Autumn in Watercolour

1. Intro: Hi, everyone. My name is Sharone from Sharone Stevens Design. I'm a watercolorist, illustrator, and modern calligrapher. This class is all about autumn in water colors. There are so many beautiful things about autumn that always inspires me to get my paints out and I really hope this class will inspire you to do the same. In this class, we'll be painting a sycamore leaf, a pine cone, a toadstool, some wild mushrooms, a pumpkin, some acorns, and some foliage, which includes a branch of simple leaves and some berries. I think that's enough for one class. The class is divided into sections, so you can just choose what inspires you and jump in as you wish. As with all of my classes, the pace of the videos allows you to paint right along with me. I'll take you through every step of my process with tips and guidance along the way from the initial sketches, so we make sure we get the form right, which is so important to looking at the pallets of each piece. Then I'll take you through the painting of each piece step-by-step. I hope you're now feeling really inspired to start painting some of these beautiful autumn pieces, so grab your supplies and let's get started. 2. Supplies: Hi everyone, and welcome to this class. Thank you for joining me. First, let's take a look at the supplies that we'll need. So you need watercolor paper. I would recommend cold pressed and at least 140 pounds weight. You'll need watercolor paints. I'll be using Winsor Newton professional tools, but you can use pans if you want to. It doesn't matter. You'll need a palette or a plate to mix your colors on. I'll show you which colors I'll be using in this class in a moment. You'll also need some brushes, I'll be using a few different sizes. My smallest size 2/0 and zero for the finer details, and my medium size four, for covering the large areas. These are all round brushes that I'll be using. You'll need a pot of water, and a paper towel is always really useful as well for taking off any excess paint or water from your brush, and fixing any mistakes. Finally, you'll need a pencil and an eraser for those initial sketches that we'll be doing. I'll be using a mechanical pencil as it has a nice fine point. So for the palette, I'll be using Winsor yellow, Indian yellow, yellow Ochre, Scarlet Lake, Burnt Umber, Sap Green, and Winsor Blue. As a minimum, you need a yellow, red, blue, and ideally a premix brown if you're happy to mix up the rest of the colors. So now we have our supplies, let's get started with our first piece. 3. Leaf Part 1: Sketching the Outline: Hi everyone. The first thing that we'll be painting is this sycamore leaf. We want to start by lightly drawing the outline in pencil first to make sure that we have the form right. So let's look at the shape of this leaf. It has five distinctive lobes that we want to draw and is fairly symmetrical in its shape. So we'll start by drawing in this center line. Keep it nice and light. I'm using my mechanical pencil here, which has a nice fine tip. So next find the halfway point and from here we want to draw in the veins of these five lobes. We already have one going up to the top so we need to draw in four lines, two curving slightly downwards and the bottom, and then two slightly longer ones curving upwards, and you will see that these top lines come out of it further up from the bottom lines and are not as high as the top point. So now let's draw in four small dots as mark points for the outline, and you can imagine these as the four corners of an almost rectangular shape. Now we want to draw in this outline. So we want the lines to be curved and jagged, pointing towards the tip of each lobe. So starting from the base during the first part of the outline. And then to make this somewhat symmetrical, let's do the other side now trying to make it fairly similar. Then from the tip of that bottom left lobe to that mark a dot, and the same on the other side. Just continue working your way around the leaf. Now we have our outline. The next thing we want to do is add a bit of weight to the low half of that center line, making it a bit thicker at the very bottom. So now you should have an outline of your leaf that looks something like this. I haven't drawn in the veins here with pencil because we'll paint those in later on and you probably won't be able to see them underneath the layers of paint anyway. So grab your paints and let's start painting. 4. Leaf Part 2: Painting the First Layers: I've added my chosen colors to my palette, so then I some fresh to use. I have Winsor yellow, Indian yellow, Scarlett lake, burnt umber, Sap green and Winsor blue. We're going to start with a yellow layer fast. I'm just going to double this down slightly so I'm going to mix up a violet, which is the complimentary color to yellow, and just add a tiny amount in. I'm using a size 4 brush here which has nice fine tip, so I can get the edges nice and crisp. You can swap to a larger brush to fill in the center of the leaf if you want to. Don't worry about the color being exactly the same all over. The thing that makes these leaves so stunning is the amount of different colors in them. By creating a gradient of each mix on your palette, you can give the leaf some lovely texture with some slight variation in each color that you're using. Just make sure that that blended in quite nicely though so you don't have any harsh lines or watermarks. Now I'm going to use some of my Indian yellow, which is much more warm yellow with a much stronger