 flashback to one of my most exciting, as well as panic-stricken days as an artist. I had gone out plein air painting with a group and we had divided up after we met at the very beginning and went off to decide what we were going to paint for the day. I was apparently more excited about my supplies than anything else because I took way more pictures of those than the flowers, but there you go. These were blooming and I had decided to paint them and began getting myself set up, did my first wash of my painting when up behind me on the hillside there was a wedding getting started. They were kind of rehearsing things, getting themselves ready and I just started painting and ignoring all of that, just sit here and do my first wash of the painting. And it was coming out okay. It looked like it maybe had some possibility. I wasn't really sure how it was going to come out, but somebody from the wedding came down and she said, I am the mother of the groom and I want my son and his wife to have this painting as a memory of the day. What'll it cost? And I could only think to price it high enough that maybe she wouldn't buy it so I wouldn't feel the pressure of, oh my gosh, what if I screw it up? So I said $300 and she pulled her wallet out right then and there and she dropped $300 on me with the painting even unfinished. Fortunately, it came out all right in the end because I was really worried about that fact and I went back to have lunch with all the other plein air painters and was just full of myself. I was so excited that I had sold a painting. So today in honor of that moment as an artist selling a painting to a total stranger we're going to talk about dogwoods. I'm going to talk about how to draw a dogwood and a little bit about maybe coloring them, but I'm really going to focus on this dogwood drawing that I did to put in my own bedroom. I'm doing some revamping around the house and I needed something really peaceful in black and white for that room. So let's get started. When we think of dogwood blossoms, we think of a dogwood tree, we think of big white flowers, big pink flowers, and that's not actually what they are. Dogwood flowers are the little things in the center of each of those and those petal-like things, the big white and pink things are called bracts and there are four bracts on dogwood. So we're going to put the center flowers in the center of each one of these. I'm not going to do any crazy angles or perspective just for this quick sketch and then they have four bracts around them. So I'm just going to sketch them in with oval shapes that join somewhere in the center. But when I start to sculpt those bracts, I need to look at what the shape of them is. They have a notch on the outside edge, which if you're drawing them in perspective, you won't always see and in the black and white drawing I'll show you in a minute, there's plenty of them that disappear and then others that become more prominent depending on the perspective. In addition to those bracts on the outside, another part of the shape that makes them distinctive is the skinny part in the center because it leaves openings where you see dark color typically underneath of it. Not all flowers or bracts have that, some do some don't, but when you have that in combination with the notches at the end of each of the bracts, that's what tells your brain this is dogwood because you're used to seeing that shape and those colors and those notches and that small opening between each of the bracts. So I'm going to create each of those and then since these are overlapping flowers, I'll erase just for the time being a little of the one that's in front so I can remember that that's the one in the front. The coloring for these two dogwood are over in the TinyTutorials class in ArtVenture. And ArtVenture is a free platform for my art community and the TinyTutorials class within that is only $3.99 a year. There are currently well over 100 TinyTutorials in there. Lots to learn for only $4 a year, so sign up for that if you would like. But the reason I'm showing you this here is because I want you to see the difference between when you have lines around an object like the dogwood on the left versus the reality you can get when you can avoid those lines, not have those lines in your artwork. And you're going to see a lot of that in the pencil version, the graphite version of the dogwood. I wanted to make something that would bring back that memory of the moment when I sold that painting. And I didn't want to paint it again because I knew I couldn't do the same thing again. But I did take another photograph from that day and turn it into a graphite drawing. My bedroom has all neutral colors in it. I wanted it to be a very calm, very quiet kind of place. I have insomnia and I just thought if I make a room that is just all very calm colors, that will help. And one wall is going to be all graphite drawings. And this one is going to be added to it. I just wanted something new. And thinking about that day that I saw that painting, I thought that would be a really nice memory to have. Like, yes, people like my work. Even when it's a hot mess and it's not finished, they'll pay me for it. So that makes me feel good. So I decided to make this drawing and it is an 8 by 10. And it's on Arch's Hot Press watercolor paper. And if you've been around here a while, you know that one of my favorite papers to draw on is Stonehenge drawing paper. I really like