Hi, I'm Donna Dubierre.
I'm a self-taught artist and I'm bringing to you my one stroke technique showing you
how to paint garden flowers and critters.
We're going to paint on all sorts of projects which you're going to have lots of fun doing
with me.
The first thing I want to teach you though is all about my brushes and the paint I use
and why I use them.
I have flat brushes that I use for all my stroke work and on the flat brushes I make
sure that I have a long bristle with thin ferals so that I can hold lots of paint and
be able to do the technique.
I have a long script liner which helps us to do curlicues and fun little detail work
which you're going to like and a scruffy brush which we're going to use the scruffy for pouncing
all kinds of moss and fun things for incredible technique that you're going to love.
My beginner's favorite brush.
First thing we're going to use is our folk art paint.
It's very thick and creamy, bright vivid colors which you're going to love and you need that
bright color so that when we're blending it down with whites and lighter colors you get
nice shading.
One stroke technique means you get blending, shading and highlighting in each stroke that
you make.
So the first thing we're going to do is load our brush.
It's very important and probably the most important thing about my technique is how
to load the brush and how to get the brush all season ready to go to do your strokes.
So the first thing we're going to do is put all our paint out.
I want you to see how much paint I put on there.
Lots of paint because we're going to put a lot of paint on our brush.
We're going to pick up our green on one corner, our white on one corner and you'll notice
this brush is dampened when I start.
I dampen it in the water, lay it on the paper towel to get the excess water out and then
I start dipping my corners.
So what we're going to do at this point is push back and forth in the same spot on our
palette.
We're going to dip each corner, work this brush back and forth and this is the most
important part and I keep telling you that because I want you to realize if you're doing
my technique and you're having a problem it's because you're not loading the brush properly.
I keep going with this back and forth movement until the bristles are two-thirds full.
See up here, two-thirds up the bristles.
Now this has got two colors in the brush.
If I want to add a third color it's very simple.
I'm going to dip the white, dip the green and now go and dip the yellow.
See a little bit of color, just a little bit and then we're ready to paint.
The second thing that you need to remember is to hold the brush handle straight up and
down when I'm doing my strokes and the third is to push very hard.
We're pushing, wiggling and lifting but see how much pressure?
I'll show you more as we're stroking how important that stroke will be.
Now let me show you how to use the script liner.
This brush is the only brush that I'm going to use water with.
With this brush we go into the water two or three times, picking up water, making a circular
motion out next to the puddle of paint.
See that?
It's very important to make a nice inky consistency.
Really about three times, see how I'm making a circle, I'm not going in the middle of the
puddle, I'm going out here to the edge of my puddle.
Rolling my brush into this paint and pulling out so that we don't have a drip at the end
of the bristle.
Now let me show you how to load the scruffy.
This brush when you pull it out of the package it's really important that you take this brush
and fan out the bristles.
These are all natural hairs and it doesn't hurt the brush to pull it out and you will
lose a few bristles in the beginning so don't be concerned if you lose just a few.
Probably about the third usage of this brush it will be wonderful at that point, kind of
seasoned, ready to go.
But also make sure that you fan that out after each use.
Now this brush should always be dry when you're loading this brush to work with it or you'll
have a muddy mess.
So what we want to do is when we load this brush we're pouncing half the brush into one
color, can we see that?
And half the brush into another color.
See it's very important that we have those two colors on there and when I'm loading that
I'm pushing hard, pushing hard.
And then I start pouncing on my piece and make sure that when I need more paint I just
come back in, pick up some more.
And you can also multi-load this by going white, yellow, green and paint.
Now make sure that you clean your brushes out really well because the only thing that
will wreck your brush is if you let paint dry in the ferrule.
Now the ferrule is the silver part of your brush and paint if it dries right down here
in the ferrule what will happen is that you'll lose your chisel edge and I have a really
good chisel edge on the brush and we want to keep that.
So you want to take your water basin and you want to rake across the rake in the basin
and you can even hear it make sure that you're getting that paint out and not have any paint
in here when you're through.
You can use a brush cleaner or a dish soap to try to get that paint out of there so that
it doesn't dry.
I also have reusable teaching guides with my strokes on them which are really fun to
use.
You don't have to have them but I like to show them to you because they'll make it really
easy if you run into a difficulty.
These are two sided laminated sheets and it's like having the teacher strokes at home with
you.
You paint right on top of the teaching guide and the beauty of it is all you do is wipe
it off and practice again.
Now we're going to paint lilacs, daisies, roses, birds and butterflies and we're going
to have lots of fun so I want you to go gather your supplies and be ready to paint.
Now that we've gathered our supplies we're ready to learn technique.
We're going to do the Victorian Rose first and I've got my palette all ready so we can
just start painting.