orangey color to it. Again, I'm going to add that complimentary color in. So very small amount of this blue to neutralize the orange slightly. You have to be really careful not to add too much in here. It's totally up to you whether you do this, you can just use the colors as a calm for much more vibrant, bright leaf. But if you see my mix in greens class, you'd have seen how I talk about using this method, adding a complementary color intermix to make your colors more realistic. So I'm going to add this to the edge of this right side now, making sure to keep end to edge nice and crisp. I'm just cleaning and drying my brush slightly so that I can blend this in before it dries. Any paint that we are adding to this leaf, we want to keep blending in, so with the mix of colors, have a nice even graduation to them. Next, I'm going to go from my red, which is my Scarlett Lake. Again, just adding a tiny amount to my gradient as a complementary color to neutralize this a little. I'm going to add this to the edges of that top leave. Again, blend in so it's nice and even. If you need to, you can drop down to a smaller version for the edges if you're not getting that definition that you want. This brush I'm using has a really nice fine tip, so it's great for those finer points as well as filling in some of the large areas. I'm just going to add a little bit to the top here too. Now I'm going back to this orange mix for this left leaf. I'm just going to fill in this center area so we can add the red to the end edges. Just keep blending it all in, so you don't have any harsh edges. There are quite a few layers in this leaf, so just working the colors over each until we get the look that we want. So I'm not adding too much water at anytime to the paper. Otherwise, it will get too saturated. Now I'm just using more red to define these outer edges again. I'm just pulling it into the middle. I'm blending it all in using a clean, fairly dry brush. You'll see I keep using my paper tone just take off any excess water. So now I'm going back to my orangey yellow for this lower leaf lobe. Now I want to add in some green. I'm going to go to my sap green and just add a touch of my red to neutralize it. I'm going to add this to the base of my leaf, and that lower right lobe. I'm just blending in before it dries. So remember that the brush will pick up that pigment, so keep cleaning your brush, and drying it, and then blending in a bit more so it's nice and even. Next, I'm going to grab some of my brown, my burnt umber, and add this to the edges at the top. I'll switch to a smaller brush now, my size zero, just to make these edges really defined and crisp. I'm just blending this in. Now I want to add a bit of color to the center of the leaf, so I'm going to add some more red to this brown, and a little bit of orange too. Using a fairly dilute mix here, you don't want it too thick. I'm just working around these lines that we drew in to add some patchy shadowy areas. Now I just want to blend these in using very little water so I don't disturb the layers underneath. Now we want to wait for these layers to completely a dry. Whilst we wait we can paint in the stem of the leaf. For this I'm mixing up a ready brown color, I'm using my smaller brush again for this. I want to leave a slightly light area, at the very bottom, as a little bit of a highlight. Now I'm grabbing my more concentrated brown. I'm working down the left side to add a bit of a cylindrical 3-D dimension to it, blending in very slightly. Now we just need to finish waiting for the leaf to completely dry so we can add in our veins. 5. Leaf Part 3: Veins & Final Details: Now the leaf is dry we can add veins using the ready brown mix. I've just change my water as well so it's nice and clean. Don't be tempted to start painting these veins in before your leaf is dry, because the paint will bleed in and ruin the leaf. The veins need to be really crisp hard lines for the best effect. I'm using my smallest brush my two zero for this. I'm going to start by painting the center line following our pencil line that we drew in earlier. I can just make that still. Then I'm just going to go over the other four lines as well. I'm using a paper towel, underneath my hands so that I don't risk smutching anything. Next we want to paint in some very fine veins. Going back to our outline so I can show you, you want to start with veins that come off each of these lines, that we've drawn in. Just know that all of these are slightly curved, and going towards the tip of each leaf. Then from that, we can add in some extra little veins that come off this. Just trying to keep this really fine just using the very tip of your brush. Just keep using your paper towel to tale off any excess paint or water, which will really help to keep these lines nice and fine. Okay that's it for the veins right now, I just want to add in a bit more color. I'm gong to add a bit brown here to give this leaf some boldness. I'm just going to blend this in gently making sure not to disturb the veins. I'm going to add a bit more depth here towards the base. Now I just want to use my ready brown to add in some patchy areas. Just make sure this is quite diluted you don't want it stand out too much in the lighter areas. You can make it a bit darker or bolder in the darker areas over here. I'm just blending them fairly roughly to give this nice texture. I'm going to add some more of a bolder green here the base making it patchy at the button. Now, just left this a few minutes for it to dry again and we're going to go over some of these lines to make them a bit bolder. Now it's a good times to stand back have a look at your leaf see what if any finishing touches you wanted to add to it. I'm just going to darken up some of these edges here with my brown blend that in. Finally I just want to add in a few little marks here and there. Just little dots around the center line. I'm just roughly bending those in. Now I think we've done I hope you're happy with your leaf, don't forget to upload it to the project gallery. I can't wait to see your work and next we'll be moving on to our pinecone. 