7 Days of Watercolor Sunsets: Practice Blending and Color Mixing

1. Welcome to this Class: Love watching sunsets. They're a great reminder that you've made it through another day. But more often than not, I keep thinking to myself, how in the world am I going to paint that? So I started studying how to paint skies and soft clouds, how to blend your background smoothly, and figure out which colors to use to portray a particular scene, which led to this cloud diary consisting of multiple mini sky studies. Hi and welcome to this challenge class. I'm Bianca Lustre, an aspiring watercolor artist from Betangas Philippines. In this lesson, we'll paint different sunset scenes using a limited palette and review watercolor techniques to achieve the lute that we want. This class is perfect for you if you have enough watercolor experience that you know fundamental techniques like wet on wet, lifting and glazing, or if you just want to paint vibrant and atmospheric sunset scenes like these. As mentioned, we will be limiting our colors to five pigments. If you love that challenge, I have other classes where you'll get lots of opportunities to practice your mixing skills. Or check out these classes where we will paint skies and clouds. To help build up your confidence, we will start with warm up exercises and mini studies before doing a bigger painting. Once you finish this class, you'll have a deeper understanding what makes a harmonious painting, how to paint soft and effortless clouds and blend your background smoothly, which you can then apply to your future landscape projects. Stick with me till the end of this challenge, and you'll receive a free copy of my Cloud diary ebook. Find out how to get yours in the next video. 2. Class Project / A Gift for You: Our goal for this class is to create these mini studies, which will help us prepare for the bigger projects, these sunset scenes. Welcome to this seven day watercolor challenge class. Where we'll focus on painting smoothly blended skies with fluffy clouds using a limited palette of five pigments only. Days one and two, blending colors smoothly will be our focus. For day three and four, lifting paint will be emphasized. For days five and six, we'll practice wet on wet, and on day seven, we'll play with other colors and test different compositions. That means our color mixing skill will be put to test. So if you need a refresher on how to choose your primary colors, how to mix secondary and tertiary ones or create muted tones, you can watch my 30 day Watercolor challenge and check out Day seven, eight, and ten. Link into discussion stab. I did mention that you can get a free copy of my Cloud Ebook containing over 50 mini sky studies with the colors I used. And you can grab yours by sharing your class project and leaving an honest class review. And then shoot me an email with the subject Cloud EBOok. Well, not only for the freebies, but I highly encourage you to work on the warm up exercises and do the class project to complete the learning process. In fact, I recently joined an online floral workshop, and look at this, you'll see the improvement I made just by following the teacher's suggestions and feedback, which I wouldn't be able to get if I did not work on the project in the first place. This shows that watching and actually practicing what you just learned are two different things. So I look forward to what you'll create in this class. Download the class guide, which contains the materials and pigment list, reference photos, mini studies, and the bigger projects in different stages, and let's get started in the next video. 3. D1: Mini Studies 1: We'll be painting this sunset tomorrow, but before that, we need to warm up and practice the watercolor techniques we'll be using to give us confidence and help us ease into the bigger project. First, we'll need to practice blending two colors smoothly. For demonstration purposes, I will show you what not to do first and what I recommend you practice doing. Timing is important here. For example, we want to achieve a gradient from orange to yellow, and we started by painting yellow, the lighter color of the two directly on the paper, and then we rinse our brush and prepare orange next. It's all good when we do it fast. But when we take too much time to mix our colors so that the yellow paint has already started to dry, then this is what will happen. The orange pigment will disturb the yellow color, so it's not that smooth enough, like how skies usually look like. In worst cases, you can even have a cauliflower or the blooming effect. But let's say we prepared our colors in advance this time and then instead of directly painting on the paper, we will wet it first with clean water and then cover it with the two colors. Let's see how it will look like. Same as the first example, let's start with yellow and then immediately add orange from the top and let the two pigments met halfway. We also don't need to rinse or brush since orange contains yellow as well. Can you see the difference here between the blending of the two? The second one is obviously paler because we pre wet the paper with water, but no worries. We can always add another layer of the same color if this happens, but we'll have to wait for it to dry first, okay? Another thing that we have to practice is working with gradients, including yellow and blue. Let's prepare these two colors first. If you want, you can have a really bright yellow or try a pastel one by adding white and a really bright blue or tone it down by adding a bit of pink. Now let's wet the paper again with clean water since we've learned that it helps us achieve a smoother blending, and then let's start with the yellow. Paint the bottom half with this color, switch to blue, and then let's let them blend with each other. But if we do this, chances are we will accidentally mix green in between them. Could either be yellow green or blue green or just neutral green. Since blue plus yellow makes green, something that we'd like to avoid in our sunset paintings. Now, how do we prevent this from happening? We have two options. First is leaving a