Learn to Paint DRAGONFLY AND CARNATION with Acrylic - Paint and Sip at Home - Step by Step Tutorial

hi there i'm michelle the painter from berkshire paint and sip and this is paint and sip at home [Music] all right so today we're going to be painting dragonfly incarnation and i'm going to be sipping on a little merlot and i thought that this was going to be an appropriate painting to paint today because it's january and the carnation is the official flower for january and dragonflies they just mean hope and new beginnings so we all need that in 2021 so i thought it was going to be a great painting for january so if you enjoy this painting i do hope that you like and subscribe to my channel and that you also check out my patreon page where you're going to find additional painting perks so let's get painting and let's get sipping all right so for my materials today i'm going to be using a stretched and prime 16 by 20 inch canvas if you're painting along with me you can certainly switch up the size but that's what i'll be using i'm going to be using acrylic paint today my colors are titanium white magenta burnt umber which i will call brown green oxide mars black cobalt blue and chrome yellow and of course you can switch up those colors if you like but that's what i'll be using i'm going to be using three brushes today i have a half inch wide flat bristle brush i have a number eight round brush and i have a number one round brush and i will refer to these as small medium and large as we go through the painting process of course you can switch those up a little bit too if you'd like if you're painting along with me you'll probably want to have a cup of water for washing your brushes as well as a paper towel for drying your brushes and down below this video i will be providing you with a couple of additional resources one of them is a link where you can purchase the same paint kit that i'm using from the large canvas to the fancy palette and the paint and all that good stuff but there's also another link for you where you can download a free image of the final painting so you can print that and use it as visual reference as you go through the painting process and there's also written step-by-step instructions down in the description for you as well and that's all we're going to need today all right so what i'm going to be doing for the first step is i'm going to be painting my background or my sky i'm going to be using my large bristle brush the colors that i'm going to be using are black brown magenta and white and what i'm going to do is i'm going to pre-mix myself a base color it's going to be kind of on a like the lavender side i'm going to have my sky dark down in the bottom left or darker and then the lightest up in the top right so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to first pre-mix myself a color so i know i want to use some of this magenta later so i'm going to be separating some out so i can use that later and then what i'm going to do with my the rest of my magenta in here is i'm going to add a little bit of brown a little bit of black and a little bit of white and then i'm just going to spin it around so really what i'm looking for is kind of a soft neutral lavender type color and you may want yours more vibrant than mine you might want yours darker than mine you might want yours more on the gray side than mine you can certainly work yours out into whatever value or tonal value that you want but you can see i'm just going for this like a grayish lavender type color and then once i've achieved the color that i want what i'm going to do is i'm going to start in the bottom left-hand corner just making sure i've got my color that i want i'm thinking that's going to be pretty good maybe a little bit more on the brown side i don't want it too too purple i don't want it to take away from the focal point which is going to be my flower in the middle of my canvas so i don't want mine too vibrant of a color so i'm making mine more on the on the duller side but you can certainly again utilize your visual preference to find the color that you want and it will end up a little bit darker as it dries so just kind of plan ahead for that as well so this is kind of where the um the color is that i'm going and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to start in my bottom left hand corner i'm not washing my brush or anything and i'm going to just start applying it almost in a crescent type brush stroke i'm going to be painting a whole lot of the canvas almost about half the way with this single color and then when i get about halfway into the canvas what i will end up doing is i'm going to start introducing white onto my brush with this original color and what i'm attempting to do is to get a nice gradual kind of circular gradient to go up towards that top right hand corner almost to give us the illusion that the sun is up there but you can tell i'm not using totally natural colors i'm kind of playing with the youth kind of cashing in my you know my creative license on this one so these are not 100 natural colors that you're going to see out in nature but i thought that it was going to complement it well so i figured i would i would give it a go so i just added a bit of white onto my brush with that original background color and as i go towards this upper right hand corner i will continue to add more white but once i i want this to be blended in so i'm actually going to back up or back into my previous section with that lighter color and what will happen is this is going to help to get those two areas to blend and i like using a continuous brush stroke so i don't have what i refer to as cut marks which is where you'd see the end of my brush stroke you might be able to get this in one shot you might want to do it two layers on it whatever is visually appealing to you if you want it to be smoother looking i would recommend going for two coats if you like the um almost streaky look to it then one coat would definitely work for you so again wherever your visual preference is that's where you should take your painting because it is your painting so i just keep adding more white onto my brush that was a lot of white on my brush it dropped right onto the other part of the canvas and you can see my painting is getting lighter and lighter as i go up towards this right corner of the canvas and then once we get that this step all done we will be using our medium brush for the next step so you can continue to play with yours if you want to do a second layer feel free to do so i'm probably just going to sit here for a minute and just keep rocking my brush back and forth until i get this to blend in as much as i want my paint is nice and thin bodied so it stays on the wetter side for a little while to which allows me to work these colors in and then like i said we will be utilizing our medium brush for the next step so you can just get ready all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are doing the first step to our stems and our leaves of our flowers i'm going to be using my medium brush and i'm going to be using my background color plus white i want these to have a little bit of dimension on them i want them to kind of be almost out of focus not i don't want them to take away from our flower or dragonfly so i want to utilize the same color palette that we've already um established we're going to add some highlights and shadows and a little bit of green onto them later but this will just get them in place and give us a good starting point so i'm going to pick up my background color plus white on my brush and i'm going to have my big my biggest flower somewhere in through here so i'm going to have its stem maybe about a third of the way from the bottom right hand corner into the canvas and it's only going to go up maybe about a quarter of the way maybe half a third of the way up my canvas then i'm just going to go ahead and figure out where i want the rest of them and if you go through wet paint that's perfect it's intended for you to go through some wet paint just so you have um multiple colors throughout that stem and so the stem ends up looking like it's got some dimension to it so i'm just right now kind of establishing where i want my stems to go and then i'm going to put some leaves on there in a minute i want my stems to be a little bit wider at the bottom maybe so the stems on these um particular or the little leaves on these particular flowers are just little green ones that kind of shoot out the side they're kind of on the pointier side so i'm just going to kind of have some fun here and