25-Days of Watercolor Landscapes: A Calm Daily Practice for Beginners

1. Welcome to the Class: Are you ready to go on a calming painting journey, one that fits into your day no matter how busy you are? Or maybe you've been dreaming about painting beautiful landscapes, but want something simple, easy, and not overwhelming to start with. Well, this is for you. Welcome to this 25 day landscape painting challenge. In this class, we're going to paint together one small project at a time. Each lesson is just ten to 15 minutes long, designed to feel light, relaxing, and completely doable. By the end of this journey, you won't just have 25 paintings. You'll have a habit, more confidence, and a style that feels like you. We'll begin with soft, simple landscapes and slowly build into more detailed scenes, rivers, mountains, rocks, and flowing water. So if you're ready, let's begin this journey together. 2. Get to know your Materials: Let's talk materials. So the first thing we're going to need is watercolor paper. This is 300 GSM, cold press paper. All the details are mentioned in the about section. So you can have a look at that. We're going to need 25 sheets because we're going to do a 25 day challenge, and we're using an five size. So it's half of oh, sorry, it's an A six. So it's half of an A four. So if you put them all together, you should get an A four sheet. So just divide it into four different parts, and you will get your A six sheet. Once you have your paper, we're going to begin with our other materials. The next thing we're going to need is our tape. This is going to be our masking tape. You can use your white tape where you can write. Those work really well. They also sell artist tape in the market, but I feel like this works really well. Now, we're going to tape down our sheet on all four sites. You can see how I'm leaving just a small frame on the edge, and I'm going to do this for three sides. And then the fourth side, I'm gonna leave a bigger portion so I can maybe write a message or if I want to label the painting. As you can see, I've done all four sides. What this does is keeps the paper flat. So when it dries, it actually lies really flat and works really well. Even if your paper bends a bit with amount of water, it is going to dry flat. And that's why we tape it to our table, so it's fixed in place. Now the next thing we're going to need is our paints. Now, this is a really lovely set that I got from art philosophy. It's called their watercolor Confections, and this is the tropical set. You can see the lovely colours they have on you. It's so pretty and vibrant, and it's going to be perfect for our class for our challenge. I'm going to just go over the different paints. So if you have similar paints, you can use the same or if you want to buy the set or you have it at home, you can use it. So these are the colors, making sure it's all in place. And there you go. Really bright, beautiful colors. The first thing we're going to do is just make sure that we wet the paint. You can do this with a spray bottle. If you have one, this one I just filled with water, so I have this ready anytime that I need to make my paints wet, and now the paints are activated and can be used. The next thing we're going to go into is our brushes. So we're going to use about three different brushes, mainly two, but I'm just going to give you a third option. So these are round brushes. They are a size four, a two, and then we also need a detailer brush, something like this. And this is like a size one. So just make sure you have these in hand. They're going to be really great for our painting. Anything that's larger in size, we're going to cover with our big brush, and anything smaller with tiny details, we're going to use our detailer brush. Now let's dive into our paints, the ones that we're going to use, and also a couple of mixes that we're going to be using for this class. Beginning with the yellow, this is a basic cadmium yellow that we're going to be using for this challenge. You can see it's bright, it's bold, it's full of color. The next color that we're going to be using is our burnt sienna. It's labeled differently in this set, but it's basically you can see a brownish yellow color these are the yellows. Next, we move on to our pink. So you have a very light pink that we're going to use, which is basically taking a little bit of that pink, adding a lot of water to get you a very light mix, or using it directly from the pan for a deeper color. This is quinacridone pink. Additionally, we're going to need orange. Then we're going to be using purple. Now, purple is a color that either you can buy, also known as dioxin violet, or if you want to mix it, all you're going to do is take a little bit of that pink and mix it with a little bit of blue. Let's get a little bit more blue going. Make this color a little thicker, deeper. And you can see how that has turned out. So very similar shade. If you don't have this color, you can just mix your own. Next, we're going to be using our blue. So the blue I'm using here is a cobalts blue. And we're going to use a erleum blue, or you can even use an indigo. You can see how rich the blue is, and it's two different blues. It's gonna be useful for us when we're doing certain paintings. Now for black, I'm actually mixing my black instead of using for a set. I'm going to take my cerulium blue and taking a little bit of brown. This is a vandyke brown. When you mix the two, you're going to end up with a very dark green mix. Let's get a little bit more brown. You can see how that actually is a black color, very rich. It's not an exact black, but it's deep enough for us to use for our paintings. This is a little bit about color mixing, just for you to get a little comfortable with your colors. I also sometimes add in an orange to the mix. Adding a little bit more blue. You're going to see, again, this goes into a brown very dark Vandyk brown. Finally, we work in our greens. We're going to use a lot of different greens, and some of them we're going to mix on the spot, some of them we're going to keep ready in hand. This one is a sap green. Very light, works really well for all of our lighter paintings. Next, we're going to have a forest green. You can see how that's much more darker. I like to mix in a little bit of that forest green with indigo or serulem blue to get an even darker green. You can see how that's just one shade darker. We can add in a little bit more blue. And you can see how that gives you this rich, rich, rich green color. So these are the general colours we're going to be using for our painting. Additionally, we're also going to need white. For white, you can either use gouache white. So this is just a white color with gouache paints. So something opaque or you can use acrylic white as well. The same thing. Gouache is a little bit more runny. It's more like watercolors in some ways, but acrylic is going to be a lot more thicker. Either works really well for our challenge. Once we have our colors, we have our paper, we have our brush, the only other items that we would need is our bowl of water, some tissues, pencil. Eraser and a microtip pen. This we're actually going to use in a really fun, unique way. We're going to add in some really interesting details using microtip some sketch lines, and it's going to change our landscape, give it some texture. I call it texture, but it's just interesting. I love adding, like, quick lines. These sketch lines are just going to be so interesting for our paintings. You're going to see it as we dive into our challenge. So having a black microtip pen is going to be really useful. And that's about it. I think we cover all of our materials in this. Remember that when you're removing your tape, you're not going to remove just straight up. You're going to always remove it diagonally. So try to make sure that your paper is this way and you're brewing it diagonally, and you can see how your line is a lot more crisp than if you had just pulled it straight out. This protects your paper from tearing. Finally, I forgot one of the most important items that I use in watercolors, which is our dryer. So, you do have craft dryers that help a lot. I use a basic hair dryer, and that works really well. I've kept this aside for my watercolors, and it's going to be great because it has three different settings, as you can see, has three settings, works really well, covers the entire portion. It's going to make our process of painting a lot faster and just much more fun, as well. So you're not just sitting around waiting for your painting to dry. And that covers all our materials for this class. Now, this is a big nerve friendly pro tip. When you're using your paints, let's say I'm going to take some water, I make sure that I don't have excess water like this. You can see how it's almost dripping out of the brush. It's completely changed the shape of the brush. And we're going to try to avoid that. So instead, what you want to do is take your water and gently tap it along the edges, and that is what we use for a damp brush. Trying to focus it a bit. Okay, you can see here that the position the brush has come back to its original shape, and it's still wet with water. And that's what we need for our painting. Anytime you take water, make sure that you tap out the s. And when you're washing your brush, make sure you go all the way down and really press down at the bottom, so it really moves the bristles and you can actually end up with a clean brush. You can see how that's back to shape. This is so important when you're getting into your painting, and if you have any questions, please ask me in the discussion tab. I 3. Day 1 Silent Reflections: Are you ready to begin with our first project? We're going to keep this really simple so you get really comfortable with watercolors. So starting, I'm drawing a line with my pencil to divide the page into two parts for the sky and the ocean. Once we have that ready, we're going to begin by adding a little bit of detail with our pencil. Let's start with a simple mountain. You can add in a couple of smaller mountains as well to create layers within the painting. Now, wash your brush, take in a little bit of water on your palette. We're going to take a little orange and mix the two, so you get a very soft layer. Gently blend that into the background, going side to side. This is really important. You can take a little bit more of orange directly from the palette and use it right on top. This is going to give you a very soft blend. Now we go in with our ochre, and we're going into painting. I'm just going to paint the entire section, and that's going to give you a better result than just painting above the mountains. Wash your brush and then take in some clear water and gently blend the two colors together. These colors work really well, so it should be fairly easy to blend. You can take a little bit more of a bright yellow and use that just for a pop of color. Now, we're going to do the same thing for the ocean, for the waters. It's a reflection of the skies. So using our yellow and then going into yellow ochre, gently blending in the orange right at the bottom, moving side to side. Something really important to remember is that watercolors tends to dry lighter. So always go in with another shade of color if you want that area to pop. So I'm taking a little bit more of orange and adding it at the bottom directly from the pan. And that deep orange is going to create that variety. Let's now try this layer. I'm using a basic hand held hair dryer, starting a little bit away from the sheet and then gently moving closer. Make sure that your sheet completely dries. You can even press down your paper if it feels like it has buckled a little bit, and that's going to help it lay flat. Now we begin with the mountains. I'm going to take in green, adding a lot of water, making it very transparent, and starting off with the layers of mountains one at a time. Keep this layer, this wash very light, and you can see how I've added so much of water and just really mix together the paint for a very soft light color. Adding a little bit more of pigment towards the edges to give a nice shade. Notice how along the bottom, I'm going to add more pigment to deepen the color. But again, lot of water in this layer that's mixed together. If you feel like your brush is scraping the paper, then your brush is too dry. Once we've done this, we're going to do the reflection of these mountains onto the water. So adding a lot of water to the paint mix, I'm replicating, mirroring the top mountain on the bottom. You can see I've tried to maintain the same shape as well as the height. Once you're happy with this, let's try it again, keeping it further, and then moving it closer. You can also pat down your paper once it's dry just make sure that it completely lays flat. Let's move on to the next layer. We're going to go in with a deeper green. And we're going to follow the design, the lines that we had drew out before using the pencil. And then let's do another one on the other side. This one, we're going to make it even more darker. So I've taken paint directly from the pigment, and I'm just going ahead and painting it onto the sheet. Mirror these two mountains, keeping it lighter, adding more water to it. Now we switch to our thin brush, and we're going to use orange and adding some lines for the water. Gentle ripples, going side to side, keeping these lines really thin. And we're going to keep them more concentrated at the bottom. You can see how I'm adding more lines down. This is our first project for the challenge, so I wanted to keep it really simple, play around with colors. So we're going to dry our painting, and we're going to add one more layer, and we're almost done. Super easy, very simple, just very relaxing. As you go about each day, you're going to get more comfortable and really enjoy the process of painting. Now that it's all dry, we're going to take our paint directly from the pan and doing a very dark layer of a smaller mountain. This is going to give a little depth to the painting, and then you can add in the reflection along the bottom, following the same shape. Maybe use a little bit of that blue and add in some lines. Again, for the ripples of the sea and we're done with our painting. This is such a quick painting, barely 10 minutes. The perfect taster project. Remove out your tape, and one thing to remember is always when you're removing your tape, remove it diagonally instead of straight. Diagonally, you're less likely to end up with ribs on your paper or any damage. And there you go. This is our first painting. 4. Day 2 Calm Seas: Let's begin with another project. We're going to make it really fun by playing around with some interesting colors like purple and pink. I've drawn out the horizon line, and using a very soft pink, adding a lot of water gently blend the background. You can go ahead and add a little bit more of a deeper pink along the bottom. Add more water as you move upwards, gliding gently. Now, as we move upwards, let's go into purple. So we're going to start right on top, add a little bit of pink and purple so that you get a nice warm tone and add more water as you move down. Let the two colors collide. And you can see how that looks a couple of quick lines with the purple on either side. Now that we've done the sky, keeping it really minimal, let's go ahead and paint the water using the same pink, moving downwards, and then using purple to mirror the sky. While everything is still wet, you can go ahead and add a little bit more purple so that it really brightens up the painting. I'm keeping my wrist very light and not really pressing down into the paper. Time to dry the painting using a dryer, gently moving it back and forth, making sure that your entire sheet completely dries. You can also use your hand and tap down the paper after a while to make sure that it lays flat or even place a book. This way, your paper remains straight and doesn't buckle. Drying your paper is such an important part of watercolor painting, and if you skip that step, you're not going to end up with the best results. Now, let's start back with our purple and try at the Horizon line. I'm just going ahead and adding more of that purple using some thin lines as I move downwards to show the ripples in the water. You can even switch to your thinner brush, so you have more control over this process. This is such a fun painting. It's so simple, and you can do this with any color combination you choose, and it's always going to end up with some really interesting results. Using my thin brush, detailer brush, just going ahead and adding more quick lines side to side. Keeping these lines really thin gently gliding over the paper. When I started this challenge, I decided to create the first few paintings very simple, as I mentioned, so that you get a little bit more practice. It's also a good way to motivate yourself to stick through and complete the 25 paintings. Now that we have our water with the beautiful ripples, we're going to use white to add highlights. You can use gouache white, as I mentioned in the materials or acrylic white. I noticed acrylic white is really great because you end up with a very bright white color versus if you use gouache, which sometimes mix in with watercolors and ends up being a lot more dull. So using acrylic white, you can take a new brush that is meant for acrylic so that you don't spoil your watercolor brush. And then we begin by adding some thin details. Let's start by adding a simple sun, just bright white circle. And then we're going to add the reflection of that, mirroring it onto the C. Add in some thin lines to show that the water is reflected and then at that middle section where the sun is, add more white. Now to add some little interesting details to our painting, I'm going to take our navy and then mix it with brown to create a black. It's a deep dark brown color instead of an ivory black color. I feel like that looks better. It has more depth than just using black. Once you have that, let's paint some really simple leaves. Keeping your stem really thin, paint each leaf at a time. Changing the heights of the stems also creates a very interesting effect. A as we complete the last one, we're going to take a little bit of this color and just paint the bottom, keeping it really rough, and then adding in some quick lines to show grass. Let's repeat the same thing on the other side. Very simple with quick flicks of your wrist for grass. We're going to create some hatching effect onto the grass. So quick straight lines equidistant along the section. And then our painting is done. You can let it dry completely, Row out the tape to reveal our day to painting. I 5. Day 3 Indigo Waters: Ready for another fun painting. This one is more relaxing than anything. We're going to start off with our lighter colors, a beautiful blue backdrop. So I'm starting with a very soft blue. This is a cobalt blue color. Adding a lot of water to the mix to get a really smooth sky. Gently add water and blend the sky adding another layer of blue. You can choose a different shade of blue if you'd like to. I'm using a erleum blue. Or you can stick to the same one. And then once you have that ready, just blend through the sky. We're next going to take orange and paint the horizon, keeping it very soft by adding a lot of water and leaving a gap between the two colors so that you have this white space in between. Now we move on to the ocean or the seas, using orange. This time, I'm going deeper with my color and then adding blue towards the bottom and gently blending it upwards. While the sky is still wet, we're going to take blue directly from the pan, so it's very saturated, and we're going to paint some clouds. Because the paper is still wet, you're going to have the color bleed through a bit and create natural skies. For clouds, we start with thin lines and then just