Transcripts
1. What this class is about ?: Hi everyone, this is Maria, a watercolor artist
and instructor. I painted a lot of
landscapes and sky scenes, organized the annual
sky challenge, and made a few classes for
you about the sunset skies. Now it's time to explore
the beauty of white clouds. Their boneless area
of shapes presents endless opportunities
to experiment with various watercolor
techniques and approaches. In this class, we'll
dive into a series of engaging exercises and work on three captivating projects. The content in this lesson
assumes that you have some prior skills in watercolor or have completed
the essential course. In the course I covered fundamental watercolor
techniques and methods for painting
skies and clouds. Nevertheless, here of course, I also show and explain
everything in detail. We'll go from simple to complex. As usual, I'll cover topics such as painting
negative ******, the nuances of capturing a deep blue sky and creating
an airy cloud shape. We will also pay attention to perspective and different
approach to depicting shadows. Ultimately, we'll bring together all this knowledge through the completion of three
inspiring projects. I'll guide you
through the step by step process of creating
sandy landscapes, which will help you to
practice the wet on technique. And master a set of methods
with which you will be able to paint any combinations of white cloth in your
future landscapes. Join the class and
enjoy water colors.
2. Materials overview: Welcome to the final lesson in a series of classes on
painting in watercolor sky. I'm going to begin it
with a brief overview of the materials and I'll talk
about some important points. Since I'm painting the sky
in a wet and wet technique. The quality and type of watercolor paper is
important to me. In this class, I did
all the projects and demonstrations on 300
gram cotton paper. This paper absorbs water
better and stays wet longer. Which allows me to create complex shapes and paint soft shadows in the
clouds as well. Of course, you can
try to do this on celos paper if you
don't have cotton wine. But be ready that the
result will be different. In most project,
I'm going to attach the paper with masking
tape to the tablet. However, for the third project, it's important that this
board be waterproof. I use a piece of
Plexi glass here. This is a list of all the
colors I used in this lesson. I use paint in the tubes, but water color in
pants will work too. Of course, for these exercises, it doesn't matter what
brand of paint you use, just use your favorite
or what you have. As always, I recommend just
mix the color together before starting to make
sure that you get a nice mix and avoid
surprises later. As for brushes, choose from what you have
on hands to first. We need a large brush
to moisten the paper. Also soft round synthetic
or natural brushes of medium or bigger
size for the cloud. You will only need one or two synthetic brushes for landscape details in
a couple of projects. I'm also going to paint with
Chinese cadigraphy brush, but any soft, natural, or synthetic brush will
do this job as well. Here you can see the list of
all the brushes I used in the lesson before each new
block of exercise or project. I will also give you a
list of materials that I used for that particular
exercise or project. Prepare also paper towels
or tissue, a palette. I have a plastic one, a cup of water paper
for color tests, and a hair dryer to
speed up your work. When everything is ready,
let's get started.
3. Exercise : 1-Color Blue Sky: There are many ways
in which you can paint white clouds
in the blue sky. The easiest one
is just take some blue and leave white
space untouched. This is exactly
where we are going to begin to warm up a little bit and to discuss the technique
for this exercise. You can take whatever
blue you prefer. It can be uterine
blue, tallow blue, cobalt blue, or whatever blue that you have and
that you prefer. In my case, it will be
ultramarine, deep color. In most of the cases, I paint clouds in wet, on wet technique. I begin by moistening the paper and I'm going to paint with
such synthetic brush. You can take whatever
brush you prefer. It can be a nice occasion to test this brush for
painting clouds. The first step of this
exercise is to put some blue and leave white parts of clouds white if the
color spreads too much. Just to control the amount
of water on your brush here, there will be a
landscape on the bottom. Probably next, I take more
pigment to my color blend. While it's not blend,
it's Justin color. If you struggle with
water pigment ratio, with water color control, brushwork, et cetera,
I really recommend you to check out the basic
course on painting skies. I explain all the
essentials that you need to know about
painting skies and clouds. Here I'm just playing
now with some colors and trying to make the
shape of those clouds. I play with the depth
of the color as well. It's important to understand that while we're
painting the blue sky, we also paint white clouds. Because we paint
the negative space around our white objects. I will explain more about it in the next block of
exercises like this. The clouds will seem lighter on this background
of dark blue sky. And also what we need to notice here that the closer
to the horizon, the color of the sky
is becoming lighter. So here in the upper part, I can even deepen the color to create more depth in the sky. Honestly, you can even do it faster and in a more simple way, with the same technique,
if you prefer. I just always like to
add a lot of details, even in such simple skies. Let's make a simple landscape. Here I'm making a drop of paints gray and
drop of a green color. The color is different from
what we have in the sky. And just the dark green
for the foreground. For the sky, it's
the same color. It's just becoming lighter, closer to the horizon. I kept the white parts of
the clouds quite small, so I don't need to add
any shadows there. Let's see how we can make
it look more realistic.
