Transcripts
1. Intro: My name is Katia. I'm a Watercolor Artist and Surface Pattern Designer, with a huge passion for all things botanical. This class is about painting this spectacular purple hydrangea. In this class, we will go in a journey together to create this lovely artwork, from choosing the right paper and brushes, to understanding how to paint the veins that shine through naturally, including all the aspects in between. We'll create together a detailed drawing of hydrangea plant. We will practice creating detailed painting of excellent flowers and also creating a maroon painting of purple masses. This will play together as a whole. But before diving straight into the final painting, we'll do an essential warm-up exercise, where you will learn all the necessary skills and techniques which will be required to complete the final painting of hydrangea and which also expand your watercolor skill set.in general. You will learn and practice how to create a smooth blending of colors, how and where to apply interesting watercolor effect and textures, and you will learn useful tips and tricks, how to deal with the mistakes. Completing this class will make your future [inaudible] botanical paintings more confident and juicing. This glass is suitable for you if you're a beginner with watercolor painting or if you're more experienced artist. The technique we are going to use in this class will help you to train your eyes and hands to work faster and more precisely, which is great for artists in all different levels. Also, as always, I'm glad to help you with anything you find challenging and I'm happy to give you detailed feedback and fit forward to each project that you upload. Click here to follow me on Skillshare to stay up to date about my upcoming classes. You can find the link to my Instagram account here on my profile page, if you want to see more of my watercolor paintings and patterns. If you're curious to learn new things and to paint beautiful hydrangea, welcome to my third Skillshare class. Let's get started.
2. Tools: Now we will discuss the list of art supplies that we will use in this class. This list is highly recommended, but if you prefer to use other material that you have and you are happy with them, don't worry, use any art supplies you feel comfortable with. The first and the most important item is paper. In this class, I will use Arches watercolor cotton paper, cold pressed with the grain fin texture. Watercolor paper that is cold pressed, has a mildly rough texture. It absorbs colors smoothly, but it is allowed for slight irregularities and gradient in washes. So for painting hydrangea, it's a perfect choice. I will use paper which is 12 by 16 inches or 31 by 41 centimeters. In this case, the size is really important because we will paint on wet paper with only one layer of color. We will need a pretty big paper size for this technique. In case you had a smaller sized paper, I suggest that you choose a smaller reference or paint on the part of the subject which I will demonstrate in this class, or even if you feel a bit uncomfortable with paper of this size, just go for it anyway, you will get the most out of this technique. Also, we will need regular sketching paper of the same size as our watercolor final piece. I will use my drawing pad. You also need a pencil, an eraser, a light box, or simply a window for creating a preliminary drawing and tracing it into a watercolor paper. I have purchased my light box for only $15 and I'm pretty happy with it. Brushes; in this class, I will use synthetic brushes, number 6 and number 8. Also, I might need the help of a thin pointed brush. The thinnest brush that I had is 0'5. Also, I will use my old synthetic brush for mixing colors, because I prefer to avoid mixing colors with my main brushes. In order to preserve them for as long as possible. You will need one old flood brush for paints splattering or with the brush you feel comfortable with. This way we will create beautiful texture on hydrangea petals. Watercolors, the main colors in this class are purples and violets. I will not use ready made watercolors. Instead, I will mix my own purples and violet from pinks and blues, the exact colors that I will use are: quinacridone pink, opera pink, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, indanthrene blue or any dark cold blue color, lemon yellow, and alizarin crimson, or any other deep dark red color. Again, feel free to use colors that you have. Water containers; I prefer to use two water containers, one for work and with, and one for keeping clean, transparent water. Long ruler, paper towels. You can find a detailed art supply list below the video in the project description section. In the next few lessons, we will do some fun watercolor exercises, which will give you all the necessary skills to complete our final hydrangea painting.