very roughly create fluffs of cloud. You can see how I'm doing this directly taking the cerulium blue from the pan. Let's take a little bit of that blue, and we're going to do quick lines along the water for the ripples. It's okay if it blends into the page, dry up the entire thing. Make sure that it is completely flat and ready for the next step. Let's now add to the backdrop and we're going to use black. If you have black with you, you can or you can mix blue with brown to get a nice deep color just for a very misty mountain off in the distance, but also highlights the horizon a lot more. Once you have that, we're going to add in some birds. I think this is the perfect painting for that. Before we go into that, we're going to do the mirror mountain onto the water to show that the water is so clear. Now let's practice some birds. Start with an oval for the body, a circle for the head, and a triangle for the tail feathers. Extend the wings, keeping one side larger and the other side just a quick thin line. And that is as simple as you can do for a bird. Let's do another one facing the right, similar technique, breaking it down into geometric shapes. Once you have that, just paint in the entire thing with black. This is slightly larger than what we're going to need for our painting, so we're going to try a smaller one next. Now let's do the same thing, but we're going to use a thin brush so we can make this really small, the same circle for the oval shape for the body, circle for the head, triangle for the tail feather, and then the wings. And you can see how tiny that is, and that's the size we're going to need for our painting. It's really small almost half a centimeter. But if you can get that little detail into it, it's going to look so much more realistic. Let's go back to our main painting and add in a little bits whenever you are painting something, it's nice to have little focal points. Like, in this case, you have something interesting like the birds to create movement into the painting, the ocean being really flat and bold. These birds create lightness and movement. Now that we have that, we have just a few steps remaining. Our painting looks almost done, but I wanted to add a couple of more layers. Add in some ripple lines using the black Make sure to dry your painting completely. And then using a black pen, we're going to add in some hatch lines along the mountain just to deepen that color a lot more. And then we're done with our painting. I love how this one turned out, especially the dramatic clouds. So pretty. The birds have turned out very interesting. And that little subtle orange, I think is the perfect pop of color. And 6. Day 4 Ocean of Stillness: Let's dive into another project. This is going to be a really good practice exercise as well, where we're going to explore mountains. Let's start with our sun. In this one, we're going to leave a little white space around for the sun and then add in yellow around it. Make sure to keep this layer light by adding lots of water just so it's a lot more easier to blend. Adding more clear water, blending it away. And let's take a little bright cadmium yellow and adding that little bit of color. Continue layering it up with more water, gently going over it a bit so that you can blend it into the sheet. Let's take a little bit of orange, foam away, and then just blend it towards the yellow. Taking more orange. And you can see very softly with a lot of water, blending the two colors together. Keeping my wrist very light and also not pressing down too much into the paper, we just want to glide our brush. If you press down too much, you're going to end up lifting the existing color. So we want to keep it onto the paper and just make sure that we're just moving around the paint. Let's keep a tissue handy, and we're going to lift up a little bit of that paint. What that means is I'm taking a dry brush and just going around the section and pulling up that paint, that yellow from the sheet. This is called lifting, and I'm using a dry brush for it. Another way to make sure that the sun is white is to use acrylic paint. So if you can keep your white acrylic paint and use that to just make sure that the circle is completely white, here you can see it just kind of changed proportions a bit, which happens sometimes with blending. So this is a quick fix for that. Once you're happy with the sky, we're going to move on to the water. The water is a direct reflection of the sky, so the similar colors are going to be used. Let's start with the yellow right on top. This rich cadmium yellow just adds a lot of brightness to the painting. Then we add in our orange and gently blend it along the side. Notice how the color just smoothly blends in as you add more water. Using our blow dryer, we can dry the painting completely before moving on to the next step. For the next step, we're going to paint our mountain. I'm using a simple brown color and then just painting it out. You can use van **** brown. It's a very nice brown shade that works really well for the painting. Now notice how I'm making the edges of the mountain darker, especially the area that is away from the sun. If you have a little black, you can use that to add a little bit more depth to the mountain. This is going to be our main focus. So we're going to really make it elaborate, add in a lot of details, and make it look realistic. In other paintings that we've done till now, the mountain has just been something that's in the backdrop, just part of the painting. Over here, we're using it as our main main focus, starting with adding a mirror for the mountain using our black. You can see how this is lighter in color, so it shows that it's reflecting onto the clear water. As we continue adding the layers, we're going to let it dry for a bit and once it's completely dried, we can then move on to the next step of adding details. We can start by adding a smaller mountain at the bottom. This is going to just separate the two much better. And once we have that, we can start adding in some thin lines. I've switched on to my thinner brush, so I can really get into those thin details. Start by adding some rocky surfaces to the mountain using black, mixed in with a little bit of water. We're going to repeat the same along the water as a reflection. Let's add in some details to the water as well, show the ripples on it. Time to focus on the mountain. We can start with a thin line just to add in the lines for the smaller mountain. Follow along, have a look at what I'm doing and try to create the same thing. We want to keep these lines really thin. So using a thin rush is really helpful. If you prefer, you can even use a pen to get those details. You get them really nice and thin. So the side that's away from the sun, we're going to make it a lot more darker, and the one that's you the sun is going to remain bright. So not that many details, but a little texture goes a long way. Now using black, let's add in the outline for the mountains. You can see how I am connecting it to the peak of the mountain, adding in the line for the edges. I. Add in more lines, just quick spots, quick details. All of this adds to the painting and makes it look a lot more realistic. Time to add in our little birds using black. Use black, and then let's just paint over the main line, the dividing line, again, deepen up the color a little bit more. Now using our pen, a microtip pen, we're going to add in some sketch lines. Start thin and then go taller and then short again. These are going to give a little bit of texture to the paintings as well. These are parallel lines that are very close to each other, and it's really helpful for technical drawing. You're going to see me use this through our paintings because I feel like it adds a little interest, some texture to the painting, and I really love how it looks. They're used for shading as well. So you can see how I've added those thin lines very, very carefully just around the shadow areas. Now remove your tape to reveal our painting for the day. 7. Day 5 Misty mountain Escape: Let's dive into another project. I think this one has turned out so pretty. You all have different colors, a lot of different shades that we're going to be playing around with. The first thing we're going to do is prepare our sheet. Make sure that you have your tape on all four sides and mark your horizon line, and then we begin with our purple. Add a lot of water to the mix, so it's very soft and light. This forms the basis for our sky. You can keep adding in more color if you'd like. Going downwards, let's start with orange and gently move we want to keep enough of space between the two colors so that they don't merge together. Add more orange at the bottom, really building up that color. Make sure you add a lot of water so that it really blends smooth. Let's now add burnt sienna, a soft, warm yellow to the mix. And you can see how it gently glides into the orange. It's the perfect compliment to the color. Moving downwards, using the reflection of the water. Start with the same shades of color. You have your orange, your yellow, and then finally purple. Make sure you move your brush side to side, so usually fill up the space. Time to play around with our purple. Starting from the bottom, let's add purple, gently blending it into the mix. And Time to now add in more purple to really build up the color. Right now, it's very subtle and soft, and when it dries, it's not going to be noticed. So let's amp up that color by adding a little bit more purple. Gently gliding your brush side to side. And while the paper is still wet, we're going to add in some clouds. For the clouds, all we're going to do is take more of the purple and just create fluffy patches. I think that would be the best way to describe it. So we want to start thin and then build up the volume and then become thin again. Take your color directly from the pan so you get a deeper color. And you can see how I'm just adding in clouds right on top. Painting clouds is all about your wrist movement. So keep your hand light and just swish around your brush onto the sheet. Let's now add in a mountain in the backdrop. This one, we're really going to blend into the background. So start with your purple, add a lot of water. So it really blends through. You can even see a little bit of that yellow and orange pop up, which is so pretty. I think that's why I love watercolor so much because even through the layers, you can see the underneath layers, and that looks so interesting. It gives us softness to the painting. I'm quickly adding in some ripple lines using the purple, keeping the lines very thin. Now I've taken a damp brush, and I'm just going over the edge of the mountain. You can see how that is allowing the outline that was so I would say, so stiff to almost fade into the background. It looks like the whole thing has blurred in a way, and so that you can focus on the front detail, which is going to be our plants. Dry up your entire sheet. I love using a dryer just because it's so quick and so handy. And once that's done, you're ready to get into the next step. Let's begin by adding another layer of mountains, and this is going to create contrast. The darker color is going to lift up the entire painting. Now, this color I have created by mixing blue and pink to give you an interesting purple or a magenta. I think it would be considered more of a magenta than a bright purple color. And this is what we're going to also use for other details as we continue along. Now, moving on to the foreground of the painting. For the foreground, we're going to add in some leaves and little flowers to really pop. Start off by switching our brush. You can take your thin brush and we're just going to add in the magenta right at the bottom, really build up that colour, add in some quick lines for grass. A keep adding in purple lines until you're happy with the results. I like how this is looking so far. Let's add a couple of more cute details that is going to really highlight this foreground. So I'm starting with my thin brush and just adding in some flowers. You can see how I'm doing this simple flowers that are side view. You can do them in varying sizes as well as different directions. So some of them that are moving towards the right, some moving to the left, this creates a little movement to the painting. H Now that we've done a few of them, we're going to let this dry, and then we're going to take black, or in my case, I'm going to be mixing blue and brown to create a very deep brown color. And I'm going to use that for the next layer. This time, I'm going to go ahead and start with the base again and build from there. This time around, let's add in some leaves. We can go really detailed. You can add in different types of leaves if you'd like to. I'm keeping it simple by using some leaves that I really enjoy. Quick leaves that create movement that create interest in the painting. Add as many as you'd like. Similar to the flowers that we did before, we're going to add the same thing with the darkish brown color, and this is going to be in front. So it really pops when you have a look, adding in more grass, some leaves, and really just playing with it. You can see how that soft purple is almost with a backdrop and it looks like shadows and the front looks bright and full of color. H. Continue along until you're happy with the result, you can go as many flowers and leaves if you'd like, you can even change around the different type of flowers. Now using a Micro tip pen, I'm going to add in some sketch lines, parle lines along the mountain to give it a little bit more of a shadow. And you can see how that looks very interesting some towards the grass. Just a quick, easy way to add shadow. And there you go. We're done with our painting. You can add a couple of details, couple of tweaks, and once you're happy with the entire painting and have let it rest completely, we can remote our tape to reveal our day five misty mountain escape. This name is so apt for this painting with the soft misty mountains in the backdrop. 8. Day 6 Coastal Rocks: I'm so excited about this project, where we're going to be exploring how to paint rocks. Let's start with a practice paper. I'm using a pencil to just draw some rough shapes of rocks, keeping the base straight almost, and then the top a little bit more cut off. Now, we make some cut lines to show where the rock breaks. What we try to do is add in shadows in the areas right below because this is the area that is that doesn't get a lot of light, make sure that it's dark. You can fade a little bit of that color on top. You can see how it's already starting to form and it almost looks realistic with just these few steps. Now let's paint in the whole thing. Starting with yellow for the highlight areas right on top, and then we can mix blue with our brown to get a vandyk brown or a darker brown shade and then use that to paint the shadow sections. You can start by adding the dark color in the areas that we just sketched out and that really already brings a little bit of structure to the rocks. Then we have some shaded sections. The interesting part about rocks is if you can create different shades for different sections of it, it looks more realistic. Now let's try the entire thing once it's dry, we can go ahead with another layer. Adding in a couple of more details to make it look a lot more realistic. Let's go ahead and I'm just darkening up that area again, adding a little bit of shade to the top of the mountain face, adding more shadow the bottom. And once we have that, we can add in the connected lines. And this really brings it all together. By breaking down the rocks into different shapes, it makes it a lot more easier to control, and as we proceed with the paintings, you're going to learn more and more how to use this in different ways in your paintings. I like adding in a couple of dots with the black. Now with white, we can add a little bit more of highlights at the top where the light hits the rock. For more details, we can use our black pen and add some quick sketch lines to give it more shadow. Drawing out more of the details and making it look a lot more realistic, giving it more depth and three D. Now for the reflection, just mirror out the entire shape of the rocks along the bottom. This one doesn't need a lot of details, so we're just keeping it really flat, adding more color as it connects to the surface. There you go. Are you ready to start with our new painting? Take down all four sides and once you're ready, let's draw out some rocks. I like planning out the placement of these rocks because it's going to be really helpful as we proceed with our painting. I'm keeping rocks on either side so that they really focus the painting. Now let's draw the horizon line where the sky meets the water. Since we have the overall placement, let's begin with our painting. For the sky, let's start with our yellow. Adding a lot of water to it, so it's a very soft color. Moving your brush from side to side, bringing it all the way down. Let's add more water and blend it. Once we're happy with this, we can add some pink to the mix. I'm using a little bit of a warm pink, mixing the pink with orange and using that for the sky. Again, moving your brush side to side to gently blend it. Just go back and forth. You end up with a very soft smooth blend. For the water, we're going to continue with the reflection of the sky on the water, using pink, gently blending it, and then adding yellow to finish it off. I feel like the pink is so soft. So let's add more color to this. Let's brighten it up a bit more. And then add more pink because I feel like it became too orange. You can do this while your paper is still wet. In case it dries, then it's a bad idea to go ahead and continue adding more color. But if your paper is still damp, then that's the perfect time to play around even more with your colors. Let's take a moment and dry our sheet before we continue with the next step. Now, let's start right on top of the water. We're going to use a very soft layer of pink, add a lot of water, and just gently add in the ripples for the water. It's going to give more character and movement, and that's exactly what we want. Gently glide your brush side aside to get these thin lines. You can also go ahead and use the pink to add the reflection of the stones and rocks as well. Now, let's work on our rocks. We're going to mix in black by adding in blue and brown. Add a lot of water to create a soft layer. Et's use a blow dryer and dry up this layer before we move on to the next layer. I like how this is turning out. It's actually really simple. It's one of the easier exercises, easier paintings, and it just creates such interesting results. Now, we're switching to our thinner brush and we're going to add in the shadows for each rock. Follow what we practiced before adding the space layer, really building up the color, and then letting it dry before moving on to adding more details. It's all about layering when you're creating rocks so that you can get the best result and the most realistic three D effect. O. Let's now move on and add in the final details. We're going to use a thin brush to outline the rocks. Add in some more shadow to the details to make it really three D. Next, we add the shadow for the rocks. Let's add quick cross This is so great. A really fun detail to add in on either side of the painting. Now, let's add some details. Add in some quick lines. You can see how this actually creates movement into your painting and gives it a little bit more of a playfulness sing our black pen, we can add in our sketch lines. This is the final step. Let's use white and add in some highlights for the rocks. And there you go. This is our final painting. I love how it turned out. We're making so much of progress and I'm so proud of you for getting to day six. See you tomorrow for Day seven. 