Watercolor Snapdragon

1. Introduction & Supplies: A warm and big hello and welcome back to you. And happy 2022 to those of you who are joining me real-time in January as we have just started the New Year. I am so excited about our class today. It's gonna be a good one just in time for us to start preparing for spring. We are going to be creating what have been called sorbet Snapdragon. Don't you just love that name? It just conjures up so many beautiful images and colors. And we're really going to have fun with this palette today. It's gonna be a busy palette, which we will talk about. And I'll cover this because I feel like there's always new people joining us and I never want people to feel like they just poke their head into a class and didn't miss the first 15 minutes. So I'll say that this is a beaconing slash intermediate class because of the amount of colors that we'll be using and creating blends. So it's going to be a little complex just because we'll be having multiple brushes and blend is going at the same time. But the actual subject matter, we're going to keep quite simple and gestural. If you have taken some of my previous classes, you'll know all about gestural and what that means and how to implement it. If you do not, and this is unfamiliar to you. I do invite you to head back to one of my earlier classes and just work through some of the material before you had n. Alright, so let's cover our supplies. If you have an iPad or some other device on which you can look up a few pictures for inspiration that would be great. I am using this site called flower mock. See, where this sorbet orange snap dragons are featured. We are also going to be using Canson 140 pound cold press paper. I talked about this all the time. It is inexpensive and it's a fabulous beginning, even intermediate paper, one because it's inexpensive and you're not going to be afraid to mess it up. And two, because it has a really medium, fine, excuse me, a medium tooth to it. So meaning it's got a little bit of texture but not too much. It will also pick up some of that just a beautiful texture behind the painting. Next, we're going to be using a variety of Princeton brushes. I'd like you to have anywhere between four to five brushes. I'll be excuse me, four to six, I'll be using five if I need another one, I'll pick it up, I have it off to the side. We're gonna be using multiple blends, as I already mentioned. And so we're going to have different colors loaded on each brush. It might get a little bit confusing. But here is the rub. We are going to be using such complimentary colors that it's really not going to be a huge deal if you end up picking up a pinkish color instead of a gold color, they all work so beautifully together and we're not going to panic or stress about it, but we will try and keep our blend somewhat separated so that we can create these beautiful merges and bleeds. So that's with our brushes asked for size. I love a size six to eight, even attend round. Use what you have and don't forget about that either. The other thing we're gonna be using our paints, of course, and we have a variety of brands. We're gonna be using a few of Winsor and Newton Cotman, the sap green and the sepia. And then we'll be using a few. Daniel Smith, we have green apatite, genuine new gamboge, and rose matter permanent. And then we will also be using a few of my married blue. This is green, gold and Zeno. Zeno violet, clearly Italian, clearly not myelin. Which beautiful colors though, if you do not have the same brand of colors again, please do not fret. Find something similar to what we'll be using. And the effect is going to be just as beautiful. Just make sure you are using artist grade paints. If you're using the really cheapo ones, we're not going to have the same results. So keep that in mind. Winsor and Newton Cotman is fantastic, great beginner and intermediate Brand. Alright, obviously we're going to need a palette. And actually for this class, I would like you to have two pallets or one extra large one. I am going to have a palette with all of our main colors on it. Then I'm going to have a clean palette for additional mixing. So we'll do a little mixing here, but we're definitely going to need to utilize more space and have the extra room to just merge and blend our colors. Alright, that's it for our supplies. Paper towel to blog off on and a cup of water. The only time I'm gonna ask you to rinse it is when we switched from using these beautiful pinks, corals and golds to green. Just because you don't want, you don't want your green and turning pink, it's not pretty. All right, so let's head into the next step. 2. Discussing the Palette: Okay, So let's talk palette briefly. I've done some of the work for us that way we could skip this step and just kind of launch you right into creating the bleed, the blends that we're gonna be using for this class. However, I do want to just go over this. If you would like to pause the video and do this separately, just so you have this, you absolutely can, but I will keep this hopefully within screen view. As I'm working, I'll be working on a nine by 11 piece of paper or excuse me, nine by 12. And hopefully I'll be able to keep some of the colors in the frame. But if you wanted to take a moment and swatch out these colors just so you understand the base of the foundation from where we are working. It won't hurt. But these are not the colors we're gonna be using to create our blends will have a separate page for that, and that's what I'll walk you through next, but I didn't want to just go over them briefly. So we have rose matter permanent, and we have ZnO violet, we have green gold, rich green gold. We have new gamboge, green apatite, genuine sap green. And sap, yeah. That's the foundation with which we'll be working. Obviously, we're going to mix all of these colors up and create something very unique and cheerful and festive and all of those good things, all right. 3. Creating Blends: Okay, As I mentioned before, we are gonna have two pallets will have our working palette here with all of the base colors. And we'll do a little mixing here where we can. And then we'll also have this additional palette where we will pull colors together and make new creations. So let's go ahead and start swatching out what these colors are going to look like so that you can understand them. We'll start with the rose matter permanent. Let's make a nice little pile. I'm using a number eight round brush. This is a six. My mistake. The Aqua Elite, just a tad bit bigger than the six heritage. Just for reference, I loved the heritage. It's super pointy, great for that fine tip. This has a little bit more of a beefy build to it, but still quite precise. And it really depends on the state of your brushes. I worked mine pretty hard. Alright, so we're going to mix a pile of two broth consistency right about there. If you have not taken a class in which I talk about consistencies and water ratios that is absolutely crucial for this class. So please review that material before moving forward. All right, and then we're gonna pick up a little bit of the rich green gold. And we're gonna make kind of an orangey coral. A little bit more water. Add a little bit more pink back into it. I do like orange and we're going to need it. I'm not typically an orange fan unless I'm doing some berries or personal ones, but we're going to need it for these. So I'm warming to it. Alright. Then once you have it thoroughly mixed, go ahead. Move over to your paper and do a little test swatch. Bring it down about halfway, rinse your brush, and then fill in the rest with water so you can see the gradient. You can see from the highest value to the lowest value, meaning more water, excuse me, less water or more water. And then you can even go over again just to see how dark it could be. As I showed you in that first picture, where we swapped out the colors. It's good to move it through its color capabilities so that you understand like okay, so I can get a really pretty personal and orange and then I can also get a very faint peach out of that color. So in essence, each color blend is going to double as two colors. So you'll have, I mean, you could have a medium color, but there's really not enough definitive difference between here and here. Somewhat. We can use this at this highest and lowest value to create, like I said, this peach and then then this really pretty kind of burnt orange. So keep that in mind. You can have a third palette and start working with a lot of different values. So if you wanted to have this color and then break it down even further, you would start a new pile adding water. Now you have this color, one color to color. But just to keep things somewhat simplified, I'm not gonna be going that far. That would be an advanced class and something that perhaps if there's enough interest I can cover. But for now I'm trying to meet most of my community where they're at. And that's with beginning slash intermediate classes. That's our first color blend. Let's go ahead and dip into the Arsenault high lit and then mix in a little bit of the new gamboge. We kinda have a more intense version, so I'm going to add a little bit more pink back into it. Now we have more of a fuchsia. It's going to be a matter of your preference. And I want to really encourage you to not feel married to my blends. If you want more pink and yours, great. If you want more yellow and yours, great. My only request is that they are different enough so that you can tell they are separate colors. Sky is the limit there. Brushing off the excess paint, dipping into the water to finish the color, kind of dip in one more time because it's still looking a little bit dark. Then we'll finish that color. Let's go ahead and make notes here. I know what these