Watercolor Florals: How to Paint Simple Loose Flowers

1. Introduction: Welcome to this class. I'm so glad you're here. This class is a gentle introduction to painting loose watercolor florals, a simple, joyful way to connect with your creativity. My name is Sharon, and I created this class as a peaceful space to slow down, let go of perfection, and explore the beauty of watercolor. You may know one of my books, Watercolor for the Soul or How to Paint it. I also have my third book coming out in October this year, which is Watercolor for the Soul Workbook, where you can paint directly inside the book. We'll be covering three flowers in this class and turning them into bookmarks. These are beautiful flowers that are easily simplified, so a great starting point if you're new to painting flowers. Before we get started on these, we'll cover some basics like color mixing, some useful techniques like wet on wet and painting stems and leaves, and also look at some tips for composition. For each flower, we'll start with a few techniques, practicing the elements of the flower before moving on to painting our bookmarks. This isn't about realism or getting every petal right. It's about using watercolor as a way to relax, connect with your creativity, and maybe even surprise yourself. You'll just need a few basic supplies, watercolor paints, a brush or two, some paper and water. There's no pressure here, just a calm space to experiment, play, and enjoy. So grab a cup of tea, get comfortable, and let's start painting. 2. Supplies 1: Okay, let's run through the supplies that you need for this class. Firstly, you'll need some watercolor paper. I'm using cold press paper for all of the painting in this class. I recommend 140 pounds or 300 GSM weight, and I'm using Saunders Waterford paper, which is a high white color. You'll need paper to practice on, and then we'll also be cutting our paper down into the bookmark templates for which you'll need a pencil, a ruler, and a craft knife or scissors. I'm using a metal ruler, which I'd recommend if you're using a craft knife, and obviously, you'll need a board to cut on as well. My brushes, I will be using Princeton velvet touch brushes. They are round brushes, and I'll be using a size zero, two and four brush, and also a liner brush for the stems. I'll also be using a size six brush in the practice session to show how brush size affects the wet on wet technique. If you don't have a liner brush, then you can just use your smaller brush. That's absolutely fine. The liner brush just helps you paint consistently thin lines. Paints, I'll be using Windsor and Newton professional watercolors, and I'll be using pans, but you can use tubes if you prefer. I'll be using five colors. I'm using my three primary colors which are permanent rose, Winsor Blue, red shade, and winds lemon, and also permanent sap grain and burn Umber. If you don't have these colors, that's fine. You will just need a yellow, red, blue, green, and brown. You'll also need some clean water, a palette for mixing on, a paper towel to take out your excess water on. And you may also find it useful to have some scrap paper like printer paper to place underneath your bookmark when we are adding splatters to finish off our bookmarks. I 3. Techniques: WoW Part 1: In this video, we're going to explore the wet on wet technique, adding wet paint to wet paper, which we'll be using to create soft blends and natural variation within the flower petals. In these examples, you can see how I've used this technique in the flowers. I've added a darker paint to the inner part of these petals, as you can see here, and it's gently spread to create depth and to help the petal feel slightly curved rather than flat. You can see I've also used it here on these center cones in this flower. So we've got the darker brown on this left lower edge, leaving this lighter area at the top right. And this helps to give it some form and dimension in a smooth and gentle way. So it looks like there's a lighter area and a darker area. And the brown has also bled into the petals below, which gives it that nice, loose and expressive feel. Wet and wet can be a little unpredictable and look different every time. So rather than trying to control every movement of the paint, we're going to be learning how to work with and understand how the paint and water behave together. Some of the most important things to be aware of are how wet the paper is, how much water is in your brush, the size of your brush, the consistency of your paint, and the timing of when you add color. Small changes in any of these can create very different effects. So this video is about experimenting and observing and ultimately building confidence for using this technique for painting our flower petals. Okay, so here are some examples of where I've used different amounts of water, and we'll try these out in a moment, but I just first wanted to talk you through them. So in this first row, I've used a lot of water in the first layer and also a lot of water in the second layer. You can see that we have some hard lines around the edges, and there is not much variation. The second darker paint mostly flooded the circle. So you can see this first one. It's almost a flat color apart from that hard line around the edge. And if you find you're getting these hard lines a lot, then you're using too much water. The water is just pushing the paint to the outer edge as it dries creating that line. On this second row, I've used very little water for both layers, and the paint has hardly spread because it was just too dry. Instead of having that smooth bleed and transition, we've just got these kind of rough edges, and it doesn't look that great. In this third row, I used a good amount of water for the first layer. But then for the second layer, I varied the consistency of the paint. So the consistency means how kind of thick it is or how watery it is. And this first example, I used a very watery mix just adding it to the lower edge of the circle. But you can see it flooded the whole circle, and as it dried, it just became a very flat color all over. So there's no variation at all. There's no depth because it just moved too fast within that small space. In this last one, I used a very thick consistency of paint, so it had very little water in it, and it just didn't spread very much. So as you can see, we haven't got that soft transition or that nice bleed. It hasn't moved very far at all, and it doesn't look that great. I think it's useful to try all of these too much and too little water. So you can learn how the paint moves and get to know how much you need for whatever it is you're painting. We're focusing on these small shapes within this video because we want to apply it directly to these petals which are going to be small. So when I'm painting my petals, I like to use a size four or a size two brush, usually. And those are the easiest ones to work with, I think. If you went for a bigger brush like a size six, then it's going to be a bit harder to control the amount of water. I'm going to start with a size six so we can experiment with how it feels to have too much water on the paper and in our brush. I think it's really useful to do these experiments. So not just trying to get it right, but also getting to know what it's like when you have too much water or too little water, and so you know what you can do about it. Okay, so the first layout we want is we want it to be quite pale. And then we want the second layer to have more paint in it so we can see that variation. One thing to keep in mind is that when you're adding paint to wet paper, it is going to it is going to dry lighter because it's adding even more water to it that's on the paper. So if you want it dark, make sure you're using quite a dark paint. So make sure there's plenty of water in your brush for this first layer. I've got quite a lot here. We're painting quite a small circle. And you'll know you have too much water when it's kind of forming a pool on the paper. So I'm going to go and grab my second layer now straightaway. And again, I'm picking up quite a lot of this paint. It's got quite a lot of water in it, too. I'm not dabbing it anywhere, and I'm just going to add it to the bottom edge. And you can see, I just touched it gently, but you can see it's not really spreading because it is just sitting on top of that water on the paper. So if this is happening and it's not moving like that, you'll know straightaway you have too much water in there. So one thing that you can do at this point is you can tilt the page, and you'll know if the water runs down to the bottom, which it has here, and it pulls at the bottom edge, you have too much. So you can lift it off then. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to wash my brush. I'm going to dry it. And once your brush is fairly dry. If it's quite damp, then we can use it as a sponge to pick this up. So I'm just going to tilt the paper, and I'm just going to pick this up and then take it out on my paper towel. And now that's got less water in it, we can then try again. So this time, I'm picking up that dark paint. I'm just going to dab a little of that excess water out onto my paper towel and then add it into the bottom. And then leave it there and we'll see how that moves. It's probably still quite wet, so it's spreading. You can see it's spreading quite far. Let's leave that to dry. And one way to notice if you've got too much water, it takes a really long time to dry. It shouldn't be taking that long with these petals. We won't be using too much water because they're quite small. And you can actually just paint another circle with all that water we had before. And instead of picking up, just leave it to see how it does dry, how long it takes to dry, just so you know what it looks like when you have got too much water. Cool. So I can see already this is spreading quite far already. I think there was still too much water in this one. I think it's probably going to end up fairly flat this color because this might keep on moving up, but we'll see. With this really wet one, you can see again that it's just sitting there on top and it's going to take quite a long time to dry. I imagine just like these examples I showed you before, it's going to end up with this hard line around the edge. So if when you're painting, it looks like this or when it's dried, it looks like this, then it's your sign that you're using too much water. So make sure you're taking out some of that water on your paper towel, just dabbing it. Or if you've already applied it to the page, tilt your page up, make sure your brush is clean and dry, and then just use it as a sponge to take out some of that water before applying the second layer. Okay, so we'll wait for those to dry and we'll move on to using not enough water. So this time, let's pick up our paler pink paint again. And I'm just going to dab a fair amount of that out. And you can see this is quite pale, but hopefully you can see it's taking me a bit longer to fill this in because it is dry. There's not as much water there. I'm then going to Move some of this out because there's quite a lot of water in here. I don't want too much water in this next layer because I want to show you what it's like when you're not using enough. Again, I'm going to take out this excess, because that was already drying and I've been taking a few seconds to move it around, I think, as I add this to the edge, you can see it's already mostly dried, and that is hardly spreading at all now. So another thing to be aware of is how much time you're taking in between the first and second layer. If you paint the first layer and it hasn't got much water in, and then you need that extra time to mix up or paint if it's not already prepared, then it's going to be drying in that time. And by the time you come to add it, it might be too dry, so it won't spread. 