9. Day 7 Purple Views: Today, we're going to be painting one of my favorite artwork from this challenge. I love the colors. It's so bright, so bold, and so mysterious, I would say, is the right word. So we're starting off with our sheet well prepared, and we're going in bold with our purple. So directly off the bat, let's add our purple. And then we can go in, wash our brush, use some clear water and take pink. Now, we're going to use pink for the remaining, and you can see how bright these colors are. Purple and pink work so well together for the sky. It's really unique. Pops off the paper, and I love how it looks. Now let's wash our brush. We're going to take yellow and then continue on. Blending from yellow to pink is very subtle and it works really well. So it's very easy to work with. Just go back and forth with your brush gently blending in the colors. What you want to do is make sure that you do this all in one setting and don't take too much time through the process. So your paper remains wet. Now we can take a little bit of purple and just add a little bit to the side, and you can see how that looks. It's already coming together. Let's drop in more purple, make it even more brighter. Let's now work on the water. It's a basic direct reflection of the sky. Similar process that we've been doing through all the paintings. Start off with yellow, move into pink, and then purple. A Now, make sure you dry the entire layer completely before moving on to the next step. We're going to then use a pencil and just plan out our painting a little bit, start with the mountains, add in the rocks. We're going to add a lot of different sized rocks, some small ones, some bigger ones, really fill up that space. Now for the mountain, we're going to use purple and create a very soft layer, a lot of water, so it really blends into the yellow. A Let's now work on the rocks, mix in black, and start with our rocks. This time, I'm not going into too much of detail because they're all going to be really in the shadow, keep it flat, just painting out each of the rocks completely with black. Once you've painted all the rocks, let's add in the reflection full of rocks, using the same purple mixed with water. You can see how I'm following the exact same shape as a mirror. Using the same purple, let's add some quick lines side to side for the ripples of the water, give it more character, more movement. Time to go ahead with another layer of purple. This one we can directly take from the pan, it's going to be much more deeper in color and just paint out some of the rocks. I thought it would be nice to add in a bunch of leaves to pop through the painting, going really deep with the details, adding in a thin line, and then adding in each leaf at a time. Let's create a little bit of a patch here. You can really see those leaves come through. I'm just going to paint through that entire area. You can see how I'm creating a plotch and then having some of the leaves come through. You can see how it was really busy on the side and some of the leaves were able to show through. Creating creating an interesting detail. I like how this painting is turning out. It it draws you in because the colors, I think, and also that bright yellow that really pops. Add in some grass lines for movement, flicking your brush, keeping your wrist very light, and using a thin brush, you end up with very thin lines. Add in some circles to the end of the grass. Time to remove our tape from all four sides, make sure everything is dried before you do that to reveal our final painting. I like the frame of that white space because it really makes the painting pop within. 10. Day 8 Dancing Tulips: Let's now dive into our new project for the day. This is tulips. I think this is going to turn out so pretty, grab your brushes, get your paints ready, tape down your sheet, and let's dive right in. I'm starting off with a light blue, adding a lot of water to this mix, and then blending it firm up, going all the way to the edge of the tape and gently swishing around my brush. You get some movement in the sky. This color is quite subtle, so I'm able to take it directly from the pan. You might have to add a little bit of water on your palette and use it that way. Now I'm taking in a deeper blue, a cerulean blue, and adding more towards the edge. Trying to build a layer of color, adding to the vibe of the sky. Add enough of color so that it really deepens up and really shows through. And we're just doing this till a midway point. Then using clear water gently blending the sky. I'm keeping my movement very light, so that way I don't move around too much of paint, and I can blend the sky downwards. I'm keeping enough space for the tulips, which is going to occupy that bottom section. Now, using a tissue, I'm dapping out some of the paint from the sky to create little clouds gently tap your tissue, and that is actually going to absorb some of the paint, creating these white patches, which is perfect and works really well for our cloudy sky. Let's try the entire thing before we move on to the next layer. Now we begin working with our tulips. We're starting with some pretty pink tulips. Take a little bit of pink, add a lot of water, and we're using our thin brush, so we can really get those details for the tulips. Tulips are so playful and such a perfect addition to any painting, especially if you're looking for something spring, something summer. They just dangle in the sky just looking so colorful. So I'm keeping the shapes really simple, just trying to do two petals connected to each other. You can see how I'm doing that. Forming a U shape. You can have some bigger tulips, some small sized ones. Varying the size of the tulips is going to make it look a lot more natural and realistic instead of having them all the exact size. Also, play around with the placement, maybe having them up, some of them higher, some of them lower, smaller. The angle can be changed pointing right side, pointing left side. There's a lot of things that you can do to make it look more rural. It also creates a little bit of movement into the painting. I'm using a very light pink, so it almost fades into the background, and then I can layer it up over time and deepen the colors. While it's gently blending in, let's take pink directly from the pan and add a little bit along the bottom of the tulip. Maybe just painting one petal. This is going to give it a little bit more of color and make it pop. Keep adding more tulips until you're really happy with the result. For the final step, let's add some outlines using the deeper pink. Start with the tulips that I've already dried and just go over the petals, adding some quick lines to give it more detail. Tulips come in so many colors. So let's add a few more with yellow, and I think that's going to add a little bit more pop of sunshine to the painting, following the similar step of adding subtle yellow lines in the form of a shape, different sizes, different placement. And then we can move on to our next step of playing around with grass and adding in some leaves and really filling up our field of tulips. We're going to start by adding in some deep lines, and we're really just making it really full towards the bottom. And then as it moves upward, just keeping it really thin. So filling up that bottom space at the edge of the paper. Now, let's connect the stems to each of the tulips. You can play around with the different greens, as well, adding some darker greens, mixing in some blue so it becomes even more deeper in color. Continue the process until you're really happy with the results, adding in more leaves, and really playing around. Once you have the final look, and you can see how I've just skipped a couple of steps, we can use our ballpen, our black microtip to add in some wavy details, adding more movement and play to the painting. Add some parallelines, to create more of a sketch like effect. Remove out the tape to reveal your final painting. M 11. Day 9 Painted Peaks: Give yourself a pat on the back. You have gotten so far. We're on day nine painted peaks. I think the name works so well for what we're going to do today. Starting off, let's get in our purple right on top, blend it in with a lot of water. At this point, you should be so comfortable painting skies. And if not, don't worry, we have a lot of days to practice and create these incredible paintings. After the purple, going in with orange, and I'm adding a lot of water, and that's why it's blending so easily because if you add lesser water, then you're going to end up with very saturated colors which easier, which is harder to blend. So add more water. Make sure that your paint is moist and perfect for blending. So for the ocean, flipping the colors like we've been doing, starting with yellow, then going into orange and finally ending with a little bit of purple. Dry your painting completely before moving on to the next step. We're going to use a pencil to mark out our mountains, starting with planning the horizon line and then adding the mountain details. I'm adding about three layers of mountains, and then we can just have fun with it and see how it goes as we paint along. Let's start with purple, adding water so it's really relaxed and blending it in, so it really fades into the background. You can add more of the purple towards the edges to deepen the color. So you have a nice outline for the mountains. Let's do the next one with a similar technique. Darker outlines and then water to blend it. And Now, we use green to add in our landscape. You can see him just going ahead and painting the green, adding more valleys into the painting. I've been really enjoying this challenge every day painting one artwork just for a couple of minutes, barely half an hour, has been so calming. And I think a challenges work so well when you have a busy schedule or when you just need those couple of minutes to create it brings something, and I never realized it until I actually did this, and life has been going through a lot of things right now. It's been really tough. And I realized just taking those moments to paint, making the time for this has actually been so therapeutic and I never valued it as much and I didn't realize it. So give yourself that time, the energy, the space to just zone out, and to just create what I'm doing now is adding the reflection of these layers onto the water, starting with the green valleys and then the mountains as well. Time to allow all of it to rest. And once it's completely dry, we can move on and add in some trees, little greenery to give more detail to our painting today. I really like this sky combination of purple, pink, and yellows. I think it's turned out so pretty and very interesting to look at very vibrant. For the trees, starting with different heights, just making it really rough, you can kind of pause, have a look at this as I add in layers. Adding another tree in middle and then a few to the side. So we're just kind of clustering them in different areas. A Remember that further away, the trees need to be smaller and shorter versus closer up, you make them larger and bigger. So here, it's much more smaller. You can even add in just some dots to show that there are trees there at some lines to show the area of the grass is much more darker in color, which also works really well. Let's now mirror the trees as well, showing the water is so crystal clear that you can actually see even the trees being reflected. I've left a little gap between that. There trying to get as much detail in terms of the height as possible, keeping the layered light. Let's add in some quick ripple lines from side to side. And we're done with our quick painting for today. Can remove out the tape to reveal your final artwork. If you want, you can also use a black pen and add in some sketch lines like we've been doing for the previous projects. Quick parle lines that add a little bit more depth to the painting. Tomorrow is going to be our day ten painting. As we progress, the projects are going to get a little bit more harder, more interesting, more detailed. So I encourage you to continue the challenge. See you tomorrow. 12. Day 10 Lush Green Lake: It's Day ten. I'm so excited about this project. Let's begin right from the start drawing our mountain lines, different valleys. And any other details? Let's start with our indigo right from the top, using water, blend it through. Now, we're going to add more indigo to the top really deepen the color a little bit more. Once we're happy with that with how rich that color is, use water and bring it down gently moving your brush from side to side. Now, right above the mountain using purple, let's blend through our colors. I fades in. You can see how I've outlined the mountains in that process. Now, let's use some indigo clouds side to side. You can see how I just added a quick flick, and that looks like a cloud. Super easy to do. And now we can continue with our painting. Let's start by tackling our mountains, using our deeper cerulean blue. Let's start with our first mountain right on top, using water to blend through the colors, so it really fades in what this also does is creates a little bit more of a misty look, which again, creates an air of mystery. Moving on to the next mountain, following a similar step. Now, let's play around with various greens to add in some valleys and add more green to the painting. After adding that light green initially using a deeper green along the edges. I love how everything has blended through. They're going to repeat the same thing as a reflection. The same shades of green add a lot of water. So it really blends. Let's continue that with blue and fade in. Next, use purple for the sky and then indigo, exactly following the same details we had above as a reflection. This is very common when it comes to landscapes to show that the water is very clear, you have the repeat of it, and it looks so pretty and so natural. Now, let's use blue and then add in some quick lines and then gently move upwards. You can also switch to your thin brush. Now, let's try the entire thing, and then we're going to continue adding more details to the landscape. Start by adding in some little grass details along the meadow. You can see how I'm using my thin brush, so I can really get into those details. Next, we can continue and add in some trees. With trees, it's really simple. We're just trying to form triangle shapes, not perfect shapes, but keeping it very rough in different heights. And that looks very natural. Creates a lot of interest. A a Since we have so many of these trees right at the back, let's add one that's going to be a focal in the front. This one is going to be larger as well as more detailed. Have a look at how I create this. I start with a thin line on top, start with building through the layers one step at a time, gently creating the shape as they go downwards. Adding a little bit of water. Let's add few more trees. Let's repeat the same for the reflections as well, keeping it very light, adding a lot of water. These ones don't have to be too specific. It doesn't have to be too detailed. You're just trying to get the heights of the trees as accurate as possible and also making sure they're in line with their counterparts. Let's allow this whole thing to dry, and then we're going to use our microtipPen and just add in some details. Let's start by adding in some lines sketch lines, just straight lines to show shadow in those areas. This is an easy way to add in some detail without actually having to add in something. I've been really taking this as something interesting to add into this entire challenge, something new and something playful. You can see how this looks very interesting. It's so small, but it really adds something to the paintings. You can go ahead and add a little bit more of a green to really separate the two layers, like the actual ground and the water. Add a couple of more lines with green add more detail to the landscape. Now, let's use our thin brush, add in some ripple lines, and then use white to add more lines for the water, especially. We now move on to our grass, use your thin line and add in grass. You can see how I'm doing this, adding a little bit of depth through the layers. I I really like adding in some more details if you want to add flowers, you want to add some long stems, some grass. Anything to make the painting more playful, more fun. Once we're happy with the overall look, let's allow everything to dry and then remove our tape to reveal our final painting. 13. Day 11 Meadow by the Lake: Let's begin with our Day even painting. It's a fresh new day, and we're going to start with our paper all de taped on all four sites. This painting is called meadow by the Lake. So we're going to play around with some green grass, purple skies and really let the colors flow. I'm doing a basic drawing allowing a river to flow through these meadows. This is just a general idea, so we have like an understanding before we begin of where we want to place everything. We can start right on top with our purple. So I'm going back and forth, adding a little bit of water to this mix so it blends in and really glides into the paper. You want to work a little bit quicker during this process so the layers don't dry and keep your brush moist so that it has enough of water and can blend. Let's take in our blue, starting from away, gently moving upward towards the purple, blending the two colors together to create a very dramatic sky. Finally, we can use some clear water and blend that blue downwards into a gentle fade away. Now we move on to the river. We're following the same color scheme that we used for the sky to show the reflection of the water. Starting with the blue on top and mirroring the colors downwards with the purple right at the bottom. Next, we can continue painting the meadows. Let's start with a bright yellow and then we're going to continue adding in different colors to really make it vibrant. The bright yellow is just a nice pop of color as we continue. Using green, we can paint up the entire section. Keep a little bit of gap because the layers are still drying from the water and the sky. As the layers dry, we can go ahead with a deeper green and really fill up the entire section. Before moving on to the next step, we're going to completely dry our painting and make sure that it's prepped and ready for the next layer of colors. Starting right on top, I decided to add in more trees with the purple in the background. It's really important to play around with your background as well in paintings because they add to the art. If you can just add a little mountain, some branches, bushes, trees, anything that can add some details to the background works really well. I've been enjoying this series. I think it's exactly what I needed because it's so relaxing and then you end up with these vibrant landscapes that you can really place around your home and brighten up any room. I'm even contemplating converting every wall in my house into an art gallery because I really enjoy seeing my paintings because it just makes me so happy. Now, using black or a mix of purple, we're going to add some ridges to the meadows, just to show that the banks where the river touches it is a little bit more stony, there's a little texture to it. You can see how I've done these triangle shapes, adding in couple of grass patterns by adding some quick lines. While painting meadows, it's all about texture. Adding in thin lines, grass can add so much to the painting and that's exactly what we're doing here. We're adding in a couple of areas with purple, some quick lines to show that there's grass. Adding in dark green for some more depth Next, we're going to add in patches of green to give the painting some character. You can see how I'm using green and adding just a fluff of green colour and then adding in some long lines for grass. Let's create another patch of that green colour. Et's continue adding more layers of cream. Now, if you notice our river looks quite empty, it's just plain. We need to add in reflections. Let's add in the reflection of the meadows using a deeper blue. This shadow reflection looks so great, gives more movement to the river, adding in some quick lines to show the ripples. Now, I'm letting everything dry, and then you can go ahead and use more patches of green if you feel like. I felt like that yellow was so bright that I wanted to add a little bit more green to mellow it down. We're going to add a little bit more depth by adding in some black pebbles, a little bit more shadow. All these little details bring together the painting and any painting can be made fairly easy by breaking it down into different sections. Just taking the painting step by step. Now, using a black pen, let's add in some black details, thin lines, thin paddle lines to show the grass to show texture. H. Next, we're going to use white to add some highlights, keeping them to the edge of the sections. S. Adding more vital highlights to the water as well, showing that the light is hitting it and making it softer. We can add a tiny moon. Just in the background, the colours are de fading. It's going to become nighttime soon. So that's a perfect placement. And there we have our final painting. Remove out the tape. How are you feeling so far about the challenge? 