ARTIST EYE TRAINING : Capturing light in Watercolor for beginners : Leaves

1. ARTIST EYE TRAINING | Capturing Light in Watercolor for beginners | PLANT LEAVES: Hello, skill share, I am Suzy on Blade. I'm an artist here in Arizona. It leaves are just starting to change and I have an exciting, I would like to share with you today. It's a concept that a lot of artists learn when they're out in the fields doing plain AIR painting on site, in the open air. And it's just an observation about how light interacts with leaves. And how that will inform your larger works like a landscape. So if you can understand the concept of how light interacts with the leaves at the small scale. Then you'll be able to use that in your bigger trees as a whole for your larger paintings. So I'm excited to share this with you today. Gets your paint brushes and your paper. It and we can go ahead and get started. 3. Getting Started: So those green leaves that I just touched, we're going to try to simplify what we're seeing in so we can do a more of an impressionistic sort of style painting, which is perfect for the outdoors because impressionism, you're not supposed to get an exact copy. So we're gonna take this concept of how the light shines to the leaves. And then we'll be able to take it further and another tutorials on how to extend that for us and groupings of trees. All these leaves have three main forks that kinda come through 123 and kind of have a little sign one. And then the green gets a little bit darker at the bottom. Let's go ahead and do few more. So this is where the light's coming through. Student and I went over here, see how I'm touching, touching the blue on there to give a little bit more shadow. And some places. Let's go ahead and make these greens a little bit less vibrant. Add a little bit of red in there. And what about the leaves that are behind them? Now for the leaves that the sun is not shining through, but on top of the light is different. The leaf on top looks more of a bluish hue, and there's also some whites. So to give it some shine. So we're going to go ahead and see if we can figure out how that works and add it to the current bright greens that we have already. 4. Leaves | Translating Life to Paper: It was an anti-Semite keeper. So if the light is shining through the leaf and that side is very bright, vibrant green, then there's going to be casting a shadow on something which is most likely the leaves right next to it. So that's where this blue comes in and adds that shadow. So just to reiterate, right leaf, if I were to do it really symbol. And then underneath it, if there was another leaf and this one would be in shadow, that giving off a shadow. So you can just continue with that concept of having a bright leaf, casting shadows on the leaves next to it. And then just keep repeating. Now when this is all dry, you can actually do the background behind it. If that's something that you wanna do. If you're not doing just the plants. If you just want to do more of a landscape versus a plant steady, then go in with the background. And right now there is more of a purpley pink kind of color. There's a purpley pink sort of color behind this plant that I'm doing. So I'm not gonna go into detail. I'm just gonna give that concept of distance. So I'm gonna take some burnt umber and a little bit of this acronym magenta. Go behind. And now as outlined, think there'd be a lot more vibrance If I was used to painting outside. But you can use this idea to inform the paintings that you do in your studio. I personally work in the studio because it's a more controlled environment. It's very hard for me too. I keep up with how fast the water color dry ice in the air here in Arizona because there's almost no humidity, especially right now we've had the driest summer since 1995. So it's very fire dangerous right now. And get some more color in here. Well, speckles like that really make it pop. And there we are. That's an overall I'm really gonna do for right now. Yes, I could add the stems bringing to smaller brush for that. So we need to go out into nature. And you're doing planar, which means painting on site in the open-air sweat moneies to do. You're taking studies of different pieces. If you didn't have to do a landscape, you can do studies of plants, studies, have rocks, and take the information that you learn outdoors and bring it back into the studio. Because life informs your painting. If you're painting from photographs all the time, a trained eye will be able to tell. A lot of people will say, Oh, you're painting looks like a photograph and they mean it as a compliment. But what they're really saying is it looks more like the eye of the camera versus the eye of a human being. So what you really want is to make it look like the eyes of a human being seeing this painting and what they want to know that you weren't there. And there's nothing wrong with working with from photographs. But if you can get outdoors, even looking at outside your window, if you're stuck at home, you'll be able to see the light changing in different ways. And observation is the best teacher. You can tell from the painting that I did, OK. And the rim of the forest. All