Watercolours with Confidence: RED Tulips

1. A. Intro: Welcome, everyone. I'm Wendy Framst, and this is Watercolors With Confidence Red tulips. I love, love, love, love color. One of the most incredible sights I ever saw with the CokinhofGarden Tulip fields outside Amsterdam. They plant over 7 million bulbs every year. It was a sea of colors and tulip varieties. In this tutorial, I'm going to use beautiful red tulip to demonstrate the importance of underpainting to achieve vibrant and rich variations of the color red. We'll begin with a step by step drawing of the tulip. Next, we'll discuss warm and cool colors as they pertain to the color red. Then we're going to apply what we've learned to paint the tulip together. Next, stop. I'll see you in the materials section. 2. B. Materials : The quality and type of materials that you use for watercolor will greatly impact the results you achieve. You don't need to use the exact colors or brands that I use to get a great outcome. But for reference, I'll list my materials for you. If you have any questions about materials after watching this video, just message me. Or if you've not already watched the original watercolors with confidence, I encourage you to do so because that course is packed full of information about materials and how to apply them. In terms of paints, I use a lot of Windsor and Newton paints. I find that that paint has a really great color clarity and also a lot of colors to choose from. But I've also got Daniel Smith paint and a Hobein paint. The colors are Windsor Lemon, Windsor red, permanent magenta, permanent sap green, o green, and Opera. The brushes that I've used, this company is silver brush, and this brand, this type of brush is their watercolor brushes, which is their black velvet series. I've got a size eight and a size four here. In terms of synthetic brushes, I'm using a gold sable and I'm using a white tacklon. Brush. This is size six and size four. You might notice the great brush holder that I have. My son, Alex, three D printed that for me. When if you're using an eraser, I encourage you to use a needed eraser on the surface of your watercolor paper because we don't want anything that is going to damage the fibers of the paper. And this is a nice, gentle option. In terms of a palette, we want something that has individual wells and an area for mixing. We don't want the colors to run into one another, and once they're diluted with water, they can move about more freely. So it's nice to have those individual wells. You could also consider as a cheaper alternative, something like an egg carton that will help to hold the colors separate. For a water container, I want something that's quite deep and large to hold a lot of water so I don't have to continually keep refreshing it. So this one is a nice size for me. I also have it's got nice rounded edges to prevent wear and tear on the brushes. Here I have a terry cloth towel. I also will use paper towel, and I have a pencil for transferring my image onto the paper. And I have a marker. What I like to do is draw my image onto the paper, and then I can adjust it. I put the paper over top with a light box, and then I can draw that onto my watercolor paper. I don't use the marker on my watercolor paper, although some artists do, and that becomes part of their design. So you can experiment with that. Here, as you'll see, I have a copy of the downloadable template that will become a resource in the resources section of this course. It's two parts, so make sure you get both parts. And last but definitely not least for watercolor paper, I use Arches, 300 pound cold press. This one is 7.5 " by 11.5 ". Okay, go gather up all your materials, and I'll see you in the next section. 3. C. Line Drawing: Hello. Welcome back. In this section, we're going to follow a step by step drawing like this one. You'll find it attached as a downloadable template in the resource section of this course. If you don't enjoy drawing, you're welcome to simply trace the final image onto your watercolor paper and skip to the next section so you can begin painting right away. I recommend that you keep your image at least 8 " tall, 20 centimeters or larger. Sadly, it is no longer spring in Canada. So I'm using silk tulips for this demonstration. The reason that I prefer to complete my drawing on tracing paper and then trace it onto my watercolor paper using a light box is that I want to make sure that I center it properly. And also, I don't want to do any erasing on my watercolor paper with a regular eraser because that damages the fibers of the paper, and then the watercolor paint doesn't work properly. If you don't have a light box, but you do have a tablet, you can turn your device into a light box to work like a light box using a downloadable app. So the last tip I want to leave you with is remember to draw lightly because we're going to erase some of the guidelines. I'm going to not take my own advice. I'm going to draw quite dark because I want to make sure that you can see it. But if you could use later lines, you're gonna have an easier time erasing the guidelines. So let's get started. We're going to begin at the top with a narrow ellipse. I just want to