Watercolor Flowers: Create Beautiful Illustrative Floral Arrangements

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Ketlin Martins, and I'm a graphic designer and founder of the stationery company, Paige & Willow. I'm here to introduce you to my new class, Watercolor Flowers. In this class, you're going to learn how to make beautiful flower arrangements using watercolor paints on paper. I'll teach you some of my personal techniques and tricks in order for you to create a beautiful illustration. For the class project, you will create a floral illustration using watercolor paints on paper. At the end of this class, you'll be able to create beautiful flowers using different watercolor techniques. No prior knowledge or experience with drawing or painting is required as I will guide you throughout the whole process, from brainstorming ideas to sketching and painting.I hope you enjoy this class, and I'll catch up with you later. 2. Brainstorming: Hey guys, welcome to our class. Today we're going to be doing some brainstorming for your projects. I'll ask you guys to get a piece of paper or a pen like this, a pen or a pencil. At this point, we're just going to start writing down some stuff for your project. One of the things that I like to do in my brainstorming, is to make a list. Whatever comes to mind related to this project, I wanted to write it down. For example, the main focus of this will be flowers. This is our main subject. From flowers you can start writing down whatever comes to mind that is related to it. You can put, for example, flower types like roses, tulips, daisies, so on and so forth. Then even if details about flowers, for example, petals. You can think about the leaves, so on and so forth. From this, I want you to start dissecting a little more, for example, colors, pink, yellow, orange, so on and so forth. Believe it or not, this is going to help you a lot when you're coming up with your project. Some ideas that are going to come up. It's way better to go throughout this process first before you're jump in and start sketching. Because this is going to open up your mind and maybe you're going to start this project thinking, I just want to paint one flower, one rose. But then when you see the possibilities, things will shift, things will change, and I'm sure you're going to be way happier with the final results. After you make a little list try to put down whatever comes to your mind. I recommend you guys to look into Google for some flower types and start digging in. Look into books, look into whatever you can find, and write whatever draws your attention into this paper. Because after that, once you have an extensive list of things, you're going to start looking into it and be like, maybe I'm going narrow it down. I want to draw some daisies. Then I want them to be pink. Then I want them to have a lot of leaves. Things like that. You're going to circle it down, to narrow it down into more specific things that it's going to be super useful for your project. The next thing I want you guys to think about would be layout. You can start drawing a little bit of random things just to, this is a brainstorming exercise, so nothing at this point is going to be the thing for sure. Maybe you're going to change your mind and be like, I don't want to think anymore I want orange ones. You're going to go back and forth. It's okay at this point. Layout wise, what are your intentions here? You have the idea of having just one flower, or you want to have maybe a bouquet of flowers or another thing would be, I want flowers everywhere on the page, even bleeding out. There's no space. Everything will be covered in flowers. Things like that gives your brain a little boost of imagination and creativity and it really helps you when you're creating illustrations. Think about what penta flowers you want, the colors you want to use. Do you want them to be warm colors like reds and pinks and oranges, or do you want more neutral ones like pastels, or even cold ones like more whites and blues, things like that. First start putting everything down on paper and then you're going to start shaping your ideas a little better for your project. The other thing I want you guys to do is to start gathering images of the flowers you like. First, you can just start looking at different flowers just to get a sense of what shapes you like, what colors you like, and then narrow it down for the specific flowers that you want. I want you to start looking into different angles of that same flower. For example, gather them and also print them and have them in front of you. It's super important. For example, this one. You have this angle and then you have a more front angle. Then here little details of the inside because in pictures like this, you don't really see the little details. Believe me, it's very important and that makes a huge difference on your illustration. Little details like this, it's going to really enhance your final piece. Try to look for different stuff and print them out and have them in front of you when we're going to be sketching. Believe me, it helps a lot. For example, this one. If you have a file, just one image like this, you're going to miss on this little pollen part, that it's super interesting as you can see in this close-up here. There's so many little hairs and little textures that could make our illustration way more beautiful. Also different colors. For example, on this one, this is the pink one, but you barely see that the interior is red, but it's very visible on the yellow ones. You can see and it pops, its like a star shape. Also the back of the flower because maybe some of them will be off view like this. But some of them they can come on the side and you're going to see just the back of them. Things like that really help when you're brainstorming. Another thing would be to look into the real flowers and some illustrations of it. I really like these old school drawings because you get to see the anatomy of the actual plants and the details too. This one are my favorite styles of illustration, even though