30 Days of Nature in Watercolor: A Beginner's Painting Journey

1. Welcome: Watercolors is one of the most beautiful and captivating mediums to paint with. Its flowing pigments, soft plants, and happy surprises makes every painting a unique experience. Hi, I'm Madhu. I'm a watercolor artist, a published author, and an educator and the owner of the brand Femvisionary. My mission is to make watercolors more approachable, relaxing, and enjoyable. Over the next 30 days, we'll escape into beautiful landscapes together. We'll wander through blooming flower fields, admire peaceful lakes, paint charming cottages, dramatic skies, and so much more. Whether you're a complete beginner or would like to build a daily consistent habit, this challenge is just for you. We will begin by going over the materials you'll need, followed by some practice exercises. By the end of these 30 days, you'll have a beautiful collection of watercolor landscapes and a deeper understanding of the medium. So grab your brushes, and let's discover the beauty of watercolors together. 2. Materials: Let's talk materials. The first thing we're going to need is our watercolor paper. We're going to need 30 of these sheets A five size, and it is 300 GSM, Cold Press. You can have a couple of practice sheets in hand as well for some of our other sessions. Also, we'll need two brushes, a round brush of size six with a pointed tip, and a mini detailer brush. Next, we're going to need our paints. I like having a paint palette because I can look at my colors, and I'm using the Odysseus set by Art Philosophy. You can get the similar shades. A color mixing chart is there in the A section, which you can download and save so you know all the different colors we're going to mix. It's nice to have it swatched out so you can see your colors. Following this, we're going to need some more additional items like white acrylic paint or white gouache paint. This is going to be very useful for some of our detailed work. My next important must have for this class is a craft or blow dryer. This is going to speed up your painting process. Masking tape, some scissors, and then a bowl of water, pen, pencil, eraser, scale. With our materials in hand, let's begin with day one practice exercise. 3. Color Mixing: Let's talk color mixing. So we're starting with our standard colors. This is from the Odysseus set by Art Philosophy. The main colors that are in the set that we're going to be using to mix our other colors are crimson, violet, orange, Van **** brown, sienna brown, Veridan, cerulium blue, cadmium yellow, and burgundy. Now, if you don't have burgundy, you can mix cerulium and crimson to create burgundy. You don't have to get the exact same brand, but if you have similar colors, that would work well. Now we're going to go into a little bit of color mixing. I'll talk about this through each project as well. But this is a general idea. You can come back and refer. The files are also added into the project sections. You can download them so you have this color chart as reference. So we're starting off with our serolem blue and mixing burgundy into it. And that is going to give you a muddy purple color. Let's change up our proportions, taking more of the serlem blue and less of the burgundy, we're going to end up with a royal blue. Now, to the same mix of blue and a little bit of burgundy, when you add in white, you're getting blue gray color. So that subtle shift, and you can use white watercolors or even gouache for this cleaning up our palette, mixing equal proportions of blue with white gives you light blue, like a pastel shade. And if you mix in VidianGreen to this, just a little bit gives teal, which is such a pretty colour. Adding more of Veridian green will give a teal green colour. And these are the main shades we're going to be using mixing blue. Again, as I mentioned, in each project, I will go over it again, but this is a good reference for you to have. We now go into mixing of veritianGreen to get different shades of green. So mixing verdanGreen with serleum blue gives you a bluish green color. Next, mixing vertian green with erleum blue, but a little potion, so it's more of green. It's gonna give a forest green. Next, mixing green with van **** brown. We'll give you a deep sap green. We're taking just a little bit of the van **** brown. And finally, mixing vertan with erleim blue, van **** brown will give a deep green color, which is really nice and rich. A Now, we do have sap cream that we would mix in some of the projects. But as I mentioned, don't worry. This is a good reference point for you as we move forward. Now, the last set of color mixing is more towards the reds. So we're going to play a little bit with our crimsons. Mixing crimson with white gives you light pink. Super simple. The more white you add, the lighter the pink gets. I Now comes an interesting color mixing crimson, white, and cadmium yellow gives a nude warm color. It's very, very pretty. I the same combination, adding more of the pink, but less of the white and yellow gives a little bit more of an orange color, a red orange color. And then finally mixing equal proportions of red and yellow with a little bit of white gives you a orange. And as simple as that, we have our color mixing chart. With all of this information, let's get started with our projects. 4. Birds Practice: So let's dive into a little bit of a bird's practice that we're going to use for our day one project. Birds are super simple to do. There's two simple shapes that I follow to create a variety of birds. The first one is really simple, adding a circle in the center and then adding two lines pointed downwards, one line being a little bit thicker than the other. You can do this in varying sizes depending on your painting. The next one is a little bit more elaborate. So we start with oval shape for the body, a triangle for the tail feathers, and then two downward wings on either side, and then connecting them to the body, making sure that one wing is larger than the other. Let's paint this out so you have an idea. Oval shape for the body, triangle for the tail, the two waves on either side, and then connecting them. We can play around with the shape of this as well, making them smaller or bigger, depending on the painting and where it's going to be placed. This is a very simple way to do birds. There's so many different techniques, but I feel like these two techniques cover most of the birds that you'd need when you're painting landscapes. The next quick thing is when you start painting, when you take paint directly from the pan, the colors are usually darker, and that we usually use for details. If you want lighter shades, add in more water to lighten up the color. You're going to see me use this term, lighten your color, add more water. And what I mean is just take it in your palette, mix in more water so the color becomes soft, light, and almost transparent. 5. Day 1 - Lavender Blooms: Are you ready to begin with day one? For this project, I decided to go with something a little bit interesting that is going to pique your interest and hopefully inspire you to continue painting through the entire challenge. So we have taped down our sheet on all four sides, making sure that we left a little bit of space. Now I'm taking my brush and just adding in water to the paper, making sure that the paper is damp and ready to paint. I've skipped the whole process of drawing because this is just going to be a very simple painting with clouds and some lavenders. Go back and forth to make sure that you get water all through the edges. This is a very common mistake that happens. And now we're taking in our serleium blue. I've added a little bit of water, so it's much more faded in, and I'm going to go into adding in our sky. Now, you can see my swishing movement like I spoke about in the practice exercise. I'm just pushing my brush with spaces in between for the different clouds. Continue this process. And then we're going to go in a little bit darker and make sure that we have painted all the way to the edge. Now, the paper is still damp. So we're now going to take our green, add in more water, mix in a little bit of blue for a bluish green color, and we're just going to paint the bottom of the sheet only towards the right side. This is for the grass. I. As this fades in, let's take purple. We're going to add in water. Again, lighten it down, and we're just going to add in some dots to show that there are lavenders that are in the background. I'm keeping spaces between the lavenders playing around with the sizes and the heights. So some that are higher, some that's shorter. I This painting is a simple ten, 15 minute painting. So even if you're having a busy day, you can just paint it so quickly, and most of the projects are around that timeline. Now, I'm going to switch my brush and use the back of the brush, make sure that it's clean, and we're going to add in some stems for these lavenders that we just painted. I just wanted to fade into the background, and I don't want it to be a thick line, which is why I'm not painting it. As it dries, it's going to be more clear. We just move on to the next step, adding a little bit more green between the lavenders while everything is still wet, so make sure that you work a bit quickly so your paper doesn't dry in the process. In case it does dry, you can take clear water and wet the section again. Once that's done, we're going to take our dryer and dry our painting completely before moving on to the next set of lavenders. This time we're getting closer, we're going to go into our purple directly from the pan, so we're not adding too much of water to the mix. I've switched to my detailer thin brush, and I'm going to add in dots, thin little lines, stacking them on top of each other to form our lavenders. Continue this process. You can have lots of different lavenders, add as many as you would like, or as few as you would like. I really love the background that we created because it does look like there are lavenders off in the distance, and then you have this hyper focused stems and flowers right in front of us. A Time to add in our stems. I'm just adding four of these lavenders. I think it's enough. But again, as I said, you can add in as many as you would like. I'm mixing in my green with a little bit of blue to get a nice greenish blue and to match the background that we painted. And I'm using my thin detailer brush so I can add in a nice stem. A Continue adding some long leaves by just dragging your brush and pressing it down. Fill up the space as much as you'd like. And then we can move on to our last step, which is adding in some birds and completing our painting. Intuitively, I decided to add in a little bit of purple with my green to give a more dark green color and add some leaves using that. You can see how that color just again matches what we've been painting. And it's the same purple that I used for the lavenders. You're going to see me do this a lot in our entire challenge, where I mix colors that we've already used to create different shades of colors, and that's going to really match with our painting. It's a little trick that I use to create a more cohesive painting. So in case you've painted before and you feel like some of your colors just don't match each other, this is a really fun trick. Now, I'm using a scrap paper that I had protecting my flowers and sky and then just taking a little bit of the green and adding in some splatters at the bottom. To show a little bit of movement and playfulness. Just enough, you can see how great that looks, and now we can go into our birds. Using my detailer brush, I'm going to add in one bird at a time, exactly how we practiced. A A that we have our main bod. Let's continue adding some smaller birds around it. Maybe we can add one more bird. So we have four, and that should fill up enough of space. Once everything is dried and you're happy with the overall painting, we can remove out our tape to reveal our day one painting. Good job on painting your first project from the challenge. I'm sure you're able to learn and see your results. I'm so proud of you. See you in