Atmospheric Pine Forest - A Beginners Guide

1. About the class: Have you ever wondered with just your sweep of Indigo and Sap Green watching mystery and light breathe life into each layer of your miss shrouded forest? If yes, then this class is for you. Hi, guys. Hi, I'm Rika Nath an artist instructor, mother, care share teacher, and brand owner of ibritFossls where we manufacture handmade sketchbook, artistry paints, and mushroom. If you are joining me for the first time, I go by the name waterclo dot Illustration dot LeO on Instagram. You can also find me on YouTube by the same. This is a bigner friendly watercolor class where you learn how to master basic colors, light to dark values effortlessly. The secret to smooth, beautiful layers using easy glazing techniques, how to paint a breathtaking pine forest using only two colors, that is Indigo and sap cream. Grab a brush, unwind, and leave with a painting you will actually be proud of to hang up. 2. Basics of Watercolors: As the name suggests, this is atmospheric pine forest. We will start with a very simple concept called as atmospheric perspective, which explains how the atmosphere changes the appearance of object as they recede into the distance. Light scattering and haze particles moisture and dust in the air scatter light. The further away an object is, the more layers of atmosphere stands in between it and our eyes. Tonal value progression. Foreground elements having high contrast, dark rich values, sharp details, and saturated colors because there is minimal atmospheric obstruction in between. Midrounds values become moderately lighter, details blur and colors lose intensity. Background or horizon, values shift significantly lighter and cooler, often taking on atmospheric hues like soft blue, warm creams or pale gray. To match the light of the sky. High value near the horizon, merge with the backgrounds, creating depth. Now, let's understand how do we define this in our painting? I'm starting out with two pencils. One is to ch and another is the darkest value from the Black wick family. I will add the darkest value towards the bottom, and in the top area, we will have the lightest value that is to ch. The values keep on becoming darker and darker as it is closer to our eyes. This is how we will be also painting in our final project. Hence, I would like to replicate the same with our sap green colour. This sabgreen color is from the brand sinelia. You can pick up any sabran color or olive green color that's available with you. Starting out with the darkest value that is very light amount of water, dipping your brush so that you can pick up the particular pigment from your palette and then apply it on the paper. As we go towards the top, it would become lighter and lighter in value. Let us break it down a bit more in detail. Looking at the value scale, this is very important. From us, that is basically VRs or whosoever is closest to these foreground places to the horizon or the atmosphere, whichever is farthest away. Pigment density, heavy cream to buttery consistency of saprane mixed with minimal amount of water, as I tell you earlier, I have applied. Visual effect represents elements closest to the viewer dense foliage, sharp foreground trees, or immediate ground shadows. Middle ground pigment density, milk to T consistency of sabrine diluted with water. Visual effect represents mid distance tree lines or hills where the color retains a distinct green hue, but loses dark tonal intensity. Bottom, pigment density, very light wash or tinted with warm, cool skytes. Visual effect represents distant mountains, tree lines near the horizon, where atmospheric haze washes out the true green hue into a faint pale value. Now, this is how it happens in a painting. But if you want to do it as an exercise, I would highly ask you to go ahead and start with layers. Layers in a way that first is the creamy buttery layer of the mix, which we are adding to the paper first layer. Then the second would be adding a bit more water into it, going with the second one. And this is nothing but creating the second value layer. Once that is done, we will go with the third layer. Then the fourth one where more and more water is added. By the time we are done, the top value which you create would be almost water. That's how we go about it for the Sap Green. I would request you guys to create the same thing as you can see for the Indigo color. I have already created it on the left. I would request you to take it as your exercise and do it, as well as upload it in the project section. Why this exercise is very important whenever you are starting out with watercolors or even if we are intermediate to advanced level, sometimes just brushing up on our basics helps us to analyze the color pigments, et cetera, to a greater extent. When I'm working on a sap green color with the darker tones, I do not realize that there is a yellow hue underneath, whereas when I am working with one single pigment, I really get to analyze that there is a yellow hue in this sap green, and then there is a green part too. Sometimes those two can be seen separately compared to one single color of sap green. Now, these things you really will not realize at one go. It takes a while, and slowly and steadily, you will have this