3. Fantasy Flower Exercise: Smooth Blending: Before moving on to painting, a high trend job, we will do a pretty useful and fun exercise where we will be practicing blending and precision skills, as well as creating watercolor textures. We will do this exercise to feel more confident with watercolors. While painting our final illustration, we will paint an abstract fantasy flower. Let's start by sketching really simple and free hand shapes. Relax unwind and let your imagination flow. But the flower should have at least 10 petals which are adjoined to each other. Now imagine this was my sketch and we will start to practice blending. Blending means fusing two or more colors together without any visible sharp divisions between them. Right now, we will practice a few different blending options. The first option is blending on dry paper. In order to blend smoothly, it's important to keep the same consistency of water and paint in the colors you are blending together. I prepared two colors, one dark blue and one light pink, be sure to prepare the colors with the same water to paint ratio. We start by putting the dark blue color on paper. There is one secret indicator that you are on the right track. When you blend colors on the dry paper, it's very important to keep a wet paint bottle hanging at the bottom of the area you paint. It is hard to see in this video but here is a long bottle of paint. This bottle gives me time to prepare the in-between color, which is a mix of two primary colors. You can help the colors fuse by swinging the brush up and down. I continue going down with this mix and leave the petal again. Now I clean my brush with water, breath the brush down onto a paper towel and remove excess water. After this, I take my second primary color, which is pink. I continue going down and paint my first petal. Take up this hanging petal with the cleaned depressed brush, remove almost all water from the brush so it will be able to absorb like a sponge. At this point, it's very important to leave the paper and do not touch it with the brush until it dries completely. I'm removing this unwanted fresh drop from the white paper by rinsing it out with a completely clean wet brush and bloating it out with a paper towel. In case your paper has already dried and you didn't notice that it happened, don't worry, you can remove it with an element sponge and I will show you how to do this later in this exercise. Continue practicing blending on dry paper. Repeat the same actions on the second petal and create an opposite gradient there, from a light to dark color. It's important to do this exercise very precisely. Try to avoid letting paint go beyond the border of the petal that you painting at the moment. When you are finished, paint the third petal with the gradient from side to side. Next blending options is blending on wet paper. First, wet the paper. While you wetting the paper leave 1-2 millimeters of dry space before reaching the borders. I carefully put my first blue color and precisely paint the borders with the pointed tip of the brush. After this, I take my second dark blue color and spread it evenly from the opposite side of the petal. Blend the colors with a clean wet brush. Clean your brush again, depress excess water from it and continue blending colors by swinging the brush up and down until the colors are fused smoothly. I try to barely press on the paper. I make very light movements on the wet surface of the paper. The next option that we will practice is blending on a wet colored paper. Wet the paper with a very diluted consistency of paint and put your main colors on the opposite sides of the painted area. Smooth out the borders with a clean wet brush. This is a good example of how to paint smooth highlights on big areas. With this type of blending, you can achieve beautiful and unexpected mixes of color rather than the paper. Look how gorgeous this new violet hue is here. Make as many attempts for each variation of blending techniques as needed until you are satisfied with the results. That is it, we have finished our blending practice. In the next lesson, we will move to practice in beautiful watercolor textures.
4. Fantasy Flower Exercise: Textures: The first way to create beautiful spotted Apache textures is by painting colored dots or brush strokes on a wet paper. We accurately apply the first color. Try not to go beyond the border. After this, we'd take a more dense consistency of paint and experiment, was dropping some color on damp paper. Experiment with different brushes and different brush strokes.The second way of creating interesting textures is paint splattering. Create a damp surface with the main color. Splatter another color on top of it with a flood brush using your finger. Experiment with different color combinations. Try to splatter a color which is lighter than the main color, and also with the color which is darker than the main one. Another option of paint splattering is drumming or tapping on your main brush. Now, I splatter some paint on white paper in order to show you how you can simply fix it with a melamine sponge. But first, I will let it dry. After it dries, with your melamine sponge, with completely clean and transparent water, squeeze it out and wipe the blots until they disappear. Try not to touch your painting with a sponge, as I mistakenly did. A melamine sponge is a really great thing. I think that everyone who paints with watercolors, definitely should have one. The third and the last way of how we will create a texture is by using clean water. Apply your main color. Clean your brush with water and depress it a bit with paper towel and start adding some water drops on the still damp paper. With only three techniques, we can achieve a lot of interest in effects, which we will use while painting of a final illustration. In the next lesson, we will practice painting veins in two different ways.
