10 Day Watercolor Challenge for Busy Creatives

1. Introduction: Are you someone who is looking forward to consistency in watercolor without pressure? If yes, then this class is for you. A brand new tend, Watercolor challenge for all busy creatives. Hi, guys, I am Rikon at an artist, instructor, mother, sketch teacher, and brand owner of vibrant parcels where we manufacture handmade sketchbook, artist way paints and much more. Recently, we have been blessed with a baby girl and she's around two months old. I really get very less time during the day and it's usually around ten to 15 minutes. When you have this less amount of time in your hand you stop over thinking just go with the flow. A very underrated benefit of participating in a challenge like this is you feel really motivated with each small win every day. This watercolor challenge begins by cutting smaller sheets from a larger paper to make the most of the available materials. Next, we take some time to understand the tools and supplies we will be using. From there, we move into the ten day watercolor journey with each painting designed to be completed in just ten to 15 minutes. The class is inspired by seasonal themes featuring a collection of N artworks, five inspired by spring and five by summer. Each painting is thoughtfully designed with its own unique composition and elements, allowing you to explore a variety of techniques and creative approach throughout the challenge. Spring paintings stand out with a wide range of vibrant sky color palettes capturing different moods and light while the summer artworks embrace a soothing cool blue approach inspired by this. Most of these paintings are designed to be completed within ten to 15 minutes with only a few taking slightly longer. Before each project, essential techniques such as color mixing, blending, perspective, and brush control are briefly introduced, ensuring that even Wigners can confidently follow along and enjoy the process. Finally, if you are in love with the beauty and expressive nature of watercolors, this class is the perfect place for you. Whether you are a beginner or someone looking too deep in your skills, I will be right here to guide you step by step through each painting. I can't wait to have you join me and create something beautiful together. 2. All you need: Look at all the materials which we are going to use for completing all these paintings. You can see that these are small size paintings and you can easily do them in ten to 15 minutes or sometimes even 20 minutes. It all depends upon the composition and the number of elements that we have in that particular composition. I would be using 100% cotton, 300 GSM arches paper. You can see that this is 15 into 30 centimeter. Now, I would be using 15 into 18 centimeter. You can have a pad like this or else go ahead and use a big sheet, cut out pieces out of that, and then start with the painting. I will use a white ceramic palette for mixing my colors as I can see through all the colors which I want to use in my painting. There is a custom palette like this, which I use for all my paintings. It has a lot of colors. In case I use any of the other shades, you will see them on my palette as we progress through all the paintings. Here, there are various watercolor tubes from companies like Windsor and Newton, Daniel Smith, Michelo Mission Gold, White Knights, et cetera. Always keep two jars of water, one for cleaning your brush and another for fresh supply. Let's have a look at all the brushes. I am going to use a wash brush. This is 0.75 inch. Then I have size four, size six, a liner brush, a mop brush, that is three by zero, and a pencil tape and eraser for drawing, then taping down my paper. And picking up the extra graphite marks respectively. I always keep tissue handy. Now, tissue is very, very important for picking up any extra colors or taking out the extra paints from my brushes. I do have an acrylic board on top of which I would be sticking my paper with the help of the tape. The size of the paper is usually smaller than the acrylic board. Now let's move on to the next lesson. 3. Day 1 - Color Mixing & Thumbnail Sketch: This particular part, we are going to test our colors and the direction of the clouds. Yes, testing color mixing before a final watercolor painting is essential and here's why it really matters. Colors changes as they dry. Watercolor usually dry lighter than they appear when wet. By testing mixes first, you can predict the final look and avoid surprises. Prevent muddy colors. So pigment don't mix well and can turn dull or muddy. Esting helps you find clean, vibrant combinations instead of ruining your painting. Helps control color harmony. Remixing lets you build a consistent palette. This keeps your painting visually balanced rather than having random or clashing colors. Saves time and effort. Fixing colour mistakes in watercolor is difficult. A quick test avoids reworking or starting over. Builds confidence while painting. When you already know how your colors will behave, you can paint more freely and focus on expression instead of worrying about results. Improves layering. Watercolor often involves layering, transparent washes. Testing shows how colors interact when layered, helping you avoid unwanted tones. Encourages experimentation safely. You can try bold or unusual mixes without risking your final artwork and sometimes discover unique effects. These colors are also mentioned before we start our final painting, but I've gone ahead with naples yellow, Indian yellow, inatrodon coral, bright opera, compose Opera, or you can leave the compose opera, go ahead with your royal blue and ultramarine. Ultramarine can also be replaced with bal blue. Let's go ahead and just apply a clear layer of water on the smaller box on the right. What I'm going to do over here is a simple exercise exactly the way we are going to do our wet on wet cloud. This is nothing but to help you understand how you can paint your directional clouds. This is a very, very small piece of paper and mainly used for our practice session. I'm using the similar arches paper, though this one is 185 GSM compared to 300 GSM arches paper that we are going to use in our final paintings. You can very well see I have started out with my lightest value, and then I am moving on to the darker value as we are progressing with the painting. In the middle, I have added the yellow, and then I'm going to add the quin actodon coral, opera, royal blue, then ultramarine or cobarblue. This acts more like a thumbnail sketch. Doing a thumbnail practice sketch before a watercolor painting is extremely helpful because it lets you plan smartly before committing to an unforgiving medium. Watercolor doesn't allow much correction, so a small sketch can save a lot of trouble later. Helps plant composition. Thumbnail sketches let you quickly arrange elements where your subject sits, how the background flows, and how the eye moves across the painting. You can test multiple layouts in minutes. Establish values light and dark. Watercolor relies heavily on preserving whites and building layers. A small sketch helps you decide whether your lightest light and darkest dark will go before you start. This helps you avoid major mistakes early, fixes composition or proposition issues in a tiny sketch than in a full painting, saves time and materials, builds confidence. Once you've already seen your painting in a thumbnail, the final process feels clear and less stressful. 4. Day 1 - Layered Mountains - Perspective: Let us understand a bit about perspective by creating layered mountains. The monochrome layered mountains in the painting is an image that serves as a powerful foundation for understanding depth, atmosphere, and composition in watercolor landscape. Created only by using a neutral tint, it strips the scene down to its most essential element, value contrast, and layering. Each mountain ridge is defined not by color, but by how light or dark it appears in relationship to the other. The soft transitions between layers may make the natural feeling effect of distance we mountains farther away appear lighter and less detailed due to atmospheric perspective. This simplicity makes the monochrome study an ideal starting point for everyone, as it trains the eye to see structure before being influenced by color. In watercolor mastering, this sense of depth is crucial and the monochrome approach teaches control over water, pigment, and timing. The general gradients seen in the gray mountains or nutritt mountains are achieved through careful wet on wet technique where pigment diffuses softly across the paper. Each successive layer may be applied with concentration, darker values are typically reserved for the foreground, while lighter ones are for the background. By practicing in monochrome, you learn how to build dimension gradually, ensuring that each layer remains distinct, yet harmonious. This understanding can then be translated into multicolor layered mountain paintings like the one we are going to do next in our Project one, that is evening sunset. The key is logic learned from the monochrome study, progression of light to dark, soft edges for distance, and sharper contrast in the foreground remains unchanged. Additionally, the monochrome concept helps prevent one of the most common challenges in watercolor overworking with color. When you understand that value does most of the work in creating depth, then you can use color more intentionally and sparingly. This result is cleaner, more luminous paintings, where colors blend naturally rather than becoming muddy. The multiclored mountain painting looks really successful because it is built upon this underlying structure that we are using right now. Ultimately, this monochrome layered mountain study is more than just a neutral tint or gray scale painting. It is a blueprint. It teaches discipline, observation, and control, all of which are essential when transitioning to expressive multicolor watercolor landscapes. By first mastering from without color, you gain the confidence and skill to use color, not as a crunch, but as an enhancement, bringing the layered mountain scene to life with both clarity and vibrancy. Once you are done, let the paper dry off and then remove the tape at an angle. Use all the learnings from color mixing, thumbnail sketch, and layered mountains in your next painting. That is evening sunset. If you are convinced, then come and join me in the next lesson. 5. Day 1 - Evening Sunset: Let's have a look at all the colors. It is Indian yellow, naples yellow, nacrodon coral, opera, ultramarine, erleium blue, royal blue, and indigo. You can also use bar blue if you don't have ultramarine. I would apply an even coat of wash on the entire paper and then start out with the shade, which is Indian yellow and naples yellow. These are warm colors for the sunset, and hence, applying this first is most important. You cannot come back in watercolors and make it light. Yes, we can always pick up the colors in few of the spaces, but the transparency of the paper and watercolors might get lost in the process. Hence, if you have an opportunity to go ahead and use your watercolors in the lighter shade earlier, that's always better. Now I am adding some quinacrodon coral, or you can also use your bright opera, mix it with Indian yellow and naples yellow, and start applying it on the lower part of the paper. If you see I am currently using a very light shade of this, as we progress, I will make it more darker. Now it's time you can make some more darker shades and go ahead by applying it. But before that, there is a beautiful shade of royal blue, which you can apply on the left top corner. I intentionally leave some white spaces when applying watercolors as it helps enhance the transparency of the paint on 100% cotton paper. An easy way to make your watercolors darker is to load more pigments onto your brush and use less water to dilute it exactly the way we have done over here. We have picked up more of quinactodone coral and mixed it with less water. I am also going ahead and washing my brush, then taking off all the extra water on this issue, leaving out only some light colors on the brush which I directly apply on the paper. This is a beautiful bright opera from the brand Magello Mission Gold. I have been using this brand for many years now, and this is one of the sheets which has been my favorite from the beginning. The bottom part of the paper is still wet. I am mixing some amount of my cobal blue into this pigment. You can see that there is a beautiful granulation that this Copal blue has. This is again from the brand Sennelier. There are various brands which I have been using for many of my paintings till date. And these are all artist grade pigments. You can go ahead with any brand of your choice, Michello Mission Gold, Winsor and Newton. And Singer has been few of the brands that I have been using from the beginning. If you know me, you know that these are the shades that I have used even in my other classes. You can very well see that the colors are completely dried out on the paper, and this is happening because of the weather in Bangalore. I'm using my flat brush in the spaces wherever possible to make it more even and soft. Wherever you notice the paint dry, like in my case, use a flat brush to apply a fresh layer of water. This helps keep the paper workable for a longer time when using watercolors. Having said that, watercolor is an easier medium to work with when the paper stays wet for longer, and you can extend that working time by applying water to the backside of the paper. This particular trick I have applied for many years till now. If you are a big nu, you may follow what we are doing over here, but if you are more of an intermediate or experienced artist, please go ahead and use the water on the back side of the paper to have a better outcome. You can use some amount of Indian yellow and apply it in an angular direction which moves from bottom towards the top and from the top towards the bottom left and side. I love to mix my colors directly on paper, as it creates more natural vibrant blends because the pigment interacts organically on the surface. It also adds a sense of spontaneity and softness, producing smooth transitions and unique textures that are harder to achieve when mixing colors on a palette first. I use a clean washbush to just go ahead and blend the colors that are already there on the paper and then apply some more darker tonal values as you see over here. I will tell you, white spaces play a crucial role in watercolor sky paintings because they represent the lightest values like clouds, highlights and the glow of sunlight. Since watercolor is a transparent medium, you can't easily paint pure white over darker areas later. So preserving the white of the paper from the beginning is essential. These untouched areas also create contrast, making the sky look more luminous and airy. Without them, the paper can appear flat or dull, lacking the brightness and depth that gives skies their realistic glowing effect. Some more opera and kobal blue towards the bottom for creating the darkest of the value, which majorly is the contrasting part in this sky painting. I would again go ahead and apply some of my clear water onto the paper, and this is just towards the bottom part of the paper. As we haven't worked on this part at all. I would go ahead with the same colors like my opera, quintodon coral and blue for creating the contrasting colors and the darkest value which appears in this painting. On the palette make some compose opera and blue to create a shade that looks like purple. Now, this purple is not exactly the purple that we would apply. It's somewhere in between the purple and the compose opera. It is also called as red Vallet as the appearance is more on the red side and a few more brush strokes that form soft line like marks, which naturally blur on the wet paper. This helps create the illusion of clouds in motion. Painting directional clouds in watercolor takes longer because you need more control over both the brushwork and the moisture on the paper. Unlike loose clouds directional clouds require deliberate strokes that follow a specific flow. So you have to carefully manage timing, waiting for the paper to be at the right level of wetness. You are also building layers gradually to maintain softness while still guiding the movement, which slows the process. Balancing control with the natural fluidity of the watercolor takes extra time, especially to keep the cloud forms cohesive and realistic. I'm pretty happy with how the clouds have turned out. I would let the paper dry off and then move on to the layered mountain view. Using pencil marks for layered mountains is important because they act as a guide for placement, depth, and proportions before you start painting. They have you clearly separate each layer so you don't lose the structure once the watercolor starts to flow. These light outlines also make it easier to control perspective, keeping distant mountains softer and lighter, white looser ones appear darker and more defined. Since watercolor is hard to correct, once applied, having pencil guidelines ensure cleaner layers and more balanced composition. I do always use the colors that are there on the palette. Using colors mixed on the palette for coloring watercolor mountains is a great starting point because it gives you better control over the exact sheet and value before applying it to the paper. This helps you establish the base layers cleanly without unexpected blooms or harsh transitions. It also allows you to plan depth more effectively, mixing lighter, cooler tones for distant mountains and richer darker tones for closer ones. Once the base is set, you can always build textures and variations on the paper. But starting with palette, mixed colors keeps the foundation consistent and easier to manage. Mixing compose opera with blue creates a violet shade that closely matches the tones already present in the lower layer of the clouds. I prefer to keep the same shade to maintain consistency rather than introducing new ones. I would allow my paper to dry off after this and then introduce a new layer of mountains. You can always fast forward the process of drying by using a hair dryer I do not like to use any kind of artificial method for drawing my paper. Hence, I go ahead with either a fan or leave it naturally open so that the colors dry off automatically. You can go ahead and add some more of cobar blue towards the bottom part of the mountains. This really helps you to add some more darker sheade for the second ar. Right now, the sheade might look way more darker at this moment, but as the paper will dry off, you will see that the color has become way more lighter. Watercolor paints often appear one or two shade lighter after drying because the pigment spread thinner and the water evaporates, leaving less concentrated color on the paper. While wet, the paint looks richer and more saturated due to the reflective wet surface. But as it dries, the paper absorbs the pigment and the surface loses the wet sheen, making the color appear lighter. This is why it's possible to anticipate the shift when layering or mixing colors. So your final painting matches your intended values. Oh Once my at has dried off, I will use again the same shade of compose opera and some more richer amount of blue to get or create a shed that looks darker than the one which we have already applied on the paper. This is a very easy way of creating, contrasting or layered mountains. Just start with a single sheet or two sheds with diluted colors, and we get more and more darker with richer pigments as you progress with the layered mountains. The left side has more of purple and the right side has more of blue. I would just pick up this acrylic bot and let the colors move into each other. The paper is still wet, hence the blend will happen on its own. There is still a stark difference between the left and the right. We will go ahead and add some more amount of blue on the left. Try to mix it with the background wash of the purple and then leave it to dry. Once it dries off, we will introduce the last layer of mountains after this. The last layer has to be the darkest layer which we have introduced till now. You can use some amount of indigo along with the compose opera and then just use a brush movement, which is a bit variant. It moves up and down so that you can see that there is nearby trees which appears on the mountain. Perspective is the key in layered mountain, watercolor painting because it creates a sense of depth and distance, making the scene look more realistic rather than flat by adjusting size, value, and color, lighter and cooler tones for distant mountains, darker and warmer tones for the closer ones, you guide the viewer's eye naturally through the layers. Without proper perspective, the mountains can appear jumbled or unrealistic, losing the illusion of space that gives the painting its atmospheric and three dimensional effect. If you have enjoyed seeing this painting, come together as painting alongside a demonstration helps you understand the techniques in real time, how to handle wet paper, layer colors, and create depth, while also giving you the freedom to add your own personal touch. It's a fun way to practice, experiment, and build confidence, as you will learn a lot more by doing it yourself than just watching. Have a look at the final painting and then remove the tape at an angle. 