Acrylic Painting: How to Paint Clouds: Colorful Landscape Class

1. Intro: Hello everyone and welcome to my Skillshare class. My name is Yvette lab and I'm a full-time fine artists based on the central coast of California. I create lots of Skillshare classes all about how to use acrylic paints to create landscape and seascape paintings. In today's class, we're going to be doing a combination of the two by learning how to paint this beautiful coastal town, seascape landscape combo painting. In today's class, we're gonna be focusing a lot on how to use color to create depth and space in a painting. How to look at a reference photo and simplify it to create your own style. And how to use brushstrokes and different techniques with the paint to create realistic clouds and trees and landscapes in general. Now that we're done with the introductions, let's hop straight into the class. In the next video, I will be telling you guys all about the materials you'll need to complete this painting. 2. Materials: It started this class off. I'm going to be going over all the materials, supplies, and tools that I recommend for getting started with acrylic painting, as well as the colors and specific brushes I recommend for this class. To start out, we have our paints. These are the Winsor and Newton Galleria acrylic paints. And I really recommend them for all levels. If you're just getting started in acrylic paints, these can be really great because they are a really nice quality, but they're still pretty affordable. And you can find a set like this for relatively inexpensive at Michaels or a Joanne. So they're very accessible to most people. And the set comes with the colors I recommend for almost all paintings, which is your primary colors, your cadmium red, Winsor blue, which is also commonly known as the halo blue. So if you have phthalo blue, just go ahead and sub that in for Windsor blue and then cadmium yellow. And I always recommend having a green and a brown. You totally can mix all of your colors with primaries, but it's a lot of work and I think having a green and a brown is really helpful. So it comes with this set of colors and it's something I really recommend. I actually still use these in my professional practice alongside my more expensive paints. I really do love them and recommend them. In addition to this set, I always use this color, Payne's gray. I really recommend if you're looking at building up your palette to invest in Payne's gray. This is a dark blue gray and I use it basically as a replacement for black. It makes really beautiful shadows and darkens things up beautifully without them getting muddy the way that I think black doesn't mix as well with some colors. I definitely recommend getting Payne's gray. You can build up more expensive collection of paints if you're looking to get higher-quality paints, after you buy this set, you can start to add other colors that you think you might want with higher-quality paints and then continue to use this set because it's really great. Another thing that I really recommend is investing in a higher-quality artists quality white paint because you'll be mixing your white with all of your other colors. And the higher-quality white paint is much more opaque and much easier to build up layers with. When you're mixing this high-quality paint with these lower quality paints, it brings the whole quality of all of it up. So it's a really good way to get started in more expensive paint if you're looking to do that at all, is just to start out with a white. I think it will really upgrade your experience. Today's project will be done on watercolor paper. I recommend looking for something a bit thicker. This is 300 GSM, and that works really well for acrylic painting. And we're gonna go ahead and prime it with gesso, which is essentially like a white paint. And I will show you guys all about preparing different surfaces for acrylic painting in the next little class, some other miscellaneous things you'll need are some water to clean your brushes in. I always recommend having two cups of water so you can have more room to clean off your brushes and have one tank be a little bit cleaner. This one can be really dirty, so it's easier to a clean them off. And then you'll also need something to mix your paints on. I'll be using this glass palette which I really love, but you can go ahead and use whatever you're used to. You can use a plate, a plastic palette, or palette paper. Those all work really well. The reason I love a glass palette so much is because it's so easy to clean. You just use a scraper and scrape your paint away, which you'll see me doing during this class. And then you can just pick it up, throw it away, and there's no other trash and it's super easy. You'll also need some kind of towel, paper towel or a rag to dry your brushes off. I'll be using tape to tape off our edges today. You don't have to do that. That's totally up to you, but I will be doing that to create a pretty white border. If you want to do that as well. For brushes, I always use really affordable brushes. I get packs of tiny brushes and some different shaped brushes for just a few dollars at Michaels or Blick is one of my favorite places to get brushes. But I