I don't really have that in me. For example, this is not the type of illustration that I usually do. But this guides me a little further when it comes to my illustrations, I get a better understanding of how the flowers actually are. Here we have some tulips and it's beautiful that some flowers like this one, they have different shades of color within the same flower. So here are some orange, red with yellow, but this one's very purple with the orange, so it's very beautiful. Once you have your images down, take a look into the details. See what you like, see what you can envision for your illustration, and you can even go back to your brainstorming sheets and write down. Maybe the color draw your attention even more and you're like, I didn't even think about putting purple with orange together. These little things, get this sheet of paper and narrow it down. Right now, I'm for sure going to go for purple and orange into my illustration, and I want to do some tulips. In terms of the layout, I want to have a bouquet of them, I want to have a concentration of them. This is what it is. This becomes your illustration. But in a more not so refined form. This is just your ideas on the paper. After this, we can start sketching some ideas and refining it even more so you can be happy with your illustration. 3. Sketching Part 1: For this part of the class, we're going to be sketching some ideas. I ask you guys to gather some supplies. We need a pencil that it's going to be soft enough to on the paper, that you're going to be drawing and maybe painting over it, that it's not going to show. For pencils, I'm going to be using a B that stands for black because I want you guys to see what I'm doing. But I would recommend you guys to use like an HB or any type of H like this one is a 2H. H stands for hard. they tend to be the lighter ones, but for the purpose of this class, I'm going to be using a B. You can go a little darker if you want, but you have to control your risk a bit. Don't go crazy because B pencils, those are the ones that are, if you do it too strong and you try to erase you will still going to see some traces of the pencil, we don't want that. A pencil that you can draw with, an eraser because it's always useful and a pad. I'm using this watercolor pad that it's 300 grams, it's a very thick heavy weight vapor. It's good because when we were dealing with water color, we are dealing with water. if the paper is thin it's not going to work, it's not going to be nice and the paper is going to get wrinkly and all of that. This one, it's, let me see if I can find here, cold press. Cold press means that the paper has a bit of like a greenie texture to it. You can go hot press, which is the one that I use the most when I'm painting with gouache. Because it's a very sleek no texture kind of paper. It's good for that, but for watercolor purposes, I like to have a little bit of texture. I use a watercolor pad, cold press, heavy weight about 300 grams. Gather this materials and we can start. I want to refer to my other class because I did a lot of this, motion exercises like this one. I'm just going to talk quickly, but I would recommend you guys to go and look for it. It's called Gouache Fruits, a step-by-step guide on how to paint fruits using gouache. I go way deeper into the exercises. For example, this one, it's about circles. I want to train you guys how to do beautiful drawings without you having to, do it and you erase, and you do it again, and you're not happy, and you have to erase again. We want the goal is to erase the least. these exercises, they really train your wrist, if you want to do something very circularly, you just go and it's a perfect circle. Look into that class. I'm going to put the name down here you guys can take a look and even a link in the information. Refer to it, it's very useful. A lot of people find it very helpful. Take a look at that, but for this class, we're going to jump right into the sketching part. I'm going to open my pad here. If you notice, I already wrote down some of the stuff from a brainstorming exercise. Let me go back to it, which is right here. Some of the information I put down, I was like, okay, I'm going to use some of this. I like to put that information on the paper that I'm going to be using just to refer back to it. You don't have to. You can have this one on the side. But sometimes you find it, too messy, because honestly this is very little. You can go crazy and go pages and pages of brainstorming, which I super recommend, because for sure it's going to be a very nice exercise for your brain to start being more creative. You can either keep these or just narrow it down into a little list on the side of the paper or a different piece of paper. I narrowed it down to, one of the pictures that I showed you guys, which are these ones. It's called Forget Me Nots. I really like the simplicity. It's just five petals like this. The center doesn't have too many details. I decided to go with this one, and some roses as well. I'm used to drawing them. I'm just going to use this one as reference. But in your case, have the pictures of the roses and the flowers and whatever you're going to use right in front of you. It's going to help you when you're sketching. The other detail that I put here is the leaves. I wanted two different leaves. Again, if you're doing it, research them, look into them, the details and all of that, or you can draw it from heart. We kind of know, regular leaf will be something like this. But there's many different types, like even on this one, you can see they can be like just even this little thing here. You know, it's a little detail from the flower, but it's green. Sometimes they can mix like here you have a close up. They can mix in with the petals or with the leaves and you have a beautiful unique illustration. See this ones are longer, they're darker to look into those things. It has some gradient, these are a little lighter. These are more roundish, they're like bigger here, and they get narrower towards the end. Things like this. What else did I