the next one. 6. Day 2 - Sunset Reflections: Let's dive into Day two. We're going to work on this vibrant, fun sky. I've taped down my paper on all four sides. It's prepped and ready. Now, let's use our pencil to just mark out where we're going to add in our greenery. We're going to have some green hills, adding in a little bit of a wave on either side. Next, we're going to add in the horizon line, so we know where the sea is going to be and the sky. I've left a lot of space for the sky, so we can really play around with the dramatic colors that we want. Use a scale to do this so your line doesn't end up crooked. And once that's done, we're going to start off with our painting. The first thing is I'm going to take in my brush filled with clear water and just paint the entire sheet. Make sure that the entire sheet is damp. And I'm also making sure that there's water all the way to the edges. And then we can just go back and forth, make sure we cover all the spaces. I like going horizontal and vertical just to make sure everything is covered. And then once that's done, we can move on to our bright sky. I'm starting off with purple. Let's get a little bit of that purple right on top. We can take more purple to really deepen the color, and I'm going a little diagonal with this. Next, we can take in our orange. I'm adding a little bit of water so it's not too bright and mixing a little bit of red. So it's a more warm, reddish orange color. And then adding it diagonally to what we have just painted. A Next, we're going to take yellow and then continue with the diagonal movement. One thing I want to share is that when we're doing all these movements, I'm not going back and forth. I'm actually just going in one direction. We can use a tissue to tap out any of the excess paint so that it's not too vibrant. It mellows down a little bit. Let's take a little bit more orange and add it especially to the edges. A And then using yellow to again brighten up the colors a little bit more. I'm leaving a little bit of that white space along the bottom of the sky. Now, we're going to follow the same colours for the water because it's a reflection of the sky. Starting with the yellow along the edge, adding a little orange, and then finally purple. A this time around with the purple, I'm moving upwards diagonally. So keep that in mind because it's a reflection of the sky. Another cool trick is, if you want to lighten up the colors a little bit, instead of using a tissue like we did last time, you can use a dry clean brush and just press down and lift up the color. These are too simple tricks to use when you feel like your colors are too dark for what you're going for. Now we move on to greens. I've basically mixed in a little bit of blue and yellow to give a very light green, and I'm using it, especially on the top section. Adding a little bit more of a deeper green as I move towards the edges, giving a very natural shadow. Adding a little bit of that deeper green between the two hilly mountains to show that they're different mountains and for a little bit of shadow. Now, I'm going to wait for a couple of seconds while everything is still wet. I'm going to take a little bit more purple and add it to the top of the sky. I feel like it became too light. So just going in with that purple and brightening up the color more. So with watercolors, what tends to happen is after you dry, the piece can look a little faded. So if you want to add in more colour, this is your chance to do that. I overall like how it's turned out. We're going to let everything dry. You can use your dryer to speed up the process, and then we're going to move on to getting a little bit more details, adding more texture to our hills. So I've switched to my thinner brush, and this is great for my details. And I'm using green to first add in a little outline to the top of my mountaintop. And then adding couple of dots maybe pressing down and adding more green to a couple of the sections. We can do that for the other side as well. You can see how the colors are making everything just pop a little bit more. We have few more steps. I'm going to add some lines to the water, especially the horizon because it looks like it's kind of faded away. And then we might add in some trees as well. We're keeping the stay two project, S simple, relaxing, I think, just about ten, 15 minutes. But it's all about understanding how to play with these vibrant kis and to get a little bit more confident with your watercolors. It's so easy when you have a thin Detailer brush because you can really cover up some of the thinner sections. Now, I've switched back to my bigger brush. I'm taking in green, and I'm just swishing around my brush to add in some trees. We want to make sure we get some darker color, especially at the bottom. Let's use a scrap paper and protect our sky, and we're just going to gently tap some more green onto the section to give it a little bit more of playfulness, some splatters. For the finishing touches, make sure you paint all the way to the edge with your green, and then we're going to add in some purple thin lines for the ocean. I've switched to my thinner brush so I can control this a little bit. And it's just a thin line keeping it very light. We mainly want the lines to come in at the edges, so keep that in mind when you're adding them. So gaps between them is perfect. We don't want a thin line that's stretching across the entire sea because they're just little waves. We can use a little bit of that purple to mark out our hilltop a little bit. Finally to balance out the painting on the left side, I'm adding in a little bush, following the same thing that we did before with the greens, adding in deeper color, especially at the bottom, using some splatters. Let's go in with a deeper green on both of these plants. Once everything is dry and ready, we can remove out our tape. Make sure that you remove your tape at a 45 degree angle, not just straight up to reveal our final painting. 7. Day 3 - Mountain Escape: It's Day three, Mountain Escape. I think this name was so perfect for this project because it has these little mountaintops and a little ocean going in between. So using my pencil, I'm first marking out my hilltop. We're having another mountain and then just marking the horizon line between. Start by adding water to our entire sheet, making sure that you cover all the four sides going back and forth, so we don't miss anything. Now, you can use a bigger brush for this, but I kind of wanted to maintain one brush or two brushes, in this case, for my entire 30 days, and I didn't want to get into too many materials. But if you do have a spare big brush, you can use that. It might speed up the process a little bit. So yeah, there's always additional ways to do things. And my aim for you from this 30 day challenge is for you to break down watercolors into such an easy process that you can just truly enjoy the medium without needing too many supplies, without needing too many brushes, and where everything is relaxing and fun. So I'm starting off with my blue, and I'm mixing in white. So I had some white watercolor in hand. And this is part of the set. You can add in a little bit of Varidian green. To get a bluish green color, I think this color is so pretty. It's the teal blue color. It's so special. And I think it's just perfect for the painting we're going to go into today. So what I'm going to do is just paint out the entire sky with this blue. For this project, the sky needs to be a little darker because it's very light. So we're going to add a little bit more blue, mix in a little bit more color so that the sky really stands out. And then using a tissue, we're going to dab out some paint to form our clouds. I think that's such a cool, fun technique to use when you want to paint clouds without wanting to really add white to your painting. So I've gone in with a little bit more of blue because that's also important. You need to have enough paint for these clouds to show. And I'm going gently from side to side, so I have a nice backdrop, and then I'm going to take my tissue, and I'm going to use the tissue to gently tap out the cloud. You can see how I'm lifting up the paint. Let's do that a few more times. Once you're happy with this, which I think I am, we can add in our mix of blue and white to paint our water, the ocean. Taking a little bit more blue, so we have some shadows in the water, so it's not just dull. And I'm adding in a little shadow, especially below the mountain. I wouldn't call it a mountain. It would be more like a hill because it's quite small. Mountains are much more bigger. And then I'm going to mix in my viridian green with yellow to paint our hills. I think of all the paintings in this project challenge, this one is the most calm, and I would say the most happiest. It's blue skies, green mountains. It's the typical idea of summer in the mountains, if you really think about it, it's just such a classic image. Now, I'm using a little darker green around some of the sections, especially you can see in the lower part of the hills to give it a little bit more shadow, and so you're giving some playfulness and some realism to your painting. While everything is still wet, let's go in and add a little bit more green. This time, I'm mixing my green with glue. There is a color chart that is shared in the about section, so you can have a look at different mixes of colors. And you can see how I'm just adding that little dots below. And by doing this, you can see how the hill automatically has more depth to it. Let's dry our sheet completely before moving on to the next step. And you can see now everything has dried down, the colors are a little bit more muted. So now we can go ahead and work on our water, our ocean a little bit. So I'm adding in thin lines using my detailer brush with the blue. I'm also going to add more shadow below to show that the hill is reflected onto the water Now we can take in some dark green, and we can go and work on our hills and grassy areas. Just mixing green a little bit. First, we can start by adding a couple of thin lines to show that there are some shrubs. There's some little grass elements. Small dots, small lines work really well. We don't want to add too much of detail because the more detail you add, it looks unrealistic because these are pretty far away. You won't be able to see too many details very clearly. So just small lines works well enough. I Now, we tackle our hill. I'm starting off with my green, and then I'm just going to go over the edge adding another patch of green to show that the hill had two sections, one that was shorter, one that was higher. Continue adding little dots, small lines using the green. As I was painting this, I had a little doubt in my head. Would this be considered a hill or would it be an island since there's water in between. I think that's going to be my homework for the next session to read up the different definitions of these different geographical elements and get the definitions. Right, because they're quite similar. So anyway, it's a little bit of a tangent. Let's get back into our painting. I'm going to use my scrap paper to protect my sky and then adding a little splatter along our little hill, since that's what we're calling it and gently tapping your brush. I think I like that little dots because you could do it with a brush, but the splatter just makes it look more natural. We're going to do the same thing at the bottom side as well. If some of it comes on the water, it's okay. We just wanted to protect a little bit of the sky. We didn't want too many of those platters that it just ruined your entire painting. And just like that, we're done with today's project. Simple fun. So pretty. I love the clouds. I think that was such a nice technique that we learned today. And once everything is dry, remote your tape to reveal your final painting, which I always think is such a special moment, 'cause you have that nice crisp white edge that just makes the paintings look so special. 