Watercolour Tutorial | Painting Flowers with Billy Showell | SAA Archives

Hello, I'm Billie Shoal and I'm going to paint for you three flowers, the first one being an anemone and I've got this one drawn up ready to go. I've put the masking fluid on for the centre, so let's get going. I'm going to use a number six brush here. My flower here to the side, I've got a myriad of purples to mix, so I'm going to start with Windsor Violet Dioxazine, it's a very, very beautiful, rich purple and I'm going to add to that a little Cobalt Blue, give that a good stir. I always put my colours out in the same position so that I know which colours they are and then that helps me identify them in a hurry. So I'm going to mix that colour and then I'm going to mix another puddle of colour, Permanent Rose and the Windsor Violet, that should give us a warmer, more pinky colour. It's always best if you're starting your painting, if you're right handed, to start from the top left and bring it down to the bottom right, so we'll start with this large petal here. So I'm putting on a water glaze, a lot of people ask me how wet this glaze should be, it needs to be fairly wet but not puddly, so you don't want too many puddles. So what I tend to do is put the large amount of water on first, be as specific as you can, really get it into all the corners, because wherever the water goes the paint will follow. So once you've got it all covered, just take the water out of your brush and then just sort of hoover up with the brush the excess water, and what you can do is just take that excess water back up into all the little tiny areas, that way everything stays the same sort of wetness. And you want it so that it's glistening before you put the colour on. So I'll give this a good stir. I'm now dropping on the dark purple, could do with being a bit darker actually but we'll just start with this colour first, and I'm going to pick up the pink and plop that on the top here. Now if you're putting two colours on, just make sure that they're of equal wetness, because if one colour is more fluid than the other then it will bully the other one into the corner. So I'm using the tip of the brush to get that colour right up into all the frills at the top of the petal. I'm just going to dry my brush now and hoover out the excess paint. I'm going to lift out some highlights at the top. We'll put another colour over this once it's dry, but what we're trying to do now with the light is try and create form. So when you come to lift the paint off, you need to make sure the brush is dry or damp. You know, it doesn't want to be wet. If you deposit water onto here you could end up in a mess. So every time I sweep some colour up, I wash it off the brush and sweep the brush, getting a nice point and then returning to hoover up some more. Push the brush quite hard, you want to really lift it off the paper there. And then what you want to do, once you've got all your highlight out, and make sure that you've not got any outlines anywhere, make sure your edges are nice and sharp. So while we're waiting for that petal to dry, I'm going to mix up the colours for the next one, but I won't actually do the petal that's directly next to that one because you might bleed into it, so I'm going to jump and do every other petal. So I'm going to mix up the pinker version. What you'll find with anemones is that they change colour because their petals are iridescent. Have plenty of colours mixed up to try and recreate that iridescence. So I'm mixing another stronger mix of the pink and the violet, and I'm going to mix some pure violet on its own, and some cobalt on its own, and there's one more little puddle that I need, and that'll be opera rose. Some people are a little bit frightened of using opera rose, but it's just too lovely to ignore, and I've found that it's more permanent than people give it credit, so there's another little puddle of colour there. So we start with the same process again, and glaze the petal with water. Try and get a nice big reservoir in the centre of the petal, and then just pull from that into the corners. Now this is a little bit more complicated because we've got several colours going on at once, so I'm going to start with that dark purple in the middle. I'm not actually pushing the brush onto the paper, I'm letting it sort of fall off. The water on the surface is catching it. I'm going to pick up some of that opera rose, some lovely iridescence across here. Remember with all colours, watercolour, it dries a little bit paler, well actually quite a lot sometimes, almost 50% in some cases, so you need to allow for that. I'm just going to keep away from the edge there, because there's some white towards the base of this petal. I'm just going to add a touch of cadmium red to that, so in that mix is permanent rose, Winsor violet and cadmium red deep, just to give it a slightly warmer look. So you've got lots of colours all sort of mixing together. Clean your brush, and then very gently, using the brush flattened out, you can just sweep through those colours just to meld them all together. What I'm going to do is just slow down, get my edges nice and sharp, and I'm going to push the brush quite hard at the base, just to get that pale centre to it, and then very gently feather through. Once you're happy that the colours have all been mixed, you then wait just a few seconds, then with your dry brush, you can then sweep very gently through, just with the tip of the brush to get this fluting where the veins go up through the petals. It's a little highlight in between the veins that I'm lifting out. Now