write? I write, I want to have them in pinks and oranges and greens. We're going to go back into the color once we're painting, but the way that I do it's like I narrow it down from like, I want to do a warm illustration. warm colors would be red, orange, pinks, things like that. in this case, I'm just going to use pinks and oranges. I don't want to use a red one, but I want to use different shades of it. It my get too close to a red, but not a bloody red. Then also background color. You can do an illustration with some background color. I'm going to show you an example. This one that I did. First I painted the background with the center wise shade. After then I let it dry for like more than an hour or so. Because watercolor, you're going to put something on top of it, and it's going to get some of the green into this illustration. But you have to be very careful with it. You can do your illustration and paint everything, and then put her background in. Especially if you want to correct some little errors that you did. Maybe this blue went a little far. you want to paint on top of it to get rid of it, but it's a little more tricky, because you're going to have to go into, very tiny details, and it takes a little longer. Try it out, and I'm not going to do a background color one. Personally, I prefer having a white background. Then if I'm going to use it into like Photoshop, illustration kind of thing, I can just add the background later on. Sometimes I paint the background separately. Then on Photoshop, I just put them together and then it becomes one nice illustration. What I like to do, it's usually think them like this white background and just makes my life a lot easier. I like because it pops the flowers more for me personally. Usually, I either do a bouquet of them or I do them separately, just to try it out. Sometimes I like to do them separately like this just to get a sense of like where are they going. once I'm happy with it, I can just go back and mimic it into a new illustration. It's just because I like exploring different flower shapes and here, I also like different angles. this is more on the side, this is more of a top view. Things like their different colors also. I like to keep different shapes even as reference. I like having like once I explore, maybe later on it can be like okay, I like this flower with this one maybe I don't like this one with this one. I'm not going to use this, I'm going to use these. I like both colors together, they go very well. But maybe I'm going to throw and introduce a new color into this. I like keeping things like this around me as reference because for sure it helps me a lot. The final thing I wrote down is centered. That means I want my illustration to be in the center of the page. The way I like starting it, it's like, start drawing in the very middle and then expanding it and see how far I want to go. But feel free. Some people like to start in corners and then going their way all the way here, or halfway, or just a tiny little thing in the center. Whatever makes you feel comfortable. But we're going to start, one flower at a time and see how they react together. So let's start. 4. Sketching Part 2: I'm going to start with the, forget me nots, which are these little cute flowers. I like having, as I mentioned, the picture next to me, so just to mimic it. As we can see, we have five petals and we have five also little things in the center. Let's start with these. Lets go, and again, they will have to be super precise because flowers, they are beautiful for sure, but they are not always perfect. Even if you're not too happy with it, you know, you can go back, erase some of the details and stuff. For example, over here I notice hinted too much spacing here and was not enough for over here. Back add your final one. This is one of the flowers and then as I mentioned before, what makes the drawing more unique is the amount of details that it put it in. Some people they're drawn into details, I'm one of them, but some people, they prefer a more flat illustration, so that's entirely up to you. Whatever you feel that you can be happy with it, so the center, it's about here. So they have these little cushion things and these flowers, they are usually blue. But my illustration, I want to keep them in pinks and oranges. As I mentioned before, they don't have to be realistic 100 percent. For example, in this one, my leaves are blue. There is no such thing as blue leaves. But I found that it makes this illustration more interesting. If I were to put just green, you just will be another flurry illustration that it's very basic, so I pushed a little further and I did them in blue. Let's go back to this. I still don't like this one, so I'm just going to make it a little bigger here. Now, one of the things that I mentioned in my other class is that try to draw as light as possible, especially if you're doing pistils. Because the paint is going to go over it and you might not be able to erase. For sure you're not going to be able to erase the pencil afterwards, and you might be able to see it through your illustration, and we don't want that, so try to draw as light as possible. Right now it's very simple, doesn't seem like a big deal, but we're going to push it further with once we go into the painting. Because then I'm going to do the little details of like going with things like this, and these details, I tend not to draw exactly because of the whole see-through situation. I try to keep the drawing very simple. This is more for you to explore how the final piece is going to look like. Don't worry too much if it's not pretty, we can always correct it with the paints, but overall, I want to see if you guys are happy with it. I'm going to erase this just because it's I don't wanted to get distracted by that. Let's keep going, so my next, flower will be roses. My type of roses, I don't like to go too crazy with the petals and things like that. You can, it's fine with you, whatever you want to do. But roses, they tend to be like, for example, here, it's a solid shape with shapes