Atmospheric Natural Landscapes in Watercolor

1. Introduction: Welcome to atmospheric, natural landscapes in watercolor. We all want to paint a beautiful atmospheric landscape. Often we have that perfect image of our completed painting in our heads. But how do we get there? It's tricky when you don't know how or where to start. Put simply, the answer is understanding the relationship between timing and mixing paint on wet paper. If you're not careful, all the colors will run together and make a mess. I'm going to help you build your confidence and skills so that you can paint any landscape with 0s. In this class, I'm going to show you my two-step process in painting and atmospheric landscape. I'll show you how to sketch a quick drawing with pencil. Then we'll begin painting by focusing mainly on wet in wet techniques. To paint with this technique, you need to slowly add paint into an already wet area. This is crucial in creating that mesmerizing atmospheric look. We'll also go through how to use wet on dry techniques and the second wash to bring out the fine details and sharper contrast. Follow along with me as I guide you through a journey of creating light, softness, and atmosphere. 2. Materials Required: Alright, in this video, we're going to talk a bit about materials, what I'm gonna be using, and what I recommend for you as well. So firstly, let's talk a bit about paper. The paper I'm using here is 100% cotton watercolor paper. It's also a medium texture or cold press. This is very important because with medium or cold press paper, you get this nice soft look, especially when you use wet and wet techniques. Now when you are using hot press paper, a problem with that at times that it dries much too quickly and you don't get soft transitions due to this. So you might have some areas that just dry a little bit faster than others. For example, here, you might be doing the sky and then it just dries faster than say, this era here. So you might get a sharper edge. So I do recommend having some type of textured paper or the medium, or a full textured paper or the rough textured paper. Cold press or media works very well. The cotton content gives you a lot of time to do all these wet and wet techniques. I find that it's a lot easier to work wet into wet when you're using Arabic on paper, it just takes longer to dry compared to say, a cellulose paper. But if you do have some cellulose paper, that's fine. Just keep in mind that you will have less time to work due to eat drying faster. This here is a little spray bottle that I carry around with me. And I use this from time to time when I've got my painting. And of course I notice it maybe starting to dry it or give it a bit of a spray on this area from a distance. And what you'll find is that it just gives you extra time to go back in there and add some more paint. So that's a bit of a recommendation in terms of materials with your paper. So in terms of brands of paper, I wouldn't suggest anything in particular, I use a whole bunch of different brands. Just makes sure that it's a artist grade paper if you can, and it's a 100% cotton. So I wanted to talk a bit about the paints that I use. Now, There's a few paints that I have on here. And I'll see if I can actually point them out a little bit on the painting to now, down here in the bottom, I've got basically a bit of this color here called buff titanium, just in the corner. And buff titanium is basically an off-white color. And it's a useful color to have because you can use that to imply some dried grass, a little bit of a yellowish grass colour, bit of this yellow ocher here that helps as well, that a bit more yellowness into your scene. I also have a tiny bit of this stuff here, which is Hansa Yellow. Hansa yellow is a much brighter yellow compared to yellow ocher. But I've used just a little bit of that in places such as over here, and I find that just brightens up in area. This is a granulating green. And I use it because it creates these nice little effects like this here we kinda creates a bit of texture. Now, not all greens, a granulating and sometimes what I tried to do is add in a little bit of this stuff here, which is basically lamp black or a little bit of a lunar black, which is basically the same thing in granulating kind of black. Sometimes a little bit of ultramarine blue as well because that granulate and give those greens a tiny bit of a granulating texture. So if you don't have a green, you can mix up a bit of ultramarine blue with a tiny bit of yellow, either yellow ochre, because those two are granulating colors. Or you can use a bit of the hansa yellow as well, and you can make your own. So I do have a few other greens that I pick up from time to time, but bit of that undersea green, which is a Daniel Smith color. I use that and just adding different levels of yellow in there to increase in, decrease the brightness of that green. So you can also add in a bit of blue to the green as well, just to darken it, It's less colors than you'd think. I tend to use just one base green color and then just add blue and yellow to just change it up and down. However, I do have a few other greens as well that I pick out. So definitely just experiment, see what works for you in terms of some of the Earth colors. I have a brown here. This is called G, F, G, a fight. And it's a granulating brown as well. But you can use things like raw umber and also burnt sienna. Burnt umber as well works pretty well. To create these brown sort of trees and tree trunks, perhaps some of the rocks as well, we can add a bit of brown in there. So those are the main earth tones that I use. Earthy colors, um, do have a little bit of cerulean blue here in the sky. So that is a granulating blue just up the top here. And I like using it because it's very light. And then you get a little bit here and I'll end. It. Just granulate out very, very nicely. Another couple of colors that I think is important as well is this color here, which is neutral tint, as basically as a convenience colors. So you've got your three primaries mixed together to create this really dark color. You can, of course, just create your own darker color as well. So if you've got a bit of blue, a bit. Of red and a revealer just mix them together and you will get a quiet dark color from this. Again, convenience. I also have a bit of white gouache. And white gouache is fantastic to use at the end to bring out some highlights. And you can see, I'll just note in areas such as here, these little shrubs that I've created a quick little marks like that with a bit of gouache mixed in with some green or yellow for example, or just by itself here to just bring out some highlights on the trees. Bits and pieces here and the background, tiny bits of highlights and the foliage and the grass here on the side. So that just allows you to bring back a tiny bit of light in detail. In the end, I've got a big tube of this stuff and I just mix it with my normal watercolors. So in terms of colors, That's about it. You notice that the palette that I use is pretty large as well. And make sure that I have a larger mixing areas in here so that I can pick up a lot of paint. This sheet of paper is about an A3 size, so it's a quarter sheet. And having just these larger world just means I don't have to think about continually mixing up more and more pain, especially when I'm going into these larger areas here of green in the background, I wanted to make sure that I've got enough paint to cover those areas. The main tips that I have, again, if you don't have a a palette like this, That's okay. You can use a plate, ceramic plate or something around your house. Or you can just use a smaller palette with smaller wells and perhaps paint on a smaller scale like a 1 eighth sheet or something like that. So I just find having larger wells and your painting larger does make it so much easier. I'm gonna talk a little bit about brushes now, so I don't use too many brushes in my paintings. A lot of people think that you need to have a whole bunch of brushes. But here the ones that I have and always important to keep a tau. This tau allows you to alter how much paint is on the brush, how wet that brushes. So if you pick up too much paint and you just want to drive that brush, you can just draw it off here and then go back in there rather than creating a big bloom or a big mess in there. So the tau allows you to alter the amount of moisture on the brush or just super important when we're dealing with wet into wet. If an area is slightly dry and then we start picking up some paint and go in there, but we've got too much paint in. It's