really think it's good to just get more affordable brushes that you can throw away when they start to get worn out because my brushes inevitably always do and I'd rather just use new ones, then buy really expensive ones. That just works well for me and that's what I recommend. For this class. I recommend having a medium large flat brush is three-fourths of an inch, maybe a half of an inch flat brush, and just a regular medium round brush basic for filling everything in. And then I use these tiny brushes all the time. So I really recommend getting a couple of really tiny detail brushes for adding in little bits of paint and adding lots of detail and having a lot of control over what goes on in your painting. This is especially helpful if you're painting on the smaller side. If you're painting on really big canvases, then you might not need these as much. But when we're doing it a little bit smaller, I definitely use them a lot. And that's about it for materials for this class. So let's go ahead and get started on the artwork. 3. Surface Prep: Gesso: The very first thing that we're gonna be going over is how to prepare any surface for painting with acrylic paints. To start out, we're using JSR. This is basically just a thick, cheaper white paint that you can use to do the first layer of your painting. The reason that this is important to do is because it saves you a lot of your more expensive paint. You won't have to do as much layering and your paint won't soak into the paper as much and it will create them better layer in that way. If you do it without Gesso, you can. It's not bad for the painting or the paper. It's just that you'll have to do probably quite a bit more layers and use quite a bit more of your more expensive paint to get the same level of opacity and completeness with your painting. Using this is super easy. You're just going to open it up for a little bit on your paper. Then I like to use a little bit of a bigger brush for this if you have it, but you can use what I pointed out earlier. It's just easier and quicker. And you're literally just going to go ahead and coat your paper completely with this white paint. This is also nice because it adds a little bit of texture to the painting which I like. I like little brushstrokes as the underlayer. And you can use a thicker amount of paint are a little bit less depending on how many coats you want to do and how you want it to feel. But once you're finished with that super easy, we're just going to let it dry for probably about 15 to 30 minutes depending on how thick your paint is. You want to make sure it's fully dry before you go ahead and start your painting so that the white doesn't mix with your colors as you're starting tag them. 4. Composition: Once your address TO is completely dry and you've waited about 15 to 30 minutes. We are ready to get started on this painting. I'm gonna start out by taping off my edges and you'll see, but I'm going to tape it not to the table, but just to itself so that I can get a nice border, but still be able to move my paper around. I like to be able to turn it as I'm working if I need to. Once you have your paper all taped up, if you're choosing to do that and your palette setup. And we'll go ahead and get started sketching in the composition of the painting. I do really recommend before we start that you go ahead and check out the reference photo which is in the project student project section. It's really helpful, I think as you're painting along with me to see what I'm looking at and to make your own choices about using the reference photo and how you want to interpret things. I think it just really helps you to understand the steps I'm taking and the process better if you can also look at the reference photo. So go ahead and pull it up on your phone, on your computer or print it out, whatever is most helpful for you. And then you can work off of it right alongside me. Know the first thing I'm gonna do is just get a little bit of Payne's gray and a bit of water and make a nice watery, thin paint. And then we'll go ahead and just start marking in our compositional landmarks. We can see on this side that it's a little bit water starts off in the distance and it's a little bit less than halfway down the painting. Tall, give that a little bit of a mark. Then we have a mountain that comes up here. And that goes to a little bit less than halfway this way. Before we start to get our larger hill. I'm gonna go ahead and mark that over here. It's a little bit more than halfway up the painting. We start to see these big cliffs. And I'm just lightly sketching in the shapes that I see there. Then you can see the harbor kinda comes in and a big You will just go ahead and continue that coastline. And we loosely, I just started to kind of add in a little bit of details into the composition. And we can see that this hill comes down around here, lots of greenery. This doesn't have to be super precise. We're just marking in our basic areas and shapes. Much more efficient to make sure that you have the overall composition looking good before you started with any details so that you don't spend timed in details that you then have to change or paint over later. I'm not really getting into the buildings just yet. I'm just marking in the greenery different shapes there. 