don't rush this bit, you want to go quickly and steadily rather than rushing, and try and do it in one or two strokes, because any more than that, you're going to upset the glaze and it won't know which direction to dry. Just as it's about to dry, you can just do very lightly through there to get a bit of texture onto that bit of the petal. Just a slightly damp brush, just whisk through that. If you leave that too late, you won't get any effect, but if you get it just right, it's quite nice, literally just as the paper's gone from being shiny to dull, you get a moment where you can get that fluting just right. So while we wait for those first two petals to dry, I'm going to show you how to paint the underneath of the petal. I've cleaned my palette, and I'm going to mix a slightly darker but paler mix, if that makes sense, so we're going to use the same colour, Winsor Violet, but I'm going to make it duller with a little bit of French Ultramarine, and a little bit of Cadmium Red Deep. It'll all make sense in a minute. So that sort of gives it a slightly greyer, deeper tone, and then what we'll do is add some water to that. We have to sort of prepare a nice ground for putting the little hairs on later in the painting. So I'm starting with my usual glaze, quite a small area but very important for determining that petal being foreshortened towards you. I'll pick plenty of this colour up and drop it towards the top there. As it goes right underneath, it's reflecting a lot of light so it gets paler, so we'll just plop this on here and let it just fade into the underneath. Rather than having to lift it out, we're just going to let it fade into that base there. Just let that sit for a moment, and while that's just settling, there's a nice little thin section going off here, so I'll just paint that in without glazing that first. Any really tiny areas you don't need to put the water on first, you can just drag the paint across. While I'm doing that, I can paint in the other smaller sections here, just using the tip of the brush. You need a brush with a very fine point for this so that you can get into those tiny areas. Right, so I've waited a little bit, now I'm going to use a clean, damp brush to lift through that settling paint. Take the brush from the pale area right the way through the darker paint, clean the brush, and then repeat the process just a little way along. These little ridges are veins, little ridged veins along the back of the petal here. Very important that you keep looking at the flower itself so that you can mimic what you see. If you get the wrong angle, it doesn't help with trying to portray the plant as accurately as possible. When you've got the larger ones in, you can just then use the tip of the brush just to very lightly lift out the other veins coming at the opposite angle. Just sweep through the main ones again to make them a bit more prominent. What we'll do is we'll let this dry and then we can come back in a little while and paint the shadows either side. So now we've got those first petals dry, a very important stage is to get rid of the pencil. Quite a lot of people forget about this. Now I use just a plastic rubber here because I don't really get on with putty rubbers, they're too wobbly. If you paint over the pencil, it can become permanent and we want it to look as delicate as possible. Just be careful you don't remove that masking fluid, I'm not ready for that to go yet. And then we'll move on to putting another layer of colour onto the two main petals that I've started. I'm going to mix up quite a dark mix. Now I'm going to use a colour that you don't tend to use on the first glaze, which is indigo, and the reason being that if you put indigo straight onto white paper, you will end up with a blue stain, so don't do that. We'll mix up a nice puddle of indigo to start with, and mix in the Windsor Violet, and then immediately you've got a very, very dark, velvety colour. It's a little bit too blue for my liking, so I'm going to add a touch of Cadmium Red Deep. It might appear the wrong colour to go for, but I think it's quite a good colour. I'm going to clean my brush, because what we're going to do now is glaze over that original petal. Now this first glaze is permanent now, or as permanent as it needs to be, so don't worry about putting water over the top of it. It will stay put, hopefully. Very gently glaze over it. Now the most important thing at this stage is to match your glazes, so you want to finish exactly on the edge of the original colour wash. I'm going to pick up that very dark colour and drop it into the deep bit of the petal. Really dark through there. Depending on how you've lit your flower will depend on how dark the shadows are. Being a little bit more specific now about where I want the shadows to go, I don't want to put it everywhere, because otherwise I'll have to lift it all out again, so I'm being very specific this time. So long as you get that glaze, the first glaze of water, nice and wet, you should have plenty of time just to lay that colour on. Clean your brush, and then with a clean, damp brush, you're sweeping through and along the edges of the area, just to get it really nice and sharp. I'm pushing quite hard with the tip of the brush, you can see the brush bending, so you really want to hoover it out of the areas where it's not wanted. Now as we get further round, I want to try and get a little bit more sharper highlights into there, so I'm just going to soften that edge, and while I'm waiting for that to settle, I'll just tidy up here again. Just using the tip of the brush to lift out any