space between the two pigments so that they won't touch with each other and then blend together to create green. To do this, cover almost half of the wet area with blue and then rinse and load it with yellow, but intentionally leave a white gap between the two colors. You can use a damp brush to soften the feathery edges of the two colors, but be careful not to mix them. The other option is to add a light purple in between the two colors. Now, why will this work? Since purple has both blue and pink, even if it mixes with yellow, it won't produce green because in this case, all of the primary colors are present. Thus, it will most likely produce a neutral color. To do this, let's wet the paper once again with water, paint the bottom half with yellow, and then the upper half with blue. But instead of leaving a white gap, mix pink with blue to create purple. You can even make this lighter, but for you to better see this, I'm making a really noticeable purple. This way, there's no white space between, but we can also avoid accidentally mixing green by introducing purple. Next, we'll also practice lifting cloud shapes using a paper towel. This has been one of my go to techniques when I want to paint effortless white clouds. Let's start by painting a blue rectangle first and then grab a tissue paper. Again, for demonstration purposes, let me show you what to avoid. If you don't apply enough pressure and just slightly dab the paper towel on the wet area, the cloud shapes won't be that evident. Yes, they will be wispy, but the pigments will slowly go back to those white shapes, making our clouds almost unnoticeable. But if you do the opposite and apply too much pressure, then you will get these big fluffy clouds, which could be good, but it depends on the type of cloud that we're trying to portray. On the other hand, if you just apply enough pressure, not too light, not too hard, we can achieve wispy clouds like this, and this is the type of cloud that we'll need for our first bigger project. You will also need to crumple your paper towel into a smaller and manageable size to achieve this. Now just lay it flat on your wet surface or you lift up too much paint than intended, okay? Right. Now it's time to practice our color mixing and warm up with these techniques by creating our mini studies. First thing, let's prepare the paper with clean water and mix the colors that we'll need. Yes, you'll observe here that I didn't prepare my mixtures beforehand, but that's because I wet the paper enough to give me time to mix. But if you find it that you're starting to panic and mixing your colors, then better switch the process. Prepare your pigments first, then wet the paper, and then paint. Okay, let's mix yellow with a bit of pink to achieve yellow orange. Cover about half of this rectangle with that color and then make purple. That's just blue plus pink and let it blend with the yellow. We can add more blue to our mixture and then cover the whole area. Next, let's add more pink to the mixture and make the bottom part darker. We can also add some fluffy orange clouds by painting abstract shapes. This way, we are forcing the viewer to look at the center. We're creating a frame. Pretty straightforward, right? Then grab a paper towel, crumple it, and lift up some paint. This practice will give you an idea how much pressure you needed to create cloud shapes like this. For the next mini study, we'll use yellow and blue. But this time with only water or blank paper in between the two colors. Prepare the paper with clean water again. Make sure to remove those extra droplets. Paint the bottom thirds with yellow pigment, and then use blue and cover more than half of the shape. Intentionally leave a gap between the two colors. Since we're working on wet paper, you have to keep in mind that the pigments might spread farther than intended. Then grab a clean brush, blend the colors, and then wipe off the excess pigment on the paper towel. Can you see this? On our first mini studies, the cloud shapes are gone. It means I did not press hard enough, so let's retouch those shapes by lifting it again with the same technique. And do the same on the second study, lift up some cloud shapes with enough pressure. This looks really easy because I've been doing it multiple times, as I've shown you before when I was working on my cloud diary. For the third piece, let's play around with colors. Say, a purple sunset. It's a good warm up for our first project. Let's start with purple and cover two thirds of the shape, rinse our Brush and loaded with pink. We can make the upper part darker too. Then, for additional challenge, let's practice wet on wet. Load your brush with thicker purple mixture and use single strokes to paint abstract cloud shapes. This would really test your confidence in letting go and letting the pigments blend with each other. So let's keep practicing and playing around with our colors using these mini studies. Don't pressure yourself too much. These are just studies. For the clowns at the top, we can add a bit of yellow just a bit to our purple to make it darker. And here's our first set of mini studies. Hopefully, this helped prepare you for our first bigger sunset project. Sea. 4. D2: Sunset Painting 1: For our first bigger project, we'll work on this scene. This may look complicated, but don't worry. We'll discuss how to work on it step by step. Let's get started by drawing the horizon over here. We're showing more of the sky, so we're allocating more space to it. It also doesn't need to be straight, okay? This horizon line will be covered later. Then with a big brush, wet the background area with clean water. Make sure it's evenly wet and not too dry nor dripping wet. Now, we'll mix our colors while the paper is absorbing the water. I always start with the lightest color first so it doesn't get dirtied by the other pigment. Prepare a pure yellow mixture with this consistency. And then on another well, mix pink and yellow for a bright orange. We'll also need blue, but straight from the tube, this is too bright, so we can add a bit of pink to tone it down. You may test your