going to spread and cause a bit of a mess. So always being aware of how much moisture is on your paintbrush is certainly something that you should keep in mind. So don't go to the topic of paint brushes. Now, I've got three little mop brushes here. And one of the things with brushes is that you want to use almost the largest brushes you can without sacrificing too much on the detailing and being able to cut around shapes. So you see these trees here in the background. That's really important, that you have a brush that's able to come to a point like this, but also you're able to pick up a lot of pain. You'd be surprised how much paint I can pick up with this mop brush here and essentially go in, get that sky in all this area. I did use this brush as well just to get in larger washes and areas. It goes to a fine tip and you can cut around when you're using too large a brush that's too large, you're going to find that it's gonna be difficult to cut around shapes and leave highlights. So again, use the largest brush you can add. These mop brushes are great for wet and wet technique, where you pick up a lot of paint but still create detail. Here are a few other brushes that you perhaps need as well. Predominantly this one here, a little round brush. This is a size eight round brush and you can use a size six to a size eight, doesn't matter. You just size four. If you've got a smaller piece of paper. His brush here allows you to get in small details. So the little shadows around the rocks, little shadows, little bits of shrubs, things out that details in the background like this branch here. This is gonna be great. These two brushes here. This is a rigger brush. This allows you specifically to get in tiny little branches and I do some of these wet into wet. You can see it just pushes them back into the distance here. Here. You can get in little bits of little bits of grass and things like that as well. This is a fan brush which has tiny like lots of little bristles on top and that are used also to get in little strands of grass, just fossa so I don't need to continually keep going back into it with the rigor. Finally, I use a little blade and you can use a little blade or you can use a credit card as well. What I do see in these areas here, I actually scratch out a bit of paint while the paper has almost dried and this can create little highlights, little bits of grass sticking out here in there. I think a lot of it's just timing. You can see here as well in the background. But this is a really effective technique and I think it actually looks better than putting in the highlights with gouache and try a few different techniques, see what works for you. But essentially that's all that you need for this class. And apart from you, your water bucket, just a nice little container of water, and you're ready to go. So let's get started. 3. Drawing: The basis of every painting comes from drawing. And what we're gonna do in this section is we're going to be learning about how to reduce down a landscape like this. Now, I actually don't think this landscape is too confusing to draw. There's a lot of little trees and branches and things like that. But you find out sure enough that there's not a whole lot that you need to draw in there. Lot of the shapes here, a softer, especially the larger sort of bushes and trees out from the background. But what you do have is a sum of these rocks, perhaps some of these shrubs that come up around near the water, tree trunks, the sharper edges, which I think are really important to get in. Okay, So the most important thing to remember is don't overthink it. All we wanna do is make sure that we have a little plan, a basic plan, so that when we go in with the paint, we're not flying blind. Now, right at the back, you can see around about here maybe a third of the way through the scene. There is a dark area there in the back. I'm going to actually be drawing a little bit darker, hopefully so that you can see what I'm doing a bit more on the camera. But I am drawing pretty lightly here. What I'm doing, I'm just dividing this bit of paper roughly into half. And that's about where that darkened area is at the back. Okay. So you can see it almost just pops up here and you've got like a tree that comes up here. You've got a dark and sort of area, perhaps some trees going through the back. You can just see make out the edges of some of these trees, smaller trees off in the background like that. I can always remember as we're drawing bits and pieces off in the background, they do get a lot smaller due to the perspective. Here I am. I'm just drawing here a little outline, I suppose, of the shape of the trees. Another interesting thing that I like are these white gum trees here in the back and you can see them just pop out the top of the tree line. Really tall sort of gum trees. And they just extend all the way up into the sky. And they actually fairly thin these branches. So we don't want to make them too obvious, but at the same time, I do want these to be a little bit sharper and more detailed. Okay, so here we have one tree at the top. I think for the drawing, for this particular scene, we're taking a bit more time as well, Okay? So that we ever really just take, make sure that we've got in the sharper shapes. These, these trees here. You cannot really, again, just simplifying these down a little bit. And they may change over time as I continue to work on them later in the scene. But you can see at least the trunks here. They are quite quite dark. I'm just trying to draw an outline to make it a lot easier for you to see there. Couple then you can see there's also a soft treeline just running across the back like that. And this is gonna be really important because having that treeline is going to help to distinguish that white sort of whiteness and white area of the tree trunks. So going ahead and look at that, I'm just putting in a little bit of Scribble here for the treeline out the back and actually combines and we have this overlapping larger set of trees here. And the branches, again, you can see them, they're quite dark and very, very thin, just going upwards into the edge. So we're just putting a few of these shapes. And then of course, at the moment, it's just very simply detailing. Okay. We're not really trying to get in all the detail. We're just trying to get in an indication of where about some of these sharper shapes appear here in the foreground, we've actually got a lot of this softer shapes. And in fact, you can see there's like a river. And this is the Edison's Creek over in Victoria. So photo that I took actually. And you can see that there's a log that's lying around here. And of course, all this stuff here can be changed around later on. These forms like a larger branch from a tree that's fallen into the river into the creek here. So I'm just marking out the edge of this creek. She's a little bit of an edge here and it's coming out around the corner and all the way. Here. Okay. You've got some rocks as well. Little wasn't not a little rock, but a larger rock here in the front. You can see a bit of this shrub, this grass or something growing up in the side. But the main thing is to make sure that creek looks a bit smaller at the back and then you get it to just expand out near to the front here. Lot of this stuff here on the left-hand side. It's all going to be wet and wet. I'm going to have a play around and see how we go there. But I'm just putting in a few of these little shrubs near the edge of the creek. You can see there's little branches as well, sometimes just stuck, maybe fallen off. These are small branches as well. Here of this tiny, like a smaller tree or a shrub here in the foreground. So where I can, you'll notice that I just start to put in little details and essentially just use that to guide me later on. I've noticed here, look at those trees all the way. It kind of like new to that darkened area. Where does that darkened area roughly about here. Okay. You can see these darker branches just to the right hand side of them. And I thought, why not just outline a bit of that in there? This, some of this is going to change. But I do want to get in a few of those. I really like these gum trees as well. And I'm thinking perhaps to actually put another one in. Maybe I could get another one in just a roundabout here. Okay, Then we're just kind of getting other layer of this tree line up here. But I'll get in another one perhaps. Going out of the scene a little bit like this. Okay. Odd angle perhaps. Again, going out, words like that. And just to balance out that rock, these ones on the