Watercolour: How to Paint White Flowers

1. Intro: Hi, my name is Sharon from Sharon Steven's Design. This class is all about how to paint white flowers in watercolor. As with all of my classes, I take you through every step of my process so the cost is suitable for beginners or more experienced painters. I'll start by taking you through the supplies that you need in the class, followed by some of my top tips for painting white subjects. Then we'll move on to some color mixing. Then we'll spend some time practicing some petals. After that, we'll move on to painting two flowers, the anemone and snow drop. Most of which we'll start by sketching out and then I'll take you through painting them step-by-step. We hope you'll enjoy painting these flowers with me and I also hope you'll built tastes and knowledge away about painting other white subjects. Let's get started. 2. Supplies: For this class, the supplies that you'll need include watercolor paper. I'll be using cold press paper. It's lantern 100 percent cotton and it's 300 GSM or a 140 pounds. You need your watercolor brushes. I'll be using some of my smaller brushes, my size zero, my size two, and my size four. Then a mix of round and spot brushes but round brushes will be perfectly fine. The paints I'll be using in this class include Windsor blue, permanent rose, Windsor yellow, Indian yellow, Sap Green, and indigo. But as a minimum, all you need is those three primary colors and you can mix up the other colors from those. You'll also need a glass of water and a paper towel and a fine pencil for drawing your sketch out. You'll also find it useful to have an eraser. I'll be using my light box to trace over my initial sketch onto my watercolor paper. But if you don't have a light box, you can just hold your sketch up to the window when the sun shining through and trace it that way. Now we have our supplies. Let's move on to some tips. 3. Tips: White flowers can be a little daunting to paint. They can be quite tricky and there's a fine line between making them stand out from the page and making them look gray or some other color. In this lesson, I want to share with you a few of my top tips that will hopefully help you with your painting. If you've seen in my other videos, I always tell you to keep your pencil lines light when sketching out your object, and this is so much more important with white objects as you don't want that pencil showing through. Later in the class, I'll show you an easy way to help with this by sketching out your drawing first and tracing it onto watercolor paper. My next tip is to mix your own grays. I would highly recommend not using a diluted black or ready made gray, and we'll come onto this in the next lesson in more detail, but these grays tend to be pretty dull and flat. If you mix your own into tinted gray, you can make your whole painting either warmer or cooler, and just generally much more natural and interesting. Also look for other colors in your object, in your flower, where there are reflections. If you need to, practice diluting your mixes so that they are pale enough. Subtlety is key with these white flowers, and if your mix is too light, you can always add more later, so it's not a problem. If you add too much, you'll probably ruin your painting pretty quickly. Likewise, keep your brushes and your water clean. Because we're using such subtle washes, you don't want any dirty water or any leftover pigment on your brush to be affecting your work. Have some scrap paper handy to always test your colors before using them. You won't always be able to tell if you picked up too much pigment or a straight color, so it's best to check before ruining your work. Make sure you leave enough of your flower completely white by not touching the paper, and I roughly tried to work to about 50 percent white and 50 percent shadows. Use different techniques to add texture to your petals, don't just blend everything in. Use dry brushing or add some fine dotted lines to represent the creases of the petal. Adding contrast your work, will help make it stand out, so when you're working on the center or any other areas with color, like your foliage, make them really bold and vibrant, and this contrast will make the white stand out more. Finally, if you really want to make the white in your petals stand out, you can use the foliage to do this. You can paint a leaf behind the petals or strategically place another stem behind one of them. It doesn't take much to really give that illusion of those petals standing out, just by having one or two areas standing behind them adding that contrast. You can also just add in a wash of color around the edge to add in the background. Hopefully those tips have been useful. In the next lesson, we'll be focusing on the colors that we can paint our petals with. 4. Mixing Greys: In this lesson, we'll look at the mixes that we can use for our petals. Before we start looking at our paints, I just want to show you this photo of a white flower which I've imported into Photoshop. To start with, I just want to do a little quiz with you. Grab a piece of paper and a pen. This will only take minute, but I'm really interested to see what your answers