Watercolor Roses and Honeysuckle

1. Intro: Happy June to you, creative friend, and continuing with the Birth flower series. Today we are going to learn how to paint stunning striped roses and honeysuckle to celebrate the June birthday. One of the things I'm most excited about is we'll be painting using a live reference. The roses come from my garden and they make the perfect project for us to explore this summer. As with all my classes, my hope is to offer you a comprehensive study, providing the instruction and education necessary to achieving success and leaving you with a sense of anticipation to keep exploring. I'll be providing numerous options on how to approach these roses and inviting you to find the style that best suits your artistic voice. Our early practice will take us into a few moments looking closely at the roses we'll be painting, calling out any details that may feel significant and special. This time will be used to stir inspiration and help you collect information about the flowers. Next, armed with our brush, we will move into building our muscle memory by sketching out the shapes of the roses, honing in on the general size of petals, the overall shape, and how the petals ruffle. We'll use a single color to do this, which will prevent us from wanting to move ahead and begin pinning down the details. This exercise is meant to help you better understand the subject matter and provide confidence when we paint our main project. After we've explored our roses in great depth, we'll move into the class project where we will expand upon our piece by adding the honeysuckle to the bouquet. This delicate filler flower adds balance and provides a fragility, benefiting and serving the painting as a whole. Due to the complex nature of these roses, I am labeling this an intermediate class. Ambitious beginners are always welcome to join in. However, it is recommended that the material covered in either the tulips or even the floral elements courses be learned. First, to master the basic foundation of watercolor. With all that in mind, let's begin. 2. Supplies: Now let's take a few moments to discuss the supplies that we will be using to complete this class, beginning with a palette. I always recommend a ceramic, either slid plate or an official palette, whatever is going to work best for you, avoiding the plastic because it will make the watercolors beat up. Next is our Canson, 140 pound cold press paper. Then we are going to be using a variety of paints today using both Daniel Smith and Mimeri Blue. From the Daniel Smith collection, we're going to use the Undersea green, rich green gold, Hansa Yellow Deep and Burnt umber. From the Mimere Blue collection, we are going to be using Rose Lake, and this is permanent red light, and this is Verzino violet. Our brushes are going to be a variety of Princeton brushes. You know that I love for you to have duplicates. If you have that on hand, that would be great. Go ahead and bring those into your work area. We're going to have a variety of the Heritage series, velvet Touch, and the umbria. These are the three brands that I primarily work with or series, I should say, the brand is Princeton, The series is the velvet touch, the heritage, and the umbria. I'm going to have a size three and then a Size six in the heritage series, and then I'm going to have a four and a six from the velvet touch and those are the filberts. Then from the Umbria, I'm going to use a size four. You can see that there's a little bit of discrepancy here because this is a size four and this is a size force. You have to make sure that you're looking at the correct series to make sure that you have the correct brush. You're also going to need a palette or me, a cup of water and some paper towels to blot off your brushes. Then if you happen to have a live reference, Definitely go ahead and bring that into your workspace. That is going to be so much fun. Our class is going to feature these beautiful striped roses. I did a little research to figure out what is the name of these incredible flowers here, and so many different names came up including rock and roll roses, stars and striped. This one, I think was even called a purple Tiger rose. There was the Neil Diamond rose. Definitely some varying opinions on what they are called, we're just going to refer to them as the striped roses. These are from my garden. They are in full bloom right now and I couldn't resist since June is featuring our rose and honeysuckle for the birth month flower, bringing these in to create a class. So excited about that. Other than that, grab yourself a snack, maybe something to drink and a comfy chair, and let's move into the next lesson. 3. Observing The Roses: If you've taken any of my classes, then you will already know that before I begin to apply paint to paper, one of my favorite things to do in the best ways to get familiar with the subject matter is to take a few moments to observe and just note the significant or special details about whatever it is that I'm intending to paint. I've laid out a few of the roses here. This darling rose here that is, I think the purple Tiger rose, lost a few of its petals unfortunately, so I'm not going to be able to paint it as originally intended. However, we were going to paint it on its side. Um, anyhow. So I don't know. I may tinker around with this view because this is kind of fun too with the center of the flower sort of, you know, breaking out in the middle. Or we may paint it, you know, from, um, facing in the left hand direction. We'll see how it goes. We're going to have a lot of fun. Taking a lot of liberties here. Again, if you've taken my classes, you'll know that I love to use a live reference. However, I am primarily an intuitive painter, which means that again, I note and observe, but then I put my references aside and I allow just the artist within me to rise up and take liberties along the way. This is not a strictly botanical class. This is going to be a loose interpretation in which we are attempting to capture the essence of the flower. Anyway, let's take a a look at these beautiful petals here. These are just really extravagant. I just think I look at nature. I just think, Wow. Wow. If something like this is capable of growing, then we humans sure have a lot of potential, don't we? I won't get too deep because this is an art class, but if I were to be teaching a philosophy class that I probably would go off on a tangent right about now, just about the beauty of nature and how it inspires us. I think what I love most about this flower in particular is the fact that some of the petals were almost a solid block or hue of color, and then others are really faint. You can see in this petal right here, It's almost completely the yellow and the gray with just a bit of the magenta streaking through. As I always say in all of my lessons, arty is going to be key when we go to implement the details within the petals. We're really we're going to aim for some of these solid block petals and then others that really don't have a ton of detail in them, or if they do, we're varying the colors that we're using and the amount of detail. So again, just taking a moment to just note how there's a beautiful burst of yellow here, which our Hansa Yellow Deep is really going to do a great job of just flooding that petal with that initial burst of yellow, and then we'll be using a really, really light broth consistency to set the groundwork and then plugging in a sino violet for that bright pop of magenta. Anyhow, loving these stripes, and then I want to point out here that it's going to be especially important, you guys, that when you make a brush stroke through the petals, that you are aiming that stroke in the correct direction. That is really going to be our main emphasis here. The details are going to be beautiful no matter how you lay them out. But if you can manage to bring your brush strokes completely through in the right way, leading back to the center of the petal, it's really going to elevate the rose and allow it to just shine and sing and look very much like it would in nature. For example, if you were to take this stroke and then you were to pull it to the side here, it just wouldn't look quite right. We want to make sure that wherever we're loading and leading that stroke, we're aiming it in the right direction so that it's centering back to the base of the flower. So That's that flower. We're going to do a couple of different color combinations, all of which have a slightly different shape, but they're all just very roughly, very much like a tool skirt. This one features more of a very light peach and coral. We can see these waves of flowers. When we move into the next segment, where we're going to just focus on capturing the general shape of the flower. You'll really get a sense for these petals, how they move, how they unfold and lay out, and how you want to plant them on paper. Taking a moment to notice the center of the flower here. If we are to pull back a little bit, we can see that there is quite a detailed and complicated center. We have some hot pink stamen, and then at the end, we have I would say something around the hue of raw umber, possibly a yellow ochre. We're definitely going to plug in that detail. Though I will probably avoid the hot pink as beautiful as it looks within the rose. It's not my favorite to use for the center of a flower. I tend to find that a brown and a yellow really does bode well, just for the general palette. Of the flower. Anyway, this one, if we were to pose it, and we really are going to have to play with the positioning of the flowers, just because if we were to lay them all flat, we're going to get a side view for the most part. I'll be tinkering around to get some open faced angles, holding them like this in such a way so as to capture the center of the flower. Then others, such as this one, we will definitely plug in that composition where when we were creating the bloom, we have roses that are kind of shooting off to the side, and then others that are sort of cuddled up against each other, playing with the height of the flowers and playing with the positioning. You really want to make sure that as you are planning out your mat piece, and you're going to see that we're going to do things a little differently today. Because this is such a detailed flower to have a class project at the end, where we're again