puddling, and it's at this stage that you just double check your edges, make sure they're nice and clean. So similar process to be used for the underneath of the petal, I'm going to just take the tip of the brush down through that dark colour. Make sure your hand is nice and comfortable for sweeping in one direction, a little bit through the top here. What this is doing is also taking your eye down and creating the cup effect of the petal. Just taking a little bit of the colour that I've just lifted off and putting it back on up here, just to get a bit of veining up there, and just a touch of light at the bottom. OK, so while that petal's drying, I'm going to mix up the colours for the other petal. I'm going to keep the original dark colour that I've just used for the shadows, so I've got Permanent Rose. I'm going to just have a puddle of Permanent Rose on its own, actually. It's always good to have all your colours mixed before you start. I mean, it doesn't always work, because sometimes you get halfway through a glaze and realise you need to add a colour, but at least if you've got most of them mixed up, you'll be ready. Some Windsor Violet, and some Opera Rose. Always make sure your colours are really smooth and quite fluid, because you don't want anything that's going to drag. And then I'm going to mix a tiny bit of Windsor Violet and Cadmium Red Deep. OK, I think I'm ready to go. So we'll come back to this petal and glaze it with water. What we're trying to do is get as close to the finished tone of the petal as we can. Once you've got that glazed, just take the water straight over the masking fluid, because sometimes you can be too tentative around the edge and not actually glaze that area. You want to use just the tip of your brush now, because we're only wanting to put very small amounts of paint on. To put it on in a sort of see-saw motion, I'm sort of swinging backwards and forwards there to get a little bit of texture in there. Sweeping some dark in between those highlights that are lifted out. Some stronger colour up there, a little bit of that maroon. Really slow the brush down. When you get to the edge, slow the brush down, because it just stops you getting a little bit too carried away, and then ending up with raggy edges. Now my first initial glaze of water is drying out, so I've just got to stop at this point. So I'm just smoothing alongside those dark areas with the tip of a damp brush before I move on to the next area. If this happens, then don't panic, just work on getting what you've just put on perfect, and then you can come back to it once it's dry to add the other colours on. So I'm just smoothing alongside those dark areas with the tip of a damp brush, and just feather that in towards the centre. This might be dry, actually too dry on here, but there's another process that you can use. You can put it on to virtually dry paper, like so. Just do one patch, and then soften straight away. That's one way of getting around the drying glaze problem. A little bit of stronger colour down here, and I want some of that permanent rose on its own. Just get a nice shock of pink down there, and a little bit of the maroon colour towards the base, top there. Just got a little window now where I can smooth that. Just at the point now where I can leave it to dry, I've got to just grab every moment I can to put as much paint on. There's a nice little shadow down here, so I'll just plop that in, tidy away, and then just soften that in. While those first two petals are drying, I'm going to add the shadows to the underneath of the petal. What I'm going to do is continue with the same colour that I have on the palette, which is the indigo mix. I'm just going to add a tad more cadmium red deep. I'm not going to glaze it first, because if I glaze it first, it'll just go everywhere, so I just want it to be very specific. Just very carefully run your brush along the edge of that highlight, clean your brush, and then just soften one side of it. You have to be fairly swift with this, you can't go and chat to somebody or answer the phone while you've put that colour on, you've got to do it straight away. Just pick up a little bit more. Now if I go to the one directly next to it, I might smudge it, so I'm going to do every other one like I did on the petals above. So a little bit of shadow, and then soften one side. It should get a lovely sort of fluting look to it, and then very gently into this corner. There should be a little edge here, so I'm just going to paint that in, that side. Soften this small area there, and then catch the top of that, because that's the opposite side of the petal. So what I'm going to do now is the little fine veins in between here, so I'll do about three, because you can get away with doing a few more when it's small. Just soften one side of each of those, and a little bit along the edge. Really, just using the last few hairs of the brush here, just to get some nice fluting in. Soften those in. So when you've got to that stage, and you can see the different areas and the different heights of that veined area, then leave that to dry. So we're coming back to the first two petals now, and believe it or not, we're going to put another glaze on. We just want to get that colour really, really deep. I want to add the pinks to it, so I'm going to mix a puddle of Permanent Rose, another puddle of Windsor Violet, and another dark puddle of Windsor Violet, Indigo, and Cadmium Red Deep. The first two layers are completely permanent now, so you just want to very gently soften over again with water. This just gives the colour a chance to look