6. Pinecone Part 1: Sketching the Outline: Hi everyone. Next up we'll be looking at the pine cone. Pine cones can be a little tricky, so, it's important we spend a bit of time getting the form right first without pencil. Then after that, the painting is pretty straight forward. This is the outline we're aiming for. I'll leave this up here on the left so you can see clearly every step of this drawing. It will be easier to see than my pencil drawing. So just lay down a paper towel of my leaf to make sure I don't smudge it or ruin it with any water or paint. The first thing we want to do, is to draw a guideline for our pine cone, which is this egg shape. Remember to keep this really light as we want to be able to erase this at the end. Next draw a line down the center, again very lightly, and then about a fifth of the way up, draw a curve, and again at the top about a fifth of the way down. These are just guidelines to help us draw in the pine cone to get the proportion and perspective right. Okay. Now we want to start drawing the pine cone. We want to draw in the tips of each of the scales on this pine cone. We'll start by drawing one just below the center with an almost flat top, and these are going to be roughly in the shape of a soft triangle with curved corners. Now draw another one on the right side, but this time slant that top line upwards towards the right, and we'll do this in the opposite direction on the left, and this will help give some perspective and dimension to our pine cone. Draw another one a bit further up in this right side. Okay. Now move over to the left side and draw within with the tops landed up to the left, and another one underneath, and to the left. Now I've just have a few more in, getting closer together as you get narrow this bottom guideline that we drew in. Then as we go below this line, we want to start making them a bit smaller and a bit closer together. We want to do this quite gradually. We want to make them smaller at the edges as well. Remember to keep these lines nice and light, but make sure they're clear so that we know where to paint as having a clear outline will make the painting so much easier. Keep adding these in, moving over to the right now, making it smaller as we get towards the bottom, until we filled in that round base with really small ones at the very bottom. I'm just going to add one up here on the right side as I have a bit of a gap here. Okay. Next we want to add a few slightly larger tips above this center point, fairly spaced out. You can see now we've got this nice gradual decrease in the space between the tips from the top to the bottom of the cone. All right. Finally, at the top we're going to add in three smaller tips. I'm going to add in one more here to fill this gap. Okay. Now we want to work our way around the edge of the cone, adding in the end to the scales that we see from a side view so just two sides of the triangle for these. I'm just going to add four and on the left and another four down the right. Next, we want to connect all of these scale tips to the middle of the cone, so, it's useful to have this center line in here, now is a reference point at the middle. Just to quickly show you the best way to do these, you want to make these connections slightly thinner than the tip, so, that gives us some perspective. For the tips in the middle of the cone, you want to draw slightly curved lines that narrow within a tip like the example on the left, rather than straight down like on the right. For the scales on the left of the cone, you want to start the right line from the corner of the tip and have the left line slightly further in and curved round. The same for the scales on the right side of the cone, start the left line at the corner of the tip and have the right line slightly further in and curved. If it helps, you can imagine this line continues up to meet the other corner. If you need to practice getting the shapes right, just pause the video and sketch them out on a bit of paper first before drawing the minimum the pine cone. Okay. Going back to our drawing now, we want to start on the bottom and work our way up with these connections, so that the upper scales appear to be behind the lower ones. Just keep going until you connected all the tips, and you have a clear outline to your cone. Don't worry too much about the smaller tips that were the bottom, as it these will be too close together for us to see the connections, and we'll just be adding in some shadow here anyway. Once you're done get your paints out, and let's start painting. 