How to paint loose Forget me nots in watercolor - Day 14

Hello and welcome back to my channel today I am going to show you how to paint watercolor forget-me-nots And this is day 14 in our 30 days of watercolor flowers, so let's get started so I'm using a light blue wash and I'm creating these simple strokes that remind me of a cursive M or a cursive N So maybe there's an M across the top and an N across the bottom. That's more upside down They connect on one side There's white space in the middle gapping in some areas anything to Change it up a little bit to make the flowers look different is great I'm making certain bumps more pronounced and certain bumps more flat It just adds variety to the petals so that they don't all look the same Forget-me-nots are bunched together So what I'm doing is I'm creating like a center flower for each of the bunches so I'm going through and I'm spacing out a Few of the forget-me-nots that are more of a straight-on view of the flower And then I'm going to start layering flowers behind each one to start creating their little bunches So you'll notice throughout the video as some of the paint dries that I go in with a darker pigment of blue To define the centers of each flower and I do this in a really random and loose way I don't want it to be all the way around the center I want it to be you know, just a little bit here and there and this is going to really help define Where the center actually is because once we start layering these flowers behind each other it becomes a sea of blue And so giving that extra definition to the middle of the flower will help it so that they don't get lost so now I'm beginning the process of creating these little bunches and I'm just imagining these flowers half hidden Keeping in mind where the center would be and making sure to leave enough white space Now a reason this part can be tricky is because you want enough white space Between the bunches of forget-me-nots that you can tell that there are actually bunches and not just a whole sea of flowers But you don't want so much white space that it looks like they're separate bunches and not on one stem together so you have to You know define some white space in between But then at the same time filling the white space so there's not giant awkward gaps Okay, so I'm going to speed up the next little bit because it's quite repetitive but you can still see that I'm creating these shapes within these bunches and just trying to fill that white space and maintain the bunches and Remember to keep things random because it makes it more organic and we're also going to fill a lot of that white space with greenery Which will define our bunches even more Okay So for the greenery, I'm using a bright green color and I'm keeping my brush strokes really thin by using only the tip of my brush and you can see It's kind of funny watching this back you can see me thinking With my brush. I'll swipe over the paper without making brushstrokes Because I'm thinking about where I'm going to actually put a brush stroke next and I just always think that's really funny but I'm keeping it really light and Doing really thin small strokes. I'm wanting to remember where my bunches are. I don't want Random greenery sticking out or I don't want greenery that's going to a bunch But it's kind of makes the bunch look like it's floating like it's not connected to the main stem So just really thinking about the direction and the angle in which you're making your greenery so that it makes sense For the leaves. I wanted them to have kind of a wavy droopy look to them. So I kept it really Free flowing and loose when I was creating the leaf portion of this So the main thing I want you to take away from all of this is to just have fun My style is very loose and imperfect and I love it I feel like it takes away a lot of the stress of Making sure everything is exactly right because with watercolor if you make a mistake, it's really hard to fix it So making it loose and abstract is the best way to hide any quote-unquote Mistakes because there's no mistakes. It's exactly how you painted it. It's perfect so I'm just continuing to add that dark blue around the centers as every flower dries and Now I'm going through and adding a darker pigment of green To the leaves and the greenery again to add shadow and contrast and depth it's one of the most important parts at the end of any painting is to really go through and add in your shadowing in any type of contrast that you can and Probably the most important part of the forget-me-not is the bright yellow center and you're going to want to make sure that everything is Completely dry before you add the bright yellow center because you don't want any of the colors to blend into it you want it to stay bright and clean and bleed free and This is the distinguishable Trademark of the forget-me-nots. So even though you're painting in this loose style everyone will know that's exactly what you're painting and now I'm adding my forget-me-nots to my watercolor guide and I love the color that this adds to the guide and I cannot wait to add this to any composition Thank you so much for being here today with me as we painted forget-me-nots on day 14 of 30 days of watercolor flowers I can't believe we're almost halfway done I have really enjoyed this whole process so far and I can't wait to see you tomorrow for day 15. Bye