that opened up, like the petals. I like to start drawing them like as a circle thing, and then I start shaping it a little bit more, so maybe they go like this, and again, I'm drawing a little heavier here so you guys can see, but try to go light. Goodness for sure it's going to save you a lot of headaches after. Again, I'm going to draw it, but usually I will just use something like this and then explore with my painting. I would put down a flat color in here, and then for the petals I would just go like this with a darker paint, because roses they tend to have layers and layers of petals to form that very petaly flower type. Then the center, we can just put a bit of color here because it's usually darker in the center and lighter all around it. These are my two flowers, you can go back and forth. I think this is too big, or if this is too big, maybe I can make this one bigger. So then this can become smaller, then it can go around it again. They're going to be overlapping here. I think I'm happy with this, and after will be my leaves, and I'm going to go in a fence for it, so you guys can see how I'm going to do this. Here it is, at this point, I'm happy with how this illustration is coming, and that doesn't mean I have to stop here. Once I start putting the colors, maybe I'm going to put some more greens around. But as you can see, I focus on the roses. I have four and then three of the forget me knots, and usually roses, they tend to have the very irregular, more common leaf shape, and then I decided to add some little outer greenery just to make the illustration cuter and also have something that it's going to be different and its going to bring everything together. As you can see, I tried to make a more round-ish illustration. I'm concentrating it in the center, in the middle. But as I said, maybe this illustration can grow a defense and I'm going to know once I start adding some colors into it. Now we're going to start painting them, and I'm going to explain exactly what to do. 5. Painting Part 1: Now, this is the fun part, painting. As you can see, there's a lot of things here, and we're going to go through them one by one. One of the supplies that you already have is the pad. Of course, we need some watercolor paints, some brushes, some water. Let me go over things real quick. One of the thing that I want to point out is that there are two different types of watercolor. I have this set over here that is the hard kind. There are these little plates of hard and dried watercolor, and this one is the most common one. These kinds, they tend to give you the very watercolor effect that it's more watery blended soft colors, so this will be the one you would want to use, but this is not the one that I'm going to use today. I'm going to be using these ones; these soft ones into tubes. The reason why is because I like my illustrations to pop. I don't really like that faded effect that water color tend to give you. These ones act very similar to gouache. The difference would be that this one acts like the dried ones. If you have it in a container, and it dried out, you can just add some more water, and it will go back to life. Sometimes it would break, sometimes you see a little particles, but overall, it tends to react really well, so we're going to use the watercolors in the tubes. I need you guys to have a set of watercolors. I needed a little container like this, or just some foil paper, both works perfectly. I tend to use a lot of foil when I'm doing gouache, because once I'm done with it, I just throw it away. But watercolor, you tend to go back to it and use it more and more. Even if it's dry, just put a little bit of water, and it will go back to life. Try to find something, a little plate, a little plastic, something that you can put the paint, and then you can go back to it and reuse it. I need two little containers for water. The reason why, in this case, for example, it's a great idea and best to have two, because most of the time, we're using light colors and dark colors, so I tend to leave one for the dark one, one for the light. In this case here, it will be the warm ones. All the reds, and the oranges, and things for whatever, I'm going to put in one, and then the green ones, I'm going to have it separately. The reason why it's because first, if you just have one container, and you specifically have these kinds, once you mix the water, it will turn into brown, and that can affect your drawing, so we don't want that; your containers should be clean and separately. Because, for sure, it's going to help you through out the way, and you don't have to change the container, the water as many times, so it makes your life a little easier. In terms of brushes, I like to work with small ones. The reason why, is because, as I mentioned before, I like details. If you have something big like this, it's going to be hard to go around and do the details. But if you have something small like this, that's going to make your life a lot easier. But I was still having a lot of hard time doing very thin and very detail painting with these ones, so I went ahead, and I bought very thin and small ones like this one. It's Winsor & Newton, same brand as the dry ones. This one comes with a brush that is very good. I'm usually using this even on the watercolors that come into tubes, because it holds the paints very well, and it's very soft, but it's still good to hold paints for longer. But I went ahead and I bought these two. I'll take the plastic part. This one is a 6.0 Size. As you can see, it's very small, very thin, and it's very steady. This one, let me see, it 000, so it's thinner. It's not thinner than this, but it's longer, and it has more hair into it. I haven't tried these, so I'm going to try these ones with you guys. What I'm asking you to do, is to gather your materials and have them in front of you. It's always helpful. If you have, for example, a set of watercolors, you don't need to dump all of your paints in your table, because sometimes it makes it more confusing, and then you are looking for a color. You can't