What we're going to do is take our three quarter inch flat brush, put it in our water and take
and lay it on the paper towel so the excess water goes out.
Then we're going to pick up on each corner the white and the rose garden.
We're going to stroke back and forth picking up more back and forth probably about two
to three times.
We're going to dip into our color, push very hard, kind of stay in the same spot, don't
go too far and don't move all around your palette.
Now the brush is loaded because we're two thirds full.
Now what we want to do is pick up very gently now on the corners the rose garden, the wicker
white and now we're going to pick up a little bit of sunflower on the white edge and now
we're going to go paint on our canvas.
The first thing we're going to do is learn how to start our stroke and when we start
this stroke we're going to take and we're going to push, lift, push, lift about three
times.
This spreads our bristles and blends our color.
So we're going to go one, two, three, one, two, three and then we're going to start wiggling.
See this?
The brush handles straight up and down, the bristles are pushed hard and we stroke.
Let's do that one more time so you can see.
We go back to our palette, pick up paint and then we come right here one, two, three and
stroke all the way around.
We're pushing, wiggling, lifting.
It doesn't matter which side you go to.
We're just going to come around, if it's more comfortable to go all one way you can go all
one way but we make our apron all the way around and each one of these are a fan and
if you don't like one you've done you can do what I just did and we stroke over it.
So now we're going to pick up more paint and you'll notice I pick up paint quite often
and right in the center, let's do one more row of petals.
I think that might look good.
One more row of petals doing that same stroke but you notice now, don't forget, my brush
is standing, my handle of the brush is standing straight up and down and I'm putting lots
of pressure on my bristles.
Now let's do the bud inside this rose.
We put like two lines, see those two lines?
And we're going to go from this line up and over to the second line.
So we're pushing the bristles up and over.
We are not turning the brush.
So then we go to the same two lines and we stroke a U. Now what you will notice is that
you should be watching the white or the yellowish color for the shape of what we're doing because
that's the only thing that shows when we're all done with our stroke.
See we're going to start these inside petals right here along that line where we started
before wiggling and then we come in.
If we've messed up the bud at this time and sometimes you do by putting this next layer
in here then all you have to do is come right back in here and re-stroke and clean it back
up.
See that makes it very simple because it doesn't hurt anything to re-stroke and that's the
beauty of using no water and using our thick creamy paint.
So remember that line there and that line there.
So we're going to start on that line, lean our yellow out and come across.
Now if you want to do a half of a rose I'm just going to put, see the seashell, the strokes
around as you feel more comfortable you'll notice that you can do the stroke a little
bit quicker all the way around and then let's add a bud in here from line to line, line
to line, those are those two lines we started with.
Add another petal out here, maybe a little comma stroke in here.
All right, now we're going to put a leaf over that so don't worry about how that looks right
now.
We're going to come up here now and paint a bud and there's our two lines again from
this line up and over to that line.
Watching the lighter edge of the brush because that's what you're going to see remember when
it's all done.
We're going to put calyx over that so it won't matter what the sides look like.
Put a little rosebud here.
Okay we're going to pick up some white, yellow and our thicket and we're going to push really
hard.
Let's add all three of those colors in and it'll make a really pretty leaf.
White, yellow, this is sunflower and the thicket.
Okay now we're ready to paint.
Let's come over here and what we're going to do is paint around the rosebud first and
this is the calyx.
So we touch, lean and lift as we come around.
Now watch this very closely because when we touch we lean the bristles upward and then
we slide and lift the yellow as we're coming around.
Touch, lean and lift right away for the center.
Let's try this guy one more time down here.
You're going to like him if you can get this comfortably with this chisel of the brush.
We touch, lean, lean in the direction you're heading.
Touch, lean, lift around, touch, lean, lift on the center.
Now that's the same way we do our stems.
We touch, lean away.
I don't have much room there.
Touch, lean away and pull the stem back towards the cluster of roses.
Now we're going to pick up more paint.
If you realize how often I go to this palette you'll see that we use a lot of paint which
makes the shading pretty.
So now we're going to come right in here and we're going to paint, look, one, two, three,
paint half of our leaf.
I'm going to show you this and then we're going to go slower.
I want you to see how I'm painting this right on top of this paint and it doesn't even pick
up the underneath paint.
That's the beauty of not using water.
Now let's do this leaf one more time.
We put a V to start with and we're going to start on the line.
See my chisels right on the line?
I push, wiggle.
Look at that.
That's that seashell right there that we did for the rose.
And then all we do is after we wiggle we let the brush stand up.
And this kind of looks like a heart.
See this?
And all I'm worrying about is the outer edge of that leaf, the green.
And if I watch the green it kind of like draws the shape of the leaf I want.
See I touch, wiggle, lift and there's always one side that's easier than another.
