did together. Again, it looks slightly different but that's okay. It was more about practicing the shapes of petals and really just going with the flow. Just based on this, let's take a closer look at some of the petals that we just drew. Looking at this peony, a lot of the petals that we drew were rounded shapes. They were mostly like this. Now from here, if you want to show that parts of the petal are folded over, you're just going to draw another line right under that to show that. I'll do it again a little bit more closer. Again, if you have a generic shape like this but you want to show that part of this petal is folded over, you can just draw another line like that. Typically when this happens in a peony, this skinnier part, the smaller part is going to be a lighter color and then this majority of the petal is going to be a darker color. If you look at this sketch, we did that over here, right here in the center, so these folded over petals are going to be lighter than this part under it. Over here on this large petal, we also did another fold over and then over here as well. This is what it happens occasionally because peonies are very complicated flowers, and a lot of the petals are going to be overlapping, they're going to be folded over there and we twisted. It's good to practice that. Now if you're looking at the petal from a side view, if it's on the right side or the left side, they're going to have a distorted look. If you're looking at it from the left side, the left side of the petal is going to be long. You can draw a long arc like that, and then because you're only going to see a part of it your petal might look more so like that and an example of this is right here. Because you're looking at it from the left, but you're showing that it's still folded up. If it was open, this petal would look more like this, but it's folded up, and then we showed the jaggedness or the waviness of the pedal. If we're going to go on the right sign, the same thing but it just do an arc that's to the right, and again, you can vary the waviness and the jaggedness, and again here will be these petals will be found on the right side of this flower, like right here. The same thing is true when you are presenting a petal that's on either the left or the right side but they're open. As you can see in this sketch here, when they're opened they tend to be really large especially because they're on the outside, they tend to be the largest petals. You're going to have really exaggerated sides of the petals. If we're going to do it on the left side, let's pretend that this one is open. You're going to have a pretty large rounded part and then you can vary the edge if you want. Something like that, and again you can show that, this pedal is slightly folded up like that. If you want to do one that's on the right side but you're still facing it from this side, you can just have a side that goes really sharply up, and the reason why I'm having these petals come to almost an imaginary point here is because this gives you the illusion that the petal is flaring out. You can already see that, and then from here, again, you can add, this petal is also folded up and so I'll just add that little line. These are just some of the basic flower petal shapes for the peony that comprise this peony here. Now let's use these elements and work from a photo. 4. SKETCHING - Peony #2 (purple peony): The photo that we're going to be working off of is the Cardinal Vaughan peony, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, but it's a very rich deep, I don't even know what that color is, like a deep magenta type flower. It has a lot of complicated levels of petals, so I did a preliminary sketch here. Again we're going to start with these circles, starting in the center moving outward, and because this flower is so complicated, we are going to try to portray as many of the petals as we can, but if at any point you feel a little frustrated, I want you to pause and take a step away, retrain your eye. Just give them a break and then come back to it. Again we're not going to be measuring every single petal. We're not going to be making sure that everything is proportional, it's more about using the petals that we've just sketched out and using those basic elements to create the sketch. We are going to try to do it as closely as possible, but I'm not going to be stressing that you have to be perfect. Let's go ahead and get our reference photo ready. This flower is more horizontal than it is vertical like the last one. I'm going to start in the middle here and draw a small circle for that center. Then from the center, there seems to be a circle going this way. Then there seems to be a lot of petals in the next layers, heavy on the right side. I'm going to skew my oval a little bit to the right to accommodate those, then it really just continues going outward and sideways. I'm just going to draw another big horizontal oval this way. Then the last oval will include all of the outer levels of the petals. This doesn't look like much, but don't worry, we will get there. We're going to start with the center, pretend that my stamen is going to be right around there. Then we're going to start from the middle. I like to work from bottom and then either clockwise or counterclockwise just because I'm right handed. If you're left handed and it's easier for you to go counterclockwise, that's totally fine. Whatever works for you. What I see right below the stamen are these two petals that are almost overlapping each other. So I'm going to draw those first. They tend to go like that, and there's another one that's coming just to the right of it. Again I'm not concerning myself too much with all these details, but just getting the generic shape. I'm going to go right next to this one just because it's easy to identify. It's a little bit squared out, but it does come out like this. Then I'm going to move towards the center right around here. There seems to be a lot of layers of petals, so I'm just going to do my best. There seems to be a small petal right there, and another layer of petals right there, and there's a small layer right there. Then up here in this corner, there's a pretty distinctly shaped petals, so I'm going to go ahead and sketch that out. Let me erase this one. It seems to come out like this and have a point there. Seems to go out like that. Then let's fill in these areas right here. Again there seems to be a lot going on here as well. I'm just going to do my best to map out some of these petals here. Now this one has a fold to it, so let's go ahead and draw that in. That's looking pretty good so far. Now there is another petal right here in the forefront. It's almost shaped like a U. I'm going to go ahead and sketch that so that it can give me some reference. So comes down like this. All right. How's everyone doing so far? Are you still with me? Let's go to the middle or this left side here. Again there seems to be one large petal encompassing this whole area. So there's a lot of waviness here, then generically comes out like that. Let me erase this guideline so I don't get confused. Now let's focus here in this corner. There seems to be 3,4,5 petals encroaching upon that area too. Let's go ahead and define those a little bit more. I like this one big petal right here, I want to draw that into so that I can have another point of reference. I just continue working up this way because they seem to be a lot more bigger petals to help me out. Again, these are all petals that are folded over so you can just sketch out the folded over part to help you so dry that arc, remember and then draw the folded over petals. Again, we're not going for scientific accuracy, so that's pretty good I think. Here's another big petal here so trying the arch first, get the generic shape. I love how this flower is like, there's just so many folds to it. It makes it complicated, but also makes it really fun to draw and later painting. I don't want to go too far out to the outer layers just yet. I just want to make sure that we've completed all of the inner layers first. I want to come back to this left side, I think there's a couple of more flowers or petals here that I've forgotten about. I think we are pretty good with the majority of the petals that are on the inside. Now let's start focusing on the outside. Again, I'm going to start at the bottom here just because that's where I left off. There are some petals that are protruding out this way so let's go ahead and get those down. Actually I'm going to draw the arc first like I said, I'll go ahead and draw that arc. Here there is a huge petal down here. There's a pretty huge petal down here, so again, I'm going to draw that arc first, everything and then a couple more up in this area. You can see some of the leaves, so we can go ahead and sketch some of those in too. Well congratulations, we just finished sketching an entire peony together. Now the next step from here will be to transfer it onto the tracing paper. But before we go on, we're just going to practice sketching one more peony, but we're going to practice just sketching the buds. Okay, so here we go. 5. SKETCHING - Peony buds: When you're sketching the buds again, the buds really all look different, but they're going to generally be a circular shape. Just draw not a perfect circle, but slightly oblong. Mutually there are two or three large petals, so can give a general shape like that, another general shape and sometimes there is another petal right there. Then usually there are layers here. That's just one way to draw the bud. Another way is just looking at it from another angle. Draw another oval like that. This time you can have a petal like that. Another petal more like that and then have another one that's bigger and encompassing more of this top part here. I have another one right there. You might have some more layers in the middle there. We'll do one more where the petal or the bud is starting to open. I'm just going to give myself a little bit more room and do it down here. You can draw your generic bud shape there and then you can have your petal there. Another petal there. You can have your three general petals, but then have some more, a couple that are unfurling. If you recall our generic petal shapes that we made, these are what we're going to reference. We can have one that's coming out this way. That's pretty much it. Then you can add a stem and some leaves if you want. Drawing the buds and a small flower is not too hard. It's just starting with the circle and then drawing the inner petals. 6. SKETCHING - Peony #3 (coral peony): Let's do one more sketch and this time we're going to do a peony flower that's a little bit more complicated, has a lot more petals, but it has a lot of small tiny pedals. This pink flower here has several layers to it. But the process is still the same. We're going to start by drawing our center, which represents the stamen right about there. I'm going to go just a hair higher because it tends to really unfurled towards the bottom. I'm going to give myself enough room. Now from here, do you see that tall petal up here at the top. Actually we'll first do the next layer of petals right there but then the next one, really there's that one large pedal that comes up that way. I want to account for that. I'm going to draw that oval there. Then this is about as high as it goes, so the rest of my circles can't really go that much higher than this one. Continue to draw larger and larger circles that come out from that point. Then from here, there's definitely a lot more petals over on this side and it definitely comes out more on this side. This is my generic shape for this peony. [inaudible]. Now I'm going to sketch out the top petal right here. Again, this gives me a point of reference so that I know not to go to much higher than this one. It helps establish my center. That's how it looks. Continuing to move around. This right side is becoming nicely developed. I want to come back to the left side and develop that area too. [MUSIC]. Now I'm going to start working my way outward, there is still a lot of petals here to be rendered, and again, I may have missed a petal or two here. I'm not so concerned with that really. I just wanted to make sure that, I'm still getting the overall shape down.[MUSIC]. All right, and the last petal I got to do is just the one that's down here.[NOISE]. Let's go ahead and draws some of that stamen in.[NOISE]. It looks like there's a lot that happens right here. There's a little bit of a gap, it starts up again here. [MUSIC]. Then if you wanted to draw it in a couple of leaves, maybe right about here.