5. Blocking in Darks: Then the next step that I would do is I'm going to mix a little bit more of that Payne's gray and a little bit of our green, I get a really nice dark green. I might add a little bit of white to that. Then I'm gonna go ahead and just start loosely blocking in the areas that have that really dark green foliage for our first layer. And this just starts to give it a little bit of dimension. And we start to be able to see where things are a little bit better. Sometimes it helps if you squint your eyes at the painting just to get an block in these loose shapes of darkness, wherever they are. And then you can look at the overall composition when you squint your eyes at both the reference photo and the painting. To kind of get an idea of the general areas of darkness on the painting. When you're working with acrylics, there is a lot of layer building and repetition. So that's why we start out with just laying in these dark colors, getting a feel for it because we know we'll be going over it several times. So this gives us a really nice foundation to work off of. Once we filled in our darkest darks, I'm gonna go ahead and mix up similar color, but a little bit lighter. So we'll still use our Payne's gray and our green, but just adding a little bit more white to get a nice kind of shadowy color. We'll start to add that in, in the distance where we see our mid tones. Because we're just starting to color block all of the areas. It doesn't have to be too exact, but it's just starting to kind of carve this scene out from the paper by using lights and darks. It's also helpful to pay attention to your brushstrokes even in this early stage. You can see that rocks are coming down here. I'm using downward brushstrokes. We'll get more into how to use that as we continue our painting as well. But using these brushstrokes intentionally really helps give life and movement to a piece. 6. Blocking in Mid and Lights: I'm mixing up a little bit of a lighter color as well because it's easier to go back and forth that way when they're all mixed up. Having a little bit of lightness here. This is a little bit later. We'll use that lighter gray color for this rock. Because if you look at the reference photo, this front part of the rock is one of the lighter parts on his painting. Again, this is just a mixture of the green, the Payne's gray and white in different shades that we're using all around the piece. Back into our darker gray or version. The mid tone. Come in and use that all around there as well. Again, I'm just using my brush strokes up and down because I know this rock. If you look at it closely, it seems like the rocks are pulling up and down. Then I'm gonna take some Payne's gray, some white, and a tiny bit of brown mix up a different tone of our gray, so a little bit of a warmer gray. And it's a little bit less. Since it's a little bit less green, it makes sense to use it for our buildings and our man-made objects in this town. For now, we're just going in with a mid tone gray because we're just trying to get a first layer. And then we'll come in with all of the cool colors of the houses and the pops of white and brightness as well. You can see there's a lot of houses and city over here in this far port. Time just covering that whole area. We have one right here. I'm buildings will come in and make these a little bit more squared off and precise. But for now, like I said, we're just trying to get the base covered because acrylic painting does require quite a few layers to really make it feel finished and really well done. Adding a little more white to that so we get a nice crisp light gray. To do these buildings. Then we will mix in a little bit more gray and start to fill in these rocks. Some of it is quite dark, so we'll use a more gray and it's more kind of a blue-gray. So I do really recommend using Payne's gray or like I said earlier, some blue tinted in with your black. We might even add a little bit of our blue to the Payne's gray. So it's a nice cool, dark gray. We're starting to go back into our shadows. That's gonna be our next step, is deepening those shadows and adding another layer to them to make them really nice and dark. 7. Pt 5: So I'll mix up some more of that first color we used for our dark when you use Payne's gray, some green, and then just the tiniest bit of white so that you can see the colors a little bit better. And we'll go ahead and start layering that. On all these areas we did dark. And I do recommend you can follow along with exactly what I'm doing or you can look at the reference photo. But we might change some areas. We might see that we did the composition a little bit differently. Though we want our final results would be. I think it's helpful if you do also look at the reference photo just to help you re-evaluate your shadows. 