4. Techniques: WoW Part 2: Okay, so let's have a play around now with the consistencies of the paint mixes that we're using, so you can see how they're likely to behave and what you want to be aiming for when you're mixing your paints. So we'll be using a very watery mix and some thicker mixes, and we'll see the differences and how they spread. Okay, so for this first layer, we just want a good amount of water. We don't want too much. We don't want it pooling. If it looks like it's that's quite a good amount. It's got a little bit of extra there. You can see as it's tilting, but I think as I paint the next layer, but I think as I now need to mix my paint, that's going to give it a few seconds to start drying. I think that's going to be good. So now we want a very watery mix. We want enough painting there so it's darker. But you can see, I'm loading up my brush. This is really quite watery here. And I'm just going to add this in to the lower edge now. You can see that's already bloomed as soon as I lifted off the brush. And we're just going to leave that one important thing with wet on wet is not to overwork it. And if you're not used to working in that way, it can take some practice. But with these wet on wet petals, it is just about doing a couple of little dabs into the wet, not trying to control where it goes and not overworking it either, and also not going back to it once it started to dry. We just want to add the painting and then let the watercolor do its work its magic. And you can already see that's starting to fill up this circle because that second layer was so watery, even though the first layer was pretty good. It's still flooding the paint, and it's making it move really fast. So let's paint another circle now. Again, you take out some excess. Making sure that it's not a puddle on the paper. We want it to be wet enough that if you look to the side of it, it's shiny, but it's not pulling. So if you chipped it down, we don't want to pull. We haven't got a poll here, so this is quite nice. So now I'm going to work quite quickly. We want a thick consistency. So I'm just picking up the paint from the pan. I'm going to mix it on my palette here. But you can see, compared to this one, it's the same strength of color. This one has a lot of water in it, but this one is thick. It's not running down the palette. So now I'm going to add this into the edge. And again, I'm using just gentle dabs. And then we can see how this spreads. You can already see the difference in how it spread compared to this one and this one has filled the circle. This one's moving much slower. And as we wait for that to dry, we can go back to this first one, which is the one we use a lot of water for, and you can see it's already created that hard line around the edge, which we want to avoid if we can. Okay, so now we've done a few examples of what we don't want. Let's try and get this nice wet and wet transition that we do want. So, again, we're going to start with a pale circle. So make sure your brush is fully loaded. We want it to be fairly pale, so you can add a decent amount of water. The paler it is, the more delicate the petals are going to look. And the more obvious the variation will be once you add that darker color. Okay, so I've got a fair amount of water in my brush now. I'm just going to dab out a little bit. You can see that's kind of bloomed on the paper towel. And I'm going to paint my circle. Okay. So now I'm going to look at that and think, right, is that a good amount of water? It doesn't look like it's going to pull or run down too much if I tip it, but it's nice and wet, it should be wet enough for it to spread. I'm going to swap to my size. It's four now. And I'm going to this pink that we were using here, but I'm going to add a little bit more water to it because I want it to be a bit of a bit more watery consistency. It was a bit too thick before. So again, making sure my brush is loaded, but this has got too much water in. I know my brush is falling out of water. So I'm going to just dab that out and then just add this at the edge and then watch how that spreads. I might want it to be a little bit darker, so I'm just going to go and grab some more pink. Again, just dabbing this out and then just dropping a bit more in at the edge. And we'll see how that goes. But I'm hopeful that it's not gonna spread too far. We've still got this nice light area up there. I think it's still spreading. So let's try that again. I'm using my size four brush now. And you'll see the difference in using the different brush sizes. Obviously, a bigger brush will hold a lot more water. So the smaller your petals are, the smaller the brush you should be using is. So here this has got a fair amount of water in here. I can go to tip it up a little bit and maybe just pick up a little bit of that. And then go and pick up this paint. So it's not too thick, not too watery. Just going to dab out that and then add this in at the bottom, just a few little dabs. Let's see how that spreads. You can see this one above. Now that it's starting to dry, it's not a very smooth transition between that dark area and the paler area because it was just too thick to move very far. And this one you can see, it's just a very flat color like we never added that second layer at all. So another thing that you can do, especially if your flowers are a bit smaller. So again, I'm just mixing that paler paint, taking out the excess. And then I'm just going to paint my smaller circle, checking to make sure it doesn't look like there's too much water there, but making sure it's dry enough. I'm switching now to my size tube brush and I'm going to pick up that darker paint. And I'm going to use this to add that in now and see how that spreads. I quite like to switch between using my size four and my size two, especially when I'm painting delicate flowers and I don't want the paint to spread too far. I'll know that in the smaller brush, it won't be holding as much water. So it will be a bit more predictable, a bit more easier to control. So these circles, the first layer is fairly dark. We can make that even lighter so we can see a bit more of an obvious transition. So let's just try that. So this is quite watery now, so hopefully it will be nice and pale. Okay. Again, I'm switching to my size two now, picking up that darker pink and then just adding it at the bottom edge with a few very gentle touches. I'm not pressing down too hard. I'm not trying to control where the paint goes, just dabbing it in along the edge. And you can see that's created a lovely transition already because we're using a slightly paler first layer and that darker second layer, it creates more of a depthier effect than this one. I think this first layer was a bit too dark. Okay, so that's just a quick introduction really to using wet on wet for these petals. I hope it's been useful. I have a few more tips for you, which I think would really help, especially if you're struggling a bit with this because I think it can take some practice. My first recommendation is to experiment. There really is no better way to learn than to just grab a piece of paper and practice. Experiment with different maps of water. Try mixing different consistencies, play around with your paints. Have fun just observing and seeing what happens without any of the pressure or when you are actually trying to paint a subject. Make notes, scribble all over your page and see what works and what doesn't. Tilting and lifting. As we just practiced, if you add too much water to your paper, you can easily tilt the paper so it pulls and you can dab it with a paper towel or lift it up. Or just try lifting when the paper is flat. Remember to always clean and dry your brush before lifting so that it can absorb the water without adding more water or leaving any extra paint behind. Switch to a smaller brush. If you're struggling with too much water in your brush, switch to a smaller brush. For petals, I tend to use a size four or tube brush, like I said, because they're quite small. I find using a size four brush for the first layer and a sized tube brush for the second layer when I had the darker paint helps me to control the spread a bit more, but experiment and see what works for you. Premix your paints. Get your mixes ready before you start painting. Having the second layer mixed on a separate layer of your palette so that your first layer doesn't dry whilst you're mixing it up can be crucial, especially if that first layer isn't that wet and it's drying in that space between the first and second layer. Always be mindful of that. A few other variables that may affect your wet and wet painting is the paint that you're using. Some paints bloom and spread more, so try them out and get to know how all of your paints work. The paper that you're using will also affect how the water is absorbed, how it sits, and how the paint spreads on your paper, and how warm your environment is. Obviously, if it's a very hot day or you're in a very hot room, the paint is going to dry quicker, so you need to be working quicker and be mindful of that. Okay, I really hope this has been useful for you. Now let's move on to our second techniques practice video. 5. Techniques: Stems & Leaves: Okay, now we can just spend a few minutes practicing the stems and the leaves for our flowers. So for the stems, these are just fine lines. So you can either use a fine brush like a size two round brush, or if you have one, you can use a liner brush. And the benefits of the liner brush is that the hairs are long and thin. They're the same all the way along. So it just helps you achieve that consistent line. So let me show you the liner brush first. I'm just going to load it full of my green paint. And we want a slight curve to the line. We don't want very very straight, kind of stiff looking stems. We want there to be some movement. So I'm just gently resting my little finger on the page, and I'm just going to drag the brush upwards, slightly curve it around So it's quite useful to just practice these over and over again. You can fill up a whole page of lines like these. It can take some practice if you're not used to it just getting that steady line with a consistent thickness all the way along. So just repeating these over and over again and also changing the direction of that curve as well. As you'll see from, for example, the lavender, we have them going off in different directions. So we also have some curving to the left slightly. And then with some of the other flowers, you might have a bit more of a wave. So I'm just I'm using rather than moving at the wrist to help get that kind of smooth flow to the line, I'm using my whole arm, so I'm dragging my whole arm down. So I'm not restricting my range of movement by just moving at the wrist. So take some time to practice the stems with these different directions and the waves. And then we can just quickly practice some of the leaves as well. So now I'm moving to my size bow brush, picking up some of this green. I've loaded it full of paint, and I'm just going to dab the tip of the brush onto my paper towel to take out the excess at that tip. You can see there quite a lot. I just very gently touched it, and it's just flooded into that paper towel. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to touch the brush to the paper. And as I start to drag it, I'm going to gently start applying pressure. So because this is a round brush, the hairs are laying flatter. I'm continuing to drag it as I lift up that brush slowly until those hairs come to a fine point. So now we've got this shape of a leaf, which has started with a fine point. It's become thicker, and then it's gradually come back narrower to that fine point again. So again, just taking out that excess first. Otherwise, I won't be able to get that fine point at the beginning. It will be a bit more of a blob. So I'm just dragging it and gradually applying pressure and then gradually releasing that pressure until it comes to a fine point. And what is nice with these leaves is to add a bit of movement. So as we move around to the right, so I'm applying the pressure. I'm also curving the brush around a little bit so that the brush so that the leaf tapers off and curves. So we can try adding a few different bits of movement. So maybe a bit more of an S shape, a quite subtle S shape here. And then we can try this off in the other direction for leaves that will sit on the other side of the stem as well. So going off to the left and curving it around slightly. I'm going up a little bit more the curving it around. So it's a bit more of an S. So you can see those subtle differences in the direction can just really add a nice bit of movement and will change the look of the painting. So that one's curving upwards instead. So practice those as much as you need to before we move on. 6. Colour Mixing Part 1: Before we start painting our flowers, let's take a little time to look at the colors that we can use. We'll practice creating some simple color palettes for our flowers as well as looking at the greens to go with them. When you're working in a loose style, the color can do a lot of the work for you. It can give your flowers a sense of movement and softness, and even really subtle shifts can make a big difference. In this first example here, I've used one single color, and that's permanent rose, and to create a sense of variation depth, I have simply varied the values of the color. So this is the scale of the permanent rose showing the different values it has. So here at its darkest, it only uses a little bit of water. And then as these swatches move on, I've added a little bit more water to them until the pink gets really pale. And as you can see in these flowers, we have these petals. Some of them are really pale. And then you've got these darker areas. And this is what creates the sense of depth and movement to these flowers. If they were all an even color, it would look really flat uninteresting. So that's the simplest way that you can create some depth and movement to your flowers, just using a single color and varying the values. So if you haven't done this kind of exercise before, I highly recommend it. It's a great way to get to know your paints. So choose any of your colors and just start with the darkest swatch you can paint using only just a little bit of water to activate the paint so it's at its darkest. And then each time just add a little bit more until you can get to the lightest color you can make it. So it's almost just kind of tinted water. Okay, the second simplest way to create a color palette for your flowers is to choose two colors and mix them together. So for these flowers, I have used permanent rose and winds of blue. So this scale shows the swatches starting from pure permanent rose. And then with the swatch, I've