just utilize my brush i'm pushing it kind of hard and then bringing it almost to a point at the end of the flowers or the leaves so you can certainly have as much fun with this as you want you can have it cross over into another stem if you want to again we'll be adding better detail to it later but this is just going to kind of get get the party started so maybe i've got a couple of leaves coming up this way maybe i've got some going off my canvas over here maybe i've got one going up in through here and again if you run through some wet paint just roll with it that's definitely gonna um only enhance the appearance of your painting so maybe that one's got a little bit of a wiggle to it maybe this one's smaller so just try and keep them nice and diverse which means just having different directions to them and different sizes to them if they all look exactly the same then you might lose the um the idea that it's a natural element i'm having a couple kind of coming peeking out from the corner over here as if maybe there's a flower over on that side that's just kind of you know not in our focal point yet and then i'm going to put the where the flower is going to come out so the little um cup where the bud kind of comes out so i'm gonna just put that at the top of my stems i'm only having maybe two or three flowers so i'm not going to really do a whole heck of a lot for this so it's just almost like this little bulb type area and then i'm gonna have one up in through here so just a little bit wider than your your actual stem itself and then that is all we're going to do for this step we're going to be utilizing this same brush for the next step so once you've got your stems and your leaves in place you can wash and dry that medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're putting the first layer on our flower petals so i'm going to be using my medium brush and i'm just going to be using magenta so these flowers have a ton of little petals and they're really ripply around the edges so when they're open they almost look like a really rippled rose with a bunch of way more petals than a rose has so i'm going to emulate my i'm going to have a really big one here that's fully open so this is going to be a really big huge flower in the middle and then i'm going to have just little pieces of um the corners of other flowers that are going to be surrounding just to bring that color elsewhere but my main flower in through here it's going to be fully open but it's going to be a little tipped because the the dragonfly is coming in at it here so the top of the flower is going to be here but it's going to be really big and open so as i'm doing this i'm oh just a little reminder as i'm getting ready to paint i'm forgot to tell you that you need to have your canvas dry before you start this step so even if you have to take a little extra break you know extra little long break or blow on it or you know you can just whip out a blow dryer to blow dry whatever way that you want to get yours dry as long as that background is nice and dry you'll have success on this step um so when i do this i'm going to be thinking that the edge of my petals are really ripply i'm not really concerned about every single petal right now i just want to give a basic shape to my flower so this is going to be where my flower grows out of and it's going to be growing in this direction so what i'm going to do first off is i'm just going to kind of establish myself a starting point here which is going to tell me okay well that's that's where it's going to start how tall do i want it to go and i think i want it to be about this tall in through here somewhere like that and you can see i'm already doing my wiggle lines um because that's gonna that's gonna set my mind straight here so if this is kind of the top of my flower i think i'm going to have maybe a little bit of a petal coming out here then maybe i'll have some petals coming out here and i'm really just wiggling my brush in order to get the shape of these exterior these exterior petals because again this is a very ripply type flower that we're dealing with so then maybe i'll come down in through here and then maybe i'll have a big one down in this vicinity like something like this and then once i've kind of got my exterior shape what i'm gonna do i'm just painting the whole thing in with my magenta color no fancy brush stroke just get the color on there your paint will probably be translucent or see-through don't worry about that this is just allowing for us to get a base coat on here that we will be building off of later so if you have some streaks or some light spots and some darts dark spots don't be terribly concerned about it because we're gonna be able to build um on those later and you won't even be able to see them by the time we're done this is again just kind of adding that that base coat for you and then once i've got this central flower done maybe i will add the little some little petals coming off of this one just the little bottom edge to it and you can really have as much detail or as much fun with these ones coming off of the edges i like to kind of make sure that they look a little bit different from one another so you can certainly have fun with it as as much as you want maybe i'll have i really want something down in through here so maybe i'll just have a little edge over here that looks pretty and then maybe it's always hard to figure out where you want those extra little bits and pieces maybe i'll have a little bit down here at the bottom of this one maybe there's one that's falling on the on the ground or something and then we are going to be using our small brush for the next step so once you've got your base coat of your flowers you can put your medium brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we are putting the shadows on our stems and our leaves so i'm going to be using my small brush i'm going to be using brown black and my background color so how i'm going to do this is i'm concentrating on where my light source is which is the light up in the top right hand corner and i want everything on the opposing side to be a little bit darker as well as inside the creases of my leaves so i'm going to start with some brown on my brush and i am going to just kind of go on the left hand side of some of these objects and just kind of establish where i want these these little shadows to go this is inside between the leaf and the the stem itself and this has a little shadow in between there and then i just kind of get it to gradually go out into the the piece that's next to it on this left hand this one that's the farthest away this this one is the one that i can use black on as well as the ones at the bottom as you get towards the the sun itself or the light source you'll want to use more just brown so i am going to touch my brush a little bit in brown and black to get this shadow underneath um this little bulb part the darkest something like that i'm going to get it pretty dark underneath the flower petal itself and if you run into a little bit of wet paint don't worry about it and then if you need to you can pick up some of your background color to get that shadow to just kind of blend into the stem itself so you can really just kind of work with the intensity of that if you want it a little bit darker make it a little bit darker we're going to be putting a highlight on it in a little bit so that'll make it pop out a little bit more as well i'm putting a little bit of black down at the bottom because i think that it would be a little bit more shadowed down at the bottom same thing with underneath here maybe a little bit more black in through there so black and brown is where i'm pretty much sitting for these ones and again i don't need them to be really in focus a thousand percent because this is intended to be not the focal point i'm really just looking for this to be something that is you know adding complementary information to my background of my painting so i don't really need this background you know these to be really really in focus but right now i am picking up a little bit more brown just to get it so it's not so black black black and then i'm just going to kind of go up in between my where my leaves are and on the left hand side of the stem because it is on the opposing side of my of my light source so again brown and or black and if you need to you go into the original background color to get it to blend in with any of those areas that you feel need that little punch of um of a shadow or of a of a blend so something like that this underneath here is the underside