7. Pinecone Part 2: Painting the Tips: Okay, so now we have our pencil outline. Let's start by looking at the palette of this pine cone. For this, I've used three colors, Burnt Umber, my Winsor Blue, and a touch of my Indian Yellow. The winsor blue makes burnt umber a greyer, darker brown. At the extreme we can use these two colors for the very darkest areas which are almost black. I think the key to making this pine cone look effective, is the contrast of the colors that we use from the much lighter tips at the scales, to the very dark center of the cone. We'll be adding in layers to build this up and to get some of that texture because the surface of the scales is quite rough. The first thing we want to paint, is the tips because they are the lightest area. I'm just adding a small amount of the winsor blue to my burnt umber. You'll see it's taking away some of that reddishness from the burnt umber and making it a deeper, more neutral brown. Be careful not to add in too much. We don't want the blue to start dominating this mix. I'm just going to test this color out on a bit of leftover wet paper. This needs more water as it's too dark at the minute. It's important we get these light enough for that overall contrast in the finished piece. I want this to be a little warmer, so I'm just going to add a touch of my Indian yellow. Have a play around until you find a brown that you like. All right, I'm happy with that mix now. I'm going to use my size four brush for the first layers because it has this nice pointy tip. But it's also big enough to get that coverage. But you can use a smaller brush if you need to get that definition as we want to keep this nice and neat when filling in the pencil lines. We just want to use this mix to paint all of these tips in the triangles that we draw in pencil. But that's coming out a little dark than I want to. I'm just going to add some water to it and just take some of that pigment off my paper towel. That's better now. Just use this mix to paint in all these tips. You can use your paper towel to take off any excess water or paint from your brush. Try and make this as neat as possible. It really helps if you've drawn a nice defined pencil lines. Now we've painted all of these triangle tips. We can paint any side view scales with the same mix. We can just paint all of these down all the way until they meet another line. 8. Pinecone Part 3: Painting the Scales: Now, we want to mix up a dark brown to fill in the scales. I'm going to use the same mix of my [inaudible] and a touch of my Windsor blue and make it thick and more concentrated this time. These won't be the darkest areas so we want to go for a midish brown here. Just test this out again until you get it right. You want to have room to be able to go much darker later on. Now, I'm going to make a really dark black brown mix here using these two paints. This can be the darkest that you can make it, and add this into the bottom of the scale. This is the bit which is the center of the cayenne and would be in the my shadow. I'm sketching roughly to blend this in, so it just gives us some texture. Going back to my mid brown now, I'm going to work on scales that are not next to each other so that they have time to dry. We want to do this, we can clearly see a scale, so we don't want them to run into each other, which they will do if they're still wet. Truncate these nice and neat within the pencil lines. Having that graduation from the really blacky brown at the bottom to the mid-brown at a top really helps get the scales in dimension, and makes it look like they're coming out towards you. Just keep working on each scale, making sure that everything surrounding it is already dry so you get these nice crisp edges. Use a paper towel to take out any excess water or paint, you don't want to use too much water to it because we want a good level of control everywhere the paint is going. Don't worry if some browns are slightly different. This one is a little warm than the rest, but having a mix on your palette like this will create a spectrum of brown's that has subtle differences that will add a bit more realist and interest to your piece rather than it just being a flat color. If you add too much paint just use a dry brush to take some of it off while it's still wet. We'll come back to some of these adding layers to make them even darker to make sure we have that distinctive contrast in the center of the kind, so don't worry about making it perfect right now. It's all about building up these layers. This is a really nice dark blacky brown here. So I'm just going to add this to the center scale. I'm just doing this quite roughly to add that texture in. I'm going to add this dark blacky brown into some of the areas near the center. I'm going back to my mid brown now to fill in the rest of these scales. 9. Pinecone Part 4: Painting the Scales cont.: As we get further towards the bottom of the pine cone, I'm just going to fill in everything surrounding the tips with this mid brown and we'll build this up to make this darker. I'm using my smaller brush now, my size 20. Let's go ahead. It's got a bit too much blue in it, so I'm just want to go over that with a bit more of my brownie mix. By using your darkest black brown, go over All of this gaps at the bottom to really make the can have that contrast and dimension. Just keep going adding the layers of the darker brown into the scales until you covered each one. I'm happy that each one has a nice graduation between the dark center of the can, becoming not lighter make brown towards the tips. 10. Pinecone Part 5: Final Details: Now this is looking like a fairly dimensional pine cone. We want to start adding some of the final details which we'll give it some more texture and depth. I'm going to add some of this diluted mid brown to the center of each tip as they are looking