painting all of these different roses. It would be a very long class just because we need time to allow things to dry and just those intuitive marks take time. You'll see we're going to lay things out a little differently today, and then at the end, we'll add some details as well. That is the main focus of the class and the roses. The other thing I want to just take a moment to point out are these beautiful rose leaves, being very mindful not to poke myself because there are quite a few sharp thorns on these roses. Anyway, the leaves are so beautiful. I tinkered around with these yesterday and I love the symmetry. It's just slightly off balance. So we have these leaves that begin here at the stem and then this one shoots down, and this one is just a little bit higher, also aiming down and these beautiful ridges on the edges of the leaves. So we're really going to play with that as well. And then some beautiful details through the center. We have a little bit of brown on the edge of the leaves here. Just taking a moment, give yourself the opportunity to just look what feels special to you, write down those details off to the side on a piece of paper so that you can bring that in because sometimes when we're painting, we lose track of initially what we gravitated towards and what felt the most beautiful. Because I guarantee you that whatever you feel most attracted to and most excited to paint is going to bring the most enjoyment to the process, and your overall painting is going to be benefited. Okay, so anyhow, that's the leaves. There are some that are quite a bit darker, which is why we're going to have a variety of greens today. We're going to have the rich green gold, which we'll do use in here, and then we have the undersea green for these darker petals here. Same variety of roses, but just slightly different leaves. Okay, that's going to conclude just our noting and observing, if you want to take a screenshot of anything, please go ahead and do that now. You can keep that off to the side. And then the next lesson, we're going to go ahead and just begin to capture the shape of our roses. 4. Sketching the Roses Part I: The color we're going to be using for this lesson is the versino violet. We're just going to use one color right now because, again, if you've taken my classes, you'll know that I like to really pare down and simplify the subject matter until we get to the part where we're building a composition. Using a single color is really going to allow us to focus on the shape and the size without feeling like the need to ruh ah and begin adding those pressing details that really make this flower sing. Go ahead and pick up your number six brush. And wet your paint so that we're working with somewhere between a broth or a cough s consistency is great. Again, this is just for practice purposes, and then I am going to play with this rose here. So that it's not completely on its side. I really want to get the center of this flower. So I'm going to position it just like this. Kind of angling it a little bit. Love Love and I didn't I should have pointed this out when we were noting and observing, but I love this chunk of stem here from which the smaller stem is emanating. It's just absolutely beautiful, and then we have this dark stem here. So we're definitely going to have some fun with the stems when we plug those in at the end. Holding the rose in such a way, let's go ahead and create the center of the flower. Push things over just a little bit, so I have some more room here to work. Let's begin with the center of the flower. I'm just going to create something to act as the center here. Then we know that there is fun stuff happening in here. I'm just going to lose put some stamen and there we go. Now, I'm going to work from the center and build my way out. So we're not going to use our filbert brush right now to capture the wave and me, ruffle of the roses. We're just going to get the shape. So I just want to make sure you're not trying to ruh ahead and capture the way that the petals are unfolding and furling and curling up. We're just going to get the main shape here. We have something like that, coming up here, higher petal, and then coming down, and then I see a petal, a little bit higher, and then a nice dip here. And coming back to center, this connects right through here. Then continuing to move along. I see another petal right here. Nice, generous curve there, and then it just ruffles along. Again, we're going to take lots of liberties here. But this is going to be so beneficial of just helping you understand how the flower lays down on paper. Then we have another petal here with a dip in there and then comes back. And then we have a petal that comes out right about here, dips down, and another here. And then I have one more right about here. Ruffling. And now, I'll continue working my way this way. This one kind of comes like that. And we have a smaller petal here. Nice little ruffle. And then building out from that, we have one more. And then nice, generous petal here. And then again, right about there. And coming out here, some beautiful ruffling, and then it sort of shoots up here and comes back to there. And then at the very top, we have something that's kind of like that. Maybe connect it behind there. And then one final. Petal here. Okay. So that is capturing the general shape of this rose, the way it lays out. And if we were to plug in the stem, we would do it right about here, and then we have another branch that sort of shoots there and then this beautiful stem here, that's just off to the side, and then something like that. And then we would plug in those leaves. You don't have to do that stem if you don't want to, but I just like to get the general shape of how it lays out. Anyhow, very rough scratchings here doesn't really look like this flower per se. However, it just starts to give us an idea of what the shape is because when we look at something, we're like, Oh, it's a round shape. But then when we plug it in on paper, we see, it really does have more of an oval feel to it with some point to your edges. What you can also do is just try and get the outer shape to get a feel for size because here's what's going to happen. Your petals are going to get really big. We're going to be using the whole paper here, but If you're not careful to make sure that there's some smaller petals within the center here, very quickly, your rose is going to get gigantic. So being able to play with size and create something you can already see. I went a little bit bigger than what we have here, just because it's fresh and new and it's the first time I'm plugging it in on paper like this. For the next one, I would aim to do something just a tiny bit smaller. If I would capturing just the general shape, I would just do something like this. And you can see slightly smaller than that, I may even have to modify that a little bit, where I go, Okay, tiny bit smaller. And then I want something that maybe looks a little bit more like that. Even though it's a little bit smaller, we're going to be fitting these roses together on a piece of paper, so we want to make sure that if we are doing a big rows, we want to make sure that's our biggest rows, and then the others following that, we want to make a little bit smaller. Building from that framework, we can again in a center here. Again, just noting, something's happening in there and then begin to plug in those details. You can see things are a little bit smaller this go around. I'm going to take a few liberties here as well, just feeling a little confident about how things are laying out. And grabbing that petal right there. And just moving my way around as I see lines and ruffles. Okay, we have that kind of coming there. And then there. And then maybe ruffling there. That's good for this flower. We can get the sense of the open face with the center being very prominent and then a stem coming down from the center and then off to the side. Let's go ahead and put that rose off to the side and then we're going to paint or sketch this beauty right here. You can see that the center of this flower is almost completely covered, and if we were to put it on its side, then it absolutely would be completely covered. Let's go ahead and do that now painting this rose on the side. I leave it just like that. And I'm going to fit it in right here. Let's start here with the base. I see a leaf happening here, and then my stem. Then I'm going to begin right here at the base plugging in those petals that I see. We have a lower petal that sets the framework, and then a paddle shaped petal right here and then further out, We have one that ruffles and then tucks behind the flower. That's what we're working with from the get go. Comes down a little bit more. We can extend that if we want to. Then we can see behind the stem here a little bit of petal action. Let's go ahead and plug in some ruffles. Then we have This petal shooting out here. Then this one, which is tucked behind this main petal, so we're going to plug that one in. Then there's another right here in the middle of this petal right here that we're going to focus on. And then continuing to work our way up and around. We see that this petal is definitely the petal that extends the furest. We don't want to go farther than that. We have this one coming down like so. This is getting lost behind here, I just looks funky, but it will make sense when we do it with all the paint and the details. But that is the general shape of the rows on its side. I definitely recommend doing this a few times. I would say at least three times for each variety of rows. This is really going to benefit you. I know that it might seem a little overdone and you just want to go in and I get impatient to and I just want to paint. I want to go for it. But every time I do this, it really does make such a huge difference in the results and just the success and even like I say, the joy of the process. Then we could add in if we wanted to do the leaf on here, we have a leaf that's coming over here. And then we have some razor edge here. Again, we'll take some liberties. It's a little leaf pointing up there and coming down rights like that. All right. Let's go ahead and do one more, and then we'll wrap up this segment. I wish I could send you the smell of these flowers because, Oh my goodness, my friends, it is just decadent. This rose was so