use this little cup here for a demonstration. If I turn the cup more towards you, you'll see more inside the flour. If I turn the cup more away from you, you'll see more of the outside edge. In this example, I've decided I want to keep it quite simple but interesting. So we see some of the inside. So keeping that in mind, the next shape we're going to draw is the cup. Now, I'm going to use I want it to be roughly as tall as it is wide, so we can sort of do a rough measurement here, and I'm going to want the bottom to be right about here. And this cup is merely a guideline for us. So don't fuss too much if the sides aren't perfectly the same or if one is a little bit skewed. The other thing that I want to talk about here is this would be one of the petals off of our tulip. If we stretch the petal out, I hope that there are a couple of things that you notice. One of them is there are two bumps at the top, and I represent these bumps quite often with an M shape, the letter M. And then the other thing that you may see is a rib along the center where the spine is, and that gives the tulip some strength, and you may decide to draw those in or you may not. I just want to point out for you that they're there. We're not going to draw all of the petals completely flat like this because they're around in the cup shape. And so, instead, what we're going to do the first two that we're going to draw will come around and you'll only see them in a foreshortened view. So you'll only see them from the side like this. So let me show you what that looks like. I like to begin with a bump shape that I think of as drawing an M. The petal is a bit wider on the top than it is when it gets down to the base. So I'm going to draw it a bit wider there and it comes out. But we really like curve shape, so I'm going to end it with a little bit of a curve down here. And I also like to do a little bump in the back and then connect to the top. I'm going to replicate that on the other side. So we began with an M shape. And that widened out for the edge of the petal comes down and ending in a curve down here, and then just a bump along the back and a curve up to the top. So those are our two outside petals. You may want to put a little marking you know where that rib is. This rib would connect up with this spine connects with this one. I'm not wanting to draw the whole thing in. You may choose to. Now I'm going to put in the center paddle for the front. It's hidden behind the first two, so all you really see of it is the top and it connects in there. The petals in the back are quite similar to the ones in the front, only you just see the top portion of them. So I'll begin once again with my M shape, and then I'll widen the petal and connect it to the M, and then just connecting it to the M there as well. So here once again is my shape, connecting it to the top. And widening it here. The last shape for the cup is a final M. Alright. So that gives us the top portion of the flower. And now what I usually notice is there's a little bit of a semicircle underneath that is where the stem connects to the flower. And I like to draw the stem on an angle. And you will probably notice it's about as wide here as it is here. Now, we're moving into leaves and I like a nice big s curve here, but then I end it in a bit of a hook and that becomes the front part of the leaf. Then we'll make the back matching nice big bump out and it gets thinner here. And it comes up and connects to that portion of the leaf. Here, I'm going to make it wider and then narrow it along through this section and finish with a nice hook on there. So that is the first leaf. Then another *** curve and sort of a parallel line and one little matching semicircle here. I'm just going to clean that up and erase this line. And there you go. I hope you enjoyed completing this drawing, please remember, I love to receive photos of your projects and I'm available for any questions. Just drop me a message in the chat sections of this course. I'll see you in the next section where we'll talk about color temperature, the color red, and the importance of underpainting in watercolor. Oh 4. D. Theory- Color Temperature : In the color theory section, we're going to discuss the temperature of pigments and the benefit of underpaintings to reinforce temperature. When artists talk about the temperature of color, we group them into two main categories, warm and cool. One way to remember the warm colors is to think about a fire. The colors I associate with a fire are yellow, orange and red. Warm colors are often used to emphasize patterns of sunshine and firelight, and they're more often found in the foreground. Cool colors are those associated with winter or distant mountains, green, blue and purple. Cool colors are used by artists to give the illusion of distance. And more importantly, for tulips, cool colors can be found in the shadows. Okay, so dividing colors into the basic warm and cool is simple enough. But the trickier thing to understand is that simple colors like red also have a temperature bias. Reds that look a bit orangy have a warm bias, and reds that look a bit pinky have a cool bias. The reason that I want you to understand color temperature and color bias is that when you look very closely at a tulip, you'll find that the petals are delicate and translucent in the sunshine. So they have subtle variations of warm and cool within them. In the next section, we're going to discuss the importance of underpainting to enhance color temperature. 