Red Lotus Flower in sumi-e Chinese brush painting technique

I'm going to show you how to paint lotus flowers. Here's a hard bristle brush. Normally I would use a soft bristle brush for flowers but this works really well for the lotus flower. On the saucer I've got a little bit of water which has mixed with the red so it's become pink and over here I've got some alizarin crimson. So we've got water and then pink and then tipped in red. Always a good idea to check it out. I can see the gradation. You see it's water here then pink and then red. That's about right. So the first stroke the brush handle is pretty much parallel to the paper. It's not vertical it's horizontal and I'm going to use this the point of the brush to do the outline of that petal like that. Now I can leave it that size or I can add another stroke that side. So it's one like that and one like that. Added a little bit more colour to the brush. Second petal. What I'm doing is building the first cup then it'll be the next row of petals like that. It's almost like a spoon. Again the brush is parallel to the paper and the tip is doing the outside of the petal like that. I'm doing it very carefully. After a while I hope you'll become looser with the brush. Now you can stop like that. Probably a good idea. Maybe we'll add one more petal up here. If you want to add the inside part a little bit of green like that and then yellow to the stamens. Put the yellow and blue mixed in together. Now you've got green. Take the centre of that main leaf. That's where your your stem is going to go like that. You always want to have a sense that it's coming from the centre of that leaf and then it has little thorns actually on the sides of the of the stem there. That's your flower.