6. Day 2 - Painting Clouds - Practice: A two is all about painting clouds and C. The C is going to be really simple. Let's start with the clouds. You will see that I will paint some clusters together and some sparing places with very, very light brush strokes while we come towards the bottom part. This is the part of perspective as you come towards the bottom, the number of clouds or even you can say the way the clouds appear is way more lesser compared to the top area where it is way more higher. I have just masked out my entire area of the ocean part. I'm starting out with a clear shade of royal blue. I have picked up my color on the flat brush so that I can cover this larger space, and then I am adding it in higher intensity or in higher value on left side and with lower intensity on the bottom part. Have a darker pigment for the clouds, and this is basically a mix of your indigo, then your ultramarne, some amount of your royal blue, as well as you can also keep some prucianbue, et cetera, for creating a shade like this. You can make some more amount of your pains gray if you want a darker value, which I would also be doing though this is peak summer season in Bangalore, and it becomes very tough on my part to keep the paper wet for a longer period. Keeping a wash brush handy in this case comes to your rescue very well. You will see how I'm going to use it. My paper is really dry when I come towards the bottom area, towards the top, I can still work as the top area is still damp, you can always wash your brush and apply some clear water wherever you think it is necessary, I'm applying it towards the bottom area. Overall, my clouds may not appear the same way. I might go ahead and just change it a bit more, but that's absolutely okay. If you do not have the required amount of water on top of your paper, you can allow this painting to first dry off or just go ahead and apply some clear brush chokes with the help of your flat brush exactly the way I am doing over here. Clouds may appear different than what it was in the first row, but overall, the painting will appear good. So don't think much when you are painting, go with the floor, let your creative juices flowing. I will again go with a darker mixture and apply some more colors in the areas where I think it is necessary. Again, some of the areas have become ready dry. That's one of the reasons you might have to go ahead and use your flat brush to apply clear water. These things I have done even in the beginning and we all have faced challenges when we work with watercolors. Even if there are any hard edges, just go with the float. Do not think much. I always say overthinking and overworking will always kill your painting. If you're someone who wants to ace through watercolors, this is your chance. Go ahead with your beautiful shade of Horizon blue, bar green, or any of the other shades that's available with you and then apply some of your Telo turquoise towards the bottom area. Top part on the right appears way more darker. Hence, you have to go ahead and apply some of your darker value of blue even towards the bottom. The shadow of the clouds have to appear in the bottom area because that is how it appears in nature. The whole of the video is 1.5 xp. You can always go ahead and adjust the speed of the video wherever you think this is necessary. It would help you to not only have a edge when you go ahead and start with your second painting or day two, this will also help you to gain a lot more confidence, as we understand the fluffy nature of the clouds in a great way. As I always say, practice is the key. If you have a quick practice session before a final painting, you are going to nail it. I would remove the tape pattern angle and let everything dry. 7. Day 2 - Cloudy Beach: Let us have a look at all the colors. First is Horizon blue, turquoise green. Then I have royal blue, Cirelmblue, French ultramarine, invigo and John Brilliant Number two. These are all the shades which we need for this painting. Let us start with a Horizon line. Once we have marked a horizon line, we will be marking two more lines. That is it, which we will be doing from the drawing perspective. Once we mark those lines, this painting is all set for going through the watercolor process. Before we start with the painting part, I should actually tell you how powerful it is to participate in these ten to 15 minutes watercolor challenges. It is not only a consistent habit, I also improves your speed and decision making. It boosts your creativity, reduces the fear of mistake, and finally improves a lot on the water control side. Why our water control is such an important aspect in watercolors, it is the water to pigment ratio that is very, very important, just the way right now we are applying our royal blue color on the sheet of paper. I have added a real light shade towards the top part, and again, I'm starting from the bottom and taking it to the top. This royal blue is a beautiful shade from the brand white knights. You can also get this color in senior. Both of them actually are something close to serium blue. If you don't have serium blue, you can also go ahead with your royal blue. I have mixed some amount of serraium blue into my royal blue right now, and I am again applying it on the paper. This is some amount of ultramarine and indigo to create a darker shade so that we can create our clouds. You will see that I continuously mix my color to make it look darker in appearance because this right side is the area where I'm going to apply my colors for the clouds. This first shade, of course, would be lighter, and as we go, there would be one more shade dark that I'm going to apply in few of the places. I'm not covering the entire part of the sky. You will see whenever I am painting clouds to make it airy and fluffy, I'll leave out some of the spaces in white of the paper or maybe very light shade of blue so that it appears absolutely airy, fluffy, and atmospheric. Right now, my pigment to water ratio where the pigment ratio is very high compared to the water on my brush, hence, you will see very less of movement in terms of the colors that appear or appear to be moving on the paper. I would leave this particular painting here itself and then think about that, do I need to add more clouds or do they we as is and start with the bottom part, which is majorly my water area. Water is going to be very interesting when you are using Horizon blue. If you don't have horizon blue, you can mix some amount of green into yellow, and then get a shade that looks similar to the one which I would be using. If you don't have Horizon two, you can also use Copal tren Copart. These are the ordinate shades which I love to use during all my painting sessions, that is for the summer season. Summers is one of my favorites, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to introduce summer and spring paintings in this particular ten day challenge. Still retouching some of the spaces of the sky, but they need to be wet if you are retouching any space. Let it dry off and then start with your horizon blue. I have given you alternate colors for horizon blue. Again, this particular color is from Migeno Mission Gold, and the Steelo turquoise is from Daniel Smith. I would leave this decision up to you, which colors, which brand you want to use, but always an artist's great paints is an add on whenever you are looking forward to painting with watercolors. The colors do not dry up two, two, three shades lighter. Which usually happens in case you are using a student rate pig. Here, your water and sand will meet each other. I'm going to use John Brilliant number two. This is from the brand whole paint. If you are someone who doesn't have this color, something closer to peach or brown mixed with a bit of naples yellow can also serve the purpose. I am blending both the colors. I would be using white goh for painting the waves, but there is another painting which we are going to do at the last where there is only white of the paper, which we would be using for painting our waves. So hold on if you are someone who is in love with white of the paper and wants to create waves with that I will introduce how by simply using water, you can do the same. Okay, let's continue to add some more of the darker values. This would be one or two shade lighter as we progress. Hence adding some more darker values is very important at this stage. I would go ahead and introduce some more browns and darker browns. Either you can create darker brown by mixing some of your light brown with blue. It is a great way to create your different shades of brown or else. You can also use your dark brown. I would leave that decision up to you. I always love to mix my colors on the paper. Mixing watercolor directly on paper instead of p mixing on palette is one of the techniques that gives watercolor its unique, lively character. More natural and vibrant color blends. When pigments mixes on the paper, they blend organically with the water, and this creates subtle variations, transitions that are hard to achieve on the palette. Saves times and keeps the momentum going. That's one of the most important reasons which I'm going to tell you, I'm using this particular technique for this ten day challenge because we have to be quick. We need to have the creative flow moving. Having said that, it also encourages a lot of spontaneity and happy accidents. So very unexpected textures that you make granulation effect and unique color blooms that you usually don't see if you are mixing the colors on the palette rather than on the paper. You see a hint of blue somewhere. You see a hint of dark brown somewhere. Some places would be in brown. Then your John brilliant number two, everything put together, it looks unique, brilliant, and absolutely refreshing. So I've introduced some water onto the paper. With my brush, I would let my acrylic board help me move the colors a bit more, and then we might apply some more of the brown as the brown is not seen much on the paper at this stage. Hence going ahead and just adding a bit more is always a good idea. Continue to add some more shades. As you see over here, the darker value of brown, then the blue, I would be using the same blue that I've used for my sky. Use the mixes that is available on the palette for even introducing onto your sand area. This helps to bring in a lot of color harmony and interaction between the colors itself onto the ping. Now it's time to go ahead and lift out the color in some of the spaces. It helps to restore light and dark areas. Watercolor is transparent. So once you go dark, it's hard to get lighter by adding paint Pullback highlights create flow within shadows, recover areas that became too heavy, creates contrast and depth. Dark areas look more interesting when they are in flat. You all know this. You break solid dark masses, add variation within shadows, make the painting feel more dimensional. Add atmosphere and light effect. This basically helps you to glow some of the spaces even of the sand, where you think it is necessary to have the lighter values compared to the darker values. In and around it, you may also add some dark, but yeah, most of the space where you want the white still remains or maybe not exactly the white, I would say the lighter value, which is majorly our John Willian number two over here. After even picking up the colors, I think some of the spaces needs a bit more of the blue and the brown, you will see me introducing it on the waves part. Let the paper dry off after this and then add the white on top of the waves area. Now, this particular white is the quash that I would be introducing, and it would help you to show the effect of the waves. Bit of ultramarine blue that you're going to use towards the horizon line just to separate the sky from the water area. Though it is very well separated, but still introducing a bit of it is not a bad idea. And the paper was wet so I could do this exercise. I have picked up some of my whiteqh on my brush, and I've started introducing my waves, as you can see over here. Using white gouache in a watercolor waves painting is a smart practical choice. It helps you capture the energy and sparkle of water in ways pure watercolor, sometimes can't. Brings back bright highlights instantly. Watercolor is transparent. So once you lose the white of the paper, it's gone. White gouache lets you add foam highlights, creating crashing wave edges, paint sea spray and splashes very easily. Creates strong contrast and dark waves. Now pops against the dark areas, makes foam ucrous and energetic exactly the way we want over here, enhances depth and drama. Allows layering over finished work. This is something that I appreciate a lot. You know water color is less forgiving, and if you have applied the color already, you cannot go over it with any of the white spaces. So you can introduce white uh to get that effect which you want. And it also speeds up the process, paint more freely, focus on shapes and values it highlights later with Goh. Finally, fix his mistakes gracefully. That's the best part of using watercolor gouache. If a wave area becomes too dark or muddy, gouache can recover highlights. You can reshape the foam patterns and it helps rescue the painting without starting it over again. Okay, great. I think I will keep introducing some more gouache in some of the places where it is necessary, the white is beautiful, and this is from the brand Windsor and Newton. I have been using this brand very often for most of my paintings, whether it be watercolor, whether it be guh. You can see it that this is a designer wash kept on the left. I have picked up a bigger size of it compared to my others, which I usually used to pick up earlier. Once again, the quash has dried off, it might look a bit more lighter, but that's absolutely okay. The pigment to water ratio might have been a bit lesser, hence it has dried off a bit lighter. Now, if you have a situation like this or in a situation like this, you can go ahead and introduce somewhat darker values in skew spaces that would help you enhance the crispiness of the watercolor waves very quickly and easily. I have been using this technique very often in many of my audio paintings, too, and this has been rewarded in a great way when I wanted to actually have the highlights intact. I would add some more darker value of brown on the left, and then just blend it with my blending brush. You can use any size four brush to introduce this kind of a darker shade and then just apply some of the water to blend it. I love this painting altogether. It has such less requirements in terms of keeping the space as is using any of your masking fluid or any of the masking tape. Hence, it becomes very easy for anyone as a big not to also attempt. Salt is a classic and very effective way to create texture in watercolor, and it works beautiful on a simple but fascinating principle. It absorbs water and pigments. Salt crystals are hydroscopic. They attract moisture. They pull water towards themselves. Pigments move along with that water. This leaves lighter starburst patterns around each grain. Creates organic, unpredictable patterns because the process isn't fully control. Salt introduces natural looking textures, irregular shapes, unique results every time. Before you touch upon any of the areas of the salt, just let the paper dry off and then start introducing these smaller brown patterns which are basically like rocks on the beach that you usually find. Hope you have enjoyed the Dato painting along with me. I am waiting for your results in the project section. Do upload it, and let me know if you are facing any difficulty in the discussion part. I would be more than happy to have you wherever possible. Met you again with the third painting, and that is spring. 8. Day 3 - The Castle - Practice: Today, first, we are going to learn how we can actually blend colors in a castle. Now, these shades will be lighter than what we will be using in our final painting. If you know how to use lighter shades, it's very easy to go ahead and use any kind of dark shade that you are willing to apply in your painting. Let's go ahead and start with the royal blue, as well as some ultrak for the sky area. Our main focus is not the sky or even the greens that we are going to add in the bottom. But just to complete this painting and make it look more organic, I just thought to apply some colors for my sky and the green for the feels that I want to add towards the bottom area below the horizon line. Of course, our horizon line is marked by the sky and the green pastures that you are going to paint next. I wanted to keep it absolutely rough and a practice exercise. Therefore, I did not even tape down my paper. Only for your understanding, I have added this blue. I'm going ahead and using any color that's available on my palette, so don't think much when you go ahead and paint this castle part. We are majorly concentrating on the castle, and it is a bit far away as our final painting fourth the third day is also having a castle that is also far away. I'm using my three colours that is yellow green, olive green, and some amount of forest green. I'm very happy with how the greens have turned out. I will also add a bit of salt to get some textures into this pot. The paper was wet and hence the colors did blend into each other. Having a bit of texture is always more beautiful. I always start out with a very simple and easy shade like naples yellow. You may also go ahead with any kind of peachish skin shade if you don't have naples yellow with you. Then we are going to actually mix some amount of our brown and red together. You can also take compose, opera or any kind of quinacrodon coral, et cetera, if you do not have red in your palette. Now, since my brown that I'm going to use is not as per what I would like to add to the painting, hence, I love to add some amount of red into it. Red actually is a brick kind of a shade, and that brick kind of a shade appears usually in any kind of castle around the world. I wanted to keep it absolutely natural with a red stone part. Hence, adding a bit of red or compose opera will be an additional add on to your painting. Some of the areas would be lighter and some of the areas would be darker. It is a natural wear a tear which usually happens in any castle that is standing for years. Mostly, I would be working wet on wet and avoiding any kind of hard edges. That's how I love to keep my paintings atmospheric flowy, as well as simply creative. When you are working on a small paper like ASIC, which I'm using right now, always use a very small brush. This is a size two brush which I am using along with a size four that you have seen me using earlier. For smaller papers, you don't need bigger sizes of brushes. For bigger paper, of course, the size of the brushes also changes. Let's go ahead and mix our colors. The mixing of the colors of cases happening on the paper. I have iteratively told you why mixing on the paper is better than mixing on the palette. You will get more shades and it will not appear muddy, as well as there will be some happy accidents which you will not find happening on a palette. My paper has become moist at this moment, and it might appear that you have a better water control. But what's really happening is a shift in how the water behaves. The paper is already saturated. This gives you more time to move and adjust the paint. Slower absorption is equal to more working time. On dry paper, water plus pigment gets absorbed quickly, which can lock shapes in place fast, create hard edges, you didn't intend. On moist paper, absorption is slower and more even. You can guide washes, blend colors, and soften the edge more easily. Because the surface is uniformly damp, paint flows in smoother gradients. You avoid sudden blooms caused by uneven dryness. Less competition between water sources. On moist paper, the whole surface already has water, so adding paints integrates itself of pushing outward harshly. Softer edges happens by default this way. I'm adding the darkest of the value at this moment, and usually I'm adding it towards the bottom area. And then there are some windows which I would be highlighting with the ducks. This whole of the castle is not done in a very dark shade of brown, as it is the morning time, or you can say this is the daytime. Hence, it's important to just keep it in lighter shades rather than adding any kind of darker shades. Light shades usually appears during the day, during the night, of course, or in the evening, these shades will appear way more darker that you will observe me using in our next painting. You can continue to add the darkest of the value at this moment. I did not go ahead and start with the sketch part because all I wanted to concentrate on was the blending of colors. When you are going to paint the next project, you will get, of course, the sketching. I do not spend a lot of time on sketching because the whole idea is to keep everything simple, easy, and free flowing. This whole video is at 1.5 X speed. You can always go ahead, reduce the speed of the video and then paint along with me or just watch it as is to understand the blending of the paints in the castle area on 100% cotton paper. You can let the paper dry off and then remove the tape and have a finer look. Let's move on to the next painting where we are going to paint sky, water, and a beautiful castle. H 9. Day 3 - The Castle: Let us have a look at all the colors quin actodon coral, bright topera, compost sopera, purple, royal blue, indigo, brown, and ultramarine. We're not going to spend a lot of time on the drawing. First, I will mark the horizon line. Once I have marked the horizon line, I would go over it or on top of it, you can see, and start adding the details for my castle. Now, this castle details is going to be very rough. That is how I always look forward into it. I do not want a very detailed outcome at this stage. Because it is a multiclored sky and the castle is just there. The reflection of the multicolored sky is into the water and because the water has got good amount of movements into it, hence, you will not observe any kind of a reflection of this castle in the water area. That is how I look into it. I try to keep things very simple even when we are doing castle paintings. There are two castle paintings. One is from the spring part, and one is from the summer part. The summer part again, has a reflection into the water area because that water is standstill compared to the one that we are doing right now. I am very excited at this stage to show you how we do this. It's a very, very rough sketch. You can go about it. It will not take you more than five to 7 minutes. If you can't do this somewhere the way I'm doing over here, I will also upload this in the project section. You can go ahead and have a look at the drawing from there after downloading it. That way, it can become really easy to follow. Once I have finalized the sketch of the castle, I would go over the entire paper and apply water. Now, this water is going to keep my paper wet for a longer period of time, and I will not, of course, paint over the castle area. I would leave that ***. I would go over it with my brown. We are right now starting out with my quin atrodon coral and then adding some amount of purple. As you see, I go from the middle and sometimes towards the top and from the top, sometimes towards the middle. I'm not following any particular way of applying my colors. This is going just with the flow. Believe me, the idea of even do watercolor paintings at this stage when I have a small child at home, I cannot think I just go as I want to. There is no particular way or no particular motion that I follow. Not much of watercolor rules or not so much of watercolor ways in which it should be done. Sometimes I'm applying the blue, sometimes I'm applying the purple, and then you might see me even applying some amount of coral or opera as you see, this is a beautiful coral shade which I have been using from the Band Daniel Smith. If you are someone who is in love with coral, I think this is a must have for your floral, as well as for your sky paintings. I have been using this over a few years now, and still, I feel it gives a very beautiful and fresh look in every painting wherever I go ahead and apply it. Now is the darkest value of purple which I'm trying to apply for my clouds area. Having said that, you will always see that some portions of the cloud, I still keep it a white, which I have been following