5. E. Theory- Underpainting Theory: Emphasizing color temperature is where under paintings are particularly helpful. As you probably know, many watercolor pigments are transparent or semi transparent. What this means is if you paint a layer, dry it, then paint another layer of color on top of it, chances are that the bottom layer will influence the color on top. Let's give this a try. We have already painted red, yellow, and pink cure, and I've mixed up some more red paint, which I want to do as the top coat. Alright, let's give this a minute to dry. Now that it's dry, let's have another look. So where I placed red over top of red, we have a more saturated red. It's a deeper looking color. Where we place the red over top of the yellow, we have a lot of the yellow shining through and coming through. Where we place the pink underneath the red, I also have that shining through. What I'm noticing is the yellow has turned the red to more of an orange color, and the pink has turned the red more of a pinky color, a warmer red and a cooler red, and then the base red, the local color that I was using. You may be asking, so what? Why not just do this more quickly and use a warmer red or a cooler red color instead of doing two layers? When you use multiple layers to build up your colors, there's an intensity in a magic that's hard to replicate from a single layer alone. Let's have another look. This infographic represents the painting that I just did. So the bottom layer is the white of the paper, which can shine through the transparent colors. The next layer is the underpainting that we did the red, the yellow, and the pink. The top layer is the red layer. And what you'll see from above, once all of that is dried is that where we had red, we have more particles of red that will show through if we delve down into a cellular level. And what we have in the second one, some of the yellow is peaking through. It's not as intense as the red because it's not on top, but it's definitely there influencing the red. And similarly with the pink, it is showing through a little bit. So here we have a deeper red because it's got two layers. Here, it's more of a warm color, and here it's more of a cool color. So I hope I've convinced you that under paintings can add richness to your paintings, and I hope you're going to go and test some of these examples on your own. Use a variety of colors underneath, let them dry, and then test some different colors over top of them. Then I'll see you in the next section where we're going to complete under paintings for our tulip. 6. F. Painting- Underpainting: Alright, here we are. It's time to complete the underpainting. I've already transferred my drawing to my watercolor paper. And what you're going to find is I'm using Windsor lemon and opera. They will serve to accentuate the reds that we're going to have pushing them into warm and cool, but they'll also provide a little bit of pop or some accent color if we allow them to peek through in different areas. Let's get started with the Windsor lemon because it is the lighter value of the two colors that I have here. So first of all, I'm going to mix up some of the yellow color and have it ready to go. And then wet my paper. I want to do nice wet on wet technique. We want to keep it nice and juicy. I also encourage you to think about where the highlights are going to be and allow some of the white of the paper to show through. So we're going to have the light coming from this direction, meaning that the top right hand corners will be the lightest areas, and the darker areas or the cooler areas are going to be the bottoms in the left hand side. We'll have a little bit of both colors on most of the petals, but we'll concentrate the light in the top right hand corner, as I mentioned. No, I'm painting petal by petal, so then I have a bit more control about where the colors go. You may because this is just a underpainting, you're welcome where you think the colors run together a little better to do that all in one shot. I like to do it this way, as I mentioned so that I have a bit more control. Now, these petals are wet, so I can't paint this petal or everything will run. I'll blend together. So what I'm going to do is skip down into the stem area. Yellow will play very nicely with green as well. In fact, green is made up of yellow and blue. So it'll hide nicely under the green. Again, I'm thinking about the light coming from this direction. So I'm moving to the largest leaf we've got here. And I'm thinking about I'm thinking about the yellow being very near the top and the right hand side. This area would be more in shadow. I'm wetting the whole thing though, because I don't want abrupt, hard stop and start points. So if it happens to run a little bit, then give it some water, and that gives a nice smooth transition. You can have a little bit of yellow up near the tops. Because I'm