just added in a tiny amount of the winds of blue, so it shifts it more towards purple and then towards these bluer purples, back to the pure winds of blue. And with these flowers, I've used a range of the pinks and purples, mainly on kind of this half of the scale, so they don't shift too much towards the blue, so they're not too kind of cool or too bluey purple. You can see, I've got these lovely pinks and the purples up here. And again, I'm using a range of values to create even more movement. Some of these flowers are really quite pale with an added drop of color into them, and then some of them are a bit darker. And just using those subtle shifts of values and also colors creates a beautiful range, um, for your flowers. This is a much easier way of creating harmony in your paintings than just choosing multiple colors in your palette, different pinks and purples, and using those. Just by mixing, you can create such range in such a simple way. Here's another example of using just two colors to mix for a range of flowers. And I've got more of a range here, so you can see we've got yellows and oranges and pinks and red oranges. And for these colors, I've used permanent rose and Winsor Lemon. So again, here's a scale showing you all of the colors that you can mix in between. So I started with the permanent rose and added in a little of the yellow each time just so it starts moving towards these lovely peachy pinks and these reddy oranges, these oranges, yellow oranges and back to the Windsor lemon. So in comparison to this one where I just use some subtle shifts in the color. This has more of a range where you've got those pops of color. But because we're using those two colors that mix together, there's still this lovely sense of harmony in there, and they work really well together. So, I like to make these watch cards of different mixes. They're a great place to go to if you're wondering what colors to use, for your projects, for your flowers, whatever it is you're painting. And also, they're a really fun exercise to see how your paints work together. So one way you can do them is you can just paint squares. So for here, this is just permanent rose, and I've just varied the values. But you can also paint the squares next to each other so they bleed into each other, which is a really nice reference for things like these flowers as we'll be using the wet on wet technique. So you can see the way the paint flows together. In these two, I've used permanent rose and winds of blue, like I showed you on this scale. This one stays a bit closer to the pink and the pinky purples, whereas this one moves a little bit further towards the bluey purples, so you can see the slight difference, and it will create a different feel for your painting, for your flowers. These will become a lot cooler. So even those subtle shifts within the two ranges of paints can make a big difference. Okay, so if you've got some scrap paper, that's the perfect thing to use for these swatches. I've just got so I've just got some paper left over from some other work. And I'm going to just sketch out the outlines of the swatches, and they are 5 centimeters by 6 centimeters. So I'm leaving enough space just to write the colors of the paints I'm using at the bottom. Okay, so I'm just going to go along the top and mark 5 centimeters. And then mark 6 centimeters for the length. And then along this line, I'll mark the 5 centimeters again so I can match up with those chop marks. Okay, so we'll start with a single color. I'll do the permanent rose, and we're just going to create different valleys within one paint. So as I said, this is a nice exercise to do, especially, you know, I find a lot of the time I'll only have ten, 20 minutes to paint, and it can often feel like you can't get much done in that time. But these are kind of the perfect kind of go to. And you can kind of still be painting, still be adding to your collection, and they're really lovely way to kind of keep that kind of toe in the water of being creative. So I've painted the first square. Don't worry about it being neat. And I've just washed the paint off my brush. I'm just going to add a little bit more water to the palette so it's a bit paler, and then I'm just going to paint this next. So don't overthink. These swatches, they don't have to be neat. Don't worry about the squares, where they are, if they're the right shape. Just work on creating squares of different values. I'm just washing the paint off my brush now. So I'm just using the water, and I'm just going to touch that square and let it bleed in and then pulling the paint down. So it has become a little bit pink. I'm going back to the pink on my palette now. Going to paint another square here. Again, very roughly. I'm not worried about being neat. I just want to see how the paint looks with different values. So I have a reference for when I'm choosing colors in future. I want to leave a bit of space at the bottom, so I'm just this is going to be a bit more rectangle than a square. Okay. That's enough. So really quick. And then I'm just going to write the color underneath so I don't forget. Okay, next, I am going to make a swatch card for the permanent rose and the winds are blue with some pinks and pinky purples. So I'm just going to pick up some of my winds of blue and add it to the side of my palette, and then I'll gradually mix it in. So I only want a little bit. I don't want it to shift too much towards the blue. I don't want it to be too cool. So that's probably the coolest I want it to be. And again, just touching those squares and letting the colours bleed in together. I'm just washing the paint up on my brush now so I can get a nice pale color as that paint bleeds in, so you can see that lovely blade of that purple. I'm going to add a little bit more pink now. And again, another pale one in between these two. So this is quite a cool purple, the one I actually started with. So I might just add another one like that towards the bottom, a bit more cool as it doesn't look so out of place. To balance it out a little bit. Add a bit more of a pinky one. Here. Okay. So again, don't worry about these being neat or perfect. You might find that you don't like the color mixes or you might think this is a bit too cold, but you can just do it again and they're all kind of learning experiences. So don't worry too much. Okay, so I just wanted to show you a couple of examples of the way I did those. But now you can continue with whatever colors you have playing around, just using one color and using the different values to create that variation and movement and depth, or you can use two colors and mix them together. So whatever you've got in your palette, whatever colors kind of spike your interest, you can play around with those to see what works well together and what kind of variation you can create. So with these other boxes, I want to create some green swatches now, and we can use those later on to match them up to our flowers so we can see rather than guess, we can use them to choose which greens we want to create. 7. Colour Mixing Part 2: I also want to quickly look at mixing greens as the green that you use for the stems and leaves can change the look of the whole painting as well. I like to start with a base color of permanent sap green and then add another color into the mix. So here are some examples of swatches that I've made. This one here is made with a base of permanent sap green with the yellow Windsor lemon added in to make it very warm and fresh and bright, which is great for a cheerful spring painting, which is great for a cheerful spring painting and will brighten up your flowers. This one here starts again with a permanent sap green, but adds in a blue indigo this time, which makes it cooler, darker and more wintry, which will add a bit more depth to your flowers. And this one again starts with a permanent sap green, but this time adds a little bit of the permanent rose, which is the complimentary color to green. And this just takes away a little of that brightness, makes the green a bit more neutral and realistic. I find it really helpful to have swatches like these for the greens. These lines all have slightly different ratios of the mixes, so you can see a variety of what the color could look like. And then you can just hold them up to your flowers to help you choose which green you want to go for instead of guessing. And I have lots of these. Not all of them start with the permanent sap green. Some I mix with a blue and a yellow. So I have experimented with different colors like indigo, yellow ochre. So you can play around and find some favorite mixes of your own. So let's just practice now making a couple of these swatches that we can use to choose our greens later on in the class. Okay, so I'm using my size for brush, and I'm just going to start with this permanent sap green base. And I want to first make a swatch card of a nice, bright, warm green. So I'm going to be adding my Winsor lemon to this. So I'll mix that in, and then I'm just going to paint a stripe so you can see that's a nice bright green. I'm gonna try adding a little bit more in to see how it changes the mix. And just a little bit more. I'm leaving a gap at the bottom so I can have plenty of space to write the names of the paints I'm using. So I'm just going to pull in the green leftover from this end. So it's still got some of that yellow in, but it's a bit darker. It's still brighter than it would be without it. So sometimes you only need a touch of a color to make a subtle change that works for what you want it for. Okay. So now I've got a nice variety of what these warm greens with that Windsor lemon could look like. So I'll just add the names of the paints at the bottom, so I can refer back to it later. Okay, let's do one more. So I want to do the neutral green now. So again, I'm going to start with the permanent sap green and add a little bit in of the complimentary color, which is the permanent rose. So we want plenty of the green to start with and only a little bit of the pink. And we just want to add that in gradually because otherwise, it will take over. So I'm just going to pull it in and watch as the color changes. So I'm just going to add that in So you can see it's quite a muted green now. It's certainly not as bright as these ones with the yellow in. Let's pull in a little bit more. We don't want to go too far because it will start to look a bit muddy and brown. That's still a nice neutral green. So just keep going, varying these mixes slightly so you can get a variety of what it would look like. Okay. And then don't forget to add your paints in again when you're done. And then we can cut all these out, and then we can refer back to them. And this is gonna be really helpful when we're choosing which colours we want to use. 8. Composition: Let's spend a few minutes looking at composition, which simply means how we arrange our flowers on the bookmark. Because bookmarks are long and narrow, composition helps create balance movement and a clean finished design. And in watercolor, simple compositions are often the most effective, especially for floral paintings. Okay, first, let's talk about white space. White space is the empty paper we intentionally leave around the flowers. And leaving this space helps the flowers stand out and gives the painting a light, elegant feeling. If we tried to fill every area of the bookmark, it's going to start looking crowded and will affect how it makes us feel looking at it. So try to think of the empty areas as part of the design rather than unused space. For all three bookmarks that we'll be painting in this class, will leave plenty of breathing room around the flowers. I like to leave a fairly big gap at the top, and then small gaps around the edges for a margin. And this just gives it space to breeze so the flowers don't look too crowded. Number of flowers you paint can completely change the look of the bookmark. Odd numbers usually feel more organic in floral compositions and help the viewer's eye roam around more freely. So arrangements of one, three or five or even seven often work especially well. So here are some examples of the first flower that we'll be painting with one, three, five and seven flowers. And this single flower creates a really minimal, simple composition that's quite striking on its own. And these bookmarks with more flowers, create a fuller design, but because we still have all of that white space, the bookmark doesn't feel crowded. Here are some more examples of the other flowers that we'll be painting in this class, using either a single flower or a group of three, which works best for these stars of flowers as it would be a bit tight to try and fit anymore in. Okay, next is positioning. So try and avoid placing everything directly in the middle of the bookmark. Instead, move the flowers slightly higher to create a more interesting arrangement. I like to paint the groups of flowers about a third of the way down the bookmark. So that's where the eye goes to first. And then the rest, the leaves and the stems and the white space above, this will be where the eyes move to next. For the lavender bookmark, the height of the tallest flower reaches a similar height to where the other flowers sit because bookmarks are vertical compositions that flow upwards, work especially well. So tall stems