[MUSIC]. This is a simple solution, which is okay, so how is that looking? All right, so even though this one had a lot more, smaller, really complicated petals. I think if you just follow the principles of using those concentric circles and working with perspective, folding up some of these petals, you'll be okay. The next step now is to clean up these sketches. We're going to go over them with ink and then trace them onto tracing paper, see you in the next video. 7. INKING your sketches: Hey everyone, so now that we have all of our various sketches, the next step is to ink it, and the reason why I ink it before I transfer is because, as you can see, these sketches are pretty messy and you can still see the guidelines, which is fine but when you transfer it makes it difficult to see. It's just a little bit confusing because you don't want to draw the guidelines, you only want to draw the petals. Using the ink pen will really help you define just the outline so that it makes the transferring process a lot easier. We're going to go ahead and ink all of the sketches that we did today, including this one that we used a half of just sketch. I mean you can ink these if you find you don't have to. We'll ink that bright magenta peony, the one that was horizontal. We'll ink these buds that we practice and this half-open peony and we'll also ink up this large one too, the light pink one. Yeah, the Pigma Micron pen that I'm using, I'm using the zero one size. You can go a little bit smaller than this if you want, but zero one is a pretty common size that's very thin. I like to use this so that I can still draw really fine details without losing any of it, and this is archival, which means that it won't fade over time, it's also waterproof. If you don't have this, you can use a regular pen, but you may end up smudging it or if it gets wet it will definitely bleed so if there is a pen that you want to get, make sure to get this. I'll include it in my list of supplies. We'll just go in order from the one that we did in the beginning. There's really no wrong way to do it, just like how we sketched, I'd like to start with the center and then move outward. If that works for you, that works for you, but just go slow. Again, as you're tracing with your pen, if you accidentally make it a little bit bigger, a little bit smaller, don't worry, again, we're not going for super scientific accuracy, we just want to make sure that the lines are cleans so that the transfer is easier. Go ahead and start inking it. That looks really good, again, the pencil lines make it look really messy, but once you add the ink, it just looks that much cleaner. I'm just going to add the stamen here. I'm going to give this just a minute to fully dry, I'm going to go ahead and ink the other sketches and then I will erase all of the pencil lines. Now if you wanted to, you can ink this up, but I'm not going to, so let me set this aside and then ink the next one. Now that I've got all my sketches inked, now I'm going to erase the pencil lines. Most of the pencil lines have been erased, so you can already see that it's a very clean sketch, which is going to make the transferring process a lot easier. Go ahead and erase the rest of them, and I'll see you in the next video. 8. TRACING your sketches: Hey everyone. I hope you had fun inking your sketches. I know I did. The next step is to transfer them now onto tracing paper. Now, some of you might be wondering why are we using tracing paper and not just transferring from this regular paper to our watercolor paper? and the reason for that is because the tracing paper is really thin and transparent. So when we do transfer to the watercolor paper, the watercolor paper is pretty thick, so we are going to use a lightpad, and even though this lightpad can get pretty bright, the thinner your tracing paper is or the transfer paper, the easier the light will just shine through. Using regular sketch paper like this, the light will still shine through, but it'll just be a lot easier to see the sketch when you're using tracing paper. If you don't have it on hand, you don't need to panic. You can just transfer directly from this paper to your watercolor paper, but if you do have tracing paper, I highly recommended it, and again, it's just easier to keep track, and like I said that the pad that I have is from my goals and I actually got it on sale. It was only $2 for the entire pad, and yes, it was very convenient. If you don't have it, you can skip this video, but in this video I do want to show you how to transfer from here to your tracing paper. We'll start out with the first sketch that we did, and the light path that I have here is just from Amazon. Again, it's all in the links for the supplies. You can download my list of supplies in the Class Downloads. Before we get started, I wanted to just do a quick overview of all the supplies. This lightpad here, I got it off of Amazon. It's included in my list of supplies. We're going to use our archival ink pigment micron pen again. I am also going to use some washi tape just to secure the paper, and the tracing paper to the light path, so it doesn't move around, and then of course, we have our sketch and then some tracing paper. First I'm going to affix the sketch onto the lightpad. You don't need to use too much tape. I can anticipate that it's going to move around too much, but make sure that you cover at least all four sides. Obviously don't cover up the sketch itself, and then I'm going to put the tracing paper on top, and for this one, I'm going to have the flower to the left, and then on the right side, I'm going to add in these sketches because I think all three of them will fit in this space here. I want to have it facing the left. I'm just going to secure the tracing paper to the lightpad as well, and the reason why I'm using washi tape is because it's really not that tacky. So it won't ruin your paper. If you don't have washi tape that's okay. You can use painter's tape or artist tape. Just don't use regular scotch tape, or obviously not packing tape, or duck tape, or anything like that. Try to use a tape that is not as sticky that it won't ruin your paper. I've got my pen, I'm going to go ahead and just turn it on. when you turn it on you'll start seeing the light coming through, and you should be able to see your sketch very clearly, and then we're going do exactly what we did in the last video. Just trace it over with your pen, and again, it's okay if you miss a couple areas. Again, if you make the pedal a little bit too big or small. Again, don't sweat all those small little details, and that's pretty much it. Go ahead and finish tracing all of your other sketches, and I'll see you in the next video. 9. TRANSFERRING your sketches to watercolor paper: Hey everyone, welcome to this video and we are going to transfer our sketch to our watercolor paper. The supplies that you're going to need are obviously your sketch on the tracing paper. You're also going to need watercolor paper. You're also going to need a pencil, and I'm using an HB pencil instead of a regular eraser we'll be using a kneaded eraser, and a kneaded eraser is really great because it doesn't alter the properties of the paper at all it only picks up the pencil graphite. So if you don't have this, it's okay you can use a regular eraser, but just know that your paper might feel a little bit different or behave a little bit differently. So kneaded eraser. You can find this in almost any art store. We're going to use washi tape again and our light box. Now the lightbox I just got from Amazon and you can find it in my list of supplies. To get started, we're first going to put our sketch onto the light pad and use washi tape to keep it in place. Make sure that your sketch is within the white area because that's where the light is going to be coming through. You don't want it situated like this where half of the sketches off of the light pad or like this, you want it nice and centered on the light pad. Next you're going to put your watercolor paper on top, but I can't see my sketch and I don't know if this paper is where I want it to be. I'm going to go ahead and turn on the light pad and you can see that the light turned on in the back. I'm going to turn down a light in my studio so you can see the sketch better. Now you can clearly see the sketch. I want to move my paper around so that I have it exactly where I want to be. If you want only this big flower on your paper, maybe you move your paper so that the flower ends up being in the middle, but if you want the flower and all the buds to be with it, then go ahead and just place it right on top and then use washi tape again to secure it. Now before we start sketching just a couple of tips. Now your hand has natural oils in it and so every time you touch the paper, you're going to be transferring some of the oils. First, make sure that your hands are nice and clean so that when your hand does touch the paper, you're transferring less oils. Don't put any lotion on or any fancy stuff. Just keep it nice and clean. Because as you know, once oil touches the paper, oil and water don't mix and so you'll start seeing the watercolor paints kind of pushing around because there's oil residue on there. The second tip is to try to sketch as lightly as possible. Some people like the look of pencil lines showing and some people don't, but once you have pencil lines and then paint over it, you can't erase them. Try to sketch as lightly as possible and that's why we're also going to use a kneaded eraser because this will erase almost all of the pencil lines without changing the properties of the paper. So that's that. Go ahead and follow your sketch and just draw lightly and go slowly. Like before, if you're finding that your sketch isn't perfect, that's totally okay. When it comes to this stamen, you don't have to draw every single one of them. You can just draw just a couple of the ones at the top, and that's pretty much it. You can go ahead and sketch these and the other paintings and any other paintings that you want. If you don't have a light pad, I should've mentioned this. You can just use actually a sunny window. You can put the sketch paper up against a window first and then put the watercolor paper on top, and it's the same process. Just make sure the sun is shining, nice and bright. At this point I'm going to go ahead and turn off the light pad and carefully remove my sketch. This is why washi tape is really nice because it's not very tacky at all and it just comes off without tearing the paper. I'm going to go ahead and bring my sketch up and then you can see nice and clearly that my sketch is on my paper. Now if there are any portions that you feel are too dark and you want to lighten that up, then that's where the kneaded eraser comes in. You can use this like a regular eraser or you can kind of push and then twist. That's kind of what I like to do. I just kind of push and twist because a kneaded eraser does a really good job and so if you're not careful, it might erase the whole thing. That's definitely what I don't want and so I just want to take off just a little bit of it and so that it leaves just a faint line. Let me bring it up again so you can kind of see the difference. Go ahead and keep doing that wherever you want it to be. Do as much or as little as you want. That's pretty much it. In the next video, we'll go ahead and paint this painting together. I'll see you there. 10. PAINTING - Supplies: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this video. I'm going to go over the supplies that I'm going to use for all of the painting videos. We have watercolor paints obviously, and this is just my general palette of all of my colors, but for each one, we'll use a different set of colors. If you want all of the colors that are in my palette, you can just download my list of supplies in the class downloads, but for this first peony, like, one of the peonies, we'll focus on the pinks here, a ouch of red and a touch of peonies gray. Another one, we'll do that bright magenta one. It will probably be mostly the purples and the pinks here. Then the third one we'll do orange E1. We'll focus on a lot of the warm colors that are down here. Anyway, that is that. I have a variety of brush sizes. These are all the round shape. The largest I have is a four, and that's probably the largest I'm going to go. Then I have two 2s actually, and then I have a one, a double zero and a triple zero. These are really small brushes that can get the finest of details. If you don't have all of these sizes, that's okay. I think at least a four. Maybe a one or a two would be good, and then having a really small one like the double zero or triple zero would be really good. Other supplies include a paper towel, a jar of water, and then this is a spray bottle so I can keep my paints nice and fresh. Then finally, you'll need your sketch on your watercolor paper. I'm using the arches brand and I'm using cold press. With botanical painting, a lot of people use hot press paper because it's really smooth surface, but for this one, it's okay that we're using cold press, so if that's all you have, that's totally okay. Go ahead and gather your supplies and let's start painting. 