sweet yesterday, it was a bud. This whole thing was completely closed and there were only two or three petals that were extending out. I was so excited, I should have just taken a picture of it. I knew it would open up today, so we won't be able to do that bud, but it's still the smallest of the roses and such a fun color, not typically ones I would gravitate towards because it's yellow and red, but I just love the shape of it. This will be the next rose that we pin down on paper. Again, I love how we lost the petals here in the center. If we wanted to envision that they were still there, we can pretend like, this one would sit right about there, blocking a bit of the center. Again, we can definitely take some liberties. We don't have to have this exposed center. We can imagine that it's nestled up like that. I really want you as the artist to feel liberated to paint it how you like it. Okay. So if we were, let me just take a moment to position here. We would say that something's happening right about here in our center. And then we have the base the rows. And then we have this petal that sort of just shoots down. And then we have the other side that comes a little bit lower. And then this one is layered on top. Sort of ruffles up here. We have this pedal here, just kind of shooting up. And then we have one that curves. Another ruffle behind here. Okay and right about there. I'm going to kind of reshape that, bring that more generously down here. There we go. Now we have a better sense the size here, and this is kind of coming on top here. Don't be afraid to paint over your lines. This is just you exploring, getting familiar with things or sitting. And then you can lay these pages off to the side and use them as guides and framework as you in the roses on your main painting. That's right about there. And then go. Okay. I really like the shape of that. It's looking a little more open face than on its side. But were I to add details, it would make more sense. Then this last petal here is coming on top, and that's what's giving it that illusion of being on its side. Then we have a stem that comes out here. There. Then we have this one that's shooting up. If you wanted to do it like so, you don't have to. You could just completely take a liberty here and just do a leaf off to the side. Sometimes that works better in loose paintings. You can even add the thorns in if you want to completely up to you. Something like that. Yeah, again, really going to be beneficial and we'd love for you to have this resource as you move into the next segment. 5. Sketching The Roses Part II: Now that we've taken some time using our round brush to capture just the general shape of the rows and how those petals lay down on the paper. We're going to do the same thing using our umbria brush. It's the filbert size four. Again, with a beginning and intermediate class, I'm trying to do my best to ensure that I'm taking steps so that those who are newer to filbert brushes don't feel as though the material is just jumping ahead. We're going to definitely take a few moments to just show petal structure and and how to move this brush around so that we can really capture the shape of the rose. Go ahead, if you have not already and dip your filbert brush into the paint, and I'm going to take the rose and just position it so. This is just the back side of the paper I was using a moment ago. Don't feel like you have to get a fresh piece of paper out, just turn over your paper, and you can use the other side. Okay. We're going to use the side of the brush and we're also going to use the belly of the brush. We're going to vary in strokes like this. Then we're also going to use some belly strokes like this. Aiming them back towards the petal if we were to be adding in those details. Of course, that's not how the petals are going to necessarily look when we go to add the details because we're going to be working wet into wet here. But those are essentially the two different postures of the brush that we're going to be using on its side. Moving it around, coming down and up and capturing general petal shape. You're just doing this up and down motion. Then occasionally, we'll do some belly strokes, which is the toe of the brush on its side. Let's do that, but also looking at our reference flower. We have a petal that's starting right about here, right in the center, this one right there. There, that's our shape. Then we have another puddle that's coming up and overlapping, but I'm going to start with that triangular shape here. Using the toe of the brush to come up and then down and then building from there. Continuing to work my way out. Again, this is just capturing the shape. We're not trying to get every single detail. We may need to do this a few times before you really get the idea of how those petals lay and fold and nestle. Roses are very complicated flowers to paint just like peonies because they do have so many details, and it takes a while for your mind to separate everything that's happening and make it work for the page. Again, it is on its side here, so we want to make sure that we are not extending too far on this side so as to lose that shape. We have this petal here, and then we have something happening there. Then if I were to take my round, the stems right about here. And then just looking at it, I see, definitely something happening here. You can if you have a reference flower, you can lay it on top to get a feel for how it works. Now if I'm turning it on its side more, we see way more of this generous flower, but I was moving it like this. It's all going to depend on if you have a live reference and if you're moving it around a little bit. P, if your petal ends up looking more wide and generous, you have something that's more like this, not two petals, but one. That is fine. That is not going to be a problem. If you're not painting exactly what I'm painting, what you're going to do is you're just going to work with what you have, I'm going to give you the techniques and skills to work with what you have on your page. Now if we were to continue working in that flower, let's do a few belly strokes imagining to strokes, that we have some details shooting back to the center here. We're just getting our aiming right. We're going to pull out a couple petals and do that in a moment. There we have it. Let's go ahead and do one more and then I'm going to take. I'm going to use these petals as reference, and we're just going to observe them, capture the shape, and I'm going to show you how we're going to be doing the two different details using two different brushes. All right. Pull out our purple tiger rose. Put a little bit more of the razino violet on my brush. And let's go ahead and do the same thing. Imagining that something is sort of happening here. And then if we want, which is what we're going to be doing on the paper, we can just fill it in there because we're going to be layering paint on top of our center. We're going to be plugging in a little bit of yellow here and allowing that to settle for a moment and then putting a little bit of the umber into that, beautiful wet into wet, and then we're going to allow that to fully dry and add more details. You can take that step now. Then let's go ahead and build out our flowers. We have the base here, and then we have a nice generous petal here curves around. And then one that comes really far down here. And up. Trying to work quickly here, not overthinking it, because we can always just repaint it again. Again, you're wanting to just move. Again, you're wanting to move your brush, so, on its toe and on its belly, ruffling movements. Okay. That's the general shape of that. Then if we were to plug in those details, again, this is going to be essential. We're going to do it in greater depth here in a minute. But just taking the toe of the brush, aiming back some of those beautiful lines. You can also practice color blocking. Meaning that some of the petals here have mo full and complete color, and then others really just have a few markings. That gives me a good sense of how this flower is going to lay out, what I'm going to be looking for as far as the length and the shape of the petals, and then getting familiar with this brush, how to move it. Let's take a look at a few of the petals now. We were to start with this one. Now, in our flower, it's not going to lay so nice and simple for us. It's definitely going to have a range of motion, but this will give us an idea of the shape. If we were to be painting this on our main piece, we would have something like this. And then we would take the belly of the brush and begin. Again, very simple here. We're going to break it down into steps in the next segment. But that'll give you an idea and you can continue to build the shape a little bit if you like. Go ahead and do that petal. Okay. And then we have some pretty details here. And a nice thick block here. Remember, you're wanting to aim that in the correct direction or it's not going to end up looking like our petal. You can put the details wherever you like them, but those main lines need to look as they're originating from the proper area. Let's go ahead and do this one. Now, let's use both brushes. Let's use our fit to capture the shape. We have a nice dip here. And then we have a nice block of color here and here. And then let's use our round brush. Actually here, let's plug in a little bit more here since we have more color, and then we can You are the artist here. I want you to take lots of beautiful liberties as to where you want to put your stripes and your little tiny details. But that will give you a sense of looking, noting, and observing and where to plug in those details. Let's do one more. And then use our round brush here. To add in some of those spots. Then what we're going to do is when this media is dry, we're going to go over it with our round brush, adding in those little speckles. We can do it when it's wet and we will definitely use a little wet into wet technique, and you can see it makes some really pretty bleeds. However, it's not a bleedy, blendy flower that we're working with except for on the edges of the petals. So you will want to wait until things are dry if you're loving those opaque details. That way really does stick when you go to put in the stripes and the markings. The markings will definitely not stay if you're using it wet and to wet, but