to me this is the side that's a little bit farther away from the light source i'm going to add a little bit of darkness here and then maybe in between here where these little leaves end up meeting the um the stem itself and then i've just got this one in through here i think i already hit that i want to get this one up in through here the left hand side of this is where i'm going to have my shadow and then i can just get it to blend in with the rest of the area if i needed to i could pick up some of that original brown or background color and then we are going to use this same brush for the next step so once you've got your shadows on your stems and your leaves you can wash and dry that small brush and get ready for the next step alright so what i'm going to do for the next step is i'm adding my highlights to my stems and my leaves so i want these to take on a natural color even though i've kind of muted and played with my color palette a little bit i do want it to have some sort of natural element to it so i'm going to be using green yellow brown and white as my highlight color so i'm going to add some some green elements to it and then i'm going to put some little pops of sunshine on it so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to first start by make myself a really natural green color so i'm going to take green yellow brown and a touch of white and i'm going to spin it together so this is going to give me kind of like a light army green kind of color i really want it pretty earthy with a lot of dirt in it the best way i can explain it is to get it to look nice and earthy you want brown in it because that's going to make it look like it's got those elements of dirt in it and then once you've got the color that you want what you're going to do is you're just going to lightly without going overboard put it on what i'm going to refer to as kind of the knuckle areas of the leaves i know that's a weird terminology but when i look at that that's what it looks like to me so it's the part where the leaf kind of starts coming out of the of the stem it's still itself and it almost looks like it's a bump on these particular flowers so i'm gonna call it the knuckle part so i've got a little bit of that green on my brush and so i'm going to just put it in that area and then i just gently almost blend it out into this into the neighboring area i'm going to pop a little bit of a highlight even brighter in a minute but right now i'm just going to get that little that little area on there so something like this in that in the knuckle area i got this one in through here that one i extended a little bit far and of course you can bring it down a little bit into the stem that's totally fine i got some in through here where that one meets i've got these ones i can't really see the stem itself so i'm just gonna imagine that somewhere close to there i've got it in here and i am just you know again trying to add a a natural element to this with the with the colors that i'm choosing to do so you could certainly you know carry this even further into the stems they do have i think full on green stems the carnations but you know again i'm just doing my own painterly interpretation i do know that the little buds are also green so i'm gonna just add some of my army green kind of color in through there i'm going to do the same thing on this one and i'm bringing it right to the edge and i'm bringing it down that stem just a little bit i'm not using a ton of paint so that way i can just kind of blend it into the neighboring area and then once i have it everywhere that i want what i'm going to do is i'm going to take that same green and i'm going to add yellow and white to it so i'm in essence just making it lighter and brighter and that's going to be my highlight color to that particular section so i get my little light color going something like this and i don't want to do the whole area i'm just going to kind of add just a little bit in there just to give it that extra bit of of a bump to it so you can you know play with this and if you want to even more bright than mine you can certainly i'm going to definitely add a little bit more in through this area so you can really see the dimensional element of this but the other areas that's going to be visually however intense you want it to be you might want yours to have a lot of this element to it you might really like the colors that are happening when you're doing this you might want to back it off a little bit maybe you liked that muted color better that we started with so whatever is again visually appealing to you work work it that way on your canvas i want these to be just a little bit brighter get them to pop out just a little bit more in that little center area and then up in through the buds i'm i want you to be able to really detect the sunshine on those so i'm going to elevate those even more with a little bit more yellow and white and you might find if your paint underneath is still a little wet it might be difficult to do these um these layers right one after the other so if that happens to you if you run into an area where it's just not dry enough for you to add another little layer on it just wait for it to dry for a minute or you can hit it with a blow dryer whatever you want but you can see i'm really getting this section to be nice and bright so you can see that it's being hit by the sun and it's get it's giving it some good dimensional element to it maybe some of that army green back in here just to make sure that it blends nice and well and then we're gonna use our let's see we're gonna use our medium brush for the next step so once you've got all of your pretty highlights you could i suppose even add a bit of this onto some of the tips of these leaves oh yeah that's pretty i'm adding just a teeny bit of sunshine onto the tips of these other leaves yeah i like that sometimes just adding that little thing that you didn't think you were gonna do helps to make it and a little highlight over here um so we're gonna use this uh your medium brush for the next step so once you've got your leaves and your stems the way that you want them you can wash and dry your medium brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're going to do i'm going to call it petal placement we're going to use our medium brush and i'm going to be using magenta yellow and white and i'm going to pre-mix myself kind of like a peachy kind of color i i want it to be slightly lighter than this but i don't want it to be too on the pink side so i'm going to add a little yellow to it so i'm going to use a little bit of my magenta a little bit of yellow and a little bit of white and i'm just going to mix it together i don't need it to be any perfect color i just want it to be a little bit lighter than this and a little less magenta-y a little less pinky so i've got something in this vicinity and you'll see as i put it on the canvas it's going to look a little bit lighter than it does on my palette simply because it's going to be on top of that dark color so what i'm going to do these petals are very like i mentioned earlier ripply and there's a ton of them so i'm going to start in what i like to refer to as the nucleus of the flower the center of the flower and to me my center of my flower is going to be up and through here and what i'm going to do is i'm going to end up i'm going to in essence kind of do a wiggly um brush stroke to get the edges of all of the little petals that are going to be at the top and those are going to be really close together and very tight and then as i work my way towards these leaves at the bottom that are in essence going to be closer to us and more open my wiggle lines are going to be farther apart from one another so it'll look like they're closer to us and that they're more in an open position so i have the paint on my brush and i will reload my brush often because i really just want to have i'm going to use the tip of my brush to um almost just do lines as opposed to thick brush strokes so i'll reload it often so i can just work with the tip of my brush so i'm going to start in through here and i'm just going to do these broken kind of wiggle lines almost in a cylindrical or a circular kind of fashion again it doesn't have to be anything perfect you're just kind of getting the wig lines i see that my brush is starting to separate now so i'm going to reload my brush so i can just work with the with the tip of my brush as simple as you could have used your smaller brush to do this i'm going to do the edges too and now that i'm getting towards the middle from top