14. Day 12 Beyond the hills: I think every challenge requires a foggy misty painting, and that is what we're going to be doing today. Just something moody and it feels like you're just taring at it, and the world is doing its own thing. So let's start by taking our paper, making sure that it's taped down on all four sides, and then we're just going to plan our mountains, just making sure that the layers work well together. The heights match for the kind of design or painting that we want to create. Now, let's start right on top. We're going to go with our blue from the top, adding a little bit water and just blending the color downward. I found that it's very good and helpful to have a nice range of colors that you can play around with when you're getting into your painting. Sets like the one that I use really inspire me, and I think that also helps. So if you can gather the colors that you know inspire you, you're more likely to end up with really interesting paintings as well. And that's what I do. I actually get sets of colors that I love and enjoy. And then when I get into painting, it's just so natural and I'm very inspired by the painting. I know a little bit of a side track because I was just so excited about the colors we're using, moody blues, keeping it monotone in a way. Um, yeah, I think we're mainly keeping it blue. So it's one of the only paintings, I think in the entire challenge, that's just going to be one color. So I've used my blues to create a very moody skyline. And then we're just going to use our dryer and dry up the painting before we continue to the next step. For the next step, we take in our first mountain. We're going to tackle it. We're going to make sure we add a little bit of water and keeping the tip of the brush towards the edge of the mountain, so we get a nice crisp edge. Time to let it dry, and then we move on to the next mountain. And this is what we're going to do. We're just doing layer by layer. Here, I'm taking a deeper blue. And then I'm going to use water to just blend it. And this is going to give us a misty effect. Like there's clouds there, and that's why the mountain isn't fully rich in color. You can go ahead and add a little bit more of your blue to the edge of the mountain. I love adding in trees to a landscape like this because it gives it texture. With the mountain being so straight and majestic, the trees create movement. So I started doing a thin line for the trunk, and then I'm just swishing my brush and trying to create a pine tree. Notice it's all about the shape of the tree. It's more conical, and that's our main focus. How about we add another one before moving on to the next mountain. Always remember to dry your layers as you proceed. Having a hair dryer on hand is so so comfortable. You can even use a craft dryer. There's a lot of different options, but it's so handy and it saves so much of time. Moving down to the next mountain, again, starting with even deeper colors, you can even switch to a deeper blue so that you can really fill up the paint and then use clear water to blend it, creating a very misty effect. Et's add two more trees to the left this time. That way we create a little bit of a balance between the two within the painting. We are down to our last layer. This one, we're going to make it really dark so you can take your paint directly from the pan, adding maybe a little bit green if you want to or just keeping it monotone and really building on that color, making it really dark. Notice, with the mountain, our edges aren't just straight. We try to keep them a little bit rough and jagged. Time to add in more trees to this. I Let's allow everything to dry, and then we move on to the next step. I'm going to use my black pen to just add more shadow to some of the mountains by adding in our parallelines. So you can see how I'm adding it to the last layer. This gives a little bit more shadow. We can add it to the edge of the mountain, as well. Since our sky looks a little bit empty, let's add in a bird like we did in our previous challenge. A simple bird to create a little movement, little perspective in the painting. And we're done. It was so simple to do this, but it looks so nice. So let's allow everything to dry, and then we're going to remote our tape to reveal our final painting. 15. Day 13 Gentle Current: Of all the different paintings that we have been going through, gentle current is one of my favorite ones because it actually makes me feel calm after painting. There is something so calm about the colors, and it's just so green and luscious that it just pops from the screen. So the first thing we're going to do is draw our horizon line dividing the sky from the landscape. Once we have that, I'm going to just jot out a very rough River flowing through the landscape. We're also going to have a couple of mountains in the backdrop to ease the eye. Once we have that, let's start with bright cadmium yellow. We're starting from the bottom and just moving up gently, adding a lot of water so the layers really blend in. We're being careful with how much water we use, and this is a little bit of a trial and test method. If you feel like your paper or your colors are notar sitting well, there are a couple of reasons this could happen. Yes, it could be because of too much water, but I've noticed a lot of times it's actually because of a paper itself. So making sure that you get the right paper is so crucial for better results. If you have any questions in terms of paper, if you have any questions in terms of materials, please do feel free in the discussion tab to ask me your questions. I'm so happy to answer them, and I can even add in a couple of tips and tricks into these challenges so that you can understand more. Now, going back to our painting. So I've done the river with a reflection of the sky with the same yellows and now adding in blue around the edges for the landscape. A let's do the same thing on the right side as well. I'm not getting it too close to the river line that I had drawn out, but just enough so it blends in. Remember, the water is still wet, so we don't want to get too close because everything is going to blend together and it's just going to be a mush. Using the same blue, we can just add a couple of distant mountains. Blue and yellow mixes to give you green, and that's why we have green on our paper. And that green just works really well with our painting because it's a mix of the blue and yellow. While everything is still wet, I'm just going to go over the edge of the mountain just to create a blurry line. You can see how instead of keeping it crisp, I'm just gently fading it into the backdrop by adding a little bit of brush movement along the edges. This way, it doesn't have sharp peaks and it's just blurring. Giving it a more misty look. Now we're going to let our layers dry completely before we move on to the next step. We're going in deep with our blue and starting off with adding some distant trees, swishing around your brush so you can really get that color. I could use green for this, but I feel like the blue just works so much better to create the effect that we're going for. Once we're happy with the backdrop, let's start working on our landscape. We can start by adding in the green along the river bank. In this step, I'm making it a lot more, I would say clear, making the lines a little bit more crisp, adding more green along the edges. Let's do the same thing on the left side as well, repeating the process. As you can see, the blue from our previous layer has become much duller and it just has faded into the painting. So let's go ahead and take more deep forest green or even the same blue and layer it up, build that color towards the edge of the paper. What we're trying to do is add more shadow towards the edges and keeping a much lighter green near the river bed. Now, let's take blue again. This is an indigo blue that I've been using, and we're going to just go over the river bed, add a little bit dimension to it. You can see how just the section that is below, I'm adding a little bit blue to it, and that adds some more depth to the painting. Now we're going to work on the river. So using blue, we're going to add in some lines, and this is what makes it realistic. We've been painting so many landscapes, and you would have noticed how these thin lines really shows that it's water and actually adds to the ripple effect. So it's such an important part of painting rivers. A Another important thing that we're going to add now is the shadow of the river bed. You can see how just in those sections, I'm adding a little bit of color to show that it's reflecting onto the water. Keep this layer more transparent. Time to let everything dry, and then we're going to move on to our next step of adding white. You can use white gouache or acrylic white. I mentioned this in the materials as well. Remember that the materials are a recommendation. If you don't have the materials or have any questions, as I mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial, please feel free to ask in the discussion stab. Now using white, I'm just going to go over some sections and adding a little bit of highlight because right now, if you see, our painting looks a little flat. There's just something missing. There's a little texture missing. So using the white, I'm going to add thin lines for grass, and that you can see is popping out of the painting. It's always nice to have that little white part. I really like how this is coming together. Let's add more grass, Just adding parallelines. Finally, we're going to switch to our pen and just add more details. I'm just going over those edges, the river bed, adding couple of lines, making it a little bit more jagged. Adding in some parallelines along the trees in the background. This is going to give it more texture as well. We're also going to take this as an opportunity to add in more grass, as well. It looks like there's patches of greenery missing. So we're going to use our pen to add more detail. These little tiny, minute lines might feel unimportant, but in the overall painting, they make a difference. Now that the layers have dried, I feel like I need to add a little bit more of the indigo blue along the curves. This is where you can step back from your painting and just notice if you want to add a little bit more details, maybe more patches of green. And once you're happy with the overall look, we can remove out the tape and reveal our final painting. It's very interesting that even when the painting looks amazing with the tape, when you remove the tape, it just looks finished. A gentle current with yellows and green. 16. Day 14 Blooming Flowers: Can you believe we are already on day 14? This is amazing. Congratulations for getting this far. Inspired by dancing tulips, I decided to create another project inspired by Flols. So we're going to start off by wetting our background. So the whole background is going to be very misty and blur so that we can hyper focus on our flowers. So add a lot of water to the base of your paper. Just go back and forth, make sure you cover all the edges. We don't want too much of water, so not blobs, but just enough. So just moving around your brush, so your water really fills up with water, and it really seeps through. This is a basic wet on wet technique where we wet the paper, and then we're going to add wet paint to it, and you're going to create a very interesting backdrop for our florals. I'm going back and forth, making sure that I cover all the edges that is so important. And then we can start with our colors. So let's take a mix of colors. We're going to experiment with a really interesting background, starting with orange right on top. Gradually, adding more of a yellow or a burnt sienna to the mix. Blending it in. And then a bright cadmium yellow to really perk up that sky. Now, if your colors are really moving around too much and isn't as smooth as this, it means that you have too much water. And in case it is very dry and your paint is just kind of staying, that means you have very less water. So it's a delicate balance between the two. Now, I've taken blue, and I'm going ahead and adding my first mountain, just blending it into that background while everything is still wet. You can see how it's blending together. Et's add in purple to create another mountain. You can see how I'm not going ahead and taking more and more paint. I'm using what's in the brush, and that's why it fades into clear water. Then we can take in green. This is for our meadows, right at the bottom, leave a little white space in the middle, and we're going to drop in some bright yellow to it. Every time I take a new color, I make sure that I wash my brush so that I get a really nice bright mix. Once we've put down our yellow, we're going to wait for a couple of seconds till it slightly dries up, and then we're going to add some splashes of green onto the yellow, so it's not so bright. This is a delicate balance, and this project is going to teach you so much about water control. You might have to try this a couple of times, but it's so worth the effect. Now, I'm taking a tissue and I'm just dabbing out a little sun. You can see how I just dabbed out a little bit of that paint right near the mountain and that created a glowing sun with such ease. Now, I've switched to my thin brush, dropping in some green on top of the yellow. Being very intentional about the placement, not just clumping it all together, but just adding a couple of patches. You are doing so great. Using the detailer brush, I'm just going to fix a couple of things that went wrong. Like, if I feel like the mountain just went a little bit off, I'm just going to go over it a couple of times. And this is with a dry brush, so I'm not taken in any additional paint. I'm just moving around the paint that's already on the paper, making sure that everything looks a little better. It's not just a messy blob. Once that's done, we're going to let this dry. You can use a blow dryer, and you can see we have our final result. That looks so great. It looks like it's out of focus. It's blur. This is perfect for us to continue with our flowers. Now, here I'm going to do a little trick. We are going to mix a little bit of that white gouache or acrylic with cadmium yellow. This is going to give us a really nice bright yellow flour and also make it opaque so that it sits on top of this layer. If I use the yellow as is, it's just going to blend into the background. But adding that little white is really going to make sure that it stays as it is. You can switch to a brush that is more for acrylics if you feel like and you don't want to ruin your watercolor brushes. That's important because using the same brush for acrylic and watercolor is generally not advised. Once you have that going, mix enough of paint and really mix it together. So you get that really nice yellow. You can lighten it up a bit. I felt like mine was a bit too bright, and it would kind of pop out of the paper a bit too much. Now we go into adding a little florals. So I'm adding a couple of small petals, just making this so miniature. And this takes a little patience. Just step by step, adding one small but at a time, adding in three different petals. And you can see how I'm just really gently pressing my brush onto the paper. Continue the process by adding in a couple of flowers in different sections. I'm bunching them together. So when I do a stem, they all connect together. Adding in some buds by just gently tapping your brush. If you feel like doing larger flowers, you can. I just wanted to keep this very small and kind of match with what we've been playing with. With a project like this, you can really get creative and you can really have fun with it, playing around with different floral colors, and there's so much experimentation that you can do. But I think this is just so great. I still love how that mountain background turned out. Adding a couple of buds, just go with the flow. There are no right or wrong way of doing this. While I'm at it, I'm going to stack on little white on top of some of the petals, and this is going to give it a little variation as well, and that's going to make it again, a little interesting instead of having everything one colour. Using white, let's add a couple of dots to represent some smaller flowers. A couple of flowers that we maybe can't get that much of detail because they're not that clear. So we're just showing them as little dots, little spots maybe added in some buds, all with the white, so it creates more to the painting. Now we move on to the next step, which is adding in the stems. I've switched to my thin brush, so I can really get into those details. I'm using the same purple that we use for our mountain, so it really stays in line with what we've been painting. And we're going to be really careful with this. Just trying to get some nice crisp lines all the way from the bottom connecting to the flowers. Pay a little attention to how I've clumped together the flowers. One of the things I notice is that some people tend to, like, cross over the stems where it looks a little unnatural. So all we're trying to do is just kind of get them straight in line all the way to the bottom of the paper. We can add in some buds like I'm doing just in groups of three. You can see how that looks so great. Adds a little detail to our flowers. Continue this process across all the flowers. One thing I'd like to mention is also notice how I placed my flowers. I had some of them that are higher up, and then the rest were more down. What this happens is create contrast and gives something to look at. So it gives you a little perspective where you focus on the flower that is right above that's taller. Right? So these small little tips and tricks can really make your painting look better. So just having one that's longer, and you can see how I'm also adding more buds to it, adding more detail, and the rest are just down there being part of the painting. A Now that we've finished this, we have just a few more steps. We're going to just increase the depth of that bottom grass. So add more of dark green and really add in some quick lines just to fill up that. And you can see how that deepen the color down, and that looks much better. Now you can add in some birds. We just learned how to do birds in our previous projects. So you can really add in some detailed little birds that also fills up the sky so the sky doesn't look too empty. And this part is really up to you. I'm adding a couple of dots with the yellow, just to show that there are some more flowers in the distance that maybe you can't see as much, maybe some dots with white, more birds. It's really up to you how you want to fill up the painting. But overall, we've got our main focal flower. We've got our blurry background, and that already creates the perfect little project that we've painted for today. Make sure you let everything dry once you've added all your little details, and then you can remove out your tape to reveal your final painting. I always find it interesting that once I remove the tape, I actually love my painting more because it actually creates this nice crisp edge to the painting. And there we go, we're done with our quick project for today. 