4. Exercise : 2-Color Blue Sky: Let's make an upgrade
to this picture. Now, you probably noticed
that on the photograph, the sky color is different in the bottom part and
in the upper part. Now I'm going to repeat
the same picture, but changing the
color a little bit. You will see that it
really makes difference. You can just watch
this demonstration if you're interested to see
how the colors work. Or you can do this
exercise with me to practice liquid
and pigment control. Now, I will also take this light sky blue
color, the second one. And you can paint the
sky starting from the bottom part or from the
upper part as you wish. This time I've
decided to begin from the bottom part with
this light blue color. This light blue color
that I'm using is colder than the ultramarine
color that I used. In the first step, you can
use whatever colors you have. Just use the blue that
is more violet for the upper part and
the colder blue to the bottom part to get
more or less same effect. Here I paint is the mix
of these two colors. I use the paper towel to control the amount of liquid on
my brush all the time. If I want to darken it
in the bottom part, I'm going to use the blue that I used for the bottom part, but just with more pigment
and less liquid in it, ultramarine for the upper part. Doing so, I'm really
trying to create this nice color gradient
in the background sky. From the ultramarine blue to
the slight sky blue color, the transition looks smooth. And if there are two
big areas of white, I just split it with
some blue dots. For the same reason
I explained before. Because I don't want to add
any shadows to my clouds. Now we will discuss
shadows in next exercises. The drier my paper is. The drier the brush becomes. And I always using the paper towel so I
don't have it too wet. Hopefully you already can see
the difference in the sky. Now I'm going to recreate more or less the same landscape. In the bottom part, I'm using two blue
colors for the hills and mix, so green and gray for the foreground. Let's try it. You see how different
these two pictures are. Even though I almost
haven't changed anything, I just added one more
color to the blue sky. This is a beautiful
and simple technique. You can use it whatever
landscape you paint. But of course, we can't use this approach for all
white cloud paintings. Because if the cloud is big, you may have a huge white area. And without shadows,
it will be flat, which is not beautiful. To paint such clouds, we need to learn more about creating the shapes
of those clouds, and on how to add
shadows on them. Let's see how it works.
5. Negative Space Painting: As you may notice, we don't use white paint to paint white
clouds in watercolor. But we paint such clouds with
the blue sky around them. We use here painting the
so called negative ******. We're not painting
the object itself, but we paint the
space around it. Of course, I'm going
to paint soft clouds. I moisten the paper first. What I want to demonstrate here is how our
approach for painting this blue part influences how light and soft
we see the cloud. I will show you two options just so you can see
the difference. It's not like one of them
is better than another one, It's just notice when
you paint white clouds, what kind of a cloud
you want to create. And depending on that, you will choose the approach for
painting the blue sky. Here I'm showing
you the approach that I used for painting white clouds in the blue sky for the very first time
when I painted them. And I just take the
very dense color and I paint the sky
around my clouds. The key thing here is that
the color is very thick. You see even on the wet
paper, it looks quite dark. Of course, you already know
that in the bottom part, the sky should be a
little bit lighter. But here it's not the point. Of course, we could add
some shadows on the clouds. But anyway, the point is that on such dark skies with soft
but pretty precise contour, the cloud look pretty heavy. If such massive
clouds is our goal, great, if we want to create
something more light. Let's see, the second approach. This approach is quite similar to what we saw in
the first exercise. Of course, I'm
moisten the paper, I will try to paint three
clouds as I did before. But this time I will
begin with lighter blue. I add more water, more liquid to the blend, even though on the palette
it seems like the same blue. But you know that if
we have more liquid, the result color
will be lighter. Of course, I control
the amount of liquid on my brush with a napkin here. In this case, I begin a
little bit further from the contour of the result
clouds that I want to add. Just to have more control
on the result contours of the cloud because I know that this liquid color will spread. I have lighter color and my brush strokes are
also quite light. You see sometimes
I'm barely touching the paper and this blue
for the future gradients. Next, as you may have
already guessed, I make this blue part darker, but I'm not following the exact contour and just
deepen in some places. Sometimes I cut part
of the cloud as well, but very often I also keep this light blue part
around the cloud. Here we have not
only two color value like white and blue, but we also have this mid
tone of light blue that will create this
volume and volume of the clouds and depth
in the sky and also this foggy
lights of our clouds. Of course, I can add some
light blue details if needed. You see in this
case, we will have much more air in our clouds. They seem lighter. Of course, I work only
while the paper is wet, so the paper surface is shiny. So you see here because of
this light blue like mid tone, we have our clouds more fluffy, we can feel more air
in the sky here. We also have such a
transition of color, like this light blue on the very edge of the cloud,
but it's not that big. The cloud in the upper part looks heavier, at
least for my taste. The last thing I wanted
to mention here is that be careful doing
such little dots in the shape of the clouds because
always keep in mind that the color is spreading and
it will do until the papers. Sometimes it spreads that
much that our cloud, like someone ate its coors. You see here, of course, we may see sometimes such shapes of the clouds in the sky. But for example, in this
particular painting, it wasn't a goal to
paint it at all. So yes, just keep this in mind when you will use this
approach for painting clouds. Once again, depending on how light you want
to have your clouds, you either paint
with just heavy, thick blue color around
them or you start with lighter blue and then
deepen the color if needed.
