Watercolor: Painting Veggies

1. Introduction: If you've dabbled in watercolor, then you know it can be a pure delight. This class dives into watercolor with a focus on a unique topic, subject matter, which are vegetables. My name is Peggy Dean, and I am an author, educator, and artist. I'm going to be introducing to you four different vegetables that you're going to be able to paint along with, all focusing on a unique skill to hone in on when painting with mysterious water medium. You may be familiar with the beautiful results that watercolor can render, and there is a way to achieve each result. We are going to be exploring wet-on-wet techniques. We'll be jumping into wet-on-dry painting, working with the white of our paper to our benefit, paint-to-water ratio, utilizing brushes to our advantage such as large brushes for full body strokes, but also using them for even itty-bitty tiny details. This class can be used as an introduction to watercolor, it can be used to learn some new tricks, but also, it can just be really a fun, relaxing project-based lesson. The work that you create from this class can be used as beautiful pieces of art or a special gift for a friend's kitchen or your own kitchen. Basically, let's jump into some veggies. Let's start painting. We're going to have some fun. 2. Class Project: This class project is covering four different vegetables. You will paint a bundle of carrots, a radish, a tomato, and a crown of broccoli. At the end of this class, you will have a quad, quatro. I'm used to saying trio of things. You're going to have a quatro of things, a quad, a quad, the whole gang of veggies that you can create a series out of. You might isolate two or three, that you can create wall art out of. You can even put your art on greeting cards, you can transform them into repeat patterns, you can do just about anything. I'm really eager to see where you guys take this. Be sure to upload your projects in the Project and Resources tab. At the moment, you can only do that from a computer or a tablet, not on the app. Can't wait to seen what you guys create. 3. Materials Needed: Let's talk materials and supplies. This one's pretty easy. There's not a lot that we need. First of all, you'll need your watercolor. I have a palette that I created myself with colors that I wanted. I'm going to just briefly show you because the process of setting up my own palate was really beneficial and I was really, really happy about it once everything was said and done, I never visit any other pallets anymore. These are all Daniel Smith watercolor, they are professional grade. These aren't necessary for what we're doing today. However, if you do want to dive into them, I highly recommend Daniel Smith. They have some really great pigments. If you want to check out how to create your own palette, be sure to watch my very quick class on prepping your watercolor palette the right way, because there is a right way and if you do it the right way, it can beat it up, the paints can fall out, and you just don't want that. I'll also talk about my little slots chart because I love the little slot chart. So yeah, you'll need your watercolors. This is what it looks like new is Strathmore watercolor art Journal. These are my cats little ears. She's so cute. A watercolor art journal. It's got nice thick pages that will support water media. You want a 140 pound or higher. This is the 400 series. Don't worry, I have links to everything in the about section of this course. This is what it looks like when it's been used. The thing I love about this and I wanted to show you this is, I don't know if you can really tell, but there are all these imperfections like I've such like marks on top of hear, you can use your fingernail and it just creates an indent immediately. It takes your journey of what you've done with your watercolors sketchbook with you and I think that there's something so magical about just earning these marks on your journey of your sketchbook. That's what I'm using today. You can use any watercolor paper that's a 140 pound. The other thing that I am using, round brushes. By round brush I mean one single round brush. I'm going to be using a number 10. It's not necessary, you can use a six, you can use a 12, I mean, if you use something slower than a six, you won't be very happy with yourself for how much you have to paint, but the ideas of brush that's large enough that you can get sum nice full body strokes, but then also that has the capability of getting a nice fine tip. Round brushes are the way to go. I have my own line of brushes, so obviously use what you have on hand. Be sure to check these out too, they're professional grade, cruelty free, pure synthetic. I was very, very picky as I was making these and you'll see that they are the best. You can look at all the reviews, they're the best. There are needs, if you haven't taken any of my other watercolor classes, for two jars of water. One for cool colors and one for warm colors. The reason for that is because if you rent your brush in a water cut that has a bunch of blue on it, but then you're going for red, the chances are it's going to come out a little purply. But if you rinse that blue off and then go into your warm color, it's going to neutralize that and then you can pick up where it's going to be red. It's magical the way that it works, but yeah. Okay cool. Let's get started. Let me show you her. I'll stop. I have to do it. Look at how cute she is. She's just a baby cat and she's so sleepy. 