and long curved lines and staggered flowers like these help lead the eye naturally from the top to the bottom, which is why tall flowers like lavender work especially well for the bookmark designs or flowers that have these long stems. Of the easiest way to create movement is by changing the angle of the flowers and stems. If every flower points in the same direction, the composition can feel stiff or flat. So what you can do is instead try varying the direction slightly. So some flowers can tilt outwards. So, for example, we've got some side view flowers in these bunches here, and some can tilt downwards or upwards slightly. And as you can see, these ones are pointed at slightly different angles, and the same with the lavender, these are curving off in different directions, which just helps gives it that more movement and creates a gentle flow to it. Another important part of composition is variety. So not every flower needs to be exactly the same size, height, or angle. Small differences can help the arrangement feel more natural and balanced. So with this lavender, you can see the tallest flower is in the middle, and then the flowers, either size slightly different heights, but they're both shorter than the central flower. The goal is balanced rather than perfect symmetry. Before you start painting, take a moment to plan your composition. Think about how many flowers you. Where they will sit, the direction they'll face, and where you'll leave white space. If it makes you feel more comfortable, you can use a light pencil to mark out where the flowers would be like the centre cones of the echinacea to check that you're going to have enough space to add in the petals. Or you can lightly sketch out the stems of the lavender if it makes you feel more comfortable doing so. Generally, my biggest tip is to keep the composition simple as this will often create the most striking and elegant result. In watercolor, less is very often more. 9. Making the Bookmark Templates: A So for these bookmarks, I like to measure them out as 6 centimeters wide and 18 centimeters high. That just means they're wide enough for the flowers. We don't want them to be too slim. So I like to cut out quite a few at a time. So I always have some prepared ready, so I can just grab them and paint when I want to rather than having to cut them out each time. So you just need your pencil and your ruler. And I can fit, I think, five on this page. So five across. So I'm just going to mark this out, so 6 centimeters across. I'll mark them again along this bottom. I'm leaving a five millimeter margin at the sides. Okay. Now I'm just going to connect those lines. Okay. Now I'm just going to measure the length of 18 centimeters and then cut them out. Okay, so now I've got my five bookmarks mapped out on the page. I'm using my palette knife to take the paper off of this block, and then I'll use my craft knife to cut them out. So I've got my metal ruler. You don't want to use a plastic ruler with a craft knife because it will just cut right into it. I'm going to do the edges first. Okay. So now I've got my five foot marks ready for painting. 10. Flower 1: Part 1: For the first flower, we will be painting these simple five petal flowers, which I love to paint. For the petals, I'll be using permanent rose and Winter blue red shade mixed together in varying ratios to make a variety of pinks and purples. For the green, for the stems and leaves, I'll be using permanent zach green with a little burnt umber mixed in, but you can choose whatever green mix you would like to use. For the brushes, I'll be using size four and size zero round brushes and my liner brush. And for the techniques, we'll be focusing on color mixing, creating subtle varieties within our mixes, simple brush strokes, wet and wet and adding splatters at the end. Okay, so I've painted a few of these simple flowers for your reference at the top of the page. So we have a front flacing flower where all the petals are the same size. This is another front flacing flower, but it's at a slight angle, so you can see those two bottom petals are slightly shorter, and this just helps to give it a bit more movement, and so the flowers don't look as flat. Here, you've got a couple of flowers at a side angle. So with these ones, you can see there's a dip at the top, there's two kind of bigger petals on the left, with a thinner one on the right, and then a bigger petal in the middle and two thin ones on the sides. So it's just to show you that you can create a little bit of variation with the strokes that you use, and it's just going to add a lot more kind of interest and movement to a finished composition where you have multiple flowers. And then finally, we have a bud here, which is just a smaller petal shape and then the stem underneath with a V shape supporting that bud. Okay, so we'll start with the individual petals, working on that shape. So I'm using my size four round brush, and I'm just going to use my permanent rose as well. It doesn't matter at this point what color you use. We're not going to worry about mixing just yet, so just pick up an individual color. So I've loaded my brush quite well here. I'm going to start with this top petal. So I want it to come to a point at the bottom. So I'll start from the bottom with the tip of my brush. Going to drag my brush around in a s curve, applying pressure and lifting it up as it comes around. So this is going to give the shape of that top curve edge. So now I'm going to go straight back in, starting from this bottom, again with minimal pressure with the tip of the brush, and I'm going to run my brush up the middle, applying pressure until I get to that top. And on this right side, we're going to do the opposite of that first stroke, starting from the bottom with just the tip, applying pressure, and I'm going to curve the brush round to the left. So that's going to give this nice shape where we've got a point at the bottom. It doesn't have to be a sharp point. It's just wants to come inward to come into the center of the flower. And then we've got a fairly rounded top. And this doesn't need to be a really neat rounded top. You'll see if you look at some of these petals, they have a few little bumps in and this is the way I like to paint them because it makes them look a lot more natural and delicate and organic. If you kind of painted the curve first and then filled it in, it's going to look a bit more stylized and more like a doodle if it's too smooth. Petals are naturally going to be a little bit kind of more jagged and more delicate. So let's practice this again. Okay, so starting from that base, applying pressure and curving round, and then going straight up the middle and then that right curve, as well. Okay. And you can adjust the curve if you like, if it's a bit too uneven. So you see here, it's kind of a bit bumpy. I might just smooth that off a little bit. But what is nice is if your petals all do look a little bit different. And by painting with these three strokes, I find that happens quite naturally rather than if we were to paint the outline and fill it in. So keep practicing this as much as you like to start to feel comfortable with this. And then what we can do is start practicing them from different directions as well. So let's paint this one off to the side. And then the lower one going downwards. You can see that's actually kind of got a bit of a bump there in that rounded edge, which is nice. Okay, so now let's practice creating these shorter petals which are at the bottom of this slightly angled flower. So we're going to do it in the same way. We're just going to stop a bit sooner. So it's just going to be a bit shorter. It's gonna be the same width. And that I'm just going to curve that around a little bit more. Okay, so continue practicing that as much as you need to. Pause the video if you want to here. Now we're going to move on to actually creating a whole flour together. So what we want is a nice pale mix for this one, because we want to add a little bit more colour into the middle when it's still wet. And so we need that first layer to be really pale. And the second layer is going to be a bit darker and it's going to help give it a bit of contrast. 11. Flower 1: Part 2: Okay, so we're going to start with that top middle petal. So going up about three strokes. And then the side one coming off, I'm not quite touching this first petal. You can a little bit on some of them, but I like to leave a little bit of a gap for most of them and go up to this left one now. You can see I'm leaving a bit of space in the middle as well. Now I'm going to come downwards. And then this last petal here. So you can see there's some gaps, and some of them are touching. So I'm going to go straight in, pick up my darker pink. I can see this is drying quite quickly. I'm actually going to drop to my smaller size zero brush for this wet on wet, so it won't spread as far because these are small petals. The paint can spread quite far. So I'm just going to drop this darker pink into the edge just with the tip of my brush. So I'm just adding it into the center. I'm picking this up, and I'm just taking some of the excess out because the wetter it is, the more it's going to spread, and I only want it to spread a little way. As it starts to dry, you can add a little bit more if you want it to be darker or you want to build on that. Okay, so I'm happy with that. That's given a nice bit of contrast in the middle. Okay, so now let's work on this second flower, which is slightly more angled with those two shorter petals at the bottom. So again, I'm going to start with this top middle flower with top middle petal with those three strokes, and then go off to the side. So these are all the same size. Leaving that small circular shape in the middle. And then coming down to the bottom, and these are going to be shorter. Switching to my size zero now to pick up that darker pink, making sure it's got enough water in there that it's going to flow. And then just dabbing this in to the center. I find that it's a lot easier if you switch to a smaller brush. You can have more control over it, especially with these smaller shapes. If I were to use a size four, it can spread quite far, and then it can take over the whole petal. That's why I like to drop down to a smaller brush. But take some time practicing. The wet on wet. As I said, it can be unpredictable, so each kind of petal will look a bit different. So try not to get too hung up on that or worry about it looking perfect because part of the magic of these loose flowers is just kind of giving over some of that control to the watercolor. Okay, so let's move on to these side petals now. So I'm going back to my size four brush. Again, we want a fairly pale mix. So I'm going to start with that middle petal, and it's going to be at an angle slightly. So there's three strokes. And then I'm going to do this one, so I'm going to curve off to the left and another one. So it's just got that dip. And then a thinner petal, starting from the base, curving round. That's just one stroke with a little bit of pressure that's not too thin. And then I'm going to go from my size zero, pick up that darker pink, and just drop it into that base as well. So let's try another one of these side flowers. So the middle petal, those three strokes, and then the two either side are going to be a bit thinner. So starting from the base, applying a little bit of pressure and then coming up to a point. So lifting the brush gradually and the same on this side. So applying a bit of pressure as I drag it, curving it round, then coming to a point. It doesn't need to come to too much of a sharp point. You can see this is a bit blunter here, but it's just kind of trying to lift it up a little bit gradually. Okay, switching to the size zero again to add this darker pink in the base, just dabbing in and then leaving it. And it's going to spread. It's going to keep spreading until it's dry. So don't try and control it because it will probably look quite different in a few minutes once it's dry. Okay, so the final one is the bud. So again, using the size four and the pale mix. This is just basically the shape of one of the petals, maybe a bit smaller. I'm going with a tip of my brush, I've just dried the brush off on my paper to, I'm just going to pick up that little bit of excess water at the top. Okay, coming back to these two, we're just going to add a dot of brown in the center like this. That's the burnt umber, so I'm using my size zero. It's a fairly dark brown I'm using. I'm just going to put it on my palette to make sure it's mixed in well. I don't want any blobs of paint. Then I'm just going to paint a small circle in the center. I'm leaving some of the white to show through. And that's it. Just really, really simple. For this bud, oh, I forgot to add in a little bit of wet and wet to this bud. So we'll do that as the same as the others dropping in a little bit of the darker. I think that's probably dry now. So perhaps try that again. So, again, just the pale pink. That's got quite a lot of water in it, so I'm going to wait. I might lift a little bit of it up. If it's got too much water on the paper, when you add the drop of pink, it's just going to spread because it's quite a small shape. It will take over the whole thing. And when it's dry, it will still look like a flat color, and it will just be a bit darker. So sometimes it's worth just waiting a little bit until it starts to dry. So with the size zero, I'm just going to drop in that darker pink to the base, and you can see that's gradually starting to move upward. Okay, so with the size zero again, you can use the bigger size four, if you want, just the tip of the brush. I'm going to use my permanent sap green. And I'm just going to paint that little V shape underneath. I'm not touching that bud because the buds still wet. You can do it a little bit. I will bleed in. And then the stem would come down and we probably if you have a line of brush, you can do that with them, but I just want to show you how it would look. And again, with these stems for these angle flowers, this would come down from that center and curve round. With the front flacing flower for the stems, we would find the center and just decide which way we want that stem to go. It would probably curve out slightly. So instead of having it straight down, it's nice to add a little bit of a curve. So it looks like it's a bit more natural. There's a bit more movement. So from this one, I'd start from the center. My brush is not touching the paper. I'd work my way down until I get to the white of the paper and then curve it round. And for this one, again, this looks like it's facing a little bit to the left, so I think the stem should come off to the right as well. So again, I'm going to come down here and curve around. Okay, so now we've practiced all these individual elements for these simple flowers, we can work on a composition. So if you've got your bookmark template, grab that now, and we'll start painting a few of these flowers together. 