find it, so I tend to just put on the table the colors that I'm going to use. I have two containers with water, just regular, and something that can't get damage, and something just to use as a painting supply. I have some brushes. My recommendation is for you to test and try out different ones. Some people might feel more comfortable with bigger ones. Some people, like me, would prefer smaller ones, but that doesn't mean I don't use the big ones. I do use them to lay down the background color, because it's just less time consuming. Then I would use the little one for going around the edges, and then making the details of the center, and things like that. Even for these little leaves, I can't paint them with this. I would go around, and it takes a little bit more time, but then it's more precise and saves you time afterwards. Get the containers. Your pad in front of you. The colors you are going to need, the brushes that you're more comfortable with test them out, try them out before you jump into painting or illustration, because you don't want to start doing it, and then it's like, "I smudged too much. I don't like how it feels. It's not holding enough paint." Try to find the ones that you really like and only keep the ones that you might use in front of you as well. Have a plastic container, plastic cup, plastic plate, or some foil paper will do the job perfectly. Let's begin. For starters, I'm going to start mixing some colors to get to the shade that I want. My recommendation for you is that do very little, see if your comfortable with if you like it, and then put it on paper. I want you to lay down all of the colors that you are going to use for your illustration on the side and see in terms of harmony, what do you think? Because sometimes in our heads we're like, okay, pinks and oranges. But then what kind of pink, what kind of orange? Sometimes it really differentiates and then they don't really go well together. I'm going to mix some, and I'm going to do a little palette on the side to have a sense of how my illustration is going to turn out. I'm just going to go fast-forward and you can see my mixing and we're going to go back to it. As you guys can see, I mix my colors and I came into like the warm pink and orange. Then I decided to do a dark green and the lighter green. I would suggest you guys to do just a bit to see like lay down your colors over here, see if you're happy with them. At some point, the green that I had here, I laid it and I put some in here. Didn't like the harmony that was giving me so I added a more of white to make it lighter, and now I'm happy with these colors. Let's start. The other thing, it's like water color, it's going to dry. Another reason why I did put some paint on top of some old paint that I had here, i t was because it was similar already to what I wanted. There was some things in here. So I just went ahead and put it on top. I wouldn't do that like if the background was green and I want to mix some reds on it. It would turn into something brown. That's not what I wanted. I just reuse the palette. If it's too dirty and you can't use it, just wash it and then it's going to be brand new or grab a different piece of foil, aluminum foil or something like that. What I like to do is that I like putting the colors of the flowers first. The reason why is because that's our main piece. The attention will be drawn into the flowers. I like putting the warm colors first and then I'm going to go ahead and paint the greens. I kept my brushes, but please don't take too long. I just kept them because I'm going to do this quickly, but they are already drying a bit just like the paints. Just dump into the water and then go back here and mix it a bit more and then everything is going to be okay. I'm going to start with the pink ones. I decided that I'm going to do the roses pink and then the forget-me-nots in orange. As I mentioned before, try not to draw too hard because you might be able to see it, especially if you're doing soft tones. In my case they're very dark and bright, it's not going to be an issue. But in your case, unless you want to see a detail there, you're going to top with a brighter color on top. It's fine, but try to draw as light as possible because most of these details are going to fade while we're painting. Like for example here. I just put down the color, nothing too special, but as I mentioned also, I'm doing this with a bigger brush because it's a bigger area that I have to cover. It's okay, it's going to be quicker this way. But I wouldn't do this brush in these ones, for example, that's going to be very hard. Also, one thing that I like to do when it comes to the edges over here, they tend to do this every once in awhile, like this little rainy effect, it's not as smooth. What I like to do is to dump my brush into the water, then go on to the paints, and then do the edges because the water makes things more smooth, just flows very easily because it's carrying an amount of water. Another tip would be to not to take too long when you're painting it because the paint over here dries really quickly and you don't want your painting to be too thick in some places and not as thick in others. Also for the edges, try to paint on top of the pencil because you don't want that to show. Even if it's goes a bit too much over it, it's fine. We can correct it, if you went too much into the leaves, just make the leaves bigger when you're painting them. Always pay attention in those edges because it tends to be a little hard if you're not used to it. Here as I mention, you see some pencil traces. I don't want to see them. So if I try to paint over it and then they don't go away, I wait a little bit until they're very dry and then paint over it again, do a second layer. But in my case, I'm going to be painting different colors on top of it anyways, so it doesn't bother me too much. I'm just going to fast-forward the video and paint. Do the exact same thing I did right here into the other flowers. So bear with me. 6. Painting Part 2: There it is. I put on my first layer for the