Hello, I'm Jill Baes and I'm standing in my garden by the Thames and I'm going to show
you how I paint some of the flowers which are growing here.
I've come in from the garden and I've picked this cosmos on the way which I'm going to show
you how I paint it.
I'm going to start straight with a brush.
I'm going to draw it with a pencil first.
It's a simple shape, it's really a spherical shape.
If you had it facing you it would be just a circle but you've got to make it into a
sphere.
So I'm going to paint this flower here that you see, this cosmos.
I can see that it's a spherical shape and what I'm going to do now is to actually describe
the shape with my brush in my mind's eye so that I can see that part of it starts over
here and then there and I'm just sort of really trying to draw it invisibly before I start.
I'm going to mix up the colour for this flower and I'm using magenta and rose madder.
I just pick up a little bit of each with water but one thing to remember is that the colour
always dries much lighter than it appears on the palette.
So my brush is full of water and I'm just going to put my brush down, try to follow
the shapes not too closely.
I'm not working as a botanical painter here.
Just try to follow the shapes around and still trying to remember what I originally thought
of.
I'm not too worried about tone here or anything like that.
I'm just using my brush straight off.
I'm trying to remember of course that I've got this little centre here which is quite
important.
I'll move the flower out of the way slightly.
Here we go.
And then up here, up here and I can see the tiny bits where the petals break and also
I suppose I've got to remember that that petal comes in there but I'll have to wait till
it dries before I actually go on much further.
You'll have to resist the temptation to touch it up like I am.
I have got two petals here which are actually standing up and the backs of them are lined
up a bit lighter than the front.
So I'm going to see if I can put that in but this means another overlay of paint.
And still with the brush I'm just going to indicate that the petal behind is darker.
Not a lot but somewhat so I'm actually over painting that.
So I've got to actually come in here again, in the right place, round in there and make
this one a bit darker as well.
But not a lot, just a little bit.
And also there's one here which seems to look a bit darker in here so we'll make that go
up.
So I've got nearly like two coats of paint, almost.
And maybe a bit in here as well and just a little bit in there and I think that's about
it.
I'm going to paint the centre of the flowers now, that's the stamens and I'm actually using
cadmium yellow here.
Just to put this in because it looks a bit strange with a little hole in the centre.
And I'll pick up a little bit of burnt umber to go round the edge.
Just to drop that in, to give it a bit of form.
And then I'll paint the stem.
I've got a sort of medium green here.
And of course one thing about stems and flowers is that you've got to make the stem come from
the centre of the flower.
So if you can draw through and then make it come out.
I can't see the settles here at all.
So it's just one stroke here.
And if I wanted to I could maybe put in some of these tiny feathery little leaves and things
here.
Actually it just finishes a little bend here and you've got some little feathery bits and
pieces which are coming out here and a little bud as well.
And I think for a flower which is painted straight off I think that could look okay.
I'm going to paint the cosmos again from a different angle.
I'm going to use a slightly different colour, a different tone of paint and make it slightly
lighter than the other one because I still want to show the effect of the petals, of
the back of the petals here.
So they've got these little serrated edges which is very attractive.
I think possibly that's enough for that.
I'll come in there again.
You've got to wait for it to dry but while it's drying I can actually paint in the settles
at the back which are here.
And it doesn't really matter if it runs in slightly because flowers often take on the
effect of what's behind them anyway so don't worry about a little thing like that happening.
And the stem as well which if we're going to we'll make it come down like that as if
it's two that are growing together.
And I'm going to put the other tone in behind these petals here.
So I've got my slightly darker paint which is another tone of the magenta and I'm going
to actually put these in.
So these back petals do show up a bit more.
There we go.
It's not difficult to do at all.
Really quite easy but you have got to look really quite hard at what you're doing.
The other thing which is probably interesting is I'm using a smaller sized brush than the
one I started out with which was a size 10 and this is a 6.
So that will make these come right down there and I think that looks as if one petal is
coming towards you and the other one is going away.