are. I hope you'll post them in the gallery or discussions board for me to see afterwards. Write down what colors you see in this flower. Ignore the green in the background and the yellow in the center. Just focus on the petals. You can pause the video if you need to. I'm going to grab the eyedropper tool and select the area of the petal which is the whitest, and paint this color up here with my brush. As you can see, that's probably one of the whitest areas in the flower. I'm going to do this for a few other areas of these shadows here. One more here and the last one here. Now I'm going to change the background to gray. I want you to write down what colors you see in these circles. Finally, write down one word to describe your reaction to this. That's enough, I'm not going to make you write anything else. But I'd love to see what you wrote so do share it with me if you want to. Let's look at the circles. We have the white on the left, and then we have this blue-y gray, this really cool gray, and we have this purple color and a brown. I don't know about you but when we look at the flower it is not so easy to see that these colors are in there. It just shows that our eyes can play tricks on us as what we see as gray can be a whole range of colors and reflections, depending on what is around the flower or the white object. The aim of this lesson is to really just to get you to be more aware of the colors that are in your white objects or your white flowers or wherever you're painting, because I want to urge you to avoid using flat grays, any ready-made blacks or any ready-made grays in your palette because they will most likely make your painting dull or flat. Mixing your own grays will allow your paintings to be much more natural looking, more realistic, and more interesting. How do we mix our grays? There are many options for mixing our grays in water color. We can use complimentary colors, we can use blues and browns. But the way I want to show you is by using our three primary colors. Hopefully, you'll have all of these in your palette. I've divided my page into two. On my palette, I have my winter blue, my permanent rose, and my winter yellow, my three primary colors. I also have my ivory black over here so I can show you a comparison a bit later on. Make sure you have your clean water. We don't want any dirty water affecting the colors that we're mixing. I'm going to start by pulling out some of my blue. I'm going to wash that off, make sure it's clean and then pull out some permanent rose. You can say it is turning into a nice, vibrant purple. Now I want to grab a touch of my yellow. You don't need too much of it. You can see that this has too much red in it now. We have to water this down, It's a bit too brown. We want to add more blue. Just have a play around with this mix to see what colors you can make until you're happy. This has now made a nice cool gray. I'm going to add this to my page. This is going to be way too dark for a painting. What we want to do now is just practice diluting this mix, watering it down so we get a nice washy color. I'm going to really dilute this and I'm going to add even more water. Just practice getting these mixes the palest you can as that is what we want to use at the start of the painting. We can always build it in layers, but we want to keep these really subtle, especially at the beginning. So always make sure your brush is clean and you want it so you can barely see it. So just try to get the lightest mix you can. These are the ones we want to be using, from these light mixes to the slightly darker ones here. This looks so subtle. But with these white flowers, we really want this to be subtle to make sure the flower still looks white. So that's a nice cool gray. If you want to make it warmer, you can add a bit more red. Let's practice doing that. Now this is a bit more of a purple-y gray. I'm going to move some of this up here so I can add more water to it. Again, just practice diluting this as much as you can and varying your mixes until you get the ones that you like. Have a play around with your primary colors. Practice making different grays, making warm grays, cool grays, and really practicing those valleys, making sure you're confident with really diluting these mixes to make them really light shades. As I've already said, it's always best to err on the side of caution and go lighter than you think as you can build more color in with the layers. Now let's just compare these with our black. This is my ivory black. I Just want to show the difference. You can immediately see the difference and that's really going to make your painting look dull if we use this all over, whereas these up here will be much more natural and interesting. Finally, I just wanted to show you my Payne's gray. I don't have this in inner tube, just on my pan here. You can see this is a really cool blue-y gray. But this color can vary quite a lot across brown. You may have a Payne's gray which is quite different. So you can use this if you wish, but I like to use my mixes because then I have a lot more control over the different shades that I use. I'm just going to quickly label these mixes, so I don't forget