- Hi. Welcome back. Certainly glad you could join us today because today is a very special day. You know, over the
years I've got literally hundreds of letters from people saying, "Teach us how to paint florals". Well, I'm not really a floral painter. I'm really a tree and
mountain type person. So I've asked a very dear
friend to come in today and help us with a little floral painting. I'd like to introduce you to my partner and longtime friend Annette Kowalski. Annette, welcome to the show. - Thanks, Bob. - We're going to have Annette
paint a little flower for you. And I'm just going to
turn the show over to her and I'll see you later. - Thank you. Since Bob has invited me to share with you the joy of painting flowers let's start right away by
having a look at the colors. we're going to use to paint these flowers. Most of the painting I'm going to do with just this one brush. And I'll start by doing a basic sketch on this black canvas. This is a canvas that's been covered with black gesso. We're going to roughly
sketch our composition. I'm using alizarin crimson and I'll just sketch a
little pot to begin with. Notice it's not right in
the middle of the canvas I don't care whether it's perfectly round. It's not in the middle from
side to side or up and down. Little pot and two little flowers. These are not easily identifiable flowers We're gonna keep them fantasy flowers. If you paint a fantasy flower you don't have to worry too much about where the petals are or
how many petals it has. But if you paint an iris or a rose, well, you have to really put those
petals where they belong. I have a rough sketch on the canvas. Two circles for the flowers and the pot. I'm loading a large brush
with a tiny bit of red. And I'm gonna begin up at the top here with just a little back lighting. Flowers are easy to paint on black canvas. I recommend that if it's
your first flower painting you start with a black canvas. You don't have to worry about all of this. Little bit of light below the pot. You don't have to worry about all this negative space and backgrounds. Love black canvases. And that's really all we do for light. Now let's get on the pot. The pot is painted with a mixture of alizarin crimson and sap green. I use no earth tones. Alizarin crimson and sap
green make a beautiful brown, Christmas brown, a good friend calls this, because it's made with red and green. I'm going to load my brush
with that Christmas brown and I'm going to block in
the dark area of the pot. Just block it in right around the edges. Notice this pot is dark. Just loose crisscross strokes right around the edge of the pot. We'll say that the light
is coming from the right so there would be a little
more dark on the left. I'm picking up some red little orange. Begin adding the light area of the pot. Just loose crisscross strokes. Save this little tiny area in the middle for your lightest color which is yellow. Little yellow. Loose crisscross strokes. Doesn't that look messy? You want it to look messy. This is a Mexican pot. I've just wiped my brush by the way with a paper towel. Now I'm going to use
loose crisscross strokes to lightly blend, very lightly blend one
color into the other. This is a Mexican pot, handmade. So it would be sort of crude looking. The contrast of the flowers
with the loosely painted pot is quite nice. I'll go back again to my larger brush, just blend out the pot
with horizontal strokes. And that's about all there
is to painting a pot. We can add a little reflected light with a mixture of turquoise and mauve right down this side. Just a little bit of light. Before we actually get
into painting the flowers, I'll use a mixture of sap green and blue. Loosely block in an area here where some leaves will go later. Keep this very dark. I know that it's hard for you to see this on the black canvas. But when we apply the highlights I think it'll become more visible. Do keep it dark. You have to just paint by faith when it's this dark against your canvas. Before we go too far I want
to go back now to the pot and just put a little lip here. This lip is important. You'll see why later. The surprise comes later. But that little lip is important. Maybe up at the top we'll just
block in what might be some indication of some leaves
right up at the top. Let's get to our flowers. We're going to use quite
a bit of painting medium and some alizarin crimson. Use very loose strokes
to undercoat the flowers. This is just an undercoating. It's not going to look like anything, yet. It's just an undercoating. All we're doing is placing. Now we've places a leaf area. This is the second flower. We'll call these posies. A pot of posies. How 'bout that? That's neat ain't it? Pot of posies. Just block them in for placement. We'll allow that to dry
for just a few minutes. While the flowers are drying I'm going to go back
and shape some leaves. I'll start right over here. Pull these strokes in towards the center of the leaf. I know how dark that is. I know you're having trouble. But trust me. You're going to see it before it's over. You know it's there and I know it's there. Well, I know it's there even