I have another flower now.
It's a Japanese anemone.
It's very similar to the other one but much paler in tone.
While I'm going to try and get the colour of this flower, it's very very much paler,
I'm picking up some Rose Madder and I can see that that's not quite the right colour
so I've really got to add water until it gets more or less right.
Maybe a little tiny bit of Mauve, a very tiny tint of it might make it just right.
I think that's better.
That's it.
So having got the right colour on a piece of scrap paper, I'm going to start painting
this just like I did the other one, very very pale.
I'm going to try and follow the shape around and I can see that this Japanese anemone has
four petals, four major petals and also a little crink in the top there and three other
petals which seem to come behind these.
So I've got to make sure they look as if they're behind.
Now this colour is so pale that you can actually hardly see it.
So that goes in there, I'm still trying to follow the shape almost exactly as I see it.
Add that one in there.
So this is really my first coat of the paint and there's hardly any difference with colour.
There we are, we'll leave it at that.
So I'm going to paint my second colour now which is actually the same colour, it's just
a wee, makes it look a bit darker, maybe not quite enough paint on there.
Just a little bit so that these back petals actually show up a little bit and I can see
that they're slightly purpley colour, just very very slightly, very very pale, so that
these look as if they're slightly behind the other petals and also there's a little bit
coming into the centre here.
This might be a bit too much, you can maybe adjust it later on if you feel it needs adjusting.
Just one more stroke, there we are, so that's quite quickly done.
Well I'm going to put the little centre piece in here with the stamens and this should actually
sort of hold this together, it's a very nice light bright green, not much shadow on it
at all.
And the stamens I'm going to put in a yellow ochre, very very lightly indicated around
here, so that these will just go in here and finish it off with the stamens stalks as well.
You could actually use a pencil for that if you wanted to, a very very fine pencil, it's
just a little blur around the edge here with the dots.
Now because this flower is so very very light, I'm going to put a background around it, I'm
going to start with a blue, keeping it really wet, cutting right into some of these edges
and I'm going to vary the background so that part of it will be blue and part of it will
be yellow, green, all sorts of colours really.
So we're trying to make these flowers stand out against a very much darker background,
there I've left a space for the stalk which I'd almost forgotten.
Let's try a bit of yellow now, because this will mix in quite nicely with the blue to
make it look as if it's against some sort of foliage or something like that.
And while the paint is so wet, it's not really dried off there, you can in fact incorporate
more or less any colour that you want.
So there we are, we've made our little pink flower show up against a different coloured
background and we're letting the paint run in so that it could look, with a bit of imagination,
as if it's against some sort of leafy background.
There, we'll leave it like that.
Following on from doing the pale pink anemone, I've got another white flower here which is
a white cosmos and of course when you're painting a white flower you have to really let the
paper do the work and it's the pale shadows which will show the flower up and as we did
before you have to use a background to let your flower stand out.
I'm just penciling in this white cosmos because it's difficult to see the actual shape when
you're painting and of course I'm going to paint the negative shapes, I'm going to paint
the shapes which are around it.
So I'm putting in just a little indication of how it's going to look, very pale light
pencil drawing and of course we've got these stamens on the stalk which will come out from
there.
What I'm going to do now is just with clean water and I'm just going to paint around the
shape which will make my task of painting slightly easier.
You probably can't see what I'm doing, it's like painting with an invisible ink but I'm
doing it quite quickly and then we'll let the colour run in there.
I think I've done that, so I'm going to pick up an indigo blue and the colour should run
in fairly easily around here, a little bit more easily than if I'd started off with it.
I can still vary the colours if I want and in fact you can pick up all the colours of
the shapes and things which are around you.
I'll do that now, I'll add a little bit of pink here which will look quite nice with
the blue and indeed run in.
It's drying already there which is not terribly helpful and then I'll pick up a little bit
of green and put that in as well.