5. Fantasy Flower Exercise: Veins: Painting veins, sometimes looks tricky. In order to make veins look more natural and make them to appear to shine, through the petal. In the hydrangea, we can bend them in a few specific waves. First, we can bend them on a damp paper. Prepare two color consistencies of a paint. One more diluted, for covering all the surface, and one dry, almost without water, for painting the veins. Wet your paper with the diluted color and wait until the water is almost fully absorbed. Take a thinner brush, about zero five, with a darker and denser color, and paint the veins with embedded movement of the brush. This way, you will create a shining through effect. When you are done, you can slightly clean up the veins by lifting the color, along the veins, with a very well depressed, almost dry, clean brush. If you want to learn more about color lifting, you can take my previous class called The Essentials of Botanical Illustration, where I spend more time explaining this. The second option, is painting on dry paper. When your bottom layer is completely dry, paint a vein with the tip of the brush. Wait until it's almost dry and soften the veins with a clean, wet brush. Wait until it dries completely and paint the next vein. For this purpose, always keep an additional water container with a clean transparent water. That is it. Our fabulous fantasy flower is ready and we are now fully equipped with all the necessary skills to paint hydrangea. Don't forget to upload your exercise to the project gallery. In the next lesson, we will briefly discuss the class project. After, we will jump straight to creating a final painting. Stay tuned.
6. Class Project: Our class project for today is to create high drain chair painting. First complete the watercolor exercises from previous lessons if you have not, this will give you the necessary skills to do the final painting. Upload your exercise results to the project gallery. I would be more than happy to help you improve things you find challenging. Then select a reference of a hydrangea, search for the shapes and the colors which inspiring you because there are so many kinds of this flower. Also you are what Ann, welcome to you the reference that I use in this class. You can download it following the link in the project description below this video section. I would like to give a special thanks to any spread who shares her awesome photography with the world via Splash.com. Her works are really stunning. Thanks. In the next lesson we will create a preliminary drawing of hydrangea. Grab a simple paper and pencil and let's get started.
7. Pencil Drawing & Tracing: In this class, we'll create an illustration of this beautiful hydrangea flowering plant. I will create a drawing on regular paper, and as soon as it's ready, I will transfer it to a watercolor paper. First, I roughly measure with a pencil the width of the subject in relation to its height. The approximate ratio of the width to its height is around 1:1.3. I define the width, I want my illustration to be with a horizontal line. Accordingly, I calculate the approximate height of the illustration. Now we have defined our working area. I will start drawing from this central flower. This flower pops out beautifully and it will definitely be an excellent flower. First, I define its size and placement within the working area. In order to do this, I measure how this flower is related to the overall width of the plant. Also, I defined where its central point is placed, which is slightly below the middle of the overall height and around the middle of overall width. Also, I measure the width of the flower in relation to its height after I define its placement and I start drawing the petals. Drawing hydrangea might look complicated, and actually it is. But the most important thing here is to start from a specific part, a specific flower, which will serve as anchor to the whole drawing. After the first petal is correctly placed in measure, we can draw all other petals, relating them to our anchor flower. Also, it's okay not to be completely precise because your goal here is to create main shapes and main movement within the plant with the help of natural hydrangea curves and the right shape and density of the petals. First draw the general shape and the central wing of each petal and only after this draw, a detailed outline. [MUSIC]. Always relate the petal you are drawing at the moment to the petal that you have previously drawn. Ask yourself how the central vein of one petal relates to the central vein of the other. Which angle is between them? Look at the reference. How does this specific petals start in relation to the neighboring petals? [MUSIC]. Observe what happens in the central parts of the flowers. While drawing, I always relate all the petals to our first flower. [MUSIC]. I encourage you to create your own drawing because it will be a brilliant exercise to improve your drawing skills. After being able to draw a hydrangea, you will also be much more confident when drawing other flowers and plants. But in case you are just beginning, or you feel it's still tough, you can practice using my drawing or trace over the original reference. You can find those attached to the project description section below this video. [MUSIC] I will transfer my drawing into a watercolor paper with this nice small light pad. Pens for painting with light pencil lines, preferable with a hard pencil because we want to keep the lines as faint as possible. Also, try to make the lines precise and thin. Our composition is cropped right, so I draw this cropped board with the ruler on my watercolor paper, because I prefer to keep this line clean. I take my watercolor paper and attach it with masking tape over the drawing. Be sure to approximately leave equals space above and below the illustration so it will look neat. [MUSIC]. In the next lesson, we will start painting our hydrangea. Stay tuned.
