Watercolor Wildflower Journey: a 7 Day Intro to Watercolor

1. Introduction - Wildflowers: Hello, my name is Molly Barker, and today we are going to be learning about watercolor. I've broken this class down into seven different lessons, where I will demonstrate watercolor techniques, which you can use to illustrate different types of flowers. All of the flowers that I'm going to be painting, I found near a little pond in my neighborhood. I found that one of the best ways to clear your head and helped to inspire you is simply to go on a walk. Just go outside and walk around. There is a small pond near my house, and I spent a lot of time walking around there. During the winter here in Colorado, there is hardly any green. Mostly everything dies or hibernates with the exception of the evergreen trees. But come spring, Colorado is one of the most beautiful places for different types of wild flowers and greenery. This year, I wanted to document some of my favorite flowers that are around my pond. So I've come up with seven lessons where I will demonstrate my loose watercolor sketching technique. I would love for you to join me on this watercolor journey. I'll see you in the next lesson. 2. Materials - Wildflowers: Hello. In this lesson, we're going to go over some of the materials that you'll need to complete the projects for this class. What I'm going to be using is a Moleskine Watercolor notebook. And I've used these for quite awhile now and I love the way the paper is. It's twenty-five percent cotton and it just makes a very wonderful painting. This is what I'll be using. You can use any other watercolor paper you prefer, but I recommend this kind. And you'll also need some watercolor paint. I have Winsor and Newton professional paints. They are quite expensive. And though I really like them, if you're just starting out, I wouldn't say that they're absolutely necessary. So I used to use the Winsor and Newton student brand, which is the Cotman watercolor brands. And I found them to be really vibrant, really lovely, and they're substantially less expensive. I've also used many different kinds of watercolor over the years. And they all seem to work really well. If you have a watercolor palette just lying around, go ahead and use that, it would be totally fine. And the next thing that you're going to need is, of course, something to dry your paint brushes on. I have this paper towels. I always have it nearby. And then you'll need some. This is a Micron Pigma archival ink pen and any kind of waterproof ink will work. But I really like this one. This is 0.005. And I'm going to be using a Kolinsky series seven size seven round brush. And I'll also be using the Kolinsky series seven size three round brush. And these are also quite expensive. Other brushes will work just as well. I would recommend that you get a round brush, a small one, and a large one. And then on a couple of the paintings, we're gonna be using this Jelly Roll pen, which is just a white liner pen that you can put over the top of watercolor. It's lots of fun to play with. And I use an eyedropper to get my paints wet. And you can use a spray brush or just get your brush wet. And I'll use a clip to keep my watercolor sketch book open. And of course, we'll need water. And that is everything that you'll need to complete my class. So I'm really excited. Let's get started. 3. Cosmos - Wildflowers: Hello. Here I am. We're going to start out this watercolor with a quick sketch. And I wanted to let you know that I'm using a Pigma Micron pen with archival ink. It's the I think one of the thinnest ones that they make is at 005. And so the tip is barely even there. You can see the lines that I'm making here are incredibly fine. That's something that I think looks really nice when you have watercolor over the top is just the hint of ink underneath it. So that's what I'm going to be using through this class. I really like having the black ink. Some people prefer the sepia tone, which is also really nice. I like black to use with colors though. The first flowers that are going to be starting with our cosmos. And the wonderful thing about these is that they're just this really light small area flower and with lovely little star. So they're not very, they're not very sturdy. They're just dainty flowers. As you can see here. I've drawn a couple of flowers already. You can see how indistinct the lines are. This is just a very basic, vague guide. You can see some of the flowers are opening upward or opening in the opposite direction. So you can see the back of the flower. And then some are more towards you so that you can see the front. And then I have given some hints of buds, flowers that haven't quite yet opened. Then there some leaves as well. The lines that we're making. They're more of a guide as opposed to the actual rule of where the paint is going to be on the paper. So draw what you think looks nice, really light, really basic, really indistinct. And then when you actually have a paintbrush in your hand, that is when you're going to make the serious decisions about where you want to have the paint actually on the paper. You can even have whole flowers that don't have any ink underneath them. So I think that I think that having the pin lines, It's a really good way to have a small guide of where you want to paint. But don't feel like you must paint there and only there. I'm nearly done. You can see that the lines are very faint. They're just an idea of where things will be and it'll be, this will be pretty much it. This is pretty much all we're going to pay all we're going to draw to paint. I'd like you to keep it that way as well. Just keep it very, very basic. Hardly any details at all. What I have here is a little eyedropper, and I use that to wet all of my watercolor before I begin. This brush is the Kolinsky series seven, size seven brush. It's rather large. Holds a lot of ink really. Well. I like to use this to start off so that you can lay down the larger shapes and then layer over the top with detail later. Anyway, I like to use the eyedropper to get everything wet so that you can really grab the ink quickly, the pigment from the watercolor. If you have dry ink, it's quite a bit more difficult to actually pick up the pigment with your, with your brush and it takes a bit more work. So I definitely recommend getting your watercolor is wet first. Now you can see here, you can see already how I'm going. I'm painting outside of the lines. What you wanna do is have this more vague idea of how the paint is going to look. And it might look sloppy at the beginning. But you'll find that it's actually a very intriguing way to paint. It gives you more of the feeling of something as opposed to extreme detail. And it's fine to go into detail with watercolor. But to be able to have a sketchy look with watercolor is also very nice. So that's what we're going to be practicing today is sketching with watercolor. And again we have a series seven, size three, so this is smaller, thinner. This will help you get the lines that are more dainty, especially with the cosmos. You want to have very thin lines for the stems. One of the wonderful things here you can see the paint is starting to bleed in because I've left it. Oops, excuse me. I've left it wet. So the pink and the green will bleed together and you get a really wonderful light field with that. You can see how thin these stocks are. So we're going to go in and sort of flush out where the lines are originally. And then from then on we'll go on and add things which aren't yet drawn in. And you can see it again, I put the green right over the top of that pink and it's starting to bleed. It's really wonderful. I love watercolor for this. So with this, you don't want to be too picky about where you're putting your paint. Just vague ideas. And it's more about the overall feeling that it is about individual details. So from here, we're going to be doing all of the stocks and all of the leaves. And then what we'll do is we'll start to add more details. And when I say details, I mean deeper colors, things that would give the impression of shadow and other details like the inside portion of a flower. I think that's what I'm doing now. So one of the things that you want to be careful with is mixing your paints. Sometimes you forget to rinse your, your paintbrush before you go into a new paint. And you can, sometimes that causes some really beautiful things to happen. But sometimes you want to keep them separate. If you have too much of one color and then you put a, a complimentary color into it. Let's say you have a green and you accidentally mix it with a red, you'll get more of a murky color, less of a bright, vibrant color. It will be much more muted. You can see now here I am putting in more details. These are some extra leaves just to fill out the page. And you can see as I put my paintbrush down, I'm going to have a sharp point, press harder and then connect it to the stock or stem. To get that point, you dip your paint brush into the paint. And as you pull backwards, you roll in the paint just like that. And then you'll have a nice sharp point. You can see, I'm adding these, these leaves and without the ink underneath it, it has a different feeling. It has a theory of feel. I like the leaves that I've put in. And now what we're going to do is darken the petals a little bit. With petals. If there's light coming through the top, you can see when it two petals overlap. So there's almost like a shadow between the two petals. And so what I'm doing here is giving the, having that shadow, that overlapping pedal without going into too much detail. And you can see how it just changes the feel of it. All of the sudden. It has depth and dimension as opposed to before where it was something that was flat upon the page. We'll do that with each one of the flowers. And don't go overboard or don't cover every single petal with this color. But hints of it here and there are really what makes it pop, what makes it stand out. After this, we're going to be adding more shadow and depth to the leaves as well. So there I am. Make sure you rinse your brush. Often. Hear what you're going to do is add