very soft and natural, and it also gives you a chance to remove any mistakes, if there are any. I'm going to put the Permanent Rose as a sort of washy glaze over the top here. Just be careful, keep that point of your brush just behind that line. If you go over, you can just sweep it back with your fingertip, as long as you're quick and you don't have mucky fingers. A little bit of the lilac towards the base here. Just let that sit over the top, you'll find all the bits that you've lifted out will still shine through. I'm picking up that very dark colour now and really dropping that heavily into there. They're almost like velvet, these petals. I'm just sort of dropping it into that wet glaze, just to really not disturb what's below. One always plans that this will be the last glaze, but you can never tell until the paint's completely dry. Just drop another little shadow in down there, you can just see another shadow around this corner. And just allow that to settle very gently. Replace some of those little sweeps of light that we pulled out originally, they're still there underneath. You can lift both ways, depending on whether you want to lift light or pull some of the dark into the lighter areas. Now that's all sitting very nicely on top, I can see a little bit of what I did below, so it's really important that you don't put a wet brush onto this stage because it could all go very wrong. When you're happy with that, then leave that to completely thoroughly dry before you put the last stage on. I'll move straight over to the other petal. This one's a little bit more complicated, plenty more colours on there. Just going to mix some Cadmium Red with a little bit of Winsor Violet. Really important that you let each of these glazes dry completely, because if you go back slightly too soon, it could be the difference between success and failure. So make sure that each layer is completely dry. Just put a nice light glaze on that, quite a lot of pink through there. Because this is paler and has got more flutes on it, each little glaze will dry, allowing that light to shine through, so this is quite interesting, this petal, lots of little patches of colour to think about. And you're sandwiching all these colours together, which will help to create that iridescence, which is very important. Just add a bit more of that Cadmium Red to this corner down here. Just drying my brush off there, I'm going to just wipe this area here to keep that light area towards the stamen. Just sweep very gently, I've got my dark colour, just going to plop that in. Slow the brush right down here, because I've got to get into all those little nooks and crannies. Just a few little sweeps of that here and there. A little dark shadow there, and some nice little thin brush strokes there, just to get that nice and soft and dark down there. Now these very strong pleats of colour in the centre, I'm going to wait until this one's dry and put those in wet on dry. Always stop lifting when everything's looking nice and petally, that way you won't overwork it. When you're sure that everything's as it should be, don't fiddle any more, leave it to dry. While those first two petals are drying, I'm just going to add another little shadow to the underneath of the petal, so that when we dry brush on the white, which we will do later to give it the fur, it'll be nice and dark to get that contrast. So I'm just going to water down this red and indigo, and just literally paint that right over. Now this is wet on dry, so you've got to work fairly swift so you don't get a line, and then soften that edge there, so it softens into the light underbelly there. And that's all there is to that, we've just got to wait for that to dry now without interfering too much. We're going to add the detail to the petals now, which requires some very steady, fine brushwork. I've got the Windsor Violet here with some indigo and some Cadmium Red Deep, it makes a lovely deep, blacky velvet, it's really nice. So get your brush filled up with that, but get a nice point to it as well. So very gently here, I'm just going to very lightly put on these little fine creases that I can see. Try and change the angle of the paper, obviously I'm not changing the angle because it's for the DVD, but try and change the angle when you're painting it so that you work with the curve of your hand. It's much easier to get nice gentle curves when it's in line with the curve of your hand. I'm going to put some very fine lines through there. So all the time you're putting these lines on, think about being a sculptor, you're sculpting the shape of that petal. Very light marks. Now I'm letting them settle for a minute, so that they become nice and permanent. Then cleaning the brush, if there's any marks that you don't like, you can just wiggle them away. Very light sweeping marks as you get down into the dark, because what you don't want to do is upset that very dark glaze at the bottom, because you've got pigment sitting on pigment, and it's very important not to disturb it too much. What I'm going to do is put lots of very close fine lines of this dark colour to really get that lovely deep black centre. Change the angle to really create the shape of this petal. You'll just start to see a little bit more of the detail coming out. So lots of quick marks here, very gently brushing that colour over the top. Anywhere where you want to soften the edge, just clean the brush, take the water out of it, and just catch the edge. It's not quite dry brushing, it's what I call thick paint brushing, so you're putting on a nice thick glaze of dark colour. You can literally