6. 2 Ways to Add Shadows: All right, we already discussed how to create the
contours of clouds. How to work with
blue background, and now it's time
to see the ways how we can add shadows
to our clouds. I personally
distinguished two methods and I'm going to show you both. And it's not necessarily
that I use one of them, only in my painting. Sometimes I combine them
on different combinations, but sometimes I only
use one or another one. And now it's the
first approach where I start by creating the
contours of the cloud first. So I paint the blue sky around it directly as
we discussed before, colder blue in the bottom part, a little bit warmer and
purplish in the upper part. And then in the second step, I add the shadow. First I put some light
gray to the cloud. Of course, I want the
clouds to be moistened. The shadows will be
with soft edges, so painted on wet. I mix blue of the sky, a little bit of pink and
burnt sienna for this gray, amazing this second
layer in some places of this darker gray to bring
more volume to the cloud. Just as we discussed before, I deepen the shadow
here and there. That was the first approach. Let's dry now. I will quickly demonstrate
the second one, where as you may see, I begin with shadows first and then I will
add the blue sky around. I use the same mix
of colors here. I don't have what reference, just paints the imaginary cloud you see as the gray
comes first here, it's spreading quite a
lot because the paper is still very wet Like this. I will have softer shades, softer shadows of my cloud. I switch to the blue right away, and you already know the Sps. I don't comment it a lot. In the upper part,
you see we have a softer edges of the cloud because we painted blue
color on quite wet paper. In the bottom part, it's more defined because the paper
is a little bit drier. And we also actually risk to get even sharper edges sometimes in this technique, just
bear it in mind. You will see there are
some complex moments in both of these approach. You saw these two methods? I personally, as I said before, I don't prefer one to another. Sometimes I use first method, sometimes the second one. It always depends on my mood, on the photo reference
that I have. How many clouds there
will be or for example, what shapes of the
clouds will it be, the great shadow or It will
be plenty of little clouds. Every time I'm asking myself which method I'm going to use, but now you know the
both in our projects, in this class, we're going to
test both of them as well.
7. Lightning: We discussed in the
previous video that if the surface of a white
cloud is quite large, it will appear flat. So obviously, to give
volume to the cloud, we need to add shadows to it, and the color of
the shadow can vary depending on the time of
the day and the lightning. But within this tutorial, we're talking about white
clouds in the blue sky. So when I say shadows here, I mean different shades
and tones of gray. White, light gray, and mid tone, even without very dark shadows, will already add
volume to the cloud. And the stronger the contrast
between light and dark, the heavier and more voluminous
the cloud will look, and also maybe the moodier and more dramatic the
atmosphere will seem. If you pay attention to the position of the
sun when painting, it will be easier
to understand from which side to paints the shadow. And here, the sun
is above the clouds and so they have a
lighted upper part, and the shadow is at
the bottom logically. Also, of course,
there are times when the sun shines from the side, such as in these
cases, for example. And there's also a situation where the sun is behind clouds. It looks interesting
in photos sometimes, but it's not always
good for water colors. I prefer when the light is more clear the light source
on the side or on top, or even maybe when the
light is more diffused, like in our future
first project. In this class, we will try to paint three different
types of lightning, which will be a nice practice
for you to mix the shadow and to control the
watercolor flow in clouds. Let's begin with our
first painting project.