colors on scrap paper, but from what you can see on my palette, these are the colors that you'll need. As always, let's start coloring in the background with the lightest color. Yellow. Draw an abstract shape in the middle by dragging your brush from left to right, and then load your brush with orange without necessarily rinsing it since orange has yellow in it, too, and cover the bottom part of the background. Now time for the blue. Start from the top this time and make sure to leave a black space between the blue and yellow because you know what will happen, right? Green. Then add more pink to your blue mixture that's already on the palette to make a light purple tone. Use this to cover and blend that white space between the two pigments. While this is wet, let's grab a paper towel and use that to lift cloud shapes. If you did the mini studies yesterday, you should find this technique quite familiar right now. If needed, you can repeatedly dab and lift pigment from the paper, but make sure to rotate the paper towel and use the cleaner side. Okay? As demonstrated earlier, you will need to apply enough pressure to lift up the paint. Not too hard or you'll lift up more paint than intended. Okay, I think this is enough for our white clouds. For the foreground, we can mix blue with yellow to achieve green. Again, this is too bright, so let's add its complimentary color which is pink to tone it down or create a more muted shade. Adjust as you see fit or until you achieve the tone that you want. Then test it on a small area. Once satisfied with the mixture, cover the ground area bit by bit. Or you can continue adding blue for a blue green shade or yellow for a yellow green shade. From time to time, let us adjust and add yellow or black to make this huge color block more interesting. Avoid using one shade of green only. As we reach the top where the horizon is, let's add more black to the mixture and paint those distant bushes. But make sure to check if the orange background has dried before painting in those dark bushes, okay? I mentioned earlier that we won't need a perfectly straight horizon line, since we'll be covering this with absurk shapes that depict bushes in the middle ground. Add more black to the green mixture and use that same color to create texture by dry brushing or applying a light pressure on your brush and dragging it lightly on the paper. Of course, if you're using a hot pressed watercolor paper, it might be more challenging to achieve this texture. Instead of dry brushing, you can use the scumbling technique. Once the background and foreground areas are covered, let's leave this to dry. Right, this has dried completely, and we can see that the area where the sun is supposed to be looks really pale. It's okay. Let's add another layer of yellow and orange wash. Since we worked on the foreground earlier, my yellow paint here has become dirty. So if this happens to you to be careful not to pick up the dirty paint to avoid muddy skies. Wet the area once again with water, apply light pressure so as not to disturb the layers beneath. You can also see here that even though I'm only covering a small part of the sky, I am wetting farther than intended in case the pigments will spread farther than expected. Then let's drop our colors. Concentrate the yellow paint where the sun will be. Then prepare a thicker orange mixture and surround the yellow part with that color. Now, it's looking more vibrant, isn't it? Make sure though to do this lightly. And if in case this feathering of the pigments is bothering you, you can pick up a goats hair brush like this and soften it. If you don't have this brush, any clean wet brush can also do the trick. Now time for some texture on the foreground. I am pushing my brush on the palette and forcing it to open up its bristle. So by doing this, we can paint grass blades nearest to us and add texture on the farther ones. A hint of grass shape will give us a textured background and will complement the softly blended sky. But don't overdo this, as fun as it looks, we can easily overdo it. Also, our brain will automatically complete the scene. We see a group of gra shapes, and we can assume that the rest of this area is also covered with grass. Drag the brush on its side, and you'll then achieve a dry brush effect for an effortless texture. Leave this to dry and then prepare your white watercolor paint. I'm using guh, by the way, for the next step. With a smaller brush and more black on our green mixture, let's paint coconut trees or palm trees. I'd like to start with some guidelines as straight line for the trunk and a star like shape like this as my guide for the leaves, and then I'll add more details. We're only focusing on painting their silhouettes, so enjoy this part. And do it slowly if needed. It would also help if you've seen a coconut tree in life. That way, you'll have an idea of its overall structure. But I want you to own this painting. So if a coconut tree does not interest you, then be free to replace this with another type of tree and focus on painting its silhouette only. Add more trees, but this time, vary the height for visual interest. You can also do the same on the other side. Use the side of the brush and apply light pressure for some bushes. Abstract shapes will do. Again, this is just an impression of the bushes, and we're only working on their silhouettes, so no need to be too careful and think of painting each leaf. Then add some lampposts for a nice balance of nature and man made structures. Now it's time for the white gh to paint the sun. Let's use it over the yellow part of the sky. I'm using the paint directly from the tube, so it's more concentrated and opaque. If you don't have gouache, don't worry, can just use any white watercolor pigment that you have. A few more touches and we're almost done. Don't forget the birds. I find it that when I add a living thing on my landscape painting, it just gets livelier. Don't you think? Just like the trees vary the angle of the birds and how their wings fold and spread to make it look more complicated. And for an atmospheric effect, if you decide to