right-hand side. And of course here we've got a few that are just another few little branches like that. Like that. There is a tree here. Again, kind of like with a darker trunk. Not so developed. Let's work a bit on this side, I'm just again going to mark out a bit of this area. Again, we've got perhaps a few rocks I want to just drop in here. I'm also thinking a little bit about the light source where I want to put in the general light source. And I think we're gonna get the light source coming from the right-hand side to the left. So I get a bit of a shadow. In some of these areas. This is a bit of a tree trunk going into the river again. And I'm always remember we're just marking out generally what is happening. Okay. Let's not get too bogged down in the details. Okay, branch here. There's maybe a branch coming up like this, okay. Some shrub here. Then we've got this larger tree trunk here that looks like it's been broken off. Okay. You can just see the edge of it cut off like that. It's either being blown down by some wind. Just basically collapsed on itself. Okay, So this is a great bit of detail I think that we can include in, in the foreground anyway for some extra details. Um, I think just also to make sure that we've got a bit of decreasing size of objects as we move into the background. So for that, you're going to need some larger shapes and that kind of thing. I mean, this is some kind of branch that I'm just making up, making it longer than it is actually come across and you can see it actually droop downwards like that. Okay. I think of that just a simple little branch or whatever you got it coming up like this. More gum trees off in the background. Smaller ones. Maybe another one here, off in the background. Few more trees. And the big thing I want to get in is just this treeline here, okay? And leaving a bit of sky up the top. Okay? So we essentially have everything that we need for this drawing. It doesn't look like much. But what we do have is this creek here. We've got the tree here in the foreground. Another tree here coming in. Okay. I'm thinking perhaps I can put in another tree here at the back. It's just a last minute idea. But a smaller one. Like a smaller trunk like that. And perhaps just get that the branches out more irregular like this. So that we've got I don't know, I just wanted, I just want a tree that looks a bit more formed rather than one that's just cut off completely like this on the right-hand side. So it's just mimic that one but made it a little more structured and thinner than that one here. So I've got a couple. Okay. This might be another, another gum tree here in the foreground. So the rest of it. I think we can go and just make it up along the way. But we've got the river, got some grass here, shrubs, indications of trees, the tree line there, so we know where the sky starts and the treeline starts here with a sky, sky finishes. We've got the creek here, perhaps a little bit of grass or something, twigs and things to indicate the edge of these Creek. A few rocks in here as well. Why not put in a few rocks just for detailing? And we should be ready to go with the painting. 4. Paint the light: For the next step, we are going to work on all the softness out in the back. This is where we get that atmospheric look. It's really important this initial step because we're putting in most of the details, wet into wet, believe it or not, I'd say this is about 60 to 70% of the actual painting. And you need to make sure that your work while the paper is wet. Okay, so I'm gonna be showing you a few interesting techniques that are going to help you. And also to preserve a bit of the white here for these white sort of gum trees. And here's a painting, quick little painting that I did the other day, mainly just to illustrate what I mean by that softness in the background and k with the sky. And then we've got the trees here, a little bit of that water. The softness in that, in that water and in the shrubs and grasses. And over here, a lot of that is just painted while the paper is wet and then we add in all the darkness and shadows after. So without getting all those beautiful, soft and lighter colors, we're not gonna be able to get those shadows to pop. So let's give this a go. The first thing that I'm gonna be doing is picking up a bit of green. And I'm going to mix, sort of show you the mixture of the green that I'm going to pick up. Okay, so I've got a little bit of this stuff here, which is green called undersea green. I've also got a few other greens here, but essentially a dark green is really important. This green kind of granulate out, which is important for me. And I think also in terms of creating a sense of texture without too much effort. When it dries, the granulation just makes it look like something and something that's not really their little shrubs and stuff in the bush. Okay. And notice the amount of water than I'm mixing in here, I'm using a lot of water. Okay. So I also like to drop in a tiny bit if I can, a tiny bit of yellow. So I have some of this yellow ocher. I'm mixing a bit of yellow and a bit of green together. And let's drop that in into the background. A bit of a test there. That looks quite nice. I'm very light, it's mostly water. So you're talking about 80 to 90% water in this section. And I'm working my way around. And also, if I've got some other greens that I can put in here, a bit of darker green or just another type of green. I like to drop that in there as well, something like that. And I'm just going in and really getting this shaping. But remembering to cut around these gum trees, look at that, making sure that we have a little bit of that whiteness from the gum trees. That's super important. So really, really light, it's got to be transparent. I'm putting in a bit more yellow. I do find with the Australian bush that you don't get so vibrant colors in here, the brownie green color. So try to keep it that way and look at that. I'm just dropping in some colors in here. Pick up a bit more of this other green, which is a darker green. If you don't have a darker green, you can also just mix in a tiny bit of blue, and that does the same thing. Okay, so keep it pretty light. And around here as well, you can see there's a tree on the right hand side. I'm just doing a tiny bit of cutting around this tree. You will find that a lot of the painting, a lot of the detail actually comes from leaving out little bits of areas like this. And I don't often actually use masking fluid on the paper I'm painting on is also on a slight tilt. Okay. Very slightly tilted. So dropping in some more very light green on that right-hand side. Let's move that over. Move that down. And remembering to cut around some of these branches. And also don't be too precious about it. This can be a point as well where you just start to obsess too much about everything and worry yourself. But at the moment are all I want you to do is make sure at least this color is nice and transparent. And leave a bit of this white. In areas so we don't have to color everything in. This is some kind of, again, that tree that we've drawn in a bit earlier here. And we'll just cut around. And again, there is a tree running through that one. Okay. So I'm working quickly as well because I also want to make sure that I can get the sky in at the same time and create a soft edge in the sky. So I'm just being quite quick with this. It's not hard especially because you've got all this softness here, all this. It's really just light. Okay, So we can just get that all in like that. Simple quick little indication. Bit more green here. Drop that down like this. Okay, good. Okay, there's the trunks, the tree trunks like that. And I'm going to just leave them a bit, a bit wider actually and have them carry down more. And as I come further down here, I'm going to mix in a bit of darkness at the base. And you notice this is where there is some kind of clearing or dark area at the back just in here. Drag that down a bit like that. Okay. And look at that. I'm just picking up bits of paint and make sure that when you're dropping in paint to an already wet area that you're picking up thicker paint. So before where we've used a lot of water to paint all this area in the back. Now I'm using less water and I'm dropping in more concentrated paint. And by doing that, you're going to, you're going to avoid blooms. What I'll do now is I'm going to pick up some cerulean blue and get the sky in. While I can just grabbing some cerulean blue. Let's drop that straight in. I want this to be quite light as well. I think that's too dark. I'm going to just