the firms were changing color. They were beautiful reds and oranges and purpley colors and the shadows. And then I'm taking that same concept that we just learned over here. I did that earlier when I went up to the forest. You can see that the sun shining through these leaves and these against the shadow behind it. And a creases beautiful sparkling effect. And that sparkle happens everywhere in nature. You just have to look for it. It's usually when the sun is behind the trees and you can look in that direction. Isn't a little something else I can do? Add just a little extra something that I've seen. Another artist and Instagram. I'll see if I can link him. He always puts this yellow tinge around the edges of his plants when they're behind the Sun. It's really pretty. Yeah, something like that. Just further illustrates that glow effect. 5. Finishing in the Studio: So I brought the painting that we did over in the wilderness, and I brought it into the studio so I can have a more controlled finish to the work because I don't want to leave it as it is right now. I wanted to see if I can just fetch that often. Make it look nice. Mirror to start ups a few these leaves be a good spot. Going in with a smaller brush this time. There's a few things I wanted to add an i couldn't with the time I had outsides. So what cleaners painters will do this? They'll get the colors that they want expertly slapped onto the canvas before the light changes usually have about two hours before light really changes or an hour if it's golden hour. And then when they're done, they'll finish off the detailed later. In a controlled environment like a studio. Clean up some of these edges here. Using a big brushes and very good idea when you're doing nothing but a small painting. I think to always consider when doing a painting is composition. When I was outside, MIT, didn't really given much thought. I was thinking more about how, how do I capture the light coming through the leaf? And I, yeah, don't, don't do what I did. Try to think of a pleasing composition when you're out there. And if I had done that, maybe I wouldn't have had to finish it indoors. But this painting definitely needed it. See, It's going to put it in bigger leafs over here perhaps for the twigs. Now all the stems to these leaves, to this part of the bush is more of a reddish color. I'd rather go in with that first, then try do the background. Because then I know what I'm painting around. Risk going in with a line brush right now. So that rigor brush usually used for doing the rope work on ships and sales. Things to look for out nature is balance and you want a pleasing contrast between light and dark. Not everything is perfectly aligns its nature. Things grow in funny ways. And all those being lines in it and that kind of change it up in a little bit. If it's in shadow or not. Kinda going between this cadmium red. That's been muddied a bit over time from different paints. So feel free to use a tiny bit of blue in there or some other color that's opposite of red, like a green. And then I also use some bird number to make these twigs and all leaves that connection here. You can change it to this burnt umber for these ones and shadow. You're some yellow ochre that I'm putting in. Usually this mix is really nice with any kind of purple or red. Seeing if I can kinda make a connection here, kind of imply that there's some plants in the distance. If you have something in the foreground, you can accentuate it by either contrasting it and value with light and dark, or by using a opposite color. If it is a saturated color, you can contrast it with a more muted tone next to it. For example, I have these bright green leaves and a desaturated purple behind it. Or you can have a dark green leaf with eight lit background. I have a yellow ochre. Contrasting some of these. Hopefully by using this idea, you can get some of your paintings to pop. And I have a balance in your planar pieces of work. Score brushes are definitely better suited to small work. So I guess some key points here is when you're out and about outside, have a composition in mind. If you find something that you wanted to paint, you feel free to change what's in the picture itself. It doesn't need to be a perfect representation of the scene exactly before you can move things around. So it's a more pleasing painting. Also keep in mind that you have only roughly two hours when the light changes. So if you have something that's currently lift up, definitely take some photos in case the light changes before you can get back to it. Keep in mind what time of day where you're going outside that has the lighting that you want? I went out and I went out in the morning around 10:00 AM and the lighting changed. By the time I had to go to lunch. Now all I am doing for this background is implying that there's some other trillions back there. It's probably a better idea to use a rigor brush for this one because the lines are so small. I guess if I was out in nature, then I would look more realistic. It's not exactly the best piece. But at least now it looks more complete. Now today. And if you shadows on the leaves just a little bit more. Today. Looks for it again.