12. Flower 1: Part 3: Okay, so as we paint our bookmark, we want to keep in mind some of those things that we discussed earlier in the composition video. So firstly, we have positioning. When I'm painting these bookmarks, I like to keep the flowers kind of in a cluster, about two thirds of the way up, and then we have the stems and leaves underneath. And then we have this nice chunk of white space at the top. That just helps give the flower some breathing space so it doesn't feel too tight and too crammed. For all three of these bookmarks, I've used odd numbers for the flowers, so you can see I've got three flowers here, five here and seven here. And as we discussed earlier, it just helps your eye roam around a bit more freely, and it's a bit more pleasing to the eye than even numbers would be. In these two, we've got quite a lot of movement with the angles of the flowers, so we've got some front facing flowers here. This is slightly angled with those shorter petals underneath, and then we've got some side angled flowers here as well. Likewise, we've got some side angles here. This one is facing downwards. And then we've got some nice movement with the waves of the stems and the leaves coming off in different directions. We've also got some variation in color here. So in this middle bookmark, you can see, I've just used a pink, but there is quite a lot of variation in the value. We've got some really nice pale petals on the side here. And then some of these flowers are a little bit darker, and especially in the center, we've got that contrast where we've dropped in some much darker pink. This one, I've used Permanent Rose and Winsor Blue red shade and just varied the mix ever so slightly, just to get some different kind of pinks and purples. It doesn't have to be too much variation, but it can create such a lovely effect. Okay, so we're going to paint a bookmark similar to this one. We're going to have seven flowers. We'll start with a front facing flower in the center and then work our way around. So as we're doing this, just make sure you leave plenty of white space around the edges and a chunk at the top. Choose whichever colors you like for this. I'm going to use the permanent rose and the winds are blue red shade, so to create the more pinky flowers, and then the slightly more purple ones and bluey purple ones here. So we've got a nice variation. I'm not going to go too far over to the blue, so it's not going to be too cool, or I'm not going to go for the pure pink either. I want to stick in the middle range where we have those pinky purples and the bluey purples. Okay, so I've got my bookmark template. I've also got another bit of ward color paper, scrap paper that I can do some swatches on for the colors. I'm going to be using my size for round brush and then my size zero brush as well to drop in some of that color. I'm also going to be using my liner brush for the stems. So let's start by mixing our colors. So I'm using my permanent rose. I'm going to add some of this Windsor blue next to it up top here. I'm going to keep some of the darker mixes up the top, so we can use that for the wet on wet so those are already prepared. So now I'm just washing off my brush, and I'm just going to pull some of this pink downwards and likewise with the blue, and I'm just going to start mixing that in a little bit. All right. Let's just mix some of this at the top, as well, so it's ready. Okay, so nice and pale to start with a nice pale pinky purple. Taking off the excess from my brush. I want there to be quite a lot of water in this mix to make it nice and a watery consistency, but I don't want too much water in my brush that's going to flood the paper. So I'm going to start about a third of the way down. Just pick up a little bit more and paint a front facing flower in the center. So there's three strokes. Okay, quickly switching to my size zero. And I'm going to get some of this darker mix on the top and drop that in. Okay, so let's move on to another front facing flower just to the top right. So this time, I'm going to make it a little bit more purple. And then going for that darker mix with a size zero brush, and again, just dropping that into the center with some little dabs just with the tip of the brush. I'm just going to go back and pick up a little bit of my permanent rose, mixing that with the purple. So I can just add a little bit more in here because I just want to make that a little bit darker, as well. Okay, so let's have another front facing flower down below. We can do these at a little bit more angle. So I'm going to add a little bit more of the blue in. So it's a bit more bluey purple swatch these out if you want to. On these side ones, you can move it around, or you can actually start at the top end of the petal instead. So now I'm going to do two shorter petals underneath. Just quickly mixing up some of this darker bluey purple to add in. Then we can have another one here. So I'm going to add a bit more pink in again. Make it nice and pale this one. And again, those two bottom petals are going to be a bit shorter. Size zero dropping in a darker mix. Okay. So we've got four front facing flowers now or slightly angled flowers so we can do some side ones now to fill in the gaps. So one here, one here, one here, I think. So I'm going back. I got a nice bluey purple one here, so I'm going to use that same color for this side. So starting with that middle petal and then off to the left and then a thinner one on the right. And then, again, we can go in and pick up that darker mix and just drop that in to the bottom. Okay. This one might go for a bit more of a pinky one up here. Just mixing that in a little bit, so it's not pure permanent rose. I want a little bit of a purple tint to it. So starting with that middle petal, I'm just going to wash my brush off a little bit as it's very dark and then adding in the side petals. Got a bit too much water in there, so I'm just picking up a little bit. Okay. And now going back, mixing this darker mix and adding that into the bottom. Okay, let's have one more here, and that will round that off nicely. I go for a mid purple. Just go to turn my bookmark around slightly now and then have this coming off to the right. So side petals, faliTick side petals. Okay. And then again, with a size zero picking up that dark mix to drop into the base, just for that contrast. You can see that one has spread quite far, and it's kind of flattened it a little bit. So I'm just going to add a little bit more in to see if it's still wet enough to spread a little bit. Okay. So there we have our seven flowers. So if the front facing ones are dry now, they should be. I'm going to go with my size zero and pick up some of my brown, my burnt umber, so we can do those little dots in the center. Again, remember to leave some white space. Just that helps give it some contrast. Okay. 13. Flower 1: Part 4: And now we can mix up a green that we want to use. So for this, I think I'm going to using a quite a neutral green. So I'm going to start with my sap green. Add that to my palate. And then I'm going to add some of my burnt umber. Test this out. I think that's quite a nice. Nice, neutral green. So I'm going to go for my liner brush now. So if you don't have a liner brush and you just have a round brush, that's absolutely fine. Just remember just to use the tip of the brush to get that line nice and consistently thin. Okay, so I'm just coating my brush and then I'm going to take off the excess on the end. And then I'm going to start with this flower down here and I'm going to work from the center and then touch my brush down as it gets to the white paper and curve it round and come towards the middle of the bottom of the bookmark. So it's got a nice bit of movement in there. And if we overlap some of these stems, it just makes them all feel a little bit united, brings a piece together. So this flower is going off to the left a little bit. So I'm going to calm this way down. So starting from there. Going to drag my brush all the way down to the bottom. So I'm dragging my arm. I'm not keeping my wrist locked and moving it. I'm dragging my whole arm to keep it nice and smooth. Okay, so I'm working from this center one now, so I'm going to go down and come over to this left side. So I have to stop at this petal, and then I'm just taking my brush over the top of the petal to see where it would meet the white paper again and then bringing it down. Okay. Okay. So with this one, this is going off to the right, so the stem would be coming off to the left this way. I'm going to curve it around, I think, over here. Okay, so it comes behind that petal with a little bit of green there, and then bring it down and round. Okay, with this top one, I'm going to bring that and we're straight down, maybe with a slight wave in it. So it's just going to cross over. Okay, so we've got two more to go. So this one, again, it's facing off to the left, so we want that stem coming out to the right. So pull that down, and then I'm going to curve it around. Okay. It's the last one. Can I come down? Okay, so we've got all our stems in now. And now I'm going to switch back to my size four brush to paint in some leaves. 14. Flower 1: Part 5: Okay, so now we can add the leaves. So I'm using the size four ram brush and picking up plenty of that grain, just taking out the excess from the tip on my paper towel. I'm going to start at the bottom on this right side, and then touching the stem, bringing it down, applying pressure, and then curving it around a little and lifting it off. I'm going to pick up some more green now and do another one on this side coming off from this right stem. I'm going to curve this round a little bit more, so it looks a little bit different to the one underneath. Okay, let's head over to this left side now. We want to kind of try and make them position them in different heights so it doesn't look too uniform. I'm going to bring this up a little bit more and make it a little bit longer. Okay. And now one down here. Curving that off a little bit. And then we can have some overlapping the other stems. So I'll start here. You can add a little bit more color in that if you want to cover up those stems. Make it a little bit darker. And I think I'm just going to do one more probably in the center area to kind of fill in this space a little bit. Okay. So I've got six leaves out. I might just add one more, keep it odd. So they're not fighting for attention, so I'm just gonna have one in this gap here. Okay. Just take a step back at this point and have a look, see if you need any more leaves. But I'm quite happy with mine. I'm going to wait for it to dry, and then I am going to add some splatters. Okay, so I've just got a bit of printer paper here, which I'm going to lay on the table. Underneath my bookmark. So just make sure you've moved anything out of the way that you don't want to get any accidental splatters on. I'm going to use my size to brush because I want these splatters to be fairly fine. So the bigger the brush you use, the bigger the splatters will probably be. And I'm going to focus the splatters on the top half of this page over the flowers and in this white area. I don't want too many, but I'm going to add some pinky pertible splatters there, and then perhaps some green splatters over the stems and the leaves. So I'm just going for the pink pinky purple that's mixed on my palette. I'm going to take off a little bit of the excess of my brush. And you can either tap this on your finger or you can tap it on another brush. I'll start with my finger, see how this comes off. You see, that's quite a nice, fine spray there. I think I need a little bit more water. I'm just going to take off this excess blob, I can see because I don't want any big blobs of water. And then I'm just gonna go again moving it around as I tap. I don't want too many. I'm gonna go for a little bit more pink. Okay. And now I'm just going to rinse off that color and pick up some of this green. Again, taking off the excess, I can see there little bit of a blob of water on the silver part of the brush. And I'm just gonna splatter this over the stems. Okay. I'm going to leave it there. I don't want too many. Now, you just need to be quite careful with these flatters. Make sure you give them a good few minutes to dry, especially if there's any blobs of water, they can be easily smudged, and we don't want to ruin our painting at this stage. So sell it to one side and don't touch it for a while. Okay, so that's our first bookmark completed. I really hope you've enjoyed this. I love painting these. They're so relaxing. Not only are the brush strokes calming, but the colour palettes are as well, and I just love how they look at the end. And then you can use them whilst you're reading your books, or you can give them to friends and family, and it's just a really nice way to incorporate them into your everyday life and remind you why you love painting and also that it doesn't actually take long to create something that is not only relaxing but really pretty, as well. Okay, let's move on to our next flower. 