where they are in the future, something I'd always recommend you do. Now we've had a little practice in mixing up some of these grays. Do take more time over this if you want to. We've only touched on this really briefly. In the next class we'll be moving on to using some of these mixes to practice painting some petals on the other side of our page. 5. Practice Petals: In this lesson, we'll be practicing some petals. Grab your pencil. I'm using my fine mechanical pencil. Let's start by drawing a couple of petals, starting quite thin at the bottom, curving up to the top. Down again, keeping your lines nice and light. I'm going to draw another one next to it, this time from side view. Starting again at the base, curving up to the right, and then down with a few bridges in that. Make sure you have a paper towel handy and that your water is clean, and then start mixing your pale Grey. I'm just going to start at the bottom of this petal with small strokes. You can see how pale this mix is. You can barely see it. That's what we want to be starting with. I'm just going to add a bit more water to my brush to blend this out a little. Just going to pull this out a little more. I want to aim to leave most of this hair white, but we want to define the edges enough that it stands out. I'm going to start with this edge up here and blend that out. Again on this side, you can see I'm not just going around the edge with my brush. I'm using little strokes and I'm following the curve of the petal. It's really, really subtle at the minute. Now I'm going to grab one of my smaller brushes and pick up my gray mix again. Normally we'd want to have some scrap paper in hand, but as we're just practicing, I'm just going to use this side of the page and check if that color is okay. Now I'm just going to paint a few lines to add a bit of soft texture. This is still really light and it's going to be blending in as it's still wet. Again, I'm following the curve of the petal. Now I'm going to add a bit of extra shadow here, then at the top where there's this little dip. Missing the two strokes, and my brush is fairly dry, it's not completely blending in. There's that dry brush refract and it's adding some nice texture if you look closely. It's still really subtle. I'm going to pick up some of this darker gray, I'm just going to test this, and then I just want to build up this area here. Remember, don't go too dark too soon. I'm just going to use a side of my brush again to add a little texture, and that's creating that dry brush effect. Okay, we've kept it really subtle and left about half that white. Now let's move on to the next one. Again, I'm starting at the base and I'm using the side of my brush to get that dry wash effect, there's hardly any water in my brush. Now am going to use a slightly darker mix to run along this edge here. This is possibly the darkest you want to go and just blending that in. Now I just need to add a bit of definition to the top of the petal and make sure we can see this whole shape. Just play around with the shadowy areas and see how dark you want to make it. I think that's probably enough now. Okay, now let's draw that same petal again, that first one. Then we'll draw the side view again. But this time we're going to draw one underneath so we can play around with the shadows that petals underneath would have. This area here, that petal underneath is going to be in the my shadow. So we'll start with that. But again, remember not start to dark as we can build on it. I'm just going to test that out. Now just run along the edge. That's quite dark. So I'm just going to grab some of my water and blend that out. Now you can just use these little strokes to blend it out. Remember to work along the curves of the petal. Then work on the top of this petal to add that definition. Now you can leave these edges of the upper petals more white if you want to, because those edges have already been defined by the petal underneath. That's quite dark so am just going to add a little more water and blend it out. Then just work on that tip again. Just focus on keeping your washes light, leaving enough white for the paper left, and using little strokes to blend the shadows out to add some texture to the petal. If the paint is too dark, just come back and pick it up or add some water. Just going to build on the shadow a little more at the bottom. When you have these areas as slightly darker, it really brings out that contrast and shows us the white areas. But you just need to get the right balance, so just be careful with that. Now I'm just going to go back to this first petal now it's dry and painting some really fine lines with some texture. Remember, I know I keep saying it. But remember to follow the curve of the leaf. I'm just going to add even more depth to this, making that shadow a little darker to bring out that white even more. Just to see how far we can go with that shadow. I think we're done. You can also use a foliage or a colored background to make your petals stand out. You can practice doing that as well. Let's just draw another petal. Add a little shadow. Now grab your green or another color for the background. I'm going to grab my olive green and just paint around the petal. Don't keep it too smooth. Add some additional dimples in those edges. It will make it more realistic. Just work your way around. This should really help to bring out some of that white in the petal if you've left enough in there. We've probably added a little bit too much shadow into this one. Just going to make some of these shadowy areas slightly darker to bring out that contrast a bit more. Now we've had a little practice time. Let's move on to our first flower. The Anemone. 