8. Detailed Painting of the First Accent Petal: It might look a bit intimidating, but don't worry, together we will manage it. The hydrangea is not the simplest plant to paint because it has so many flowers and so many petals. If we will paint it layer by layer and paint all the shadows and all the details separately It will take us forever to complete. This is why we will paint each petal with just one layer of paint, we will richly wet each petal one-by-one and apply all the colors, paint all the shadows, and all the highlights, and all the veins until this petal dries. This technique is very interesting and it trains your eyes and your hands to work faster and more precisely. Also, we will make a separation between the [inaudible] and the accent flowers and petals. We will paint the accent petals which pop out from the [inaudible] in much more precise way than the others. First, we will paint the biggest and the most eye-catching flowers in a detailed and relatively realistic way and only after this, we will move on to painting the accent cells in a pretty loose manner. First, I'm squeezing the paint that I am going to use into my plastic pellet and spraying clean water on them and we are ready to go. When I'm looking at my reference, I see that there is a meaningful difference in tonality and hues in different parts of the hydrangea. The upper part is darker and colder. It has lot of blues and violets. The middle part is brightest, saturated with pink and purple, and the bottom part is sunnier. I see here a yellow color and a lot of warm pink. Let's mix our color combinations in advance. I take my authentic brush in order to mix paints, I start by mixing a dominant purple color for a central big flower. I take quinacridone pink, ultramarine blue, and water it down, add some more paint from both colors. Also, we can add a bit of cobalt blue. After this, I mix one colder violet hue from ultramarine blue and Oprah pink. For the darkest places, I mix in the [inaudible] blue and Alizarin crimson in a very opaque and dense consistency. Finally, I mix a diluted purple color from cobalt blue and Oprah pink for the lightest places. We will start painting from this big petal. I take my brush number eight and evenly wet the petal with the massive layer of water, leaving one, two millimeters of dry space before the borders. I wait few seconds till the water absorbs slightly and wet it again. This way, the paper will stay dump for the maximum length of time. You can even repeat this action a few more times. In the meantime, I will mix one more color, a color for the veins, very dense, almost without water. I take quinacridone pink and ultramarine blue. I'm wetting my petal a little bit more, and I'm checking that there are no water puddles, no dry places, and there was a nice even gloss. I start by applying the brightest purple color, with the hedge and movements of the brush according to the directions of the veins. This petal is bright and our goal here is to make it look dimensional, to paint all the shadows, but not overwhelmed with a dark color. I spread the color very precisely along the borders. Now I take a saturated purple mix and start painting shadows, observe the petal carefully and try to replicate main components tonally. Look where there are shadows and where there are highlights. Blend colors with the brush as we did in the exercise. I am darkening it with the saturated purple mix, and a bit of saturated pink, as I see in my reference. Also, I'm lifting redundant color from the place where there was a small light reflection and again, I take my saturated purple color and deepen the shadows above it. Now I take my smallest brush with the purple mix and paint central vein. The half of the petal, which is under the vein, is slightly darker, so I'm darkening it a bit with a bright color. Also, I'm adding a bit of texture with random movements of the brush. Now, I take the darkest mix with my thinnest brush and continue painting veins. The veins emphasize the shape of the petal and immediately make it look natural and realistic. Now, I take my fled brush and splatter some purple paint on top of the petal to create a nicer texture. Again, I take my brush number six and continue deepening the darkest places. Be sure that your paper is still dump. In case it dried, leave it as is, and continue painting the next petal. As a final touches, I take my thinnest brush with an opaque color and add more veins according to what I see in my reference and then drop some marks across the petal. I lighten the place where the petal attaches to the middle of the flower by lifting color with a clean wet brush and that is it. Our first petal is ready. In the next lesson, we continue painting other accent petals.
