Transcripts
1. What this class is about ?: Hi everyone. Is maria your watercolor artist
and instructor? If I were color, I'd be cool gray of the dance
rainy cloud Laden's guys. This topic also happens to be one of my favorites for
watercolor paintings. In this brief tutorial, I will demonstrate different
ways for finding in blending the perfect shade of gray
to create dramatic skies. Additionally, we will
quickly paintngs heavy clouds using the
wet-on-wet technique. Over the course of this
10-minute painting session, you'll gain insight into my approach for capturing
such atmospheric scenes. This technique is
something that you can later practice independently using the photo
references that I've prepared for you in
the class materials. This will allow you
to expand the variety of cloud patterns in your
watercolor landscapes. Join is Quick class
and enjoy watercolors
2. Supplies: Hello and welcome to
this quick tutorial. We will begin with overview of materials and going to
use for this painting. I'm going to paint
on my usual paper. It's cotton paper, 300 g called
pressed of arches brand. It's not necessarily to use
the same brand of the paper, but I really recommend you
to paint on cotton paper. It will give you
more time on working wet-on-wet and also all these soft transition
between colors. Of course, you can try to
do it and sell those paper, but be ready that the effect
of clouds won't be the same. I fixed my paper on the plastic
board with masking tape. But of course you can
use wooden board or Catan board or
whatever you have. I will only use four
colors for this painting. This will be ultramarine
blue in untrained blue, burnt sienna, and
dx's in violet. Of course they are replaceable, so just mix your colors
before you start and just make sure that
they blend well together. And the also see the brushes
that I'm going to use, one big brush to
moisten the paper and a couple of brushes for
clouds and Details. One of them will be Chinese
calligraphic brush that I like to use for spontaneous,
natural shapes. They're not going to draw anything so you
don't need pencil. Prepare your palettes. Water ends, something like
tissue or paper towel. And I'm also going to
use a hairdryer in the variant. Let's begin
3. Color Mixing: To create the volume of clouds, we need to create the
difference in color value. And if we don't paint
sounds a paintings, normally the color will be
some sort of a great color. So let's see now how to mix
such color for our painting. Of course, especially in the very beginning of
our watercolor practice. The first idea that comes to mind is to take a black color and just to make a
different color value to get different shades of gray. So for example here
I could just take a Mars Black and try to
paint clouds with it. In the most of the cases, I prefer not to use black color first because those
color tend to granulate. And second, they may look
just flat or monochrome, so not really alive. What I used from
time to time, as, let's say black color, is it payne's gray color? And I like it because
it's a composite color. It's contains three
pigments inside. So it's already not just black. I like this color
hue that it has. And actually even being
alone in the sky, it may look pretty natural. So if you really want to make it simple, you just can replace. The first idea of
the black color. Is this something more complex as Payne's
gray for example? What I often do is I mix
it with some other cars, for example, with blue. Like this, I can not only
get it darker or lighter, but I also can vary the
temperature of the results color. So it gives me much
more options to play. Next. If you already familiar
with some color theory, you probably know that if
we mix three basic colors, yellow, red, and blue, normally we get a gray color. Here. I'm going to mix really primary yellow,
red, and blue. And depending on the
color proportion, it can be colder, warmer, more red, more
blue, more green. So we really can vary the color. And this, it gives us a lot
of opportunities to work. But it also can be
pretty complex, especially if you're a beginner. If you're not ready to mix
these three colors to get the gray and to play with
all these color nuances. What you can do is to think about how we can
simplify this thing. And as I know that
I'm going to use blue as blue color and most
of my Cloud paintings. So I actually can think about what mix of yellow
and red gives me. And, you know, well that
it's a orange color. And logically, if we mix
orange color was blue. Normally it should give
us something great. So I'm going to have to
colors instead of three, which will be more
easy to manage. And here you see
pretty classic couple of orange and blue color. I took cadmium orange
and ultramarine blue. I already know that
they will give a nice, beautiful gray color. With only two colors. You can get a gray that can be warmer or colder if you want. And you can play
with all this colors to paint your clouds, which is something that
we are looking for. But before starting
painting with orange and blue that you
have in your palette, what I recommend
you to do is to mix them together first and to see
what the results color is. Also, it's important to
mention that for orange color, it can not only be
just simple orange, it can be orange that
tend to more to gray. It can be orange
that tend more to yellow or even brown color, which basically is just
dark orange color. So it can be pretty good idea to make a color chart, for example, like I'm showing here, where you can try to find the best gray you may
get from your palette. So for example here
what I'm doing is I2k for orange colors
that I have in my palette and for blue and I mixing them with
each other to see what result color
they may give to me and which one I liked the best to use in my belt,
in my painting. After completing
such color chart, you may notice that
some couples of colors, one gives you gray, but in some combinations that
will be more like violet or it may be maybe
more green color. It really depends on which blue and which
orange you take. So it can be really nice research work
that will help you to Paint your feature clouds
or hedonic cloud paintings. So I really hope that that
exercise will be useful. But for our future project that we're going to
begin in few seconds, I'm not going to use
only two colors, but I will also add purple color to the
combination to create more different shades of gray
for this dramatic skies.