if you don't know it's there. Watch the miracles that happen when you apply the highlights though. Just a few little leaves. The highlights are the fun part so we don't want to do that too soon. Let's let these leaves come cascading down out of this pot. Just let 'em hang right down. We got a lot of canvas to fill up. This is a 12 by 24 canvas by the way. It's very rectangular. It's a gorgeous canvas when it's framed. It's a fun canvas for composition reasons. It's a lot easier in my mind
to compose a floral painting on a canvas like this that
something that's too square. Maybe it's because
flowers grow tall and thin and so it just makes a lot of
sense to me to put a flower on a tall, thin canvas. Now you trusted me with those leaves, so watch what happens. I am not telling you a story. This leaf that's on the dark side touch a little highlight to the edges. And there's just the slightest
indication of a leaf. Now it begins to show a little bit. Watch what happens over here if you just touch little highlights. There is a leaf there, see! Aren't you glad you trusted me? You really thought, you really weren't sure there were leaves. I bet you thought that woman doesn't know what she's talking about. All I see are these... And you don't have to do everyone. But it's just enough to
bring them out a little bit. Now I'm going to clean my brush
in odorless paint thinner. And I'm going to start
working on these two flowers. I'll start with this one
it's the most distant flower. I'm going to use the mixture
of blue and a little crimson, maybe some mauve, and I'll put that mixture
right in the center. Again you have to trust me. This is very dark. I'm pulling that mixture
out in the direction that the flower is facing. I might also use the same color,
mauve and blue and crimson, to add a shadowed area at the base of the flower. Same mixture, mauve, crimson, blue, plop in the middle of this flower. Pull this in the direction
that the flower is facing. And again, a little bit of shadow underneath the cup of the flower. These are fantasy flowers. They'll have some petals
that are folded up. And under the folded up petals will be shadowed area. I think that will become more obvious when we begin to find the
petals of this flower. I'm loading my brush now
with the dark red, just red. And I'm gonna find a couple of petals in the back of this flower. I'm using just red. And again, I know you can't see this. Trust me. We'll go back later. If they're not showing up enough we'll go back later and further highlight. Notice that each stroke is directed towards the center of the flower. And if it's too hard to see, just the indication of
a few highlights later. Let's wrap this petal around. We can just indicate
with a few highlights. This one can wrap around here. Keep the edges ruffly. This will probably get lost but it's fun to just keep wrapping petals. And there should be a little petal right on the base here. Right at the base. Little something that- It's important to keep this area open and I think you''ll see why in a minute. Let's work on this closer one. This one's facing down. We'll have two big, two
or three big petals. Very dark, very mysterious painting. Very mysterious painting this is. Now the little folded up petals
are actually facing down. I'm just using red. I'm just using red. No other color. Just plain red. I'm not picking up anything else. I am always loading my
brush to a chiseled edge. This is important when
you're painting flowers. For almost every stroke that
you make in a floral painting, this brush needs to
really be well groomed. The paint has to be worked
very well into the bristles and the brush should
come to a chiseled edge. I can't think of anything
that you paint in florals where you don't need that chiseled edge. Whether it's leaves, petals, buds, Almost any part of a floral painting you have to work with a chiseled brush. If you can learn to load
your brush properly- I've got blue and green
and I'm going to go up here and add another leaf. If you can learn to
load the brush properly floral painting is a snap. I've noticed that that's
the area that most people have trouble with. Just loading the brush properly. If your paint is getting too thick then add a little paint thinner. Go easy on any kind of an oil medium because that too can make
your paint thick and goopy on the canvas. Now we don't want to just leave
this pot suspended in space. So let's see what we can do with it. I'm going to load my brush. Blue, maybe some mauve and black, anything dark. This will be a good time to use black. And again, you're going to
have to use your imagination. Let's suspend some ropes that this pot is hanging from. I'm using black, mauve, blue. Just to indicate where the
ropes would be coming down. This one... you have to be brave to do. This one is in the back. This one comes to this point. It'll go right over your flowers. And there's another one in the back. These pots are usually
hanging by three cords. It's hard for me to
get my perspective here because of the angle. But know in your mind
that these three cords come together someplace at the top off the canvas. So be sure that you keep that
in mind when your painting. This cord comes through
the lip of the pot. Makes a little knife, oh, a little knot. wraps around the pot. Be sure it goes in the shape of the pot. Underneath is a nice big knot where the- I'm still just using