15. Flower 2: Part 1 : For the second flower, we will be painting echinacea, one of my favorite flowers. For the petals, I'll be using Winsor Lemon, and for the central cone of the flower, I'll be using burnt umber. For the stems and leaves, I'll be using permanent sap green with a touch of burn umber mixed in to make it a bit more neutral. I'll be using my size zero and four round brushes with my liner brush for the stems. For the techniques, we'll be focusing on fine details, creating the texture in the central cone by painting lots of dots together, simple brush strokes, wet on wet, and finally adding some splatters at the end. Okay, so let's start by practicing the elements of this flower. So we've got an example up here for a reference that I've painted for you. So we'll start with the cone, the center part of the flower, and then we'll practice some of the petals and the wet on wet bleeds that we've got here. So using a size four brush, the way I painted this is with a pale bone umber to start with, and then added in some darker bone umber on the left bottom side along the edge and on that corner and let it bleed in. So it gives it a nice contrast and helps give that cone some dimension. So pick up some burn umber, and then we're going to water it down. We want a really nice pale color. So you can test that out. So something like that, it's almost like just a tint because we're going to build it up with the wet on wet. And this center is made up of lots of dots. And that's just using the tip of your brush. So just practice. Just using the tip. And some of these dots can touch each other. We don't want it to just look like a series of uniform dots. If some of them touch each other, it just makes them a little bit bigger. They blend in together. So just practice. Just a light touch with the tip of your brush. Okay, so to paint this, we're going to paint a semicircle, so it's got a half circle for the top, and then the base is slightly curved. So we'll start again with the pale burnt umber with a size for brush. Using the dots, paint this curve, semicircle. And then we can paint a slight curve for the base. This just helps give its shape. And then once we've got that, we can start filling it in with these dots. And again, remember some of these dots will touch each other. I shouldn't just look like it's lots of dots. What we want to create is just texture. So some of the white showing through. Okay, and our why that's still wet. We're going to pick up some darker burnt umber taking off this excess and starting at this bottom left corner, just dab it in. Again, just using the tip of the brush. Tip dab in this darker bone umbra dot work your way along the bottom edge a little bit, not all the way along. So it's just focused in that corner and it'll bleed upwards, and that's going to help give it its shape. Okay, so we'll work on the petals individually first and then we'll paint the flower as a whole and work on creating these lovely bleds from the brown of the cone into the petals. Okay, so again, with the size full brush, eight. I'm going to pick up my yellow, which is my Winsor Lemon. But as I showed you, you can do this with pretty much any color, and it will still look lovely. So you can choose which color you'd like to use. So for these petals, they're quite long petals. The ones at the side, they curve around a little bit, and they're slightly thinner. So this one on the left and this one on the right, they are usually just one stroke petals. And then the rest are a little bit wider, so I usually do two strokes for those. So we start with the tip of our brush and then drag the brush down, curving it slightly and then lifting it up. So it's not got a pointy edge. I'm lifting it up kind of before it gets to the tip of the brush, curving it in a little bit. So taking off the exit, starting with the tip of the brush, laying down, dragging, curving slightly into itself, and then picking up. So it's got a bit of almost a blunt kind of curved edge. So for a thicker petal, we can drag it down and then start at the top again and then add a bit more width to it. So just trying that again. So I'm curving it a little bit. And then the other side, curving it. And if you've got a bit of excess at the edge, you can just pick that up. And you can see these petals aren't really neat, just like with the last flower, we want that kind of realism in there, that delicateness and natural way that the petals are. They're not going to be really, really neat. So we're going to practice another thin petal curving round to the right this time, so again, laying down the brush and then picking up. And again, if you get any excess bits of water and paint at the edge, just take off the paint off your brush so it's pretty dry and then using the tip of the brush to let it absorb it like a sponge. Okay, so pause the video here if you want to practice any of those elements again on their own, but now we'll paint the flower as a whole. So continuing with my size full brush, I'm going back to that pale bone umber, taking off the excess, and then starting with that semicircle with those dots. So working all the way around, and then that slight curve at the base. And then filling it in. Okay, so lots of little dots for texture. But again, remember, we're not trying to paint a semicircle that looks like it's made up of dots. We want it to be texture. So some of them will merge in together. If you have a look at the white space that it's creating rather than the spots that will help you think about if you need to add some more. Okay, so I've got some dark upburn um now and I'm going to that bottom left corner. If you add some of this onto the white paper, it will be darker as well. Going to help add a little bit of contrast. So where the paper is dry and white. Okay. Okay, so I'm going to wash my brush off now and pick up my yellow. So if you see, these all come downwards and then they curve around. So these ones are slightly longer. So we'll start from the left corner the tip of the brush, and pull it down just in one stroke. And you can see that that brown has bled in really nicely because that cone that center cone is still wet, so I'm going to pick up some more. That's actually quite thick, but that's fine. So I'm going to start from the edge again, leaving a little gap, and then pull it down a bit longer. Okay, and again. So just working your way around with these two strokes, picking up any little bits that you need to. And then as we get to the right side, I'm gonna do one more. And I'm gonna have one more thicker one. Sorry, one more thinner one on this side. Okay, so that's quite thin. Okay, what you can do now is pick up your smaller brush size zero, go back to this burnt umber, especially if that color is bled in quite a lot or some of it hasn't bled. If you just add this down to the edge, it's going to help build up that contrast on the cone and just add a little bit more blade. And then once those petals have dried, you can add in the stem. Okay, so I'm just going to mix up some of my green for the stem. Add in a little bit of the burnt umber to that permanent sap green. So I'm mixing with my larger size four brush, but I'm actually going to paint with my liner brush. Okay. So figuring out where the center is working my way down. I don't think my petals are completely dry, so I'm not going to touch them, leaving a little gap and then curving it around. Okay, so practice this again if you want to. If you're ready, then grab your bookmark template, and we'll start painting our bookmark. 16. Flower 2: Part 2: Okay, so before we get started with our bookmark, let's just think about some of those things that we discussed earlier in the composition video. Okay, so before we start painting our bookmark, let's just think about some of those composition tips that we discussed in the earlier video. So with regards to positioning, I focused these flowers about two thirds of the way up, leaving a nice chunk of white space at the top to give them plenty of breathing space. So I've also left some white space around the edge, so again, they don't look too crammed in. I've chosen three echinacea. You can choose one or two as well, but I quite like the look of three and they're all facing slightly different angles. This is off to the left, the right and the left, and it just gives it a really nice bit of movement. So pick which color you would like to paint your flowers in. I'm going to stick with the yellow. This is the permanent rose mix with a little bit of the Winsor Blue red shade if you'd like to paint them this kind of pinky purple. But there's lots of different colours that you could use for this. So experiment, try out and choose one of your favorite colors. Okay, so I'm starting with the size for brush, and we're going for that pale bone Umber first. So taking off the excess. And I'm going to start the first flower about leaving a decent chunk and starting it about here, making sure it's not too close to the edge because one of these that left petal is going to come out a little bit further. Okay, so I'm painting the semicircle with those dots. And this is off to an angle, remember, and then adding this curved base. And then I'm just going to fill it in with those dots. Okay, now going to the darker burnt umber, add this into the left bottom corner, using just the tip of the brush and those dots. So it starts to bleed in. I'm gonna pick up a little bit more. I want it a little bit darker in that corner. Okay. Okay, so washing off my brush well now because we're changing colors, I'm going for the yellow. And then starting at this bottom left corner, I'm going to come out and curve it round. So I want to touch it so that paint bleeds in and then bring it down. And then, again, touching that brown, bringing it down a little bit longer, adding a little bit more width. Okay. And then one more petal curving round from that bottom corner, curving around to the right. Okay, I'm just going to pick up that. Okay, and now going to the size zero, I'm just going to pick up a little more of that burnt umber. Just drop it into that bottom, so I get more of a bleed and more of a contrast. S. Okay, so we can move on to the second flower now. So this is going to be off to an angle to the right slightly. So I'm going to paint the cone just probably in line with the lower edge of these petals. So you can turn the bookmark slightly if you want to. And again, just with dots, painting that semicircle, and then that slightly curved bottom edge, and then filling it in with lots of dots and dabs. Making sure plenty of them are touching each other, so you've just got little bits of the white paper showing through. Okay. Go for the darker brown now into that bottom left edge. Dabbing it along so it starts to bleed in. And then I'm going to pick up some more. So it's even darker for this bottom edge. Okay. So again, rinsing this off well and picking up my petal color. Right. There's quite a lot of brown kind of gathered there. So I'm going to paint my petal, but I'm not going to touch it just yet, because otherwise, that brown is going to bleed in a bit too much. So I'm just going to pull that petal down, and then I'm going to give it a minute. Oh, you can see that I accidentally touched it and that's just flooded. That's fine. We're going for loose flowers here. So we're not looking for too much control or perfection. Okay, let me just bring this a little bit up. Okay, again, I'm just gonna grab my bone umber and just dab that in. Okay. And now we can do the third flower. So starting with the pale bone umbra again, size four brush, and then starting on the left side again at the angles that's the same positioning as this one. Probably around the bottom of those petals. And then painting that curve with the dots and the slight curved bottom, and then filling it in Okay. Grabbing that darker burnt umber and dropping that in. If it spreads