for many of my paintings. White is important to show the fluffiness and the atmosphere of the sky compared to if you do not keep it white at all. Sky also looks overworked if there are no empty spaces, or you can say there are no white spaces. I love to show the same kind of reflection of the sky and use the same colors even for my water area. Once this color dries off, it would be one shade or two shade lighter than what you see over here. There are various colors that I have been using. Hence, I cannot say that it would be only one shade or the pigment to water ratio is as it is wet on wet. It might get two shade lighter. If you are doing wet on dry, usually it is one shade lighter than what you have applied. This is what is as per my experience, but you may be using a student rate paints that maybe two or three or four shades lighter than what it appears. It all depends upon the filler that is there in a student grade paint compared to there are no fillers that usually is there in any kind of artist grade paint. There is only gum arabic and some amount of pigments. I mean, usually it's the pigment and the gum arabic, which is there, whereas gum arabic pigments and there are some amount of fillers that available in a student red paint. As for my experience, that's what I have seen. I do apply some amount of quinarodone coral in towards the bottom area or in and around the horizon line that you see over here. But because it is mixed with a bit of blue, the color has become a bit darker. That's absolutely okay. Do not worry much. While you are doing this painting, just remember go with the flow. If you have to pick up some of the colors in a few places, do pick it up wherever it is necessary. Blending is always the key, and I am right now blending a bit of color here and there towards the top area of the sky as this part is still wet. Always know you can only work on a wet surface if you are doing a wet on wet painting. It's very difficult to work on any kind of a dry or semi wet surface if it is wet on wet. I'm starting out with a very, very light wash of purple and then applying it on the bottom part. I would go ahead and still apply some more colors of the sky into the water area. This is just a very, very preliminary part of adding a first layer. I would say, and then the same colors that I have on the palette would be applied even on the bottom part. I'm mixing my purple and some amount of quin agradone coral along with blue, and this blue is basically your royal blue. Then I've started applying as lines on top of the paper. The paper is moist. It's not completely wet, so I will get a few line like structures. This is mostly purple. I am not going to apply a lot of colors at this stage. It's only the shades that I've applied above would be reflected into the water area. Simple exercise, but all I can say is that you may feel that this looks less, but less is always more in watercolors. Know the fact that if you are applying less colors, if you are doing less in watercolors, that particular painting is going to shine through. Watercolors is transparent and the transparency, if can be maintained, I would say, we'll give you the best of the results in your future paintings, too. I have realized this over the years, and believe me with my experience, you will understand that the whites or some of the spaces of the painting might look better if they are absolutely in water with the clear shine of the paper coming in. Great. I guess I am now going ahead and applying some amount of pink. You can go ahead and apply some compose opera or opera. It can be also quinacodon oral. These are the shades that have been used do and we are going to use the same shades over here. The paper is wet and it's time to go in and around our horizon line and start adding the brown. The brown can be your B sienna bon sienna, one, two, three, whatever colour is available with you. I'm not thinking much when I'm applying the colour. I'm going with my size pour brush. You can also go with a smaller brush like this. Or go ahead with any other brush that's available with you. The brown is now mixed with some amount of purple to get a darker shade. I try to use the similar kind of colors which have been used lier in the painting to make my shades darker or lighter. I think this is the best way that I have learned and want to impart the same learnings of mine to you too. Mixing some indigo to get the darkest value. You can also add some purple. I would leave the decision up to you, whatever works best for you, add that, to get the darkest of the values and start adding it above the brown that you have already applied. Once I'm done with the bottom part in a darker shade, I would allow the paper to dry off as I will be adding lighter and darker values to create the depth effect into the castle area. Always create contrast and depth in your main subject, and over here, castle is the main subject. It would help you to differentiate the subject better, as well as present it in a manner which looks more pleasing to the eyes of any Person who is watching it. I'm again starting out with the lightest value of brown at this stage, and slowly I would be introducing the darker shades. I am using my size four brush. I have loaded prime brush with the pigments and applying it on top of the darkest value of the brown, which is there in and around the horizon line. Here we are again going to actually mix the colors on the palette as well as differentiate in terms of the values of the colors. Some places the brown is of a darker value compared to other places where the brown is of lighter value. I will also add some amount of indigo into the brown to create the toques of the value, but all the mixing is done on the paper. Hence, there will be more colors or there will be more number of idea sheets which would be formed that usually do not appear if you are mixing the colors on the palette rather than over here directly on the paper. Though, I have talked enough about mixing watercolor directly on the paper, but let me tell you two or three more hidden benefits of doing this. More natural color variation when pigments blend on paper, they interact with the water, paper texture, and each other in unpredictable ways. This creates richer, more organic color transitions than pre mixed colors. The next would be it is the better use of water control. Mixing on paper forces you to understand moisture levels, how wet your brush and paper is, which is a core watercolor skill. Lastly, it is cleaner colors. Over mixing on a palette can dull the colors on paper. Pigments often retain their identity, especially if you let them blend lightly instead of fully combining just the way we are doing over here. It's just last three to 4 minutes which we need at this moment to complete the painting fully. I need to even allow my paper to dry off before we add some highlights, which is basically the lights in the asser. This is again an evening sky. I'm in love with these evenings, and the purple variation of the sky is one of my favorite. It has been my favorite for quite a few years and still the variation with the purple is where I like to invest a lot of time and understand the skies in a better. Though if you are looking for sky classes, I have other dedicated classes where I am teaching for ten days, 15 days, or 20 days. Even smaller classes are also there. Please go ahead and check out those. I think you can dedicatedly give very less amount of time, still achieve great results. And have an understanding on sky paintings. Let's go ahead and apply some of the darkest of the values to create small small window light structure in this particular cassle. Once this is done, I would let the paper to dry off and then apply some highlights. The highlights will be with the white. Now, this white is basically the wash that I'm going to use. You can mix it with some amount of yellow or use the h directly, that is the white, which represents basically the lights in the assu. I would be using my liner brush to apply these colors because it is very thin, small dots here and there. Some of the spaces might also bleed. If it is bleeding, I might go ahead with my finger and just rub it a bit more. And apply some two, three dots here and there. I do not keep it even at all places. Some of the places it's two, some of the places it's three, some of the places it's longer, some of the places it's shorter. That's how I like to keep it. Variations is always good. Variation helps you to understand that all the windows or all the places is not equally glowing because of the lights in the castle. If you enjoyed the painting and followed along, please upload your work in the project section. I'm looking forward to seeing all your creations. I will take a look at each one of them and share my feedback wherever it is needed. Let the paper dry off completely and then have a look at the entire painting. I am truly telling you that you will be super proud of how this painting has turned out. I really did not feel that this painting would turn up exactly the way it did when I started out with it. Over the whole span of 15 to 20 minutes, it became one of my favorite paintings from the entire ten day challenge. Some of the paintings did look very basic initially, but I realized that basic is also good. Stop thinking that this is not good or that is not good. Just appreciate yourself and go with the flow. Remove the tape, and meet you again in the next lesson. Till then happy painting. 10. Day 4 - Painting Rocks - Practice: I'm going to teach you how I started painting my rocks when I was a beginner and then how I improved upon it as I did progress to an advanced level artist. Let's first start out by just adding a flat wash to our sky area. We will be doing a similar kind of a flat wash, even as an advanced level artist. I have not changed much in this. As a beginner, of course, you are more scared and you might go ahead with lighter values compared to when you are working as an advanced level artist where you know exactly how much pigment to water ratio should be added on the paper. Next, I will move on to my grasses section why I'm attempting the grasses. As a bign I did not know that you have to move from top to bottom. And I did go with the subject at the last level. I never thought that you have to move from the sky, then attempt the rocks, and then the ground level where you will be painting the shadows, as there are many things which usually change when we paint our subject. And it's important to always go with the flow, not start from in between and work it out accordingly. I would say this is something that I have learned over time that you have to move from top to bottom that gives you more control in watercolor. Though there are a few exceptions, which I have also exercised in my other paintings. There can be negative painting or there can be some floral painting where you have to go as per the particular photograph or on the site where you are painting. Let's go ahead and then add the shadow of the rocks onto the bottom part. Though the shadows is just on the right side, you can see the light is on the left, and everything that's on the darker side is on the right hand part. As I'm adding the water on a semi weight kind of a surface, this is, of course, pigment, but it has got good amount of water in it. You will some cauliflower like effect which I never work around with when I am advanced level artist. If even I need a cauliflower effect personally, then only I will go ahead with it. I will not allow this kind of a cauliflower effect to occur in a simple easy painting like this one. I'm going with a flatwh for, again, the rocks, and I'm just filling up the space, which is right now in white that I did keep empty for my rocky area. Let me do a quick comparison of my bigness compared to my advanced at this stage, we will only focus on bigness. The rocks look oversimplified. Shapes look round and generic, almost like soft blobs, poorly defined edges, edges are too smooth and uniform. Unconvincing stacking, the rocks don't feel like they are actually balancing. They lack weight and gravity. Weak value contrast. The Bigner painting has very limited contrast. The shadows are too light and not clearly separated from the lit areas. Everything sits in a similar midton range. Color use is just too basic. Use mostly one local color, light brown. If you observe here very clearly, we have the dominance of one color. Shadows are just slightly darker version of the same color, no temperature variation, which means there is no interplay of warm and cool colors. The next is about texture. Surfaces are too smooth. No suggestion of rock, grains, cracks or roughness looks more like soft clay than stone. I will tell you that the dry brush technique, lifting, broken washes, nothing is there a big null level painting of rocks. Light and shadow confusion. Light source is unclear or inconsistent. Shadows don't wrap around the forms properly. Cast shadows on the ground is weak and undefined. As a beginner, when I started out, I really did not know about value control, understanding of light, observation of rho shapes, texture technique, color variation. These are something which I did learn over time. Let us really slow down and unpack why the advanced level painting works so much better because the difference isn't about more detail. It's the collection of deliberate decision that makes the rock feel believable, solid and alive. First we are going ahead with a solid wash. Once we are done with a solid wash, we will add the values, the darks, et cetera. But let's start from the thinking perspective. Convincing sense of form, that is three D thinking. The most importantly from Bigner to advanced is thinking in three D instead of two D shapes. Each rock is built from planes. You can clearly see how surfaces turn away from the light. I understand that rocks are not plops. They are faced forms with structure. This is why light hits the top planes. Midtones appear on angled surfaces. Deep shadows sits in the underneath areas. Mastery of value. If you had to pick one thing that elevates the advanced painting, it is the value contrast. There's a full range of value. Light highlights, mid tones, strong confident darks. The dark areas are used strategically, not everywhere. Key improvements, deep shadows between rocks create separation. Undersides are clearly darker, reinforcing gravity. Cast shadows on the ground adds weight and realism, which you will see as we progress. Clear and consistent light source, light is coming from a specific direction. All highlights and shadows agree with the direction. Shadows are not random. They follow the form. The result is cohesive lighting, believable volume, stronger realism. Shadows are not just darker, they are cooler and richer in color. Light areas are warmer creating contrast beyond just value. You will observe that slowly I'm adding colors at this stage. Initially, I added a very light wash, and now I'm going ahead with my browns. Once I'm done with my brown, I would add some amount of ultramarine into few of the areas to create the darker values. I will mix it on the palette also, as well as you can always add it even on the paper directly wherever it is wet. This brings me to the point color sophistication. Beyond brown rocks, the advanced painting avoids the trap of using a single flat color. Warm tones, which is basically your warm browns, cooler tones, which is basically blue, and some amount of muted Bnciena in the shadows, subtle shifts within the same rock. Why this matters, real world objects are rarely one color. Color variation adds life and realism, warm and cool contrast enhances depth. Texture that suggests and it doesn't overwhelm. The advanced painting introduces texture, and it is done in a very intelligent way, if you see broken edges, slight irregularities, granulation from watercolor pigment, suggestion of cracks and roughness. Everywhere I'm not adding the darker values or everywhere I'm not adding my dry brush technique. Dry brush, only for the rough surfaces. Lifting to create highlights. If you are lifting it from any of the spaces, I will use the lifting technique for my ground area towards the right hand corner, which is thumbing up as we progress. Edge control. I would say the advanced painting. So edges are sharp, others are soft. Edges help guide your eye. Overlapping rocks are clearly separated. Soft transition and realism. Grounding and environmental integration. The advanced level portion of the rocks feels like they belong in the landscape. That's the most important part, and this is our subject that actually differentiates the whole of the painting. Strong cast shadow anchors them to the ground. The grass has value variation, not just flat green. Their interaction between light, rocks and ground. This creates a sense of place, physical weight, stability, overlap and spatial clarity. Rocks clearly overlap each other. Foreground versus background is easy to read. Depth is created through value contrast, overlapping shapes and edge variation. Last, I would say is confidence and intentionality. Confident brush strokes, deliberate placement of dogs, no hesitation in defining form. Knew what we are trying or what we are aiming for. Me decision on purpose. If you look at a bigger picture, observation is the most important aspect, seeing real shapes and light. Value control is very, very important for creating contrast. Color understanding to introduce the warm and cool at the correct place. Techniques that is not only doing wet on wet or not only doing wet on dry. Adding the edges, textures, layering. These are most important techniques that actually build up your painting. Finally, I would say layering. Laying is something that you do intentionally for your rocky areas. Now, this laying will only help you to understand that everything will not move wet on wet or everything will not move wet on dry. Some of the pieces are kept soft with the help of my blending brush, and some of the spaces are kept very hard with the help of the liner brush. I think I have explained you enough. Of course, the whole of the video is at two speed and you may not follow it exactly. You can always go ahead and reduce the speed wherever you think it is necessary. This is basically to show you how you can add structure or depth or value or even how you can add life to any kind of painting, even if it be rocks, how dimension can be added, how it can change to a three dimension or painting rather than it being a two dimension. Now I would say it's time to just follow along and have a look at the final painting, how we are actually painting our grasses, the shadows into the grass area, and some of the textures that I will also add in the grass, the variation of the colors in the grass area, as well as the shadow area, which also will have some kind of variations. Continue to watch it and just paint along with me. You will nail your Dafot completely, waiting to paint along with you the cliff. Uh, Uh 11. Day 4 - The Cliff: Let us have a look at all the colors. The first is my royal blue. The second horizon blue. Third would be Telo turquoise. Fourth would be my beautiful sabrene or olive green, yellow green, ultramarine, bun sienna, and neutral tint. Let us start out with the horizon line. The horizon line is going to separate your land and the sea, as well as once we draw the cliff, the top area would be your sky. I am starting out with a very simple drawing, and there will be some green pastures, even on top of the cliff and a small lighthouse. This is all we are going to add to the elements, and this particular painting is more compared to all the other paintings we have attempted till now. But this became one of my favorite painting from the entire series as it had so many different beautiful elements added on with the light and shadow effect, as well as the depth that you can create in rocks. I will guide you through the entire process, so do not worry, just go with the flow and enjoy the process. Make a few lines that you are going to add on top of this cliff area. It will help you to separate the depth, as well as the lights and the darks that usually occur in the cliff. Just keep adding a few more lines even on the right, though, this is just a guideline which we are going to follow. When we actually paint, sometimes the sketches do change to a greater extent and you will also see how that particular thing happens. Some of the areas where I want the darker values, you can always go ahead and add some shading with your pencil. Again, I would say this is a guideline which will help you to add the darker values in these areas and leave out the lighter values on the other area. I'm going with simple flat lines, straight lines, I would say for my small lighthouse that I have on top of the cliff. This cliff is very beautiful. Believe me, the final outcome I never thought would come out exactly the way it happened. Overall, it takes time to understand. So if you are in a hurry, I would say you can attempt this painting in two parts. One is the drawing part, and another is the painting part. The drawing part is going to take you around four to 5 minutes, and the painting again take you around 20 minutes time. Though the whole of the painting process is not difficult at all, as I always say, there is proper guidance which I'm going to give step by step. Even if you are a regner who is starting out with watercolors, you can, for sure attempt it. Only keep in mind that you should be using 100% cotton paper. If you're not using 100% cotton paper, the outcome would not be exactly the way you see over here. I always keep the focal point a bit on the left. You will see that none of my subjects are placed just in the middle of the painting. I would keep either on the top left corner or on the bottom corner, bottom left corner, on the top right corner. These are the spaces where you will usually find all my subjects to lie. Some green bushes for the background, and I will get back to some more of the shading on the rock area wherever I think again, it is necessary because those darker areas are important for my eyes as some of the areas need to be in darker shade so that the contrast can be seen very well, and it gives the effect of rocks. Going ahead and masking the small lighthouse which you see over here with the masking fluid. You may also leave it. I would leave that decision up to you. This particular masking is only because I do not want to touch this at all, and I do not want to get back with my white coach exactly the way we went in day two where we wanted to actually paint the foam of the water on the beach. Over here, I want to keep it as is the white of the paper. Hence, this particular thing. Okay, let's go ahead and start out with the top area, which is majorly my sky. I would be using my royal blue and just going with the bottom area, then blend it towards the top. For drawing my clouds, I would be taking away more darker mix of pigments and that I would guide you