black and blue and mauve. It's not too important
the colors that you use. These will later become
cords that are hanging down. We're just under-painting
the cords at the base. You can go back and use some
of the same brown color. I'd like to take just a few
minutes, add some little buds. Let's put a little bud out this way. This is very loose blocking in. Just block it in. Same alizarin crimson. Little bud maybe down here. This can be very loose. Doesn't take any shape at all. Little bit of a dark mauve center. And again with the highlight color, the tiniest little indication of petals. Look what just a couple strokes can do? Do you believe that? With just a couple brush strokes you actually have a little flower! You haven't even done anything. Just a couple little strokes. This is the advantage of a black canvas. If you're painting on white canvas you have to do a little
more than a couple strokes. This is why I suggest black
canvases are wonderful for your first floral painting. You really don't have a lot to deal with. Just a couple little strokes
and you have a flower. Before we go too much further, I'm loading my brush to a chiseled edge with the light red. The red light. I have quite a bit of paint on
the brush and it's very dry. I've mixed no medium or
thinner with this paint. I'm going to touch just a
couple little highlights to these flowers. Very mysterious little highlights. Don't overdue. This is easy. A lot of times people want
to just go crazy with those and it's really not necessary. Just little bit of a
highlight here and there. While we're highlighting
let's give our cord with some orange. This is right over the
black and we'll make this look like a rope. Just make it look like a rope. Just a hint. There's our knot underneath. Do you remember that knot? Little highlight on this cord. I'm using various mixtures
of crimson, our brown, our Christmas brown, red
and yellow Christmas brown, We'll add some little cords or a tassel. I guess that's a tassel isn't it? You could do this with a liner brush. You could spend a lot of time with a liner brush. This can be a little reflected light on the back side of the cord. Look what I almost forgot. We'll add just a little bit of highlight to this area of our rope. That's not going to show up
so add a little bit of white. It's the first time I've
used white in this painting. I've done this painting a lot of times. I can't tell you, I can't make you think otherwise. We've done it at the
reunion with our SRI's. By the way we have a lot of instructors who are teaching floral painting. Usually it's quite a
challenge to me to paint this whole painting without using any white at all. I think that's what helps
to make it so exciting. I think the colors are vibrant, transparent if you don't use white. White is a very opaque color. I'm gonna take a small filbert brush. This is a tiny little filbert brush. And I'm gonna use black and I think mauve. And we just tap in some little centers, right in the middle of our posies. Pot of posies. Tap in little centers. And again, chiseled edge, pull out some little stamens. Pull out little stamens. Maybe with some pink and some yellow I'll tap on just some little highlights. Tiny little highlights. I wonder, if you wouldn't like to see a little stem that comes up here, wraps around the cord, comes down and there's leaf. You could spend really
just hours and hours on this painting. You could just spend hours. I'm really happy that Bob
got me out of the closet with my floral paint. Bob has been trying for 10 years, I kid you not, for 10 years
Bob has been trying to get me to do this. I have so much paint on this filbert brush but I'm going to use tiny little strokes to add some daisies,
or little wild flowers, whatever you want to call them. Just a couple of little flowers. Anyway, Bob has been
trying for years to get me to come forward with my floral painting. If you're hiding in the
closet painting florals why don't you decide to
come out of the closet with florals. And by the way, you would
be surprised at how many men enjoy painting flowers. When I teach flowers, there are actually I think more men in the floral painting classes than women. So even if you're a man, don't be afraid to come out of the
closet with your florals. We could give some little stems to these little flowers. Additional little highlights,
maybe the rope cord. It's fun to end with your liner brush and add some highlights in this tassel. Some really, don't make them
too light like I'm doing. But you might really want
to add some little cords that are really swirling around here. Let 'em really play and swirl. Go back and be sure that you've put enough little
highlight here and there. Look and see if there's
any area of your painting that you think needs a final highlight. If there's anything that
needs a little help. But don't overdo. Again, I caution you, don't overdo. You can very quickly lose this painting if it's got too much highlight. Keep it dark. Keep it mysterious. But by all means, come out of
the closet and paint flowers. I hope you enjoyed the
joy of painting flowers. Thanks for watching. Buh bye. (smooth jazz)
She even talks about "coming out of the closet" several times.
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