8. Project 1 : Clouds: All right, welcome to the
first real painting project. Here we're going to paint a simple landscape
with some clouds, but with not that complex shape, even though it may seem complex. But you will see
that it's easier to paint than our next project. And I hope it will be a
nice practice for you to make some grays and
also to paint a landscape. So we're going to
combine everything that we learned in our
previous exercises. And also we will add a quick
landscape of no surprises. We begin by moistening
the paper we discussed before that
for such landscapes, for the background sky, I use a pair of blue colors. One is colder and
second one is warmer. So in this painting,
I'm going to show you one couple of colors, and in the next one you
will see another one. While my paper is getting ready, I begin by just preparing colors and I begin with gray color as the
base for this gray. I'm going to use infant trine
blue for this painting. This will be my warmer, like, more purple blue of this couple, I'm adding burnt sienna and you see the color is actually
already looks nice. And I also can prepare another of a little
bit warmer gray, more about mixing grays for clouds and especially
for dramatic skies. And how to manage cold, warm grays and different
combinations of colors. For that, you can learn in my another quick class for
painting Dramatic Skies, where I explain all
these principles. I add just a little bit of
water to the paper surface. I just want to keep
it glistening, to be able to paint white
and wet a little bit longer. And I remove excess water drops from the
edges of my paper. So you see for this
first painting, I chose this method when
I put shadows first. And they will help me to create the composition of my sky
and all the clouds in it. And with such round
brush strokes, I just put some drops
of shadows here. So you see, I'm
not drawing them. I just like touch the
paper with my brush, pressing on it a little bit. You see that the
shape of clouds is a little bit different
and the size as well. So sometimes I make them big, sometimes I make them
smaller here and there. I just repeat what I
see in the picture. And of course, remember
that we need to control the amount of
liquid on the brush. I use paper towel
for that as usual. And of course, I think
it's a nice occasion to remind you that I also
have a class about essentials of
painting skies where explain a lot about
liquid and pigment, rat and water color control. If everything I'm showing you here seems too
complicated for you, maybe it's time for
you to begin with this basic course and then
go back to this class. You see clouds in the bottom will be a little
bit more straight. And also now I'm preparing the blend
for darker gray. Because I want to darken
the shadows by the way, I take quite enough of liquid so the color
spreads freely. I don't repeat existing clouds. I'm just heading in the shadow here and there to
bring more volumes, to bring more depth as to the picture right away. I'm taking dancing blue to paint the sky
in the upper part. No rush. Choose well
where to put them. Sometimes they are
on the shadow, sometimes in white parts. Use the napkin if needed. If you see that the
color spreads too far. I don't really try
to draw the clouds, like to make a shape as
we did in the exercises, I just put some
random blue spots. Of course, I look at the picture that I have,
the photo reference. But still here, it's not the idea really to
draw all the clouds. The idea is to bring a
little bit of blue sky that actually by itself creates this effect of shape of clouds. Now to the industr blue
that I have on my palate, I start adding thalo blue. Little by little, I keep the
same value of the color. So it's still dark, but
the hue is different. Now, while I'm having less and less pigment
left on the brush, the color is becoming
lighter and lighter. That was the mix of two blues. Here aside, I take almost clean thalo blue with
a little bit more water. You see the color is
lighter and colder. Next, of course, we
can add more contrast. You know how to do
this, but simply mind the color that you already
have on the painting. I add mix of two colors where it was mix of two colors
and I add clean industry blue to the industry blue like this. The sky feels a little
bit deeper to me. I don't know, what do
you think about it? You see it's a quite
quick process. While the paper is still
wet in the bottom part, I want to paint the landscape. And to create the
transition between the sky and the hills that
are in the background, I'm going to take this cold, fallow blue color as I want to paint the landscape
here in the bottom part. And I want to paint it on wet, I just make sure that the, that the paper is still
glistening in the bottom. In my case, it starts drying, I'm going to add a
little bit of water, but the brush, it's
not really wet. So I just want to remoisten the surface a little bit
because if it will be too wet, the color will spread
to the upper part and may ruin the sky
that I've just created. Of course. I'm also going to control the color on the brush. For the transition between
the sky and the landscape. I'm going to paint some
hills in the distance with this cold blue talor color.
9. Project 1 : Landscape: No pose here. Right away I
start painting the landscape, I take this called
pale blue color and you see on the photograph, we have some hills in the
distance or maybe mountains. And I paint them
like mountains here. With this blue, this will be the first layer of the hills. And then I take in blue, quite dark and dense, and I'm making the second layer, second plan of such hills as I remoisten the paper and this bottom
part is quite wet. I see that in the end, my color spreads quite far
and I don't want it to be, so I can try to control
it by tilting the paper, but it's not this liquid either, so I will just move
it a little bit. With this dry, fluffy brush, I'm just swiping the edges very, very gently and I continue
painting the background even though I'm using the
same color that I use for the sky as I had the
gradient in the sky. This dark blue doesn't
seem to be the sky. I take my cold yellow color now. Well, it's always
dirty with some blue. I almost don't paint with
clean yellow color anyway. As usual. I'm not trying
to copy the landscape. I'm just inspired by
what I see and I just try to take some information
from the photograph. Let's switch to warmer yellow. Yeah, my paper is
pretty wavy and this will affect the drawing
of the landscape as well. But what we can do, you see, I always
touch the napkin, the paint is not too liquid. I think finally, I will put
the masking tape to create. Yeah, to create an angle, the color will move
to the bottom, switching to this warm
brown, burnt sienna. As the picture itself
is quite sunny, even though we have clouds
to keep the sunny mood, I prefer to have nice, clean, bright color
somewhere in the landscape. I can even add a
drop of pink color, for example, to this brown. But basically we just
need some color here. Now, switching to the
smaller brush and I mix my blue color with yellow
to get this dark green, let's add some trees
in the background. They can be even more blue. Everything is still, I'll just put the color so the paint
is still wet on paper. And this gives me such
a soft landscape, I really like it like that. Now let's bring a little bit more contrast
to the foreground. We also can add drops of color or just sprinkle
clean water. Why not? There are these details of the wine yard here
in the photograph, but I'm not repeating
all of them. Of course, we don't
have such space in this small landscape
For each detail. I'm asking myself if I should
paint the tree here or not. In my opinion, if
you're happy with the landscape as it
is and you don't want to add to defined
details or objects, keep it like that,
dry the landscape as it is and be happy about it. But I think that I still am going to paint the
tree that I see in the photograph and also will add a few details on the
foreground on dry.