fairly flat and smooth at the minute, we want to make them look a bit more rough and textured, I'm using my smaller brush now my size 2.0. You want this to be lighter than the brown you've used for the rest of the scales, you want to make sure there is enough distinction in these tips from the rest of the cone. They still stand out and I'm not going to blend this in, I'm just adding it in quite roughly. Now using my darker brown, I'm just adding some slight marks to the center of the tips for some extra definition and texture. Finally, I'm going to use this dark brown to make make any areas darker that I think need it, now it's finished and dry. I'm just going to erase that pencil line on the outside. We are done for the pine cone, If you completed this with me well done and I hope you are happy with your pace, I can't wait to see it. Next we are going to move on to mushrooms starting with one of my favorite pieces the [inaudible]. 11. Toadstool Part 1: Sketching the Outline: Hi everyone. In this section, we are going to be looking at two types of mushrooms, the toadstool and wild mushrooms. We'll start with the toadstool and as usual will be sketching this first. Let's look at the shape we'll be drawing. It has a soft triangle for the cap, covered with a small scales in varying sizes and shapes. Then we have the stem, which includes this jaggedy ring about a third of the way down. We won't be drawing in all of the scales as I think it's easier for the very smallest ones to just leave gaps when we're painting. This is a sketch that we want to end up with from this video. Grab your pencil and let's start with the cap. It has a nice rounded top and then forms a bit of a triangle with a slight curve for the lower edge to make it look dimensional. I'm drawing this about three inches wide, the widest part, about seven centimeters if you work in metric measurements. Next let's draw in this stem with the downward lines curving outward slightly. Then draw in the rest of the stem with a soft curved line and the bottom to again, make it look dimensional and give it that cylindrical effect. Now we're going to draw in these scales. Try to avoid destroying any circles, make them different shapes, and that will make them look a bit more realistic. I'll add some in that go over the line as well, which again will help it give it that three-dimensional look. I'm just using my eraser now to take away the lines in the scales on the edges. These will be white, so we want to make sure we don't have any pencil line showing. I'm just going to draw any bits back and now just to make sure my outline is clear. Finally, let's just give some thought to whether light will be hitting this toadstool, so that we can really give it that dimensional look that we want to. I have the light coming in from the upper right side here. These blue lines shy where will be hitting the toad stool. We want to keep these areas much lighter than the rest of it. I don't need to draw these in, but if you find it useful to mark these out, especially in the cap then go ahead making sure your pencil lines are very light because we don't want them showing through. Now we have our outline, we're ready to start painting. 12. Toadstool Part 2: Painting the Cap: So now we're ready to start painting. Let's take a look at our palette. For this toadstool, I've used Scarlet Red for the cap. I've added in some Sap Green as complementary color to make the dark red shadowy areas of the cap. I've also used Burnt Umber and Winsor Blue to mix up a shadowy color for the stem and for the scales. So we're going to start by painting in the cap of the toadstool. So grumpy red and we're going to paint the lightest area first, which is on the right side in an almost oval shape. So you can test out your mix fast and a scrap of paper to make sure it's light enough. Just add more water if it's too dark. If you're in any doubt, is better to go lighter as we can, always make it dark later on. I'm using my small size zero brush to make sure I can control my paint around each of these scales. We want to leave all of the scales white for now. So just fill in this oval shape that we talked about which you make drawn the guideline for, which is scarlet red light in the cap. Now pick up more of your red on your brush and start adding it around this light area. We want this to be a nice, pure brilliant red. The aim is to blend this in smoothly to the lighter area. So work your way around, making sure to paint around all of the scales and you can even leave some smaller gaps for the smallest scales. We want to do this a lot more as we get towards the bottom of the cap. So as I say constantly, when making these transitions, these gradients, remember that as you pull the paint from the dark area to the light area, your brush will pick up pigment. So to get that grade you and you need to keep washing up that pigment off of your brush, drawing it and just using the brush as a way to spread the paint around. We don't add any extra water to the paper because it will push the pigment around in ways that we don't want. That's when you get those horrible watermarks, which can ruin your work even when not intentional. So just use the water that is already on your page. So just take the time to make this as smooth as possible we are not in any rush here. We want this to be nice and bold with this red as well, which will give this illusion of the cap is curving round. Just keep blending in to get that smooth transition. 