paint the bird on the blue part of the sky, use darker blue. Or if it's located on the light purple part, use a darker purple or blue purple and so on. Then let's add some abstract, darker shapes on the foreground to break up this big shape, and we can call it a day. You're doing great. How do you feel about your painting so far? Did the mini studies earlier help? Hope you're having fun with your first bigger project. See you tomorrow for another set of mini sunset studies. H 5. D3: Mini Studies 2: We'll be doing this unusual sunset scene next where the dominant colors are yellow and gray. And to prepare for this, we have to practice lifting paint to portray the sun rays. I will be using these brushes, one for painting and the other for lifting. Let's mix pastel yellow. Just add a bit of white to your yellow, and that's it. One option to paint rays is to combine the wet on wet and lifting techniques. Prepare the background area with clean water first, drop the colors, and then press the brush hard on the paper, then wipe off the excess pigment on the paper towel. As this dries, the pigments will try to spread on the white area, so we will need to keep an eye on it and repeatedly lift the paint as needed. Another option is using the negative painting technique. Paint the sky while leaving the ray shapes white and then soften the edges using another clean damp brush. But I'm not used to this approach, so you won't see me using this option in our mini studies later. There's also a high chance that the paint will dry before we could even soften the edges. So it's up to you which option you'd like to practice later, okay? Another warm up exercise I suggest you do is painting the silhouette of this African Tisa tree or the Madagascar almond. It has a sort of inverted pine tree shape. Its branches are pointing upwards and there are spaces in between them. Using the same dark green color we used with the tiza trees, grab a smaller brush and with light pressure, paint abstract shapes to depict bushes in the middle ground or background. One last thing, we'll also have to practice mixing gray. If you watched my color wheels class, a quick review in color mixing, you'll know that mixing all primaries will give us a neutral color. Say we have this yellow. If we mix in pink, we'll achieve orange, right. Then add blue, and all of the primary colors are there. You'll get this neutral color brown. But if you add more blue, then you will get a blue biased neutral color. Mix in a bit of pink. So this time we'll have more pink and blue in the mixture, and you'll get this neutral purple color. You can see here that I keep on adjusting my color, and it looks really easy and fast as I do it because I've been studying color mixing for a long time. So if you're taking more time in mixing your grays, that's totally fine. You can even mix white to make a creamy version of that gray. Now let's get some action and get started with our mini studies. The mini studies for today would be more challenging, but you can do this. We'll use the lifting method to depict sun rays. Have your paper towel ready for this technique. Wet the paper evenly with clean water, load your brush with yellow to paint half of the shape, and then fill the rest of the background with orange. Et's say that the sun is over here. So obviously, the rays will go this way. With a clean brush, lift up some paint. Apply enough pressure until we see the white of the paper. Let's keep an eye on this and repeatedly lift the pigment as the paper is drying. This is looking pale right now, but we'll need it to dry completely first before adding another layer. Next up, we'll practice mixing gray. Mix all our primary colors, pink, yellow, and blue, and add a bit of white for a pastel color. For the first layer, it's a purplish gray. That's okay. Just make sure not to mix muddy grays that looks brown, okay? Wet the paper with clean water and cover the whole area with this color. Now that this first study is starting to dry, we can see that the pigments are once again covering the rays. So with a damp brush, not soaking wet, lift the paint. Make it a habit to check that your brush is not wetter than the paper, or it will cause cauliflower or blooms effect. Next, let's add more blue to our pastel gray mixture and paint rainy clouds. Vary the color from time to time for visual interest. We can even go darker by adding black to the mixture and paint these clouds but go lighter with the pressure, okay? As long as the paper is still wet, we can add more layers to it. This time, let's add white for a lighter gray. Remember, the goal here is practice mixing grays, not browns. It's okay if it isn't a perfect neutral gray. As long as it's leaning towards blue or purple, that's totally fine. With a clean damp brush, we can also lift some paint for lighter clouds. But I think this is still pale for a rainy scene. So I'll add darker colors by adding more black. Again, I'm only able to do this because my paper is still wet. If the paper is half wet, then we have to wait for it to completely dry before glazing another layer. On the third study, we'll practice lifting again, but let's use different colors. This time, wet half of the paper only and cover that area with orange, yellow and pink mixed together. We can also vary that color by adding more pink as we go up or vice versa. Rinse the brush and lift up some paint to depict the rays. Let's try the opposite direction this time. Press hard enough to lift the paint. Wipe off the excess paint on your paper towel and do it repeatedly and patiently as needed. Be careful not to touch or go over the second mini study, okay? Orange is more vibrant than yellow, so I had to go over this more than I did on the first study. For the next step, we'll need this to completely dry. So while waiting, let's retouch the first study. Prepare this area again with clean water and cover half with orange. Make the upper part darker for visual interest and vary the mixture by adding more pink on some parts or more yellow on the other. Then retouch and glaze over the yellow parts while avoiding the rays. This