blends are usually, but let's make sure we haven't written down. So we have rose matter plus green gold. Then we have violet plus new gamboge. I'm going to sop up a little bit of the color here just to give us a little more room on our palette. Then I'm rinsing off between just FYI, but my water is it's kind of looking like our first little swatch here. I don't mind if you want really freshwater, you can rinse rinse out the cup every two or three colors. I don't really find that it affects the the value of the painting, but it's something to keep in mind. Just keep an eye on your water as it's changing. Let's do a little bit of green gold, a little bit of new gamboge together. I'm going to bring out my practice page. So I think kind of mirror what I have here. Just checking to make sure that Let's go ahead and pick up this new gamboge and rich green gold rinsing off and finishing it with water. We have green gold plus new gamboge. I'm gonna move over to the other palette now, in the certain situations, I'm going to use the color as it is. So this is a little bit of the rose matter. Just so we have it up against. I've already done this on the other palette, but I wanted you to see it too. Just so you can kinda see how these colors are playing with each other. So this is the rose matter. Just as is. You can see, there's not a huge difference between this color and this color. This one has a little bit more orange in it. You can see I still had a little bit of my new gamboge and green gold. And so I'm picking up a little bit of the orange here. This is what I'm talking about when I'm saying, it really doesn't matter when working with these colors. If there's leftover on your brush, will use different brushes just so that we're using the correct color. Initially. However, if when we are in the middle of painting and we're just with the spirit, I like to call it. You don't have to worry about, Oh gosh, this is running into that or I still had some of that on my brush. It's all going to look really beautiful together and just enjoy this process. Then for ZnO billet will do the same. I'm going to play with the color value here and add a little bit more water and bring it down. This is mainly what we're gonna be working with. I may pick up a little bit of new gamboge as it is at occasionally, if I'm wanting to add a little pop of fresh color. But for the most part I'll use the blend. But I want you to also just feel free to use all of these colors. Think of them as a family and they all just work and look so lovely together. So that's gonna be our working palette. Like I said, make sure you have enough room because you're gonna be moving back and forth between picking up this color on your brush and then moving over to this palette. And you're going to want to have something that's close and comfortable and just get comfortable. That's the most important thing. Alright, let's move on. 4. Studying Shape and Making the Petals: Some are fully popped and showing all of their curves and arches. Others are kind of medium, wrinkly, more of a fluffy bowl shape. And then some are in Kernel, not yet popped or just slightly popped with a little bit of the kernel still attached. So using that, that comparison really frees me up to be like, Okay, popcorn, I can do popcorn at rather than, oh, I'm gonna paint a Snapdragon. So it's really important that in my classes we talked about this and we not just sweep all of that anxiety and overwhelmed that creating art can stir up creating is beautiful, beautiful process and a beautiful thing that we are so privileged to be able to do. However, if we cannot get our minds straight, we lose the joy when we're creating and just sort of mar the experience and taint what it should be and what it should bring to our lives. So I know I'm rambling a little bit, but it is crucial. It's important that you come here and you feel comfortable. Yes, we want to learn something. Yes, I want to improve your skills and help you be a stronger more it stronger technician and be able to. Things that you couldn't do before you came to this class. But with that, just as important is I want you to move through the lessons on any lesson with a sense of peace. So let's move into creating Popcorn. Go ahead and pick up one of your brushes can be number six or eight or ten, whatever it is that you're using. I'm going to brush off a little bit of extra for Xeno violet that I somehow gathered on the shaft. And really doesn't matter what color we use first. But let's just go ahead and pick up some of that. Rose matter. And green gold. It's already mixed here for us again, I'm not really worrying too much about it being the precise color. As long as I have something I have something definitive here, That's really all that matters to me. So I'm going to pick that up kind of an orangey coral. Then I'm going to use another brush, number six. And I'm going to load that with our gold color, new gamboge, rich green gold. I'll have these two colors working together immediately, working wet into wet. And then I will pick up a third color. Put these here as well. So you can kind of see. I don't want to cover that. Here we go. I appear at the top making sure my brush brush is fresh. I almost said breast there you guys not even going to try and hide it. Brush and fresh came out as breast. I'm definitely not going to edit that out. So enjoy. Let's head into this popcorn shape. I'm gonna take my brush and I'm just moving it gesturally. Creating what I see is like this first sort of lift up of the popcorn kernel. And then I'm gonna come down here and just create some lines from where I want there to be some orientation, some, some negative space in a whitespaces is very important in watercolor. We don't always need to use it, especially when we're working gestural. However, it really does give a sense of ease and shape as you can see in this petal right here. It really helps to just kind of give that whole petal as a whole sense of just balance and variety. Come down here, just using a little bit more water. Add a little bit more. Here's the thing I'm going to take a few liberties because although this forward doesn't have a whole lot of little fine edges, it doesn't some areas, it's more just kind of a clump. I'm gonna take some liberties here and going to implement what I call flare, which is just these little kind of gestural marks along the side using the toe of the brush. And that just gives it a little bit more shape. Picking up the gold now and heading into the middle here, you'll see that the media is quite wet and that color runs perfectly into here. And now we have something that is a pretty good blend. Definitely need some time to rest. While that's happening. I'm going to pick up a third brush and head into my ZnO violet just as is at broth consistency. So go ahead and do that on your palette. I'll show you what mine looks like. This is broth. And I'm just going to touch here along the edges and fill in some of the already wet area. Not too much because I want to have the initial color. We laid down, that green gold mixture and then also that Virgina violet at the tip. So there's our first petal, petal flower. It's hard to think. I think of the Snapdragon as being the flower, but there are also little flowers along the way. So whether they're interchangeable, if I call it petal or flower, you'll know, I mean, I mean this I'm going to create a different shape. A few of them over here just to keep them separate, but to keep in mind that we're gonna be putting these eventually on a stock. It's going to be important to learn how to tuck in flowers behind flowers so that they're not all just like stuck on the page without any sort of interaction with one another. That's the most important thing when creating painting a flower that has a lot of busy little parts going on. They need to be able to interact with each other. And there needs to be a sense of distance. And even if you can't or don't want to create that with a lot of detail. You can do that with positioning of the flowers and the shape of the flowers. All right, This time let's start with my little trick to, to keep denote what I have on my brushes to just take it and run it across the palate real quick that way I'm not like, oh, was this the one that had for Xeno violet? It's just a really quick swoop and I'm like, okay, yeah, that's the one I wanted. All right, let's go ahead and create one that's facing downward. Remember Popcorn? Popcorn can be any shape, but this is what we'll attempt. Just kind of dragging the brush coming up on the toe and through the belly as I work, going back and forth, really moving that brush around so that I don't get the same shape over and over again. This is something that takes time and practice, but you'll get it adding a little bit of that flare. And I don't want the flowers looking too similar. So I'm going to keep this one a little bit smaller and actually do a connection here. Then let's pick up the rose matter and the green gold and pop that right there in the middle. We can even create a little line in the middle here and pull it into the rest of the petal. And I go back here so you can kind of see these are separate colors. I wanted to get a close-up of the popcorn, so to speak. But let's go back to our inspiration picture as well. So there you have our sorbet, snap dragons. You can see there's pink, yellow, and then orange. If we're not giving the colors, assigning them names all within the same given flower. Go ahead and pick up another brush, and let's pop in a little rich green gold just as it is. Let it touch the top petal and also these bottom petals. Then that obviously needs to rest. And so now what you can decide, it's your decision is whether or not it needs to be a little bit darker. And what you can do