13. Toadstool Part 3: Adding Shadow to the Cap: Now we want to mix up a darker red for the shadowy areas, which will mainly be on the left side, and to do this, I'm just going to add some of my sub grain to my scarlet like. Make sure you don't add too much, just enough to darken it and test this out on a scrap of paper if you need to. Starting from this left edge I'm just going to fill this corner in, working up the left side and blending into the red. This is what is going to help give it a three-dimensional look like I said on the other side is going to help it really look like it's curving around. Remember to keep adding in the smallest scales at the bottom and anywhere else you feel like you paste needs some. Just make sure it's all blended in nicely, and has a nice graduation from the very dark areas on the left to the line area on the right. Just keep working any areas that you need to building up and add some of this doc makes to the bottom of a cap as well. But only very slightly. We don't really look like it's curving in too much at the bottom. Most again, to add a little bit at this dark red to the right side, but only just to the edge and then just blending in. Just keep building up layers of this reds until you're happy that the cap has a smooth gradient is three dimensional look. The next thing we're going to do is add a tiny amount of shadow to each to this scales to make them a pair so thus standing out from the cap. If you make this really subtle, it will be really effective in making the tiles to look more realistic. Using my dark red mix again for this am just painting a thin line on the left and bottom sides of the scales. This is going to give that three-dimensional effect, but is one of the subtle things that you won't immediately see when you're just looking at the target store, it won't be immediately obvious. If you can see your lines clearly than they probably too bold, you probably adding too much. Just trying to keep it nice and subtle. I'm happy with how this looks now. We'll come back to it when it's dry and add a few more subtle details. But for now, let's move on to the stem. 14. Toadstool Part 4: Stem & Final Details: The stem is predominantly white, so we need to be careful not to go overboard with the shadow on this. We can keep this very simple as cap of the toadstool is the main attraction and where the eye will be drawn to the most. I'm going to mix my pen on both and with a blade, create a gray brown for the shadow, and I'm going to add this down the left side of my stem. This is a really diluted mix. Make sure you keep yours nice and light too. Remember you can always test out first if you're unsure. I'm going to blend this in, keeping this nice and subtle. I'm also adding this down the left side on this bottom section too, and underneath the ring to make that stand out. I'm just going to add a small amount on the right side and underneath the cap as well. I'm going to come back to this when it's dry, but for now let's get back to the cap to add some subtle details into the scale, to add a little bit more dimension and texture. For this, I'm going to use a blue-brown mix and test this out as I want this to be very, very pale, very subtle. Otherwise, it will ruin the look I'm and going for. As always, if you are in any doubt, always go lighter. Starting with the scales on the outer edges, I am just going to use this pale-mixed, add a bit of definition to the outside edges of the scale so they stand out. I'm going to add a small amount of this mix to some of the largest scale so they don't look flat, to give it a little bit more texture. Going back to the stem, I just want to add a little more shadow to make this stand out more. Make sure you leave the bark of the stem white, so don't touch it with your paints. You just want to add a shadow and at the edges, and underneath the ring, making sure is nicely blended in. Okay, that's the toadstool complete. Let me know how you found it. I'd love to hear from you, as always. Next, let's move on to painting some wild mushrooms. 15. Wild Mushrooms Part 1: Sketching the Outline: Next, we're moving on to wild mushrooms, which will be a lot quicker than the toadstool. We're going to paint two of these, one small and one a bit bigger. The pencil outline is fairly simple. This is what we're aiming for. Start by drawing an oval shape for the base of the cup, then add in a circular top, which comes down to be a side then goes inwards. Then add in the stem, getting bigger towards the bottom with a round base. Do the same for the larger one. We can make this cup a bit more triangular, just to make it a bit different. Now I can just erase these lines that go through the stem. Now we're ready to paint. 16. Wild Mushrooms Part 2: Painting: For this parlor, I'll be using my burnt umber and my Winsor blue again. So starting with the burnt umber, I'm just going to add this to the edge and blend this in. We want to dark the edges on the left and on the right to create that curve effect, that three-dimension. Now using a very washing mix, with a bit more bias towards the blue, so is a pale gray color, add it to the left of the stem and you can have a slightly darker mix, to the very edges to give it that dimension. Then I'm going to add a dark brown mix to the top of the stem, which is in the moon shadow, and underneath the cap here. Now let's wait for that to dry, and start on the larger mushroom, doing pretty much the same thing. Make sure to leave some highlight in the cap to give it that contrast and dimension and add the