So sometimes you might want to do that one first or do the harder side first.
But here's my V. Okay, remember if you don't like something you can stroke right back over
it.
You don't have to wipe it off.
Now let's do the second half.
Here's another simple way you push and slide.
And that kind of gives you the effect that that leaves a little turn.
And then we pull the stem right in using the chisel edge of the brush.
All right.
Now we want to come up here.
Let's try a push, turn, lift.
And then we pull the stem into it.
That's like a one stroke leaf.
And we're still, if you've noticed, I have not changed brushes.
We're still working with a three quarter inch flat brush.
Push, turn, lift.
And then we pull, immediately pull your stem through.
We're going to put just a few more leaves.
Pull on the stems into it.
And then I even like to trail that stem out on the chisel lifting the yellow.
Now all we have to do now is come in and add some lilacs.
I'm going to show you a couple of ways that we can do that.
Let's start first with loading the scruffer.
Remember it's dry.
We pounce some white and some plum.
It's plum chiffon.
OK, we've got that brush all loaded.
And I'm going to come here right on top of wet paint on top of wet paint.
That's the beauty of this technique.
And we're going to pounce a round area.
And you don't want to over pounce it till it's lavender.
You want to keep all this variation of color here.
So then we tilt our brush on the edge.
And we pounce a little tail off after you've painted the round area.
Now that's one method that we can do lilacs, which everybody really
likes this if you're a beginner too.
You really have fun with this brush.
And see how I have dark end lights in there?
But we can also take and paint the lilacs with more detail
by I kind of take the same brush and make a circle.
And then I'm going to come in with a smaller brush.
And this is like a number 8 flat or a number 10 flat.
Remember, I'm painting with all flat brushes when I do my strokes.
And you use whatever size flat brush is most comfortable for the project
you're using.
See, I'm pushing, lifting, pushing, lifting.
Now let me show you this.
I push down on the brush.
I'm on the chisel.
And I lift, push, lift, push, lift.
Now we're not flat.
We're not flat like this.
We're up on the chisel.
And I push the chisel down really hard and lift.
And you can alternate what you pick up.
I'm going to pick up plum more.
Next time, maybe just white.
See how I get my variation of color?
And we just keep picking up color.
And we keep layering this on top.
Now we don't have to take and paint the entire petals
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 around in a circle.
We can take and layer it.
We can put 1, 2, 3, pick up some more, overlap that 1, 2, 3, over and over
until we get the shape we like.
And I really like having the variation of color.
Pushing, lifting, pushing, lifting around in a circle all the way around.
And then what's really fun on this is that doing these lilacs
is that we can come in here and just add a few little sprays
like they're coming away from this blossom.
And those make it really fun.
And you can fill these in wherever you want on your piece.
And then what we're going to do to finish up these little lilacs,
I pick up all sorts of colors like midnight and dioxazine purple
and other colors to add to it.
But we've got a real soft palette here, which is fun.
This is really good.
You can put this in little girls' rooms,
or you can have it in your kitchen or your bathroom.
That makes it really fun.
Now we're going to take the handle of the brush.
And I'm going to use a smaller brush because I have a smaller handle.
And I'm going to dip dot these little centers by dipping into the paint.
Just pick into the wet paint.
And you touch.
Pick, touch, dipping into that puddle of paint.
And just don't touch every single one so it looks too exact.
I like you to pick up and just occasionally touch it.
Let's see how that just adds a little bit.
I don't know if you can see it because it's so light.
But that makes it really nice.
So you can do either method there, either the scruffy, which we did,
making the round, and then tapering off, which is very quick.
This is a little bit more detailed, but it's fun.
I like that too.
Now let's load our script liner.
We're going to pick up water, remember, two to three times,
picking up a little bit of thicket each time that we make a little circle here.
And we want to make this an inky consistency.
If it's too thick, it won't work.
If it's too watery, it's going to run on our piece.
So we get it nice and inky.
We roll the brush.
And you know what?
Learning the consistency, learning how to load your brush,
all that happens by practice.
And so you want to make sure that you practice and not be frustrated
with yourself when you're first starting.
Now see how fun that curlicue is?
Let me show you how easy it is to make that.
And this is sometimes a very difficult thing for people,
but not with my technique.
I take the brush.
We want the handle straight up and down.
My little finger is out here.
I'm making a circle to get me going.
Then I slowly lower the tip till it touches.
And then I'm thinking about where my little finger's going.
And the beauty of this brush is it has so much bristle
that you can go on and on and on before it runs out of paint.
The bristles hold all this paint.
But concentrate on where your little finger's going,
not where the tip of the brush is.
This is also the brush that I sign with.
When I'm signing or doing other details like bows,
I'm doing all downward strokes.
See that?