not going to paint all the way down, I can just lay this in here even though these petals are wet still. All right, skipping back down to my petals. Just put a little bit of yellow here. Now, this time I didn't use a wet on wet technique. I put the paint directly onto dry paper. I can soften that by just running a damp brush along beside it, and now the yellow can gently move into that space. Do the same thing for this leaf so that we don't have to wait for it to dry. So I placed the yellow onto a dry paper and then can come back in and just softly touch those edges so that we get a nice transition between white and yellow. We won't put any yellow in here because this area will be in shadow. And finally, we can put a little bit up in this section here. Now, for the purpose of this video, I want to make sure my yellows are nice and strong so you'll be able to see them when they're peeking out from behind the reds. So I'm just going to come back over the areas that were quite light, and I'm charging color in, which means the paper is still damp or wet, and I can put some more color in, and it will just flow through those areas where it's still wet. If it was dry, this wouldn't work very well. Okay. I did get one area here where it's still quite a hard transition now that I've come back with extra pigment. It was dry already, so just soften that edge again. Now, this color is going to lay underneath the red and the green. So it really doesn't matter if the transitions are not perfect because the red will mask some of that. All right. I'm going to stop at this point and dry it and come right back with the opera. Welcome back. I hope you have all your yellows in place. Let's move along to the opera color. We'll just mix a little up. Hey. We'll come back and petal by petal decide where the cool colors are going to go. This petal is very much in shadow, and so it should have a lot of the cool color. You know, as you can see, I don't have very nice transitions yet, so I got I cleaned out my brush, I tapped out a lot of the moisture, and now I'll soften that edge. Clean out the brush, tap out a lot of the excess moisture, and then repeat and soften that edge. And the transitions are looking much nicer, but now a lot of the opera has disappeared. So I'm just going to charge some more. I'll take a stronger dose of pigment from this well and place it on the areas that will be the deepest and the coolest. I'm exaggerating the strength of these underpaintings, just so you can see the benefits of having that nice bold color underneath our reds. Softening the transitions here. There we go. We'll move on to the next petal. If I'm doing the wet on wet technique, I wet a larger area than I intend the color to go. If the area that I'm wetting is really, really soaking wet, the color will just shoot across the page. However, if I just give it a damp area to introduce it into, then the paint doesn't travel quite as far. Also if my pigment is a little thicker, it won't travel quite as far. One other thing you can do if you want to be completely safe is using a smaller brush will hold less pigment and so then it won't take off on you quite as far. This petal is more in the sunlight. I'm going to have less of this cool color on it than the first petal that we did. I got a little petal of water here. I'm just going to scoop that out. And I'm noticing that this became quite hard again, just feathering that edge out while I've got it there. Okay, I can do all three of these rear petals. The base inside them will be in shadow inside the cup that we were talking about before. So if we really emphasize the cool shadow color in here, that will help to create further illusion of depth. Cleaning out my brush, taking the excess moisture off, and then feathering that top edge. And then we can come back in with a little extra color and charge that. Make sure it's nice and bold. Having another look at this edge. Now, if I'm coming back into it, I need to make sure my brush isn't soaking wet or it will push the pigments aside. I'm going to come into the center area with some pretty strong opera color because this area is between the two petals and it's recessed a bit. And having this cool color will help to push it back in space and give us more layers. Just softening that top edge. Okay. Okay. Now, one other thing that I really like to see is complimentary colors beside one another. Red and green are complimentary colors, meaning that they're across from one another on the color wheel. Pink is a tint of red, so they're very close to complimentary. And what I would like to do is just put tiny little hits of the pink that we'll use as accent colors. Along the edges of these leaves, not where the strongest light is. I just want a hint of color there. I've put it on and now I'll soften that edge and the same with the second line that I added there. In fact, as this rear portion of the leaf is in shadow, I can pull it farther around that top corner of the back portion of the leaf. Now, it would look funny to have it in just one spot. So I'll put a little of this color along the second leaf as well. In nature, chances are you wouldn't see pink along the edge of the leaf, but you might, depending on how the light falls and what variety of tulip you're looking at. Again, for the purposes of consistency, I'll just put a little bit of that color down along the bottom here. If you have it in just one spot, it may look out of place, but when you introduce little pops of the color into a variety of spots, then it all just blends nicely. Okay. So there we have the underpainting. I'll let that dry up and come back and we'll add the local color. 