4. Carrots: So this lesson is actually prompted by this carrots that I water colored a while ago, and I'm actually really really glad that this happened, because I then very eager to do a series of carrots altogether. So basically, we going to be showing you exactly how to create this, but we're going to do it in a much looser way, where we have a lot of play with the watercolor bleed and whatnot. Carrots come in so many colors and we're going to take advantage of that with all of their beautiful hues, and we're going to let them bleed together, and it's just going to be glorious, so let's get into it. The first thing that I want to do is grab my brush and I'm actually going to be using a number 10 round brush, and saturate my brush in the water. So to do this, I'm going in, I'm studying my bristles on the side and rolling, and that's going to ensure that the water is thoroughly through here, which I'm also going to do with my paint. That's going to make sure that it's nice and saturated, which will help me as I'm painting. So to form this basic shape, I like real skinny carrots with real nice pointed tips. I'm going to make sure to create a nice point and I want to make sure that I leave plenty of room for the green tops. So I'm going to start at the bottom here, have my nice pointed tip and I like that to be pretty long, that's just personal preference, but I think it makes it fun. Then I'm going to have that line imperfect on the way up. You'll notice too, just because I am taking my brush and moving it, if you go faster, your line is going to be a lot smoother. I actually want mine to be a lot more jagged, so I'm going to come in and actually intentionally put in some imperfect lines. So the main part of this is I want plenty of water on my brush, and I'm just going to fill that area, and then I can see any spots that I might want to fix. Then the bottoms here, you can have it coming off to the side just for some movement. While this is still there, I want to grab my next color. So I'm going to mix colors here, I'm going to grab some red, bring it on my palette, and get some orange, bring that over, so this is just a deeper orange color. Make sure that's nice and wet, and then I'm going to do the same thing, but I have these touch on the way up. Then I'm not going to have it be the exact same height or the exact same direction, because I want these to be really playful and imperfect. I'm going to fill that area. Then if it's not bleeding as much as you want it to, you can always encourage it a little bit with some more water and then let that sit. Now I'm going to go on to another color and let's make this one a lot more yellow. You can do it where it's going from light to dark, however you want to do that, but I just want to get this laid out with a lot of color. So I'm just doing the same thing, nice long tips, some imperfect shapes. Then I also want to point out that you might be seeing this area where it's separating here, so that's part of the bleed, but something to also keep in mind is that it's going to create what is called a hot spot, and if that's something you don't like, then you want to use less water. I personally love the way it looks, it's not technically correct, but I love the way it looks, so I'm keeping it. Next one, I want to do there was like a fuchsia color, that I see you've come up with, it's basically a really rich purple but it's like fuchsia almost, so I'm going to bring in because I'm not making these look like perfect, like exactly the way that carrots look. I want to bring that coloring incorporated. I'm also keeping in mind how the bottoms of these are all harmonizing with each other, because I want there to be a lot of movement. Then I'm going to push a little more pigment in here. But the reason I'm working so quickly, I'm making sure that all of them are laid down first is because I do want a little bit of this color share. A lot of times with most pigments anyway, some are a little bit different, what will happen is the last color that you lay down is the color that bleeds into the other ones, so that's why you see this bleeding into this, yellow bleeding into the orange, the pink bleeding into the yellow. So I added a little more yellow so that can also bleed into the pink, I just think it looks pretty. Then there's also these nice deep dark purple colors, so I'm going to do a deeper purple. Keep in mind to your paint, the pigments not all created equally because I just grabbed [inaudible] , I know this one's super saturated soil, watered it down quite a bit. You see what I mean? Some very pigments in. Then, because these two are going in this direction, I'm going to choose to have it go that way, but then it's final flip out is going to be the other way. Push that, give it a little encouragement. Basically, until you do this, until you think that looks like a good composition. So I like the way the slug sits nice and centered, it's got lots of color in here. I can then work on my greenery. Now, if you start putting in your stems while your paint is still wet, then that's going to add additional bleed, which I love, so I'm going to do that. This one's a little too dry for it, but I see the orange, pink, and purple line is going to take well. So I'm going to grab a green color and scrub sap green, and I'm just going to create with the very tip of my brush. Yeah, I'm going to create. Now, if I was to pull away, it's doing okay, but what it could do is pull the purple with me, but if I pull into it, it will definitely bleed downward, which is what I want. So and then I'm just going to have these connect together. Then I can also vary the tone and heal by adding either more pigment or a different color altogether, a green. So basically I'm just creating that initial contact with the base or the top of the carrot. I'm going to do this even more because I want a lot of bleed in mind, so I'm going to take advantage of the fact that it's wet right now. I can add a little more depth, a little more color in here. Then also to note, these are looking like chili peppers. That is because we are going to add a lot more depth into the carrot themselves, but also carrots have a ton of little stems. So we are going to add all of our stems in here. All you have to do is use the very tip of your brush. Very, very tip because you want these to be nice and skinny. It's okay if they skip a little bit like this, just adding some playful interests, and add a tone of these little off stems. Then from there, they have got little leafy elements that we're going to add to each stem. So what that's going to look like is essentially the same thing we just did, but just really small. So just scatter some little marks with the tip of brush onto each of these lines that you painted. Don't do it all the way down, but you can