pinks and as you can see, some of the places sometimes might be a little bit more faded. You can go back, add some more paint. This one is very faded, I can just put some more paint over it. One thing that I like to do also is to let these flowers now dry. Once you're happy, like right now it's fine, the way it is. I'm not going to be using this paint or brush anymore or at least anytime to soon. I'm going to go ahead and put it on the water because that's not going to damage my brush and I can use it afterwards. I'm just going to keep it here. I'm not going to clean it 100 percent because I might need it again and I don't want my water to be dirty right away. Usually I just leave it there, just hanging and if I need to go back to it, I do it. But for the moment, it's fine like this. Whatever I did here was just to put one layer or a couple of layers of the pink. Now I'm going to go ahead and do the exact same thing into the orange. Here, there was a little bit of a mistake. But obviously, when it comes to the painting and watercolors and specifically this, that it's like things and oranges. This is not a big deal. I'm just going to paint over it and things will be fine. If you make a little mistake, don't freak out. Let it dry, paint over it. If it's a big mistake, consider putting a new layer on top or maybe like as I said, for the edges always go over it. If you go too much over it, then my solution here, it's like, my leaf is not showing as much, then I'm just going to paint even a bigger leaf and then that's going to be fine. I'm going to fast forward and do whatever I did here into the orange flowers and I'll catch with you right after. Here it is. I did a second layer on the orange because I could see too much of the pencils on it and I decided to cover up a little more. This is the layers of the orange, and again, I'm going to put my pencil, not my pencil, my brush into the water and leave it there. But again, that's the container for the pinks and the oranges. Don't mix it up with the greens because otherwise it's going to be brown and it's not going to be pretty. Right now, I'm going to lay down my green colors and fast forward real quick and I'm going to put everything, then go back to it so we can start painting the details. As you guys can see, I laid down all of my colors and while I was doing it, I want to show you guys real quick a little tricks to do small leaves and leaves in general. Let me start with this one. This kind of brush, it's a little thin at the tip, but it's still a bit chunky. The reason why I like it is because it holds a lot of ink. When I was using this one, it doesn't hold as much paint, you have to go back and forth longer. But I needed something small to do a thin stroke. This one, it can be hard sometimes to do a little pointy edge. But I want to show you guys how to. I like dumping in the water and make it more watery as a said before because it makes the paint smoother and easier to work with. I dump it here and then I try to press in one of the edges of the brush to have paint on one side and not the outer as much to make it the tip, a bit narrower. I'm going to do it on the side here. You get the bottom here. Usually you want to start with your hands like very soft. Don't put much pressure and then you increase the pressure. So you start going like thin and then you start, just pressing. Then release. That's one leaf, a thin leaf. Let me do another one. Again, when you dump your brush into the water, come here take a bit of the excess but don't do like all around, try to just concentrate in one of the sides and then you come here very soft and then you start pressing down. Then for this kind, you go back though not the edge, but go around and start making it a bit larger. Always go like very gentle on the top and then you start pressing the brush. It's going to give you already the shape of the leaf that you want. You go more and more. You get the idea. The other one, it's these tiny ones. They are a little trickier to do, but in the brush like this, it's pretty much the same thing as the other one. It has a small narrow edge, the tip here, but then it gets chunky. It holds a lot of paint. So we have to be a bit careful. But again, you just dip your brush in the water, come here, press one side. Because this way you remove the excess water and also you shape your brush, as you can see here. In this case here, I start from the bottom, the thin. Always I like to start from thin to thick because that means less pressure, more pressure. Again, you start with the brush on the sides when you press it. Very gentle and then you press and then you release. Again, you start gently here, you start pressing and then you release. That way you can do as many as you want. Sometimes it can be a bit fuller. Sometimes you might be like, "No I don't like it." Then you start again just like this one, you start refining the edges. Then you can use the other side to just close it up. There you go. In terms of the flowers, again, I like doing edges first, to draw my painting area. Then I go and try to push to the middle. From top to the middle, from the edges to the center. Same thing here. I would start going around it just so I know my edges here and then I can start painting the middle here. Sometimes I like to leave a little bit of space in between them, especially if it's the same color. Because I want to remember the shape of the flower. When I apply the darker details, then I'm going to go over it. It's going to be fine. But it's just as a little reminder of like, okay the flower ends here and this one starts there. I'm going to go ahead and start putting some details. For the details, I like making things either a lot lighter or a lot darker because you need the contrast. In my case, I'm going to do them a bit darker because I want the details to pop a little more. Let's do that. 7. Painting Part 3: Right now what we're going to focus on putting some details into the flowers. That's when the pictures coming handy. Because you know what is it that you're going to do next. For example, in