understanding. Once you have this kind of understanding, you can go ahead and kneel any kind of pigment values, hues, whatever you want to create in your watercolor painting. While you create the value chart, I would like to go ahead and tell a bit about Sagren. Sagrene is one of the most essential, widely used green pigments in landscape painting prized for its ability to mimic the natural colors of organic plant life without looking artificial or overly harsh. Warm organic hue. Sab green is a warm yellow, leaning green. Unlike vibrant tallo green or cooler emerald greens, its yellow undertone give it a natural early quality that resembles sunlit leaves, grass, and moss. Convenience green. Modern sabrene is almost exclusively a convenience color. A factory premixed paint using two or more modern pigments, where one of them is green and another is warm yellow. High transparency and glazing power. It is traditionally non granulating and highly transparent to semi transparent, making it exceptional for glazing layers to build luminosity and depth. Mass tone versus undertone range. In mass tone appears as a dark, olive, tinged green in dilution lightens into a bright, vibrant, glowing yellow green. That's one of the reasons that this has so many properties. I love to always experiment with the yellow or you can say, the sub greek that has undertone of yellow with some indigo, and this gives me fantastic outcomes, the darker or lighter tone of values that's really needed for a forest. These have become my go to colors for painting forest. And since many of you have already followed me on Instagram and have seen how many of these atmospheric pine forest I have painted over the past few days, which gives you a lot of insight into how powerful these two pigments or together. And the power of these pigments helps you to create so many different kind of outcomes without hesitating or thinking much about adding more colors or leaving out spaces in white, et cetera. This is something that I have learned over time. Do not try to overcrowd with a lot of colors. Try to stick to only a few colors, which gives out various values. You can also try to have only a few values out of it. You can have a foreground middle ground and you can have a background. If you are starting out with watercolors, these are the three areas where you can play with. You can start out with one single color or maybe just go ahead with only two colors and not think about overcrowding your whole painting. Let's move on to the next lesson now. 3. Technique Glazing: Glazing glazing with sap green is one of the most effective ways to build huminosity depth, and realistic light and foliage, landscape and botanical illustrations because sap green is naturally a warm, slightly yellow leaning green with moderate transparency, control layering transforms flat green washes into rich dimensional forms. Let us understand step by step, the glazing technique. Apply your initial wash using a wet on dry or wet on wet technique. Here we are doing a wet on dry technique. Allow it to dry 100% completely. Touch the paper with the back of your hand. If it feels cool to the touch moisture remains and glazing will bleed or lift the lower pigment. Mix the glaze, dilute sam green with plenty of clean water to reach a juicy, light to medium tea consistency. Avoid heavy thick paint glazing, relies on thin fluid films. For me, I usually always prepare a small pool of color and then go over each layer, but always let your paper bone dry before you go ahead with the second layer or third layer. Application. Load a soft synthetic or natural hair brush with glaze mix, sweep lightly across the dry base layer in a single confidence stroke. Minimize fiction. Do not scrub or rebrush over the same spot while with overworking disturbs the underlying layer, pulling up base pigment and causing muddy texture. Drying and stacking. Let the first glaze dry completely. If deeper values or subtle hue shift are needed, apply subsequent glaze of complimentary hues over the sap green. I would go ahead and remove the tape. Once I have removed the tape, I would love to just write glazing, but make sure that each part of your paper is completely dry before you touch or the color will lift out from that particular space. Let's move on to the next technique now. 4. Technique - Beginners Mist & Pine Forest: Today, I'm going to teach you how to create your mist in a very easy and simple way. We are starting out with a small piece of paper, and I would apply water on all the part of this paper. We are doing a wet on wet technique. Hence, the part of this paper needs to be wet enough. Then we are going to make some amount of our indigo along with sap grain since the sabrene has an underlying yellow and it will not give me much of a misty pine forest which I really need, I would add some more amount of indigo into it and create misty effect by adding some brush strokes towards the top and the bottom area. I would always keep some white spaces or keep some areas which are showing off the white of the paper. I do not use any kind of wash to create the mist as it is watercolors and I would love to use the space of the white paper to create the spaces which are basically you can say negative spaces and white spaces that looks like it