8. Day 4 - Golden Hour Glow: Welcome to a new project Golden Glow. This is going to be really bold and bright, and I want you to get really comfortable with going really bold with your colors. Until now, we've been playing it a little safe and going for lighter shades. So here we're challenging ourself a little bit. So I've drawn out the horizon, and then I'm using my clear water brush to just wet down the entire sky. This time, I'm not going to paint the ocean. I'm just going to paint the sky first and then move on. Making sure you go back and forth with your water and just dampening the whole area. Once that's done, we can dive into our colors. So I'm using a burgundy, rich burgundy right on top. We're going to go ahead with adding more color, and I'm going directly from the pan, so the color is bright and vibrant. Let's add the same color along the horizon line going back and forth and blending it out. Next, we're going to move on to orange directly from the pan. And I'm adding a very bright streak of orange at the top and at the bottom, leaving a little white space in between. Now for the space in between, we're going to take our cadmium yellow, and we're just going back and forth and filling up our sky. Now, looking at it, you can see how the burgundy has become dull. So we're just going to go ahead and add another layer of burgundy, brighten up the color before moving on to our next step. Now we're going to try something interesting. We're going to take a tissue paper, and we're just going to dab out a portion for the sun. Making sure that our paper was still wet when we did this process. If it dries, you won't be able to dab out the colors. But I find this so fun. It's exactly the same technique we used for our clouds, but this time for the sun. You can go ahead with a little bit of burgundy and just paint out the edge if you feel like it's not as perfect as you wanted it. Now, we're going to let the sky dry, and meanwhile, we're going to go into our ocean and paint that. For the ocean, we're starting with our burgundy all the way through back and forth. We can add in some clear water just to blend through the colors a bit and then taking our orange. But I'm adding the orange only towards the sides, keeping a nice path or space between for the sun rays. So that middle section is going to be in yellow. Now, taking a burgundy, let's add in some aves for the ocean. I'm using my detailer brush so I can get some really thin lines, leaving in some caps. So I'm not doing a straight line all the way from side to side, but leaving caps in between, which makes it look more natural. And I'm adding quite a few right on top. And as I move away, I'm going to go lesser Now, we're going to let everything dry, and this is where there's such a drastic transformation. You can see how the colors just really mute it down. And also, you get to see what mistakes or what things you'd like to add into your original blends because sometimes it looks so amazing, but when you let it dry, you realize how maybe it didn't look as great as you wanted it to look. So I'm going ahead and taking a little bit of burgundy, and I'm just painting out the horizon line again. I think what ended up happening is a little bit of that color from the ocean spread out. But what we're going to take this as an opportunity to deepen up the color for the Burgundy a little bit more. I feel like it just became so dull after everything dried up. Now, there are multiple ways to tackle this. You can go over another layer, and there's different ways to do it. But this time, we're going simple with our projects, and we're just going to add another layer and continue on. A so let's use our thin lines now and just go over the ocean again, adding more lines. Some of them faded and some of them kind of became much lighter. So we want to have some deeper waves coming through. And you can see how we're really just playing around with this, and this is looking so great. I love how bold these colors are, and it's just it really makes you step into challenging yourself a little bit. Now, we're going to let everything dry before we go into painting the sun. Start by adding yellow on top and then add an orange towards the horizon line. This is going to give us a nice shade for the sun, as well. For the finishing touches, taking a little yellow and adding our reflection of the sun onto the water. I To complete our project, we're going to add in some birds like we practiced on day one. Fill up that sky. And we're done with our painting. Make sure everything is dry and then you're going to remove out your tape to reveal your final painting. I love how this turned out. It's just it's so different. I think, compared to all the projects in this challenge, this is the one that is so bold in color and definitely a very unique color scheme put together. I can't wait to see you tomorrow for day five. 9. Clouds and Rocks Practice: Let's dive into some practice exercises before we begin with our project. In this, we're going to cover clouds. Just a simple understanding so you know what we're talking about when we go into our main projects. Mixing whichever color you like clouds can be different colors depending on where the sun is and the sky is. I'm just taking an orange for us to have an idea. Now, the shape of the clouds, basically, it starts with thin lines, and then you have a fluffy body, which then again tapers into a thin line towards the end. This is a general shape. You can make this as big as you want. You can layer them up. So I have a secondary cloud that's again, right on top of the previous one. Maybe some that are much more smaller. And you can see how that really creates a beautiful effect. Extending some of the lines also creates a nice wave. And just like that, clouds are formed. So keep that in mind, start with thin lines, build up, and then thin again. The other thing we're going to be talking about is a little bit of a rocks practice. I want you to test this out before we move on to our projects so you get really comfortable. So rocks have a little I would say, chunky shape. And what we want to do so I have three rocks here. You have one that's separated, and then two others. You have to cut them into different pass, the different pass of the rock. This can go however you'd like to. You can see how I've done that. And once you have that ready, it gets a lot more easier to move on to the next step. So we're going to mix in our colors, and I'm going to mix in a dark grayish shade. Let me show you what I'm going to do, which is a mix of burgundy and blue, which was mentioned in our color chart. In this case, since the sun is up, we're going to have more of our shadow down. So the faces that are below, I'm going to paint them up with this mix that we created, which is a bluish gray and adding a thin line for the outline of the rock. Let's repeat the same thing for the second and third rocks. An outline for the top of the rock and then filling up one or two of the faces a little bit adding in some little dots for texture. Now, while this is still wet, I'm going to go ahead and add in a little bit more burgundy and just add a little bit more colour, especially at the cuts. You can see how that kind of added a little bit more richness. Then we're going to add in the shadow for the rock. Then we let this whole thing dry and just add in a layer of blue on top of the rocks to complete it. For the shadow, we're basically doing a mirror of the shape of the rock below. Let's try this. You can see how this looks, dried up. It's almost there. We're going to use blue, mixed in with a little bit of water and just paint the entire rock again. Because rocks are generally gray or grayish in shade, so we don't want it to be a bright white. It doesn't make sense. So we're just going ahead and painting over it. Making sure that this layer had a little bit of water mixed in, so it's a little lighter. And then with a pen, you can just outline some of the details. I'm using a black pen, adding in the bottom, adding a little bit of the rock shape, maybe some of the details which I felt like kind of got hidden away. Maybe some hash lines for the rock face that's further away from the sun. And there you go, in a few simple steps, you have rocks, practice a little bit a couple of times till you're confident, and then we can move on to our main project. 10. Day 5 - A Moment of Stillness: I really love how this project turned out. So pretty, beautiful blue orange shades of sky. So let's dive right in. We're going to use our pencil to mark out our horizon line, add in some mountains. In the backdrop. We're going to have a couple of rocks closer to us to frame the painting. I'm just doing rough sketches just to know where everything goes. And then once we're ready, let's take our brush. We're going to take clear water and paint the entire sheet, prep it ready for our next step, which is adding in our clouds. Making sure that my entire sheet is filled with clear water going back and forth to cover every spot. Now, let's mix in our color. I'm taking crimson, a little bit of cadmium yellow. So it gives you a nice orange color, taking a little bit more crimson. And then I'm going to take white. You can use white watercolor if you have or white gouache. To lighten up the colors, you get this nice peach color. Adding more white and more yellow till we get a nice orange mix. And once that's prepared, we can go ahead and start with the blue for the sky. So obviously, my color mixing took time. So I'm going ahead with clear water and just adding another layer because my paper might have dried up in the whole time that I took. So that's another thing to keep in mind that in case you get distracted or busy, just go ahead, add more clear water, prep your paper, and then begin again. So I'm taking in my cerulean blue, starting right at the top, adding in this beautiful blue color for the sky. Leaving a little bit of a gap and adding some quick strokes. You can see how I'm doing that, trying to get them more towards the right side, moving away. You can drop in a little bit more of the blue, so it brightens up. Remember, everything dries a little duller. So you want to get a little bit more color into these. Skies. Next, I'm going to take in this orange mix that we created, and we're just painting it through our page, through our sheet. Adding a little bit of that orange in those in between spaces. All in a diagonal motion, if you can have a look. My brush is diagonal to the sheet, so I'm not keeping it straight or flat. It has a little bit more of a 45 degree angle. Now, let's take in cadmium yellow, and we're just going to add it right at that orange point. Blending it out until it's nice and smooth. We're going to use a tissue to dab out any excess color. With a light touch, move around a little bit of the color, make sure everything is blended well. We're going to go ahead and continue with our painting. I'll start by taking a little bit more of the blue and finishing up our sky because I feel like it's going to be really light, and I think it's going to dull down quite a bit. So let's take a little bit more blue, do the sky, do the mountains, and then move on downwards. Dropping in a little bit of blue for the mountains. I'm being a little careful because I don't want to blend too much. I'm just adding a little bit. We will go over it again once everything is dried up anyways. And then we go onto the water, the ocean. So for the ocean, I try to continue with the details we had for the sky because water is usually a reflection of the sky. It's a mirror, and we're trying to capture that, as well. So we're going to start off by first using my dry brush. And I'm just picking up a little bit of paint in the middle of the sky and a little bit of that blue because I feel like it just went bled through to the ocean. Now we're going to take yellow, and we're going to add in a quick line. You can see how I'm doing this right below the sun. Next, using orange on either side. Then finally, blue. At the end. A continue adding in the blue and paint out the bottom section. I'm keeping white space for the rocks area because we're again going to paint that out with a different color. Don't worry if everything looks a little bit messy with the water side, the ocean