8 Quick and Easy Winter Sunset Paintings for Beginners: 15-20 minute Watercolour Paintings

1. Welcome to my Class: Winter is one of the magical seasons of the year. It is the time for comfort. To sit back in our cozy corner, sipping a cup of hot cocoa or chocolate, and enjoying their favorite pastime. Have you ever tried watching the sunset or a sunrise on a cold winter day? It is almost impossible to watch a sunset and not dream. What if we could combine a cozy cold winter with a beautiful sunset view? Hello everyone, I'm Geethu, an artist, an engineer, and an art educator. Welcome to yet another beautiful class where we're going to explore our creativity with watercolors, and walk away with some magical paintings to cherish forever. Today, we're going to explore the beauty of winter sunsets, the colors dancing on the snow as the sun sets, and the sky speaks to us in 1,000 words. As usual, we'll go through each of the art supplies that we need for this class in detail, and start with painting our gorgeous sunset scenes. Each of the class projects are in real time, which will make it easy for you to follow, even if you are a beginner. If you are a beginner looking to learn watercolors, then each of the projects in this class is going to help you learn a lot about this beautiful medium, and give you the perfect control over small paintings. If you are an intermediate artist, then the cute little paintings in this class, is going to bring a huge smile on your face as you remove the tape to reveal your masterpiece. The first six projects of this class will take you less than 15 minutes, and the last two less than 20 minutes. Are you ready to step out into the snow and watch the gorgeous sunset with me? Grab your rod supplies, and settle down in your cozy art corner, and paint these magical scenes with me. 2. Art Supplies: Let us have a look at all the art materials that we will need for this class. First of all, most importantly, we need watercolor paper. I will be using people from this Arches block. This is a French brand arches, which is cold pressed, 140 lb and 100 percent cotton paper, so 140 lb means it's 300 gsm. That means the paper is really thick. You can see the thickness of the paper here. This is one of the best paper for watercolor paintings. I will be using this one over here and I will be taking heat out of this paper and cutting them out into small A6 sizes for all the paintings in this class. Try to use any paper which is of our discrete quality and has a minimum of 300 gsm or 140 lb. It will be really helpful for you to get all the techniques right. I will be cutting the paper into A6 sizes like this. From two sheets of Arches paper, I have cut out eight sheets and this is what we're going to be using for the whole of this class. You don't have to be painting these paintings in the exact same size of paper that I'm using. You can use A5, A4, or whatever size of paper that you have. You don't need exactly the same size. You can also go for sketchbooks instead. If you have an A5 watercolor sketch book like this one, you can also go ahead and paint on your sketchbook. This one is the sketchbook from HR. It's their perfect sketch book. This is also 300 gsm, 100 percent cotton paper. I always prefer to do my watercolor paintings on 100 percent cotton paper, which is of artist grade and 300 gsm. But like I said, if you have any good quality watercolor paper, then you can go with the same. You don't necessarily need to use the exact same material or the same brand that I'm using here. The next thing that we need is watercolor brushes, of course. I will be using a flat brush to apply water onto my paintings, as well as to do some background skies. But you don't exactly need a flat brush. You can also use a pointed brush like these ones. Very large brush that you have will suffice for this background work and also for applying the water. Then you need a smaller size brush, typically a size 2 or a size 4 one, or you can go for a size 1 for the extreme detailing. These are the only main brushes that you will ever need. My smallest size brush here is a size 4 one. The next most important thing that you need is watercolor paints, of course. Here, I'm going to be using the paints from White Nights. This is a Russian brand which is officially known as Nevskaya palitra and brand of paints is known as White Nights. I have the tubes and the pans as well. These are full pans and I will be using paints from this brand. But you don't need exactly the same brand that I'm using. You can go with even a basic palette of watercolors, such as this one from Sennelier. It is their aqua mini set. You can see, there are just very basic shades available. You can also go ahead with any watercolor palette that you have. Because all of the paintings that we're going to be doing today, the colors are not important, but rather the techniques is what is most important. The next thing that we need is watercolor palette to mix our paints. I'm using this ceramic bowl here. It's got three wells and I will also use this other ceramic bowl for mixing my paints. You can use any watercolor palette that you have and any space that you've got for mixing your paints. Even if it's plastics, ceramic, or metallic, it doesn't really matter. I will also be using this plastic palette, which already has some shades of White Nights filled in. You can go ahead with whatever watercolor mixing palette that you have. Anything will do, so don't worry about it. Then we will need two jars of water. Use any jar and fill them up with water because one would be to take freshwater to apply the water onto our painting or paper for the wet-on-wet technique. The other is to wash off your paints in the water. Imagine trying to apply the water onto your paper and you pick up this muddy water and you're applying, it will have an underlying color. This is the reason why we use two jars. One will always be kept clean and the other will have the dirty water in which you can keep washing your brushes. We will also need some paper towels, which will be helpful in removing the excess water from your brushes. You can dab on the tissues and remove any excess water. You don't necessarily need the tissue itself. You can also use a cotton cloth instead. Next, we need a pencil and eraser to make our sketches before we start the painting, so I'll be using a mechanical pencil like this one. If you're going to be cutting out the paper from larger sheet of paper like I'm doing, then you would need a scale as well as a paper cutter like this to cut off the sheets, or you can go with scissors as well. I'll be showing you the entire process of cutting the paper so you can follow along. Then I will be using this wooden board for taping down my paper. You can either use a wooden surface or any kind of board that you have. You can also go for the tabletop actually. You don't necessarily need a board. You can stick your paper onto your table or your surface. We just need a flat surface where you can tape down your paper. Maybe you can also use a hardcovered book like this one or a magazine or any kind of flat surface that you can get hold of. It should just be really hard such that it doesn't rip off what's underneath. Lastly, we need masking tape. We're going to be using this tape to tape down our paper on all the four edges. This is just a normal masking tape that I got off Amazon. You get these in normal hardware stores as well, or you can use washy tapes. This is a washy tape that I use in my paintings as well. Or you can actually go for the normal cellotape as well. You don't necessarily need the masking tape. Here is the cellotape. You can use this one as well. It doesn't really matter. It's just that masking tape is quite easy when you apply the paint because the cellotape has a glossy surface which could prevent the easy flow of the paint. These are all the materials that we need. Go with whatever materials that you have. I have suggested all the alternatives that you can use for continuing on with this class. Let's get started and I will show you how we can cut the paper first 3. Prepping the Paper: Let us now see how we can prep the paper for the painting. Here is my Arches block and I'm going to take a sheet out of it. These are 9 by 12 inches and I'm going to be cutting them down. For cutting them, obviously, we need to take the measurements. My paper is 9 by 12 inches but your paper might be different and if you prefer to cut it down like I'm doing, make sure that you take a scale and take the measurements of the whole paper and then divide it by two. Here here is going to be along the length-wise edge, 6 inches by 6 inches. I'm just going to mark the center of it and draw a line. Here I've marked the center and I'm going to be using my paper cutter to cut the sheet in half. I'm being very careful here. I'm holding down the scale with my left hand and then cutting along the edge and after creating a groove, it's quite easy to cut down along the groove that we have created. This is the process that I always do. I always actually use the roles of Arches paper and I cut my paper out of them usually. Here I wanted to show you how exactly you can cut your paper down into smaller sizes. You don't necessarily need the paper cutter itself, you can go ahead and use a scissors instead. Now I have two sheets, so they're 6 by 9 inches wide. I'm going to be cutting this again in two half-size. I've marked the center again and I'm going to be cutting the center again. You can see I've cut it again into half, creating small portions. Please note here, be very careful when using a paper cutter. You don't need cut with the paper cutter, of course. Here I have the two sheets cut out and I'm going to be cutting this other one as well. You can see how out of a 9 by 12-inch sheet of Arches, I have got four sheets actually. I'll be cutting the other one as well and we'll get four sheets. This is an efficient way to use paper because Arches is quite expensive as well. I've only used two sheets here, and I have got eight sheets in total. Isn't that really great? This is what we will be using for all our paintings. Now, I will show you how we can take down our paper onto the surface or the bold that we are using. Because we have to be extremely careful when we are taping down our paper. We need to make sure that all the edges are intact. Place your paper on the board. I'm just placing it in the corner here. You can actually place them in the center if you want. Then take the masking tape and stick it onto your paper. You can see I've left a very slight border on my paper. You can have a large border or a small border. It doesn't really matter, totally depends on how you want your painting to be. I prefer small borders and especially because this is such a small painting. That is why I'm going with a very small border. Cut out your tape as much as you need it for the paper and then stick it very nicely and firmly. After sticking the paper, we're not done yet. We actually need to make sure that all the edges are intact. I use my scale to run along the edges and make sure that it is really intact on my board because I don't want my paper or the paint to flow into the edges and to get a clean nice border, this is what you would do. For all of the paintings in this class, I'm going to be sticking my paper like this and using these ones. Without any further ado, let's jump into each of the class projects. 