8. Blocking Trees : Now we're going to mix a little bit of white into that color and a little bit of yellow so that we can get a nicer, more earthy light green. We'll go ahead and start laying that in. It's still a pretty dark color, but it's just a bit more green and lighter and we're trying to do those tree tops. You can also make some a little more of your green, green if you want. Maybe a little bit of brown to tone it down. I really like mixing burnt umber with green. It gives it a really woodsy, earthy green. We're going to go ahead and start Laying that in where we can see lighter green trees like a lot in the front here we can see that I like to do trees in a circle, dabbing motion with my round brush. It gives this kind of rounded tree shape. I'll do lots of little circles and dads. To give it a little bit of a texture. We can go ahead and add some of that in over here as well. But we will be keeping this green mostly to the forefront of this painting. I'm going to add a little bit of white to that mixture and make it a little bit lighter. We can go over it again, adding in some highlights. A little yellow to it as well. I'm just going to using again that rounded dabbing motion, sticking especially to the top so that where you might imagine the tops of the trees would be. To add in this highlight. Then I'm going to add a little bit more gray to that same green color. A little bit more green and will be darkening it up just a little bit again. I want this color to be a little bit lighter and more green looking then are really dark color, but it's a nice mid-tone that'll create and we'll just see it on top. I'm just going to start to go around some of these darker green colors. Since this almost looks black, I'm just blending it out with a little bit of a softer green to show that it really is like foliage and trees and such. We'll also take it over here. I start to add in the tops of the trees. In all these background areas. It's not super clear because it is very shadowed. And the further away that we get from the viewer and further away the less detail you can see, you'll make it a little bit simpler. Back in these backgrounds. You can tell that's just true with the eye. You can see a tree that's very close to you, but if you're looking far away, it just looks like a large dark blob. Closer you are, the more you can see the leaves, etc. But I do want to add just a little bit of dimension to it by adding in this slightly lighter green. 9. Distant Mountains: So at this point I'm going to go back into our light gray color. Just white, a little bit of Payne's gray and maybe a little bit of brown. This is the lightest color we've been working with so far. I'm going to fill in any last areas. Over here we have some rocks that are kind of in the sun. They're really bright. I'll use that there. Will use it on the top of our mountain, but we haven't filled in quite yet. Bring that up. Lots of it right here. Kinda show that curve. At this point. I just want to go ahead and start filling in other large areas of the painting. I find it's easier to get everything down before we get into too much detail. So I'm gonna go ahead and mix up kind of a light green blue. This is pretty light because similarly to how you can't see as much detail as you move back into space. You also don't see as much contrast. There'll be lighter colors. So you won't have as dark darks. You can see that really clearly in the reference photo. An example of that. Something to carry with you whenever you're painting landscapes, it really creates a sense of space and depth in your landscapes. Then we'll mix a little bit of white and brown into that color. To come in with some lighter areas. I'm really just kind of dabbing this around where I see it in our reference photo, not super exact or anything like that. 10. Ocean Layer 1: Next up I'm going to work on the water and I'm gonna pull out one of our little bit bigger brushes, a half an inch flat brush. And we're going to mix up some blue, tiny bit of Payne's gray and some white. We can start laying that. I want to add a little more boy, a little more Payne's gray, make it a little bit darker. The way you want something you want to notice is that when the water is deeper in this image, so over here we have a darker blue, but we're going to move into a prettier, more teal light-blue as we get closer to the shore. To do that, we'll add a little bit more blue, a little bit more white, and then this tiniest little smudge of yellow. Since this is the first layer, I'm just really roughly covering it up. But we'll go in right after and add another layer of paint as well. If you're a little bit confused, looking at the reference photo, just know that I'm opting to leave out the Doc or rock jetty that goes out. I just want to leave that out of my photo. You can add into yours or continue along with me. But just so you're not confused, I am cropping that from my my painting. I'm mixing up a little bit more blue Payne's gray and just going right over it again. Like I said, this is why I recommend having a little bit of a larger brush for this section. Because if you can move quickly, you can blend it all together and that gets us really pretty gradient. And it really looks like the ocean. Moving back quickly using a little bit of yellow, a little bit more blue and some white to get that turquoise color. Again, back into our darker blue mixed sample, a little bit of blue, a little bit of gray back. One of the biggest things with creating a smooth look is just moving back and forth a lot. Then I can see there's a little bit of a darker area right in here. So I'm just adding a little bit. That is I'm bringing some of that darker color in towards the shore and the distance because since it's further away, you wouldn't be able to see the TOO as clearly as we will see it pop in the front. I want to mix it like a really vibrant teal blue. Kind of throw that in there as well. I'll add a little white to that because I feel like we're losing a little bit of the distinctness. 