come lower on a few of these, because not all of them are going to be the same length. The more that you saturate that area, the more loose it's going to look. So there's this way to do it, but then you can also go in and just very quickly add just color fill the top. So you see how those look very, very different. So that will determine what style you're going for. Like do you want this to be really structured, then you're going to want less water on your brush, more paint, use the very tip of your brush. You might even want to grab a smaller brush if you prefer the more control with that smaller tip. But I am just going for something a little more playful. I can add more of the saturation afterwards or before, but I'm doing a mixture of both. Then I can go through, get more water on my brush and just add some loose line, greenery behind. It's like giving the illusion. There are more layers there, but the detail lies on the front. You could also do this first, but I found that doing it this way let's me pick and choose where I want that to appear. Now that's done and our carrots for the most part have dried. It's okay if they haven't completely because that little bit of bleed is just going to add to it. I'm going to grab the same color that I used on all of this. Doesn't have to be exactly the same, but for the most part I'm grabbing the same one. Then I'm going to use the very tip of my brush, is going to be hard because I'm right-handed and I don't want to set it down in the left parts, but tip of my brush, and I'm going to create little lines. They're going to be imperfect. They're not going to be perfectly spaced out. Some are going to be really close, like a lot closer together. Some are going to be shorter than others, some are longer than others. They don't all have to come from the same sighed but the reason that I do that is because when you do detail on one side versus both sides, it gives the illusion of a light source. There's some depth to only one area, which might mean that the other side is more shaded or maybe this side is more shaded. You can see I'm just filling in that detail and that's it. I'm going to let that dry, and then I can return to it with even more detail in a minute if I want to. I'm going to go to this next one, grab a reddish orange, and do the same thing. It's okay if there's a bleed there, they can just work with that. Just add up the very tip of my brush. See my hand is pretty close to the tip. That's giving me more control. I'm going to grab a little more paint. Then as you get toward the bottom, you can just add a general mark there, a line that goes down. See how when you start to add these details, because you know that carrots have these ridges, as you add them, they start looking more like carrots. That's what gives them there personality. I'm going to grab yellow. This is too much paint. You're committed to only doing one side. That was just my example. What I usually do is see how the end result looks once it dries, and then I can always add the areas that I think more detail need to go, but I always say less is more in the beginning, especially if you're not like certain as to how something's going two turn out. Then you can always add, you can't take away. Then I'm going to grab that pink color. See how when you have less water on your brush and more paint, it's coming out. This is the same exact color. This is just the difference in opacity. Basically paint to water ratio. That gives you control over your pigments so that you know how that color is going to come out with or without as much water basically. See how I have more water on my brush now than paint. I'm just using that to my advantage and creating a little extra depth to the carrot, like on the mane area rather than the one side. I'm going to grab this really nice deep color, do the same thing. Looks like I got into my yellow a little bit, but friends my crash completely. You can't always just dab to take that up and go back in. See, I'm going to skip these big areas so that I can have plenty of the more natural imperfection if you will. Then like some areas I'd like to cover more like this because that's adding that depth. If you move your brush a little bit faster, you have more of these imperfect lines that can add to stile. I wanted to show you these different styles so that you can see like okay, this one looks a lot more organic, whereas this won might look a lot more structured. I personally like them to look more organic, so I'm going to come through and do just overlap what I already did with a little more mass, if you will. Then I can add detail on top of that once that dries. It's basically just like seeing how this process takes you or where it takes you, how things are go, oh, that's why because I have no paint on the side of my water. Yellow paint. It's basically going to take you through that journey so that you can see how things are going to react or how it's going to end up, the end results. What it's going to show? What it's going to look like? Work in stages because this can be done as is, or you can add more detail depending on the level of what you'd want it to look like. One of the things that I want to do is actually enhanced the green a little bit while those strokes dry. I'm going to grab my green one more time and just go over just some of the areas in the front. They don't have to go the hole way. They don't have to match up even I just wanted to add a little more definition. See how that just like adding just a little bit of depth can make a huge difference to, not necessarily a good or a bade difference, just the difference because this is all about how you want to go about creating it to your own aesthetic and how you like it. From here, once this part dries, these details. This red one, I didn't put a lot of extra into it, so it's almost dry for the most part. I'm going to go in and I'm going to actually go in with a little bit of a darker color now. I'm just going to go, I known that I said at the very tip of your brush, but I promise you that you can get even more, just the tip of it. We're going to go even more concentrated with just the tip