time, it's negative painting plus wet on wet. What a challenge. Again, these are just studies, so no need to get too serious. Have fun while practicing the watercolor techniques we'll need for the bigger projects. For the third study, let's leave this to dry before adding another layer. Okay, my paper has dried now. Wet the whole area again with clean water and retouch the orange parts while avoiding the ray shapes. For this to work, the paper shouldn't be soaking wet and your brush should have more paint and less water. Or else the paint will just spread farther and you cannot control the shapes. For the top part, let's make it a pastel pink color. Just add white to your pink and add a bit of yellow if you find that too dull. Cover the white space with this color and for the next step, please observe carefully. I am directly dabbing my brush on my full pan of paint and using that to paint darker clouds. This way, we get a thicker mixture. This works perfectly well for these fluffy clouds. It is also important to take note that I did not rinse my brush in between because if I did, I will only load it with more water. I'm smiling to myself and loving this guy's studies. I hope the same goes for you. See you tomorrow for our next bigger project. 6. D4: Sunset Painting 2: For today's project, let's work on this yellow and gray sunset. Some rain clouds are covering the sun as it is setting and casting this lovely rays. As always, let's start by drawing the horizon and giving more space to the sky by drawing it below the center. Then proceed by wetting the paper with clean water. Only the bottom half of the sky area this time or the middle part of the whole paper. Mix a pastel yellow by combining yellow with a bit of white pigment and make sure you have another clean brush ready to lift up some pigments for the rays. Cover almost half of the background with that pastel yellow, and then let's grab that clean brush and a paper towel. With enough pressure, lift some paint by pressing your brush going from top to bottom. Then white it off with a paper towel or rack. We might need to keep doing this more than two to three times. Since the paper is still wet, naturally, the pastel yellow pigments will go back to that white area. So we have to keep an eye on this. And when we're lifting up some paint, it's okay if some of the yellow pigments goes to the foreground area because the foreground area is darker, so that's totally fine. Now, while this is drying, let's mix blue with our pastel yellow and keep adjusting until we achieve a darker and muted green shade. One common mistake that I always do when I was painting sunsets before is using really bright yellow greens for the foreground or grassy area as if it was summer. I forget to consider that the grassy area or the foreground area should be receiving less light since the sun is already setting. So let's avoid that mistake by mixing a darker and muted green. Once we achieve this color, carefully paint the foreground with various green shades. Let us keep in mind that the sky area is still wet. So this is actually a challenge to ourselves that we must leave a thin gap between the green foreground and the yellow background. Or else the green pigment will spread upwards the sky. For a variation, add black and change the green mixture so it doesn't look too flat. Spread the darker green mixture on the other parts of the foreground and add some grassy texture or shape by using the tip of the brush. This foreground area is a large shape, so we have to vary what's inside or it will be too monotonous and thus boring. Additional abstract shapes will help in increasing the visual interest of this part. Next, while the yellow sky is still drying, let's take this time to mix our grays. As demonstrated in the previous videos, getting the right shade of gray can be challenging. But fine. We wouldn't want a brownish, muddy gray. What we're trying to achieve here is a cool gray, which could lean towards either purple or blue. Next, since it's hot and sunny, the time I recorded this tutorial, the yellow part has already started to dry. But if it isn't the case on your end, please wait for it to dry before doing the next step. Patience is a must. We the remaining blank background area and up to half of the yellow sky. And then we can start painting it with various shades of gray. As you can see, I am varying the shade ever so often. I started with a pale, pastel purple and then added more blue. Remember that you can only work on this while the paper is still wet. If the paper is half dry, half wet, then you'll have to stop, let it dry completely. And then just like what we did with the first bigger project, you can rewet the area with clean water and proceed by adding more layers of gray. We can paint abstract shapes to mimic the clouds while still glancing over our reference photo from time to time to help us make decisions on where to place those dark parts. Like here. Like here, the gray pigment spreads farther than intended, so I'm lifting up some paint using a clean wet brush. And of course, my favorite brush and blending can also help. I really love this cheap brandless calligraphy brush. My paper is still wet at this point, and I think, and I think we can add darker paint to depict some rain clouds. But take note that as I add more layers on this still wet paper, I'm also making my strokes lighter, and I'm careful not to lift up the layers underneath. Now we can leave the sky alone and work on a distant mountain. Using the same gray mixture that we already have on our palette that we used for the dark clouds, just add more blue and paint a mountain shape. Remember, we only wet half of the yellow sky earlier. This gives us an opportunity to work on this dry part by painting a mountain. Now, for an atmospheric effect, we can also make the top of the mountain darker by painting it with a thicker and darker pigment. We can also leave the middle part light since the sun rays are hitting that place. But for the right and left sides, we can darken both. Now we'll need a smaller brush, and we'll use the same technique we used earlier