through the process. Till now I am just tilting my board so that the colors move on their own. I do not need to do anything as gravity has its own work to do and let gravity play its role in this particular case. Let's make some more of our ultramarine and royal blue. Along with it. I'm also mixing indigo or neutral tint, whatever is available with you. You can also use Pains gray if you don't have neutral tint or indigo. I'm starting out with my top area, and then you see how my brush strokes are laying flat. I am again going ahead and making some more of my brush strokes on the top part, mixing it with a bit of indigo or neutral tint. And then while I go towards the bottom, my clouds would become thinner and smaller in size and shape. This is also as per perspective. The clouds that are on the top area always look way more bigger in size and shape, whereas the clouds which are towards the bottom or near the horizon line are always smaller in size. I have changed my brush, and now I have moved on to a very thin line of brush for adding these clouds. I would continue to work on the cloud area a bit more as you see over here and then just blend the colors, some more with the background sheade which is basically my royal blue. Do not overwork. At this stage. We need the beautiful white of the paper. Of course, it's not absolutely white. A very light shade of royal blue has been added on top of it. The paper is still wet. Let's go ahead and add the green pastures. You can use your olive green or any other dark value of green that's available with you. Even a forest green is good to go ahead with. I would like to add some more graphite marks to my glyph in the areas where I feel that I would be adding more of the darker values. I'm just marking those. You can always improvise your sketches at any point in watercolor till you have not added any of the paints on top of it. Even after adding the paints. If it is in very light value, you can go ahead and add some of the graphite marks on top of it. We do it very often when I'm doing any kind of layered mountains, et cetera. And even in sketches, as we go forward, you might want to add a few things which you have missed out during the sketching time. Those things can always be included I still your paper has space or you have not added any colors, even if you have added colors, light values, you want to add some dark values. For a guideline, it's important to always add those graphite marks. I always believe in it. Okay, let's go ahead and add some green grassland area on top of the cliff. This is a very beautiful yellow green and with the yellow green, I would add some amount of my olive green towards the bottom part. The yellow green is one of my favorites. I have been using it for very long time. This is from the brand Michello Mission Gold. If you are looking for a yellow green, go ahead and try this out. They do have the greenish yellow, as well as the yellow green. I go ahead with yellow green more than the greenish yellow, though, I have both the colors with me. I'm a fan of this particular brand Michelo Mission Gold or SenaliaO Windsor and Newton Artist Great paints. These are my go to brand always, and I have been using them for most of my paintings. I always blend my greens even in smaller spaces. As you see over here, it gives you some beautiful shades which you do not get very often if you are blending it on the palette, as I am a fan of blending on paper compared to the palette. You already know it from all the paintings that we have done till now. Lifting out some of the greens from a few of the spaces as you see over here. I will pick up some of my horizon blue on my brush and start out with the water. The water is going to be very simple. We are going from more simple stuff to more difficult things. The most difficult in this stage is a rocky area, and I would be attempting that the last, as you always see me gaining some confidence in the process of watercolor and then only attempting the difficult ones. Okay, once you have added this color, we will go ahead and use some of our til turquoise or turquoise green. Whatever is available with you, I have two of these shades, one from Daniel Smith and another from Shimenke. So both of them I have with me. I have been using it alternatively in many of my paintings, and believe me, the final outcome has been tremendous. I am again adding some amount of my blue. This blue, of course, is ultramarine, as you see a lot of granulation. I'm a fan of granulation when it comes to ultramarine Bern Siena. If I have those shades which can give me some granulation, I always go ahead and use it in my painting. Blending is the key. I'm not going to go ahead and add a lot of movement into the water at this stage. It's going to be simple, easy and let the paper dry off before you start out with your areas of the cliff. That is majorly the rocky areas to apply the lights or to show the lights of the cliff. I am going ahead and using John Brilliant number two. This paint is from been. I have a full set of hopin which I have been using for many years now. I purchased this when I was in US and then I have been using it very this particular shade is something that I have fallen in love with. It is a skin color tone, but not exactly naples yellow, also. So it is somewhere in between, which gives me a lot more subjects to play with. And so you see, again, we using this for the rocky terrain. When I go ahead with my first layer, it's more of watery solution and less of pigments. And then I go ahead with few of the areas where I want to add more of pigments and less of water. I'm also blending some of my burnsiena into the shed now. Slowly, steadily, we are going to build up the cliff, varying the colors, shades, pigment to water ratio, and more. Let us add some more pigmented values now. We are going more darker in the value compared to what we have added earlier. I have mixed some amount of blue or else you can also go ahead with CPA or any of the dark brown colors like Vendike brown, et cetera, that's available with you. I will shift to my thinnest of the brush now as I want to add some line structure. The paper is still wet or else the colors will move a lot, which I don't want. Though the soft ditches is something that I have always eyed for hence I will use my flat brush to go ahead and just blend the colors with the bottom part. Keep adding more and more of these shades in various places where you think it's wet. This is a pretty iterative and repetitive process. You might feel that it's a bit boring or we are doing the same thing again and again. But believe me, when you are layering your colors, it's good to go slow at this moment. We do not want to spoil anything. It's only the rocky and the ridges area which is lift. Rest, all the parts are done. You can see that we are done with the sky, we are done with the water, the green pastures, it's only a bit of the lighthouse which you need to attempt, rest, everything is in place. Continue to work through these layers, and once you are done with more and more of these layers, I will tell you how the depth is created. Let us quickly understand the process of layering. Laying is what gives those glyphs their convincing depth and structure. It's less about one perfect color and more about building values and textures gradually. We are going ahead with our browns and then the neutral tint, which is basically the darker value. Start with a light base wash. This base wash is an early tone, and it is either you can have a very light skin color exactly the way I have added over here, or else you can also use your brown along with some amount of your naples yellow. It will give a color that's similar to the one which we have used over here. Keep it light and uneven. This becomes your stone base. Let some paper show through for highlights while still damp drop in slightly stronger brown and random areas to create natural variation. Establish forms with mid tools. Use a slightly stronger mix of brown and a touch of neutral tint if you do not have dark brown in place, paint vertical strokes to suggest cracks and erosion, form the natural direction of the Now, how do we form this natural direction of the cliff? Exactly by giving the vertical strokes? Deepen shadows with the neutral tint, mix the neutral tint with the brown for cooler, deeper shadows, use less water for sharper edges in shadow zones, and darker accents. Use dark brown, deep cracks, base of the cliff and overlapping rock edges. Use layering technique intentionally. Glazing builds richness without losing luminosity. Dry brushes a rock like structure. We will also do that as we progress. Soft itches, distinct or round forms, hard ditches, sharp rock bricks and shadows. Preserve highlight. Don't paint everything, leave light areas untouched or lift paints. These highlights suggest sunlit rock faces, and they balance the darker layers and enhances you can see right now I'm adding the darkest of the layer and even keeping a blending brush in few of the spaces where I think blending is necessary. This is how I exactly go about painting my rocks. Painting rocks initially was very difficult for me when I started out with watercolor. But over the time, I have realized that painting rocks is one of the easiest form of watercolor, only if you know how exactly you should apply the colors. It is not important to apply colors or darker values everywhere. Only in few places, if you apply the colors, it's good enough to give you the cracks or the rocky structure for the darker shadows and the lighter versions are basically for the littered areas, which usually fall on a sunny day or on any of the days where you are observing it on the site or working through even a photograph. Thing that I would like to tell you is layering in watercolor demands patience because the medium is transparent, fluid and hard to control once it's on paper. Each layer affects the neck, so rushing usually works against you. You have to wait for each layer to dry. If you paint over a damp layer, colors bleed uncontrollably. Edges become bloody instead of crisp. You lose the structure. Water builds depth gradually. You need opaque paints, you can't jump straight to ducks. You start slowly deepening the values. Each layer subtly shipped colour tatons rushing through dark values can make things look flat or muddy. It's easy to overwork the paper. The paper surface can break down, colors get dull and chalky, you lose the freshness, luminous look. Patience helps you stop at the right moment. You are constantly judging values. Between layers, you need to pause and assess. Do I need more contrast? Where should shadows go? Is this area already strong enough? Those decisions are harder when you rush. Mistakes are harder to fix. Watercolor is not very forgiving. Dark layers are difficult to lift completely. Muddy mixes can't always be undone. So taking your time reduces the chance of needing correction. Simple way to think about it is layering watercolors is like building depth with glass sheet. Each layer is thin and transparent. Stack them carefully. You get richness, rush or smudge them. Everything turns cloudy. Therefore, patience is the key always, and if you have the patience, you are going to nail your painting in the best of your ability. Now it's time to layer with the darkest value, and this is the final step that gives your watercolor, real depth and drama. The layer creates strong contrast, makes everything else look brighter. Depth pushes shadows back. Focus guides the viewer's eye. When to add the darkest value is very, very important. All lighter and mid tones are completely dry. You are confident about your shapes and light direction. Think of it as a finishing touch, not something you build very oolly. How to mix your darkest value, you can go ahead and make some amount of your brown with either the blue, that is ultramarine or the neutral tint. Less water is equal to deeper or sharper ducks. Me water, softer shadow transition. Avoid using straight blacks. I would say, you should always mix the color and keep it or the, as well as believable. Where to place your darkest value. Basically, in the deep cracks or ridges, the base of the cliff where lightest block and overlapping rock edges. These are the places where I usually place my darkest of the value. Control is everything. So either you go with a smaller brush or if you are going with a brush like my size, you have to use the tip of your brush. Sharp rock details, that is basically with the hard edges which you will get and slightly softened edge depth without harshness. That's what it is all about. I have been iterating this again and again because we sometimes lip it from our mind, and it's important to understand that both soft and hard edges to make up a painting, it's not only one part which is important and one part, which is not important. Common mistakes. Now, I will tell you over using darks, everything looks heavy and flat. Adding to OD, these darks, which is you lose the transparency and too much water. Dark spread and lose the impact if you're using too much water with the softness, et cetera during the initial stages. There's a very small mental model that I usually go ahead with. Light is equal to paper, which is majority, very, very diluted colors that I apply on the complete form of the rock. Midtones is equal to forms. Now the rocky forms, et cetera, have started working out. Darkest values is equal to structure and depth off the cliff. Once this part is completely dry, we will go ahead with our lighthouse. There is very less amount of colors that I would be using for painting the lighthouse. I would go ahead with whatever is available on my palette and add some windows, as well as a few lines to highlight the docks in my lighthouse area. You will see that these are the final details or the last moment things which I am done. My painting is finished, hence I'm going ahead with my thinnest brush, which is basically my rhino brush. If you are looking for a lino brush like this, you can go ahead with this Raphael brush. It's great to work around with I have been using for a few years now, and I'm pretty happy with how it helps me to turn out all my paintings in exactly the way I wanted to. Let us now remove the tape at an angle and have a final look at this painting. But do let your paper dry off before you do the same. If there are any final edits which you want to do on this painting, this is the time. Think about it. Once you have removed the tape, though I do not encourage a lot of changes, but still, if you want, yes, do it, and then just finalize it. Don't go ahead and overwork anymore on this painting. The painting ready looks amazing. There is nothing much to be done at this stage. It's only some small lines here and there. Met you again day after tomorrow with the spring painting. 12. Day 5 - The Pathway: Let's have a look at all the colors. It is John Brilliant number two, then naples yellow, Indian yellow, quinacridon coral, bright Opera, royal blue, purple, yellow green, and forest wing let's start with a basic horizon line, which will actually divide my sky and the bottom part. That is basically my fields. Horizon line is a basic outcome which we usually try to get in any kind of a sketching. I will now make a small pathway. If you can see it is moving from the top and going till the bottom. The pathway becomes broader when it is closer to the yes and it becomes thinner when it is far away from the eyes. Take away any extra graphite marks, and then we will start with the sky pot. Apply clear water on the entire part of the paper, I will pick up my wash brush and dip my brush in the clear water and then start with the horizontal swatch. Once I've added the horizontal swatch, I will also do a vertical swatch so that there is no place which is left empty. Let us now start with our Indian yellow. I am going to apply this color along with it. You can also go ahead with any kind of Naples orange, or you can also go ahead with a very light tint of orange in it. I would leave that decision up to you or even go ahead with orange like this. Yes. The point is that you should get a color that looks similar to the one which you observe on the paper. You do not need to be concerned about the sheets which you have something similar will always work. Once we have applied the color, we will add some amount of John Williant number two. This is a beautiful shade and it's a skin color shade that looks amazing, even for the sky or for the rocks. Most of the pieces I have been using this, and throughout the painting, I have seen so much of beauty. Whether you use in a rock, whether you use in for a wood log or you use for the skies. Everything looks beautiful with this painting. I'm mixing some amount of orange with my quinacadon coral, and then I'm starting out with my sky pod. You can see that some of even John Willian number two, I love to mix. This mixing I have been doing for many years now, and believe me, these mixing give me some beautiful shades which usually I do not get if I'm going with only one single shade. Okay, continue to build in your sky. You will see that your paper is becoming dry. So it's important to add some amount of your opera. You can go ahead with bright opera or compose opera, whichever is available with you. If you don't have these colors, please go ahead with carmine or any of the other things that's available on your palette. I'm trying to apply and pick up some of the colors in few of the spaces so that it becomes gentle and pretty. Towards the top area, I will go ahead with my beautiful purple shade. This painting was very spontaneous and I was really not sure that I would include it in this whole process of ten day challenge. But overall, when I completed it, I just felt it's easy, quick, and anyone can paint it because it has beautiful shades along with it. It doesn't take much of time for anyone during the day or even on busy days, you can't find this much amount of time to complete your skies. Okay, I guess I'm happy with how it is turning out. Some of the spaces towards the bottom area, I'm applying some more orange as the color got completely mixed, and I do not see any hint of orange specifically being shown there, mixing some amount of my purple with my royal blue, as you can see on the palette in the left side and then extending from the top towards the bottom part. Now, bottom is not exactly the bottom, of course, few strokes, as you can see. And then even some more strokes near the horizon line. Near the horizon line, the clouds will become smaller as per perspective. It's a multicolored sky, and I'm very happy and excited to actually teach this one hope that you are also following along with me. It is not going to take you more than ten to 15 minutes. Usually, I complete it within ten to 12 minutes. If you are someone who is starting out or is a big note, then you will do it very quickly because skies have to be painted faster or else you will lose the wetness or the moisture of the paper. I'm using the same yellow color which got extended from the sky area towards the bottom, and then using my purple color, along with the yellow shade, you get a color that looks more like brown. It's not practically the brown shade which I have used for painting this. It's just the yellow and the purple mix together, which gives me a shade like this. But you can also go and check if you mix the naples yellow and purple. Do you get something similar to this one or you will get for sure. But every pigment or every company that produces a particular type of pigment has different ratios of particular pigment of two, three pigments that they usually mix. Like, if it's a naples yellow, they might have gone for two or three different kind of pigments to produce that naples Yerow. And if it's a signal pigment, then I'm not sure how it would behave, but you can always go ahead and try out these shades together, mix it and see how it works for you. Mixing is always great. Mix it on the paper. Mixing on the paper is a very, very good exercise. You get various shades and colors, which you usually don't see when you are doing it on the palette. Oh I will pick up some of the colors from the pathway size because it is done on a wet paper. And when it is done on a wet paper, you will see that the sheets which you are getting will move a bit around as the paper will itself let the colors move here and there. Okay, going with the yellow, it is a yellow green that you can also go ahead with any of the other light trenes that's available with you. It looks really bright and I might have to change it a bit more to make it look a bit goldy. Otherwise, the whole painting is glowing altogether at this moment. Mixing some amount of my forestren with the light reen that's available over here and then just blending it near the horizon line. I will do the same on the left side too. It is, again, wet. You can go ahead with also blue to mix the shade and get a colour that looks more like the forest or green or any of the other darker values or green. You can go ahead with dark green also that's available with you. I would not suggest you new new colors. I will always tell you whatever is available on the palette. Go ahead with that to create your own sheets. That looks similar to the one which you observe over here, which I am using. Again, you will see that whenever you are mixing some good amount of blue or purple, you will get very dark color that looks like your green, and then that color can be used for painting these brushes. The paper is still wet because of which whenever I'm adding these line like structure, it would look like soft grasses. I really want to do this. Even on the right side of the paper, you can see over here I'm adding some line like structures that would look like grasses. You can go ahead again with some amount or some more amount of your greens or blues and then add one or two more structure. A bit of salt can also be added to get the texture these are some quick tips and tricks that I love to use for my paintings. I have been using salt a lot for getting the texture in this entire series. You will see more of it as we progress. So far away green pastures to show the horizon line in a better way is important. I have added that on the left as well as on the right. Some of the spaces, of course, would be broader and bigger and some of the spaces would be smaller. Uh huh. Blending is the key, and I'm blending with my clear brush over here, as you can observe, some of the dots and the final touches. I'm not going to do much in this particular painting. Less is more for this painting, and that's what I want to also tell you. It was more of a relaxed, easy going painting compared to the other all the paintings which we have done till now. If you're someone who loves painting skies and a very simple pathway for your creative energy, I think this is the one that you should try. Okay, let your paper dry off at this moment or just add a bit of salt on the left side. I'm not going