How to paint a DRAGONFLY and HYDRANGEA flowers ACRYLIC PAINTING, TUTORIAL

Hi everyone, welcome back for another video. Now before we jump into this beautiful flower and dragonfly painting, I just wanted to start this video off on a positive note and some words of encouragement. I'm going to be doing this every so often at the beginning of my videos. The focus of this month of August is all about prioritizing ourselves and making ourselves come first, paying more attention to our healthy habits and getting good sleep and, you know, only taking in what's positive and that will benefit us. Now if you want more on that, I'll have a link below. It is way more than just about learning the skills of painting that are going to make you a good painter, so there's lots to know about and learn with that link below. However, let's start off with my positive note for today and that is being in the present. I am noticing around me this August, everyone's already on to fall and autumn and don't get me wrong, I love fall just as much as the next person, but we've waited all winter for summer and summer's here. I want to be in the present, enjoying what's going on now where I'm at. Doing this is going to help you guys stay grounded and really appreciate every day and every moment and not always thinking about the future and what's happening. I mean we're always in a rush as everybody's on the go, we're on our phones, we've got this to do, that to do, making plans or we're reverse looking back in the past with maybe regret or should have done this and or you know whatever it is. It's fine to look back in the past with fond memories, I recommend doing that instead and looking forward to things that are coming up in the future, maybe goals that you have set for yourself, but it's so important to stay in the present and that's going to help you be really grateful and be happier because being in the present is part of the journey right? It's not always about the destination, it is about right now where we're at and where we're at right now is getting ready to paint a beautiful flower and dragonfly painting. So head over to my station with me, I'm going to go through everything I'm using and we're going to get started. Oh and don't forget to subscribe to my channel, it's free and it helps more and more people out there around the world see my channel and learn to paint with me. Thanks everyone in advance. All right the canvas I'm using today is 11 by 14 inches and it's been double primed and stretched. The colors I'm using today are lemon yellow, titanium white, bright aqua green, phthalo blue and neon pink. I'll be using my five piece set of brushes starting from left to right, 14 filbert, a one inch number 20 mop brush or flat brush, we've got a one inch mop brush and then the two here a mini round brush and a one inch number two liner brush. Feel free to change up your paints canvas and brushes to suit your preference, just use whatever you have if you don't have everything I'm using and follow the same steps and process. Let's start by adding a little bit of water to the canvas just enough so that it's damp, that's going to really help with blending the acrylics. I'm also going to fine mist my palette as it keeps my paint wet longer. I'll begin by just spreading the water evenly over the canvas with my flat brush then I'm going to scoop up this beautiful turquoise it's called bright aqua green but I'm just going to call it turquoise because it's easier. Look how quickly we get that canvas covered just by having a little bit of water on the canvas first. All right I'm going to take a little bit of blue now and I'm going to add that along the side. I'll add a little bit more and this is where our mop brush comes in. You want to take your mop brush dry and clean and you want to just start softening in little circles over the blue and the turquoise so just kind of blend them together. Now if you find your mop brushes get too saturated with paint they get too wet and you can't make it look really soft then you may need to wash dry it off or use another one if you happen to have more than one that's great. All right the next color I'm going to add is a little bit of yellow and a little bit of white so I've got a little scoop of each here I'm going to dab that up top add a little bit more of the white and then I'm going to use another mop brush you may not need to use three like I have it depends on how much paint is on your canvas how much humidity is in your room and what type of brush you're using. Okay so I just wanted to soften that a little bit now the next thing I'm going to do is completely dry this off and then we're going to come in with our flowers. Okay now that it's all dry we're ready to come in with the first stage of our flowers and I'm going to make this so easy for you guys we're going to just take our filbert brush we're going to take a little bit of blue and a little bit of pink and we're going to add a circle right here and then paint that in let's add another one here this one can come right off the side of the canvas and we can add another one here now we're going to paint flowers that are sort of like a hydrangea and I say sort of because I like to kind of just do my own take on things and sometimes they end up looking like something different so I have hydrangeas in mind but you just never know I paint intuitively most of the time so things can take on a life of their own really quickly and easily I'm going to add a smaller one up here and a little one down here as well now I don't know if you guys have seen my how to paint flowers using figure eights if you haven't I'll link it below it's an