 Hello and welcome to my YouTube channel. I'm Sandy Olnock and I'm going to be making cherry blossom branches today My cherry blossom theme this week was inspired by this I was on a walk recently and saw one of our cherry blossom neighborhood trees got cut down I posted on Facebook and asked if anybody knew what happened to that poor tree and one of my girlfriends said oh I was the one that called it in it fell down in the wind so that big beautiful tree is gone But I take pictures of it all the time. So I thought I'll do cherry blossoms this week in its honor I've pulled out my hex chart to figure out what colors I want to use and notice that those Ones running in the middle and then up into the orangey types of colors Those are all more of the peachy Salmonie colors with the cool colors around them. So there's worms in the middle Want to be careful and use them sparingly if you're going to do cherry blossoms because they're generally cool colors So I'm going to use one warm color and the rest will all be cool in this And begin by sketching the branch very lightly with the chisel nib of a light gray pen and you can go lighter than this I just wanted to make sure you could actually see what I was doing And I'm trying to mimic the style that I love so much and just I'm not loose enough to do it in Sumi art and in Chinese painting where they just make these lovely branches that are Just it looks like they don't even make any effort at all at making these Gorgeous elegant branches with a paintbrush and with inks and watercolors And I don't know how to do that, but I thought maybe I'll try it in Copic markers and see I'm using the chisel nib to continue drawing these because when you use the Brush nib you may have noticed that you get a thick thin line So unless you're really skilled at using very light consistent pressure You don't end up with a Line that looks more like a branch like these so the chisel nib can actually do that especially if it's a little dry So pick your dryest marker and put it to work Make sure you cross some of the branches over top of each other too so that not everything is looking like it's going Left to right sideways out from the main branch because branches just crisscross all the time We're going to layer the blossom colors on top of each other I'm going to start with an RV one zero move to an RV zero two and then I'll jump into a warm color Because these two are going to be very cool colors, and then I'll go back in with another cool But notice that I'm making blobs. I'm not drawing flowers You don't need to draw flowers at this point if you're making one that's smaller than this This is a full sheet of paper that I'm working on and eight and a half by eleven You're making a really small one. You're going to scale the flowers down So you'll scale your your drops down your droplets of ink But you still don't want them to look like polka dots polka dots Are not really going to look all that great They're not going to blend with each other and not that we want this to look blended But they're not going to look like they belong together like the whole thing is going to look like It's a scattered bunch of polka dots basically So make them into actual shapes just make them scale down smaller So now I'm putting in the RV zero two I'll just keep adding color to it and I'm leaving some of the lighter color showing as I add The darker color and with each of the darker colors I'm making sure I vary the size of the the blossoms because that's going to help to Tell the viewer's eye even if they don't understand what they're seeing That the branches are full of flowers facing different directions But sometimes when a flower is facing towards you, it's got one bit of mass But if it's looking upward to the sky, you're only seeing the sliver of the side of it You don't see much of it at all. So the different sizes of the blobs can really help That's why polka dots don't work as well as Just having different sized blobs So get them get these on your branches and Don't make them too much like You know sticks that are outlined with dots You want to make them look very loose let some of the flowers just kind of flounce around a little bit Here's where I'm adding the warmer color and you can see this is more of a salmon type of color than the other colors that the other pinks And I'm going to go over this with something that's more purpley So that's going to tone down the coolness of it. It's going to give me that push pull From warm to cool and I love when you can get both of them to work well together I've had a question that's been coming up from a couple of people Which I thought I'd answer while I'm sitting here doing all these dots Which is why I'm not using stamps very much anymore I've talked about that in terms of the changes that I've been making to my channel And I think during 2022 maybe this is probably one of the best times that I've made a change and It turned out to be good for the times because I want to teach you things that you can make Because you can do this. This is a piece of paper and markers. You already have the markers But I want to teach you things that you can make you don't have to go out and buy a stamp for I want to teach you how to draw things and that's what I love to do here and I I want to encourage you to step out and try drawing things that maybe you hadn't thought of trying before And every time I have showed stamps for years I felt like I was discouraging that so I want to give you the chance to try something beautiful like this that you can do You can make a beautiful branch like this. I promise you it's going to be gorgeous If you do this, I would love for you to tag me as well on social media Over on instagram. I'd love to see what you are making So here is adding the more purplish color. This is the rv17. It's got a much more purpley feel to it and you can see the The temperature difference as I'm moving across the entire branch Because it's much cooler on the left than it is on the right That's what I mean by temperature of colors if you want to go back and watch my My whole video on warm and cool greens that might help to explain things a little bit better as well But just adding more and more deep colors on this works. Now, there's one color I actually didn't end up filming you'll see it in a minute an rv69 because I wanted a few spots I'm really dark because these flowers do have dark centers And I added just a couple dots of rv69 to it It's just not filmed. So you can see those very dark dots So now we're going to add to the branch and I chose a number six gray because this six gray is super dry Look at what it does to that branch I can kind of zoom across the branch that's there stopping and starting to allow Some of the flowers that got drawn in front of the branch to still remain in the front And look at that cool texture. It gives you I'm like, oh, this is perfect great use for those markers that are kind of dry And then I switched it around and got the brush nib out and started making More of calligraphy type of lines in there. Let's Some of them be thick some of them be thin let them start and stop in different places It gives you the freedom to go around some of the flowers that might be in the front of your branch so it gives them dimension And it also gives it that that feel of those ink paintings I mean not completely But it gives that sort of looseness to it, which is really what I was looking for I wanted to create something that had that sort of elegance When you get out to smaller branches on any tree you want the branches to get consistently thinner out to the edges So if you need to use the chisel nib of your dry marker If you want your branches to be a little bit darker than the original color Because I used a lighter gray here. I wanted these to be stronger branches So you can use the the chisel to create those And then I went in with an even darker marker. I really wanted some strength in the color. So I used a number 10 And you can choose how How bold you are if you're willing to go that far or if you want to stop Sooner than that as well on the flower colors. You can stop much sooner than I did. I wanted nice strong color in mine When you get the branch done, you'll get to a point where you probably need to fill in some spaces Either your flowers just look a little awkward. They look a little more like a stick with flowers glued to it Fill in some of those areas so they start to feel like flouncy types of branches But don't make them really solid But make them feel kind of natural Now I want to let you know that all of my flower classes are on sale this month in may of 2022 There's always something on sale in the sale category But I thought if you're watching this video, you might be interested in more flowers. There's some copic wildflower classes There's all different kinds. Well all different kinds of flowers. I'll let you go look for yourself There's going to be a link in the doobly-doo So all week on social media, I'm going to be doing cherry blossoms in different medium So if you want to see some watercolor some other markers some water-based markers, maybe check that out And I'm going to have a tiny tutorial showing you how to draw flowers in different directions So they look like they're facing up facing down facing left or right That will be a tiny tutorial. They will also end up in the app shortly when I get the app updated On friday This is what I'm going to be making and it's going to help be helpful to know The information in the tiny tutorial so you'll know how I'm making those flowers go different directions And that's it for today. I hope you'll join me in Making some beautiful cherry blossoms this week and I will see you on social media and then back here on friday