This class is all about building life-long skills to help you achieve your own artistic vision! I will show you how to go from a photo to a painting with step-by-step real time instruction.

Using the provided image as reference, you'll learn how to use a grid system to draw our image with extreme accuracy. This skill can be applied to any photo you want to draw/paint in the future. Learning this technique is better than tracing, because it teaches your eye how to start seeing angles and proportions and how shapes relate to each other.

Next we'll use grayscale markers to figure out our values (lights and darks). Understanding values is extremely important for representational painters, as it creates the structure of our composition. This skill should be utilized in all future painting sessions, especially for beginners. Learning how to see lights and darks in the scene is crucial, even more important than color.

Finally, we will learn how to accurately enlarge our drawing onto a new piece of watercolor paper. We will draw and paint the scene step by step with accurate colors, but also have a little fun with color in the shadows.

Each step helps build important skills that you can use to transform your own photos to beautiful paintings.

Materials:

Graphite pencil
Drawing paper (something that can handle markers)
Ruler
Sharpie (or bullet point permanent marker)
Clear Acetate sheet (optional)
Painters tape or washi tape
Watercolor paper (I'm using Baohong Academy cold pressed)
Watercolor brushes - pointed round is great to start with, and anything that allows you to do fine detail. One of my favorites is Silver Black Velvet #12 and #8.
Watercolor Paint (mine are Daniel Smith)
- Manganese blue hue (you could use cerulean blue or similar light blue),
- buff titanium (if you don't have this, you can mix it with titanium white gouache, burnt umber, and yellow),
- ultramarine blue,
- amethyst genuine (any purple will work),
- deep scarlet (any red will work),
- lamp black

Want to dive deeper? Check out my other in-depth classes for drawing and painting nature:

Find me online:

Ramona Merk

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