is atmospheric, it is misty. And finally, it will give you an understanding of how lighter and darker values can work. Now it's time to create the faraway forest. Now, this is a very, very simple and easy technique. I will do a wet on dry technique. In this case, I will make some amount of indigo and some amount of sap green and start creating these brush strokes which are coming from the top. I will use the tip of the brush to create small, small, small, small lines and then take it towards the bottom, mix it with both the colors I love to mix and then only create it so that there can be darker and lighter value play None of the spaces are absolutely dark or absolutely light. It is more of a play of values and colors. Some of the spaces are better seen as there are less of atmospheric particles in between, whereas some of the spaces are least seen, and there are different, I would say, leaves, et cetera, that come into play. Some of the pines are younger, and hence they are more lighter in value. Some of the pines would be darker, more mature, they are more darker in value. You need to keep all of these nuances that is basically coming from the nature in your mind when you are creating any kind of forest or are creating any kind of spaces that should imitate nature in your painting. Let's continue to work through it and finish the whole part of this space that is majorly the mountain, which has some amount of fines that can be seen extended towards the right. I will just add some colors or the pigments that we have used earlier towards the bottom area. Now let's move on to the next lesson. 5. Knowing your colors: Indigo and sa grain is the ultimate door for painting deep, realistic forest because it balances temperature, desaturation, and value in a single mix. Temperature Sap green brings warm, sunny yellow undertones while Indigo adds cool, shadowy blue black tones. Blending them creates an organic green that reflects real woodland lighting rather than synthetic tube greens. Natural desaturation, Indigo dark pigment, gently mute sabrene brightness without turning the mix muddy or chalky, capturing the dusty, natural look of the dense foliage. Massive value range. Sabrene alone cannot reach deep shadow values. Adding indigo allows you to transition smoothly from sun dappled mid tones to pitch black canopy shadows simply by adjusting the ratio of the palette. Quick mixing ratio use 70% sabrene for sunlight. Pine needles and midground trees and 70% indigo for the deep forest hallows and core shadows. Let's move on to the next lesson. 6. Atmospheric Pine Forest - Part 1: This painting is very special because we are not going to draw anything. We will go directly with the paints. So I would go ahead and just add some water on the back side of the paper. I have used a spray bottle for doing the same. You can also use normal brush and just add some water on the back side of your paper exactly the way we are doing right now for the front side. Once this process is done, we will do heavy washes, as we are going to add a lot of mist in this painting and for mist, having a good wet paper is always very helpful. I have taken an acrylic board to stick my paper. This is an important step as I would move this paper a lot, and an acrylic board really helps me to do the same. Starting out with a beautiful Indigo color from the brand PBC, I was really not very happy with the shade from Sennelier. Hence, I switch to this one. It's a great shade if you are someone who wants more of blue into it, but I am someone who wants some amount of darker shade of blue that gives a lot of atmospheric effect in my painting, which I am always looking forward to. Just adding the paints very, very randomly do not have much in my mind. I am just initially adding some darker, lighter, but very, I would say tone down value of these paints or pigments into my painting. Now why I add very tone down layers at this moment? Because the values have to be lighter on the paper. This is the first layer that we are doing. We are going to add two to three more layers. And hence, if you have a very, very dark layer, you will not be in a position to see through it as you progress in your painting. I have picked up my acrylic board and started moving it in various direction so that the colors can automatically move into each other and merge. Keep adding some more colors in few of the areas without thinking much. Towards the top part of the sky, I would like to keep some white spaces that's only there when I think about adding my colors into this particular painting, rest, you can go ahead and add any shade. Only thing to keep in mind the values need to be lighter. This particular paint will, of course, dry one to two shades lighter, though I am using my artist rate paints. If you are even using student rate paints, then you have to go ahead and add more paints compared to what I am doing at this stage. Student rate paints have more fillers into it. Hence the shades are way more lighter than what we expect. I would go ahead and let my paper dry before I actually add my second layer. Always keep this in mind when you are adding your second layer, you need to apply it only when this particular paper is bone dry. Do not add it if your paper is not dry enough. Your earlier rays will