10. Project 1 : Tree and Details: As I'm going to paint
the tree on dry first, I need to dry the painting. It would be also
useful to wait until the paper is cold, not warm. After the drying, I prepare such green color using all the paints
I used before. Even though the tree on the
photograph is quite dark, I go to paint. I'm going to begin
with lighter green. It will be somewhere here, especially I have some
blurry background where there's almost nothing by using the trim
blue for the shadow. It also can be a drop
of paints gray or the leftovers of
this brown color. I'm improvising with
the tree shape. I think I'm also going
to paint the second one. It will be smaller and a
little bit darker as well. The light comes from
here, from above. The upper part is
lighter and the shadow, so we are below. And of course the tree has a
cast shadow on the ground. Now as the tree is quite, I want to add just a few details to the foreground to keep
like the same edges, like the same precision
of utilization. Basically, there are
just a few brush strokes on dry or a few color drops. And let's complete it with these last final
touches details. Congratulations with your
first project painting. You probably noticed that here I mentioned that the
clouds in the upper part are bigger and more straight and flat and
smaller in the bottom part. Of course, it's not
just by chance. This is something that we
need also to keep in mind and also be free in choosing the
technique for the landscape. For example, here, I painted the tree on wet and
it also worked.
11. Perspective: In the first project, I've mentioned something about changing shape and
size of the clouds. This is the final thing I'd
like to discuss with you. You will think about it
while painting clouds. Let's see in the example of how the perspective rule
works in the sky. Let's imagine that we approach painting white clouds in the blue sky in a
very direct way. For example, I have
a few clouds here. They have different shapes of, there are shadows
that are missing. But we're not going to talk
about them in this block. I could ask myself
how I can make this cloudy sky looks
more natural, a look. We may notice that
actually the size of our cloud changes from the
upper part to the bottom. Here you see this huge
cloud in the upper part. It almost takes a
half of a picture then like this one
is almost twice, three times smaller
than this one. Of course, we have just
tiny little clouds very close to the horizon. First thing that we can
do is to change the size of the clouds that we paint,
for example, like this. Well, clearly this
looks more natural. Now here we actually follow the rule of linear perspective. I'm going to explain you like all in
details because there are books written to the topic
of the liners perspective. But here what you need to know, it's just like to notice that it exists in
the sky as well. The first thing we see
that clouds are smaller, closer to the horizon. But is it enough? Let's see our
picture once again. Here we may notice
that actually it's not only the size of our clouds, but also the shape of
the clouds is changing. It happens because it's not only the distance between
us and such clouds, but also it's also an angle
with which we see our clouds. The cloud that closest to us, it will have more
like spontaneous, chaotic, maybe a round shape. And then the clouds
in the middle, you see they already start
having longer shape and their bottom part is becoming flatter The further from us and the closer
to the horizon, the more we see the
clouds from their side. This is why they
appear to us with such a flat bottom and
this fluffy upper part. But also what I want
to say once again, that it's not the rule that
works in 100% of cases, right, even here
in this picture. If we take a closer look, we may see that the cloud shapes are different sizes as well. Sometimes they're longer,
sometimes they're closer to us, further from us, they
may be more transparent. We may have small clouds also in the middle
of the picture, so it's not like the
structure that we reproduce. But of course, we're
observing all the time, especially when we
paint from the nature, from the photo reference. But in the cases where
you need to imagine some things or there are
so many clouds in the sky, so you need to construct
the picture in some way. I think it's useful to remember
about this perspective. Now you see we're much closer to the natural
picture of the cloudy sky. And the last thing that I
wanted to discuss with you, and I've already mentioned it, during our practice is not only the shape and size of
the clouds is changing, but also the color sometimes
will be different color, especially of the shadows. Because basically the clouds in the sunny day,
they are white. But the shadows of those
clouds, they are gray. And the color of
this gray may be different depending
on the distance. Most clearly, we see this in such dramatic skies when there
are plenty of clouds here. For example, in the
photograph you can clearly see that
in the upper part, the color of the shadow
is like warm gray. And in the bottom part,
it's much cooler. It's much colder,
but sometimes we can also see it with
more sunny weather. But we still need to have some
clouds here, for example. Once you know that this thing exists for such types of clouds, it will be easier
for you to notice this in the nature or
in the photo reference. Now, once you have
this everything in mind, let's practice it.