there. seen those thin lines. This is a number 10 you guys. You can get really nice thin lines out of some pretty thick brushes. Some of the nice things about round brushes. I'm just going in with super thin lines and I'm putting those around the areas that are more blank. See how much detail that I just added, I barely did anything. Then I'm going to do the same thing on the rest of them. Sometimes it's not even darker, sometimes it's just the same color with way, way, way, weigh less water on it. Like this is that same orange. Do you need a little bit of water? Just the tip of your brush, create these little strokes, not the hallway through unless you want it to be. But I'm just doing enough to where it shows up with a little more depth. There on my brush. One of the ways that might help you with this too, is if you hover over your page and before it even makes contact is start doing strokes as you lower your brush toward the paper. Then it'll make contact and you can see exactly how much pressure you should use to get those nice 10 strokes. That's something that really helped me in the beginning when I was like, gosh, how am I going to get a thin stroke out of this? Seems like that's pretty good. Just adding a little bit. Then lastly, I'll do it to this dark color. I'm going to do to much. I don't want to detract from the shading I already maid. Just in a few areas. So that being said, those are your finished carrots, just like that. It's so fun and creates such a fun, playful watercolor piece that you can then give to somebody and they hang it in their kitchen. Go over there and see your masterpiece. Hang it in your own kitchen. Just have fun with it. 5. Radish: We are going to paint a radish. I have seen these painted where they are narrow or they are nice and wide or they're just perfectly round. You can do this however you want to. The thing that I'm really drawn to is their nice pointy tip. I don't know what it is about vegetables that just the interests. I just love it so much. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make sure I have plenty of room for the greenery on top so about two-thirds of the way down my page is where I'm going to start. You can either go straight in with color or you can go in with water first. I'm going to do a little bit of both. I'm going to grab just a little bit of color just so that I have an undertone here, and I'm going to create my round shape. Doesn't have to be perfectly round. Any shape that you like the most. From here I'm going to create that nice pointed tip. I'm going to use the very tip of my brush from the bottom here and how it curves a little bit and then come up into the bottom. Once it's connected create more thickness basically in here. While this is still wet, I want to make sure that I put in, just because I like the way they look and my new color on top of it. I'm grabbing a fuchsia-ish color, like a deep purple, and I'm going to let that spread through. I'm basically just going around the side and then the other side. Get a little more on my brush and then drag that down. Keep in mind some of this is already dried a little bit. As long as your paint is still wet, then wherever you put the new color it will spread into that area. That might be helpful to known as you get into this more. You can also split this a little bit because it's a root so then you have that interest at the bottom and you can layer this as much as you want to so I can add even more depth, I can bring it in the center a little bit more and let it bleed more. I do want to leave some white space this what I'm getting at. I can have this be on one area, I can have it be just at the top here. Just enough to where it shows a highlight which is why I wanted to add that additional color on the bottom. Also while this is still wet first I want to add a little more depth here. I want to add the greenery because I like the way that it looks when it starts coming into [inaudible]. It just makes it playful and fun. I'm going to grab a green and then I pour into the top. I'm just going do here and see how that starting to bleed. I'm going do that a few times with the very tip of my brush and then I can start creating leaves. I have rinsed my brush once and now I'm going to start forming leaves and you don't have to do anything to really structure these since we're doing a loose style. I'm just going to come up with a little bit of a curve and then on the top of that I'm just going to do one, two, three, three areas that just come up and back down. Curve up and curve back down. I left a little bit of white space. You don't have to. I just like the way that it looks. I'm going to grab a little more green, have more water so you can see that that gets lighter as I have more water in it. I'm going to do this part now. These leaves do have some texture so you can do it with a wiggle, you can do it with these up down up down, however you want to do that. Then that's the really nice thing about the loose watercolor style is that it's very forgiving as far as what things look like and how inaccurate they might be. I'm going to do the same thing over here. I'm just moving my brush so that it has some texture filling that space in, maybe adding just a little bit more green to the base so that it has more pigment to bleed and then I can go in and add more tones or different hues. I might add a little bit of a cooler green. You can see I just had a little bit and then got it real wet and just set it down within that shape. That's just going to bring in some more interest and a new tone, but some of you may prefer to stick to just one. No wrong answer there. Do you see the incredible beauty of the way that this bled into the top? I'm obsessed. I love the way that looks so much. The last thing I want to do for this is to grab a deeper color that I can just set while this is still wet, toward just one area or maybe the bottom here too. That's just going to bleed in the same way, but it's more concentrated so that it is more of a shadow, basically. I also dragged through the bottom and the root area so that it looks complete. From here, if you want to, and you totally don't have to, you can wait for this to dry and then you can add detail in the leaves. I'm going to leave it as is because I like the way that it looks but you can see that that takes no time to have this really beautiful radish that you can frame in a series of different vegetables. 