this flower here it has a very dark center. Then there are some yellow, and then becomes lighter within the the petals. Not necessarily you have to follow this. It's entirely up to you. I'm not following the colors. For example, these flowers centers are blue and purplish. I decided to make them orange. What I want to play with it, it's like making them pop a little more on the details but nothing too overwhelming. One of my suggestions will be for you to use the exact same color, but with a hint of something a little darker or you can go a little lighter. So especially for the roses, I want to keep the petals a bit darker on the edges. That's my preference for this illustration. I'm not sure what you guys are doing, but feel free to experiment. If you are a bit scared to try right away on the drawing, I would recommend you guys just to do a little bit on the side like we did here with the little color palette. I would just maybe put some color like plane doesn't have to be the actual flower or do a little circle. Then you go ahead and lay on top the color that you think it's going to be best for your illustration. What I like to do is I don't like wasting paints. There's still a lot of paints here, so I'm just going to put something a little darker on them to make them have some contrast with the paints that is already here. I might put a third color onto my flowers, for example, this is pink. I'm going to put darker pink or even a little reddish and maybe the center can be a little brown, Something like that. Usually I tend to decide along the way. I'm going to start with the petals, and then I'll go back and figure out the center of it. I'm going to do a little fast-forward and just follow me I will stop at some point to just show you how to do it. As you guys can see, I did some of the petals. I like to keep things simple. I don't like going over to top but I am going to explain exactly what I did. The colors that I mixed before, I chose the darkest one which was this. Then I decided to blend it in with this. I didn't want to only use this one because I still wanted to have hints of the color underneath. I just added this into my existing color to make it darker. I just put quite a bit of water and I chose a thin brush because I just wanted some details. I didn't want anything crazy. Exactly that's what I did. I made the paint very watery, but only because this is a dark shade. If you go for something light like white, you don't want to put into too much water because then once you paint, it's going to fade. Right now it's drying up, and it's looking a little bit not too similar, but it's not dark enough for me. But I'm going use this in to my advantage. I'm going to add a little darker around the edges of the panels that I already have. I decided not to do all around it because I didn't want it to look a bit too childish. I just did a little bit further than the half of the petal, like the first petals. As you can see, I follow from this way up to here, then up to here and I kept on going. After this, I decided to follow the same shape that I had here. It made me get here, here, here, here, here. But then for the next one, I don't want it to have this effect over and over again within the same petals because that's how flowers usually are. Then in between them, I do another one, and a little less. I don't do the same amount of petals because as you know, petals they go from little to bigger. It starts very narrow, and then it opens up, it blossoms. I started with five, went to three, then to two. I still have to put the middle. That's not the final thing. But as I mentioned I might darken a little bit more, but I'm going to keep this color still. What I am going to do, I'm going to add some darker shade just around the edges of the existing ones. I am going to use the same brush but I'm just going to put less pressure so I have thin strokes. Let's go ahead and do that. There you go. I decided to add a little bit of brown and red into my existing pallet. I didn't go over all of them because I felt just some little extra details here and there will be nice. But again, what I did, another thing, piece of advice that I would give you guys, is that to mix the paint, go with a thicker brush because if you mix with the little one, it's going to have too much paint on it, and then it's going to be too chunky, and then you have to clean it up. What I usually do, I mix with a thicker one, and then I go back to the previous one that I was using. The only thing I did, I deep it here, and then I went over half of the edges of the previous one that I already have. It can get a little bit of a grayish effect. Now I'm going to do everything else and try to put as many details as possible. I would suggest you guys to go and try to do half of petals. You want to make sure that you can see a distinction between the flowers and between the petals. You don't want them all flat like this. You want to be able to see each individual petal and distinction between all of them. Pretty much what I'm asking you guys to do is to put something a little darker so we can put some details and you're going to see some contrasts and everything else is going to pop a little more. I'm going to go ahead and do it. Yeah. 8. Painting Part 4: There it is. I'm going to showing you just some final thoughts here on the illustration. I went back and forth with the colors, and that might happen to you too, and it's completely normal. Only because sometimes when we lay down colors, we're like they go well together, but there's something missing. I start noticing that my illustration was a little too dark, and I wanted to have a little bit of a more brightened feel to it. That's when I decided to add the yellow. The yellow, to be fair, I came back to this and I was like I love the contrast between the blue and the yellow, so I'm going to do the same in my illustration. That's when I decided to do the yellow all around. As you can see here on the picture, they have these little puffy, I would say pollen, but they're not just a regular circle. They have some