to add it everywhere. This is something that I've realized, do not touch all the spaces. Only a few spaces here and there is good to go ahead with. Let it dry. You will get a bit of textures, and that's absolutely cool to go ahead with. Great. I guess the whole painting turned out very well. Let's remove the tape at an angle and have a final look at it. 13. Day 6 - Wave Structure - Practice: I'm going to do a quick comparison of waves painting along with the shoreline as a beginner, how I used to work around and how as an advanced artist, I do it. These kind of comparisons really help you to understand the mindset shift which has happened over the years and how even you can work through these smaller exercises and create a lot of impact in your painting. If you're just starting out with watercolors, you will understand that usually the washes that we do are mostly flat. Even if we try to blend the colors look more flatter and they don't have any shadows, contrast, or any kind of laying, which we usually apply as we move to the advanced stage. I'm just blending a few colors like darker value of brown, the maples yellow, and some amount of burn sienna for the land area or the shoreline part. The sky area is really small. I started out with royal blue and applied it on the complete top part of the sky area and did not try to apply any kind of other colors, though you will see some kind of blending as we move to the advanced stage where we actually apply some structure. I'm not going to use Koch in this bigner case, as we don't have much of resources available with us when we are starting out, but quash is an amazing opaque medium which can be used in a great way if you are working with watercolors and have lost a particular area which needed to be kept in white. Those kind of things can be done very well with quash. So as we move forward, I will even tell you about using only water and paper for preserving the whites of the paper and creating the waves accordingly. Those are also there for our painting parts. But at this moment, let's start off with wash and think about from an advanced perspective, how do we go about it? I'm starting out with my royal blue and then mixing some amount of erradium blue into though the two colors will blend into each other and will not show a different color altogether, it would be one single shade that you will observe on the paper. The leap from a beginner to advanced level is quite intentional control transforms a simple wash into convincing landscapes. Let's do a detailed understanding values and contrast. The most striking improvement, if you see, is the value, the horizon, by using a deep blue saturated color at the horizon line, you create an immediate sense of distance. In landscape painting, the darkest part of the deep waters is often where it meets the sky. The shoreline, the shadow under the white foam, where the water meets the sand adds a three D effect. It makes the water look like a physical volume resting on top of the beach, rather than just a flat color next to it. Edge control, wet on wet versus dry. The advanced version where you see soft gradients. The transition from deep blue to turquoise is smooth. Mimicking how light penetrates shallower water. Hard edges, a sharp line at the horizon and the crisp edge of the foam provides structure, which grounds the painting and prevents it from looking blurry or accidental. Texture and the foam, the white spaces used for the crashing waves is the soul of the spray. Notice that the dry brush effect on the splattering of the edge of the white foam, this mimics the chaotic energy of the sea spray. Negative spaces, leaving the paper white or creating a high contrast focal point than the bigno version blacks. So in the bigner version, you will see that we have kept white spaces, whereas in the advanced version, we have used quash, because of which you will get crashing wave l structure, and that crashing wave actually creates an energy in the water, which usually you do not see in the bigno version. Sophisticated color theory. The sand, instead of flat tan, the advanced sand uses variegated washes. You can see darker browns, burn siennas near the water edges, such as wet sand, which is naturally darker and more effective. The water introduced some amount of turquoise, and then you can also add ultramarine, et cetera. So there are various colors, and hence there are darker shades, there are mid tones, and there are lighter tones, which accurately depicts the way sunlight hits the shallows before the water breaks. There are a few key positive takeaways like laying. The sand shows texture that is more dots suggesting grains and pebbles. You can see that we have added some amount of salt into it, which pushes the pigments outside, and there are some white spots which appears. Then we have also added some splattering into the sand area. Because of this splattering, the colors of darker and lighter shades both appear. The second is perspective, the darker horizon and the lighter foreground creates a clear z axis, which is basically your depth anatomy. The wave has a clear face, the blue part and the crest, the white part. The white basically shows a lot of energy, the form of the sea, the crashing waves, whereas the calmer parts are majorly the face part. Color gravity, the pigment is settled more heavily in the troughs of the sand, which feels very, very natural. If you are just starting out with watercolor, I want to give you a few tips. Moving from the cows of a bignawh to structure of an advanced piece is mostly about managing moisture and planning in layers. Master the shadow under the waves. The biggest difference in any kind of painting is layering. How to practice it, wait for your sand layer to be 100% bone dry. Then take a darker brown and paint a thin wiggly line right at the edge of the wave, soften the bottom edge of the line with a damp brush. This creates the illusion of wet sand and use negative spaces for the foam. That is preventing the whites. Either you preserve the whites or you just go ahead with any opaque medium like wash to create those whites, the gravity of the color. Which is majorly denoting the values, graduated washes, how to practice, start at the horizon with a very thick buttery consistency of blue as you move your brush down the page, dip it in more cleaner water, and then it really takes the pigments very lighter compared to the darker, which we have added on the horizon line. You can also go ahead with lightest wash and then add the darker values towards the horizon, just the way I have done over here. Controlled texture or splatters. That is your active texturing is something that I have also done very well in this painting. While the sand wash is still damp, tap your brush against your finger, and then this would create some tiny dots. You can do it on a dry paper also, or you can just do it when your paper is wet. The salt can be added, which actually breaks your pigments and move the paints from there, creates white, small, small dots here and there. This breaks up the flat colors and mimics the look of pebbles and shells. Hopefully, you have got a clear understanding of the wave structure from this painting. We will be using this kind of learning even in our last painting where there is rocks, then there is shoreline, et cetera. So be ready, go with the practice and see you in the next lesson where we are going to paint thesis. 14. Day 6 - Dawn at the Castle: Let's have a look at all the colors for our Project six, naples yellow, naples, orange yellow, quinacrodon coral, ultramarine, horizon blue, sap green, and burn Sienna. Starting out with the horizon line. Once we are done with the horizon line, we will start working for the castle area. The castle is at a faraway distance, and hence, it has to be really small, that the drawing might be a bit complicated at this moment because it's really far away when something is really far away, small, small details are important. But having said that, it is going to take you really less time, and it's going to be very simple and easy the way you are going to actually draw and paint the castle. It is far away distance. Hence, very less details will be added in this particular painting. Sketching before watercolor painting isn't just a bigner habit. It's a foundational step that even experienced artists rely on. Watercolor is a less forgiving medium, so having a plan makes a big difference. Now, this particular composition has good number of elements compared to the other composition that we have attempted till now. So having some knowledge about the sketching part or this sketching can provide a great guidance before you go ahead with the final painting. This sketching might take a bit of time at this moment, but if you continue to get along, I think that you can nail it. It helps you plan composition. A sketch lets you decide where exactly goes subject, background, focal points before committing with paint. Since watercolor is hard to correct, this upfront planning prevents awkward layouts. You avoid major mistakes. With watercolor, you can't easily cover or erase errors like acrylic or oil. A light pencil sketch helps you catch proportions, issues, perspective problems, or placement errors early. It guides your brush work. The sketch acts like a roadmap. Instead of guessing where to paint, you can focus on techniques like washes, gradients, and layering because the structure is already in place. It improves proposition and accuracy, especially for architecture or detailed subjects. Sketching ensures everything is aligned and balanced before adding color. It saves time and paint. Fixing mistakes in watercolor often means starting over. A quick sketch reduces wasted effort and material. It builds confidence. When you know your drawing is solid, you can paint more freely and expressively without worrying about structure. It helps with value planning. You can lightly indicate shadows and highlights in your sketch, which is crucial in watercolor, since light areas are preserved from the paper. Having said that, some artists keep sketching for a looser, more spontaneous style, but that usually comes with experience and strong drawing skills. I prefer always adding my sketching before we go ahead with the final painting. Though in all the audio compositions, I have tried to keep the sketch to minimum. But as we progress with the compositions, I would be introducing some more of the sketching part. This particular composition has a lot of elements starting out with your sky, your land. Then we have this castle. Along with it, you will also have water and grasslands. Now, since there are so many elements that I have added in this particular composition, I would ask you guys to go slow as I am also teaching in that particular way. I do not want you all to get confused or get overwhelmed in the process. Keeping it simple is the idea. Go ahead and first add these lines. It is very, very important when you are working through watercolors. That's the reason I have asked you to step into sketching in more of a stronger way rather than keeping it just a few lines, et cetera. Few of the areas, I just add some of my darker graphite marks as I want to see that those areas are done in darker values compared to the other areas which are kept in the lighter values. I have added some water on top of my sky area, and then going ahead with my naples yellow, naples orange, quin acrodon coral, just to make it look like dawn, you will see that the dawn colors are very light, pretty, beautiful. I want to also always keep it that way. The blue color is bar blue or ultra pennin whichever you want to choose, M cobarblue is equally granulating just the way my ultramarine is. Hence, both these colors have become my favorite overtime. Each and every brand produces different kind of colors because the pigments are different in each of these colors. You can choose your brand, see which pigment you want, and then only buy them. I would like to tell you a few fundamentals when we are going ahead with a wet on wet approach. Let's break down why we start light and build darker values and what's happening on the paper. Watercolor is transparent. Unlike opaque mediums, watercolor relies on dark reflecting off the white paper beneath. If you go dark too early, you lose the glow permanently. Light washes is equal to preserving luminosity. Dark washes always blocks the light. Wet on wet spreads and softens everything. When the paper is wet, pigments flow freely, edges become soft and blurry. While I have just picked up some of my masking fluid and trying to add a few dots here and there, let's continue with our wet on wet journey. While we gradually add darker values, watercolor follows a light dark progression and more pigment later, lift or fix two dark areas. Wet on wet is for atmosphere and not for precision. This is majorly for sky backgrounds, soft shadows, base colors. What's happening physically? Water spreads pigment across paper fibers, more water is equal to light value, more pigment is equal to dark value. Now let's go ahead and mix our colors like our sap green and yellow to get a faraway land area which is in green. I am taking this particular castle at the last. Why I am picking up the castle at the last, I want to first explore these grounds and then only work on my castle part. In the meantime, you can see that my bottom area is already dried off where it sprinkles are amount of my masking fluid. Time to add the darkest of the values. You can just pick up some blue on your brush and then introduce it. On top of the sabrne, you will get the darkest of the value this way, very simple and easy. I love to add warm yellow, school blues and sabgrens onto the background area for the land. It practically introduces such a beautiful atmospheric way of greens into the environment that it brings out a lot of realism rather than making it look flat. I'm now going ahead with my horizon blue. You can see that my horizon blue is from the brand Migello Mission Gold, I have already introduced you to this color. I'm blending it with some water. You can also introduce a bit of your bar blue or ultramarine on the sides. Every space in this particular painting is very small because of which it is taking some good amount of time to work through it. For the beach, I have started using my John Brilliant number two, which I am slowly introducing on the beach area, and then I would be blending it with some of the water. Also introducing some darker values of brown. I always try to add some contrast, whether it be the beach area or whether it be the land area. This contrasting news brings a lot of dimensional effect into any painting rather than making it look flat and more bignurs like. The structure also gets defined in this way. You all know that I have been talking a lot about contrast. Contrast is one of the most important elements in watercolor painting because it creates visual interest, clarity, and emotional impact. Without enough contrast, a painting can look flat, dull and confusing. Creates depth and dimension. Watercolor is naturally transparent, so contrast help define form. Strong contrast make objects appear three dimensional instead of flat. Just the way you see over here, we are introducing the blues into the Browns and that's the way it is becoming darker in few of the spaces and lighter in the others. Eye contrast areas naturally attract attention by placing contrast strategically, you control where the viewers look first and how their eye move across the painting. Enhances focal points. Your me subject stands out when it has strong contrast compared to surrounding areas. Without contrast. Everything competes equally for attention. Adds drama and mood. Soft low contrast can feel calm and subtle while bold contrast creates drama and energy. You can control the emotional tone of your painting through contrast. Contrast makes shapes and edge clearer. This is especially important in watercolor, where colors can easily blend and loose definition. Balances composition, a good range of values, light, midtones and dark, exactly the way we introduce. Even for our crowns, we have started with our beautiful yellow green, and then sap green. You can slowly introduce the blue to create the darkest of the value. This helps to balance any kind of composition in a great way. When we spontaneously paint the land and the grassland area, you will see that they move into each other. The pigments also blend, creating some soft edges which look amazing and very atmospheric for painting like this one. I have started enclosing some of the darker values of my browns or else this painting is looking more flat when the blend of the green and the browns make it look like a single piece rather than adding dimension into it. I've introduced the darkest of the value towards the bottom area because this is closest to my eyes, and hence it has to appear more dark as per perspective. You will also introduce some amount of salt into it. The salt will create lots of texture that would look like the spring flowers, and I really like the fact when summer spring is coming together to create a beautiful outcome, which looks very impactful and creates a interest in the viewer's eye. I'm picking up my thinnest brush to add some details. I have added this darkest of the brown. How I did that, I have picked up some blue and added onto this brown area, and you can see that it looks very dark at this moment. Use your liner brush to work this around. Once this is done, I will slowly introduce my lightest of the green just underneath the area where the smallest of the part of the greens was introduced on top of which this castle is standing. We are going to slowly build up on the faraway land areas to each of these land area is different from each other. Hence, I have worked on smaller aspects slowly compared to the ones that we did Audio, where we were continuously working one after another from top to bottom. Though the whole of watercolor painting should always go from top to bottom, but there are some exceptions which do happen in watercolors. I do keep those kind of things also in mind. I slowly develop these kind of paintings where I'm going each step by step, the areas which are not interlinked or have to be actually shown differently. Those areas need to be painted separately. Introduce some amount of the darkest of the green, so that is basically your sabgreen and blue to actually make this particular area stand out compared to the ones which we have already painted over here. Watercolor is often spontaneous and sometimes it does change the whole flow. You might have a different pencil sketch, but when you paint, it becomes very different. A pencil sketch gives structure but watercolor tends to soften or even overwrite the hard lines. The fluidity can break the precision of the drawing leading to a looser and more expressive result. This is what I have learned over the complete time, I have worked with watercolors. Watercolors isn't about strict control. It's about collaboration with the medium. You guide it, but you also respond to what it does. That's why artists say watercolor is less about following rules and more about understanding behavior and letting go at the right moments. Whenever the colors are moving into each other, I do like to pick it up as I did over here. I'm also adding some water onto the bottom part. It has become really dried, and I might like to introduce some colors at this moment. Whenever you are introducing some colors like your blues, et cetera, you want to create some texture with the help of salt. I think it's important to have the paper wet to do all of this. If your paper is not wet, you will not get the textures that you really want in this painting. I will also allow my colors to move as per gravity by placing a small tape underneath and then add the salt on the bottom part of this grassland area. So more lines with the help of blue to make it look more precise and even, as well as it gives a lot more, I would say, detailing into this drawing. Continue to add some more of the darkest value of blue underneath the area of this monument. Once you have added this particular blue on the monument area, we will go ahead and let the paper dry off before we start adding the color on the particular area of the castle. While we continue to finish this particular part of the painting, I would like to tell you why painting a castle in watercolor is very interesting. Subject naturally combines structure and imagination perfect for a medium that thrives on both control and spontaneity. Contrast between rigid architecture and fluid paint. Castles are full of straight lines, towers, and defined shapes. Watercolour, on the other hand, flows and softens the edges. That tension creates a beautiful balance between precision and looseness. Castles often have strong forms, walls, arches, which are perfect for exploring contrast. Watercolor lets you build soft shadows and glowing highlights, making the structure feel atmospheric and alive. Texture exploration, stone walls, weathered surfaces, moss and age marks can be suggested with watercolor washes, dry brush and granulation. You don't need to paint every brick. The medium helps imply detail naturally. Watercolor excels at creating mood, mist, fog, sunset, and stormy skies. A castle surrounded by a soft, diffuse background can feel mysterious, romantic, or even magical. Freedom to style. You don't have to be perfectly realistic. You can exaggerate shape, simplify details, and even make the castle look whimsical or storybook like. Foreground, mid grounds and background elements like tree, sky can be built up a transparent watercolors, giving depth without heaviness exactly the way we are doing right now. The paper is still wet, and I'm introducing some small, small darker values of the blue into it to making it look like the darkest of the green and create some textures into the foregrounds. Lastly, I would say it's all about story telling. Castles naturally evoke history, fantasy, and emotion where it is ruined fortress, a fairy tale palace, or a dramatic cliffside stronghold. Watercolor enhances that storytelling with its expressive quality. I am now introducing my browns in the castle area. Slowly, we will add some amount of blue to make it look more darker and create the contrast and depth which is needed. Some of the areas would be lighter in value with some of the areas being darker in value. I have less to guide. At this moment. You can continue to keep building your castle. As you see, this is a very, very small area, a space which you need to work on. Just having one darker and one lighter value is going to be sufficient for the darks and for the lights, for the depths, for the contrast and everything. I will pick up my thinnest liner brush to introduce the darkest of the value and keep working through it. A I'm happy with how the castle has turned out. Way less detail and very less work has gone into it, which actually makes it look very