get mixed with a new layer and the complete painting will go for a toss. Wherever I feel that I did not have a good mixing or a good radiant wash, just go ahead, apply a bit of water in those areas and then just move your paper as it is on an acrylic board in various direction, and you will get a particular color that looks very soothing to your eyes. The process might appear very much like repetitive, but you have to just do it in an intuitive way. Understand where exactly you want to place your darker values, which would be majorly the foreground at the bottom area. The top area is far away from our eyes. That is the atmospheric effect will be more over there compared to the bottom part. Hence, bottom part will be darker in value compared to the top part. So if you have this particular thing in your mind, I think you can for sure nail the painting. I'm pretty sure that I'm almost done with the painting. Extra water, I will take it off on my tissue, and then just lay this particular acrylic board flat on the table, allow the colors to mix and dry on its own. I did place a small teep underneath towards the top area. There is a movement of colors towards the bottom part. The only thing is the gravitational pole, and the gravitational pole allows the top area to be more lighter compared to the bottom area, which would be more darker. You can see that the colors have dried way more lighter than we expected. In case this is the condition that you two have, now you have to again go ahead with a tone down value exactly almost the similar values which we have applied in our first layer for our second background wash. These are basically the trees in the background, and the bottom part of these trees will be lighter or just exactly water blending into the atmosphere that we have already created in the background. Though you might see that I have kept three colors, that is a neutral tint, sap green, and the first, which is Indigo. But usually, I'm going ahead and using only two of my sheets, that is your sap green and Indigo in case I feel that the colors have become more brighter, then only I will use a neutral tint or I will give it a pass. There are a few things which we do just for the comfort, and keeping this particular neutral tint is for my comfort, as I did not want to go back and again, take out the colors when I'm already applying the colors on the wet paper. Time is very crucial, and if you do not understand the essence of time in watercolors, then your whole painting can go for a toss. Always keep your paints very, very handy whenever you are working with watercolors. You can also keep a small pool of colors ready. Since I only had three particular places of keeping my paints, I did not create any pool, and I'm pretty used to doing my watercolors in this way. But as a good practice, you can also keep a small pool of, I mean, paints and pigments ready for yourself, which can be applied very quickly on the paper. As you can see, my second layer is very light, as we have applied just kind of glazing on top of the colors that we have applied in layer one. I'm using my flat brush to pick up the colors from a few areas. I have been using this Princeton 1 " flat brush in most of my paintings, and it comes really handy. I like to blend the total portion in a great way. And hence, I apply even the clear water till the bottom of the paper. It is your choice, but what it tosses that it doesn't leave any marks or any kind of effects on your paper if you take it till the bottom part or till the ending of your area of applying your paints. This is it, guys. We are going to go ahead and start off with our third now. 7. Atmospheric Pine Forest - Part 2: I really love how the mist is coming towards the bottom part from the top left hand conumn. It's time to make some of the sap green with some amount of our indigo that's available on the palette. This particular shade of both colours blended together is Oanshe darker than what we have applied earlier. I would just make a small line and then start adding some conical like structures, or you can say loose lines that goes towards the top right side and left side. Slowly, steadily, it becomes a cone like. The top area will be smaller. As you go below, it would become more broader and broader. Believe me, this painting has been done after 21 to 25 days of continuously painting puns. So you might find this to be very expressive. But all I can say is that when you practice one particular subject for 2021 days, you are automatically going to completely nail that painting. So practice is always the key. If you continue to practice daily, you will have an outcome that looks extraordinary. Yes, there have been times where I could not practice. As you know, I have two children. One is around eight months old. Hence, any challenge that I pick up always runs to two, 2.5 months. That's absolutely okay. Mostly my challenges are painting one particular subject for about 30 paintings, and I spread it over a longer period of time, achieving the achieving something very quickly is not the idea. Just to understand the subject and achieving it in my own slow pace is always the idea. I enjoy the process. I enjoy the paintings. Failures are also mine as well as the masterpieces are also mine. If you have that kind