6. Broccoli: Now we're going to go into broccoli and I am going to approach this a little bit differently. This is a way that I could approach really anything, but for this particular one, I want to work with value, and I want to build it up. I'm going to start really light and then move into my darker shades and value for the greens that I'm going to use. That could also mean transparency. I could use a certain color and then just keep getting more and more pigment to darken it up even more and more. It's really up to me how I want to take that but when you're experimenting with paint to water ratio, I usually lay down some water and then pick up my color that I want to use, and mix it in there until I feel like, don't do what I'm doing is a paper towel to clean up messes. You can also go in with water wet a little bit more paper towel. I just don't have one sitting next to me and I'm lazy, and I don't care about my clothes. Basically, this is going to be pretty light. There's not a whole lot of pigment here, but it'll give me a nice starting point. To start my broccoli, I go with the stock first. I'm going to start with, just a little angle here and then work up the stalk, I have a little more water than I'd like on my brush, so I'm just going to drag it to the side off of the water cup that I have, then I'm just going to maybe thicken this a little bit and then go off into a couple different branches, if you will, of this stalk where the broccoli connects. I might do one on the background. From here, I known that my full crown should have started about lower on here, but it's okay. I know that my full crown will be up here, and I could start building that now or I could just keep working in the stalk while it's still wet so I can take advantage of some water and wet, and how that will look but I think I'll actually keep working, and then I can take advantage of water and wet once I layer some more. I'm going to just go into my water. I'm not going to add any more pigment, and I'm just going to basically structure some cylinder shape. You don't have to worry about making mess, what it's actually going to look like, or have any texture, because right now we're just forming the shape itself. Another reason why I am not going into my paint, and I'm just filling it out with the water as I have just enough paint on there. Although you might not be able to see it very well on camera. I will get a little more pigment on here, so you can see how I'm shaping this. It's like when we were kids in school, and we did those trees that were really blowy. I'm doing the same thing. I'm just making this big blowy tree, but it's going to be broccoli. You can make this small like this, you can make it even larger, so that your broccoli is nice and full. Totally up to you, how you want to do that but I feel like that's a pretty good shape for me. This is pretty dry already, I don't know why my watercolor usually doesn't dry that fast. Go me, I hate watching paint dry, so now I'm going to grab more of that same color but less water this time. It is a good idea to have a scrap piece of paper that you can use to see, okay, that's actually more than I want. So here's the perfect amount. Let's go in now, kind of thing. That's going to help you determine your paint to water ratio but as you gain mussel memory and you do this more and more, then you'll start to familiarize yourself with how to fix, if there's too much pigmentation, or not enough as you're working, and then work in your favor. That's won of the reasons why I skip that part and I just dive right in, but not everybody is comfortable doing that, and that's totally fine. From here, I add a little more to the stock. I'm going to do even more than that, but I'm going to choose a different color, a different tone of green. This is green gold for those wondering, Daniel Smith, and in this I'm going to grab deep sap green. I'm going to make sure that it is very watery because I don't want to get too much in there. I just want it to be enough to where it's going to bleed into what I've already worked on to create some depth. Just like so. Once that's in there, I want you to also pay attention to wherever the dark part shows up, that's where your shadow lies. Yes, there's going to be different tones of green throughout your crown, but knowing where your shadow sits is going to help you to know, okay, so mostly this is on the right bottom. I can put a lot of my depth in the right bottom, like so. Like I'm focusing right here versus all over, if that makes them. I'm just going to go through and really accentuate the right side a little more than I am the left side. I'm going to build this up because the layers and layers of color are going to come through so I'm not really worried about whether I get this fully saturated, that's okay right now because it's just going to keep building, and I do want to see the depth even in the parts that touch the light more. I'm just keeping it really translucent, getting lots of water in here. As I'm building it up, that's where I can start to add texture as well. To do that, I am going to grab a little more pigment and just come through, and just on the edges, I'm just creating and lifting my brush up fast, and creating just some imperfections, some little notches, or what have you. These are not going to be my final definition at all. It's just going to be enough to where it starts that in the background, and then my details and what not will fill it in. This is basically like if you think about, a base, or a shadow-ish type of thing, and then everything else goes over that and makes it whole and one. I'm going grab green gold again and just a little with a little more pigment. Here's an example of what I was talking about. As you get familiar, I didn't use a swatch paper, but I see I put to much pigment here. I'm just rinsing my brush off, and then I'm