4. Project 1 - The Lone Tree: Welcome to the first winter sunset project. The colors we need for this project are Indian yellow, orange, crimson, ultramarine blue, burnt umber, and Payne's gray. Don't worry that you need exactly these shades. You can use alternative shades as well. For example, for Indian yellow, you can use any other yellow such as permanent yellow or Indian. For crimson, you can use any other red or rose shade that you have. The colors that I have listed here it's not really important just go with whatever shades that you have. Starting with our pencil sketch, which is going to be really simple. Let us first draw a line in the center. This is going to be the line of horizon. We will just be outlining the basic shapes in our painting. After the horizon line, let's just mark the shape of a tree towards the left side. It's going to have a main branch and then maybe few small branches. Just randomly with your pencil, try and mark few branches for the tree. It is going to be a really simple painting. After adding the tree, let's just add few lines on to the bottom part where it's going to be the detailing on the snow. You can totally skip this and we can add it with the brush later as well. This is not necessary. There, our pencil sketch is complete. We're going to need a flat brush or a large brush, which would be quite useful to apply the water onto our paper. Since we're going to work with a wet-on-wet technique, we need a large brush. I'm going to use my flat brush here. You can either use the larger size brush that you have or you can go with a flat brush. I'm applying water to the whole of my paper. Using a flat brush makes it easy to apply water to the whole of the paper. That's why I use it. Otherwise, don't worry, you can use the largest size brush that you have. Then I'm using my mop brush size 2 and taking Indian yellow and applying it to the top. I'm applying it to the top area of the horizon line. This is going to be a sunset landscape obviously. Apply an even gold of Indian yellow from left to right using a swift motion. Then on the top of it, we will add orange, right where you stopped with the Indian yellow. There, you would start with the orange and move towards the top. We're trying to create a very beautiful blend here. You can see. Then the next color that we will use is crimson. On top of the orange, we'll start applying the crimson. You can either use a red here or another rose shade that you have, or any of the pink as well. You can see I'm applying it on top of the yellow. When you add a rose on top of the yellow, it will turn into an orange or a red shade. Be very careful when you're trying to blend it. Don't blend it towards the bottom, rather move upwards. This is the reason why we started with yellow and we moving upwards. If we had moved our painting process from the top towards the bottom, then we wouldn't have been able to get a nice yellow shade on our paper. Onto the topmost area, we're going to apply blue. Here I'm using ultramarine blue. You can also use cobalt blue or any other blue that you have. The blue will mix with the pink shade right underneath it to form a slight purple shade. That's alright. Apply the blue towards the top and we will just blend these colors together. The next thing we're going to learn here is how to make our painting more vibrant. When we apply the colors at first, it's going to be very light. We need to keep applying multiple layers of paint to get it to turn vibrant. You can see I reapplied the pink again and I'm reapplying my yellow now. Observe how I did not move down the paint. That is the pink paint from the top towards the bottom yellow part because then it would turn the whole yellow into a different shade. Then take more yellow. Now we're going to add a bit of reflection on to the snow area, the reflection of the sunlight. First, we added the yellow, then I'm taking the orange and I'm applying towards the right side in small strokes. Such that the joined yellow, where I stopped painting the yellow. You can see just few small random strokes. All of this is possible because we're painting with the wet-on-wet technique. Now, we're going to take some blue and let us mix it with the pink to create a slight light violet shade. More of blue in the mixture. This would create a nice blue-violet shade. This is what we're going to paint towards the bottom. This is the snow area and the yellow and the orange that we painted was the reflection of the sunlight or the sun rays onto the snow area. Towards the bottom, it's going to be the color of the snow. Yes, I know snow is white, but then we need to add more colors on the snow to depict that because when it's a sunset scene, the snow turns into this nice, beautiful bluish-violet colors. That's why we're adding this color onto the snow rather than leaving it white. Now, we need to blend the bluish-violet shade onto the reflection area. Just few strokes, that would be all. Here, you can see how it has turned out. We have to wait for this background to dry. There. Now it has completely dried and I'm going to be using my size 4 brush to add the rest of the detailing in this painting. I'm going to be using burnt umber. You can use any brown that you have. The brown that we're using here doesn't matter. It can be permanent brown, Van **** brown, or any brown in your palate. First of all, we're going to add the small bushes or trees further away along the horizon. That line that we made almost towards the center, that's the horizon. There further off we're going to have some bushes or maybe a group of trees. We just don't know what it is because it's really far away. Use a very smaller size brush like I'm using here and try to add some smaller detailing. You can see I'm making these tiny lines all the way on top of the horizon line. Now I'll mark along the horizon line that is stained along the horizon line. On a straight line. You can see. That on top of the horizon is what the bushes were. We're just going to cover it up with the burnt umber. As I said, don't worry about the brown paint. Just focus on the technique here. Focus on trying to get your brush to make those tiny little lines such that they seem like some bushes or trees further away from the viewer. Fill up the entire area with the brown shade. You can add a darker shade to it if you want. At random places, maybe try dipping your brush in Payne's gray or black shade just to get that different shades of brown in there. That's what we're trying to do. Once you're finished with that bush area, we will start to add our tree. Again, we need a really nice pointed brush here because our tree has delicate branches and we have to try and get it really small. This is the main part of our painting. The tree is closer to the viewer and in the front. We'll add in the main branch. You can see I'm using the pointed tip of my brush and adding the branch. You know how trees are. The trunk of your tree has to be thicker at the bottom part and it should be thinner towards the top. You don't need to focus on trying to get a straight line here. It can be slightly bent. That's alright. My tree here is going to have another main branch. The main trunk is split into two, almost towards the bottom. That's how I'm trying to be in this. You can have a totally different tree if you want. This exercise is just trying to make us understand how to use our brushstrokes, how to get the techniques right, and to make use of the fact that painting on a smaller paper is actually difficult than painting on a larger piece of paper. This is because trying to get those tiny details right, that's the most difficult part. You can see I have added two small branches or twigs towards the bottom. Then again, using the pointed tip of your brush, try adding few branches for our trees. This is totally random. Just try to make some strokes. Always start from the trunk of the tree towards the outside. This is one major thing that you need to take care of when we're trying to paint trees. That is, to try and start your branches from the trunk of the tree, and towards the outside. When you do this, the way you paint the branch and then you lift off your brush, you would get a thinner line than the other way around. That's why always start from the trunk and then move outside. You can see I've just added few small branches onto my tree. Just try to add random branches. Some on the left side and some on the right side. Then towards the bottom, you can add few small twigs or small grass, that's it. Now I'm mixing my blue and crimson again to create a nice violet shade. I'm mixing crimson and ultramarine blue. My ultramarine blue is in the pan and the crimson I have taken it out of the tube and I mixed both of it to create a nice violet shade. I'm going to use this at the bottom part of the tree to create some small shadows, that's it. Then some detailing on the snow we're going to be adding with this violet. Now the stroke is again wet-on-dry. Just like the tree after the complete background has dried. Some lines on the snow. That's it. Just random. You can see how lightly I'm drawing this. Just try to make some very light strokes, not too much detailed. Some more towards the base of the tree. There, our simple sunset painting is complete. This was like a very simple one, wasn't it? Let us remove the tape. Be careful to remove your tape away from the paper because that way your paper would not rip off. Here it is. Here's the beautiful sunset painting. I hope you guys like this one. Let us move on to the next one. 5. Project 2 - Winter Mountains: Welcome back to the second class project. The colors we will need for this one is Indian yellow, or any other yellow, Alizarin crimson. You can also use any of the red shade that you have, ultramarine blue or cobalt blue, burnt umber, and Payne's gray. Instead of Payne's gray, you can also use black, and the same with burnt umber, you can use any of the brown shade that you have in your palette. The pencil sketch of this one is going to be quite simple. You can see I've taped down my paper here on all the four sides and I'm just going to quickly sketch the shape of a mountain. This is totally random. Try to make some small hilly areas and maybe some part of it sharp. You can see I've made one peak here, which is sharp. Then add some other hilly areas towards the front of it. Just some lines onto our mountains. We're just trying to mark the areas where we can paint with our darker shade or the Payne's gray so just the areas where there are not snow. We're just trying to mark some areas. That's with the pencil sketch. Now we're going to paint the sky region first. I'm using my flat brush here. Don't worry if you don't have a flat brush, you can go with the larger size brush that you have, any brush in fact, and try to apply water onto your paper. Remember not to apply water onto the mountain area, so we have to be very careful and paint along the edges. Remember to apply the water evenly without forming any large pulls or blobs of water. If there is any large pulls or blobs of water, just try to move it outside of the paper. Here, now I've switched to my pointed brush. This is my mop Size 2 brush. I'm using this to paint along the edges of the mountains because I have to be very careful and not paint along the inside of it. A pointed brush would be very useful for this. Then here I'm taking my Indian yellow first. You can go with any yellow that you have. We will start applying towards the right side onto the wet paper. We have to be very careful along the edges again, such that our paint does not flow into the mountains. Using Indian yellow, you can see I have painted the bottom part where the sky is touching the mountains. My paper is wet and I'm using the wet on wet techniques. When you're painting with a wet brush or wet paint onto wet paper, it is called as the wet on wet technique. Then the next color that I will use is alizarin crimson. We can go with any other red shade as well and we're going to apply it right on top of the yellow area that we just painted. We're trying to get some kind of a blended sky here. But this is quite different from the blend technique that we used in the Project 1, because you can see we're trying to make some random lines. You can see I've applied the red shade on top of the yellow as well just few lines. We're you're trying to get different kinds of blending here. That is in the form of small lines