17. Day 15 Scenic Escape: Of all the projects in this challenge, this one is my absolute favorite. Something about the colors, the bright florals just makes me so happy. So we're starting off with our horizon line, planning a little bit of the mountains, planning a little bit of how we want this painting to look. And once we have a rough idea of the shoreline, we can then continue with our actual painting. Keep the lines very light so they don't affect your watercolors and you can create something incredible. Let's start off with pink. I'm using a lot of water mixed in, so it truly blends, add a little orange to the mix so that we get a warm pink tone. You can see how that is a little bit more calmer and just really matches with our mood today. Starting right above the mountain line and then gently adding water as we move upwards, creating a very gentle blend. Let's drop in some blue right on top. So we have a gentle blend of blue and pink for our sky. Once we're happy with the results, we can move to the water. The water is going to be a reflection of the sky using the same colours of pink and blue. Time to move to the shore line. We're going to start with a light green. Notice how I'm keeping a little gap because the water paint section might still be wet. So I'm being a little careful so I don't mix up everything together. But I was a little impatient because I really wanted to paint. So instead of waiting for everything to dry, I just continued on leaving a small gap between the layers. So this is a little I would say, not a trick. It's actually a bad habit where I kind of don't. Have patience sometimes, and I want things to be painted very quickly. I think it's also why I chose watercolors as a medium because it is one of the quicker mediums. If you get into oils and acrylic, it's a lot of layers. It's overtime. Every section is built, and you have to do so much, whereas with watercolors, you can end up with something so beautiful in just ten to 15 minutes. And I think that's what draws me into the medium and why I take advantage of not waiting and letting things rest, I just immediately start painting. So what I've done is gone ahead with my dark green and added in some patches of green. Now my layers have dried as time went by and I'm able to get a little bit closer to the shoreline to add in some cross, some plants, some leaves, adding more details. How do you feel so far? Are you seeing the result? It's already coming together so well. We can take our blue next and just paint our mountain. Now that everything is dry, so it's not going to merge and blend and create a mess, it's going to just stay right there. You can add a little shading if you want, by adding a little darker blue towards the edges, and you can see how that slight blue just gives a little bit of a shade dimension to the mountain. Using some thin lines to represent the ripples on the water. Make sure that you use a thin rush for this because it's so important that these ripple lines are thin. Now, I've let everything dry and actually used a drier this time, a blow dryer and actually let it rest. No impatience. This is when we take our time and actually play around with our flora, our fauna, adding in some really pretty leaves, maybe some flowers, some quick grass, as you can see. So we're going to enjoy this process and really see how our painting is coming alive. Continue adding in patches of grass, some trees around the painting. One thing to note is that whenever I'm doing the grass, I keep them long closer to the viewers, so closer to the edge and keep them shorter as they move closer to the mountain or further away. This small little tip actually creates depth within your painting. So just that small shift in size of the grass, the height can really make your painting look spaced out. Like, everything is a little bit more trey. Now, adding a little shadow below the mountain, below the shoreline that I created, adding a little shade. Now we're going to take white, and we're going to use that to add in our flowers. Every time that you're using lighter colour flowers on a deeper background, you need to add in white so it works really well. This can be the acrylic white or guause white. Either works well. I'm using my thin brush, and I'm just going to go into some quick little daisies, and you can see how I'm just gently adding each petal at a time in the form of a circle. You can add as many as you want or as few as you'd like. It's really up to you. I wanted to have that bottom section really filled out with flowers, maybe some side flowers, some buds, having a variety of them. So it really looks like this pretty shade of white in our painting. Similar to what we did with our cross, we're going to make sure that the flowers that are further out, that are further away, that are closer to the mountain are going to be smaller in size. You're just adding little dots instead of really showing them and painting them out. And this again shows depth. It looks like since they're further away, you cannot see them clearly. Time to mix in some yellow to the white and paint the center of our flowers for our daisies. A Let it rest for a bit, and then we're going to use our pen to just add some details to the painting, adding in stems so that the flowers are not just floating in the air. They're actually connected to the grass or the ground. Maybe you can add in some leaves. It's a little bit more easier to control a pen than a brush sometimes. And it could also add a little fun effect. We can then use our pen to add in other details maybe some lines, maybe more grass, and you can see how I'm just playing around with that. A a For the final step, I wanted to add in a sun. So using yellow, is adding a nice circle, adding a little white in the middle. So it really glows through that sky. And then let's copy the same sun onto the water, the reflection of it. And we're done with our painting. Just a simple very quick, actually. 15 minutes is a very short time that we were able to create something so pretty. And this is our painting for today. See you tomorrow for a brand new painting. 18. Day 16 Peaks at Sunrise: As you can see, this painting peaks at Sunrise is going to be so interesting. Definitely completely different shade of colors, and we're also playing around with a little bit of transparency here. So let's dive right into it. I've drawn out my horizon line in not really the middle, but a little bit lower than that. And then planning out where I want to have those edges where I want the rocks to sit. Just a general idea. As we get painting, you can kind of plan it out a little bit better. But this gives us an idea, especially of where the water is going to go. Now we start right in the center. We're going to start with a nice circle using ar cadmium yellow. Gently swish it around so that it becomes a little lighter, add some water and blend it. Now, let's go into Burnt Sienna and continue with this layer. It's a little tricky painting circular blends. So you might have to practice it a bit, but don't worry. You're going to end up with such a beautiful painting that it's going to be totally worth it. Now I'm going into orange. Again, gently blending the color, trying to go around the entire sky. It's all about a process of adding more water or removing some excess water as you continue. And then we have pink. You can see right now that the blend isn't looking as great. It's kind of messy, but don't worry. I'm just trying to get my colors in. And then once I have my colors, I can wash out my brush, and then with a clear brush that's just a little damp, you can kind of go around over your lines and blend the colors. So just washing the brush, let's gently use a little bit water to move around the colour on the paper. And you can see how that's kind of coming together. It's okay if the center kind of disappears. We can use white and add it again. But our whole point is to get that circle going. Another way you can keep that white space is use a tissue to dab out that section, to remove the paint there so it remains white. So many different ways to do the same thing. Now, one of the things with watercolors is unless it dries, you're not going to know what you actually did with the blend. It could look really great, and then once it dries, it could be a mess. So we're just going to kind of fix as much as we can, and then we're going to let it dry and then see if we need to add a little bit more. Notice how I'm also making sure because I'm doing it in a circle, I move my brush in a circle, as well. It's all about that wrist movement when it comes down to the sky for this painting. As I mentioned, we're go to let this dry. Let's move on to the next step, our water, starting off with cadmium yellow, just below where the sun is. This is going to make sure that it's bright and yellow and it's reflecting onto the water, which is very realistic. And then we can add in some orange away from that section on both sides and then finally a pink. So really reflecting the sky onto the water. While we were doing this, our sky is dry now. We can check back in, and you can see it's not as perfect. Some of the colors lighten down, which is what happens with watercolors. So now we can go ahead and add a second layer, starting with the pink right on top. We can go into the orange, our burnt sienna, and then the yellow. So just adding those colors again, they're going to make it a lot more vibrant, and we're going to be able to blend now that we have this base already present. This time the sky looks a lot better, and let's hope once it dries, it looks really nice. If it doesn't, you can go in with another layer or just add color into some of the sections. We're going to trust the process completely and move along with our painting. Let's start with our stones and other elements. So using brown, Vandyke brown, or if you're using a mix of blue, pink and orange, I think that's what I had shared. You can look at the color chart, which is in the about section. Blend out our colors and get our base layer, going with sap green. And Rulis filling up the space. You can see how it's not so perfect. It might look like a mess, but we're trusting the process. Lay down the color and then just let everything dry. Now we can actually see what we're working with. Does look like patches of color, but don't worry. This is truly a process of trusting how it's gonna turn out, and you're going to love the final result. Let's start with adding some shadow. The first thing I'm doing is adding in some black or dark brown. I'm just adding in some more depth. You can see how just the area below, I'm adding more color. The shadow is going to be our way of differentiating each layer. So adding another shadow. This is not a reflection. It's just the area that doesn't have light. Using the same color, we can add in some grass just by quick lines. Adding more cross as we continue this process. You guys know how to do this, so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but try to make sure that your layers far away are shorter and the sections that are closer to the edge are a little bit more taller just to give the painting some depth. Let's continue on with the shadow reflection onto the water of these sections, the little rock, following the same shape when you reflect it onto the water with a lighter black. We can add a little yellow to the top of I'm going to say shoreline rocks because I really don't know what else I can call it. So please have a look at the painting in case you're having any difficulty. So using thin lines for the water reflection, I felt like this is such an important part. When I used to paint earlier and I didn't know much about landscapes, I would just leave the water as it is with just the same color. And I noticed when I did that, it looked off. It looked fake. And when I added these thin lines, the ripple lines, it made it look more natural, and I was like, Oh, that actually looks like water. It's such a small step, but it really makes a difference. Using the black mixture or dark brown mixture, we're going to use a very light layer, and this is our transparency that we're going to show through. You can see how the sky is seen through this layer because it's so light. And then you can add in some darker colors just along the edges. So in the middle, it's still really transparent. Time to add in some flowers. We've let everything dry using red. I'm just going in and adding a couple of flowers attached to our grass to give the piece some more color. We can take white quash or white acrylic to fix that sun, just make it look a little bit better because some of the shape might have gotten ruined when you were doing the backdrop. It's okay. So this is where we're going to fix it. And maybe adding some thin reflection lines onto the water using the white. Make sure that it's perpendicular right onto the water. Using white, we can add some ripple lines of the water with the white. This is actually going to make it look like there was reflection that the sun hit it and that's why it's white. You can have that, add a little bit of white to the edge of the rocks, maybe add some to the grass to give it some more brightness. A for the final step, we're going to just deepen the grass at the bottom so that once we remove our tape, it's going to look really nice. So use that dark green and just add some flicks of grass at the bottom edge. And just like that, we're done with our project for today. 19. Day 17 Sea, stone and Sky: It's day 17, and our project is Sea, Stone and Sky, a great project for us to uplevel our skills a bit. All our projects so far have been simple and easy, and now we're going to start just leveling up our projects, adding more elements, and bringing together much more vibrant pieces. So starting off the horizon, we've got a nice mountain that we're painting at the back, and then we're going to add in some stones in the front. You can see how I'm doing this, just giving a little bit of an idea. So I know in my head where the water goes. As you know, with all of our paintings, we paint the ocean first, so it really helps to know where it is going to be. Now for the rocks, the ones that are closer, we're making it a little bit bigger. And then the ones that are a little bit further away, that little island is going to be a little smaller to show that they're further and, you know, we're showing the depth. Again, such an important tool for painting because these small little details really make a painting look great. Once you're happy with the overall look, you've got your basics. We can just dive right into our painting today. Let's take a little purple, add a lot of water to it, and start right on top, creating a beautiful, soft blend of purple. To top it off, we're going to use a yellow cloud. Use the cad yellow to just create a cloud like effect, laying down the color, and this is going to create some vibrance to our sky. Just towards one edge, you can see how light that was. Nothing massive. Just soft and subtle. Using purple again, we're going to paint out our mountain that's off in the distance. You can see how I'm painting a layer and then I'm going to use water and blend it out. Similar to our projects from, I think it was day ten or 11. You can see how we're using the tools and techniques that we learned from before for this painting. Now moving on to the water, similar shades of yellow and purple. But notice how I'm using the yellow just in the area that the cloud formation was. And then the purple in the rest of the sections. So this again, is a reflection of the sky, and that's important to keep in mind that every time you're adding the reflection of the sky, you're following the exact same colors as well and placements as well. Use water to blend the two colors. Now, I'm being very careful with this process because yellow and purple mixed gives a very muddy color that we don't want in our painting. So being careful with our placements and using enough of water. This painting is all about technique and trying not to overwork your painting by mixing and mixing and mixing. Using the purple again to add the shadow of these rocks going to add a gentle shadow of the mountain as well. Both of them very light being very gentle. I'm not adding too much of color. It's just very soft like it's there, but it's not going to take away from our painting. Once we're happy with that, we can just continue to the next step. We're going to use green to paint the second mountain that's closer to us. This one is going to be more green and luscious. And so we're adding a lot of green to it. Similarly, for the stones, we're going to use gray, just a soft color before we can let it dry and then continue with our layers. As we practiced rocks before, it's all about layering it up. This is our base. Let it rest. Use a blow dryer if you want to make sure everything is dry, and then we can proceed with our details. The first thing I want to do is fix that mountain because the top wasn't as clear. It kind of blended into the skies, which is making it a little bit more crisp using our purple, making sure that we maintain those blends that we worked on. Next, we can use our purple lines for the ripple lines of the water. On the mountain, we're going to add in our first tree using dark green. This is a pine tree. Like we practiced in our previous projects. I think that was day 12. I feel like I'm mixing up my days. But we've been practicing these trees, so I trust that you're going to be able to handle it. Let's use a little bit of that green spread a little bit more into that mountain, so it has more depth that's not just flat color. Adding more water so you create some softer trees like they're in the fog and they kind of just fading away. Once we have that ready, we move on to our rocks, going into the first layer of adding those shadows right below. It might look messy, but it is going to look great once we finish. Just filling in those areas with gray to show that it cuts in those angles. Using some of that gray on the mountain as well, and blending it all together. Once that's done, we're going to go into our first tree that is more clear that's in front of us where we're going to add more details. Starting right on top, just a couple of lines going to gently add more branches and bring the tree down with more of that green You can add some water or generally just continue the process and you'll see that the color lightens as you continue. There was a little problem, I think, with the recording. I blurs in and out a bit, but don't worry, it will clear up in the next section, but it gives you an overall idea of how the tree should look. We've done this before, so I felt like this is something you can handle. You've got this. Now going into the next layer of the rocks, you can see how this darkening of the shadow is making it much more clear that these are rocks. I've also switched to my thinner brush, so I can really get into those details, adding a little shadow to the rock, so it deepens it up, makes it more clear. Shadows generally or shadow, especially reflections, really pop the element out. So it's very important. It's all about fixing those rocks, just making sure we add those lines for step two, show that it's a rock and then adding the cuts for the surfaces. Let's use black to add a little bit more depth. I feel like the purple is still so light. So we're going to add more shadow for the rock. So it's really just a dark reflection of the rocks themselves. O. Letting everything dry and now it's all about the trees. We have a final tree to add in right next to the one that we painted. This one can be shorter. Maybe we can add in more details following the exact same steps. A We're almost there, just a couple of details. I'm going to use the dakreen to add another layer of mountain. Adding a couple of lines with the green, we're going to let it dry completely, and then using our black pen, adding some parallel lines along some of the surfaces like the rocks, the mountains. This just deepens the color a little bit more. We're also going to use white to add some highlights to the surfaces. This is just a very subtle thing. It's not necessary to do, but I think it really helps the painting. That little white at the edge of the rocks, some of it between the ripples maybe for the trunk of the tree. And there you go. This is our final painting revere. 