So while the water's fairly damp, it's dried off quite a lot here, I think there's some
sunshine or something about here, you can actually let almost any colour you like run
in and it should have quite a nice effect.
In fact if you don't like it, maybe that's a bit too pink, you can tone it down.
It's a good way of learning how colours mix together.
Probably touch up all these little bits where they meet together quite easily and quickly.
There we are, like that.
Now I'm going to put in some of the shadows here, there aren't that many but just enough
so that you'd like to see where perhaps the shades are.
You've got to be quite careful here, I'm not sure that that isn't too grey.
I've mixed a cerulean and a lightish red here to make my grey and I'm just going to put
this in, there's not a lot to see but it will just give a little bit of added tone to the
flower, maybe in there as well.
Around the back of this one which looks quite dark.
It's very good to know how to mix greys, you'll find them very, very useful.
This is a warmish grey and it's a useful one to remember, that cerulean and light red.
Have little serrations in this flower.
A little bit darker and just in the centres underneath here.
I'm going to put the centre in which again of course is this rather bright cadmium yellow.
It's got some little tiny stamens sticking up here and a little bit of tone right around
the edge which won't take me too long to pick up.
Just a little bit here in the edge, it's not running so we've got a few little spots here
just to give it a bit of...
There we go.
Well I'm going to actually strengthen up this background because I think I wasn't quite
careful enough here.
I want my white flower to show up just a little bit more so I'll show you one or two places
where I strengthened up, particularly between the petals which will make them stand out
really well.
We soften off the edge again and come down here.
I think that looks better that side.
So I'll do the other side the same, just with a bit slightly stronger, particularly in between
the petals and it will look sharper and better.
It doesn't take more than a few minutes to do.
So that you can see also here that it's quite easy to over paint and as that's green there
we'll have it showing through that side a bit as well.
I'm going to show you how to paint some leaves now.
You've got this rather pointy arrow shape.
You've got to try and think in shapes all the time and it's really, from the angle I'm
looking at it, I've got two greens, I've got a darker green there and a lighter green here.
So I'll try and put those in more or less simultaneously.
I mean with this other one here it's quite a bit darker than that one.
So I try to work with three greens.
That's a dark, a medium and a light green of various mixtures.
The light green can be ultramarine and cadmium yellow.
The medium green can be prussian blue and cadmium yellow and the dark green can be prussian
blue and burnt sienna.
They're all sorts of variations of course but mainly I work on these lines.
I'm going to paint one side of the leaf with my, what you could call my medium green.
I'm not going to try to worry too much about details here, really hoping I can let the
brush do the work.
So that's just one side of the green.
I'm actually going to have a paler colour by adding more water here and see if I can
leave a little space so that I haven't got to dry it and have a much paler side to that
leaf.
There we are.
If you wanted to you could actually put a, while it's still wet, you could actually put
a little bit darker in there.
There's no veins, it's just a side of a leaf coming up.
And changing over to another brush, let's see if I can get those smaller leaves in.
They're quite straightforward really.
They're just letting the brush do the work.
There's another one here.
I'm not worried about stalks or anything at the moment, that's just another one.
And then over the other side of the stalk we've got our green, a bit of a green stalk,
I'll put the main one in later.
We've got the brush stroke for a small leaf, be corrected a bit, and another little one
here, and I'm going to pick up my larger brush for this other leaf.
Now I haven't bothered too much about varying the greens here because they all seem to be
much of a muchness.
But what I could do is I'll leave the centre vein, there we are, maybe a slightly better
shape here.
But still, while the paint is really flowing, you can add your paint.
I've got to have another colour for the stalk which seems to be a sort of a burnt sienna,
and you've got some little buds here coming up from this there, and another one here.
And also I can see a bit of stalk coming down there, and here, I think this is important
to show the stalk, and it comes out almost the top of that one there, before we go onto
other leaves.
Now that's very basic and very simple, but I think you'll agree it does look a bit like
a leaf.
What I could do, just to add a little bit onto this other one, is make this a little
bit darker as it comes into the base there, just to add a bit of variation.