4. Project : Preparations: We're going to paint clouds, and clouds normally
have a very soft edges. For me, it means that
I'm going to paint it On Wet paper with what brush. And for this technique is, you may probably know if you
took my previous classes, the preparation stage
is very important. So here my goal is to
prepare the paper well, to make it wet enough so it will stay glistening for some time. For this, I take big brush and I started
moistening the paper. The paper that I'm
using is quite thick, so it will need some time
to absorb the water. And I'm going to use this
time to prepare the colors. As you see on the
floor to reference the clouds in the upper
parts are warmer. And the lower we go, the closer to the horizon, the color they will become. And actually linked to the
rule of aerial perspective. And for this, I will need different shades of
gray, of course. So I prepare my color
with the same brush, I'm going to paint it. And I mix all the three colors together in different blue, burnt sienna, and purple. But I just don't add too much
blue into, into the blend. I will need quite
a lot of paint for this first layer of my clouds. And you see like I take
quite a lot of liquid and I add and add
more pigment into it. But even though it seems quiet dark on the
ballot, when I tested, it looks Lights because it's just the proportion
of pigment and water that we have here which determines the value
of their result color. I think I'm happy with this. So I will keep it for
darker colors and Details. I'm going to use this
Chinese few brush. And now I'm preparing
the mix for shadows. At this time. I take less liquid and more pigments
to make the color darker. By the way, if at this stage you already
feel that it seems complicated for
you and you don't really understand
what's the difference, why I make it more liquid, more a dance, or what's the difference
between wet and wet? Wet on dry. And you have all these questions
and your hands, please check out this class. There I explain all the
basics that you need to start painting skies
and checking the color. And if it seems to
blue or too cold, I can always mute it
with some burnt sienna. And also I will have a
couple of dots of blue sky. And I'm going to
take third brush. And we'll use clean, which from orange
color for that. I gently re moisten the paper surface before
starting painting. I don't need to have
it soaking wet, but still it should
be quite damp. So all the wet-on-wet
effects appear. I remove the excess water from the sides to protect
in a future painting. And also making
sure that masking tape holds the paper well. And now right away,
I begin painting
5. Project : Lights and Midtones: Alright, so as you remember, I remove the excess water
from the sides and I will begin with the blue sky because it's just
the smallest part. I will have it done already. This blue part will be easy to paint because those clouds, they don't have exact shape
that we need to draw, so we just need to feel some space with
blue and that's it. I deepen the color
in these two spots. I switch right away
to this large brush. And here we go. I started to paint and I feel
that I wanted to warmer. I didn't wash the brush. I just add a little bit of water and it drop-off
burnt sienna. I have quite a lot of
liquid on the brush, but still sometimes
I'm touching my napkin to control the amount
of water I have. And I work with such
round large movements. Because we just started. The idea of this first stage of the work is just to cover
everything with some gray, light gray, and keep
some areas white. That's it. And of course, I'm not looking to make the
copy of the photograph. I just take it and
as an inspiration, as a source of
information and shape. And then I play with what
I have on the paper. And speaking of the play, remember, we wanted
to play with colors. That is to make the
bottom part colder. So I had to drop of
blue into the blend. I can even use the rest of this ultramarine
blue on the palette. And you probably notice that
the closer to the horizon, the more horizontal my
brush movement become, you will see more
clearly was the shadows. And you see how is
the same large brush. I started to add some shadows and I darken the color that