11. Details on Shoreline: So now that we have the base layer for our ocean all laid in, I'm going to go back and start working on the details. In our town and cliff side. I'm mixing up some Payne's gray and some brown. Kind of just gives you a neutral gray, warm gray. Maybe. I'm going to go ahead and just start adding that in all around the edges in-between the water and the land. Give it a little bit of distinction. I'm also going to use it to build up some of these shadows and the rocks as well. Then I'm going to mix a little bit of white into that color, so it's a little bit of a lighter gray. We'll go ahead and start looking at the details in our painting. We can see that there is a darker and a little bit of blue to it as well. This area is a little bit darker and shadow the point of this rock. Feel bad in with that mid tone color. We have a little bit of a dark coming out here under the water. So I'll use that color to add that in. I'm going to use it also just to fill in some of these areas that only have one layer of paint, that mid tone. I'll build up this rock with it as well. I'm kind of just being loose with this and adding it in. Just to give everything a little bit more dimension. I'm not super worried about it being too precise anywhere. I find that just starting to add in lots of colors and shading helps with the realism of a piece. This rock definitely has a bit more shadow. I'm going to connect these. And it's really only light on the one side will bring that all the way up. I'll mix a little bit of white into that a little bit later. We can go ahead and add in some texture around some of these rocks and just add in, I'm doing this up and down movement just to show that these rocks are kind of up and down. Like you can see that the movement when you look in the photo and see all these crevices. So I'm just adding those in really lightly. Same width down here. This is mostly just some loose up and down lines. I'll continue that down on the coast. These rocks are also going to have some of this up and down lines. 12. Buildings 1: And I'll add a bit more white to that so we get a nice light gray. Will start to work in that as well. Everything with acrylic painting usually needs at least two coats. So you can take this opportunity to kind of go around the painting and add in light wherever we've missed a spot or it seems like you can see the white of the paper through it. I'm also using it just to highlight these rock areas and the front. These rocker isn't a distance because this is a little bit lighter than the color we were using before. Using lots of different tones of color is just really helps to give a lot of visual interest to your painting. I'm going to use that light gray to just add in a tiny strip of white right here. Which is if you see it looks like it's maybe a little bit of beach. And the distance. Now we'll go ahead and start working on some of these houses back here. I'm going to mix up, I'm just going to mix a lot of white with the tiniest bit of Payne's gray. I want us to be our lightest color so far, pretty much just white. I'm going to start blocking in some of these squares and rectangles because as soon as you can see these straight lines, you don't see those much in nature. So that really indicates that there's some man-made structures that are hiding them amongst the woods. I'm just using this up and down strokes, doing these kind of abstracted rectangles all near each other. Some of them are connected, some of them are not. And this gives the illusion of lots of different buildings layered on top of each other. 13. Buildings: Adding Color: Again, most of these are pretty abstract shapes, so I'm just kind of different rectangles, different straight lines. I'm just putting all together because it is far away. And this is a little bit more of an abstract painting which makes it really easy and fun to just create these geometric designs. Then once you have it all kind of blocked in with a really light color, I think we can go in and mixing a little bit of red to it so we get a nice pink and we'll start to just add that in certain places, will go in with a few different colors. In this method, I want us to be kind of more of a terracotta, pink. We see that a lot in the distance. I'm just adding that into some of these buildings. Just start to give it the look of a town. There's some lines for the roofs. It'll add in some dots and then just some whole buildings will get to be pink as well. Then I'm gonna do the same thing, but with a light blue. We'll use some of our bullying and some white, tiny bit of gray. We'll start to add that in around as well in a similar way. This is very loose as well. I'm just laying it in. I'm gonna do the same as going to yellow. A little bit of yellow, a little