So what I would like to show you now is that you can use your brush, in fact, to make almost
any kind of shape you want.
You can make it make the leaf shapes.
The actual brush stroke itself makes the shapes.
You can do shapes like that, or you can have curving, sort of thinner shapes if you want,
or you could use another brush to indicate that you've got waving, frond-like shapes.
So you've got to really learn to use your brush as easily as you'd write.
You can have pointy shapes, I'm only using one turn of green here, but already they're
looking as if they're leaf shapes.
So you actually let the brush do the work, you can press hard or come away, press hard
and then come away.
And you'll find that you'll do this without thinking after a while.
You can make really large shapes if you like, but often you've maybe got to let it dry so
that you can put your veins and things on afterwards.
I've got a different sort of leaf here, in fact it's a hydrangea leaf, and it's rather
larger than the others, but I'll show you how I put the veins in.
Of course there are various ways in which you can do this.
You could in fact, I'm going to paint over this, but you could of course take the veins
out with a piece of blotting paper, but that's a bit more complicated, so we'll try it the
rather the easiest way first of all.
I've painted my basic shape like this, even with its pale stalk.
You've got an aircraft going over at the moment which is, I suppose, one of the hazards of
living by the river in Surrey.
I'm going to paint the, I suppose you could call them the negative shapes here, so I'm
going to paint, actually leave the veins as part of the, as already the pale green that
I've done.
This is quite a careful kind of work, but it's quite pleasant to do.
I've got to make sure that I don't go a bit haywire here with these things, they're very
delicate.
They come up there like that, so that we'll continue doing this one side.
I've actually mixed up my medium green here, and because I think it's a bit browner, I've
added a little burnt sienna to my green mixture.
I'm still trying to follow the shapes as I see them.
So you can see those veins standing out quite well.
One of the snags here if you're doing this is to make sure that you've, well it's not
a snag really, but you've got to make sure that you've mixed enough paint.
It's all too easy to run out of paint at a crucial moment, but if you have a fairly good
brush they do hold the paint.
As we're coming up here, I think the spaces are getting larger, and also the veins are
getting smaller.
So we've got another bit coming in here, nearly at the top.
Here are another few leaves, which I've shown you how to do a light wash with a darker wash
on top, which would show out the veins.
I'm going to show you how I put some flowers in a setting.
I'm actually damping the paper first.
I'm going to do a background before I start to do the flowers.
I'm going to make my background look something like a sky.
I've damped the paper because it makes the paint run much more smoothly.
So with my largest brush, which is a size 12, I'm actually just painting in a very,
very pale sky and letting it just run down the paper.
That's really simply done, so that will really look like a sky.
So I'm going to put some poppies in here and show you how I go over this wash with my darker
colour.
I haven't actually got the poppy in front of me at the moment, so this is what you could
call a little experiment really.
So this is going over this rather light sky wash.
There we are.
And I can actually put some darker colour in just at the base, slightly darker, just
to soften it up a bit.
There.
I've painted one poppy, so now I'm going to put another one in here and I'm actually going
to leave a little white or a little light space.
I don't particularly want this colour to run in, so that it's a slightly different, more
orangey colour, slightly lighter.
And we'll have it in up here and maybe have some other petals here.
These are quite big flowers.
They're really nice to do.
They're much easier than small flowers.
Now I'm putting in my second wash here and I'm trying to think of the shape of the flower
and to think how it would look.
But one of the things that I forgot to mention earlier was that I'm actually using a fairly
heavyweight piece of paper, in fact I think it's £140 and it's a bocking for the paper.
So I've got the middle one to do.
And now of course we want, as it's a darker tone, we want a slightly darker colour.
And I'm going to go in the back here with my darker colour here.
So we'll give these flowers just sort of two dimensions really.
Maybe in here as well.
What I'm going to do now is to actually put a wash in behind these flowers.
I think they need to dry.
And so that we're making another dimension here and this will be the background on which
the stalks and the leaves and various other things will appear.