to bottom now i'm going to start almost making these a little bit on the further away from each other and they don't all have to touch you can really just get them to be as dispersed as you want and i'm getting them to have wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle lines something like this and these are just going to be the edges of my of my petals so maybe this one's going to have one in through here and again the formation is really whatever comes to you naturally it doesn't have to be any perfect formation this is just an organic type of painting that we're doing so you can really have a loose interpretation as you see fit so i think that's going to do it for that one and then the ones oops i got this little edge here don't forget about the the prettiest edge over there um the ones over here but you don't really need much because you might not even see the separation of the petals so of you know multiple petals so maybe you just do a little bit of that um color at the edge of it maybe just a little bit over here and again this is just the the tippy top of these flowers that are on the edge and then we are going to use our small brush for the next step so once you've got your petal placement you can put the medium brush away take out your small brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're going to be doing shadows inside of our petals so i'm going to be using my small brush and i'm going to be using black and magenta so how i'm going to do this is i am going to pre-mix myself a little bit of a darker magenta so i'm just using a touch of black and adding it to my magenta it doesn't have to be super dark you don't want it necessarily black black black you just need it darker than the the regular magenta so something like that is where i'm going it's probably gonna look like a dark purple kind of color for you and then what i'm gonna do is i'm just going to kind of arbitrarily pick some spots where i want the deepest darkest places to be i'm going to have more on the top section and the bottom left section because again my light source is over there so my deepest darkest parts are going to be in the center where my petals are the closest and over here on the left where they're in the shadow the most so again i'm just going to kind of do little like squiggly lines in between some of those the edge markers that we did on the last step you can even do some bigger spots if you want it doesn't just have to be the little squiggle lines you can get a little bit more um bold and do some larger sections if you want to and this is really just going to tell the viewer so if this is the the edge of a petal i could in essence have a little bit of a shadow underneath it but it doesn't just have to be underneath it could be inside these little crevices up top in through here so you can really kind of have a carefree way of where you put them maybe this petal here we're seeing the outer side of it so maybe the shadow is right along there and it just kind of fades into this whole section in through there so you can you know have fun with where you want to put them you don't have to put them everywhere they don't have to be clean clean lines but what you don't want to do is you don't necessarily want to put them on top of your edges that you have already established so i'm just going to kind of put a few in through here and of course i'm putting more on this left hand side than i am on the right hand side the right hand side will have natural shadows with that regular magenta because we'll be putting some um the highlighted areas on which will which will increase the intensity of that darkness but you'll see what i'm talking about in a minute over there so i'm just adding some more shadows over here on the left hand side and you can see i'm definitely adding more on the left than i am on the right side of the flower maybe i've got one or two in through here i just ran through some of my wet peach which was okay i'm just gonna get this over here maybe one in through here and then once i've got this done i'm going to use the same brush for the next step but i will wash and dry it just make pre-mixing a little bit more of my shadow color i want a couple of really deep dark pieces in through here let's make sure i've got it represented the way that i want it to and then i'm going to wash and dry this brush oh do i need shadows on the other ones oh maybe i need a little bit of a shadow let's put a couple in here just you don't want to forget these little the other little petals that you have there we go that'll work okay watch me dry this small brush and get ready for the next step alright so what we're going to do for the next step is we are finishing the petal shapes so we put them in place then we gave some shadows in between them now we've got to finish the the shape of them telling the viewer if it's leaning over or if it's curled up if it's you know if we're just seeing the edges of it so my dominant color that i'm going to use is my magenta but i will also use that peachy color that i had i might use a little bit of white um i might use some of that darker shade that i also use but the dominant color is going to be magenta the peach and white and i'm really gonna the these inside petals aren't gonna you don't need to do much other than some squiggles to make sure that you have a nice second coat it's the ones on the edge the bigger ones that are more in focus that you have to kind of think a little bit more about so i'm going to have a couple of them where we see like they're curled up like this and then i'm going to have like these ones that are maybe leaning over like that so really you just want to understand what side of the petal you're seeing and then kind of go with that most of these ones over here are just going to be laying down like this most of these are going to be laying down like this it's kind of these ones in here that i might have them cupping up a little bit so if i haven't scared you enough already let's go so i'm going to start with just a little bit of my magenta and that peach on my brush just so i can kind of get my first one or two going and then once i've um started to work my way into it hopefully you'll kind of see see see where my my brain is going so in through here i know that i've already established my edge with that kind of peachy color so really what i can do i do want to make sure that i have a crooked edge to it something like that and then this one is just going to be fading into my shadow and through there so all i really need to do is kind of get myself a gradient from the edge to the shadowed part so something like this is going to do it for me i've got my peachy color on the edge and then i just kind of fade it into the darker shadowy area so you might need to pick up a little bit of the magenta or a little bit of the darker color whatever works for you so same thing i'll do the same thing here i'm going to start with my magenta at the edge make sure that it's nice and wiggly because that's what these leaves do they've got these petals they've got that edge to them i'm picking up some magenta and that um peachy color and then i'm just gonna get it to gradually go into the shadowed area so something like that now i've got that one done enough for me to move on to the next one so my next one is in through here i've got my peach so i i think i want this edge to be you know pretty wiggly and through there i'm gonna pick up some of my magenta color and just get it to if you if you put a bit of a curve on your brush stroke that will give the viewer even more information that it is in fact curving into that dark shadowy area and you can have your petals overlapping one another you can have them as light or as dark as you want this one's going to be a little bit lighter in through here and then i'm going to pick up some of that magenta and i'm just going to kind of repeat until i have all of my petals in the direction that i want there goes my doggie it's funny how they just know when to park so i've got my peach again just starting the edge in through here and then i'm going to pick up some of that magenta and the the um petals on the exterior the ones that we see more of are clearly going to be the more difficult ones to do so these ones in through here you can see this is a little wonky area here so i'm just adding a little bit more shadow and through there there we go the i want the maybe one or two of these ones over here to look like they're going in the opposite direction so i'm going to have my edge really bright in through here and then they're gonna almost