too far, you can always take off the paint from your brush and your paper towel and then pick a little bit of it up. Just go to add a little bit darker, especially I'm gonna add it underneath. It's on the paper, so it looks a little bit darker to get more contrast. Okay, now rinsing my brush and picking up my yellow. Okay, again, switching to my size zero to get a little bit more of that burnt umber, just dropping that in along the bottom. Okay, we're going to give that a few minutes to dry, and then we can paint our stems and leaves. But as you can see, we've got quite a few nice bleeds in here. They vary quite a lot because I'm not trying to control the way the paint moves as much as I necessarily would when I paint it in different styles. Even some of these petals, you can see these are a little bit browner because it dragged quite a the brown down. But I just think it adds quite a nice variety to the flowers because if you look at flowers, the way the light shines on them or they've got shadows, they're not consistently the same color. They do have like flickers and variations and shadows in them. So I think it does give it a really nice effect. So whilst we're waiting, we can decide which type of green we want and mix that up. I want to go for a bright green, I think, like a nice spring color. So I'm going to start with my sap green and I'm going to add some yellow to it. To make it a bit brighter. This is just going to make it look quite nice and cheerful. I might actually add a tiny amount of the brown in just to neutralize it a little bit. There we go. That's nice. Brown. I'm just going to test that out. Yeah, I'm happy with that. Okay, so going to my liner brush, I'm going to pick up my green and I'm going to start with this top flour. So from the center, I'm going to bring this stem down till it reaches this petal. And I want this to come all the way around and curve round. So I'm going to fill these bits in. You can see that those petals are still a little bit wet. So the green has blended in, which is fine. Okay. Pick up a little bit more green. I'm going to go for this one now. I want to bring this stem over a little bit more. I want these stems to look kind of balanced at the base and not be on one side, so I'm going to bring this down using my whole arm to drag this down. Okay. And then I think I'm going to have this one come down and overlap this one and finish in the center. This is only going to be a small part of it showing there. And then I'm gonna bring it down there. Just going over some of these stems. They look a bit pale. 17. Flower 2: Part 3: Okay, so now I'm going to go back to my size four brush, and we can add in some leaves, nice, long leaves. So I'm going to start from this stem and bring this up and curve it round. And on this side, it's gonna be a bit shorter because I haven't got enough space really. I want to make these leaves a little bit darker. It's a bit pale at the minute. So I'm just gonna mix a bit more of my color. Okay, I'm going to have a leaf here, and it's gonna bend over. Okay. I'm gonna have another one coming upwards from here. And then maybe just one more coming off of here, just a small one. Okay. I'm happy with that, so I'm going to give it a couple of minutes to dry, and then we can add some splatters. Okay, so I've just removed my watercolor paper and just added my scrap piece paper underneath. So again, just make sure that you've moved anything out of the way that you don't want to get any accidental splatters on. So I'm using my size two brush, and I'm going to pick up my yellow. So pick up whatever color your flowers are. And I'm just going to focus on this top parfO the flowers and over the white space. Okay. I'm just going to rinse that off and pick up a little green and then just add some green splatters just to the bottom where the leaves are. Okay. I'm not going to do too many. I'm going to leave it as that. And again, just pick it up very carefully and put it to one side until those flatters are completely dry. Okay, so I hope you've enjoyed painting this flower. This is one of my favorite flowers to paint. I love the look of it and how easy it is to paint and the variety of brush strokes within there and the lovely bleds you can get. And you can try this with lots of different colors. As I showed you earlier in some of the examples, it works really nicely with those pinks and purples and deep reds and even blues, as well. Okay, let's move on to our next flower. 18. Flower 3: Part 1: For the third flower, we'll be painting lavender. For the petals, I'll be using a mix of Windsor and Newton permanent rose and Winsor Blue red shade to create the purples, and for the stems and leaves, I'll be using permanent sap green with a touch of permanent rose to make it more neutral and realistic. I'll be using my size two and four round brushes with my liner brush for the stems. For the techniques, we'll be focusing on mixing colors to create subtle differences in the purples, layering the petals and using wet and wet, add a bit of depth and variation. Okay, so let's start with practicing the elements within this flower. As you can see from this breakdown, I have painted the petals using two layers. So this is the first layer with a paler color. I've used two different mixes of purple here to add some variation. So this pinkier purple has slightly more of the permanent rosin, and I've used a bluer purple, as well. So this is the second layer. So once that first layer dried, I painted a second layer of petals over the top using darker colors, and again, still adding slight variation. So these are the purples that I used for this one. And I also use the wet and wet technique to drop in a little darker purple at the base of each of these clusters of petals to add a little bit of depth. I've also painted an example of a smaller version of this flower using simpler strokes, and this one's much quicker to paint. So here is an example of this, and it's more of a quick doodle of this flower, which I would use for smaller projects like a gift tag. I'm going to start with my winds of blue, getting plenty of that blue on the palette. And then I'm just going to add some of the permanent rose next to it. Okay, I'm going to add that in to the blue gradually. Okay, so you can choose what kind of purples you use for this. It can be nice to go for quite bluey purples. So that's quite a kind of mid level purple. So if I added a bit more of the permanent rosin now and go for a pinker purple, that's quite subtle difference between the two, but it's a nice variation. I'm going to mix up a slightly bluer purple. Yeah, I quite like that one. So try a few swatches and decide what colors you want to go for. Okay. So once you've chosen a couple of those purples and you've got them on your palette we can practice painting the shapes of these petals. So they're kind of upside down tear drop shapes if you look at the individual petals. So I would just start at the top, press my brush down, kind of almost bringing it to a point at the bottom, and then curving it around at the top and filling that in. So if you can see, it's kind of got a bit of a rounded top, and then it comes to a bit more of a point at the base, and that's where they're going to join with the other petals. So again, I'm just pressing down slightly curving the brush to the left, bringing it to a point, then bringing it the other way, and then filling it in. And these don't need to be exact. They don't need to be the same. They look much nicer, more organic, more natural if they are slightly different each time. So practice that shape, and then we can practice actually joining them into a cluster. So if you look at this one, I've made these clusters slightly smaller at the top, so we've got three here. As you move down, we've got four and then five, so it gets a bit wider, which just helps make it look a bit more balanced as you go to the top, so it's not too top heavy. So if we're going to do a cluster like this, I'd start in the middle, bringing that down quickly, and then do a couple on the side. So now, if we're going to think about that in terms of using the different purples that we've got, we can just move over slightly onto our palette if you've got a variation there and use a couple of those different purples. So let's just try one of the wider ones. So again, starting fairly in the middle, bringing it out, roughly joining in the center, but it doesn't need to be exact. And again, you can see they're kind of different sizes as well. They've got different gaps. So I'm not trying to get it really symmetrical or perfect. We want it to have that nice organic loose feel to it. So kind of the loose you are with your brush strokes. And if you get a little bit kind of quicker with them, which comes with practice, they'll look a bit looser. And you don't need to worry about joining them up, especially on this first layer. We can join the bottom up on the second layer where we're going to add in that wet on wet. Okay, so once you're happy with those shapes, grab your liner brush if you have one, and if you don't, just use a smaller brush. We are going to use a very pale green to paint the stem, which is going to be our guide. So we're going to go over it after we've painted the petals, but it's just going to help tell us where the petals need to sit. So I'm just going to mix up a green first using mit size four again. So that's my permanent sap green. And then I'm just adding a touch of this permanent rose to it, so I'm adding that onto the side. I don't want to add in too much too quickly. Okay, I think that's good. Okay. So with my liner brush now, I'm just going to I've got a fair amount of water on my brush because I want this to be really quite pale. I only want to just be able to see it basically to give me a bit of a guide. And I'm just going to draw a line which is going to curve slightly towards the right. Okay. So you may not be able to see this very well. I'll go over it a little bit more for you. Okay. Okay. So going back to my size four, I'm going to start with the petals at the top, again, this first layer, so we want these to be nice and pale. So make sure you've got a couple of variations of the purple on your palette. So I'm going to start at the top and just paint three of those petals. I'm going to grab a pinkier one for this right side. And then leaving a small gap. I'm painting another cluster. Okay. And that's another cluster of three. So moving down again. Another cluster this time, I'm going to make this a bit wider, so I'm going to add in four. And again, I'm using a couple of variations of that purple. It's subtle, but I can see it quite well. It adds a really nice variation to the color. So keep going, leaving a gap. Now I'm going to add five petals into this one, making it a bit wider still. So remember, vary the sizes of those petals. And the shape a little bit. They don't need to look the same, so I'm probably going to fit one more on here. Okay, so I'm going to give that a couple of minutes to dry, and then we can paint the second layer. 19. Flower 3: Part 2: Okay, whilst I'm waiting for that to dry, I'm going to mix up a darker purple, more concentrated purple on the edge of my palette so that we can use it to drop in that darker color at the base of the cluster of the petals. Okay, so I'm going to leave that darker mix there. This looks like it's dried nicely now. So I'm going back into my purples with going for a slightly darker mix. I don't want to make this top one any wider, so I'm not going out anymore to the sides. I'm just going to kind of go over some of the petals and then even make them a bit smaller. So with my size two, I'm going to pick up some of that darker purple. I'm just taking out the excess because it's quite a small area, and I'm just going to touch that into the base. Okay. Go back to my size four, I am going to paint some more of these petals over the top. Again, making sure to use those variations in purples. Switching to the size two, that darker purple to add it into the base. If it floods it too much, which has done here. I'm just going to lift some of the color from the top of these petals. So it doesn't flood it and end up being a flat color. And this is a quite nice thing to do anyway, just lifting some of that color because it's going to give a bit more variation within the petals. You're going to have the darker base and the lighter top, which is what I did in some of these. You can see I've lifted these areas here. So you've got that variation in value. Okay, so continuing down. I'm going to mix up a bit more of this darker purple. So it's really nice and concentrated. Add that into the base. And just lift. Some of that color from the top of the petals again. So keep working your way down, remembering to vary the purples that you're using so you've got a bit of a variety in color in there. Trying not to go over all of these white gaps as well. So you can see I'm trying to leave some there. Otherwise, it's going to be all the same kind of height. We want a bit of dips in there, too. Switching to the size two to add in this darker purple at the base and join them together. So on these und edge ones, they're usually a bit thinner. That will help make them look like they're a bit more to the side. If you add a bit too much color like this one, it's a bit dark. I'm just going