to paint grasses. You also have to consider that this brush I'm using is not that precious, so I can sort of abuse this brush and really press it against my palette to open up the bristles more. You can use a fan brush if you have one. I don't have one, so I keep on doing this technique. We won't have to cover the whole area with grass shape. Once again, our brains will perceive that this part is grassy if we say some grassy texture or some blades that we painted earlier. Now we don't have any other dry areas we can work on, so let's leave this to dry completely and add some final touch. With darker green, let's paint African D Lisi trees or what others refer to as the Madagascar almond. The structure of this tree is like an inverted pine tree with its branches pointing towards the sky. I love the shape of this tree and even love the variegated version the more. Like what we did with the coconut trees in the other project, let us vary the height to create vitual interest. If you want, you can even replace this with evergreen trees or any tree to your liking. Take your time in adding details and enjoy the process. Next, add black to the mixture and paint some abstract shapes for the distant bushes and trees. These tiny details will complement the large sky area that we have. Some more dry and brushing, and this is done. How do you feel about this second bigger project so far? Have you achieved to depict the rays, or did you manage to paint the shade of the gray that you want? Either the case, I'd love to see what you produced in this class. So don't forget to share your projects, okay? I'll see you tomorrow for another set of mini studies. Oh 7. D5: Mini Studies 3: Now it's time to warm up for our last bigger project, which is a beach sunset. We already learned how to achieve a smooth transition from one color to another in the previous demonstrations. Now let's focus on how to paint these fluffy clouds. The same technique will be used both for the clouds and the waves. Start with mixing yellow and pink for a vibrant orange. For demonstration purposes, I'll show you what to avoid first. Begin by painting an orange background. This is still wet. If you want to paint darker clouds but use the same watery consistency of paint, only darker in shade, what will happen is the cloud shape won't be sustained. The pigments will just spread out since the paper is so wet. So, what do we do? Let's paint another orange background. But this time, I'll use a separate palette with an almost dry yellow pigment. You don't necessarily need to copy me, okay? This is where we'll mix a thicker consistency of orange color. Unlike the first one, there's less water here and the mixture is not that runny. It should have this consistency for it to work. What I'm doing is I'm directly loading my brush with paint without rinsing it in between. Now, if we use this paint consistency, the cloud shapes won't spread too far compared to the first one. We can also make the clouds go darker by adding just a tiny bit of blue. Again, just a tiny bit, or this will turn into a brown if we add too much. Comparing the two, the clouds are clearer on the second one. The same goes for the waves. Let's use this leftover mixture, a muted blue green for the background, and again, for demonstration purposes, I'll drop waves using a watery consistency, but has a darker blue shade. To achieve this color, just mix blue with a bit of pink and yellow. For the first demonstration, I'll paint the background first, adjust the color by making it darker and immediately paint the waves using a watery consistency. For the second one, which is what we want to achieve, let's paint the background with our sea color. Let the paper absorb the water for a while, and then makes a darker and thicker blue color. Make sure that there's less water. This is blue plus black and a bit of pink. Now, if you use that to depict waves, the thicker paint won't spread too far, creating soft but still distinguishable shapes. For the glare or reflection of the sunlight on the sea, you can also practice the dry brush technique. I find that using a smaller brush and just dragging it lightly on the paper surface will effortlessly create this broken effect. But if you use a bigger brush like a mop brush, the shape will be bigger and chances are it's loaded with more paint and water, so it's trickier to achieve the desired effect. Finally, I suggest you practice moving not only your wrist when painting a huge shape like the C shape, but engaging your whole arm to move the brush so you won't need to cut off the shape. It also allows us to practice our brush control. Okay, enough of the demo and let's dive into action. Time for our mini studies again, which, in fact, can be turned into bookmarks later. You call. On the first one, we'll practice the clouds. On the third shape, we'll practice the sea, and on the middle one, let's play with our colors. As always, prepare the area we'll be painting with clean water. Then while the paper is absorbing the water, let's mix yellow orange. Paint half of the shape with that color and then add more pink to the mixture and fill in the rest of the shape. So vibrant, isn't it? For the next step, grab your paper towel. Dry off the belly of the brush to remove excess water and then mix a thicker and darker version of the first color, making sure that there's more pigment than water this time. With fewer strokes as possible, paint abstract shaped clouds. For the thicker and bigger clouds, use more pressure so that more part of the brush is in contact with the paper. On the other hand, for the thinner clouds, use only the tip of the brush and then let go. I really mint. Let go and let the paints blend with each other to achieve this fluffy look. It's so easy to get excited and overwork this cloud, so practice letting go early on. Okay. Now for the C, mix a dark blue green color. As long as your color isn't too vibrant and it leans towards blue green, that's good enough. Don't forget to prepare the paper with clean water. Cover two thirds of the shape with blue green, as we reach the bottom part, let's make it