so I've added the red shade and I've added a few lines on top of my red. Next, we're going to take the ultramarine blue. Or you can also use cobalt blue. We will add the next line on top of the red from the right side towards the left. You can see, I've not covered the entire area towards the left, but just like a small line from the right towards the left. Then I've taken the red shade again and I'm adding it towards the dark. You can see how that blue has joined the red at an angle. This is like an advanced blending technique. But I'm pretty sure that once you try it, you will see that it's very simple. The next thing is now, we need to make our painting vibrant. Because when you're painting with a wet on wet technique, the colors would just spread away in the water and they would fade eventually. In order to make it vibrant, we need to apply the shades multiple times. Re-apply on top of the areas that you already painted in the same exact stroke that you applied earlier. You can see I'm reapplying the red shade. You can also re-apply all the other shades as well. You can reapply the blue shade and the yellow as well, but just make sure that you are trying to blend them correctly and don't add any more water to your paper because that can lead to hard edges being formed. When you're trying to blend each stroke, the most important part here is to be careful that you blend along each of the colors. That is, if you started blending one color, then don't stop until you have blended the whole of the paper. Because if you stop at one area, that is, you started reapplying the red shade and you just leave it at that, then your red area would have more water or more paint and it will just create hard edges along the other shades. This is the reason why you have to be very careful and not introduce any more water onto your paper so you can dry your brush using a tissue. Then, once your background has completely dried, we will start to paint the details on the mountains. This is going to be like a very cool technique to paint some watercolor mountains. First we're going to add the black lines on our mountains. I'm using Payne's gray here. You can use a mixture of Payne's gray and burnt umber together to paint the mountains. Just some lines and some strokes at random places. Use a pointed size brush to get the best results and just add some lines here and there. This is totally random. Use a mix of both of these colors, Payne's gray and burnt umber. So when I say Payne's gray, I'm trying to get a nice dark black sheet so you can use black also. Don't worry if you don't have Payne's gray because if you're using a basic palette, you might not have Payne's gray in it. That's completely all right. Also burnt umber. It is just totally random. We just trying to add some dark rocky areas to our mountain. There are lots of spaces that I'm leaving white. You can see that this is like completely random out of my mind. If you asked me to recreate this I'll not be doing it in the same way. But you can see how I'm doing those strokes is just here and there at random places. Then towards the right, this mountain, we're going to paint it in whole because it's like in the front and it's a dark mountain without any snow area. The whole of it painted with black or brown. Then the other places is where we'll just add some random detailing. Remember, use the tip of your pointed size brush to get the small lines at random places. Now, here's the interesting part. Now we're going to use our blue shade to paint the snow on the mountains. We cannot leave it white. The reason being, this is a sunset scene and during sunset, the snow turns to a nice bluish shade. We mixed our blue with red shade, crimson or alizarin crimson here. You can get a nice purple shade. We're just going to add this on top of our mountains. Use a lot of water in your mixture and try to blend the whole thing onto your mountains. You will see that the black shade or the Payne's gray shade that you applied will start to flow because you're reapplying on top of it. That is exactly what we want. We want that brown and black shade to slightly blend with the blue. That gives a very nice look to our mountains. You can already see some parts of my gray has moved on to the other areas and that's alright. Then, now take a medium dawn of violet and we'll just darken certain areas. This is the areas where the shadow is like dominant. In some other areas the shadow is just going to be very light. You can see on my mountain, I have differentiates of violet. The violet I applied using the blue and red mixture, the same violet. First I used a lighter tone. Then I picked up a medium tone and I'm applying it on top of the lighter tone that we just applied. This gives a varying tone onto our mountains and makes it look more interesting. Just try to blend everything with your brushes. Once you've done that, that's it. That's really it. Your mountain painting is ready. Your winter sunset mountain painting. Isn't this really beautiful? I hope you like it. Here's the final picture. Thank you for joining me on this one. We have learned some advanced blending technique for the sky here. And then for the mountains we saw how we apply different shades of violet to get that beautiful look to our mountains with varying shades. That's it. 6. Project 3 - Winter Tracks: Welcome to the third class project. In this one, we're going to look at some perspective, both aerial perspective and one-point perspective. The colors that we mostly need are Indian yellow, Indian gold, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, burnt umber, and Payne's gray. Don't worry if you don't have Indian gold, you can use an orange shade instead. The same with the yellow and the other shades. You can use any shape that is most similar to red in your pallet. Don't really worry about the colors. Let us now make the pencil sketch. First of all, it is going to be a horizon line and note here I'm going to make the horizon line somewhere almost towards the bottom because not exactly towards the center. Right below the center part of our paper and then we're going to add a road on our paper. The road it's going to vanish away at one point. You can see the two lines of the road, they meet at one point on the horizon line. This is what is known as one-point perspective. That was all for the pencil sketch. We'll get to painting first and we're going to be doing the wet on wet technique. Again, we're going to apply water onto paper. I'm using my flat brush here and I'm applying water. You can see here, I have applied water only to the top area of my horizon line, just right above the horizon line. If you're using your larger size brush, just make sure to apply the water towards the top of your horizon line. Then. Now I have switched to my Size 2 brush. If you're using the normal pointed round brushes, then use a Size 6 or Size 8 brush. We will start with Indian yellow. We're going to apply it as a straight line from the left towards the right onto the wet paper. Then the next color I'm going to take is Indian gold. Don't worry if you don't have Indian gold like I said, you can use orange instead. It's almost like an orange sheet. Don't worry about it. Reapplying my yellow. My yellow lines, I've applied all the way towards the right on top of the horizon line. The next color is alizarin crimson. I will apply this towards the right and the left on the top. You can see I've painted somewhat in a staggered manner towards the left, it's a bit towards the top and towards the right side, it is at the bottom. This is because of the extra space of Indian gold that we applied on top of the yellow. Then the next color is violet shade. You can use a violet shade directly, or you can mix a blue and rose or red together to create a nice violet shade. That's what I've done here. I've mixed crimson and ultramarine blue to get a nice violet shade. I love the mix of the blue and the red that gives the violet rather than using the fresh violet from my palette. Here, what I wanted to show was another blending style where we're blending our colors in different angles. Another reason why I mix my paints that is to get the violet shade is by varying the amount of red and blue in your mixture. You can change it to a light pink shade and a dark violet shade. You can see towards the right, I applied a pink shade, but that's only because I've got more rows in my mixture. Then let us add few clouds with the alizarin crimson. The clouds, I'm just using my pointed brush and I'm dropping the paint onto my yellow and just very small drops of paint. And you can see how those paints have created a nice cloud shape. Then I'm taking my blue again and I'm mixing it with the pink. I'm going to apply this on top of the clouds. I just want my clouds to be like a red and violet mix. That is the reason. The red clouds are going to be towards the top of the yellow and the violet bluish clouds are going to be towards the top of the blue region that we have applied or the violet region. You can see it's very simple. Now, the next thing that we're going to try is we're going to see the aerial perspective. When we say aerial perspective, it means that something in the aerial view. We're going to have some hill or some bushes towards the horizon. This is different from the one where we did in Project 1. Because in Project 1, we did it with the wet on dry method. But here our background is still wet and we're applying the Indian yellow onto that wet paint. You can see that when you're applying, it is blending along with the background that is slightly flowing. That's alright. This gives a blurred look to our bushes. This blurred look, we'll give it more of an aerial perspective. When something is far away in a picture, you will draw it less detailed and more blurred that is what is known as the aerial perspective. When you come closer to the viewer, it would be more detailed and more visible. On top of the Indian gold, we will add darker tone here. I'm adding burnt umber. Again this is using the wet on dry method itself because my sky region is still wet and you can see how I've got it to be looking like a really nice blurred effect. This is because of the wet on wet method. Make sure that your brush is damp and not a lot of water. Because if you're using a lot of water in your brush, then the whole thing is just going to flow away. Even though we're using the wet on wet technique makes sure that there is less water on your brush and more of the paint. I'm just adding few trees with my burnt umber. You can see just some lines onto my horizon. That's it. Here we don't need to wait for our sky region to dry. You can go ahead and paint the bottom part. Because even if you apply the water, your yellow paint and the brown paint that you just applied is going to flow towards the bottom. I agree, but that's all right here. Next, we will take the Indian gold and we will apply some random strokes onto our paper. Wet the paper first, don't forget that. Then some random strokes with Indian gold for the reflection on the snow. Then back to creating the violet shade. I'm creating my violet shade by mixing ultramarine blue and crimson. More of blue in your mixture so that it's closer to the blue side than the pink side. We don't want it to be a red violet, but rather a blue violet. You can clearly see how I have applied my paint. Onto this new region, onto the wet paper, we will apply this. When we're trying to paint near the yellow region, we have to be careful that our blue does not mix with the yellow to create any green shade. We don't want a green shade on our snow. Just be very careful. All of the darker mixture towards the outside. As you move towards the yellow region, try to make it more diluted so that it does not create any green. Use simple strokes with your brush just on the doe as a line. You will see that it's perfectly blending together if your paper is wet