dilute this out, touch. It's important to have a brush that is as thin at the tip as this one because you're gonna be able to cut around, cutting around all the different shapes that we've got. Okay, So here we go. There. I'm just going to drop this in here. And here. Here. At times I might think of connecting up and at times I might just leave a bit of white in some spots maybe to indicate the glimmer of a tree or something like that. The branch of a tree. Okay. So very light. Wash mostly water, 80 to 90% water. We don't want this area to be too dark because that's going to be the sky. The sky wash trick is that I've left the area of the green to dry a little bit before doing the sky. And by doing that, you can get a soft edge for those trees. These little tree line there. So you can preserve a bit of that moving forwards, but still have enough definition to show that tree line. Okay, so you can see there, but it melts a little bit into the sky, which is what we want. And even some of it moves downwards. And because I've got the paper on a slight tilt, you're going to find that this is all the paint just comes downwards here. There's a bit of paint there. And that's quite crucial so that the paper dries nice and evenly. Okay. Now there are some noticed, some lighter sort of shrubs here and they kind of yellowy green, really bright green. So while things are still things are still dry over here. I'm going to just drop in a bit of this lighter green. And it looks a bit overpowering at the moment. But it will mix in, I think, with with some of the other colors later on. But I'll just keep it lighter for now. Okay. Look at that some of that top wash starting to blend in and that's okay. Don't fight it. That's the most important thing. You have to let it do what it wants to do at some point. Remember, we're not detailing. We are just putting in this first wash, which is just adding in colors. Okay, we're looking at what we can add in here essentially to indicate all the lighter bits of the painting. Okay? And I'm really trying to just focus on the green and the little bits and pieces here as well. That there's a section out the back here. Darker section again. And the great thing is you can just keep going back into it and dropping in bits and pieces. I've accidentally put it in a bit of green in the sky there, but doesn't matter. No problem. Okay. That can be clump of trees or something like that. Tree leaves. Okay. There. Look at that, just carrying this wash down, looking at the painting at the reference photo as well, to make sure to make sure that I'm leaving out some white where there could be potential branches, things like that, that I want to imply. Okay, So I'd not actually started working on this bit yet, but I can start doing it now, just like this trunk that I've left out previously. So just a bit of color around that trunk. And I'm like that. See if I can shift some of that downwards and get that to just run run down like this. Okay. I don't want anything to just pull in areas, which is why I keep saying to make sure that that papers and a slight slant. Okay. I guess I'm just cutting around that tree like that and leaving a bit of white. It more yellow. You mix yellow with green, especially this yellow that I've got here, which is a kind of Hansa yellow is essentially very vibrant yellow, but it's not going to stay like that. I'm putting in a bit of yellow ocher in there as well, perhaps a tiny bit of brown. Again, with these Australian landscapes, you don't get too many vibrant greens, but I can actually see some, some in the, in these fresh shrubs that are growing. So that's why I've decided to drop in a few of those. And I've also left a bit of white in here as well. There's no problem. We can have a bit of white in their tiny bit more green here in the foreground. The trick is, is kinda just letting all these colors melt and play around with each other and dropping in details while everything is still wet. Okay. I've noticed this air in the back is starting to dry. So you can even just add in a bits and pieces of color to indicate a treeline here. Just one that comes in front. Okay. This one is kind of more in front than the one than the softer trees off in the back. So I've just dropped in a tiny bit of this is a bit of purple, little bit of a purple color. Just dropping that in, even here you'll notice there's a bit of darkness. We mentioned before. A little bit of purple in there. I think we'll call that down and make it darker. But I'm not done with that yet. Okay. Another shrub or something here? Like a shrub but like a bunch of tree branches, a case. So I just want to get a bit of, a bit more darkness in some of these areas, a bit more contrast. Okay? And one or pick up a bit of extra green. I've got some extra greens in here. Okay. And I look at that because that area is still wet. It just melts in beautifully. If you ever feel also that perhaps the paper is drying too quickly. Grab a spray bottle such as this, and give the painting a bit of a spray. And it just gives you a little extra time to continue on with this wet and wet and I'm going to have to do that. I think continually throughout this first part of the painting. Let's carry this down here. Good, good. And again, you notice it's all just kind of warmer bits and pieces. Here in the foreground. I'm more yellowy color like that. This is a bit of lamp black or what was it called? Lunar Black. Roughly the same thing. It's kinda like a granulating black and I add that in with my colors at times to help it to granulate. One thing to remember as well, we're going to have the shadow is kind of running towards that right hand side. This rock. Let's get in a bit of, I don't know, just a bit of warmth in this rock here. The ones that are in the creek. Okay. Little bit of little bit of sparkle. We'll probably have to go in with some quash later on. Okay. I'm going to pick out a smaller brush. This is smaller mop brush to do this last section to get in this river. And one thing I noticed that the river is darker than the surrounding areas, so I'm going to have to mix in. Let's have a look. I do have some darker greens here, so we'll just use that. Sometimes you can just really just make your own greens if you add in a bit more blue. Okay, let's try this. Let's try this. Okay. Good. So it is darker. It's not significantly darker, but you certainly can see that the creek takes on more of a murkier color than what we've gotten the back. Let's drop in some of these other green color, they're lighter, green or yellow or something like that. They're okay and that's probably too vibrant, but doesn't matter. It should even out soon. But this is just a kind of a darker green. And notice what I'm doing here. I am just touching it onto the edge of where we have some of these shrubs and things like that. And I'm hoping that a good portion of them have started to dry. Again. If you start noticing running too much, liftoff, just grab that brush and lift off on that area. And then you can avert avert a bit of a mess. But of course, not everything needs to be controlled. You, you've got a lot of leeway here. Notice that some of the parts which are actually lighter, I kinda dried already or partial emotionally dried. So you're not gonna get more sharper edges, which is fine. As I move closer to the foreground. You may be tempted also to add in a bit more darkness to the water. Now this is something that I want to do. I want to just make the water a little bit more dark and the foreground to just help it to come out. Okay. But let me just put in a bit more of that yellowy color there. Greeny yellow color here. Good. Here we go. Let's just move some of these colored down here. Okay. Cut, cutting around these rocks again. Like that. That that I'm sometimes a bit of lights or indication of light on the right-hand side of these rocks are perfect. Okay. Leaving a bit of little bit of light on there. And again, some of these streaks of white running through could indicate branches that we could work on later. Took a long time for me to realize that I don't have to color everything in. Leave some bits of white and they can turn into rocks, anything really. So here we've got it. We have the first wash mostly done. Really at this point, I sort of look at what we can do to imply tiny details and softer details, bits of darkness in places that we want to indicate them. So over here maybe I might have some darkness near the trees at the base. Not only that, but I've realized that perhaps a bit more, bit more darkness near the edges as well underneath the shrubs and grasses helps to indicate