texture to it. I don't want to go crazy, I just want to go simple. I cleaned my brush a couple of times because I decided to use the same one to do everybody else, because I wanted the same effect. But anyway, with the yellow, what I did, I just stumped my brush in the paint here and I just literally pressed. I did one, I did another one, press again, again and again, and that's it. Because if you try to draw a circle, you're going to go around and then round, then you close and then you're like, okay, but there's something missing. You want to start pulling things because you do want to see a bit of a distinction in the shape. You don't want it just be a circle. Even though it does look like a circle, especially because here right now it's in the white, but here you feel there is a little bit of pollen effect, pollen-like little petals. Then I really liked the yellow one when I put it here. Then I'll say, I'm going to do little hints of the yellow in the flower. I decided to just put it in the middle. I left some so I could show you. I like the contrast. Even though it's a tiny little detail, it makes the flower happier and brighter and I really like that. I'm just going to finish this one and another one over here. Because I saw that the orange that I put before wasn't giving enough contrast, so I was like, there's something missing and I want to put a little bit of more brightness to it. That's what I did. Once I did that, I decided to go back into my roses, and I was like, it's missing a brighter pink. I went on this one, went back to this and just circle it a little more here and their. I didn't undo the whole thing. I still want to see the lighter one underneath and then the bright one, darker one, all around it. Since I did the yellow here, I went back and I did in the middle too. Since I had the pollens around, I didn't want to do a perfect circle because in the end you're going to have this shape. For over here, I didn't want to repeat because it is a different flower. Let me just clean this brush. Sometimes I'd dumb into to the paper just to remove any excess of the previous paint because as you can see here, it carries a lot of the water in it. You still can use the water quite often, especially if they're well divided. You can see this one is all green, so I don't have any issues of dumping my green brushes here, going back and forth, even if it has a little bit here. But, right now I have some yellow and I want to go back to the red or the pink. There you go. I just put the regular paints that I already had. I did the surroundings, but you do the middle here, I just did a little star. I put some brown with some black, and I literally went from the center to the edge. Just going like this, like a little flower as well. That's it. It's very simple. I don't like to over complicate things because in the end, even though it's a little simple thing once it's altogether, it makes your drawing very nice. I'm going to clean the brush. Then when I went back to put the red, I just see the exact same thing but on the edges that had no paint. For example, same thing, just pull to do a little bit of effect. If you pull from out in, this is going to be thicker unless you go very gentle. But I prefer to go from the middle when I had pressure and then release. Then I have this thin stroke over here and I can even go back and make this thicker, do it again and again. Do it all all around it. It becomes a little bit of that effect of like it's very dark in the center and then starts opening up and brightening it up. That's what I intended over here. For the leaves, I went ahead and I put the exact same green that I had over here into here only because I want to reference it back. I want everything to have some harmony and work very well together. For this one, I didn't want to do anything with it. It was just a little detail and it's small so you won't get to see unless you want to put something very dark in the beginning of it, and then it becomes lighter. But, I find it that it's not necessary. It's very small, so I'm happy the way it is. The leaves, I just darken one edge and half of the the other one. The middle here, I just did as a regular leaf for circling some little veins and that's about it. Right now it's a little dark, you don't get to see too well. But when you refer back to the pictures am posting, you're going to see it's a lot brighter. Well, that's pretty much it. I hope you guys liked it. I hope you can come up with a beautiful illustration of your own. Can you see the whites in between the flowers? Some people would want to do some greens in between, completely up to you. I find it's fine because my background is white, so I don't mind. But if it was arrangement, like a real bouquet, you want to darken this or put it just greens in the little edges and that's it. But I like the way it is and especially because I like the contrast, it pops a little. Yeah, but it's entirely up to you. You might start in a way and then when you put the colors you might think, I'm not too happy, there's something missing, so you either want to darken some of the edges or brighten them, depends on the end result that you want. That's about it. I hope you guys enjoyed and I'll see you in the final video. 9. Conclusion: Hey guys. This is our final video and this concludes our class. I'd like to thank you so much for joining me in this journey. I hope you guys learned how to make beautiful flower arrangements and that you had fun. If you have any questions send me a message and I'll do my best to reply to you as soon as possible. If you'd like to explore a little further on drawing and painting techniques I strongly recommend you to check my other class called Gouache Fruits, a step-by-step guide on how to paint fruits using gouache. In that class I go a little further on the drawing exercises and some of my techniques, so it's very useful if you'd like to expand your knowledge. Thank you so much once again, I hope you guys had fun. If you have any questions, let me know and I can't wait to see your projects. Thank you so much.