fresh yet keeping it simple. I would now go ahead and remove the masking fluid in the foreground area. This foreground area has small, small flower like structure. I would also add a small dark line just below it. Finally all done, I'm just trying to add a line with water and then just use my tissue to remove the extra pigments from that particular area. Let us remove the tape at an angle, as I always see and have a final look at the painting. Be proud of yourself, and let's move on to the next day. 15. Day 7 - The Boat: Let us have a look at all the colors. First is horizon blue. The second is to blue. The third would be bi ultramarine. The fourth is royal blue. Fifth would be myserleum blue, and then we will go ahead with the green, that is sap green, then is some dark value of green, any green utrtint. This is what we have from the color perspective, and let's start out by drawing a line. Once you draw a line, this would be basically the horizon which will separate your sky and the water. I will also draw two small hill like structure for defining my horizon in a better way. Watercolor is a very transparent medium. If you go ahead with very dark marks of graphite, taking it off in a later date would be difficult. And since it is transparent, you will be also in a position to see through. Whenever you are working with graphite, for watercolor is either keep it limited or if you are not keeping it limited, just make sure that you apply lighter tones or lighter values of graphite marks. Working with a two edge or an edge B pencil like this is always helpful in the process. Let us now go ahead and make a small boat. Now, this boat is starting from the left side. You will see that I will never place my subjects in the middle. It's a very easy and simple painting. We are going to cover this boat with a masking fluid. If you don't have the masking fluid, you can also go ahead with masking tape. Take a 1 " masking tape, place it on top of this small boat, and then draw on top of it. Once your drawing is done, go ahead and cut out the piece, and then just stick it on top of the boat area. I have used the masking tape method quite a few times ardo and then I did go ahead with the masking tape way. Exactly just by sticking it on top of the paper and then applying all my colors, removing it, and keeping the white ases. That's a great way to work around in your white spaces or keeping your white spaces intact. Masking fluid is the best way. If you do not have masking fluid, then another way is masking thief. You can make beautiful birch trees even with the masking tape approach. I have another class where you can paint 21 polroid series. I have used this masking tape method over there. So go ahead and refer back to the class if you are someone who is looking for a few hats, which can replace your masking fluid. Let us continue to add the graphite masks for making the boat. You will see that the whole composition is being kept as very simple, easy. We have done more complex compositions over here. Hopefully you will like and enjoy this composition a lot more, as I love the greens, the blues, et cetera, merging and together in one painting. My composition usually has a choice that I choose whenever I'm going to a beach side. Every beach side I go to, I like to have some hills, see, land together. That really makes that particular trip really memorable for me. Let us add some small tiny human beings on the left side of the boat, and then we will just mask it out with the help of the masking fluid. I've already told you if you cannot use the masking fluid or don't have the masking fluid, then go ahead and use masking tape. I will not have a lot of reflection into the water, but since this boat is white, so there will be some amount of reflection that I need to add to the water body, I will go ahead and just mark out that area with the help of my pencil. And once that is done, we will just apply some masking fluid in few of the areas. I use the masking fluid from the brand Pebo and this is 100% cotton paper, 300 GSM, which enables me to apply the masking fluid without any tear whenever I try to remove my masking fluid. I would always like to tell you if you are using any masking fluid, go ahead and check the kind of paper which you need for that masking fluid. Usually 100% cotton, 300 GSM paper is good to have. In case you are using a lllose paper to check that this masking fluid should be compatible with that particular kind of paper. I would let my masking fluid dry off completely before applying a clear water for the sky area. I will go ahead with my own beautiful colors like loyal blue, erleum blue, and then some more darker shade to create the clouds. Whatever we are learning here is clearly an extension of whatever we have learned earlier. Now, since this particular painting has more of all the learnings from the di paintings except the water part, I would just recommend you to go ahead and start with the painting directly. You can watch this video at Nox speed first, see how I go about the entire painting, and then you can start with the painting and paint along with me. All the paintings are at, which makes it easier for you to follow along and paint with me. I'm mixing some amount of ireum blue with the royal blue to get a darker shade of blue towards the bottom area. I usually try to keep my watercolors transparent. Watercolor is a very transparent medium, and if you have some whites of the paper visible, I can tell you the clouds or the sky looks way more prettier. Mixing some tramarin and indigo in the existing mix of royal blue and erleium blue. If you don't have these shades, you can also go ahead with cobar blue or donthrineblue. These two are equally good shades to work around with. I have added the darkest value at this moment towards the bottom area. I plan to add clouds only in few of the spaces. I will not add it on the entire part of the paper. They are concentrated more towards the bottom and few lines here and there, or few shorter clouds towards the top area. Not every time we will observe clouds everywhere and that's one of the reasons I like to keep it concentrated in some of the areas of the composition compared to the entire part of the sky. I have also picked up some more of my darker values into the cloud area, mix some more indigo or neutral tint, whatever is available with you and start adding the colors in some of the spaces. Do not apply it everywhere as we don't want the clouds to be concentrated in all the spaces. This is one of the mistakes which I have done initially as big nurse to go ahead and apply the clouds or the concentrated mix of the colors everywhere into the cloud area. That really leads to the fact that we are not sure about where to exactly guide the eyes of the spectator into our painting, and it makes all the spaces equally important, which doesn't allow our painting to actually glow. So it becomes really important to keep some of the spaces boring and some of the spaces pretty interesting in any painting that you are attempting. As we have already applied the blue on top of the green areas, hence, it has become an underpainting. Now, let me tell you a bit more about this technique. Watercolor underpainting is essentially the blueprint phase of a painting. It involves applying an initial layer of light, transparent pigment to establish values, map out lighter sources or unify the color temperature of the piece before adding local color and details. Type of underpainting, one monochromatic, usually done in a neutrton like paints gray, CPR or light blue. This focuses entirely on value, allowing you to ignore color and focus on the three form. Warm versus cool base. If you want a glowing sunset, you might underpaint the entire paper with pale yellow aca. For a snowy landscape, a pale koba blue wash sets a cool mood that peeks through subsequent layers, complimentary underpainting. This is a more advanced technique when you paint the opposite color underneath. For example, a light wash of pink or red under a green forest can make the greens appear more vibrant through optical mixing. Core mechanics to master the underpainting, you must control the relationship between water and pigment early on. There is wet on wet wet on dry, staining versus granulating. Wet on wet is applying pigment to a damp surface. This is what we have done over here. Wet on dry is applying a wash to the dry paper. Staining versus granulating is using non granulating color like Taleo blue. Best practice for layering is go light. It is nearly impossible to lighten an underpainting once it is done. Start with a much lighter value than you think you need. Check non lifting colors. If you use a pigment that lifts easily, it will mix with your second layer and create. Staining colors for underpainting so they stay locked to the paper. By ensure the underpainting is 100% dry before moving to next stage. Now, it all depends if you are doing wet on dry, then it should be bone dry. If you are doing wet on wet, then it should be normalized, or I mean, the paper should be damp enough so that you can apply the colors. I'm picking up some of the darker colors at this moment while we continue to work through the underpainting points. When painting complex subjects like water or ves, the underpainting serves as a light. I would say, I have used this particular thing in many of my paintings earlier and it has turned out really well. Let's go ahead and just focus on our background, ill before we go ahead with the water area. O. Let us start with the Horizon blue for applying our first layer of watercolors into the bottom area for the water. I really love this T and horizon blue combination, Telo turquoise, I would say, and Horizon blue combination. I have been using this for quite a few years now. And if you are someone who doesn't have turquoise or Tao turquoise, you can always go ahead, mix some blue with your lemon yellow and try this combination. I think you will get a color that's closer to the one which I'm using over here. I will go ahead and apply some more of my Telo turquoise towards the bottom area and more towards the top area. Let us try to have an even wash with a gradient in it because we will really need the colors to change a bit as we go towards the top area. I'm not saying that we have to stick to any particular pattern, but this is how I like it. And I think you would also enjoy painting this way. Okay, the darker values would be closer to our eyes because we can see it in a close manner, whereas everything that is far away will appear way more lighter. I'm mixing some amount of indigo into the Ao turquoise shape and then trying to apply some lines. The lines will be more broader towards the bottom area, and it would become more thinner and thinner as we go towards the top area. The golden rule of watercolor is going light, which is light to dark, allows you to bid depth through glazing without losing the clarity of colors. The first wash, this is where you map out your lighter values. For things like the crest of a wave or sunlight hitting a surface, you might leave the paper completely white or use a very diluted watery wash. The mid tones. Once the first layer is dry, you add more pigment and less water. You can also go wet and wet as we are doing over here. The darkest dark reserved for the very end. This is where you use high pigment concentration to pull out deep shadows, crevice or sharp contrast, exactly the way we are doing over here. I have added more of indigo to create the darkest of the value towards the bottom area as we have progressed. Why disorder matters, transparency and vibrancy. If you layer a light color over a dark tone, it will just look chalky or muddy. By layering dark over light, the light shines through the layers, creating a rich stained glass effect. Mistake management. It is much easier to darken an area than it is to lighten that up. Edge control. Start light allows you to establish soft atmospheric edges early on. You can then use the darker thicker paint layer to create hard edges that draw the eye to the focal point. Let us have a quick comparison. EO coffee is very high in water, establishes the light and move. Milk and cream is balanced, building structure and mid drown values. Butter, very low water, deepest shadows and fine details. This is how your pigments should appear. I continue to create some more lines, as you see over here. We are almost armed with the bottom part of the painting, and we will allow this part to dry off before we go ahead with the boat area. The complete area is dry now and I'm adding some more darkest value of greens towards the bottom area of my hill part. Once this is done, I could just use my flat brush to blend it easily and quickly with the water area. Or else you can also leave it as there will be no changes or no problem in it. I'm using my flat brush to blend the darkest value of colors with the water area. It gives a nice smooth transition from the land to the water side. We will be repeating the same process again till I'm a bit satisfied with the outcome. Now it's time to work with the darkest value, and that is our neutral thin. As you can see, I have actually used my thinnest brush at this moment and started applying it in few of the areas where I think it is necessary. This is basically a lineup brush from the brand file. You can have a lineup brush like this or whatever thin brush that's available with you, you can use that. Let the darker values dry off before you go ahead and remove the masking fluid. Once you remove the masking fluid, we will go with a very, very light wash of the nutritent that we have applied. The boat is white, but we cannot keep the entire paper absolutely white. Hence, a very clear kind of a wash of this nutritent will be helpful in creating the structure of boat and its reflection into the water area. I'm exceptionally happy with how it has turned out and supplying some more of my lighter value of this neutral tint on the right side. We might have to go ahead and again work with a bit of darker tint here and there just to make it look more organic and not just blend the colors automatically into each other. That is something you must always keep in mind. If you are adding something in wet on wet, you have to go over it once more to finish it. There is very less to explain at this stage. I hope that you are enjoying the lesson. I have completely loved the easy composition, though there is lots of components that we have added over here, whether it be the sky, the land, the water, and the boat. But still, you can complete it pretty quickly and easily. You have seen how much time I have taken. You may go ahead and just multiply it by 1.2 or 1.3 x for your completion. Yes, sometimes we have to pause, we have to see, and then again give back. So all of that, keep in mind. I have just estimated the time. Let the paper dry off after this and then remove the tape pattern angle, have a final look at the painting. I'm pretty sure about it that you are going to love it. Do upload the project in the project session, and I will meet you soon in the next lesson with a spring painting. 16. Day 8 - The Meadow: Colors are green, yellow green, sap green, ultramarine, aleine, immian yellow, maples orange, serlem blue, royal blue, Russian blue, or indigo, and neutritin. We are going to do very simple sketch. First is basically a small area that I'm going to define and under that would be an horizon line. You continue to just add these lines as I work through it. I want to really tell you a bit about horizon line. The horizon line is the absolute backbone of realistic drawing and spatial composition. Whether sketching a vast landscape or a complex interior, it acts as the foundational reference point for every single element in the frame. It dictates the viewer's eye level. In drawing the horizon line and eye level are functionally identical. Whether the artist or the viewer's eye are positioned, that is where the horizon line sits. Shifting the line completely alters the narrative and the mood of the piece. High horizon line implies the viewer is looking down from a high vantage point, Ward's eye view, emphasizing the ground plane and making the viewers feel dominant. Low horizon line implies the viewer is low to the ground making objects and figures look imposing, grand and heroic, just the way as we are doing over here. Without a horizon line, linear perspective breaks down completely. In one point and two point perspective, all receding parallel lines converge at specific vanishing point which must live exactly on the horizon line. It controls object orientation. The position of an object related to the horizon line tells the viewer exactly which sides of the object can be seen. This creates an instant intuitive sense of three D or two resurface. Above the horizon line, you will look up at the objects. Below the horizon line, you are looking down at the objects and on the horizon line the object intersect your direct line of sight. It establishes consistent scale and proportion. Once we have established our line, that is basically the horizon line, we will go ahead and mark the area where we want to draw these branches. For my son, I have masked out that area, as you have already seen. With my masking fluid. You can also go with a masking tape to mask out this small circular area. In case none of these are available, you can also go ahead with wash. Now, white Kush is great to work around with. It's opaque in nature, and you can always add this small wash area on top of the watercolor. Which would shine bright and because of its opacity, it is always good to work around in case even working with a medium like watercolors. I will go ahead and apply a layer of water on top of the paper. As you see, I'm going from the bottom towards the top. You can also go from the top towards the bottom. It's great to do a cross watch and always see that you have not left out any spaces. Once this is done, we are going to go ahead with the yellow. I am adding some amount of my naples yellow at this moment. You can also use lein or Indian yellow. These are the options that can be used in case you don't have Naples yellow available with you. Indian yellow has always been one of my go to colors because of its extreme transparency. Modern Indian yellow is highly transparent because it lacks any chalky or opaque filters, it acts like a stained glass window on your paper. It's great to warm up underlying layers without making the painting look muddy or muddying the paper's natural white cloth. As I continue to apply my yellow color, you will see that some of the spaces I would leave in white as I go towards the top in and around the sun, it would be more of yellows, and towards the top, it would be more of blues on neutral tint as you observe. I'm starting out with the lightest of the blue, which is basically my royal blue. You will see that this shade, along with the cerium blue can do wonders in any of your paintings. Let us elaborate a bit more. Using a warm yellow alongside Indigo for a watercolor sky is one of the most brilliant palette choices you can make. It yields incredibly dramatic atmospheric results that mimic the natural physics of light in our atmosphere. While mixing a standard yellow and standard blue often creates a bright, grassy green, the unique property of indigo changes the game entirely. You avoid the muddy green trap. The biggest fear watercolor artists have when painting skies is accidentally creating a brilliant unnatural green when the sun meets the blue sky. The magic of indigo, indigo is a deeply, highly desaturated, reddish or gray leaning blue because it contains a hint of red violet undertone, and a lot of black and gray value. It acts as a neutralizer. The result, when a warm golden yellow blends into indigo on damp paper, they don't create vibrant landscape green. Instead, the transition through a beautiful, soft, muted olive gray or an odd stormy gray green. This perfectly mimics the natural dusty haze seen near the horizon during sunset or a sunrise. Watercolor relies entirely on white of the paper to create light to make a light look flindly bright. You need deep darks next to it. Yellow sits at the very top of the value scale. Indigo sets at the very bottom, the result. Putting them in same sky creates an immense dramatic value contrast. The yellow sun or the horizon will appear to vently glow and radiate light because it is scraped by the deep moody darkness of the indigo storm clouds or night sky above. I love the aqua brown shade that I see over here near the horizon line, once I make some amount of orange into the blue that I have already added. I will add some lighter values of this dirty blue mix towards the top area. Once that is done, we will move to the ground part that is majorly using my may green, apply the first undertone value. And then going ahead with the darker value of greens to create the contrast. I will use may green as an undertone, or you can also say it is my base layer for all the greens. May green is a bright, luminous, yellow, leaning green, while it might look shockingly vibrant right out of the tube, almost like a neon spring leaf, it is a secret weapon for landscape painters when used as an undertone. Using knee green as a foundational underpainting for round planes, fields and foliage works beautifully for several distinct reasons. It mimics natural subsurface scattering. In nature, grass, moss and leaves aren't solid opaque surfaces. They are translucent. When sunlight hits a field, the light actually penetrates the top layer of the blade of grass bounces around inside it and illuminates it from within. It counteracts the dreading effect of earthy tones. If you paint a ground plane, using only traditional earthy tones like raw sienna, ocher and Saprine, the landscape can quickly start to look heavy, flat, or muddy. May green has incredibly high chroma and strong yellow pies. Using it as an underlayer ensures that even when you cover 80% of it with muddy or dark brown colors, the remaining 20% will provide an intense visual pop. You can see I have started arting on the right side, some amount of blue along with sap green. But still, the ground looks really vibrant and classy. It creates instant atmospheric depth because me green is so heavily biased towards yellow, it acts as a warm color in the foreground. As the ground plane recedes towards the horizon line, you can let that matrene undertone mix with cooler blues or atmospheric grays as you see over here. The transition from a warm, glowing may grene underlayer in the foreground to a cool, hazy blue green in the background instantly establishes a believable sense of distance and perspective on flat ground. You can also use it in opposite way exactly how we have done over here. I have also added some amount of salt on the wet surface to shift the colors from that particular area and make it look more like a spring season. As you know, this whole of the series is a spring as well as a summer series, and I love