darker by adding blue and black. We'll do the same technique as we did with the clouds. Let the paper towel absorb the excess water from your brush and then mix a thicker and darker blue green. Combine it with a bit of orange to tone it down. Now we'll reverse the shapes. The waves should be larger when it's near us and thinner when it's farther. So for the big waves at the bottom, use the side of the brush, and then for the smaller waves at the top, use the tip of the brush. Once again, let go and don't fiddle with this too much. Now, time to play with our colors for our last study. I'd like a purple sky once again, a color closer to wine, meaning there's more pink than blue in our mixture. Don't forget to prepare the paper with clean water. Let's cover two thirds of the shape with that color and then mix pink and white for the bottom part. Next step, you know it. Let the paper towel absorb the excess water from the belly of the brush and then makes a thicker and darker purple color. But instead of using single stroke for clouds, let's try to give them their distinct fluffy shape. As we move to the top, we'll make the clouds smaller to depict distance. I'm also making the bottom part more pinkish and the top part darker to show that the bottom part of the clouds are receiving more light from the sun. Oh, I love these colors. And I hope these mini studies help you prepare for our third bigger project. Sea. 8. D6: Sunset Painting 3: Right. Let's work on a sunset scene by the beach. This time, we'll need a straight horizon. So let's use a masking tape to make sure it's really straight. Let's prepare our colors. Orange first. Combine yellow and pink. Make sure that you're grabbing the clean yellow from your pan, or you'll get a muddy orange mixture, okay? For the upper part of the sky, we'll also need a tone down version of blue. So let's mix white, blue, and a bit of pink. Once the colors are prepared, let's wet the paper evenly with clean water. Not dripping wet just enough so that the pigments will blend smoothly. You know the drill. Load your brush with orange and cover half or more than half of the sky area. As we move upwards, we can also mix in yellow for variation. By doing this, we're also preventing a big shape like this area from looking too flat. If you'll really observe the sky or a sunset, you'll see variations of a color, not just one shade of orange or one shade of yellow, right? Then mix a bit of pink to our blue puddle here and let's use that to paint in between the yellow orange and tone down blue color just to make sure that we're not accidentally mixing greens for this sunset painting. Next, let's load the brush with thicker paint and mix this dark orange. That's yellow, pink, and a teeny tiny bit of blue. You have to be extra careful when you're using blues like Prussian blue or halo blue because they are really strong, powerful, and staining blue. So just a teeny, tiny bit of blue will do. As practiced, we'll paint these clouds and let them blend with the background for its fluffy look. Again, we have to make sure that this mixture is thicker than the background. More paint, less water. Aim to paint abstract shapes, not too perfect cloud shapes, okay? And don't scrub your paper too much. We might accidentally lift the first layer here. This project will really teach us to let go and let watercolors do its magic. A flat brush also helps in painting thin shapes, or if we want wider cloud shapes like this, we can push harder or change the angle, how we're holding the brush. As we reach the top of the paper, the clouds are getting less light, so it makes sense if they are darker and darker orange means there's more blue, but not too much, okay? Now for the lower part or for the sea, we can just mix the cloud colors that we already have on our palette. Basically, we're making the sea darker than the sky. It will help make our painting look more credible. And if you think about it, the only light source here is the sun, which is already setting, so it won't make sense if we paint the sea with a bright blue color. Just like how we did the foreground in our second project or bigger project, instead of using vivid summer greens, we used muted and dark greens. Once our colors are ready, let's remove the masking tape carefully. Since the sky is still wet and we'll paint some mountains on the middle ground, we can still continue painting by leaving a tiny space between the sky and the sea. Remember what we practiced earlier, move your whole arm to paint continuously and steadily, and then fill in the rest of the shape. But as we reach the bottom, let's add more blue and black to make it darker. Like what we did with the mini studies, the waves near us should be bigger and the farther ones should be thinner or smaller. Try to achieve these shapes in one or two strokes and then let go. That's the purpose of doing the mini studies. They help you warm up and practice your brush stroke. Okay, now let's leave this to dry and then continue. For the next step, let's grab our white gouache again, our white watercolor paint, whichever is available to you, and then switch to a smaller brush and use the paint directly from the tube. Paint a broken circle to depict the sun. We can design it in a way that some clouds are covering the sun. I'm also using my paper towel as an eraser here in case I make some mistakes. Oh, and did you see that? The sun suddenly shines so bright. It seems like it's approving my painting of a sunset. I find it really fun when these things happen during recording. Okay, how does this look? Now, let's mix white with our orange puddle that's already on the palette. And since this paint is thicker, we can easily achieve dry brush marks or dry brushing to paint some glare or reflection of the sunlight on the sea. Not too much, just enough to create that effect. And we should only paint the parts near the sun, and we have to make sure that it aligns with the sun, not to the left or not to the right of the sun, okay? Or it will look a bit weird. Next, let's add black to our blue mixture and paint some distant mountains. I hope by this time