more of the sap green. And what I'm taking here is something called Payne's gray, and it is my absolute favorite color. And one of the best colors to use. Darken almost anything. It's a deep grayish blue. And it works wonderfully with the green. So as you can see, I made the point again and just kind of add hints. By doing this, it makes the pedal or the leaves and the stems look more three-dimensional. It looks more like it has a shape as opposed to being just flat. So I'm going to add a little bit of detail to almost every leaf and run it along some of the stocks so that you can see it looks like it has, again, has some dimension to it as opposed to being flat. So again, these are really impressions of things and not something that has to be exactly perfect. You can see that there are different as well on each leaf. It's not the exact same line. Some of its more of it is dark and some lighter. So as you do this, just kind of put it in where you feel like you should. It's better to be loose than have so much overwhelming detail that you look mechanical. So here I am sitting back and trying to decide if I want to add more. So from here, we're going to add that again to the interior of the flower. We're going to add a little tiny bit of Payne's gray. And you can see that starting to just enough to add a hint of shadow. And with this, you can sort of dotted, give it some texture. Don't just cover the whole thing again. That is just about it. Right there. That is our final watercolor piece of Cosmos. Thank you so much and I'll see you in the next class. 4. Gaillardia - Wildflowers: Hello again. Okay, so I have my pen again, Pigma Micron pen, 0.005. And this is what we're going to be using, again, just to lay down a very vague hint of what the shapes or is it going to look like and where they'll sit up on the page. This was a really interesting flower. I say these are wild flowers because I found all of these right next to a little pond in my neighborhood. And I go there and we walk sometimes you can just see all of these beautiful flowers. I think someone must have taken a packet of seeds and toss them out. Because we have some really wonderful flowers like this one which is Giardia. And it is, I don't know, but it's a wild, but it's definitely wild where I am. With this flower. It is a little bit more sturdy. It has a bit of a thicker stock, and the interior of the flower is a bit thicker. It has kind of has spikes on the inside. And it has this really nice deep red with these beautiful tips on the end that are yellow. So this is going to be quite a bit different from our cosmos watercolor. As you can see here, I'm adding another flower behind the first one that I've drawn. And this first one is going to be turned upward towards you. You can see both the inside portion of the petals that are far from you and the outside portion of the petals that are closest to you, including the interior of the flower. And then again I have the other flower which is behind the first stock. So to give it a depth of how the flowers are sitting in real life in the next to the pond. And then over here they had these really wonderful buds. They have sort of spikes coming up. And I really liked this one because the green of the flower isn't, it isn't a really bright, vibrant green. Instead it's more of a murkier, brownish green. It's a darker color and it has more, more of a deep feeling to it. So these are going to be a little bit more structured than the cosmos that we did before because of how the flower is in real life, how much more sturdy it is. You can see here, I'm still, this is just a vague idea of where everything is going to be. And for the most part, I paint outside the lines anyway. So here we have just about everything. I think I need to add a little bit more to make it feel more balanced. And so let's add another button right here. These sketches really shouldn't take too long. When you do a sketch like this. Really just lay down the hint of where you want things to be and it doesn't have to be too in-depth. So let's put that pen away and we're going to pick up the size seven Kolinsky brush. Again, you can use any brush that you want, but try and keep it larger at first. So here we go. When you are trying to match a color to something that you've seen in real life. Sort of pick the colors that you think are closest and don't be afraid to lay down some color and if you don't like it, add some more color to it and paint over the top. So as you see here, I'm adding different kinds of yellows, different reds. And what we're going to do with this flower because it has those really wonderful yellow tips and the red petals. Towards the center. We're going to prepare both the red for the petals and also the yellow for the tips. Because we're going to allow it to bleed together to get the combined lookup, both of them as they connect on the page. So I've prepared the red and that's not quite right. So I'm going to add a little bit more pigment and let's add a little bit of a purply color too. That's nice. Yeah, that's good. So make sure that you pick up enough pigment. You can add some more water if yours isn't. If you don't have enough of it. We're going to work a little bit quicker so that everything will remain nice and wet. And so we're going to go ahead and lay down the pigment where the petals are and keep it nice and white. You can see me adding more paint here. And then what we're going to do is dot the yellow to the tips and allow them to bleed together. And you'll see that in a moment. But here you can see again, I'm just being very vague, laying down some color but not really staying in the lines. I have the basic shape of the petal down. Here. I've got my size three brush and we're just going to just touch it to the tips there. You can see some of them have already begun to try a little bit. So try and work pretty quickly just so that you can have the wonderful bleeding effect. You have on the tips here, but also on the tips of the feathers of the petals that are closest to you. So we're going to add in just the hint of the end of the petals there. And we'll add more later for more detail. Another thing with watercolor is that even if you put something on the page and you think, Oh, no, that's so dark. How am I going to change that? It was way too dark. As watercolor dries, it becomes much less dark. It's much lighter than you always think it's going to be. So if you lay something down and it feels too dark, don't be too worried, it'll lighten up as it dries. And so here we go. We're adding some more yellow to the tips of these flowers here. You can see it. You can see at the top flower, you can see it bleeding together. And you can see how it gives it this wonderful connected depth look. And I'm going to add the centers here. The centers are yellow but also kind of a dark red, just like the petals. And so we're going to add a little bit of Payne's gray to dark and everything up. And you can see how that really made it look a bit deeper. Payne's gray is one of my favorite colors. Here we go. We're just going to kind of stipple with the paintbrush to get the idea, the feeling of the spikiness of the interior of these flowers. From here. We're going to firstly add some more water. My paints are drying out. So it makes sure that you keep your paints nice and dry. It just makes everything so much easier, especially when you need to grab color quickly if you're trying to do something with paint that's already on the page and trying. So from here we're going to be doing the color of the stems and the leaves. So again, with these flowers, the leaves and the stocks are quite a bit darker. There are more of a deep colored green. And I've got again my sap green and my Payne's gray just to have a deep color. And we're going to add first the little things on the, on the flowers, and then we'll move on to the stocks. The stocks on these flowers are pretty thick. They have big flower heads so they need something strong to hold them up. So I'm going to be putting these wonderful lines and you'll see me going right over the top of this flower. And it has quite a bit of depth just to have that overlapping effect of it. And these buds were very interesting as well. They were very spiky, are kind of fuzzy feeling. So there are these spikes coming out off the top and then a texture look to the, to the bot itself. And so we're going back and adding the bud color. And now let's go ahead and color some of these leaves. With the stocks also in wild flowers. I find that flowers that you find in a bouquet or a flower shop. They have these perfectly straight stocks and everything seems so manicured. But one of the wonderful things about Wildflower is, is that they have this kind of rugged appearance, this beautiful but a rugged appearance because they have to deal with wind outside and coyotes coming in, trampling on them in your dogs sniffing every flower. And so they have a more realistic life-like appearance as opposed to store bought flowers. And so when you put the stocks in and the leaves and don't be concerned about making it look absolutely perfect. Making the stock look perfectly straight, or the leaves looking just the right angle or side. Instead. Think about what this flower went through to get, to get where it is today. And so with this, we're going to add a little bit more Payne's gray to make it. Darker because it's still not quite dark enough to get a brown or muddy or feel. What we're going to do is add a complimentary color, which is this red. And you get this really nice dark green. And that'll add a lot of depth to the, to the, to the green portions of the plant. And if you look closely at the buds of this flower, they have, like I said before, these spikes and the tips of the spikes had this nice kind of reddish feel to it. And so I think this works really well for that. And again, we're gonna go ahead and just run along the stocks again. Just so that you can see a dimension to it, make it look more rounded as opposed to flat. So again, I'm going to be adding a little bit of detail and texture to these. Nothing too serious. You can see I'm just brushing slightly upon the