enough. There, few lines, that's it. You can see I'm creating the violet by mixing my blue and pink together. As I said, I mix them together just because of the fact that by just changing the amount of blue and the pink on my paper, I am able to change the color of the violet. Now, after the background has completely dried, we will move on to adding the roads on our paper. I'm adding the road again with a blue violet shade. Very little crimson in the mixture and more of blue, which will give me a nice blue violet shade. This is what I'm going to be using for painting the road, so the road or it's not exactly road. It's like the vehicle tracks. Some vehicle truck on the snow area. Again, following the rule of one point perspective, you can see the tracks are like vanishing towards one point. When it comes closer to the viewer, you can see more of it. That's the one point perspective rule when you're painting. This is quite useful when you're trying to paint a road or a train track. Some object that vanishes off towards the horizon. We're painting this with the wet on dry method because our paper is now completely dry and we're applying wet paint on top of it. The lines are just totally random. I'm not trying to make any detailed or exact lines is just I'm applying my brushstrokes at random following the shape of the track. These are just like shapes on the snow. Then using a damp brush, I'm just going to move my brush along the paper and let the paint get applied on it. The brush is really dry and make sure your brush is dry. What you can do is you can try painting on the outside or another paper until your brush is almost dry and then you are running your brush over the paper. This creates like a dry brush method. This is actually called as the dry brush technique. This is more seen when your paper has a rough surface. Don't forget that. Now, we'll add some detailing on to our landscapes. We'll add a tree towards the front. This is what I wanted to show again about the aerial perspective. Those trees and bushes that were in the background further off along the horizon. We painted that in a blurred picture mode because that was like really far away. This tree that we're building right now is closer to the viewer. That is why every single branch of the tree is going to be like detailed. That is why we will draw the branches in a very detailed manner. That is the basic rule of aerial perspective. That is, things that are far away would be less detailed and more in a blurred way and the things that are closer to the viewer would be detailed. I hope you have understood that. Let us get to painting the branches of the tree. This is exactly going to be similar like the tree that we painted in the Project 1. Using the pointed tip of your smallest size brush, try to draw the branches of the tree. As I said before, try to make sure that your branches are such that each of them originate from the trunk. Your strokes make them such that from the trunk towards the outside rather than from the outside towards the trunk. Because when you draw from the trunk towards the outside, your strokes will get thinner as you go outside and will give the perfect shape of the branch. There you can see I'm almost done with the main tree. I'm just going to add few smaller branches and twigs towards the bottom because I just don't want my tree to be standing there as a lone tree. You can add more branches or you can add more trees towards the bottom. Here is the final painting. I actually forgot to click the record button while I was removing the masking tape. That is why that part is missing. But here it is. We have learned about aerial perspective to make something blurred in the background. Then the one point perspective about the vanishing point and about adding detailing to the foreground. 7. Project 4 - Following the Footsteps: Welcome to the fourth class project. So we're going to paint a nice pinkish sky with the winter, of course, and some footsteps on the snow. So the colors that we're going to be using here are carmine or queen rose or any rose for that matter, then a violet, burnt umber, Payne's gray, any yellow such as Indian yellow or any permanent yellow, and scarlet. Let us start a simple sketch on the paper, so it's going to be another line in the center. So that's the horizon line. And we're going to add some little zigzag towards the middle, so it's going to form a small mountain or a hill. On top of this hill, we're going to add a tiny house so it's a house in the distance. A cute little winter house. Just draw the shape of the house so you can see very small, just a triangular shape and few lines. Then we will add a snowy roof so that's why it's got a bit of thickness because of the snow on it. The sketch is going to be quite simple that you can follow along. Then we'll add a small chimney towards the top of the house, on the roof and a tiny door and window on the house. So our house already looks really beautiful. Then we'll have some far off backgrounds, bushes, and trees towards the back. That would be all for the pencil sketch. So to get started with our painting, we're going to be first working with the wet on wet technique. So I'm going to apply water onto the sky region of our painting. So I'm using my flat brush here to apply the water, but you can use any size brush and just apply the water. Just be careful around the house. We don't want the water to be on top of the house. So along the edges of our pencil sketch. So this is the main reason why we draw a pencil sketch so that we can paint around it. Apply the water evenly without any large pools or blobs of water. There that's it. So now we'll start to apply our colors. So we're going to start with crimson or carmine. So a nice pink shade, and this is what we will start with at the bottom. Right on top of the horizon line. So this is where we started applying our water, above the horizon line apply the pink shade. You can use your pointed brush. You don't necessarily have to paint with the flat brush itself. That's all right. So I'm just using my same flat brush that I used for applying the water. Just use any brush that you have and apply the paint onto the wet paper. So you will see that the paint starts to spread and create a nice wet on wet effect on the paper. Again, very careful around the house. So here this is where a pointed brush is going to be really useful. I'm just using the tip of my flat brush. You can see that. So apply the paint multiple times if you want to really get it nice and vibrant because the pain tends to get lighter, because it's spreading a lot and it would sink into the paper as well. Then the next shade that we're going to be using is violet. So you can either use permanent violet or any kind of violet. If you don't have violet, you can actually mix a blue and pink together to get a nice violet shade. So here I'm adding the violent towards the top and you can see I'm applying it onto the wet paper and blending it with the carmine that I just applied. So we will re-add the carmine or the pink shade. So we're going to add this multiple times and to create a nice perfect blend between the two. That's what we're trying to achieve. Because our paper is wet, it's really going to be easy to get that blend on our paper. Now, I've switched to my size two mop brush and I'm adding the violet again. I will also add the Carmine again and mix it very nicely. So this is how I'm creating the perfect blend on my paper. We're working on the wet on wet technique and only because my paper is still wet. So if your paper has started to dry, then don't reapply the paint. Next, I'll switch to my size four brush, which is a really smaller size. So switch to your smaller size brush and use burnt umber. Our sky region is still wet from the paint that we just applied. We're going to use the blurred method again here, just like we did in the previous project to get that blurred bushy background further way in the picture. So using burnt umber, just add it towards the top. Don't really worry if your paint has dried, you can just go with the wet on dry technique. It is not going to make much of a difference. It just means that your background is not going to be blurred. That's it. But that's completely all right. So you can see I've just applied the burned umber from the left side towards the right side of varying length so that it resembles the look of some further of trees or bushes in the background. So we're going to apply this right towards the left side of our house, and then towards the right side as well. So take a nice dark consistency of your burned umber and add this. So you can see towards the right side, my paint has started to dry and it's almost looking like a wet on dry stroke. So that's why I said it doesn't really matter if your paint has dried, you can just go ahead and apply it. Now we wait for the whole of our background to dry before proceeding onto the ground. So once background has dried, we will start to wet the bottom part. So this is where it's going to be the foreground or the snowy region in our picture. So wet the whole of that region even the top of the hilly region where our house is sitting on, just apply the water and we're going to be adding violet and mix a little bit of blue into violet. Just a very little amount of blue into the violate so it's going to be like a nice blue-violet shade and this is what we're going to apply on to our snow region. As I said, again, this is going to be like the color of the snow during the sunset. We will apply a more darker tone towards the bottom and it should go lighter as you go towards the top nearest to the horizon. This is because the foreground region, or the darkest color is towards the viewer right below. So that's the reason why we are applying a darker tone towards the bottom. Then, using nice darker tone of violet, we will add some darker shades on to the hilly region. So this is just to show that there is some extra hilly region in that area. But we don't want it to be too detailed because it's really far away from the viewer who's standing at the bottom side. So you can imagine that the viewer is almost towards the bottom and has taken this picture. So that's why this house is really far away and so are the hills. So take more of the darker tone of violet and apply it towards the bottom. So you can see I'm darkening the bottom part. Now our paper is still wet and we want to add in the footprints. So take a nice dark tone or darker consistency of the violet and just dab your brush on a tissue. Just because we want to make sure that it doesn't have a lot of water. So remove any extra water and use the tip of your brush and just dab it on the paper like a small footstep. We're trying to create some footsteps onto the snow leading towards the house. Here, we're going to follow the perspective rule again. The footsteps are going to be bigger towards the bottom. Then it would go smaller as it goes further away leading to the house. So you can see I've added big steps towards the bottom and then just small dots as it was nearing towards the house area further away from the viewer. Once we have added that, we will wet the region or the roof of the house which is covered in snow. So we're going to paint that as well because we can't leave it white. So we're going to add a violet shade, lighter tone of violet onto the top of the house and some random dark shade to the left and right. You can see the varying tone that I have applied. So it was a lighter tone of violet and then just a few spots of darker tone onto the wet paint so that it spreads and create a nice darker tone. Then along the triangular area, we will also apply the violet again then once the roof region of the house has dried, we will paint the house so on to the windows, add some yellow tone and the door as well. So it depicts the light inside the house. Then we don't need to wait for the window region to dry because we just