that stuff, but it has more texture than Hot Press watercolor paper does. So I can get a little more detail with this paper than with the Stonehenge. On Tuesday, I did this drawing. If you've seen that video, if not, I will put a link to it in the doobly-doo. That one focused on a lot of dark areas. And I wanted to do something as a complement to that to try to see what it'll do with light areas. And that's where the dogwood came in. Now this is one of the spots where you can really see what not having lines can do for a drawing. I've erased the line around the place where those two bracts join. And then put a little bit of it back in and I'm using a cotton swab just to move the color around a little bit. Not trying to create a line in between those two shapes. Because these two white bracts are on top of each other. In that particular case, that particular bract, there was no gap in the middle for the dark area in between. The outside edge where the notch is, I wanted to get rid of that line. So I again erased that using a kneaded eraser to just lift up that line so I didn't have a hard edge there. And then when you don't have a line, you need to decide which side of it is going to be the one to define the difference between those two areas. And here the bract had a dark shadow right around the notch. So that was going to define the difference between the bract on the left and the bract on the right hand side. So that one would be lighter and one would be darker. You can also do the same thing with color. When you put one color on one side of what a quote unquote line would be. And then the other color on the other side, colors can make a difference between those shapes when there are not lines. In your drawing, if you leave black lines in there or if you draw black lines in pen, and then you're just coloring in the areas on either side of them, it ends up looking like a drawing. And literally I had a printout, a black and white printout of the photograph that I was working from on my desk. And I also had the black and white drawing. And when it was finished, I almost couldn't tell the difference between the two of them if it weren't for size, because my drawing is bigger than the size of the printout that I had. They literally looked the same as there were no outlines around anything. And that really creates the realism that you might be looking for in your drawings. If you've been wondering, you know, is there some little thing I can do, get rid of those lines in the best way that you can. I've done this in alcohol markers, I've done this in all different kinds of mediums before, in trying to butt one color up against another, but I haven't really focused on how much it means to get rid of the line entirely. And especially when you're working on a white object, it's crucial. Look at the difference that happens as soon as I disappear the line between these two dogwood right there. That is what it normally looks like when you're looking at two white flowers or white bracts or two white objects next to each other. If they are the same value, then they're going to merge together. They're going to look like one shape. And that's where you need to get rid of the lines, especially in the lightest areas. When it comes to a dark that's next to a light. So here I've got a dark area that merges up against the edge of the dogwood. I can go plenty dark. I don't have to lighten that line at all because the dark shape is going to hide that line. It's going to make it disappear because the value of the area that I'm coloring in right here in the pencil is darker or as dark as the line itself. So erasing happens when you're in the light areas and you need to lighten those lines so that they disappear. And in mid-tone or dark areas, it just needs to be light enough that it disappears into the darks that you do create. It really depends on what kind of value you have. But throughout this drawing, I was trying to see how much I could get to a nearly 100% black. Down to right here, I'm using just the cotton swab to make something that's more of like a 3% or 5% type of gray color. So that I could get the full range. That's one of the things that makes it look more photographic is when there is a full range. Because that's what you see around you all the time. You see a full range of values. You sometimes perceive that as color. But I would challenge you to try doing something in black and white, whatever the medium is that you use. There are plenty of oil painters, water colorists, pastel artists, marker artists who will do before a finished piece. They will do a black and white study first. That will tell you where your deepest darkest values are and where your lightest values are. Because sometimes your eye gets confused when you're looking at color. And you can't really tell all the time what the value is if you're not used to looking for that. Because you're looking at color. You're seeing red and purple when actually if you turn it into black and white, those two may be exactly the same. But if you look at it in black and white, you'll start to notice that maybe your red needs to go darker when you actually do the finished piece. And your purple needs to go lighter because they're different values. And a value study will really help you to do that. In addition to having subtle value changes in your lights, you can have subtle value changes in the darks. And there was a lot of that that I did in the