12. Project 2 : Clouds: Let's combine now
everything we learned before and this rule
of perspective. For this, I chose
the vertical format. We could really have space for painting different shapes
and sizes of clouds. Now we're going to vary not only the color
in the background, but also shape and
size of clouds. I begin as usual the
paper and preparing the colors looking for a nice
gray color for the base. I used ultramarine
blue this time, and this is the
result. Gray I have. I like that, it's
a little bit cold. Two blues for the sky this time will be the sky blue
and ultramarine blue. I'm checking the paper
surface state before I begin getting rid of
excess water as usual. This time I'm going also to
begin by painting shadows. Suddenly I felt that I want to make it a
little bit warmer. And let's begin. So this will be the first cloud shadows in the middle clouds, they will be a little bit, a little bit colder. A couple of clouds
here and another one. Yeah, Here you see they are like almost
lines in the bottom part. I don't wait a lot, I just switch to the blue color. Here. You see I'm using the
Chinese calligraphy brush. I like using it for
spontaneous natural shapes. But whatever brush you have, it may fit and do this job. But for painting clouds, I really prefer to have
something soft as a tool. You see, I begin a little bit further from the future border of my cloud to better control where exactly
I will have this edge, because the color may
spread too quickly. I'm never sure about it. Napkin of course is
already here as well. Notice that the
color I used first, it contained more
ultramarine blue. Now in the bottom parts, in the proportion of the color, I have more and more sky blue. You see that the light comes from above and we
discussed it already. I won't have this white
line below the cloud. It's the shadow and then
the blue color right away. I even sometimes like paint over the edge of this
gray gray color. I deepen the color
in some places and you see how the blue of the sky is becoming
lighter and lighter. Here in the shadow part
where I painted gray, the paper is still shining. I actually want to use
this chance and to add a little bit more of the
shadow while I'm doing so, I will just keep the
spotting part wet as well. Very gently. With almost dry brush, I add just final
touches to the sky. In the upper part of the sky, it's I don't touch it anymore. I cleaned the
preparing darker gray. And I will take it also very dry because the paper is
drying so quickly and this part is not dry yet. So I still can do it.
If it's not your case, just keep it as it is. Don't touch the goods clouds
if the paper is almost dry. More blue if needed for the bottom cloud shadows, of course, the most
difficult part is to stop at the right moment. I can feel that there
are so many parts that I would correct or
add more details. But it's water, car, guys, So we have to stop and
switch to the landscape.
13. Project 2 : Sea: Right away without any pose, I switched to
painting landscape. And I'm going to imagine a simple seascape
with some waves. Maybe I don't have
the photo reference. Hopefully you will be able
to follow my steps here. Or maybe you just could find
the photo reference for the sea or just paint the
field or whatever you prefer. I will be the different
color from the sky. I take ind blue for the furthest parts of
the sea, for the background. Adding a drop of turquoise
color for the foreground. For waves, you can take emerald green and
mix it with blue or you can add a cold
yellow, whatever you prefer. Everything will work. I leave long white stripes that will give the
impression of waves. And below them I just
add a darker shadow using industry blue mixed with the torques that
I have on my palette. I will do the same like in the first. In the previous project, I will put masking tape under my board to
tilt the board a little bit and will darken the horizon and was
a little bit more. And let's try so you can
see the final result. You see here, I painted on a quite small format and
I worked really quickly. But sometimes when we want to
make a bigger painting with lots of clouds and shadows and everything we learned
about perspective, and gradient and colors, This might be
really challenging. In the next and
the last project, I'm going to show you an
advanced technique that you can use for
painting on wet longer. So you will be able to create a little bit more details and use all these
rules that we learned.
14. Project 3 : Preparations: This painting I'm going to do on this texture
side of my paper, I will moisten its back side. You may have seen
this technique in another class about
sunset skies. The idea here is to prepare the paper to make it
really wet inside. Like this. We can work
in wet technique longer. Here I took a bigger size
of the paper and we're going to paint quite
complex picture also. By the way, I recommend you to watch the entire process first. Like this, you will have an
idea of what's going on. I turn the paper and of course we need waterproof
board for that. Because if you paint on
carton board or wooden board, it will absorb water
from the paper. All the technique
doesn't make any sense. Such surface got a drop of the color here.