11. PINK PEONY - 1st Layers: Hey everyone. In this video we're going to start painting. The first one that we're going to do is inspired by this one here. This is just in my watercolor journal that I actually made myself. But this botanical peony has a lot of great details. It's really light in color, but you can still get the sense that this peony is three-dimensional. It has a lot of details. Yeah, so this is the look that we're going to go for. The sketch that we have is really similar to this as well. Again, during the sketching and the transferring process, some of the petals might have gotten lost or they might have gotten moved. That's okay. What I'm going to do, I'm going to show you the principles of how to paint some of these petals. Then it'll be easy to take it from there. This is our inspiration. I have my sketch over here. It's really difficult to see, because it's a very light color. But before we go into that, let's talk about some of the colors that we'll be using. Whenever I have scrap paper leftover, I usually use them for testing out colors. I'm using my size 4 brush. I'm going to pick up some of my opera rose and just see what it looks like straight out of the tube. You can see what the color is. Yeah, that's very bright and rich. That's good, at least I know what that looks like. I'm going to add some water to my brush and then just draw that color out so I can see what it looks like when it's lighter. Because when you first start out, you're going to want to start out with the lightest colors possible. Let's grab my other pink. I'm going to grab a little bit more paint, so I can get a more concentrated color. This one's a little bit more like hot pink almost. This one might have to be diluted a lot as well. But both of these colors are the professional grade colors. Just a little bit of pigment really goes a long way. Do a couple of color test to see what you like. I'm going to try mixing just a bit of red into one of the pinks and see how I like that. I'm going to pick up just a little bit of the red. That might be too much. Yeah, it's a little too much. I'm going to add some more of that pink. Then just see how that looks. Yeah, it's a really nice, deep rich color as well. It's a little bit to red for me. Like I said, I think I added too much red, but at least you get the idea. Then let's just see what it looks like if we add just a touch of purple to it too. Maybe to just cool down this pink here. Yeah, you almost get a nice almost lilac color there. In this peony we're actually going to do a little bit of gray. My favorite gray is Payne's gray over here. I'm just going to pick up a little bit of that, really water it down. I'm just adding a lot of water. Now your brush is going to be really wet. Instead of putting this really wet brush onto the paper, I'm actually going to dab it on the paper towel, get rid of some of the moisture. Then that'll help you create a less watery color. The pinks we're going to use the lightest color possible for some of the shadow effects. But in general, we're going to keep what these pinks here, maybe add just a touch a red to darken some areas and then use the gray to add some shadows. Go ahead and test out some of your color, see what you like, and then we'll get started. In general, since your sketch is going to look maybe just a little bit different than mine, especially if you draw it yourself, I'm going to just talk you through some of the principles and then we'll paint together. In general, this peony especially has a lot of deep colors towards the center of the flower. If you look here in the middle, obviously that is the center and we're looking inside the flower, that's why it's the darkest in here. Then here where the petals meet under the flower or this little sliver right there, those are all going into the deep parts of the flower. Those are going to be the darkest parts. It also looks like this flower in general has pink just radiating out. Then the tips tend to be very white or just very pale pink. Then the outside of the petal is also white, but the underside or the inside of the petal is darker and more of a pinkish color. Over here I added some extra shadows because I'm imagining that the light is shining in from here this way. These petals here are under these petals here. They would be in some kind of shadow. That's the general feeling. We will go petal by petal, and so you go petal by petal as well. But keep in mind that these parts that are coming inside the flower are going to be really really dark. We will layer those up. Then the tips of these petals are going to be mostly white or as pale pink as possible. Then the inside of the petals are a nice pink color, but the outsides are lighter. Now that you understand that, let's go ahead and start painting. First I'm going to go ahead and mix up a really pale pink color. Again, I wanted to be as pale as possible. I'm just going to add a lot of water to it. The good thing about watercolor is that you can always add more, and you can erase to a point. When you put your first colors down, try to go with the lightest color as possible. I have a pretty light color, I'm just going to dab my brush on my paper towels so I can get rid of some of the color. I've got some paint on my brush, and I'm going to start with the petals that are towards the center, but that I know are going to have a darker area. If you go above the stamen area and above the folded petals, and up to these petals up here, that's where we're going to start. Go ahead and put down your first layer of color, and just be very careful. Then add more water as you go, because you want to draw out the color and be as light as possible. Right now, I'm using my size four brush. Then remember that the tips of the petal are not going to be as dark, so I'm not going to paint all the way to the edge there. I'm just going to leave it like that. That's a very nice pale, pink color right there. For my next petal, I'm going to skip the petals that are just around it, that are just adjacent to it, because I don't want the colors to be mixing. I'm going to skip a petal, and then move on to this one here. Again, picking up some color, but then dabbing it on my paper towel and then painting it in. Then I'm adding some water as I go so that I can lighten up the color. Then again, the tips of these petals are going to be very light in color, so I'm just not going to even bother painting all the way up to the line. I'm just going to keep going around and then paint the parts that are heading towards the center of the flower, and keeping it as light as possible. Again, don't paint the petals that are right next to each other. Try to avoid adding too much water because if there's too much water, you're going to get some pretty hard lines. That's okay in some regards, but in botanical painting, you want to try to be as smooth as possible. You know what? There is a random line right here that I'm going to get rid of. How is your flower looking so far? I'm going to touch on some of these upper petals up here, because I know that it also has some color. Again, I'm adding some water as I go, trying to keep it as light as possible. Remember that petals that tops, they don't have much color, so I'm going to keep it just the way it is right there. Now that this middle petal is dry, I'm going to go back in there and then paint that one as well. Now that I've got some color around the center, I'm going to go ahead and fill in the center. Now, remember that we drew some faint lines for the stamen, so I'm going to avoid that area, but paint the whole inside part, this very light pale pink color. I'm going to do a little bit of painting down into this stamen area. The good thing is that I can always go darker, but I don't want to paint exactly where the stamen are going to be. I'll just continue to paint the bottom parts of the pedals. You should slowly start to see your painting come to life. Keep going with the lightest of pinks until you've got every petal that needs it done. My first layer of the lightest pink is pretty much done. At this point, I'm going to go in and start adding my second layer. For my second layer, I'm just going to deepen some of these pinks than I have, and then start defining where the petals are. 12. PINK PEONY - 2nd Layers: All right, so for the second layer, I'm not really going to do much different in terms of paint color. I'm just going to add a little bit more of the pink and then just make it a little bit stronger in terms of concentration, so using slightly less water and more the pigment. I'm not really adding new colors or mixing new things. I'm just adding more of the same color and then using less water. Go ahead and start adding the second layer in there. For the second layer, you're going to start with, where are the petals touch each other, and then draw it out again. I know it's a process, but you'll get there. I'm going to continue to use my size four, but eventually I might switch to my size two. Once I put that second color down, you can already see a big difference here. I'm going to spread that out and then wash out my brush and then add some water to it so that it's a nice gradual. Then when you're drying out the colors, either you don't want the paint to stop in just a straight line. To be a little bit more organic, you can just swish your brush around like this so that you can have different heights to where the paint stops. This Arches paper is really nice because it can really hold the water really well, and so if I do make a mistake, I can quickly pick it up and I don't have to worry about it. One of the things that I didn't really do is this big petal here. There are some faint pink veins that are going upward. I'm going to create a couple of light pink arcs that follow the petals curves. That'll help give it a little bit more dimension as well as this peony is coming along really nicely. In the next video, we'll put on the third layer of paint. 13. PINK PEONY - 3rd Layers: For this third layer, I'm going to add just a touch of that red. Remember how it got really dark really quickly? I don't want to add too much. Yeah, I can already tell it's too much. I'm going to add a lot more of the pink and I am going to water it down because again I don't want to jump too dark of a color. I'm going to add a lot of water and then tap my brush into the paper towel, and this time I'm going to actually move down a brush size to a size 2. For this third layer, I'm going to really concentrate on most of the petals, not all of them, but most of them, and really concentrate on where's going to be the darkest. Inside this center here, this section right here that looks into the flower, this as well. Just really deepening some of these corners where the petals meet. I'm just going to quickly just do a test to make sure that it's the right color that I want. Yeah, that's a little bit better. It's a little bit darker but not too dark. I'm going to pause for a moment because you may have noticed, we didn't really paint in the parts that are folded over. At this point we're going to go ahead and fill them in. We still want a pretty light color. Just do a very faint wash over them, just so that they have a touch of color, but not too much. I'm going to pause here. There are definitely a lot of areas that I can still deepen, but I'm going to come back to them because right now I want to add in the shadows. I'll see you in the next video. 