is wait for the media to dry and then add in more color. I prefer when working with this style to not go dark too soon. I feel like that's something we could probably do later on and add a little bit of darker flair to the flower. But these colors are so beautiful and so complex because they're all three colors in each flower. I don't really feel like we need to go one step further. That's just my personal preference. But obviously as you work and just feel like I said, the spirit moving as you're creating, It's completely up to you. Alright, let's go ahead and pick up a little bit of the rose matter all on its own. We'll go ahead and create a closed popcorn kernel. Little line here coming up on the brush to create something that's kind of thick over here, the little line. And then will come on top of it and create the petals. Pick up the green, gold and new gamboge and blend those two together. Some can be very simple like this one. You know, that that really is something that you want to attempt because if you have every single flower with all of this flare, nothing's gonna stand out. I know there's this tendency to make each flower super-strong and count, but you have to think of this painting as a whole and not an individual piece when you're working with something like an orchid. Or a rose, It's one flower and you're creating each little bit within this one flower, but with a flower like this where it's more clustering again, you have to think about the interaction between your elements. That's a nice variety here we have some different colors and I feel like they're all kind of working well together. If you wanted, you could come on the side and just add a little bit of pedal showing just to close it off. Then could do the same on this side, just kinda showing you different options here. But obviously nothing needs to be permanent. Let's go ahead and do one more. Pick up. The rose matter and the green golden new gamboge mixture. Let's do similar to what we did in this one. I'm going to create one kind of moving giant petal. Just using the toe of my brush to kind of swoop to the side with a simple stroke. Come up over here with a little tail, then move down through here. Creating little lines, kinda like the ease of details you would see in a popcorn if you were to really take it and study it here. And then this is quite large. When we're working, we probably won't paint quite so big. So you have to keep that in mind as well. A one large flower like this wouldn't be a problem. It would be super lovely, but you just wouldn't want all the flowers to be that large or you're going to lose a sense of how they are thick at the bottom and then gradually get smaller as they work their way to the top. Just kinda dragging the brush here. And now I'm going to dip into the green, gold, and new gamboge and do some blending here. But these colors run into each other. Just kind of making connections here. Here we have the top petal, then here we have the one that's kind of folding out in the middle and then we have these bottom petals here. This would be probably one of the more complex petals. Can add a little bit more flair to it. Making a little connections here using the toe of your brush, just dragging things, keeping it gestural. Then let's go ahead and do a simple sideways using the green gold. Picking up a little bit of the router ZnO violet all on its own. Pumping it in there. I'm going to help kind of work it through. Again, like I said, I advise leaving some flowers, just really simple like that. This one looks like it's folding, folding in an upward. And for the most part we're gonna be facing our flowers going outwards because that's how snap dragons tend to lay on the page. But this could, pedal could easily work over here coming out from this one. Let's go ahead now that we've done these separately kind of fill in the gaps here with different positionings, different sizes using all of the same colors that we've already previously discussed. Let's do that in the next video just to take a little break here. She got your hands and stretch. 5. Conneting the Flowers: Okay, I'm gonna come in a little tighter here. You won't be able to see exactly which color I'm picking up, but I will talk about it as I'm using it so that you can follow along exactly with me or you can just use the creations that you have on your palette. But I wanted to just kind of come in a little bit close those who are working on a smaller device. You can just see how we are stitching all of this together. Alright, let's go ahead and pick up a little bit. The rose matter. I'm going to create a flower right here coming sideways. I'm making that first little mark just to kind of give it some framework. I'm going to come down here and then fill in here, kind of dragging my brush a little bit. So you have this sort of emerging when we put a stock in here and a stem and here it's going to move even better together. But if you want, you can always run it up against the edge that it really looks like it's touching. That looks great too. It's really your preference. Sometimes distance is nice like on this side to create a little sense of peace, a little bit of separation. And then other times I like to kind of run it right into it. You can even take your brush, kind of roll over the paint and then now you can't really tell where one petal ends and one begins. So that's a tip and technique that you can use throughout the painting. When you are connecting everything together with this paper, it stays wet for so long that it's very forgiving. If things were even dry, you can still use your brush to do little things like that. All right, let's pick up our rows matter and new gamboge. And I'm just going to pop in here with just a little bit of color in the middle. Just dragging the toe of the brush through the middle, not really making too many connections here so that there's a little bit of white. Just more of like a center. Now, this doesn't really look like a Snapdragon petal. But in conjunction with the ones that do where we've taken a little bit more care. It's going to fit in magnificently, I promise. I'm gonna keep this one simple and just leave it right there. When I'm trying to think about where I want to put flowers, I have to think about, okay, what's where are we ending and where are we? Which direction are we aiming it with a Snapdragon. They intend to either bend either right or left, and then they come down and have a really big stalk with lots of really beautiful green foliage here at the bottom. So keeping that in mind as I'm working so that when we get there, that feels just a little bit more like we prepared for that. We don't want anything that's coming out super far. In fact, when we're working on the final project together, we'll keep in mind, we want to keep things narrow here. I mean, there's definitely some big blooming here, but we have to keep in mind the size of paper that we're using. I'll be using 11 by 15 paper at that point so we can get a little bit more of the whole shape and cents and scope of this magnificent flower rather than trying to fit it here. But I liked the size because it fits in the frame. I can come in close and show you guys all the details. Picking up a little bit of orange. And I'm gonna come fill in. Here. Again. I'm going to create little shape here. Touching on this side and on this side. Really getting a sense of balance here. And then picking up the Xeno violet. Use utilizing it in a little bit of a higher value. So this is not quite broth, it's more along the SERP consistency. You can do that by just poking into the color with the toe of your brush and not dragging it out and adding water. Doing that on a few of the flowers really helps to keep the eye attracted. Quite wet there. So I'm gonna stop poking it and just leave it right there. Come down again using the same color. But this time I am going to pull it out on the palette so that it's back to broth. Excuse me. I'm going to flip up this petal here, kind of doing a little V-shape so that we have something that's kind of lifting up. Then I'm gonna come down and fill out the bottom portion. A little bit of flair here. Keep things small. While that's resting. Let's pick up a little bit. Of the rose matter and green or excuse me, yeah, rich green, gold. And head into the middle here. Pulling it out a little bit for this petal. Then I'm going to also add the rich green gold, as is. Just kind of letting those colors do their thing. You can see over here having a little bit more structure. Something a little sleeker really does lend itself to being beside a flower that looks like this where things are. I'm not necessarily less structure, but just more clumpy and big. So having that variety is really key to creating and maintaining the composition. Let's go ahead and do one more. This will be about how many flowers we would do when creating that middle portion of the Snapdragon here. And then we would start to get a little bit smaller working into opened bud and then barely opened bud and then no open bud. So we'll pause here. Let's do two more. I'm going to use new gamboge. Do a nice flower here in the middle. Again with the V coming out to the side. Just creating a little bit of shape and structure here where I imagine like a little fluffy center to be. Then picking up the rows manner as is touching along here. I'm going to blend that yellow and pink together so it turns more of coral, but then I'll leave it more of a pink on this side. Adding a little bit more flair. Then let's move up here. Picking up a little bit of the new gamboge. Creating that V, create the bottom portion. We imagine this one kind of poking out to the side here so we won't do too much work here. Picking up a little bit of the rose matter. Give it a tiny bit