All downward.
And I'm steadying my finger so that I can do those strokes.
Now let's go paint some daisies.
What I've done is added a few more colors
to my palette for the daisies.
And the first thing I'm going to do
is load my brush for my stems.
I'm going to pick up probably some white, yellow, sunflower,
and thicket.
The yellow is the sunflower.
And we're going to pick up all three of those colors
at the same time, work it into my brush.
And sometimes when you're on a dry surface,
what you'll need to do is you might
feel like you need water.
But instead of using water, which
will make my painting muddy, I'm going to dip
into some floating medium.
And if you notice, the brush had to be totally loaded
before I used the floating medium.
Then I work it in.
And then I paint.
Now you can only use this floating medium
every third or fourth stroke.
Because if you pick up more than that,
it'll be muddy like if you were using water.
All right?
So let's come and let's paint our stems.
And the stems are kind of the placement.
As I'm coming here, I'm putting them in so that I
know where to put my daisies.
Now I'm starting on the chisel, slightly lifting the yellow.
So I'm only dragging the green bristles.
All right?
Now we're going to pick up our number eight.
And we're going to paint some daisies.
What we're going to do is stand on the chisel edge
as we're making our daisy.
We touch, lean towards the center.
And pull.
Touch, lean, pull.
Now in the lilacs, I was pushing very hard.
On these, I just slightly want to touch, lean slightly,
and pull, unless I want my daisies
to be very thick-pedaled.
On these, I'm doing little thin ones.
And they're really fun.
You can alternate what colors you pick up.
You can make them smaller.
Or you can come in and just make it a half of one.
Let's come over here and do a little half of one,
where they're just coming upward.
Now we're going to load this small scruffy
for the center of these daisies.
And we're going to pick up yellow.
And they're yellow, so let's add a little bit of green.
Sometimes you might can just use the yellow.
And we picked up this on our little scruffy.
And then we're going to come and just pounce right
in the center of each little daisy.
And here, we're going to have it just at the top,
so that we have the centers all done.
Now let me show you how to paint the leaves.
These leaves have a little bit more detail.
I added a little floating medium so that it
would move easily for me.
Now I'm watching the outer edge of the leaf.
I'm watching the green.
I wiggle out, in, out, in, out.
And you know, they're kind of jagged,
more than a smooth stroke.
Now you're watching the green.
Remember that.
So here's my V, remember the V for the leaf?
So that'll help you know where to put the other half of the leaf.
Now watch the green.
Can you watch that green edge there?
See how much easier that makes it?
If that's what you're concentrating on.
And then remember, pull the stem in right while that's wet.
Look how pretty that is.
Now if we take and we wiggle out, in, out, in, up.
And then you can slide down and make a half of one.
OK.
Now if I want to add some floated leaves,
kind of like shadow leaves in the background,
I'm going to wipe the excess paint off the brush.
I'm going to go to this floating medium.
And this is fun because it's like watercolor effect.
You clean out your brush into that puddle of floating medium.
Then you wipe the excess off, and let's paint with that.
And what we're doing is we're coming in here,
continuing to pick up, and just make these little shadow
leaves in the background.
And that gives a really nice effect.
And I pull the stems through those too.
Now what we're going to paint next,
see I added a little bit of pink in that one that time.
But what we're going to do next is come in and paint
some butterflies and some birds.
And the birds are real fun because we're
using the same brushes.
We're using our flat brushes.
And we're going to pick up, let's do a hummingbird.
So we'll pick up the green and white first.
We're going to pick up the number 12 flat brush.
And we need two brushes.
So we're going to have about the same size brush.
We're picking up the green and white on one.
And then we're going to, let's do the rose garden,
since that's what's in our picture.
The first thing we're going to do when we paint the hummingbird
is we paint like a half of a circle,
like a grape for his head.
Then we're going to come down and make
like a little one stroke leaf, a longer leaf for his back.
We switch brushes.
And we make a little half circle for his cheek.
And we slide down for his tummy.
Now he's fun.
Everybody loves doing the birds.
And you can take and do a bluebird.
You can do any sort of bird that you want,
remembering these strokes.
Now right here at the back of his head,
we're going to come right here and push, turn left
for a one stroke leaf, which is his back wing.
Then we put our little finger here.
And we stand the brush up.
And we're going to chisel little feathers all the way
around the white part of that wing.
Now make sure that these feathers are
pretty close to each other.
You don't want them all separated.
Now the next thing we're going to do
is add his front wing, which paints right
on top all that wet paint.
And then we're going to make the little feathers on here
all the way around to the front.
And then we come down with his tail, which we touch,
pull back, touch, pull back to his body,
long, skinny strokes for his tail.
Now let's come in with our script liner.
Pick up the green for his beak.