14. PINK PEONY - 4th Layers: All right. Welcome back. In this video we're going to add some of the shadows, and that's just to, not every peony is going to be super bright white like this. There are going to be a couple of shadowy parts. Like I explained earlier, these areas are going to have some shadows to them. On these inner pedals are also going to have some shadows and it's going to be the lightest gray ever. The gray that I'm going to be using is a Payne's gray. I'm going to I grab my scratch paper. We tested this color earlier, I just want to make sure that I can get to it again. I'm going to add a lot of water, I'm going to use my spray bottle to do that. I can just quickly add a lot of water. Because this is so watery and blobby, I don't want my brush to be too wet, so what I'm going to do, I'm just going to debit on my paper towel and then paint with it. This is a really, really faint gray and that's exactly what I'm going for. When in doubt, add more water because you don't want to go too dark too quickly. Let's go ahead and ask some of those shadows. I'm going to continue to use my size two brush and the shadows that I'm going to add are at the tips here. I want a really, really faint gray. If it's too dark, just quickly wash your brush out and just paint it in. This will make your paintings feel a bit more realistic. Paintings are all about manipulating light and color, or light and dark, I mean. Being able to add some shadow to it, will give the illusion that there is some depth to your subject. Again, keep it as light as possible, and I'm just painting the tips of these petals. I'm sort of blending them with the pink, but not so much. I did the petals over here. Now, I'm going to do is some of the petals here on the inner layer, so just right up at the top, I can just to give some illusion that this flower is 3D. That's a little too dark, quickly wash my brush out and then pick it up. All right. So your peony should be looking really good now. At this point, I'm going to switch to one of my smaller brushes. This is a side zero, zero, and I'm going to outline some of these inner petals with a pretty dark red pink combo. The reason I'm doing that is because I just want to be able to distinguish where the petals are. I'm just going to do a couple of tests lines with my brush so that you can see how thin we want to get it. All right. Those are pretty thin lines there. I don't want it to be too red, I'm going to add some other pink. I am going to dilute it just a bit, but I don't want it too light either. That's pretty good. I'm only going to define these petals that are in here, just kids. There is a little bit of color that's happening between some of these petals and this small brush we'll really get in there. You can see that this petal already really stands out, and I'm going to add some more color behind it because the petal behind it has. Then I add some more color to the petal behind it to help define it a little bit more. Now, this middle petal here, I haven't really done much to it. I should probably actually go back in there with my size two, and really help define that too. We'll just do that real quick. All right. I'm back to my size double zero, and I'm going to continue to define some of these petals. I'm going to define this one here because it has this really deep color right behind it. Just going to help it to stand out. I'm actually going to use a different size brushes just to draw the color out. I don't have to keep re-dipping and picking up new colors. This size two is just a clean brush then I add some color on them. But it's mostly water. To find that petal there too, and it's just very subtle, very subtle markings. I'm going to define these petals in this intersection too, because eventually it's going to be all colored in and I want to make sure that I can see the boundary. You know what? I am going to color in some of it because this whole solid section isn't going to be the stamen and there's going to be some of the deep red pink color in here. I'm going to add some of that color in there. Just jagged and not really thinking about where I'm placing my colors, just randomly putting it in there. Now, this section down here is really rich in color too. When I go in there with my small brush and just paint it in. I'm making it pretty dark now because I'm fairly confident that that's where I wanted it to be, and I know, it needs to be a lot deeper than it is. I'm going to define these petals right here too. Then this little section here, it's a break in this petal, but it also is going to have a deep color in between. This coloring that in sort of, these petals up here could still also use a little bit more definition, a little bit more color, not too much, but just very lightly, maybe just another light layer of color. All right. I really like how this is looking. I'm really pleased. Yeah. You can really clearly see every single petal. It's really coming to life, and if I zoom out just a little bit, it just looks really good. I hope your peony is looking really good so far. When you step back, you notice a couple of more things. I'm just going to help define some of these petals here too. Just so that they don't get lost and it doesn't look like one big blob. That's really all I'm doing here. All right. That's looking a little bit butter. Now, the next step is to just continue refining, but I'm going to focus on the stamen next. 15. PINK PEONY - Fine details: Hi. To paint this Damon, we're going to use the yellow och-re. My yellow och-re is right here, so I'm just going to take some of that, just mix it right here, but I'm going to use mostly the paint, so very little water and mostly paint. I'm going to use my smallest brush, because I want to just create little lines, because what I'm going to do after I create these lines. I'm going to go back in there with my darkest red pink combo and then paint around it. Just using this, just creating some lines like that. Again, it's mostly paint, so it's pretty thick, and yellow och-re tends to be a little bit more opaque than other colors. I'm going to leave that as it is and I'm going to let that dry completely and I'll come back to it later. But for now, I still want my peony to be a little bit deeper in color. I'm going to take my size 4 brush again, and I'm going to go in there with some of my darker colors. Actually, you know what? I just spotted another area that I could improve, there's a little corner right here, another slit and the pedal that I overlooked. I'm just going to paint that real quick. Let me go now that pedal looks prettier, going to there again and just define this pedal too, and then just have parts of it deeper in color. Like I said, I want this paintings to be just a little bit deeper in colors. Especially in the areas where it's like really, really white, I want to just darken them up, just a touch. I'm going to take my size 4 brush which is the largest, I'm going to water down my red pink mixture a lot and I'm just going to go over it very lightly over some of these areas, just to give it a little bit more color, but not covering it completely, just lightly going over it. This process is called glazing, where you're adding a new color or not new color but just another color, but applying that over the entire painting or even parts of it is fine too, but in this case I'm doing the entire painting. Well, mostly the painting. Again, this really just helps add just a little bit more dimension to our painting. Here I'm just going to add a couple more paint, just in darker areas to make our cut outs more interesting. I do the same thing over here, just adding some paints that follow the curvature of the pedal. I'm going to let those areas dry, and going to go back in there with the darkest red pink mix that we have, and I'm going to use my smallest brush to paint in between all these little stamen. Now at the same time, you want to darken the center area too. You can just go on in there with your darkest red, and just start painting. We are like 90 percent done with this peony. The last step, I'm just going to let this area dry. We're going to start painting the leaves, and then we'll take one last look at it and see if we need to glaze any certain areas or deepen any colors and yeah, it's just a lot of fine tuning once everything is laid out. I'll see you in the next video. 16. PINK PEONY - Leaves and Stem: Hey everyone, welcome. In this video we're going to start painting the leaves and peony leaves can come in a couple different colors. But for this one, because the pink is so bright and warm, I want to go with a slightly cooler tone of leaves. I've got, just a variety of greens and mixed up in here. But I'm going to add some Payne's gray to it. That will help darken it, but it will also help cool the paint down, not temperature wise but tone wise. Let's just see what that looks like on my scrap piece of paper. Yeah, it's like a, I don't know, like a dusty green color. That's okay for the lightest shade. For the leaves, just like the petals were going to paint one light layer and then we're going to go in there with the details. We're basically going to do some negative painting to paint the veins. I'm going to start out with my size four brush and then just paint all of the leaves in this light green color. This is going to add a lot of water to it. Again, dab it on your paper towel because you don't want it to be too wet and just go over the entire leaf. (MUSIC). All right, for the peony stem, I'm going to just paint it with that green color, but I'm going to go in with some brown just to add some dimension to it. Go ahead and just paint it all up in there. I'm going to add just a little bit brown, just to give it some, let's say give it some character. Then I can deepen this color later too but for now I like how it looks. Now, for this next part, I'm going to use this smaller brush. When I go down to my size, size two. We're going to do some negative painting. What that means is, so for example, if this is my green, I hope it's mostly dry now, I'm going to go in there with a darker green color. I'm going to imagine that there's a vane happening and I'm going to paint basically around it. I'll try to demonstrate on here. If this is the shape of the leaf, so pretend that's the shape of the leaf. If I know it's not that great. There would be a vein going down the middle. Well, let me just show you what the leaf actually looks like. The leaf is shaped like this and then it has a vein down the center, then it has really long veins that go out like this. Really long veins. Basically what we're going to be doing, we're going to be painting the areas in between the veins and leaving a really faint line. If I imagine that this is the first vein, we're going to stop right there and then skip just a little bit, then paint another section, skip another vein area, and then paint to the top. I do the same on the other side but this time I need to leave a central vein as well. Okay, so you can see here the vein that is left behind and you're just painting around it. That's basically what we're going to do here. Take your darkest or darker leaf color, make sure that it's not as wet (MUSIC). How is your peony leaf looking? This is what mine looks like when you have the veins. I know that some of these sanctions are a little bit darker than the others and that's okay. We'll just work on darkening of all of them later. Continue to do that for all the other leaves.(MUSIC). As the leaves bend, you want to make sure that your veins also follow suit. The leaves are looking pretty good. I want to go in there with the stem and go a little bit darker. I'm just going to mix some of that brownish green. I want the color to be in here pretty dark. At this point, I'm just going to continue to darken up the leaves and then we'll take a step back and see how we like everything. All right, we are 95 percent done with this. In the next video, we'll take a step back and look at it and see if there's anything else that we want to add, any more glazing that needs to be done, but for now, pat yourself on the back because yeah, you made it this far. So great job. I'll see you in the next video. 