Watercolor Control: Painting Forget Me Fot Flowers

1. INTRODUCTION: The reasons why watercolor can be intimidating to some is because it's quite hard to control when you're just starting out, whether it be the paint to water ratio or how what your paper should be, it does take a few practices to get used to the medium. In this class, I will go through some basic techniques on how you can control your watercolor paints through painting these adorable, forget me not flowers, from looking for reference photos to the finished painting. My name is Eugenia and I will be your teacher for this class. I am a graphic designer who also has a passion for watercolor art. I'm also known as Neon Yani on my small YouTube art channel where I share my love of food illustrations and easy but technical paintings for beginners. The lessons will first cover the supplies you will need to complete the exercises and the final project. Then I will show you how I quickly look at reference photos to learn about the structure of the flower, and then I will go through it with you in pencil first. Then on the next lesson, I will be showing you the color palette that I use and how I mix the colors. Then we move onto the watercolor techniques that we will be using for the final project. Next, I will show you different approaches on how you can paint the flowers and the fillers. Then the final class will be a speed paint of the final composition of the painting, finished off with closing statements and the class project. I hope you guys enjoy this and let's begin. 2. Supplies: Welcome to the first lesson where I will go over this place needed for this class. First of all, you will need a regular pencil and eraser to sketch and draw. If you're going through the lesson one by one, I would recommend either an HB or a 2B pencil for this. We will also need paper. You can either use your sketchbook or a watercolor paper. I have here at the cuts and XL watercolor paper cut into small A5 size. For all the lessons and exercises, including the final painting, you will need around six sheets of paper. Next is the watercolor paint and palette. Here I have my usual quite palette with 24 colors, which includes a palette in the set. Of course you are free to use whichever paint and palette you have available. For the brushes I will be using size two and size 14 round brush. This is a race brush and the other one on the right as a local brand, but you can use any synthetic brushes available. The sizes also differ depending on the brand. Most of the time I just referred to small fine detail brush and a medium brush. You will also need an empty jar for your water and tissue to dab and dry your brush. Last but not least, as an option, you can also use a hairdryer to quickly dry some sections of your painting later. 3. Drawing Structure: In this lesson, I will go over the structure of forget-me-not flowers because I find that it's always a good idea to understand the form and the structure of anything you are going to paint. So you know certain areas that you should look up for when painting. To know the structure, I always go to Google or Pinterest so we got pictures of the subject you are painting is easily available where you are. They tend to look for photographs when looking for references and other artworks just to see how certain people approach the paintings differently. But I recommend to not copy from paintings if you want to understand the subject yourself. Here I'm just going to browse through the pictures and look out for the structure. I like to look at the budding flowers because that's a good sign of how the flowers grow. I'm also looking out for colors and trying to figure out what its natural color is, because a lot of photos are color corrected. I can also see that some flowers are also pink and sometimes even purple and that the buds are mostly pink. So this might be a sign of the growing stage. But you can take this information as you please and interpret it as you like. Now I'm just going to draw out how I think the flowers grow from looking at those references. I'm going to draw them as buds first, so it's easier to see. That's roughly how I think it looks. And what I can tell is that the buds grow outwards and have round two flowers on each side. Now I am going to draw this out again, but instead I'm going to leave larger spaces and draw bigger circles instead of the budding flowers. These circles are just for gauging the space roughly so we can fill the spaces up with flowers once you're happy with the structure of the stem. If you don't know how to draw the flowers, don't worry, I will get to it on the next step. As you can probably tell from the previous step, I like to approach the flowers by drawing out a circle first, because this will help your eyes not to stray from the overall shape. I'm going to show you different ways in drawing them. And on this first one, I'm going to draw the outline as realistically as I see it, where the five petals are overlapping each other to create a nice movement. Then I'm just going to finish off with a circle in the middle. A different way on how you can approach this in a little bit more detail is to draw out five very small ovals in the middle creating a circle. And then join those petals out from each oval the same way as we previously did. Now, these shapes may be too difficult to paint straight on paper without outline. So what I do when I do paints straight, I simplify what we have drawn and just draw a simple five petaled flower as we all