shadow underneath, leaving a thin line between the cap and the underside. I'm just going to add some more of my brown to this cap to make it a bit darker and then I'm going to add some shadows to my stem and roughly blend it in, leaving it a little streaky with this very pale wash, which gives it a nice bit of texture. Make sure again to leave some highlight at the bottom of the stem. These are in a bit of quicker looser style than the toadstool, they're still defined enough without contrast to give them some realism. So going back to this smaller one, I'm just going to add some dark areas to the cap and then with my smaller brush, I'm just going to add some lines underneath, from the top of the stem to the edges, working my way around. I'm just going to add a bit more shadow to the underside of this bigger one too. Now I'm going to add some more brown, a bit patchy to give it some texture to the cap. Now just take a look at yours and see if there are any areas that need any more definition, any more shadow, or contrast. So now we finished all of our mushrooms. Once again, let me know what you thought of this class, and show me your work. I really do love to see the work you create from these classes and next, we're going to be moving on to the pumpkin. 17. Pumpkin Part 1: Sketching the Outline: In this video, we're going to be looking at the pumpkin. We want to aim for an outline like this. So we'll start by drawing an oval as a guideline, so keep this nice and light. Now, join a shape like this in the center, about three-quarters of the height of the guideline. From this, draw another, curving in at the top and at the bottom. Again, on the other side and keep drawing these until you reach the edge of your guideline. Now we want to draw in the stem with the curved base, and this should be a bit taller than the guideline, so it's just going to go above that line slightly. Now I want to draw in the rest of these ribs of the pumpkin which sit behind the stem. Just add in little curves here. Now we can erase this guideline, and hopefully you have something looking like this. Now let's move on to painting. 18. Pumpkin Part 2: Painting the First Layers: My palette for the pumpkin includes, Winsor yellow, scarlet lake, Indian yellow, burnt umber, and Winsor blue. You can keep your pallete much simpler with an orange and brown, but these colors allow us to give the pumpkin a nice variety of highlights and shadows to get a lovely three-dimensional effect. On my plate, I have a mix of my Winsor yellow running through to the scarlet lake with a range of oranges in between. I'm going to start with my Winsor yellow, and fill one of these ribs. While it's still wet, add some orange to the middle and blend in. I'm going to work on alternating ribs to give each one the time to dry so they don't bleed into each other. We want that definition. I'm starting with my Winsor yellow for each one, and then just adding in some of the orange at one of the edges. This will help give them the effect, they're curved and the light is hitting them where there are more yellow. Once it's dry you can start working on the remaining ribs doing the same thing. Now, we just need to wait until this first layers are dry and then we can start building up the color and adding more shadow in the next video. 19. Pumpkin Part 3: More Layers: Now this drawing, I'm going to use my Indian yellow to add some more layers, making the orange part of each rib more intense. Now I'm just adding a touch of my Windsor blue to my Indian yellow, to make it darker shadowy color. I'm going to add this in some of the edges to make them appear more in shadow. Now I'm mixing my burnt amber with Indian yellow to make a more brown orange, again to add more shadows, I'm just building up the layers now, working on the intensity of the color of the pumpkin, and highlights and shadows. I'm just making these inner edges darker on each rib and blending it in, so they look curved. 20. Pumpkin Part 4: Stem & Final Details: Next we are going to paint the stem. For this, I'm using a mix of [inaudible] to make a deeper gray brown, I'm using my smaller brush for this. You can paint in a little circle on a top of the stem, which will help it look more cylindrical. Now using a darker mix of your brown they [inaudible] layers of the stem, you want a few different shades of brown showing through, which will give it a nice texture. Now using the same darker mix, just keep building up a shadowry layers on the edges to make them look more carved or anywhere actually they need that on your pumpkin. Try to make sure blend them as much as possible so you don't have any hash dark lines. Now we have a lovely three-dimensional pumpkin. I hope you have with yours. Next we going to be move on to Acorns 21. Acorns Part 1: Sketching the Outline: In this video, we'll be looking at acorns. We'll paint two of these. They're quite straight forward, so we're going to sketch this simple outline first. So we start with the top, which is kind of a semi-circle. This is called the cupule. So next, draw the nut coming to a point at the bottom with a little stump. Finally, draw the stalk at the top. Do this again for the second acorn. So the cupule, am caused to calling it just the top for these videos, and the nut, and the stalk. Now, let's move on to painting. 