It's not that big. You see if you
moisten the backside. Well, the paper
sticks right away. Now, in the same manner, I'm moistening the
face of my paper. Of course, you're moistening
the backside if needed, but please no excess water, especially on the sides. I'm going to work with
such quite big brush. It's synthetic, but they're soft preparing the gray color, four shadows based
on ultramarine blue. I'm actually going to use the same couple of blues
that in the second project, Ultramarine and Burn Siena. And here on the
side I'm going to make a little bit warmer mix. Why not a drop of the
sky blue as well? Here you see we may have
different shades of gray, warmer, colder, lighter, darker. Just test what you have in
your palette before painting. I squeeze the brush to leave the dark color
on the palette because I'm going to start with the lighter one,
lighter and warmer. I leave the brush here loaded with some
gray color already. I mean, it's not
important to load it, but I just don't wash
it. It's ready to paint. Checking the paper once again, I don't want to have
any bubbles here. For this purpose, I need to remoisten a little
bit the paper from the back side with such calligraphic brush
that you already seen. I'm going to prepare
the blue for the sky. I'm going to use this brush for creating the cloud contours. So everything is prepared
now and I can begin.
15. Project 3 : Blue Sky: I will begin from
the upper part. I need ultramarine
blue for this. And I'm going to take it's quite dark right away, just in case. I always begin with dryer brush. First I outline the size
of the biggest cloud here, like this, I can
see its dimensions, you see. This time we begin with the sky and
then we will add shadows. To do so, you can
watch the photograph, like try to see the
shape of blue spots, or you can see the
shape of the clouds. When you draw, you can switch the attention from the
negative space to the object. And back in the middle part, I'm adding some sky
blue to the mix and clean, cold blue
for the bottom part. I decided to add a few
white clouds there. Also notice the brush
strokes direction, this movement, it's
more horizontal. In the bottom, you see I have almost a half of the painting for the bigger clouds
in the upper part and a half for the landscape and the bottom part
of the clouds. I'll just notice
this proportion. I deepen this blue little by little while trying
to do this quickly. Anyway, same way, I keep
this bottom part wet. Well, you know the story also, which is a little bit
different with this technique, that you need to add even
more pigment if you want to have the result color
very bright, colorful, dark. Because the paper absorbs
also the pigment inside and the color will be even more pale in the end once it's dry, of making the exact copy of the cloud shapes that we
see on the photograph. It's just impossible when we do this with water colors
in this technique. So I'm just inspired
with what I see and I just try to take
some information, some spots that I like the most in the photograph and bring
them into the painting. And now I take more
and more pigment. You see how much time
it takes sometimes. First it's because the color was already dry on my palette. I mean, even in this pans
also because I paint was quiet soft brush and it's more difficult to
take enough of a pigment, you know, like really to bring it to the ballots
with such brushes. And synthetic brush
really makes it easier. But I don't paint to
a synthetic brush because it's harder to get
natural shapes of clouds. I deepen the blue color. I correct the cloud
shapes in some places, adjust some contours
here and there. But I don't try to
make it too precisely because the paper
surface is wet, the color is moving. It will change a little
bit in the process, really put some dots and
then just keep an eye on it, how it spreads, and then
maybe adjust some things. What's great about
water color that sometimes it just
does this work for you, You see that? Well, the paper is still wet. But please don't spend too
much time at this stage because we still need to
add shadows to our clouds. For that, we still
need to have them wet the shining paper
surface in the white places. Let's move right away
to this next part.
16. Project 3 : Clouds' Shadows: So let's move on directly. I take this light gray color here. The paper is still wet. You see how soft the
edges of the gray spots. I work with such
large movements. The idea here is to make this
first layer of the shadow, but to keep at least a
little bit of white. For this, we also need to think about the fact that the
color will spread as well. The light comes from the left. The most of the shadow will be on the right
side of my clouds, even though it's quite
complex here in this picture. It can be like the
big entire shadow or it can contain
many little pieces. Just try to notice these
things in the plot reference. And then I darken the shadow still with
quite enough liquid. At this stage, you may say, oh, wow, this is dark. But actually this will be
much lighter once it's dry. So don't be afraid
of such shadows. Now, I take this
calder gray for, for the shadows on
the bottom clouds. I always keep an eye on
this future landscape area. Moisten it slightly
if it's needed. The brush I'm painting with
is becoming drier and drier. I really want you
here to understand the principle of this work. And then you can just manage all these things depending on what you
have on your paper. You don't really need to repeat everything after me just
once you understood it. You can play with it
with your own painting. Here, I'm switching to
the smaller brush because I want to add and adjust
some shadows here and there, and I really want it
to be soft touches. You see, I'm hesitating
to touch this place. I really like the shadow here. So let's do it in places
where I'm more sure about it. In the places where
I put quite a lot of the light gray shadows, the paper is still wet,
so I really can add this dark gray here and
there, but not everywhere. Unfortunately, I'm
really choosing the places where
it's still possible. Here on the bottom, it's drying
and I can't add anything. Now, I'm depending
on what I have on the paper because there are so many things I'd like to add, but technically they
are not possible. I really look at my painting now trying to figure out what
I could add and what not. Finally, I dared to
add this shadow here, and I think it's time to stop.