excellent beginner tutorial or even if you've been painting for a long time and haven't approached flowers this way you're really going to enjoy it everyone is loving that video and I'm so glad I decided to make it figure eights are a great way and shape to approach so many things and I've got actually quite a few I should almost make a playlist by now of how many because I have so many from figures to butterflies and dragonflies which I'm going to be showing you in this video we're going to be using the figure eight method for the dragonfly but let's focus on our flowers now we've got these circle shapes kind of they don't have to be perfect or symmetrical because we're going to be adding some petals over them now let's take some white you can mix that in with what you've already got in your brush and you'll develop this beautiful shade of blue violet let's start with the first one because that one's starting to dry so we need to get to this quickly so we can kind of blend in now I'm just going to push and let off push and let off we're going to use the wet paint to mix and make more shades with so as I'm pushing and pulling and letting off I'm picking up some of that paint and I'm not paying attention to how many individual flowers how many petals each individual flower have or has I'm just maybe doing four to five but it's not something that's a priority because as a whole it won't matter but if you're somebody who wants to paint the exact number and amount of petals on hydrangea I think I could be wrong I think it's maybe five but look at so quickly now let's move on to the next one same step haven't rinsed my brush out from the edge push and then pull in and let off that's how you're going to get kind of a fatter shape by pushing it spreads the bristles out it makes it wider and then you pull and let off and it makes it narrower sometimes I've got more white in my brush this will give us look there I just did five for some reason but they're all piled together and massed together that you're not really going to be studying them and counting because it's kind of you get lost in all those petals now I paint my cherry blossoms very similar to this so you can use this same flower technique flower petal technique for a lot of different flowers okay let's keep going I like these colors I've just picked up a little bit of yellow in there that'll be interesting maybe some sunlight getting that giving it a warm glow and if I don't like it I can go over it I love the freedom of acrylics how quickly they dry now a lot of people don't like that about them and I think it's a huge bonus because when you're really in the mood for painting and feeling creative the last thing you want to do is wait five days for one layer to dry if you're working with oil correct me if I'm wrong but I know there's different techniques for oil painting but if I wanted to add really bright highlights onto something I don't think it would work the same as with acrylics I haven't tried oil painting enough to really know like all of the ins and outs of it I tried it a couple times and I really did not like it it's just not for me although I wish it was because it's so beautiful but I think I've developed some techniques of my own with acrylics that make the paintings look and act kind of like oils the parts of oil that I like that buttery creamy look okay so there we've got some pretty flowers we can just kind of make some blurry out of focus ones let's take a little bit more of the pink and the blue in there maybe some petals falling I don't know these just look like they're free floating a little bit so we'll just kind of blur these up with a little bit of flower petals and out of focus things now the next thing I want to do is take my round brush and let's add a few dabs little dots in the center now I'm going to just do you can go with dark dots like say here where it's really light you could use some blue and some pink get like that deep purple shade and add a few like that or you could take white and for me I think I like the white better so I'm going to go over these dark ones I think the white is brighter than the colors underneath so I know it's going to show up so you just want to load your brush with a little ball of paint on the end and I use my pinky to steady my hand it's dry so we can do that and we might not be seeing all the little white seeds or dots or whatever they are I guess they're probably little seeds because the flowers are all on different angles so don't think that you have to get every single flower facing the same way it's not natural so that's why I said it doesn't really matter how many petals you're adding because they all kind of just get lost together being on different angles and there are a lot of different color combinations you can use for your hydrangeas we just saw actually the most gorgeous deep deep purple the other day down by the harbor and that was a first for me I haven't seen that shade but there I used to have a raspberry one it was like a really light pinky whiny raspberry well raspberry shade and sadly it did not bloom this year I don't know why my garden's gotten worse and worse over the years my roses always do okay which is strange because they're hard to supposed to be the hardest anyhow you can change up the colors of your hydrangeas just by adding more or less blue purple pink white so play around even a little bit of turquoise is pretty but you know we've got turquoise in the background now I chose these colors together because I think they're really pretty they're one of my favorite color combos I love pastels and all the pretty colors okay so I'm just going to add a little