And this is real simple.
All we're doing is we're touching right here
where his eye would be, kind of.
And we pull away.
My hardest thing is making that not crooked.
And then we stand here.
We do one, two, three little dots for his eye.
Pick up white.
I use the green to still do that.
Then I pick up the white on the green brush.
And I dot for highlights.
Maybe even put a little dot there.
And what I like to do is put a little string bow on him,
which I'm using this inky, inky script liner again.
And we're going to pull one.
See how I go down first?
Two loops.
And then we make his little tail of the bow.
See how fun that is?
Now we're going to paint a butterfly.
And I'm going to get two brushes ready.
I'm using the script liner.
Remembering that I want this inky paint.
And this is going to be for his body.
We're going to roll that brush, have it already in my hand.
And then I'm going to pick up the Wicker White and the Plum
Chiffon.
And we're going to make a purple little butterfly here.
All right, get that brush all loaded.
And then we're going to come right to our palette.
And we're going to push.
Instead of going flat, we're going to start at an angle.
Push really hard.
And lift.
All you're doing is pushing those bristles down
and letting them stand up to the chisel.
So it's real simple.
But I'm picking up paint each stroke right from my palette.
Then I'm coming here.
And these are like the little feathers that we did before.
These are the two bottom wings.
We're leaning towards the white.
And we're lifting up.
And then all we have to do at this point
is push for his body and lift.
Touch, lift, touch, lift.
Now aren't those fun?
I love putting butterflies on all sorts
of projects in every color.
Now that we've learned our technique,
let's go paint some projects for your garden pieces.
THE PRECIOUS Maybe
you
Now that you have your supplies ready, let's paint our birdhouse.
I'm going to paint roses and lilacs and daisies on here and I'm going to show you how to build it step by step so that you can do it at home too.
We're going to take our brush and our large brush, three quarter inch flat, and we're going to pick up our white and our rose garden.
And we're going to load that brush like we did earlier, picking up corner, corner, and two to three times.
I really like to stress this because it's so important that you remember that that's the most important thing.
The technique is getting that brush loaded.
Alright, so we're going to find the place here that we want to start with the large flower first.
And I'm going to start right here on the top of the roof and do one petal at a time.
So if you look at your project as one petal at a time, it won't seem so overwhelming.
We're going to do one seashell. See how it looks like a seashell or a fan?
And the edge I'm watching, I'm watching the white edge of the flower because when all the petals are put together, that's the edge you're going to see.
All the way around, there's our outer apron.
And I'm not going to put a second layer here because we can do it without it.
A second layer of petals. Let's just go ahead and paint the bud.
Line to line, remember? We're going from that line to that line.
Still watching that white edge.
Now start on that same line and let's do the second layer of petals from the rose bud.
Right here, starting right on that line, wiggling away.
And fill in between those two petals.
Now remember, if I've messed up this bud right here in the middle, you can actually re-stroke the whole bud.
Or just the second stroke, whichever is easier.
Whichever is needed, probably.
So then we're going to start on this line and we're going to chisel a comma stroke from here.
Lean the white out, stroke around, and then maybe a little slice right down there.
So there's our full rose.
Now see, that's fun and easy. It's not difficult at all.
It just takes a little bit of practice.
So now we're going to come in and do our rose bud.
And the rose bud is going to come right up here, line to line.
We're going from that line to that line.
We're going up and over.
See, push up and over.
Then from the same two lines, we're going to make the U.
See, it looks like a U, the white part of it.
Come down here, we want to see another layer of petals.
And then I'm going to lean the birdhouse and down here, let's put a couple more.
Line to line.
You don't have to paint the lines if you can visualize those lines.
But at first it makes it easier if you just do that.
Making sure that we pick up fresh paint.
So we're doing stroke on top of stroke.
And don't worry about the sides because we're going to put K-Licks there.
And they are going to cover the whole anything that you might not like on the sides.
We're going to pick up the yellow, the white, and the green.
I'm using Thicket Sunflower and Worker White.
And we're loading this all into the brush.
Real thick and creamy.
Lots of paint in there.
See how nice?
More paint than you usually would imagine if you've tried painting before.
And then we're going to, instead of doing the V for the leaf,
we're going to just start right next to the rose.
The V is so you separate the strokes so you're not stroking on top of each other.
And when it's like this, right next to the rose, you're not going to start on top of each other.
Then I think I better switch brushes because that brush is a little big for what we're doing.
We're going to use the number 12.
And let's go back and load that one just like we were loading before.
And my brushes were wet before I got started.
But I'm really not painting with any water because that's going to muddy up my strokes.
So now what we want to do is come up here.
You touch, lean, and lift as you come around the rosebud.
Touch, lean.
I'm leaning away towards the direction that I'm heading.
