Hey guys, this is Matt Quarre from ControlPaint.com and today let's sketch flowers. Of the subjects that I have done in this little mini series, this is clearly the most complicated. Flowers are, woo, they're tricky, but they're also a really fun opportunity to be fluid and to be dynamic. If you really think about it, the shapes of a flower are kind of like big brushstrokes. They have this beautiful flow to them, this natural dynamism. They're really sort of energetic if you want to think of it that way. So in this video, I am doing two radically different approaches, as I think is important to do when you're studying. And the first one you see me doing here is a linear study. When you use a narrow mark like this, by definition, you're using contours. You're describing things in the way that a cartoonist would. You're using exterior lines, not form and tone. So you have to be choosy. You have to decide what's the most effective way to describe this very complicated shape with a relatively simple line. And as you saw, the very first marks I made were long and flowing. And I think if you're working with a narrow tool, the danger is that you get too detailed too quickly. So a gesture like this, it's essential to start with the long sweeping lines that define the, well, if you were a character, you'd be defining the pose. Flower doesn't really have a pose, but the idea is the same. You're defining the, well, the gesture. And then once you've established those large framing areas, then it's okay to get a little more specific, you know, do the little finicky details. But I'm going out of my way to keep these marks lively. And I'm doing that by trying to draw from the shoulder as much as I can and making, you know, as long and sweeping of marks as I'm able to. Clearly it's harder when you're dealing with physically small areas of the canvas, but utilizing what I call template, it makes it a lot easier. As you can see, I'm making long sweeping marks intentionally drawing beyond where I want to. But then I can just switch to the eraser tool and erase away those overlaps. It's a really fun way to work. Now I said the second one is going to be using a large wide charcoal. And I wasn't lying. The difference here though is that I'm still giving myself a little bit of a framework. I want to use these narrow analytical lines just to make sure I get everything in the right places. And now I'm going to start using templates and using a big wide brush. So here I'm making, you know, almost paint style strokes with this edge of the charcoal. I'm able to be large and gestural and loose because I'm doing it on template. Each stroke here is on its own layer. So then I can quickly switch to the eraser and kind of carve away those edges or lighten up the tone a little bit. And then I can switch back to the brush tool and start adding pigment again. If you're watching my layer stack, it starts to build up pretty quickly. And that's okay because I can flatten these all together once I'm done. Another thing to notice with this one is here I'm starting to have a little bit of tone modulation. There's some lighter grays and darker grays. Well, it's important to notice that I'm not actually changing the color on the brush. I'm not using the color picker. I'm never actually changing the color. What I'm doing is erasing away to kind of bring it back to the light color of the page. So really all I'm playing with is the intensity of the charcoal. And this kind of harkens back to that traditional charcoal drawing mindset. Where you have one very simple tool, two if you count the eraser. And that's all you have to work with. So if you need light areas and dark areas, you have to get creative and you have to use that eraser very gently to kind of bring out a full value range. It's not like when you have a whole bunch of different paint tubes and you can kind of pick different colors or different values. Instead, here we have a very limited set of tools. And so the problem solving becomes, well, how do you tell that rich story regardless? How do you make that full range of values, even though you're only actually using one color? And if you've ever drawn a pencil, you know all about this. This is not news to you. But I think a lot of people these days are skipping drawing with a pencil completely and going straight to working digitally. And if that's you, it's not immediately obvious to work this way. Watching me work this way might seem really limiting. Like why am I not picking colors? But I think the hidden takeaway in all this is that using very limited tools to create a rich image teaches you problem solving. I think if you practice a lot like this with a very limited set of options, once you then open yourself back up and have access to a rich palette of colors, I think you'll get more out of it. So even if you don't want flowers in your portfolio, I hope you'll like it. I hope this has shown how useful they can be just to try out technical exercises. Whether you do a linear drawing or a tone drawing, it's a really great challenge. So get out there and sketch some flowers and I think you're going to have a lot of fun. Thanks for coming to the site, guys.