17. PINK PEONY - Final details: Welcome back everyone. At this point, you might be just really tired and might not want to do anything further to this flower. If that's the case, that's totally okay. I understand. Because we've been doing this for over an hour probably, maybe even more, especially if you stopped and took breaks or anything like that. But the time is not what's important. I think Water coloring, especially in this type of style, really just develops a lot of discipline and patience for sure. If you want, go ahead and take a break, get yourself a snack, reward yourself, give yourself a mini-massage or something, but then come back to it because at this point now we're just going to fine tune little things. We're going to continue on, and I'm just looking over at this painting and I had a moment to look at it from afar, and look at it up close, and overall, I'm pretty satisfied with it. There are a couple water lines here, but I'm not too concerned about it. The dark areas are pretty dark, and the petals are pretty well-defined, so I'm not too concerned with the tiny little details. Overall, I just feel like there needs to be just a little bit more color, especially in some of these other outlying petals. I am going to take my size four brush, mix up some of that pink and red mixture. Kind of water it down though, because again, I don't want it to be too much, and then just add just a little bit more color to the overall, some of these petals right here. It's not too much details that I'm really worried about. I'm just going for the overall sense of the petal. I want there to be, definitely definition in the petals because I don't want the petals to look like they're all melding together. That's why we defined some of these petals here. See I just want to deepen that one up a little bit more, even still. I think that is mostly it. Just want to add a little bit more definition here. I'm just continuing to look and see if there's anything else. Now you don't want to get to the point where you're really nit picking every single little thing, so I am going to stop eventually, I am going to stop now. [ LAUGHTER ], because you can overwork a painting too. I think we're at a good stopping point. I just want to touch up these leaves just a little bit. I'm just going to glaze a light green color over it, just to bring out some of the veins, I don't want them to be to light. I'm just applying a color over the entire leaf, just a very faint green color. I'm being careful not to use too much water because if you use too much water, you're going to end up remixing some of these colors and I definitely don't want that. I'm just quickly going over it. This glazing helps bring the leaf together as one unit. Because since we did some of that negative painting, I don't want any of the veins to look like they don't belong. Now, with the glazing, I'll bring it up for you to see, the veins look a little bit more natural. Those are my final touches. I am not going to touch it anymore. I'm going to leave it as is. I'm just going to take a deep breath because that was a lot of work. But you should definitely applaud yourself because you did a lot of work too. Next, we'll paint some of these buds together, and then continue painting the other peonies is that we sketched. I'll see you next video. 18. BUD #1 - Pink : Hi there. In this video we're going to paint the buds together. Earlier, we sketched out two different kinds of buds, I know it's hard to see the sketches. Then one flower that had a bud mostly and then a couple of petals unfolding. We're going to go ahead and paint all of those. I have a couple of inspiration photos and most of them are pink buds but you don't have to make them pink if you don't want to, you can make them purple or coral, yellow, red, whatever color you want, even white. I have three different sketches here. Maybe this one will do like that bright pink magenta color because the next peony is going to be that color. Maybe this one will make white, since we haven't done a white one yet and then this one will do it as a deep reddish color. Let's go ahead and do this. The inspiration photo that I'm working off of has the leaves folded over and then you see just a sliver of the pink. Not just a sliver like you do see that pink. Let's go ahead and mix up a nice bright magenta color here. I really like this color. You can start with the leaves on either side or you can start with a petals inside. I don't think it really matters, but I'm going to do the petal inside first. Just like we did with this peony here, we're going to start with a lighter wash. I should probably mention I'm using my size four brush, but if you want to use a smaller one, that's totally okay too. That's just a clean flat wash, not really much detail. I'm going to go in there and then add some of a brighter pink color and just drop it in just different parts just to give it some more dimension. I really like that. I'm going to switch to my smaller brushes and do some of the other petals that are inside here. Again, I'm starting with a lighter wash. While I'm waiting for these petals to dry, I'm going to go in there with the leaves. This sap green color is probably one of my favorites. I'm going to just do a very light wash of that and then drop in some of this bright yellow that I have here too. I have this but then now I want to go in there with some of that bright yellow and then just outline it. Looks like there's an outline and then some veins too. I'm just going to let that blend in effortlessly. It is a little too yellow for my taste. You know what? In the next layer I'm going to go over it with a darker layer of sap green and see if I can remedy that. All right, and I'm going to do the same over here. This time I'm not going to put in the yellow. I might actually make this side a little bit darker to make it seem like a more of a 3D bud. Can I go back to my size 2 and then finish up with these petals here? All right. I'm going to come back to this leaf here and make it a little bit darker but keeping what this sap green, I just don't like how that yellow really made it. It's just a little bit too bright for my taste. I'm just going to layer over it. There we go. But I also want this to have some dimension and so I'm going to add some more color to make it a little darker. I do want to come back to these petals here because right now it's starting to look like one big shape and I want it to look a little bit more organic and real. I'm going to just grab some more of that bright pink magenta and just start giving it a little bit more shape. Just by highlighting the corners with this bright color and distinguishing some of the petals here. That already looks more 3D and has a lot more texture and interests to it. I do the same here. I'm just going to spread out this bright yellow color a little bit more. Make this corner a little bit darker. I want to come back to the leaves and make them stand out a little bit more. In some of the inspiration photos, sometimes the edge of the leaf has an outline to it. I want to explore that and try it here. I'm going to come back to this when this entire bud is dried, so I'm going to leave that as is. Let's go on to this one and then try to do a white bud. 19. BUD #2 - White: Painting with white is not as challenging as it sounds. It just means that you're painting with almost every color except for white. In this one I have two large areas here. Then I have one medium size area here. Then inside here are all the petals. Even though my reference for the white bud is a little bit different, I'm going to try to incorporate those same elements. Inside here I'm going to keep it mostly white and add just a little bit of shadows. Then these two are going to be my leaves, then this top one will be the white one as well, and then this little guy here. Let's do the leaves first because it's just a little bit easier. It looks like in this reference the leaves are mostly green and then has like a red edge. Let's go ahead and do that. I'm going to add a sap green layer here, but I'm going to stop just before the edge. I'm going to wash this border out. It looks like it's fading out. I'm going to use my size 2 or maybe my size 1 brush and then go in there with a deep reddish color for that border. I'm going to add some more sap green to this bottom here to give it some more shape. I'm going to let that one dry and then we'll come back to it in a little bit. Let's try to do some of these white petals over here that aren't touching this leaf that I just painted. Now for the white, if you look really carefully at this white bud, there are hints of pink and small hints of, I don't know what is that like a mossy green and yeah, it's mostly pinks that I see, maybe even a little bit of gray. We're going to use that to our advantage. If we think of our bud as a 3D round object and up here there's going to be some shadows right at the edge. This petal because it ends here, there's going to be some of the pink right here at the edge, and then some of that mossy green overshown the other edge. Let's go ahead and add some of the gray right there, just to give it some more dimension. I'm going to use Payne's gray for that and then dilute it as much as possible. Remember you can always add more, but you can't always erase it. I'm going to pick up some of that gray and just very lightly, just paint that edge. I know it's going to be really difficult to see, but it is there. It'll be easier to see once we paint some of the other elements around it. Let's go in there with a very pale pink as well. Where the edge of this pedal is, I'm just going to just paint a couple of streaks and again, it's very faint. But once we paint around it, you'll see it a little bit better. I just painted a couple streaks right there that might be a little bit easier to see. It's little bit of gray just around it. I'm just going to blur that with a light wash of gray. Then I'm going to add some of those mossy brownish details right on the other edge over here. It's like a brownish greenish color. I'm not going to be too worried about it, but it's just giving some more detail to the flower. Already you're seeing the petal coming to life. I'm not going to work at it to much more. I'm going to leave it as it's and I'm going to focus on some of these petals that are inside. Although it's not obvious in my reference photo, it would just have more of that pink and maybe a little bit of this gray or brown green that's going as. I'm going to add some more of that pink, a very light color just on the edges right there to show that there are boundaries. Sometimes the good thing about white is that you can still see the pencil lines. Sometimes that's a good thing. Let me bring it up for you so you can see a little bit better. Let's go ahead and do this left side. It's going to be similar to what we did here. But it looks like there are more streaks rather than a solid color. I'm going do those streaks, but I'm going to wet my leaf first because I want the streaks to be less precise and more free flowing. I'm going to take some clean water and cover the entire petal with it. You want a nice even layer of water. If you're not sure if you have enough water or if you have too much. Just hold it up and hold it at an angle towards the light source. Then you can see the shine that has it. If you see too much water, you'll see that the water is building up or there will be a dome. But if it's just enough, there's just going to be a nice shine or sheen to it. I'm going to grab my sap green, I've got my size 2 brush. I'm going to try to recreate those streaks just like that. It creates a nice softer lines. I'm going to come in here later and make some more dimensional details. I'm going to just let that paint continue to spread on its own. I'm going to come in there with that dark red edge or the border there. I'm going to work on this petal just a little bit more, just to blend the colors a little bit better. There's actually a little bit of yellow just under that red border. I'm going to add just a little bit of yellow right under there, and that's blend through as well. Adding a little bit more details to the petals so that you can see where one petal ends and then the other one begins. I'm just adding just subtle colors and then washing them out, just dry the paint out. But I'm being careful to leave the majority of the petal a very light color and leaving it as white as possible. Let me hold it up to the camera so you can see better. At this point, this layer is a little bit drier. I'm going in there and add some more sap green layers to it so that it has more of a dimensional look. I'm pretty pleased at how those two came out. Let's take a look at those two buds. This one is the mostly pink one and I'm still going to work on the leaves here so don't worry. Then this one, the white one. Now let's move on down to the other sketch here, and we'll do it in a deep reddish color. 