Then I leave a little gap right there because right there is where I push and lift a little K,
like right in the middle, not as long as the others.
Come down here.
Touch, lean, lift.
Touch, lean, lift as I come around and follow the shape of the rosebud.
Touch, lean, lift all the way around.
Then now the stem, we're going to touch, lean away, and pull.
Touch and pull up.
And I kind of let it disappear underneath.
Touch here, lean, come down.
And then I'm going to come in here and do some one-strokes leaves.
Push, turn, lift, pull the stem into it.
Let's do one more of those so we can see.
And I'm going to pick up a little bit of pink because that makes it kind of fun too.
We're going to go push, turn, lift.
I'm always turning the green towards the tip.
But if you saw what I just did, I took and switched the direction.
I have green on one side or I can't turn my arm that way.
So we want to go down to the bottom here so I can show you down here.
Push, turn, lift.
Now I can flip my brush this way with the green on the other side.
Push, turn, lift.
Oops, I ran out of paint.
So we're going to go right back over that again.
Push, turn, lift.
And then we pull the stem right into it.
Okay, now we're just going to fill in with our scruffy the area where we're going to put some lilacs.
And then we're going to pick up our number 12 and load it with the white and the plum chiffon.
Remember we're going to alternate colors here.
We're going to pick up purple on the plum and the white, the purplish color.
And then sometime we'll just mostly pick up the plum.
Sometimes we'll mostly pick up white.
And then we're just layering these petals on top of each other.
And that background just gave you a basis to start with, the scruffy part, the scruffy area.
And we're going to keep filling in here following the alternating colors that we were using.
Put a little few sprays over here.
And these are kind of fun because you can do little trailers coming off of here like we were showing you before.
And then we're going to take the handle of the smaller brush and dot the centers.
We're just going to do a few of those.
Use bright yellow. I'm using a sunflower or you can use Scobas yellow.
But this light yellow looks really good in here.
Okay, and then I'm leaving areas to come in with some daisies afterwards.
Now see, remember on these I'm pushing harder.
See, I'm pushing a lot harder than I'm doing when I do my daisies.
And then let's put a few down here.
Just a few little partial ones down here.
Kind of looks like a daisy if you're not careful here.
Okay, now let's come in, add some daisies.
We're going to use the same brush. Let's clean this out.
Use the same brush, dry off the water.
And let's pick up Scobas yellow and Worker white.
Load that into your brush.
It's so important each time that you remember you want that brush two-thirds full of paint.
Okay, now I'm going to, because this is background yellow,
I'm going to pull the yellow towards the center and let the white follow.
So I touch, lean, pull back towards the center of the daisy.
And I can go wet paint right on top of wet paint.
It's okay if it picks up a little bit of your previous color.
See how fun that is? Right on top of there.
Put a little spray in here.
And it's okay to go right on top of the rose if you want to.
And then we're going to use our scruffy.
See that one didn't show too well. So see I'd go right back over that with more white.
All right. Right down here a few little clusters of daisies.
And you have a pretty little spray. Let's take our scruffy now.
I'm going to pounce yellow, but remember I'm going to go into some green like I did before.
Yellow and green with a small scruffy and pounce a little center.
There you go. And then to do the front, it's very simple.
We're just going to turn it and maybe put a spray of rose buds right around the center there.
I'm still using that large brush, the three quarter inch flat, to do the rose buds
because I want them pretty big.
Remember we're going side to side. Maybe put a couple down here.
And you repeat what I just did on the top.
You're going to repeat that on the other side, on the roof and down the other side.
So let's just do the front really quickly, adding our green and our yellow for calyx.
See the placement. Rose buds, calyx, leaves and then filler flowers.
All right. And then you can finish off by putting a few little curly cues at the end for a nice detail.
And our paint's wonderful. It works really well outside.
What I found, I even live in Florida and we don't have the fading, the color lasts so good outdoors,
which has been really good for me because I like to paint mailboxes and I've even painted out on fences.
And it's held up really well.
OK, now we're going to come in with a few little daisies.
And then I'm going to still put a few lilacs on here, but not maybe as much as I did on the other side.
And just play with this. Have fun. I like it when you use your own designs.
We have patterns that you can always practice with by tracing those on,
but it's so much more fun when you create your own design following the strokes that I'm teaching you.
Let's clean this out. Put a little bit of lilac on here.
See, instead of pouncing with the scruffy on this, I just make little circles
because you're just trying to wet the area as a background, a base for my lilacs.
And then I'm going to come right here and finish it up.
OK, pushing hard. Don't forget the handle of your brush is straight up and down.
OK, a few little ones in here. Dot the centers. Put our curly cues.
Oh, you know what? I came in here a little bit and just dot with the handle of the brush some of these with our thicket
when they're smaller daisies.