And this green will form the green of the stalks which of course are rather important
and we haven't put them in yet.
I've mixed up quite a large wash, quite a lot of wash here so that I'm covering quite a
large area.
And as I'm going up above the flowers to a certain extent I'm going to, little hair there
again, I don't know where it's all coming from, I'm going to just go up above the flowers,
on top of the green, on top of the blue rather, I'm sorry, so that it will form a background
to the flowers.
But I'm having to work fairly fast just to keep the wash flowing.
I don't want really to get any hard edges here.
I'll come back to that one, we'll cover that one up and then we'll go back round here because
what I'm trying to do is to put my flowers in a setting such as the garden.
I'm going to put in these stalks now and I'm actually using a darker green which I suppose
you could say was my medium green and of course I don't want to forget that I want to put
in some buds.
So I've got to work in reverse here which is quite tricky.
Maybe I want to leave other stalks in, other bits of flowers so that we'll have that one
in like that.
I'm using a medium green which is a mixture I told you about earlier.
Let's see if I can leave a bud here.
I'm still leaving my little white edge which I explained earlier.
I'm coming round.
I'm continuing with my wash here, still making up the stems, going over that.
I can easily go over these washes again and in fact I can use this to make almost any
kind of shape I like but principally I'm making my stem shapes and of course I can use this
particular colour now to do other bud shapes here, seed heads, anything like that.
I'm just going to work on these little bits around here and sometimes you get interesting
leaf shapes in behind.
I'm actually building up my washes now with my darker green, whether it's my darkest green
or not I'm not sure.
Of course I can correct the shapes as I go along and you can actually put in other leaf
shapes and things as you go along and just paint it as you see it.
This will further bring out the shapes of the flowers and the stalks.
You will of course be getting other kind of things coming through into the background.
I'm doing the centre of the flowers now and I'm using one of the darkest colours I've
got which is a mixture of purple, Prussian blue and alizarin crimson to make this very
dark shape in the centre and this is often repeated right at the base of the flower but
if you damp your brush with some clean water you can spread out the colour fairly easily
afterwards like that.
Of course the other thing which is quite important to do is perhaps you've got more folds and
veins and more little bits of detail.
I never really like to say do detail too soon because people get carried away by it and
they forget the basic shapes but there's certainly, if you look at poppies you'll certainly find
lots of quite interesting little veins and frills and things like that which you can
put in and these are the interesting bits to do but you can't do them unless you've
got the basic shapes in.
I'm going to start on this other flower now which is a slightly different colour.
I think maybe we need a bit more definition in under here and certainly with the petals
here they need a bit more working on and maybe here as well, it's a bit kind of bland that
colour so we'll actually come in and around here to make it look a bit more like a poppy
with some of the frills on the pleats and things that newly opened poppies have.
Maybe in here as well.
A little locked one can do on that one.
I think it's a little bit flat up here so what I'm actually going to do is to put a
bit more colour in here, so I've damped the paper and I'm going to run a little bit of
blue in this cobalt actually, just so that I'm hoping it is going to look a bit like
say maybe a distant hill and with a little bit of green as well coming in here and this
is really working quite wet now.
I think that's a bit better, it just breaks up that rather hard flat line.
When you're painting certain flowers you can often use your brush in a different way.
You can practice holding it in different ways.
I mean I have this budle here and although I might start with say having these separate
little flowers here at the base and of course also note that I'm actually starting without
having to draw it because it would just take ages to draw.
I can then use my brush in a different way, say like this, just to, a kind of dry brush
effect really so that you can actually indicate vaguely what it looks like.
Particularly if this, you have a flower which is in the background and if you think well
it's not quite long enough like this one, you can go up a bit further so that you're
giving an impression of what it could look like.
Of course you've got to add the stalk, pick up some green here, you've got to have the
stalk coming through maybe and this will, the paint is wet, it will just blend in and
come down say down to about here and you can also of course put the leaf in rather like
you put with your brush stroke.