the edge of the river bank. So I'm picking up a little bit of purple mixing that in with the green and dropping that in here. Really wet onto wet and thicker as well. Okay. So we are really putting in thicker paint, thicker and darker paint in these areas. Just help help to draw out this area. Here is another bit of darkness that's kinda just faded away a touch. But I can go ahead and play around with a bit more purple perhaps in here. Because like I said before, the area is quite dark and still wet out the back. It's not going to cause too much of an issue if we just drop in paint like that. Okay. And I always encourage people to mix the paints on the paper where possible because it's just something that you can't, you can achieve this through most any other medium. Besides watercolors. Just this beautiful atmospheric, wet on wet look becomes second nature and you don't have to think so much. But really if you follow along with me, you'll notice everything is just done wet on wet. And I'm not looking at so much the exact form. I'm looking at the tone. So how light or how dark and area is really quite crucial for me. This area is kinda dried a bit on the left and I do want some more wet in wet. So it's like I said before, fit of a spray down like that. And I'm hoping that will help me to get in it just a little bit more weight onto wet activity. Going through. Let's have a look here. I just want to paint this all the way to the edge. I'm okay. What have we got here? There's really a lot going on, but a lot of it is actually just lighter colors coming through here. Some picking up a bit of this. It's kinda, it's called white buff titanium. So it's kind of a whitish cream colored watercolor. And I'm dropping that in here like that to just getting a bit of Peter, this lighter color. A bit more here. Or wet into wet still, remember everything is still wet. Bit here. You can even drop in a bit off in the background if you'd like just a soft enough some some areas to make it look kind of Misty. I'm is slightly opaque. And this misdemeanors also helps with just a sense of atmosphere in this scene. So if you don't have this color, you can also just use a bit of white gouache mixed with a touch of yellow. And that will accomplish the same, same kind of effect here. And normally I can just do this thing forever. I can just keep on. I'm scratching away and I'm drawing in little bits of detail like this tool. Essentially, I feel happy to continue. And here again, I've noticed that some of this water has moved down the page and I can just grab the tissue and dab off like that. Okay. Because I don't want too much of that river area to come in. Okay. Let's have a look around. So I'm going to pick up more of this green and see if I can put in a few brush strokes, quick little brush strokes like this to indicate some bits and pieces, little bits of grass. And if you've got a rigger brush like this, then you are set really or small little round brush because you can really just put these in near the river bank, the creek, just like this. And all, they are just vertical lines. And of course, they don't look like much on their own. But we've got a few of them in a row. You start to find that they, you know, your mind interprets them as bits of grass. The paper has not completely dried yet. And I'm doing this so that we again have a bit of softness or three kind of edge. Okay? Just getting, getting in that river bank a bit more as well, a bit more darkness underneath. So dropping in a bit more of this paint to help to separate out the riverbank. There's not really much of a separation on the other side of it. On the left-hand side, it's more on the right-hand side. There you go. There. You sometimes get darker branches like a darker one that maybe runs up like this, like that. And I can just draw that in with the rigor while the paper is still wet. Okay. Because it's really thick paint. I mean, this is just paint without barely any water added ingest to activate the paint really. But I find that doing this, you can really get some late totally to details here. But the details will still blend in with everything else. I'm going to get these wet and wet details, I suppose. Okay, So I'm getting a few of these. This is just a neutral tint I've put onto the, um, rigor bit of wetness up there. If you want a little bit more water or you can just spray as well. There we go. I don't think I'll do too much else with that one. Just get another branch or something in there. Maybe have another one here. There's a few one maybe running through this tree and going up in, there's a lot of verticals I find in this scene. But look in the corner here, I can just scratch in a few branches that move around and blending into the background. And because it's wet, you find that these branches often get pushed back as well. Okay. Let's have a look. What else can we do? It's left-hand side as well. I do find that there are some trees or something in there. Before I do that, actually just adding a little bit more color, a little bit more green in here. I want it to be darker. And the reason is is that I I want this area to come forward more. Yeah, I want that area to come forward more because it's more again, it's more like in the foreground is like a layer of trees out in the back. And not only that, I'm gonna do it over here as well, just in select spots near to this, these branches that I just painted in some softness in some of these areas. This can just indicate these trees coming forwards a bit more. And we're not disrupting all this stuff in the background. We adjust. Dropping in a bit of color. This wet into wet. Layering over the top of those previous layers. Got some vibrant greens. I've got some dull greens. I've got some browns in here. This is a bit of brown over here. It's actually quite dark. I might want to just quickly spray that bit down. Okay. It's kinda darkened area of the side like that. Okay. The bit of darkness here in the base again. But like I said, it's just putting on almost like a second layer but still wet into wet. Okay. Let me just soften this edge down. Sometimes you get an edge that's just a little bit too sharp. And so you can just re-wet that edge with a touch of water there and it pushes it pushes it back a little. I always like to indicate things. When we're talking about these natural landscapes. Indicate them. They just look so much better and more convincing than if you just force force them in. Okay, fantastic. Just having a look here on that side, whether I want to add anything here on that left-hand side. I might drop in a few bits and pieces of darker green in here just for the sake of it, because it does look very, very light in there and I'm having trouble differentiating what's what areas of the grass and areas of where we've got some shrubs and things. So some darker shrubs or look at that, just some little bits and pieces like this. I'm going to use some brown actually. In some areas like that, there's actually some dark spots here, the bottom, kind of like a dark and greeny brown shrub or something here because this is a fan brush as well. So the fan brush helps me to get in these little strokes that look basically like the leaves of the shrubs. Without too much effort, I can get in indications of this stuff like that. But here in the corner there. Okay. So have a look here in the front here, drop in a bit there. That bit of yellow is too, too much. But we'll leave. It did go into a little bit more. There is a shrub here as well here at the front. So it looked I'm just again trying to find some areas where I can drop in the hint of detail. And this is not the end as well. I'm going to detail more of it later when the paper has dried. But what you want is yes, some of these shrubs, you want them to be kind of wet on wet. And so they, they look more softer. And then when we go in there with some sharp as shrubs, they're gonna look contrasting and more interesting than if we just had sharper objects in their sharper shapes in there without all the softness. Softness is what brings out the beauty I think of the world. The watercolors, we combine it with Thor, The sharper and darker details. But at the moment you can see the only sharpness that we've got as maybe some of these dark branches. But a lot of them have melted into the background and the trees. And let me just go ahead and pick up some of that dark neutral tint again. And I'm going to just go into this section and I'm dropping an indication of some of these, these trees. And they look at them, they just kinda go up all the way up like that. To the edge of that. That