9. Detailed Painting of the Central Flower: I start by mixing some more paint on my color palette because I want to do this prior to wetting our next area. Now we are ready to start painting the second petal on the opposite side. First, I observe it, and identify where the darkest and the lightest places will be, and I analyze how I can create volume in this petal. After evenly wetting the petal a few times, I applied the main color, replicating the direction of the veins. As I see my reference, the upper part of the petal, has a warmer shadow and the central part, has a color violet shadow. After applying these colors, I create volume by spreading the color with my brush. Keep the lightest places light, and try to avoid latent paint cover this light areas. In general, try to contrast your biggest accent petals. Observe the whole plant, and find all tonal gradations between the lightest and the darkest tones. Search for the lightest and the darkest tones in each of the petals as well. After the main volume of the petal is roughly done, I change brush number 8, to brush number 6, and continue painting the details. Notice that the place closer to where the petals attaches to the middle of the flower, become slightly lighter. Now, I see that I have over darkened the central shadows. I will lift the color up, between the veins, with a clean, deep pressed brush. Make sure to clean your brush every time it becomes dirty. Now, I will make the veins look more crisp, by painting on top of them, with my thinnest brush, and with my most dense mix of colors. But be sure that your paper is still damp. After this, let's add some texture by splattering the paint on top. That is it. Our second petal is ready too. Now, when our first petal is completely dry, I can paint the petal which is behind it. Always compare colors in different petals. I see that the color in the petal that I will paint right now, is warmer and it's more pinkish than the first one. In addition to it, in this petal, I put water on two small dark negative spaces, which are beyond the petal. I will paint all of this area, and will add this small negative spaces to the top, with the mix for the darkest shadows up to this area becomes dry. I take my brush number 6, and take our saturated purple mix and add a bit of quinacridone pink to it in order to make it warmer. I start painting from the underlayer. I apply the main color, and move it to the direction of the borders, with a clean wet brush, in order to make them bright, as they are in my reference. When the bright underlayer is ready, start adding the shadows on top, and continue building dimension in this petal. We will not paint all the petals in such a detailed way. It's important to keep the biggest and the closest petals to the viewer, precise and realistic. Try to be patient on these central areas. The petals that are further from us, and are on the outside, we will paint in a relatively loose way, which will create an interesting effect. Continue painting this and few more accent petals. I advise you first, blend the light colors, add in the bright underlayer. Only after this, gradually paint in the shadows on top of it. The darkest colors, such as the veins and heavy shadows, apply at the very end. Always compare colors. Where the colors are colder, then the tint is more bluish, and also, where the colors are warmer and more pinkish. Also, note the difference between the main colors of the petals, colors of the shadows, and the colors of the veins. Compare tonality, some petals are lighter, and some petals are darker. Try to keep this dynamic. It's even much more important than being super precise and realistic. With the right tonality in each petal, you will keep your hydrangea natural and harmonic. Squint your eyes when you look at your reference. It will help you to understand how the tonality changes from petal to petal. Most importantly, try to concentrate, and rely on your eyes. They will guide you on whether you should take each color and tone. We will continue painting other accent petals in the next lesson. See you there.