bit of white. Me a tiny bit of brown to mix in there to warm it up. 14. Buildings: Adding Contrast: And then once we've added some color into there, I'm going to mix up a really dark color with our Payne's gray and our brown. Just go ahead and add that in around because we have windows, some spaces in-between the buildings. And that is kind of like the final detail that will make this little abstracted town come together. I'm doing little Rosa dots on some of the buildings like Windows, little lines and bushes, separations between the houses. Some of these could be trees in the distance. Again, you can just use your imagination, your discretion as to where you want to add in these darks and separate the buildings from each other. They don't all need Windows, they don't all need to be the same. But it's kind of fun to just play around and add it here and there until you feel like it looks really nice. Then after having in some of those darks, I feel like we could add a little bit of blue and do a little bit of a darker blue. Gray. Really mixing Payne's gray and our blue together. And add in some of that too to have kind of a mid tone amongst this little town and all of its colors. I'm going to use this mid tone to add in some of the window type dots as well. Because it's a little bit less jarring and noticeable and it blends better into the scenery. Going back to our light blue, I'm just going to draw that and bring it out under the dock. 15. Shoreline and Greenery Details: Then I went to work a little bit on our shoreline similar. I think usually when you look at the ocean next to the shoreline is a little bit of shadow from the rocks. I'm gonna go ahead and add that. Again. This is just a mixture of Payne's gray and our Winsor blue or phthalo blue. And I'm only adding it on the side of the rock. We can see in our reference photos some of these areas are in a lot of shadow. So that's why we're adding that in. I'll add a little bit more Payne's gray to that in a little bit more blue. Just get a really, really rich dark color to kind of blend into this area where we see these really dark shadows. Kind of blend it into the shoreline little bit more. Use that color and just outlet distance to kind of show off out a little white to it. Just to emphasize that that is where the ocean meets the hill. I want to add a little more detail into some of this area right here because it is closer to us. We would see just a little bit more. Even though it's a bit abstracted. I'm mixing a little bit of brown and our Payne's gray and white together get a nice warm gray brown. I'll just start adding that in as well. I think what I want to do next is mixed up a nice darker green color. So I'm gonna make some of our green over Payne's gray and some of our brown together. A little bit of white because I don't want to be too dark, but darker than this color we have. And I'll start adding in some real nice contrast details with that dark green. You can add this all around because there are plenty of shadows within the trees were really only have the highlights on the top of the trees, which you can only see a little bit of when you're looking at a distance. I'm just continuing to go around these light areas and add extra dimension around areas. We have the green. I'll even add some of that dark green back out. And these areas because like I said, there might be trees back there in-between the houses. I'm just adding a few little splotches of it here and there. Again, for most of this I'm just using kind of a dab motion and letting the brush speak for itself. 16. Foreground Cliff: And I'm gonna go back into our rock. Gray, a little bit of brown, little bit of Payne's gray, a little tiny bit of white. And add some more. I'm mixing up a little bit of Payne's gray and a little bit of white. And a little tiniest bit of blue actually give us a really nice cool toned color. For the rocks. I'm going to add a nice bit of contrast into these rocks because if you look, I have the reference photo. You can see there are quite a bit of areas that are quite dark on this front rock. Then I'll mix just a little bit of white into that. A little bit of a lighter tone. And build that up as a kind of blend out or dark tones. Makes a little more white into it, get a lighter color. I'm just going over all those really light areas and darkening them a little bit. We can add more in light as we go. But for now I feel like it was just a little bit too bright, so I'm darkening it up. I'm kind of moving that around some of these other shore front rocks as well. Just adding a little bit more contrast and detail. Little bit more. Payne's gray will continue to build up these contrasts. Sometimes when you're working on a landscape and you're doing it a little more abstracted like we are here having a little bit of fun with it or just in general, you just decide that you want to take out parts that are in the reference photo. So I'm gonna take out this front rock. I just don't feel like it's working very well for me right now. I'm just going to quickly paint over it with that shadow. And then we'll mix a little bit more. Blue. White. Started to kind of blend it out. 17. Ocean Layer 2 Details: And then I want to mix up some of that