want to create a nice blending effect here. So take a nice, red shade such as scarlet or carmine and add it to the house region. You will see that your red paint spreads and there's very little amount of yellow left, but that's alright. Then onto the top of the red, we're going to add some burnt sienna or burnt umber shade to create some nice shadows for the snow. Just onto the wet paint, that is the wet red paint, the digestive light. We will add the brown paint on top of that. Then we'll paint the right side that is the front of the house as well, in a similar manner. So around the door use the red shade. Just very carefully within the pencil sketch alone will just paint the whole of the house red and then we're going to add some dark shades with the burnt umber already burnt sienna. There I've picked up the darker burnt sienna shade and I'm applying it on top of the red to create a nice shadow for the house. So this is going to be like the shadow from the snow. You can see I've covered the front part with almost the brown shade. So, it looks really beautiful when you have that brown shade on top of your red because it creates a very beautiful blend with the shadow. Now, I'm switching to my smallest size brush. This is a rigger brush that is helpful in painting trees, but just go with the smallest size brush that you have with a nice pointed tip so that you can add some trees, just like we've been adding for the other projects. Just add some small trees right next to the house. So these are winter trees, you just need to add the branches. That's it. Randomly, some lines towards the top and some main trunk and some branches. Remember to use the smallest size brush, and the tip of it. You can try practicing this on a spare piece of paper first before you paint it onto the painting because we don't want to create thick branches. We want it to be really thin. Here, our painting is complete so we can remove the tape. Always remember, remove the tape such that you're pulling it away from the paper. That is very important. Here, this is our final beautiful winter sunset painting. I hope you all liked it. 8. Project 5 - Snowy Reflection: Welcome to the fifth class project, and for this one we're going to create a beautiful winter sense of painting with some water and reflections. So the colors we're going to be using are permanent red or Scarlet, burnt sienna, burnt umber, Payne's gray, permanent yellow, or Indian yellow, permanent violet or any violet, and if you don't have violet, you can just mix your blue and red together to create a nice violet shade. So let us start sketching first. So we're going to create just a very simple pencil sketch, draw the horizon line first. Then we're going to add a slanting line like this to add the portion where the water body is. Just join it with the other end. Then we'll have a tree in the front. Just a very small tree, add few branches just as a placeholder for us to know how we're going to paint them. Then the background bushes or trees, there. So this pencil sketch was really quick and simple. So we're going to paint the sky region first, that is the background. So we're going to be using the wet-on-wet technique. So let's apply the water. Apply water evenly onto our paper. Make sure that you don't have any large blobs or pools of water. Use any brush. It doesn't really matter. Then we're going to start with our permanent yellow or Indian yellow. Using this, we're going to apply a very nice good of the Indian yellow onto the sky region. So you can see I'm applying it really vibrant, so I've got it in a very nice concentrated consistency. Then the next color that we're going to take is Carmine or you can go for permanent red or permanent rose. So we just need a nice rose shade. So you can also go for Alizarin Crimson instead. This is what we will paint towards the top. We will try to blend this nicely with our yellow paint. So don't apply the yellow in a very straight line. We just want to create some shapes in the sky. So you can see I've got the yellow at uneven places so that I can mix the Crimson at random places. We paint with the yellow again so that we have some yellow in between the pink shade. Remember to apply the paint multiple times if you need to create it vibrant. Then next thing is we're going to paint the reflection in the water. So the reflection in the water here is going to be exactly as it is in the sky. So this is the reason we'll apply the water first and then we're going to apply yellow on it. So let's extend our yellow paint towards the bottom part where the water body is. There towards the bottom part of the water body, we will add our carmine or crimson. You can see I'm blending it with the yellow. So take the pink shade and add it towards the bottom. Here, only a little part of the pink shade is going to be seen. The other whole part is going to be yellow. So just towards the bottom, we will try to create a similar blend like the one we have created for the sky. Just some lines on to our yellow paint there. Now, I'm switching to my size four brush and I'm going to take burnt sienna. So load your brush with a very nice concentrated amount of burnt sienna. We're going to add the bushes or the hills in the background. So again, this one is going to be with the wet-on-wet method itself because our sky region is too wet, although it might have started to dry, but that's fine. We don't want it to be too blurry and too clear. So even though it has dried, it really doesn't matter. You just going to create this small hilly region, towards the horizon. So that's on top of the line that we drew. So we apply the burnt sienna. Now we need to create the reflection of this hill on to our water. So we're going to take some burnt umber and we're going to top on a hill first. So just towards the bottom part of the hill region that is right above the horizon line, we'll just add some darker tone. So the first color that we used was burnt sienna, and then we're adding burnt umber. If you're using a basic palette, you can mix your brown with a little bit of black to get a nice darker shade. Then, using the same burnt umber, we're going to add some reflection into the water. So we just adding this brown on top of the yellow and try to blend that into the yellow by taking more yellow paint or you can use water to blend it. You can see I'm trying to blend it and I'm using my brush to blend the brown as well to create that perfect look of the reflection. You can see, I'm trying to create a gap between the real part and the reflection part. So this would give the deflection a nice real look. So that's why I'm using my brush to try and lift off some paint towards the middle of the reflection. Then once your background has completely dried, we will paint the snow now. So we're going to paint with a wet-on-wet technique again. So we need to wet our snow region. Remember, this is after our background has completely dried. That's when we start applying the water. Once you have started applying the water first, we'll create some very few lines for the reflection of the sunlight on the snow. So we're going to add that Indian yellow onto our snow, just right towards the left side, and then the rest of the areas we're going to paint with violet. So pick up a nice medium tone of violet, and we're going to add this towards the bottom and the whole of the snow. The more darker shade is going to be towards the very bottom part. So use the tip of your brush when you're approaching the water body because we don't want our violet paint to be spreading on top of that. You can pick up some more yellow and add some tiny strokes or tiny lines if you want onto the violet. Just make sure that you take a nice amount of yellow otherwise your violet and yellow can mix to make brown on the paper. Add the darker tone of violet towards the bottom. So that means the more darker side towards the bottom, add more shades onto the wet paper. Here now the snow has completely dried. So you can either wait for it to dry or you can use a hairdryer to dry it up. Now we're going to add the tree, so we're going to use our burnt umber shade. Mix a nice amount of burnt umber on your palette. Start adding the tree, remember to use the pointed tip of your brush. So get your smallest size brush and try to use the pointed tip to create a nice tree with few branches. We have the tree with two main branches. If you have been following me along in the other projects, then adding this tree would not be really difficult for you. I'm pretty sure of that. So just relax and put in those strokes. Let go of all your fear when trying to paint those thin lines. Just go with your instincts. Just try to move your arms on the paper very slowly and creating those thin strokes. So the key thing is trying to use the tip of our brush and to move outward from the trunk of the tree. Add in as many branches as you want. If you only want to add just a few branches, that's also fine. Or if you want to add a lot more than I'm adding, then that's also fine. So now I'm going to pick up more violet and we're just going to add a few drops of violet on to the bottom part of the tree. This is because I don't want it to look like without having a shadow or any effect on the snow. Otherwise, it would look really weird. So that's why we just added a few drops of violet to the bottom part and we can add some twigs with burnt sienna. Using the tip of your brush, try to add in some few tiny details onto the bottom part of the tree, as well as some areas of the snow. Then picking up violet again, I'm just going to add some few very small lines onto the edge of the river or the water body on the snow. So just few drops of violet with your brush and then try to blend it. Next, I'm going to take burnt umber and I'm going to add a tiny fence here. Well, this was not part of the painting when I started with the pencil sketch, but then I thought that we can add this fence and try to make it really more interesting. That is our painting. So just a few lines and try to join them with a small thread line. So not a thread. So you know how it is just a very thin line. That's it. Once you've done that, the painting is complete, you can totally skip that if you want. So here, removing the tape to review the final painting. Oh it's looking so beautiful, isn't it? 9. Project 6 - Snowy Sunrise: Welcome to the sixth class project. This one is not exactly a sunset, but it looks like a sunrise, with its sun rays falling on top of the mountains, creating a very nice reflection on the snow, and the colors we're going to use for this one are Indian yellow, Phthalo blue, Indian gold, burnt umber, Payne's gray, yellow ocher, and cobalt blue. Don't worry if you don't have Indian gold, you can use any orange, and for the Phthalo blue, you can use any of the blue that you have. You can just go ahead with the cobalt blue or ultramarine blue itself, so don't worry about the shades exactly. It can be any shade that you want, don't worry about it. Let us start sketching our mountains now. We're going to sketch some few lines on our paper for the mountains, just follow along. It's going to be having a really nice hilly shape here, and then another layer of background mountains. Just few small peaks, so it can be larger and smaller peaks, just in some random shades. Then another hill towards the bottom here. Let us start painting the sky. Again, I'm going to be applying the water for the sky, so this is going to be, again, the wet-on-wet technique. I'm applying the water with my flat brush. Use any of your brushes, and just apply the paint evenly onto your paper without forming any large blobs or pools of water. Then I'm switching to my Size 4 brush, and I'm starting with Indian yellow. I'm applying the Indian yellow onto the paper Write above the mountains, so carefully along the edge of the mountain because we don't want our water to be flowing on towards the mountain, so just right