I'm painting with. It slightly warmer in
the upper part and a little bit more bluish
gray in the middle. Hopefully you can see it. We will follow this
logic all the time. At this stage, it may
seem to you quite dark, but honestly it's
just the Midtones. You will see how darker we
will make the shadows and also how lighter it will
become once it's dry. Notice that I don't cover
everything with this midtone. I keep white and light tones. And then I add this Midtones in some
places, not everywhere. The colors quite liquid
and I really want to get rid of some excess
water in the upper part. So I will tilt the board to yes. To collect extra water. You see I don't even try
to smooth the shape of this clouds that because
the color is quite liquid, it just moves itself
and it's very soft. I didn't really do
anything for that. So this is why the amount of liquid is important
at this stage. But in the next step, the color will become thicker
6. Project : Contrast and Details: So I take this smaller brush and we'll switch to
the darker color. And with the same idea actually to add shadows
where it's needed, but keeping Lights, Midtones, and white seal at their places. On this exact photograph, it doesn't seem these dark, but depending on whether or depending on the photograph
friends that you use, those shadows, they can
be really, really dark. So here I think it can
be really interesting to try to get very dark shadows, but still keeping the, the entire picture
very soft and smooth. And of course, the shadows
below will be colder, so I add more blue for them. And you see how they
become more flat. And the bottom, this
is because there we see only the
size of the clouds. While in the upper
part will almost see the entire Cloud because
it's closer to us. At this stage, the
paper will get dry a little bit, Little's, so I make sure that my
brush is not too wet. I put the excess liquid
to the napkin to control the colors spreading because when it's to
liquid spreads too much. So really here, don't
be afraid to make it dark for such dramatic effect. Seen it in some
places the paper is drying so I will probably
finish the paintings. So I'm just adding the
very last details now. That is, the paper
was well-prepared and I used quite a lot of
liquid in the first stages. I still have time to
work on Wet messy. But in your case, it may
be different because it's the hot weather there where you painting or for
whatever reasons. So please control the paper
drying and if you see that the paper surface is not glistening anymore,
just stop painting. Just keep it as it is. And maybe practicing the next. Try. And really
always prefer to keep it as it is in with
all the imperfections, rather than just try to fix
something on a drying paper, is normally leads to
a horrible results. So you see here in the
upper part is warmer, a little bit purplish and very, almost very blue in
the bottom part. And I will just paint them the simplest Landscape
ever in the bottom parts. Just a few final dark touches in the places where
the paper is still wet and it's really time
to finish the painting. Also try to balance the
dark and light parts so don't make the shadow very
dark in only one place. If you see that you
paper is already dry in other places so
you can balance them. And let's make it dry
7. Conclusion: Here is our result. To be honest, such grey
called Color and dramatic skies are my favorite and
Painting Clouds and Skies. Even though you
probably saw many times we painting sunsets. So now you know how to painting
skies and you can paint it with any Landscape
you prefer. Mountains, see, heels
field, whatever. I will leave a few
Additional photo references for your independent practice
in the class materials. Looking forward to seeing your paintings in
the project section. So don't forget to share
them if you want to get a Tips and
commentaries from me. And of course, if you share
your painting on Instagram, please don't forget
to tag me or use this hashtag so I could
see your painting too. Thank you for joining me
in this quick tutorial. I hope you enjoyed
it as much as I did see in the next glasses. Bye-bye.
Maria Smirnova, Watercolor artist
