Yellow Blanket Flower in Gouache or Watercolor | Mixing & Naming Neutrals

1. Welcome!: Welcome to yellow blanket flowers, designed for confident beginners. This is class two in a series of classes, focused on three outcomes. Firstly, to mix our effortlessly beautiful neutral background. Secondly, we're going to do a fun thing and name our chosen palettes. And thirdly, in each class, we're going to choose our favorite background to paint or study on. Hi, I'm Holly. And I teach from my studio in a very drafty 18th century house in Southeast Scotland. As well as teaching on Skillshare, my designs have been chosen for greetings cards, wallpaper and bedding. My inspiration comes primarily from my surroundings. I adore trees, and wildflowers are my passion. In Eslothean we have the Heather strewn Lamamu Hills. And a 40 mile coastline including the iconic bass Rock, which is home to 150,000 Northern gannets, and it's the largest colony of gannets in the world. I was brought up in a very land locked area of Northwest England. So when I was a child, I promised myself that I would live by the sea. And although I don't paint seascapes, I feel I can breathe more easily next to the sea. So back to our class. And have you ever wondered how artists allow their paintings to pop? It's very often to do with the background. I'm going to share with you the secret of how to mix luscious backgrounds which don't compete with your paintings. We'll be using gouache, but you could also mix your favorite watercolor with white gouache, using only the three primary colors plus white and black. In this class, we're going to paint yellow blanket flowers together. And I chose this rich, warm green. We're going to stipple in with the makeup brush, easy flower centers before taking up our flat brush to create expressive flowing petals. We're going to reach a place of confidence where we'll feel able to replicate our neutral recipes time and time again. You may have named your palettes so that they're easy to remember and added new brush strokes and floral elements to your glossary. And just a quick reminder, you can always upload your project in our projects and resources area. It's a lovely way of seeing other students work, as well as sharing tips and getting feedback. For my deaf, hard of hearing, or neurodivergent followers, you can access subtitles to the class as well as a full transcript. So, shall we get started? Let's go. 2. Materials: Because we're creating backgrounds, there's quite a few papers that we can use. I'm using Fabriano Studio hot press paper, 11 " by 14 ", 28 by 35.6 centimeters. But you could use your favorite watercolor paper or mixed media paper. And you can see here I just folded it in half and creased just one tiny edge. I then cut that in half. And then I did the same again, creating a little crease. I couldn't see that one, so I'm just making a pencil mark. And there we have our study papers. Now, as the class went along, I did actually cut those in half again to create some smaller backgrounds. For our background, we're going to use handsy yellow light, Ultramarine. Quinacridone Gold and Prussian Blue. And I used my half inch flat brush. But any brush you like, really, that will give you a good coverage. For our practice run, I just used an off cut of some hot pressed wood colour paper. As for colors, I'm using moss green, which is Shen han, primary black, which is Holbein. Hansa Yellow Light, and I'm using a Daniel Smith and Quinacridone Gold, which is also Daniel Smith. And finally some white. And I'm just placing two little areas of white there, and I just want to mention that you can use watercolor and just buy one tube of white gouache. And then if you mix those together, the gouache kind of lends the watercolor that opaque feeling. And then today I'm using a stippler brush, which is actually a makeup brush. Always a really inexpensive alternative to artists brushes. And then finally a colored pencil, and I used caradash luminance in dark sap green. 3. Class Project | Mixing Neutrals: I thought I'd cut down a couple of the larger sizes into small study size. So let's start with handsome yellow light, Ultramarine, and Quinacridone Gold. I'm using my half inch flat brush. It's great for mixing as well as laying down the backgrounds. So I'm going to mix this lovely green first with the blue and yellow. And because we're using handsy yellow light, that's a nice bright, cooler green. And as soon as we add the quin gold, it starts to warm it up. And then let's put some white down. So I'm adding a fair bit of white. And that makes this lovely, what I feel is like a 1950s green. Then let's put that down. Actually, this is the color of our front door. I tried to make this paint go a long way. Let's get those last remnants onto the brush and get full coverage. Just going over that with a damp brush, and I love that. It'll be interesting to see how that dries. And I want to also, while we've got them, do one of these little studies. They would make really good practice sheets if you wanted to do one of the larger pages. Okay, so let's move on to what I called Presmennan and Woods, one of my favorite forests nearby. And we've got lots of Quinld and some Ultramarine. I really want to mix a lovely warm lush deep green. And one of my favorite enduring mixes is just this quin gold, Ultramarine, and Emma can add a little white to it. But let's get this moving first of all. Adding a little water. That's well mixed now. And then we don't want to lose the richness, so I'm not going to add loads of white. And let's put this down. Oh, that is lovely. It's such a beautiful and reliable way to mix a quick green and adding the white brings us that lovely gouache feel, very matt, slightly chalky feel. Really gorgeous. I can't wait to do a study on this. Absolutely blissful. Beautiful. So we've got a couple of greens going on there. This one I called fen. And I'm starting off with Pyl red and adding handsy yellow light. So that's going to give us a kind of an orangy feel, although the Pyl red is so overpowering that it's staying pretty red. And then we're adding Prussian Blue. And adding some white there, and I'm using the Windsor and Newton zinc white. That mixes this earthy green, which we may use in another class. I called it loam. Such an easy brown to mix, as well. And then let's add some more handsy yellow light. And I'm kind of mixing into it. I know that this is going to create