20. BUD #3 - Dark Red: This bud here has a couple of petals coming out of it. The majority of the bud is still closed up right here in the middle. We also have a stem and a few leaves. What I want to do with this flower is paint it in that dark red color, but in the bud area, I still want hints of that green because I still want to show that this flower has not yet bloomed to its full potential. Even in the closed bud and even in the petals, I'm going to drop in just a little bit of green here and there so we can get a better sense that, yeah, this flower isn't completely bloomed yet. Let's go ahead and mix up a nice deep red color, and even though my red is over here, I'm actually going to use my black and gray area here because I want a deeper color. I'm just going to let it mix in with some of the Payne's gray and the black that is here just so I can get a nice deep color. I'm going to start with the outer petals first, and I'm going to paint the underside of the petals because there are also parts that are folded over. I'm going to just paint the parts that are just under it, and it's going to be this nice thick color. All right. I'm going to work on some of these inner petals in here and they're going to have that same deep red color, but I'm going to try to create a little bit of a gradient and I moved down to a size two. Okay. I'm going to wait for some of these petals to dry. I'm going to get to work on the petals or the stems and the leaves. Now the leaves are interesting because I think you can use some of these reds that are in the leaves too. I'm going to leave this first leaf like this, but then go in there with some of the red. I'm going to add in more of the green just right here in the corner because that's where it would be darkest. This time I'm going to do more brownish, greenish color. Then do the same with the edge. Just adding just a little bit. You know what, I don't like this stem as much so I'm going to go in there with this leaf green too and alter the color just a little bit. All right, our flower is starting to look like, I don't know, it is starting to look like it has a weird face or something. We need to get in there and draw some more details or paint in some more details. Let's do some of these petals that are folded over. You know what, I messed up on my painting, this petals was to go a little bit further to the right, like that. Okay. Well, I won't be painting that one yet. Let's do these petals here, and this is where I talked about adding some of that green is going to come in. I'm going to paint it mostly like a lighter shade of these dark ones, but then drop in some of that green. I'm painting about half of it and then I'm going to drop in some of that green right there. Let me do the same for this one over here too. Keeping it nice and light and then adding some of that green right there. Here's to show, hey, this flower isn't quite developed yet. The same thing for this one. Since this paint is still pretty fresh, I'm going to go in for some of these inner ones. It'll be similar using that lighter reddish color. This is looking a little flat, so I do want to add some more deep red just right here in the border. Okay, how is your peony looking? This is just another unique way to blend the colors because peonies, again, just come in so many different varieties and it's really hard to paint one exactly the same way because each one is going to really have their own personalities. Hopefully you learned a little bit about how to blend some of these colors, how to paint in white. Oh my goodness, I totally forgot, we need to come back to this guy. What I wanted to do with this one was just add some veins and add some more dimension to it. Then I add some more that sap green but a thicker mixture. I blend that through and I'm doing the same on the other side as well. All right, well, great job in painting these two buds with me and a semi-open peony, we explored lots of different colors. We've even painted in white and in a really deep red, rich color. Yeah, I'd love to see what you create. Join me in the next video as we continue to paint the peony together. Bye. 21. PURPLE PEONY - First layer part 1: Hey everyone. The next several videos are going to be all about the next peony, which is the second one that we sketched and it was like that bright pink magenta. Yeah, that one. So yeah, but for this one, we're going to do it a little bit differently in terms of technique, but also in terms of creative liberty. So looking at this peony, it's mostly one color. It's a very monochrome peony in a sense. But don't let that scare you or anything like that. And for me, I'm going to take some creative liberty and I'm going to make some lighter parts, a lot lighter and some darker parts a lot darker. I just really like the high contrast look, so I want to encourage you to also do the same. Now in terms of technique, we're going to do it a little bit differently. In the first one, we used mainly wet on dry, meaning that we took what paint and put it on dry paper. For this one, we're going to try some wet on wet. First let's try to get our colors. I do want to try to make that bright magenta light color. I've actually never mixed this color before, so am going to be mixing it for the first time. So be patient with me. First I want to grab a lot of purple, because I think purple is going to be our main base. then I feel like some parts look a little bit bluer, but most of it is a lot more pink. So I'm going to add a lot of this one. Yeah, this one looks a lot closer to the actual color. Add a little bit more purple and a lot more pink. So let's see how that looks. I'm actually going to use a little bit of that red pink mixture that we used earlier too, might as well use up the colors that I have. Let's add a little more purple. No, that was too much. So let's see how that looks on my scrap paper. Yeah, that looks pretty good. What do you think? So go ahead and wash it out and see what it looks like when it's lighter, because watercolor always dries lighter, so it's good to see the whole gradient. Yeah, I really like this magenta color. I think we hit it right on the head. I'm going to mix up a little bit more of that on my palette here, so that I don't have to keep mixing it up. When you do the wet on wet method, you want to place clean water on your paper. So in this case, I'm actually going to be using two jars. This is the one that I used earlier to try to mix this color, but I also have another jar that's just clean water. This is a water I'm going to use to place on the paper, and this is a water I'm going to use to wash out my brush. I'm going to start out using a size 4 brush and I'm picking up some clean water. I'm going to start with one of the smaller petals towards the center. We can go large, but I just want do it on a small section first. Go ahead and pick up some water, dab your brush lightly on the paper towel to get rid of excess water, and then go ahead and start painting basically with water. Try to stay within the pencil lines. If you need more water, go ahead and grab some water. You may, you may not. Make sure you cover the entire pedal. The way that you will know whether you have a good even surface is kind of hold it up at an angle, then you'll see the light reflecting off of it. If you see a nice sheen to it, then you know that you have enough water. If you see any water bubbling up or in a dome, then you want to soak up that water either with a different dry brush or with some paper towel. I'm just adding a little bit more water in some areas that I haven't touched. This is another reason why paper, like the Arches brand, is really important because this paper can hold a lot of water. So if you use cheaper paper, it tends to not hold the water very well, and so usually it just soaks it right up. If that happens, then you need to put down the paint really quickly and it just becomes a real hot mess. I'm going to go ahead and get rid of the water from my brush. Try to make it almost dry but not completely dry. Now I'm going to pick up my color, soak my brush in it, and then go ahead and drop it in your petal. Now we've seen in previous pennies and other examples, that the edges tend to be a little bit lighter and then the bottom tends to be a little bit darker. So I'm going to concentrate my paint towards the bottom of the pedal. Go ahead and drop it and you'll see the paints start to move. I'll bring it up, so you can see better. If you continue to drop in color, you can see it's spreading. Go ahead and use your brush to guide the paint. I do want the paint to almost reach the top of the pedal too, so I'm going to help it along just a little bit. There we go. But you get a nice organic gradient without having to layer. Because in the previous one, we created this gradient by layering color on top of color, on top of color. But when you're working with a really rich and deep color like this, it's a little bit easier if you just start out with this gradient, so that it's easier to layer on top of that. So just like before, the next peddle we're going to do is not going to be adjacent to this paddle, because if I put any water down and it touches this wet paint, is going to start bleeding, and we definitely don't want that. I'm going to skip a petal and then move on to this one. So again grab some clean water, go ahead and wet that section. Just like previously, just move slowly there is no rush. The good thing about watercolor is that you can come back to it tomorrow, you can come back to it a week from now. So don't feel like you have to finish this all in one sitting. Am just dropping some more paint just to make it darker. Then I'm going to go ahead and help it, just filling that area too. You can already see a good comparison, because this one is starting to dry already, and you can see that it has a nice gradient to it but it is significantly lighter than this one that we just painted. That's exactly how watercolors work. It's always going to dry lighter, so don't worry about it. We're going to come back to this and then add some more details. So this one is drying, so I'm going to skip to a totally different petal again. Let's skip to one of these that has a folded over section. Again grab some clean water, and then wet that section. Now, I'm only putting water down in this section that doesn't have the folded up part. We're going to do that one in just a little bit. I just love it when the paint dances like that. It's so cool. Now for this one, it's going to be pretty dark, almost the entire pedal, especially the section that's right under the folded over part. So I'm just going to just spread the paint all around and then add some more paint in certain areas just to darken it up. Now with this style of painting, there's a lot more creative liberty and freedom to it. Again, we have the reference photo and you can use it as a guide, but you don't have to paint it exactly as it is. I'm really just being inspired by the colors and just letting the paint do its own thing. Yeah, give yourself the freedom to also do that too. I am going to let that dry and I'm going to come back and then paint that folded over part in just a little bit. Then let's do another one, maybe this big one over here. This one might require a lot more water. This petal's interesting because this is the top of the petal, top edge, and then this part back here is the bottom of the pedal. So our concentration of the paint, it's going to be actually darkest down here. So I'm going to go ahead and just let that paint dance right there. Isn't that so cool? Man, I really love it. Again, especially this little crevice down here is going to be very dark too. So I'm going to really let the paint, I'm going to set there. Wash my brush out a little bit and then help fill in the paint for the rest of the petal. That's looking really good so far. So just continue with this technique until you've got all of the petals down. 22. PURPLE PEONY - First layer part 2: At this point I'm going to come back to that folded over petal right here. For this, I'm just going to do a very light pink wash, and yes just paint right over it. Just like that. Then we'll add some more details, so don't worry about that just yet. This is where a little bit more of that creative freedom comes in. This petal here, at least what I'm seeing in my reference photo there like the more of a violet, or like a blue purple color in there. I'm going to mix a little bit of that blue violet. But this time when I do the wet on wet, I'm going to put in this magenta color, but I'm also going to drop in some of that violet color. Let's go ahead, and mix some of that. I've got my original magenta color here, but then I'm going to go ahead, and add some of this blue in there, and see how that looks. That's really too blue. I'm going to add a little bit more that purple. There we go. Actually I'm going to add some more of that pink in there because I still feel like it's a little bit too, yes, this is a much better violet color. I'm going to do that same wet on wet process, to go ahead, and wet that whole petal. I've got my pedal down, and it looks like the pink is mostly everywhere. Then there are just some parts of it right down here. I'm going to go ahead, and drop that magenta color down first. Just all over here, and then also some parts here. Maybe some tips here. Wash your brush out, and then grab some of that blue violet, and then drop it in the other parts here, yes. Then I'll be cool to see how this dries. You can see how this purple, and this magenta color are reacting together. You can help it blend too. I really like that petal. That's probably my most favorite petals so far. If you see colors like that feel free to experiment, and try it on your own. Keep going, and continue to experiment. For this one, this petal here, this section over here is going to be really dark. You know what? I'm going to add some Payne's gray because Payne's gray is as dark as it's going to get to my violet mix, and put that right up in there. It's going to get pretty dark, really fast. But that's what you want with wet on wet. Then from there it's going to get a little bit lighter, so you can start adding some of that in. Let