side. We will be working on it in the next step. But for now, we're just trying to get all the colors in place and ready for what's going to come next. One thing I learned with landscapes is there's a lot of I would say, not even trust, but a lot of building colors. When you do florals, it's pretty simple. You don't really build colors. It's the same colors that you use, but with landscape, you can build the colors. So your mountains get painted again, the ocean, you're going to add layers, and we just keep building in the colors to get a better look. Now, I'm using my craft dryer and just drying everything up, and we're ready to begin with our second dip or the second layer. Now, I'm taking in orange using my thin brush to add in some bold clouds. You can see how I'm doing this. Adding in that cloud like shape. We discussed this in the previous practice exercise about the shape of clouds. And it's actually really simple. I never realized until I started getting more into detail that it's just trying to get a thin line at the end of the cloud, which makes it look realistic. And so you can go into different shapes, sizes as far as you follow those main details. I don't want to have too many clouds just enough right near the sun, and then we can add in the orange for the horizon line. I'm adding a little bit of blue for the mountains in the backdrop, using my small Detailer brush, adding in thin lines for the ripple lines of the water with blue, getting them spaced closer when they're far away and keeping more gaps as they get closer and closer. With these lines, make sure that you don't have them go all the way across the paper. You can have them either moving from left, midway through, or right midway through or somewhere in the middle because they're just ripple lines. Using the same blue, let's paint out our background mountains because I feel like they're just quite dull. Adding a little bit of water mix, so it's not too dark. A Now we move on to the rocks, as we did in our practice exercise. We're just basically mixing in our dark gray color. And I'm adding a little shadow to our rock. Time to take van **** brown, and I'm starting by adding a thin line for the outline of the rock. This is standalone rock, and then there are a few that are more towards the end of the paper. Continue by working on the rocks closer to us. You can see how I do the outline and then add in faces of the rock. Maybe adding in a little bit of blue for some of the sections. And I'm just breaking up the rock into different cuts. Again, as we did in the practice exercise, we're just following the similar technique, painting some of the areas, adding a little bit of maybe blue to deepen the color a little bit more, adding in some dots for the textures. I feel like my rocks need a little bit of work, but let's dry everything, and then we're going to add in just a layer of color. I think that would help because rocks are generally not this white and bright. Time to dry our painting, see what it looks like, and then we can move on to our third layer. Now that it's dry, let's take our blue mix in with a little bit of burgundy, so it's a little darker, and I'm just adding a thin layer on top of our rocks. And that just looks so actually looks a lot better than what it was. I think it really needed more color to it that white was just it did not work out. Let's take a black pen and just add some more details, maybe outline the rock a little bit, especially since there are two sets, one that's in front, one that's back. So we're just going to outline the two rocks, maybe add in some thin lines for a couple of the cuts that we created. Now, for the final part, I'm just going to take light blue or the blue mixed in with a lot of water and just go the middle section of the mountain to fix that part in case it wasn't smooth. Keeping it very light. And once that's done, we can allow our painting to rest and then remove out the tape to reveal our final painting. I really love how this one turned out with the blues and orange. I think it's a very unique color combination, looks really interesting. And the rocks that frame the painting just all of it works so well. Really excited about today's project. See you in the next one. 11. Day 6 - Painted Skies: Now we move on to another project where we're going to be playing around a little bit with mountains, a bright vibrant sky. Let's start by planning out our mountains a little bit. And then once we have our layers, we can start by adding water and painting our entire sheet of paper. Now, this time around, we're going to add bright cadmium yellow directly from the pan to one side of the sky. I'm adding it a little bit lower towards the mountain, as well. But we want that bright sun to peek through. Now adding water mixed in with crimson. We're going to add in pink, just being very gentle, not pressing down my brush too much so that it blends into the sky. Next, we can add in our violet right at the top, giving it a nice bright shade of colors. You can see how I'm just gliding my brush and then adding a couple of lines to make it look like the clouds are just parting ways. I love working when the paper is wet for these kind of effects. I just gives you a nice finish. Adding a little bit more purple, just a couple of lines. You can see how I did that. And then we have this nice vibrant sky. After some time, I might add a little bit more violet because it does dull down, and I want the sky to look bright. It's kind of our focus for this entire project. Now I'm switching to my thin brush, and I'm going to be taking a little bit of redder. I'm painting just the part closer to the sun. Next, we can use green and then just continue painting that section of that section of the hill. Once we have one of the hills complete, let's move on to the next one. What I'm going to do now is mix a little bit of cadmium yellow with varietian green to give you a soft sap green color, and I'm going to use it in the top section of our hill closer to the sun. So you can see how I'm doing that on the left side, just on top. And a little bit right next to the other hill. Next, you can mix in some cream, and then we can continue filling in the rest of our hilltop. I know this part can look messy because it just looks like everything is together, but don't worry, we're going to add in more definition, more details, and it's going to look amazing. So I'm taking in dark green, mixing inverdian green with a little bit of blue, and then switching to my thin brush to add in some little dots to show that there's some grass, there's texture, and the hilltop isn't just one color because in nature, you can see the shadows of these trees and grass and all these little details. And it looks so interesting. There's a lot of texture in nature. So adding these little dots to our hilltops and what I'm going to do is I'm going to use a little bit of crimson, add a lot of water mixed into it, and paint our mountain that was very far away in the distance. And because I'm adding a lot of water, you're going to be able to see the yellow shine through. And we want it to be very transparent. So it truly looks like it's off away in the mist. I Now, we're going to use our dryer and dry p sheet before moving on to the next step. We just have a couple of details, but what I want to do at this point is see how our painting looks. Now that everything is dry, are the colours still vibrant? Are they rich? Do we need to add more? You can see some of the hilltops. It's just not obvious. So I'm going to go in with my green and just add a little bit more detail so you can see them because right now it still looks a little bit messy. Adding a little bit of that dark green. By the way, you will see me use random mixes. Don't worry about it. I think this time I mixed a pink and a green. You can just use a dark green if you have or mix your Verdan green with blue, like we shared in the color mixing chart, which is in the project section Upload. I also have a mix of Verdan green and Van **** brown. That also works really well or verdant green with burgundy also looks really nice. So don't worry too much about that. You will see me mixing random colors because I just use what's in my palette sometimes. And it's not necessary to follow the same thing. But if you want to, you can just have a look. I basically mixed a little bit of brown, I think, a little bit of crimson with my green. Now you can see how I just added those little dots, and this makes the hilltop a little bit more, I would say, clear. It shows them without needing too much detail. Now, I'm taking more of the green, and I'm just going to add in some splatters. And you can see how those little dots just add a little bit of vibrance to the painting. And you can see how that looks. I love how this is coming together. And we're basically done with our painting. If you want, you can add in some words from what we did on Day one, which I think is such a great addition and which is why I decided to add it as a day one practice exercise. So you have that for you to use in any of the upcoming projects. But as a whole, I like how this looks. Maybe a little bird would be cute. I think it would just be such a nice touch to what we've painted already. A I feel like painting nature is so therapeutic and calming. Like, there's just something so nice about painting the bright greens and the reds and creating your own colors, imagining a beautiful scene in front of you. I think a lot of us are living city lives, and you kind of forget that nature does exist, and it's so beautiful. At least that's the case with me. After seeing all the steel buildings, I miss seeing green grass green hilltops. And there you go revealing our final painting. I 12. Day 7 - Thundery Clouds: After going through a couple of interesting projects, we're going to dive into something that is more of a stormy sky. Starting with our horizon line, we're going to play around with a couple of trees on either side. The focus here is mainly on the sky itself. So you know the basics. Let's take our clear water with our brush and just paint our entire sheet, making sure that we cover all the edges, and the paper is prepped and ready to paint. I really like having the paper as damp, but we don't want too much of water where it puddles up, so just make sure you go over it. Now we're going to take in blue directly from the pan and just add it right on top. Gently blending the color. You can take more blue, so it's a little bit more vibrant. Next, I'm going to take red, crimson color, which when you lighten down, is going to give you a beautiful pink. And that's where we're going to add for the remaining of the sky from somewhere in between. Now, this I'm keeping more towards the right side and gently blending it out. Let's add a little bit more of that pink. It's really light. So let's add more color because we want it to be a bright sky. Now, let's mix a little bit of that pink and blue, making sure that we have more blue, so we get a nice deep color. This is going to be, like, a very dark purple, a very muddy color that is going to be perfect for some of our details. Once we have that prepped, let's just work on the bottom, finish up our landscape a little bit. And for that, all I'm doing is washing my brush, taking Verdan green, and just painting the bottom of the sheet. Mixing in a little bit of red to get a muddy green colour that we're going to use for our painting, adding more green and filling up the space. While everything is still wet, let's switch to our thinner brush. We're going to add a couple of details and basically finish up our bottom section. This is going to give the top part of your sky a little time to blend through for it to dry up a little bit, so then we can get back to it. Now, I'm using a little bit of green and just adding little dotted sections to show the grass in some of the areas. A Now that I'm happy with the overall look, let's get back to our sky and finish up those details. So washing my brush, taking that muddy purple blue color that we mixed, and let's start by adding in our clouds. I'm just adding straight lines and noturally forming perfect cloud