a lovely earthy green. And I love green so much. I just want this on a larger piece of paper. I should have mixed a little bit more, but I'm hoping to cover this. Oh, I love that. Just added a little bit of water there, just so I can finish the edges. This next one I called Viana. That's Scots Gaelic, and you meant to roll your R a little bit. And although I have spent more of my life in Scotland, I still have an English accent and find it hard to roll my Rs. But it's a beautiful name, and it means older as in the tree. So while I've been talking there, I added some handsy yellow light, and I'm just adding more there, and then adding zinc white. So adding some white to that really makes it a near to color. So this is where we have kind of paler versions of all colors and all mixes of colors. Adding a lot of white brings these beautiful lighter tints to the fore. Well, that's delightful as well. And it just shows you how easy these are to go back to whenever you want a background. I love that. So that's Fiana and Fenn. 4. Practise For Our Study: So this is an off cut of Hanamula harmony, and then let's put some colors down. So I have moss green, some primary black, handsy yellow light, quin gold, and I'm going to put two little areas of white, and I'm using zinc white. So let's start off by stippling. And I'm picking up the makeup brush that I mentioned in materials really inexpensive and super handy. I will leave a link to these in the about section. So let's start by getting off all of the moisture. We want the brush to be almost dry. And then let's dip into all of the colors. Just go with what feels right for you. You don't need to do the same as me. But I went in with the black, green, and the hands yellow light and quin gold. And we want them to just stay fairly unmixed on the brush. And I'm just bobbing up and down a few times. And each one is individual, and I absolutely love that. I'm mixing there's some quin gold with white. I have my half inch flat brush here, and I'm going to be using this for the petals, as well as using it for our background, as we've just done. And let's just practice some brush drecks. So that's the full brush there. And then let me show you a kind of a twisty movement. So we're putting the full brush down, twisting, and then lifting up now let's do the side. These make particularly beautiful petals. And this brush is really going to come into its own when we do our final layer of petals. Isn't that a beautiful petal shape? If you don't have a flat brush, the next best thing would be a filbert. A little bit more cuing gold there. So let's try getting a little movement in these petals. And then placing these over top of our blunter petals. In this way, we can start to build up layers, a little bit of white there and some quin gold. We're going to be mixing on the brush like this. It's so beautiful. And again, gives us varied and surprising and delightful outcomes. Really get to know your brush, take your time. And then let me show you here adding water to our gouache. So it's almost like a watercolor consistency. We're going to add over these translucent petals. This, I feel is one of my favorite things to do. It's so beautiful. So we have the thicker gouache underneath and then the watered down watercolor style gouache over the top. And the translucency is gorgeous. So I have my little white area there, and I've added some hands yellow light. Because what we're going to do now is create a second layer on our stippled centers. Now, we want a very dry brush for this layer, and we're not pushing into the page as we did with the first layer. It's very light touch. But this lovely light, handsome yellow and white really starts to create some depth in those centers. We've done these brush strokes before in other classes, and I love them. They're very textural. So just keep varying the direction of young leaves. But those lovely textured kind of pushing into the page leaves, I think a few of those would be really lovely. And we can do that upwards on the side of the brush. Now I have my luminans dark sap green, and whilst the paint's still wet, we can go in and carve leaf shapes. And we can also take that beyond the leaves. I'm holding the pencil right at the top, so it allows me just to paint more intuitively. And then I thought it might be nice to add some little seeds to the center of the flowers. I'm doing them quickly. I don't want them all to be very uniform or perfectly shaped. I love this pencil. I think it's my favorite color, and these arndase pencils are just gorgeous. I'm now building a collection of them. And just so you can see here on the white paper, let's do some seeds. 5. Class Project: Study | First Layer Stippled Centres & Petals: Let's start on our flowers. And we're going to do some stippled centers and put our first layer of petals down. Got my quin gold again and our moss green or a warm green of your choice. A little bit of black. That's primary black by Holbein. And handsome yellow light. Two. Let's start on our stippling. And we're going to be using the same technique that we used in another class in this series or Daisy study. The stippler I'm using today is actually a makeup brush. In other classes, I use a Jackson's art, Deer foot and an inexpensive crafts for all stippler. What we're aiming for here is a mix of all sorts of colors on the brush. So a little bit of black, yellow and green. And then in we go, and I'm just going to place them fairly randomly. And that looks good. Yep. It is a bit hit and miss with stippling, so that's why I always have a piece of paper to the side of me. And then some of that gorgeous quin gold into some white. And then a cooler yellow in the top left there with the handsome yellow light. A little bit of green. I'm not cleaning my brush in between mixing. This is all about mixing color on the brush and on the page. So just a quick practice. That's the side, and you can also use the full brush as we practiced. So I'm doing the twisty move to start with. And then that's on the side of the brush. So you can just vary your brush strokes. So again, a full brush and side brush. And the reason why this is so beautiful is that we can start to see the background coming through the brush strokes. I really love this technique. So I'm mixing my colors and also doing full stroke and side stroke on my flat brush. It is about relinquishing control and just allowing lots of color on your brush, not