jump over to this other petal with the same colour. This one's a little bit more specific because you're putting in these very fine veins, creases from the centre through. So I'm going to start with a couple. This is to one side of the highlight that you'd lifted out on the very first glaze, and then just catch one side of that and sweep away, and very gently keep looking at your flower, because obviously that's what you're copying or creating, a little sweep. Now one thing you have to bear in mind with Neonenomy is that it will change shape out of the vase, so the longer you have it in a warm room, the more it's going to open and change. So you do have to work fairly swiftly, it's a good idea to have a couple of flowers, one a little bit younger than the other, so that you can swap over to the slightly more closed flower once the first one's opened, tricks of the trade there. So every time I'm putting on a line, I'm softening it, and make sure that it tapers away and smooths away towards the edge of the petal. Now while that's drying, I'm going to jump back to the first petal, and I'm going to do something called dry brushing. Now you very often hear about this on landscape painting, but you use it for botanical painting as well. You flatten the brush out to create a flat edge there, and then just gently touch the paper, and then sweep the colour on as lightly as you can, as though you were dusting butterfly wings. Very gently dust that colour on, it'll give you a very light broken finish, which should give you a little bit of iridescence there, which is what we're after for the top of that petal. You can do it with any of the colours that we've got on the palette, you could even do it with a dark colour to just dry brush over the darker areas, and get them even darker. You're depositing very tiny amounts of strong colour. You let it settle for a little bit, and then you can gently catch the edge with a damp brush, so that any little spiky bits get softened away. Just move around the petals now, adding little bits of brighter colour where I need it, and softening it in. You can use that Opera Rose on the other petal now. It's always a good idea to have a couple of petals on the go, just so that you're not overworking one, you can jump to the other while one's resting. Very important to be patient with watercolour. If you allow each section to dry, you'll have much more success. You'll find that Cadmium Red does dry a little bit brown, so sometimes it's a good idea to put just a touch of Permanent Rose into it. A little bit of pink mixing onto that red there, and just soften that in. Going back to the dark now, on the area where it's dry, I can just put in these very fine veins now, just one or two lighter ones across from these pleats. Surprising how dark these little creases are. Continue putting this colour on until you're happy with the amount of detail and level of darkness. Dry brushing there and then softening over the top with a slightly damp brush. When you're pulling your brush away, when you're softening something in, try lifting the brush away, otherwise you end up with a blob at the end where you stop your brush, so it's very important to keep the brush quite loose and light across the painting. I'm just going to go right up into that little edge there, put a slightly darker shadow in there. If you do get any little overlaps onto the next petal, don't worry, because the next petal will hide that when it goes over the top. Really, try and aim to get your petal so that when the overlapping one comes alongside, it will hide any little mistakes. Not that there should be any mistakes, but if there are, it's nice to know you can get rid of them. Just a light feathering over the top there, and I think I'm happy with that. Let's use some of the red here, just to give a little bit more fluting to this corner. When I say fluting, just a little bit more detail on this corner here, and just seeing hints of veining there. A little bit of drybrushing up here. This drybrushing here should just give it a sort of velvety texture, hopefully. You want the petals to look lovely and soft, just be careful not to smudge, do a little bit of smudging there. Well, I'm very happy with what I've done so far, we've used three processes, so we've used wet in wet to get the really good colour and form first, and then we've used the following wet in wet colour to really bring the tone up, and then the fine wet on dry, and then the drybrushing on top, so there's lots of things there for you to have a go with. So I'm going to continue with the rest of the petals using exactly the same processes. Well, that's the flower done now, so I'm thinking maybe we just do a few little finishing touches. I'm going to add some white, which normally you don't use, but on this occasion we can, to get the bloom on the petals, to make them look nice and velvety. Now I've squeezed out some fresh titanium white here, it needs to be fresh from the tube so you get it nice and opaque. It's sort of one of those colours which you think is nice and strong, and then it dries and disappears. I'm going to take the excess of the water out of the back of the brush there, and flatten the brush as we did for the drybrushing. Be very selective about where you put this, because you don't want it everywhere. I'm just going to put a little bit here, this is the back of the petal here, just a tiny touch of that white there. You brush it on, like I said before, as though you were dusting butterfly wings, not that you ever would, but if you did, this would be the lightest touch. Very gently there, and we'll