page to get the feeling of fuzziness as those buds had. We're also going to be adding some nice shadow to these leaves. The leaves were quite a bit bigger. So let's add, let's add this to make it look like it's bigger, beefier leaf. And you can see already how much more depth that looks like it has. It starts out so simple and just very quickly you can turn it into something that looks much more complete, much more dimensional. And you don't have to add so much detail to absolutely everything. You can just put hints of it here and there. I really liked the screen, so I'm going to add a lot of it. Also keep in mind where the direction of the sun is coming from. Where is your light source? Where are the shadows B. And if you follow that, it will make it look really nice. If you don't follow it. It'll still look pretty cool. So don't, don't feel like you must follow the light source to put shadowing, but it is nice to keep in mind. We're going to go back and we're going to darken this red. I added a little bit of a fuchsia color to it. And this is going to be like we did before with the cosmos, just the overlapping field of petals where it gets darker when it overlaps and other petal. And also just to add some more texture and depth. And again, like I mentioned before, if you feel like it's something that's really dark, don't worry, it'll lighten as it dries. So again, we're gonna do the same thing to the top one. And flowers will look darker from underneath. So go ahead and add quite a bit of that there. And by adding it to the bottom of the petals that are closest to you and to the interior of the petals that are farther away and avoiding the tips. You can see how that made the flower pop. All of the sudden, oh, it looks like it's open as opposed to something that's flat. So let's get some more of this white or I'm sorry, I have this yellow. What we're going to do is add white to the yellow. And by adding white to any color that you have, there's going to be it increases the opacity and so it makes it so that you can see it kind of gives it something to sit on, on the page. So you can see that I'm able to go over the top of this red with yellow just because it has the white on it. And it allows it to become much more noticeable. So let's do that with the other ones as well. Just to add a bit more texture and detail so that you can see how it looks. And again, make sure that you get that nice tip of the paintbrush. Dip your paintbrush, pulled backwards and roll away. And it'll sharpen to a point. There we go. That looks really nice. Let's add some fat to the middle of the flower. Had a yellow center, kind of spiky. So let's add some some dots to make it look that way. I think it's looking nice so far, but I think it needs a bit more. So let's add some more leaves. Let's add some leaves that you draw outside of the lines. Oh yeah, that's nice. I like that color. That looks very interesting. Again, to get this leaf shape, touch the brush tip to the paper, press down so that the paintbrush fans out. And then as you become closer to the star, lift up slightly and it'll go again to a point and you can connect that to the stalk of the flower itself. I like that leaf. That looks nice. Again, you can just use this to fill in the places that you think needs some more. I think also with wild flowers, you have less manicured looks about them. And so it has more of a bush, more of kind of a wild and chaotic look to them, but also still very orderly. So adding more leaves is a wonderful way to make an illustration look fuller and more wild, more like a wildflower than a manicured, manicured plant in a pot that you'd find in a greenhouse somewhere. So I've added a little bit of water because I almost ran out of this paint and we're going to add just a little bit, a little hint of texture underneath this. But it adds texture and it adds depth. So you can see that the roundness, the bot itself. Here we go, adding a little bit of depth to the stems. Hints of different color on the leaves. Layers and watercolor really add something. Very wonderful. Okay, Here we are. All finished. Okay, Thank you so much. I'll see you in the next lesson. 5. Aster - Wildflowers: Okay, Here we are again. This time we're going to be painting an aster. And these flowers are so pretty. They have these wonderful fluffy feathered head to them. And so right now what I'm thinking about is, what is it that I need to put down on the paper? What kinds of hints do I need to draw for myself so that I can paint these later? I decided one of the most important things about these flowers is the middle portion. So right now I'm thinking about where I want the flower heads to sit. And you can see the more oval shaped they are, the more sideways There'll be to you. And then the round are they are the more forward facing there'll be. What I noticed was these, these flowers were growing in such close cluster that the heads were actually competing for space. And so the petals we're actually touching. And they were coming upwards to a V-shaped when they were getting close to each other. And so right now I'm adding in the hint of these little feathery petals so that I can later on go in and add more detail, add more texture to these with an actual paintbrush instead of a pen. So right now, I'm just thinking, where are the petals going to be? When the petals kind of coming at you, there'll be much smaller. And then the petals that are on the side you'll be able to see are longer. And so you can see I've drawn that in as well. And again, with that one kinda looks like a fried egg. Who were just putting in the basic idea of things and we're going from there. And so even though the drawing is very sketchy, very basic, the watercolor itself will be very lovely. And so don't try and spend so much time drawing this absolutely perfect flower so that you can add detail with watercolor. Instead. Think this is basically how it's going to look. And the watercolor will be the detail. The watercolor will be the shape of the flower and the stem. You don't have to draw in every teeny tiny little portion. So as you can see, the flowers themselves have these sort of thicker stocks and then they have, they all come down to a point. They come down to one connection point. And so we're going to add in the leaves now. And these flowers have these bigger leaves that they looked crinkly to me. And so I'm adding more jagged edge, sharper looking edges to them. And they go all the way up the stock, all the way to the flowers. And so I'm adding in where I think they'll look nice. And again, we'll certainly add more leaves than we have drawn. So if you have a specific shape of a leaf that you'd like to add in or you're certain that you want to leave in this position, definitely draw it in. Otherwise, you don't have to you don't have to put in so much detail. And so I'm just about finished. I have the idea of where I want this stuff to be. I I like how it looks so far. And we'll just add a few more details with this pen and finish up the stock and everything. And that should be good. So make sure that you don't spend so much time drawing. You want to spend the majority of your time painting. This is just, this is just a note to yourself of what you want it to be like later. I have my big brush here. And again, I'm dipping into my Payne's gray and I have nice purple color that I'm also using. What we're going to do is make a nice color. And then we'll actually, we'll add a, will add the detail with a thinner brush. And so what you can do is add the colors that you think you'll use. Obviously you're going to be using purple and yellow and green. And so you can prepare these ahead of time or you can, if you're not expecting to have it bleed into the paper, if you're not using a wet on wet technique. You can prepare them one at a time as you go on. So right now, I'm adding in the foundation of the center of the flower. And again, this is the kinda thing that you noticed most about these flowers as these big yellow bright centers. And so we want to add that first. Let's see, that needs a little bit more emerald color, so that looks good. Add some yellow. Yeah, these leaves are brighter, they are more vibrant, more of a spring green. So we're going to add in some different kinds of green, not just sap green. And again, like I said before, these stocks are rather thick. And so we're adding the details, not with our thin A3 size three brush. We're going to use our size seminar are bigger brush. And you can see how I hold the brush. Makes sure that you're not running your finger through any wet paint. But in order to get a straighter line with a consistent width, what you can do is hold the brush vertical. So you want to have it pretty much straight up and down. And then run it along the paper with your pinky on the page as well. And it'll give you a guide to have it on the same level. Then with these leaves, these leaves were also kind of bigger. So I'm using this larger brush again just to fill everything in. And you can see that I'm using a lot of pigment, a lot of water. And so it'll have these wonderful kind of blooming effects as you as, as the paint dries. And so if you feel like you need a sharper tip, you can roll it along the, along the palette there, sharpen the tip of that. And so we're going to just fill in the color here. And you can see I press harder to fill in the larger portions of the leaves. These leaves will not be the only ones. So these are just the ones that I wanted to make a make a mental note of. This is what I definitely want to have on the page and then we'll see where we go from there afterward. So here we go, Let's get some more pigment and let's, let's find some more places to add leaves. And yeah, that looks nice. And you can see that this stock didn't extend beyond the original one. So if you have it crossing, it will give it more of a feeling of depth, something that's coming from behind. More of a, a wildflower look as opposed to a potted plant. Another thing which is really nice is whitespace. And so if you leave whitespace in-between each of the leaves, you can really see how how the shape of the leaf is. If you want