Learn to Paint One Stroke - Practice Strokes: Pounced Flowers Bee Kind Stencil | Donna Dewberry 2026

Hello guys and other practice strokes today. This is Donna Duberry on the YouTube Donna Duberry channel. And what I want to share with you is if you subscribe and ring the bell you'll even know when I do my live. So this is all about practice strokes is all about teaching you the one stroke painting technique that I created okay. And so I'm going to show you different things like using stencils and why we use floating medium instead of water and different things that will help you with the one stroke technique. And we are using multi surface paint. And so I'm using a foam plate. I have double loaders that will help you if you're a newbie to where you put the paints next to each other. So go look at double loaders and I'll show you how you load that and how it helps you. Okay. So let's get started here. What I want to show you is I'm going to be on art paper and this is 184 pound. We have gray tones and we have black on my website OneStroke.com just to let you know. So one thing I want to do is I want to show you how kind of we ombre. See I went from brown to gold on that stenciling that I did. I'm using a stencil brush. There's all kinds of stencil brushes we have. So you can go check those out on our website too. All right. So what I'm going to do is let's say like be kind. So if you put kind you can put any of these bees a big fat bumblebee which I have a little and a big one and the honey bee which I have two sizes of those. I love how detailed these little legs are. So I just wanted to share that with you today. All right. So what I'm going to do is this and there's three different fonts of kind. All right. So let's do this one down here. All right. So there's a trick to doing a good stencil. So it's real important that you guys watch what I'm doing here. I'm going to get some of the thicket on a dry brush. I'm going to come here and take it off. All right. Now I can get it. I'm going to start dark first. Ah. Okay. So you take it off each time. All right. Now I'm going to come down here near the bottom because we're going to paint thistles on here and I'm going to go across the bottom. Okay. With one color. So I'm choosing the dark color. All right. Now I can make circles left and right, but I'm going to come across and I want you to see this. Okay. So see how nice that comes out if you don't have too much paint on here. So no matter how many times I teach some people, they still come in here, pick up a lot, go like that, and then they go right to it and you make a mess. So you're going to come back here and you're going to rub off that next color. And I'm going to come right across here and that's citrus green, so thicket, citrus green. And then what I can do is do a touch of white and I can take that right in on the citrus green and take it off. Okay. All right. So that's just ombringing the color from dark to light. All right. And there you go. All right. So you can then close in the little breaks. If there's a break, there's only two breaks, a couple of breaks right there and or you could just leave it. So I'm going to, I like the little set of stencil brushes that we have because this can't be cleaned and used right now. So we have to go to another brush. Let me see. I've got some smaller ones in here. So the set of smaller ones, all right, will help you so that you can keep, oh here, there's some colored handle ones. There we go. And what this is going to help you do is not worry about having to clean it and start. I should have pulled that out first. Sorry. All right. So I'm going to put this in the water because I can't use it again unless I'm using green and I'm going to just put a couple of these little, um, what do you call them? Bumblebees. All right. So I'm picking up yellow ochre. All right. And I can put a little bit of white in that yellow ochre and I'm going to come right here and I can tap it or make circles. So, um, this is a couple of steps for this one, so I just want you to see. I can do that and I can do another bee up here because I know what I'm going to do. All right. Now this, when you're on fabric or when you're on this dry paper, what it will do is it will soak in pretty fast. All right. So I'm going to take this off and I just, you know, I'm going to go back and say, you know what I should have done. All right. Let's line this up. What I should have done is went ahead and put some of the white right here on the wing. Okay. So here's the white wing. Okay. And so you can do that at the same time so you don't have to go back and line it up. I don't know. I wasn't thinking because like right there when I do that, then I usually go right and have the white. But because I'm doing two, I kind of wanted to do both at the same time with the same color. All right. So we don't have to worry about the legs and all because we're going to come back, but I didn't touch it. I'm good. All right. And look, it's easy because I can say, hey, that isn't white enough. There we go. All right. See how I got it whiter. All right. So now what happens, I'm going to get rid of that one. Now what happens is I am going to fill in this whole yellow. Okay. Now you're going to like the thistles and all that I put in here, but I want you to see that where those stripes are is where the licorice is going to go, the black. So that just gave you a spot to shade the body. Oops. I made that, I made that a little bit too much. Okay. So now look what happens. I want to take a little bit of white or bright yellow and shade it a little bit more. Okay. A little bit of white. Okay. What did I get there? Oh, I had it on my hand. That's okay. We're going to be painting up there now. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my heat pen right here and I'm just going to tap this. Now that I can do really quick. I'm doing it slow for you now though, because I want you to see in detail what I'm doing. And the heat pens are great because if you're doing glass or whatever, it will dry little spots that you need to dry before you put the next step on. All right. So I'm going to come here now and I'm going to line up everything I just did. Oops. And I need licorice. Okay. There we are. Now what I love is how detailed my stencil turned out. I was so wanting each one of those little legs to be perfect. So look what we did. Now I've got, I'm sure that's been there. I'm going to touch this and I'm going to come right here. Okay. Now watch what happens. I'm not going to go where the wing is. I'm going to go right here where the legs are. All right. I'm going to go right in here where the body is and get the legs here and the stripe on the body. Now I think you're going to be so excited when you see it. Look at all that detail. Look how killer that turned out and it looked like we worked really hard to get that. All right. So that makes doing bees all over your project so easy. Okay. So you line it up again. So it's really two steps. You