of a mindset, you are going to completely nail allo watercolor paintings. I'm starting out with the particular shade as I did tell you earlier, and then while I go towards the bottom, I blend it with more of Indigo shades or Indigo color. I will continue to add some more of these pines. They are smaller in size. As you know, it is a bit far away from our eyes. The mountain that we have created earlier had a few line like structure because it is far away from our eyes, compared to the ones that we are drawing now, the top part is mostly pines. It's a forest area. I will also add it on the left side and then just blend it with the bottom area with the help of my blending brush, which is majorly my 1 " Princeton brush, as I have quali done even earlier. I continue to do this process. Blending always helps in having an even tone, as well as it gives the colors to go down with the help of the gravitational pull. It doesn't allow it to sit at the particular area and automatically move around with the help of water. I have continuously created more pins, but with various values, as you observe and then now is the power of the blending brush. You can see that the top part has a fog and I want that fog to also go down. That's one of the reasons I did not paint in a particular area, the forest part and just allow my washbush to go over that area and make that area look lighter. The fog is coming towards the bottom part. I want to make these portions very even hence just adding some bit bits and parts of the pig bins here and there. This is a generic practice which I have been doing for long time now. From the time, at least, I've started painting pins on a regular basis. I would be doing this experiment for a few more days, and then I will be stopping this and moving on to a new subject. I feel if you practice a subject for 21 days, you just know how the complete subject works for you, where basically your flows, how to create the trees. Initially, when I started creating the trees, I was really not sure of how to create the trees, how my particular brushwork will be. But over time, I've realized brush chokes work very differently, and the pigments sometimes do not flow evenly on the paper. You have to use your plenic brush in various places. Let your paper dry off, and now we are starting off with our fourth layer. This is the reason I always say use a 300 GSM arches paper. It's a mold made paper and it can support multiple washes. We will be going ahead with another wash after this and hence if you have a handmade paper, it might not give you an even wash after the fine painting is ready. You might get some blobs here and there. That's the reason to go ahead with either Ovabiano or Bahong or the arches is one of the best and I have been using this for many years now. The core press part. You can also use 180 GSM or 190 GSM. But for arches, I think that particular works, but there can be a bit of buckling. But in this paper, there is hardly any buckling. You can also go a bit above that is around 650 GSM or more. These decisions, I would leave it up to you, but having good paper for yourself is always the key. You can always, always nail a painting when you have a good paper. These trees are way more closer to my eyes compared to what I did draw earlier. I would again use my blending brush to apply the water and then some of my brush strokes just to make it look more even. I would continue to paint some of my trees further on. Then blend it while I go towards the bottom. Again, this is a very iterative process. As I do tell you, it's like a meditation. You can just take the paints on your brush. It's like a breath in. And when you paint your tree, it's like a breath out. So breathe in breathe out process. It can be a long breathe and a long breathe. This is how I have been practicing and it is fun to do these exercises. Believe me, it's very relaxing and after a very hectic day, this kind of a smaller painting can be nailed within 30 minutes after all the drying time and all, because you can always use a hand dryer to fast forward the process of drying. I will continue to add one or two more trees. Once it is done, we will allow the paper to dry off and then start out with our final layer. Final layer is very crucial and it's very, very important compared to all the other layers which we have applied till now. There is no coming back when you have applied your final layer. Hence, whenever you are thinking about applying your final layer, be very calm composed and then only start out with your final layer. Just don't think much, go with the flow, enjoy the process, and you can surely make it happen. Let's move on to the P three, where we are going to paint final foreground trees. 