same, similar blue, green, gray, darker tone. Start to come out from the edges and just add in some details to the water. I'm doing just some zigzags, really light lines. I'm not touching the brush too much. I'm almost hovering. I'm just letting it create these lines and textures on certain areas of water. Keeping it mostly to the side where it's a little bit darker. Mixing a little bit of white and blue into that. We'll just be able to kind of go back over it, blend it out a little bit. Then I want to blend up a really vibrant color to put right along the shoreline as well. So I'm just gonna do some straight fellow or Windsor blue on the tiniest bit of yellow to make it a little more teal and a little bit of white and then making sure there's no gray in there, so it's a really vibrant, saturated color. And then I am adding some white to lighten it up. I'm keeping it just as pure blue and yellow colors. I'm just mixing it till it's a little bit lighter than what we have on the page. It's good to just keep playing while you're mixing your colors, keep adding and changing things if you feel like you need to. I'm putting this all along our shoreline here and then I'm going to add some in the distance here is kind of indicates shallow water. You can see the light through the water better in the shallow areas. Then we can also take a little bit of it and just start to kind of feather it out like we were with the other darker color. Just by adding these little bits of detail, you really start to feel the movement of the water. And a little bit more of the piece. I'm adding a little bit more blue into it. I want to keep it really saturated, but just a little bit darker. We can add that in right in-between. This adds a really nice pop of color. 18. Sky Gradient: So once you're happy with your town in your ocean section of your painting, we're going to go ahead and jump into the sky. And you can always come back and work more on the lower part of your painting after you've put in the sky. Sometimes it's easier to see what it needs once they're all of the colors are into the painting and the whole thing is covered. But for now, we're going to go ahead and start on the sky. And I'm gonna be showing you guys my best techniques for painting clouds. I'm also going to go ahead and clean up my palette so you can see that I just spray it with a little bit of water and then take the scraper clean off the palette. And it's super easy, just comes right off with the water. And then you just use a paper towel, wipe all that paint off, and then you have so much more room to work. So it is just really easy and low maintenance, low-mass. For this guy, we're gonna take our larger brush, this is our three-fourths brush, and I'm going to mix up some of our Winsor blue and our white. We'll add a little bit of our gray, just the tiniest amount. And then a good amount of blue will just start to lay that in the sky in this painting is very blue. We're using a really nice bright blue for it. And putting this darkest blue that we've mixed up right along the top, it's about the size of the brush, just one layer across the top. And then we'll start adding a little bit of white into that same mixture, starting to blend it down because as we get closer to the ground, the sky becomes quite a bit lighter. That's how I like to do it. I just slowly mix in a little bit more white as I move down the painting. And then you get this really nice, easy gradient. I'm just working that lighter blue up into it really gently with my brushstrokes. And then we go back into our light paint and keep adding a little bit of white until we get to the bottom. Once you get to the bottom, it might be easier to use a smaller brush or you can just use the corner of the square brush. It's why I like to use square brushes. You can still get a point with it. Go around your existing mountains and buildings and all that. When you're painting clouds with any piece, I recommend doing this gradient technique. Having that be your first layer and then adding the clouds on top. You can also add just a tiny bit of water to your paint. If you want it to be a little bit easier to blend. Don't want to add a lot. You don't want like a watercolor texture. But adding just a little bit definitely helps. Then I feel like it could use a little more blending in the middle section. So I'm going to mix a little more blue and go back into the middle. That's the cool thing with gradients as you can just work back and forth to your heart's content with acrylic paints until it's as smooth as you want it to be. 19. Clouds 1: All right, so once your gradients how you want it to be, I'm gonna go ahead and remove the tape because it's easier for me to see the painting when it's got clean lines already. You can wait till the end, but I'm not gonna be doing any more big broad work around the edges. So I'm gonna go ahead and take mine off. Beautiful. I feel like once you take the tape off and take all that mess away, you get these beautiful clean lines and the whole painting looks like a 100 times better already. You could actually totally leave this painting as it is and it would be like a cloudless day, but we're gonna go ahead and work on the fluffy white clouds. And I'll