of flair for structure. There you have it. That's pretty much going to be the body of our Snapdragon. And then we're going to start working into creating petals that are closed. And then just gradually getting smaller and smaller as we work our way up. Take a break, stretch out those fingers, and let's come back for some more. 6. Studying Shape and Creating the Buds: I wanted to show you this image one more time before we head into creating the buds. As you can see, we were really orange and gold when we're working down in this area. But as we head up, we get into some darker sort of fuchsia, magenta colors and then similar like dusty rose and then a very faint pink. So we'll be mirroring that as much as possible to kind of get the sense of the whole sorbet in the mixing together. So I did want to just point that out. You can choose to use all the same colors we've been using. But I think the overall effect is going to look really pretty if we follow along here with the image. All right, I'm going to tuck this off to the side now. Go ahead and start creating some buds. Go ahead and pick up your brush. Let's get into the violet. Once you to have that on your palette at both. Cough syrup consistency and brought consistency. That way we can kind of pull from both. Taking the time to mix that, adding a little more water until there is some definitive difference between those two colors. I'm gonna have my reference picture off to the side here, but I'll keep my painting here so you can look at how it looks on the page. We're also going to use another brush to dip into our step yet. Let's go ahead and do that. Try to avoid that little ring of light needed because it's very cloudy and overcast today. But try not to give you a ring. Then let's add a little bit of the Virgina violet to that. We picked up a little bit of the rose matter, which is totally fine. Again, happy accidents. I don't want you to be stressed. There's still enough definitive color between all of these. This is clearly a dusty rose, whereas this is more fuchsia, magenta family, little bit more sepia into it, Till I have something that's pretty rich. There we have our three working colors. We're gonna do the same thing only we're gonna keep in mind that now we are creating petals that are getting a little bit smaller, a little more clustered together. Let's go ahead and start with the Virginia violet and the sepia with a little bit of rows matter in there starting here. And now we're gonna take the toe of the brush, just drag a line and really gestural line here. Just to kind of indicate, okay, that's the front of the flower that's coming up behind the flower. There could be more pedal action here, but I'm gonna leave it open because it just feels right. It feels like it has a sense of balance, complexity, and it's just the right shape and size. I'm going to leave that as is. Now. I'm gonna come over to the casino violet in its highest value. An atom, another flower right here next to it. This one, I will add a little bit of back pedal work. These flowers, unlike the ones that we were doing before, don't consist so much of blends. There's a little bit of mixed color in there, but more within the petal, the individual flowers and not so much within the same singular petal, if that makes sense. Give it a little bit of flair there. Now I'm going to use a third brush to use the Virgina violet in the lowest value. And I'm also going to pick up a little bit of step yet, just to kind of get it a little dust ear. So here's my Marzano Violet pulling it out here and adding a little bit of the sepia to it. Really, really pretty faint pink. I'm actually going to darken that a little bit because this is the color that I want when we move our way up. So I'm gonna just kinda let that sit there and a sop up a little bit of the color here. And start again because it's all running together. Because I'm moving the palette back and forth. Normally the palate would stay still and everything would be separate, but I want you to see everything. I'm gonna leave that there. I'm gonna take a little bit more of the violet from my other palette, put it back over here. And pick up the sepia, mix it back in, and then draw that out a little bit further. Broth consistency. You have to remember the stock is coming at an arch here, so we have to visualize and keep in mind, okay, There's a stem running through here. Let's create petals that are going to complement that. We have one that's facing out and a little bit down. We have three definitive colors here which are working really nicely together. Pick up a different brush and head back into the darker version of the sepia and the Xeno violet. Little bit more backward here. So basically just dragging the brush for an initial stroke and then doing a little bit of back pedal work using the toe of the brush. Let that run into that one here. Just kind of keep it simple. I come down here and do the same. But I'm gonna make this one a little bit more open since it would essentially be attached to the top of here. So we're imagining this to be the top of the flower and this to be going right on top of here. Nice big petal here, a little tiny petal here. And then let's come around there. Then we're going to create a little bit of pedal work using the Virgina violet. Then as we work our way up, we're gradually going to get smaller and smaller. So let's go ahead and do that. I'm going to reduce, excuse me, the sepia and Brazil No Violet to even paler. Taking it one step further until I have something that's more like this one. This is what I call lightest consistency. For those of you who don't know, I have a watercolor book coming out in May and we go over a lot of these techniques, mostly all of them. And you'll, you'll learn about different techniques and consistency. And so the three that I use are lightest consistency brought consistency and cough syrup consistency. We're getting a little bit smaller here. So we're gonna do big petal here and then some TO work here. Do the same thing on the other side and kind of let that run together. As you see in your reference picture. We mostly have flowers that are coming out. Be around the ring. There we go. Cup colors that are, excuse me, petals that are coming out to the side. So they're kind of springing out from the stop. There's a few in the middle and you can kind of play around with different shape and position. But for the most part we want these to be angled out to the side. I'm going to go back to that color that I had mixed before, that really, really pale pink. I'm just going to create a gestural, almost like a pinwheel petal, like one of a pinwheel pedal. You're doing the whole pinwheel. We would do a few more imagining that negative space. So this is just one pinwheel petal. Same thing on top. Then we would have our buds up here. So we're going to take a little break here. And actually I'm gonna do one more just to kind of give this middle portion a little bit more. We're going to have a stock coming through here, and I want that stock to show, but I also want it a little bit more connection here. So I'm going to grab the sepia for Xeno violet and just create one more loose, loose TO work here off to the side, dragging the brush down and then a little bit of a bigger petal coming back up through here. More TO work just to kind of connect things. And now we have something that has a really good flow. Negative space, negative space, negative space, big negative space. And then here we'll have a areas for the stock and stem to show through which we want. So leaving intentional areas for that stem. Again, stretch out your hands. We're gonna come back, mix up some greens and I'm gonna show you how to merge the greens into the pinks without losing the individual colors and also how to time it correctly. 7. Mixing Greens and Forming Small Buds/Stems: You'll remember from the initial swatch sheet that we have the green apatite genuine and we also have the sap green, which we will be mixing with sepia. Clear off a little room on your palette. You can rinse your cup if you like. Then grab the fresh brush and dip into your sap green. Then you're gonna make a little pile here. Pulling from the working palette where I had all the colors. I'm going to add the sap green first because it's more of a gentle color and the SFIA kind of dominate. So I'm gonna make sure I get that sap, the color I want it. Then I'll plug into the sepia to create that beautiful, rich, mossy green. If you loved these color blends. And you have not already discovered the line of color guides that I have available. You're definitely in for a treat. So head over to the website and have a look under artists resources. And you will see a ton of color guides where I thoroughly explore each range of colors. Yellows and golds, whites and grays and browns, pinks, oranges and corals, greens and blues, purples and reds. They're broken up into families so that they can be easily understood. Okay. Let's go ahead and just make sure that's thoroughly mixed. I have a little bit of sap green that's just kind of sticking on there. And this is still quite wet. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to add a little bit to it right now. This paper, like I said, it takes forever to dry depending on if you're using a lot of water. It's one of those things where water is knowing the right amount to lay down to achieve whatever result that you're trying to get is crucial. So we'll walk through that. But while everything is still wet, I'm just going to plug a little stem right through here. Not minding if things are blending, going to kind of curve it here because that's how it is in the picture. Things we're sort of curving to the left. And then I'm gonna come down here and thicken it up. So we have this which is going to plug into the top of this. I wanted to keep them separate because we'll be doing this in our final project. But you can kind of see how this is going to lead into this. And then the stock gets quite thick through ear and we have lots of beautiful greenery which we will cover. As you can see when I dipped the green into this pink, it's sort of, it's sort of took over. Now, this is where I really, really, I encourage you to figure out what look and style best suits you. We talk a lot on Instagram about finding your voice, finding your signature style. And this is something that really can cause a lot of anxiety and overwhelmed, especially for artists who are attempting to turn this into a livelihood, a business. And that's probably one of the questions I get asked most often is, how did you find a style that immediately as recognizable as your own? And then the answer is practice and exploration. I figured out what I liked by following along with other teachers to use as a guide. Then figured out how to make that more me. I would take a picture or a lesson. And then I would make little changes along the way that just felt inherently and instinctively my own. It's something that can't be rushed. And I think that's probably one of the harder aspects for new artists to grasp, is that we're not talking even just a year. We're talking multiple years because you are going to continue to grow and evolve. Your skill is going to get better. What you created when you are just learning to paint. What you paint a year later is going to be exponentially stronger and better. Then gradually you hit a plateau as your skills sort of even out. And then you might have another leap after you go through utter despair, not being able to grow in your craft. And you just have to keep in mind that it's a constant evolution and growth. And eventually the things you paint will start to take on a style of their own, the colors you use, either personality of your flowers. It starts to move its way to the forefront, to the surface. Just want that to hit home with you in two, Take your time. Those of you who are hoping to turn this into something to support yourself or your family. It takes time, it cannot be done overnight. The only way it can be done overnight is by copying other artists. And I see it done a lot. And it's something that I initially started off doing 56 years ago and quickly learned that was not the route and very dangerous, not only because it hindered my growth, but because if you are very present in social media, people are going to pick up on that and you're going to lose your credibility and your integrity as an artist. And there's nothing more important than people trusting you and your art. Talk that aside. Keep it in mind. Trust the process. Keep it slow and keep it study. As I've been talking, can you believe that this is still wet? All that time. This petal, I had used significantly less water until the color just kind of looped into the bottom here. I'd like you to have a mixture of both. I'd like to you to keep certain petals separate from the stem. And then I'd like certain petals to, flowers to run into the green here, which ones you choose completely up to you. But I'd like you to execute a variety of that. I'm going to plug in here and that's pretty dry. I'm just going to kind of brush the toe of the brush up along the edges here, just drag it back and forth to create that sort of STEMI, clasp that is around the base of these buds. Do the same thing over here, curving this using the toe of my brush. Again, just kind of creating that little STEMI area at the bottom of the petal. Not everything has to be defined. Not everything has to look identical. You som can have none, some can have some of this, of this little green area. The idea is to just keep it loose and not get too detailed. You can have some stems pulling out from the flower, then some that are really close and kind of on the stem and you don't really see a whole lot. It all works. Let's do a couple of moving parts together. We're going to pick up our number six brush, dip into really any pink. But let's use a broth version. So I'm gonna use the Virginia violet and sepia at its lightest. I'm gonna come up here and just create a few more. They're getting much smaller now. I'll open that one up just a little bit. This one is fully closed. Let's go ahead and plug in a little green now things are very wet still. I'm going to take the total of my brush and run the stem so that I'm creating an angle here. Then I'm going to take the toe of my brush and come here at the very edge and just gently nudge the paint so that it doesn't completely dominate. That's what you have to look forward. That's what takes practice as an artist is figuring out, okay, how wet is my media? How gentle and slowly do I need to work my way into it? Because if you just sort of lay the brush in there, it's going to clobber and dominate, which is super beautiful. But you don't want that to be the look of the entire flower giving flowers variety or is what makes them so special. I'm gonna plug in a little bit more green here. Then I'm gonna come up and do the same year. And I'm not going to extend that green into the petal. You see there's a variety here of what's going on. Now let's work our way into the smallest buds, solely green with just a little bit of pink popping through. The green first. Just a little blob. Nothing to structured. We take the pink, we're just going to rub it along the edge here. I'm gonna make this one a little bit bigger. Just so we can, we're keeping the shapes. I'm going to pull that out a little bit. Give it a little pedal backwards. I want these ones at the very top to be the smallest. It's okay if there's a little bit of difference between moving your way from largest to smallest, but overall it should gradually get thinner and more narrow. I'm going to look at my reference picture just to kind of get a refresh of how everything is sitting. Once we're here at this point, things start to come back towards the middle versus not completely sideways off of the stem. So we have buds that are sitting right on the middle. We can create some stem here. We can add a little bit of pink if we want to. We didn't really do a whole lot of that. We can do a little bit more here. Then as we work our way to the top, curving it again. Gentle coming up on the toe, keeping things really loose. Smallest, but really nothing more than a few strokes. These are created really by just doing two simple stroke. So coming down using not quite the toe of your brush, sort of mid belly and then keeping things a little bit pointy up here. Or you can at the very end, rounded out. I'm gonna do one more over here. Just to kind of show a little bit of shape. I'll do the green first. Just creating that bottom part like we did over here. And then I'm going to take the rows matter lightest consistency and plug it in here. I'm just going to drag it through and just get something that's really loose. And I'll make this one a little bit bigger. So you can see again, this is bigger and this is smaller. Do the same thing here. If these are feeling too light to you, you can always head back in and darken it up. In our picture we have a, a, a gradient where things are a lot darker right here in the middle and then they get fainter. So we can always do that after the fact. Still is gonna look lovely, especially with this paper because it stays wet for so long. We can even go over that green with that color again, the idea is just to make sure that there's some separation. I'm going to plug in a little more flair here. Using the toe of my brush to create a shape. Then will thicken up the stem here. But I just wanted to get the basic form and shape down so you guys can see how everything is laying on the stem. You can do a little bit more work in here. You just want to be careful about not getting too blobby that you can't tell the difference between anything. I'm looking at my picture one more time and I'm going to add one final little green guy right up here at the top to close it out. That looks pretty solid to me. Do a little bit more flair here if we wanted just to kinda give it a little shape. Using the toe of the brush. Adding a little bit more green into here. Now just kind of standing back, looking at my work and touching things to see do they need more? Do they need less? And add a little bit of green here? Dip into that sap green again and the sepia. And I'm gonna add a little bit of green into this flower right down here. A little bit more sepia. Just a really light version. There's not a whole lot of flair that comes out from here, but I don't think that's going to stop me. I'm going to create a little bit just using the toe of the brush. And then I'm gonna hit in here this butt and just add a little bit more definitive. And we'll do that too is we, we do a little more contrast, but I just wanted to get the framework down, like I said, and that initial layer. So that is the top of our Snapdragon. We're going to head into finishing the middle and bottom portion and adding leaves. And then we'll move into details contrast before we head into our final project. 