shapes like we discussed before, thin lines, making sure that they start from the left side, moving to the right. And What's so amazing is when your paper is still wet, you can easily create these cloud shapes. And it's just such a simple process without having to think too much about it. Just dropping in color works really well. Next, let's mix in our van **** brown with Verdan green to get you a muddy green colour that we're going to use for some bushes and trees. This is just to complete the entire project. We already have our dramatic sky. We've learned a little bit more from this project, and it's going to help us as we move on to the more complex projects along the way. I like slowly building up skills because as you grow with each project, you're learning small little techniques that are going to help you build your confidence, feel more comfortable with watercolors. So when we go on to other projects, it becomes so easy. And that's my goal for you from this entire challenge. Little bit of fun, little bit of enjoyment, and a little bit of growth. Now, I'm adding a little bit of that dark green to some of the grass. Let's use our craft dryer and dry up the section. You can see how the layers have become a little bit more lighter. So let's take a little of the green and go ahead and add another layer. Just a couple of dots. I just wanted to lift up the color a bit more because I felt like it became so dull. Maybe adding a line for the horizon as well. Y finally using a spare sheet, let's protect our sky and then add in some splatters for the grass. And just like that, remote your tape to reveal your final painting. A 13. Day 8 - Wildflower Meadow: It's day eight, and I wanted to pick a very fun project for us to try out. It's got flowers and the sun, and it's definitely full of joy. Starting off by drawing out our mountain off in the distance. It's quite small, and it's just going to be very subtle and very misty. Now, I'm going to take my masking tape or painter's tape, and I'm going to draw a circle for the sun. I'm going to use this to mask out the section of the sun. This is a really fun technique that we're trying. Looks really great and creates very nice results. So once you've drawn out your circle, we're just going to cut it. With our scissors and then paste it onto our paper before we begin with our painting today. Make sure that your circle is proper sized, or you can use something that's circular, so you get your design or the shape, correct. Placing our circle right on top of the mountain, pressing it down to make sure it really stays there before we continue. Now, the first thing I'm going to do is take in my brush with clear water and just paint out our entire sheet. Let's start with yellow in the middle right next to the sun. We can take in our crimson and add it in the middle section. You have a yellow reddish sky. Let's continue add in a little bit more of the crimson right on top. Just quick lines. And then let's take in blue. We're going to use the blue right near the mountain or the hill that we just drew. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's okay if it comes over the section, but we're just trying to get a little bit of blue in that area. Going back and forth with your brush. Now, as we get to the bottom, I'm going to use verdant green. Maybe mix in a little bit of blue and red to get a more muddy green color, add in some bright pink or crimson in some of the sections. So areas that have crimson, we're going to add in some flowers. So we're keeping it a little bit mixed in together. Using green mixed in with blue to get a little bit more green in between these red sections. Keeping in mind that the painting is going to dry out and become more dull. I'm adding burgundy at the bottom to build up even more color. Now, before drying our sheet, I'm going to take my thin brush and add in some quick lines to show the grass using green. Now, this is going to blur out once it dries because it's on wet paper, but I think it's going to give us a nice look for us to continue with our painting. I love projects like this when you're doing challenges because they give you a little bit of a break from the usual and you have flowers coming in, which is always such a nice touch. Now, we're going to use our dryer, dry up our entire sheet. You can see how the colors have muted in a lot more. And now we can go in and just add another section of leaves and flowers and brighten up everything. Using my thin brush, I'm taking green and I'm just adding in some stems. I let's take crimson and we're going to add in little dots that connect together to give you some nice long flowers. This could be a good representation of delphiniums. And we're just continuing to follow the structure of the flour, having some of them smaller, some of them bigger, but making sure that the top is pointed and they become wider towards the middle and then small again. Having some smaller ones going towards the back, I just really playing around with the flow, different sizes, different widths, different length, heights. A Let's switch to green to add in our leaves for all of these flowers that we just painted. I'm leaving certain sections out, but I'm going to actually paint them with the flour, as well. And we're just going to continue this process till we really fill up that entire bottom space. A a continuing along the process, I'm leaving those two sections free because I want those to be our center flowers. They're going to be the focus. Once you're done with adding all the leaves, we're going to use our scrap paper, protect the sky and add in some little splatters with green along the bottom. Once that's done, we can then move on to adding the flowers because I didn't want green splatters to come on the flowers that we are painting. Add more leaves to complete the space, filling up as much as you'd like. I've sped up the process so you don't have to really sit through this. Now, let's go into a mountain using the same dark green. I'm just going to add a lot of water and add a very soft mountain in the background like it's really misty and you can't see it very clearly. Blending it out with a little bit of water, so it looks like there's a lot of mist off in the distance. Once everything is dry, let's remove out our sun. Just be very careful while doing this. I have had instances where I've ripped my paper, so just be careful very gently lifting it out one small section at a time to reveal our empty white spot that we're going to then paint with our yellow for the sun. Now, for the final step, let's add in our pink flowers for those sections in between that I left empty. And I'm making this much more bigger than everything that I painted before. So they really are prominent and they are our focus flowers. Add in some greens for the stems in case you haven't, leaves everything else to finish our painting. And there you go. I really like how this turned out with the very soft colors of pink and yellow for the sky, the very interesting flowers in the foreground. Definitely very interesting painting. And I hope you're giving yourself a lot of compliments for getting this far, for continuing and continuing the challenge. Remember that it's not easy and the fact that you're committing to this challenge of 30 days, I'm so proud of you. I 14. Day 9 - Thunder Storm: Today's project is going to be a very interesting one. We're playing around with clouds. If you have your white gouache or white acrylic paint, keep it in hand because we're going to need this for today. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to paint the top part of the sky. So I've drawn out a horizon line that is in the I would say lower third of the painting. And then I'm using clear water and just painting out the sky. My paint had a little bit of black because I didn't wash it, but that's okay. It's not going to be noticed, so I didn't really worry about it too much. Sometimes your water color could be a little bit off. It doesn't affect your painting as much, especially for something else where we're going to use bright bold colors and really fill up our sheet. So started with cerulean blue and painting a little bit on top. Now, mixing a little bit of burgundy to this to get a more navy indigo color. If you have indigo, you can use it directly. I decided to just mix my shades in. And I'm starting right on top, just building the color downwards. Let's add some blue in the middle section. As we know, the colors dry out and can fade away. So we're going to add more layers of the indigo to deepen the color a lot more. Really making sure that it is bright and bold at the top. I'm also swishing around my brush instead doing straight lines so we get a more cloudy feel. Now, as I go downwards, I'm taking my cerulean blue and just continuing to fill up the space. The first thing I'm going to do is using a tissue. I'm just going to tap out the center where I'm going to be placing my cloud. Let's take a gouache or acrylic, whichever one you're using and paint our clouds. I'm using a brush that works with the medium. Make sure you don't use your same watercolor brush because you might damage it if you're using acrylics. Now, I'm going with a little bit of a circular move and building out my clouds. Making sure that I have those little dotted lines towards either end, like we discussed in our practice exercise for the shape of the clouds. This helps it form a little bit more. Also painting some of the areas that are still dull because even though I used the tissue and removed it, some areas remain I would say remain dull would be the best way to explain it. Now, as I add in a little bit more of the white, I can see how it's kind of coming together, but I want the clouds to have a rain like effect that it's about to rain and we have this stormy sky. A So to pill that, what I'm going to do is mix in a little bit of the indigo that I had with the white. This is going to give us a more grayish color. And then I'm going to use this to paint some sections of the cloud, especially the bottom areas because that's where it's filled with water. It's heavier. If you look at the natural cloud, the bottom section carries most of the water, and that's why it's going to be darker and shade. So we're really filling up that area. With this grayish tone. Adding a little bit of that gray for some of the smaller clouds as well. Usually, you don't have one big cloud. There's usually patches of smaller clouds that combine to give you that big cloud. I Now that we've done this, we're going to take our white again and just paint over this layer. Not too much, but just enough so it blends in and really stands out because right now everything has kind of come together and all has just blended in. So we're going to use our white and place it over this gray. But what happens is it's going to mix in with the gray and give you a brighter color. You're going to see this in a bit as I'm painting, so just follow along and trust the process. You can see how it's coming along slowly. I actually like how this is looking. Maybe we can add a couple of more clouds off in the distance. You can see that gray that we painted peeking through. A And now once you're happy with the overall look, let's let this dry, and then we're going to work on the grass section. I'm going to use the green mix in with the blue and just paint right above the grass. Adding in some thin lines to show the grass details and continue painting the area. Dropping in some yellow and continuing to paint it out. You can add in some clear water to blend everything together. Adding in some green and continuing it. Get all the way to the bottom of the sheet, make sure that there's no gaps. Now, we're going to let everything dry. Let's see how it looks, and then we can make any adjustments. I want to add a little bit more detail to the grass, especially. Maybe add in some of some more smaller grass details using a thinner brush, adding some little dots, some quick lines. Using a scrap paper, let's protect our sky, and then we're going to add in some splatters for the grass. In our entire project list for this class, I felt like while everything is happy and cheerful and bright colours and interesting, I wanted to add something stormy and thundery. I love the rain. Um I love looking at rain, especially since I live and have grown up in a country that is so hot, the Middle East. It is very hot. There's barely any rains. I miss the rain and I enjoy it so much. And I know there are other people who hate the rain because they've just lived so much of their life in it, but you always see the grass is greener on the side. So since I haven't experienced much of rain, I really love it. I love looking at it. And so this painting is a personal favorite. It means so much to me, seeing these thundery skies and cloudy it's just the perfect setup for someone like me who just loves in looking at the freshness, feeling, the smell, just enjoying all of the senses of rain. And that's why I decided to add it into this 30 days because I think it really meant so much to me. So as we continue with our platters, adding some small ones, big ones. I like that it adds a little texture to our painting. And once we're done, we can allow everything to dry up and then remove out our tape to reveal our final painting. Additionally, if you'd like to add in some birds, you can go ahead. I think it could work with a paint in this and really add some more detail to the sky. And so I'm just following along from our practice exercises on day one. Which was such a useful exercise because we're going to add these birds to a lot of our projects to make them look even more better. Congratulations on completing day nine. I'm so proud of you. Definitely give yourself a pat on the back and see you tomorrow. 