the fact that we are creating beautiful greens today. I would be going ahead with the yellow under the sun area and then mixing it with the green. As we continue to work through the greens, let me tell you another important fact when you apply a wet on wet undertone of may green and drop other colors directly into it while it's still them, the granular properties of round earth pigments react beautifully. Granulation contrast may green is typically very smooth and non granulating. If you drop a highly granulating pigment, like a bar blue or genuine granulating earths over a damp may green wash, the heavy sediment of the paint settles into the valleys of the paper texture, while the smooth may green stays on the ridges. Let's go ahead and just mix these greens in a good way so that the yellow and the green look very smooth when the blend appears on top of it. I would allow this to dry off and then go ahead with some amount of my darker value of green along with the dry brush technique, as you see over here, to create the grass like structure for my fgrounds. The phenomenon of the foreground being darker and more intense in value compared to the background is one of the most fundamental laws of landscape painting and drawing. It is caused by a natural optical occurrence known as atmospheric perspective. Even when the air looks completely clear, the atmosphere between you and a distant object is filled with billions of microscopic particles, moisture, dust, pollution and gas molecules. In the foreground, there is very little air between your eyes and nearby object like a tree ten feet away. You are looking through almost zero atmospheric interference. So you see the object through deep, unaltered dark values. In the background, when you look at the mountains 10 miles away, you are looking through a massive dense wall of air and floating particles. These particles scatter the incoming sunlight, and this scattered light acts like a luminous veil or fog filling in the dark shadows of the distant mountains with light, making them appear much lighter, softer and blur. I've added some amount of my white gouache and the blue color of the royal blue that I already had on my palette, along with the white gouache to create these small dots that appear like your spring fields. I'm adding a second layer now to my background hils. This is basically the yellow and the blues, along with the greens that you see over here. You have to always use it in a way that it shows the contrast that we need in the paint. I will add yellow towards the top and then blend it with the green when I go towards the bottom area that is around the horizon line. Once I have added the green, I would make sure that I blend it with the help of my flat brush so that the movement of the colors look absolutely seamless from the horizon line to the background hills. There is less to explain at this moment. Hence, I would let the colors blend and move as is. Once it is done, we will just go ahead and move on to the next part that is basically drawing our tree. It would be simple and easy. So some of the part is basically your branches and then would be the leaves. We will do it in a very soft natural way so that it blends with the background. Um, now we are starting with a very atmospheric and blended kind of approach for our greens. I'm going ahead and applying a clear layer of water. This you can only do once your sky is completely dry. Since we have painted the sky first, hence the sky should be dry by now, go ahead and apply a clear layer of water. Once you have applied this clear layer, you can always start out with the greens. Now, once you start out with the greens before that, you can also add some amount of yellow if you feel anywhere you have added less of yellow for the sky area. This is the second layer on major, you can say this is basically your glazing part for the sky. As we have already applied all the sky colors, and this is just to add as a top up, or you can say just to make it look a bit more enhancing and enchanting. I'm done retouching my sky area. Now I am mixing some amount of my may green along with the yellow green. Once I have added that, we are starting out to apply some of the areas of the green onto the top area of the sky. The bottom area would be more in the darker values compared to the lighter leaves which actually appear in the top area. The phenomenon of the bottom area of the tree appearing more vividly green compared to the leaves at the top comes down to a beautiful mix of plant piology, lighting conditions, and the translucent nature of the leaves. Now I am starting out with my darker value of green, which I apply only underneath the lighter value of greens that I have applied towards the top area. Direct sun washout, you can say. The leaves at the very top of the tree are completely exposed to direct intense sunlight. When bright light hits these glossy or waxy leaf surface, it creates a high amount of spectacular reflection. Subsurface scattering. Leaves are not completely opaque. They act like tiny filters of light when sunlight hits the top canopy, some of the light penetrates through the upper leaves. As the light travels downwards, through the layers of the tree, it gets filtered by millions of chloroplast containing chlorophyll. The light eliminates the lower leaves from behind and above, creating a phenomenon called subsurface scattering. It makes the bottom area of the tree look like it is glowing with a deep, vibrant green inner light. Shadow contrast in the visual perception, color is entirely relative to what it is next to it. The bottom canopy of the tree is full of deep pockets of shadow created by the branches above. When a rich green leaf is nested right next to a deep dark shadow, the value contrast makes the green appear incredibly punchy and intense. At the top of the tree, the leaves are framed against a bright luminous sky, which visually compresses their color and makes them look less saturated by comparison. That's why we have lighter values towards the top and darker values towards the bottom, as I have or the told you in the pinning before we were starting out with the colors of the tree. I have now added some smaller dots here and there of the darker values for the trees. This is basically to show that there are some scattered leaves here and there rather than making it look like a pattern, which looks more human made versus it appearing natural. Now I'm mixing some shade of light value of brown and darker value of brown to create the shade of the branches. And these branches, some of it is dark, some of it is light, some of it is thin, some of it is more heavy. Towards the bottom area, you will see that the branches are more heavier and they do not appear like smaller or thinner ones, compared to the top where they just break into more thinner ones. Let's summarize quickly in 1 minute, whatever we have learned in the last 20 minutes, the glowing sky. Look at how the brilliant, warm yellow horizon perfectly collides with the heavy dramatic indigo clouds. By using a desaturated, reddish blue indigo, the transition creates a completely natural, stormy atmospheric gray green right where they meet, avoiding any flat, muddy green drops. The radiating sun, the tiny unpainted, white circle of the sun looks blindly bright because it is immediately hugged by the rich yellow, which is then framed by the deep dark indigo above the may green ground. The foreground meadow uses the vibrant luminous yellow green undertone to capture the look of the sun drenched turf. Notice how it provides an intense lifelike inner light while the dark grains are laid over it to create rolling shadow and depth. The anatomy of the tree, the tree perfectly showcases the leaf biology under harsh lighting. The top canopy catches the direct blue of the sky. Turning light and translucent, while the bottom area gets progressively darker and richer in green as it escapes the dic lure and sits next to deep shadow pockets. Let's remove the tape at an angle and have a look at this final painting. If you have also painted along with me, do upload the project in the project gallery. See you soon in the next painting. 17. Day 9 - The Tower: Hello, guys. Let's have a look at all the colors. It is horizon blue, to green, yellow green, sap green, ultramarine, indigo, John Brilliant number two, and Burn Siena. Let us now start out with some basics of drawing. First is my horizon line. Once I have added the horizon line, I would go ahead and just mark out an area where basically I would add a small monument, a watchtower or even you can say it's a small castle kind of tower that I'm going to add. Overall, I have tried to keep the composition pretty simple, but still it is complex compared to last all the compositions which we have attempted, as there is a good number of things that we have included. We have included some amount of our land. Then some amount of greens for the backgrounds as well as this small tower castle whose reflection will fall in the water. You should be ready for something very exciting, creative, and enjoyable. Okay, I guess I am happy with how this is turning up at this moment. I'm not trying to actually have a very complex painting. As I always say, complexity should be kept out When you are working with watercolors. You should always try to simplify whatever is given to you. I've made a small door for my castle. Once it is done, I would add my background hills. Now these are two layer of hills which I'm going to add, and keeping it more simple, the skies would be easy to go with. We are not going to complicate the sky at all. So long windows for the castle. Of course, they are not done in an absolute straight manner. I have done it dintively. Um, just add a bit of darker pencil marks wherever it is necessary. And once that is done, we have to start out with some of the soil or the land patches towards the bottom area. Bottom, right hand conno left hand conno and rest would be the water. We are going to add some beautiful colors even in our water. That's one of the reasons I have chosen horizon blue palo green. These are one of my favorite shades to go for water area. Now, let me elaborate a bit about why do I always go ahead with pencil marks before final painting. Skipping straight to the final paper with a loaded paintbrush is tempting, but a preliminary pencil sketch is the secret weapon of watercolor artists and painters. Don't think that it is an extra work. You would see it as a blueprint that ensures your final masterpiece doesn't collapse. Here is why laying down those pencil marks is so crucial before you ever touch paints to the paper. When you start a painting, your brain is trying to process a dozen of things at once, color harmony, water control, values, anatomy structure, et cetera. A rough sketch allows you to solve the spatio puzzle first. Proportions and placement. It ensures your subject actually fits on the page and that a horizon line or a critical element isn't accidentally cut off. Focal points, you can map out exactly where you want the viewer's eye to go using composition rules. The roadmap for water and light in mediums like watercolor, timing and moisture control are everything. Once the paper is wet, you don't have time to second guess where a shadow falls or where a light should be preserved. Saving the whites, a light pencil mark reminds you exactly where to leave the bare paper for brilliant highlights or where to apply the masking fluid. Value mapping. You are lightly hatch on note whether the darkest darks and the midtones will go giving you a clear idea for building up washes from dark to light. Ful is painting. There is nothing more intimidating than a pristine, expensive sheet of black paper. Lowering the stakes, a sketch breaks the curse of the blank page because it's just a sketch. You give yourself permission to make mistakes. Erase and adjust. Okay. Now, let's start out with our Olean yellow. You can also go ahead with Indian yellow and then mix some amount of yellow green into it to get a shade that looks exactly similar to what I have over here. I'm also mixing some amount of my Telo green because I usually like to go ahead with whatever is available on the palette rather than always always trying to go with some new shades or new colors. We are now going to go ahead with some of our sabrene and ultramarine. Sabrene and ultramarine will give you the midtones and the darker values wherever necessary. I would be changing the values as and when needed in and around the bottom part, I would be going with the darker values and around the top part, I would like to keep it lighter. The paper already has some moisture on it because of my application of Alene or the green that you can say. You can also go ahead with this to green if you don't have the ultramarine or you want to use this to green to your advantage, I would leave that decision up to you. There is nothing in particular that I always say about the colors which you need to go ahead with. You can always try your own shade, see what works for you, what doesn't work for you. Palo green. Of course, we'll have some amount of staininess. So be ready for that. If you are someone who is new to watercolors and is not sure about the stainess and the properties of watercolor, I would ask you to go ahead with ultramarine. That is a better shade and you can pick up those colors whenever it is necessary. You will see that I'm continuously just going ahead, picking up some of my sap green, applying it on the paper, and then again, mixing it with some of my darker values of blue, whether it be ultramarine, to green, these are the shades that I'm using. Some of the areas are lighter in values and some of the areas are darker in values. That's how I like to usually go ahead with any of my paintings. Mixing some of the yellow green now towards the top area. The top area would be more lighter. Towards the bottom area, it would be more darker. My faraway here would be more lighter in value compared to the ones that we would be doing closer to our eyes. We have Audi learned that in our last painting, that is your day eight. This is day nine, and since we have Audi learned it there, I do not want to again iterate it over here. We would be having a darker value for the hill area that is just above our horizon line. Why we use the same concept of watercolors over here, I would like to just add a bit about the change in value and contrast. In watercolor, constantly shifting the value and contrast within small areas is what keeps a painting alive. Because watercolor is a transparent medium that relies on the paper shining through, flat uniform color can quickly look dull, lightless or muddy. Here is why a micro adjustment to value and contrast matters so much even the tiniest section of the painting. It mimics how light actually works. In nature, light is never static, even on a seemingly flat surface, light mounts, diffuses and creates tiny shifts. Reflected light. A small shadow area is rarely pure black or a solid dark tone. It receives ambient light reflected from nearby objects. By varying the value in a small shadow, you hint at this reflected light making the object look three dimensional. At this moment, I am going ahead with my yellow green, yellow, and darker value of green, which is basically a mix of my sub green, and it can also have some amount of your ultramarne to create the darker shade of the hill pot, as I have already told you odio. While we continue to explore the changes of the value, let's also paint along. Our eyes are naturally drawn to areas of the high contrast. By manipulating value shifts in small zones, you control exactly where the viewers look. Creating depth. If you paint a shape with a uniform value all the way to its edge, it looks like a flat cutoff by letting the value fade out in one small spot and sharpening it. In another, you create a lost and found edge. It prevents the flat mud. Watercolor behaves differently than opaque mediums like oil or acrylic, which can be layered thickly to create texture. Watercolors beauty lies in the luminosity when you vary the value within a small wash, perhaps by letting water due one side or dropping in a slightly darker pigment while it's wet, you allow the paper to breathe through the paint. This variation creates a sense of texture and atmosphere that a flood block of color completely destroys. Okay, I guess I'm very happy with how this has turned out. Now in and around my horizon line, I'm trying to add some more of my darker values. I just see the colors which I'm adding for my greens really breathe and they are getting reflected. I am pretty happy with how this is turning out, so let's go ahead and add some more colors to this painting. I will now start out with my water area, and the first color that is in my mind is the horizon blue. W 579 is a stunning luminous shade and it is incredibly well suited for painting water, especially if you are capturing the vibrant light filled essence of moving waves, tropical sea, or shallow shorelines because Mission Gold formulation is known for its intense pigment load and rich honeybees consistency, Horizon blow brings a unique set of properties to a water painting. Here is why it works so beautifully along with a couple of technical quirks. The power of pigment mix, it is PB 1523 that is to blue, green shade, PY, hansa yellow light, and titanium white. The underlying mix of a clean, greenish blue with a touch of bright yellow gives it that perfect vibrant aqua turquoise gleam. The touch of white, the inclusion of a tiny bit of white gives the color a semi transparent, milky opacity. While some watercolor purists shy away from white pigments in watercolor painting, it is a massive sec. It gives the paint physical body, making it phenomenal for painting mist sea foam, shallow water ripples or the hazy atmosphere where water meets the sky. I will make some amount of blue now. This is the ultramarine blue, and then just go ahead into the areas which are basically in and around the shoreline, or you can say this is basically in and around the muddy areas which we have left in whites. I would always like to keep the muddy areas in whites rather than going over it at this moment and then just spoiling the whites because if you add on top of it the burn sienna, it gives a better greenish, dirty, I would say, brown, kind of a mix, rather than it being pure bunsena. Okay, let's go ahead and just take off some of the areas of the blue. Now, here I would be adding the reflection of my tower into the water area. That's the reason I want to keep it in white. Though I have already gone ahead and add the colors. Hence, it cannot be changed to a greater extent, but to some extent, I can always pick up my colors. You all know that picking up colors in watercolor is not a new thing. We have been doing it in many of my oldio paintings, and it's always good to use it, even in our future paintings where we want to keep it white or go ahead in another layer for glazing. I always love to mix my ultramarine into the green or the blues that I am choosing over here because it gives me a bit of granulation that looks great in any kind of watercolor painting. This is basically the mid tones, and when we come towards the yes or towards the bottom part, it has to be more mid tone or darker in value. The darkest value of blue, or you can say purest of the ultramarine I'm only adding towards the bottom part of the painting, I have loaded my brush size six or size four and start adding it towards the bottom area. For adding movements into the water, I simply go ahead with my brush and just add a few lines here and there. That's all I am not going to do much at this stage. It's just a bit of lines, and that's all. We are going to see a perfect, beautiful, blended water sky greens everything together with various shades to create the contrast, values, et cetera, in a painting. Uh I was really not happy with how the water turned out. Hence, I have added some more colours, water, et cetera, to make it look more organic. But this is up to you if you do not want to do this. I was even happy with how it turned out initially. I did not change much. But still, I wanted to make it more softer. Hence, I have gone ahead and added more water, colours, et cetera, towards the top part of the water area. Once we are done with the water, we have to go ahead and let it dry up before we start painting the parts of our rocks, as well as the tower that we have added in our right side of the composition. Starting out with non number two, this is the color that I'm adding towards the bottom area, and once I have added this color, I will go a bit towards the top to add some of my burn CNA. These are the two shades that I'm going to use for creating the darker and lighter values in my watercolor study of this particular monument or tower, whatever you want to say, as well as the land parcels that we have over here. I will add some amount of my burn sienna, take it from the top, and then just mix some amount of blue to create the darkest of their value. This has always been the case that I've been doing. You will get the darkest of the browns this way, and the blend of colors that appears on the paper is super cool, super amazing. I have used it previously, and I think if you also start doing the mixing on the paper, you will get various shades which actually give the painting another level of mixes that usually don't appear if you are mixing your colors on the palette rather than mixing it on the paper. The darker values of the tower is on the right side, and the lighter values where the light falls is on the left side. Hence, I'm making that area more lighter compared to the right side, which is more darker. I would be using a similar concept even for my rocky terrain. While you see the bottom of the rocky area, you will observe that we need some more of the darker values as the water hits these rocks and hence, there is a lot of algae, et cetera that settles down. Once these algae, et cetera settles down, the rocks become more darker in values. Of course, keeping the dio point constant, that is the right side would be darker, the left side where the light faults would be lighter in value. I will now go ahead and start painting the shoreline. Now these are small parcels of land that you see on the shoreline. Now you will observe me doing glazing. Watercolor glazing, the art of layered light. Glazing is the technique of applying a thin, transparent wash of watercolor over a completely dry layer, unlike mixing pigments directly on the palette, glazing relies on optical color mixing. Because watercolor is transparent, light passes through the top layer, bounces off the underlying paint and paper and reflects back to the viewer's eye. This technique is invaluable for building rich value, depth, luminosity, without losing structural clarity. In complex subjects like water and a glaze can instantly shift to colorless temperature, such as warming up a shadow with a thin yellow overlay