picking some of this up and putting it over here, picking some up, putting it over hear. Now you can seen that I've worked that in to where I was able to use all of that pigment instead of grabbing new pigment for the areas that I wanted it to cover. That's just a little trick you just have to work fast in order to really feel like that is working as you want it to, instead of second guessing it. This is a hot mess for sure. We're just going to waited a minute for this to dry, and then I am going to continue with adding even more depth as we work in layers. Now that that layer is dry. I'm going to go in with sum more green. I'm going to just do sap green this time instead of the deep sap green, make sure I have enough water, and then I'm going to be a little more deliberate with where I place color. Water is closest to me, so we are making messes. What's closest to me is going to be what I want it to be a little bit lighter. I'm actually going to, instead of working in the part of the crown that's closer to me, I'm actually going to work above it. I have too much water on my brush, so I'm just swiping it on the ledge of my water cup. Then I'm going to work this out behind it. See how I'm accentuating a round area that might be close to me, and then I'm going to work this out and just keep working it. It's mostly the depth that's around the base and then it gets lighter. Also notice that I was moving my brush back and fourth really small as I was doing that to create depth or seem to create texture and I'm creating depth. I'm going to do the same thing right here and then wiping a lot of that paint off because I just want to drag it a little bit back. You don't want to go too far back because here's another crown and this is where I'm going to draw a lot of attention to the shape toward the top. Then I kept this area more transparent because I want the light to pick up there more. Then I can always go in with this darker color toward the right side like we were talking about and push that in. I can see now how this is starting to form. Once these are like halfish way dry, I go in and I drag some of that color in so that it doesn't look like there's just this blank area. I'm going to drag some of that in then it just shows that depth more. But I like to wait a little bit. See how this is already coming alive, coming together and then once that dries more I'll do that again just in a smaller radius, sure. Then I'm going to do the same thing on this side and I'm just going to do it to the top with more translucency and instead of filling it in the same way or it's a simple stroke I am lifting my brush up and down as I'm putting this paint down and that's creating texture. Don't worry, this is not the only texture we're creating. We're going to keep building on it. That's the trick with this stuff. That has a lot of texture is that it's buildable. You keep building and you keep building. I'm just adding a little more paint at a time to build out these round shapes. This one is getting lost now because I'm adding more and more. It's not lost, but I just want you to keep that in the back of your mind as you're working because that's what's going to start happening and you can go in. That's where you're going to go in with even more to enhance that depth. But if you do want to keep the center for the most part pretty light while dragging a little bit of that in so that it blends. There's one of those ones that it can be a little confusing as you're working on it but just remember, you're forming a shape, you're keeping some lightness in there, letting that halfway dry and then pulling a little bit of that color into the center so there's depth. There's not like a perfect placement or anything. It's just enough to where it's blending and making sense. I'll do that on the outside here, grabbed a wrong color, that's okay. See how that's starting to form here too and starting to look more like the actual stock and we're going to get to detail on the stock as well. Right now we're just building up, see how this is halfway dry. I'm going to push some of that color into the center now and then do the same thing until I am done. Toward the outside, you're just going to do the same thing but bring it even down further and you could keep a little spacing in between to have even more texture, or you could just use it as a guide. It's totally up to you. Then just keep in mind like do I want to add more shadow to one side? Do I want to add more depth to a certain area? But if you can work and build it up evenly and then take a step back to look. So I'll notice like right here, it's pretty open. There's not a lot of text here. I might want to go in and just pull some of this paint in and if I don't have enough, then I can just very lightly go in and start adding little tiny dots that are pretty watered down but keep some white space in there and that's showing texture within those areas without taking away the fact that they are lighter. That's where the light catches to show that dimension. If you do it too much, you can always take a paper towel and just dab it and then it will pick up some of that paint. I'm just doing that to the outside here. Then I know that that's a really crazy difference, but I'm going to wait for it to dry just a little bit before I start pushing it into the center area. The reason I'm waiting for it to dry instead of just using more water is because when wet touches wet, it bleeds pretty quickly and I don't want that to happen. I want it to be more intentional how I'm adding color instead of having just like this quick bleed, if that makes sense so that's why I'm waiting. Right here this is still wet but because it's not drenched, it's like bleeding just enough and that's why I'm going in with this right away but it's not bleeding into everything. But I like the way that it bleeds a little bit because that is adding a lot of depth and I can bring that in. It might look crazy at first because it's like, that's really dark. That's really committing but you're doing that to the whole thing now to develop the shapes. I'm not going the whole way around and not drawing circles, I'm just