15. Day 10 - Hidden Cozy Hideaway: To celebrate our ten days of projects, I've picked a very special one for today's painting. It's our little hideaway cottage with these really nice warm colors. Let's start by drawing out our cottage. I'm just following simple steps. You can have a look at what I'm doing. We're just getting the basic structure in place, having some mountains in the backdrop. And then let's use our tape to draw out a small circle for the moon. I'm making it much smaller in size, about, I would say a centimeter in diameter or maybe 1.5 centimeters. So it's quite small. We're going to cut it and then use it to mask out the section like we did in our previous painting. Let's paste out little circle somewhere in the middle of our paper. Press it down, make sure it's flat before you continue with your next steps. So what I'm going to do now is start by using clear water to paint our background and grass. The thing that I'm going to do is make sure that I paint around our house. So just keep that in mind and just be really careful. To make sure that we don't paint the house section and then add clear water for the remaining parts, we're going to do all of it and then finally get to the details for the house or our cottage. Now that we're ready, let's begin with our color mixing. We're going to mix a very interesting color for the sky. I'm taking a little bit of cerulean blue and mixing burgundy to it to give you a nice warm indigo color. Once you have that, let's mix in a little bit of red with white and yellow for a nude skin tone color. And once we have all of that ready, we can begin with our painting. So I'm starting with indigo right on top. It has a little bit of a purple feel because I mixed in Burgundy, but you can use Indigo as it is, as well. I'm going all the way to the top, making sure that I really blend out the colors. Adding a little bit in between, as well. You can see how I just flick my wrist, not necessarily paint certain sections because we want the color to blend through. If you have any questions or doubts regarding any of the techniques that we've gone through, please add them to the discussion tab. I can go ahead and add in a sample tutorial or additional information if you're wondering, or if you have any questions, I can answer them. Now, I'm adding more pink and white. And then adding a little bit of that yellow, you can see how the color turns more skin tone. And once we have that, we can go ahead and add it to our sky. I'm starting from the bottom, but I'm making sure that I don't paint over our cottage. Adding more of this nude skin tone color in between the purple sky. And because everything is still wet, it's going to blend through and create a very interesting result. You can notice how I'm not going back and forth a lot with it. It's just quick strokes. If you go back and forth, you're more likely to mess up your painting. So we just want to do this with very simple, easy strokes. Painting around the house so that in the next step, we can just paint the house without worrying about the background. Let's now move on to the grass, the meadow, adding verdant green for the greenery, mixing in some yellow along the way to get a nice shade of colors, and then adding in some burgundy to get in some darker shades, especially along the bottom of the page. While everything is still wet, adding little dots of this mix green and burgundy little dots along the meadow. We're getting more bigger ones at the bottom, and as you go up, just few of them. It is going to dry up and blur out, which is great. For now, it's just a nice effect for our painting. Using the same green, let's add our background mountain. Just be careful because we don't want to blend with everything. So I made sure that the painting had dried a little bit, so the color just doesn't flow. It will blur out, which is great, but it's not puddling up. Our background is almost dried up. So meanwhile, let's go into painting the details for our cottage, mixing the same nude skin tone color with red and yellow with a little bit of or with a lot of white. I'm just going to be painting the left side because I'm going to add shadow towards the left side. So I'm just making sure that area is darker in color. Keep your tissue ready so we can just make sure that we remove any excess colors so we can gently blend it. Let's allow this to dry for a bit, and then we're going to take in our thinner brush and use green to add in little dots to our meadow. I I Next, let's get back to our cottage. I'm going to take brown, and we're going to do our roof and add a couple of details and finish up our painting. So starting off, let's do the top of the roof, adding a thin line for either side so we know what we're painting. Let's paint the entire roof with brown mixed with water, so it's a lighter shade. And then while it's still wet, we can go ahead and add brown directly from the pan. It will blur out, but that's okay. Once we have the roof, let's move on to the other side. Outline the chimney. Add in the little door for our cottage. As well as some of the windows. Use cadmium yellow to paint the inside of the windows to show that there's light coming through. Now, with Burgundy, we're going to just add in some of the outlines, add in a couple of pushes right next to the house. Add a little bit more of dark green around the meadow, as well. Just small little details. You can have a look at what I'm doing. Small things to finish up your painting. Let's add in some dots to the mountain. Just three of them to show some texture, add in some grass lines, especially to the grass that is closest to us. I'm using tissue to protect my painting, and then I'm going to be taking acrylic white or goose white and gently tapping for the stars in the sky, removing out our circle, being very careful while doing that to reveal our moon. Now, in case your tape rips your paper, like mine did, very easy fix. Instead of removing out your paper, we're just going to paint on top of it. I'm taking a little bit of yellow, and then I'm just adding an outline to the moon, painting some diagonal lines to match what we have in the background. And this way, you can't really see that the paper had ripped a bit. It happens, and instead of panicking, I want to teach you a little bit of patience and trust. Now, we're going to take a little of gray. You can mix your gray between blue and burgundy and add a few spots around the circle for the texture of the moon, allowing everything to dry before mowing out your tape to reveal our hidden getaway. I 16. Day 11 - Ocean Whisper: After painting a lot of mountains and cottages, I wanted to go back to the ocean and paint beautiful soft waves perfect for this project. Let's start by drawing out our horizon line. I'm actually keeping it towards the middle of the sheet so that we have enough space for the sky and enough space for the waves. Using a pencil, let's draw our waves. I'm adding in a couple of layers. So we have one layer. Let's add another one. And I'm drawing them diagonally. And then maybe a final one that's just small. It doesn't have to go all the way to the end. So we have three waves that are going to be the focus of our painting. Let's begin with our painting. Using clear water. Let's paint our entire sheet, making sure that it's damp and ready to start. Et's start with our sky. We're going to use indigo. It's mentioned in the color chart, which is basically a mix of serleum blue and burgundy. And we're going to start right on top, gently blending in our indigo. Next, let's mix our crimson with white to give us a very subtle pink tone for the remaining of the sky. Now, let's mix crimson with white to give us a pink color that within going to use for the remaining of the sky. Keeping it really simple, just quick strokes. I'm not going back and forth too much, and that's really important to note. And finally, we can add in some yellow for the remaining. Let's add in the yellow at the bottom of the horizon line. We're going to add in a little sun and follow the same colors for the water since it's a reflection of the sky. What I'm going to do is take a tissue while everything is still wet, and I'm just going to dab out a little circle in the center for the sun. It doesn't have to be too perfect. We will go over it with white paint, but I just want to make sure that I clear up that area. Just lifting up a little bit of that paint. You can use a dry brush as well to remove any of the excess color. While we're at it, let's take cadmium yellow and just go around the circle. Now time to move on to the waves. This is my favorite part. It's so fun to paint waves. It's a little bit of an experiment. And as you get more comfortable, you're going to find it so easy. We're starting off with yellow at the bottom. Make sure that your bottom section is still damp. And in case it's not, go ahead, take some clear water on your brush and just paint over it again. Make sure everything is damp. So when we go into the step, it's easier. So I've added yellow right below the sun in a line and then using pink to continue the sky. Wash your brush. And then we're going to take in our excess pink with a dry brush. Finally, we can take our indigo and just paint the remaining part of the waves. For the sand, we're going to use our burnt umber to paint out the section. We're going to bring a little bit of that brown below the first wave. You can see how I'm doing that just getting it a little further. Have a look at the video and go back and rewatch it in case you're having any questions or doubts. Sometimes I'm not able to explain it exactly. It's kind of hard to explain what you're painting with words. So have a look at the painting, pause so that you understand it, test it out a bit, and then continue. Now, while everything is still wet, I'm going to take my thin brush and add in little dots of brown to the sand to add in some flecks of maybe stones, little texture to it. Now, we continue with the waves. Everything is still wet. We haven't moved on to the drying portion and moving on to the next layer. So in the same layer, I'm taking blue with my thin brush, and I'm just going to go over all the waves that we threw out in the beginning. After tracing out the wave, a little bit of the blue in between before the second wave. Again, following the outline or the shape of the second wave and repeating it for the third. Adding a few more dots of blue having in some thin lines. You can see how our waves are forming already. And in the next step, we're