6. Snowdrops Part 1: Sketching the Outline: In the next couple of videos, we'll be looking at snow drops, and we'll start by sketching them out. As with the last flower, I'll be sketching out first on sketching paper and tracing it with my lightbox to transfer to my watercolor paper. It's not necessary, but it's useful for keeping those pencil lines nice and neat. So this is the outline that we're aiming for by the end of this lesson, we'll be painting two snow drop side by side with three leaves. Start with the top of the snow drop on the right, make sure you leave enough space for both flowers with the stems running down the center, now draw in that first petal. So it start by dipping it down, then curving around to a point, and then curve it backup. Now the other one, so, again dip it down, curve it out to a point, and then curve it backup. Now let's draw in the middle of the flower, which has an upward dip at the bottom, and we'll be painting in a green area here, you don't need to draw that bit in really. This middle bit is made up of three inner petals, so, just draw the other two either side. Okay. Now we want to draw that third petal which is sitting at the back. You can just run your pencil along to make sure it would meet up to the top. Make sure your lines are nice and bold. We can go over these more when we're finished, so, we're ready to trace it. Okay. Next, let's draw in stem. So we want this to be curving around quite sharply, and then we want to add in this top part of the flower, so, start in the middle, and then do the outer edges, and it curves around that stem. Then you can draw in the rest of the stem down to the bottom. Okay. Now let's move on to the second flower. So again, starting with that top part flower, and then drawing those two front petals in again, then the center part and the two inner Petals either side, and then finally that back petal. Okay. Now that stem and the top part of the flower, the inner edge first, and then the outer area, and then the rest of the stem. Okay. Now we want to join the leaves, so, start at the base. We're going to draw a leaf that is going to go right up behind this first flower, so, give that petal, that extra definition, and another short one here on the right, and then a final one on the left. Okay. So now we've finished with our sketch. Just go ahead, neaten up. Make sure your lines are Bold, now you can see it. Trace it on toward color paper, and let's get painting. 7. Snowdrops Part 2: Painting the Stems: In this lesson, we'll start painting our snow drops. Let's take a look at our color palette fast. I'll be using the same mix of graves before. So I'll be using my three primary colors, my Winsor blue, my permanent rose and my Winsor yellow. I'll also be using, my Indian yellow, my sap green and my indigo, and using a variety of mixes among these six paints to make up the colors I need. Let's start with the top of the flower. So you'll need your green fast. So this is my sap green. I'm going to mix this with some of my Indian yellow to make it slightly more yellow and more neutral, more realistic. Start by painting down the center. The aim here is we want to leave a highlight at the top right. So we want that to be slightly lighter and we want to make the left side slightly darker. So we'll give it some dimension. So make sure you're nice and neat around those edges. Now I'm just picking up a bit of the dark mix. I'm going to fill in this left edge. I'm just washing my brush and drying it. I'm blending that color in very gently out to the right side where we want it to be lighter. I don't need any paint on my paint brush for this. I'm just using the paint that's already on the paper. Now we want a bit more of a diluted green mix for the stem. You don't want any excess water on your brush while you're still painting any of this delicate areas. Having a dry brush will always give you much more control over the paint. So just make use of that paper towel to take that excess water out. Now pick up the slightly dark mix and run it along the bottom edge of that stem. Again, this will give it some dimension. Now using that diluted yellow with green mix, I'm going to use this to paint the top part of the stem which wraps around this main stem. Now let's do the same with the other snow drop. Again, we will not highlight at the top right and we want the bottom left to be darker. You can just dry brush again and use it to blend in. I'm going to make that a little darker and just blend that in again. Now for the curved part of the stem, using more of diluted mix. Now I'm just using a slightly stronger mix. I'm just running it along that bottom edge of the stem so it