if you will want to do it wet and to wet, this is how it would look. Let's move back to some of these petals so we can do the same here. If we were to add in that next layer of color. If we do it like this. And we can use the filbert brush to do it. And we can use the round brush as well. Again, the emphasis is going to be on making sure that those markings are leading back to where they're supposed to be. And then we can also use to soften those edges. Then eventually, what we're going to be doing is using the paint at a much thicker consistency, and we're going to be using it in such a way that it layers over very opaque like. Carving out a few of those areas where things are void of color. And then using my round brush to make sure that I'm aiming back in the correct position. And I'm just going to take a few liberties here. You can see the different ways that you can approach the flower. You can head straight in with that thicker consistency and layer over almost opaque like. Now, you could also add quite a bit of color here, and then rinse off your paint brush almost completely and blend those colors so that it looks more watercolor like. Essentially, you're lifting a little bit of the color as you sweep the brush through the stroke, and then you can reload your brush. If you really like that wet and to wet look. It's really going to be what you gravitate towards. You can wait until things are dry and then use your filbert brush to layer on top for those beautiful opaque strokes, or what you can do is create a wet media foundation and then rinse off your brush once you've added that first layer of color and sweep the color out. You can see if we were to compare it to this petal, though, is quite a bit lighter. We're going to implement a ton of variety so that our rose does not feel lack luster in any way. I'm going to show you several different approaches. In the next segment, I'm going to walk you through the whole petal process so you can see what it looks like from start to finish, from laying the groundwork to those opaque details at the end. 6. Petal Process: At this point, you're going to want to lay out your palette. I have all of the colors that we're going to be using on the palette, starting with the burnt umber, the Virgino violet, the Hansa Yellow deep, the light red, and the rose lake. Go ahead and plug into your Virgino violet. We're going to mix up the wash that we're going to be using for the foundation. We're going to put a little bit of the burnt umber in there as well. This is going to be a very, very light consistency. I'm going to swatch it out so that you can see just how light it's going to be. We really want the base color for the rose to be light because essentially, it's white. It's a very very light color with this initial flood of yellow through the center. Then with a separate brush, go ahead and plug into your hansa yellow deep, and we're going to decrease the color value there as well by adding water, creating a broth consistency. We're also going to put a little bit of the burnt umber in there. The two colors should look just like this. This should be your yellow, not too dark, this should be your foundational color for the rose. I'm going to load up my brush with that yellow mixture and set it off to the side. And then I'm going to use this mixture to create the petal here. I'm going to use this petal as inspiration. Let's go through the process together here. Rinsing off my brush a bit, using the color that's already on the page to complete the petal. Now the media is nice and wet. And I can take my other brush and in the yellow right here at the base wet. And then I can use my round brush if I really wanted to pull out that yellow. You may not like it with that intense yellow in the middle. It looks great on the road, but sometimes it doesn't translate, but we're going to try it. Then what you do, right below where the media is wet, you're going to plug in that burst of color, and it's just going to flood right. You can help it along if you want to by sweeping it. I've chosen a little bit of a muted yellow versus that intense highlighter yellow. That's my own personal preference, but a Naples yellow would work really well right there, and then also a lemon yellow. Those are two other possibilities that you could use. That sets the foundation. Then if we like that wet and wet look, what we can do now, is dip into the versino violet, and we're going to increase the value of the color. Now we're working at a slightly more opaque consistency, and we can put in some details where the media is still wet. You don't have to plug an all in, but this is essentially where we see the darkest blocks of color, and everything else is quite a bit lighter. This is the point at which I would say, leave it and allow it to dry. Then we're going to layer on top those opaque details. Now, if you really love that watercolor look, which you could do once more, is dip into the Vazino violet. And add it to the rim of the petal here, the outside edges and get more of that gradient. It would be an intense burst of color right here around the edges, and you could pull that down through the petal, and then you would have even more of that striking gradient. Now, if you like the opaque look, this is where I would leave it, and then we're going to wait till it's dry and then take our brush and create those stripes and markings. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to leave that here, I'm going to allow it to dry, and then I will come back and we will add those details together. My petal is completely dry now. I actually used a hair dryer to speed up the process. I usually don't recommend that unless it's a very light wash of color because essentially what can happen is you can end up blowing the paint with the hair dryer. But because it was such a light amount of paint, it actually dried perfectly. Now I'm going to dip into my asino violet. I'm going to put quite a bit on the brush and we want to use it almost at its highest color value. Because we want those details to be opaque, like a solid block of color. So I'm making sure there's not too much water on my brush and really picking up the paint. But I also want to be sure that the paint is evenly dispersed on the bristles. Otherwise, I'm going to have dry strokes, and the idea here is that we have a fluid motion of color. Right about there should be good. Then if I'm following this petal for inspiration, I'm going to go ahead and start here at the center, and I'm going to pull those strokes back towards the center of the petal. Using the toe of my brush. You can leave in a little bit of markings if you want or you can just completely color block that segment. Then I'm going to do the same thing with my round brush and I'm going to saturate it with the versino violet so that it's at the same consistency, and then I can continue that marking all the way and then do the same thing over here. Making sure that I'm aiming those strokes back towards the center. Then I like where that's at. Now I'm going to use my round brush as a little bit more of a delicate tip. I won't get such chunky strokes, and I can begin to. You can even rinse off your brush a little bit if you don't want such que dark strokes. I'm going to rinse it off even a b. Here we go until we get some lighter mas. And then you can even do some stripes through it, making sure that you're coming back to center here. Just alternating brushes to get the right level of detail. You can see that the petal is not exactly the same shape. That's okay. It's just to get an idea of how it all works together. You're just taking the tip of your brush and just fine marks like this and then making gaps in the petal so that there's blocks of white. And The amount of detail you want to put in is completely up to you. Remember that we're going to have an entire flower. Try not to be so detailed here. You can always add more details at the end. But I think that the best thing to do would be to plug in those central key details and then once you have the flower assembled, then you can come back and decide how much more you want to do. Let's say in the event, you didn't like this opaque look right here. What you could do is rinse off your filber brush so that it has basically no more water on it, and you could lift out the color. To get more of that watercolor feel. You're just lifting out the color and you could do the same thing with any other areas. Let's say things just got too dark, you take that brush and you just lift out the color. This is what I was saying, you can take the brush, go along the edge, and get more of that watercolor feel. Now, keep in mind you will darken the petal because it's another layer of paint. But it does create a bit more of that gradient. Then once you've lifted it out to your preference, you can take a brush and touch the wet media, and it will create a gradient of color. That's if you want that wet into wet look and you don't want those solid stripes and markings. That's a couple of different approaches for you. Now that we've gone through the petal process, we're going to begin assembling our roses. 