10. Detailed Painting of Other Accent Petals: We continue painting the flower which is behind the central flower. Its petals will beautifully emphasize the main flower by making its edges look brighter. Let's put the water on the petal. I see these petals are darker than the petals in the central flower, but still they're not the darkest in the plant. It's important not to over darken them. We keep the lightest area of the petal light by avoiding covering it with paint. Keep the diversity of different hues. Observe this petal and notice in which parts colors become warmer and have have a pink hue. Fuse different colors with the clean wet brush. Accurately go around the central elements of the flower with the brush and leave them dry and uncolored for now. We want to bend them separately as small essence which will make our hydrangea look more natural. I made the upper part of the petal darker because it has a shadow on it. The darkest place here is closer to the place where the petal attaches to the middle of the flower. Finish this petal by painting veins and all the details on the damp paper and split some color on top in order to add some texture. Continue painting two other petals of this flower. Observe each petal separately and all over the plant in general, compare different parts and all we think about tonality. Sometimes it's hard to understand where exactly one petal ends and the other one begins. Don't worry if something went wrong, our goal in this painting is to build an overall atmosphere and the right dynamics of color, light, and shadow. After we've painted the area which is behind the central flower, look at how beautiful it pops out now. In the next lesson, we'll move on to painting essence petals on the top of the plant.
11. Painting of Top Accent Petals: Now we will paint this three top flowers. They are much colder and have significantly different colors. I see there are lot of blues violets and some purples in just a few places. It is important to prepare the right color mixes before we start painting at the lightest color for painting under layer, I create a blue color by mixing cobalt blue and a bit of oprah pink. For the shadows, I will primarily use a violet column, which consists of ultramarine, cobalt and oprah pink. But we will need some purple color as well. I will use a mix up quinacridone pink ,oprah pink and ultra marine, also closer to the top, the color of the veins changes to a cold violet color. Here we will make some dense and opaque colors for painting veins, primarily from ultramarine and quinacridone pink. We start painting this blue flower and we see that it is one of the lightest flowers in the group, so keep that in mind and try not to overwhelm it with a dark saturated colors. Make sure that your water is still clean and transparent, if it isn't refill your container with clean water. Here we're doing exactly the same as anomalous central petals. But to use an appropriate color combinations, observe each petal and all of the flower compare colors and the overall tonality of the petals. Evenly wet each petal one-by-one and apply a light blue underlayer. Add some and purple essence where needed. Keep the lightest places light and gradually add the shadows from the lightest to the darkest. Paint veins and this texture at the end but be sure that the paper is still down. Now we will be painting, the dark right petal, this petal is one of the lightest petals here. It has a beautiful blue color and waves with high contrast, which we will be painted in a wet and wet technique, richly and evenly covered this petal with the very diluted cobalt blue. Cobalt blue has a natural light green related effect.That Means that after it dries, it leaves granulation and rough texture. That is great for our painting. Because when I observe the petals, I see that they are not completely smooth and they have their natural rough texture. We will be painting veins when water will be almost fully absorbed within the paper. Because if we apply paint right after wetting the paper, it will begin to flow and we will not be able to reach the crisp effect for the veins. Now, while water is being absorbed, we prepare a very dense consistency of blue color for painting grains. Am adding cobalt blue and ultramarine for our violet mix. Also, in the meantime, we observe the pattern of the petal. We need to be ready to replicate it when we start. The veins are not completely straight. They look like as exact path. The paper dries pretty fast and we don't have much time so we need to be prepared.I paint the veins with my thinnest brush makes sure that your brush is almost dry without water and it is full of dense paint. This way you will be able to achieve beautiful crisp lines. Also notice that close to the borders of the petal, veins become thinner and lighter. Think that the veins start and come out from the one particular point in the middle of the flower, and we don't see this point in our reference because it's slightly hidden by the other petal, so keep this in mind and don't paint veins from one exact point. This pattern reminds me of lightening, very beautiful. Continue to define the veins and smaller and lighter veins as long as your paper is still down and remember, the less water on the paper, the more crisp the veins will look, but into paper has dried completely, just leave as it is at continue painting the next petals. After you have finished, move onto paint in the top-left petal. This petal is darker than the two previous petals that has the variety of cues from purples to blues. In the next lesson, we will continue painting the bottom, excellent petals.