Harry Potter drawing. And I did some of that here in this one as well. Because there were layers and layers and layers of dogwood that were going deeper and deeper into the background. And there were even some branches that showed that went right across that. In some areas, the branches were light because they were closer to the outside of the dogwood plant. And then in the deep inner recesses of it, they look like dark branches. So, you know, there's all different kinds of ways that they'll get rendered. But putting darks into darks is a way to make a dark area more interesting. Instead of this whole area just going black, I can add in a really, really dark branch that goes across that area. And I end up with something that doesn't look like a big void. It looks like there's just more in there that we can just barely see. And adds a detail that, for the final drawing, is going to make the whole thing work better. As I'm working into it more, I'm adding a leaf that's even behind that branch. And just keep going deeper and deeper and deeper into the interior of the dogwood so that it just starts building that volume and that depth that I want to get in the finished drawing. The section of this that I dreaded the very most was this upper corner because the dogwood got smaller and smaller and smaller in the distance, which is something I wanted to include in the drawing because it made the whole sense of dimension increased that much more. But I had to start pushing those dogwood bracts further and further and further back. And they got darker and darker, but it didn't make them any less white by the time they were done. They were just tones and tones and tones that got deeper into shadow. So anytime you think, well, they're all white flowers. They all have to be white. No, they don't. And if you make them all a pure white, everything is going to fight for attention in the foreground. So I'm just using the pencil to build pressure slowly as I was getting toward the further and further reaches to make each one of those dogwood get deeper and deeper into the shadows. And it's scary sometimes because you think, oh my goodness, am I going too far? If you're working in graphite, you can just keep using your eraser and pulling more flowers back out. That's perfectly fine to do. And I did plenty of that as I worked through this. It's here I wanted to add a little bit of highlight onto one of those bracts, just something so that I would have a little better transition from the lighter ones that were in the foreground. The rest of that entire cluster is in the shadow, just that one piece I wanted to bring to the front. And I can do that by adding a little bit of detail. I'm increasing the width between each of the bracts as it joins into the flower to give that a little more sculpting of the shape, but just working back and forth with it so that I start to get a transition of tones as it gets deeper and deeper into the plant. Whatever the medium is that you're using, just keep adding deeper and darker layers. Now, there are some where you won't be able to back out of it the way you can with graphite, but you can just work slowly by adding a little bit by little bit by little bit and don't be afraid to put shadows within shadows and deepen those values even more. If you struggle with trying to figure out like, OK, have I gone far enough? Do I have enough detail in there? Do I have enough shadow? Have I pushed it far enough? And you're trying to look at your photo reference and you can't see what that color should be. Then send me a message. I'm over on ArtVenture all the time. If you've got a question on something like that, post your photo reference and your work in progress, and I'd be happy to try to help you with some color suggestions or value suggestions, areas that you might be able to strengthen something by adding just a little bit more to it. You can message privately over there if you're embarrassed to put your work out there, but I encourage you to put it out there publicly for the whole group because it is the kindest, most wonderful group of people you'll ever meet. They love seeing each other's works in progress and the things that we're learning as we each create different things in different mediums. Everybody's doing something different. You don't have to be a graphite artist or a marker artist or a watercolorist in order to share there. And there are people who watch the work from all different disciplines and they learn from that and can apply the same learning to their own work. So please do share there. It's just a great place to be. I am so enjoying the community that's building there and I hope that you will do so as well. If you've watched this far and you're not yet subscribed, I highly recommend you just get that taken care of. Tap on the subscribe button and the little bell beside it tell it to send you notifications for all videos. And if you're not a patron and you would like to be, there's a link to that in the doobly-doo down below where you'll get more from me. You can take classes from me. I teach over at art-classes.com on my website. Links for that and supplies and everything else including the Harry Potter video are in the doobly-doo which happens to be the description box underneath of the video. Please do join me again next week. I'll be back on Tuesday with another video tutorial. And until then, go create something every day. And have a great weekend. Bye-bye.