show you guys how I build those up. What I like to do is I'll actually just mix a little bit of white into that blue we were using for the sky and make a nice light blue. And I'll start to just draw in where I see the clouds. I'm starting with this kind of light blue midtone so that we can build up to our bright white colors slowly. And that's where you really get a nice effect for clouds. We can see there's one right up at the top and I'm just being careful around the edge, but I'm also not that worried about it. You can always cut off your border or if you're framing it with a mat, you can just frame around it. And then we have some beautiful fluffy clouds and little bits. I'm using kind of a just scrubbing motion with this medium-sized round brush. I feel like that gives it the best fluffy texture. And then I also just kind of do a little dabs and go around with little circles because there's lots of little bits of clouds. Clouds are definitely a really organic shape. So they don't have to be very precise, which is part of what makes them so fun to work on it as long as you're building up your layers of lights and darks, There's not too many rules to shape. Then we have this one. You can kind of just squint your eyes at the reference to see the shapes. If that helps. We have some little straggler floaty clouds up here as well. I'm just blending this down because this cloud does come right up to our mountains. Then what I'll do is I'll just mix more white into light blue. So it's more of a bright white with just a tinge of blue instead of a light blue. And then I'll just start building up where I see the highlights. We can see on this Cloud there's a quite bright area right here. And a little bit over here as well. In our top one is centered in the middle of the brightest area of the cloud. You can always mix back into a little bit of blue and blend all of these colors together. My best brush technique, like I said, it's kind of just the scrubbing motion. Then on this cloud, this is like our brightest cloud right here. So we'll go ahead and add some pure white to that and then just blend it into the light-blue. Same with the top of this cloud. We have some bright white right in here. Down here. Go in and add a little bit of it up in this corner to this wispy clouds. I'm gonna go ahead and build up my layers here. I feel like these could be a little bit brighter. I'm using some pure white and then just blending it down. 20. Clouds 2 & Outro: And then I'm actually going to add just a little bit of Payne's gray to white light blue mixture and this whole function as the bottom of the clouds. I'm still want there to be an overall blue cast to it. So I did add Blue. What does it a little bit darker. You can just almost just like a neutral. It's not that it's super dark, but it's a different tone than the blue of the sky. So it really stands out as a shadow. We'll add that in wherever we see these shadows, I see some right over here underneath this cloud for sure. Maybe a little bit in the middle here. Some underneath these clouds. A little bit of white to that mixture. So it's still this grave and still a little bit lighter. What kind of blend in some of that as well. I think one of the most important parts of doing clouds is you'll have your bigger chunkier cloud areas. But you also want to have some little wispy bits coming off of your clouds. Because it's not just one form. Moving back into our blue, light blue with lots of white. Kind of start to blend this out a little more detail. Then I'm just taking a pop of pure white. Since the cards are still a little bit wet, the paint is wet, blends really beautifully into the Cloud without looking too stark. That's how I recommend approaching clouds as you put your gradient down first. Then you'll start to add in your mid tones, your light blue. And then you can build up your highlights and add in a little bit of shadow here and there. And just play with it and blend it until it looks how you want it to look. And make sure to include lots of little wispy shapes and bits and pieces of clouds around your clients as well. So at this point we're coming to the end of the tutorial, but feel free to take your time, go back, add more details, fix anything you want, re-watch parts of this class. So there's anything that you want to go back over with me and change it up and add things as you see fit and keep working on it as long as you want and as long as it's fun. I really hope that you guys enjoyed today's class and that you were able to have fun following along with me and enjoy the process of painting and learn something. Hopefully, if you enjoyed this class, I would really appreciate it if you reviewed it in the reviews, it really helps the class. And then what I really want is to see your guys as artwork. So please take a picture of the painting you created and posted in the student project section so I can celebrate the art that you created along with me and cheer you on. And I just, it's just so fun to see everything that you guys make. The difference is the creative parts, everything about it. I really love seeing you guys as art, so definitely share that with me. Again. I hope you guys had fun and thank you so much for taking my class.