to have leaves overlapping, you might want to allow the paint to dry completely before doing that. Otherwise you'll have bleeding. And so it won't, it won't really appear to be two leaves. It'll just look like a massive leaves. So we're adding in just a few more things just to make it look a little bit fuller because these flowers have really wonderful leafy stocks. So now we're going to get into the petal aspect. And this is a bit different because the other petals were thicker. The flowers that we've painted so far, the petals were very distinct. But these ones just have this really feathery appearance. And I've put some on some paint on the page and it's just not quite dark enough. So I'm going to really darken that up because these petals are this very vibrantly purple color. I've added purples and reds and Payne's gray, of course. And we're, as you can see, I'm just making these kind of shorter lines starting from the center or from the edge and pulling. And so you'll have sort of distinct lines of where the feather to shape is. We're gonna do that with each one of the flowers. You can see it gets smaller as it gets farther away. Then the side petals are going to be longer or appear longer. So that it looks really nice. I liked that a lot. So let's go up here where the petals are going to be touching. So you can see the shape of the flower and where the petals are going to be moving. So I'm gonna go all the way around this flower. And then where they touch, I'm going to make it stand straight up just like that. And then this this guy back here is. Farther away. So let's go ahead and change how that looks a little bit. And you can see the petals themselves. They're not perfect. And there are gaps in-between where the petals are. And again, that's just a really good way to make it feel like a wildflower as opposed to a manicured plant. It has to loop through more. And so giving it an imperfect feel, I think is really nice, especially with these asters and the little feathery petals that they have. So here we go, these petals are touching and you can see how it looks like a V-shape where they connect. This is a really nice flower. There were just tons of them near the pond. There were big bushes of flowers. All right. Go back and add where you think you missed some. If there's too much white, you can add some more. Let's get some more Payne's gray. And we're going to add more than that. There we go. We're going to add it to the green and we're going to start adding some texture to the leaves. As you can see, I'm kind of oscillating between the flowers, the flower heads and then the stems and leaves. And that is to allow it to dry. So you can have time in-between where you're actually working on a certain area and working on the other area to allow for one or the other to dry so that you can have layers. And instead of just areas which bleed together. As you see here, I really quite liked this blue green color. So what I'm doing is I'm going to add some detail to some of the leaves, but I'm also going to add in some leaves. It kind of had a thinner look, something that was farther away, something in the background. So I'm going to add some hints of leaves that are behind these other ones. I do love the leaves or the masterplan. Very pretty. So again, we're just going to add texture, add hints of shadow, add dimension to these petals, and not be super detailed about it. So yeah, let's add some more here. That's nice. Kind of fill in the extra white space with these. Very pretty. And that's also a thing if you find that you're using a color that you just mixed and wow, That is a wonderful color. Just use some more. Add a little bit here and there. You can change the entire look of a painting simply because of the an extra color that you made or added. Here. I've added a little bit of a deeper yellow, a little bit more of an orangey color. And I'm just stippling a little bit to get the fuzzy feel of the interior of the astro flower. And you can see it makes it look more dimensional, adds a bit of a shadow. And the interior of these flowers were more like a, like a coin almost. And then in the center there was somewhat of a divot. And so what I'm doing is I'm adding a shadow around the edge of it. And then also adding a teeny tiny hint of a shadow towards the middle so that you can see that it had that kind of bowl-shaped looks to it. Here we go. A little bit more. Wasn't quite dark enough for me, so I'm going to add a little bit more of a shadow. That's nice. Yeah. Okay. And so right now we're going to add some more color to the petals. And this is going to make it very fuzzy looking. Make the petals pop. And I had too much paint on my brush, so I'm just going to roll some of that off of there. You don't want it to be, to pull too much and then balloon. So we're just going to add the hint of some extra petals, some shadow, some color in-between. And it's just going to make the plant itself just really pop out. That's another thing with watercolor. If it doesn't look quite right, try adding another layer. It'll definitely help. I think one of the hardest parts is trying to decide when to stop. So going overboard is very easy to do. So that's it. I think that's really good. Maybe a little bit over here. Alright, there we go. Alright, I'll see you in the next lesson. 6. Showy Milkweed - Wildflowers: Hello again. Alright, So today we are going to be sketching a showy milkweed. And if you don't know what a milkweed is, if you've never seen one in the wild, they're actually something that you pay more attention to in the fall because they have these gigantic seed pods that kind of dry up and they split open. And then all of these beautiful silky parachuted seeds come out. And they're quite beautiful in the fall and I never really noticed one during the summertime. So I decided once I saw this that I had to draw it because I've never really appreciated it for how beautiful it is during the spring and summer as well. And so with this one, as you saw at the beginning, the flowers themselves are actually very intricate. They have these sort of clusters of pods all with beautiful five-line kind of cross shape on the top of them. And then when they bloom, they sort of burst open. And there's a five pointed star flower and also five points of the pod itself that opens up and it's sort of like a puddle. And so with this one, I'm going to be adding quite a bit more detail in the sketches just so that I can be sure that I don't accidentally cover something important. Because as you see with the actual picture of the flower, it is very, very intricate and there are several different colors going on. So you have the Muted Pink of the pods themselves before they open. Then they have a dark pink of the inside of the pods once they open. And then that almost white light pink star. And then in the center there's a darker portion and I'm not sure if that's a shadow or actually the color of the flower. With these, I wanted to make sure that I have all of the details set just so that you can really appreciate how they really are, how, how orderly and beautiful they are. And so as you can see, I'm putting quite a bit more emphasis on the drawing and this one. And I've sped it up a little bit just so that we can get through it quickly. But the, the pods themselves, once they, once they dry, are just this stunning, stunning silky flower. And if you've never opened a, a, a milkweed pod with the seeds in it in the fall. I would highly recommend you find one and do it because once you open them, they actually are all so perfectly packed in there. And it's quite amazing to look at just to see how beautiful it is and in real life. So, yeah, but I didn't realize how beautiful the flowers were because I've never really seen one in bloom before. So as you can see here, what I've done is I've picked a cluster of pods that aren't completely open yet. Some are starting to bloom. And so there are flowers on them. And then also there are some that have not yet opened. And so that's the original cluster that I made is the cluster of pods and then the flowers. And then I'm going to have a secondary cluster of just the pods before they bloom, as you can see coming up in the background. And then also with milkweed, the flowers, our kind of a muted pink, but also the leaves have a muted, muted color to a really milky look to them if you will. And so I want to be able to capture that with the paint. So we just finished the drawing. So let's start working on some of those colors of pink. And they're really quite stunning colors in real life. And so I wanted to make sure that I could capture them really well in this painting. So we're adding some extra water to the paints just to make sure that they're nice and moist and that you can grab the colors that you want. And then let's see, that looks good. Maybe a little bit more red. I like that. So when you're mixing paints, just grab some crap, something, put it in. You can always overwhelm a color that you don't necessarily want on there. The one that I would say be cautious about is white and black because it really changes it really changes the consistency and colors of the paint. With white. I really tried to use that only when I'm going over another color or in pinks because somehow you just can't get. Pink with a just read on the paper. And so I use that a lot in pink. And this is a perfect example of that. So as you can see, I'm doing the same thing. I'm going through, not really trying to stay in the lines. I am trying to take note of where the the star-shaped whitish flower is because I don't want to cover that with paint as we go along. So the white of the flower will be the white of the page. So definitely try and keep that completely free of paint. And then let's go ahead and make something for the inside of the seed pods once they open so you can see how much darker this color is. And it will really stand out well with the white flower in front of it. And you can see it's just, it's just wonderful how much it helped pink it is, I've never seen a flower like that before. So many different kinds of pink all kind of wrapped up into one. And this drawing