fade down into this darkness into here so i might have to add an extra shadow where i didn't already have one placed but if you want to have that effect where you're seeing the underside of it and it's curled up you need that highlight or the brightest part up here and then it kind of sinks into the darkness over in through that area so i'm gonna just pull in a little bit of my darker shadowy color over in through here and that's going to give me the effect that this in fact is kind of curled up and then maybe i've got a couple of maybe this is the edge over here maybe there's another one and there's a the uh these flowers have so many petals so if you're getting into it and you're like oh that area doesn't look right just add another little petal into it it really works out just fine so that's going to be how i tackle those outside ones when i get to the inside these little tiny ones in through here really i just want my lighter ones over on that side and i'll have some little darker ones over here so i'm just adding the magenta yellow and white to my brush and almost just kind of making sure i have a second coat on all of this area up in through here but i'm really not terribly concerned about any extreme perfect detail i just want to make sure that i have a second coat on everything and that i'm not seeing any of my background color underneath there and then i just want to make sure that i am doing a full second coat on the entire flower so once i've pretty much figured out what my game plan is as to these particular petals you know i've got this one in through here i kind of skipped around a little bit so i could show you that one over there but i still have some more over here that need attending to but again i'm i'm just doing a pretty similar process i'm starting with that lighter color on the edge of it and then i'm kind of going a little bit into the darkness making sure that i have a full second coat this one is probably i don't know what this one's going to do maybe this one is going to be maybe this one's going to be up a little bit too so maybe i'm going to have this one kind of this is going to be the edge like this and then maybe it's going to go into the darkness in through here so again you can really kind of play it out as as you're painting to see you know visually what you want it to do and then i'm just going to get these last couple in through here and then we just have one more step on these petals before we start tackling another super beautiful fun area of the painting this is going to be my lighter ones in through here so i am going to add a bit more white to these ones as i am putting my shape onto them and again if you want them to look like they're bending over you could actually add a little bit of a curve to your brush stroke but you still want to be able to understand where the edge of the petals are so utilize your visual um direction to to tell the viewer where where that in fact is i think this one maybe maybe this one's going to be like this i've got to put my head back so i understand what that little petal is going to do i think this one's going to kind of fade down into this little darkness in through here yeah that looks good and then oh we're going to use this same brush for the next step oh i want this one to cross over here crossing your um petals over those the neighboring stem also adds a whole bunch of natural element to it so if you're close to a stem and you want to kick it up a notch cross over it a little bit and that's going to really help to add some great dimensional elements but be mindful keep these these edges wiggly i keep having to catch myself because i keep wanting to do them smooth but i'm well we can we've got another step coming that will help us to enhance the wiggle on the edges of those um petals but once you've got the shape on your petals i think i'm doing pretty good in through here just adding a little bit more here and there and everywhere to tell my my story of the shape of my my petals once i've done that we're going to use this same brush for the next step so yeah that's looking pretty good so you can just wash and dry that small brush and get ready for the next step all right so we're gonna do for the next step is we are finishing our petals and we're going to do that with highlights so i know i didn't really do a whole heck of a lot to these ones over here because they don't really need much we're going to just add a highlight and poof they're going to be done but this is going to be our our flower that is really in the main focal area so again i'm going to use the same colors i'm going to be using white my peach my magenta and maybe that's probably it if i use any other colors i'll let you know or at least i'll try to i'm going to use my small brush and really i'm just adding the highlights the sunshine the this is going to tell you exactly where the tips of all of these little leaves are or these petals are this is where i can add extra little edges if i don't feel if it's too uniform or i feel like i want more wiggle to it this is where i'm going to do it so i'm going to start with just white on my brush i've got some white paint on my brush i really want this right hand side to be the lightest so i can take this and just kind of wiggle it along those edges i'm going to add a really bright highlight onto this edge and through here i'm going to pick up now white and magenta to get myself a nice little pink color um if i mix my white and my magenta together that's going to give me this beautiful little pink color that i can use especially on this right hand side and again my biggest goal here is to make sure that this right hand side speaks of the sunshine and the highlight and the the brightest areas of my of my petals and you can see right now i'm doing a lot of wiggle with my with my brush getting these real bright little highlights on the edges of these of these petals and then sometimes you can just kind of rub your brush into kind of allowing it to blend into the neighboring area sometimes you might have to pick up some of the original background color of that particular petal you can just kind of feel it and and and bend it and twist it and shape it the way that you need to but i really want these right hand ones to be nice and light so i am adding a lot of the magenta and white to these few ones over here to get the that highlight on them and i'm just going to kind of alternate the colors the white magenta and the peachy color sometimes i'm going to use i already kind of pre-mixed myself a little bit of pink on the fly so those will be the colors that i'm going to be using throughout this i'm going to try and call them out as i do it but sometimes i know i just go and pick up colors and forget to tell you so i've got the really i want to get the this wiggle happening on the edges of these these petals to make sure they really stand out and you can you can see them really really well and if you want to you can of course add extra little edges here and there right now i've just got the um the white that i'm utilizing i don't want these to be really white over here so i'm going to pick up some of that that peach and magenta to get make sure that i don't over highlight this left hand side that can really easily happen so as you're going about it if if you know sometimes i recommend standing back from your your painting at looking at it from a distance because what can happen is you're working at and you're like oh my god i love this this little highlight it's bringing this petal right right to life and before you know it you've done that same highlight all over the entire the entire flower now it just looks like the light source is coming from every every angle it are all you know all the way around when in essence it should just be coming from over there so if if you feel yourself sometimes almost having too much fun that that's usually a good sign that you might be getting lost in your painting and walk away that's what happens to me i know i i know it happens to me all the time i'm just going about i'm like oh my god oh my god i'm having fun i'm having fun i'm having fun i'm having fun oh crap i've painted the whole thing a color that i didn't want to because i was just having too much fun so just you know be mindful of where your fun level is and just kind of um know that you might need to step back every now and again to to control yourself and again i'm just really um right now kind of making sure i've got a lot of a lot of um wiggle on the ends of these these petals i do want some additional highlights over here on the left