7. G. Painting- Local color: Hi. I hope your underpainting is where you would like it to be now. And we're going to talk about local color. So local color is the object the color of an object. When you look at it, you say, that's red, that's blue. That's yellow. So the local color of this tulip is red. The local color of the leaf and stems are green. So we're going to switch to using Winter red and sap green now. And we'll paint this local color over the majority of the tulip and the leaves in the stem. So we'll just mix up some of the winds are red. I'm going to need a fair amount of it because we'll cover most of the tulip. Alright, now that the color is mixed up, we can go ahead and wet the area that we intend to paint. Once again, I prefer to do this petal by petal. I find it gives me much more control. I'm painting it first with clear water because I want the transitions in this to be nice and gentle. When you get a smooth graduation from dark to light, the area looks rounded. When you have more of a sharp line between light and dark, then it looks like the area is bent, not curved, but sharper bend. Now, I like to leave some of the underpainting showing through as an accent color. So I intentionally will paint around and allow some of the pink and the yellow to show through. And even white if I manage to capture some of the white still. Paintings are very magical when they have a natural white of the paper left poking through. It's quite dry under the lights in the studio, and so this is drying quite quickly. So I just need to reintroduce a little bit more water in here to keep that soft transition that I was talking about. Moving on to the next pedal. If you use a stiff bristled brush, when that springs up quite quickly, when you bend it over, it may lift more of the pigment underneath. So I like to use softer brushes. This one is a combination of natural hair and synthetic, and it has a little bit more. It stays in place a little more. It's quite a bit softer. It holds more water, but it also doesn't disturb the pigments underneath the same way that a stiff bristled brush does. So when you're painting in layers, it's a good idea to be using some of the softer brushes. My painting, I really concentrate on making nice crisp edges. I allow the water to flow and move around on the inside may even encourage it by tipping the painting and letting the natural transitions occur just from running the water through the pigments. I have a nice white highlight here, and I know as soon as I put water on it that the pigments are going to run to that area. Okay, so this petal is almost dry. We'll be able to sneak in here and add the local color on top of the underpainting. But this one is still wet. So let's move down and start to paint the local color for the leaves. That would be the green. That will be our middle layer. We'll begin with the stem. I'm going to try really hard not to touch the wet petal that we just painted, so leave a little gap in between the stem and the petal. I prefer when an area is quite a large area to paint it with water first. And that allows really a smoother. It gives me more time to keep everything smooth. If I was to paint it dry, I can still get it smooth. It just takes a little bit more effort, and I have to work more quickly. Some of the red did flow into the top of the stem, but that's okay because right in that area, this would all be in shadow. So it's nice to have a darker patch popping through there. We're going to move on to this leaf here in front. I'm painting right over top of the underpainting, the red and the yellow. I'm going to want to keep my pigment away from that red area somewhat, but I do want them to mingle. I don't want them to blend. If they blend, they'll become quite muddy. But if they mingle, they will have a really nice soft transition and give us some drama to the painting because we have complimentary colors beside one another. I'm just going to smooth out this area. I wanted the yellow to poke through as an accent color as well as an underpainting. Okay. This one, this leaf is much smaller than the other one I was working on. So I'm not as concerned about wetting it because I'll be able to paint it more quickly because it's smaller. But I will bring in just some damp water on my brush to soften the edge where it overlaps with the opera. I'm going to pause here and just dry everything up before we continue on. This is very wet, so I can't paint this petal nor this petal. This is still somewhat wet, so I can't paint this petal or, again, this one. And then this final edge of the leaf, same thing, it would be a butting against a wet area. So we'll just take a moment. Okay, let's finish painting the local color layer. I'm going to start with the red