is going to be substantially more meticulous than the other paintings because, just because of how, how detailed this flower really is. So we're gonna go through and try and grab all of the thing, all of the same colors at once. So all of the portions of flower that you're going to be painting this dark pink mixture that you find them all. Because oftentimes when paint starts to dry and you reanimate it with water, it becomes darker or lighter because it's very difficult to get the exact same color by adding water to it. So try try to find all of them at once. And then yet as you can see here, we're leaving the stars right now. So we're going to let everything dry because we don't want any bleeding happening into the white stars flowers. So from here now we're going to mix the colors for the leaves and the stalks. And milkweed is very sturdy, has very large stocks and very big thick leaves. And so I want to try and portray that with this, this, this milky color and these very large, massive leaves that they have. And so we'll go ahead and fill all of the stuff and all of the leaves. And then later on we're going to come back. And this milkweed, this is called a showy milkweed. It has, it has sort of reddish or pinkish veins on the inside of the flowers. And so we definitely want to add that in. And we'll add some darker greens for shadows and then we'll add some pinkish for the veins. And then I think we need some more leaves. So let's go ahead and just add a few more of those. And again, you can see how you touch the page. Press down harder and then lift up as you're pulling back. You can see how that creates that nice leaf shape, that kind of what everyone thinks of as a leaf shape. And let's add a couple kind of overlapping so that you can see depth. That one's nice. Yes, this flower was just really, really cool to see. I'd never seen one blooming before. But go ahead and ask me any flower, add as many leaves as you would like. Filling up the whitespace and then kind of go from there. So we're done with our large brush right now. Let's go ahead and move to a smaller one. And we're going to be using this green to kind of fill in the spaces in the flowers around the white stars. So I didn't think that it was really the right thing to use pink to fill in those spaces because it was just so overwhelmingly paint this flower. And so by adding green, it's filled in the whitespace. So it allows the white star-shaped flower to sort of pop without having too much pink around it. And so we're going to fill that in. We might add a little bit more here. That's nice. Then even if it starts to bleed, That's really nice too. Because if you look at a flower, sometimes the petal colors will actually bleed back into the stems or even into the leaves around them. And so the bleeding of the watercolor actually looks really nice with that. Alright, so now what we're gonna do is we're gonna make that pink color, green to make the veins of the leaves. And I'm not being super precise, I want to add the hint of these veins into the leaves because they are quite prominent in nature. So as you can see, the center vein is very distinct. And then just kind of add some mark-making to the side to create these smaller veins coming off of the main one. We're going to do that with just about all of them. And you can do it more faint or add more paint and make it a much darker depending on where the leaf is and what kinda look you're going for. And then after this we're going to be adding some darker green shadows to the leaves just to give it more depth because right now I feel like it's still kinda flat. This flower is much more intricate than the other flowers that we've done. And so takes quite a bit longer to add in these details. So yeah, you don't have to make veins on every leaf and you don't have to make an the same and perfect on every leaf. But adding the hint or the idea of the veins on the leaves will make it so that your eye sees it that way. All of the leaves must have these veins I see. So we're gonna go on from there. And let's mix some more paint. We've got some of the pink that we were using for the dark color. And then this is going to be the center portion. The shadow portion of the star shaped flower. Just the teeny, tiniest hint of pink on those. And for the most part leaving them white. And you can see also that the star when it opens, it has a divot on the inside of each petal. And so that's what I'm trying to add is those hints of a shadow where those divots are. The center portion was definitely in shadow. So it's kind of a blue almost. So I wanted to make sure that I added that. So I added a little bit of Payne's gray to the pink that I was using for the stars. And you can see that just adds just a, just the idea of shade there in the center of those flowers. That's looking really nice. I like that. Alright, let's get some more yellows and purples going. That's nice color. Alright. Have a good point going as well. This is going to be the lines on the top portion of those seed pods. And they were so orderly in, in the flowers themselves, all five lines coming down and it's just really beautiful to see. And so I just wanted to make sure to add those to the pods so you can see the roundness of them, how they are all clustered together like almost like grapes. And so by adding these lines in this way, you can see the depth. You can see how OIC, that's not flat, it's definitely round and round. It's rounded, It's not cavity, It's not some kind of divid inside the middle of it. So let's go ahead and add these lines into each one of the seed pods. It's much different than the other flowers that we've been doing because of the detail that we're adding here. But I feel like without this, it just wouldn't do the flower justice. So only a few more here because there were some seed pods within the flower blossoms that hadn't yet opened. So just to add detail to that so that you can see that this one is just about to open. This one up top is not yet there. And so you can see the texture of it as well. It's one of the wonderful thing about flowers is that you have all of these wonderful textures, summer spiky and some are really velvety and some are very thin like tissue paper. And some have these seed pods like this one that just have these really wonderful sort of bumpy texture to them. And yeah, it's just, it's so much fun to play with. So let's go ahead and add a little bit more green to the leaves, and we'll make it just a little bit more shadowy. And you can see I pulled in a little bit of pink and I've added a little bit more sap green and some yellow. So let's go ahead and just add in the hint of a shadow. Now with these, since the leaves themselves are so thick, you wouldn't really see through this kind of leaf to the leaf underneath it. So we don't have to, you don't have to have that impression where there's a leaf behind it adding darkness to it. Just because these leaves are so thick in real life. So we're adding just some color and some depth to these leaves. That looks nice. Yeah. So after this, we're going to go back. And what we're going to do is just add a little bit of color to the base of these little flower pods. And this'll, this'll show also how they're very round like clusters of grapes, like I said. And it'll give it some shadow, some depth you can look at. And it will make the front portions of the paws sort of pop out. You can see I'm adding it even to the pods that are inside mixed with the flowers. And then let's go ahead and add that to these top parts as well. Such a pretty flower, they'd never seen it before. Alright, that's it. Thank you so much for joining me. I'll see you next lesson. 7. Yarrow - Wildflowers: Hello again and welcome back. So right now we're going to be doing a quick sketch of Yaro. And Yaro is this really interesting little plant, and it has sort of a cluster flowers that bloom together. And so what we're going to be doing is drawing this, the outline of what we think that the outer shape of the flowers will be. So you can see right now what I'm doing is drawing where the idea of the flower cluster will be. Then what we're going to do is add in the interior flower petal, the little yellow circles in the middle of the flower blossoms. And that is where we're going to base how we're going to paint this later. So you can see right now I'm adding in those circles. And this flower is a little bit different because the flowers themselves are, when you stand back and you look from afar, sort of just a cluster of white. And it looks sort of like a fluffy cloud. But when you get closer and you look individually at each of the flowers, there, they actually, they look kind of like small daisies. Each one is very distinct from, from the other. So right now, we're trying to decide how are we going to convey the feeling of a cluster of flowers. But then also if you actually look at it, the individual flowers themselves. And so we've taken a one cluster here and we've drawn it. Then if you look at the stems themselves, they have these very dainty fine stems that go up to where the blossoms are. And then there's a junction point and the stock that goes down from that is thicker. And then there's another cluster of flowers and then it comes to that junction point and that stock below that is thicker. And so it kind of is this tiered thickness of stock. So we've got two clusters of flowers. I think I'm going to add a little bit more. And then we're also going to be working on the leaves which are substantially different from what we've done so far. The leaves are this kind of fern like, feathery. Look, it's not a one leaf. It actually has these soft toughs on the side of them. So with this, you can see I'm just kinda giving the idea of where the feathery look is going to be. And again, we're not going to be painting inside all of these lines, but this is just the hint of how it will look. So you can see the leaves come up from the side and kind of arch inward. And so we're going to be drawing several of those. And Yaro is a very pretty plant to see. It's very lacy looking. And so it'll be very interesting to paint this. So let's do one more