hand side but i don't want it to go bright bright bright like that right hand side so i picked up magenta and white and this is going to help me to get little bits of highlights in through here and i don't need to cover the whole thing the whole edge of the petal but it gives me those extra bits of highlights without turning it that light over there so that's one way to control it never just have only white on your brush make sure that whenever you're doing the highlight for that particular area that you've got white plus something else on your brush and that will ensure that you don't bring it into that vibrancy of the other side that is supposed to be lighter than um lighter than the side that you're working on so you know there's a couple of those little tricks and again if you can try and keep the the wiggle to the end of these uh leaves that's going to help to tell the the story of this particular flower these carnations they can come in any color you want i used to know a florist who had buckets and buckets and buckets of these flowers some that were naturally dyed or naturally colored during their growth process and then others that they would stick in buckets and put dye in the bucket so they could turn them any color they wanted for any holiday so there'd be green ones for for st patrick's day and there'd be red ones for valentine's day and there'd be all different kinds of colors for any occasion of the year that you wanted so you could make these into any color you want carnations come in a rainbow of colors so i was just you know going for the a nice pretty pink one but you could certainly go for whatever kind of color variation that you want and i'm just having fun adding my highlights you can get this into whatever intensity you want i'm probably going to stick my head back a little bit more now so i can make sure that i've got some of these beautiful edges on these um ones coming in through here i want this to look like it's kind of sinking into this one and maybe this one is cupping like that so you can really you know visually get this to look in whatever way you want i'm just having oh i have black on my brush on the light side yikes that was a yikes that we can magically make go away i think a little bit of water a little bit of finger yeah it's all gone now but i'm just going to keep adding my little bits of of bright highlight in through these edges making sure that it reads as much sunshine i can't believe how much i'm using my finger i don't really mean to do that it's just it's getting away from me today but you can see i'm continuing to just add these these little wiggles to these edges to make sure that i've got some beautiful highlights in through here i'm almost there i'm feeling i'm feeling the light is coming from over there sometimes it takes a minute to to get it there but once you've got it there i do want to add some on the little um petals down below so i'm going to just kind of get these ones the way that i want to and then i'm going to move down there real quick and just get a couple of those added on there yeah here we go i've got the underside of this one showing nice there's a couple little pops of these little highlights here so i'm going to just go up top i know i want this one to be a little bit lighter and brighter so i'm really not going to do a whole heck of a lot to these at all just going to kind of add little bits of the edges of those flowers the little petals maybe it's just catching a tiny bit of the sunshine in through there i'm gonna pick some of that magenta back up and again it's more about just making sure that you have full coverage on these little um pieces that are coming off the sides and that it tells the same story that the light is coming from over there so just adding a touch of the little bits of the little ripply little petals at the top we've got a couple in through here i don't just want white but i do definitely want to make sure that i've got some bright little bits that will show the the edges of those petals and again you can keep tweaking yours as much as you want i'm feeling like mine's pretty pretty good right now like it's telling enough of the story that i want it to tell so i'm feeling like i'm ready to move on to the next step i might tweak it a little bit more but it's pretty good for me right now so we are going to be using this small brush for the next step so once you've got your beautiful petals as perfect as you want them to be you can wash and dry this small brush and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're doing the first layer of our dragonfly body we're going to use our small brush and we're going to use just blue paint so what i'm going to do is i am loading my brush with blue paint and i'm going to give you a couple of markers and then we're just going to do a line and then we will connect the dots and then we'll make a shape and it'll look like a dragonfly body by the time we're done so what i've done is i'm going to come up well i'm putting it where it's going to be relative to my flower if your flower is somewhere way different than mine then you may want to put it somewhere else i'm going to be putting mine a little bit maybe an inch and a half to two inches above the center of my um flower in the direction of the flower direction so my flowers tip like this so i'm gonna go about an inch and a half to two inches away from there make myself a little bit of a dot then i'm going to go diagonally this way and i'm going to come maybe about a half of or maybe about an inch away from the edge of my canvas and make myself a dot now i'm going to connect these two with a slender line it doesn't have to be perfectly straight but you want it to be on the skinnier side because we're going to be shaping it in a minute so right now this is just kind of giving us the the center um area of of the whole structure so once i've got that i want my um tail to look almost like it's coming up a little bit at the end or have a little bit of a bend to it so when i go to shape this this is going to be like my pointiest kind of area i'm going to make it a little bit thicker in through here as i come down here and then we'll put the body on in through here and then our head is going to go here so i'll show you what i'm talking about so i'm going to start at the end of my tail and that's going to be the skinniest part about trying to keep my hand out of the way and then i'm going to bring my line almost in a downward not much we don't need much movement or much shape on this at all just a little tiny curve will be just fine so once i've got it like that then i just kind of clean it up on the other side so i'm just kind of cleaning it up and i'm going to just stick it up a teeny tiny not up but a little bit at an angle at that edge just a itty-bitty bit not much at all something like that and then as i get towards the upper part of it i'm going to thicken the top side of the line that's going to give me the illusion of a bend in that seemingly straight line that we just made so i'm just thickening up kind of the top side of it and again it doesn't have to be much maybe um to the width of like a quarter of an inch or so and your line doesn't even have to be perfectly clean because we're going to be adding a lot of elements to it in a little bit anyways and if you don't get the curve that the little bit of a bend in this don't don't worry about it it'll you know it'll all work out in the in the long run the i'm going to put the head on first so that way we kind of had a idea of where the body is going to go my head is actually going to be a little bit of an oval going towards my flower so something like this from that dot that we made maybe the size of like a p doesn't have to be big at all and then my body is going to be maybe about i would say an inch and a half to two inches um long so something like this it doesn't it bumps up a little bit from the um from this from the tail part but not much just a little little tiny bit in through there and dragonflies come in all different colors and shapes and sizes too so if yours doesn't come out exactly like mine it's okay they they i think i read that there's like 3 000 different species of dragonflies and that they've lived perhaps millions of years so they are strong and sturdy little insects that have withstood the test of time so i'm going to just kind of bump this out a little bit i don't need it to be much more than the um much more than the width of the head so something like this and then i'm just going to color it in blue so once you've got your body shape on we are going to use the