I've got rather a small brush here, probably the larger one might be better and then you
can pick up your other colour for the, these little, I'm not quite sure what they're called,
these little stem bits which will add a bit of depth to the actual flower and give, that's
better, it's more of an impression of the flower and you can see that these actually
little flowery bits come from the base of the leaf.
We'll go back to the green, a bit more yellow and we'll add the other, add the other leaf
here.
Just in as few strokes as you can.
There we go.
You could actually tickle it up a bit if you wanted to but I think that would give an impression
of Budley quite well.
If you were painting this larger flower like this hydrangea, you've really got to treat
it like a mass and you can use silhouettes shapes for the edges, I mean it doesn't matter
whether you're painting on a tinted background or not.
So you keep it quite loose and free and try and follow the shape as far as possible.
Come back now to some deeper red in here and just drop in bits, this is really quite wet
in wet here, in fact it's running down quite a lot and then add your grey which I'm using
a cerulean and a Venetian red to make quite an interesting grey here.
You can add the other colour at the base and try to sort of make up, not make up but to
copy the flower shapes that you see because it's a very obliging flower, the actual, the
red seems to run right into the grey here.
And of course the other thing is that there's quite a nice lot of green in it as well.
So that you could drop bits of green in here which would look quite convincing.
So you could, I haven't done the stalk and I'll pick up another brush for that, you could
maybe take out, stalk actually is about, I'm holding it but it comes out to about here
and of course you've got a leaf here as well which will, I don't want that to run, probably
will, you could have one of your leaves here and it's got quite a nice little serrated
edge which you could put in, bring the shape out here, stalk coming down here maybe.
But one thing I often do with flower like this is I also, not only do I paint but I
take bits out so that if you saw little stalks you could actually maybe, I say maybe because
it depends sometimes on the wet in which, you can actually take maybe little bits out
or little flower shapes out, I think like that with a point there.
So that you're adding another kind of dimension to your rather flat shape, it does depend
on how far in the painting it is or whether you want it just as a silhouette.
But those are just a few ideas, I'll mop that little bit up there, a few ideas of how you
could use your brush to make other flower shapes.
Right, well I've started actually drawing out a more finished composition because I've
showed you how to make some individual flowers, what techniques I've used to make the individual
flowers so I'm now going to see if I can put them all together into a more finished composition.
What I'm doing now is just sketching in an idea I've thought of earlier using the cosmos
that you've seen me demonstrate before.
I've just done a light pencil sketch and I've based it on this idea of a scene in my garden
with the silver birch and the hedge and some sky and to help me along with that I've also
done a quick colour sketch.
First thing I'm going to do is to paint the sky and I'm mixing up some cobalt.
Well I'm going around this branch here and I have really quite a wet wash, it looks like
it's going to run down there, it's just plain cobalt.
I'm going in between the tree here, of course you're leaving out this silver birch which
is white, it won't be white when you finish, and I'm just doing a cobalt sky here.
A lot of this will be covered up by branches and things, it's quite easy to just brush
in a sky like this.
I'm going to paint these two flowers here in pink and this is very much like I did earlier,
in fact I'm using exactly the same colours.
I'm going to do this first because my background will be able to cover up some of this.
So I'm sort of working in stages really, but I'm using magenta and rose madder here.
So just for these two flowers so that I can actually go around with my darker background.
I'm actually placing these flowers now, it's a good idea to do this because sometimes although
I've done a pencil line, it really, you go over the pencil and you can't really see what
you're doing so I've got to make sure I know where these shapes are.
I'm not being too careful about the edges because I've got to come in with my darker
green behind.
I'm just using a pure rose madder here, it's a lovely, lovely colour, and the darker tones
I'll put on afterwards.
Well while I've got the pink on my brush, this lovely rose madder, I'll put in these
other two here.
I mean sometimes you have to place the stalks and the petals so that you've got a pretty
good idea of where everything is because the large wash is at the back.