accentuating parts of these and you don't have to do only the bottom. You could choose on the top here to do the top part, since that's the part you're accentuating. It's up to you just do that. What I was talking about where you just take a minute. Where does it make sense for me to put this. Like right here I'm actually going to go up like this instead of down because that's showing that circle. But instead of making the circle with it, I'm actually forming the shape within this one on top. Then I can go in and just add a little more depth to the base of that while it's still wet so it can bleed upward. Then I'm going to do that same thing right here because I want to form this one, but I don't want to lose that shape. I'm pushing the shape but then my focus of the depth is actually on the part above. Then I'm going to leave that and then I can always drag more texture in a minute. Right now I really want to make that definition here. The outsides can be tricky, don't forget that when you look at broccoli in the story, you're actually looking for them to be nice and dark at the top of the crown. So you can make them like that too, where you add more in-depth in here instead. Just don't do one solid situation because then it's not going to look like you want it to. Now I'm going to add this depth, but then I'm going to go back in right away and drag or put place sum lighter color inside. Like I was talking about. Any area that looks like the separation is too too strong, don't make this a mission to try to make it all seamless. Because if you do, you're going to totally lose the shape. Notice how this part looks like. The center is like right hear. I'm going to add depth to it because if it's yummy broccoli, it's going to be darker in the center. Then I'll do the same thing on this one right here. Not too much though, because then it'll start getting lost. I just want to do that on like the focal point ones. Then you have this broccoli that's totally coming together. To really emphasize that it's broccoli, we're going to work on the stalk itself. I can add a leaf to it or I can accentuate like, what is it? The stem things, what are they called? Stem, stalk. So to do that, I'm going to go in with the green gold again and bring that up. But I'm going to go in with my sap green and I'm going to just focus on these, that's a way to much pigment. I'm going to focus on just the areas that connect like this. Ideally that would have been a little less pigment and then drag it through and then I can do that. Fix some of this up to the side. I don't want to outline it though. So what I could do is, go in and just create a stem that sprouting off of that. Then maybe on this side to really make it look more like a realistic broccoli. Then just because it's all together here doesn't mean that you can't separate it by using like darker pigment or something. Because remember that could be like a peekaboo, like what's coming from the other sighed of the stock behind it. The way that we've done it to where it's so light in the background. So that could be what that is. Then like the mane stock is what we're seeing here. Just remember to keep that light space in there too, so it looks more dimensional. I'm going to get rid of this here, I'm really messy and I work with my fingers. So do paper towels. There we go, then keep that white space, so I will let that dry and then I'll go through a one more time with an even darker detail. Once that layer's dry, now I can go and my final detail and I can really accentuate that the tip of my brush, those shapes, I'm just going to go over them at the outlines with just the same color, same pigment. You can change the color. You can make it more of a blue-green, so that it looks nice and right. I think I might actually do that too. I'm going to switch over two jadiete genuine. It's got a little more of a blue tone. I'll show you as a sample. A little more blue tone there. Just know too, the closer you stick to the tip of your brush, the smaller your detail will be, which is a good thing. If you want it to look more detail. Totally not necessary because your broccoli can just look like a painted broccoli or it can look like a detailed painted broccoli. It's not a right or wrong way to do it for results. That's the beautiful thing about art. Yes, I like the different tones and here I think it helps it define it better. I'm going pretty fast. That's not going to necessarily help my detail because I am moving so fast and it's making it more blabby and less precise. But that's because I'm trying to get through this faster so you don't have to watch me sitting here and stipple. The real true reason is because I don't have a whole lot of patients for stippling while I love looking at it, I'm it's not really my thing. It drives me a little bit crazy. It's really cool. I just have ADHD and I can't deal. Finishing this up. I'm going to add a clear definition of where the stalk slips underneath here. Then you can add more to the stock just a little bit like a maybe a defining line. You get a little more pigment. This defining lines maybe, but overall, I don't want to overwork it. Remember you're done before you think you're done with this one because overworking it will just make it darker and darker and darker. I've overworked mine a little bit, but I'm still happy with the outcome. Lastly, you can go in and add some definition to the very base of this, the last area like that. Just doing a simple line length that will show lakes and more dimension as far as it being like a cut stalk. It's just like very little goes along way, which is nice. So then let that dry and you're done with your broccoli. 