learned when we were little. But remember this is my interpretation and you are free to approach this however, you please. Pick a style that we have drawn out, that you prefer to paint with. Once you're comfortable drawing out those simple shapes, we are going to draw out the angles. As we draw, practice quite extreme angles. I know it won't be this extreme as we paint. But if you're going to paint in the same style as I will, which is without any pencil outlines. The shapes might not look as angled as you paint, so get used to the shapes by drawing out a circle and then imagining those circles facing different directions as if those flat surfaces are seen from different angles. Which will create an oval shape instead of a circle. If this is hard for you to imagine, you can hold out a flat circular object in front of you, maybe like a small plate, and try looking at it from different directions and then drawing a rough outline of those oval shapes. After you've drawn out those ovals, you can then fill the ovals up with petals. Note that when you draw the petals keep in mind that all those petals should be drawn towards the center of the flower. So what you can do is draw out the center first before you draw the petals to help guide your eyes. Then I finish off with lines to represent the stems, which is grown from the center of the flower. Last but not least, we are going to sketch a bunch of these flowers and putting it together with the buds and the leaves. To start this, I am going to draw out a bunch of circles to roughly plot out where I want to place the flowers, then I draw the flowers out. Please note that if you don't need to draw the circles first and you are able to draw straight, you could totally skip this step. Then I'm going to draw the main stem where I think the flowers are growing out from and do small buds around the sides. The buds are just simple circles or oval shapes. And when starting to bloom, sometimes I like to draw something like a cup shape or a bowl shape with little bit of frills on top when it's starting to open up more. Now I'm going to add more buds at the top where the flowers are going to grow for a nice uneven composition. As the buds progress to the top, they get a little bit smaller in size. Just think of it as an earlier growth stage, as the grow upwards towards the light. And then I'm going to finish off with basic leave shapes which are roughly like eye shapes. But don't forget to vary the size and the angles later as we paint. You can also paint this in the more detailed style. In that case, you can draw out the center of the flowers. But for this painting, I'm going to stick with the simplified version. If you decide to paint straight on paper later on, I suggest you get used to drawing the flowers out of free hand without guides. 4. Colour Palette: In this lesson, I will go over the colors that we will be using in detail. For the petals, the main color that I'm going to be using for this painting is the iconic blue color for the forget me not flowers. I use two types of blues, which is cobalt blue and ultramarine blue, and I mix both of the colors together because I find that cobalt blue by itself is a little bit too warm, and ultramarine is little bit too cold for my liking. So I mix both of them together creating a different shades. When you mix two colors together, you can get a range of colors, when you use different ratios. I mix my colors by putting them right next to each other on my palette, and I personally like having different colors because I find that it gives a really nice dimension, and it makes the painting look more natural that way, but if you want more of a consistent mixture, I suggest you make a big amount of the same mixture in your pellets, she used later as paint. Now, we are going to go over the values, as you know values and watercolor depends on how much water you mix in with your paint. So in this case as we want a light blue, this means that you want a fair amount of water to dilute the paint. You can practice your values by putting down thickest consistency paint you can get, and adding a bit more water as you go along, so you can get a good feel for the consistency in your brush. As we saw from the reference photos, though the flowers are mostly blue, they're also Pink and sometimes purple flowers. This is an option to incorporate the pink color into your final painting. I personally will, and this is because I liked the slight pink accent to the painting, but of course this is optional. To make the pink color, I mix two different types of reds, which is cadmium red and quinacridone rose, and like before, I'm going to show you the color range and values between those colors. I know it doesn't show too well on camera, but there are still slight changes and differences within those colors, where the cadmium red is a little bit more warm, the quin rose is more of a cooler magenta color. As before, if you would like to have inconsistent pink colors like I do, you can go ahead and mix your colors by putting both colors right next to each other and letting it blend freely, or if you want a certain range, you can make a batch of it later as we paint. Now we are going to go over the values again, as we previously did with the blue colors. There are also a couple of ways you can control the values on the paper. If you have made a mistake, if you accidentally put, say, too much paint and it looks a little bit too dark, well, the paint is still very wet you can clean and dry your brush, and