bit more here kind of just add this around because these are background background blurry ones I also have two other hydrangeas that are more this color and then I have one that's like a true cornflower blue but like I said like none of them unfortunately none of them bloomed this year I'm gonna go back right here sometimes you have to step away from your painting to see it in full focus and there's just a couple that may need a ring right here all right we're ready to start painting our dragonfly so I'm going to use my filbert brush and I'm going to start with just the body and then we'll come in with our wings so I'm going to use just a little bit of this light purple shade and you got to decide what angle you want your dragonfly to be on you could have it this way or this way I think I'm going to have it right here I'm going for it so I'm going to gently gently push to make it a little bit thicker where the head is and then I'm going to taper it and I'm going to go make it about two inches long and go underneath with a little bit more a little bit more paint I'm going to taper that a little bit because it looked like it had a stinger on the end of it okay then I'm going to take some white mix it up and make a lighter shade and I'm going to bring this over the top let me just get a little bit more that paint is wet so I'll be picking some of that up and I'm just going to take a little bit more white and we're going to tap tap tap leaving a little bit of spaces okay so now that it's all dry we're going to come in with a little bit of that blue and that pink again and you don't want to have a lot in your brush because wings are so delicate and you don't need a lot and we're going to start by coming up here and then we're going to loop so go slightly over scoop down go up again and then bring it in then you have a figure eight just a little bit of water to my brush okay then we'll come in with the next one and we're going to go from here okay so this one's not a figure eight this one's more of an arch right but it comes up into more of a peak or a point I'm just going to move the paint around a little bit wiggling it around will give you a few little lines with a damp brush not dripping with paint or water just damp and you can move that paint around all right I'm going to take my liner brush I've gotten it wet and I'm going to add a little bit of and white maybe a touch of yeah there's a little bit of yellow in there that's nice too soft peach shade and add a few little dabs and little lines to thin the paint out just a little bit more with some more water the thinner the paint in your brush the more delicate your wings will look because you'll make these really fine thin milky lines just tinted any pastel color that you want you could just use white if you want and it'll look like a soft turquoisey shade from the background always add a little extra a few dabs of the lightest colors to make them appear a little sparkly and kind of iridescent there's just something so magical about dragonflies and their wings they really do have a sparkle to them don't they all right I'm going to take some yellow and white now and just lightly brush over and then soften now you might want to dry your painting off first before you do this just a really thin kind of dry brush whatever it takes for it to be uh see-through because we want them to be see-through and delicate looking and then I'm going to take a little bit more of pink and I'm going to just go along the top where it's the darkest in here see how I'm loading my brush kind of wiggling I don't have a big glob of paint on there I always paint my dragonflies I tend to paint them I'm going to use a little bit more pink in here I tend to paint my dragonflies the same I love the iridescence that's what I notice about them so that's how I render them I'm going to add a little bit of that soft yellow I'm going to take off just a little bit right there where I added a bit too much and I'm going to go back and add some brighter spots a little shake in here and a touch of pink so I'm kind of alternating with my soft pastel shades of yellow and pink and I'm going to make it kind of look soft and glowy by just going around you know when you take a photo or if you squint that's something that's the sun is hitting it has that fuzzy glowy look to it that's all I'm trying to achieve here okay I'm gonna finish the painting off with my flat brush and a few little soft sunrays and I don't know how far I'm gonna bring those down so we better make sure this is all dry before we do that for our sunrays you want to make sure your brush is just a little bit damp so get it wet and then wipe the excess off on a towel I'm going to use a little bit of soft yellow so just tinting my white with a little bit of yellow and I'm going to start from here I can see I probably need a little bit more paint I want it to be see-through but that's going to dry to like nothing so I'm going to push here this is where I want to have the most and then I'm going to let off remember that one right there that had a little bit of yellow accidentally we're going to add a little bit of light to that I'm going to soften that yellow a little bit more just by adding a bit of white on it a little bit extra white for the top here okay so here we have the finished piece let me just focus I hope you guys enjoyed this one and learned a lot leave me a comment below letting me know what you learned and what you took away from this painting tutorial so thanks so much for watching don't forget as I say goodbye don't forget to be in the moment stay in the present and enjoy where you're at right now see you guys soon bye