same brush for the next step but you're going to want to wash it and dry it and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're putting ourselves on some dainty little dragonfly legs so i'm going to use my small brush i'm going to be using black and white paint and water so i can get these little tiny almost like translucent little skinny lines um i think the dragonfly has six legs i'm hoping i'm right i think i really am right so they have little tiny ones up in the front kind of like a medium length one almost like where a normal person's arm would be and then um some longer ones where our legs would be so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take my small brush and i'm going to water down some of my black paint so it is like an ink consistency if not even thinner this is going to give me good control on the tip of my brush i really want this to be a nice skinny line so the thinner my paint is the more moisture will be held in my bristles which means i can have it have a longer brush stroke without having to reload so i also take my brush and i spin it on the side of my palette so my brush is nice and pointy so once you've done that what you can do is i'm going to have my front legs there think of these as just little tiny details i'm gonna have my front legs kind of near the the neck area i'm feeling like my brush isn't pointy enough like i'm nervous to do that first stroke hold on let me see if i've got a a pointier brush i don't want to go ahead and do that first stroke and then him look like he's got you know the biggest leg in the world i still want a number one but i feel like my brush is a little frayed hold on a second that might work better hold on hold on hold the phone this is what you do when you're when you get getting ready oh yeah that's going to work better when you're getting ready to make your first mark on a skinny skinny tiny line you want to have a nice pointy brush so that's good that that looks like it's going to work for me okay so i've got teeny tiny lines i think they have almost like um two uh joints so i'm gonna go kind of down forward and then down again like that and then i'll do another one at a slightly different angle so you can see both of them like that yeah that works i was a little nervous there that i wasn't going to get a nice skinny line for you and then i'm going to do a similar ones about a little bit further down almost i'm going to call it where the shoulder is so i'm going to come down to the back like that maybe these are going to be a little bit longer so i'm going to go out a little bit further then it's going to come down with like a little claw sensory thing on the edge i'm gonna do another one that would be coming out the other side of the body and again just maybe at a slightly different angle so that way it looks pretty natural maybe something like this and if you um if your lines end up being a little bit wider than you want them to be what you we're gonna add a little bit of a light highlight to them in a second and that will allow you to make them look a little bit more slender plus the wings are going to be on top of them later too so that can help as well so then this is going to be the longer ones which are going to be the back legs so maybe a little bit longer like that like this is the knee this is the bottom part something like that and then we'll go forward with a little claw or sensory thing on the edge and then i'll do my second one at a little bit different of an angle maybe something like that those tiny lines they're gonna they get you then i'm just wiping my brush off and uh washing it and i'm gonna pick up a tiny bit of watered down white paint and i'm gonna add little bits of highlights just to add a little dimensional element to this so i'm really just streaking in tiny little white spots wherever you want it doesn't have to be anywhere in particular unless you have a area that you feel needs to um be minimized then you can just add that little bit of a white highlight to it and then we're going to use the same brush for the next step so you can just wash it and dry it and get ready all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're finishing the dragonfly body and head i'm going to use my small brush i am using black blue yellow and white and how i'm going to do this is i'm whenever i look at these type of insects or beetles or anything that has that almost a shell as an exterior as i feel that the dragonfly does i think of it like armor and every little piece has a little dark shadow in between it or underneath it so i'm going to start with black and almost make my little sections for the armor of the dragonfly so i've got and i'm using my watered down black so i have good control so what i'm going to do is i'm in essence going to give i'll start at his head and then i'll work my way back so i'm going to give myself a little bit of a section around the back of the neck i think they it's going to have some little dark spots on the top and really you can have fun with the um assortment of sections of your armor but if you want it to have a good dimensional element i'm going to give it uh the top make sure that i have the top of the back up here and then everything's going to have a little bit of a curve to it to give the illusion of a um of a rounded type object so i'm just going to put a little bit of a stripe down the center of the back that i'm going to give myself a couple of little armor sections going in through here maybe i've got a little bit underneath the belly and then down the tail i'm just going to do these little curved lines maybe every inch or so something like that i think i've i i'm gonna end up making my tail a little bit wider when i um put the colored colored part on because it looks a little narrow right now but i'm going to add a touch of black underneath here this is going to add up that shadowy dimensional element to it and if you want to you can certainly widen it if you need to but i think when i add the light colors on the top that will help yeah that looks nice so i've got my separation of my um armor areas so now i'm going to do i'm going to wash and dry my brush and i'm going to start building the lighter sections so i said i was going to use yellow and blue i'm going to make myself a cool like a neat teal kind of color so i'm using yellow and blue and i'm just kind of mixing them together to get this really pretty i i just see it a lot in dragonflies my sister has a dragonfly tattoo um because i dragonflies they they symbolize a lot of different things for people's strength and moving forward and change and all kinds of beautiful um symbol symbolization goes into this but anyways my sister has one on her leg that means a real lot to her and it has these teal colors in it so we're gonna we're gonna honor my sister a little bit here so i did yellow and blue and i'm gonna put a tiny bit of white into it so i can get this really pretty color into here and i'm just really adding these nice streaks into it i know that i want to have some in through the face i'm going to have some coming up the bottom of this belly part i'm going to have a whole lot on the tail the blue is acting as a beautiful under color for me it's it's really adding a nice dimensional element to it so now that i've got my pretty teal on there i'm going to pick up white without washing my brush so i still have that that teal type color and i'm going to start adding these pops of i'm going to call them the the highlights and the glow on on the dragonfly itself so just adding maybe some on the front where it's going to be lit up by the sunshine down the spine on the spine i don't know if it's the spine but the um top of the back somewhere in through here i'm definitely going to add a bunch on the tail and you can see i'm going in between those sections so adding it to the top of each section i haven't reloaded my brush i'm just kind of using the remnants on my brush like this and like this and then i think i'm gonna lighten up these sections just a little bit i'm just using the remnants on my brush right now it is working out really well for me so you can you know you might find that you need to reload yours or add any kind of um additional colors maybe you want yours a different color than mine maybe you want yours pink to be complimentary to your um flower but after you've got your your beautiful dragonfly all nice and colorized and he's got this beautiful highlight on the on i think what would be the eye and the face and the on the back we are going to be using this same brush for the next step so once you've got