leave that to dry a moment, and then just very gently soften the edges so that it softens into the petal. So I'll just jump around now and put some of that colour on some of the other petals. Now what I'm going to do is add the little hairs on the underneath of that petal, the one that we've left to dry earlier, and this requires just the tip of your brush. So we're using the titanium white again, get it stirred up so it's nice and gloopy, and then what we're going to do is really twist the brush so it's all on the tip of the brush, and then very carefully, where we lifted out before, we're just going to gently sweep some of this white onto the raised part of those veins. As the brush starts to run out, you can very gently put on the fine little hairs, lots of fine marks, you don't really want this heavy at all, if you get a heavy mark, sweep it away with a clean damp brush, let it dry, and then start again with a finer tip. So I'm sort of changing the direction all the time to really get a nice natural look. It's very tricky on a small curve, so what I do is make a fine line and then sweep back from that, just very gently over the top. And usually once I've done the hairs, I just sort of gently, with a damp brush, just gently soften the ends of those so they're not too spiky. I'm going to mix a tiny touch of French Ultramarine with a little bit of Winsor Violet there, and a touch of red. Always twist your brush to keep it all together. I'm just going to get some of that shadow under here, just where it's a little bit darker, just where it curves under there, gently touch that in, in between all those little white hairs. This also helps with pushing this petal right underneath there. You can carry on putting in any further little details from your particular flower, if you're painting from life. We'll just leave that there. So I've removed the masking fluid, and now I'm going to mix up the colour for the stamen. Now you can only see the top of the stamen, so we're going to mix a nice dark colour. Now don't be tempted to use indigo at this stage, because we've got to do some lifting out, so if we use indigo it won't lift off. So I'm using French Ultramarine, quite a nice dark, sort of gooey mix, with Cadmium Red Deep, which makes a very dark purple, and I'm just going to add a tiny touch of Cadmium Yellow Pale, just to take away the purpleness and make it more of a dark steely grey. I'm going to glaze the centre first. What that does is make a little barrier between the paper and the paint, and creates a moment just long enough for me to lift out some light. Now I obviously don't want to overlap onto the petals, so use the tip of your brush to just point the water into those spaces. It's a good idea to have a very close look at the centre of the flower before you do this, just so you can familiarise yourself with the shape and nature of the anther heads. Pick up lots of that colour, we want it nice and dark. I'm just going to plop that in. It always looks a bit scary doing this right into the centre of the flower, but hopefully it'll all work out. Just be careful, as I said before, not to overlap onto the petals. It's not the end of the world if you do, because you can always sweep it back very quickly, but obviously you don't want to make a habit of it. Just pushing some of that colour back off that leading edge there. Let that settle for a moment, because if it's too wet, nothing will happen when you lift off, so we'll just give that a few seconds to settle before we lift away. So I've allowed that colour to dry, and what I'm going to do is use this small, fine chisel brush. It's a synthetic brush on the tip, and it's got a flat surface. What I'm going to do is wiggle it onto the settling paint, and then lift off with a bit of tissue paper. This should reveal some little highlights for the tops of the stamen. So just wiggle it a little, and then dab off. You've got to wait until it's just stopped glistening, and then you can dab away. And also keep referring to the flower so that you don't make the wrong marks. And it doesn't matter if you take out too much light, because we're going to add some darker patches, darker areas around it, so you can always eliminate some of the light. So I'll just carry on doing this until we get enough light out. So I've lifted out quite a lot of light there, and what we're going to do now is come back into the painting and paint around them with some very dark colour. So I'm going to keep that patch of original colour and then just add the indigo into it. So quite a lot of that, and always add the red, because otherwise you end up with this very sort of bluey look, which is not terribly convincing. And if it goes too purpley, just add that little touch of yellow. So give that a good stir, and you want it very dry. You want it sort of wet enough that it moves around, but dry enough so it will make a really nice, dark, intense colour. Looking at the centre of the flower, you can see that some of the stamens actually are like little paddle shapes. So to start with, I'm just going to outline some of the stamen shapes and get them in the right position and angle. So very light, with the tip of your brush, just mark these out. Well I've finished outlining those, so now I'm just going to soften in the darker areas where you can't see much. So just take a little bit of that dark colour and just very gently soften around, losing some of them, and highlighting others by going a little bit darker. I don't want to go too much darker, because it ends up just being a big black blob, so just be very careful, just to be quite