going to add in more detail, and it's going to look so amazing. I'm so excited about this project. I think it's definitely unique. And it's the next kind of fun thing we're experimenting with in this challenge. Now, dry out our entire sheet, make sure everything is dry before you move on to the next layer. Now that everything is dry, let's go back and add in our details. I'm switching to my thin brush, mixing in blue and burgundy, so I get a more dark indigo shade. And I'm just going over the outline for the wave right above the previous layer. Adding a couple of little small lines for those in between sections. Continuing to add the outline. I'm making it really rough, so we don't want it to be very smooth. It has a little bit of bumps. For the third wave, we're just doing lines. You can see how I'm doing that little short lines. Now we move on to the next step really important, we're going to take our white guche or acrylic paint. I'm using acrylic because I had it in hand, and I'm just going to paint the white form of the waves. So painting very close to the edge of the wave you can see how I'm not doing straight lines. I'm actually just waving around my brush, kind of like we did our trees or clouds. It's the same kind of wavy motion instead of just doing straight lines because we want it to look like foam, making it more white towards the edges. Moving on to the second wave, following the same steps. I a little bit on the third wave, and then we can also paint the circle for the sun. Y Almost there, I can see it's deforming. Now I'm going to mix in burgundy and just add in some mountains in the distance. So adding a little bit of water to it, so it's much more lighter in shade and translucent. Add that little mountain in the backdrop, it also makes the horizon a little bit more crisp. Following that, we're going to add some quick lines for the ripples of the water. Now, using burgundy, we can go ahead and add in one more layer of outline this time I'm making it really rich. And just going ahead and adding little shadow to our waves. I'm not doing the entire outline, as you can see, the section that is closer to I don't know how to describe it, but if you have a look, you can understand it's just where the wave dips is where I'm adding in the burgundy. Same thing for the third wave, just a little bit. I think the reference is the best way to go about it. And you can see how that looks more natural now. En you can continue to add in some more small little dots and details with purple. This basically shows the kind of shadow of the waves and makes it look more realistic. I'm using a thin brush for all of it so I can get really into the details. Now gently tapping your brush to add in some splatters. Just along the wave section, if you want to protect the sky, you can just place a scrap paper over it. And now that we have done, I love everything to dry, remote your tape to reveal our painting today. I think this is definitely a special one. It's calming, it's relaxing. It's the perfect touch of ocean that we all need. 17. Day 12 - Evening Radiance: Welcome to a brand new project today, evening radiance. I think this is perfect for our challenge. It's got rocks. We're going to play around with the sky, some clouds. It's everything that we have been working and painting towards. First thing I'm going to do, tape down my sheet, prep it, draw out the horizon line three fourth of the paper. So we have more focus on the rocks and the water than the sky. Now that we have that, using our pencil, I'm just going to do a very broken line for the rocks. Follow along and just repeat the same thing on your sheet. I'm doing little cuts for the various rock. Something I've been doing in my voiceovers for my projects and classes and courses is adding a little story time, sharing a little bit of what I'm going through, or a little bit about my past. And I wonder if that makes the process of painting feel like a story. I do that sometimes even when I'm painting, I imagine something for my past or I imagine myself actually standing on the edge of rocks, standing looking at beautiful florals. I imagine myself there and that adds to the feeling of calm and excitement and joy. We're just adding clear water to our entire painting before we get started. And I want you to give yourself that little visual before you get started with your painting. Imagine that you're standing right there and you're painting along. It puts you at that moment, and it gives a little bit more of peace and sets the mood before you begin with your painting. Try it out and let me know how you felt. The discussion tab is always available. If you want to share a little bit of how you felt, you want to share or ask questions, I love discussing and I love talking about art makes me so happy. I've added yellow, going back to the painting, yellow in the center for the sun and then added in some quick thin lines all the way downward for the reflection. Next, using orange, I'm adding it to the sky as well as the water since it's a reflection of the sky. Finally, we're going to take in our burgundy and we're going all the way from the top and blending downward. Burgundy is there in the color mixing chart. So if you don't have the color, just have a look at the color mixing chart. It's a color that I use often in this challenge. And what you can do is prepare a little bit of it and keep it in advance. So you have that for the entire challenge. So repeating the same thing along the water, the same burgundy color. Now, I know this could look like a little bit of a mess because nothing has been added in. There are no details, but it's okay. Let's continue with our painting. Switching to my thin brush using orange, let's add in some of the ripple lines for the water keeping them really thin and just going back and forth. Now, let's mix burgundy with a little bit of actually brown or blue. We're trying to get we're trying to get actually van **** brown and adding in the shadow along the rocks. The area that's right below, we're just adding in more darker brown, so it looks like the shadow. You can see how I'm doing that. Switching back to my bigger brush. Let's take in our brown, and we're just gonna go over all the rocks. I felt like I was being a little timid with the brown. So we're just adding a lot more, more of the burgundy and really just painting out our rock. Don't worry about the mixing that I'm doing. It's basically standard colours of Vandyke brown that I'm mixing with my palette. And so you can use Vandyke brown as is switching to a thinner brush, let's add some of these brown lines for the ripples of the ocean. Make sure everything is dry before proceeding to the next layer. Okay, so this is our first layer. You can see how colors have dulled down, some of it has mixed up, and we have a clear idea of what's happened. Now, let's go ahead and add in details, and this is going to be what's going to bring everything together. So I've taken directly Burgundy or you can use Van **** Brown, and I just did the Horizon line again. And now I'm going to go through each rock. So starting off with doing the top outline, and I'm using my thinner brush so I can really get into the details. I'm breaking up the section into little parts for different rocks. And then I'm going to be painting more of the bottom part to add in some shadow. Just have a look. You can see me paint this entire thing before you start so that you have an idea of how it's supposed to look. It's a little bit of practice, but don't worry. I'm sure you're going to get it. We have done so many different projects, and you've gotten this far that I feel like this is such a good step for you a little bit test yourself and push yourself a little bit more. All I'm trying to do is just paint out little sections of the rock, making some of them empty while painting the rest of them. I think this side is a lot more clear, and you can see how I'm doing this just adding in rough rocks. Adding in little dots with vandyke brown for some texture. Using the same Vandyke brown to add more shadow to the area below the rocks to make it look like those areas are darker. H. With the same Van **** brand, we're going to continue adding in some of the outlines, just working a little bit on these rocks so they look a little more realistic. And rocks are all about depth. So if you can add in layers, it looks more realistic and works really well. So you can have a look. I'm just adding in a couple of outlines. We're moving on to the water and just using the BandagGround to add in thin lines. Again, especially the area that was under shadow, right? So right below the rock section. I mixing in a little water to this, and we're going to add in a cloud. I wanted to balance out the colors because I felt like the bottom part became really dark and heavy. So adding in the clouds for the sky just balances out the colors. We're following what we did before. So these are two different clouds. We have a bigger cloud, which tapers and then we have a smaller cloud that is attached right next to it. Let's do another one, the other side as well. Same exact techniques, Mhing your brush around to get that fluffy cloud. And there you go. We have a balanced piece. You can see how the clouds match the rocky section and everything just comes together. I love everything to try. We're going to remove our tape to reveal our final painting, evening radiance, which I think is such a great name for this painting because it does feel like you're walking down a rocky path in the evening enjoying the weather and definitely enjoying the view. And 18. Day 13 - Into the Hills: After all our different projects, I decided to pick today's project because it's simple. It's just ten to 15 minutes, and we're going to end up with really pretty results. I'm starting off with my pencil just drawing out different mountains. And then I'm going to use my brush with clear water and just paint everything before we begin layering in our colors. This painting into the hills is all about greens and blues and if you think of an ideal landscape, this would be it. Lots of greenery. I have to say, I'm also sitting in a desert climate where it is currently 48 degrees. It is very hot. I am missing this blue skies and green mountains. So this is such a perfect getaway. I've started with serum blue right on top and just gently bringing it downwards. Quick flick of my wrist. Then we can move downward into our mountains. What I'm doing is mixing a little bit of serleum blue with ardian green, and I'm just going to paint each section of the mountain at a time. It's okay if the colors blur in a bit, but we want to have different shades of green. Mixing a little bit of the ardian green with burgundy to give you a more vintage forest green, and then mixing a little bit of yellow to give more of a sub green. All I'm just doing is really going back and forth with migraines. Let's continue this process using yellow mixed in with ardian to give a more sap green. S that beautiful color. Then taking Verdian green as it is, adding it to the edges, adding a couple of dots along the way, mixing in burgundy to the green to give you a forest rich green for the bottom part of the painting. Notice also that I'm not going back and forth with my brush. I'm actually just going round and round. Exactly how we practiced our clouds, our trees is the same method of just moving your brush in circles. I added a little bit of van **** brown along the bottom. Just few dots here and there to give a nice mix of colors. Now using my tissue, I'm just going to dab out my clouds like we did in one of our previous projects. That looks so nice. Love how that's turned out, making sure that it tapers towards the end. In case your section dried out and you are able to dab out the paint, just use white acrylic or white Gouache paint and paint in your cloud. Let's make sure everything is dry before proceeding. We're just going to go back to each of the mountains and get in the details. So starting off with the topmost mountain, I feel like it kind of blended and you can't see it as clearly, so I'm just going to go over it with a little bit of Verdan