instantly dry brush to absorb the excess water and paint on the paper. Keep repeating it until you get the consistency that you like and the lightness that you like. On the other hand, if the color that you've put down is a little bit too light, while the paint is still very wet, you can add a thicker consistency paint on it. Do not add the same consistency paint, if the paint is still wet because, it will just spread out, it won't look too different from what it originally is. Next we are going to go through the center of the flower, I use a mixture of permanent yellow deep and lemon yellow to create the shade of yellow that I like. I'm going to use this yellow and wet on wet technique where there will be gradation from the blue to the yellow. So pick the shade of blue or pink with the yellow that you would prefer. Now I'm going to show you the color that I use for the dot in the middle of the yellow, which is actually more of a brown color if you refer to the reference photo. So you could a brown color, but for my case, I want a deep maroon color. So I'm going to mix cadmium red and ivory black to create the color that I'm looking for. I personally find that this maroon color pops nicely in the middle of the flower. For the leaves and the buds, or the greens of this painting, I use a mixture of four colors, which are made out of; yellow-green, viridian-green, permanent yellow deep, and Ivory-black. This of course is an option, you can use any type of green that you want. I'm just very specific with my color mixing, and I will number the colors and show you the kind of colors that I can get by incorporating each color into my green. As you can see, if I mix only yellow-green and viridian, I find that the green is still a little bit too cold, so I mix in a warm yellow to get more of a muted, warmer-green, and I darken it a little by adding a very slight touch of ivory black. Those are the colors that I will be using, but as usual, you are very welcome to choose your own mixtures. In the next lesson, I will go over the wet on my technique that will be very useful for the final painting in order to control your paint. 5. Watercolor Control: Wet on Wet: One of the reasons why water color might be so intimidating, is because it's hard to control the water to paint ratio. One of the key is also to wave for certain stages of how wet the surface of your paper is. In this lesson, I will go over those stages with you so you can see how paint reacts in different wet surfaces. On this first one, I'm going to make a really wet surface. What I do is make sure my brush is very wet, and I place the paint so it puddles on top of the paper. Now I'm going to change the color and I'm going to apply a similar consistency of red to the blue surface and see how the paint reacts to the water. It will gradually spread out creating a nice soft transition. For the next one, I'm also make a puddle of blue, but this time I'm going to add thicker more concentrated ratio of paint. Because if there's more paint, then water in your brushed paint becomes more dense, and therefore it won't travel as fast as if your brush is loaded with paint of the same consistency. On the second one, I'm going to try to make less of a puddle but still wet and see how the paint reacts this time with the same consistency as the blue. As you can see, the transition isn't as smooth as the first one because with less water on the paper, the paint tend to move a little bit slower. I'm going to do the same thing again with this next one, but with thicker consistency red paint. With the thicker consistency paint, it also makes it easier for your eyes to see how the pain is traveling. As you can see, this one isn't traveling as fast as the first one. On the third section, I'm going to make the paper a little bit drier. This time you can see a slight sheen on the paper. This is the stage I mostly work with because I find that I can control the paint quite well at this stage, the wetter you use your paint, the more use your painting will be overall. Now I'm just going to paint the same surface again. But now as you can see, that the thicker consistency paint is moving a little bit slower and traveling less. But while the paint is still wet, you could also use your brush to move the paint around if you want a smoother transition. Last but not least, I'm going to paint another circle, but this time I'm going to leave it out to dry. As you can see, to make the process faster, I'm just going to use a hairdryer on low speed. Be careful when you do this to a wet puddles stage as you might risk your paints flattering out everywhere, so just be mindful. When the surface is completely dry, you are basically painting another layer on top of the painted surface. The paints will not lend and you will be able to see a line from the bottom layer if you decide to paint over it. With the thicker consistency paint, the paint will just become more vibrant, and certain cases of cheaper or student grade watercolor brands, the paint will be a bit more opaque so you might be able to cover the layer before. Now I'm just going to paint lines with the same four stages that I have used as examples above just so you can gauge at how fast and how far the paint will travel according to the consistency between the ratio of the paint and water. When the surface is at a puddle stage, you can also move the paint around by tilting your paper and the paint will just follow where the water is flowing. Now as you've probably noticed, the cool thing about this