above it. Very carefully apply the Indian yellow. Then the next color we're going to add is Indian gold. Indian gold is a very nice, beautiful pigment consisting of yellow and red mixed together. You can actually go with an orange shade if you don't have Indian yellow. If you're using a very basic palette, you can actually mix your red and yellow to create this beautiful orange shade. We will just add some random lines on to sky with the yellow. Some really small lines. We're just trying to create an interesting feature to our sky. Then the next color that we're going to take is Phthalo blue. I'm trying to create a sky by using blue and yellow, but without creating any green, so we will just see how to do that. I'm applying the blue onto the empty spaces, that is the white regions. But while I'm applying, I'm trying to be very careful to not touch any of the yellow regions with my blue paint. That's really important in order to not create a green shade on our paper. Because as you know, blue and yellow will mix together to form green, and we want to avoid that. Phthalo blue that I'm using here, and the Indian yellow that I've used, both would create green if mixed together, so that's why we will use water to blend the regions and apply the blue paint only to those regions where we do not have the Indian yellow, that is the white spaces that we left behind. Can you see the gap of white that are left there? We're going to leave that glowing, so that it resembles the sun. It's like the glowing sun in the morning. Add the yellow and the blue multiple times to create a very nice vibrant sky, and don't apply any paint to the white region. Then once the sky has completely dried, we can paint the mountains. Again, we're going to be painting with the wet-on-wet technique on the mountains, so apply the water onto the top region of the hill, just the background mountains. The white region that we left is going to be the glowing sun. We need to create that glow on the mountains as well. This is the reason why we are using the wet-on-wet technique. You will see just in a moment how we're going to create a nice glow in our mountains. Apply the water evenly and then we're going to start with Indian yellow, right where the glow is. But you can see I've left a slight gap of white on the mountains as well. First yellow, and then Indian gold adjacent to it, so use orange if you don't have Indian gold. Right next to the yellow, we add the Indian gold or orange. Then towards the farther ends of the mountain, we will be adding burnt umber. Blend the Indian gold with the burnt umber. Now, do you see the reason why we applied the water onto our paper for the wet on wet technique? This is because we wanted to create a nice perfect blend between the burnt umber, the Indian gold, and the Indian yellow. Towards the farther end, we're adding the brown shade. Create a perfect blend between the yellow, orange, and the brown, or in my case, yellow Indian gold, and brown. We're trying to create a very nice transition, and also be careful along the edge of the mountain. We don't want our paint to be going towards the sky, so just very carefully. Now, you can see that glow in my mountains, how the yellow, orange and the brown has created that really nice glow from the morning sun. This is a very beautiful sunrise, isn't it? The region where you have left white, remember to leave it white itself. Now we're going to add some pine trees in the background. We're going to paint in the wet-on-wet method itself, but with very little water in our brush. We have to have more paint in our brush than water. This is the reason why I dabbed off the extra water on my tissue. We're going to add some blurred trees in the background. The reason why I'm making this blurred is because this is like the mountain that is really far away and so are the trees, they are far away. This is the rule of aerial perspective in paintings. When some object is far away, we don't draw it detailed. We try to make it in a blurred and background manner. That's the reason why I'm going with a wet-on-wet method. I used paints gray and while you're approaching the glow again, we need to create that glow in our trees as well. I've switched to burnt umber when I reach the glow, and right where you reach the center part of the glow, we will take orange or the Indian gold. Can you see the transition between the trees as well? First I started with paints gray, then moved onto burnt amber, and then in the burnt umber, I started along with the Indian gold. Again, I'm going back into the burnt umber towards the right side. Once the glow region is completely over, you can go back to the paints gray or the black sheet. We will start adding the trees towards the right side. You can see towards the right side, my paint has almost completely dried. I'm going with a wet-on-dry stroke now and I'm trying to fill up the whole region. But towards the top, I've added few lines to make it look like pine trees. This is like a pine tree forest, which are so clustered together such that you only see the tips clearly. We'll try to add some few detailing on to the tips and make sure you make that transition from the paints gray and brown and the Indian gold such that they do not form so odd in our painting. Now, we'll get on to painting the hill. This is like the foreground, and this is going to have some nice real reflection of the sunlight on the snow. We will add it with water first very carefully along the edges. Do this after the pine tree layer has dried. Either wait for it to dry or you can dry it quickly with a hairdryer. Apply the water evenly, and then I'm going to use yellow ocher here for adding in the sun's rays. Now I'm going to tell you something about yellow ocher. Yellow ocher is an opaque pigment. When I say opaque, it's one of the properties of water colors and its opacity will not let it blend easily with blue to create green. Actually, it is a very good color if you want to paint the yellow and blue together. It would not mix easily with blue to create greens. Here we apply the Indian yellow towards the top of the hill region, and then I'm picking up my cobalt blue and adding it to the rest of the region of the hill. You can see, I've added it adjacent to the yellow ocher and it's not mixing with the yellow ocher to create a green. This is a good shade if you want to use it for skies. The reason why I did not use this for the skies is because I wanted to show you how you can actually paint yellow and blue together without mixing green and without using yellow ocher as well. But here we need it to be adjacent so at the bottom here on the hill, I'm using yellow ocher. Cobalt blue onto the hilly region and more cobalt blue towards the bottom. Try to create some lines on the snow. Then some more yellow ocher towards the right side as well adjacent to the blue again, there. Now we're going to paint the bottom part. You can wait for your cobalt blue layer to dry and paint the foreground here. This is the most foreground part that is the hill part that is right in front of the viewer. We start with yellow ocher again, and we apply it towards the top. This yellow is like the reflection of the sun rays on our snow, which is creating this yellow glow on the snow. Add some lines and leave some white spaces for the blue. You can see I've left two large white spaces for the snow, which I will add with cobalt blue. I'm picking up my cobalt blue and I'm adding to those places and you can see how my paint did not create a green shade. Next, there is this gap on the right side which I did not paint with burnt umber. But if you did paint with burnt umber, that's all right. I'm just trying to add some tiny detailing onto my mountains in the corner. But since those mountains are in the background, I don't want it to be too much detailed so I'm just spreading them with water such that they look like the background. This is like how we did our mountain project, that is the project number 2. You can add a bit more yellow ocher on the top to make it a bit more prominent and vibrant. Remember, don't apply more paint if your paper has completely dried. Let us now remove the tape. That was really beautiful and quick one, isn't it? We learned how to apply a yellow and blue together without turning into green in two different ways, isn't it? Also about yellow ocher 10. Project 7 - Winter Forest: Welcome to Class, Project 7. This is one of the two which are the longest. We will learn to paint this beautiful, gorgeous sunset scene with some birch trees in the background. Let us have a look at the colors that we need. They are Indian yellow, Alizarin crimson, Indian gold, burnt umber, cobalt blue, and Carmine. If you don't have cobalt blue, you can also use any other blue. It's the same with any other colors. You can go with any colors in your palette, you don't necessarily need exactly the same colors that I'm using here today. Let us start with our pencil sketch. We're going to have a slight hilly region in the background. This is going to be the snowy background that we have. Actually, this is the line that is separating the background and the foreground. Then we're going to have some trees in the front. Just make the trunk of these trees. They're going to be some birch trees and maybe some other trees as well. That is what we're trying to sketch, just the random sketch of the tree. As you can see, I'm also not making them straight, just trying to draw the shape of the trees by a random method that is trying to bend at some random place so that it looks original. We don't want it to be totally straight. I've added two trees to the right, and now I'm adding two trees in the center. Now let's add another tree to the left, some more trees, in fact. So, slowly, and make sure that each of these trees are not in the same line. This is the reason why I add a line at the bottom part of a curve and then make the tree from there. It's like these trees are at different levels on the snow, so they're not like in a flat surface. Make sure the trees are of varying lengths as well, that is the thickness of them. Then ideally we should be painting these trees by masking them using masking fluid or something. But I wanted to teach you how we can do that without using the masking fluid. We have to make sure that we don't paint on top of the trees because they need to be left white. What we're going to do here is we're going to apply water to the areas that are between those trees, that is skipping the area of the trunk region. We'll apply the water to each of the areas. My paper here, that I'm using is 100 percent cotton paper and it is going to withstand the time that I take to cover up all the area between the trees. But if you're noticing 100 percent cotton paper, this might not be the case. In this case, you can actually paint each part of the tree, that is, each section separating the different trees. First, you would apply the water, then you would apply the paint because you don't want the water to dry by the time you come back from the other spaces. You can go ahead and start painting, that is. If you forward to the part where I'm applying the paint, you can see that. But if you're using a nice watercolor paper that stays wet for a longer duration of time, you can do it the way that I'm using, that is, applying the water to each section in between those trees. This is because we're going to work with a wet-on-wet technique, but we don't want paint on top of our trees. That's the reason I'm just skipping the region of the tree and then applying the water. You might need to reapply the areas that you applied at first. I'm starting with Indian yellow and I'm going to apply it to the whole of the background now. You can see the whole space where we applied the water, we're going to paint with Indian yellow. This is a sunset scene that's why we're going to cover the whole thing with Indian yellow first. This process is