you're appreciating how harmonious our paintings look when we use a limited palette. Paint the mountains wet on dry and be careful to retain that straight line. Well, not too straight. Some imperfections are totally acceptable, okay? I also dragged my clean brush underneath the mountain shape to soften that edge because I painted outside the lines, but that's totally fine. We can also retouch the waves and define them more if we need to, like what I'm doing here, and use the same sea color. One to two strokes will do. I think this part here is too big, the shape is too big, so I'm painting an abstract shape here that looks like an island at the right side. Once this is done, it's time to paint a boat. A silhouette will do. So don't stress too much over the shapes, okay. I'm carefully doing it to get the shapes correct, but I'm also not spending too much time here as well. Some organic shapes will help balance the smooth background. So let's paint distant trees and use the tip of the brush and scumble abstract shapes for the foliage, and that will do. Of course, the birds. In painting the birds, I love to use the same color of the sky, only darker. So if we are adding a bird on the orange part of the sky, let's use a darker orange. And if it's on the blue part, use a darker blue. We don't necessarily need to use black or it will stand out too much. Here's our third bigger project. How do you feel about it? I'll see you tomorrow for our last set of mini studies. 9. D7: Mini Studies 4: Time for our last set of mini studies. This time, we'll try different color combinations and compositions. You'll also see variations of this on my Cloud diary, which you should get a copy if you upload a project and leave an honest class review. Okay, wet that first rectangle and prepare a pastel pink color. That's pink plus white. But if you find this a bit dull, just add a bit of yellow to add some vibrancy. Then paint these shapes as you see on your screen. We're covering the bottom third with this color, but we'll also spread it on other parts. And then let's mix dark blue, purple. More blue than pink on the mixture. Using this color, let's fill in the blanks. This is once again negative painting plus wet on wet. Do not blend too much, or the blue will try to cover the pink shapes, okay? And then let's grab our paper towel, let it absorb the excess water by tapping the belly of the brush, and then mix a thicker and darker blue purple. Now, paint abstract cloud shapes. Make the upper parts of those pink clouds darker, too. The less brush stroke, the better. We will have to let go and let them be and let the colors blend with each other on the still wet paper. For the second one, prepare a pastel yellow, yellow plus white. And if you want, you can also add a tiny bit of pink. Prepare the paper once again by wetting it with clean water, and then paint almost half of that shape with pastel yellow. Next, let's mix gray. You should know how to do this, right? A combination of the three primaries. Let's use that and paint the middle part of the paper, blend it with yellow, and then mix a pastel blue color. Fill in the gaps with this color and even paint in between the gray shape, but not over the yellow part, to avoid greens. Next, remove excess water again from the brush and mix a muted grayish purple color. Mix a bit of yellow to that purple tone it down, and then use that to paint azure clouds that go over the yellow part of the sky and retouch some parts of the gray. And once again, it's time to let go and let this dry. For the last one, let's make a reverse sunset where the yellow is at the top and then it becomes darker as we move towards the bottom part. This time, we'll create a gradient from yellow to orange to pink to a purplish gray. With each step, we're going darker, so there's really no need to rinse or brush in between. That also makes our process faster, which prevents the paper from drying before we're able to drop in our colors. We have to be fast enough, okay? And that's the purpose of the mini studies and demonstrations earlier to build our confidence and be familiar with the process and the techniques that we'll be using. So good job if you did all of the mini studies and the practices I suggested earlier. Once the background is covered, make a thicker purplish gray and paint single stroke clouds. But as we reach the top, we have to match the colors also. Instead of gray clouds, let's mix darker orange to add some more clouds at the upper part. Retouch the bottom part if yours is also looking pale like this, And finally, lift up some cloud shapes using our paper towel. And as always, don't dwell on these studies for too long. These are supposedly quick and meni studies to practice different watercolor techniques useful in painting skies. And here, ladies and gentlemen, is our last set of Mini studies. Before we go, let's find out what to do from here to continue improving our skills. I'll see you in the next video. 10. Claim Your Gift: Wow, great job for sticking to the end of this class. Now it's time to complete the learning process by sharing your project and receiving feedback. Watching and actually doing the exercises and projects are two different things. So I will be looking forward to what you created in this class. We made mini studies, tested our colors, and reviewed essential watercolor techniques to create dramatic sunsets. And then we learned that it's better to let go and let the pigments blend with each other to achieve soft and fluffy clouds. To further improve your mixing skills, check out these classes where you'll have lots of opportunities to get to know your pigments. Or this ones where we'll be painting skies and sunsets. Now it's my turn to learn from you through a class review. What do you think of this class? Which part do you like the most and what do you think can be improved? This way, we can help other students decide if this class is for them or not. Oh, and don't forget to get your free copy of my Cloud diary eBook. I'll see in my other classes, and together, let's make this world a little bit more colorful with our artwork.