it blend through, so you can have that natural gradient going, and it continues to stay dark for a good long while. You can continue to add some more of that if you want. We're just really experimenting and letting the paint just do its own thing. We'll just let that dry and see what it looks like. Yeah, let's come back to this other petal that we worked on. Yeah, I really like how that looks. I want a little bit more of the blueish parts more evidently so in the next layer we'll add some of those details. But for now, I really like how it looks. [MUSIC] Just checking in and we're about, I don't know, what, 70% done with the first layer of the white and red. Yeah, I'm already starting to see the peony come to life. There's still a lot that I have to do. Just keep going, just go petal by petal, and we'll do the second layer in a little bit. I lied. I think this is my favorite petal. [LAUGHTER] I don't know. I'm just, yeah, with each petal that I'm painting, I like that one all the more, but yeah. Just keep going. [MUSIC] Here is what my peony looks like after the first round of what on what I didn't know what it was going to look like, but I'm really pleased with this. In the next couple of videos, we'll look at how to add details and how to deepen some of these colors. See you there 23. PURPLE PEONY - Second Layer: I'm actually still waiting for my painting to dry in certain areas. But I wanted to take this time to walk you through what I am seeing, and how this painting can be improved a little bit. I know I still need to paint my leaves, and I didn't paint the stamen yet, although I made some room for it. I will get to that in a little bit, but this is what I am seeing. These petals that are curved over, these definitely need to have more of a contrast on the other side. If you look carefully, especially at this petal, this one is folded override. This is the folded over part, but the part right above it is not darker. This dark purple actually needs to spread all the way down this way. I'm going to fix that. Let's see what else I see. This petal over here can also be touched up. This petal is meant to be folded upward this way. I think to help this one, we can add some veins. In the photo reference, every single one of these petals actually has veins. We might add some of those just to give it a little bit more detail. I'm going to deepen some of these petals that are here in the center. I think it'll just create more of a contrast. Same thing with this petal down here. This one has a lot of veins as well, going upward because without the veins it looks like a flat shape. We did a good job, adding the colors, but I think adding the veins will help you see that petal as a curved petal. Let's see what else I see. I do like some of these color blends that are happening here and here, and up here. I don't want to take away too much from that. Let me see what else I see. That's really the majority of it. I'm going to continue to let some of these areas dry, but I am going to start touching up those sections that we talked about. I'm going to move down from a size 4 to size 2 just I can get some more details, and I'm going to color in this part. But instead of doing wet-on-wet, well, I might do wet-on-wet, but I might just color it in with a darker color. I just want some more of that darker contrast in there. Now, this petal, yeah, it's a lot more obvious that this petal is the shape that it is. I'm going to move down to my size 00 brush. From here, I'm going to add some of the veins that I'm seeing. For the veins, I want to use a maybe like a dark, dark pink or even a dark, dark purple. Maybe I'll vary it, we'll see. Let's just mix up a color. I'm going to add some of these veins, and they're going to be really thin. I'm going to start with this one here, just because it's pretty easy to spot. The veins are going to come straight up, but then also curve up this way. I see a lot of veins coming down here. You do want to vary the length and the thickness of your veins just so that they look a little bit more organic. Now, this is the almost like dry brush technique because your brush is still wet with the paint obviously, but the paper is dry. You want a pretty dry look. If you'll look closely here, you can actually see some of the lines are a little bit streaky. That's exactly what I'm going for. I don't want it to look wet at all. It's okay if it's a little streaky. You know what? I'm actually really liking the veins look. I'm going to go ahead, and add the veins to all of the petals or maybe the majority of the petals, maybe not every single one, but definitely a lot of them just because they really do add a lot more to the painting. I'm only going to add them where I think they're necessary, and where I'm seeing them in my photo reference. I'm not going to overdo it because again, it's easier to add more, than it is to take it away. Even in these dark areas, I see very dark veins too. I don't want to forget about that. I am going to add some veins there too. That looks pretty good for that one. Now, even in this one, I could probably actually darken this leaf more. I'm going to do that first actually. I'm going to grab my size 4 brush, and then grab some paints gray, mix some purple, and really get in there, and make it nice and dark. I'm not doing wet-on-wet, I'm just doing wet-on-dry. I am going to wash out my brush, and let that color fade out. I'm just going to soften the edge up to. Now, I'm going to have to let that petal dry before I come back into it with the veins. Let's continue with the veins. Here is what the peony looks like. So far, this right half has some of the veins drawn in, and this left half doesn't. As you can already tell that the right half, I don't know. It just has a little bit more of a realistic factor. It looks a little bit more organic. The left looks a little bit flatter, not as three-dimensional. Adding these veins is a really nice touch. Keep on going, and keep adding those veins. Now, I'm going to take another step back, and look at my peony. Yeah, I really like how this is looking. My center is almost dry. I still want to darken this area up a little bit more. The one of the last steps I'm going to do is actually glazing. Glazing is actually perfect because we just laid down these details. When you put another layer of really thin paint on top, it's not really going to mess with these details, but it's just going to make them look a little bit softer, and make them look a bit more organic. Let's go ahead, and darken the center, draw in the stamen or paint in the stamen, and then do some glazing. 24. PURPLE PEONY - Glazing and final details: I'm going to start with the stamen and I'm going to use some yellow ocher. Yellow ocher is really nice because it's a pretty opaque color, and so I'm just going to go in there and color and then paint in these gaps here. The yellow will really stand out next to this deep dark purple, red, whatever color you want to call this. Just painted all up in there, add another layer if you wanted to. Yellow ocher is also not quite opaque like quash, but it is more opaque than other than other watercolor colors. It really stands out as you can see. Now I'm going to darken up this area here. I'm going to use maybe a size two brush. That looks good. Now I'm going to glaze some of these areas with a light wash of that pinkish purplish color. The effect that I'm going for is that some of these really white areas, I want to deepen their colors a little bit. Then some of these other darker areas, I just want them to all have the same overall tone, if that makes sense. I'm using my magenta color, but I am going to water it down, but I'm not going to put a super wet brush on my painting. Glazing, obviously, you still want a wet brush but you don't want a super wet soping brush. My brush right now is super wet, so I'm going to just dab it on the paper towel, get rid of some of it, and then glaze. Now you want to be careful when you're going over those little veins that you're not remixing it and then making it blurry again. You still want to keep that detail. Just continue to glaze this color over everything. Now if there are some areas that you don't want to glaze, that's totally fine, but I'm definitely going to concentrate on areas that I want to deepen the colors a little bit more. I can already tell that I like this side after glazing a little bit more. I'm going to do this a little more just a touch darker. I already like the direction of this painting, and I'm just going to do a little bit more glazing here. How is your painting looking after glazing? Hopefully it has a little bit more of a consistent tone. I missed some of veins right here. Let's just quickly do the leaves and this one, we're going to do it a lot more loosely. I am going to use a warm green, so I'm going to use my sap green here. I'm just going to paint it one solid color and then paint in the detail veins with a darker color. I'm going to let that dry and then come back and paint in the details. While we're waiting for that to dry, let's just continue to talk about this peony. Some of the things that we practice was the wet on what method, so we first lay down a layer of clean water and then we went in there and dropped in some paint, and the reason why I chose to paint it like this for this one is because the darker color peony is just easier to do it this way instead of working up the layers, sometimes it might take forever. I just thought that this way would be a little bit faster, and I also wanted to show you a way where you could paint with some creative freedom and liberty. All of these veins, they're not exactly at the same places that they are in the photo reference, but at the same time, it's okay, it still looks realistic, it still looks really good, and now that I'm looking at it some more, I'm noticing some areas where I forgot the vein. Let me just add a little bit more, just like the other peony at some point, you just have to stop. I will eventually, but let me just add just a little bit more. Let's go in there with these details here, and I'm going to use a little bit of Payne's gray mixed into my sap green just a little bit. I need to go ahead and paint the veins there. Now I'm going to let this dry and then I'm going to go over it with some glazing just to give the leaves a little bit more dimension because right now they look flat. I'm going to add some more dimension by layering some colors on top of it. I'm going to use my size two brush and just go over some areas with this, and already the leaves look a whole lot better. I am going to call it done. I am going to call this painting done. There are still some more things that I could probably add, but I don't want to go crazy trying to fix all that. For now, I really hope you enjoyed painting this painting with me using the wet on wet method. In the the last video, we'll do a combination of wet on wet and wet on dry for the third peony. I'll see you there. 