20. Day 18 Painted Views: Let's create this painting for today with just a few colors. I've planned out my horizon slightly below the middle of the painting, taped down my sheets, so it's prepped and ready. Let's start with a bright pink right on top. Using water, blending it out, just gently creating a soft base. We can add a little bit more pink because remember, it is going to dry much more lighter. So we're going to take this opportunity to deepen up the color. Let's take in burnt sienna, add in a little bit of that yellow as we move downwards. Cadmium yellow is going to be the perfect add on to brighten up this entire sky. Once we have that, we can move to the ocean very similar colors, bright cadmium yellow, followed by burnt sienna, and then to finish it off, the pink. In this painting, I wanted to show you one of the common mistakes that might happen when you are blending and how we can fix them. There are a couple of ways. I'm going to just do the easiest one. So when I added the second layer of pink, I added a lot of water, and you can see how the cloud like effect is already forming. Once it dries, it's going to make it's going to become worse and more obvious, and we're going to fix that. Meanwhile, we're going to let it dry right now isn't the time to fix anything. Let's continue with adding a couple of clouds of pink to the sky, making it a little bit more dramatic. All I'm trying to do is gently tap my brush, creating little clouds. The most important thing is to make sure that you have some thin lines that become bigger and then smaller again. So it's just creating patches of color, repeating the same thing on the reflection in the water. Now, while it's still a little bit damp, I'm using my burnt sienna and just painting over the section, that could have been a big mistake. You can see how that got fixed so easily. Just going over the color again, with a brush that is also filled with paint. Now we've let everything dry. Gonna take our pencil and plan out our rocks. So I'm going to have a bunch of rocks, especially to the right side. And we're gonna have a couple of more on the left, and we're creating something really dynamic in this painting. You don't need to get into so much of detail around the rocks. I just want to have the basic shape and where the shadow is going to hit it. The section right next to the water where it is least likely to get sunlight, that's going to be the darkest section, and that's going to be our shadow. Once we have that, let's mix in our dark brown or in my case, I'm going more of a greenish black and using water, let's place our first layer. Painting the entire rock formation with this soft color. We're going to keep stacking up the color, so it's going to look a lot more vibrant and more realistic. At this point, we just want to have a base color. I Time to add some soft trees in the background, using the same color, using a lot of water to just keep it subtle. It's not going to take away from our main painting. It's just there in the background. Because it's so light, you can actually see the sky through it, which is so pretty and the whole thing just comes together. While it's still wet, let's drop in a little bit more of dark green along the horizon line. And then we can add a little bit more. You can see how that just adds a little bit more color so it's not completely faded. Let's repeat the same thing on the other side. As the trees have dried, we can go in with another bright tree that is more in the foreground, that is more visible. And once we have that, we're going to add the shadows of these trees onto the water. A simple way to do that is using the same greens and adding in lines that represent the same shape of the trees. You're going to understand this in a bit when I get into the painting. Going in with deeper green and just adding in lines at the same height as the trees. There's a direct reflection onto the water. While I'm at this, I'm also going to add some ripple lines around the rock. This is definitely something new we are doing here. Just in circular semi circle movements, we're adding the soft gray color around the rock to show that the water is actually moving around it. Next, add in the shadow for the rock. We're going to add more details as we continue. We're right now just doing some of the softer layers before building up the color. Time to tackle our rocks. So start with our shadow, the line of the rock shape, the cuts. Using a thin brush so you can really get those details, keeping it really thin. You can even use a pen if you feel like if you can't get those thin lines. Go ahead and painting out another rock, similar getting that shadow section like we had practiced and then adding those thin lines to show where the rocks are. To balance the painting on the left side, we're going to add some grass to show that there are going to be some flowers there that are just peeking into our landscape painting. Adding some thin lines for longer stems where we can place our flowers. This never fails to surprise me. Look at how bright this is, and then in a second, the colors have lightened down now that everything is dry. So we will go in with another layer to darken our rock, make the shadows a little bit more vibrant, maybe add a little bit more green for the grass. So we're going to keep layering and layering till we get the result that we want. To the h to the grass, we're going to add a couple of the flower beds for us to place our flowers on. Just some small circles. Oh we don't really want to fill up the space, but just enough to make a difference. For the flowers, I'm going to use acrylic white because it's going to be nice and bold and show through our painting. Have a look at your painting, see if you need to add anything more. I'm really happy with the rocks. I'd added in a couple of lines for the ripples, and that has really come through as well. Overall, our painting is looking great. We just need that small little add on flour, and I think we're going to have a beautiful painting for today. This time for the flowers, keeping it really simple, just some fluffy white circles. And that's it. You can go details if you want, but I'm keeping it really simple because we do have a lot of different focus areas, and the flowers are almost just complementary. They're just there to add to the painting, but they're not the main focus. I like how the colors for this painting just came together. It's pretty much a few colors that we've been able to create so much with. Congratulations on completing day 18. 21. Day 19 Shades of Green: It's been an interesting journey until now, and as they say, it takes 19 days to build a habit. So for this painting, we're choosing the calm, we're choosing relaxation, and we're just loving on greens. It's going to be like you're in nature, looking at trees, sitting and admiring it. Starting off with our blue, blue and green are such a great combination because they work really well with each other. Blue mixed with green is just going to give you a blue green that is so rich and so juicy, I would say. So I started with a light green for the bottom. We're not even focusing on the sky this time. We're just going to get to our ground, create some layers, some cross, really build it up, make it look very interesting. So I'm going in with some deep green, the forest green, mixing in with a little bit of a light green and just playing around with all these different colors of green. Everything is still wet and it's all blending together. And once it all dries, we're going to be able to see a little bit more of what we created. Now, using the light green, I'm actually just painting a nice big blob, I would say, is a good word. But basically, it's the starting of our tree. As you get the light color green on top, we're going to have a deeper green. You can actually add a little bit of the forest green with the light green, get a secondary shade that we're going to use as we go lower. This looks like a mess. Don't worry. We're going to let everything dry, and then we're going to see what we have to work with. Now, let's get to our tree. So starting with that deep forest green, adding a little bit of water, let's paint out some branches of leaves sticking out. You can use your thinner brush if you want to really get those details in. I just wanted to have some of them poking out of the tree. It's going to create a nice effect. Then just pressing down my brush and really filling up the space. Let's go deeper with our green and add a couple of more of those leaves that are hanging down. Continue downwards. Again, another set of leaves just falling down. Time to tackle our landscape, the ground. We're going to add some cross with dark green quick lines. This is going to be great for the edge of our painting once we remove the tape. Creating another section right on top. You can see how I started big and then went shorter as I moved away to the center of the painting. Let's do the same thing on the other side as well. Then let's add in some grass in the horizon. Even adding in some quick lines immediately differentiates the sky from the landscape. H Time to jump into painting our tree. You can take Van **** brown, and we're going to paint a nice thick trunk. And from there, we're just building out our branches. Remember, the branches are always thinner than the trunk. There's something I notice people do if they're just starting off, and that's what makes the painting look a little bit off. So make sure that the branches that you as they break become thinner and thinner. Another tip I can give you while adding branches is to make sure that the line is actually straight. The bigger or thicker the branches, the more straight it's going to be, the thinner or smaller the branches, it can bend a little bit more, which if you think about it, makes sense in general physics. So your trunk is usually straight, and then as you get those smaller branches, they are going to be able to move around and be more curved. Adding more leaves. This is again going to show through because it's right in front, so it's going to be very interesting to have these leaves popping I'm really enjoying the leaf process. So let's add a few more to the branches that we just painted. Remember to move around your leaves, so they're not all in the same direction. Some of them can be moving downward, some of them are smaller, bigger, so just have fun with it. But you're creating a nice variety, making it looks like it's flowing in the wind. Now, let's add in some patches of green with some leaves popping out. We're going to do a couple of these patches, and this is going to make the tree look fuller because right now it looks a little bit empty. Like, there are leaves, but it looks kind of like things are missing. So this dark green layer that we're adding in now is going to complete our tree and just fill it up. Oh So far, so good, a tree looks great. Now let's work on the bottom. We're going to add some quick lines for cross, some tall lines, and just play around with more details. Using a black pen, let's add some straight lines. As you saw, I added in some leaves for the grass as well. Maybe we have some of the weed plants that are popping up. Now we're moving on to the interesting bit of adding white. So we're going to use white to add in some details for our painting today. First, let's start off with adding in some leaves. This is going to be great because we have a lot of dark leaves, so this white is going to create a very nice contrast. Just few of them, not too much. We don't want to take away from the painting. We're also going to use the white for the trunk and also the grass to just give it a little bit more space because right now everything is so green. So this white is going to be the perfect contrast, maybe adding in some grass lines. Can see how that looks really great. It just adds to the painting a little bit more. Maybe adding in a couple of small dots for flowers. We can add as many or as few as you want. And then once we're done, let everything rest and we can remove the tape to reveal our Day 19 painting shades of green. 22. Day 20 Lakeside stillness: I hope you're seeing the progress in the paintings in your skills and really tapping into that painting habit every day. This painting is going to be really fun. We're starting with our purple right on top for the sky, getting in some color, adding in a little bit more of purple, and then blending out with water. Next, let's take some pink and continue with our blend. We're creating a soft sky that really makes an impact just with color. We don't need some crazy clouds, just the softness coming through. Next, we're going to take blue and start from the horizon line all the way upwards, very gently blending in the colors. I'm trying to not paint it over the pink because I don't want the two colors to mix, so I'm keeping a little gap between the two. Adding a lot of water, so it really blends now, one thing to remember, and I feel like I mentioned this before, but I'm going to mention it again. When I say take more water, a lot of people assume that they need to take water in their brush. It's actually you need to add more water to your paint, whether it's taking it in a separate palette or adding more water to your paint pan, your paint needs to have more water, and that's what actually softens the color and makes it more subtle. Because through this process, what we're trying to do is make the paint more liquid, more watery, right, and reduce the ratio of paint. And that way we get a softer blend. So keep that in mind every time someone says a very soft blend, a lighter shade or every time you're trying to paint a light color, you're just adding more water to the paint and not to the brush. You can see I added the ocean, added more of a darker blue for the bottom. Once that's done, let's just plan out where we want to place our rocks. And also where we're going to place tree. These are the two main elements for this painting. After mixing a soft layer of green or black, adding a lot of water to the paint. I'm just creating a very soft layer for the rocks. Adding a little bit more of that deeper green in those areas of shadow where it's touching the water. Let's continue that process for the other side as well. The other rocks. We're going to let this dry after some time, meanwhile, while everything is still wet, let's just continue with our painting. We're going to add tree. Adding a nice trunk followed by some pranches Once we have the tree trunk, we can go ahead and start painting the leaves using green, adding in patchy areas and then also some leaves towards the edge like they are popping out of the tree. Similar to what we did before. Now using a lighter color, so we really bring a mix of shades to our tree, and it looks a little bit more natural instead of very fake with one color. The duality of having these multiple colors are going to really make it stand out. With a light creen adding some of the leaves that are just drooping off the tree. Using more daka green to really fill in a color And there you go with just a few simple steps, we're done with our tree. Now we can add some quick lines of grass that are just popping out of the base of the tree. You can add in some flowers if you'd like to or if you just want to do leaves, that works as well. Just giving it some more movement. Let's now work on the rocks. The first thing we're going to do is add the shadow the reflection of the rocks onto the water. I think I keep calling it shadow in some of my previous paintings, but it's the reflection. As you can see. So the reflection is always the same height and shape as much as possible of your rock. So keep that in mind when you do it. And then once we have that, we can also add some curved lines to show the ripple of the water surrounding the rocks. Adding in some water ripple lines and then also some trees off in the distance. I Once we're done with the paste, we're just going to let it dry. Use a blow dryer, if you'd prefer whatever is handy with you, and then we move on to the next step. For the next step, we're going in with deeper colors and really layering it up. The first thing we're working on is the rocks themselves. So start with a very gentle outline and then go into the different cuts and adding in more shadow areas like we practiced before. Now, the rocks are almost done. We might add a little bit white. I also decided to add a little darker green patch to the tree because it felt like it looked a little empty and the colours had dull down once it dried. So just that little patch is going to, again, pop up the color and make it more vibrant. Now we use white, whether you're using gouache white or acrylic white. But can you use white to add details to our painting? Taking a thin brush so you can really get those details. Let's start by adding some thin lines to the edge of the rocks, giving it a little highlight. Once that's done, we move into the water ripples. We're going to use white lines for our water ripples. And you can see how I'm just creating a thin line close to the rock, and then some lines that are a little bit more further away breaking them so they're not perfect. Curves, having a little bit of gap between them. With the white, we can also add in some ripple lines, small details to bring together the painting. What I also like to do in the process is add some leaves of white to the tree, like we did before because it just adds a little added effect and really complements the painting. Gently tap your brush to add in some splatters to the water. I love everything to dry, and then we're going to use our black pen to just get in some thin lines closer to the tree, maybe getting in some texture if we can. Let everything dry and then remove the tape to reveal the final painting. 