thinking about what color they have to be or which is the predominant color, going between all of these colors that we have laid out and mixing on the brush. I do like using this brush on its side. It creates such beautiful little petals. So I'm still running between the handsome yellow light, the quin gold, a little bit of black, and a little bit of white. Every brush stroke is different. This is what I love about hopping between colors. Stepping back in terms of feeling like I have to control things and just see what my brush puts down. 6. Class Project: Study | Second & Top Layer Petals: So I've got white ping gold and handsome yellow light there all in one well because I now want to go on top with another layer. So I'm just allowing those all to mix. Have a quick look, see what it looks like. And then let's add a top layer of petals. And I do love green gold mixed. It's just so vibrant. It's also transparent, so it lends itself to this class because we can continue to see the background coming through or the layers underneath. That was the whole brush round to a twist. That was the whole brush, and that's a side. So you can just keep varying all of the brush works that we practiced. There will be small moments that you like in this in particular because it's very intuitive and we're not trying to control the process. Once you've finished, you'll be able to really take in what you've done, and it will be wonderful. You'll be able to see these little moments that bring everything together. I'm also not really worried about which flower is over, which flower. It's all about texture and translucency. So just have a little practice on the side there. I love these little petals. A flat brush is wonderful. It's not everybody's first choice, but I love it, and I think I'll be using this brush a lot more. I've really got familiar with it. So a little bit more white. And now let's do some translucent petals. So what I've done there is watered down the paint, and you can have a practice on the side. If you're finding you don't have control over these petals, you may just have too much water. You can see that by watering down the paint, we can really work with the green base. It's an incredible process. And once you've mastered it, it will always, always be one of your things. Isn't it gorgeous? So I take my time over these I really enjoy the whole process. But also, I just want to make sure that they're well formed because these are the ones that we're going to see on top. B 7. Class Project Study | Stippling, Leaves & Pencil : I'm now thinking I want to add a little bit more to the flower heads. So that's my moss green and handsy yellow light and a bit of white. This is a very earthy palette, and I'm really enjoying it because I often choose cooler colors for my paintings, so this is a really wonderful voyage into that gorgeous kind of earthy textural moss greens and warm yellows. So again, I'm allowing these to mix on the stipple brush. And I'm just bobbing up once or twice on these centers. I'm not pushing down a lot. And then what we get is each bristle kind of a little bit separate from each other, and it creates this multitude of dots, which, if you tried to do one by one, would not look the same. There's something quite random, unexpected and surprising about using a stippled brush. I'm adding just a tiny touch of shadow there with a little bit more of the primary black, minute little touches, not pressing down very hard at all on the stipple brush. I would say the flower heads are a two pronged process. So the first layer, you can push down and get lots of texture out of your stippled brush, and the top layers are much more gentle. We're not pushing down on the brush. We're just wanting to use all of the tips of that with all that gorgeous color. So a little bit more moss green, and let's add some leaves. And this is a very similar movement to the petals. We're not doing anything different. I'm either using my full brush or the side, just as we did with the petals. Going over the petals a little bit there, practicing those two movements again, that full brush on and twist and using a side. Minimal leaves, really? Oh, like that. This is what I mean about just mixing on the brush. You get these lovely surprises. Beautiful. I love that. And then if you want it, you don't have to. We could do a slightly lighter layer on top. So at this stage, everything is mixed together. I've got a little bit of black, little bit of the moss green, some white, and a gold. And using the side of my brush, as we did for our top petals. Gorgeous. Yeah, I'm liking that. I also wanted to aim for something in this class, and that was not too much of a dynamic in terms of value or brightness of color. I wanted them all to be very harmonious and close together. This is a luminous pencil by Carendash and it's dark sap green. I'm holding a pencil at the top. And what that does is just make the marks slightly more random and less perfect and defined. I do love this pencil in particular. This color is lovely. So just picking out some of the leaves, and some of these marks can go over the petals. I'm gonna do one down here. It's not gonna show up very much, but I just wanted something there at the bottom, right. And now, why not add some little details to the flower heads? We don't need too many. It just adds to the texture, and it's like a little step beyond the stippling. Again, very random, very loose, not worried about trying to make them perfect little circles, just marks really to enhance the stippling. Now, that bottom left flower just looks a little darker than the others. I just want to add some white and maybe some yellow on top there. So tiny bit of white. And I might as well bob some in the others as well. And there we go, our yellow blanket flowers. 8. Thank You!: I hope you're going away feeling so much more confident about mixing neutrals and using them for your own studies. Today, we've concentrated on yellow blanket flowers, and in other classes in this series, we'll be creating a woodland walk daisies and a rose leaf study. So keep a lookout for these classes. You can build up your array of studies on your beautiful backgrounds. If you hit the follow button, you'll get updated as and when I release a new class. Any questions? Fire away. You can contact me through discussions when you upload your project or over on Instagram. Thanks again. Take care of yourself. Bye for now.