is, as the paper is wet, and you place different colors on top of the wet surface, the paint will not go outside of those boundaries because the paper is still dry while the painted area is wet, the paints will only travel where there is water. But of course, the same theory applies as in the previous exercise, where the surface is drier, the paint move slower and travel says, if you don't help and move around with your brush. Now I'm just going to go over the rest, so you can see all the stages. Now that we are done with this one, next I'm going to show you how you can move between different wet stages. For this first one, I'm going to make a puddle of paint on the paper, and I'm going to get it to a sheen consistency quickly without having to wait for the paint to dry on paper. What I do is I clean my brush with water and I dry it with tissue. I'm going to use the dry brush to absorb the excess paint on the paper. However, if you do this, you are also going to take off some pigments because you are also absorbing the pigments in the puddle. Just be mindful of this. If you want the pigments to be as vibrant, you can add on the colors on top later, but further exercise, I'm just going to leave it here. For the next one, I'm going to do the opposite. What I want to make is a dry surface, but I'm going to re-wet it so I can make the paints move naturally on top of the dry surface. What I do is I take clean water and I try to place it as close to the paint boundaries to create an area for the paint to travel. Once the surface is wet, I'm just going to place my color on top. Notice though that the color is still placed on top of the blue, not mixed with the blue. This is because you are still painting with the first dry layer on the bottom. You can also make a smooth transition while painting in layers or on a dry surface. If you place wet paint on the dry surface, you can still rework the wet paint with clean water and dragging it down to create smooth transition with your brush. Last but not least, I'm going to show you the final technique, which is called pulling. This is essentially what I just did, but I'm going to show you on a white surface so it's more visible. I'm going to place a little bit of blue and I'm going to clean my brush, and then I'm going to pull from the blue color that we've placed. Your brush is basically absorbing the blue paint before and pulling it to other areas. This is the technique that we are going to be using a lot as we paint the flowers. Now I'm going to be doing the same thing again, but with the shape of the flower petals this time, I'm going to paint some blue for the outer part of the petal and then I'm going to drag the paint down with a clean brush, creating a nice gradation from dark to light, and to top it off, I'm just going to add a small amount of yellow from the mixture that we mixed before, just for the very tip to represent the center of the flower. We are done with this lesson. 6. How to paint forget me not flowers: In this lesson, I will show you how we can ease techniques we just learned to pin the flowers. I will show you several ways and you can pick whichever way you want to approach the painting in the end. For the first one, I'm going to do the pulling technique the exact same way as we did in the previous lesson, but this time I'm going to paint the four flower instead of just one petal and because this is small flower, I'm going to use a size tool brush, your final flower size [inaudible] will naturally depend on the brush size that you have. What I like to do is just make a mixture of the blue that I want and as you keep painting with it, you naturally will put more water into the mixture making it more diluted. When it's too thin, I will just add on one of the blues into the mixture until I reach the consistency that I need. After I place down the blue, then I clean my brush with water and I damp it on tissue to make sure most of the pigments are gone and then I reword my brush again to get a slightly damp so I can use the extra clean water to pull from the outer blue line of the petal. If you accidentally misjudge the amount of water on your brush, and then you accidentally make a puddle on your paper, you can use the same technique that we learned in the previous lesson by dragging your brush and using it to absorb the excess water on the paper. Now, I'm just going to repeat the same steps again until I get all five petals, and I will keep it at real time. So you get an idea of how patient you have to be went approach in watercolor paintings. Because a lot of time we tend to watch a little bit too much sped up regions and we forget that in real time and real life, the artists actually took their time to achieve the final artwork. So it's good to watch and real speed every once in a while so you don't feel like you need to rush your work. You can see here I want my blue to be a little bit more vibrant on this petal. So while the paint is still wet, I can base down more blue again, and work it around with my brush to get the smoothness that I want. After I've made all the petals, as you can see, I leave out a little bit of white paper for the yellow if you accidentally miss this it's okay, that is why we want the middle part of the flower to be lighter. So when you place the yellow in the middle it can look more vibrant with a nice smooth gradation to the blue petals. If the petals are already dry at this stage, we can use the same cooling technique again to smooth out the yellow by cleaning and drying