8. Adding the Stems: I'm going to refresh my pile of sap green and Sophia just because it was getting a little low and I don't like running out of paint mid project, so make sure you have enough. Want to have it at about broth consistency. Now we're gonna plug in the stem here and give it a little bit of shape direction. Now, we have to remember that this is going to be the top of it. So we're kind of working this way. If this paper were a lot bigger, you would obviously move up into this area and then arching toward the left, which we'll do in our final project. I'm going to start here at the top and just kind of leave where would be? Things would start to be getting a little bit thicker. So here's connecting to here. And then we'll work our way down using the toe of the brush to fill in here. Taking my brush and I am pressing lightly and at a 90 degree angle for a more sharper, thinner stem and then using the belly for some areas that are gonna be thicker. And then we'll come down here. Things are thickest and give it a nice loose gestural stem. Nothing to defined. We're going to add a lot of leaves to this area and we'll go over leaves and how to cluster those together. Then we'll start making a few connections here you can see this one's a little bit too far out. But we're gonna start there anyway and just pretend that we meant to do that by adding some smaller stems. And we're not really going to connect it because it doesn't really in an area where it would connect. It's just sort of floating there because we were figuring out just the popcorn kernel shape itself and not necessarily thinking of attaching it to a stem. Then we'll create some smaller stems. Here. This one again is facing inward rather than out, but that's okay. We're just going to create some stems using the toe of the brush, keeping things really loose and gestural. You see I'm not taking my brush and dragging a super slowly. I'm just flicking it around, chunking up the stem here, and just making the connections. Snapdragon stems are really just thick and they look beautiful on the Snapdragon flower, but it's not so great on paper unless you're doing a botanical and there's a lot of different shading and light. So I like to make up for that aspect when using gestural by really playing with flair. And then obviously we would come up here and there would be a lot more happening, but we're gonna start curving things this way. And then we're gonna have flowers coming off the stem here, which we will do in our final class or final project. But just you get an idea of how this is all working together. That's pretty much it for the stem. What I'd like you to do now is mix up a little bit of the sepia with the sap green in cough syrup consistency. We've been using broth up until now. If you need more sepia, take a moment to get it on your palette. Want it to be more on the brown side than the green, but not so brown that you can't see any green. So nice little marriage between the two. We're going to add a little bit of detail through the stem here. Just by using the toe of the brush and running it along the side to create a little bit of shading. Not dark enough. I can add a little bit more sepia in there. Like I said, I like to start light and then work my way. Too dark. Can add a little bit towards the middle just to get some darker areas. But there's a lot of really beautiful color variety happening here because sap, green and step, yeah, there's so much color between those two. There you have it it's a really it's one of those things that I say. It's simple but not easy because what happens, especially for newer artists as you look at something like a stem and you think, Oh my gosh, I just want to capture every little bit of that to make it really come to life. And inherently what ends up happening is you overdo it, you overwork it. And so when it comes to stems, I really just kind of give myself the right shape and direction. Then give it a rest, put my brush down, stand back, let it let it dry if I wanted to, and then be able to come back and say, okay, you know what, I want a little bit more definitive dark area over here. So let's darken that up. Give it a little bit of shape along the side. There. Now I feel good and I'll set the brush down again. Come back and say, Okay, Still not where I want it, but avoid the urge to just keep touching it for the sake of touching it, can keep touching it all you want if you are achieving the result that you're trying to achieve. But if you just think just doesn't look good, That's when I advise you to take a step back, give yourself a moment, see it through some fresh eyes, maybe even go get a glass of water. I'm telling you even just five minutes away from a painting that you feel is total garbage. When you come back, you're like you don't want it. That really isn't so bad. As we work were so close and we're getting so caught up in all of the details that we miss. A lot of the magic that's happening on the page. We're not even aware of it because it's something that's sort of just within us and beyond us. So keep that in mind as you're working. And don't be afraid to put the brush down and add slowly. So that's it for the stem. We're going to come back in just a moment and I will show you leaves. 9. Adding Leaves: One of the most magical colors in my toolbox is green apatite, genuine. As you can see, there is the most beautiful sediment rising to the surface. And like anything else that's happening here. What happens is the pigment separate and they kind of make a texture of their own which is so beautiful and can really be used to just sort of jazz up a painting. I use it with caution and I tend to calm it down with a little bit of sepia just so it's not so intense, lime green, but honestly, if you know how to use it correctly, it works great all on its own. We're gonna be using that color along with the sap green and sepia and just kind of be merging the two together, letting them run and then creating a little bit more detail on the leaves once things are dry. As far as leaves, I have gone over leaves extensively in previous classes like simple, simple stroke leaves and compound stroke leaves, gestural leaves. And it's something that I'd covered. And so I'm going to cover it here, but I'm going to do it in a way that's not quite as thorough just because it's material that we've already we've already reviewed. So I'll break it down a little bit for you, but I would love for you to lean on, rely on in the leaf lessons that you've learned in previous classes and also just feel free to kind of make it your own. So looking at the reference picture, you can see that it gets really busy. Try and get that ring on. It gets really busy along the bottom of the flower here. Lots of leaves, bushy effect. And if you're not using all of those little individual colors and shadow, it can kind of get lost. So we're gonna, we're gonna be inspired by that, but we're not going to feel super attached to that either. Let's come down here at the bottom and we're gonna make our first stroke. I'm going to mix the green apatite genuine with the SFIA, breath consistency. And then all my other brush have sap green and sepia to working brushes. We're gonna make one big leaf to just sort of anchor the stem. I always like when I'm working with a painting to have an anchor flower, anchor stamp, something that says, okay, this is where I'm starting. Everything else can extend from there. So to do that, I looked at my reference picture and I see, Okay, there's a big leaf that's just kind of curving up here. That's, that's the that's where my eye goes. That's where I'm directed. So I'm going to mirror that. We're going to take the silver brush not full TO mid belly and just drag it down to this doc here. Really loose, not doing anything super special, just dragging it down. All I want is for you to have a slight curve. We're gonna do the same thing on the other side. But we're gonna give it a little bit of movement and we're gonna point it down. So we're going to come start at the toe and then we're going to pull it up and attach it. Okay, so now we have kind of an idea of where things are going, which direction they're angling. We're doing is just start adding leaves in different sizes and colors. So now I'm going to dip into the sap green and sepia. What's going to happen here is this dries is you're gonna get a lot of really beautiful texture that is just gonna be so lovely all on its own. It's not going to need a whole lot of touching up. This is where we get a little bit more gestural. We'll do some bigger leaves, taking our brush, dragging it along, and bringing it down to connect it. But we're also going to do a lot of little or leaves two, coming up on the toe for a line. I'm actually going to come out here on the stem and create a leaf that's shooting out from the stem. Again, this is all very loose. I'm just sort of moving and working with the paint as I see the leaves. Really just trying to get a shape, not trying to perfect each leaf that I see. These leaves are achieved by strokes, simple strokes, starting at the top and bringing it down. Gestural, more of a line stroke coming up on the toe. Gestural. If you wanted to even thicker than that, come down full belly. Basically just doing a variety of these, moving the stems in different directions. So you have this one that's up, this one that's down, this one that's coming out to the side. Nice variety. Now we're a little hindered here because we have this flower here. So we're just imagining things kind of moving into this realm over here. Then. Darkest value, the suburbia and the sap green. I'm going to come on top of what I've already done. Just add a few darker pieces, darken things up a little bit. Moving things out to give things sides, giving things shape and structure. It's a very busy bottom here. I'm trying to make sure that there's enough variety, but also preserving the shape in which these leaves cluster. So have a look at that reference picture. Be mindful of shape and positioning and size. Those are your three strongest components. Size, positioning and shape. We're pretty good here. That's enough leaves I feel like it fills in the area of really nicely. And we would obviously have a little bit more room here between the bottom and then the Snapdragon, and then finishing up at the top. So we'll be working in our class project with a bigger piece of paper so that we can accommodate that. But if you want to do things on a smaller scale, you're more than welcome to. It still works is just you need to paint smaller, which can be tricky to do. Okay? Alright, so we're going to pause here, stretch out those hands, and then we'll come back for our final lesson. 