this all nice and done i'm just adding a bit more a bit more of my light color in through here but once you've got yours as dimensional as you want we are going to be utilizing the same brush yeah that looks pretty um so you can just wash it and dry it and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are painting the wings on our dragonfly i'm going to be using my small brush and the colors i'm using are white yellow and black and how i'm going to do this is i'm going to first do a really light translucent kind of sketchy outline for my wings and then i'll show you how to color them in because to the best of my knowledge dragonfly wings are usually pretty translucent um so you can see through them i know that there are some with colors in their wings but we're going to kind of try and go for a nice translucent one so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take a little bit of my white with a touch of yellow and a little bit of water and water it down so i'm just going for a really thin paint right now uh very fluid so i can emulate these nice sketchy lines and i don't have to worry too much if because i'm using a lot of water in it it will be see-through it's going to be more vibrant when it's wet but when it dries i'm on the safer side because it will be more see-through and then we can just add to it so water down white and yellow i want this to be a very full dragonfly and take up a lot of space so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to just kind of mark the tips of my top two wings and then we'll build everything off of that so the wings are going to come out of where the spine is there's two that you know the top there's two sets there's a set that comes out the top and then there's a set that comes out off the bottom of this main shell area so i want this to be pretty far out so i'm going to bring the tip of this wing to about here then what i'm going to do is i'm going to in essence kind of measure how far i just did that because the one on the right side should be a little bit longer because it's closer to us so i'm gonna say okay here's my brush and that is about that long my other one i want to be coming out in this direction and i want it to be a little bit longer than that so i come from the spine i'm going to go up in kind of a diagonal and i think it would be right about here is where my second one is going to go so what i'm going to do i still have some of that light color on my brush so i'm just going to kind of take from this dot and bring it back to the spine you don't want it too too straight of a line so give it a little bit of a curve if you can not much but just a little bit and then you're going to do the same thing for here it's going to go in front of the face the little dragonfly face and you're going to come and bring it right somewhere in through there and then i'm going to bring this and curve it and it's going to come about i would say a third of the way down the dragonfly's back something like that so i'm going to bring it around this corner something like this and then you can bring it back up and it doesn't have to be perfect because these wings can come in different shapes and sizes and colors and all that good stuff you just kind of want the two sides to look similar to one another like they would belong to the same the same dragonfly so i'm going to bring this one in a similar kind of direction maybe something out here and then bring it up in front of this petal area something like that so then my next set of wings is going to be just a little bit away from the first one somewhere like that i want this to come out maybe just a little bit further so something like in through there so i can go ahead and connect these two something like this and bring it down and around and it's going to come to the back area in through here and then again you can kind of measure this one if you want to to see how long that one is and then you want to make the other one a little bit longer and and again kind of a similar format or shape to it so again i'm bringing it down in through here and i want a little bit oh i lost my mark i lost my mark i thought i knew where it was let's see i think i see it but i just want to make sure that i do in fact see it so i think somewhere and through there and i'm going to make sure i have a little bit of a of a bend i keep i keep losing my mark i think i'm somewhere into there and then i'm going to go ahead and make this this bottom wing something like this and again you can see i'm just doing loose sketchy lines because what we're going to do now that we've got our shape on there yeah that looks pretty good is i'm going to take that same color and i'm going to brighten up the edges and then just bring these little streaks of almost like they almost look like spider webs to me so i've got white watered down white on my brush right now it could be white and yellow but more more on the white side the light is over there so that's where the brightest part of my wings is going to be so a little bit of water down white i'm just kind of rubbing in this almost translucent color along the edges and then i can just bring these little tiny streaks in through the actual wing itself i'm going to do that to this one as well just these little tiny translucent streaks but again i want the edge to be the brightest this little tip at the edge that's going to have the most light or the most white on it because it's being lit up by that light source and then when you come on to the opposing wings over here it's going to be the right side in through near the body that gets the brightest area to it so i've got the most white on my brush right now and if you feel like your white is too solid and you can't see through it then you want to add a little bit of water to your brush and that's going to help you to almost pull it out in this translucent type fashion and then i'm just going to take my brush with the remnants on it and just whisp in a couple of these little uh almost geometric type lines throughout the wing itself so it's almost so it looks nice and translucent and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to wash my brush real quick and i'm going to put a tiny bit of watered down black paint on my brush i found a lot of the dragonflies i was looking at had this little black edge to the top of their wings so i'm gonna i'm gonna put that there i'm not quite sure what the significance is of it so i'm gonna put a little tiny black edge along the edge of the tops of these wings something like that something like this and i'm going to do it to all four of the wings and then of course you can modify this as much as you want you could make these wings more intense if you wanted with more color in them or more shape to them whatever is visually appealing to you feel free to bring this into your visual reference our visual pleasure point and then we have one more step to go it's going to be with this small brush so once you've got your beautiful dragonfly on here you can wash and dry your small brush and get ready for the next step alright so we are on to the final step this is the final step of every painting which is to sign it i usually sign mine in the bottom left or the bottom right i'm going to use my small brush i'm going to use black paint and i think i'm going to sign this in the bottom right because i don't want to take away from my my dragonfly so i'm signing it in the bottom right with my initials you could certainly use your first name or the date or a symbol whatever you want to be your identifying mark is totally fine it's your painting you sign it whatever way you'd like to and that is going to conclude this painting i hope you enjoyed the process i hope you painted yourself a beautiful flower with a delightful insect coming near it and i look forward to painting and sipping with you again sometime [Music] you

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 70,068

Keywords: how to paint, paint and sip, acrylic, painting, tutorial, beginner, simple, easy, painter, michellethepainter, sip and paint, class, step by step, learn to, how to, paint, sky, landscape, realistic, peaceful, beautiful, best, top, instructions, black, ontop, country, on, white, flower, floral, single, one, large, up, stem, leaves, stamen, yellow, green, center, open, stunning, plant, nature, natural, petals, petal, summer, day, six, legs, dragonfly, inspirational, carnation, pink, insect, flying, flight, over, wings, sun, four, pretty, bulb, mauve

Id: lrQ58Lw4h4s

Length: 81min 8sec (4868 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021