your brush and then rewording it again until it's a little bit damp so it can help the yellow pigment move around until it's reached the smooth transition that you're looking for. As you can see here, when I added the oval for the center of the flower, I didn't wait for the yellow paint to completely dry so the pain started flowing out too much. What you can do is either take off the paint with a dry brush while the paint is still wet, or you can just use tissue to take the paint off before the paper absorbs it, but do not rub the tissue or else you will risk would paint going everywhere. Another way you can approach this painting is by adding those small yellow oval for the center. As I have shown you during sketch, this uses the same technique as before for the pedals including the yellow center. So I'm just going to speed through it, but after the yellow dries off, I add another layer for the ovals in the center of the flower and makes sure that the paint is thick and opaque enough for it to show. I'm not going to do this for my final painting, but feel free to add this layer if you like the look of it. Last but not least, you can finish off the flower with the same round dot in the middle. Now some of you might think that is such a bother to paint one petal at a time and this is true, but I find that it's the best way to control your watercolor as a beginner, it is possible for you to paint the outer Petals all at once, or maybe two or three petals at a time, but you do have to work quickly or you need to make sure that the outline of the petals are still wet while you pull it with clean water. I'm going to show you the final way of painting this, which is the wet on wet technique. I'm just going to paint the petals with clear water on the paper, and then I'm going to put something down and the paint will stay within those barriers that you have created with the clean water, but this approach will leave you with more of a softer flower because you won't have the distinct outline we can get from using the polling technique. As you work the paint, as usual, you will end up taking off some pigments. So you do have to go back and forth to put more paint to get the shade of blue that you are looking for. You can finish off the flowers the same way as we previously did with the yellow and the maroon center. These are four different ways you can approach painting the flowers, pick whatever you are comfortable with for the final painting, I personally will be mixing the first and the third way of approaching this painting. Now, I'm just going to quickly show you exercises you can do if you are still a little bit uncomfortable with painting these flowers and feel free to repeat whichever step you are at until you start understanding what you need to do with the watercolors. Obviously, I would recommend that you are comfortable with drawing up the flowers with pencil first. If you need guidance, you can draw a circle first to make sure that your petals are quest metrical. If you can already do this and would like to try the technique with paint straight away. You can skip the first step and try to paint the petals that you have drawn using one of the techniques that I previously showed you. The third step. If you start feeling comfortable with your paint and your brushes, you can't draw the circle only and start painting your flower freehand inside of the circle. Last but not least, once you're comfortable with both the petal outline and the water color control, you can try painting it out free hand without any guidance. Now, I'm going to show you the exact same thing, but for angle flowers, this is little bit more tough because of course, when you see things angled, it might look a little bit distorted. So to achieve this, I'm going to use the same exercises as we previously did with the flowers facing hat on. Keep in mind while drawing the angles flowers as a flat surface. It seen at an angle and will look more like an oval-shaped instead of those circles we practiced with. Also think about the center of the flower as the shape of the center of the flowers should follow the large oval outside of the followers. To help yourself as you draw those ovals to represent different angles, you can draw a smaller version of the oval in the center of the flower and ease that as guidance for each petal from start to finish. Notice that as the flower is more tilted or at a more extreme angles the oval becomes more thin than if the flowers are to face you straight on. If by the end of these exercises you still feel uncomfortable with painting freehand of course you can still do the final painting with pencil outlines, but remember to use a hard pencil like HB So the pencil isn't too visible after you paint over it. Now, I'm just going to show those exercises step-by-step again and as usual, pick whichever exercise you need to help you practice for the final painting and keep repeating it until you are comfortable to move on to the next step. Notice that I'm doing a few petals at once here and to help the drying time off the outer pedals, I add more paint to make a puddle for the outline. So I have time to pull the paint to create a nice gradation before it dries out. Now, I'm just going to speed through the rest because I'm sure you guys understand these steps a little. This is probably the hardest part of the painting. Once you get this down, I think you will start to understand the media more in terms of control. Feel free to repeat whichever steps you need to practice. These exercises are just a way for you to understand the medium because I know it might be intimidating to see a completely blank page without any outlines to fit, especially when you're just starting out with watercolors. Go at your own pace until you start feeling more comfortable with the techniques, but don't forget to have fun in the process. 