foliage. Just hold the brush at the end, drag it upwards like that. And don't think about it too much, just put the branches in and let it go. Because if I think if you just start fiddling around too much, it again begins to get overworked and doesn't look good. And you notice there's also some little little ones as well in here in the background like little shrub branches and stuff off in the distance. Thought I'd try to indicate some lighter ones in here, like that. Even here inside the little clearing, which is actually significantly darker, keeps fading off, but I'm going to drop it in extra dark in here. Okay. Let me get some more. Let me get some more of this darker color. Sometimes I just use purple as well, mixed in with the greens. But I want to create a bit of sharpness for these clearing. There's gonna be a bit of a soft edge anyway. But this edge is going to form like a sense of this tree to the right-hand side. So this little edge here. I didn't mean to go that far, but I'm going to have to leave it now. It's like that. Okay. You got a bit of an edge there where it gets darker and then just fades as we move up. Okay. May just lift off a touch of that paint like that. Don't be afraid to use your darks. They bring out all the light. Your scene. Super-important. So going back into things again, let's have a look. I'm going to pick up bit more of this darker color. And I'm just drive that brush. 5. Paint the details: Let's put in a few little tree shapes here in the distance. And I want to say dry off the brush. That's essentially what I mean is that I'm just putting in getting rid of all the water on the brush so that you've only got a tiny bit of it left in there with that because there's only a little bit of water. You can get an indication of some trees. And they blend in because they're so light off in the distance. And that's really crucial because when we're talking about depth and perspective, you want to make sure as we move into the distance that these trees become lighter and less detailed as well, because that's how things often appear in reality. Softer and smaller. Reduce detail as we look into the distance. Okay, so I've got enough of that. I think going on there in the background. Things are really starting to dry off now. And at this point, this is where I start to figure out all the bits of darkness that I want to put in here. So for instance, I think some more of the shrubs and perhaps some little, little indications of round leaves and bits and pieces would be good. I can just put in a few little look at that. Just a few little spots of leaves or something like that running through here. There are some shrubs here. I need a bit more water for this, kinda just running through this error and the distance. Here. They're like a shrub, a large shrub. And this would actually take up a lot of room, but I've put this tree on the left here, so I'm just trying to make sure that it's included. That tree still included bit more detailing there on the right-hand side. Let's see what have we got here? I think I can probably play around later with some gouache to get in some details in here. But just some of these, if you look at this little bits of, little bits of darkness in here, okay. Got a branch and it's kind of like a brownish branch. So I'm gonna pick up a bit of this brown color. Some of it in like this can just be a bit of again, that branch near the river. I'm just guessing really, but putting in some detail for it. Okay. The great thing with these natural landscapes is that you're never completely wrong because nature just appears in so many different forms that if a branch is facing the wrong direction, I'm going in slightly different way. That's fine. I could take a photo of this scene a week later, and it looked completely different. A bit of putting a bit of cerulean blue in here. I'm just dropping some. This maybe a bit of lavender or teal. Teal color would be good, just mixed in with a bit of that green. Okay. Notice some of these leaves have these kind of cool tinge to them in areas like how that bit of light seems to be showing through the clearing there. I didn't anticipate that too much, but I'm happy with how that looks actually. And there's already a bit of light in there, but I think it's just emphasized a bit more In what I've done. Let's have a look. What else can we do in here? We can look at a bit of this darkness here. The base. There's just flipping in-between this this fan brush, flipping between the fan brush and the smaller round brush as well. Bit more. Let's go ahead and get some more bits and pieces here. Another interesting thing you can do. Another interesting thing you can do is pick up. A little blade, a little pocket knife, or a plastic card. And you can scratch off the little details like this. Indicating some shrubs in the darkness. Like this, just gets rid of a touch of that paint. What I love doing this in areas, because you can indicate so much little details. I mean, there really aren't really out there, but they help to add to this overall sense of complexity. And I'll also go in with a bit of gouache later on to basically do the same thing. But I find if you can do it at this stage, it actually looks quite a lot more interesting because the scratching off that paper also gives it some texture. Look at that, especially scratching off around near the river bank to you've got to wait for the paper to almost dry. So you kind of looking at that dampness, damp paper and some damp areas. Because of that paper is still wet. The water that you scratch off is just going to seep back in again. Okay. And even on this branch, look at that. I can just scratch off a bit there and help it to blend in better. Even here in this clearing or whatever. Often the back, I can just scratch out a bit of a highlight for potential tree or something. They're not obvious. Not too obvious, but certainly something there. Maybe a bit on this side has that dried yet? Not really. Get a bit here. I like doing it on the areas of the paper where you've got to that river bank. Okay. Let's have a look. Sometimes you can just scratch off little indications of like leaves as well, like this. I'm want to go overboard. We can do something here on the left-hand side. But I'm building up more and more detail. I'm perhaps a bit more here in that left-hand side as well. And dry brushing it a pickup, some green paint, and dry it off. And then just go in. And you're using the value of paint that making it, making sure that it is a little darker than the previous wash that you have on there. Okay. I want to leave a lot of that light in there and I'm just wary of not getting rid of this beautiful warmth and darkness in there. So I'm careful, but also at the same time, making sure that I've got these bits and pieces in here, like these shrubs and things here, here. Here. Here, here. Here. You can also go into the bottom of some of these rocks and getting some darkness. I'm just picking up some brown mixed with a bit of this black. I'm looking at that just a bit of darkness on the left side of those rocks, perhaps to indicate some of that shadow in the water there underneath the rock. You can get it in for this one here to. The interesting thing is like this tree is quite dark. I mean, it's like a super dark. So I'm going to just indicate I don't want it to be I don't think I want it to be as dark as the reference, but I do want there to be a bit of color in there. Little bit of grayish color like that. And I'm also leaving some of that right-hand side of the tree exposed so that it appears like there is a shadow on the left-hand side of this tree. Okay. With the base of the tree is as well like here. And having really a lot of darkness at the base of this tree also helps to anchor it to the ground a bit more that I've just noticed that there's another darker sort of. Branch running in here, something like that here. So I just thought I'd get that in quickly and never be afraid to use your darks. Know, it looks quite dark. But at the same time, it's really necessary so that we can bring these trees out from this whole scene. Notice the darkness underneath, underneath the tree here. The branch like that. What have we got? This is turned into almost like a larger tree, but actually it's cut off here. This tree kind of connects onto this one in the back and the right-hand side. So if I can just indicate where it leads to, I think we should be okay. This one, Let's have a go with this one. Bit of darkness here on the tree and I'll just bring this down. Leave a lot of that white on that right-hand side as well. I think it's