10. Class Project Part 1: Okay, we are ready for our class project. We are going to be utilizing all of the tips and techniques that we learned throughout the lesson and applying them to one giant piece. So rather than having everything kind of broken up here with the middle and the top and leaves. We're going to put it all together for a beautiful Snapdragon. As I mentioned earlier, I'm gonna be using the 11 by 15 paper just because I feel like it accommodates the Snapdragon will get a really pretty arch through here. We're gonna be leaning towards the left like we were in our lessons as we were working. And we'll break it up into the same, same steps that we did, starting with the middle and the bottom of the flower and then finishing with the top. And then we'll add in the leaves and details. After everything is finished. Gonna be playing a little bit of classical music just to have something to kind of fill in the background noise I'll be talking as I'm painting, but not quite as much as I was during our lessons. Just so you can kind of get into the mood and the spirit of putting a hole, putting moving pieces into a hole that way you can enjoy it and just sort of get lost. And they experience right along with me. Alright, so I've gone ahead and I've mixed up several colors just like we did in the Initially, I've freshening them up, having the permanent rose matter and the green gold and then new gamboge and green gold and here in the center. And then for Xeno violet with the green gold slash new gamboge, kind of a mix of both. And then also for Xena violet here just on his own and rose matter permanent on his own, will be using all five of those colors interchangeably and creating a variety of a popcorn flowers using all of these colors. All right, so let's go ahead and begin. Alexa. Resume music. I'm going to start here with the rose matter. Green gold. If you'd like, you can put your practice sheet off to the side to sort of inspire and guide you as well. Starting with that initial petal facing up, then coming down a little bit of flair, leaving a little bit of negative space here. Then I'm gonna use my other brush to pop in a little bit of the new gamboge and green gold. Pick up a third brush now and add a little rose matter at the top. Making sure things are very plenty wet but not so wet that it just pools. Smart ticket down on eye level to check how wet your paper is. This time I'm going to start with the fuzziness, violet. The new gamboge. A little bit more of a violet though, a little bit more pink. But again, we want to remember that these flowers down here are more sorbet inspired. And then we'll gradually work our way up to something pink. Asked for where to start. I kind of just plopped a flower right there in the middle. I'd say it's just a slightly bit higher than the middle of the page. And just for scale, this is roughly the size of a piece of popcorn, slightly bigger. Then if you need to, what you can do is take a pencil and sort of sketch out a framework of where the stem needs to be. And then you can erase that with a dust free eraser at the end. If you feel comfortable and confident to just move the flowers around, keeping in mind that there's gonna be a stem running through it, then you can do that to whatever it's gonna make you feel most comfortable and give you the most piece. Sometimes having that pencil framework really does just sort of alleviate the anxiety of straying off course. And if you are on the newer side of painting, it might be something that might be a good idea. I'm going to use the side of my brush creating little tail here. And then like a sideways simple stroke. And then coming up on the side here. A little bit of flair, then a little bit of back pedal work as well. Remember these ones want, you want these to be bigger so that as we're moving up, you can get smaller. So they need to be big enough so that you have room to get smaller. It's gonna pick up new gamboge now on its own. I'm going to do a coming facing outward, the top petal. We'll do that little sideways Mark. And then we'll imagine that it's kinda coming down here. I'm going to pick up the rose matter, enrich green gold now, giving it a little bit of flair here in the middle. Really utilizing that popcorn shape. Gonna pop in a little bit of violet. Doing a little bit of work here. I'm going to blend that in with this petal here so that they're combined. So that it looks like this is sort of falling behind this petal. Like I said, you want to have some petals and flowers that are separated for some really beautiful negative space and area for that stem. And then you also want to have areas where the flowers are touching. This is most natural to what you would find in nature. Violet again, I'm gonna do a flip up again. Coming up on the side here. This was achieved by moving my brush downward and then dragging it across the page up and down until I have a shape that resembles a petal, sort of lifting up. Then I'm gonna do some negative space work in here like we did on this petal, this flower right there. And a little bit off to the side. Coming up on the toe of the brush. I'm gonna pop in green, gold and new gamboge. Just sort of filling it in sort of like that pop corny where you see the wrinkles and the areas where the skin is sort of folding into each other. Nothing too detailed, just enough to give it some structure and shape. I'm going to leave that one as is. It looks really nice up against these two that are a bit darker. Next I'm going to pick up rose matter. Rich green gold, a little bit heavier on the rose matter. Letting that blend into the other petal flower that we did here. I'm going to create the middle and create some outside petal work. Wash off some of the paint here. We have more of a broad consistency. Plug-in, a little bit of green, gold and new gamboge. 11. Class Project Part 2: Take a moment to step back and see how full the stem area is, where to continue adding. Remember, we're curbing our stem to the left here. And we want things to be probably come out no further than about here. Just adding a little bit of pink to that petal. It come in at lightest consistency here, something somewhat soft. And do an outward petal. Then do some back pedal work here. Then I'll pop in just a little bit. Orange. Just a little bit more color here to the center. Things are wedged a little bit of green, gold. Just to kind of get some variety of color. They're looking a little bit orange. So I just want to make sure we're utilizing all of the different colors here. Remember, Thanks, stay wet for quite a while so you can head in and do a little bit more work. Making sure that I'm coming out and down. Create kind of a closed petal here. Blending into this one. Pick up a little bit of diverse, you know, violet, nice dark petal there. And then a little bit of the rose matter in new gamboge. Little bit of the rose matter to the tip here. Just keeping it a little bit of shape. I'm gonna come in here with a little bit of yellow and just sort of create more of a bleed between these two colors. That's the rich green gold into the rose matter. One more off to the side here. Pick up, never seen a violet as it is. Not a TO work here. Just really gestural. Just keeping the shape of popcorn in my mind, not being too exact or precise. Coming in with violet again, to darken things up. A little bit. New gamboge. Honest to take a pause and just look at my reference picture again so that I can just sort of get an idea. I'm gonna leave this as is for now. I'm tempted to kind of add some really thin flowers over here, but I don't want it to get so bulky. I wanted to keep things narrow and then I can always fill in later. We don't want to lose the shape and extend things out so much that we don't know it's a Snapdragon. I'm going to pause there and just leave that as is and begin working with the smaller flowers, not quite buds, but just smaller than what we've been working with using the variety of pinks that we covered. So the rose matter and the sepia and then the Xeno violet and the sepia, and then also those colors just as is. Let's make sure your palate is prepared for that. I mostly have that already on my palette, so I'm going to just add a few areas. That's for Xeno violet, all on its own. Then I'll add a little bit of sepia to it. Now remember that the paper that we're working with, like I said, it stays wet for quite a while. So if we don't have to really worry about mixing up the greens yet, they'll say something, these will stay quite wet and we can add a little bit of the merging greens. And soon I have received a violent and sepia loaded on one of my brushes. And then I will have the rose matter and SAP yet loaded on the other brush. My dramatic song. Don't know if he quite suits the mood of the painting, but I do love it. Alright. I'm gonna look at my reference picture one more time. Just to be mindful of how everything is laying. I encourage you to do the same. You want to make sure you leave room for the stem. Accommodate that clustering look. Back pedal work. And then we'll do the same over here. A little bit more differentiation. So the more gestural here. 12. Class Project Part 3: And then Martino violet, all on its own. I still have my brush with rose matter in suburbia loaded up so I can pop that in whenever as well. Plug-in one really big pink flower right here. A little bit of back pedal work here as well. Making it a little bit different, giving variety, just sort of extending the brush