7. How to paint fillers: In this lesson, we will go over the stem leaves and the flower buds. Flower stamps are very simple and yet it might take a while for you to get used to creating fine lines with your brush. For the final painting, I will be using this size 2 brush. But as an exercise, I would actually recommend you to use a larger pointed brush. I have here a size 14 or medium size. Make sure your brush is loaded so it's slightly wet so the paint can still glide nicely. After you can achieve fine lines with a bigger brush, try moving back to the size 2 brush. It'll feel a bit easier to control the pressure once you're used to this pressure. I also tried to do other lines like arches or waves just so you feel how the brush moves as you move it in different directions. Keep repeating this until you feel like you have a grasp on controlling the brush pressure. Then we can move on to a different exercise where we actually press on the brush this time to cover a large area for the leaves and then pulling it back to the tip again to create leaf shapes. Also try to do this with your brush pointing in different directions, not only pointing upwards to increase the flexibility of your brush control. Just for the sake of exercise, I would also recommend you to try this with a larger brush. As you can see, the larger the brush, the wider the brush will open up, and it will also create a larger leaf shape. Of course, these are only brush control exercises, but for the final painting you may fill in the leaf shapes as you please. Now let's move on to the flower buds. For the buds, I'm going to pay two types of shapes. One as an oval, another one like a bowl shape with frills at the top to represent the blooming flower. These are just the growth stages, so you can include some variety with the final painting. When you're painting the opening bud make sure that the top stays rounded and not too flat to give some dimension to the shape. Even though, as we've seen from the reference images, most of the buds were pink. I also want to include some blue ones because I like the look of it. So as I said, time and time again, it's really up to you and your own interpretation in the end. I'm just merely giving you guides to help you experiment to create your final painting. While the paint is still slightly wet, I use the green mixture that we made earlier to paint the bottom of the buds with a small amount of paint. Because the surface is still slightly damp, the paint will spread out a little bit and it will create a nice blend into the color of the flower. To finish the flower buds off I'm also going to use a thick consistency paint to paint rounded lines to give a little bit of volume to the flowers. Just use a thicker consistency as the base color of the flower for both the pink and the blue. Another way you can be the flower buds is by bunching up together, like we have seen in the reference images. With this one, the size of the buds becomes smaller and smaller as we get to the top. The color also becomes more green because that's where the flowers are going to grow last. You can also mix in some flower blossoms around sides, and I think it creates a really cute composition. The same applies for the blue flower blossoms. At whichever point you find that the colors are a little bit too dark, remember to use the lifting technique where you can use a dry brush to leave the excess water and paint. Once you are done, I'm also going to finish it off with the lines, as we previously did, to contour around the flower buds and give it a little bit of falling. Last but not least let's try to paint this altogether combined with the leaves that we practiced earlier. For this one, I've also mixed the blue color and the pink color to make appropriate shape just for fun variation. When you are painting the leaves, it's totally fine if you can't get the right shape in one stroke. Remember that you can also play with the size, direction, and the angles of the leaves to keep it looking more dimensional. If you are happy with the progress that you've made and you feel like you have a good handle of the techniques and form off the subject. You can try to combine everything that we have learned together with the flowers we painted in the previous lesson. This, by itself, composition would look very cute for a small card or sketchbook doodle. It would even look great as a repeated pattern for a gift wrap or a book cover. Remember to stay patient when painting this because patience is key to watercolor painting. Wait until the paint dries when you want to add on another layer to minimize the risk of the paint bleeding out, or add water when you need the paint to blend with the other colors and work it with your brush. As a reminder, if you need your layers to dry quickly, you can use a hairdryer to dry the paint in low setting. Do not use a hair dryer if your paint is still at puddle wet stage. Because you will risk it blowing out everywhere and it might cause an unwanted mess. Please feel free to repeat any of the exercises in the previous lessons. If you are still unsure before attempting to paint the final composition or as I mentioned in the last lesson. If you still want to do the final painting, but you're still a little bit uncomfortable with painting the flowers, you can use a hard pencil like an HB and draw it out very, very lightly so you can cover it up with the watercolor paint. So that's it for this lesson. This is a mini version of what we will be painting in the next lesson, where we will be putting everything together that we have learnt into our final painting. 