12. Painting of Bottom Accent Petals : The button flowers are significantly different from the top. Let's add some yellow color to the palette. I will use lemon yellow, which I will apply as a base layer to most of the bottom-left petals. When I look at my reference, I see that this part is lightened by a warm yellow light, but it has cold pinkish shadows. This will make our plant look unique, harmonic, and colorful. By the way, according to color theory, yellow and violet are complimentary colors and it's one of the ways to create color harmony. Apply a very light yellow underlayer and mix quinacridone and Opera pink for the light shadows. Blend colors as we did in our warm-up exercise, continue darkening the shadows and building the volume of the petal. Notice that the darker the shadows are, the colder the hue they have here. Continue painting excellent petals in this area. Now let's paint the bottom right flower. This flower is very beautiful and it pops up out uniquely from the purple mass. We see that these flowers has different lighting, and the colors here are different from the petal that we previously painted. This flower is colder; it has purple and violet hues. That is it. We are pretty much done with the accent flowers. In the next lesson, we will continue loosely painting the messes that are around these flowers.
13. Painting All Remaining Petals: If you are patient enough to stay with me until this step, I just want to let you know that we are 80 percent done with our painting. We have already finished the main part of our painting, our [inaudible] and our most eye-catching petals, which required a lot of concentration from us, and now, it's time to relax and to have fun. Now, our goal is to build overall volume for all of the plant. We will look more at the plant in general, instead of concentrating on specific petals. We will feel the purple masses which are around the flowers that we have already painted. You can skip a lot of details here because the work that we have already done has built the main feeling of the main atmosphere of Hydrangea, and when the viewer will look at the painting, this [inaudible] flowers, will pop up most. Now, you can skip painting veins, small shadows, and textures. But to rely on your eyes and intuition, and add these details where you feel they should be. At this step, we need to emphasize the [inaudible] petals, with the help of purple masses, and negative spaces between the petals. The most important thing right now is to keep the dynamics of dark and light. You don't have to paint each petal separately. You can unite a few petals, bud them together, and paint them together in order to speed up the process. If you decide to unite a few petals together, try not to paint this area evenly. There are still places which are darker and places which are lighter. Try to avoid creating big areas of flat color, and most importantly, relax and have fun. In the next lesson, we will add the last details. We will paint the middle parts in some of the flowers.
14. Painting of Central Parts: For the finishing touch for our painting, we will paint this small round central parts, which are now white. Actually I really like how they pop out from the bunch of purple petals. They also shine like petals here. I want to keep them light and brilliant. In order to do this, we will build volume in each of them, but we will leave the white paper white, where there are highlights. Carefully, observe its shape and try to understand its structure. Find the shadows and highlights in each of them. This small parts are very important, so try not to over darken them and be as accurate and as precise as possible with your brush while carefully replicating all of the small details according to what you see in your reference.
15. Final Thoughts: That is it. Here's my final painting, and I can't wait to see yours. Upload your painting to the project gallery below this video so you can receive feedback from other students and from me as well. If you have any questions regarding anything, post them in the Community section below this video, I hope you enjoyed the class, improved your blending skills, and feel inspired to paint more and more. For me, art is one of the most wonderful things that makes me happy and puts me in a good mood. My final tip for today is, try to paint every day. I know that we all have work and other responsibilities, and we can't always paint when we want to, but it's really possible to find at least 15 minutes a day to make some progress within your painting. This consistent practice will crucially improve your skills and make daily painting a habit. For those of you haven't seen my previous classes about the essentials of botanical illustration, where we paint a beautiful non-sterile leaf. Also, about paint in watercolor flowers for better in-design. You can click here on my name to find my previous classes and learn some more new skills. Also, don't forget to follow me on Skillshare to stay up-to-date with my upcoming classes.
Katya Rozz, Watercolor Artist & Pattern Designer