to lift this color a little bit before I add my dark purple at the base. Okay, so that's the second layer done. So I'm gonna wait for that to dry and then I'm going to go over the stem. Okay, so with my liner brush, I'm going to pick up more of this green and then paint over this stem so it's more visible. Okay. 20. Flower 3: Part 3: Okay, so for the bookmark, we're going to start by painting very faint guidelines for where we want our flowers to go. If you feel more comfortable, you can sketch these out in pencil first, but do do it very lightly because once you've painted over them, it'll be hard to erase that pencil line. And especially through the very faint petals, the ones at the back in the first layer, you may be able to see it. I'm going to start with my liner brush, and I'm just going to pick up some of this green and adding a fair amount of water. I want it to be nice and pale. I only just want it to be dark enough just to see quite faintly. So I'm going to start in the middle, and I'm going to paint a line that curves slightly and comes up about an inch or so from the top. Okay, so I've got my first line, and then I'm going to paint a stem either side, and that's going to be a bit shorter. So this one on the right side is probably going to come up to just over halfway of the height of the bookmark. So I don't want to get too close to the edge. You've got to think about adding the petals in. We still want a little bit of space, so the flowers don't look too crammed. So finally, there's one on the left. I want to make it a bit of a different height to the one on the right, so either make it a bit shorter or a bit taller. Try and leave enough space in between each of the stems to add the petals in. Okay. Now I've got my three guidelines. I'm going to switch to my size four brush and make sure I've got my two purples on my palette. So if you've got some swatch paper, you can just check that again if you need to. Check, you've got the colors you want. And remember, we want this first layer to be quite nice and pale. So I've got this pinkier purple this side, and then I've got a more bluey purple, this side. So I'm going to start on the left one and work my way across so my hand isn't sitting over any of the paint. So I'm just doing three petals to start with at the top. Mixing up those purples that I'm using, leaving a gap, and then working your way down. So I'm just going to do four on this one, so it's starting to get a little bit wider. If you find you've added a bit too much paint like this one, just dry off your brush a bit and you can pick a little bit up. I'm going to add a little bit more of the permanent rose. I want this purple to be a bit pinker. So as you work down, go for kind of four or five petals in these clusters. Again, remembering to keep them quite organic shape, so not trying to make them look exactly the same. We want a bit of movement to them. So you can see if you look at these, the gaps between them are a little bit different. So these two petals sit closer together. They're touching a bit more. Then there's a bigger gap here. So that's just going to make it look a little bit different. So think about that as you're working your way down, making some of them thicker or a bit further apart. Okay, so I think that's as far as I'm going to go down because I want to add some leaves in here. And for this longer one, I might add another one below, so that looks a little bit longer. So for the second one, again, I'm going to start at the top with those pale petals, keeping the first one quite narrow and then making them wider as you go down. It's a really lovely flower to paint. With these repetitive types of strokes and the variation in color. And I think the color itself is relaxing, so it feels relaxing when you're looking at it and painting with it. I'm just going to do one more so it's slightly below where the flower sits on the left. Okay. So the final first layer on this right hand side. And the nice thing about letting your colours run together on your palette rather than having two distinct areas for two different purples, is that you're getting a bit more variation in between. And they'll naturally mix on the palette which will just help it look a bit more natural. Okay, so I think I'm going to leave mine here. So I'm not going too low. I'm going to leave them to dry for a minute, and then we can come back and paint our second layer. 21. Flower 3: Part 4: So now the first layer is dry. We want to add the second layer of petals. So we want to make sure we've got some darker mixes on our palette and the even more concentrated purple that we can add in the base of each cluster with our size two brush using the wet on wet technique. So again, I'm using the size four for the petals and just making sure these mixes that I've got are a little bit more concentrated. Just taking out the excess on my paper towel, which is what I do constantly. So again, starting at the top of this left one, I am just going to paint some more petals. I'm trying to leave some of these white gaps in, so it doesn't look too full. I'm just going to pick some of that up. There's a fair amount of water in there. I might just give that a minute to dry while I paint the next one and then I'll go back and do the wet on wet because otherwise, I think it might flood all of those petals as they're quite small. So again, just going between the colors for that variation and just switching to my size tube brush now and picking up this more concentrated purple, which I'm going to just dab in to the base of those two clusters. And then I'm just gonna make this purple a little bit more pink. And then just add some more petals. Switching to the size two for that wet on wet and then just carrying on. Just keep an eye on these. If you feel like this paint is just going a bit too moving a bit too far, you can just lift some of it up at the top of the petals to give it a bit of that contrast. So make sure you can see some of those lighter petals coming through in the background. So you're not completely painting over them. Okay, so that's the first one done. Just go to pick up a little bit of this bottom paint. This paint in this bottom cluster. Okay, so moving on to this one now. Got my second Second flower in progress. So if you find it works, you can paint two clusters at a time and then do the wet on wet. Depends how much water you're using. And once you get used to these techniques of lifting and switching brushes, it just becomes really quite easy and feels quite natural. And just quite a fun way to do it and paint a bit looser. I'm going to pick up a bit more of this more concentrated mix because I'm running out a little bit. I want it to be nice and thick. Okay. Moving on to this final stem. It So again, just making sure you clean, dry your brush, and lift whenever you think you need to. So it's just really keeping an eye on some of the petals you've already painted just to see once you've added that wet on wet, how it's reacting, if it's moving too fast, then you can deal with it while it's still wet. Okay. So now I've finished painting the petals. I'm just gonna give that a couple of minutes to dry, and then we can go over those stems and then finally add in some splatters. 22. Flower 3: Part 5: Okay, so now the flowers are dry, either go back to your liner brush or your smaller size two brush to paint over the stems with a bit of a darker green. I'm just going to mix up a little bit more of my green because it's not much of it left. So it's the permanent sap green with a little touch of this permanent rose just to neutralize it a bit so it's not so vibrant. It's a bit more natural and realistic. Okay. So once you finish the stems, we can do some leaves. So I'm going to use my size for this and pick up that same green, make sure my brush is fully coated because we want to press down and apply that pressure. We want to ensure there's enough in there. So I'm just going to start from the stem, press down, curve it around slightly, and then bring it up to a point. So fairly short, and we can do a couple along the stem. I'm going to do another one on the other side. So in the middle. So going up, pressing down, curving round slightly. And now I'm just going to fit in these leaves really wherever they will sit nicely. Trying to do them slightly different angles just to make them look a bit more organic as well. Okay, so I'll just give that a minute to dry. I'll grab a piece of scrap paper, which we can put underneath, then we can add our splatters on top. Okay, so just remember to move anything out the way that you don't want to accidentally hit with some splatters. It doesn't always go exactly where you want it to. So I'm going to use my size two brush and tap it against my size four brush just so the sized tu brush will give us some nice fine sprays of color. I'm gonna start with one of the purple colors. Just dab that out. I can see I've got a bit of a blob of water on my brush. So I'm just making sure that's gone. And then I'm going to start at the top and just tap. I want this to be a little bit more watery and a bit paler. I'm going to go for the blue as well. So mix up the colors a little bit. Okay. And as I move to the bottom, I'm going to switch to the green. So I can add in a few green splatters over the leaves. Okay, so once the splatters are finished, just remember, be really careful when you're touching it and moving it. Some of these splatters may take a little bit longer than you expect to dry because they might just be blobs of water. So just be very careful because we don't want to smudge them, especially at this last stage. But there is our final bookmark. So I really hope you're happy with yours, and I can't wait to see them. 23. More Inspiration & Conclusion: I really hope you've enjoyed painting these flowers and making these bookmarks in this class, and I hope you're feeling inspired to continue experimenting with colors and flowers and more compositions going forward. One thing I love about these flowers are how simple they are, but also how you can keep painting them and making subtle changes in colors or composition, which can completely transform the way they look. Here are some more examples of the first flower that we painted. You can keep coming back to this one throughout the year, using different colours, depending on the season, using bright, fresh colors for the flowers in spring with the lovely warm greens or using cooler colors for the colder months. And that way, you can always have a bookmark or be surrounded by art that reflects the season that you're in, and it's a great way to keep experimenting and practicing in a really simple way without any pressure. Here are some more examples of the second flower, the echinacea in different colors. And you can see we've got some lovely kind of burnt oranges here and blues and purples. So you can really try out any color you like. You don't have to worry about it being realistic or whether the flowers actually come in those colors because I'm not sure if they do, but they still look really beautiful, and that's really all that matters for my painting for this purpose. Try different numbers of flowers and playing around with movement and positioning as well or simplify the flowers a bit more and use them for very simple gift tags, which is one way I love to incorporate art into my life and be able to share it with friends and family. They had such a nice, thoughtful and personal touch to a gift. You can also cut out your flowers and add them as embellishments to your journal or to cards or just simply paint them in your sketchbook and fill it up with flowers, a great one to go back to when you only have 10 minutes and want to get some joyful creativity in with something that is going to feel really good. I know painting flowers always makes me feel good, so I hope it does the same for you. I would really love to see your work. So whether you have painted just one flower or three, please do share your work with me in the project gallery. To share your work, just head to the Projects and Resources tab and click Create a Project. You can upload your image and add a project title and description. This is a great place to add any comments you have about your paintings or the class in general, as well. If you're on Instagram, you can tag me in any work you share at Sharon Stevens Design. Your feedback always means so much to me, so please do leave me a review. These are so encouraging for me to see and read and also really helpful for other students who may be thinking about taking the class. And if you would like to see more of my classes and work, I have lots more classes here on Skillshare. You can check out my other watercolor classes or take a look at my drawing and doodling classes. I also have a class on Mindset artists and a digitizing class for Photoshop. I also have three Watercolor books that are great for beginners and for learning how to use watercolor to relax. Watercolor for the Soul, which has 20 fun and relaxing step by step projects, Watercolor for the Soul Workbook with all new exercises and projects where you can paint inside the book using guides and templates I've provided and how to paint it, which has 100 step by step projects with lots of paintings to inspire you throughout the year. Once again, thanks so much for watching and happy painting.