17. Project 3 : Smoothing: I'm going to show you how to
use this brush for smoothing some edges of the well
off anything basically. But for the shadows that
I put here and there, you see some of them have such defined edges and I
want to have them softer. After each movement, I dry
the brush with the napkin. And here the idea is that paper is still
a little bit wet. Not too much, but
still a little bit, which means that I can
move the pigment on the paper surface and I'm
using this brush to do that. And here the cloud
moved a little bit. I will correct this place
with some dark blue. I'd love to add a little bit
more shadows and contras, but it seems to me that
it's better to stop now because it's a little bit too late to have the
technique perfectly done. Let's just smooth
some final clouds and let's move on to
the landscape parts.
18. Project 3 : Landscape: This bottom part is
also getting dry, but it's not that bad. So I can continue painting and to paint the
landscape in wet technique. As I did before for
this very background, I'm using the same blue
I used for the sky. The brush is dry enough so I hope the color won't
spread too much. Of course, it still
moves a little bit, but this is what I want to have. This is why I paint on wet. To have this soft landscape
in the very background, I switched to even smaller
brush synthetic one. This time I used it
for painting trees. In our first painting project, if you remember, I'm going to play with colors
in the background. Why not adding this
cold yellow here? As the paper is wet inside, each water color spot I make will stay wet for
quite a long time. So I have the
chance to play with such smooth transitions of colors and to do
everything I'm doing. Now, I switched
to another brush. It's also synthetic small, but a little bit softer
than the previous one. Now I'm eating gray green, A drop of future, everything I can add to
get this dark color. But as a result it looks
more like a dark green. You see here, the sky
background is almost dry. So I have almost like defined sharpened
edge of this hill, which is good because I have
the sense of perspective. I'm adding just a few
details here to get an impression of sort
a forest or why not. And I just keep playing
with colors here in the landscape with
such soft brush. And I'm going now
to add details.
19. Project 3: Final Details: With no post. I continue
with the landscape and I'm going to add
some trees and details, but if you want, you can
even leave it like that. Or maybe you have another
result which you're happy with, really always take a look at. Maybe it's already good
enough and you may stop. But I will continue. I don't really have
much to comment here. I'm just adding darker spots, mixing gray, green, blue. And I just paint
trees here and there. I like having them, really, because it brings the
dark dark to my painting. The light looks lighter
because now we have nice contrasts of light
and dark tunnel contrast. This is something that really
makes our picture sunny. But not least, I'm going
to take a synthetic of clean yellow color with enough of water and let's add
some water drops here. I'm a huge fan of detailing
the landscape this way. Well, in the end I feel
like I want to add a few trees here in
the very foreground. Well, you see these
are the final touch. It so much depends on what you have on the
paper at this moment. If the papers dry, wet, do you want to add more
details or to keep it loose? Really feel free not
to repeat after me, but just to do whatever you think is better
for the painting. I'm going to leave the painting
drying just like this. Also, depending on the
paper format and size, I sometimes use paper
clips to fix the paper on this board to dry
it with less waves. This is what we have
as a result for our third and final project of this class about painting
white clouds in the blue sky.
20. Conclusion: These are the three results of the project that I painted, and I hope that you
painted with me and that you enjoyed the protest
as much as I did. We've covered in this lesson the different principles I used to paint white clouds
in the blue sky. You've seen the different
techniques and approach that you can use for
painting such skies. Now I hope that you will also keep in mind the
simple principles of perspective when painting
clouds in the sky. I also hope that you found the information in
this lesson useful. If you still have any questions, feel free to ask them in
the discussion section of this class for your own
independent practice. As usual, I have added additional thought references
in the class materials, and of course, I look forward
to seeing your projects. Please share them in the
project section so I can comment on them and
give you a few tips. Finally, don't forget to take me if you
share your work on your Instagram profile
so I can see your work. Thanks for joining me in
this class and painting Watercolor Skies with me
and the next classes. Bye bye.
Maria Smirnova, Watercolor artist