8. Atmospheric Pine Forest - Part 3: This is the final layer and it is going to be very crucial at this moment. It's important to just understand where exactly we want to place our pines. For me, I do not want to go ahead with a lot of pines for my foreground. Otherwise, the background will lose the whole intent, the charm, the look that we have created, already, the atmospheric effect. Everything just comes together at this moment. Let's just mark out that there will be three lines, though you cannot see those lines properly. It's mostly for your muscular memory that yes, here I want to place my trees. I will start out with a straight line, and the first or the top area, I would say, will have less number of your leaves compared to when you go down. That's how I have kept my trees. I mean, you can have a different way of actually adding these trees. I love this way because that gives me more area to show my background and it looks completely put together. Okay. If you can see that I did draw out with the help of my tip, the entire line, this is not a thin brush, as you have seen already. I have been working with this brush for the entire part of the painting, except the two other brushes which we have used. I did keep a size four brush in case it is needed, but it was not needed in the whole process, and we did complete the entire painting with the help of only one single brush. That's the power of having a good brush, and it really can help you to improve the complete painting in a grade Okay, adding some lines on the right and on the left. Nothing is in a clear direction or a clear way, which what I meant to say is that you will make one of going on the right, another on the left. Not like that. Few of them are on the right, few of them are on the left. Having said that, I'm not trying to add one after another or trying to build up a space where everything looks even. This is something that I've done in most of my paintings, even earlier. I should not look even. Keeping that in mind, you will create a painting that really looks more natural. It has more nature effect, the atmosphere, then all the layers that you have put together, the mist, fog, et cetera, everything binds together, and it makes a painting look complete. Again, I'm not trying to add a lot of character towards the corners. As you know that I keep my corners very boring. I do not try to add a lot of character towards the corner areas. I follow the rule of thirds. Rule of thirds is you divide your paper into nine equal halves and focus on the intersecting points. You can place your subjects in and around that intersecting points. We have done the same for the lower half wherever the points are intersecting. You can see that the middle part I have left it as empty. I'm not going to draw a tree over here. I'm just going to add a bit of paints, and that's it. I can see the right tree has become lighter than what I expected. I might go over it once more to paint it, but we'll decide upon it later. Let's continue to paint on the left and then come back to it slowly. I always like to do my painting slow. I do not like to just fast forward the process though you might feel that, yeah, I paint very quickly because it is watercolors. Watercolors needs a bit of quick movement of your brush paints, et cetera, or else. You might lead to something that is like quick drying in a few places, which will lead to cauliflower effect as we progress. This we really want to avoid in our paintings. Going ahead and starting out with the top area of the tree, again, I am not going to add a lot of leaves over there. I will just make it very skinny and then add more character as we go towards the bottom area. This is something that I always keep in mind. I try to give the space that the background trees also demand because we have given it a lot of effort while we created the background trees. And slowly now when we are creating the foreground trees, we should not forget how much effort we did already put into our background tree. As you know, this is a postcard size paper, which we are working on, and it is pretty easy to quickly finish off a painting on any postcard size paper. That's another reason I have picked up a postcard size for this Atlas class so that all of us can finish it off. I would also add a small prompt at the end and then you guys can paint it and upload it on the project section. A prompt is always helpful to understand how we want to go ahead and work on a photograph next. This would be a very simple photograph. You can paint it. You can also consider this as a final project, painted and uploaded as well as paint that particular photograph too and upload it in the project section. I know this might have been a quick and easy one wherever you think that you want to stop see and then again, paint, you can do that. If the right tree has been really dark, then don't go over it. I just feel that my foreground tree on the right side has become really light, which I don't want. It looks more like a background tree rather than a foreground tree. I want to add some more darker values and give it a bit more character. It is closer to my eyes, and hence I should focus on it and make it way more darker than the other trees which appears in our background. Mm. I think I did successfully go over my first part of the tree painting and then just added the darker value. Now I'm picking up the colors from wherever I think it is necessary, blending it with the background art as the background is still wet. I have already blended the color with the help of my blending brush. This is something that I am really excited to teach always, always. You can see that the fog is moving from the top towards the bottom area. Requesting you to upload this project in the project section and also use the prompt from the resources section for the painting.