going to just look better. Work on down. Again, I'm gonna do the same thing where I just dry brush the base of that tree in like that to help it to stand out a bit. But I don't want it to be completely dark in there. Okay. This is going to dry off and it's going to look kind of like a negatively painted shape with the grass anyway, is it negatively paint it as you can see, the just cutting around it. It creates a bit of this sharpened greenie sort of area there, feathering it in nicely like that. And there we go. We've got this indication of grass growing around the trees. Okay? So you're leaving in that beautiful green color in the background really helps. You've also got again, this darkness underneath keeps disappearing, but we can just bring it back quickly by darkening a bit under here as well. Here we go. Lot of this lot of what I'm doing is dependent on on what you're leaving out. Okay. As well as what you actually painting the whites, especially on the trees. I'm leaving out a lot of that white. I get this branch going up here. Okay. This is a made-up ranch, really. This whole tree is just made up, but I'm happy that I've put it in there because I think we needed that. But a bit of detail in there now, again, that could be like a rock, a little bit of shadow or something down at the base of the rock. I want to make that shadow a bit less, less apparent. So I'm going to use this brownish green color that I've mixed up on the palette and get a few of the mean like this. And that. I think maybe some ripples on the water might be nice. I'm just thinking what we can do. But you can see already these, these appear to be like little rocks or something like that in there anyhow. Brown, brown or something. Notice that a lot of these rocks, they tend to reflect a bit of light as well. So I'm having just a bit of that white on there. That's all you need. People go fossil king and gold panning in these rivers. In Victoria. Bit of a leisure thing. I've never found any. Myself. There's a lot of rocks lots and lots of rocks in here. Really liking how that area looks at the back there with the bit of light coming across in that section. Keep working. And using this small brush to imply some details. Just looking to see what else I could potentially add in here without. Upsetting the balance of everything is expanding out these little more. When things start looking to shop, That's when I get worried. Little bit of dry brush perhaps on the tree would be good to indicate some of this side would bark and things bit of texture on the trunk of these trees. When a bit more darkness, some of these left parts of the tree, I'm going to just catch a shadow here or there. It's just going to help that tree to stand out a bit more from the background. I'm worried that it doesn't look dark enough in some areas, but I'm fixing that up. There we go, a bit more of this branch Coming up here. Perhaps. It's nice to skip over parts of the paper every now and then. I'm going to work a bit on the left-hand side. I think I've done a lot of work on that right-hand side already. And let's just put in a few darker strokes in here, just a few to indicate bits and pieces. Now, another thing that's important to mention as well is that we want to put in a slight shadow for some of the stuff on the right-hand side. And we don't think I want to make a huge deal of it. But just some kind of soft shadow running along like that would be nice. On the ground. I grew this kind of thing. Not so apparent at all, but something running through would be good. Like this. It doesn't have to be perfect. We can even have like an imaginary shadow of something. Oops, that's too much. And again, if you've done too much, just lift off. All the paper's still wet and you can save it. It's not the end of the world. There we go, but just something in here. Here we go. More here. Let's have a look. Some more of these shrubs running through in the foreground. Some darker bits. I always think because you're taking away detail from the scene as well, we sometimes go to exaggerate bits and pieces or just change it up. And that's why I have often some darker bits where it might be lighter in a scene. And the reference photo. Because in a reference photo you've got so many beautiful tones and colors in there. And when you do your painting, often, often the biggest trap is you look at your painting and you think to yourself, Gee, is it just doesn't look anything like what I've painted. But you gotta remember that a painting stands separate. It should stand separate from the reference photo. So I always like to just change something up or just take it on its own. Merit. At the end of the day. What I'm trying to do here is like dark enough this separation here to make it look like this part of the foreground is lighter, part of the foreground comes forward. So by doing that, what I'm doing, I'm just darkening some of this area here in the background. Hopefully that will bring this bit of these Buddhist shrubs forwards more. But a lot of it I think I'm gonna have to get an a few strands in there with some white gouache. But while I can, why not just add in a little bit of darkness there and see what happens? You can soften that off with a tissue as well. If I feel like it's just a bit too much. There we go. Few more strokes here as well. Craig keeps some of these in different angles coming in so that we draw the shrubs. They don't look like they're all running on the same angle. They grow in different ways, in different directions. If you draw them all in the same way, it starts to look to, to contrived. It's funny when you have more chaotic shapes, it's going on. It looks more natural. And ironically. That's a kind of Planned Chaos. Suppose I could say Planned Chaos, going to go all out and just with complete abandonment, you are, you are having some form in their stool like that and this was starting to take place, takes shape. I mean, bits and pieces coming out. The paint that I'm using is just a little bit darker than the previous layer. Good. I am going to work a bit on those background trees. And just quickly I've got an old brush here. And I've got just an old mangled brush and I can pick up a bit of brown or green or something here. Just whack it on the page. And then I can just do something like this, just dropping a few little leaves like that. Okay. All dry brush down. By the way, this is not this is not by any means. Perfect. But you just want to get a quick little indication of some of these leaves. And then usually with the Australian trees as well, these gum trees, they just have little bits and pieces of leaves. C, C just soften off some parts of it and some things just leave sharper. So often like that. I've got an old brush. They work so well for this. You can do this in a few different areas. To put on some texture for the leaves. You can do it here as well. There's like a, like a tree that just runs up to the left-hand side. And I can just get in like a bit of that bit of foliage running in like this. Just makes sure that blends bit better. I've got a bit more Here. It's kinda like a brownie green. There we go. Bits and pieces. Small round brush. And I'm going to continue detailing a little more. Especially with these on these trees out in the back. I think a touch of darkness in some areas for the branches are going to help to define them better. But very light compared to what we've gotten the front anyway, quite transparent still. You can really detail this out as much as you want. I try to be on the conservative side because we've got such, such so far off in the background. So preserving the whites on them, I think is Pi, biggest goal here. But I'm just putting in a little bit of darkness on the left-hand side of them to hopefully get these trees to pop out a little more. A little bit more. Not all areas, but like in an area here or there, just gives them some structure. Touch more darkness here. Move this shrubs here. Okay? So we're gonna give this a quick dry. 6. Finishing Touches: Alrighty. So for the final part of this session, we're gonna do some little finishing touches, mainly with some white gouache and mixing that around with some yellow. And I find that we can get in bits and pieces of leaves, highlights here and there maybe would have grass in here as well just to finish it off. Same fan brush as before. And I'm also going to be using perhaps the rigor and the little round brush. So suddenly smaller, thinner brushes and I find these are great for detailing it. You don't risk getting rid of any of the previous bits of paint that you've added on. And you keep that