Three things, three times into water with our script liner.
Get our inky consistency of our paint.
And then we can come in here and put a few stems in here or we can just do some curly cues.
Remembering wherever my little finger is going is where that's going to go. Isn't that fun?
Then I sign my piece and we're done.
Let's come here, some little curly cues. And see how the curly cues just give it a lighter touch. Isn't that fun?
Now, I'm going to go and paint a tray with you.
We're going to do step by step on a tray just like we did with the birdhouse.
So let's go get our supplies and get ready to paint our tray.
Music
Now that we've gathered our supplies, let's paint this beautiful tray together.
We're going to place out our large objects first, which would be the large rose.
And we're going to take and put the apron, all the petals around in an apron for the outer edge of our rose.
Remembering that you want that white edge to be nice and pretty because that's what shows when it's all finished.
Then whichever way we want the rose to face is which way we paint our bud.
Then we come in and do our second layer of petals.
And with this thick, creamy paint, look how nice you can lay that layer on top of layer and still have that beautiful shading.
And you want to make sure that you have the soft white all the way to the dark pink.
I'm adding a little, this is rose garden, then I'm adding a little bit of sunflower to give that little bit of a yellow tint.
I'm going to stand right here on that line, fill this way, fill in here.
Okay, now what we're doing is we're going to lay our buds out.
I can do one here, one there, one there, just by touching it so I can see which direction I want this rose spray to head.
And I'm putting all these large elements to this design first so that I know where to come back and lay my leaves.
Whichever way the rose is, I'm putting the rose buds going away from it.
Make sure that they're not pointing back towards the rose.
See, one, two, three, you have three layers of petals there.
Then we want to pick up our green. I'm going to pick up green, yellow sunflower.
It's the wicker white sunflower and thick it.
And we're going to come in here, and the first thing I do is lay a big leaf.
So I'm going to come right here, push, handle straight up and down, wiggle, and lift to the point.
And the green is on the outer edge all the way to the point of the leaf.
And then immediately, don't forget to pull your stem in.
Now I want to come over here maybe and put another smaller leaf here.
And on one side, I'm going to slide. Remember how I just did a little one that slid?
Especially on that side that's harder to paint.
And then I'm going to put maybe one or two larger leaves, larger one-stroke leaves with this 3 quarter inch flat brush.
And I've used the same size brush for all the design I've done so far.
All right, I'm putting my calyx on.
And remember when you're laying out those rose buds, and this will happen as you practice, as you paint your projects.
I tell you to start painting right away.
Practice a little bit and start painting.
And what you'll learn is, well, I wish I hadn't put that rose bud there because it's going to be too hard to pull the stem back
because it's too close to my other rose bud.
And then the next time you do it, it'll be easier because you'll remember that wasn't easy to do.
So I grab this bud, pull it back, do the calyx around this one, and pick up more paint, grab that, and pull it back.
All right, we've got to pull these stems back and this back.
Now what we want to do is use our number 12 now to make some one-stroke leaves.
And when we're doing the one-stroke leaves, I'm picking up the same colors, working it into my brush.
Now I've got a little trick that helps you on laying placement of these leaves out is because I don't want you to have the leaves pointing back towards the main rose.
So I tell you to put your fingers, and whichever way they point is which way you can have a leaf.
But the leaf will not come back towards the large rose.
It's going away.
And I'm pushing, turning, lifting, push, turn, lift.
And so it doesn't matter which way my green, if my green is on top or on the bottom.
It's just the green edge of the brush turns towards the point first.
Put a few in here.
Same thing here.
I'm going to take my fingers and I can point my leaves whichever directions my finger would point.
Okay, and I don't like that one.
I'm going to re-stroke over it.
Don't you like it when I don't do good ones either?
Then it'll make you feel better when you're stroking.
All right, then we're going to pull a stem, remembering that we want to pull the stem from the main stem into the leaf.
All right, now we're ready for our filler petals, the little flowers that will fill in here.
Pull our stems into there.
All right, now we're going to come in with that scruffy and use our plum.
And we're going to have some little daisies too.
But let's start with the purple, which is a plum chiffon.
Let's make a circle.
See, I don't worry about it being wet because if it adds a little bit of green, if the paint's wet and adds a little bit of green, it just looks natural.
Okay, because nature is that way.
All right, so wherever I put those spots or where I'm going to put my lilacs, I'm picking out my number 12 with the two colors on the brush,
the lilac colors, which will be the plum chiffon and the wicker white.
And then I'm going to stroke right on top of here.
Short strokes.
And now remember, I'm on the chisel edge of this brush.
I push, hard, lift, hard, lift, push, lift, push, lift, push, lift all the way around.
Alternating, I'm going to pick up white sometime.