cluster of flowers here, just that we can have some more balanced so that it kinda balances off the other side. And then we'll head into painting. The first thing that we're going to do, like I said before, the circle on the inside of the flower blossom is very important because you can actually see those distinctly even when you look from afar. So we're going to do those first. So let's go ahead and mix a yellow. And we're going to add a little bit of green to it because it did have somewhat of a green consistency to the center of the flowers. So we're not going to be super precise. You can see that I'm adding the center of flowers even that I didn't draw. So there's just an arching motion with the paintbrush. You can see they look kind of like a coin on their sides. So go ahead and fill in where you think they should be. And you can add more if you think you didn't draw it on and off. And then that's it. So I went ahead and cleaned off my palette because I didn't want to have the white in this green that I had from the milkweed. So let's go ahead and start practice. Start getting the paint for the stems. So we have some sap green. Oh, the joy of having a Labrador is that you have hair and your paint. Whenever you have any kind of fuzzy or hair or anything in the paint, make sure that you get it out while it's still wet because once the paint dries on the page, that hair will be locked in there forever. And you don't necessarily want that look. So be very cautious about what ends up on your paper. Alright, so we're gonna start here with these very thin, fine lines. These are what's going to go up to the flowers. And you can see, I didn't quite like that color, so let's add a little bit more yellow. And that's fine. So I'm just gonna go over the top of it again and kind of mask the color from before. And I think that's an important lesson that just, if you don't really like the color, that's fine. Just go back and change it a little bit and go over the top again and it'll be just fine. And you can see I'm pressing harder as I go down to each junction point and the stocks are getting larger. And then again, very fine because we're up at where the blossoms are. Then what we're gonna do with these leaves, you can see how I'm just making this out from the tip and then brushing in towards where the stem is, towards where the interior vein is a leaf. And that'll add a really nice feathery fern like appearance without having to go into extreme detail. So we're gonna do that with each one of these and make sure that you vary the distance between each one, vary the length, and then vary the direction that you're pulling in. Because if you make it all exactly the same, it'll appear that the leaves are all facing you perfectly. So change it so that it looks thinner. And in some areas and you'll be able to have more depth with your painting here. We're gonna go ahead and do that with all of these, like I said. And don't be too overwhelmed with the detail, just kind of pull in with the paintbrush and it's quite easy to fill in all of this whitespace. You don't want it to be solid whitespace because you don't want to have no whitespace because then it'll appear to be just leaves like from, from other plants. You want to have that feathery for an appearance just like the real plant. So it looks like I've got just one more. So let's go ahead and do that and you see how I draw the vein first to give yourself a starting point, someplace to go from, and then arch inward. It looks nice. Alright, so the next thing that we're gonna do is we're going to be painting the petals and the flowers. And you can see I've taken some Payne's gray and I'm going to take a little bit of this violet color. That's nice. And then mix them together. And I think I'll take a little more Payne's gray. What we're doing here, we're not going to paint them this deep blue color. We're going to add this so that it has the appearance of shadow. And so you don't want to have it be overwhelmingly dark. What you want is just a vague hint of this color so that you can see that there are pedals there. But you don't want, you don't want the appearance of the petals to be purple. You want them, you want people to know that and say, Oh, that must be a white pedal. And so what we're going to do is just from not too far away because these flowers are quite small. You're just going to touch the page with the paintbrush and pull inward. And it'll make the appearance of a little pedal. And we're gonna do that around each one of these, of these flower centers. And by doing that, you'll get the feeling of clusters of flowers without having to go into extreme detail on each one. You don't have to individually think, where exactly is this petal supposed to be. But just the feeling overall that there are pedals on these, on these flowers. And what we're going to do is add this color to all of it. So each flower will have this, this kind of ridiculously light blue color. And then later on what we'll do is we'll mix a slightly darker blue, go in and add just a few hints of darker shadow. Color. A color, petals that are lower or in-between other, other flowers. And it will give the impression of not one consistent cluster of flowers, but individual flowers and flowers that are in shade. And we'll be able to do it quite quickly without having to really meticulously guy with all of these flowers. Alright, so we've done this. Let's go back. And what we're gonna do is add a little bit of Payne's gray to this sap green and yellow mixture that we used before. And we're going to add just a hint of shadow on the stocks and stems. And we'll add some more shadow on the leaf France themselves. Then. I think we'll add a few more leaves as well, because we didn't add any before, we just follow the ink. So let's add a few extra leaves as well. So you can see right away this, this just a hint of a secondary green really adds depth to the stems. And I'm gonna go in here and add just a little bit more, a little very faint little tendrils that would go up for the blossoms. And you can see, I'm pulling in towards the center of the France where they would be shadow. And I'm not going to overwhelmingly go over with green all of them from the tip to the vein in the center. Instead, I'm going to just give us a hint of this shadow in the middle of these leaves. And make sure that you have a nice fine point. I've done all this with the Kolinsky size three brush. And it's such a it's such a dainty, frail looking flower. I wasn't sure if there was anything that I could do with the size seven, it was just too big. So let's add in a few more France here that whitespace is just too much there. So let's add in one whole dark leaf there and maybe one over here. That's good, kind of crossover, give it some depth. So you can see I'm just feathering inward going from outside Towards the vein of the leaf. Yarrow is a really pretty plant in the wild. They almost look like a cloud sailing across the sky. Alright, that looks quite nice. So I think I'll add a little bit of shadow to this when it became a homogenous blob there. That's nice. Then let's add a few more little stems that go up towards the blossoms. Those look nice, maybe a couple more. And after this, we're going to mix the darker blue just to add in the hints of shadow with the flowers. So here we go. Since the paint has been drying on the palette, it's automatically going to be darker. It will be more condensed. So just, you can see I'm just adding just a hint of shadow here and there. Just underneath the petals or between the flowers. A little bit of yellow. And we're going to do this for the center of the flowers. Just have a little bit more depth. So we'll take our darker mixed yellow and we'll add this to the center of the flowers and we're not going to go over the whole thing, will just dot it from one side. And it'll add, again, it'll add depth to the flowers themselves. This is just about it. We're all finished with the arrow, and I think we have quite a pretty little painting here. Okay. I'll see you next time. Thank you. 8. Shasta Daisy - Wildflowers: Hello again and welcome back. Today we're going to be doing Shasta daisies. And these were all over the little hill by the pond in my neighborhood. And they sort of took over. There were so many, just clusters of these wonderful white daisies coming up. So we're gonna go ahead and do the sketch like we've done before with the wildflowers. And what we're going to do is start off with the main flower. We're going to do several flowers and blossoms and this one, and this is going to be the first one, the focal, the focal point of the flowers. And you can see the petals that I've drawn first are smaller and sort of angled. And you can see that they're kind of coming out toward you. And then the petals behind the center of the flower so that ones that are farthest from you are taller and upright. So it looks sort of like it's somewhat turned towards you, but still slightly away. And so what I'm doing here now is we're going to add in the stocks of the flowers. And then to add depth, we're going to go ahead and add in a couple buds of flowers as well, just to give the hint of some that are not quite opened yet. And so here we go. You can see that it's both in front of and behind the flower. So I think that'll give it a lot of really interesting depth. And we'll go ahead and add a few more flowers in here. Shasta daisies bloom altogether. So I thought it'd be important to add more than just one or two. So this one is going to be facing more upward but still somewhat towards you. And you can see, I'm again, I'm not counting petals are making sure that they are the exact right size or number. Instead, I'm getting the hint of what a daisy looks like. And so we're going to add some leaves because the, the bush of daisies themselves are quite large. There are lots of leaves in the daisy plant. And so we went ahead and added leaves and, and another bud there. And then we'll do one more, probably one more flower and then some more leaves here. And then after that we'll go ahead and call this sketch. Good. And so I think since I have these flowers facing us, let's