strokes a little bit further in some areas, coming up on the toe and other areas darken this just a little bit. Then this one as well, just because we're gonna get pretty faint up here. So I want to make sure that we have room to do that. Okay? Loading up the rows matter are using the brush with the rose matter on it. Getting it to the right consistency. You want something between breath and cough syrup? I'm going to pop in just a little bit of green gold. Excuse me. Just to kind of give it a little bit of a playful color here. Being mindful of the stem and where things are going to lay. Some are pointing up like we did in our practice and some are pointing down. Some are coming out to the side. Make sure these are dark enough so that we can get a little bit lighter. If things are showing up to light, like I said, you can always go back in and just add a little bit of color. Once we plugged the stem into, we can always come back. So that's something to keep in mind is you don't have to fill in every little area. You can do this part and then decide, oh, that's still needs a little bit more. We're getting to the area now where we're going to want our greens. So let's go ahead and mix up. Or if you're still using the same palette, go ahead and freshen up your green areas. That was step sap green. Then the green apatite, genuine and sepia. We're going to start merging and blending here soon. Gonna get a little bit fainter and a little bit smaller here. Mixing the Rozanna violet and the sepia. So it's very faint like the color we were using in our lesson. Still want these to be somewhat bigger so that we have room to get smaller. I'm going to run the stem through the top portion now using the sap green and sap, yeah. Just so I understand now where things are aiming and angling and I'm going to attach it to this. Right here first, rather than doing a middle stem, because this is going to give it a more of a natural flowing appearance. I'm gonna merge the green into here, give it a little bit of loose green area connected to our stem. And do the same thing here, connecting, do some chunkier stem and then do some lighter, thinner stemming as well. Letting the colors run in gently nudging them. Still a little bit wet, so it's still a little bit pink, so we'll give it a minute to rest. Doing a little bit of tow work here. Along the edges. Now the Snapdragon is a lot fuller than what it's looking here, but we need some separation to show that it's getting thinner and more narrow. So we're not going to fill in everything the way that it would be in the picture. Let's go ahead and stem off from here and do a green first. Like I said, it's kind of like no distinct shape. You're just going to run your brush up and down doing some TO work and some belly work. Then you'll add the pink into it. By doing it that way you get a little bit more of a different effect. Here. You can see that it's a little bit lighter. Here, it's a little bit darker. Actually going to pop a little bit of color into here. Just to kind of bring a little bit more flair. Just giving it more of a shape. I'm working these a little bit because I want them to be bigger so that I have room to get smaller. Now I'm going to connect the stem right about here, rather than doing it directly through the middle. Again, this helps to create a flow within the piece. Not attaching one stem to run through the entire metal, but moving your stem from branch to branch. I'm going to do a couple here just to kind of prepare and get ready. Some are gonna be right on the stem and some are gonna be coming off doing a little bit of tow work right around the bottom. I have these sort of run together. And now we'll add the pink. So I'm gonna do for Xeno violet first just on its own. A little bit more over here as well. Then I'm gonna do the lighter color, the rose matter and sepia. I'm going to cross over the stem here. I'm just going to rub the brush until it rubs out the stem. And I'm gonna plug in a little bit more of the violet. We have something that's not so moving in this direction, but something that's flowing together. Darken up this with the violet as well. Then I'm going to do a little bit more work up at the top. Standing back now, I'm really starting to lean towards the left and I want to make sure that I don't start to arch all the way over. So I'm gonna bring it back up through here. It's important that every once in a while you just sort of stand back from your work and realize what's happening. Good to get lost in it, but it needs to come out of it every once in a while as well. More connections here just to kinda, kinda lobby the stem a little bit. I don't like stems that are too courteous, that are too nice. And I want something that's just a little bit more unreserved. Little more here. Now let's come up here and finish with our smallest. 13. Class Project Part 4: Alexa, next song. We don't need that one twice. C, one more final one right there. Run that through. We're going to need to thicken up this stem a little bit. It's looking a bit too dainty for what snap dragons are. Let's go ahead and give that a minute and we'll do the rest of the stem while we're waiting. Let's mix together that sap green and sap. Not too heavy on the sepia because we want to have room to play with contrast later on. So more on the side of sap green. Let's start plugging it in where we would imagine. We're going to bring that standing nice and long. I have a little bit of paint down here that I will have to touch up later. As to in the moment. Nice chunky Snapdragon you saw, it's really just practicing moving gesturally in a vertical position of that something that you feel like you need to practice on a different piece of paper first, please do that. Get, get the feel of what it what it feels like to just move up and down, not being so rigid and stiff, You've got to keep your wrist loose, keep your fingertips on the brush loose, and just move up and down in a very flowy manner. We're going to add some flair, even though there's not so much in the actual Snapdragon, we're just gonna do it anyway because it needs a little bit, it needs to perk up. So let's get messy here with our brush. Make some connections here between the petals. This will also help to define individual flowers. Not all of them, but some. I went a little too far into my petal here. So I'm going to take my brush and just run that out of there. This is my own liberties. This is my style, my voice coming out gestural work along the stem. Or I feel like it best accommodates and suits the painting. Please take your own liberties here. This is just a sample, an example. It's not meant for you to exactly copy, but just to give you a framework and idea of how to move along, need a little bit more sap green. So I'm going to mix up here. Sap green, the one that I'm using with any way from Winsor and Newton is very gentle and so it requires quite a bit. Some don't. It just depends on what you're working with. Still a little bit wet here, but I'm just going to darken up some of the areas. Give it a little bit more detail to this. Let's chunky up this stem a little bit. I don't mind if it gets a little Dane tier as we work towards the top, but I don't want it so that we lose. The essence of the Snapdragon. Really feel free to kind of get messy and sloppy here. Pulling it all together. Rub out the color a little bit more, but I don't mind if emerges too much. Coming down through the stem, darkening things up a little bit. Then going ahead in width, the leaves now going to start with the sap green and sepia. Again starting with that anchor leaf. Nice big leap off to the side. Going to connect this stem here. Then we're going to do the same thing. A little bit more movement down here. Washing off a little bit of the color that we have something lighter. Then I'm gonna pick up the green apatite genuine and the sepia. Mix that together as well. That will bring out some really beautiful sediment. Again, I'm just moving the brush and an up and down, minding the shape and the positioning of the leaves not getting anything too intense, just kind of figuring out where the shape guides me. There's a lot of leaves that are coming out towards the bottom. So I'm, I'm accommodating that. I want some leaves actually on the stem because there's a lot of that happening too. I'm going back and forth between green apatite genuine with sepia and soft green. Adding a little bit of leaves from up here. Although there's not a whole lot of that in the photo, I think it just kind of lends itself to the feel of the Snapdragon. Adding a little bit more contrast to the side here. The sap green and could do a couple of light petals in the background. That we have something a little bit more delicate. Touching to the stem here. I'm gonna go over it one last time with the green apatite, genuine and step, yeah. Just for some darker gestural strokes. Really just sort of waving my brush around. Figuring out where does it feel most natural. This is where I would step back and just kinda see what I have as a whole and figure out does it need more? Is it done? Sometimes you don't know until you give a few minutes to rest. I'm going to pull you out just a little bit so you can see the whole thing minus the boo-boo. That way you can kind of get a sense of the whole piece. Moving from the top all the way down to the bottom. Really beautiful. Just cover that there. That will come out very easily with a little bit of TLC. All right, there we have it, that is our Snapdragon. I hope you enjoyed this class. It was a fun one to teach. I can't wait to see your projects. Please make sure to upload them to the forum and then also tag me on Instagram with love to see and combine and see what you're up to. Thank you so much for joining me today. Have a wonderful week.