over top of this petal. Personally, I really enjoy pinks in my red. So I'm going to leave some of it popping through as an accent, as well as the underpainting, as I mentioned. In interest of time, I'm going to move on. Normally, I would stop and dry that up again. I'll just make sure I leave a little layer of the pink. I can see the yellow just glowing through the red that I just put down. Right up in here. Okay. Now we'll quickly finish off the last leaf and the shadow area of the leaf in behind. It's a really small space. Clean up my brush and remove the excess moisture and then come over the area that has opera on it. I'm sure. It's really important to make sure that the value on this top portion of the leaf matches the other side of the stem. So this area and this area need to match so that they look like they're behind this level. An important thing about painting layers is having things that are on the same layer match so that your eye believes that they're in behind. Okay. So now we've painted the local color, and you may be wondering why I was so insistent that we paint an underpainting before we paint the color. I just want to show you the difference between the painting we just completed and one that only has the local color. So this tulip is very similar except that I didn't put any of the opera or the Windsor yellow on it, and I also didn't put any on the leaves. Now, in a side by side comparison, I hope I have convinced you of the importance of an underpainting. Personally, I think this is just so much more dynamic and interesting. This one is a little richer because it's got two layers of the red, and in some areas, two layers of the sap green, but it just doesn't have the same value range or color range as the painting where we did the underpainting. I'll see you in the next section, we're going to add some polish, some highlights, and some shadows. 8. Polish 1: Welcome back. We're on the home stretch. Now, this section is about polishing. It's about making some areas lighter and making some areas darker and just doing those final touch ups. So where I begin this stage is if I have any areas that I want to have lighter, that's where I like to begin. It's easier to make watercolor paints darker. It's a little bit harder to make them lighter. None impossible, though. So just to show you how this would work, I'll use a stiffer brush. This one is a synthetic brush. And I've got I've wet it, and I'll just put some of the water on top of the pigment that we have here, and then I can blot it out. And you see it lifted right off. I'll do that one more time over here. There's more of the yellow showing underneath there, and it just lifted right off. So if there are any areas that you're feeling you want lifted, that would be now would be the time to do that. I mentioned that there are some ribs along in a in a tulip. So I'm just going to give the hint of a rib along where these seams are and lift some of the color out there. I don't want to take it right down to the white of the paper. As I mentioned, I love this polar section, so I can spend a lot of time going back and forth, putting more pigment on, taking more pigment off, and back and forth and back and forth. Where the ribs are, I just want to give the suggestion that they're there. I don't really want to draw them completely the whole way down the spine. If you like that look, you absolutely can. Okay, um, I think that's it for the lifting. Now we'll go into adding some shadow or punching up some of the color. So you already know that if we put red on top of an already red area, we're going to get more of an intense, a deeper red. And so let's use that for some of the areas to darken. I'll come to the center petal here. And I'm wetting it right over top of the area where I just lifted right over top of where my yellows were and the pinks. And I'm going to place some nice red here in the center to give it more intense to give it more intensity and more saturation. I'll feather that out. Down in the bottom, I'm going to use a little bit of this magenta. I wet the whole petal, so I should be able to just place it right in here in the creases. And that will give me some shading. My paint was really quite thick, so I'm just going to soften that area and add a little more charging the color as you will. Take out some of the spider's webs that were created when it traveled through the water. Put a little bit more of that red. I really love the effect of the pink, but I also want to punch up the red. Other areas that I think should have some more intensity are around the bottom side of these tulips, being really careful not to touch the area that we just painted. Blending that out. Now that the red is there in place, I can come in with some of the shadow color. I just soften that in. We'll do the same thing on the other side. Let's start with some red. I cleaned off my brush and this time, I'm using the paper towel instead of the terry cloth towel to take off the excess moisture before I run it alongside the red to soften the edge. So when you're adding a darker color for shading, you can use the local color or you can use another color that will go nicely with your color. In this case, I'm