selective about where you put that darker shadow. So I think I'm going to leave it there for now, and move on to the leaves and the stem. So I'm going to mix up some really lovely bright greens now, and I'm going to use a very limited palette. I'm going to use two blues and two yellows. So I've got French Ultramarine and Cadmium Yellow Pale, and those two together makes a really nice, sort of warm, olive-y green, nice and dark. That's going to be my basic green, if you like. And then I'm going to take some of that over here and add some Winsor Blue Greenshade. Now this is a very powerful colour, very, very strong, so you need a little bit of it. And then you need some Cadmium Yellow, just brighten that up a little bit. And I'm going to add some lemon as well, Cadmium Lemon this is. I like using the Cadmiums, they are very good at lifting off the paper, so if you do make a mistake or you want to retrieve some highlight, that's a very good colour. They're quite fancy, the leaves on the anemone, lots of little fingers towards the end, and you often get a little flash of colour in there from the flower. Be very gentle when you get to the end so that you don't put the water everywhere. Continue with the glaze right up to the stem, but keep these as separate entities. Just go over it one more time. And it's very important this, you know, to get the glaze right, because if you get too much water, then all the colour slips off and ends up around the edges. Pick up some of this darker colour, and I'm going to drop that into the shadowy part of the leaf. It's always a good idea to turn your brush around so that you can always see where the tip of the brush is going, especially when you're getting into tricky areas. And I'm going to pick up, I'm not even going to wash my brush, just pick up the other bright green and sweep that on next to it. I'm going to keep most of the colour towards the stem, turn my brush around there, because as it goes towards this outer edge, it's catching a lot of light. Obviously it helps to have a steady hand for these things, but it's a good idea to rest your hand on the paper, that helps steady everything. Just pull that colour back from these little pointy bits at the end. Actually they're all very separate, but we'll put some shadow in to separate them later on. Just put a drop there, and clean your brush, take most of the water out, and just soften in there. Now we're trying to create shape and light, so bring the brush across the top and then back into the centre. We've got these very bright highlights on the veins. Just continue doing this really until the brush rather starts to make harder marks. So work as quickly as you can to retain as much highlight, and just as it's settling you get a much stronger mark here. It takes quite a while to get this process right actually, so if it doesn't work the first time, then don't give up, just keep practising. So there's some nice light coming right from the tip of here, all the way across, and then a little bit of light just in there where there's another end of the leaf, and once you're happy with that and it's all nice and soft, leave it to dry. Okay, so that leaf has dried now, so I'm going to just mix up a little bit of a stronger colour and go in with the detail. I've also removed the pencil, which is very important because you don't want to make that permanent. So I'm going to add just a tiny bit of French Ultramarine to that darker mix, just to make it a bit more shadowy, and a little bit of the Winsor Blue green shade, just to make it slightly bluer. I'm going to put a small amount of paint on and then soften it, and just put that tiny shadow through here. You've still got to be fairly swift. If it's a bigger shadow than this then I would suggest glazing first, but as it's only small I'm going to just put it on and then catch the edge with a damp brush, just to blend it in there. As I say, if you feel a bit unhappy doing that, then glaze it first, drop it on, have much the same effect but maybe just a little bit paler. Then I use this colour to just paint the tiny little shadows in between these twists of the end of the leaf. And again, where the veins come into the centre there's some quite strong shadows. Then each of these I'll just soften the edge to one side. Just a little bit more shadow over here. I always find it a little bit easier to do it this way because if you're just doing a small area you haven't got quite so much waiting time between glazes. Just use this colour as well, just to define the tips at the top here, as the ends twist and turn you get lots of little shadows and darker bits. And then I'm going to go over to my original brighter mix and make them a bit greener. This is quite good fun because you put a little sweep on and then just soften it in so it all joins up. When you're painting these in you can leave little chinks of light there to show the edge of one where one starts and the other one finishes. A little sweep there. So come back up to the middle of the leaf here and just drop on a bit more fresh colour in between the veins. Very subtle. When the leaf catches a lot of light sometimes you only need one glaze really to get as close to the finished tone that you're after, which is the same in this case here. Just a little bit more towards the centre there. And just a touch more green coming in here. And we'll leave that to dry and then we can work on the stalk. So that leaf's dry now so I'm going to move on to the little bit of stalk at the top and then down onto the longer length of the stalk below. I'm going to use exactly the same colours as before