add one that's facing away so we get to see the back of the flower as well. So you can see I'm very vague sketches not make very much detail. And just the hint of how, how a flower would look from behind. So you can see it's kind of side facing where you get to see the back of it. Alright, so from here, let's go ahead and add in our paint. Let's start with the center of the daisies because it's such a prominent look. When you see a daisy, you see these white petals, but you immediately see this yellow center. So let's go ahead and mix. It's quite a deep yellow, so let's have some orange and yellow in there together. And you can see I'm twirling my brush and pulling away so that I can have that nice tip just to paint the centers. Well, and then the center of a daisy is sort of fuzzy. So let's go ahead and make sure that we have not a perfectly round center, but kind of dab it on like stippling. And alright, that looks nice. I think Let's make sure that you can see this one here. I turned away. From here. Let's go to the leaves and the stems. Let's mix ourselves some new paint. Here we go. We've got some good sap, green daisies have a really nice green stem. I've got some extra water and we'll just mix this old paint in mind as well. And we'll do a little tiny bit of Payne's gray just to darken it up a little bit. And from here, the leaves and the stem from the Shasta daisies are quite large as well. So let's go ahead and use the size seven brush. You can see we're doing the hints. Stem behind the blossom there for this bud. And then you can see from this flower that's turned away from us. So don't, don't be too concerned about laying everything down. It's actually more interesting, I think when it's, when it's more fluid, less meticulous. So these look good. From here. Let's go ahead and start doing the leaves. And I liked the leaves that I've drawn in. Some of them are kind of, you can see the tips have folded down a little bit. So let's put those in. And then we'll also add in a few more leaves as well. Just because the daisies, it's just such a bushy little plant. So you can see, I'm not being too crazy about staying in the lines. Just be loose. And if you make what you think is a mistake, just say, oh, well, it's fine. And move on from there. So it's definitely not anything to be concerned about. Alright, that looks good, but I think we need a few more. So let's go ahead and just figure out where we want to lay those down. Yeah, that's good. I like the way that the leaves are, the ends are folded down. So let's add a couple more of those. Those are nice. Lad, a few up here too. Just look at it and add in where you think you need some more balance. If something looks like it's two to open or if there's too much on one side versus the other, just add in an extra leaf or two. Yeah, I think that looks, that looks pretty nice. Maybe just a couple more. Alright. Then from here what we're going to do is add a little bit more to the bud. But we're going to add in the colors. Petals now. Just like we did with the Yaro plant, what we're going to do is add in shadow, shadow to the petals instead of leaving them white. Another thing that you can do is to paint the background and leave the petals more white. But I liked this look of just the shadow, the idea of the, of the petals instead of having the background painted. So what we're doing here is I had a little bit of purple and a little bit of Payne's gray, and a lot of white here on this palette. And we're just going to drop it in where you think there would be a shadow. And you can see the yellow centers are still quite wet, so try to avoid them, but if they bleed, it just makes it look prettier. So don't be too concerned about the bleeding together. Just assume that it will at some point. So you can see, I'm not going too crazy about where they're being laid down, just kind of putting them in. And we're going to add more detail to this later. So don't be too concerned about how much you're putting in. This is just going to be a hint of shadow just to show that the petals are present really. I really liked the Shasta daisy. It's, it's such a well-known plant. It seems like everyone, everyone knows what a daisy is. But it's very interesting to actually look at the plant and think, how would I draw this? So you can see the, the flower that's turned away. You can see that there was a lot of bleeding. But I really like how it turned out. I really like the green and the yellow mixing together on that with that Payne's gray shadow. Looks really nice. Okay, so from here, let's go ahead and we're gonna get Payne's gray again. And we're going to add that in. I think I grabbed a bit too much. Here we go. Let's add that in for a little bit of shadow for the leaves. And we'll do the same thing. Let's add a little bit more yellow that was just a bit too dark. Nice. Make a nice point. And we're down to our smaller size, brush the size three. And we're just going to add hints of shadow on the buds and on the stocks. Just pull down and you can lift up again if you want. If you don't want the line to be completely continuous. Varying the thickness looks very nice for shadows as well. So just some hints of Shadow. Make sure that you have a nice, a nice amount of paint on your brush. And go in and add a little bit to each leaf just to kind of give it a hint of, of interest. And you can see because it's so bushy. By adding the shadows, it kind of makes the leaves more distinct and makes it individually leaves as opposed to a big cluster of green. And I think it looks quite nice that way. I really liked how these leaves turned out, the ones that sort of crinkle and follow over. And I think that was very nice for the, how the plant actually looks in real life. So we're almost done here. And you can see already with the paint that's drying on the flowers. You can see how nice that is looking because it was such wet paint that we're having some nice blooming effects with the watercolor. It'll have a nice distinct line on the outside and then the interior of where the paint was will be lighter. Very nice. Look there. Alright, let's see, that looks good. So let's go ahead and move on. Let's see here, Let's take a little bit of that violet purple color. And then a little bit of Payne's gray mix that together. We kind of ran out of paint there. Let's make it a bit darker than before. We're going to take this with a smaller brush now and sort of just adding some, some hints of more shadow. You can see where the, where the petals are now with the previous wash that we laid down. But now let's go ahead and lay down some darker parts, especially this one that has it's back to us. Oh yeah. That looks really nice. If they're wet pools of paint still, it's fine. You can add it in and the darker paint will bleed into it. Look very nice. Really good. Yeah, don't be too concerned. Just added here and there. Alright, let's see. Now. That's looking really good so far. Yeah, you know what let's do? Let's go ahead and get some more orange. And let's add some more dimension to the interior of the flowers, a little yellow centers. So we're going to darken up this yellow that we use from before. We've got a little bit of orange and a little bit of Payne's gray. And we're going to use this as a shadow. And we'll sort of stipple it onto the sides to continue having that look like fuzziness that the fuzzy center of the daisies. And so let's add it to all of these. And that's looking really nice. Yeah. Alright, so that looks really good. Let's add a little bit of white. Just straight white. And we'll add a little bit just highlights of sun. That'll add just a little bit more texture, a little more dimension to it. You can see we have the shadow and now we also have the highlighted portions. And we have a little bit of yellow on our brush. Let's take this white here. And let's just add some highlights to the edges here. Having the mixture there, blue of the Payne's gray and the purple color. And adding this slightly yellowish white man, that looks really nice. I'm liking that a lot. Yeah, sort of just touch it to the leaves where you think it needs. Just a little bit more, a little bit more texture and color. That looks really nice. I like that flower. Alright, so let's go on to the next one. Thank you so much for joining me. 9. Flax - Wildflowers: Hello again and welcome back. This is our last flower illustration that we're going to be doing for this class. And we're going to be doing the flax plant. And I love the flax plant. It is actually what's used to make linen fabric. And it's a beautiful little plant. And it's very, very blue. I don't know how else to describe it. The flowers themselves are so beautiful. And we're going to do our absolute best to capture that really blew look of them. So right now I'm doing the little sketch drawing. And if you look at the flax plant, they have these wonderful little seed pods that come off of the plant. The leaves themselves are quite spiky. It almost looks like to me, it looks kind of like Rosemary. It has these spike flower, spike leaf coming off of that main stem. So we're going to add in the idea of what that looks like. And then we'll of course paint outside the lines to figure out how it should look when we're all done. And the flower itself has five little petals. And it's just this really dainty, soft, thin petal look to it. So let's go ahead and try and balance that out a little bit. So we've got a few flowers there. Let's add some more seed pods. And maybe another flower here might as well. And so we're going to be drawing the hint of what it looks like. But keep in mind that this isn't going to be the exact final look of the illustration. You can be really loose with how this is going to be. And just add in the look of those leaves. And as you go down, it seems to me that the leaf sort of droop downward instead of being pointing upward. So let's go ahead and add in a few more flowers, because these plants have a ton of little flowers. They're just so pretty. And I went ahead and I spit up drawing just a little bit just because it's it's quite a detailed played. It has quite a lot going on. So let's go ahead