blends in. Again use that diluted yellow with green mix to paint the top part of the stem that's wrapping around that main stem. Now let's move on to the petals. I'm going to get some freshwater for this. I will pause the video here and do the same if you need to. 8. Snowdrops Part 3: Painting the Petals: Okay, so now I have my fresh water, I want to mix my gray up again using my primary colors. I'm using my size two brush now. I'm going to use a really dilute gray mix to start with for these petals. I'm going to start at the top of this one. Then working my way down this edge using the same solo strokes used in the last petal, following the curve of the petals. We want to slowly build up the shadow and these inner petals and that back petal, work gently, slowly, so you don't make it too dark and remember to leave enough white in there. Now pick up some of your green and you can paint this little area on that inner petal. I want to darken the shadow and the back petal so it makes this inner petal standout more. Keep building up these edges so you have enough definition around these petals. When you're happy, move on to the second snow drop and we can start working on nice petals. I'm starting with this front two petals. I'm making that back petal darker to make everything else stand out more against it. Now working on those inner petals. I'm going to add that green area to this inner petal. In the next video, We'll be moving to painting the leaves and to finishing up our painting. 9. Snowdrops Part 4: Painting the Leaves: Now I want to make the sap darker green for the rest of the stems and the leaves. I'm going to use my sap green as a base for this. I'm just going to mix in a touch of indigo to make it darker. Again, be careful if you're using indigo, it's a very strong color, is very overwhelming, I only need the smallest amount. I'm just going to test this out until I get a gray mix I'm happy with. Now I'm going to paint in the bottom part of these stems. Just try and make sure the color isn't solid all the way along this stem. You can use some of the different greens that are on your parlor to create some variation or just add a bit more water. That will just make it look more interesting and give any edges more definition. Now lets move on to the leaves. Start with your pale green mix we want to paint this up through the center of the leaf as though it's folded in and now use a darker green to run along the side. Run this along the edge and it should blend into the center of the leaf because it should still be slightly wet. If you need to clean your brush, take any excess water off with your paper towel and use your brush to blend in gently with small strikes. Make sure to be nice and neat around this petal area. We really want to use this leaf to make that petal stand out more. I'm going to make sap even darker blue-green for the edge of the leaf. I'm going to use my sap green and indigo again for this, a bit more concentrated. Now I'm just using a dry brush to blend this in gently. Darken it up, these edges a bit more and this petals if you need to. You can use this darker green mix to add any extra definition around the rest of the flower and the stem to give it more definition on dimensions. I'm just going to work with few areas. I'm working around the edges here and any areas in shadowing. Now let's carry on with these leaves. Again, with this pale green at the center and then the slightly darker mix along the edges so it blends in. Then with this final leaf, I'm going to make it slightly darker so it's almost facing away from us. I think that's a bit too dark, so I'm just going to take some of that paint away, just using my dry brush. That should pick up some of that paint. That's better. Now just take a step back and have a look at your flower and check you're happy with it. See if there are any areas you want to add more definition to. Obvious I have to at least put more definition to some of these petals with my gray mix. Then we are done. Don't forget to gently erase any stray pencil marks once it's completely dry if you need to. I hope you're happy with your painting and please do you share it with me. I look forward to seeing it. 10. Anemone Part 1: Sketching the Outline: In the next few lessons, we'll be painting the Anemone. And the first thing we want to do is sketch it out. So as we discussed earlier, we want to make sure our pencil lines are as faint as possible. So that they don't show through in the finished piece. And whilst I say this for every painting, this is so much more important when the object we're painting is white because it'll be so much more obvious. So unless you're really confident with your drawing, the best way to do this is to sketch the flower out onto a piece of paper first and then trace it onto the watercolor paper. Either using a lightbox or by just holding it up to a window when there is enough sun shining through. So let's start by briefly looking at the anatomy of this Anemone. It has a central mound which is yellowy green surrounded by yellowy orange stamens. In this Anemone there are seven petals four on top and three underneath, which are a bit more in shadow. So grab your piece