quite simple, as you can see, all you have to do is apply the water to the different sections in between the tree box or tree trunks and we'll apply yellow paint over it. That is why I said you could paint in sections. You didn't have to apply the water to all of the spaces at first itself because the whole paper might dry quickly. The only thing that we have to make sure is, we have to be very careful that our paint does not flow to our branches. But randomly, if it does indeed flow to some places or the branches, that's fine. As you can see, for some of my trees, it has gone on top of the trees. That's all right because we will cover that later on. There now, I have added my Indian yellow. Then the next color I'm going to take is Alizarin crimson. We will be adding the clouds with Alizarin crimson. Just a few clouds in the sunset sky. With your brush, drop the paint onto the yellow that is on top of the yellow. But again, here, we're going to do it along a line, but then by skipping the region of the trees. You can see I'm applying the paint and then I'm continuing on to the next side, but on the same line but without painting on top of the tree. That's exactly what we're doing. We'll just draw up your paint at random places, just in the shape of clouds. We're trying to create a gorgeous picture here with a nice background. Now, I have switched to my size four brush and we're going to pick up Indian gold and we're going to add some bushy background. This is just like the other paintings that we have done in this lesson. We will just add them in the background. If you don't have Indian gold, don't worry, you can also use orange here. Or you can mix a bit of brown into your orange and you'll get a nice golden shade. The same way again. Skipping the region of the tree, we're going to apply the paint. Because our sky region or the background is wet, we would get a nice blurred effect because the paint is going to flow, but not a lot because it's not too wet. Make sure it's not too wet. Apply it in some random shapes like a bush, as you can see. So there. Now, I've applied the Indian gold and I'm going to run on the top of it with burnt umber. The next shade that we're going to use is burnt umber and we're going to paint it on top of the Indian gold that we just did. Adding two colors like this will give it a nice variant look because if you look at it, it's got that golden touch, and then it's got that dark-brown touch, which makes it look interesting as if the top part is glowing. Also this burnt umber is like creating shadows to our bush, so there. Now, we wait for the whole background to dry, and once it has dried, we will paint the foreground. The foreground part is where the snow is and we have to be painting the snow properly. Again, here we're going to skip the region of the trees. In between the trees, apply the water carefully, just the different sections in between the trees but all the way towards the bottom, there. Then we're going to add some reflection areas onto our snow first. Pick up some Indian yellow and drop it onto the wet paper at random places, just few lines here and there. That should do. Then now, I'm going to be making violet like I've been doing in the other projects. First you can start applying the blue and then we're going to mix it with a little bit of carmine to create a nice blue violet shade. More of blue because I want it to be like a blue violet shade. This is what we're going to paint on the snow. Again, skipping the region of the trees, we're going to apply this. You can also use violet directly but I prefer to mix my blue and red together to create a nice shade of violet always. Carefully along the different sections and along the lines of the snow that we have added and very careful to skip the regions of the yellow paint as well because violet mixed with yellow would give a brown shade, so we have to avoid the areas of the Indian yellow as well. I don't need to be more prominent with the bottom side. Lighter towards the top and more prominent towards the bottom side. I'm going to pick up a bit more of Indian yellow and try to make those shades that I applied, that is the reflection areas a bit more prominent. We'll just drop in some more Indian yellow. But again, make sure that you do not apply too much on top of the violet because it might turn into a brown shade. Then we'll pick up the violet again and try to add in some strokes. Now, before moving onto the trees, we have to make sure that the whole thing is dry because we don't want the paint on top of the trees to be spreading all around. I'm switching to my smallest size brush. We're going to add our birch trees, that is those trunks that is just a pencil sketch now, we're going to transform them into beautiful looking birch trees. All we're going to do is pick up some burnt umber and we're going to apply it onto the paper but in small lines on the trunk, that is from the left and the right, just totally random. Some lines you can extend it all the way towards the bottom. At the bottom, I'm trying to create a nice base here. The rest of the areas you can see what I've done, just few lines on our tree, that's it. Then towards the left and right we'll create some small branches. This is totally random again, the branches are just where I feel I want to add them. There is no specific rule, just at random places. Some lines originating from the tree to the left and to the right. We're going to be repeating this process for all of the trees. What I'm doing here is, you know when I painted those yellow and red strokes onto my sky, there might be regions where my paint actually flowed into the tree region, so those are the regions that I look for and those are the regions that I apply the brown paint and some other extra spaces as well. This process here, I'm trying to cover up the regions where my yellow paint float into the part of the tree and I'm covering it up with the burnt umber, and then adding few branches. For the next one, for example, you can see I've got a lot of yellow paint covered of red. I'm painting the whole thing with burnt umber because our tree cannot be yellow. It's a sunset. That's part of the sky. It cannot be yellow. That's why I'm covering the whole part of the trunk with burnt umber. Any spaces that are left white, I'll leave it as white itself but if it's got yellow on it, I cover it with burnt umber. It doesn't really have to be birch trees all over. Since I had to cover the whole of this tree with burnt umber, I'm turning this into a different tree. That's why I added a whole bigger branch to the right so that it looks like some other tree. It doesn't have to be a forest completely filled with birch trees itself, you can transform it to have some other trees in the forest as well. That's what I'm doing here. Look for areas where you paint has spread, that is the yellow paint, and then cover it up with burnt umber by adding small streets of lines onto the tree and then adding branches. But if you're really careful and none of your yellow paint has seeped into the tree region, then just add these burnt umber strokes at random places by leaving a lot of white spaces in between the trees. You can see clearly how I'm doing. Just some small lines, tiny detailing onto the tree. On some areas I extended to cover the whole of the left side or the whole of the right side. Then towards the right and the left, I'm adding few branches. All of these branches don't necessarily stop them from the left corner and the right corner itself. Try starting some of those branches from the center portion of the trunk as well. That is the middle part of the trunk towards the outside because they are not going to be exactly from the right and the left itself. Some of the branches start from the middle towards the right, and some start from the middle towards the left. This process is going to be entirely similar for all of the trees. Just enjoy the process. It's really fun to add the branches. I don't know why I really love adding branches to my trees. All of these branches, they do not have to be in the same exact size as well, so use them in varying sizes, in varying directions, add multiple branches if you want. It's totally up to you how you want to do it. You can also see these two trees towards the right I've added less of the brown spots. It's just totally random, totally up to you how you want to add it. If actually you want to cover the whole of the tree with burnt umber as well, that's also fine. It would just turn into a different forest. That's it. That's why it's going to be totally simple. Just try adding the random strokes. Once you've finished with the trees, try adding some twigs and more branches of grass at the bottom as well, because we don't want to leave it as entirely blank. To make this painting interesting, it's better if we can add some random twigs at the bottom. Just some random twigs and branches at the bottom on the snow. I'm trying to add most of them towards the trees because I do like my tree branches standing alone in the snow, so I try to cover it up. But you don't necessarily need to do that. You can just add at random places, small lines and small branches. These could be the grass coming out of the snow. Then I'll mix the violet again and we're going to add some lines onto our snow to depict that higher ground, that is the different heights of the snow. As I said, this whole thing was a hilly region and different heights of the snow where the trees are, they're not on the same line. We're going to do that with the violet. You can see I've added some small curves and lines extending on my violet. Because it's a wet on dry stroke, I'm using water on my brush to just spread it a little so that it looks more original and you can see now it looks more like a hill now. There, our painting is complete. It's looking really beautiful; isn't it? This is my most favorite among all of the eight projects. Here it is, guys. I hope you like this one. Thank you for joining me on this one. I hope to see all of your projects. 11. Project 8 - The Glowing Shadow: Welcome to the next class project. Here again, this is the other sunset project which is one of the longest, slightly only. The colors we need for this one, are Indian yellow, permanent red, or you can use Alizarin crimson, orange, cobalt blue, indigo, Indian gold, burnt umber, and Payne's Gray. If you don't have Payne's Gray, you can also use black, so don't worry. The same for Indian gold, you can use orange instead. You do not need exactly the same colors that I'm using here. Here is the paper that I have taped down on all the four edges. Starting with our pencil sketch, again, for this one, we're going to have a horizon line somewhere just below the halfway point of the paper. Then towards the center, we're going to have a small sun and right in front of the sun we're going to have our tree. You've already seen the picture how it is. I will also upload all of these paintings to the reference section, so you can reference that to draw your pencil sketch as well. But you can just follow along and add these pencil sketch with me because this whole process is real time, you can see it. Add these branches or the main trunks of the tree, and there, that's all our pencil sketch is going to be because the rest of it we're going to be doing with our paintbrush. Let us paint the sky region first. I've taken my flat brush, I'm going to apply water to the whole region of the sky. Again, evenly, without any large blobs of water on the paper, evenly apply the water. There, so once you have started applying the water, I'll switch to my size two more brush and I'm going to apply permanent yellow or Indian yellow onto my paper. I'm going to be painting in a semicircle manner now. This is quite different from the strokes that we have done till now. We were doing straight lines strokes and random strokes. This is going to be in a circle. Add the yellow