7. Purple Tiger Rose Part I: One of the best, and in my opinion, the most fun ways to build a composition is to actually use live flowers. This is going to give you a really good feeling and understanding of how it's all going to lay out on paper. You can get a good idea about scale and size and positioning. Although the flowers may not lay perfectly I will give you a vision, and what you can even do, if it's helpful, you can take a really light pencil and pull up your flower and then mark how big that flower is. You can just take your pencil and mark around. Because if this is your piece of paper, you're wanting to make sure that things aren't going too far beyond here. For a few different reasons. One, because we're going to be adding some leaves to bring in some more interest and to add just dimension and flow to the painting. Then we're also in our class project, going to be adding the honeysuckle, which is the second birth flower. It's quite a simple flower, and we're going to achieve it with just a couple strokes, so we're really not going to have a breakdown period of how that works just because it is quite a simple flower and we'll be able to understand it with just a few moments of instruction. Okay. This will give you a good idea of how in my mind, I'm mapping things out. I will be taking a couple of liberties, so please keep that in mind. The flowers starting at the top, we want to make sure that there is a big height difference and we want to make sure that things are balanced. This one, I'm going to plug in a little bit lower. This one right here. Because I want to have a nice difference in where things are positioned and also the size of things. Initially, I was thinking that this would be the best rose to have is the biggest one and it still might be. Although you can see that the way that this rose is positioned, it looks like the biggest. But you're going to see that I'm going to take a few liberties along the way and make a few adjustments and changes just to benefit my own painting style, I hope that you'll feel The ability to do the same. I don't want you, as I always say in my classes, to feel as though you have to paint exactly what I'm painting, is just to give you an idea, and then you can play with the framework within those boundaries. If you want to take a screenshot so that you have an idea of where things are placed and how you want to move them, that would be fine, and then you can have that off to the side. If you're watching on your computer, you can have that on your phone. And then we're going to leave this area open for some honeysuckle to come shoot over here and this area down here for some leaves. I may end up even pulling leaves off a few of the rows. Uh, the roses and then kind of doing this sort of thing. And then I'm also going to add more stems than what you see. I had to cut these because they were growing from a single stem, and so I had to pull those off individually. So I'm going to put back in some more stems, and then I'm going to have these lovely leaves kind of shooting off to the side. But yeah, this just gives you such a great idea of what you're working with, and you can map it out with a pencil, and just feel really confident and at peace as you're moving forward, not having to worry if things are too large or if, you know, you're coming up too close to the side of the paper, which is something we always want to make sure to avoid. Because if we run up against the edges, we really lose the breath and the space around the painting. Okay. So I'm to go ahead and take that off. You put all those to the side. Makes for a lovely work space. I've chosen the purple tiger to be our focal flower. Rather than being on its side, I am going to paint it in more of an open face posture. Then this will be also the main stem from which the other stems are intertwined with. We're going to start here with the center. What I'm going to have you do is pick up your number six round brush and dip into your yellow mixture, that's the Hansa yellow deep and the burnt umber, and we're going to start with the middle. We're just going to make a few key details so that we know how to build around this flower. Again, I want to make sure that I'm not going too high up on the paper that I'm going to lose the breath and the movement around the piece. I'm wanting to place it right about here and making sure that I'm leaving room for it to grow because that will be your inclination is to just keep expanding. We need to remember that the petals can't be quite as large as how they appear to us in real life. Beginning here, I'm just going to make a few markings for our stamen. And then I'm also going to blend a little bit here so that it's a bit more filled in. And now I'm going to pick up my filer brush and begin to build. This is the asino violet and the burnt umber at a really light consistency. If you need to check that consistency on a separate piece of paper, go ahead and do that. I'm going to paint this in an open face w. I'm going to start here at the top. Using my filbert brush to sort of ruffle around. Building the flower out. I move that leaf down so that it's not in my way here. Again, I'm going to be taking liberties, not going to position every petal the way that it's seen here. Taking care to leave a nice space in between. And continuing to build around, twisting things just a bit to get more of that open face. H I have the general shape now captured on the page, doesn't mean I'm going to leave it here, but it gives us an idea of the framework and put a little bit of yellow in through the center. If you like that more intense color than you can add it here at the bottom, just like we did when we were practicing. I see it carried all the way through here, so I'm going to include that. Now I'm going to put it off to the side so that I can work intuitively. I'll probably be twisting the page around a little bit to get some better angles. H. I saw some petals and tucked behind here that I'd like to include. I'm just going to sketch out the shape of those. Now as things are starting to dry, I can add another layer of color. Some of the petals will still be wet, so I'll get a little bit of that wet into wet, which is just fine. I'm just going to put in a few of those color blocks that I see here. Making sure to angle those stripes in the right direction, I'm going to be using my number six round and my number four filbert. Just adding in a few of those details that I see. Taking my time. I'm not going to rush the details. You can use your inspiration flower or you can just move intuitively. We'll be adding this petal last once things are a little bit more dry, but it is going to be more open face like this, so we're going to have two petals coming up and ad. Again, if things dry and you're not loving how things are dry, you can always rinse off your brush so that it's completely rid of color and then bring that stroke lifting up the color as you move through the pal. I use my round brush now. I'm going to put a little bit more color into this petal down below just because I think that looks pretty. And then I'm going to guide it and now I can take my round six brush and put in some of those details while things are wet. Like I said, I wanted to give you guys multiple ways to approach it. Lots of variety here. So this area of the petal is dry. And then down here, we have the wet media. A few details, taking some liberties here. This pedal is almost completely void of details. I'm just going to add a few. I really like that, that contrast between an almost solid color block here. Making sure I'm aiming those details back in the correct direction. Okay. Now that things are drying pretty nicely, I am going to load up my number four brush with the versino violet, and a little bit of the Hanza and create a nice mixture of color. And plug in those two leaves. E, two petals. Trying to move ahead. Okay. This petal is coming up and around. So I'm going to put it in right about there. And this looks a little bit wet. I'm actually going to take paws and dry that, and then I'll come right back. While the outer petals are still continuing to dry, let's go ahead and solidify our c. We're going to mix up a little bit of the Hansa yellow deep along with the burnt umber. Just a touch. So that it looks like this. We're going to begin plugging in some of that stamen that we see here in the center with the brown on top of it. You're going to take the very, very tippy toe of your brush to create some super fine lines right here in the middle. You can extend those petals, this statement out into the petal. Then I'm going to add a little bit. I'm going to dry this a little bit so that I can make sure that when I plug in the next layer of color, that it's not bleeding into my petal here. Continuing to build here, things are a little drier now and I can plug in some of those stamen that I see. Okay. Remember, we're not trying to capture every single statement, just the idea that something's happening there in the center. And now I'm going to dip into my burnt umber and get quite a bit of paint on the edge of my brush. And begin to in those details I see on the tip of the statement. Okay. So I'm going to leave it there for now. I can always add in more later. But that gives me a good start. And now things are dry enough that I can add the next layer. To do that, we're actually going to pick up our number six filbert brush now. We can get a little bit better control and smaller strokes than with our four in the umbra series. I'm going to begin plugging in those details using the ver sino violet at a cough sp consistency, and then I'm also going to have my number six round brush in the same consistency. I'm going to capture this stroke right here in the center. I take my number four brush blot off to extend that petal just a little bit further. And then I'm going to do the same thing on the other side. Using my number four brush to blot to lift up a little bit of the color and leaving that nice open face. I realize that the color is not exactly the same, that is okay. That's just a liberty that I'm taking. I like the shape that I'm working with, and then I'm going to just use my brush to give it a little bit more body. 8. Purple Tiger Rose Part II : This pedal has quite a bit of solid color, so I'm going to implement that here. And begin moving. This one just a little bit. I'm just going to darken up those areas that I had initially begun painting. Then I'm going to use my number six round to just give a little bit of structure here. That doesn't look like an open spot, but does in fact look a petal and then just create a few lines leading up towards the tip of the petal. You can see, it's really starting to come along very nicely. Taking my time. Make sure not to overload it with details that I can't really do. I can darken the pedal by lifting out a little bit of the color and kind of start again. But these dark details, I want to be careful about putting in too early. And then we have this pedal down below has quite a bit of color, so I'm going to sweep that through making sure that I am in the right direction here. And then I'm going to use my round brush to plug in some details in the center here. I'm going to move over to the other side. There's just a little bit of detail in this petal. I'm going to sweep through here where I see these markings. Turn my paper just a little bit so I can get the right angle. H. We have nice varied leaves or me petals here. We have one that has almost a complete color block, and then we have others that have just a little bit of detail in it. I think that really looks nice. The one area that I'm going to touch up a bit is this outer petal here and I'm just going to blend that a bit into this bottom petal to create more of just a water co. B. I'm really satisfied with that rose and where it's at. It still obviously needs a stem and some leaves, but we'll begin to plug those things in as we move along continuing to build the roses. That will conclude the purple tiger at this point, and now we will begin the next rows in the series. 