22. Acorns Part 2: Painting: So for the palette for these acorns, I've used burnt umber, Winsor blue, Winsor yellow, Sap green and scarlet lake. We're going to paint a light wash for the tops first with a burnt umber. You can test this out if you want to, to make sure it's nice and light. As always, we want to build up our colors, so start with the lighter colors first. We can always make it darker, so if in any doubt just go lighter. Then we're going to use yellow for our first layer of the nut. We want a few colors in here to give us some high light shadow and texture, so we'll be using few different colors from the palette for this. Now I'm just mixing some of my sap green with my scarlet lake to neutralize it, and make it a bit grayer, a bit. I'm going to add this to the edges and at the top of the nut. I'm just going to blend this in, and do the same on the other one as well. Now I'm switching to my smaller brush, and grabbing some burnt umber, and I'm going to paint in these stalks. You can make this a little dark at the bottom. Now I'm just using that burnt umber to add in the scales using very fine lines starting from the top. I'm just painting in tiny semicircles, and working my way down. Just keep your brush nice and dry so that these lines are redefine. Now I'm mixing up a darker brown to add some more depth and shadow to this top, and I'm going to gently blend in so I don't step the scales. I'm using hardly any water at all, here my brush is always dry. I'm just going to dark on the edge of these stalks a little, and blend that in. Now I'm mixing my sap green with my burnt umber to make a nice, dark green to add some more layers to the nut. I'm painting thin lines down this to give it some texture, and roughly blending it all in. Just build up these layers until you're happy with your acorns. Now I'm just going to add a touch of more brown mix to the little stump at the bottom. Okay. I think we're almost done now. Just add in any dark areas that you need to for some final detail and definition. Okay. Now we finished our acorns. Let's move on to the final piece, which is our branch of leaves and our berries. 23. Branch & Berries Part 1: Sketching & Painting the Branch: The final piece we'll be painting is a branch of leaves and some berries. We'll keep these pretty simple, so they won't take long. But they're really lovely pieces to use, to add some simple declarations to your work, or as foliage and fillers for erase. We'll start with the branch and we're going to draw an outline like this. Start with a curved line for the main branch, and then draw the smaller branches coming off either side. Then just draw the outline of each leaf, slightly jaggedly edges coming to a point at the top of each one. For the palette for this branch, I'll be using Winsor Yellow, Yellow Ochre, and Burnt Umber. Start each leaf with the yellow. While this is still wet add in some of the Yellow Ochre on the edges so it blends in, and attach to the Burnt Umber as well. Just work your way around each leaf doing the same thing. Now, I'm moving to my smaller brush for the branches, and I'm going to use my Burnt Umber to paint over this pencil lines. I'm going to wait until this leaves are dry and then come back and paint in the veins. So while still waiting, we can paint our berries. 24. Branch & Berries Part 2: Sketching & Painting the Berries: Something like this. Start by drawing in the circles for the berries. You can create these together in twos or threes. I'll just have them on that line. Then draw in the main branch running underneath. Then connect all of the berries out by adding smaller branches coming off the main branch. For the palette, for the berries I've used scarlet lake and burnt umber. I start by painting each of the berries with your red, leaving a small bit of white on upper the right side for highlight for each berry. Then using a mix of the red with the brown which makes a nice dark shadowy red. Just add a bit of shadow to each berry on the left side. Now with the same mix, add a little spot to each berry. There we have our berries. 25. Branch & Berries Part 3: Painting the Veins of the Branch: Now that the leaves are dry, I'm going to use my brown to add veins to each one. That's it for the branch and berries, and that's the end of the painting for this Autumn class. I really hope you've enjoyed it and painted some beautiful pieces and I really can't wait to see them. 26. Final Thoughts: Hi, everyone. Congratulations on completing this class. I really hope you've painted some lovely ultimate pieces that you're happy with. I can't wait to see it. Please do remember to upload your work to the project gallery. If you're on Instagram, you can tag me on your work at Sharon Stevens Design, and use the hashtag LearnwithSharon. Finally, I just wanted to share with you some inspiration for how you can digitize these elements into some lovely wreaths. You can make it quite simple using the foliage and the pine kinds like this, or you can use some of the larger elements to make a much bolder wreath. Once you've digitized, then there are so many options for what you can create. I'm always thinking about what classes to do next, and I do you have a long list myself, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. So if there's anything specific that you'd like to see from me, do just let me know in the discussions or you can just drop me a direct message on Instagram. If you have any feedback about the class, I'd love to hear it, I'm always trying to improve. If you've enjoyed it, I'd love a thumbs up in review, it's really useful for me and for other students to see. Once again, thank you so much for joining the class, and I'll see you in the next one.