23. Day 21 Whispering Pines: It's date 21, and this project is called Whispering Pines, which is such a perfect name for this painting. So let's start off with just planning where we want our mountains to go so we can plan where we paint a sky. We're going to have a lot of different rocks at the bottom, just creating some landscapes that are just interesting. So pine trees, everything just coming together perfectly to create such a calming landscape. You don't have to get all the details for, let's say, the rocks. I'm just trying to show you where everything is placed so you have an idea before we continue and jump into the painting. This one is going to be so great, especially the sky. I think, as I've gone to painting landscapes, I think if you can get the perfect colors for the sky, it just works so well because you can really make the painting interesting just with that. It's all about the color. It's all about creating that environment. Now that you have a basic idea, we can just jump right in to painting the sky. So I'm taking my brush, making sure all my paints are activated and ready to use. And we start with our pink. Go right on top, right at the tape, and we start a light shade of pink and orange. The pink and orange work really well together because they blend into a very interesting color palette using water and just blending it out. We can add a little bit more pink, I think, on top because I feel like the pink just faded away. Add a little bit more orange. Both are just going to brighten up the sky a little bit more. With our sky prepped and ready, we can move on to our landscape. And this, we are going to add a light green, start with a lot of light green, then add in some darker greens, especially near the stones, so you add some depth. And There is no specific way of adding the greens. All I'm trying to do is get some deeper green color towards the bottom of the paper because when we remove the tape, it's going to look really nice. I'm trying to avoid the stone that I drew out. So just painting around them. This is actually called negative painting where you paint around the object. But what it's going to do is create a nice white base for when we add in our rocks. Otherwise, you're going to have this green tint to the rocks, which I think would ruin our painting today. So we're just going to be careful making sure that we leave those white spaces in between. Let's take dark green and add in patches. We're going to add a little mountain of green as well. A now that the sky has dried, while we've been working on the bottom half, we can move to the mountain that's right next to the sky. We're going to do a black, really add a lot of water, so it's very gray, and then just paint out the base. We're going to try to create some depth and detail to the mountain. Till now all the mountains we've been doing have been quite flat and just in the background. Here we want to have a little detail going. So all I'm doing is adding in color with a little patch of white in between. And then we're going to layer it up with more color and make it more detail so then you can actually see the mountain with all of its detail. We've done all we can for the first layer, so we're going to let it dry. And now with our dry painting, let's dive into our second layer. So this is all about details. Starting with our mountain, let's deepen up the color for those shadow areas. So this is where let's say the mountain has turned and it's a little bit shadow, and it's going to give us different sections. Kind of like rocks, actually, it's a similar technique that we're using, where we're adding dark depth to some sections. Adding a little outline, and you can see how it's kind of coming together. We always try to make sure that the area that is below the one that's next to the land has a little bit more depth going. I follow along. What we've tried to do is all the areas we added darker color, we're just going in and making it even more darker. We're trying to patch out some areas that are going to be light and keeping them light. And then adding a quick, subtle outline for some sections to bring it all together. This is just our first layer after the base, so we're going to do another one once that's dry. For now, we're trying to get a base, just something going on. We're also going to add in trees. So once we add in the trees, we'll also know how much of the mountain is actually going to be seen, and we can just work on that part. We don't want to do this whole effort of getting this perfect mountain and then covering it all up with trees. For the trees, ticking in your dark green, you know what to do. You guys have done this before. We're going to just add a row of trees. Vary the height of the tree, so it creates a little interest and also looks natural because trees don't grow in one height, right? Some of them have been planted earlier, some of them grow slower, so we want to have those variations, but it's all about getting that shape of the pine cone. The trees that are closer to us, we're going to make them bigger, and we're also going to increase the height. You can see because of that small shift of the height increasing, it looks like it's actually closer to us. It's such a subtle difference, but really makes an impact on the painting. We're gonna let all of this dry. Let's work on our stones meanwhile. So I'm going to take yellow and just add a little bit of that yellow to the stones. This time we're doing things different in terms of the color. Instead of keeping a gray color, we're going for yellow. It looks like the sun kind of maybe hit those stones, and so they are a little bit more lighter in colour. H. Next, we're going to take our deep greenish black, which we've mixed before in our color mixing chart. Remember that the chart is there in the about section for you to refer at any point of time. The first thing I'm doing is actually adding in a couple of stones as if they're a little bit further out, and then going ahead and adding a little outline to the stones that we've left spaces for adding a little shadow by just making the base a little thicker and then going ahead and adding a little realism to the stone. A a Time to let everything dry. And then we're going to add in maybe some grass that's peeking out of the stones. Maybe we have some leaves that are showing through. If you really want to you can even add in some flowers. We've kind of painted cluster flowers before, so you can use that. It's really up to you. You can make the piece your own by just small details. M Using a black pen, let's add some parallel lines, sketch lines to our mountain in the shadow area. And you can see just that add on has fixed the mountain. It looks great. It has that pop of black color, adding a little bit of those lines around the rocks so that they look a little bit more crisp, adding some of it in the shadow areas. Again, making those colors a little bit darker. H. For the final step, we're going with white. We've added shadow. We've added our colors. Now it's all about the white. The white is going to be used very sparingly in just some sections. For example, the mountain, the area that was supposed to be highlighted, we can add a little bit of white there to lighten it up even more. We can do the same thing for the base of the trees. Maybe a little bit for the stones. Add maybe a leaf set with the white, small little details. This is where we can step back and look at our painting and see if everything looks great. I felt like there needs to be some splatters of green. It'll give it a little more texture instead of everything just being very blended. And then using that green, let's also add some shadow for the stones. I feel like they've kind of gone missing, and it just looks like the stone is part of the painting. It doesn't look like it's a three D element. So adding a little bit of that dark green or dark black there's nothing called dark black, so dark gray just below the stone is gonna really help it create some more three D effect. And you can see how that looks so great. It's kind of coming together. And we're done, so we can remove our tape and reveal our final painting for the day. 24. Day 22 Whispering River: In this painting, we're going to try something different. We're going to focus on our mountain, and here we're going to really practice how to paint mountains in this simple 15 minute project. Start by just planning your horizon nine a little below the middle of the painting. And let's just plan out maybe the mountain, how tall we want it to be. Just a couple of details so we know where we want to paint our sky and so on. And I'm also adding in a gentle river at the bottom, so having that in mind also helps. Let's start right from the sky using burnt sienna. Let's outline the mountain that we just drew with this burnt sienna. Adding a lot of water to the mix, so it surely gives a subtle color which is going to make it easier to blend. Next, we're going to add in some blue right on top. Now, be careful when you're adding the blue because blue and yellow can mix into green. We want to avoid that. Make sure that you don't paint over the yellow, maybe a little bit close to it, but keep that in mind. Now for the river, we're going to follow the same blue. The sky is done, the river is done. We move on to the next step, which is painting a very subtle green or subtle blue color for the mountain. I'm trying to divide into multiple mountains. You have the topmost, then you have the next layer, and then another one that is even more shorter. Gently painting V shapes. You can see how that actually already is creating dimension and three D by just adding those triangle shapes. This is just the first layer so we can continue and really work with it. For now we're just laying down all the base colors. So we can use our green and add in the side mountains through which the river is passing. Using lighter green towards the edges and maybe the darker green towards the paper edge. You can really play around with it. There's no right way to do it because again, the base layer. When we move on to the next layers, we can actually play around a little bit with the color so it matches the look and feel of the painting. Et's add in the shadow for the mountains. We're going to let everything dry before we move on to the next layer. Let's go back and tackle the mountain. So I'm going in with a little deeper blue using my thin brush so I can really get more detail. And notice how I'm just painting each mountain. So the first one, the lowest, I've added in a couple of shapes, add in a little bit depth. Now we move on to the next one, just making the color a little deeper around one side, and then leaving the other side light. And then having one more mountain right on top. Again, keeping the left side, having a little bit more detail in color and leaving the right empty. We want the edge to be a little jagged, so it doesn't have to be perfectly straight because it is rocks, and you can see how there's a fourth mountain towards the back. So that one as well, we're going to do the same thing. Separate the two layers and then try to get one N, which is the left side a little bit more detail, and the right side remains white. So what we're trying to do in this process is creating shadow. So the left side has a shadow because that side is not getting the sun, whereas the right side has sun, which is why it's brighter and doesn't have much detail. Let's tweak this, add a little bit more color. I'm going very slow with the process, so you really understand how I'm building the layers. As you get comfortable, you can just do this in two layers. But here, I'm just going slowly, so you can see how every layer of blue is just adding to it. Next, we move on to our pine trees. We're going to add lots of pine trees on either side of the river. Try to keep them spaced a little uneven, having a couple of them closer, some of them further away. Add a little green along the river bed to have a little shadow. Just in the bottom section on either side. Tend to use a black microtipPen and add in some lines along the edge of the river bed. Using dark green or you can use black. Adding a little grass that's peeking through. This makes it a little natural and you can see what I'm trying to do is closer to us. I'm adding more detail, so you're not going to see too much when it's further out, but closer to us, you can see a little bit of that grass that's popping up. Time to use white to add in some subtle flowers, just a couple of dots, cluster them around. Next, we're going to use the white to add in some ripple lines onto the river. We're almost done with our painting. Let the painting dry completely, and then we can remove the tape to reveal our day 22 painting Whispering River. I 25. Day 23 Gentle Lake: It's Day 23 Gentle Lake, a very interesting project where we are going to add in multiple different elements that we've been going through in the past paintings. We're starting off with our rocks, having few of them on the right, further away, you can see how they're smaller, shorter in size, and then few that are closer to us on the left. So they're much larger in size. This is such an easy way to create depth in your painting. As you're painting along, I hope you notice how you're finding it easier and easier to paint rocks, to paint the various elements because as you practice through each painting, your skills get better and you feel more confident. And that's the whole point of doing a challenge like this because every day, you're pushing yourself a little bit more so after doing that little drawing, getting some of the detail, we can start with our painting. I wanted to go back to one of our favorite color combinations for the skies the pink and the blue. I think pink and blue is one of the easier skies that just look good no matter what. It's so easy to create and always ends up looking very nice. Starting right on top. Let's start with our pink. Make sure your paints have been activated by adding water. Get your brush ready. Make sure that it's clean, has a little bit of water, and then we can pick up some paint. Let's start by taking a little bit of pink. You could mix this with orange, as you can see, I'm getting a little bit more of a warm pink instead of just a bright pink. Starting right on top, making sure that the edge is clean, gently gliding downward, adding more water and blending this. Let's do the top of the sea. This time, instead of mirroring the colors, I'm just going to use pink right on top and then the blue swam, actually, following the same color layers as the sky. Just a little switch around from what we've been doing. Now we can take blue, and we're going to start from the bottom and gently blend upward. Make sure that that bottom is really vibrant with color as you move up. Repeating the same thing for the sky, adding that blue. But this time, I'm going to give a jacket edge. So it's actually not part of the sky. It's going to be distant mountains that we're just seeing through this very soft blue color. And because everything is still wet, you can see how it's slowly blurring out in the distance. Okay. To let everything dry. And once it's dry, we're ready to continue with our next step. First thing we're going to do is tackle our water. Let's start by adding some thin ripple lines with blue. It just gives water some texture. And we're doing this with our thinner brush. So we want the lines to be really thin and it's just straight. So we're not doing a little wave, we're keeping it straight because often the distance, you won't be able to see a lot of the waves. Adding a little shadow to our rocks. Very important makes it a little bit more realistic instead of looking like it's floating in the air, and then continue adding your lines. You can even go for a darker blue to show that it's a little bit more closer to us and the colors are darker. Off in the distance, let's add another layer of this darker blue, adding a little mountain very far away. But this is just going to highlight the colors and make the sky a little bit more vibrant. Next, we move on to our tree. Using green, this is forest green, we can start by just dabbing a little bit of paint right on top on the left side corner. You can have some of the leaves popping out like we've done before in some of our projects, and then just continue building the color. A a It's all a work in progress. So now we're moving into adding some grass for our rocks just to show that somethings are popping out. Again, making it look a little bit more realistic. So you can go for dark green and using your thin brush, so you have a little bit more control. We're just going to add long grass. Switch to a lighter green if you'd like, and add more crust. We're creating a little contrasting colors, making it all pop. Let's deepen the shadow for the rocks. One of the things is that since layers dry up, you can have a look and see that sometimes even though you did a dark layer, it's just dried up and it looks dull. So it's important to go over it a couple of times. You get the colors as dark as you want them to be. Now you can see that the rocks really have shadows because I added in that secondary layer. Now, we're almost doing everything around the rocks, but we will get to it just mixing in your colors, and we can start off layer by layer as we've done before. Start by just painting out the rock, keeping the shade very light, so we can then layer on and make it darker to add in our shadows. Here, instead of using gray, I decided to add a little bit more of green. You can see how the rock kind of is greenish color, which also looks like the rock is covered by moth, which is very realistic as well. So just a quick switch in color, and it looks different. We've laid down our first layer, let everything dry, and then we're going in with our thin brush and getting into all those details, adding a little outline, adding in those cuts for the sections, using our darker color and just bring it all together. Let's add a quick little detail for our gross. Adding in some stock. Quick thin lines. It's gonna create some interest instead of just having plain old gross. You can add in some flowers if you'd like. That would be interesting. I wanted to keep it a little simple. At the same time, just have enough Let's go back to our tree and just add another layer of dark green, maybe add in some more leaves that we can actually see like branches that are just falling down and finishing up that section before proceeding. We have just a few parts left. I using gray, I'm going to just line up the ripple line, the folds that are seen on the water, giving it a little shadow. And the last step is actually adding white. We're going to add in more of the highlights because you can see right now the rocks have kind of just faded in so that white is going to pop it out and make them more clear. I think white is one of the most important parts of a painting because that white space actually gives the painting a fullness and completes it. So using gouache or you can use white acrylic, make sure you use the brush accordingly. So if you're using acrylic, don't use your watercolor brushes because you're going to ruin them. And if you're using gouache, then it's fine. So just keep that in mind. And we're going to do a thin line right on top for our rocks, a couple of highlights. Adding in a few highlights along the water as well. For the final step, using a black pen, and we're just going to go over the shadow areas, maybe some of the outlines and just adding in our parallelines, the sketch lines, and completing the painting. And this is so pretty. I think this one turned out so nice. And you can see how far you've come from your first painting to this, the skills you've learned and how the consistency of this challenge has really improved your skills as well and how much each day has created this habit of painting. We have two more days. I'm so excited. And the last two are my favorite projects as well. I kept them to the end, and we're going to do so much. So let's dive in to another day. Make sure you let everything dry, remove the tape to reveal gentle lake. 26. Day 24 Quiet Grove: I decided to leave this project for the last two because it's one of my favorite projects. It literally feels like you are walking through the forest in this quiet grove and enjoying the birds chirp while feeling the fresh air. It's such a fun painting, and it's so relaxing. The first thing we're going to do is take our paper. We're going to just plan out where we're going to place our walking path. The section that's further away is going to be smaller or shorter in length. And as we get closer, it's going to be wider. You're going to see this in a bit, but these small little details are really going to help the painting look more realistic. Get some of the lines going for the