green and burgundy mixed in with water because I want it to be very light and translucent, not taking away from any of our main elements. Next, mixing in our ardian green with burgundy. We're going to add in little dots for some foliage that's very far away, trees that are very far away that we can't really see the details, but we can just see them off in the distance. I while I'm doing this process, I'm also breaking down the tree into different sections, there are different fields of grass. You're going to see that in a bit. I think it's not as clear at this point, but as I move on to the next part of the mountain, you're going to see me really divided up. I absolutely love how this turned out. Just so interesting, we're going to add more trees. Then the hill that we're standing on or where this painting is created. We're going to just add in grass because that's closer to us. We can't really see too many trees next to us. We're just going to add in little dots for grass, maybe some longer grass lines as we're closer to the details. After you happy with the result, we're just going to use a scrap paper and just add in some flatters to the crus gently tapping our brush. There you go, our simple painting in just a few minutes. Let's let everything dry and then we're just going to remove our tape to reveal our final painting. A 19. Day 14 - Soft Daisy: Soft daisy, another interesting project with a different technique that I cannot wait to get into. We're starting off with taking down our sheet as usual and drawing out our daisy. You can see how I'm leaving spaces in between the petals. This is really important as we continue with our painting. We have our little daisy here, add in a stem, maybe a bud. That would be really nice. And then we can plan out where we're going to add in some additional leaves. Once we have that in mind, let's just take cerulium blue mixed in with water. I'm using my thin brush, and what we're going to do is a negative painting technique and paint around the flour. This way, the flour remains white while we have a very interesting backdrop. So I'm using blue and just painting around I'm going to fill it up a little bit, use some clear water and blend out that layer. So we don't just end up with an outline, we end up with a background, dropping in more of the serlem blue next, we're going to paint around the bud, taking more Silleum blue, adding water. I'm trying to make sure that there are no dry lines and everything is blended through. Make sure to paint each section, taking in your time so that you get the best result. This is a part of patients. Negative painting is a topic that I talk about more in my other classes. Now, we're going to continue adding in water, blending out the colours. I'm not going all the way to the end. I'm just trying to get the section that is closest to the flower. Once we have that, it's going to be easier for us to work on the remaining. I sped up the process a little bit and slowly, but surely we have reached here, where we basically have painted around the main flower. Now to complete out any of the sections that dried up, make sure it looks nice, and then we're going to add in our background, our sky. Now, these sections might have already dried up. So all I'm doing is adding a little bit more blue with more water to blend and kind of paint over those dried sections. You can see how I'm doing that. And that way, we have a nice background. Next, I'm going to add purple for the top of the backdrop. It's more midnight and really suits are painting today. For that, what I'm going to do is just take purple or violet and add it to the top of our painting. Mixing in a little bit of blue with burgundy to give us some clouds that we're going to add into our sky. I Amazing. For the final touch of our painting layer one, which is going to add in blue, little darker. So I've added a little bit of burgundy. You can use indigo as well, and just painting the area below. And in case you have sections that have dried up, just make sure to add in more paint. You can add in some green as well and just paint over it. Time to completely dry our painting. You can see how the colors have muted down and also blended through. So it looks really great. We have a good start, and we can continue with our next step, which is just adding in our leaves, maybe painting the center of our daisy with yellow. Adding a couple of dots of brown along the bottom for some shadow. A using green to add in the stem as well as leaves. You can add as many as you'd like or as few as you'd like. I'm adding in some really long leaves, and I'm going to speed up this process a bit so you can have a look at what I'm doing. Continue adding in lots of different variety of leaves. You can have some smaller leaves, some longer ones. Waving about in the breeze. This also gives you the effect of breeze. So if you can just vary the different directions of these leaves. Now, using a scrap paper, I'm just going to add some splatters to the bottom of our painting. I really love how this is looking. Adding a little bit of blue slight tinge to our petals because it looks really just white. That little blue is going to really add to it, adding a little bit below the yellow section, and letting it dry before removing out the tape to reveal your final painting. Now that you've gotten this far into the paintings, I am curious to know which is your favorite. We've tried a lot of different techniques, a lot of different styles, a lot of different colours and themes. I think I'm I'm still not sure which is my favorite yet, but I'm curious to hear yours. 20. Day 15 Fields in Bloom: We are midway through our challenge, and we're diving into some of the more floral based paintings, and I'm so excited about them. So let's start with this one. It's going to be a good step up as we move forward. So I added clear water, make sure that the paper is wet, and then I'm just painting the sky using cadmium yellow, and I've actually painted around a little mountaintop. Now, let's use orange and add it to the left side of the painting. I'm smooshing around my brush so it doesn't really create any harsh lines. And then I'm gonna mix in my erleium blue into the sky. So our sky is looking a little dull. So let's go ahead and add a little bit more of cadmium yellow near the mountains. And then we're going to add in some clouds with our mix of seroleum blue and burgundy. A Start right on top, and we're going to add in some fluffy clouds. Drop in more of the burgundy color so it deepens it up. And then we can continue with the rest of our painting. Make sure that your layers are still wet. So in case you feel like things have dried out, just add in a layer of water again in that section, and then we can continue with our painting. Let's use burgundy for the mountain. Keeping clear water near the cadmium yellow because I don't want the two to mix. And then adding in cadmium. I'm being really careful. In the next step, I will go over it so that the edges are a little bit more sharp. But for now, I'm just painting it out, but making sure that I leave little bit of space between the yellow and the burgundy. Time to move downwards. We're gonna be using green for the other hilltop or hillside. And then we're going to go ahead and add in some color. Using crimson, painting the section up. Let's take more crimson, add in little dots. Remember, it's all going to become softer as it dries, so we're taking advantage of that. Now, I'm painting the crimson, leaving little gaps in between so I can add in a different color. I Washer brush use cadmium to paint in between some of the areas. So we have some yellow flowers. Also leaving space so that we can add in our stems of green and leaves of green. Very carefully, we're going to use our brush and paint verdant green in the sections in between. We can mix in a little bit of burgundy, so you end up with a muddy color that I think would match the painting a bit more than a bright green and gently placing it in the areas in between. I We're now going to dry the layer using our craft dryer, and you can see how the painting has become a little bit more softer. The blends have come together, and now we're going to go into the details. So I'm taking in green, and we're just going to do our mountain. I'm adding a little outline to it at the bottom. Let's add some thin lines in between the flower fields for our stems and grass. Now that we've added in our lines, we're going to go into just adding some more flowers. This time around, we're going to make our flowers more obvious. We're going to use crimson. The flowers that are far away that are far away from the bottom of the sheet are going to be smaller in size because they aren't as clear. And the ones that are going to be closer to us that is closer to the bottom of the sheet are going to be bigger in size. Next, we're going to use our gouache white and mix it in to get different shades of colour. Maybe we can mix a little bit of yellow with the gouache white. So it's going to give us a more opaque layer. Mix it well together, using your thin brush. I think a detailer brush is so useful for pretty much any project. You could use the same round brush, which is what I do for a lot of my paintings, but a detailer brush is great when you don't want to think about too much and can easily create smaller elements like even dots and small flowers, it's so easy to do. So I would highly recommend investing in a detailer brush if that's something you don't have. Watercolors, I think, is one of the mediums that you don't need too many supplies off. If you have your basic paper, paints and even one brush, you're good to go. And the paints last such a long time. I highly recommend even creating your own paint palettes. What I used to do is if I had tubes of paint, I would mix them to colors that I like. So taking a little bit of ceruleium and ardian, mixing it into a pan and adding a little bit water, so it all blends together, and then I have it ready for the next time I want to use that color. So that way, you don't have to keep blending every time or color mixing every time. So what I've done is I'm just protecting the sky and then I'm going to use my white mix with yellow. Just add in some splatters for some of the flowers that we can't really get into painting. Repeating the same thing for red or crimson. A a For the last step, we're going to basically mix in our verdian green with burgundy to get a dark color for our stems. And this is when we can finish off our floral section before we go ahead and add a little bit more detail for the mountain. You can see the mountain kind of has disappeared into the mist, so we're going to just fix that a little bit. And then we're kind of adding more detail. Okay, the flowers have turned out so great. We don't want to have perfect flowers. It's just the idea of a flower is enough to create that effect. Now, mixing in more of the green, our vintage forest green, we're going to go ahead and add in the hilltop, add in some mountains, add more detail and layers to our mountains. If you've gotten this far, I'm so proud of you. Honestly, this is amazing, and you should give yourself a pat on the back for being consistent, for keeping up whether you've done all the projects together or you've pasted them out. However, you have decided to go about this, give yourself a pat on the back. Remember that it is a commitment and you have done so well. And this is a commitment not to art. It's a commitment to yourself and to your peace. And I think that is so much more important. Nowadays, with so many things happening in the world, so many things happening in life, we need that little bit of peace for ourselves, that little moments that we take, and that we honestly, I think gift to ourselves. I take it as a gift that I'm gifting myself this moment to paint, to relax, to feel good. So, yeah, I've added in a little bit of color to our mountains. And once you're happy with the overall result, let's allow everything to dry, and then we're going to remove out our tape on all four sides to reveal our painting for today. You are doing so great. I'll see you in the next one.