got to get that yellow in there. All right. I don't want to touch the wings very much, but I do have to get some more licorice. All right. And you can tap because this is so small. It's easier when you're on the bigger one. But come on. Okay. And what you can do is just brush the wings a little bit. All right. And it shades just a little bit the wing. All right. Compared to not. Okay. How fun is that? So that's a go-to incredible stencil. I can tell you I love it. All right. Now what I'm going to teach you now is that we are going to take our angle brush and we're going to pick up some sticky there. We're going to be my hand. We're going to take this five eighths angle brush and we're picking up thicket and citrus. And I'm going to put a medium in there because I need the stems to these yarrow or these different wildflowers. I mean, I just did a short with this so that you could see all this fun, fun strokes that we're going to make. Now what happens is that this is going to come right in here. All right. Now look what happens. It's going to have little stems here that come from one spot. It doesn't go down just a little bit. It goes just like that. All right. And then here I can come right out here and I want these to be little, little stems. And so I can let that be part of a stem if I felt like I went too high. But we are going to have this be right in there. I see my grandson helps me with my garden. And I said, go there and clip some of that off. And he goes, look at all the bees. I'm not comfortable. I'm not comfortable with those big fat bubble bees. They're all fuzzy, furry looking. He goes, I'm not comfortable touching those. And I laugh at him because I said, they kind of go, those kind just kind of move away. They're just getting pollen. And he just looks at me and he's, you know, since he's been 16, he's been out there doing that with me. He just looks at me like, really? Okay. So, so see this toe, this is an angle brush. There's a toe and a heel. And what we want to do is get those little thin lines with the toe. All right. So I'm going to put this away. And there's a couple of things. Let's, let's use a small scruffy. This is a quarter inch scruffy. And let's pick up a little bit of citrus and some white. Okay. Now I just did. Oh, here. I just want you to see. I was doing this one in the background. And then we put other ones in front. Okay. And I'm not going to put, I don't think I'm going to put the leaves down here much because I want you to see the other. But since this one's in the background, kind of, I can put this in here. And if I wanted to stay in the background, what I would do, see, I'm tapping, tap, tap, tap. And light. I still want to see those stems, right? But what you would do to put that in the background, you would come right here. And you would go right back over this. And see, then it looks like it's in back. Okay. And let's just put one leaf. Oh, I messed that up. Wait a minute. Let's put one leaf. So you can see, like, right in here. So here would be your stem. So you're going to come out and wiggle it. And then come back here. And then you pull the stem in here. All right. Okay. We just had a couple in there. All right. I did put a little bit of a stain. I'm not going to, but I did. All right. So now I could still take this citrus. I'm going to rub some of that off because this scruffy has to be dry when you're using it, guys. And I am putting this purple back here. And I'm going to make this one smaller. Okay. And I'm going to dump that out. And I'm going to use this big. This is a half-inch scruffy. Wait a minute. Let's get a small scruffy again because I forgot. I want to. You got to fluff these. Now, when you get these, you have to fluff them because you don't want it to be squished, like in the package it's squished. And flat. And I don't know if I have one I haven't fluffed yet, but when it's like this flat, you can't get what you want. You got to make it like a makeup brush where it's really open and oval and fluffy. All right. Here we go. There we go. All right. This isn't my signature style. You can buy dark green. Half-inch one single. I'm going to put that scruffy in there. All right. So I'm going to put white. This is a quarter-inch again. And like the Aro where it's yellow. But what I'm doing is I can have the yellow ochre going up and have a couple layers of it. You can even put a little bit of brown, a little bit of brown underneath. Okay. So now I'm rubbing that off on a paper towel and I can get more white and yellow ochre. And I can have the white going up. See how that gave it shading. And so this half-inch, this is a quarter-inch. The quarter-inch you can do a little bit more detail. I hope you like this. This is like a fun little one you can stick into with other big flowers like irises and daffodils. And then you can also have these yarrows. So let me put another purple one up here. So I'm going to put, this is dry. This is a half-inch. Okay. And so I can have my bee right there in that. Try to get some of those blossoms. Okay. Now let's pick up some white. So see I can do the heavy. And then I can come back in here and put that bee right in there. You see like that. All right. It's kind of fun. Let's just put neon in here. This is neon purple. So see I can make that more. And then I can get some white and have some of that on top. See. See how that gives it more depth. Okay. So look at the difference. And practice some leaves. So you can do some leaves. Look at those little bumblebees. Now I could put any kind of color. I even did a purple bee where it was in a floral where I didn't want, I didn't want the normal colors because it didn't work with what I was doing. All right. So you sign it and you can mat it and frame it or do it on a card. There's all kinds of things you can do. Use the small brush and do it on a greeting card. Or matting. Okay. All downward strokes. This paper is not letting me do this too well. There we go. I hope you enjoyed it. The thing you can do that I like to do sometimes is I like to do like it's flying. And this can act like it's doing my name. Okay. All right. So just have fun. This one I already put some lines in there. Okay. Now I needed, when I did that, I really needed the smaller. Look. When I did that black, I needed the smaller one. I used the larger one. But that's why you want those little small sets. I think there's five to seven brushes in that set which are nice. All right. Have fun. Thank you. Be sure to go subscribe. And ring the bell when you subscribe. It's free. You get all these how-to lessons. Two brand new lessons a week. One is relax and paint. And one is practice strokes. So go back to the beginning. There's years of practice strokes which will teach you the one stroke painting technique right here at no charge. But become a member. So if you're a member, you get four lessons a month. And that starts at $9.99 a month. And I really go into more detail. So I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.