of sketch paper unless you are drawing down onto your watercolor paper. We'll start with drawing the circle for the center. A helpful way to get your proportions right, especially if you're using a piece of sketch paper when you're not concerned about having extra lines, is to draw another circle much larger around this as a guide for where the petals should reach out to. In this way, they should be nice and even all the way around. So now start with your top petal coming out and don't make it too smooth add a couple of ridges and then curve it back into the center. So we want four of these. So another one here on the right and one at the bottom. I'm going to make this just slightly underneath that last one. Then one more here on the left. So now we want to draw in the three petals underneath. So try and give each of these petals about their own character, their own shape, some lifts or dips. Some different angles will make them look much more interesting and realistic. So imagine you drawing this in the center, you can come up round and down. Okay, and finally, draw in the stem. So make sure it's bold enough for you to be able to trace and then either grab your lightbox to trace it or hold it up against the window when the sun is bright. Remember when tracing, keep your lines really faint. So I'm going to be switching to my mechanical pencil, which is really fine to draw this on the watercolor paper. Then if you need to, you can use a blotting eraser, if you have one, to make them even fainter before you start painting. Okay, so now let's move on to the next lesson. We'll be starting to paint our petals. 11. Anemone Part 2: Painting the Petals: In this lesson, we'll start painting anemone, and we'll start with our petals. But first I want to look at the palette that I'll be using for this whole flower. For the petals, I'll be using the same mixes in the practice session, which were my three primaries, my Winsor Blue , my Permanent Rose and my Windsor Yellow. For the center and the stem, I'll be using Sap Green, my Indian Yellow, and some Indigo. But you only really need the three primary colors, you can make up the oranges and the greens using those if you don't have the other colors. Our aim is to make the petals stand out from the background but to keep them looking white. Remember, go slow and steady. We will start with a really diluted mix as we can always make it darker. I have my gray mixed up, I have my clean water, I have my paper towel, and I also have my scrap piece of paper handy to test my colors on. I have my size four brush, and here I have my size zero and my size two as well for the finer detail. Now we have our pencil outline, just make sure it's light enough. If there are any areas which are too dark, tissue is you're blotting eraser if you have one, to take out some of that pencil. We want to start with a really light wash. I'm just going to add some water to my palette and pull some of this mix into it. I'm just going to test this out first. That's really nice and light to start with. I'm going to start with these petals underneath, and they'll probably be the darkest areas and will give us a point of comparison. I'm just roughly blending this out with strokes aimed at the top of my petal. I'm always working along the curve of the petal. From the top to the bottom. We'll probably come back and make this darker, but just keep it nice and light to start with. We'll do the same for this petal under here, working along those edges and pulling it out roughly to blend it in. The same with this last petal that sits underneath our pair. Making sure I'm nice and neat along these edges to get that definition. Now let's add some shadow and texture to these top petals. Starting from the base and working up, I'm using the side of my brush again to get that dry brush effect. It's patchy. That's the shadow area. I'm going to leave this area white, so it looks like it's folded in on the two. Then I'm going to change over to my smaller brush, and start defining some of these upper edges. Then pulling it out with these small strokes. Keep working into that curve of the leaf. You can see this goes round, so we want to paint in a similar direction. These are just the very fast layers, we can go back and make these darker. I think we will need to. Let's add some shadow here too as this petal, is also sitting underneath that one next to it. I'm going to bring a little more color in and just pull that along the edge. It's blending in nicely because the paper is still wet from before. We don't want it too dark, we just want to make sure the shadow on these three underneath is darker than this one because that sit further back. Let's just go in and dark nice out now. That's a little bit too dark. I'm just going to soften it with a little water, and do the same up here. Now I want to add a bit of a curve shadow down this one. I'm just going to add little water to blend that out. Then I'm going to start defining these edges of this petal. It's starting to look like these edges are really too obvious, so we want to be a bit more delicate with the other ones. I'm using a line going up to the edge here rather than painting around the