trees. Doesn't have to be too specific. When we get into painting, you're going to understand a little bit more of what we're doing. This painting took me a couple of tries, so don't worry if you don't get it right the first time around. Just enjoy the process and all the learning you're going to do as you continue. Start by adding a little blue to the upper part. So this is the sky, but we're fading it in, so keeping it very light, adding a lot of water, and just blending it out. You can use your bigger brush so you can really fill up the space and work a bit faster. That's the reason we use multiple brushes. It's more of a purpose of working quickly because as you know with watercolors, things dry. So if you feel like layers are drying, sometimes it could just be the brush that you're using. Now, while it's all still wet, I'm going to go ahead and paint a tree trunk. This is going to completely blur out once it dries, but we're just going to still add it so it fades into the background. This is going to look like our forest has a lot more going on. There's a lot more trees. So even if it fades in, we're still going to do this process. Now, while that's drying up, let's continue and paint around the footpath. Using a little green, painting around the edges. Switching to a lighter green and continuing on with this narrow winding path. I wanted to create something where it looks like the footpath is not straight, but it has a little bit of flow to it. And that's going to create a little motion and movement to the painting. Continue on with adding in the green to the sides. You can add some darker colors as you get to the edges. Very important that shows that the edges are a little bit more deeper in color. And you can see how I've created that little midway path. I'm going to be very careful here and add in a little bit of gray. So it's going to be in the middle of the path, but I'm being very careful because the layers around it are still wet. So we want to make sure that we don't touch any of that. And you're just laying around a little bit of color, you can add a little bit of a deeper color. But don't worry, we're going to get into it as we move on. For now just lay in some color. We're going to let the whole thing dry before we proceed. With the darker brown, I'm just adding a couple of stones, and you can see how I'm creating a little stony footpath. It's all go to merge in, and it's all going to blend once it dries, but this is just going to give us a hint of color. Don't worry about getting it perfect because this is just a process of having fun. Now, while everything is still wet, we can go ahead and take a little bit more blue and add in another tree. Then let everything dry. You can see how the layers have dried down and we can go in with more blue and add a little bit more of a defining tree. Still keeping it very light, let's continue adding more trees in the backdrop using the blue. You can kind of play around with the shape so they are not exactly straight. You can see how some of them are bending, splitting into two. The only thing I would remind you is that the trunk is always bigger and thicker than the branches. So always keep that in mind that your branches that are splitting away from the tree trunk are going to be thinner, and that difference is very important. After adding trees on either side, let's continue on. We're going to play around with our grass. Let's go with dark green, and we're going to just add in a lot of different grass, create some more texture to this section, which looks more blurry. So starting off, adding in some quick grass closer to the tree trunk, we can blend in a little bit of that color, add in those quick wrist movements to create grass. M I thought it would be nice to have some of the leaves seen as well. So you can have some of the little plants with leaves. It looks interesting. It's a small little detail instead of just having a lot of gross. Remember that I've switched to my thin brush because I can get into any of the details using the thinner brush. Really going in deep with that color with the green. And you can see how the trees actually look a lot nice or it looks better just by adding in that second layer of green. Creating another patch of grass and leaves closer to us, following the same process of adding a patch of green, adding some quick lines, and getting in couple of details. Now, adding along a little shadow in the bottom part, you can see where it curves. Just in those sections, I'm adding a little bit more of a deeper green and quick cross. Very important. It shows that these elements are three D and they're not just flat on the paper. We're going to repeat the same process on the other side as well, the same patches of green, the same shadow areas. You see how I'm doing that. It's the same repeat process. I really like how this is turning out. Let's go into the stone path. We're going to make this footpath a little bit more clear because right now it's just all blurry and just doesn't make any sense. So we can take in our brown, and we're just going to go over each little stone and create a very thin outline, add in some details to it. If you've gotten this far, you are doing so great. We have just a couple of more steps. Completely trust the process. This is going to turn out amazing. So now we're going to add in more bolder trees that are closer to us that are going to be filled with color. So taking black or if you want to use dark green, we're going to add in our trunk and then have some branches coming off it. You can see, because this is darker in color, the light blue trees that we did on the back look like they're fading into the mist. This is such a cool trick of just using color to create mist, to create a very mysterious look let's do the same thing on the other side. And the other fun thing to do is to make sure that your tree trunks aren't just straight. We're having them curved. We're having them moving. We're creating movement with them. And that is also important because you're framing your painting. Especially for trees like this in nature, they're not exactly straight. So we're following nature and taking inspiration from it. Now, letting everything dry, I'm going to use white quashe and add in couple of flowers, cute little flowers that are just going to pop by along our footpath. You can get as detailed as you want, or you can just keep them as little dots. The closer they are, you can see how I'm getting a little bit more detail. I'm just adding in the petals. But the further out you can just add in dots. Use white to add in some grass stems. When we're basically done with our painting, we just have a couple of more steps, and this is where I like to look at my painting, step back for a bit and see if I want to add anything more. I'm going to mix yellow with white and get some yellow dots for the center of the flowers. And the last thing we're going to do is use our microtip pen and just add in some quick lines where we feel like some of the details are unclear or maybe we couldn't do a lot of outline, simple sketch lines. And that's it. Our painting is done. You can see how just a few steps by breaking down our painting into different parts, you are able to create something so pretty. Using the microchip pen, I'm also adding the circle for the flower. Have a look, let it all dry, and then you can remove out your tape to reveal our day 24 painting. We have one final painting for this challenge to come to an end, and that one is my favorite painting. We're going to do a beautiful fountain that's just gushing with water. So see you tomorrow. 27. Day 25 Hidden Waterfall: Welcome to Day 25 Hidden Waterfall. This is one of my favorite paintings, and we're going to do so many different cool techniques to create a wonderful waterfall that is so unique and special. So we start right on top. This time we're doing things differently because we have our waterfall that's going to come on top. So you can divide your sheet into three, and on the top part, you're going to just have a line go in, plan out a little bit about how you want your waterfall to be placed. Just a gentle line with your pencil. Get a line for the base of the water. And once you have an overall picture, just maybe adding some rocks along the sides, we've got our paste ready for us to start painting. This is going to be such an interesting project, and it might take you a couple of takes to get there, but I'm sure you're going to end up with a beautiful result. I'm so proud of you for getting this far to keeping to this habit of 25 days, it's not easy. I can I struggle with being consistent. And if you've gotten this far, kudos to you. Good job. And let's just continue, finish this project, and then celebrate. Let's begin right on top. We're going to add some greenery to the top of the waterfalls. You can pick your different greens and just go in and smoosh around your brush to create your soft forest. What I'm trying to do is get lighter colors along the middle portion, and then darker greens along the edges. You can build through the colors layer by layer. So you really are creating more detail to your painting just with these simple steps. Going in really dark with my green, or you can even pick in a blue. This is what I'm doing. I'm going with my indigo blue, and I'm just continuing this forest towards the sides on both sides. I love adding, and you would have noticed through these projects, mixing in blue with my greens because it just creates such a beautiful color. The bluish green is so great and just so vibrant. So instead of just tacking on greens, you can just go in with a little bit of blue to mix around the shades. You can see how the top looks really nice, that yellowish green on top, followed by the dark green, and then blues. Now let's move on to the waterfall. Now, we're taking our blue and adding a lot of water. So this needs to be really, really transparent, very soft in color. And we're just adding in thin lines where the water is falling. This is the gentle reflection that is coming through. I'm sure you know this, but I found this very interesting that water actually has no color, right? So all the color you see in water is actually just reflections. So the blue color that we see is the reflection of the sky onto the water, and that's the color we look at. But actual water is just transparent. So we're just capturing the reflections right now. Now, I'm doing the light blue base. Again, with the very soft light blue in the middle. You can go ahead and build that color as you go away from the waterfall. I've kept a little gap. We will go in and fix a little of these details. This is just our first layer. And as you know, and we've been practicing, your first layer is just the basis. It's not the final result. It's just laying down color. So quick thin lines along where the water is gushing down a little bit more of a deeper blue base where the water has fallen. Let everything dry and then we move on to the next step. Here, I'm working a little bit on the rocks that are on the sides. Let's get a little color on there. So this one ended up being a little bit green, which is fine. Or if you want to use black, you can. I just mixed in my colors like I had shown in the color mixing chart. And I'm just laying down a little bit of color on the sides. It's a similar technique to what we did with our rock. So we're trying to get our shadows in I'm also painting around some of the rocks for the mountain, for the cliff. You can see how I've just created, like, the faces of the stone, and then I've added in color to that section for shadow. Let's do the same thing on the other side. Adding little rocks at the bottom where the water is touching everything, and then the cliff, which is just a straight line. We'll get into more detail as we continue. Y one thing we want to make sure is that we get a nice thin line along the edge of the water to show that that section is where you can see how it already looks a little bit like water is falling down. It's already got those elements, right? And remember that in the area that the water is splashing down, I've left it white. I don't have a lot of paint on there, and that's important because it's the splashes and the foam that's coming out. So we're just keeping that section white until we're ready to work on it. Now I'm going ahead and mixing black. And we're just going to go into those trees. Everything is kind of dried now so we can get into a little bit more detail, add in some tree trunks, add in some branches, just filling up that top space, so it's very luscious and full of vibrance. If you've gotten this far, I'm super proud of you. Really good job. Stick to it. I know it could look like a mess at this point. If you've kind of seen it's like, What is even happening? But trust the process we've been doing so well with every project. So give it some time. Let's get through the entire painting and then judge it. We're going to let everything dry, and now we get into the details. So mix in your black. And what we're going to do is just go over our cliff and we're going to add little details. So pay attention to this. You can just watch this entire process before you try to paint. So you can see what I'm doing. I'm trying to break down the cliff into different sections. You can see how I've kind of added a patch on top, and then I'm adding straight lines connecting below. So it looks like the rock is broken down. It's not just a straight piece of rock because that's not how nature works. It has a lot of cuts and faces and things like that. So I'm just adding those little straight patches of dark black color and then thin lines to connect them down. It's a very interesting process, but just trusted, it's going to look so great. The main focus of our painting is anyways, the waterfalls. This is just a side detail, but we're still trying to get it to look natural. Once you have those little straight lines, those cuts in the cliff, we can continue and work a little bit more on the rocks. At this point, I feel like you guys are experts. You know how to do your rocks. It's just adding thin lines to show the cuts of the rock. Adding a little outline on top to show this is the rock that we're working on, getting a little bit more color in those shadow areas. You've got this. You're doing so well. A repeating the same process that we did on the right to the left side, using the bricks, trying to create more structure to the cliff. Now, what I'm also doing is making sure that that space where the water is touching is falling down is still white. So I'm not adding a lot of detail there. I am keeping that space empty. That's really important to keep in mind. But cutting that rock face by just adding a line of black and then adding thin lines going upwards can do the same thing, some lines going down as well. And this makes it look like the rock isn't just completely straight. It has a little detail. And then we work on the smaller rocks at the bottom. You guys know what comes next. We're adding the shadow for all of these rocks, so they look more three d and not like they're just floating in the air. Follow the same shape of the rock at the bottom, using a little transparent color. So it's not the exact same shade. Just add a little bit water, so it looks like it's blended in. You can add in some thin water ripple lines with the same blue. Wing everything to dry and we're getting more detail. We're going into our trees. We're adding in little leaves or branches that are falling down that have a little bit more of detail, adding more green to deepen the color because everything faded in. You can go in with a little bit more blue to really brighten up that color. We're making this background really pop, having some of those leaves come in, having some grass at the base of the tree, repeating that process on the other side as well. You can even add a couple of other trees if you'd like. But it's all about just making those colors pop a little bit more. Next, we move on to our water. You can see how the water all day looks so great, but we're just going in and adding little tweaks. So using a very thin brush and be very careful with this process. We're using a little darker blue, and we're going in with very thin lines. Not too much, but just enough. This is where the water is falling, but you can probably see through it to the cliff. We're showing that the water is still transparent and you can see through. It's not just a pale sheet of white, right? So this gets it a little bit more realistic, small little detail, add a lot of water and just go over that little white cloud that we had kept the foam, just to soften it up a little bit so it doesn't look so dark. We're also pulling a little bit of that color up and down. You can see how that white space doesn't look as white anymore. It looks a little foamy and that's all by adding more water to it. Now, using yellow, we can just go over the rock face and add a little bit of yellow on top. We're at the final step, we're going to take our white acrylic or white guash, and we're just going over the top of the water fountain, and we're going to add white. What this does is also create a little bulge on top because the water isn't flowing flat. So it needs to be a little bit above the base. And you can see how that looks a little more natural. You can add white to that foam side, add a little bit more in case it became too blue. This is your chance to just fix that a little bit, going over that section. And then we can add in white to a couple of other areas that we think need a little bit more highlight. Maybe it would be good to use the white for some of the water area, so it looks more foamy and it looks more natural. So just following along that curve that I had painted before with white. This is where you can step back from your painting and just see if you need to add more white. I felt like a little white is needed on the rocks because they had a lot of color or even for the cliffs. Not necessary, but I thought it would be nice to have that little white because it was just getting a lot darker. Small little detail, not necessary. You can use a black pen and add more branches, more leaves, maybe add a little bit more shadow for some of the rock sections, so they really deepen in color. And we're done. Look at that painting. It's turned out so great. And don't worry if your first time didn't come around that great. Try it again because I'm sure you're gonna get it. What happens when you first time painting, it can be a little bit uncertain because you're just following along what I'm doing. But the second time, you know what to expect, so you're more likely to end up with better results, as well. And this is our final painting from the 25 day challenge. I wanted to kind of push you a little bit, motivate you to just tip a little bit out of your comfort zone in this project. It is a little intermediate, I would say, but I'm so proud of you for sticking with it. Once you're happy with the painting, let everything dry, you can even add in some birds in the background because now you know how to do that and remove your tape to reveal your final painting. 28. Conclusion: I am so proud of you for getting this far for completing the 25 day challenge. And it's not easy, and you kept going, so give yourself a pat on the shoulder for doing such a good job. Art is all about creating and it's making yourself find that moment of peace between a very busy day or very crazy life. I hope you enjoyed this, and if you love this and would love to see more challenges for me, please leave a review or add a little discussion post, letting me know that this is something you're interested in. I love seeing your comments, I love seeing your reviews, and I definitely can't wait to see all your projects from this challenge. Hope you have a wonderful month ahead, and I can't wait to see you in my next class. Happy painting.