gouache application sparingly. So it's really important to keep it quite sparing when you're applying it, but be deliberate with it as well. So I'm going to just start off around here. This just a bit of that tree from just redrawing or painting basically a little bit of, I don't know, some additional detail here. I think that would be good. Tiny bit of highlight on that right-hand side. Sometimes you lose some of that and you can regain a tiny bit of it through this technique here, which is basically just basically just applying some gouache to the highlighted areas. And the trick is to make sure you do it in a way that doesn't look too obvious here. So you notice I'm just like touching it onto some areas and touching go. Okay. So that it's not too obvious because once you, once you use too much on there, it's not. Painting starts losing this transparent feel And, um, you don't want that. So just a bit more here, perhaps running up the trunk. Okay. The point where you feel okay, that looks good enough. Then I stop. So again, there's some of these like rocks here that have, like maybe add a little highlight and the right-hand side. And you can mix this Guassian with a bit of yellow just to try to pick up a bit of this yellow and mix it in with the the white gouache and you can get a warmer color for parts of the rock as well. So you're not you're not painting everything white. Leaving. It's kinda like, uh, it's still a highlight, but it's like a warmer colored highlight rather than just a white highlight. And I can go in there and just Dunkin a bit of this paint in areas like this here and even some of these little, maybe there could be a tweak or something like that here that you can indicate. Can you just write simple detailing, little bits of shrub or something like that here. I'm around. I tend to mix a little bit of green with the gouache as well. And that also helps to get a bit of this lighter color into. So I'm really just being careful not to overdo it. This lovely clearing here as well is something that I'm interested in preserving. So I don't want to go too much into that area. But at the same time, um, I do think a little bit of gouache in there and perhaps mixed in with some green, so much like a greenish colored gouache, green and yellow. Let me pick out a bit of this brighter yellow with a bit of the green to create a kind of a lighter green color. We can use this to get in some tiny little bits of highlights, of greenish highlights. Of course, just dry off that brush nicely. Okay. Here we go and just feather it, feather it in, in areas and some parts you can just dunk it. Because sometimes when you're two pressures as well, it can also begin to look unnatural. Bits and pieces here. Also the tree leaves. Of course, this is something that's important. So just you can indicate some of them may be coming through here, especially in the darker areas as well. You then have to draw them in, but just a little clump of them like that in indication of them. Some lighter ones. Wash and you really just picking out select areas so that you're not overdoing it. It's all about balance. I mean, you've got to make sure that you've got a good balance of lights and darks in here. So here's, Well, look, this is shrub and I thought let's get in a few little a few little streaks running in like that. Okay. Maybe there's some running through like this, this like it could be a shrub behind here. Again, just a little quick little indication like that. Okay. You these little bits of leaves here at the base nearly nearly the creek bed as well. Just dropping a few little dots like this. Okay. I'm more green in here, It's just not green enough. Maybe more yellow as well, greeny yellow color in here. Just trying to get the right consistency. I'm putting a bit here as well. Why not? It's really just it's a fine balance because if you if you overdo it, it's going to just look like a gouache painting. I'm sorry, I'm trying to leave in the majority of it really just watercolors. And interspersed with the watercolors, we've got little bursts of energy, little bursts of this green and things like that. Little bits of this gouache showing through. Okay, um, decided to make this one a little more colorful actually than the scene, the reference photo. You've even got some of it here look kinda like this on the right-hand side of some of the trees you a little bit of this kind of greenish color that I'm just putting in with the gouache. It's just indicating like the highlights of the trees. The right-hand side of the trees even dropped some in here. Sometimes it helps to disperse a bit of this paint around and aids with balance pose. So let's get into some more yellow color. Maybe in here, lighter bits of yellow, something like this. Again, just its indications of bits and pieces. It could be larger leaves or something like that. Don't overdo it. Just didn't. Just using my imagination here guys. Okay. Tiny bit here. Good. And of course, here we have again, some of this work that I've done before on these trees and shrubs as well. And you notice it again. You've got these little bits that run up the background. So look at that, just a bit of this white gouache mixed in the air and provides that perfect, perfect blending. So it connects the background. Some of this stuff happening in the foreground. Okay. Dry brush, this science super-important to dry brush it on so that it looks more natural. Don't have it all completely wet. Because otherwise it's just going to look funny. Okay, there we go, Look a few more bits and pieces. But remember this side on the left is going to be lighter because we've got more light reflected on that side. So the important thing is just to get a few strokes as well near the bank creek bed here is to indicate where it might start, essentially. Okay. I was thinking of actually outlining a bit more detail on the creek bed, but I really don't feel the need to do that anymore. We can get we get the point really that it is there. And I think if I go through again into the creek bed, I might eliminate some of these beautiful softness that's in there. So I don't want to do that. He's a few longer ones maybe here in the foreground like this. Holding the brush at the end really helps to simplify things down. Have a look here. I'm going to just add in a bit more mess like that, the base like this. Okay. Bit more here. Anywhere where you can get in a little bit of contrast between light and dark. I think that's the key. Really you can just make create a sense of contrast and interest. Now even here, look at that. I mean, it's not even representative of of what we've had there for the leaves, but I can indicate just some of that running through there like that. In a bit here as well. Perhaps. That just little textures, little details and textures here that might indicate some highlights on the, on the trees. A little bit of that. The highlights, quick little highlights. Can also put a few up the top here if you'd like. Okay. Just wanted to darken a little bit of this river bank. He had just a touch like that. The left-hand side, I keep calling it riverbank Creek. I'm glad. Okay. Some more lighter bits maybe in here. Just feathering it in little bits of paint. Again. Crucial to be sparing with this. I wanted to just get in a few more darker strokes in here. Actually. If I can just do it actually with this, with this mop brush and not mop brush, but this fan brush, I think it's probably going to be easier. Just a few little darker strokes in this section. But not too dark. Just because we don't have many darks in there. And I feel that there is some kind of imbalance because there are some darks here. It's just that the kind of overshadowed. But will the light areas, sense of shadow, light and shadow huge. It's very subtle, very subtle. There's even some kind of like tree or whatever here. Darker. Of course, few little bits and pieces growing in here. Okay, and I'll call this one finished. 7. Class Project: Your class project is to draw and paint your own natural landscape. This can be the same featured in this class are based on one of your own photographs or since you've observed outside. You can also refer to the scan drawing and painting templates attached below, which will allow you to trace your drawings if you choose to do so. I recommend drawing each saint, free hand. Drawing is an important step in improving your painting skills. This provides you with an opportunity to compose and plan your painting. Once you finish the drawing, use the watercolors, steps, and processes included in the class demonstrations to complete your painting.