or deepen contrast in a specific zone without mudding the detailed beneath. Bone dry. The base layer must be 100% dry or the brush will re wet and disturb the paint underneath. Non staining top layers, use non staining or transparent pigment for the glaze and apply it with a soft brush and a single confidence stroke to keep the layers crisp. I'm going ahead and just mixing some amount of my darker values from the top as any of the things that you see in nature is not even because of the wear and tear, rain, light, shadows, et cetera, as well as the atmospheric particles. Some of the areas appear more darker, some of the areas appear more lighter. I Time and again, I'm actually picking up some of the concepts and explaining it to you as we paint. I hope you are liking it, and if you have any questions to post in the discussion section, I would be more than happy to get back to you in case you are not getting any reply on that. You can also directly ping me on Instagram, that is Watercolort Illustration dot ETA. If you are new to my classes, you can go ahead and see all my earlier classes to understand water, clouds skies, et cetera, in much more detail. Let's continue over here and just go ahead with our painting skills. I am very happy with how this is turning up now. You can see that even in smaller parcels of land, I try to actually create some value contrast. I add the darker and lighter tonal values of Bern Siena. By mixing some amount of blue into Bern Siena, you will get the darker value if you are not very well versed with these mixing of colors. Then go ahead and add some amount of Vendi k brown or darker Vagus of brown that's available with you on your palette. I'm pretty happy with how this is turning up some amounts of green for the base of the tower area, and then I think we are done. This is really less in terms of what you have to do. We have taken it really slow and hope that you have also enjoyed along with me. I am just finishing off a few here and there points that is necessary for this painting. And then once the whole part is done, we will let the paper dry off, have a final look at it, how it has turned out, remove the tape at an angle. The base of this tower will be having some yellow green. You can also go ahead with any of the other yellowish kind of shades. You can make some amount of oleine into your sub green and get a green that looks similar to this one. I will also add bit of darker values in some of the areas where it is necessary, and it is important to actually separate out the other patch of land, which is going to come up after that. Okay, great. I guess this is good in terms of the darker values of brown. Just that I have to add some of the lines or tell you that these are the areas which look more dark in the browns and these are the areas which look more lighter. This is majorly to differentiate the rocky areas. I always love to add a bit of your dry brush stroke for our rocky planes. It helps me add the shadows more brilliantly. Okay. So more of the darker values as you see over here and then blending it with some more water to create the softer edges. This more of a repetitive and iterative process. There's less to explain over here. I would just add some music so that you can just meditate and paint along with me. Time to add the reflection into the water area. Water is not constant and hence there has to be a few lines which move here and there. Some of the areas will have these moving lines, and some of the areas will have a simple blend of colors. I would like to add simple lines here and there to make it look more even and interesting. Playing with the values even in the water area for a reflection is a good idea. Go ahead and do it. Then let it just dry off once it dries off, remove the tape at an angle, have a final look at it, and see what you have achieved. I hope that you have liked this lesson. We will go on to the next lesson very soon. You have a look at it and let me know in case there are any doubts. Once you have completed this particular project, to upload it in the project section, I'm eagerly waiting for each one of them. Hopefully I can add some of my valuable inputs, which can help you to improve in your future paintings. 18. Day 10 - The Cliff: Colors are bar blue, horizon blue, C bar green, ultramarine, John Brilliant, number two, burn Sienna, bun tumble, purple, yellow green, sam green. Let us now start with our painting. Again, a very simple sketch, and this is last painting from the entire series. Of course, I hope that you would have liked the series, and there is a lot that we have learned through the entire series. There was a mix of spring and the summer season where we have gone ahead and painted a lot of different kinds of water waves, et cetera. Starting out with the horizon line and then a small mountain or a hill, as you can see over here, followed by a beach, and the beach has a part on the right side, which is basically the sea. On the left side, it would be the shoreline. So this is what we would go about in this painting. It's going to be simple, easy, interesting. We have quite a number of elements. This is one of my favorite paintings when your hill actually touches your sea. That's where I think the whole painting is brought together. As this is a last thing, I would love to actually emphasize why sketching is so important. Watercolor is a beautiful medium, but it is notoriously unforgiving. Once a wash is down, you cannot paint over it with a lighter color to fix a mistake because water moves quickly and unpredictably, your brain is forced to multitask, managing water to pigment ratio, timing wet on wet merges, and preserving the whites of the paper. If you're trying to figure out proportions perspective and where your shadows go while the paper is actively drying, things can quickly turn into a muddy mess. This is why sketching is the ultimate stepping stone for watercolor painting. It offloads the mental heavy lifting before a single drop of water touches the sheet. It solves a value puzzle first. In watercolor, you build from light to dark. If you lose your highlights early on, you cannot get them back. A quick monochrome sketch or how you study acts as a visual map. It helps you identify where to leave the paper completely untouched, where the soft midtones will sit, where the deepest hard edge shadows need to lock the composition together. A secure underdrawing frees your brush work exactly the way we are doing over here, creating the darker and lighter values wherever it is necessary. When you have a confident, accurate refine or waterproof ink sketch on your watercolor paper, your mind relaxes. You do not have to worry if the left side of your part matches the right side or if a weak structure is anatomically correct because the skeleton is already secure. You can focus 100% of your energy on fluid, expressive brush strokes, and beautiful pigment plumes. It prevents overworking and muddy watercolor. Usually happens when an artist tries to fix a shape that went wrong while the paper is in a tricky semi wet damp stage. A solid sketch ensures you hit your shapes correctly on the first pass, allowing the pigments to settle naturally into the grain without being agitated by constant corrections. It teaches edges and boundaries. Sketching forces you to seal line and form in watercolor managing your edge, knowing where to a color bleed out in a soft edge versus keeping a crisp hard boundary is everything. Like in this one, we are going to learn how without using even a guash or any masking fluid which will keep the paper as white. So this is going to be a new trick that we are going to learn. We will leave the white space and paint in and around it. It's interesting. Nice, as well as it's a new experience. Okay, let's carry on and finalize our sketching first, and then we will go ahead with the painting part. You will start off with the sky and try to move from top to bottom. Now starting out with the sky means that I'm picking up some of my bar blue and then adding a very light layer of it for the sky area. Then slowly going ahead and applying some of the darker values from the right hand side and moving it towards the left. This is, again, easy going painting. I hope you do understand that it's simple, easy, interesting, as well as you have very less in terms of complexity in this part. There is more of beautiful shades, colors of water that we are going to experience and paint with and less of thoughts into how the whole painting is turning out because colors are simple. There are less number of elements that we have in the painting. Hence it is easier to work around. I am now using my board to just let the colors move from left to right. This is how I always love to work it around moving the colors left to right on from top to bottom, whichever way you want to go about. I will just go about mixing the darker value of the palbo into the lighter values on the left souls on the right, the smallest of the part where you have the area of the sky in between the two rocky areas needs to be also fixed with the help of your blue colour. So go ahead, fix that part, make it look more organic, and you will have a painting that is going to reward you in many ways. In case you have some Prussian blue on your palette, now, these colors are very different in various palettes, so you have to check what color is available with you. You can go ahead with that Prussian blue and apply it. In case you don't have a Prussian blue, just go about mixing some amount of ultramarine and then applying it. I'm a fan of ultramarine and I have been using ultramarine in most of my watercolor paintings. You have seen how beautifully it has turned out. I can quickly tell you how we are going to work through the shoreline and the water. It is going to be a wet on wet technique. I'm starting out with my John Billian number two on the left side, mixing it with some of my burnt sienna, and then the water will be in various colors like your ultramarine horizon, blue, cobalt green. Creating the seamless water gradient, the smooth transition from the deep go baar blue on the right side to the bright aquamarine on the center was achieved by laying down a continuous wet on wet wash by applying wet paint on a complete damp paper surface, the pigment were able to bleed and merge into one another naturally without creating any harsh, unwanted dry lines. This mimics the gradual change in ocean depth perfectly. You will observe it as we move forward. I will now make some amount of my burn Siena into this and then use a flat brush to apply some clear water so that water can move into the colors and the colors can move into the water, making the space more white, as well as it would mimic the wave like structure. Though my initial plan was I will start out from the right, apply all the colors and then move into the left. But then I thought that that would not be the great way to work around. We should always apply the water on the left side. That is the area of the place where we are going to leave it all the wave area altogether and then go with the blue, starting from the right side and putting it on the lift so that they merge into each other. This also creates the soft shoreline belt. Look closely at the area where the turquoise water meets the warm golden brown sand instead of hard crisp patch. There is a soft, hazy dissipation. The overall way, what we have achieved this is that bleeding a diluted blue wash directly into a still wet wash of the sandy undertone because both sections of the paper were wet at the same time and the color did flow into each other perfectly capturing the soft look of the receding wave or a shallow translucent shoreline. Reserving the light for the foam effect. Yes, this is my favorite part. The brilliant white of the paper right at the edge of the water provides a beautiful break between the sea and the shore. By leaving a strip of paper in a semi wet condition, what I understand is you will get some crisp boundaries. Along with it, you will create the soft wet on wet pres happening just inches away. You can see how the colors are moving into each other. You can pick up some of the colors in a few of the places, make it bit more white. And also apply some of the darker values for creating the foam or the ocean waves in a better way. Blend it with the help of your flat brush anywhere you want as of here. Granulation and texture of the wet sand. This is something that I really want to touch, but let's park it for a bit later on. Till now, I would go ahead and just apply some of my tramarne as you see over here into the water element. This is to create the various values in the water compared to only one single value which we have mostly applied over here. Some of the turquoise colour or co baar green colour can also be applied. You can see that everywhere I do not keep the same shade or same value. I like to alter it, and creating some lines, small, small lines actually help us to show the foam in a better way. Now applying my darkest of the values, of course, this has to be in and around the area where my rocky terrain touches the water and then also going ahead and applying it towards the right side to create that sense of depth and value. Using my broad round brush just to fix the colors in a few of the places wherever it is necessary as the dampness on the paper is not same and now my paper has become way less damp. Either I have to stop working at this stage or apply a fresh layer of u my water and then again, keep working through the entire water area. Because I want to retouch some of the water areas, it's important to go about with it with the help of a flat brush. Now, this flat broad wash brush actually covers a larger area and it also helps to blend the colors. It's a semi wet condition, and believe me, it's not the best condition to work around with. You can also let your paper dry off and then pick up your colors from wherever it is necessary. If you are a go in watercolors. Now, this is something that I have done pretty often in all my older paintings, and I have been working this way or retouching my paintings in various areas wherever I think it is necessary, even through the early paintings, et cetera. You may not see it much whenever I'm taking classes, but yes, when I'm working on my own, it does happen. This more of an advanced technique, I would say I keep just adding a few clear water here and there and then just mix my colors so that they look very even. This, yes, you can also do if you are very comfortable with or else, let the paper dry off, then apply a clear layer of water wherever necessary, and then you can again go ahead with your darker or lighter values to retouch any areas that you think it is necessary to do. I would be using the same colors that is John Brilliant number two and Bern Siena to apply in various areas of the shoreline. You will observe that they would blend into each other, but let's talk a bit about granulation and texture on the wet sun. As we move forward, there will be dark brown foreground of the beach. You can see some beautiful textured spot and speckles, which is created with the help of salt. This effect happens when paint is dropped into an existing wet wash or your salt is dropped into your darker areas. It will create some texture effect. Mimicking the gritty, uneven look of damp wet sand filled with pebbles. So this is something that I have used often in many of my earlier paintings. I can also use some bendy ke brown, some burnt umber, or mix some amount of neutrth ultramarine into the shade of your burn Sena, where you can get any darker value exactly the way you absorb over here. Cleaning up the burn tamber or B sienna with the help of my flat brush wherever it is necessary. The value shipped from John Brilliant to burn tumble, John Brilliant number two and Burn sienna in the mid crowd, where the water gently laps onto the shore, the mix of John Brilliant number two and Burnsiena creates the warm, luminous, peachy gold undertone because John Brilliant often has a touch of opacity. It gives the shallow water area a milky translucent quality, perfectly mimicking how wet sand glows when a thin sheet of water reflects the sky. Moving down into the immediate foreground, transitioning into burn tamber drops the value significantly. This deep rich earth tone anchors the entire painting, instantly giving the viewer the sensation of looking at heavy, saturated water logged sand. The magic of salt on undertones, using salt in that deep burn tamber burn Sienna mix is a brilliant choice for a peach texture. Salt is incredibly thirsty when dropped onto a damp watercolor wash. It acts like a tiny sponge. The fox pebble effect because burn tumber burn sienna are often granulating pigments, the salt creates these beautiful organic crystalline flares. Perfect microdtl. Looking at the foreground, those tiny pale speckles surrounded by slightly darker rings look exactly like a miniature pebble crushed sea shells or the bubbling foam that traps air as a wave recedes over coarse sin. It is perfect example of letting the chemistry of water do the hard work for us, giving us intricate chaotic realism that would be almost impossible to paint by hand with a brush. Now moving on to the hilly area or the rocky terrain, where we have this on Brain number two, again, working with my Vern Siena in few of the areas, the darker values will be there towards the bottom because the water, of course, has a wear and tear on any rocky terrain, hills, et cetera, whatsoever is going to actually go about and meet the water in these areas. So you will see this happening whenever you are going to a shoreline or even if you have visited beaches of Thailand, Murius, et cetera, you would have seen this phenomenon or any of the other beaches for that matter, you can see this kind of phenomena happening. I can only already see these blues, the beaches, the foams, et cetera, makeup, the whole painting come together. But this rockytering is going to add that star to the painting which we have always, always thought. Okay, adding the darkest of the value towards the bottom, some of the areas will again be mixed with the darkest of the dark value. This can be born tumber. Mix some amount of blue into your burn Siena, you will get it. I'm using my hands or fingers to also mix my colors. I do it very often for my watercolor paintings, you can paint with your fingers. You can paint with your hand, you can paint with your brush whatsoever you like to go about it. I've switched to a liner brush now, and this liner brush is loaded with the darkest of the value, which is basically your ultramarine mixed with burn CNA or you can also have burned tumberFndak brown. Whichever is available on your palette, I am not much inclined to what darkest of the value which you are using. It's just that it should be one of the shades of the brown that should be darker as it would then be in line with the value effect that we always try to create, whether it be water, whether it be land, whether it be your rocky terrain, hills, et cetera. I'm loading another brush with some of my bon sienna and then adding few blinds here and there. I am then also mixing my darkest value in few of the areas and creating the rocky ridges for this part of the hill. Now, these are the two shades that I would be using alternatively, and you will see that the whole of this part for the rock area will come together. When we work with two brushes, that is one which has this kind of lighter value with it. And this is more like a mob thin brush. The other one is your lino brush that is applied in few of the areas where we have dy added our brown. Now, this brown, of course, is darker than what we have already applied as an undertone for the hill or the rocky terrain. While you actually paint along with me, let me just go ahead and break up this whole of the rocky terrain, along with the green parts a bit more for you. Structural form and geometric underdrawing. The cliff and the arch are defined by highly confident angular faces instead of drawing smooth rounded blobs, utilizing sharp geometric planes to suggest a rugged crystald rock face that has been carved out by centuries of crashing waves and coastal winds. The underdrawing successfully mapped out the distinct planes, allowing us to treat each surface as an individual block of light and shadow. Sophisticated play of light and shadow, the highlighted faces, the surface facing upwards and to the left up in a warm, glowing occur tone suggesting a bright direct light source, the cast shadows strong, deep down shadows line that undercuts off the cliff and the right hand side of the surfaces. Now, this high contrast instantly gives the rock mass weight depth and making it pop forward from the distant sky. We have already learned more about painting rocks in one of our practice sessions. I would ask you to go back to that in case you haven't gone ahead and taken it. That's a very, very effective tool if you are someone who wants to paint rocks. Linear textures, to emphasize the weathered fractured nature of the terrain, fine, dark architectural lines run through the formation. These mimicking cracks and falls look like they're applied with a very fine detail brush like the one we are using right now. You should go ahead and use a liner brush wherever possible. This technique breaks up the solid blocks of color and introduces the chaotic imperfect texture found in the natural stone. The popping greenery, which is my favorite. The porch on the top left slope of the rock is a vibrant strip of grass like mixed using the sap ring and the green yellow visible on the palette swatch. This sudden burst of saturated warm green provides a brilliant visual break. It separates the warm earthy tones of the cliff from the cool blue of the sky and adds a layer of organic life. Otherwise harsh barren stone structure. This is something that I've always loved to create in my paintings, and that one of the reasons even a touch of green can really add life to your painting of your browns or your rocky terrains and even your shoreline, which has more of sand, et cetera. Okay, I'm adding some amount of my darkest value of this brown and then blending with the help of my blending brush. This is something that we have done always. This is basically to create the undertone value of the darkest shade or heating the car shadow wherever it is needed. Let the paper dry off now and then remove the tape at an angle, have a fun look at the painting, and I'm very sure about it, you will fall in love with it, as I'm already in love with it and I want to create more like this. If you are also someone who loves the summer water season, I would say join my other classes where I have taught a lot about how to paint water. I would be coming up with a new class very soon. It's a subject that I've always fallen in love with and hope you also enjoy it. Please drop a constructive feedback as I would be waiting for it, and it is really helpful for my future class.