You can so easily go over things which you really don't mean to, particularly when you're
trying to work quite fast with the in watercolour.
We've got a little bit of pink in these buds as well.
Well I've mixed up some light green and I'm actually going to use it first to go around
this other flower which I've left out, I know the stalk as well, because this is the last
one, this is another white flower.
And I'm going to use this as part of my background at the same time.
But I'd better go around this one, I know I should forget it, which I'll be sorry about.
So there we are, that's more or less around there, so make sure you've mixed enough paint
of course.
So we'll continue down over the painting here, over the stalks here, and round these other
flowers here, but at least I've got the white one.
Of course I've got quite a large brush which enables me to actually go round these rather
large areas fairly quickly.
But these are my basic first washes.
I'm trying not to have an edge showing here, and a little bit more water, and we could
come right out over here.
It's always difficult to know what to do first, whether you do your flowers or whether you
do your background, but as I like to keep the colours as clean and pure and let the
white paper show through, I decided I'd start with this basic light green wash which will
form the colour of my stem as well.
Get the one down a bit, very wet up there.
I think that should probably do.
Well while that's drying I'm going to put in the shady side of the tree using a grey
which I've mixed from burnt sienna and ultramarine.
Although the tree will still look white, I've got this shady side.
I'm coming right down, I'll be covering all this up anyway.
I have a few bits coming round here.
So that's my shady side of the tree, and I can soften off this hard edge with some clean
water so the trees won't look exactly white but almost white.
There we are, and then I can put the detail on afterwards.
I'm using prussian blue and cadmium yellow here to mix up this medium green.
So I'm going to put this medium green, I call it my medium green, in and around here.
You'll have to use your imagination here and think that it's some sort of hedge coming
in here.
I've mixed up a really dark green here using an indigo and burnt sienna, and I'm going
to go round these flowers.
I want a dark kind of hedge here which will throw these up.
So I'm going to go over the sky, right up to my tree here, and round this flower.
I think it would actually be a good idea if I had a smaller brush here so that I can go
down in between it here more easily.
It's quite difficult really to keep the wash flowing, but one of the secrets about water
colour is if you can keep it wet, you sometimes don't get these nasty kind of blooming shapes
which are so easy to achieve and which beginners find rather daunting.
So you've got to keep it flowing, and this is why really one should use a big brush all
the time.
However, when you're going in behind these flowers, you've got to be quite careful, so
that's why I'm using this little brush here.
I think it's a number 6.
And this of course is really also establishing the darkest colour that I might be using.
I'm not sure yet, but it's pretty near it.
So it's actually throwing these things out in silhouette.
So we're continuing with our dark green and bringing it right down around this next flower
here to make it really show up.
So you can see how I'm painting into the pink to give it a nice clean, clean edge.
So we're coming round over these sort of serrated edges of the petals with this quite fine brush
to give it this nice, clean, sharp edge.
I'm going to put a little bit of tone on this white flower here.
It might have to have a bit more background behind it, I'm not sure yet, but just so that
we can see what it's going to look like.
I've mixed up the same grey that I've used before.
I want to make sure that it's not too heavy, which it almost is.
So I'll make a lighter tint of it.
Because whatever white flower it is, they've always got some sort of tone.
And often it could be green or it could be grey, it doesn't really matter.
You've just got to look very hard and try and observe and paint what you see.
Put that in.
Maybe that's a bit hard.
I think that will do.
I'm going to put some tone on this other white flower here.
I actually had to pick some so that I could actually see what they look like, because
otherwise it's quite difficult to remember.
In fact it's almost impossible to remember what they look like.
But it would have some tone.
I'm using a small number 6 brush to just make a little bit on here.
Hardly anything really.
Just to take off the whiteness.
But I still want it to look as if it's white.
I'm going to paint some of the leaves of the silver birch in now, really while the other
is drying.
So I'm using my brush in a kind of a silver birch way to hopefully try and get some of
these tiny leaves that they have with the silver birch.