9. Coral Rose: I decided to plug in a few gestural strokes here and here just to give the petal a little bit more structure. You can do the same or you can take different liberties. Moving on to our second flower, we're going to create this beautiful coral rose. We're going to use different color and we're going to mix it up together, and then we're going to pin it on its side here. We're going to make it a little bit smaller so that this is our main focus rows, and then this one will be nestled against the side here. Then we'll have the other one facing like that. A little lower here and then this one right about there, and then that'll give us room for some honeysuckle. I may even plug it on this side, since we might have end up having room over there. We'll just see how it all lays out on paper. For this rose, we are going to use our rose lake, which is this color right here. Then we're also going to put in a bit of the Hansa yellow. It should be like an orangy coral matches pretty well with that. Then we're going to decrease the value so that it's very light. You can blot off your brush and then create a new pile, something right around there, working with lightest consistency. Then we're going to put it on its side just as I showed you, so I'm going to tinker with that now. I may even layer over this petal here. We'll see how it goes. The petal I want to start with is going to be the center petal here. That'll give me a nice groundwork. I don't want to put it too high because then I'm going to end up at the same level here. I'm going to come down a little bit lower. Right about here is good and begin plugging in that shape. Again, we're working smaller, even though that petal is quite a bit bigger, I need to adjust so that my petals aren't overly large. I'm going to blot off a little bit of the paint because it's still a bit dark. Go, just using kind of what I have. And then I can continue building from there. Then I can now begin to plug in these upper petals. What you can do here is intentionally leave some white space too so you can just build the structure of it. Then if you like that white space, you can just use the filbert brush to build around it and leave gaps. This is another technique for those mas. Just working intuitively here, I have the main shape plugged in. I am going to overlap here. I'm just going to begin to play with that concept. Then when I add the opaque details that will cover a little bit of that flower. I don't want there to be so much separation that they look as though they were just planted on the page. I want them to look as they are nestled together in a bouquet. Then we have this petal that comes out. Like so. And then this very generous petal here. This is where the sketching the shape comes in handy. And I'm going to prince off the paint and just use what's already on there to finish that. Again, making modifications because I don't want the petals to be so large. And then see another petal tucked in over here, so I'm going to pull that out. And then one last puddle right around here to finish it off. Okay. I like how all of that is laying down. I'm going to just color that in a little bit. I know where my space is here, so I can when I'm ready, begin to p in those details. I could probably extend this just a bit. A little bit of color there. That's okay. We'll do the same thing here, just layer in some of that color. Then if this isn't too wet, we can continue to do that around here. Things aren't too wet, so that works. One of this is just trial and error and seeing what's and what's not. Let's begin to some of those details. I'm going to switch to my number four in the velvet touch, so I need to rinse that off real quick. Excuse me. It's a number six in the velvet touch. Here I am layering over that bottom petal. Pulling out a few of those really pretty speckles I see here along the perimeter of the pedal. My paper just a little bit. I'm going to pick up my round brush now to begin putting in a little bit of those toe markings and some sweeping lines. And here through the center as well, adding a bit of that gestural structure. Making sure I am angling those lines back to center. This pedal is almost completely blocked in color. Okay. Okay. So I like where everything is sitting. I'm going to allow that to dry and then we will come back and add that last layer of detail. I'm going to use my number six in the velvet touch continuing to build upon what I have. So I'm going to darken these areas. Can take your brush and just move along the perimeter to smooth out that petal edge. Picking up a little bit more of the Rose Lake. And now I'm going to take my number four in the Rose lake. And switching brushes again. And again, lots of brushes. So my number six in the round. I'm going to make a structural line here. Give me something to work within. This is my number four again. And my number six, adding a few structural lines again. And then I'm going to use my number four to layer on top of this rose. Really playing with the markings here. Another structural line. I'm going to take a number four brush in the Embry series and just blend that a little bit. Again, at any point, you feel like the details are becoming oppressive to the flower. You can stop. I like to add in quite a few at the get go, but then also leave room to continue building, especially because we're making a bouquet, and we don't need every single petal on every single f to be the focus or be the focus petal. But these sure are showstopper roses. That's what they should have named them, showstopper. Okay. I like where that's situated and the amount of detail we have there. We can always add a little bit more at the end, like I said, so we're going to pause there, and then we will come back for our third rows and then continue building our composition. 10. Red and Peach Rose: The biggest liberty I'll be taking with this rose is the size. You can see we have two roses that are similar in size. This one, I'm really going to make quite a bit more petit than as shown just because if I end up doing it the same size, then we can see that we have three roses that are all just looking even though they're different colors and different positionings, they're starting to look a little bit too similar. And I want to break up that similarity by adding in the contrast of size. Yes, the leaves will help us with that as well as the honeysuckle, but I definitely want there to be some differentiation here. If you haven't already clear away your palette and then we're going to begin using the permanent red light and the Hanza yellow deep. That's this color here. And a little bit of that za. That's a lot a bit of the onza. I'm going to lift that out. Blot that off. Sometimes it just sticks to the brush. Plug in a bit more of that permanent red light until we have something that's orange. Then I'm going to break that down even further to create a nice light version of that using it at its lightest consistency and lightest value. Start right out there. And then I'm just going to continue to build upon that framework. I along hair. Nice and petite. And then I'm going to add a pedal here so that we really get that sense of it being on its side. Okay. I don't want to make it too much bigger than that, or I'm going to lose the petitnes of the flower. So it's not exactly the same. I'm definitely taking a whole lot of liberties here, but I'm getting the general shape down, and I'm leaving a little bit of gap here to imagine that there's some stem work happening. Not everything needs to be up against each other, but you want to give a sense that these flowers have been assembled in a bouquet like fashion. Okay. My media is dry. Now I'm going to take my number six brush in the velvet touch series into the permanent red light at a nice opaque consistency and begin to plug in those details where I see them. I'm also going to load up my number six round with the same consistency. I have that brush ready to go, and I can work with all the brushes I want to work with. Okay. This petal here is still a bit damp. I'm going to give it a moment and begin with some of the other petals. A little bit darker than I want. I'm going to actually blot off just a little bit. Fine to have some of those dark details, but I want one more layer before I head in with the really dark color. Here we go. Some of you may even want to stop at that point, which is completely fine. We're going to get a wet here. It's ok. I put the flower here for you guys as well. If you want to work intuitively, that's fine, or if you want to use this flower to inspire some of those markings, too. Adding a few structural lines. I turn my paper just a little bit. Git at an angle here. And now I'm going to head in with that darkest consistency at the highest value. So looking at my brush, seeing that the paint is evenly distributed, and now I can cover some of those markings using my number six round as well. Mm. Try and stand back if you can and look at it without being so intensely close to it and take a moment now to see the composition as a whole. Even though there might be a ton of details within this flower, you may want to invoke a little bit of subtlety here so that things aren't feeling quite so intense or overwhelming, or you may just want to go full and add all the details. It's completely up to you, but I just as your instructor, just want to invite you to stand back, take a moment to look at the piece as a whole and decide what you want to do next. Making sure that I have things aiming in the right direction so that I can get a sense that the flower is moving like so. If you want to, even though you cannot see the center of this flower here because it's hidden behind these petals. If you wanted to just imagine that it's sitting more like this and p in some more details right here and I may end up doing that once I put it all together, that is an option as well. Sometimes I'll do that because the center of the flower really does give a whole lot of comprehension. Flowers. Sometimes when they're just very petal laden, a sense of just understanding the flower can be lost. We also do that with structure and posturing. But the center really does help to just ground the eye and helps move around the composition. Again, another option for you, if you like. Just about done adding details here, just poking at it now. And I like that. You might also even like just doing the two layers of detail you can see it ends up being a very striking contrast to have the light and then immediately the dark. It doesn't look so much like that in real life. That would definitely be a pretty distinct artist liberty, but that is fine, if that's something you want to do. It really does make for a dramatic effect. I'm going to pause here, and then we're going to come back and we're going to add some stems and some leaves and then we will plug in the honeysuckle in our final class project. 