7. Tomato: Now we're going to go into a tomato, and this one is super simple. But the first and most important part of it is that we need to do the center first. That is because if we were to do a big red blob and then do the center afterwards, then the range of the color would be different because it's overlapping a different color. That's why I like to focus on the green center of the tomato first. To do that, I'm just grabbing a simple green, any green that you would like, I'm going to use sap green because I'm really into it today. Then all I need to do is I'm just using the very tip of my brush. I'm applying a little bit of pressure, just a little bit, and then coming up, and off of it. Same thing, and off of it to make it a little more. It's got a little to much water on here so what I'm doing is wiping my brush off, and then I'm going to drag that color just from all the water that's from my page already, and spread it out so that that water disperses. There we go. These can be messy because they're just the center, and they don't have to really have a rhyme or reason. No leaves really do on vegetables. They just are supposed to look messy so there's my green center. If you feel like it's too saturated, like I do, look I got a paper towel, and you can just set it down, really lightly, just on the wet part, and it will pick up some of that color, and then you can move it. Make sure your brush is clear of water and paint, and you can just move it two cover what you want. Next part, this is important. Let this dry before you add the red. Otherwise, it will start blending, and bleeding together, and we don't want that. If you're impatient, and you want to jump right in, sure, we'll do that. We just won't touch that part yet. Rinse your brush completely, make sure there's no green left on it, and then grab your red. I'm going to be using spiral scarlet. It's my favorite red. What I'm doing is I'm grabbing enough, I'll show you on my swatch, to where it's going to be pretty watery. That's just to form my base first. I'm going to make this pretty round, and I think I want it to be about this size so I can bring that down to here, and I'm just forming it. It's all I'm doing but what I want to do is while I'm forming it to make sure that I'm also filling it, and you can determine the shape, make it fatter, make it skinnier, and then don't touch that green because you don't want it to bleed, but you do want to raise it above. The circle isn't coming to the base, it's coming to above the center that you drew with the green paint rather, and then you can go in, and finish the rest later. You can bring this up even higher if you want the center to seem like the tomato is more on its side. Don't worry if you go too far or not far enough because really there's no wrong answer there. Notice I'm not going to the green, I'm just shaping, and getting real close. Now, I'm using my wet-on-wet technique, grabbing more red, and I'm going to start to bring that color up from the bottom, and let it bleed toward the top like so. Basically, just a few soft lines and you can define them a little bit more with more paint in certain areas, but overall, they are just there to start to add that lighting effect where the light will catch in some of the parts of the tomato up top. Then I'm going to go in and just add more pigment, and I start at the bottom and I work my weigh up. But I want the bottom to be nice and saturated. Try not to misshape, what I'm doing. Then I'm going to drag that up. Notice I'm leaving a lot of white space. That is so that I can very intentionally put that in. What that means is I want there to be an area hear that I leave open, an area here that I leave open, and an area here that I leave open. I'll keep that area right there because I like it, and that now looks like it's catching light. I'm going to let that bleed as it will. Once this starts to get dry, I can then go up, and get right next to the green, try not to overlap it or anything. But then you can add that peekaboo behind it because it's probably dry buy now, it doesn't take too long. Just make sure. There we go. Now I'm going to add even more pigment to make this nice and rich so that it looks nice and juicy. I'm just going in for pigment. I'm not even dipping in water, my rush is wet enough. I'm going to follow the strokes that I had before, and then I'm going to push it into this area here. I see some areas that I might want to push more paint into but I'm not sure yet, so I'm basically just going to let this sit, and bleed, and do its thing for a sec, and watch it, and see if it will need some encouragement, I like to call it, or if it's going to be good to go. The other thing that I want to do is I want to add a little bit more of a highlight toward the top here. So I'm going to take my paper towel, this green is dry on it, and then I'm just going to dab right here and then go right back in with my wet brush, and just push the paint so it it does its thing. There we go. I just wanted more of a highlight. While it's still wet, you can do that to where you can take advantage of lightening it while it's still wet, and still able to be lightened. From here, I can add even more pigment. If you want to, you can add a darker color so that it adds more depth. I like to do this right toward the bottom. If you have a deep red, cool, if you don't, you can always mix one, I don't, so I'm mixing it. I'm just grabbing my red, and then just like a hint of like either dark purple or even black, and then I'm just going to, maybe even more, set it down just along the bottom. I have too much water on my brush that's why it's pooling. So I wiped that off, and then I might need to pick some of it up but I'm getting the most of the water off, and then I'm just dragging upward a little bit. So I'll take my paper towel just right there, and then smooth that out. That looks a lot better. Make sure that my brush is clean, it doesn't have a tone of water on it, it's just moist only. That looks good, and that's it. Tomato, done. Super easy. 8. Next Steps: I hope that was enjoyable for you guys. I really want to see your works, so be sure to upload it into the project area and let us know if you have any intention on creating wall art, or creating something else with your awesome art, or let us just know about the process and how enjoyable it is to paint the vegetables because it was really enjoyable for me, so I hope it was enjoyable for you to. Thanks again you guys. Be sure to check out my other classes. Be sure to check out my website. I've got ton of freebies on there for you @thepigeonletters.com/freebies. I will see you next time.