And of course I'm not having to remember this.
I've made lots of sketches of trees so that I've got it fairly well in my mind of how
I'm going to do it.
We're coming over with the green over here with these small brush strokes.
So it's a different kind of dabbing technique to maybe some of the other that we've used.
And of course you can always change the colour a bit because they're not always one colour.
I'm going to actually put some yellow ochre in here and to come maybe down with it with
a slight change of colour over here.
And I love the way that silver birch is just hanged down with these lovely little leaves.
Well I've mixed up a brown now.
I've used some burnt umber and some ultramarine and I'm going to try and put a bit of texture
on the trees here.
I think I've lost my shadow a bit for some reason.
You know quite gone in.
But anyway we'll just see what happens.
It's got rather odd kind of shapes on here.
And I'll use the same colour for these branches here which are coming over maybe over here.
I'm not worried too much if it runs.
So I'm using the top of the brush here and coming over here.
No big large branches, they're really just hanging leaves.
And over here as well.
They often have these um odd branches which just haven't got any leaves on at all.
So that, still using the top of the brush.
I'm really trying to start from the top and coming down and they're quite wavy.
Could be coming from somewhere maybe off the painting.
And I'll go back to the trunks again with this sort of slightly bluey grey.
And coming up here.
So we give it a bit more shape which I seem to have lost a little bit.
That's better.
And down under here as well.
A lot of dipping in the water pot.
Maybe over here.
I think that's better.
They still look like silver birches.
On this flower I'm going to use a slightly darker tone than I've got here which will
give it some depth.
And I'm just really doing this so that it makes the petals in the front stand out from
the ones in the back.
But there's not a lot here to do.
But it just gives it that further dimension which will be quite useful.
I'm going to do the same on this one which is the same colour which was magenta.
Just to give it a bit more form than it's got at the moment.
There we are.
And maybe that one a bit darker.
Before I put the centres in of this flower I'm just going to actually darken it around
here a little bit.
Just to make it look as if it goes in.
And I'm going to do a very, very pale tint of the rose madder here.
Just like this.
I've picked up some water on the brush and I'm just brushing it out so that it makes
it look as if it's going back a bit in the centre.
I'm going to do some detail now on these little buds here which have the little sepals which
are coming out here which make them rather attractive.
And also maybe make the stem very fine line.
I have very fine stems here.
And we'll do the stem first in this one which might be easier to do.
And using the brush again like we talked about before to make these little pointy shapes.
And then coming back to have a little darker colour, slightly darker colour in and around
the buds which just softens it off a bit.
Coming down here to make this look a bit tidier.
The actual leaves of this flower are very, very slight.
They're very feathery and there's hardly anything to them at all.
Pick up some water and let that bit come down there again.
And also to follow that through the other side is quite important.
It doesn't look too full.
We make that dot come through there.
I always find that the actual insides of this bit of painting which seems to cause quite
a bit of bother.
I'm going to do the centre of this one now and I'm just using cadmium yellow just to
go right over here.
But round the outside it seems as if there's a little green just in here, just to give
it a bit of body here.
And then when it's dry I'll put in the little black specks of the actual stamens.
I'll just continue with the centre of this one as well.
It's still cadmium yellow, just neat.
And with a little bit of green just around to give it a bit of tone.
I'm just putting in these last minute details on this centre here which I think as it's
so nearer it is quite important that we actually maybe get it just right.
It's just a little bit in here, these are these little stamens.
But really details should be left to last which is what I'm doing.
And then we'll come just down here which it follows through from the back of the flower.
Well I think I've done just about as much as I can of this painting.
I'll look at it later and see whether I can add anything afterwards.
I've shown you really how to do these basic shapes and basic washes and how to get the
flower shape.
We've done some buddhlya and some hydrangea and of course the cosmos that I did last.
But if you feel that you couldn't tackle anything like this, just start with the individual
flowers and see how you get on, add a bit of background, don't be frightened of it
and enjoy it.