in a circle and you can see, I've skipped the region of the Sun, but my paint is definitely going to flow into that region because I have not mastered. You will see in a while the holes and region is going to turn yellow. That's alright. Apply the Indian yellow or permanent yellow first. Then right next to it, adjacent to it, we'll add the next shade, which is orange. I'm picking up a nice tone of orange and adding it again in the form of a semicircle going outward each time when I'm applying my stroke. You can see the nice, beautiful blend of the orange and yellow that I've got. Then the third color that I'm going to be taking is crimson or permanent rose. Or even you can use Alizarin crimson or red instead. We will continue on to the semicircle going outward each time. Make sure to take a nice consistency of paint in your brush. Apply the paint outward. Then towards the edges, I'm going to be adding a little bit of blue so that we can turn our painting into our violet in the corner. Applying the blue right next to the red, in both the corners. Now you can see the left side and the right side is uneven. I'm going to pick up more of my Alizarin crimson and apply to the red side. That is towards the left. I'm going to add more layers on top of this so that the whole thing turns vibrant. I will also apply on top of the blue because I do not actually want blue on my paper. What I want is I want it to turn violet. This is the reason why I applied the blue paint. But I'm going to try to make this thing vibrant. I'm reapplying my orange. You can see now I'm reapplying it and it's turning into a nice vibrant color. I've added the orange, so let's add the yellow again now. As I've been saying, the key thing to have your paper stay wet for a longer duration of time is to keep applying the paint multiple times in order to get it vibrant. Don't stop your paintings midway. That is, let's say you reapply the red and then you reapply the orange, but if you stop there, then your yellow part is going to look uneven because you did not reapply the yellow. Now I'm using my tissue to create the space of the sun. Just use the tip of your tissue, roll it up at the corners, and then dab off that part of the sun that we want. Then create a round shape around it, so there. Now the sun region is perfect, isn't it? We're not complete yet. Let's go outside area and cover the whole thing and make it into a nice purple shade. More of the Alizarin crimson or carmine and there, so you can see now I've covered the outside and it looks more like a purple sheet, isn't it?This is the reason why I applied the blue. If you want to take it to more violet shade, you can add a bit more blue and then the carmine on top of it. There, that's it. Now, we're going to pick up a nice burnt sienna or burnt umber shade. We're going to add the background bushes. This is exactly going to be like all the other projects where we have added the background shape. Those blurred effects that we created. This is exactly what we're doing. Use the burnt umber and just add some random strokes onto the wet sky. The background is still wet and we're working on the wet-on-wet technique. Drop some paint and when we approach the sun region, we have to turn it lighter. This is exactly like the other project where we did the sun glow. We're going to create the glow here again. That's why I've used orange. I'm going to mix it up with a little bit of brown so that I get that nice golden shade. You can go ahead and use Indian gold if you have that, but I'm just showing you here how you can create that Indian gold. That is by mixing orange and brown and then using that same color to apply right near where the sun is. You can see my blend here. I've mixed the orange and the brown together and then apply it towards the center. Then towards the right again, I'm reapplying the burnt umber itself. That center part is where the glow is and that's why we made that lighter, that area for the bushes it's lighter. Make sure you blend them nicely. We don't want to see a clear separation between the orange bar and the brown bar. Now, we don't need to wait for our background to dry. For this painting, we're just going to paint the foreground as well. We're just going to apply the water. When you apply the water, you'll see that your paint is spreading towards the bottom, but that's all right. Let it spread. Then we will pick up some orange and we'll apply right below the horizon line and also add some extra lines. This is again going to be the deflection on the snow that is from the sun. It's glowing on the snow. That's what we're trying to create. Then we will take indigo. Here it is like almost the sun has set, and it's nearly getting dark. That's why we're going for a darker shade, which is indigo. We're going to apply this indigo in the other regions of the snow. In-between the orange shade that we have applied. Make sure to not touch the orange too much because you might turn it into a dark brown shade. We have to make sure that the indigo is darker towards the bottom and lighter towards the top. This is the region why we wet the paper because it would create a nice blend always that is the wet on wet technique there. Now that looks really nice. Isn't it? We're just trying to create a nice blend. I'm just running my brush over the orange and the indigo to create an even blend between them. Next, I'm taking my size 4 brush because I want to create some thin lines and we have to make sure that there is not a lot of water on my brush. I've dabbed it on the tissue and remove any excess water. There's only paint now, and on the wet paper that is the paint that we have just applied is wet we're going to draw some lines. This is the line of the reflection of the trees. Not the reflection exactly, it's the shadow of the trees. Here again, we will follow the perspective method where the shadow is going to be thinner towards the tree that is further away from us and near us, it is going to be thicker. Make sure that lines are thicker towards the top. Towards the top, I mean the branch, so it will be thicker towards us and thin at the point where it join the tree. Then pick up some more indigo and just run over your reflection and shadow so that, you know it can be looking like a seamless blend. After that, we will wait for the whole background to dry. Now everything has dried and we're going to paint the trees. I'm starting with Indian gold first. As I said, if you don't have Indian gold, mix a bit of orange with burnt umber, and you'll get this nice golden shade. We're going to add the trees. You can see right towards the center of the sun, I have not joined the tree. I've left a slight gap. This is because of the glow in-between the trees. Then towards the bottom, I'm adding with burnt umber. Only where the sun is and a little bit towards the outside, we have the glue. That's what we paint with Indian gold and towards the bottom we add burnt umber and towards the top as well. Towards the bottom part, make sure that you are joining the trunk of the tree to the shadow exactly. In the same line as where the shadow is starting, because this is actually the shadow of the tree itself. It has to match the exact point. Towards the center, if you want, you can join the tree by using a very lighter tone of yellow, but it's okay to leave it white as well. Then the branches that are closer towards the sun, we will add them with Indian gold. You can see just some few lines towards the left and the right. Then I'm dropping some smaller dots and laces. Some tiny drops of paint. I'm trying to create like a triangular shape around the tree. My branches are getting smaller as I go towards the top such that it tapers to a point at the top. Like I said, it's almost like a triangle. Imagine a triangle and try to paint inside it. But then don't be like you want to exactly go with the line of the triangle. Some of the leaves can go outwards. That's alright. Because this is a tree, it has to be totally random. Then further away from the sun, that is towards the top region, we will add more darker tones, so on top of the already existing Indian gold and apply burnt umber. These tiny small dots. I will add on the top. I want the top region to be more darker, so I'm going with the darker shade on the top, which is Payne's gray. You can also paint with black instead. That's only towards the extreme top. This is the three color variation that we're trying to bring in here that is fast Indian gold towards the glue or the sun area. Then we added the next color variation, which is burnt umber right next to it, around the area further away from the sun on the tree. Then Payne's gray or black, whichever you are using. We're going to be doing the same for the other trees as well. But as you can see, the other trees are further away from the sun, so you don't need to create a lot of blue area. You can go with just the two shades. Here I'm using burnt umber and I'm adding the tree trunks. Make sure that each of the tree trunks are right where you added the shadow. Don't forget that. The process of drawing the trees here is fairly repetitive. We're just going to add some branches to the left and the right and then fill them up with some leaves. Again, like a conical shape or like a triangular shape on the paper and just cover it up with some small tiny leaves. Nearly for all of these, you can go with burnt umber itself. I'm adding this one on the left, immediate left of the sun, and the immediate right of the sun. I'm going to add it with burnt umber. Then all the other trees, all the way to the left and all the way to the right, I'll add it with the darkest tone, which is Payne's gray. Or you can go with the black shade. Do any of the leaves that are closer towards the sun, I will add some Indian gold. What I'm trying to look here is, you know, those semicircular region where we painted with the yellow. The region where there is yellow, I add tiny drops of Indian gold there so that it can add that glow to each of my trees. Then the rest of the areas, I fill them up with burnt umber itself. Here, this is the tree that's almost towards the left and it is in the red region of our semicircular background. I'm adding it with Payne's gray because it's going to be really dark. It doesn't have the glow from the sun. The same principle we're going to apply to all the trees towards the right side. I'm applying the burnt amber here. But then some of the branches of this tree is towards the yellow region. Few of those branches, I will add some Indian gold shade. Then the rest of the areas with burnt umber. You don't have to be stressed about the little amount of detailing that we're adding here, we just have to use the tip of our brush and drop in the paint. Just tiny dots I'm making to make those leaf shape. It's totally random. It doesn't have to be any exact shape we have to make, it's just some tiny small lines that I'm adding here. There. Now I've picked up the Indian gold because I want to add in those little details right next to the yellow region. Now all the trees towards the right I'm adding with Payne's gray. Then towards the base of each of our trees, we just want to add few lines. I'm adding them with the burnt amber itself. You can try blending them with water so that those lines do not seem odd standing out because this is the wet-on-dry stroke. It would stand out a lot. First apply the stroke and then just try blending them with water. That's pretty much it. Your painting is complete. This one is gorgeous, isn't it? I hope you like it. Here's the final picture. Thank you all for joining me in this class. 12. Thank You: Thanks to each and every one of you who joined me in this class. I hope you liked all of the eight winter sunset projects. If you attempt any of these paintings, don't forget to upload them to Skillshare as well as social media. You can find me in Instagram as colorful mystique. See you all in my next class.