11. Stems and Leaves: You can see I've pinched off a few of the leaves and I placed them at an angle where I feel like it's going to give a really nice sense of flow and direction to the piece. We're going to imagine that there's stems coming down the center here, curving here. This one's going to come right down the center and this one will have a little bit of motion moving up and towards the right, and we'll continue with that motion by ping in a leaf here, leaving a little bit of room for honeysuckle. And then a nice leaf coming just short of here, so having different lengths and making sure that not everything is running up at the exact same spot on the page. Then having this stem with the leaves just shooting at a dissonant angle, providing a little bit of direction or even mis direction. And not having everything moving in the upper direction, I'd like to have some leaves that are giving a break to the piece. Then we may add in a few more details we'll see, but this will be the general structure and layout. Then we'll also plug in some honeysuckle up here. We'll probably do it highest up here and then a little bit of lower down here just to give that sense of there being a highest point and a lowest point. If you have not already, this is a really great time. For you to clean off your palette and empty out your water cup and also rinse your brushes because they will probably be saturated with pink and red. Then you can come back and put a little bit of the undersea green and the green gold on your palette you should still have a little bit of the burnt umber two. We're going to be mixing all of that together. We're going to start with both of these colors. Let's go ahead and pull a little bit of the undersea green onto the palette, mix in some of the green gold. We're just going to mix that until we have something that's similar to what we see here. These are two of my most favorite colors to use on their own or together. I have a little bit too much undersea green here. Blotting off. There we go. There we have very nice green. I'm going to break create another pile decreasing the value. Now there's two different ways to do the leaves. Actually, there's a variety of ways to do the leaves. There's two different ways that I create the leaves. I use my number four in the umbria to create that sense of structure. Then sometimes I'll use the belly of the brush to sweep in those little spikes that we noted on the edge of the leaf there where it's like I said, just has a little bit of a spiked edge to it, or you can use your round brush and do the same thing, just creating that base structure and then filling in the leaf with paint. All right. Just making sure my piles are ready. Now I am going to move the way and add in the stems first using my lighter pile. I'm going to start with the center stem. Imagining that it's originating somewhere around here and pull that. Then I'm going to imagine that this stem is kind of plugged in somewhere around here, we're going to come out right about there, and I'm going to have my stems at different lengths. And then this stem is coming right about here. We're going to have that one right about there. Then let's begin to build in a little bit more structure. Okay. So that gives us a nice groundwork. And then we will be adding details to thicken the stems and then to add some shadows as well. I'm in to pick up my number four brush in the umbra series and begin to plug in some leaves here. I'm creating the structure first, and then I can use the side of the brush and just come up in these jagged motions. Just like so. Then I can use my round brush to create a stem here. I'm going to build out just a little further here. And then I'm going to continue doing the same thing. Fill that in and use the toe of the brush to come against the edge. And then I can take my number six brush and come in here for a stem. If I want to do a little wet and wet and continue working. Okay. Adding a bit more of that green and the coughs are consistency, and I can even add it around the edges if I want to. Turning my paper. I get a good angle here. Imagine it sort of disappearing behind that se. And then We can increase the thickness of the stem there if we like, add it in a few more details. We can wait till things are dry and then add a few more details as well. Just continue to work a little bit wet and to wet. Now I will begin p in those leave. I believe it was this one, here. Nice long leaf. Sketching out the general shape of it, and then using my brush. And then I can take my number six brush, come back, Then we'll just kind of imagine that that leaf is disappearing behind the rose. Go adding a little bit of shadow and depth down here at the bottom. Having fun with the wet and wet. And then I'm going to begin adding more shadows on the stem, using the cough ser consistency. Using those gestural markings we so love. To create a nice thick main stem. I'm going to take my number six brush and dip it into the burnt umber and add in a touch of brown to the base of the stem had. Okay? And then I believe this was the leaf. I can't remember, actually. I might have been this one. But we're going to angle it in such a way that it's kind of coming down here. And bending backwards. So I'm going to kind of create the stem for that. So that's just like so. Adding a few more shadows here at the base of the stem. I'm going to cover that stem. Since this would be the top. Being really loose and gestural here, just sort of indicating that a stem is happening. I'm going to do the same thing up here. And we can take the toe of the brush and create some veins. The veins help to really give the leaf a sense of structure, although they look beautiful, just using the wet and to wet as well. Completely up to you how you want to lay it out. This is my favorite way to do leaves with the umbria, building the shape and then using the top, the brush to create those sort of serrated edges of the leaves, especially for rose leaves. This leaf is still a bit wet. But we'll go ahead and plug in a few details anyway. I can see it's really starting to come together. I'm going to do the same thing with my number four brush, and I'm going to work into green gold a little bit more so that there's a little bit of color difference between this set of leaves and the others. I'm going to turn my paper around so that I can get a really good sense of direction. I'm going to start here and work my way back. We built the structure. Now we're taking the toe of the brush and just moving an up and down motion. Continuing to turn the paper. It's okay that we're overlapping here. It looks great. I'm going to add a smaller leaf here. Okay. So we have a really good range of motion. I'm going to pull you back so you can see it. So we have a really nice sense of direction and flow. Things spreading out, but we're not too close against the sides of the page. There's still room to add in details while keeping the breath of the piece. I'm going to go ahead and lay in a few veins here. You can do the same if you like. All things are wet. I This leaf is already dry, so some of the vans will look great. Can you just poking at it now, fixing things up. A lot of what I want to do, I have to wait until it's completely. I like to move a, stay. Let's put in a few shadows. There we go. That looks great. Same thing here. Creating a nice sense of flow and movement. Then down here at the bottom, we can do the same. Layering on top. Then when we add the honeysuckle, it's really going to come together so beautifully because that's going to add that bit of delicacy, a little fragility to the bouquet. Right now, it feels very hardy, very robust, just the colors, the shape, the movement. By adding a smaller filler flower, we're going to add so just interest and fascination to the piece. I'm going to pause there, and then I may come back and work a few more veins into these leaves, but we're going to start focusing on the honeysuckle in our class project. 