I'm going to pick up white a little bit more here.
And see how it has the streaks of color?
It makes it look really natural.
And that's the more colors that you add in, the more natural it's going to look.
Come all in here, wherever I scruffied first, adding these little strokes all in here.
And see how soft this palette of color is?
What's the beauty of this is that you can take any color that matches the decor in your home
and pull out any color you like and replace the colors that I've used.
And remember, you can do the same design on a smaller piece, just use smaller flat brushes.
But what's wonderful is that you don't have to buy very many brushes to be able to do my technique
because we use very few and we can get all kinds of colors.
Look at this.
We only have a few colors in here and we've achieved all that shading
because we're using always the lighter color with a dark, rich color,
which brings in all the shades in between the dark and the light color.
Okay, let's go back, dot the handle into our paint and put little centers.
Remember, don't do every one, just a few.
And then we'll come in and put some daisies in here.
All right.
The daisies are the same brush, but we're going to use the Wicker White and the School Bus Yellow this time.
And last time I turned the white on the outside, I'm going to leave the yellow on the outside this time,
so it's bright and yellow.
See how bright and pretty that turns out?
And it makes it real vivid.
And let's just put a few daisies here and there, complete daisies all the way around.
I'm on the chisel.
I touch, push, lift, pushing the white edge of the brush towards the center of the flower.
Let's come over here.
Touch, lean, lift all the way around.
And then we're going to use that little scruffy in here for the centers of these.
You can dot them with the handle, depending on what size you make, but I like that little scruffy,
because then we can add some yellow and some green.
Look how that turns out.
The more you add, I mean, you could have stopped back when we just had the roses and the leaves,
but look what happens the more that you add to it.
You just start getting more and more detail.
Some people like less more, and so just do whatever makes you happy on this.
Let's use the scruffy.
We're going to pick up the yellow first, then come into the edge of the green,
and this is your small scruffy.
Come around, pounce some little centers all the way around there.
And then before I finish, I want to take and do some floated little leaves, shadow leaves.
I take the brush with paint on it.
I'm taking and wiping off the excess paint, and then I'm going to clean the brush,
like if you had a brush cleaner.
I'm going to clean the brush out into that floating medium.
So then I have a puddle of this dirty paint, wiping it off the brush,
and then I pick it up and go and paint with it.
And it looks like little shadow leaves, and you don't even have to be good at these.
They just look real impressive when you're all done.
Like a fine artist has been here doing all these little strokes.
All the way around our piece, and just put them all out, out and away.
Remember your fingers, figuring out which direction to put them.
And then you make sure that you come back and pull all your stems in with the same mixture, okay?
The same floated mixture.
Let's load our script liner to do our curly cues.
We're going to pick up water two or three times.
Make that inky consistency.
Remember we're going to start with our little finger,
and then wherever my little finger goes is where that curly cue is going to go.
And you don't have to put your little finger down if your project's wet,
but you can move your whole hand when you're doing this, okay?
Your whole arm, so that you are not following the tip of the bristles,
but you're going where your arm is going.
Now to finish this off, I think it would look really good after we sign our name to put some butterflies.
So let's pick up the number 12, and we're going to use School Bus Yellow and Wicker White.
And let's do stroke by stroke, and remember how to do this butterfly is really fun.
We're going to push on the chisel really hard and slide to a point.
Pick up fresh paint. It's real important that we pick up fresh paint.
Push, lift, now we're going to chisel edge these two little wings up that way.
And like if I'm going to do two, I'd go ahead and do another one now.
We're going to push, lift, push, lift, stroke, stroke.
All right, now all we do at this point is we touch for the body and we lift our brush up.
He's going to be a big butterfly. Look at that.
Push, lift, touch, lift, touch, lift. On the little antennas, you barely touch and then lift it back to the body.
And then we sign it and we're through. Isn't that fun?
Now all you have to do is practice, and a little bit of practice,
you'll be so amazed how quickly you can pick up the strokes and you can do them, too.
Now for our final project, I want to go back and finish painting on the canvas that we were practicing on first.
I'm going to come over here and add a few more daisies,
doing some pink daisies all the way around in a circle, pulling the white inward, long strokes on the chisel edge.
And then come in here and maybe do some half daisies.
And then I'm going to take the handle of my brush and dot the center
and come back with some little one-stroke leaves because we need a few of those smaller leaves.
So a push, turn, lift, little small leaves in here to finish our piece.
Now let me show you the canvas that I finished earlier.
Look at this. And let's put a frame on it.
And look how beautiful this would be in your home.
Isn't that fun? It was quick and easy, too.
If you want to see more exciting projects, check out our website.
I'm Donna Dubyre. See you next time.
For more exciting ideas, visit our website at PlaidOnline.com.