just to keep everything very simple. We'll practice on the short bit. It's always a good idea to get a bit of confidence before we go onto the longer part of the stem. You probably don't need to glaze it but I am just for safety's sake putting just a little bit of water on there. So mix up that colour again. If your puddle of paint has started to dry out always add a little bit of water just to liven it up. So I'll put that nice fresh colour on all the way down. Just be very careful when you meet the flower that you don't overlap. Down to that centre piece there. I'm going to lift out a bit of diagonal light here because obviously this is causing shadow here so we're going to just lift the light through there and just drop in a bit of fresher green towards the base there. So a nice dramatic bit of highlight across there. Now while that's drying I can carry on on the longer part of the stem to glaze this little bit here. I'm going to mix, give that little colour a bit more of a mix and drop that. That's all going to be very dark under there actually so I'm just going to drop in that bright green nice and flat in there. It's almost dried out anyway. And then continue down, you can see the difference actually when you go onto the water it's much softer. I'm just going to change my mind a little bit and add a touch of cadmium lemon to that mix just to make it a bit brighter. I'm going to concentrate on sweeping it down one side a little way just to get a really nice sweep of bright green. These stems can often be quite limey looking, as I was saying get that nice bright green all the way along that side. Then I'm mixing up my darker green, just give it a little bit more colour, be quite swift because you want this to go on at the same time. And take the shadowy green down this side. It's very important that you have consistent light all the way through your study because if you were working in a sunny room and the sun's on the other side of the room you could end up with shadows on one half of your flower in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. So what I'm going to do when I get to the bottom here is just a little bit of water just to soften that away. Now I've cleaned my brush and I've taken most of the water out so I'm just going to increase some of the highlight through that centre there. So at the moment we've got a very dramatic bright light and dark and I'm going to take a little bit of light out from the far side, a little bit of water on the brush here just to push that dark green away. We can carry straight on and put the shadow at the top of the stem here. So put the shadow just inside of that edge, all the way across to the other side. Put another little bit of bright green at the base here just to make it very intense. When it gets into the middle it gets a lovely intense colour. Don't worry that that's a little bit wide, what we're going to do is glaze over that with another colour. I'll just put this shadow in while we wait for that to dry. Really important to let everything dry really well so that you don't disturb it with your next glaze. So I let that completely dry and I removed the pencil and I've cleaned the palette. So I'm going to mix up a nice fresh green as a glaze over the top. So I'm going to use Cadmium Yellow Pale and Winsor Blue Greenshade. These two like each other a lot, they make a beautiful bright green and it just keeps lovely and fresh so it gives you a lovely fresh glaze. Make it quite watery, we don't want it too sticky. Really fill your brush up with it and then sweep it down. Now don't go down one side and back up the other otherwise you'll end up with a hard edge in the middle. You just want to bring the colour down literally as though you were pulling a blind from the top down to the bottom. It looks very bright at the moment but it will dry obviously a little bit paler. When you get down to the bottom you can just soften it away with some water. Very important when you're doing it like this you can keep nice clean edges so it's a really nice effect. And obviously we've got to have the other bits of the stem with the same glaze even though they're in shadow they need some of that bright green just to give them a bit more body. Go right over the highlight there because the highlight's not white and then just hoover out a little bit of light through that. While that's settling I'm just going to mix up a little bit more shadow, just mix some French Ultramarine into that and I'm just going to drop a touch more shadow through that glaze while it's nice and damp because it will soften in hopefully and just beef up that shadow on that side of the stem. Just clean damp brush just to catch either side of it so that it doesn't make any sort of nasty cauliflower edges. Well the stem's all dry now so I'm going to complete the rest of the leaves using the same technique as I did for the first. So I've mapped in all of those leaves and now what I'm going to do is just mix a puddle of Indigo with a little touch of Cadmium Red and some Cadmium Yellow. So I'm just going to put in some of the darker areas of the leaves. So just using the tip of the brush I'm just going to define some of the little frilly ends just to determine who's in front of who. Now you don't want to outline everything, you're really just putting some dark bits of shadow where you need them. So wherever you've got an opportunity you can just soften them away. So there we have the completed Anemone, so why not have a go yourself. So that brings us to the end of the first DVD, join me on the next DVD where I'll be painting a Narcissi and a Helibor.