edge. That still gives us that definition, but it doesn't look obvious. I want to leave all of that area white. Just keep working on these edges and adding texture. I'm going to grab my small- Brush here and you see a bit more definition into this area separating these two petals. Okay, that's better now. I'm just going to match that darkness here at the base of that petal. Now, I'm just going to darken some out some of the darkest areas and just add this in a few places for some low contrast to make that white really stand out a bit more. Just slide your way around gradually, defining these petals building up slowly. I haven't touch this petal on the left-hand side, so let's start to add some definition to that. Now, finally using my smaller brush, I'm taking out my excess water. I'm just going to add some fine details, some fine lines to add some texture. I just want to add a bit more shadow to these petals on the left and the right and I'm going to use the side of my brush again to this to get that dry brush effect. Then add anymore dark areas that you need to until you're happy with the definition that it has. Okay. Once you finished, we'll move on to the center of our flower. 12. Anemone Part 3: Painting the Centre & Stem: Now we've painted our petals, let's paint the center of the flower. We really want this to be nice and bold and vibrant so it gives a really good contrast to the petals. I've added some more whimsy yellow to my palette, along with some Indian yellow, which is much more orangey, some sap green and some indigo. Start with your yellow. I'm going to add a tiny touch of my sap green to this. I'm also going to add a touch to my permanent rose to make it a bit more neutral. Then I'm going to add this to the top left of the circle in the center. I want to mix up a darker green, which should be the bottom-right side, which should be more shadowy to give it that 3D effect. I'm going to mix my sap green with a little bit of indigo. This will make it bluer and darker. But watch out because this indigo is a really overpowering color. Then, using a darker mix, I'm going to add some more around the bottom and right edges and lower area. I'm just dotting it around with my brush gently to give it some texture and it's blending in. I don't want this to be really smooth. We can come back to that once it's dry and add a little bit more definition to it. Now let's start on those stamens. I'm going to grab my yellow and mix in some of that Indian yellow to make it more orange. Then I'm going to switch to my smaller brush, test out that color. It's nice and bright, I'm happy with that. Now just start a little distance from the center circle and start painting in some tiny marks, almost like oval shapes. Just take your time working all the way round the center. I want to mix up a slightly darker orange so I'm going to add a touch of my sap green, a very tiny touch to my Indian yellow to make it darker and add in some darker areas next to some of those dots. Now, using that yellow mix, draw some really thin lines connecting the center to those dots. Let's get back to the center. I'm going to add a small change of yellow up here on the left as a highlight. I want to make it a little brighter. As I said before, we want the center to really contrast the white of the petals. We really want it to stand out. Now I'm going to mix some of my sap green with my permanent rose to get a really dark neutral grain and use that to add extra shadow and definition to the bottom right of the center. I'm adding this in gently with small strokes so it keeps that texture in there. I'm just going to go back and add some more darker areas to the stamen now they're dry. I'm going to use that same neutral, darker green to paint the stem. Work really delicately around the edge of the petal, way down the side and then add a little water to your brush, not too much, and blend it out. I'm just going to mix a bit more of that green because I want a really dark shadowy area right at the top of the stem for the most contrast against that petal. Then I'm just going to add a little texture with some little fine hairs down the side of the stem. I think we're done. Don't forget to erase any stray pencil marks very gently. I hope you are happy with your flower. I can't wait to see it. Next, let's move on to the snow drops. 13. Final thoughts: Now you finish this class. I just want to thank you for taking the time to watch it, and I really hope you've enjoyed it. I hope you're happy with your paintings. Your project is to paint one or both of these flowers and post them to the project gallery. I'd also love to see your color mixes and your practice petals, and of course, your answers to that little quiz early on. So don't forget to click that Follow button if you haven't already, so that you'll be notified of my future classes and any other updates. If you're in Instagram, you can tag me in your work, sharonestevensdesign and use the #learnwithsharone. I love to feature my student's work in my stories. So make sure you tag me in the photo of your posts rather than the caption, so that I don't miss it. Once again, thanks for taking the class and I'll see you in the next one.