8. Speedpaint and Final Project: Welcome to the final lesson. Before I start my paintings, what I usually do is I activate the colors that I'm going to be using first so I don't have to wait for the paint to activate in the middle of a painting, as this can be a little bit frustrating, especially with the student grade paint that usually takes a longer time to activate. To do this, I just take some water with my brush and putting them on the colors that I chose one by one. I like to put a good amount of water too so I can take quite a bit of it from my palette. Another option is also spraying your paint with a spray bottle, which is very handy, but I know that not a lot of you have it on hand while painting. After you've activated the paint, I then move them to my palette, and I made sure that I have a fair amount of it, especially with the colors that I'm going to be using a lot, like the blue for the flowers here. In the first half of this lesson, I've left the frame like this so you guys can see how I mix my colors, load my brush, clean my brush, and how I dry them in between the paintings because sometimes it can be a little bit misleading if you don't see a full process of how people paint. When I paint my botanical paintings, I always like to start painting with the main subjects first. My composition will depend on these blue flowers, as all the fillers like the stem, leaves, and the flower buds will follow to accent around that subject. This will also help your eyes to distinguish what the focal point is, which in this case I wanted to be the blue flowers. I'm just going to do a simple composition where I have a few of these flowers bunched together in the middle of the page to guide your eyes. By the way, this whole lesson will just be speed paint. If you find it a little bit hard to follow, you can either choose a slower speed setting on the screen or refer back to the previous lessons because I've covered everything that I'm doing for this painting all in the lessons before. This particular one is just going to show you the process of how I paint the flowers if I were to bunch them all together all at once. For your own projects, you can either follow this composition or even make something that is more personalized to your taste. I've also shown you a few different variations on how you can paint the flowers, so you can even pick between those flowers styles and techniques as I have shown you in the previous lessons. Notice that I'm painting the optional pink flowers apparently just to accent the blue flowers. This is done to keep the blue flowers as the main subject still, but if we have the same amount of pink flowers as the blue flowers, the focal point will be different. Take this into consideration as you're planning to paint your own forget-me-not flowers. I think the rest of this lesson is quite self-explanatory, so I'm just going to leave you guys to it. Enjoy watching the speed paint, and I will see you towards the end of this lesson. I've painted what I wanted to paint mostly here. When you're close to finishing, what you want to consider is the overall balance of the composition. What I see here is that the composition is very top-heavy and that the stem needs to be lengthened a little bit for the flowers to fit on the page nicer. I'm just going to add a little bit more stem to lengthen it, and then I'm going to add leaves and buds to fill the bottom part of the painting. As you can see here, even though it's still a little bit top-heavy, the bottom looks like it's little bit more filled, and it doesn't look like the flowers are going to topple over anytime soon because it just looks a little bit more balanced overall. It's normal for the flowers to be heavier looking at the top than bottom anyway. After I'm happy with the placing, I also look at it as a whole. I feel like I need to add a little touch of color, so I decided to take the yellow from the center of the flower to paint random small circles around just for a final touch to the painting. As we finish off this painting, as you can see, a lot of this is just my own interpretation of what I see best fit into the composition and balance of the overall painting. I'll leave it up to you to create your own artworks. Well done on completing the class. I hope you guys enjoyed it and learned a couple of new things about watercolor techniques that you can apply to your paintings now. For the class project, you can try to paint this forget-me-not flowers. You don't have to paint the exact same composition. In fact, I would encourage you to pick a style from the exercises and paint with your own interpretation of the subject. Remember that if you are stuck in any parts of the painting, you can refer back to the small exercises I have designed for you. If you want to see more art by me, you can also follow me on Instagram @ig_nianiani, or my YouTube channel, at Nianiani for some food illustrations, [inaudible] and many tutorials. I hope you guys enjoyed this class, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys have come up with in the project section.