using a magenta to go with the red. Sometimes I work all the way up to a dioxene purple, and then with the green, I'll be using To green or the sap green, the local color. Okay. As I mentioned, I can play with that all day long. I'll just move into the back row. I'm adding the red first because I just really wanted to intensify the color and get some really rich red there. There's already a nice base, but those little punches of extra color will just give it that extra drama that I'm looking for. Now, I'm coming down into the cup shape, into the center of the cup to push those leaves back and make them look like they're on the other side and give them some separation and dimension. Okay, let's move on to the leaves. Similarly to the tulip, I can use the local color, which is the sap green to darken some of my sections and to saturate the color a little more. I'd like to start with the largest leaf first. Nothing worse than getting through a whole bunch of different sections and then finding that you're not happy with your largest area. So once the big ones are done, everything else is smooth sailing. 9. Polish 2: Okay. I want some of this color to travel a little farther this way. So I'm just tipping it to see if it will go on its own. It's not juicy enough, so I need to add a little more water in here. And I have a hard edge up here, so we'll just soften that section. Now I'm going to move to the rear pedal. I'm just using the local color again, so I'm just using the sap green. I'm placing it mostly at the base of the leaf. I find that darker color seemed to ground objects. Just put a little along the side. I was pretty thick. Come back in with some water. Taking most of the water out. If I put too much water, I'd end up with some blossoms. Okay. Now I want to use the shadow color or the stronger color just to accent and give the illusion again of additional layers. So this little layer in here is in shadow. Do we want some thalo green in there. And I like to put a little bit along my stem, as well. Because it was still wet, it's fuzzing, it's becoming a blurry line, which is what I wanted. If it was too hard a line, I would take most of the water out of my brush and just go over top of it to blend it out a little bit. Now, the area on this part of the leaf is all in shadow. We want to add either some extra color or some shadow color. We don't have very much of that the in this painting yet, so this will be a good place to put it. I'm just wetting the area first because I want a smooth transition. I'm also trying to be very careful with my line when a nice crisp edge here. I can even go right over top of the stem because the stem would be in shadow also. But the shadow needs to travel higher up on the leaf portion than the stem portion because the stem is closer to us. So the shadow wouldn't be as high or deep. Now, as I mentioned, what we do on the bottom, we need to carry through onto the top part of the stem so that they look like they're connected. Even if the shadow amount is less on this side, we still just need the color on both sides to give the illusion that this stem is in front of both of those. There's a little bit of a bleed right here. Just lift that out. It's best to wait until it's all dry to go back in and make those adjustments. And I'll make this area darker with the thalo green to indicate that it's in shadow from the tulip. Now, that area became really dark. So I'm just going to lift some of the color out. If the value is too overpowering, it will detract from everything else. We can't have where the darkest darks are and the lightest lights are beside one another. That's where the eye gets drawn. And we want the eye to go to our beautiful reds. Okay, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed painting alongside me. I'll see you in the next section. 10. Next steps: Now that we've painted one tulip, you may be wondering, where do we go from here? I encourage you to practice by experimenting with some variations in compositions and colors. Remember, compositions of odd numbers like one, three, and five tend to be more interesting than those with even numbers, but this isn't a hard and fast rule because I do have many lovely flower paintings that have only two blossoms. Give it a try and let me know what you find. Thank you so much for watching this video about how to draw and paint vibrant red tulips. From start to finish, we covered a lot of information. I provided a list of materials I used. We drew a tulip together using a downloadable template. We discussed color temperature and color bias, and then we applied those concepts as we painted our tulip in layers. The three basic layers we painted were an underpainting layer, a local color layer, and then a polished layer. And finally, I provided you with a sample painting that is meant to inspire you to develop your own compositions. I hope you followed along and found that underpaintings and color temperature can really help to add depth and interest to your red tulip paintings. Don't ever hesitate to send me questions or share samples of your artwork. It is such a joy network with artists from all around the world until next time, keep those brushes wet. Eight