25. CORAL PEONY - First layer part 1: Hi everyone. Welcome to the final videos of this class, where we're going to paint our last peony, and we're going to be using a combination of the techniques that we've been learning. We did wet and dry with the first pink peony, and we also used wet on wet when we painted the purple peony. For this last peony, we're going to use both of those techniques. But the twist is, we are not going to use a photo reference. I know it sounds a little scary, but don't worry, I know when we first sketch this peony, it was that pink peony with tons of layers and layers upon layers of petals, and it was a great photo reference for the sketch. But sometimes I like to go off script and paint something of my own, which is exactly how this peony originally came about. This one was sketched from a photo reference as well, but it was this, I don't know, it was this weird off purpley color that I didn't really like, and I was just inspire to do my own thing. I focus on warm colors such as yellow, red, red orange, and just a little bit of pink right here on the edges. By now you understand the principles of how to paint a peony. The edges or the tops of the petals tend to be a little bit lighter. As you go towards the center of the flower, the petals get darker. The folded over petals like these are always going to be lighter than the bottom part of the underside of the petals. The center, the area around the stamen is always going to be the darkest. If there are any cracks like this or cuts in the petals like that, you want to make those really dark as wall, so that you can create that a high contrast between the pedal that's on top of it and the petal that's below it. Using those principles that we've learned and using the techniques that we've learned so far, I want to challenge you to paint this last peony in any color that you want, but try to do it without a photo reference. I know it sounds scary, and I was at first too, but I think when you let your creativity shine and flow, it really releases you from having to be so strict and it takes away all those limitations. I'm super proud of this peony and I know you'll be proud of yours at the end of this class too. Yeah, without further ado, let's go ahead and start painting this. I'm not going to walk you through so much as in talking and stopping, and talking and stopping, because we've done a lot of that so far. It's going to be mostly just showing you some details and closeups of me painting. I may talk a little bit here and there, but for the most part is just going to be showing you how I would paint this peony without a photo reference. I can't wait to see yours. For my peony, I'm thinking of doing a coral color, a nice like orange and pink, maybe even salmon color. Let's just do a couple of color testing to see if I got it. I have a couple of orangeish colors here, and then my yellows here over here. I have bright yellow, this is naples yellow, and this is yellow ocher. I'm going to mix a couple of colors and see what I like. That's a really bright orange obviously, and it's also very opaque. I might use this color maybe for the center of my flour, may be mixed in with some red, so there is that. Let's see what happens when I mix some bright yellow into that. Should definitely get yellow or more orange. Yeah, I like that. But I also want to see what happens when I mix this orange mixture with some pink. I'm going to add some of my pink in there just a little bit more. Because I think this is the ultimate color I'm going for, I want to a more quarterly color. It's a little bit closer to what I'm looking for. I think if I added a little bit more pink, it would get closer. Let's see, yeah. These are the colors that I'm going for and being inspired by. The colors, I think I'm going to stick to are the yellow, the bright yellow, naples yellow, maybe a little bit of yellow ocher, I don't know, we'll have to see, my red orange over here and then my permanent rose over here. I'm just going to mix more of this coral color so that I have it, and then I'll get started painting. Just like our previous peonies, we're going to just work petal by petal, go one by one, and if you like the wet on wet method, you can start with that. If you like the wet on dry method, you can start with that too, there's really no right or wrong. If you want to combine the two, then that's really great too. You can use the photo reference as a guide to know where the dark spots are. But if you wanted to do a different color, by all means, go for it. I'm going to start in the middle like I normally do. I'm going to do maybe a combination, right now I'm going to do the wet on wet. Here at this point, I want to just vary the colors a little bit. I'm going to start doing some petals that have this coral base, but then add some of a bright yellow in there, just to add just some more dimension. You know how I like that word. It almost looks like this peony is like on fire or something. These are what some of my initial petals look like, and I know, again, they don't look like much right now. But as you know with all of these peonies, the more you add, the more layers you have, the more pronounced and more detailed these peony is going to get. Just take your time, go petal by petal and we'll see how this unfurls. It's going to be a surprise for me too. 26. CORAL PEONY - First layer part 2: [MUSIC] How is your peony looking so far? This is what mine looks like after the first layer, there are some messy areas that I won't point out to you. But, yeah, for the most part I'm done. I know I've got the stamen and the leaves and this stem still, but I'm going to give it a moment to fully dry and then get in there for the second layer. I'll see you in the next video. 27. CORAL PEONY - Deepening Colors: Welcome back. While I'm waiting for these petals to dry, I'm going to work on the stamen. For the stamen, I'm going to use my yellow ocher just like all the other videos. This time I'm going to do it a little bit differently. I left this whole area blank. What I'm going to do, I'm going to do a light wash of yellow ocher over the entire area and then I'm going to go in there with some shadow details. I thought that might be another interesting way to do it. Just a little bit lighter here. It can be a little bit darker towards the bottom here. But for the most part, try to keep it a little bit lighter. Then we'll come back to this once it dries. Looking at my peony so far, I mentioned in the last video that there are some mistakes and it's not really mistakes, it's just areas that I definitely want to touch upon. There are some petals where I didn't wait for it to fully dry, and so there are some areas that are bleeding into the other petals. I want to define those a little bit more. I'm going to go in with a second layer to just separate out those petals and make them defined a little bit more. Then I'm going to start outlining just some of the petals, just like we did in the very first one with the pink one. Again, just that outline helps distinguish where all the petals are. Here I go. Then in this point you can make the darker places even darker. This petal that's coming out here, you can really tell that it's protruding out from the flower. This process might be difficult because you're not working off of a reference photo, you're just going by feel almost. I can understand that can be a little difficult. But the more you practice this, the more you'll start to see, oh wait, this is where the shadow needs to go. Oh, this color needs to be deepened. You'll start developing an eye for that. If you don't have it right now, that's okay. Just keep seeing what I do and which areas that I am deepening and soon you'll be able to do the same. I think I'm at a good stopping point to step back and look at it again. I've definitely deepened a lot of the colors and I'm a lot happier with it. I can really see each individual petal. I'm going to let those petals dry. I'm going to come back to the stamen up here. I'm going to use my double zero brush and deep it in some yellow ocher. You can mix it in with some brown if you want just to add a darker color. Again, we're going to do some negative paintings. I'm going to paint some really thin lines to show the shape of the stamen. Basically what I did, I just painted some straight and a little bit wavy lines right there. That's really it because from up-close that may not look like much. But from far away it really gives the sense that there are more details in there. Before I add even more final details to this flower, I'm going to take a look at the leaves and the stem. 28. CORAL PEONY - Stem, Leaves, and Final Layers: Let's take a look at our leaves. For the leaves, I want to do a mostly sap green leaf. I'm going to grab my sap green here. I'm going to do some of that negative painting again. Just like the leaves in the pink peony, we're going to do some glazing, because right now these veins are just pure white and that's not normal. We're going to go in there and I'm going to just do a very light sap green wash over it so that there's a little bit of color in the veins but not a lot. They're still lighter. I'll hold this up so you can see the difference between the two leaves. This one has the wash, and this one doesn't. This one, look at the veins, they're completely white, and then these have a slight color to them. That's what we want. We just want a very subtle color over them. Now again, I'm not coloring just the veins. I'm actually coloring the entire leaf because that's what glazing is. Glazing is putting a color over the entire leave. Now these veins look a little bit more organic. I'm going to take a step back and look at my peony one more time to really look at if there are any other areas that need some deepening of colors, if I want to add some yellow to any of these areas. Let's just take a minute just to look at it. Just like we did for the purple peony, I'm just going to add some glazing to some of these petals here just to deepen their colors a little bit without being too dramatic. Hopefully, the effect that I'm going for is that, again, these petals will look just more natural and more organic. Because we didn't use a photo reference, I don't want this flower to look fake. When we blend the colors like this, it will just create a more natural look, and so hopefully it's starting to unfold in that way. I'm also doing a little bit of light yellow glazing too. I think some areas it would be nice if it was a little bit warmer. One of the things that I didn't do yet was I said that I wanted to outline some of these petals. Fortunately, this flower looks very detailed and it doesn't look like it really needs outlines. But there are a couple areas that I might want to add, so I'm going to add some red to that corally mixture and just add some very subtle outlines to the petals. Not all of them, just some of them. If you feel like your outlines are too strong, you can just add some water to it and let that blend naturally. Now working on details like this really helps you to see the flower way up close, and it really helps you to see details that you may have missed before. That's another reason why I'm doing this, because I'm finding myself adding some more details. The outlines added a little bit more detail, but really didn't take away too much from the painting. Maybe just a little bit more here. I promise this is the final detail or final step. I'm just going to do a glazing over the stamen just to give it a more consistent tone to it as well. I'm just doing a light wash of the yellow ocher and a little bit of the bright yellow. Well, there it is. Congratulations on painting this peony without a photo reference. Really just going with the flow, applying the techniques that you learned, and just going with the basic principles of how to paint a peony. I hope you learned a lot through this class, I know I did. Every day I'm growing as an artist too. I'd love to hear what you think of this class, and I can't wait to see your projects. Stay tuned for the final conclusion video. 29. CONCLUSION: Hi, there. Congratulations on finishing this class on watercolor botanical painting, the peony edition. You should feel super proud of yourself for completing all of the lessons. We learned how to sketch using photo references and using circles and ovals as our guide. We also practiced inking and transferring our sketches onto watercolor paper. Then we painted a lot of peonies. Now it's your turn. I can't wait to see your projects and all of the beautiful peonies that you've painted. Take a moment now to create a project under the Your Project section. You can post one or all of the peonies that you've painted. I'd also love to hear what you thought of the class, what you learned, and how this class has helped you in your watercolor journey. If you're on Instagram, feel free to tag me at Things Unseen Designs, and use the hashtag WatercolorWithTUD. I love to feature students and their work. For this class's conclusion, I'm going to give only two tips, and if you've taken some of my other classes, you already know what the second tip is going to be. My first tip is to just be easy on yourself. Drawing and sketching nature is not about perfection, but about capturing essence and beauty. Even if your drawing or painting doesn't look exactly 100 percent like the actual flower, it's okay. From my perspective, it actually helps me to appreciate nature even more. I love that nature is so complex, but it invites you in, and the dozens of petals in these peonies are captivating yet illusive. Enjoy the process and just be easy on yourself. Nature will always be better in person, but as artists, we're definitely going to do our best to capture its essence and beauty the way that we perceive it. My second tip is to practice. This will always be one of my tips. Sketching and painting like this certainly doesn't come overnight, and that's part of the reason why this class is so long. I wanted you to slow down, take your time, and practice sketching and painting different peonies with different techniques so you can find out what works for you. For next steps, try finding a picture of a peony or take one yourself and try sketching it and painting it on your own. It might take a couple of tries or a couple of dozen or even a couple of hundred times, but that's okay. With each live with each brushstroke, you are improving, and you have to believe it. Thank you again so much for taking this class. I hope it's taken your watercolor skills to the next level. Until next time, happy painting. Bye.