In this webinar, learn the power of the circle with Laura Pennock.

Design #1

I'm gonna just go ahead and paint my circle right here. I'm using a 1/2" filbert and this is some TAG Red.

Next, I want to go ahead and I want to do a blossom. So I'm gonna load up some Kraze White. I'm gonna add a little bit of blue to that white and mix right on top of my one stroke. But then, I don't wanna just have a boring flower so I'm gonna grab some of this pretty purple-y color to mute that blue tip a little bit and give us something fun. We've got this great color and I already know I have a circle to work with! We can just come in and we can add these blossoms and you can do as many as you want. You can do a double push, gives you that really fun shape.

So then, I'm gonna grab a little filbert. We're going to fill in any little empty spot we have with these little leaves and what that does is it tells the circle story.

So now we're going for a #4 Loew-Cornell brush. We're just going to go around that red right there, give us a nice little ring around that, and then I'm gonna split that almost down the middle except that I want that little black triangle or the little open triangle that then I'm gonna paint black. And then this is fun to do, little stars or little hearts but of course little dots are just great so I'm gonna do that.

The most important thing when you're painting should be the thing that gets the most detail. So this little ladybug gets the most detail, it's gonna be what's on top and so it doesn't have to follow the circle story. So we can put fancy antennas, we can put really basic ones, whatever we want because the ladybug gets to break the rules.

So now, we get to finish telling our story. Our main character has shown up. I'm just grabbing some Kraze White here that we're gonna use for our detail work. I like to focus on any area that light will hit or that I wanna give a little love to. I know that the center of a flower is where insects go to get the pollen so we want to give some love there. I know that the circle is really important so I want to give some love there. And then maybe even add a couple teardrops in and we can even add a little swirl that goes down onto the eyelid.

I love white eyeliner so I usually add that. Our ladybug is super important so we can add just a few little highlights to her shell, make her look nice and round.

When you do dots for your flowers, it's better to just do the sparkles so that it doesn't look like it's snowing in your design. So here is our first design!

Design #2

So I'm gonna just load up this black, white, gray one stroke. This is the base for almost any grazing animal, okay? You can use this base to make a horse, it can be a moose, it can be a cow. What you have to focus on is getting the right ears and the right nose. We want that little bump on the nose and then we wanna have this little pouty lip there. So then we wanna go ahead and we wanna give him some nice little pointy ears for our rhino there. We're gonna draw the Nike sign which is gonna be the upper lid of his eye and by giving him that look, it's gonna make him so mad.

So I fill in his eye right and then I'm gonna give him a nice horn. I want this to look three-dimensional. Now we've got these 2 awesome horns. You can make them curvy, you can make them short and stubby and that's just going to tell a little bit more of the story of your rhino.

So I'm going to grab a little Protege 1/2" flat brush and blue and I'm gonna just add a little bit of water so in order to do that, I just want to make sure that my one stroking looks a little drippy but it's kinda gonna be more of a splash. Then we wanna create these little drips so we're gonna just bring little splashes all the way out and I'm just following my circle lines and this just creates something that's a little bit more intense.

Add in that lighter blue with the green edge and you can see that that's just kind of knocked back the intensity.

So I've got this ear going straight up so that this guy is paying attention. We can go ahead and we can add a couple little lines to show the fold of the skin that is attaching that ear to the head. Highlight some of those wrinkles and give it a couple little flicks.

The pupil is going to tell you more about his personality. I usually go for just a circle pupil because it makes it just a little friendly. I like to give him just a couple little wrinkles under his eyes so that we see the baggy nature of our rhino. Have that squarish jaw that's gonna make him masculine and strong, and then we're going to give him a little bit of a frown. 

We're gonna grab our white 'cause again white is light. So we can add one dot or even two little dots, and now he's a lot friendlier. So he's mean but he's not too mean.

Add one ring of red around the eye and now this guy, he's nice but he's also really not nice.

So now with these white dots, we can come in here and we could change this water in so many ways. I wanna make sure that we get the little splashy bits that are gonna tell it, and then I also wanna bring and drag some teardrops that are just messy teardrops. You can also grab and wiggle down and that creates an awesome water look as well. I did those little flicks in blue. I can also do some in white. This is something that I do to my work all the time 'cause I think it's beautiful.

And then we can highlight this guy. So anywhere that the light would hit--the top of things, the side of things, we can go ahead and we can add that little bit of white to it and we can definitely add white onto his horn which is just gonna brighten it up. 

Design #3 

I love to just take the extra two seconds to put in a little bit of color on the eyelid.

We are going to create our half circle and then I'm gonna just pull the center with the side of my brush. I want this to be the story of a sunrise. I am just doing little triangles.

So now we have this beautiful sun and we've got the fun color on the eyes, and then we get to decide what is happening. I'm gonna add a mess of pink. I am just shifting my one stroke and I'm just making this blotch of color.

I'm gonna use #4 Loew-Cornell that is the gold-handled again and I'm gonna grab the light and the dark green, so I'm one stroking with a round brush. 

We're gonna just capture this bush into the morning right there like that. And then we're gonna just grab green, load it up really nice and well and we're going to do teardrops. So we just pull these teardrops down. We're just doing little teardrops and bigger ones and we're pulling it. We're leaving a little bit of space in between so that we can see the texture and then while we have this, I'm gonna just add in a few little leaves in our flowers that are blooming underneath our beautiful bush.

I wanna take the existing load that I have on my brush--you can dip the brush in water if you want, if it's getting super dry--but you take that existing paint and then you go to yellow or you go to white and you just reload with that color, and then you come and you add teardrops right on top of the existing ones we already did. So we have the same color family, it's exactly the same, it's just shifted in tone just a little bit. And then we can go back in and add a few more little leaves to the bottom.

So I'm gonna just load up our white. You can add a face to the little sun or you can add details like little dots. I love doing a little row of dots along the edge. Put in a little cluster of teardrop line work kind of stuff and it can just live right here and create this little sunshine, sunrise princess right there. And then we can add those extra little dots that we love to be the little baby's-breath to kind of blend the transition from flower to bush, and then we can come in and we can add the little sparkly stars, shine marks to the sun.

Use our power of the circle to create a little center circle that's wiggly, and then a couple little lines around it. So center, jagged circle lines around it, wiggly jagged center lines around. This just ends up flowing on its own. These are all kind of pointed down. 

Take the time to put eyeliner and a little bit of lip color, but there we go.

Products Mentioned in the Webinar:

TAG 5/8" Filbert Brush
TAG Green
TAG Red
Kraze FX White
Loew-Cornell #4 Round Brush
KT Tape
Protege 1/2" Flat Brush
Loew-Cornell #3 Round Brush

If you missed the live webinar, you can watch it now in the video above or later on our YouTube channel. Thank you, Laura, for sharing your talents with us! Thank you to everyone who tuned in to the webinar. Click here to know our upcoming webinars.