12. Class Project: Honeysuckle Practice: Welcome to the class project. As much as I wish I had some honeysuckle to bring into the studio with me. Unfortunately, it is not growing in my area right now, so I am going to have to resort to using a few inspiration pictures on the web. I decided that because our roses are so show stopping, that a bit of delicacy and fragility within the piece is going to add, like I said, so much interest and fascination. But I do want to restrain a bit with the color palette. I've decided that rather than featuring some of the pinks that you might see out in nature, I'm going to use a really limited yellow palette. I'm also going to plug in a different color than originally anticipated. We're actually going to use it in addition to. We're going to use the Naples yellow that I was mentioning a little earlier, which will also look great in your roses if you wanted something just a little bit lighter. I'll make sure to mention this in all of the class supplies. You can always check there to be sure what exactly you're going to need for the class because sometimes I'm in the moment, and I decide, you know what? That's just probably going to work a little bit better with the color palette that we've already built into our existing composition. The honeysuckle, when done gesturally is very simple. It has a really beautiful stamen. Which you can see highlighted here where we're going to inject a lot of movement within the stroke using our number three brush here. We haven't used that yet. We're going to take the tip of the brush and we're going to create these lovely slender strokes to create the stamen. Then we're going to use our number six in the velvet touch, we may even use the four, we'll see how it goes to create these paddle like petals. You can see that there's this petal that's curved over and then from there, you usually have two to three more petals, and then you have these stamen that are pretty large with the little balls on the end of them. We're really going to pare it down. Make it simple. I just wanted something to fill in the honeysuckle being the June birth flower was perfect. We're going to practice just a little bit here together before we plug it into our main piece. If you have not already, go ahead and get out a piece of paper. I'm just going to use the backside of a practice piece here. And if you don't already have it on your palette, which you won't because it's the first I'm telling you of it. Go ahead and dab a little bit of the Naples yellow and mix your number four into the paint here. And then let's create a pile here. Then let's use the number four, Filbert in the velvet touch. I'm going to rinse off some of the paint here and dip into the hansa yellow. Then I'm also going to put a little bit of the as into the. So that it's a bit more complimentary. The Naples is very sticky, especially if you're using the Mmeri blue brand, but I do like it because it a little bit goes a long way. You can see the two different colors here. We have a cough syrup consistency and more of a broth consistency here. Let's go ahead and just put a few practice strokes on the page. If I were to do that initial curved over pedal, it would look something like this. It's curved and then if I take my number six, we have something that's like this. I could even do it three petal. You can do a little wet into wet here, which looks absolutely lovely. It just means that you need to have your brushes pre loaded and ready to go. Then from there, we use our number three brush to dip in two, and I'm not going to use a white stamen as shown here. I'm going to use a brown. I'm going to dip into the burnt umber and create some really beautiful slender strokes here. I put a little bit of movement into them. Then we can put the balls on the end if we like. Let's go ahead and do that a few more times. We have that initial curved over petal, and then we have these very paddle like. Color. Like so. That stroke is really just going to be you're going to inject some movement into it like that, and then come back. Or if you want to create more of that paddle, you can just do a straight and then slender here and shape it. And that really gives a sense of paddle. Was this is more of an S shape. You're bending the brush, rotating your wrist as you're making the stroke. I put a little bit more of the Naples yellow onto my palette. Something more like that. And when we cluster them, we're going to put them together going in different directions. We might have a honeysuckle that looks more like this where it's really spread out. Then we take our number three brush to put a little bit of movement back into Or we might have one that looks like this. Let's say we're facing in this direction, nice paddle stroke here and there, and then we have maybe a smaller here, and then we imagine that this is the base. And then we can tuck in some stems here. Just get familiar with those strokes. It's just your simple filbert stroke. Maybe practice a few of those little three where you have a large petal and then you're using the side of the brush, like so, and then you can vary that out to the side, out to the side and maybe in through the middle. Then maybe you're practicing one here, one here and one here. That would be a honeysuckle that's facing down. And then we can also obviously plug in that Hanza we wanted to do like that curved over petal, where we're shaping it, so, and then using like that, and then we would plug in the stamen here. Different ways, I would say, We will help if you can take a few moments to just practice those strokes and just move through how they lay out. You can see there's a whole bunch of different varieties here. Here you can get some reference pictures out and plug in any of honeysuckle that you like. But we're really going to go for something that's simple. We're not going to overdo it here with the details. That'll give you a sense of just what we're going to do. Now I'm going to pause here and then we'll regroup with our main piece. 13. Class Project: Once again, these are the brushes we're going to be using for the petals. This is a number four and number six in the velvet touch. It's a fill bird, and then we're also going to add in the heritage round in a size three for the stamen. Just looking at our piece, everything's nice and dry. We're going to go ahead and add some honeysuckle right down here, and then we're also going to plug in a little bit up here to create the highest peak of the painting. I'm going to begin with that ruffled over petal, and then plug in a few of those paddle petals. You can vary with how many petals you have. You can do two or three. Bunch of different directions, will be great. And then also vary in your colors too. Make sure not to go too close to the edge of the paper here. Apologies, my friends. My camera suddenly shut off. Fortunately, I keep a very close eye on it. Having had experienced filming 30 to 40 minute segments and come to find out it was not even recording. I keep a very close eye on it and was able to catch myself just a few flowers in, so we didn't miss too much here, but I wanted to just let you know what happen, didn't want you to think I jumped ahead without you. Added a few more of the honeysuckle here on the left hand side, and now I'm going to continue to build up into the right area. Bringing you in just a little bit closer here. And now let's go ahead and plug in our petals. And some smaller pedals right here up towards the right, adding just the right level of detail filling in. Let's go ahead and plug in some stems now and then we can continue to build on what we have after we see how things are laying down with the added stems. I'm just going to use that undersea green mixture. I'm going to use my number six round brush and begin plugging in those stems. Create a little cap here at the base, and then I can bring that back through here if you want to connect it all the way through. I'm also going to add just a few little gal strokes, some thinner lines to break up the blockiness that we see here within the roses and the leaves. I'm going to pull those stems through here. Just to create a little bit more delicacy down here. And then I'm going to do the same for these stems, bringing them all the w to the bottom here. So we have a nice thick little cluster here at the base. Blot off this little area here so that it looks as though it's tucked behind those leaves. And that really does add just a whole lot of motion and movement. I'm not going to get very complicated with the leaves, the honeysuckle does have a generous leaf. I'm going to leave it with these thin strokes here, just adding a bit of delicacy. You can see by creating different levels of heights and creating a fuller stem area down here below, it really does just add a lot of volume to the piece, but also at the same time, a lot of delicacy to the piece too. We're going to add this statement here in just a moment, but I wanted to pull you back so you could see it at large here with these generous row stems and then the thinner honeysuckle here. And then you can continue playing with the honeysuckle if you want to build into this right hand side here, if you have a lot of room. Just remember that negative space is part of the composition. You're not trying to fill every little nook and cranny, but just building in flow and movement within the piece. I'm going to bring you in closer again and we're going to dip into that raw me burnt umber with our number three brush, and complete the painting by adding the stamen. You don't need a super intense consistency here. Just a nice broth is great. Again, it's just to add a little bit of motion into the painting and a bit of delicacy as well. Okay. Go ahead and move to the other side. And plugging in those little ceilings at the top. Do you be sure that your media is dry before you do this or it will all start to bleed together. I made quite a mess of my painting here when I was splashing in water. So you can see quite a few markings. They actually show up a lot more intense than they do in person. I will have to work the paper to alleviate some of that there, but if you've seen my previous classes, you know my trick for that, I just use a filbert brush and make sure it's clean and devoid of all color, and then I begin to agitate the paper using the filbert brush, lifting off the color and allowing it to dry. If you made any mistakes along the way, that is definitely workable. These are not all that dark, but essentially just take a little bit of water and go over the areas. And as it dries, you won't be able to see it. Just make sure your paint brush is, in fact devoid of color. I like to have a separate brush that I only use for this. I did make sure to rinse this one very well. But you can see all those little water marks are gone. And as it dries, you won't be able to see it one bit. My friends. At this point, I would call the painting complete. Now, of course, there are always moments where we want to continue poking at it, and that is all will and good. You will always learn something through taking a painting all the way through your curiosity. But I also, as I mentioned, during the class, take a step back, look at the painting at large and figure out what needs to be added or what you feel like you should be adding to help serve the overall piece. Hope you had a lot of fun with these roses. They're very complicated and very intricate. I'm really stretching you here with this material. I hope that feels good and right. But if there are any questions, you're always more than happy to leave me a comment and I will get back to those as soon as possible. Also appreciate your reviews if you wouldn't mind taking the time to follow through and just let me know your thoughts about the class. That would be absolutely wonderful. Until next time, happy creating to you.