and add in what we think should basically be the idea of how the plant should look and where we want the main leaves and the main flowers to be. These little seed pods are all over tons, a little seed pods. So let's add these in and then I think we'll add in maybe one more flower but facing away. So maybe another flower too. And this way you can kind of get the, you can draw what you want with the flowers in shadow and in sunlight and the differences of how they look there. So let's go ahead and move on to the painting. And I think the first thing that we're going to do is sort of, let's try, let's try and capture that blue. We're not going to make it first off, but let's capture that beautiful blue of the flax plant. And so we've got some really nice paint here. Let's mix that with a little bit of red because it's sort of a purply blue if you look at flax flowers. So this one's gonna be quite tough, at least for me to get the right color going. And so I have my size seven here. And let's just add a little bit. Red. That's too blue for me. That's a bit better. All right. Go ahead and roll it into your paintbrush and makes sure that you have it a good amount because we have a lot of flowers to cover. We're going to do is sort of go over each one of these petals. And the hint of each one of these petals because we're going to be doing several layers of this blue and we're going to fill it in. This will be pretty much how it's going to look. The flux has a little yellow center. So I think what we're going to do is add the yellow centers and just allow it to bleed in. Because it looks to me like the yellow sort of moves into the petal flower, petal colors. So let's go ahead and do this pretty quickly. And we'll try and keep it still somewhat wet. So let's go ahead and let's grab this brush. And we're going to use the size three, and we're gonna get some of that. Oh yeah, that's a real nice. Let's see, a little bit more water. And then let's go ahead and put this in those centers. And you can see some of it is a little bit dry, but it's starting to bleed. And you want that you want that look to have sort of a really vibrantly yellow center. And by putting it on, while the paint is still wet, the yellow will actually push the blew away. So it'll be the yellow on top of the white paper instead of the yellow on top of blue paint on top of the white paper. Then if you look at the leaves of this plant, there's a blue-green, almost like a sage colored. So I went ahead and grabbed a more of an aquamarine colored green. And we're going to add a little bit of Payne's gray. And let's add a little bit of yellow to lighten that up. Oh, that's real nice. And some water because it's a bit thick right now. And we'll see how this looks. Let's see all of the stems and the leaves themselves are quite dainty. So we're going to start, we're going to start off by using this size three brush. Let's add a little bit of sky blue there. That looks really nice. Add a little bit more. Yeah. It's one thing I love about watercolors. That looks nice. Let's just add more of it, see how it goes. I like mixing paints because there's no really hard and fast rules to mixing. Put in what you think looks nice and go from there. Alright, so we're doing these really fine lines. So let's go ahead and do this with each of the stems. And as you can see, the seed pods are actually the same color as the, as the stems and the leaves. We're going to go ahead and just color all of those in with those watercolor and add in a little bit of leaves, hints of leaves there. And this flower is turned away. So let's color in that back portion. You don't have to make the stems perfectly straight. So here we go. Let's go ahead and start with those leaves. And you can see they're very thin, almost like needle-like leaves. So make sure they have a nice fine tip. Go from there. Yeah, so we're going to just color in these seed pods and then you're going to touch down for the point and then barely press down for the fatter portion of the leaves just because they're so thin already. So we're going to do that with each one of these leaves. And go ahead and add more if you feel like you didn't draw it enough. I always feel like I didn't draw it enough. Alright, running out of paint. So make sure that you have a lot of good paint on your brush for this nice color. This flower was actually not by the pond, but it's one of my favorites. And my mother-in-law has a beautiful garden. And so she sent me some pictures of flax to paint. I guess they bloom for quite awhile. And so there's just always flowers in her garden. So wonderful. Alright, we're almost done here, so let's go ahead and add in just the remainder of the stems and these few extra leaves. And then we're gonna go back and we're going to try our best with the blue again. It's not quite there yet, or at least for me, I think that it's just not quite the right color. So let's see here. Alright, let's go ahead and rinse our brush. And let's see what we should do. Let's get some of this Payne's gray again. And you can just layer on what we're doing here is we're actually going to be layering on a lot of very thin washes. You can do that or you can add thicker washes as you go. But just this thin. Oh yeah, that's nice. This thinner colors so that you can leave the highlight of the wash from below. It's still visible. And you can see I'm just painting it on, but leaving the more purply blue visible through, through the new paint that I'm putting on. That looks really nice. And then especially there are some places here that are still wet. This blue will bleed in with that, the other paint and that's really nice. Consistency to the petals. These little buds. Let's make sure that we don't forget them. Add some more paint to them as well. Alright, yeah, and you can see here is wet and the paint will bleed there. It'll have a more indistinct edges. It'll look fuzzier. Alright, let's see, that looks really nice. Not quite sure if we're done with that yet. We might revisit with other colors. Okay, so let's see. Let's try and work on those centers a little bit more. I don't think that they're quite bright enough. So I went ahead and added quite a lot of white to the yellow. And let's just kinda dot that on and see how that does it. Let's see it, let's make it even more white. So you can see how now it's standing out quite a bit. If you look closely, you can see that the white is actually drowning out the ink lines from below. So it gives it, it gives it some thickness to the paint. Let's see, how about this violet here. That's nice. Alright, so this is what we're adding to the green to add some shadows to the leaves. And we're going to do it again, the buds and with all of the stems. And we're going to add in just that hint of another color other than this light green and add dimension and depth to these, to these little stems. It's really surprising how quickly you can do this, how little effort it takes. And then it really looks like the painting itself just pops off the page. And we're gonna do this sort of just to the interior of the leaves. And maybe let's add a few more leaves in there as well. Just if the dark color. Yeah. So you can see the shadows. They're not overwhelming the leaves and we're not painting over the entirety of the bulbs or the seed pods. Just, just a hint. And if you leave it on one side of the seed pods, you can see that it has the appearance of the sun coming from the light source, coming from one side. And it looks quite nice. I'm really liking this nice violet shadowed green. Alright, and these leaves down below, you can add a little bit more darkness to because there's low, you can assume that the leaves are being shadowed by the plants from above. Let's get a little bit more paint. And let's go ahead and add a few new leaves. There we go. Oh yeah, that's really nice. And don't be afraid to add a bunch of extra leaves if you want it. Or extra seed pods are flowers if you didn't draw enough in. This is looking really nice. I'm liking these extra leaves, just that some of the leaves are an entirely different color than the others. That looks really nice. And then some overlap just to give it some depth. That's nice. Okay, Alright, let's go back and let's work on the flowers again. So let's go back to this yellow and white mixture and you can see I'm getting quite a bit more yellow and rolling my brush to get that nice point. And we're going to dab this on. We're gonna do several layers of this white and yellow just to try and get a really vibrant center. And here's some more white. And we're going to do straight white here. And then the white goes into this blue that we make from before. And we're going to do somewhat of a highlight for this, for the petals. And having these multiple layers of different colors. It's very interesting once it's all dry. Yeah, just dab it on here and there where you think it might need some more, some more interests. That looks very nice. Okay, I'm liking these flowers a lot. Ok, so what I have here is a little Jelly Roll white gel pen. I'm just going to add just a few hints of dots here. Just for a little bit more interests for the center of the flowers. And that's it. That's our flax plant. Thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you in the next lesson. 10. Conclusion - Wildflowers: Here we are. You made it through all of the lessons with me. And now we have these beautiful watercolor wildflower illustrations to show for it. Let's go over the topics that we covered and everything that we accomplished in this class. We learned about mixing watercolor paint and layering in order to get a desired effect or color. And many different watercolor techniques to bring several illustrations of flowers to life. We first sketched, then painted cosmos, Galatia, Aster, showy milkweed, Yaro, Shasta, daisy and flax. I hope that you enjoyed learning about painting with me. And I can't wait to see the flower illustrations that you've come up with. So please don't forget to upload your watercolor sketches to the project gallery. Leave a review and subscribe so that you can be notified if my future classes. Thank you again. Bye.